Painted Mountain Sweet Corn

Admit it.  You’re jealous of my beautiful corn.  It’s ok.  I don’t blame you.  I would be jealous too.

For days now, I have been trying to sit down and write a post, lamenting summer’s near-nonexistence in this part of the country.  I was going to talk about daytime highs in the 60s and 70s, and crystal-clear mornings with that familiar, crisp, autumnal chill as lows dip into the 40s.  I was going to talk about how this is what I saw last Saturday at the downtown Portland farmers’ market:

And how many of its tree cousins all around Oregon and Washington have also put on similarly colorful frocks even though it is only August.

I was going to talk about how there is no hope.  That we skipped summer this year and all my efforts to grow early, big, strong, healthy tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers will have gone totally to waste.  How the tomatoes sit green on the huge, healthy vines for weeks without the slightest hint of color, how the eggplant flowers shrivel and drop over and over again, how my strawberries are tasteless and bland, my carrots are beautiful but lack sugar, and my tomatillo plant is covered in sadly empty green husks.  But I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t get myself to sit down and write all that.  It just seemed so sad and, frankly, uninteresting.  It’s not just here, you know.  My family in California has exactly the same woes, my garden-blogging friends from all over the Western states are singing the same song, and I hear the words, “early fall” tossed around like confetti every week at the farmers’ market.

Ah, but then there was today.  Today – the last day of a three-day “heatwave” here on the West Coast.  After a solid week of distinctly fall temperatures, we had 90 degrees on Monday, 99 (!) yesterday, and 93 today.  And after months of staring at my stubbornly green tomatoes, BEGGING them to ripen, and picking one, two, or three Sungold cherry tomatoes a day – not enough to do anything with them other than eat them immediately and then wish I had more – today, I was rewarded with this:

Pork Chop, Sweet Carneros Pinks, and Sungolds

<Lisa faints with happiness>

That big yellow tomato is a Pork Chop tomato from Brad Gates’ Wild Boar Farms.  I posted the first picture of that exact tomato on June 28th.  Every day since then, for the last 8 weeks and two days (but hey, who’s counting?), I have gone out and stared at this tomato.  And every day it stared back at me – green and smug, mocking my naive hopes for a ripe tomato in July (ha!).  With each passing day, the hulking plant grew up around my baby until I couldn’t see it anymore without holding back a mass of large vines and leaves with a long stick.  Green, green, green, green, and more green.  I started to allow my mind to wander into forbidden territory… maybe I should pick it green… fried green tomatoes, anyone?  I really gave up hope when, two weeks ago, we had 4 days in a row in the 90s and still not a single blush of color on a single tomato in my garden.  We only had 4 days total in the month of July that were in the 90s, so 4 days in a row in August was a huge deal, trust me.  A big deal with no results.  Just more green tomatoes.  By this past weekend, I had mentally moved on.  I got cold overnight in bed and added another blanket.  The next morning I shivered at my keyboard in my fleece, sweatpants, Uggs, and knitted fingerless gloves as I stared out the window, past the thermometer that said 49 degrees, at our birch tree, suddenly sprinkled with bright yellow leaves.  Fall was here.  I accepted it.

And the reality is that fall is here.  There’s no denying.  Today’s high of 95 will soon be forgotten with tomorrow’s high of 68.  But NONE of that can take away from my giddiness today; I was like a kid in a candy store.  It’s true – absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  Monday dawned cool but quickly heated to 90 degrees, and when I went out to do my normal, unenthusiastic glance at the garden, lo and behold there she was, shining like a beacon in the night – a hint of brilliant yellow on the crown of my evergreen beauty.  Hope springs eternal!  To add to the excitement, a couple of my Sweet Carneros Pinks were barely beginning to blush as well, AND I suddenly had several eggplants set on one of my plants.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  I immediately dashed inside and emailed Brian at work to tell him that he should get ready to pick some tomatoes in the next couple of days (remember, I do not touch tomato plants during this part of the season due to the distinct possibility of encountering my sworn enemy, the tomato hornworm), then I called my parents and a couple of friends to tell them the news.  You’d think I’d just won the Super Bowl or something.

part of today's haul

It was all I could do to resist picking them yesterday, knowing that 24 more hours would just make them that much better.  When Brian got home from work today, he hadn’t even shut the door behind him when I said, “ready to pick some TOMATOES?!?!?!”  He pointed out that it was only 4:00 and I worked until 5:00 and we wouldn’t eat them before 5 anyway.  So, I relented and sat through the last hour of my work day, bouncing in anticipation.  At 5:01 pm, we were out the door and in the garden.  In addition to what you see in the pictures, we actually picked an entire additional pint basket of Sungolds, which I accidentally gifted to my neighbors.  ”Oh, Lisa, are those tomatoes?!  Our tomatoes are terrible this year.  We don’t have any yet.  How do you make them ready?”  I walked over to show them my tomatoes.  ”Oh!  You have cherry tomatoes, too?!”  I lifted the pint basket toward her and said, “yes, would you like to try one?”  Her eyes got wide as she took the entire basket from my hand, “OH, THANK YOU, LISA!!  Thank you SO MUCH!!”  Hmmm.  Not exactly my intention.  Oh well.  They are honestly the world’s nicest people ever and they have given me tons of stuff from their garden over the years, so all is well.  Though I will admit to smacking myself in the head multiple times over the rest of the evening.  Why didn’t I just hand her ONE tomato?  Oy.

