Our Backyard Homestead

Dairy and egg free waffles

I decided that today would be the day for our first trial of a gluten containing grain.  We attempted lactose free organic kefir over the weekend and it seemed to be tolerated, though The Garden Girl was especially grumpy and full of complaints on Sunday.  Could just be because she was up well past her bedtime on Saturday night, but it was enough of a behavior change, that I opted to wait another week or two before trying kefir again.

The kids have really been missing bread, so after over a month without any gluten containing grains, we tried spelt this morning.  My dilemma was how to make something yummy for breakfast without using dairy or eggs.  My attempt at waffles was shockingly good!  I want to do more research on chia seeds, but I tried them as a replacement for eggs and honestly I don't think I would have believed they were dairy and egg free had I not made them myself.  The chia seeds worked very well!

The Starvation Diet Waffles

• 1 3/4 cup  coconut milk (the beverage variety, not the can)
• 1/4 cup water with 1 TBSP chia seeds (set aside for at least 15 minutes until gel forms)
• 2 TBSP olive oil (I don't measure, just do two quick pours)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-2 TBSP raw honey
• 2 cups spelt (other flours could be used)

Add all above ingredients to blender and mix.

• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking powder

While blender is running, add the soda, salt and baking powder all at once and mix briefly.

Bake waffles to desired crispness.

Weekend Roundup 3/27

Baby peaches are beginning to appear!

Spring has most definitely sprung in North Texas.  With the unseasonably warm temps we have had, the backyard is brown no more.  Our winter rye has been growing beautifully for the past few months and with the warm days is growing quickly!  It was several inches tall and required a little trim on Saturday.  We worked in the yard for much of the afternoon, the kids helping pull the many weeds that are fighting to take over the front beds.  I worked mainly on my kitchen window bed and am quite pleased with how it is coming along.

Evidently I missed the weather report that it would be cold and rainy all day yesterday and part of today.  I discovered too late to take pics on Saturday that my corn was popping up and was quite disappointed that the weather was not going to permit me to go out and work at all yesterday. 

The corn began peeking through less than 10 days after planting.

In other excitement, we ate our first two strawberries.  Heavenly!  And the birds didn't even steal them!  They were from one the two transplants that I planted this year.  The strawberry plants that wintered in the garden are just now blooming with baby strawberries.

It also appears that we better get busy harvesting some baby greens from the garden because the lettuce is suddenly going wild.  Unfortunately, none of my lettuce from seed has sprouted.  However, my spinach is beginning to pop up.  All three varieties are supposed to be warm weather types.  This is my first attempt a spinach beyond the wildly successful Malibar spinach.

The tomatoes are doing great although there is a tiny bug that is eating up the leaves.  I need to get out and begin foliar feeds ASAP to put a stop to that!  My two Saphos are amazing.  They already have several tomatoes.  The other tomato plants are flowering so should be setting fruit soon.

The blackberries are beginning to load up with berries.  That makes me happy!!

Growing Swiss Chard is so rewarding.  It is very hard to kill and is so pretty.  I have to grow something that looks pretty even in the heat of the summer or I would give up.  My goal this year is to find more ways to cook with swiss chard.  Since I have been brave enough to use beet greens in our smoothies, I think mixing it into a smoothie will be our next experiment.

Playing with my new macro lens.  I am discovering that I still have lots to learn about using a macro.  I was rather shocked to be f7.1 and still get this kind of background blur.

"Mommy, can I put all of the eggs in one basket?"

I my wildest dreams, this was never a question I would have envisioned hearing from my six year old.  Oh how it makes me laugh that we have chickens, but how much fun they have been.  We did have a nice even dozen hens, however, we experienced our first chicken loss while we were out of town for New Years' and are down to 7 chickens now. 

I am quite sad to have lost my spring gardening buddy, Henny.  She was at the top of the pecking order, and one of our original five.  She would stay right by my side last spring while I was working new beds and planting, ready to gobble up any grubs or other bugs that I uncovered.  The other chickens were too fearful when I would turn over a new shovelful of dirt, but Henny was right there next to me with every move I made.

Last May we added eight new chicks to our bunch, of which, seven survived.  The new batch of chicks like to walk on the wild side.  Last August they decided that they were not fans of sleeping in their coop, they preferred to sleep on top.  Fortunately we did not have any predator attacks during the month or more that it took to get them moved inside the coop with the other chickens.

However, their "wild tendencies" continue on, which if not for the fact that we live in a neighbhood would be a good thing.  Industry has been hard at work breeding natural instincts such as sitting on their eggs to produce chicks, otherwise known as broody. out of chickens.  A broody chicken gets in the way of a large scale egg production operation. 

