I’m giggling as I write the title of this post – I am sure that you all think I have gone nutty!

Today’s post is all about our worm farm and the “liquid gold” that is essentially “worm wee”. I wouldn’t normally spend my Friday nights blogging about such weird things, however I am terribly excited and just wanted to share it with you.

12 days ago, my little person (and my big person – aka “husband”) decided to do a spot of gardening. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping (ummm – how many more cliche’s can I fit in this one?) and it was just a super day to be outside.

I realised that the ugly garden bed, and yes, I am kidding myself when I call it a garden bed as it was really just a patch of dirt with a retaining wall around it, was the ideal place to put some veggies in. Full sun, long, high fence and a space that needed “greening up”.

We spent some time planting seeds – Lebanese cucumber, snow peas and capsicums in one section. Tomato plants (little ones that had started growing already) in the space next to them. In another section, we planted some parsley seeds, carrot seeds, broad beans and gerberas (my little person picked these ones!).

Now usually, I get all excited, plant some seeds and nothing happens. This time, we made use of the worm farm that we have been running for over a year now and took out some of the super composted soil that the worms have been “farming” in for all this time. We spread this around the tomato plants, and then heaped in on top of the areas where seeds were planted. Water from our catchment bins was used to thoroughly soak the ground and then we settled in to wait. Being skeptical of my gardening abilities yet again, I did not expect to see little plants pushing through the soil after just 4 days! My little person was so excited and every day we have been out to check on their progress. Water that passes through our worm farm (as we keep them moist) is tipped on the plants every other day, and they have grown at an astounding rate over the past week. I am convinced that if we had not used the soil and “worm wee – liquid gold” from our worm farm, that they would barely be poking through the soil as I blog. The tomato plants have tripled (if not quadrupled) in size, and I expect that the flowers popping out at the moment will turn into cherry tomatoes any minute!

How the worm farm works – We have a “Can-O-Worms, a layered farm, which houses our “colony” of composter worms (different to earthworms which live deeper in the ground). The worms feed of household scraps – anything such as veggie peel, rice, leftovers, bread, newspaper, tea leaves/coffee grounds and filters,  vacuum cleaner dust, eggshells (crushed), pizza boxes/egg cartons/cardboard (soaked in water first) – and the list goes on. Great for reducing landfill, you are also creating an amazing organic fertiliser by feeding and watering the worms – all of their “castings”, the products/waste that they create from eating the scraps, is amazing to use in the garden and contains no chemicals whatsoever.

I am amazed to have just read that we can expect our colony to have around 15,000 to 20,000 worms in another year or so – I knew there were lots, but never thought it would turn out to be that many. You can buy your own worm farm from any hardware store or Bunnings, and they are great, practical presents to give to a little person or family for Christmas.

So this weekend, grab your gardening gloves, get digging and plant some veggies! Your little person will love to help and get their hands dirty – don’t worry if they aren’t planting precisely, you can always replant later when they seeds shoot (if you are concerned) and once the veggies start to grow, you have a special activity to do each day – crunch on healthy, home grown veggies! I guarantee your little person will love it, and develop a taste for fresh and healthy food, while learning that not everythign we eat comes in a little plastic package off the shelf in the supermarket!

And why not? It’s the last ragged remnant of my harvest. The tomatoes visible behind the chard are actually riddled with fungus. They wouldn’t taste like summer anymore, anyway. After taking months to recover from our pair of hungry bunnies, the chard is still bitterly delicious. It apparently enjoys a light flirtation with frost. I hope it’ll still stand tall in ten days, when I return from California.

For now, I’m grateful to have time with my family. Everyone is (reasonably) healthy. None of the various cancers in my family has made an encore appearance. I’m still recovering from last winter’s mystery illness, and as long as I notice continued improvement, my spirits are (mostly) good. My father is clearer-headed than I’d expected. There’s hope that his memory lapses may be at least partly due to a vitamin B12 deficiency, and thus treatable. My niece is recovering well from back-to-back swine flu and a complex bone break that required surgery. My own kids are masquerading as angels, so thrilled are they to be with their cousins and grandparents. My mom still makes the world’s most delicious caramel rolls.

