Going 'Home'

Hobby Farm Home is one of a family of magazines targeted toward those who live or want to live the country/homesteader life.
This past spring we were contacted by a writer who was doing an article for the magazine on home-based canning businesses run by women. The author, Lisa Kivirist, has her own food and farm based business so we had a few things in common as we talked. It was a fun interview to do and I was looking forward to seeing the finished product. Though there is always a little reservation in this, as Sean & I have both had enough encounters with the press as to always be a little bit leery. Not to have worried, the magazine arrived last week and it is a lovely article featuring 3 women who use their canning skills to supplement their farm/business income. There are several tips and suggestions on getting started with a small canning business and we even included the secret recipe to our popular Cinnamon Pear Butter. Now I just wish I could meet the other 2 women in the article!

Here's a peek at this issue from the HFH website.
September/October 2010 - Table of Contents

And if you've never seen the magazine, search it out. It's worth it for the pictures alone!

Social Treats

This past weekend we hosted our annual Ice Cream Social for the CSA members. It was a great afternoon with agreeable weather, fun visitors and plenty of good food. We also had lots of requests for recipes so here are the most requested of the foods served at the event:

Chocolate Zucchini Birthday Cake

2-3c. grated zucchini

2 c. flour

1 ½ c. sugar

1 tsp salt

½ c. oil

1 ½ tsp baking soda

1/3 c. cocoa

2 tsp vanilla

Mix all ingredients together, pour into greased & floured 9 x 13” pan. Bake at 350° for 35 minutes.

When cool, frost with Hershey’s Cocoa Frosting

1 stick butter

2/3 c. cocoa

3 c. powdered sugar

1/3 c. milk

1 tsp vanilla

In a medium mixer bowl melt butter, add cocoa and stir until combined. Alternating between powdered sugar and milk, add to cocoa and butter, mixing between. When thoroughly combined, beat in vanilla.

Makes +/- 2 cups.

BGF Chocolate Ice Cream

5 (1 oz) squares unsweetened baking chocolate, melted
1 (14oz ) can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp instant coffee granules
2 c. half and half
2 c. whipping cream


In a large mixer bowl, beat chocolate, condensed milk, vanilla and coffee granules until coffee is dissolved. Stir in half and half and whipping cream.
Pour into ice cream freezer and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.
Makes about 1 1/2 quarts.
Recipe adapted from : Great American Favorite Brand Name Cookbook

BGF Zucchini Bread

3 eggs                                         1 tsp soda
3 c. sugar                                    1 tsp baking powder
1 tbs vanilla                                 1 tsp salt
3 c. flour                                     3 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 c. grated zucchini                1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 c. oil                                         1/2 c. dried cranberries (optional)
                                                    1 tbs fresh grated ginger (optional)


Combine eggs, sugar and vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. Combine flour, soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Add to egg mixture. Then add zucchini, oil, cranberries and ginger. Mix well. Put into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 1 hour.


Rosemary Butter Cookies


1 c. butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp minced fresh rosemary (for more herb flavor, grind rosemary with some of the sugar)


Beat butter at medium speed until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating well. Add eggs one at a time, beating until blended.
Combine flour, cream of tartar and salt, gradually add to butter mixture. Beat at low speed until blended.
Stir in rosemary (or rosemary sugar mixture).
Shape dough into 2 (10-inch) logs; wrap each log in wax paper & chill at least 2 hrs.
Unwrap dough, cut each log into 1/2" slices and place on lightly greased baking sheets.
Bake at 350° for 10 minutes. Remove to wire rack to cool. Yield 3 1/2 dozen.


Recipe source: Gloria Beebout (BlueMom)

Breaking and Entering

This morning when we woke up, the screen was pushed out of the storm door. No we weren't burgled, though our house was entered without our consent. Last night after I went to bed, Sean stayed up in the living room to watch TV. He heard the dogs tussling out on the front steps but they quieted down after a bit and he didn't think much about it.

Sometime later, ready to go to bed himself,  he got up and turned off the TV, but when he walked into the kitchen, there sat Blue and Luci in the middle of the kitchen floor, looking guilty. Huh.

For those of you who aren't familiar with our house (and our dogs) we do not have house dogs. Blue and Luci are outdoor, working dogs. They do not come in the house unless there is seriously severe weather, and then they only get to come into the back porch...not the kitchen.

So apparently, while wrestling they managed to push the screen on the front door partially in and then, naturally, decided to avail themselves of the dog-sized opening. The best part is that the front door is in the living room, where Sean was sitting at the time, so they had to pass within 10 feet of him. Clearly they knew they weren't supposed to be in there, since they snuck past him into the kitchen.

