Our Backyard Homestead

Grow Kale - No Garden Necessary

While we are thrilled with our move this summer, I was very sad to leave my garden behind.  For five years I poured precious time and energy, not to mention lots of sweat and chigger bites, into building that garden.  When we made the decision to move in June, I stopped attending to the garden completely and focused on the details of moving.  Despite a very dry summer, my garden lived on without me!  I was so pleased this fall when we put the house on the market to have just enough growing in the garden to hopefully make it a selling point rather than an eyesore.  I had a few tomato plants, a couple peppers, lots of basil, onions and kale-mighty, impressive kale!!

I stopped by the house last week to pick a little kale and brought home two huge shopping bags full!  I would have easily spent $30 to buy that much organic kale from the grocery store!  The only effort I put in was planting it last March and watering until it was established.  Well there was that tiny detail of picking off the caterpillars that were calling the kale home, but they left more than enough to share and the chickens were happy with their little protein feast now that grasshoppers are in short supply. 

When in the course of human events does a mother have to scold her children for eating too much kale?  Never?!  Well that is until I made kale chips and my children inhaled them.  Kids, REALLY, you are going to get upset tummies from eating that.much.kale, at least in one sitting.  Yeah, we are pretty crazy in this house.

Kale chips are extremely easy to make.  Simply wash up your kale, making sure to diligently remove all green caterpillars that might be hiding in all those curls (if you buy your kale from the grocery, you can skip the caterpillar step!).  Pull out the stem and tear into about 2 inch pieces.  I then put it in a bowl and toss with olive oil.  Spread on a parchment lined cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt.  I baked mine at 375 for 5-10 minutes, watching carefully and turning about midway through.  Remove when starting to brown and turning crispy.  Amazingly, I only over baked one batch of the many that I did.  Even more amazing was to take them to a party that evening assuming I would be laughed out of the room with my crazy kale chips.  Not only were they well received, but I returned with an empty bowl and everyone was asking how to make them!

Now about the title of this blog entry.  As my picture clearly shows, this kale was grown in my garden.  However, have you noticed the nurseries are selling lots of kale right now?  They are selling an ornamental variety and while google tells me the ornamental type can be eaten, the eating varieties are preferred.  The main difference in the eating varieties and the ornamentals is the height.  Why not slip an edible variety right into your current landscaping?  I am so amazed by its hardiness this summer and it loves the cold more than the heat.   If it turns out to be a few inches taller than its ornamental cousin, even the strictest of the HOA police would likely be fooled!  I stopped by Marshall Grain on Friday and picked up a few more kale and Swiss chard plants that will hopefully provide us with kale chips and greens for juicing all winter long.

Starting over

After investing five years in building an organic garden at our old house, I was quite sad to leave it behind this summer.  I am not in a season of life that will allow me to invest a great deal of time in building a new garden and starting over.  Between homeschooling, making all of our food from scratch and trying to keep up with three musical kids each playing two instruments, my plate is very full.  How ironic that we now have four times the land, but not much margin for gardening.  I previously wrote briefly about choices and right now I must choose to focus on creative gardening efforts rather than building a large garden space.

This spring I build two new cedar, raised bed garden boxes.  I added one to my garden at the old house, but hadn't yet filled the other when we made the decision to move.  I brought the box over to the new house and with a little good soil, I have an instant garden.  In my other space, the soil was double dug and amended, so the fact that the beds are only six inches tall was not an issue.  My new instant garden is less than optimal because I simply laid down several cardboard moving boxes, set the cedar frame on top and filled it with dirt.  Since I am filling it mainly with greens, hopefully the shallow depth will not be an issue and if I am lucky, the worms will get busy breaking up the cardboard and improving the soil below.

I "fenced" in the space to protect it from the cats, chickens and neighbors goat.  Unfortunately, I did not take into account the army of grasshoppers that decided to feast on the first round of kale and lettuce that I planted.  They ate every last bit, leaving only my hardy favorite, Swiss Chard.  Hopefully round two will be more successful since I planted it mostly from seed instead of transplants-by the time the seedlings start growing, maybe the cooler temps will have reduced the grasshopper population slightly.