Everything dear to me is as fragile and transient – as tough and resilient – as my garden. My task is to be in the moment, savor the last leaves of the harvest, taste their solid transience, and know that planting time is only weeks away.

Happy Thanksgiving, kind readers. May your blessings taste as sweet as mine.

Yes, my parents came to stay last week and my wonderful Dad spent 2 afternoons in the garden chopping things down and clearing up fallen leaves and whatnot.

He helped me out with a lot of useful information about what different plants were and how they’d react to being pruned in the extreme.

The fact that the Council were collecting the garden waste bin on Tuesday made him more determined to chop things about.

Anyway, I’m newly determined to turn my lovely garden into my dream space.

Today we hosted our first Thanksgiving dinner.  Family members drove up from Florida to stay with us for a few days and we had a great meal this afternoon.  My favorite part was picking vegetables out of our own garden to cook for the meal.  C and I planted our vegetables shortly after moving here, and these two crops reached maturity in time for the feast:

Mustard Greens

Green Beans

I was so excited to pick them out of the garden!  We’ve been watching these guys grow in the hard Georgia clay, getting bigger every week despite my infrequent watering.  It was really amazing for me to see what creation will yield despite my amateur attempts to help.

On the other hand, it reached my soul in a very deep level to harvest and consume something I grew myself.  A fulfilling, deep joy, almost addictive, that makes me look forward to the spring when I can plant in earnest.

Little wonder I feel this way: we’ve been hard-wired since the very beginning to take care of the earth and live close to it.

Genesis 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

To dress it and to keep it: the Hebrew can be translated “to work in it and to protect it.”

Our work in the dirt is a mirror of God’s free, gracious attention to us dirty humans: he works in us, to improve us and increase our yield, and he protects us from danger.

Seriously. It’s Thanksgiving. My annual flowers should not be flowering now. They should be a little pile of brown crud that I really should compost or something but forget about doing when the weather’s decent and then feel sort of guilty about. Not flowering:

Chinese forget-me-not (Nov 26, 2009)

The elderberry hasn’t even really started changing color yet. And the grass has started growing again. This is just nuts.

Well, we didn’t win the award for Green Project of the Year, but the party was good. There was plenty of free food and drink at the City Academy and an audience of worthy people from the local community. The award was won by Abundance Nottingham, a group who distribute spare fruit for free. Read about them at http://abundancenottingham.wordpress.com/

Abundance receiving their award

Hi folks, while many of you are having your Thanksgiving dinner, perhaps wearing overalls ?, and before some of you, perhaps not many, but many of your fellow citizens are going crazy on black Friday, I will take the freedom to come up with some general thoughts after having read several comments on our first overalls day here on this blog and other blogs and facebook etc.. I really begin to think that overalls are not just a fantastic clothing item, but also a symbol for a way of thinking and living !
I was young in the late 60ties and early 70ties and there was a lot of fun going on and one of the big things was the liberation of women, demanding equal rights for both women and men, fine of course no problem, but….. one of the problematic things at least viewed from my angle, was that very often men and women went to separate gatherings and in a way developed two different cultures ending up with our current situation, where in some way you have equal rights, but there are also a quite strong system of different roles affiliated with each gender, on what is masculine and feminine behavior and outfit ! Well, I know it might not be a much out in the countryside, but in cities and in many, many communities worldwide, there are quite strong gender roles determining what you are expected to do and to look like ! And now I come to the overalls ! One of the qualities for males as wells as for females by wearing overalls is that you can choose to be fancy, to take a scarf and become a little chick or work hard in either kitchen, garden, in the factory and even teach your students ! You don’t need to decide whether you want to follow general female roles or male roles, but you can be a whole overall being taking into account that we all have some of both cells and develop some kind of more flexible ways of living. If you are a man in a biological sense and want to knit, make cookies as well as sail or go hunting etc. you can do all the things at different time! So in other words, let’s open up the fixed gender roles and have a more diverse and colorful way of life. Another characteristic dimension in the 60ties/70ties, especially among the hippies, was to recycle clothes, to patch the clothes etc. not to always buy new clothes, special brands etc. This has also dwindled quite a lot, so nowadays you are usually expected to follow the main clothing culture, more or less buying clothes all the time ! I know it might not be as much the case in the countryside as in urban culture, but I am reading very often that it is a painful process for many of you, going to something, where you need to dress up, often in some tight outfit, limiting your capacity of breathing all the way down from top to toe!
So in addition to improving organic food, more vegetables etc. as many of you are working with, I would be so happy if we could start moving into a social climate for flexible gender roles and making old worn out clothes cool, I would be really happy and I am sure that it would also help to make the world more peaceful ! Now I stop and I would be happy to get comments, both supportive and critical comments are of course welcome and I finish with two shots of my scones and a view from our window watching the colors in this dark afternoon of the North. LOL from your bibprofessor and happy continued holidays

