I Should Be Planning

My sister gave me a gardening calendar.  It says that in January I ought to be ordering seeds and starting seeds for cool weather crops.  I guess since it's almost the end of January, I'm already behind, eh? 

The priority right now is getting the no-till method cooking.  I ran out of newspaper before I finished even one row last weekend when the weather was nice.  Folks are saving newspapers for me this week, so maybe I'll be able to finish two rows this weekend.  It looks like it's going to take about 5 bales of straw per 75-ft-long row, so I'll have to lay in more straw, too.

I bet you're wondering how the pineapple upside-down kefir cake turned out.  It would have been better had I remembered to add baking powder and salt to the flour.   :\  The kefir had just enough leavening power by itself to make a dense cake with a texture almost like cheesecake.  But we're eating it!

Kefir

One cold, drizzly day last fall, a friend and I went to a butter- and cheese-making class at a local farm.  During a break, we overheard a gentleman telling another gentleman that he had been drinking some stuff called "kefir," and that since he had been drinking it, his blood pressure and cholesterol levels had gone to normal, and he had not had any trouble with heartburn.  My friend and I looked at each other with our ears perked up.  Both of us have been eating over-the-counter antacid tablets and capsules for years.  My friend even takes prescription-strength heartburn medicine.  We insinuated ourselves into his conversation, trying to find out what kefir was and where we'd get some.

It turns out that kefir is fermented milk.  The fermentation process begins with kefir "grains" - they're not a true grain; they just call them grains because they're grainy - little clumps of bacteria and yeasts.  The man said that we could order them in dehydrated form online, or he would give us some of his grains (they grow over time and produce enough to share).  I decided to order some grains and have been making kefir since October.

Kefir has a consistency that is much like buttermilk.  It tastes a little like buttermilk, too, or plain yogurt.  I kind of wrinkled my nose up at my first taste of the stuff but quickly got used to it.  I'm addicted to it now.

I can't personally testify to kefir's effectiveness in lowering cholesterol or blood pressure (there are studies online that you can read, both pro and con).  I CAN personally testify to almost complete relief from heartburn when I drink 1/2 cup of kefir on a daily basis.  I can also testify to a serious reduction in irritable bowel symptoms.

I can also testify to the fact that it makes KILLER cornbread.  Seriously.  KILLER.  Just use it in place of the milk in the recipe (you might need a little more kefir than milk to make the batter wet enough because the kefir is thicker).  The taste is not much different, but the texture is heavenly.  There are also recipes online for making loaves of bread with kefir.  I tried it, both with whole wheat flour and with all-purpose flour.  Because it has to sit for a long time to rise, the kefir flavors the bread much more strongly than it flavors the stir-it-up-and-cook-it cornbread.  Kefir bread is dense and tastes a lot like sourdough bread.  The crust is a little tough, but it's good.

Of course, cooking the kefir robs it of its probiotic properties, but it's a good way to use up surplus kefir.

In two minutes, a pineapple upside-down cake made with kefir will be coming out of my oven.  I bet it's going to rock.

The "No Tilling" Method Begins

This morning, I installed a shiny new trailer hitch on my Jeep, borrowed my son's 10-foot trailer, and headed to the garden center for straw bales and alfalfa pellets.  My intention was to buy 20 bales of straw, but The Husband said he didn't think I could get 20 bales on that trailer, so I just asked for 10 bales at the garden center counter.  (It turned out that I easily got 10 bales on the trailer, with room for at least 6 more.)  Bought two 50-pound bags of alfalfa pellets.

I took everything straight to the garden, unloaded the trailer, and started to work.  I laid sections of newspaper right over the existing debris, separated the straw bales into patties and laid them on top of the newspaper, then sprinkled alfalfa pellets on top of the straw.  I ran out of newspaper before I got the first row covered.  Two bales of straw did a little over half of a 75-foot row.  Looks like I'm going to need more straw.

