Harvest Monday - 25 November 2013

Awoke Sunday morning to wind, bitter cold, and the first snowfall of the season, albeit just a dusting.

I must have known something was up, as the previous day I worked (and froze) in the garden to put the finishing touches on winter-bedtime. We also picked the fall carrots that were outside the coldframe. Not very impressive, but it is a harvest, and they will be excellent in The Kitchen Goddess's mirepoix for the Thanksgiving turkey, just a few days away!

 

And now, in the spirit of Harvest Monday where it's not just what you pick, but how you use it, I will show you how we finished processing the apples picked in September.

 

In my post of 30 September, I showed how we crushed and pressed 5 bushels of our apples, and put the cider into fermenting buckets. About a week or two after that, we siphoned the buckets into glass carboys for secondary fermentation. Today, it was time to bottle!

 

Here is what the fermented cider looks like:

 

First thing is to wash and sanitize the bottles. A clean dishwasher makes a handy rack for draining them. We use longneck beer bottles--the best kind of recycling! No screw-tops of course.

 

All your other equipment has to be cleaned and sanitized too, even the bottlecaps. Then prepare some priming mixture. This is just brown sugar in water, heated to a boil. This is what will give the cider its sparkle, as it slightly reactivates the small amount of yeast left, whose sediment you can see at the bottom of the carboys above.

 

Then siphon the cider from the carboy to the bottling bucket (just a primary fermenter with a spigot).

 

Then, it's just a matter of filling the bottles: 

 

And capping them!

Of course, you can label them for fun. This is the second year of our "Chucky" label, this year commemorating the maurading woodchuck who met his demise. The first year's label (still a few bottles left) is in the center, flanked by this year's.

 

We also bottled our plum wine (plums from a friend's tree), and the small amount of wine we got from our wretched grape harvest. All told, 3+ liters of plum wine, 1+ liter of grape wine (note the classy name--"Black Rot Wine"), and 98 bottles of hard cider. Here it is on parade:

Now it all has to age. Last year the cider did not mature and develop carbonation for a number of months, but when it did, it was outstanding (it was pretty good to start with). We have high hopes for this year.

If you ever want to make your own hard cider, either with your own apples, or with apples or soft cider you purchase, here is a great concise article from Mother Earth News.

With that, I wish the Daphne's Dandelions community Happy Thanksgiving! Even if you're not from the U.S.!

Harvest Monday - 11 November 2013 + Garden Report Card 2013

Welcome to probably the last Harvest Monday at Eight Gate Farm. Thanks again to Daphne's Dandelions for providing us the opportunity to share.

What happens when a warm rainy day is followed by a freezing night?

 

You might have Jack Frost leave you lovely paintings on your screened-porch skylights!

The only thing happening harvest-wise is Brussels Sprouts. So at least I have something to show you.

I had to cut the stalks with a saw.

This yielded over 5 pounds (~2.5 kg.). I never was much of a fan of Brussels Sprouts until I grew, and tasted, my own. Now I'm sold.

That will pretty much be it for harvests for the year. I thought now I'd present my 2013 Garden Report Card, in which I evaluate the crops we grew this year. Overall it was a pretty successful year, but as always, there were disappointments.

I think a major contributor to lack of success in certain areas was timing. I follow advice once told me by an old farmer--plant tomatoes after the last full moon in May. I always took that to extend to peppers, eggplants, melons, etc.

This year the last full moon occurred on May 25, a Saturday. But we were having an unusual cold snap, with nights into the high 30s F. I was faced with a dilemma. I had to go out of town on business the next week, and the tomatoes especially were getting leggy. So I gambled and planted all those seedlings on Monday (a U.S. holiday). The weather while I was gone started to warm up, and by the following weekend we were in a heat wave. I think the combination of the initial cold and later heat was not healthful for the plants.

All the plants looked stressed for a long time. The tomatoes recovered amazingly, and we had a record harvest by season's end. But the peppers and eggplants never really took off. So I have learned that it's okay to wait a week or even more until I can be reasonably sure the weather will cooperate.

Another possible contributor to lack of success is the fertility of the soil. The raised beds were constructed a long time ago--not by me. By the time I came along the soil was very depleted. Last year I began a concerted effort to improve the soil by adding blood meal (N), bone meal (P), and potash (K). This year saw huge improvements in yields, except for seeds planted on the edges of the beds. I think I did not evenly spread the nutrients.