Jean Paton delighted in growing vegetables and flowers, which she took up in earnest for the first time in Ojai, California in the late-1950s.  Jean spent hours in her garden, cultivating sweet peas, Swiss chard, beets, lettuce, and broccoli, as well carnations and roses.  Such activities would remain a life-long pursuit.  This photo is unidentified but it is probably taken in the backyard of Jean’s home in Harrison, Arkansas, during the summer.  It looks as if Jean is inspecting the tomato patch.

Even though it’s cold, wet and muddy these days, we spent a couple of hours in the garden this afternoon clearing as much as we could in preparation for next spring.  In our garden the word “clearing” still refers to clearing concrete, rather than the aftermath of this year’s growing season.  This is because we knocked down an old workshop in the autumn to make way for a greenhouse and there’s still a lot of mess to clear up. 

The photo below celebrates another skip load of rubbish ready to be moved off site – making way for greener ambitions to our own design and taste.  We were pleased to see the back of the workshop, since it was about twenty years old, had a leaking roof, and two of its walls were made of asbestos.  However, its biggest crime was that it took up a lot of space that we want to use for crops.

Well, when I say a lot of space, I mean that it occupied about 12 square metres.  But in a city garden like ours this is very valuable and our “Master Plan” for next year is based on using every inch of space that we can get our hands on.

Future “Master Plan” posts will show us lifting sections of the block paving in the front garden to make way for four largish beds that will be used for the more ornamental vegetables, mixed with edible flowers such as nasturtiums and calendulas.  Having an allotment in front of the house is fairly eccentric in our parts, but it’s a quiet street and it’s what we love – which is the most important thing.

After all, what could be better than looking out of your lounge window at crops you can eat?  Or popping out in your slippers with a pair of scissors to snip off some fresh herbs?  All of our neighbours have gravel or block paving in front of their houses.  Whilst ours will be an edible paradise.

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Vertical growing walls are nourishing a city or refugee camp near you…

These vertical hydroponic gardens could really sweeten your harvest and second as an amazing, in or outdoor, art piece!

I’m sure ninety percent of blogs written today talk about what people are thankful for. Mine is no exception. It’s been a bountiful year.

The first thing that comes to mind of course is my horse, or our horse. I’ve told my daughter that she can’t call him her horse because we’re sharing all the horses for the time being. I guess I really should follow the rules. He’s such a love and turning out really well the better we come to know him, which so far is only two months. It’s been challenging because I don’t actually know that much and I certainly don’t know him. So I’ve been taking remedial horse-keeping lessons from the trainer.

Haltering a horse you don’t know out in the pasture (however willing he is) is completely different than haltering my past instructor’s very old horse who put his head down when I touched between his ears and would wait patiently while I fumbled around. Thor is pretty short compared to many horses, but for the vertically challenged (that would be me) he’s still tall. And he always wants his mouth close to my hands (just in case there’s a treat in them, because there must be, right?) So, I’d go to catch him and he’d come out to greet me and then back away as I walked to his shoulder, trying to find treats. If I’d cooperated he’d have backed across the entire pasture. So after I learned how to circumvent that and how to easily halter a horse (told you it was remedial), we moved on to bathing.