We currently have two of last May's chicks that have recently gone broody.  Now if we had a rooster, this would bring about a cute little batch of spring chicks.  However "Big Ben" our "rooster" turned out to be a hen and is currently one of the broody hens.  Big Ben has been a rebel from the beginning.  I am not sure "he" (as we still refer to her) has ever laid an egg in the nesting box.  She preferred hiding out, first, under my tomato plants in the fall and then when they disappeared, she moved on to the large cedar trees that line the edge of our property. 

At some point this winter, she rejected those trees and has moved to the cedar on the other side of our neighbors fence, right next to their carport.  Fortunately, they have not been too upset with her daily visits.  But now we have a new problem.  The chicken that has insisted in laying her eggs in the neighbors driveway is now broody and wants to sit on her nest in their yard all day!  Oh my, the problems I never expected to be solving in my lifetime!!

What's for breakfast?

As part of our "starvation diet" a big issue to overcome was the dilemma of what to serve for breakfast.  I take no shame in saying, a box of cereal is just easy and what Matt and I grew up on.  Strangely enough, I had noticed in the past that I had more energy on the days that I made green smoothies and we did not eat cereal, but that was hard to pin solely on what I ate as so many other factors could influence energy levels. 

If we were eating eggs, our breakfast options would be endless, but alas The Tornado reacted to eggs when we put them back in the diet.  After a year long elimination from his sister's diet, she was able to eat them again, but never wants to.  So the two of them remain egg free, as does our baking, however, for a quick meal, the other three of us will eat a fried egg every once in a while.

Yesterday, I took one of our favorite breakfast recipes from my favoritist of favorite cookbooks, What the Bible Says about Healthy Living Cookbook and amended it to better fit with our current diet.  Before I share our recipe, I want to offer a commercial for this cookbook (with no incentive from the author or Amazon to do so!).  Every single recipe I have made from this cookbook has been well received by the family, which anyone who is cooking for kids knows is a difficult thing to do!  It is filled with simple and healthy eating options, and in my opinion a wonderful starting place for anyone interested in improving your diet without going super extreme as we are right now.  I have enjoyed this cookbook so much that I bought it for my three sisters, my mom and my grandma.  One of my sisters went on to buy a copy for her best friend.

After realizing that we needed specially grown, gluten free oats, we cut them out of the diet for about a week while waiting for the gluten free variety to arrival.  When we ate oatmeal with the gluten free oats, all but one of us got a tummy ache and therefore, we have not eaten them for several weeks.  I have gone back and forth on my opinion about the need to soak grains.  There are sooooo many theories on diet out there that it is really difficult to sift through and determine what is valid and what is junk science.  However, now that our diet is very basic, it is quite easy to determine when what we eat affects us, good or bad.  I soaked our gluten free oats to make our oatmeal bake and everyone was able to eat it without discomfort.

Our Favorite Oatmeal Bake

• 3 cups oats soaked overnight with just enough water to cover and the juice of 1/2 large lemon

In the morning, rinse drain the oats well.  Set aside while preparing the additions. I leave them in my strainer dripping into a bowl to get as much liquid out as possible.  In a separate bowl, add:

• 4-5  Medjool Dates, chopped
• 3/4 cup flaked, unsweetened, unsulphured coconut

Pit and chop the dates into small pieces.  Drop into the coconut as you chop to keep them from becoming a big, sticky ball of sweetness.  This step is really worth the extra effort!!  Add to coconut and dates:

• 1/2 cup organic raisins (or craisins, but we actually prefer raisins)
• 2 heaping teaspoons of cinnamon (to taste, we love extra cinnamon)
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Stir well so that cinnamon and salt are well mixed.  Add in the oats.  Mix again.  Finally, add in:

• 1 cup organic applesauce
• 3/4 - 1 cup of coconut milk (the beverage variety, not the canned variety - we used to use cow's milk-rice or almond milk would likely work too, but we love the flavor with coconut!)
• 1/4 ish cup of honey or maple syrup
• 2 granny smith apples, chopped (I use my corer/peeler to make quick work of the apple)

Stir.  Press into a greased 9x13 pan and bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.

This makes enough that we have some leftovers to snack on throughout the day.  If I served it with a smoothie, it would be enough to feed us for two mornings.  The original recipe had dates as being optional.  I only used them once and a used pre-chopped variety.  After making it with freshly chopped dates, we find the dates are not optional and make it the yummiest breakfast ever!!