Crop	Grade	Remarks
Apples	A+	2 trees. Produced way more than we could use, even being creative.
Artichoke	F	2nd year trying. Last year got beautiful plants but no chokes. This year, plants poor.
Asparagus	A	12 row feet. We were cautious about taking too many; next year should be abundant
Beans (fresh)	A	Got all we needed for the year on 16 squares, four plants per square
Beets	A-	Planted 32 squares, 9 plants per square. Not all grew large.
Broccoli	B-	Grew in 3 sets, spring (from starts), fall (from seed), fall (from starts). None was heavy producer.
Brussels Sprouts	A	Took a long time to grow, but got a lot.
Butternut	D	Planted 4 hills, 3 per hill. Only got 5 fruit. Bad bug problems.
Carrots	A+	Planted 32 squares, 16 plants per square. Not all grew, but got an abundance anyway.
Chard	C	Planted 4 squares, 4 plants per square. Not as prolific as expected.
Cherries	F	2 trees. Lost entire crop to birds.
Chinese Cabbage	A	Planted 8 squares, 1 plant per square. Grew in 2 sets, spring (from starts), summer (from starts). Summer crop better-no root maggots.
Corn	C	Planted 5 12-foot rows, plus four 3-Sisters hills. Bad insect troubles, what we got was good.
Cucumbers	B-	Got enough for fresh eating, not much for pickles. Problems with powdery mildew.
Eggplant	D	Never recovered from setting out too soon. Got some.
Grapes	F	Five 12 foot vines. Devastated by black rot.
Hops	A	One plant now two years old. First harvest this year, a handful. Should be better as the years go by.
Kale	F	Fall planting. Never grew large.
Lettuce	A+	12 squares, 4 plants per square. Grew 3 varieties, all for spring into summer. More than we could use.
Muskmelons	C	Never grew large. Got a few to ripen. Tasted great.
Onions	A	128 sets planted, got good results.
Pears	B	2 trees, got 30 small fruit. Have to give them credit for trying, in a bad spot.
Peas	B	Planted four 8 foot rows. Fair production cut short by early heat wave.
Peppers	D	Never recovered from setting out too soon. Got some.
Pumpkins	D	Planted 4 hills, 3 per hill. Only got 3 fruit. Bad bug problems.
Radishes	A	Spring: 4 squares, 16 per square. Fall: 2 squares, 16 per square. Spring did well despite root maggots. Fall did pretty well too.
Raspberries	A	Got enough for fresh eating, not much for jam. Fall-producing plants better.
Shallots	A	Planted 6 bulbs, which multiplied 5-fold.
Spinach	C	Planted 8 squares, 4 plants per square. Seemed to bolt very quickly.
Sunflowers	A	Planted both for seed and landscaping. Very pretty; got seed crop too.
Tatume	D	Had high hopes for this plant. Did not prove resilient. Got some.
Tomatoes	A+	12 plants. Recovered wonderfully from setting out too soon, got enormous production.
Watermelons	F	Never grew large. None ripened.
Zucchini	A	Grew 4 plants. Problems with mildew and bugs; still got all we needed.

Harvest Monday - 28 October 2013

Welcome to another Harvest Monday at Eight Gate Farm!

The National Weather Service began posting "Frost Watches" on Tuesday. The actual frost did not occur until Friday night. But I took all the remaining tomatoes and peppers, as well as the tender herbs, well before that. I figured nothing was going to grow or ripen further.

The very, very last of the tomatoes:

 

The tiny peppers, and some raspberries:

 

 

And the herbs; basil, rosemary, tarragon, cilantro, parsley, winter savory:

 

So, as I said, the actual frost came Friday night, when it got down to 30F (-1.1C). On Saturday I pulled out all the tomato, pepper, and broccoli plants. I also pulled out the chard. It could keep going, but I wanted to clean out the beds.

 

 

I also took a pound of Brussels Sprouts, which had gotten their first "frost kiss," plus the few remaining raspberries:

 

There should be lots more Brussels to come. Everything else has gone south for the winter. But I did want to show our white-trash "cold frames," made from re-purposed skylights. They are now covering some of the teeny-tiny kale, and the fall carrots.

 

A look up the fenced garden, now forlorn and ready for its winter rest.