I’d groomed horses, but never bathed one. He has a skin condition behind his front knees at the top of all that gorgeous feather that requires bathing with a special shampoo, several times a week (basically, he has dandruff). I don’t know if he’d ever been in a wash rack before, but it was pretty scary. After a couple months he’s come a long way, there’s just a small flinch when the (warm) water hits his legs and he’s only really unhappy when it’s close to his face. He’ll stand there for an hour and get soaped, scrubbed and rinsed (all in hopes of a chunk of carrot, I’m sure). Toweling down is his favorite part. Besides the carrot. Oh, and immediately rolling in the dirt after being released. Sigh. All that lovely white and black turns into a brown horse.

We’ve moved on to working him in the round pen and lunging him in the arena. He’s cooperative but would be more than willing to stop at any time, because there might be a carrot involved. He’s losing a few pounds of fat and gaining some muscle. It’s lovely to watch all that mane, tale and feather flying when he canters. He’s done all of it before and is getting a refresher course as well as getting back into shape.

Still waiting for the saddle. We had to order one from the maker. No one had what I wanted in stock. The tack shop is estimating the first week of December. I had to get a leather one, but chose the lightest one I could find. I tried a couple of synthetic ones, nice and light and easy to care for, but they weren’t anything I’d like to sit in for an hours long trail ride. So instead of 18#, I’ll be hefting 25# above my head (almost). Need to work on that upper body strength.

The other boy is still in England, waiting until January to come over. They’re doing groundwork with him as well. He’s only a baby, eighteen months now, I think, so it’ll be a year or so before he’ll be ridden. I can hardly wait to meet him.

Writing is going slowly. Still revising ‘Black Opal’. It’s occurred to me that my plan to get it out circulating by the end of the year is going to be problematic. That leaves only about three weeks of school left to work on it. I’m going to have to work longer and harder at it if I’m still going to keep to that schedule. Not sure if it’s possible. I’m over the halfway point chapterwise, but I don’t know about the page count. I think the last half has shorter chapters. We’ll see. It’s a very long process all this polishing. And there really is no end to it. My writing is improving at such a rate that I could now go back to the beginning and start another revision and there would be quite a few changes. This could go on forever, but at some point I’ve got to put it out and see if anyone else is interested. And move on to the next novel. I’ve got two waiting. And a third, ‘Chakras’, that needs a major revision. Major, major revision. I’m going to wait on that one. So, I’ve got to make a big push on ‘Black Opal’ because come January the writing time will vanish until everything is finished here and the horses are home.

January is when they’ll build the hay storage shed, the run-in shed, the wash rack. We’ll build the compost bins and someone will build a small storage shed for garden furniture, grooming stuff and possibly tack. Then fences and gates will go up, electrical lines will go down and possibly plumbing. Last of all will be the geo-tech fabric covered by 6” of gravel in some places and sand in others. Then it’ll be done. Except for all the details. Which I’m sure will have me running around like a crazy woman. Hay, water trough, things I will never have heard of that must be hunted down and bought. Then finally the horses will get to come home. Whoo hooo hooo!

Which brings me to the garden. Somehow in the wet, mucky rain of November and December I need to get out there and finish planting the hedgerow. Weed and plant. Not really looking forward to it. I’d just like to twitch my nose and have it all done, but that’s not the way it works. So, that starts this weekend. And in order to fit a round pen into the paddock area, we must move chunks of the sidewalk over. Which means moving more plants. Sigh. After two years of it, I’m really tired of moving plants. At least it’s exercise.

Last week was the first since school started that I made it to the Y three times in any given week. Mostly it’s been a day or two. I could actually move up on some of my weights! So, I’ll try again this week. And keep at it. It feels good to be getting stronger. Must get my body working smoothly. I really don’t want a reoccurrence of ITP, although the hematologist is expecting it. I’m trying to do what I can to get healthier in general. The struggle with sugar is really hard. Haven’t conquered that one yet.