I planted kale, cilantro, beets, spinach and collard seeds.  Additionally, I put in two Brussels spouts  and two romaine transplants.  I am also working on some plantings in my existing landscaping and using some pots on the back patio. 

I grew my first ever beets this spring.  I only planted a few and ended up with only one harvested, but it was delicious.  I have space for three rows of beets and have planted the first one.  I am trying my hand at succession planting so will put in row two next week.  Below are the beet seeds.  I am not sure why I find them so fascinating, but of anything I have planted from seed, I think these are just the coolest seeds ever!  And beets that look like a bullseye, how cool is that!

Maybe it is because we are studying ancient history right now, but I was especially fascinated with this seed that looks a little like a weathered ancient Greek statue to me.

Here is my replanted fall garden:

It seems I was quite distractible while planting.  Too many new things to photograph!  Here is the one of the three oaks out front. 

And the gorgeous view of the sky off to the west:

And the plane that few overhead:

It was a great day getting my hands dirty and knowing that with minimal effort, we will hopefully reap some nice rewards....if only the creatures great and small will be agreeable to share!

 

The Backyard Homestead Expansion Project

It was an exciting summer for our family.  Not only did we have a bumper crop of zucchini which after 5 years of failure was super exciting, but we also moved to an amazing new house!!  We were not planning to move, we had been gearing up to remodel, but we have always kept our eye open for a little more land without a little more commute.  The beginning of June, just such a place went on the market. 

I am so grateful every single day that I wake up in our new house!  With all of our special eating requirements, much of our time is spent in the kitchen.  Our old house had a very small kitchen and did not allow for meal preparation to be much in the way of quality family time.  Now, the kitchen is the heart of our home and all five of us can be in there together without anyone tripping over another.  It was truly exciting to remodel the old house for someone else and now that it is on the market, we are praying for a family that will be transformed by the 1.2242 acres the same way that we were.  

Here is a little picture of what life on our new piece of Texas looks like:

Gorgeous Sunsets

Interesting Neighbors

More Gorgeous Sunsets

More Interesting Neighbors

LOTS of Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers make for fat, healthy chickens

Exciting events in our own front yard

Wild birds that want to be pets

And finally, more interesting neighbors...that have babies!

 

Grain Free Lasagna

For the first time since I began gardening, I have managed to get enough ahead of the squash bugs to have a successful zucchini harvest.  Now, compared to books I have read which mention drowning in zucchini and not being able to even give it away, I am by no means a smashing success, but we are being rewarded with 3-5 zucchinis every day or two for the past two weeks!  In looking for creative ways to use it, I made lasagna at the beginning of the month using thin zucchini slices as our noodles.  It tasted fabulous, but was quite watery.  Thus began my quest for the perfect lasagne.

When two large zucchinis came in from the garden on Monday, I knew they were perfect for a second attempt.  As I brainstormed on how to eliminate some of the moisture, it hit me, the dehydrator!!  I used my mandoline slicer to cut the zucchinis into long, thin strips and then put them in the dehydrator for about 2 hours at 135℉.  I have never dried zucchini, but I would guess they were about halfway to being dry when I took them out.

The dehydrated zucchini worked perfectly!  Our lasagna set up just like it would have had we used traditional lasagna noodles.  The dish had a wonderful sweetness created only by the mix of vegetables that were added.  I don't think there has been a better received meal that I have made since we went grain free!

If you don't have a dehydrator, I would guess that drying the zucchini in a very low oven for a few hours would work the same.  The first time I attempted the lasagna, I read recommendations on several websites of using salt to draw out the water in the zucchini.  I didn't want my lasagna to taste super salty, so I skipped this step and dealt with the excess liquid.  Dehydrating the zucchini first is an extra step, but one that is very much worth it in my book!  Don't let the long list of ingredients or the extra steps keep you from trying it out, you wouldn't have to add everything, but I wanted to load it up with as many healthy veggies as I could.   I also sautéed most everything first to help cut down on the liquid and to improve the flavor.

