The Urban Farmer's Almanac

We have a history of neglecting the fruits of our garden, and here is another instance. We grew a bunch of little delicata squashes last year, which were a bit of a pain to use because they were kind of petite. So down into the basement they went. We’re trying to pinch pennies these days, so in scouring the food storage, Alicia found them and decided it was time to make some risotto. They had changed colors from white with green seams to a golden yellow, almost like little pumpkins. Those things were over a year old, and still going strong… talk about staying power.

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The little crabapples out in front of the run-down church next door are ready to go, so Robbie and I filled up a basketful yesterday. The sauce they make is really tart, but the batch we froze last year was perfect as a base for pie filling, adding either apples or rhubarb. The first batch today made 7 pints of applesauce, and I have the rest prepped to cook down tomorrow, hopefully for another 5 or 6 pints. That should get us through to next year in pretty good shape. Though pies have become my go-to potluck dish, so I think we’ll also do some apple pie filling this fall.

I got a little artsy with the photos this time, just to warn you. Here’s to steamy August nights in the kitchen.

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Last year we had a really cold stretch of weather, and the only thing that survived was our Tuscan Kale. Included in things that did die was our artichoke plant, which was just getting ready to be harvested. Instead it froze solid and wilted to the ground. When the snow started today, I leapt into action and saved our artichokes, even though only one of them was a respectable size.

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Wow.  We had quite the harvest today.  Dan has been out of town camping the last four days. With him gone I did not have the time to harvest much from the garden each day, so the cucumbers got a little out of control (those guys grow fast!).  In addition much of our long awaited produce has finally reached ripeness – squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, etc.  We haven’t had a ton of yield for most of the summer, which I am sure is related to the things we chose for the garden as much as it is to the terrible summer weather.    Now we are finally enjoying some bounty.  We need one of those Thanksgiving horns for our table or something.  The squash should keep well for a while, the larger tomatoes will be dried in the dehydrator  for “sun” dried tomatoes packed in oil (we just used up last year’s crop this week), but we will need to deal with the other things in the next few days.

Fall Harvest

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Peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes from the garden.

The garden has been neglected due to a massive home improvement project, but I finally got out and picked everything that was ripe in the hoop house and up front in our meager potato patch (that is all the potatoes we got this year, minus a few I pulled up earlier).

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