Just finished rereading George R.R. Martin’s Ice and Fire series–well the four books that are out. I’ve been reading his blog about the HBO pilot they’re filming of the first book and realized I couldn’t remember some of the characters. He’s really got the whole cliffhanger chapter ending and being mean to your characters thing down. At the end of book four (which is all that he’s finished so far) one character is blind, another about to be hung, another imprisoned by religious zealots for all the nasty things she’s done, another on the run for murdering his father, another gone off into the wilderness on an elk with a strange man, another trying to rule a city she’s conquered and on and on. There’s more viewpoint characters than I can count and they’re all fascinating. I’m dying to know what happens next. I also just finished listening to the unabridged version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ in the truck. We started it when we drove to Oregon to pick up Thor. So finally, I’m done. Am listening to ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ now, read by Stephen Fry. What a brilliant combination–witty language read by and amazing actor. I’ll finish that just in time to start listening to Christmas music. I just started reading ‘Lip’s Touch’ by Laini Taylor. So far it’s awesome, I love the places her imagination takes me as well as the juicy language.

Basically, I’m thankful for the horses, having enough money (thanks Mom) to buy them and make a place for them, for making progress on revisions, for beginning to get in better shape, for my health, for the cats (who are wreaking havoc inside because they don’t want to go outside in the rain), for my daughter and my husband, for our warm, cozy home, for having two functioning vehicles, for electricity and new computers, for sunshine (which I’m not likely to see anytime soon), for water (which I’m seeing a bit too much of) and for my life. I think that about sums it up. Oh, and did I mention chocolate?

A note from Jim Hightower which is more than applicable for this Thanksgiving. http://www.truthout.org/11260903

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Homemade gravy is one of those joys of life.  True, the turkey, dressing (stuffing with cornbread made in a pan, for the Yankee readers), vegetables, and pies bring a wonderful scent and flavor of home and family, but the gravy ties everything together.  Okay, I don’t use gravy on pie, but a little gravy may hit everything else on my plate for a holiday feast! As good as gravy is to eat, some folks have a hard time making it.  I’m going to give a recipe today for basic gravy that you can start with broth from the turkey neck bone and then expand with pan drippings.

When you prep your bird for brining, remove the turkey neck (it’ll be long, skinny and bony) and the heart, liver, lungs, etc.  If you wonder whether or not to brine, read here.  I have two cats that love turkey innards, and since they deserve a happy holiday too, I cook the innards separately for them.  I may address giblet gravy in a future post nonetheless. To make starter broth, boil the turkey neck, broken into a couple of pieces with a stalk of celery (cut into chunks), about half an onion, and a carrot, with enough water to cover.  I’ll also add fresh herbs from the garden, including a 6-inch piece of rosemary and a few sage leaves.  You could add a teaspoon or so each of dried sage and rosemary if you are not growing them fresh in your garden. Rosemary and sage are perennials where I live, if you give them a little help.  I cover them for a few months when it gets really cold, but just south of here I know of people who leave them exposed all winter and never lose them. Simmer the turkey neck and veggies and herbs for about an hour.  You’ll notice that this is a light broth, with very little fat.  You want it that way now, since you’ll be adding pan drippings later.  After that hour (or so), strain off the broth; that’s the base of your gravy.  Toss the veggies and herbs in your compost–they’ve done their job–or if you are really frugal you could save them for soup later.  Reserve the neck.  After the neck cools, you can pick off the meat.  It is full of good turkey flavor, making it perfect for turkey soup.  The remaining broth is a wonderful, protein-rich stock.  If you were to refrigerate now (which you could!), it would separate into a tiny line of fat on top with a jelly-like, fat-free aspic on the bottom.  The gelatin is protein.