Grain Free Lasagna with Zucchini Noodles

• 2 medium to large zucchinis, sliced into long strips with a mandolin slicer
• 1 jar Bionaturae tomato paste
• 15 ounces Ricotta Cheese (beware, most have added starch)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 8 ounces mozzarella cheese
• 1.5 lbs ground beef
• 1 large red bell pepper, roasted or sautéed
• 1-2 large onion, sauteed
• 8 ounces sliced mushrooms, sautéed
• 2-3 cups fresh spinach
• 1 cup fresh basil or 1/2 cup pesto
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 2 tsp garlic powder*
• 2 tsp onion powder*
• 1 tsp salt
• pepper to taste

1. Mandoline slice your zucchini.  I did not use the thinnest setting, nor the thickest.  Dehydrate as described above.
2. Sauté onions, peppers and mushrooms.  I roasted the peppers in a little coconut oil in the pan I was planning to cook the lasagna in.  Set aside.  I also kept all of the veggies separate so that I could make distinct layers.  You could be a little less OCD than I was and mix them up!
3. Using the pan already dirty from sautéing the veggies, brown the hamburger.  Because I use pastured beef, I do not drain off any fat since there is very little to drain.  Remove from heat and add tomato paste and seasonings.
4. Mix ricotta, egg and Parmesan.
5. Grease lasagna pan.  I used a slightly smaller than 9x13 pan.  Add layer of  zucchini and then layer remaining ingredients in any order.  Divide cheese and meat for a total of 4 layers.
6. My order of layers was roughly, zucchini, spinach, 1/2 of onions, 1/2 of meat, zucchini, basil or pesto, mushrooms, 1/2 of cheese, peppers, meat, cheese and finally topped with mozzarella cheese.

*Anyone avoiding starches should be careful in consideration of these two additions.  They are a source of starch, but seem to be tolerated in our household.

The little bit of juice in the picture is more from the meat than the zucchini.  I should have waited until it cooled more to take a picture because the little bit of leftovers had no moisture at all when I dished them into a storage container.

May have been a little more effort than many of our weekday dinners, but a great meal for an adorable birthday boy seemed like a good idea.  Since we all liked it so much and since the garden continues to reward us with zucchini, the efforts will be repeated and soon!

We celebrated with a grain free rhubarb crumble.  I won't be sharing a recipe for that because it was not quite the success I was looking for.

The birthday boy was happy with his "cake" and we managed to polish it off with no problems.

The Ulitimate Thief

I am so thankful that my  husband held a strong disdain for watching television when we were first married.  Initially, I did not share his sentiment and found it annoying that he would never sit and "veg" with me in the evenings.  Our compromise was to not have cable and this very much limited the time wasted on mindless TV.  Over the years, we have found that the television was on less and less.  Even the kids would go for weeks without interest in watching.

A few years ago, we downsized substantially and simply did not have room for a TV.  We let it live in the garage for a while, but realized that we did not miss it a bit.  One day we were cleaning out the garage and set it on the curb with a sign that read "Free - Works" and in less than an hour, our television found a new home.

Have you thought of how much time you spend in front of the TV?  If the TV were still in our lives, there is no chance that I would have the time for a garden.  I wouldn't have a list of several books read in the past year.  My kids would not be playing two instruments.  They would not have the vivid imaginations that they have today. 

Do you think you will look back at your life and wish that you had watched more TV?  I dare you to watch this and be honest with yourself at how much time the television is stealing from your life. 

It's Harvest Time Already

Let the record show that we picked our first ripe blackberries on May 8!  This is at least three weeks earlier than ever before.