Anyway, the rest of the story is that this second, miniature heatwave seems to have kicked everything into gear… my carrots are finally sweet, I picked my first summer squash (bulbous light green thing in the picture on the right, looks like an onion, called a Trombetta squash), and my first ear of corn.  And can you imagine my delight when Brian pulled away the husk to reveal this:

(Brian shucks the corn for the same reason he picks the tomatoes.  Corn borers and corn earworms = Lisa’s worst nightmare)

Have you ever seen anything quite so beautiful in all your life???  Normally, beautiful, colorful corn such at this is dried and used only for decoration, or possibly flour.  But not my Painted Mountain corn.  It can be used at all stages, including fresh as a sweet corn.  It is not a sugar-enhanced hybrid, so the sweetness does not last.  You must pick it and eat it immediately or the sugars will convert to starches.  And so eat it we did, sauteed in a little butter with lime juice and cayenne pepper.  I win.

228 million eggs.  Unbelievable.  Wouldn’t you rather know where your food comes from and how it was raised?

Can you STAND how cute that is??  Can you believe that he really does that?!?  I have had a lot of animals in my life and I’ve never known a single one of them to share food.  I never tire of watching this.  Blows my mind every time.

OK, now everyone run out and get a rooster, ASAP!

And now for the outtakes that I filmed on my own:

How about in this one?  It was tricky as all get out to get any decent pictures because I didn’t want to scare my waspy friend away from doing her valiant, noble, beautiful, wonderful, ordained-by-heaven, incredible, lovable, I-could-kiss-her-for-it-but-that-would-probably-hurt job.  SHE IS EATING A CATERPILLAR!!!!!!!!  YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY WASPY!!!!!!

Ok.  I’m better now.  I just now popped out to the garden on my lunch break to stare at my tomatoes and will them into ripeness when I noticed this lovely lady with her own lunch on my cauliflower.  I made a mad dash back inside for my camera and made it back out in time to get a few shots, though there was only about half the worm left by then.  Deader ‘n a doornail.  Isn’t it beautiful?  In case you couldn’t tell, anything or anyone that helps me in my quest to rid the world… ok, at least my life… of caterpillars automatically gets 10 trillion bonus points on my love-o-meter.  I just hope she tells her friends about the lovely lunch buffet my brassicas can provide.

An Unexpected Garden Friend

Miss Tigerlily, garden friend extraordinaire!

Oh, sure… she may look like a harmless, sunbathing alien-dog there, but don’t let her calm exterior fool you.  She is a ruthless killer of young and old alike.  Let me explain…

This morning, I was in a fitful sleep and dreaming that I needed to throw up, but instead, I was gagging over and over again… kinda like… a dog.  Suddenly, I awoke, and I opened my eyes to find a small Tilly sitting calmly up against my bed, 1 foot from my face, wide awake and staring at me.  Hmm.  Strange.  She is a total princess and is usually sound asleep, curled tightly in her bed until close to noon, long after everyone else  has been up for hours.  Through bleary eyes, I said, “what’s wrong, Tilly, do you need to go outside?”  And I swung my legs out of the bed and stood up, only to be rewarded with the squish of a pinky toe in a pile of dog vomit.  So that’s where my dream came from.  I gingerly removed my toe and washed it in the sink, before taking the dogs downstairs to go outside.  Then I returned, armed and ready to clean it up.  Not that I enjoy it, but having owned animals of all types for my whole life, I am used to this sort of thing.  No biggie.

I went to grab the bulk of it and noticed a large-ish pink thing.  I looked closer, and lo and behold… it was a newborn mole.  I soon realized that there were at least three of them in there, completely whole and undigested, but I think there were more.  I didn’t exactly comb through the whole mess to get an accurate count.  Anyway, so my girl managed to find, dig up, and eat an entire mole family!  Now THAT is what I’m talking about!  Clearly her stomach didn’t agree with her plan to control the local rodent population, but that’s a minor detail.

She has always been a great little mole-hunter.  She can hear them underground and follows their tunnels around the yard, nose to the ground, dashing earnestly this way and that until she locates her quarry and then promptly begins barking at the dirt and digging frantically.  You wouldn’t think this would work very well, but I’ll be damned if she doesn’t manage to pop up with a face full of dirt and a full-grown mole in her mouth more often than not.  And yesterday she must have hit the jackpot when she didn’t just find a single mole, but an entire nest of babies instead!  Go, Tilly, it’s your birthday!!

One More Pretty Picture

bronze-colored Pacific Tree (Chorus) frog

I saw this guy right after I photographed the wasp, and I thought he was so pretty I had to share him with you.  Are you tired of my froggy pictures yet?  He is the typical bright green, but covered with a brilliant, metallic bronze wash.  Click the picture for a bigger version to see the metallic shine.  It’s pretty amazing.

Anyway, I love that I have a whole army of living, breathing pest-fighters living in my garden.  Whenever I see things like this, it always makes me think of how all the frogs and beneficial wasps and honeybees and mantises and everything else are killed by blanket applications of chemical pesticides and herbicides.    Nature has such a lovely system to keep things in balance, if you let it.

Having a mole-hunting dog doesn’t hurt either.

Dragon's Tongue wax bean

Isn’t she wonderful? I do believe that is the prettiest vegetable I have ever grown.  Ever.  I want to marry this bean and have its babies.  The sad thing is that the stripes apparently disappear upon cooking.  In the words of Sarah: sad.  Still, I am in love.  Brian’d better watch out!

And yes, those of you with sharp eyes may have noticed that is tomato leaf that sneakily made its way into my photo.  I was trying to hide it from you because I’m ashamed, but that is a mystery volunteer tomato that I have no ability to murder.  My lack of plant-murdering skills is rivaled only by my lack of bunny-murdering skills.  Again – sad.

Moving on.

Other pretty things:

Chicken Soup

Chicken Soup, handsome rooster extraordinaire!

Soupy boy

Please don’t mind the scabs on his comb.  For evidence of cause of said scabs, please see previous post, or click here.  Getting kicked in the face does nothing for one’s complexion.  What’s a beautiful boy to do?