 

With that, the Eight Gate Farm blog will probably go dark. Nothing really to show you until maple syrup season starts in February. Here's one of the trees we will tap:

 

That is, unless I'm lucky enough to "harvest" one of these puppies recently nosing around in our woods:

 

 

 

Muzzle-loader deer season starts this Saturday!

 

I hope this doesn't offend any of you. But here in New Hampshire it's part of "country living."

 

Oh, now that I think of it, I may post a 2013 garden "report card."



Thanks for reading, and thanks especially to Daphne for giving me the opportunity to share my gardening experiences this season.

Harvest Monday - 21 October 2013

Welcome to another Harvest Monday, brought to you by the kind graces of Daphne's Dandelions.

No frosts yet, but the garden is pretty bare. Here you see Daisy-Cat enjoying some sunshine. She is an indoor kitty, but we do take her out with us to the fenced garden sometimes. Thus I call it The Prison Yard.

Harvests were sparse this week. Here are some raspberries and a serving or two of broccoli shoots.

More tomato drops too.

The Brussels Sprouts are still growing. I planted two varieties. Long Island, on the left, grew tall but its sprouts are still small. Franklin, on the right, is a hybrid that has already given us a picking, and its sprouts are much larger.

Re-showing the picture from 2 weeks ago to describe the amount of processed squash we got from it. This week the Kitchen Goddess got 12 cups (2.84 l.) from the Butternut, and the same amount from the Tatume. Also 4 cups from the smaller pumpkin. The bigger one is left for a Jack O' Lantern, for our non-existent Trick Or Treaters.

The verdict on Tatume: not as sweet as Butternut, and much harder to extract from the rind. So I would call it second-rate at best; not the “survival” crop it was talked up to be, and not particularly tasty. No room for it next year. Well, maybe I’ll plant the remaining seeds at the edge of the far compost pile and see how it fares as a neglected crop.

Well, I'm being unfair. The Tatume does produce a large number of seeds. Which is good, since my favorite football snack is roasted pumpkin/squash seeds. Here's my recipe for this delicious treat. Scoop out the guts, and separate the seeds. Run the seeds under hot water to get off as much of the gook as you can.

Put the seeds in a bowl, fill with warm water, and add salt. I like 'em really salty; you may choose to use less or even omit it (weird), in which case soaking is unnecessary. Let it sit overnight. Just before game-time, drain the seeds and place in a single layer on cookie sheets. I like to spray the sheets with butter-flavor cooking spray. Bake at 400 F. (200 C.) until they start browning and popping. They will need to be stirred with a spatula several times. Once a good number are really brown the lot is done and ready to enjoy, preferably with a glass of home-brewed ale. I'm too lazy to extract the kernals so I eat 'em whole. This has the benefit of providing valuable roughage.

The mild fall weather may be coming to an end this week. A frost is finally predicted for Thursday night. If the forecast holds, I will pick all the remaining tomatoes and peppers, and "summer" will be over.
 

Harvest Monday - 14 October 2013

Welcome to another Harvest Monday at Eight Gate Farm. Almost mid-October and still no frost in sight.

 

But the shorter days, cooler nights, and declining sun have taken their toll.

This is the end of the season for the eggplant. I'm not at all crazy about the productivity or size of Rosa Bianca, but they sure are pretty.

Still a few ripe tomatoes taken right from the vines. These are three Rutgers, and one Caspian Pink on the right. The Pink weighed 8.5 oz. (~240 g.) for comparison. That's it for the Pink plant. We still are gathering drops from the remaining plum tomatoes, and waiting for the others to ripen on the vines, if they will. Who knows?

 

This is also the last of the fall-planted radishes. Shown with them is a spring carrot that must have had its foliage broken off, so it got overlooked. The top grew back feebly, but we have a nice fresh addition to The Kitchen Goddess's Hearty Beef Barley Soup. The fall carrots are still tiny.

 

A decent chard-taking, enough for a good side dish.

 

Some herbs gathered for drying from the kitchen garden : basil, thyme, parsley, rosemary, tarragon, and oregano (or, as spelled by The In-A-Rush Kitchen Goddess, "oregnao").

 

 

Wish I had more to show! Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Daphne.

 

 

Harvest Monday - 7 October 2013

Welcome to the first Harvest Monday in October 2013. Thanks to Daphne's Dandelions for hosting.

Here at Eight Gate Farm, we are just starting our biggest-by-far harvest of the year--sugar maple leaves. They make great mulch when shredded.

