Crock-Fermented Dill Pickles

This is my second year making crock dills in cooperation with my friend Cathy, who lends me the crocks her grandmother used.  The cukes come out of my gardens, as well as the peppers.  This year’s dill came from my friend Amy’s garden, and the garlic is Patti’s from Evergreen Farms (certified organic).

The recipe comes from Putting Food By–the little cucumber crock pickle recipe.  Because I started later this year (not thinking I was going to make them, and having a friend who had a little crock to fill with the early season cukes), I used the smaller 3 gallon crock this time.  The 5-gallon crock was devoted to the Concord grape wine project.

You can actually leave the pickles in the crock and eat them out of it over the winter.  But because I split the pickles between Cathy and me, and because it’s just easier to have the jars of pickles on hand, I can them.  I sterilize the quart jars and pack them with pickles, then strain the brine and heat it just to boiling before pouring it over the cukes.

I’m generally a bit short of enough fermenting liquid to can all of the pickles, so I add a brine of 3 cups water, 3 cups vinegar, and a third cup of pickling salt to that brine to make sure there’s enough.  The vinegar I added this year was 1 1/2 cups each of white and cider vinegar.

Because of the late start this year, and because I was picking those cukes very small like I like them, I only ended up with 9 quarts of pickles this year.  But they are gorgeous, and they are tasty.  Luckily, I have one quart of last year’s pickles left to eat, and a few leftovers from this batch too before I break into my share of this year’s dilly goodness.

 

Sick Days

The weather has been gorgeous for the last week, but the last I managed to get done at the farm was the garlic planting a few days ago.  Despite my strategy of hiding out and working in my house, I finally came down with the crud that’s spreading like wildfire this season.

It’s possible that it’s the swine flu–I haven’t gone to the doctor since I tend to think that unless I’m really deathbed sick, it’s not going to do me much good, and will probably expose me to all sorts of other germs in the waiting room.

It started with the respiratory symptoms three days ago, then the cough and body aches and maybe a fever–I didn’t take my temperature to know; I just took action.

In case I didn’t have a fever, I gave myself one by running a super-hot bath with a little tea tree oil and soaked until I was good and steaming, then made a toddy of honey, lemon, and rye whiskey and wrapped myself in a couple layers of pjs and went to bed.  I’d made a little chicken soup for H a couple days before that, so I ate the rest of it.

During the best-feeling part of the second day I made a lentil soup with lots of onions and garlic, so I’d have something to nibble on when I felt the urge to eat.  Yesterday I made a crockpot sauce with home-canned ratatouille and tomato sauce, a couple of lamb sausages from Bob, some hot pepper flakes, and a couple extra cloves of garlic.

I didn’t make pasta or anything for it, I just sucked down that spicy, garlicky, tomato-y broth like a soup.  And went back to bed.  At not-even-seven at night.  And continued my Cormac McCarthy binge-reading until my toddy-of-the-night put me out.

Today is a little better–some of the sinus crud is starting to go away, and the body aches are alleviating.  I’m tempted to use this bright sunny day to get out and work a little more on the farm, but I’m thinking it might be better to wait one more day even if that means it rains and I don’t get out again this week or even this year.

But it does feel like I’m over the worst of it in only a couple of days, and I’m able at least to get some work done around the house without collapsing in a coughing, gagging, achey heap.

 

What’s Better than Garlic?

Why, MORE garlic, of course!

I spent much of the morning working on poetry unit updates for my lit classes (no rest for the wicked or for online teachers) and the late morning and early afternoon hours cleaning up the yard again, now that the last of the leaves have fallen.

My monarch butterfly habitat project went nicely today–all the milkweed pods on the southeast side of the house were dry and splitting open, so I gave a few to a bunch of neighborhood kids.  It’s amazing to me that something that was so ubiquitous when I was a kid is a novelty to kids now.

There’s nothing like pulling out a cluster of those delightfully silky floating seeds and running down the sidewalk loosing them into the breeze.  And even though they were a new treat for the kids, they were still as fun for them as I remember them being for me (yes, and they’re still fun for me).

If you’re worried about your tidy lawn being overtaken by milkweed, don’t.  If you mow them, they succumb quickly.  But if you let them grow, you’ll have lovely fragrant pink blossoms in summer.