 

Weekend Report - 3/20

It seems the garden is coming together in bits and pieces when there is some spare time to be had.  This weekend was not one with much for spare time.  We enjoyed attending the Russian wedding of our girls' violin teacher on Saturday.   A trip to the luthier (violin maker/repair) after the wedding and three extra children that spent the afternoon and evening with us joyfully took the remainder of Saturday.  We took a supper picnic to a local park in order to watch the "Super Moon" rise.  A fun time was had by all even if mom was wearing too many hats in order to get the pictures she wanted.

Despite little weekend progress, we did manage to get a few beds planted with seed last week.  We also worked on my kitchen window garden, clearing out the leaves that had served as mulch and trimming back perennials.  I am delighted to see many plants returning.  I am also delighted that the kids were great helpers this week!

Planted this week:

• 2 rows of corn (this is a first time to attempt corn)
• 3 supposed heat tolerant spinach varieties (good thing since we are having a WARM spring)
• first planting of patty pan squash, more sequential plantings to come
• several more onion sets (totally late, should have been in a month ago but we'll see what happens)
• a bed of millet (Matt's experiment to see if we can successfully grow grains)

The tomatoes look great and the strawberries are doing well.  The peas have not sprouted so I think our dry spring and my lack of irrigation (assuming spring rains would cover me) is looking like a fourth year of pea failure.  The blackberries are looking beautiful and in the past week all of the fruit trees (that I didn't kill last summer) have leafed out.  My sweet almond verbena is not showing any signs of life.  Winter may have been too chilly for it to be planted in a pot.  My mom has hers in the ground and it began putting out new growth this week.

This week, I bought two new fruit trees to replace some that have not made it.  I added a Loring Peach and a Santa Rosa Plum.  Of the first bare root plantings we put in three years ago, the Santa Rosa was the only one that did not make it.  My other little plum is doing well and needs a pollinator, so now it has a companion.  Hopefully we will get those in the ground this week.  I also am researching my options on putting in blueberries.  They do not like our alkaline, clay soil but it appears that by amending the soil in raised beds, we might be able to grow our own and save the $$ spend driving to pick them.

Though there are many projects that could and hopefully will be done, this is the first year in the garden that I feel it is built enough that it has not been a major drain of my time to make it happen.  Because of how much of my time has been invested into building the garden in the three springs past, I was somewhat dreading planting anything this year.  However, that investment is finally starting to pay off and I am glad that I didn't follow through on my threat to throw in the towel this year.  Now if I can just get the remaining bags of soil to finish off my weed avoidance plan, all will be good.

A Super Full Moon on Saturday

Make plans to watch the moon rise on Saturday evening!  According to NASA science:

Mark your calendar. On March 19th, a full Moon of rare size and beauty will rise in the east at sunset. It's a super "perigee moon"--the biggest in almost 20 years.

"The last full Moon so big and close to Earth occurred in March of 1993," says Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory in Washington DC. "I'd say it's worth a look."

Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon's orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee): diagram. Nearby perigee moons are about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser moons that occur on the apogee side of the Moon's orbit.

You can read more about the super full moon on the NASA website.

What if???

A child in the 70/80s, I can remember all of about three kids I went to school with through the years that had major allergies or health issues.  This come up in conversation recently with more than one friend and it seems I am not alone in this memory.  So if we were healthy kids with no allergies or health issues, why are we giving birth to a generation of children with peanut allergies, milk allergies, egg allergies, wheat allergies and a host of health issues?  Why does nearly anyone I know, especially if parenting a boy, have experience with reactive airway disease with their young children?

What if the very food we are eating could be to blame?  What if by simply changing your diet, you might be able to pack away the nebulizer for good?  What if modern food science has shortchanged us and genetically modified foods have genetically modified our children?  Yes, that is a bit of an extreme conclusion, but I was pleased to read an article in a mainstream publication about the possibility of rising rates of gluten sensitivity.

Although much remains unknown, it is clear that gluten—a staple of human diets for 10,000 years—triggers an immune response like an enemy invader in some modern humans.

A new study in the journal BMC Medicine may shed some light on why. It shows gluten can set off a distinct reaction in the intestines and the immune system, even in people who don't have celiac disease.

"For the first time, we have scientific evidence that indeed, gluten sensitivity not only exists, but is very different from celiac disease," says lead author Alessio Fasano, medical director of the University of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research.