The Soup Man

Pretty froggy on my cabbage…

Hopefully eating all the caterpillars that are making such pretty lacy leaves.  I love them so.

As you may have noted, weeding is not my thing.  So sue me.

Pretty froggy on my Three Sisters’ pumpkin leaf:

Pretty froggy on my front walk:

I LOVE MY FROGGIES!!!!!

Pretty red dragonfly:

Pretty ladybugs, doing their pretty jobs in my pretty (ok, weedy) garden:

ladybug on dillweed

ladybug on French Gold pole bean plant

Pretty baby Potimarron French pumpkin.  Not sure if it’s pollinated or if it’s going to shrivel up and fall off like all the others so far (hand-pollination here I come!).  I’m pulling for knocked up.  We’ll see.

Pretty diseased French Gold bean leaves.  Not sure what’s causing it.  Closest description I can find seems to indicate mites.  I’m gonna go look for them this evening.  Hopefully that’s it because apparently you can knock them off with water, or at worst, insecticidal soap.

Pretty diseased apple leaves:

I have been trying to diagnose them.  I still can’t figure it out.  The leaves look a little like many different apple disease pictures that I can find.  All diseases seem to stem for the very long, wet, cold spring we had.  This is the same apple tree that looked so awesome and healthy and even had a baby apple or two on it earlier in the year.  Now I don’t know if it’s going to even live.  Blah.

Moving on to happier things…

Pretty green tomatoes!

Pompeii Roma

baby Pork Chop tomatoes

more mature Pork Chop tomato

Like the Sweet Carneros Pinks, the Pork Chops start to resemble their Green Zebra ancestors once they get close to maturity.  They’re hard to photograph because my two biggest ones are all hidden in the rampant foliage.

pretty strands of Sungolds

Pretty Rose Tomato

The Rose tomato is particularly exciting, not just because I love all things even remotely related to roses, but because I thought I planted these last year only to discover that I had two Costoluto Genoveses instead, and no Rose tomatoes.  I was a sad Lisa.  And then this year, the plant has been getting bigger and bigger with lots of flowers that just turn brown and fall off.  I thought it was going to be a dud.  No Rose tomatoes for me.  But then I found this lovely lady this morning and I now have a reason to live!

Pretty Marconi Red sweet pepper

Finally it was cloudy this morning and the pepper is a bit bigger and so finally I could photograph it.  Doesn’t it look like an elf shoe?  I have quite a few of these set on three plants, which is very exciting.  I picked them specifically because they are supposed to be nice and sweet and productive even in a cooler northern climate.  YAY PEPPERS!!!!!

pretty happy chickens

And last but not least, pretty fruit tart (photographed in crappy light):

old-fashioned blueberry tart

Fresh fruit tarts are such an awesome thing to do with all this beautiful summer fruit, and if you have chickens, it helps you eat through your egg surplus with six yolks in the pastry cream.  My tart dough doesn’t use an egg yolk, but many do, so you could actually use up seven eggs in this if you wanted :)

Fresh Blueberry Tart

adapted, ever-so-slightly, from Chez Panisse Deserts

Pastry:

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 2-3 Tbs sugar, to taste
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp lemon zest
• 10 Tbs butter (most chefs will tell you to use unsalted.  I use salted, so shoot me.  I could for a long time about the pros and cons.  use whatever you like.)
• 1 1/2 Tbs water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix flour, sugar, salt, and zest.  Cut butter into 1-Tbs slices, and work it into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or your fingers until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal with a few pea-sized pieces of butter left.  Room-temp butter is ok with this dough, unlike with Pate Brisee (pie crust, whatever you want to call it).  Just don’t work it too much or your crust will be tough.  Mix water and vanilla and work it gently and briefly into the dough until it starts to come together.  Gather it into a ball, wrap in plastic, and let rest for half an hour in the fridge.  Press rested dough into an 11-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, making sure to create and even thickness on the bottom and sides.  Wrap entire pan in foil, and put in freezer for 30 minutes to relax the dough and prevent shrinking.  While it is resting, preheat the oven to 375F.  Bake shell for about 30 minutes, or until light golden brown, removing the foil after about 10 minutes of baking.  No need to weight.  Let cool completely.

Lemon-Scented Pastry Cream:

• 2 cups whole milk, preferably pastured organic*
• zest of 1-2 lemons, meyer lemons if you have them
• scant 1/3 cup flour
• 6 Tbs sugar
• 6 egg yolks
• 2 Tbs butter
• vanilla to taste

In a small saucepan, heat milk and lemon zest to just under boiling.  Do not boil!  Look for steam to come off the milk and it’s ready.  Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, whisk flour and sugar.  In a large bowl, beat egg yolks until thick and pale.  When milk is hot, mix into flour/sugar mixture, whisking vigorously as you add the milk to prevent lumps.  Cook milk mixture over medium heat, whisking the entire time until it has boiled for a minute or two.  Carefully ladle some of the hot milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, to warm them slowly and prevent curdling.  Then, pour the warmed yolks back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk, whisking constantly, and continue cooking until thickened and whisk marks hold a slight shape.  Do not let it boil (ok, mine boiled a little and it was fine, but you’re not supposed to let it boil).

Remove from heat when thickened, whisk in butter, then pour through a fine strainer into a glass or ceramic bowl, cover with plastic wrap pressed to the surface of the cream to prevent a skin from forming, and place in the fridge to cool until you need it.  When your cream is cool and your tart shell is cool, peel back the plastic and whisk in the vanilla extract.  The whisking will smooth the cream.  Spread into cooled tart shell.

Blueberries:

• 1 1/2 pints fresh blueberries, picked over
• 3 Tbs quince or red currant jelly, or strained raspberry, blackberry, or blueberry jam, preferably homemade
• splash kirschwasser (cherry brandy)

In a large saute pan, heat jam or jelly until it is liquid, then add berries and kirsch.  Cook over high heat very briefly, tossing to coat berries.  When they are warmed through and glossy, but before the juices start to run, immediately spoon the glazed berries evenly over the pastry cream with a slotted spoon.  Then get a regular spoon and eat any extra juices from the pan because they are incredible and you cannot possibly throw them away.