And, you’ll be providing habitat for monarchs to lay their eggs.  Monarch butterflies only lay eggs on members of the milkweed family and their caterpillars only eat milkweed.  Milkweed sap is toxic, but it also tastes very bad (I’ve been told), so it’s not something that critters or people eat.

The nasty sap is what makes Monarchs unpalatable to birds, and that unpalatability in Monarchs is what also protects Admiral butterflies, whose looks mimic Monarchs.  Cool, huh?

But this post was about garlic.

My friend and fellow farmer (when she’s not working her butt off helping to save the planet for people who live here, which is most of the time) had some leftover certified organic seed garlic from Patti Bancroft, who was selling nice-sized bags of it at the Farmers Market Harvest Dinner.

She’d offered it to me, and it seemed like a good idea to get more in.  I’d only put in 72 cloves, which is pretty good, but once I started thinking about next year, I realized that I should be planning ahead a little better.

Seventy-two heads might be a good enough amount to eat for myself and for a few CSA members if I take them on, but when you plant garlic in the fall, you’re also planting your seed for the next fall.  If you don’t plant enough for both eating and re-planting, you either have to buy more seed or cut into your eating supply. And that’s pretty tragic.

So I got out to the farm and started manuring and turning the rest of the top bed in the east garden–the 2′ x 51′ space below the trellis that I didn’t get to yesterday.

You can see the difference between the turned area on the right and the unturned, manured section on the left.  Turning organic fertilizer into the beds in the fall is a good way to let the soil microorganisms get a head start on turning that manure into rich humus.

It also lets the mycelium (the webwork of fungi) recover, and that network works with the plants to help them get nutrients.  Mycelium is actually pretty darn fascinating–see Paul Stamets‘ work if you’re interested in all that great, geeky fungi stuff.

Once the manure was turned in, I grabbed H’s 100′ measuring tape and scrolled it out down the length of the bed about halfway between the trellis and the outer edge.  Then I started to plant–one clove per foot in the (yes, I’ll brag) gorgeous manured black earth.

I’m hoping that planting the garlic in front (south) of the trellis reminds me to plant the sugar snap peas (that’s what’ll go there next year, then cukes after that) behind the trellis this time.

For some reason I’ve gotten into the habit of planting peas on the south side of the east-west trellises, so when they lean toward the sun, they flop away from the structure instead of twining into it, as I imagine they’d do better if I planted the seeds on the north side.

But that’s why there’s a next year, right?  For trying to do things better.

I ended up getting in all of the seed garlic Kelly gave me–58 cloves in all (I had to wrap around the east end of the bed a little to get those last few in).  That brings my grad total garlic planting to 130 cloves.  I’ll rest a little easier about my future garlic supply now, and chow down on what I’ve got saved back for this winter!

 

A Day Off

Yesterday was gorgeous–74 degrees or so and sunny.  A perfect fall day.  I kept telling myself, since  I was trapped inside grading papers all morning and most of the afternoon, that it was actually a little too warm to work in the gardens.

Instead, I worked online down at the coffee shop–the furnace guys were here removing my original-to-the-house (built in 1951) furnace and putting in a spanking-new 95% efficient unit with a fancy air cleaner filter.  They were banging and wrenching and screwing (not that kind!) and singing of all things, so I headed out to a more concentration-friendly locale.

When I hit home at about 3:30pm, the difference in the air quality in the house was simply amazing!  But the Energy Star settings on the programmable thermostat leave something to be desired.  Since when is it a savings to heat the house to 70 degrees?

So, I’m working through the manual and will have to knock some serious degrees off those settings.  I know everyone called it a political misstep when Jimmy Carter told everyone to turn the heat down and put on a sweater, but for cryin’ out loud folks–turn the heat down and put on a sweater! Either that, or do some more jumping-jacks.

After yesterday’s intense grading work-out, I decided to take today off.  When my boy isn’t here, that means that I go out and work in the gardens at whatever speed I’m feeling up to, and I repeatedly tell myself, this is all I have to do. There is nothing more that needs to be done.

So, I finished pulling the bean vines down from one of the trellises and raked both sides of the bed, and I manured and turned half of it.  It wasn’t that much, really, but half this bed is about 100 square feet.

Working at a leisurely pace, I also pulled out the rest of the broccoli stalks and the lowermost row of eggplant and their cages.  That’s about all I managed, but it was my day off, after all.

