Processing the Harvest

This is a good climate for many plants, but dry in summer often - and hot. The layer of leaves allows weed control. When the weed sticks up you pull the easy ones, and spray roundup on the tough ones. Most of the eating plants, the berries and trees, are in raised beds so very easy to hand weed - the spray only is used on the walks and on some flowering areas. I am mostly organic - but the invasive grasses require roundup or surrender. I pick up free lumber from construction sites (I am an ex-carpenter so know construction people and sites) and basically box everything in - then fill it with 3 to 12 inches of compost, or compost and sand. The weeding is easy in that soft stuff and the string trimmer has a boundary to beat against.

Then the leaves are a moisture mulch - and then breakdown into compost over time. I have collected about 5000 to 6000 pounds of leaves this year, 10 truck loads. They are free - and just pick them up wile driving about so no gas either. Why not? I used about that many last year too.

About 60 inches of rain per year here - twice England's, but mostly in storms. And a really shallow water table so many things do not mind a dry spell. England is much more lush with the regular rain and mild climate. Here it is much harder to keep a nice ornamental garden, hot and weedy. The beautiful gardens of England are not possible here. But then it will grow crops. This is an agricultural state and here food gardens produce all year if you work at it.

 

I really need a good egg pie, some kinds of quiche or anything if anyone has any ideas - I am getting close to having to feed eggs back to the hens after a regular customer dropped out. I would sell at the farmers market but some person with 30 chickens is taking that over.

It is getting time for wild blackberries here, called dew berries. They grow low as a ground cover almost - not the massive triffid like ones we would pick in Cornwall - they were amazing. I am really liking the marmalade I made, not optimal, but good, and think I will make some orange/blackberry marmalade for fun. I wish the very hard freeze had not wiped out the local citrus - I will have to resort to the bland store bought. I had lived in Florida quite a bit - a good friend lived on a pure food hygiene; fruitarian, (extreme vegans) commune that made their living picking organic fruit from abandoned orange groves for health food stores, and really had some good citrus. (I used to get down with the cults and communes - now the furthest I get is going to the odd full moon re-enactors drum circles.)

I have hopes for figs. I planted half a dozen this year, and 3 the year before and the older ones are looking pretty good. does anyone preserve them?

 

How about Crème brulee? It has quite a few eggs in it - more yolks than whites but you can freeze whites I think for use later can't you?
Jenny

 

I've only just seen your video of your pond. I really enjoyed it too. I love the blue lilies and the terraces you have built. There's such a wide variety of things growing and so different to my garden here. It's fab and it was so nice to explore it by video.

 

Hi fern, thank you. I need to cut bamboo today, a semi wild harvest. In the woods opposite I know of two huge clumping bamboo stands - just 18 foot in diameter but they grow so tightly jammed together they are touching at the base; then they rise like a giant pouf to about 20 foot tall. we go there with loppers and collect all we need, the supply is so much our taking some is undetectable. But the pieces will root and grow if put in the ground too quickly.

 

Last night the main thing from the garden was broccoli. The corn has hit the shops here, beautiful cobs 3/$1, it is always so cheap here during the long season and with a bit of butter is wonderful. The guy who was our mushroom picking partner for 4 years, and built several houses with me, grew corn all his early life - his grandfather was a university professor and agricultural researcher who specialized in corn and was the one who developed 'Silver Queen' - one of the very best white table corns.

So I know how to cook it----drop into boiling water, return water to boil, boil 6 minutes. That is it, from one of the best corn scientists. I then cool it with cold tap water, slice it off the cob, and microwave it when ready to serve it - so it is the perfect crunchiest. Of course the corn sold nowadays is probably genetically modified because it stays so good and sweet so long, unlike the older times when one had to eat it the day bought - and that had to be within two days of picking.

(To tell if the corn is good peel back the husk and push the back tip of your thumb nail on a kernel till it pops. If a spurt of liquid bursts out instead of starchy paste it should be good.)

 

When I worked in West Africa I often didn't have a lunch break. Sometimes when driving between factories I would buy barbequed corn from vendors at the side of the road, wonderful!

 

lyke, that sounds like a fascinating place - please tell us some recopies - especially some pumpkin and peanut ones. Having read a couple of the Woman Detective Agency books I want to try some of that food.

But the egg avalanche - every day another, and now I have some chicks too.



This is an hour ago, washing eggs. I had a time finding out how to wash eggs and this is what I ended up doing - and I think it is good (I have a bit of chemistry and biology background and this seems to be the right thing - but only what I do)

In a stainless bowl I add 1 teaspoon automatic dish washer liquid - it is very alkaline, caustic almost, and a Tablespoon (1/2 oz) of laundry bleach. Then a gallon of very warm water - it is vital the water be well warmer than the eggs. Hold an egg in each hand under the solution and rub it all over. Your hands are right for this washing, do not use anything abrasive - it is not needed, and interferes with the shell integrity. If the egg is very soiled just dip it and put aside wile you wash a couple more and then the dirt will be loosened and come right off.