I highly recommend reading "Clues to Gluten Sensitivity" over at the Wall Street Journal website.  Recently, Matt has recommended to more than one patient that removing wheat and/or dairy from their diet, might just be the answer to lingering health problems that have not been solved by modern medicine.  The feedback he has had from patients seems to align exactly with the article.  The experience of our family with our elimination diet this past three weeks has turned us into a healthier family nearly overnight.

I have so much more that I want to research and write about on this topic, but for now I ask you to read this article and consider if you or your children might benefit from a gluten free trial.  What do you have to loose?  This coming from someone who has been suffering with chronic congestion and sinus infections for most of the last decade.  Even with seasonal allergies causing much havoc right now, I have not been able to breathe like this in years!  Literally the congestion would be so bad some mornings that I felt I was suffocating.  I don't know yet if it is dairy, gluten, corn or soy contributing to my issues, but without a doubt I am 99.9% improved since we began our elimination diet. 

I fought going nuclear with our diet because it seemed too hard in an era of modern food conveniences.  Now I regret not doing it years earlier!  It likely would have spared my children much agony had we done it long ago. 

Build that soil

I have black clay soil in my yard.  It is so thick and sticky that it made raised beds a necessity in order to have a successful garden.  The first year I ordered a dump truck load of soil from a local company.  It was a mix of equal parts of topsoil/compost/sand.  We tilled the clay to about 6" below the raised beds and then filled the beds with about 6" of of the soil blend.  Every year since, I have added a new layer of compost and a little fertilizer  when I prepare the beds in the spring.  After reading about the benefits of no till methods, I am as gentle as possible when amending the soil in the spring.  At the end of the growing season, I try to cut plants out at the base rather than pull the entire root system.  The first year of "no till" I could tell a big difference!  Here is a good article about the benefits of the no till method.

Here is what I added to my beds this year:

I have no idea if this is the best choice, as a matter of fact, I may use Texas Tee in the future after talking to an employee at North Haven Gardens.  I believe this was slightly under $25 for a 40 pound bag at the feed store.  The Texas Tee was nearly $40 at North Haven.

I am quite liberal with dried molasses.  We try to spread some in the yard as well.  I believe it was about $20 for the 50 pound bag at my local feed store.

I choose this for compost this year.  This along with a bag of cotton burr compost has been, or will be, added to each of my raised beds.  This was considerably more expensive than the cotton burr compost at $6 per 1 cu ft so I am using it sparingly.  Hopefully it will prove to be a worthwhile investment.  Someday I hope to do better in the production of my own compost.  Right now my time is limited and I have to make choices of where I can cut some corners.  While it pains me to pay for bagged compost, until I can get a better composting set up going, it is what it is.

This is my staple compost.  I have used at least one 2 cu ft bag per bed per season over the past four years.  I get it for about $5 per bag at my local feed store.

This is the potting soil I have used for my growing bags.  I mixed in all of the above to the bag when planting.  The only place that I can find it is at L0we's for about $2.50 per bag.  It is a nice blend of topsoil, compost and sand.  I am quite happy with the row of soil that I dumped out of the bags I used last year.  The nice thing is that it is not full of weed seed like the dump truck load purchased locally was.  Crossing my fingers that it works as well as it did last year with my current tomato crop.

I truly believe that if you are going to be a successful Texas organic gardener, you must focus on your soil as a top priority.  I have an unbelievable amount of earthworms and I love letting them do all the work of tilling for me!  One of these days, I  will get around to having my soil tested, but so far what I am doing seems to be working so I haven't managed to make soil testing a priority.  The nerdy side of my brain would like to see that happen, but so far the right side of my brain seems to be running the show and with the right side in charge it is rather miraculous that anything in the garden has been accomplished!!

The tomato experiment

 After planting way too many tomatoes last year, I swore I wasn't planting any this year.  However, too many months with cardboard or no tomatoes made me weak when the kids started asking to pick out plants.  My compromise is to plant them in bags.  I had success with this method for some extra seedlings last year, so here is to hoping that it will work as my main growing method this year.

I decided to take a quasi scientific method with my little tomato experiment this year and set up a control plant.  I bought two Sapho plants from North Haven that come with promise of being a great choice for Texas.  One I planted in a raised bed that was tomato free last year and the other is in a bag of potting soil.  They both got a mix of fresh compost, organic fertilizer and dry molasses when planted.  The soil is covered with the same cedar mulch and they are both protected in a Texas Tomato cage covered with frost cloth right now, but soon to be replaced with floating row cover (as soon as it arrives).

Here is the control, in front of the large tomato tent that contains the experimental plants.