Also, I can't help but suspect that the deer are going to come eat the straw and the alfalfa pellets before they get a chance to decompose.  We'll see.

The weather is supposed to be reasonably nice tomorrow, so I'll raid Nanny's newspaper stash and finish the straw-spreading job before it turns cold again.

No-Till Gardening

Last weekend, I went to a lecture on soil.  The speaker was a proponent of "no-till gardening."  You can google the specific hows and whys of no-till gardening, but the basic idea is to add layer upon layer of organic material on top of the garden soil to provide nutrients to the soil and condition the soil from the top down so that tilling becomes unnecessary.

I patiently listened to the lecture, visualizing my garden plot in my mind, wondering if the no-till method could ever work for me.  During the question/answer period, I asked him what specific things he would do to begin the no-till method on a garden like mine, a 75' x 75' plot of concrete-like soil that currently hosts debris from last year's vegetable garden (unpicked greens, frost-bitten pea vines, sundry weeds, okra stalks, all of which is blanketed with a couple of inches of leaves).  He said to scatter "a couple of bags" of alfalfa pellets over the mess to speed up the decomposition process, and begin piling more organic matter (shredded newspapers, coffee grounds, wood chips, leaves, grass clippings, etc.) on top.  When I asked how I was going to get the seeds and plants into the hard-packed soil come springtime, he said to use a "dibble" to poke holes in the ground for the seeds. 

Though I am skeptical, I think I'm going to try it.  It's probably going to be more work than running the tiller, but it may help solve the blight problem that I battle every year. 

Closed for the Season

I'm guessing my garden has about 36 more hours before it's "curtains" for the season.  Tomorrow night's temperatures are predicted to be in the 20s.

Yesterday, The Husband picked the remaining chili peppers and bell peppers.  There are a few green tomatoes left on the vines.  An industrious person would probably be combining the peppers and tomatoes into a delicious green tomato relish.  I never claimed to be industrious. 

Last week, the farmer cut the soybeans in the field next to my garden.  With that food-source buffer gone, the next day, the deer ate the peas and beans in the garden that were almost ready to pick.  I'd hope it gave them stomach aches, except for that word "almost"; tomorrow night's freeze would have taken them out, anyway, so it's just as well that the critters got some benefit from them.

Deer must not like turnip and mustard greens, for they are still standing.  An industrious person would pick a "mess" today (before the freeze), cook them, and put them in the freezer for Thanksgiving dinner.  See above.

Crossing My Fingers

According to my old posts, I planted the second crop of beans/peas in August.  The purple hull peas now have slim 4"-long pods on them.  Butterbeans and crowder peas are blooming their heads off.  I'm crossing my fingers for about 3 more weeks of frostless night, but I have clear plastic sheeting on hand, just in case.

The carrots in the trough are growing nicely.  The beets at the other end of the trough are having their leaves disappear as fast as they can make them.  I suspect there's a deer in the neighborhood with beet green breath, and it burns me up that it doesn't even have to bend its head over to eat.

The tomatoes and okra are reluctantly still producing, but not much.

Turnip and mustard greens are growing well; the kale and the collards barely made a showing.  We had our first meal from them a couple of weeks ago, but I was unimpressed.  I planted these greens in mid-August instead of mid-September because a 90+-year-old gardener said that's when he plants his greens.  Figuring that he ought to know when to plant greens, I got busy and planted mine.  The greens seem tougher and less flavorful.  Plus, they're more bug-eaten.  Next year, I'll be reverting back to mid-September plantings.

It's been down in the 50s here for a few nights in a row, maybe even in the 40s for the past couple of days.  Yesterday, it was cool and damp all day.  Time to crank up the indoor hobbies.