Tart can be served immediately, so that the berries are still warm.  However, it will set up and slice better if you chill it for a bit in the fridge first.  It’s up to you.

Bon Appetit!

ripe sungold tomato!

Take a little note, to remind you in case you didn’t know… that I picked my first ripe tomato of 2010 on July 25th!!!  Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!  Or, um… at least mark the date on your calendars… whatever you prefer.  *ahem*  This day will go down in history as my greatest triumph in Pacific Northwest gardening to date.

capturing the historic moment on film - the pick.

on the way to my mouth...

My camera didn’t exactly want to focus on it in my hand and I was in too much of a hurry to eat it to fiddle around taking photos for very long – but you get the point.  It was lovely and beautiful and sun-warmed and bursting with sweet-tart juicy goodness and I got to eat it in JULY. <Lisa collapses in ecstasy>

I will be the first to admit that I have a tomato problem.  Being a lifelong home gardener (and being raised by the same), I wait with baited breath for the first tomatoes of the season, and can hardly stand the excitement when they first arrive.  They have been absent from my diet for so long and anything from the market has been just sad that the first few are relished like the rare delicacies they are.   Then I enjoy the heck out of the glut of tomatoes for a few weeks.  We get into canning season and the first round or two is satisfying – seeing the glistening red jars filled with tomatoes and sauces makes me feel like I’ve really accomplished something.  Then I get to the point where I have giant piles of them on my counter, begging to be used, fruit flies hovering excitedly nearby.  Somewhere between the first time I think, “gee… I need to use those tomatoes before they go bad,” and, “wow another round of canning seems like a lot of work,” I hit the wall.  I never want to see another tomato again.

And yet – a few chilly months go by, and the last of the indoor-ripened tomatoes that I picked green before the first frost have come and gone in our dinners and sanwiches, I’ve held out on breaking into my home-canned stash until I can’t stand it anymore, and every single recipe in my cookbooks that calls for so much as a single fresh tomato sounds excruciatingly delicious.  I NEED to make those dishes, and I simply can’t.  No fresh tomatoes to be had.  All other recipes sound boring.  Tasteless.  What’s a girl to do?

Thus, the cycle begins again.  In those bleak winter months, a deep-seated need for fresh tomatoes starts to build inside of me, the autumn glut long forgotten.  By the time late spring rolls around, I’m nearly delirious with tomato lust.  I scour my beloved farmers’ markets for any sign of the jewel-toned fruits.  At the first sign of outdoor-grown, chemical-free local ones, I snatch them up.  My own plants at home are just starting to get going – harvest is still multiple weeks away.  The ones from the farmers’ market are ok, not great, but I eat them like candy anyway.  And each day, I go out and stare at the plants in my garden.  I look for flower buds, and then blossoms, and then pollinated blooms.  I am dismayed when flowers turn brown and drop from the plant, not yet ready to make fruit because the current combination of environmental conditions are not yet right.  I am giddy when I find the first teeny green fruits, nestled in the calyxes.  And then the waiting begins.  Like a stalker, every day I go out and stare at my tomato plants.  I watch the fruit grow and look for new fruit set.  I wait for any hint of color change.  It always takes longer than I expect – especially up here in the NW.

Finally, the day arrives when I have a ripe tomato to pick.  And I hesitate.  What if I pick it too soon?  Can’t be hasty.  Must choose exact moment of maximum flavor explosion.  Can’t wait too long.  Overripe is even more unacceptable.  I hem, I haw, I watch like a hawk for signs of tomato hornworms (believe me when I tell you that overrides any desire I have to pick my tomato… or even be within about a hundred yards of the plant).  And finally, I do it.  I reach into the plant, feel for the slight give of the fruit that indicates perfection, pluck it from the stem, admire it in my hand, turning it over in the sun…

And then I eat it.  And it’s over.  Just like that.

Totally worth it.

Moving on…

ripe sungolds - day 2

Yesterday I picked another one.

sungold harvest #2

And today I picked THREE!!! (photos not available)  I let Brian have one of the three today, his first of the season.  He should consider himself extremely lucky.  I’m not exactly good at sharing for reasons I have made clear (see above).

I also picked my first carrot yesterday!

It was officially the finest carrot I’ve ever grown.  First, it actually grew (see previous accounts of last year’s carrot woes to understand why this is exciting).  Plus, it grew straight and lovely and it was sweet and crunchy but tender and aromatic and WONDERFUL.  <sigh>  I’ve had bad luck with carrots over the years, from 6-legged monsters, to short, fat, woody nightmares, to tough, tasteless impostors masquerading as perfect, slender beauties.  I consider this another of my greatest triumphs.  I picked varieties this year that are specifically known to be dependable, straight, tender, and sweet.  I was not wooed by promises of rainbow colors or heirloom beauty.  I’ve been down that road before.  Bridges burned, and all that.

perfect carrot and perfect tomato make friends

Today I picked three more carrots, each one more perfect than the last.  Success!

garlic, drying in the shade

I’ve also started harvesting my garlic.

blue-podded blauwschokker

And my recovered shelling peas are rewarding me with mid-summer peas!

parade cucumber plant

My cucumber plants, like my melons, look beautiful and healthy and woefully-behind schedule due to the weird weather earlier this year, I guess.  It’s funny, in warmer, sunnier, drier California (conditions favored by both cucurbits and tomatoes), my mom is already picking bundles of cucumbers, but her tomatoes aren’t even close to ripening.  Go figure.

wild blackberries

Honeybees have seemed notably absent to me this year  (perhaps the global honeybee problem is finally hitting us up here), as have all pollinators in general.  Usually my plants are buzzing with honeybees and bumblebees.  This year, I saw my first and only bumblebee three days ago.  I have not seen one since.  And while the dandelions in our grass were swarming with honeybees earlier in the spring, I hardly ever see one nowadays.  In spite of their absence, however, it seems something has been busily pollinating the blackberries.  I am pleased to report that we will have a huge crop this year, as always.

do you see the honeybee?