The volunteer tomato plants in the compost that were looking so lush suddenly croaked this week, leaving us with a lot of green fruit with no hope of ripening. Making the best of a bad situation, The Kitchen Goddess put up 6 pints of salsa verde, made with green tomatoes instead of tomatillos, and using store-bought habaneros.

 

A fun fall tableau, featuring virtually our entire harvest of winter squash. I just could not keep up with the bugs this year.

Kind of sad. Five Waltham Butternuts, two pumpkins, and in the middle, a few Tatume left to go to their fall stage. Also a King Daddy sunflower head. That's not really the variety. I don't know what it really is. It was a volunteer in the squash patch.

We took the first of the Brussels Sprouts. I know they are supposed to be better once a frost or two has kissed them, but some were getting really big. There are many more left. It is amazing to me that I transplanted these on April 16.

Add to the above a few broccoli sprouts (shown below), some radishes, raspberries, and more tomato drops, and you are looking at our entire harvest this week.

Still, we can't complain. It's a damp, chilly Sunday night and we lit the woodstove for the first time this year, but no frosts are predicted in the near term, so we might yet get a few more ripe tomatoes and eggplant.

My name is Daisy-Cat, and I approve this message.

Harvest Monday - 30 September 2013

Welcome to the last September Harvest Monday of the year at Eight Gate Farm, hosted by Daphne.

Friday night an old friend was visiting from Vermont. It was a perfect night to dispose of some brush in a lovely bonfire.

The weather continues to be quite mild, and tomatoes are continuing to haunt The Kitchen Goddess. On Friday, 9 lbs. more, plus radishes, raspberries, and a serving of broccoli. The tomato harvest includes lots of drops, as befitting the blighty condition of the plants.

This week the KG canned 6 pints of sauce, bringing our yearly total to 68. That's 8 1/2 gallons! (~32 l.) We really do not need any more, but the tomatoes are still coming. She also did 4 more quarts of Bloody Mary mix, bringing our total to 2 gallons. I wish "we" could can some more salsa, but the peppers are completely finished.

So with canning shut down, we decided to try drying some ripe tomatoes. It takes a long time in our little dehydrator, but the result was pretty good. We will put some in olive oil.

On Sunday, another 4 lbs. of tomatoes, bringing the week's total to 13 lbs. (5.9 kg.). I've decided that since the weather is holding out I will leave whatever tomatoes cling to the vines to see if they will ripen naturally, and bring in only the drops to ripen indoors. Then we will dry or maybe freeze them.

Well that's it for harvests, but we were busy nonetheless. It was time to make apple cider. A few weeks ago I wrote that we had picked 5 bushels and jammed them into the freezer. This week, after thawing for 24 hours, they were ready to go. Here is about half of them on a workbench in the barn. Not particularly attractive, but nice and soft.

The point of freezing, besides buying us some time, was supposed to make pressing much easier. We were thinking we could avoid the intermediate step of grinding before pressing. After cutting the first few in half, I put them into the press and started cranking. They pressed well, but the resulting juice was a pale yellow, not like traditional cider. The KG believed that grinding released more goodness, and she was right. So we got into a rythm of cutting, grinding, and pressing. Here's the grinder and its product:

Here's the press ready for its next load:

The results were remarkably good. We pressed the 5 bushels in less than 4 hours, and got 10 gallons (~38 l.) of rich brown, sweet-tart goodness. We are sold on freezing! It cuts the time and effort in half.

Of course for us the process does not end there. While I did the cleanup, the KG did what is needed for hard cider. She simmered the cider for about 45 minutes, added 2 lbs. of brown sugar per 5 gallons, then let it cool for awhile. We poured them back into the fermentation buckets (after sanitizing them of course), and waited until it was cool enough to add the yeast. It turns out that took overnight. Early the next morning we pitched the yeast, stirred, put the lids on, and added the airlocks. Now we wait!

I still do not know what we are going to do with the other 2 bushels I picked last week. We sure do not need more cider, and I don't think we need more than 6 jars of applesauce.

Wait, one more "harvest." Passing through one of the gates at Eight Gate Farm, on my way into the woods to dispose of some dropped apples, I saw some sumac along the fenceline. It is an attractive native tree, but it spreads like mad if uncontrolled. I cut a dozen few seedheads. I'm going to let them dry naturally, then use them for tea and the Middle Eastern spice za'atar, once I figure out how to do that.

Thanks for reading and thanks again to Daphne for hosting.