Pat and I have tried our hand at a couple of preservation projects this season.  We had a bumper crop of green beans, so we’ve frozen a bunch and pickled about 8 jars.  We also fermented a few jars of beets and made some pickles.

Frozen beans seem to be OK, though a couple of batches may have been blanched for too long.  The pickled beans are tasty, though next year I’ll have to cut back on the mustard seed used – it’s really strong in this batch!   We tried the pickles for the first time tonight and they are really good!  We’ll definitely have to make many more next year.  The fermented beets, on the other hand, were a terrible failure.  They fermented just fine, but I guess they are an acquired taste.  My family has not acquired that taste yet – blech.

We have a bunch of herbs drying out in a bunch of paper bags on the tops of our cabinets.  We’ll probably be able to take those out soon and fill our spice jars and then some.  We also expect to have harvested seeds from our radishes, green beans, fennel plants, and cilantro.

Yesterday Pat made it to the garden and brought back another big harvest.  The greens are still going strong on Halloween!  We got collards, kale, chard, New Zealand spinach, cauliflower greens and one head of cauliflower.  Boy I wish we had planted more a little bit earlier in July/August for an even bigger and longer fall harvest.  We’ve missed out on a fall harvest of lettuce, spinach and beets for instance.

Still though – it’s been a nice fall for locally, sustainably produced food for us.

Today Pat and I did something new.  We attended a meetup of the Urban Homesteader’s League who put on a workshop about lasagna mulching and building cold frames.  Since one of my goals this year was to learn about extending the season, this was a great opportunity.  We were there with about 20 people at a house in Cambridge.  We spent the afternoon building two raised beds and then helping with building a hoop house frame on another raised bed.

This house in Cambridge has a nice side yard, but has lead contaminated soil.  We had some 2×6 lumber to build the raised beds and started the layers by laying down some landscape fabric.  Next went on some coarse yard waste – branch trimmings, old squash vines and the like.  Next we put in some chopped fruit that had been discarded at the nearby Harvest Co-op.  On top of that went 2 layers of cardboard which we wet thoroughly.  Old lettuce, also from the Harvest went on next, followed by some chicken manure mixed with sand and some seaweed from Ipswich, brought by our instructor Charlotte.  We then added a bit of compost and soil and topped with another layer of cardboard, wet down again.  The last layer, before we ran out of material, was ripped up newspaper mixed with leaves which was then topped with more compost and soil.  You would think that would fill up the 6 inch beds, but amazingly there was still room left.  The family that lives there will continue to add more materials as they become available.

After that we worked on a new hoop house.  There were four 10-foot lengths of electrical conduit that were bent using a cool, old conduit bending tool into a shape with a pointed top.  These were attached to an 8-inch deep raised bed with two brackets on each side of each frame piece.  The tops were then joined together with a 1×2 board with more brackets.  Next went on the clear plastic sheeting, which was held down by another board on top of the 1×2.  The plastic sides will be weighted down by a board attached to its length, which can be lifted to get into the bed.  We didn’t get to see how they were going to close of the ends though.

We learned many things today and met a bunch of really cool people, many of whom arrived by bicycle to the event.  We are looking forward to more meetups!

Last weekend, Noah, Pat and I took a drive to Shutesbury, to the home of the folks who are pulling together the grain and bean CSA.  They were having a sewing bee to make some bags to hold the grain and beans that they will be distributing soon.   Along with chatting and getting to know each other, we managed to also make a few bags.  Ella, their little girl, was adorable.  Noah was taken with the farm animals – Cole the giant, super-friendly, draft horse, the two sheep, the cat and the two dogs.  Pat and I enjoyed the company and seeing people really walking the talk – fun stuff!  We got to see the hand mill that they have at home that looks like it works great.

Here’s a picture of some drawstring grain bags I made at home to add to the pile.  The small bags hold about 5 pounds, while the large ones hold about 15.

The goal for this year is that every CSA member gets at least one homemade bag.  I like that idea!