Now the boiler where you were making the broth is empty but may still have some good stuff stuck inside, so let’s use it for phase two.  Begin by putting about 2 tablespoons of flour in the bottom, and then whisk in just enough broth to wet all of the flour.  Now add a little more broth until you have a smooth, thin paste.  Keep adding broth until it is all incorporated.  Now simmer the gravy base for at least 15 minutes, until the gravy base stops tasting like wallpaper paste.  No, it won’t taste good yet–we’ve added absolutely no salt yet–but it should be starting to look and smell like gravy.  Now turn off the heat and walk away.  If you’ve done this step well before when you’ll be serving the bird, refrigerate your gravy base.

When the turkey comes out of the oven (thirty to forty-five minutes before you want to serve it, since you need to let it rest to retain its juiciness), pour off as many pan juices as you can easily reach.  You can put the drippings in the freezer to speed its solidifying if you want to skim off the fat.  That said, it’s a holiday; just eat it!  Now start adding your pan drippings to the gravy base you made earlier, stirring as you add.  If you used salt in a brine or in other bird preparation, your pan drippings will give up some of that salt to your gravy.  Simmer the gravy to incorporate the pan drippings.  As you get the bird out of the pan, use a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or white wine to de-glaze your pan and get the fons (those wonderful brown bits!).  Incorporate the de-glazing mix in the gravy.  Taste the gravy.  How is it?  Does it need a little salt or pepper?  That’s easy!  Does it need something else?  See below for easy fixes to common problems.

Not enough gravy for your big family? If you are thinking of what you’ll need for days to come, don’t worry.  Just use your turkey carcass to make more broth after you disassemble the turkey.  It’ll have that great pan flavor with no additions.  Just follow the steps for above for making the broth and adding the flour.  If you need more gravy now, though, you can use a commercial chicken broth mixed with flour (see above) and simmered with rosemary to get a quick addition.  Follow the steps below to doctor the results.

Pan drippings didn’t give enough flavor? Consider adding apple cider vinegar, white port, or sherry, one tablespoon at a time.  Consider adding quality soy sauce (umami!) a couple of quick dashes (shakes) at a time.  It’ll solve both the flavor and the color problem.

Does your gravy look pale? This problem can happen especially if you’ve had to use commercial chicken broth to add to your home-created turkey broth. Take a trick from Southern red-eye gravy and add a few grains of instant coffee (won’t affect thickness) or a teaspoon or so (add very carefully!) of brewed coffee.  Your gravy will take on a warm color and flavor.

Is your gravy too thin? Remember that gravy will thicken a little as it cools.  (See the protein-gelatin note above.)  If you think it won’t thicken enough, you can add more thickener now, but you need to be really careful about what you add.  The easiest thing to add to hot gravy to make it thicken without lumping is potato flour (not potato starch).  Sprinkle about a tablespoon of potato flour on the top of your gravy.  Whisk for a couple of minutes, and it will disappear like magic.  If you don’t have potato flour but have already fixed boiled potatoes, you can take half a medium red potato (no skin) and mash it into the gravy.  Start by mashing the potato half in a small bowl and then add gravy a little at a time to make it thinner and smooth.  Once it’s thinned down quite a bit, add the mixture into the gravy.  If you’ve made traditional mashed potatoes without anything funky added, you could do the same thing with it. Whatever you do, do not add wheat flour or corn starch to hot gravy.  You’ll make dumplings of wallpaper paste.

Lumpy gravy? This happens to everyone at some time.  If you have an immersion blender (a long stick that will go straight into the pot), pull it out and blend those lumps away.  If you don’t have an immersion blender, use a regular blender.  Just be very careful!  Hot liquids tend to sort of explode in the blender, so start by spooning just the lumps in the blender and then adding just enough liquid to blend.  No blender or food processor of any kind?  Strain the gravy as your pour it into your gravy boat.

Do you have a gravy problem I haven’t mentioned here?  questions?  Feel free to post!

If you are like me, you move often. As a renter, you may not have a yard of your own – but regardless, you can put down some roots by planting a polyculture patch.

