Harvest is in!

Homestead Harvest is in…and the tally is:

Pickled Beets:6 pints

Blueberries: 2 quarts dried

Plums: 8 pints canned

            6 quarts dried

Pears: 5 quarts dried

Apples: 7 quarts dried

            4 pints of sauce

            3 quarts of juice—already gone…

Grape juice: 23 quart

Figs: 5 quarts dried

Tomatoes: roasted 70 half pints roasted

7        pints of salsa

4 quarts dried

Green Beans: 7 pints canned

Honey: 5.5 quarts, so far

Jam: 3 gooseberry

            6 rhurbarb red currant

            6 peach

            7 grape

Pickles: senfgurten—5

            Olive oil—2

            Dill spears—8

Dried beans—1 quart of Indian Woman

                        1 quart of Scarlet Runner

We also have two trays of apples left, three dozen longkeeper tomatoes, jujubes hanging on the tree, squashes and pumpkins in the larder.

Pumpkin Bread:

You can use canned pumpkin and it is tidy-- or you can bake your own, store in in pint jars in the freezer, and haul it out when you need it. This makes two loaves: one for now and one for the freezer.

3 1/3 c flour-- half whole wheat

2 t BS

1/2 t BP

1 1/2 t salt

1 t cinnamon

1/2 t nutmeg and cloves

2/3 c oil

2 c pumpkin

4 eggs

2 c sugar

2/3 c milk

raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, apples...whatever is around

Mix dry together. Mix wet together. Mix the two. Bake in a 350 degree oven.

        

Sunday Night Suppers-- September

Polenta with tomatoes and zuchinni

Pasta with green beans, mushrooms, and sliced tomato

Pasta with the tail end of the tomatoes and olives

Green beans, new potatoes baked  with tomatoes

Bold type is locally grown...

Fall Arrived Monday

     

      Fall arrived on Monday, around noon.

            We were driving to the coast to hike Cascade Head. The sky was cloudy, the air cool and damp. As we rounded the corner to Otis, and the Otis Café, alder leaves skittered across the road, soft gold against black. “Looks like fall,” the driver observed and we all agreed. But it was still August, so not yet!

            After lunch in the café, we headed up the hill. Cascade Head is one of the most beautiful hikes on the coast. It begins in coastal forest, deep with ferns, foxglove, fir trees. It climbs steadily up the headland, passes a misty grey alder grove, and breaks out onto the headland. On a clear day, you can see for miles down the coast and into the estuary at the base of the hill. Each step, from there on, brings on more breathtaking views. The panorama lures you on; the hill is steep. In the spring, wildflowers cover the grasslands and we have seen elk grazing on the point. On Monday, as we broke through, clouds moved in. “It smells like it could rain,” we observed. A few steps further on, we felt raindrops and the clouds looked more serious. Rain. We headed back under cover. Half an hour later, back at the car, rain  settled in.

 And with that, the summer ended. 

Cabbage and Apples: We ate cabbage and apples for dinner Monday night. I wasn’t quite ready to admit that it was cabbage season yet—I still want tomatoes and eggplants!—but that’s what there was. And, with some barley on the side, it was pretty darn tasty.

1 medium cabbage, cut finely

1 small onion, chopped

1 medium apple, chopped

Sautee the cabbage and onion with salt and pepper until almost done. Add the apple and cook for a few more moments. Add two or three tablespoons on good apple cider vinegar and stir. 

Sunday Night Suppers-- June

Kale and cous-cous salad, green salad with alpine strawberries

Pasta with    new peas, walla walla onion, and lemon ,
 cookies decorated by the neighbor's granddaughter

   

Black Bean salad with kale, corn, and onion,
Roasted cauliflower, Bread from the Otis Cafe




 

Bulgar and artichoke salad with chard
and pickled  beets

Sunday Night Suppers, January

After a year of photographing the garden every Saturday  I wanted something else that would reflect the seasonality of our lives. What better idea than Sunday night suppers? Whatever we are having, there it is. Bold faced type indicates locally sourced -- within 100 miles of home-- food.

Squash soup, blueberry muffins, salad

Whole wheat pasta with sauteed chantrelle mushrooms, salad

Potato Leek soup, soda bread, coleslaw with apples, cabbage, and carrots

Squash gnocchi, sauteed mustard greens and cabbage

Dank December Days

The Dank December Days have settled over Corvallis. It is cold—high 30s during the day, high 20s at night—and the air full of water. The world has disappeared in the low clouds. The ponderosa pines  are vague shapes across the football field; the houses behind them are invisible. The hills which surround town are gone; the clouds sit on the rooftops across the street for school.  The hemlocks and pines are white on top, dark, dark green underneath.  Moisture condenses on all of the twigs. The apparently bare maple branches outside of my classroom window are covered, surprisingly, in spiderwebs, now delicate icicles of frost, growing fatter through the day. It feels like a Christmas Carol when Scrooge could not see the house across the alley because of the dank air. It is the same weather, just not polluted by coal fires. Twilight will fall early tonight. The shortest night is a week and a half away; the cloud cover will not burn off today. Tonight, Christmas lights and streetlights will glow in the frozen air. Perhaps the clouds will break and the almost full moon will shine into my bedroom. Or, perhaps not. 

Season Changes

The season changes with the squash vines. One day, they are huge, and lush, and growing six inches in a morning and the next—there’s a hint of powdery mildew on a leaf, the growth is finished, and the squashes themselves are developing a thick skin. On the same day, the color of the sky deepens from mid-summer blue to end of summer blue and the dreaded Welcome Back letter arrives in the mail. I always open the letter, decide if I’m going to the Golden Apples (the celebrate-the-best-teachers ceremony which begins the year), and hide it deep in the back of the schedule book. There are still a few glorious weeks of summer remaining.