We did learn this week that they will be able to accommodate the entire waiting list – so we are in to get about 150 pounds of locally grown grains and beans.  Woo hoo!

One of the experiments we did in our garden this year was to try to grow black beans and chickpeas.  The chickpeas failed to germinate, but the black beans came through.  Here’s our harvest so far from two square feet of black bean plants.

black bean harvest

There are still 10 or so pods (sticking up from the bowl) that we are waiting to dry out a little before taking out the beans.  So it looks like we got enough for a meal out of our little experiment!  The beans are shiny and black – I can’t wait to eat them.

We probably eat about a meal of black beans every week or so, so I think we would need about 100+ square feet of black beans to feed us for a year.  Something to aspire to

I did it!  I’ve officially preserved some of our garden bounty.  Right now our wall o’ beans is producing like crazy, so I had a few pounds that we haven’t been able to incorporate into our meals.  So I followed this recipe and made these:

I think that I could have packed more beans in each one, but aren’t they beautiful?  The little brown dots are black mustard seeds that I put in along with a clove of garlic and pepper with the water/vinegar/salt mix.

This is one of the goals I posted back when I started this blog – to preserve some of what we’ve grown.

Getting ready to can the beans meant doing a little shopping.  First I got the jars and the jar-lifter-tool-thingie that allows you to get them out of the boiling water.  When I got home I measured all of our pots and horrors! none of our pots were tall enough for the quart jars.  Today I biked (see our Choosing No Car blog) over to a nearby kitchen/bath store where I got a lobster pot and got it home on my front bike basket with some ingenious bungee cord looping.

Coming soon, black beans from our garden!

It’s been a really busy summer and we’ve been busy doing so much that I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath and put up a post here.  I finally remembered to take the camera to the garden, so I have a few garden shots.

Here’s a shot showing the long dimension of the garden.  You can see the wall o’ beans on the left, the nice mulched path down the middle.  It’s amazingly green!

community garden plot, end of August

Here’s a picture of one of the smaller of our boxes – it’s 2ft by 4ft.  There’s a couple of squares of collard greens, basil, thyme, kale, chard, beets, and marigolds.  The kale is coming along pretty slowly, but the rest is doing great!

One square from the garden

We are getting at least 4 grocery-sized bags of produce out of the garden every week.  We’ve had a couple of disappointments (cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers), but overall we are getting a lot out of this little bit of land.

Tonight for supper we had tomatoes, green onions, beets and greens, and mint, all from the garden.

Last Sunday we worked with about a dozen friends and volunteers to get our 200-foot garden in the ground.  It was a blast and we got great coverage in the Brookline Tab today!

I saw this item today about regional food policy in San Francisco.  I think it’s great that a large city is creating policy about access to healthy food for all economic classes, particularly in tough financial times.

When we lived in Denver, Pat and I used to live near, and eat frequently at, one of the first few Chipotle Mexican Grills.  We loved it and in subsequent moves to Kansas City and Champaign, Illinois we would often wish that a Chipotle would open up near us.  Eventually we learned that they entered into a partnership with McDonalds and that cooled our enthusiasm for them.  We wrote them off and found other places to get our burrito fix.

That is until now.  I saw this Nightline story about them that said their partnership with McDonalds ended in 2006 and that they are working hard to find sources of sustainably raised meat.  So far they have partnerships with more than 1000 farmers, including Joel Salatin and Polyface Farms.

So, finally a fast food restaurant where we can eat the meat!  We did just that tonight for dinner.  We took our son to a movie this afternoon and treated ourselves to dinner at Chipotle’s.  It was delicious!

Local wild blackberries are ripe!  Two weekends ago we started picking berries at the community garden in the wild bramble at the edge of the property.  I just happened to walk by while admiring other gardens and noticed some ripe berries.  We also have a bramble at the end of our street.  This past weekend Pat went to both patches and was amazed at how many berries there were.  Look at his haul:

wild blackberries

It amounted to about a half gallon.  They lasted two days in our house.   They were so amazing!