Unlike a monoculture, you create a polyculture by planting more than one plant species or variety in an area. I planted just one patch, instead of an entire garden, to make the project more manageable in terms of time commitment and cost.

Thanks to having a great landlord, I planted the polyculture in my back yard. If your relationship with your landowner is tenuous, consider guerilla gardening.

The inspiration for our polyculture was a recently donated apple tree and I bought a few complimentary plants:

• Yarrow to attract beneficial insects, act as ground cover, and use medicinally.
• Sorrel, also to attract beneficial insects and act as ground cover, with the added benefits of being a biodynamic accumulator and just plain yummy.
• Anise Hyssop, once again, to attract the good insects and make a delicious tea.

The quick version of my process: I laid out each plant, planted them appropriately, added sheet mulch (newspaper and cardboard), compost, and wood chips, and watered.

Within a half hour, with no tilling, I had my polyculture patch.

Planting this way not only reduces the time commitment; it also increases the likelihood that the tree will survive. Thanks to the ground cover, it will cut down on the erosion my backyard tends to suffer from, while someday providing us with apples, salad greens, and medicinals.

This year, as my friends divide their perennials, I will add more supportive plants to this polyculture patch and build a new patch: pawpaws…

What I learned from this season in the garden:

It is possible to successfully grow cold hardy produce both earlier and later than I ever thought possible. We live in Plant Hardiness Zone 6 so typically we plant tomatoes Memorial Day weekend and hardier items in early May. This year we backed it up about three to four weeks and many items fared well. Despite late frosts and cold nights, with the use of floating row covers, I was able to plant tomatoes in early May and had their roots well established when the June cool heavy rains came. The plants held their own and flourished while many other growers encountered diseases and blights. I did get some mold though in mid to late summer.

Planting early meant encountering cutworms in the cool damp soil. Those little buggers earn their name well as they cut through the stem of new young plans. Hate em! A physical barrier around the stems next year, like a collar, when planting out should prevent their damage.

Intensive and diversified plantings of companion herbs and veggies prevented most insects and pests from becoming a problem. This year clearly revealed the importance of a diverse garden in keeping things healthy and in balance. Also, planting a large variety of items means that with any extreme weather season, some things fare well and others don’t; more variety increases the odds that some will thrive.

Our sweet corn didn’t germinate in the cool wet summer that we had. Purple Haze carrots look absolutely beautiful when sliced raw but when cooked, although they still taste great, turn an unappetizing shade of brown. They still taste great. I will definitely plant Cherokee purple tomatoes and sun gold cherries again. Tomatillos are a must for next year because salsa made from them is so delicious.

I learned that in a garden, amazing things happen everyday. In the stillness of last Sunday morning, on the wall of our shed, I saw a slow motion battle between a spider and a tiny green caterpillar. They challenged each other for about ten minutes and then – Spider won. Gardeners love spiders. It was a Hollywood ending.

Seeing as the man-child refuses to let sleep over take him, I thought I would start my Pumpkin Pie from REAL pumpkins recipe.

This summer I decided to grow a medium-sized garden.  My plan was to do a rolling harvest so I had produce on a constant basis.  For some crazy reason, growing and canning or freezing pumpkins for the awesome pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving struck a warm fuzzy tone in me.

I set off to Lowes and bought four pumpkin plants.  The were so stinkin’ cute with their heart-shaped leaves and I never thought about how much they would grow.  And grow they did.

Soon after two months, my pumpkin patch was in my neighbor’s yard and trailing off across my lawn towards the road.  It looked a little like the beginnings of a B movie, as each day went on you could swear it was creeping closer and closer…

Enough of that business and I cut it back and allowed ten beautiful pumpkins to grow.

The first thing I did with one of my pumpkins was make it into a soup.  I love curried butternut squash soup and figured pumpkin would work well too.  Oh, how right I was!  Now with Thanksgiving approaching, I figured we would make another curried pumpkin soup and also use it in a pumpkin pie.