The other day, I did see just a few honeybees (and no bumblebees) on the blackberries.  I didn’t have much of a chance to get good shots, though.  I am sad about the bees.

On a last, photo-free fruit-set note, I do have a few peppers set on my plants, but my camera flat-out refuses to photograph them.  It must not like peppers.

Garden Friends

Pacific Chorus frog

I am pleased to report that my favorite teeny-tiny garden frogs are back this year!  They were painfully absent last year and I worried about the global frog problem.  Like our friends, the honeybees, for many years now the planet has suffered huge losses of frogs from every corner of the globe.  They are considered indicator species, meaning that they are indicators of the overall health of an ecosystem, and since they are so sensitive to change, they will be the first to be affected by negative changes, forecasting bigger changes to come.  No one is quite sure what is causing the mutations, sterilizations, and deaths of so many frogs, but pesticide use and habitat loss are front-runners in the debate.

Anyway, I spotted a teeny friend, maybe 3/4-inch long, in my lettuce the other day.  He seems to live there now.  And then on Sunday, I found this guy nestled into one of my corn stalks.  I just hope he eats and and all caterpillars that were considering making their homes in said plant.  Good froggy.

ladybug friend

There also seems to be an abundance of lovely ladybugs this year (yay!), to go with the excess of aphids (boo).  Balance in all things, I suppose.

honeybee on coneflower

Do you see the bee?  She was not cooperating.  I took a jillion pictures but she kept moving and flying away when I got the camera close enough.  And since there was just one of her kind anywhere to be found, this was the best I could do.  Come back honeybees!

* note – yesterday there were two, huge Western Swallowtail butterflies that were IN LOVE with these same flowers.  They hung out on the plant for probably 2 hours, while I watched them from my desk window.  And I, like a dope, didn’t think to photograph them until they were gone.  They have not returned yet.

** double note – yes, butterflies are worrisomely similar to moths, and yes, I am just a bit uncomfortable around them.  But, I did mange to go outside, grip my own arm tightly enough to leave marks, and observe my friends on the flowers a bit, as they dipped over and over again into the wells of nectar with their incredibly long proboscides (yes that is the correct plural form – looked it up).  A stunning feat of bravery, if I do say so myself.

*** triple note – Brave becomes braver when you learn how I first happened upon said butterflies.  I was out watering my potted plants, and when I got to the nasturtium and parsley pot next to the echinacea plant, I was suddenly DIVE-BOMBED by a mad flurry of bobbing, weaving, flapping yellow and black.  The perpetrator proceeded to CHASE ME with repeated attacks until I was well away from HIS flowers, and then he re-alighted and resumed drinking his nectar with a self-congratulatory smugness.

Charlie suggested next time I stop the attacks by surrendering to the butterflies.  He kindly demonstrated:

"surrender like this, Lisa!"

Cheekons

The chickens are well.  I still have too many roosters.  They continue to be, um… roosterly.

The girls continue to lay.  They currently seem to mostly all be on the same laying schedule, and I walked into the coop the other day to find this.

six hens in six nests and a Pippin head

It was egg-laying rush hour.  Pippin wanted to know why I wasn’t taking a picture of her.

I thought it was an excellent question.  She is an interesting photo subject these days, because she has developed very distinct swoopy neck feather things.

Pippin chicken, swoopy neck feather-wearer extraordinaire!

A couple of the other EEs have hints of these, the others do not, but Pippin has outdone them all!  I don’t know what they’re called.  The poofy cheeks are muffs, and the throat poof is a beard… but the neck swoops?  No clue.  Maybe they’re somehow related to the tufts on true Araucanas?

Sauteed Bright Lights Chard with Bacon, Lemon, and an Egg

serves 1

• 2 slices bacon
• 2 cloves garlic. mined or crushed
• 4 or 5 good-sized leaves of Bright Lights or rainbow chard (actually any kind will do… I just like the pretty colors!), leaves and stems roughly chopped
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• splash of chicken stock or water
• 1 large, fresh, free-range egg
• salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

Cut bacon into lardons and cook in a large sautee pan over medium heat until slightly browned.  Drain off any extra fat, leaving a tablespoon or so in the pan.  Add garlic and sizzle briefly, then immediately turn heat down to medium-low and add chard, tossing to coat with bacon fat.  Sautee until chard starts to lose some of its moisture, then toss in a splash of chicken stock or water, season liberally with salt and pepper, and cover pan.  Allow chard to braise for a few minutes until it is tender but still bright green.  Do not overcook or chard will be slimy.  When it is almost done, uncover, stir in the lemon juice, taste and adjust for seasoning, then move the chard into the center of the pan and make a “nest” for the egg.  Carefully crack the egg into the center of the nest, sprinkle with some salt and pepper, and replace the lid.  Allow the egg to cook until desired doneness, which in my opinion should be a barely-set white and a totally liquid center, but to each his own.  Check the egg for doneness frequently by peering under the lid and perhaps gently prodding it with a spatula or your finger to feel the consistency.  Eggs can be overcooked in a flash, so keep a close watch.  When the egg is ready, uncover the pan and slide the whole thing onto your plate, keeping the nest and egg intact.  And, voila!  Lunch.

Serve with nice, crusty bread and lovely pastured butter, if you have it.  I didn’t today, so I went bread-less, and was a sadder person for it.

