Some local food, some gardening, and an abundance of riches.

I’m a wee bit anxious that I haven’t planted my garden yet but I did make a point to spend a couple of hours tidying it up today. My last estimate of 15X30 was a little overstated. I measured and it’s 15X25 with room to grow yet.  I hope to turn it over one more time with a rototiller and hopefully get it planted up by the end of the weekend.

I took some time to weed and clean up the garlic bed.  There are about 100 plants growing and it seems to be doing well.

This is my asparagus bed and it’s torture not to be eating it.   The rule is that I have to let it mature for another full season before I start to harvest to let the roots develop.  The bed is 4X8 and if I’m lucky it will produce enough to feed my addiction and leave plenty left to pickle. Pickled asparagus is a new guilty pleasure that I tend to eat a full jar of every time I get my hands on it.

While in theory we aren’t out of the woods yet I’m pretty confident that my pear tree will produce abundantĺy this year.  The last 2 years the blooms froze off in a late hard frost.  These days were in the midst of a heat wave with no clear end in sight.  Fingers crossed.

And my luck on the milk front seems to have turned around. For the past month or so I’ve been getting local goat milk delivered to me by a kind soul. I get one or two litres a week that I turn into yogurt. Today out of the blue I got a call from the person I used to get cow milk from informing me that his cow gave birth and he had milk to share. When I went to pick it up I realized it was colostrum! That’s the first milk a mammal produces and it’s loaded with extra protein, fat, and antibodies to help protect the newborn.  Some people claim amazing health benefits while others disagree. You can see in the pic on the right (or bottom) how much fat there is.  A thick yellow layer of yummy goodness that will be brilliant when it’s yogurt.

I decided to mix the goat and cow milk for today’s batch of yogurt.  I can’t imagine that it will be anything but outstanding.

I finally finished the pair of socks I started ages ago.  This pair is for me and they fit perfectly.   I don’t multitask  well so when I spin I don’t knit and when I knit I don’t seem to spin. Now that those are off the needles I’m back to the wheel with a renewed resolve to finish spinning the blue fleece I dyed from my trip to Madonna house last summer. Once I get that done I have loads of spinning and knitting projects to distract me.

I rewarded myself with a nice local dinner. Sausages I made from the pig I butchered, sauerkraut I made last fall from some of David’s purple cabbage and asparagus from Frank and Cheryl’s place just outside of town.

Life is good!

A weekend in May

Friday was just about perfect.  Mid 20’s, not a cloud in the sky, and I had booked a vacation day to do some chores and head to the cottage.

First up was picking up the rototiller at the rental place and turning over the veggie garden.  I didn’t do a good job of putting it to bed in the fall so the garden was a bit of a mess. The tiller made quick work of it and I decided to expand this year.  I think the garden is about 15 x 30 now and I  dug a trench around it to have a barrier between lawn and food. I managed to harvest some green onions that had sprouted up from last year’s crop.  So nice.

The afternoon at the cottage was great. The water wasn’t quite warm enough to swim yet (like I did May 6, 2013) but it was nice spending some time at the dock.

Food for the weekend included grilled salmon, onion soup, lamb stew,  and kale salad.

The stew meat came from a lamb I just puchased and the meat was still on the bone.

The bones helped to make the gravy incredibly rich and tasty.

And I served it with mashed potatoes, roasted beets, sautéed mushrooms and a kale and broccoli  salad.   So good.

Being May, of course I woke up to snow!

All good though.  It was pretty much a perfect weekend and the garden is ready to plant!