I can only imagine what mischief they could have gotten into had we both already been in bed. Yikes!
Oh and just moments ago Sean hollered, "Blue, NO! Bad dog!"  He heard her this time, as she pushed her head against the screen and was part way through the door. Little sneak! Suddenly our brave farm dog has decided that house life looks pretty cushy! Grrrrr...

It's coming...

Vampire-free Zone!

As you can see from the above photo, BGF is now a vampire-free zone! No pale-faced, night stalking blood sucker could make it through our massive garlic moat!
Well actually, its not technically a "moat" since its mostly hung from the rafters, but it sounded good. All kidding aside though, I had certainly not planned to harvest garlic this week as it is about 3 weeks too early, but our obnoxious weather pattern of late was putting the crop at risk. When we pulled a test batch to give the CSA earlier this week, we discovered that the garlic was actually sitting in water just below the surface. Not good!

So we took a break in the battle with the weeds and did some serious garlic harvesting, to the tune of more than 2400 heads. Whew! That is a lot of garlic, for us anyway. We did lose a number of heads to rot, and let me tell you there is nothing quite like the "heady" aroma of rotting garlic...blech! But it wasn't as bad as I first feared. So now all of it is bundled and 90% of it is hanging. I ran out of drying space in the packing shed, so now I'm working on annexing part of my parent's garage to finish out the last of it. Surely they would appreciate a little protection from vampires too?!?

If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em!

Rain. Rain. Rain! We've had lots of it this month...more than enough for 3 months put together. So far, in June we've poured 12.75" out of our rain gauge and there's still another week left...yikes! Even though we sit at the top of a hill there is still water standing in the gardens and let me tell you, vegetables don't like wet feet! Crops are failing; spinach, salad, cabbages, broccoli, edamame, peas. A number of crops are holding their own, but even those are so buried in weeds that its a little hard to tell. The high tunnel crops look great, but they just aren't ready quite yet.

At market, we can squeak by with a thin produce offering, because we have other products but CSA is always our greatest concern and this weekend I was fairly sure that we would have to cancel Tuesday's box delivery. The only thing I could find in the garden that was healthy and plentiful enough to go in 35 boxes was spring turnips...beautiful turnips true, but I can't just give people a box of turnips! So at market on Saturday I started telling any CSA members that stopped by the booth that we would likely cancel this week, that I would send out an email after inspecting the gardens again that afternoon.

Later that day as I walked through the beds with the mud sucking at my boots I admired the 100's of feet of summer squashes covered with their beautiful, glowing yellow blooms. Blooms...blossoms...squash blossoms...SQUASH BLOSSOMS! That's it! We have squash blossoms, though we've never harvested them as such, a number of farms do and they are considered quite the delicacy! And daylilly buds, we have those too! Plus a beautiful crop of basil ready in the high tunnel, I think we can do this. But what will we do for greens? We always have greens in the boxes and there isn't enough chard in the tunnel for 35 boxes and nothing else is ready. Nothing except all the damn weeds that are taking over everything! Then a thought struck...We've been custom harvesting edible weeds for a market customer for the past year...could we do it for the whole CSA? Why not? Braising Greens for everyone!

In addition to the chard, we collected purslane, lambsquarters, amaranth, sour dock, sorrel, violet leaves and dandelion. All quite tasty and very nutritious greens and many of which you will see featured in the multitude of herbicide commercials running on TV right now. And I can sympathize with the people who use those chemicals right now, as those weeds and many less palatable ones are taking over the gardens.

So it took a little longer, as foraging/weeding/harvesting is a little more time-consuming than harvesting a cultivated crop, but harvest we did and the boxes came out looking ok. They contained: Basil, Braising Greens Mix, Uncured Garlic, Peas,Squash Blossoms or daylily blossoms and Turnips. I'm always nervous about the boxes in thin times...I want them to always be full-to-the-brim, bounteous goodness and I'm uncomfortable when they aren't. But regardless, we filled them with everything we had, loaded up the vehicles and headed for the delivery sites.

Many members asked how things were going and if there was anything they could do to help. "Just enjoy your produce and embrace the adventure." We told them, what else is there to say when you are delivering carefully harvested, cleaned and bagged weeds and flowers?
Then later that evening we received this message from a member:

"We greatly relished Tuesday's Clan of the Cave Bear/Euell Gibbons retrospective forage food box...It was a very creative, retrospective supper." -David

Clan of the Cave Bear/Euell Gibbons retrospective forage food box! I LOVE IT!
That's the best thing I've heard all week! Hopefully we won't have to resort to quite this level of foraging in the future, but from now on whenever we harvest "wild greens" that's what we're going to call them.

Its still a hard season, but with such wonderful members and customers who are willing to embrace the adventure of supporting a small, local farm, it sure makes it easier.
Thanks guys!

Lavender Harvest

The first lavender harvest of the year and the best one to date. Looking forward to tins of lavender sugar and possibly some lavender syrup.