Other signs:

§ Potato harvest

§ Beans drying on tarps at Sunbow

§ Hay bales and dusty air on the back roads of the valley

§ Macintosh apples are ripening

§ Blackberry picking

§ Chickens sleep until 6:30—oh yeah!

§ Peepsters are laying small eggs

§ The High Cascades are open—best backpacking of the year begins

§ The herbs are flowering and covered with bees

§ Honey Harvest

§ No traffic—all of the students have gone home for a few weeks

§ New schedule book and fine-tipped pen

§ Food dehydrator hums in the back yard

I love watering the garden early in the morning—it comes alive and I am drawn to it, standing and staring for hours while the rest of the world floats on. I have rigged up a series of soaker hoses into all of the vegetable beds; one long tube branches off for each bed so that I can control how long each is watered. It is a good system, held together by beloved hose clamps, although it does explode with a geyser several times during the season and I always rush in for repairs without turning the water off beforehand. You would think that I would learn after the first experience of a faceful of water, but…This morning, the hoses hummed softly to themselves, millions of fine sprays soaking into the earth. Occasionally one shoots higher into the air, watering the grass, but a shift in the straw mulch that is now covering all of the beds redirects the stream back into the soil.

Drawn by the sound of water, all of the living creatures are out today. The honeybees are loving the Shirley poppy stand—it hums when I walk by. Each flower has a bee in the center, working away. Flies investigate the buckwheat back by the blueberries. A dragon fly comes into the shallow blue bowl for a drink, then perches on the chicken fence, out of reach of the cat. A bumblebee stumbles along in the white clover between two beds. A young jay fussed that this is HIS yard, not some other birds. The larger creatures are here as well. Kayli lounges under the garden bench in the shade, considering a fly hunt. Lucy washes, perched on the top of the ladder that I had out to string up a trellis. The chickens are all lurking by the gate, hoping that I will toss them an overgrown radish or a sorrel leaf. I hunt among the plants, looking for overnight changes. Yesterday, I discovered a cauliflower, ready to eat, in the Spring Bed. Today, I check the peas and broccoli, strawberries and blueberries. Margi already has a zucchini—are mine even blooming yet? No. I make a list in my mind of chores that still need doing—plants that need to be tied up, trimming around the beds, some fall seeds to start—but there is no rush. Sufficient order prevails for right now. The water wishes on through the hoses and the world pauses—at least for an hour or so on a summer morning.

Alfred's Long Johns

It is the day before the Summer Solstice and I am baking Alfred’s Long Johns….

In Oregon, summer comes slowly…we have spring from Candlemas to the Fourth of July, especially during el Nina years—and we are in the midst of the most Nina of years on record. It has been raining forever. There have been nice days. Yesterday, I trimmed the entire vegetable garden and Mark mowed it and it looks quite snazzy, but, this morning was overcast and drizzling. When I went to let the chickens out, only the Boss Chicken, Gertrude, came striding out. George was lurking under the shelter and the Peepsters just stayed in bed for another couple of hours. My bare feet were covered in grass clippings when I came in. I resigned myself to the weather, gathered up a couple of books, a small pot of tea, and the cats, and settled into the nook for an hour or so. When the caffeine hit, I decided to make the Long Johns.

Alfred’s Long Johns come from an early summer vacation on Cape Breton I took years ago. My friend Sher, whose partner owned a bit of land and a transformed chicken coop, took me with her to the edge of the land, a small cabin at the end of the road, literally. An elderly couple—Alfred—owned the adjoining piece of land and allowed access to their shower and conversation. It is a beautiful spot, right on the ocean, high up on a cliff, green and grey and stunning. I gather it is exceptionally fine in sunny weather, but I would not know. The day we arrived, clouds settled in and did not move for the week we were there. So, we hibernated. It had been a rough year of part time graduate school and full time baking and I brought a pile of books for my thesis along. Sher had a book of Native American History. We both had novels as well. We climbed into the big bed, rigged the candle lanterns above our heads, and read. And slept. Read and slept. Alfred would come down in the late afternoon, worried that he had not seen us all day, and offer us fresh baked cookies and strong Canadian tea. Lured by the offer, we would emerge into the damp world for a little while before retreating to sleeping and reading once more. On the last day, the sun came out, bright in the world. In our good-bye photograph, we are squinting in the unaccustomed light. “It figures,” we muttered as we climbing into the car for the long drive back to work and writing and not enough sleep. But, even then, we knew that the Weather Gods had given us a huge gift—a reason to stay inside, drink tea, eat cookies, and dream, waking and sleeping, for an entire week.

So, when it is late Spring here in Corvallis, when the clouds have settled over our heads again, when I am, once more, feeling like retreating into a week of sleep and read, I make the same cookies. They are an old-fashioned variety—no chocolate, not too sweet—but they are perfect with a strong cup of tea, a book, and some quiet conversation. I have four dozen sitting on my counter….wipe your feet before you come in.




Alfred’s Long Johns
½ c. butter
1/2c. margarine
1c white sugar
1c molasses
1 egg
1T soda, ¾ c water
1T vanilla
4 ¾ c flour
1t tartar
1t salt
1t cinnamon
½ t ginger and clove
Cream butter and shortening, add sugar and molasses. Dissolve soda into the water and add with the egg and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients together and add. Mix well. Add a little flour if things seem wet. Drop in funky shaped balls onto the cookie sheet and bake in 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes.