Happy Labor Day (US) from Eight Gate Farm! This holiday weekend we spent two nights in southwestern Vermont, about 2.5 hours from us, to attend the garlic festival now called "Garlic Town USA." It seems lately that there are as many "craft distillery" booths as the garlic growers have, but we were still able to procure all the seed garlic we need for fall planting. The festival is quite fun: people watching, sampling food truck food (all the rage lately), and listening to live music. The seed garlic is a bonus. Plus the tiny town, Wilmington, where we stayed at an historic hotel, has some amazing restaurants.
We were able to get a few "first harvests" this late in the season. Leading off, here is the sweet pepper called "Hungarian Cheese." It's described as a stuffing pepper, but we prefer the thinner-walled, larger, red bell peppers for that. Instead, we use it for drying and grinding into paprika.
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| Hungarian Cheese (OP) peppers |
I also had fun digging our entire crop of potatoes. In keeping with the theme of less production but also less work, this year I only planted one 12-foot row instead of two. We should be well-supplied nonetheless.
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| Kennebec potatoes |
A crop I've ignored in recent years is hops. But at the garlic festival, I sampled a hopped gin from one of the distillers, and liked it. So when we got home I harvested a small bit of our hops, and plan to infuse a quart of gin with them. I'll let you know how it goes.
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| Mount Hood hops |
It was also time to pick our entire pear "crop". This year the animals were unkind to us, taking all our peaches before we got any, and leaving us with only one pear!
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| First and only pear |
Two "general harvests" were also taken this week. Here was Wednesday's:
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| Last general harvest of August |
And here was Sunday's. A couple of things to note. There were four more petite artichokes, making our total for the year something like 40 from 4 plants I raised from seed. We've never had such good production before. Also, on the far right, is a large quantity of Anaheim peppers. The two plants had paused for a few weeks, then put on another flush. We have to figure out what to do with them all.
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| First September general harvest |
And fall raspberries are continuing to be taken in small amounts for now.
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| Fall red raspberries |
The bobcat (Lynx rufus) is not exactly rare around here, but is extremely shy and elusive. Most of the time I only catch them at night on my trail cameras. So we were thrilled the other evening to see one trotting toward us while we were on the screened porch out back. It stopped, turned to look at us, then continued on its mission, whatever that was. We will always remember the close encounter with this beautiful creature.
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| Bobcat |
That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Dave at
HappyAcres.blog for continuing to host Harvest Monday.
The bobcat sighting is pretty amazing! We saw raccoons the other morning, but that's not a rarity at all. It looks like a great crop of potatoes, and Kennebec was always a favorite when I was growing them. Bummer about the pears though. With us it's the pawpaws, which get stolen by possums if we're not careful.
ReplyDeleteah raspberries, my favorite fruit. But hard to grow here in the desert. Bobcats can be a nuisance here. I have lost about as many chickens to them as to stray dogs. Here it was squirrels stealing all the green tomatoes and peaches. They have super overpopulated and apparently have figured out the coyotes can't get them inside my fence. Your Anaheim chilies will make lovely green chili. Loads of variations around if you google for recipes. I'm busy so I keep it simple; shredded leftover pork, goat or beef roast, onions sweated in the fat and juice from the roast. Skin, deseed and dice the chilies and drop them in along with either some fresh chopped tomatoes or canned ones. Some garlic, oregano, salt, pepper. Some add pinto beans, I don't. Serve with a garnish of sour cream and cilantro and scoop it up with either warm corn or flour tortillas.
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