While I was raking, I uncovered this little guy, but he hopped off to find better shelter after a bit.  There were actually mosquitoes out today–so hopefully he was getting a little something to eat before hibernation.

The only things left in the garden for us to eat are the mustard greens–but I forgot to grab a bag and go back and clip some for our dinner.  I did snap off a few last broccoli florets for H before pulling the plants, but it looks like leftovers are on tap for tonight–something easy so I can continue the lightweight theme of the day.

 

 

Crockpot Pork Shoulder Roast

Last night’s local feast featured a pork shoulder roast from our friend Nate, mashed potatoes made with Gary Bye’s Pontiac reds and local (Burbach’s) milk, plus some applesauce I’d canned last year from an abandoned apple tree in the neighborhood.

The roast was maybe three pounds, bone-in, and it was still a little frozen from having just been taking out of the freezer the night before.  I sliced some onions and layered them on the bottom of my crockpot, put the roast on top, then whisked together a sauce of grainy mustard, crabapple jelly (my own, of course), and a little veggie stock.

The sauce got poured over the top of the roast, and I cooked it on high for maybe four hours, then turned to low for another hour or two.  If your roast isn’t frozen, you might turn it down sooner.  I did baste the roast a couple times, and I turned it over about halfway through cooking, but you can pretty much leave it alone if you want.

When I served it, I ladled a little of the sauce with onions over the top of the potatoes–just a little for flavor, as it was pretty fatty from the meat cooking in it, and I didn’t want to try to make gravy.

The crockpot is my go-to for dinner when I’m busy with work, but know I’m going to want something hearty for dinner at the end of it all.  I’d never made a pork shoulder before, but I like that mustard flavor with virtually any pork product, and the addition of fruit is always good, too.

I would definitely make this recipe again–H must have said “Mmm” about seven or eight times in the process of eating it.  That’s all the encouragement I need.

 

Lately…

I’ve been tempted to post an “out of office” note here–though knowing my own tendencies I would likely begin blogging three times a day simply because I said I wasn’t going to.  Instead of that, I’ll just say posts may be a bit more sporadic for an indeterminate length of time (and yes, I know they have been already).

This is the time of year when I feel that things should be wrapping up, closing down, getting put up and put away.  But the grind of life keeps up as always.  Coursework is heavy with critiques and grading, and the new courseware that we’ve been using has more than its share of glitches.

Yesterday morning, while attempting to send e-mails and grade papers, server errors kept cropping up and causing me to lose whatever I was working on at the time.  I finally gave up, called in a report to IT, and headed out to the farm for a couple of hours to work on fertilizing and turning the beds.

The physical work is a balm to me in stressful times.  I won’t say that I’m never out there grumbling to myself and hacking away at projects in a foul mood, but most of the time the stresses fall away as I see the results of my ongoing labor clearly, and know that the preparation I do now will lessen the spring’s burden.

Farming can, of course, be incredibly stressful when the transplants need to go in or they’ll die in their flats–when it’s not raining or when it won’t stop raining, when the weeds are waist-high, when the bindweed is taking over or the mower won’t run.

But this time of year, it’s no longer about keeping up with Mother Nature’s full-tilt growing season pace, so the work has more of a relaxed quality about it than in the spring and summer and early fall.

Working in the gardens this time of year is a meditation. It’s a time-out from figuring how best to deal with the new kitty we’re boarding for an indefinite length of time in terms of the jealous dog.

It’s a time-out from figuring out when I’m going to make those phone calls for DRA or deal with the ongoing grind of the dishes and laundry and meal preparation and dust and dog hair.

It’s a time-out from wondering when the furnace installers will call, and worrying that it won’t be done in time to get the rebates.  And wondering when I’ll have a half-day to sit down and compile the final grant report for the market, or the vendor list for the Department of Revenue.

It’s a time-out from stressing about massive grading projects and critiques and student evaluations in the face of courseware glitches and book issues that are out of my control.

It’s a time-out (sort of) from worrying about my boy and about how the upcoming custody evaluations and court case will turn out, even if I’ve convinced myself that I am doing what needs to be done–what’s best for him–no matter how it turns out.

And it’s a time out from feeling betrayed by a market vendor to whom I was a friend–invited into my home, fed, and comforted when she was upset–and who decided to start her own after-market using our signs and location without permission.  And then bad-mouthed me to the other vendors–saying I was “against” them.