*note: everything about this recipe up to you… use more or less garlic, or substitute a little diced onion instead.  Vinegar can be used in place of the lemon juice, and you can poach your egg separately and place it on top of the plated chard if you wish, though that would require washing a second pan, which is just not going to happen at my house.

This is one of my favorite things to make right now because it is so fast, easy, and yummy.  Today I used my homemade bacon (I didn’t grow the pig, but it was local pastured pork!  someday I will grow my own pork, mark my words), garlic from my garden, chard from my garden, an egg from my chickens, and a meyer lemon from my parents’ tree (they brought me a bag of lemons when they came to visit for my birthday).  Everything tastes better when you grow it yourself, and it really is satisfying to truly feel like – “I made this!”  Have I inspired you yet?  Get out there and grow something!!

2010 male corn flower buds (tassel)

In all honesty, I’m just not quite sure what to make of gardening in the Pacific Northwest so far.  I am in my third year here and each year has been staggeringly different.

In 2008, we closed on the house in early June, and I immediately proceeded to leave the house in a shambles, boxes everywhere, and dash outside to dig up an arbitrary patch of dirt, haphazardly amend the soil, fence out the rabbits with little more than some sticks, bailing wire and twine, and stick in the ground some random hybrid vegetable starts and seeds from my nearest big box store nursery – not exactly what I had in mind, but hey, I was in a hurry.  It was a total success.  I happily snipped cut-and-come-again lettuce all season long from a single sowing; it was delicious and sweet and tender and never bolted from June until the first frost in November.  I picked sweet heirloom carrots, strong and straight and vigorous, sown from seed.  From a single, sad start from the store, I ended up with more acorn squash than we could eat all winter.  Another sad big-box start provided enough yellow crookneck summer squash to feed an army.  Three hybrid tomato plants grew right before my eyes and provided fruit through December, believe it or not.  They weren’t my favorite varieties, but they were fresh summer garden tomatoes nonetheless.  I got gigantic red cabbages, a few ears of sweet corn, a decent crop of runner beans, and my beloved Mara Des Bois strawberries recovered from their trip through the Rocky Mountains in the back of my truck to produce a delicate berries from August through December.  My pumpkins, however, grew slowly and pathetically and six vines produced a total of two, tiny, misshapen fruit.  And my peas grew tall without setting a single pea.

2008 impromptu garden

2009 held all kinds of promise as we had spent the whole winter planning and building six raised beds of cedar, filled with special organic vegetable garden soil.  I also started all of my plants from seed, indoors or direct-sown – my favorite heirloom varieties.  That year, I got a bumper crop of peas of all kinds, that kept coming for months.  I harvested pounds of green beans from a few small plants, and I got huge red and green cabbages.  My Mara Des Bois gave me bowls full of fruit starting in June, but petered out by early fall.  I was positively swimming in cucumbers and I grew various, glorious melons successfully for the first time in my life.  But my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, chard, and carrots were stricken by “tiny-plant disease” (in retrospect, I think perhaps symphylans were my problem) and hardly grew an inch until August.  I didn’t harvest any fruit until September and then we were hit by early frost at the end of that month and the brief party came to an end.  I never got any chard or carrots at all, and my lettuce was pathetic, bitter, and bolted early.  My pumpkins started slowly and then exploded late into huge, rambling vines full of swelling fruit – only to be hit by that early frost and end my dreams of a pumpkin-filled Halloween.  It was our first year with our fruit trees and because I couldn’t bring myself to remove the young fruits, I harvested a blissful handful of Morello cherries and a single, Indian Blood peach.  My onions, shallots and garlic were total failures – they didn’t grow at all.

2009's Mara Des Bois strawberries

Which brings us to 2010.  This year is everything the other years were not.  The raised beds had a season of peas and beans under their belts to add fixed nitrogen to the soil, and they were amended in the fall with our own compost and chicken manure.  I carefully selected all of my fruit and veggie varieties based on previous years’ successes and failures and recommendations for our extraordinarily temperate climate.  For the first time, I started my warm-weather, long-season plants indoors with the aid of soil blocks, germination heat mats, and grow lights (instead of just in a window).  I was rewarded with large, strong, vigorous seedlings that promised to trump the root-nibbling of overly-zealous symphs.  I carefully weeded and mulched like I never had before.  I researched regional last frost dates and watched the weather forecasts like a hawk, and I planted my seedlings out when I was confident that they would be safe and warm.  They were hit by frost the next day.  The garden and I picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and kept going.  For our daring and perseverance, we have been rewarded with the biggest, healthiest tomato plants I’ve had up here, and the earliest fruit set.

almost-ripe sungold cherry tomatoes, today

That’s right, my friends – I am going to pick my first ripe tomato of 2010 in the month of July!  This is weeks earlier than the other years.  I would say the biggest drawback of that late frost is that the recovered tomato plants have sent out a bajillion huge main stems each.  They are sprawling out of control, despite my feeble attempts to prune them (what if I cut off the most important, most productive stem??  Did you think of that??  HUH???  Can’t do it.).  It’s a tad ridiculous.

that's one tomato plant - Pork Chop

again, one single plant. you get the point.

The three plants that did not survive the frost and were replaced with later transplants are much smaller and much more well-behaved.

Aunt Ruby's German Green - a replacement with a single main stem

But of course, they have no fruit set yet.  I’m really starting to believe in this plant-’em-early-and-protect-the-ever-living-crap-out-of-them philosophy.  The clear winner for plant growth so far is Pork Chop.  The winner for fruit set is Sweet Carneros Pink, which was also the least-harmed by the frost.

green fruit on Sweet Carneros Pink

The green fruit look just like Green Zebra tomatoes, which are their relatives.

female Big Max pumpkin flower

My squash vines are still on the small side, but have suddenly decided to flower, which – again – is much earlier than last year.

entire plant

As you’ve seen in previous posts, my lettuce and chard are growing like gangbusters and are utterly delicious (remember 2009 saw zero lettuce and chard harvest), and my carrots are coming along nicely (unlike last year).