I've been working on a quilted Christmas wall hanging for the past few weeks.  The pattern is in the November/December 2013 issue of McCall's Quilting magazine - the candy cane & Christmas ornament quilt on the cover.  This is an appliqued quilt.  I'm not so good with hand-done applique, so I digitized the pattern so that I could do the appliques with my embroidery machine.  Because I'm still learning how to digitize, it took me forEVER to get the designs right.  It took me another forever to actually sew the blocks and assemble them.  This past week, I finally finished the quilt top, then spent another couple of days decided how to quilt it.

I wish I could have made my embroidery machine do the quilting.  The problem is that the blocks are 8" x 8", and the largest hoop I have for my embroidery machine is 7" x 5".  If I were better at this, I could probably figure out how to split the design into 4 parts and actually have the parts line up in the hoop, but given my current level of expertise, I know better than to try it.

I did have one rather cool idea for transferring my quilting designs onto the quilt.  I'm doing a repeating clamshell quilting design in some of the blocks.  The individual elements of a repeating design like this need to be a consistent size/shape.  I did the design with my embroidery program, telling it that I have an 8 x 8 hoop (even though I don't).  Then, instead of sewing the design, I just printed it onto lightweight tear-away stabilizer.  After printing, I sprayed the backside of the stabilizer with quilt basting spray and stuck the stabilizer onto the quilt blocks.  It will be a little bit of a pain to tear out all those little pieces of stabilizer, but I think the effect will be worth it.

Meanwhile, there was another problem:  I already had a queen-sized quilt in the quilt frame.  I tried doing the quilting on my regular sewing machine, but it was a huge pain.  Finally, I un-did the pins on half of the quilt in the frame and pinned the wall hanging beside it.  It will be a little bit of a pain to get the big quilt pinned back in, but not as much trouble as it would be to pin the whole thing back in!

Too Old For This

Earlier this week, when I went to the garden to get a couple of tomatoes for a dish I was making for supper (recipe to follow), I noticed that the new bean and pea rows were full of grass and morning glories.  So, yesterday evening, I dragged the tiller out of the shed and went to work.  The temperature was probably still in the low 90s, and I was already sweating by the time I got the tiller cranked. 

I swear that tiller gets heaver and more ornery every time I use it.  With the tines running in reverse, it squats down and digs like a mole, and it tries its best to aim for the rows instead of the middles.  With the tines in the forward gear, it sprints down the row like a racehorse.  Even with the speed switch set more toward the turtle than the rabbit, it will try to run off, dragging the operator behind it.  When it does this, the smart course of action is to turn loose of it and raise both hands in surrender, at which time it lurches to a sudden stop and sits there, idling, snarling, "Go ahead, smart*ss...squeeze that trigger again." 

After about an hour of wrestling the beast, I gave up and steered the tiller back to the shed.  The outer edge of the first butterbean row didn't get plowed, and the outer edge of the last purple hull pea row didn't get plowed, but screw it...I'll mow them with the lawn mower this weekend. 

By the time I came back to the house, exhausted and dripping with sweat, I realized that I had strained a muscle in my left forearm.  It hurt just to pick up a drinking glass and hold it long enough to wash down an Alleve. 

I am too old for this.

Thank goodness for the left-overs in the refrigerator.  Speaking of the left-overs, I'm calling this dish "Tuscany Beans and Sausage."  It's quick, easy, and delicious (even better the next day).  Here's the recipe:

4 - 5 links of sausage (Italian, bratwurst, etc.)
1 small onion
1 - 2 cloves of garlic (optional)
3 medium tomatoes (or a 15 oz. can of tomatoes, if you don't have fresh ones)
2 cans of cannellini beans (white kidney beans), drained and rinsed (navy beans work just as well)
3 - 4 bay leaves

Brown the sausage links in a skillet.  Remove from pan.
Soften the onions in the same skillet.  Add the rest of the ingredients, stirring them around to get all that good flavor off the bottom of the skillet.  Slice the sausage and add it back to the pan. Put a lid on it and simmer it for 15 minutes.

This is wonderful served over a thick slice of toasted bread.

Bon appetite!