I took a break from all that yesterday morning and was able to ferry manure to and turn seven beds in the space of a couple hours–there’s three more in that west garden to finish, and it looks as though I’ll have some left-over manure in that pile to use in another part of the garden as well.

Today is grey and sprinkly, but tomorrow and the next day–most of the rest of the week, actually–looks sunny and full of possibilities for more clean-up and turn-over in the gardens.

If I can make it through another grading project today (and maybe put away the Halloween decorations, do some dusting, put some market papers in order, figure out what to make for dinner early enough that it’s not a last-minute freak-out, maybe rake some leaves?), tomorrow might seem just a little more manageable.

 

Manure and Garlic

Manure day!  At first our neighbor Kathy (who boards horses) and I talked about loading my truck, then she’d bring some loader-scoops down while I was shoveling out the truck-load–saving a bit of gas and wear on her machine.

Waiting for a load--Cosmo likes to help

But that manure was WAY wetter and heavier than I thought it’d be.  Last time, we got maybe four or five scoops in the back of the truck–this time we could only put in two and the poor little S-10 was riding on the axles.  And last time it was lofty and easy to pitch, too.

Clearing out load #2

Shoveling it out was killer.  Kathy probably came and went with more scoops four times while I was struggling with the muck-in-the-truck.  Jeez.  But she’d known it was going to take me some time, so she just kept going back and forth, bringing more fertile goodness to the gardens.

Piling it on

In the end, I had two nice-sized piles in the garden plus the second load of manure in the truck that I shoveled directly into the northeast garden beds and dug in right away.  Once I finished with that garden, I planted 72 cloves of garlic.  It’s always a tug-o-war with how much I want to plant and how much I want to save for winter eating.

Fertilizing the northeast garden

I even threw a few extra heads from my eating stash in my coat pockets just in case I needed to fill out the row.  Garlic is just one of the many crops I grow–but it’s a staple in our house. I treat it more like a regular vegetable than a mere flavoring agent, and when I use it in a meal, it’s fairly common for me to use 2-3 cloves at least.

So garlic-planting is about making sure I’ll have a fairly decent supply for myself, and some for next year’s CSA members (yeah, I’m thinking about a few) without taking up too much garden space I’ll need for the bazillion other crops I’ll be planning and planting.  In the end, I usually end up buying some extra from other local growers.

Last compost turning of the season?

I also threw in a few shallots I found intact down in my basement yesterday–those went in a smaller bed in the west garden.  The last project of the afternoon was to turn the compost again–adding a smattering of manure between the layers.

The day ended with a very hot shower to work out the kinks from all the shoveling and digging–I’d thought Advil would be in order, but I woke up the next morning feeling pretty good.  It always seems it’s the extended computer screen time that gets me kinked up–and not the heavy lifting and digging.

If it ever stops raining again for a few days, I’ll get more of those beds dressed and dug in–and the field sanitation isn’t even done yet in all of the gardens.  It’s all a race against freeze-up now–at this point I’ll dress-and-dig first to have spring beds ready right away, then worry about clearing the rest of the gardens if I have time.

At this rate and with this weather, it’ll be Thanksgiving before I get it all done!

 

Autumn on the Vermillion

Since I got that great anti-pull harness for the dog, I’ve been able to take walks without the guilt that hits if I leave her behind.

Cotton Park Trail along the Vermillion River is beautiful this time of year–and almost completely empty.  I’ve seen a total of two people in my recent walks–most days I see no one.  But I guess regular work hours might explain some of that.

It’s kind of nice having the trail to ourselves though–Vega gets to sniff every clump of grass and leaf along the way without being tied to her slow human the whole way.

 

B.J. Running for Secretary of State!

By, B.J. I mean, of course, Ben Nesselhuf, our hard-working District 17 Senator.  The contest is still a year away, but I’m guessing Ben is making his intentions known early enough for other possible candidates for his current seat to step up.

I’m interested to know who that will be.  And will Mr. Mining Equipment Jerad Higman be running again on the R side with his record of downtown economic development and revitalization (’cause lord knows we need more restaurants and apartments in this town–we don’t yet have one apiece for every man, woman, and child).

It’s starting to look interesting already for the Clay/Turner Senate District.  Keep your eyes peeled!

 

 

Testing…

An attempt to de-couple my blog from Facebook. I’ll still link to posts, but you’ll have to come here to read them!