So, what can I say?  It’s a whole different game this year.  And all I can think is – how do modern monoculture farmers do it?  And why?  Why put all your eggs in one basket like that?  Sheesh, if I were a pea farmer I would have been living large last year and utterly broke this year.  Where is your security?  Government subsidies, I suppose, but I leave politics out of this blog.  Not only do plants benefit biologically from the company of other species, but if something goes wrong with one, you still have the others to take to market or feed your family.  It seems so perfectly simple and glaringly obvious that it is a complete wonder that we ever moved away from the small mixed farm model.  Nothing else makes any sense.

Anyway… moving on…

Speaking of peas:

second-flush blue-podded blauwschokker pea

There may be hope yet!  My pathetic inability to murder my plants in the face of an onslaught of pea weevils seems to have paid off.  The little bastards hung around for another week or two after I cut back my plants and a couple of timid attempts at setting new peas on the tiny vines proved futile as they were instantly covered in teeny orange eggs.  So, I just plucked those off and kept biding my time.  And now, lo and behold – egg-free peas!  I haven’t seen an adult weevil in a while and a couple of days ago I spotted new baby peas on the recovering vines (both types of shelling peas seem to be coming back.  I don’t have much hope for the snows and sugar snaps, which are still small and crispy).  I have kept a close watch on them and so far, no eggs!  It has been an interesting experiment, but so far it looks like you can beat a pea weevil infestation with close attention to timing and a little patience.  If I plant new seeds this week for a fall crop, I have a feeling those will be fine too.  I waited out the weevils’ breeding season and took away the places for their eggs (peas) and now it’s too late!  MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! TAKE THAT, WEEVILS!!!

They’re Baaaaaack

chopped pole bean vine

One thing I haven’t yet outsmarted is the plant-choppers.  All these months, all this chopping, and I still have no clue what the hell is going on.  I hadn’t seen any chopping evidence in weeks as my garden surged forth in mid-summer glory.  As my one- to three-foot-tall corn sent forth tassels, I faced up to the fact that I clearly didn’t plant very tall varieties and that my French Gold pole beans were going to need something taller to climb.  So, last weekend I went to buy more of my favorite bamboo poles only to find that the nursery was out of stock and I was stuck with expensive 8-foot plastic stakes.  I stuck one in the center of each corn-and-bean mound and soon forgot how much I hated the plastic as the delicate vines twined happily up the poles, past the corn, and toward the sky.  I delighted in watching their progress all week; new loops spiraled up a few more inches each day.  And then yesterday one looked a little droopy.  It was no longer reaching for the sky.  CHOPPED.

As you can see, as per usual, it was sliced cleanly through at a random point about a foot up the plant.  Nothing was missing.  The entire top half of the plant still clung sadly to the pole, and the bottom half of the plant sat, dazed and confused, still rooted firmly in the ground and unharmed.  Not a single nibble was taken.  Same as always.  STUPID PLANT CHOPPERS.

a happily-twining, unchopped pole bean

if you look closely, you can see the corn is climbing up these taller corn plants

beans twine up this small corn plant and its neighboring wooden stake

On a happier bean note, some of the French Golds in the Three Sisters’ garden are flowering.

French Gold pole bean flowers

And today I found my first teeny tiny baby bean set on my Dragon Tongue bush beans.

teeny baby Dragon Tongue bean

My tomatillo plant is beautiful and happy and setting fruit.  So glad I planted that one seed.

young tomatillos

And my melon plants in the straw bale garden are alive but growing very slowly.  I don’t know why, but I am guessing it’s all of this cool weather we’ve been having (nights in the 50s, days in the 50/60s, afternoons/evenings in the 70s/80s… lather, rinse, repeat).

banana melon plant

Lastly, my Mara Des Bois plants are still having trouble rebounding from last winter and spring.  I have had exactly one berry so far and the plants are small and tired-looking.  So, in summary… this year is about the opposite of last year in terms of garden successes and failures.  It’s always and interesting ride.  But with this much variability and unpredictability, how could anyone ever just farm one thing?

Thirteen on the big girl perch in the big girl coop!

Look at that face!  Is that the face of a baby?  No, sirree Bob!  Our little One-Three went from baby to lady in four days flat.  My friends, you are looking at an official egg-laying member of our society here at Lisa Has Chickens!

My parents and brother came up to visit for the weekend of the 4th, and after a day of wine tasting in the Willamette Valley on the 3rd, we got back home in the evening and my mom and I went out to gather the day’s eggs.  As we were peering into the nests, I said absentmindedly, “We’re particularly looking… for any little… tiny… baby eggs… because… ohmigosh!  SHE DID IT!!  SHE LAID AN EGG!!!”  I reached into one of the lower nests and pulled out a perfect, tiny, dark olive-green baby egg!  I had been keeping an eye out in the baby coop for weeks because her comb has been so big and red and she’s been squatting for the roosters for so long already.  But, no eggs.  Maybe she was waiting until she could hang with the big girls and use the real nests.  She laid on her fourth day in the big coop… which is going just fine, by the way.  They pick on her a little, and she’s not enjoying the attention from the roosters, but she’s still in one piece, and eating and laying and healthy, and that’s way more than I expected.

That was the best of the pictures I took on the day the egg was laid.  It was late and the sun was low, and you have to excuse the dirty eggs… someone must have broken an egg in one of the nests while we were gone because those eggs had dried yolk on them, and so straw and feathers stuck to them.  Normally our eggs are clean and beautiful right out of the nest like the six in the foreground.