We have also been harvesting zucchini, cucumbers and onions for two weeks now.  I have three large-ish zucchinis in the fridge that will hopefully be turned into a successful attempt at grain free lasagna for dinner tonight.  The above pictures is the 3 squash and 2 cucumbers harvested last week.  Below is the 3 zucchini and 2 cucumbers that marked the very first harvest of the season!

My lettuce is finished and I finally pulled the long been flowering cauliflower and cabbage plants that once again produced nothing more than butterflies.  Maybe I could be successful at growing this category of cruciferous vegetables in a fall/winter garden?

We have not had any measurable rainfall for about two weeks now and the cracks are forming in the back yard.  Our watering restrictions have been changed from twice a month to once a week, but I am still glad to not have much planted this year.  I am hoping for the kind of summer that we had when we first moved back to the North Texas area.  It started raining in July and I believe set all kinds of records for how much rain we had in July and August.  One and hope right?!

The chiggers and all other bugs are pretty much TERRIBLE thanks to our very mild winter.  We need to get the yard treated with sulfur ASAP so as to cut down on the number of chigger bites that is growing by the day.  I have found that if you treat a bite with apple cider vinegar immediately after discovering it, this will almost completely eliminate it.  I have also been taking Epsom salt baths after working in the yard. 

Meatza Pizza Pie

Last week I had some extra kids staying with me and had a bit of a panic when I realized that I was all out of our "normal" lunch options, ie nitrate free organic hot dogs.  I had some already cooked ground beef in the freezer and started brainstorming on what I could do with it.  The result was a pizza-ish creation.  My kids wanted to try it again, but this time with more pizza like toppings.  The second attempt was better, but still somewhat lacking. 

As they say, the third time is the charm!  Last night I tweaked the spices and we had the closest thing to pizza that we have had since going grain free.  There are several grain free crust recipes out there, but I don't think any of us missed the crust a bit.  I like that this is quick and easy to throw together and I only dirtied one pan!!

We have been flirting with adding some dairy back in to the diet, but it appears that, for now, it should continue to be on a very limited basis.  A little cheese to make this yummy dinner was worth making the exception.  The kids came up with the name of the recipe.  I added the "pie" since the first time I made it, I baked it in my pie pan.  I discovered that my cast iron pan is perfect to make it a one dish meal, so if you have pan that can go from stovetop to oven, give it a try and enjoy a dish or five less to wash.

Meatza Pizza Pie

• 1.5 pounds lean hamburger (preferable to use grassfed beef)
• 7 ounce jar tomato paste (see note)
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 2 tsp garlic powder*
• 2 tsp onion powder*
• 1 tsp salt
• pepper to taste

Toppings:

• nitrate free pepperoni
• sautéed onion
• sautéed red bell pepper
• sliced black olives
• grated cheese (I used Kerrygold Dubliner cheese and it was an excellent alternative to mozzarella)

To go with the one pan method, sauté red bell pepper and onion in a little coconut oil until soft.  Transfer to a bowl and then brown hamburger meat.  Turn burner off, but continue to prepare on the warm burner to keep it hot.  If using grass fed beef, there should be no need to drain the meat because there is very little fat.  If there is excessive fat, you would want to drain off.  Add the spices to the meat and mix well.  Stir in tomato paste.  I used about 1 tbsp of water to get all of the paste out of the jar and thin it slightly.

Press meat into bottom of pan or transfer to pie plate to form the crust.  Add desired toppings and bake at 400℉ until cheese is beginning to brown, 10-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

*Anyone avoiding starches should be careful in consideration of these two additions.  They are a source of starch, but seem to be tolerated in our household.

About the tomato paste, I have started using jarred tomato products after reading more and more about the effects of BPA.  Canned tomatoes are known source of BPA exposure:

Beyond baby bottles, BPA is widely used in the linings of food and beverage cans. In many cases, particularly where the can’s contents are acidic or corrosive, as with tomato sauce or soda, researchers have found that the BPA leaches out of the can lining and into the food…and into the bodies of people who consume the products. In fact, BPA can be found in the bodies of some 90 percent of Americans.