Put eggs in a clean basket and on a plate to drain. Dry with paper towels later and put away or just let dry themselves - do not rinse, let the cleaning solution remain.

The ph of this is good for combatting the bacteria. Automatic dishwashing liquid is not the same as regular dishwashing soap at all. You may want to wear gloves if sensitive, I never do.

Eggs last longer unwashed, but I wash them - especially to sell, but always anyway because the insides will contact the outside when cracking them.

 

I have just bought 300 of these, on line, from a restaurant supply company - and wile there I bought a dozen rolls of those brown 600 foot long paper towels.

In the previous post I mentioned using eggs, well I am getting closer to figuring out my pie recipe so need some cheap pans. These are the small 5 inch, 1 1/2 inch deep ones. One pie I made last night I really liked (I made small ones in custard cups) it was the standard ton of eggs, milk, 1/2 sugar 1/2 sugar substitute, coconut, ones but I added a light layer of bitter chocolate morsels on the bottom. These were 65% cocoa, (the rest sugar with a bit of real vanilla). I really liked the dark flavor, and look, edge it put on the bottom crust layer; very interesting with the solid custard middle remaining its clean yellow color from the eggs, and then a brown coconut crust on top.

I plan on trying flaked almonds tossed with some butter and sugar for another topping - and am trying to think of how to get a fruit top also.

 

Colne, you say you wash the eggs in dish washer liquid and bleach.....that worries me a little as the egg shells are porous, does the egg not absorb the chemicals?

Still on the subject of eggs, do you make ice cream? It would be ideal for keeping in the freezer. Only the yokes are used of course but there's always meringue!

 

A couple things there. First is the rule that the water is well warmer than the egg - that way the heating of the air pocket in the egg causes the gas to expand and be going outside - not inside, so does not draw in bacteria and chemicals.

Automatic dishwashing detergent is very caustic with a ph of over 12 - bleach has a ph of about 12 and also the detergent has a higher concentration of the (sodium hypochlorite)( bleach) and is is loaded with phosphate surfactants to remove 'dissolve' any oils and unattached bacteria from the egg. Automatic dishwashing is all about sterilizing safely.

But they are just activated table salt basically, NaClO, with some detergent, harmless once they are neutralized by evaporation or exposure to anything acidic at all (below ph7). For example this is the same thing the worlds treated household and industrial water is treated with plus a detergent. Harmless, reverting back to salt and water. and the detergent is basically the same as you use for your clothing, totally safe unless ingested as a concentrate.

It can 'burn' soft hands in the concentration I use, but will not hurt an egg just as it is completely safe to eat from dishes cleaned with the automatic dishwashing solution.

Also I do make ice cream.

 

Today I made a sort of Madras Rogan Josh and used those lovely small purple potatoes we just dug - whole - they are the finest potatoes one can grow. Excellent firmness, flavor, and really shocking purple inside. Also big pieces of yellow and orange carrot. I grow purple, red, white, yellow, and orange carrots - each quite different in shape, size, and very much in flavor. I just pull randomly and that is what we eat that night.

My soil grows particularly fine carrots for some reason. I regretted not having ripe tomatoes and used canned - but I used onions from the garden.

 

I guess you all are feeding what you grow to the pigs. Not me, last night as always we had a soup with garden stuff: carrots, last broccoli twigs, couple tiny potatoes whole, some torn up Siberian kale leaf towards the end. From the refrigerator a jalapeno and 1/2 a stalk of celery. Then in the water this boiled in I added some instant onion soup, and chicken stock powder, 4 slices of smoked sausage, and finally a small can of Jamming Jerk soup. Oh, and a teaspoon of marmalade as always. A big bowl. We love our soups and have one every night, sometimes I add a can of some good flavored bought soup - I go wild on buy one get one free sales.

 

My tonight's soup is best pickings from Chicken carcass, carcass stock, finely chopped and softened ( in microwave for 4 mins) tender celery, a fat spring onion, 3 asparagus stems added with cream, milk ,salt and pepper and a Roux thickening sauce. Enough for at least 6 portions,
Jenny

 

6 portions does not last us long - last night I pickled eggs and beets - a picture of beets from the garden:

Because the HTML was all ready to add I post it here - having just posted it twice on another thread, but one cannot get too much beets, full of free radical blocking xanthrophoid flavonoids. And fiber.

So also the very last cauliflower of the year, excellent! And there were boxes of 4 foil packets of thick cheese sauce from a mainstream manufacturer being closed out - and priced extremely cheap - so I bought 3 boxes. Just snip off a corner, squeeze on hot cauley, really good. Lush in fact, although a bit industrial, but certainly easy.

And then my extra blue home grown potatoes with butter (pork chops browned nicely, but bought).