This is a better shot I took the next day in proper sunlight so you can see the color.  It had just a faint speckling and the brown wash scrapes off with a fingernail, so that means she got the Marans gene for the dark wash over the shell color (remember that Marans lay double brown eggs (2 copies of the brown shell gene) plus they have a dark wash over the shells that make them even darker, but it can be washed or scraped off as it is not actually part of the shell… it’s like paint), and she got a blue egg gene from her mama and a brown egg gene from her daddy… which makes green.  The Marans wash makes it darker and more olive-y.

She’s 22 weeks today, and she laid her second egg yesterday – equally lovely and perfect and dark olive, and just slightly bigger than the first one.    So, she laid her first egg officially at 21 1/2 weeks, in case you’re keeping track of these things.  YAY BABY!

Score One for the Chickens!!

mummy rat

*sorry if anyone is squeamish – hopefully you’re used to this sort of thing from me by now*

I was in the coop this evening, gathering eggs, when something in the shavings caught my eye.  I looked again and thought it was just a dirt clod at first, but something about the shape made me look closer.  I bent down and realized it was a mummified rat!  Looks like the chickens finally got sick of sharing their food and water and did something about it!  I knew they had it in ‘em!  Go, chickens, it’s your birthday!  Go, chickens, it’s your birthday!!

By the way… check the lower jaw on that thing… it looks like something from Jurassic Park.  Those two lower teeth run the whole length of its head!  No wonder they can chew through things like lead pipes.  Anyway.  Here’s hoping the chickens keep up the offensive since my rat traps never did work and every time I think they’ve left, I find a new tunnel into the run again.  I never see any other evidence or damage from them, but I just KNOW they’re there.  I’m hoping they’re gone for the summer at least, since there’s no need for that kind of shelter and wild food is abundant.

Anyway, Back to the Egg

*If you click on the above photo for the enlargement, you’ll have a great view of the speckling and also the spots where the dark wash scraped off, so you can see what I’m talking about.*

Though I irrationally had an urge to “save” the baby egg, I did decide that perhaps that’s not really a reasonable thing to do, and so I decided to put it to good use – as an egg wash on our 4th of July peach and blueberry pie.  It’s always annoying to use a whole large egg for an egg wash because you never use the whole thing, and then you either end up throwing some away (blasphemy) or you save half a beaten egg mixed with heavy cream for some future scrambling or other use, which is an annoying thing to have in the fridge and to remember to use.  So, this tiny egg was perfect.

Everything Else

Montmorencies on the tree

I guess the theme this year is weather.  Somehow it always seems strange this year.  Today got up to at least 85 and tomorrow is supposed to be 95.  I have been hemming and hawing about picking my sour cherries because I’m just not sure when they’re ripe.  I think Montmorencies are lighter, brighter red when they are ripe than seems right to me.  They are very soft and juicy-feeling and birds tore into two of them today, and the heat really kicked them into gear so I picked them.  I left the English Morellos until at least tomorrow because I think they are supposed to be dark red.  I don’t really have a clue, though.

Morellos on the tree

I picked the handful of Morellos last year and they were incredibly awesome, so I guess I picked them at the right time.  Anyway, I’ll let you know how they are.  This is my first year with Montmorencies and I only got a couple of handfuls, but pie cherries are my favorite things on earth and so I am super excited.  I take what I can get.

Speaking of weather, this was the weather on the 4th (see photo).  Dark clouds, cold breeze, a few raindrops, and I’m not sure it hit 60 degrees.  We all wore jackets (Brian took this photo and then we all immediately went in and got our warm clothes) while eating our awesome dinner of local, 100% pastured, grass-fed-and-finished beef tri-tip(no feedlot no grain, ever.  only grass.  period.), local, 100% pastured chicken, lamb from next door, salad with roasted beets, lettuce, and fresh herbs from our garden, sauteed chard and beet greens with garlic, all from our garden, and potato and green bean salad with potatoes grown next door, green beans from the farmers’ market, and herbs from our garden, Argyle sparkling rose from the Willamette Valley, and Frog Hollow peach and Willamette blueberry pie (holy moly I love eating in the summertime)… and then we shivered through fireworks that night.  Yesterday was sunny but cool… even at the warmest time yesterday, I wore a sweater.  And then today we almost used the air conditioning, and tomorrow we have a warning for “extreme heat” from accuweather.  What a weird year.

And because of the coming heat and our, ahem, learning experience from last summer… we have decided to be proactive and add some more ventilation to the coop.  It  is already open around the three sides under the edge of the roof, plus the window opens and the three chicken doors are open at all times.  But, taking a cue from a cool old book Brian bought me last year, Fresh-Air Poultry Houses, I’ve decided more open is better.  And so this evening, I added a window.  The chickens were highly concerned about the remodel – the roosters sounded the alarm and the ladies followed suit and the whole lot of them “bawk bawk buhGAWK”ed at me the entire time as I ripped siding panels off the door and then covered it with hardware cloth.  But, I  believe this will help create a cross-draft that will keep the air moving and the temperature down inside the coop.  Tomorrow will find shallow tubs of ice water in the coop and run for them to drink and cool their feet.

And then today.  I think these speak for themselves.

I have nothing to say.

Unrelated – Pea Weevils

pea weevil on tomatillo plant

I got some better shots of the pea weevils (click to see enlargement for better detail) before I ran into my friends, above.  They were on my tomatillo plant, which is right next to the peas.  I think they’re confused because the peas are gone.

pea weevil on pea plant

notice the gray & white coloration

OK, that’s it for now.  Wow.  Gardening.  Full of surprises.  There were a total of five bunnies, btw.

bye bye!

*please note, no bunnies were harmed in the making of this post.  As I mentioned in my video… I put them in the bushes outside my garden so that mom could have them back.  Shoulda offed ‘em, but I’m lame and so they live on to make more bunnies and eat more of my garden.