You can read more about BPA in this article where I found the above quote.  The more I learn about BPA, the more angry it makes me.  When I found a jarred option for tomato products, I was glad to have the option of using tomato sauces again.  

 

Scenes from the Garden - End of April 2012

The garden is full of life these days, both good and bad.  The great news is that I have baby cucumbers and zucchini!  The tragic news is that chigger season has started.  I consider myself an expert on chiggers now.  Did you know you gain expert status once you have weathered over 250 bites?  Surely I must be there in my fifth season of battling chiggers.  I am making note that it seems they make their appearance when temperatures begin to hover in the upper 80s for more than a few days in a row.

I am in love with all of the blooming onions in the garden right now.  I believe that I read that it is not such a good thing when your onions bloom, but we have already established my weakness for all things beautiful.  I did not plant any of these onions, they came back from last year so I consider them a bonus and love their beauty.  Hopefully they will taste good as well.

The onions aren't just beautiful, they are HUGE! 

My cucumber trellis seems to be working great.  I planted three different cucumber varieties and it won't be long before we are harvesting!

Behind the chiggers, my second place nemeses in the garden would be squash bugs.  Hurry up little zucchini, grow quickly before the squash bugs come to get you!!

This little guy makes me so happy!  Sauteed in a little coconut oil, patty pan squash are about the best variety of summer squash ever!!

It was quite windy, so I had a difficult time photographing the blackberries, but they are loading up with berries! 

And finally, yes, one more onion picture.  But we will call this one the butterfly picture instead.  Considering the number of chigger bites I sustained to get these pictures, I think it is only right to post as many as I can!

 

 

The Incredible Egg

I was a business major in college and adored my marketing classes.  For many years, I believed that the organic label on food was nothing more than a clever marketing scheme to get people to part with a few extra bucks to "feel" like they were making healthier choices.  I have since learned so much about our food supply and am certain that organic, whole food choices are worth every penny.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words so I thought I would post a little evidence in the matter.  The above picture is of eggs from two different sources.  The light yellow yolks are organic eggs from the grocery store.  The dark, orange yolks are what eggs should look like when a chicken is being cared for in the way they were intended to live.  Grocery store eggs, even organics, are from chickens kept indoors their entire lifetime.  Chickens were meant to be outdoors and roam for bugs and other little creatures.  Our chickens have even eaten small snakes they have found in the yard!

Right now, we are not getting enough eggs from our chickens to feed our family so I had to scout out a local co-op so that I could buy eggs from free ranging chickens.  As the picture clearly shows, the effort is well worth it!

If you have not already seen the movie Food, Inc. I highly recommend making the time to watch! 

I Have a Confession

I love beautiful things and that makes me a pretty terrible gardener!  Why, you ask?  Well, see that adorable little ladybug?  The ladybugs were thick on the weeds that desperately needed to be pulled from the garden.  I left weeds, spilling seeds that will in turn create more weeds because I didn't want to destroy the ladybug habitat. 

I noticed that the caterpillars have taken up residence in the garden and are munching on some of my greens.  I have BT spray that would take care of the caterpillars and is supposed to be a natural and safe for humans treatment.  I haven't sprayed a single plant.  You see, while I am washing dishes, I watch those beautiful butterflies dancing over the flowers.  If I kill all of the caterpillars, how will I have more butterflies?

Some of my kale and my cilantro have bolted which any "real" gardener knows is not a good thing.  I, however, find the flowering plants too pretty to pull and make space for another vegetable variety. 

Evidently, I once again missed the window to harvest the cauliflower but I am too fascinated by the transformation of the plant to pull it.   I should have pulled the plant about a week before I took this picture when it was all still snowy white, but seemed too small to be ready to harvest. 

Thankfully, my children seem to share my appreciation for beautiful things and while I was working in the garden, The Chicken Whisperer decorated our cracked up driveway for Easter.  She amazes me with her artistic ability!!