My control plant

My experiment plant

I mentioned in my previous entry that I consulted the 10 day forecast before planting the tomato plants on Saturday.  I am not sure what happened to the forecast in the short time since Saturday, but it was 32 degrees this morning!!  I am still rather fearful of going out to see how they fared, but hopefully with the frost cloth and the extra flannel sheet that we threw on top, they stayed warm enough for the few hours that dipped into the danger zone!

Weekend Report - 3/13

My comfrey plant went from one blade sticking through to thriving nearly overnight

Despite only having a fraction of the weekend to donate to the garden, it was a productive time.  With Matt's help I was able to accomplish so much more.  After consulting the 10 day forecast, I decided to risk putting in my tomatoes.  Every year so far I have had some mishap them.  The only mishap I can foresee this year is that growing them in bags won't go as planned or a surprise freeze will get me again.

Last year was a terrible year for tomatoes in North Texas.  We went from a very cold, wet early spring to a very dry spring to an extremely hot month of June.  However, the previous two years I did alright and was hopeful that growing tomatoes in Texas can happen.  Going into my fourth year attempting tomatoes, these are my thoughts:

• Early Girl varieties seem to be my best producers.  Sadly, I would love to grow heirlooms, but after experimenting with several the past two years, I have had little success.  I have a few in this year that I think have been more successful, but just can't waste the space or resources in the garden for plants that give very little return.
• Pick quality transplants.  This year my tomatoes came from North Haven Gardens and they are beauties.  In the past, by the time I have actually gotten them in the ground, even if they started out in great shape, the plants were suffering.  This year, I babied them until I was able to get them in the ground, hopefully without another freeze in store.
• Pick large plants in large pots.  You DO NOT want the largest plant you can find in a tiny 4" pot.  Sure it might seem like a good idea since it is already 2 feet tall, however, it will be root bound like crazy!  If you are buying 4" pots, choose smaller plants.  Mine were around 6" tall and the roots were perfect.  However, if you can find large, thriving plants in 1-2 gallon pots, that is the way to go.  If you are better organized than me, you can start with small plants and continue to pot up.  If you start early, you can have a large plant ready to go in when it is safe to do so!  But, if, like me, life gets in the way of your best intentions, I have noticed that Lowe's has some decent looking plants in a 1-ish gallon pot for $10.  It might seem steep to pay that when you can get the little guy for $2 or less, but if you take care of that one plant, your return will be at least $10 worth of organic tomatoes that you would have purchased from the store and hopefully much more.  Once the temps get well into the 90s, production goes way down, but if you can jump start with a large plant, the chance of success is much higher!
• Use floating row cover to protect tomatoes from cooler nights, strong spring winds and bugs.  An ounce of prevention just might be worth at least a pound of tomatoes.
• Cover soil with a thick layer of mulch immediately.  In years past I have waited a few weeks before finally getting the mulching done.  It is supposed to help protect from disease.  I hope this to be true as I have been troubled with what I believe to be some sort of blight every year.

If you are a successful Texas tomato grower, please leave a comment with your tips!  I would especially love to hear from anyone who is successfully growing heirlooms!!

We also got a row of potatoes planted.  This is something completely new for me and I have no idea what I am doing.  Thankfully North Haven had a handy flier on how to plant potatoes.  Next I must figure out where to find pine straw that needs to be mixed in to cover them as they grow. 

Finally we began work on taming the fence.  I am putting a border all the way around to hopefully prevent the weeds and grass from mixing with the plants.  I am all about preventative maintenance when it is 70 degrees to lessen the amount of time I have to spend outside when it is 98 and there are chiggers to contend with.

Plants in this week:

• 9 Tomatoes - 3 Early Girl, 1 Yellow Pear, 1 Rutgers, 1 Super Fantastic, 2 Sapho, 1 Cherokee Purple
• 1 row of red potatoes
• 2 strawberry plants added to the ones that have been growing for 2-3 seasons now
• a row of carrots from seed
• a row of lettuce from seed

Time spent over the weekend -

• approx. 5 hours of Matt and I working together
• approx 1 hour spent working by myself
• 30 minute trip to Home Depot for mulch and a new hose

The Tornado inspecting what we did while he was at Grandma's house

With the floating row cover pulled back to reveal the contents of the tomato tent.  You can see the black soaker hose running through the plants.  Hopefully this will do a good job keeping them watered.  I will add another soaker hose for a total of 100' and water other space as well but have not yet settled which space that will be.  Still in process of reworking the watering set up this year.

The labels so that when I forget what went where in about 2 weeks, I have it documented!