Really, any pumpkin will do, however Pie Pumpkin varieties work the best. I do not remember what mine is, however it does lean towards the runny/watery side.  In the next two posts I will walk you through both types of pumpkins.

1. Pick a pumpkin. Pie pumpkin or even Jack o’ lanterns may work. Steer towards the medium small size because it will produce a lot of pumpkin gloop for your pie.

2. Wash your pumpkin with warm water, no soap.

3. Cut off the stem and top of the pumpkin. Cut it in half. Scoop out the seeds and fibery pumpkin innards to make a clean hollow pumpkin.

4. Turn oven on 350 degrees. Place pumpkin halves on baking sheet.

5. Place pumpkin on baking sheet for about an hour or until fork can easily poke the skin. If you have a rather large pumpkin there are a few options. Before putting it in the oven you could cut it up in quarters or leave the pumpkin in the oven a little longer until ready. A few people I know do not like to bake their pumpkins. I have heard them use the microwave or a stove top steamer. Whatever floats your boat, just make sure the pumpkin is done.  I prefer the yummy smells of the baked pumpkin in the oven!

6. Take pumpkin out of the oven. Please be careful because some pumpkins are a bit more watery and the baking pan will have hot pumpkin water in it. Allow pumpkin to cool.

7. When you are good and ready, it is time to take out the gloop. You may use a big spoon or an ice cream scoop to scoop out the gloop. Place gloop in a bowl. Throw skin away or compost it! If you have a food processor, just put it in there and blend it up until it is smooth and there are no pumpkin chunks. Bar blenders also work, as do potato mashers (fun for kids!).  If you happen to have a watery pumpkin, you can place a bowl over the pumpkin gloop so it rests on the pumpkin, place it in the fridge overnight and it should help raise the water out of the gloop and you may skim it off. Other methods: wrapping gloop in cheesecloth and let it drip over night, or putting it through a collandar.

8. Once you blend up the pumpkin you can freeze it or use it for your soups or pies. One pumpkin does yield a lot of gloop, so there are many uses for the extras: soups, pies, bars, etc.

After a few hours of sleep (hahaha) I will write-up the pumpkin pie recipe part 2 with a home-made, sure-fire, to-die for, crust.

The process of using a real pumpkin is long and somewhat time-consuming. I live by a rule of pacing myself in fifteen minute intervals (a FLYlady thing), so you can do one thing, play with kids, go back, vacuum, play with pumpkin again, and so forth as to diminish that “stuck in the kitchen” feeling. The time is well worth the healthy nature of doing it purely from scratch. I read on CNN.com the other day that Libby is telling everyone there is a canned pumpkin shortage. Whatever. Once you get past part one of this recipe, all the rest is easy-schmeasy!

Time for bed!

B’tayavon!

Kosher Spice

Hello,

Tip of the day: Inspired by a simply stunning sunrise this morning, my thoughts were these. Yes, there’s more than enough to do – removing dying hedge plants, tidying up perennials etc. – but sometimes you must just stop, look, smell and listen, whether you’re surveying your allotment or your 10,000 acre estate and award winning garden, like me.

Brando - Trifle Guzzler!

Now. Much jollity! I became a member of Twitter yesterday and already have a host of new garden-loving chums. It’s quite dear really. My plan is to garner enough electric friends and then throw an enormous party at Chatterley. It will be an hoot!

One has to come to terms with Twitter slang, or ‘twang’ if you will. We had a jargonese of our very own at Chatterley, instigated by Lord Cavendish when guests came to dine…

FHB – Family Hold Back. Used when cook had prepared enough guinea fowl, or own one occasion when Marlon Brando charged through a trifle designed for twenty, on his very own.

MIK – More in Kitchen. On the Brando occasion, Lord C whispered FHB, but cook whispered back MIK. She had prepared a back-up trifle. Phewf!

NQOCD – Not quite our class dear. Used regularly for most guests including that grocer’s daughter, Thatcher.

NWA - HKLP!

Work can wait until the tomorrow. Today, I say, enjoy.

Ever,

Jen