Update - July 14

The vegetable garden was put in late this year -- but with all the rain and cool weather, I don't think the early planters did themselves much good. All is thriving now. We had some cucumber beetles on the squash and cukes, but i used rotenone.

I read about rotenone when the beetles started to eat the plants down to the ground. This was a few years ago. It's very toxic to fish. But it comes from

Finally the vegetable garden is fully in - surrounded by an electronet fence to keep the critters away.
8 raised beds, 8x8' in size, each held together with 2x8" boards in various states of decay.

I planted 6 tomato plants -- all paste tomatoes, 4 tomatillos, thai dragon hot peppers and jalapenos. Broccoli plants stand guard over newly planted haricot vert and beet seeds. Cucumber seeds should

tooooo much to do

To Do List -- this is what's on my list. what's on yours?

flower gardens -- get plants, seeds, weed, edge, mulch
veggie garden -- weed out large burdocks, add composted manure to raised beds, plant potatoes, seeds, buy and plant plants, mulch, move turkey tractor to the garden to cover with plastic for tomato, melon mini-greenhouse
fruit trees and bushes -- too late to prune and feed. Start a

i love spring. planting gardens. new calves. asparagus and strawberries. spring is a poem of downpours and   green.

gardens

I've been hearing from friends who've already planted spinach, peas, potatoes, onions, and other spring crops. I've been ignoring the garden for the most part.

Saturday, I'll fill the eight 8x8 foot raised beds with composted manure. I won't weed or turn over the dirt already in the boxes. I'm finding that less is more when dealing with the soil. I just keep adding good soil to the top of the

Saturday's boil yielded 1 3/4 gallons -- with a jar going to a friend who donated a little sap. I'm loving boiling this year -- we're finally getting it down to a science.

Bob made homemade hash tonight - and we had toasted wheat bread with eggs and hash.

Homemade hash -- 1 lb of corned beef from our cows -- processed in the food processor and fried in a pan with sweet onion, red pepper, potato dice from precooked potatoes, half and half, a little thyme, cayenne, and garlic.

Homemade wheat bread -- 2 cups white whole wheat, 1 cup unbleached flour, 2 tsp instant

maple glazed baked pork chops

I took 1 cup of maple syrup, 1/2 cup of ketchup, 2 tablespoons of mustard, 2 tablespoons of worcestershire - and whipped it together. I slathered 8 loin pork chops in a roasting pan with the glaze. Baked for 30 minutes in 350F oven -- mmmmmmmm.

While working on the boil yesterday - I also worked on the taxes, some of my regular work, and errands - I just set the timer to check the outside operation every 20 minutes. I also made bread and roasted one of the  chickens we raised last summer, serving it for dinner with homefries and steamed snow peas. It felt great to get so much done.

Tonight we'll have pork chops, which i might search

Maple Syrup time - timeline of one boil

We started the fire yesterday at noon, and at 2am I had finished a gallon and a quarter of grade a maple syrup. 1" of depth in our pan is 6 gallons of sap. I knew I had around 44 gallons of sap and that I'd get a little more than a gallon of syrup - and by measuring the depth in the pan, I could tell how concentrated the sap was becoming. Here's the timeline --

12pm -- started fire and put 35

minestrone

I had a cow processed a couple weeks ago and so we had to make room for hundreds of pounds of beef in the chest freezer. We had a roast, a package of ground beef, a package of stew meat, and 30 pounds of spare ribs. We decided to boil the spare ribs to make a rich beef broth.

With the beef broth I made a splendid minestrone. The friends who came to help us boil last night ate a dinner of

what a gorgeous day for sugaring! We ended up finishing off yesterday's boil this morning and ended up with 1 1/2 gallons of medium grade syrup. I'm thrilled.

tapping trees

We've been so busy in our lives -- but we made some time to tap our maple trees.

Last weekend I pulled all the stuff together, washed it thoroughly, and went outside to tap the trees. We have 31 taps now - in 25 trees. We boiled last night -- a total of 70 gallons of sap we saved this week. This morning we're finishing off more than 1 1/2 gallons of syrup.

getting ready for making maple syrup

It's snowing today -- another 5-12 inches due. I hate the way dirty snow looks, but it's hard to think about tapping maple trees when it's snowing so hard. Today I'll lug everything out and take a look at our supplies. I'll wash everything and set it out to dry.

We'll move the cinder blocks and fire brick from the barn and set up our fire box for the back porch after it stops snowing. We plan to

BBQ sauce

I made pulled pork last night from a pork shoulder from Barb Muench's hogs. She sold us 1/2 of one from our collective this fall.

Typically I put the roast in a crock pot and let it cook for a day. Then I pull it out and take off all the fat and the bones. I shred the meat and put it aside while I make the bbq sauce. This is the bbq sauce I always make --

BBQ sauce --
1 sweet onion - chopped

Poor little calf has some type of external parasite I think -- she's losing patches of hair. Vet is coming on Monday to see her. We're also getting her de-polled -- not so crazy about her horns.

This weekend I'm cleaning, baking, and hanging out around the house. I can't wait. Grace's home with us.

Tonight I finished the NY Times crossword puzzle and made a quick dinner with my Black River Produce delivery from Friday. I sauted fresh scallops with onion, garlic, and red peppers and then added fish sauce, cilantro and lemon juice at the end. I served the dish with bread, a baby spinach salad with mozzarella ciliegines, plum tomatoes, and kalamata olives. It was a pretty simple dinner, but

Indian curry roll ups -- great for football games

I made a really lovely pizza rollup thing last night. I took a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks and played around with it a bit.

I sauted garlic, onion, carrots, cut up green beans, red pepper, and cauliflower -- all prepared first in a dice of similar size, except the minced garlic. I added a teaspoon of cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, and garam masala, and methi (fenugreek leaves).

easy chicken masala

Last night I made an easy chicken masala -- sauteing in an oven-proof pan some veggie oil, 1 chopped onion, 4 cloves minced garlic, and 1 chopped red pepper with 1T garam masal until the onions were translucent, and then removing it all from the pan. Then I sauted 5 boneless chicken breasts until just brown on each side, and also put that aside. I deglazed the pan with nearly a quart of whole

I have an unusual assortment of food in my house right now. Usually we eat a lot of local foods year round -- but right now I have tons of citrus and tropical fruit. I'm eating smoothies with nonfat yogurt and fresh berries for breakfast, mango and pineapple with cottage cheese for lunch, and salads with cukes, tomatoes, grated carrots and beets, sprouts, and beans for dinners. It's time for me