Eating in spring

We had a houseful of guests for the Easter weekend, a timing coincidence due to spring break. While I love having guests, I'm a little distracted this time of year and can't give guests 100% attention; hopefully they are tolerant.

Having to feed a crowd is tricky, this time of year, especially with non-meat eaters. The freezers are full of meat and we have an abundance of eggs and milk, but there isn't a whole lot of vegetables available. We smoked a turkey, the other one of the two older Narragansett males we got before the racoons did. I managed to salvage a bit of one potimarron squash that wasn't moldy, but this is it; the winter squash are gone. The potatoes are still doing okay, they have tiny sprouts that can be ignored, and there are onions and garlic. Of the overwintered in the ground roots, we ate the last parsnip, a huge beet and some very small carrots. There was small new kale leaves and sun dried tomatoes for a quiche. And there are green beans still in the freezer, and we made dessert from berries we froze last summer.

It was a great meal, but a lot of worry. Usually there's some vegetable we have in abundance but this time of year it's the somewhat bedraggled remains of last year and the scanty new stuff.

I did see some new and beautiful broccoli side shoots out there, on last falls's plants. And there are a few asparagus spears peeking out. Now that most of the guests have left there will be some interesting variety, enough for two if not for ten...

Tomato Obsession

I've been so busy that tomato starting season has sort of crept up unnoticed. But yesterday the seed starting began, and some email followup with people who haven't got specifics yet. I mentioned it to the librarians when I volunteer; telling them about the seed starting and the varieties, I got almost too excited to work. After settling down they would ask me questions like "what's the best tasting red tomato" and it would start me off again. I don't know why tomatoes are so exciting! But they are! And I've planted over 200 seeds and many more to go :-) Now my problem is going to be collecting enough coffee cups to distribute them all in.

And I don't know the best tasting red tomato. Sungold, Ananas Noire, Purple Cherokee all come to mind when I think of best tasting - none of them plain red. Red tomatoes don't tend to stand out in my memory, they all sort of look the same in retrospect. This means we need to do more careful research...

Project No-Mow

We have four grass-hungry sheep, some empty spaces between gardens and house where the grass grows raggedly, and one guy who hates weedwhacking. Permaculture has a principle "the problem is the solution"... so, this weekend we rigged up chicken wire with t-posts and rebar, and closed off half the yard, and the sheep attacked the grass like ravenous wild beasts. Assuming that 3' of dainty mesh keeps them in that area and out of the garden, we'd like to protect the small trees in the rest of the yard, and let the sheep really take over mowing duty.

(The sheep have no business being quite that hungry, by the way. They are fat enough that they jiggle when they run; real sheep people tell us the girls need to be on a strict diet).

Season is moving on

How does time fly by so fast? Whooosh and it's been a month.

Tree planting season almost slipped by, but tree orders should be arriving this month and a few of the potted ones have been planted - the two pears that I got last year, very late, and didn't get planted. Those are in the back of the orchard, where we have to protect them from the neighbor's goat. There's an 8 foot fence going up on the north side of the property, which act as a trellis; the hardy kiwis will finally get planted, along with a grape or two. But enough of future plans...

Some starts got planted out under a tarp in the upper beds, and some in the lower beds without protection. The ones in the lower beds don't look so good, they look dry - it's been dry and cold mostly, lately. Seeds planted a few weeks ago haven't come up yet. The kale is putting out small new leaves which are yummy, I eat those whenever we can! There are still beets and carrots in the garden, and one parsnip. And we still have onions, garlic, and potatoes. Dunno if any of the squash is unrotted; the test ones in the SB root cellar have spots but aren't totally gone. I'm giving a talk on seed saving on March 19, for the permaculture group; I'm excited out it, trying to prepare well. There's a lot of talk about seed saving but I hope I can get past both the mystique that intimidates people, but clarify the long term genetic issues so people know where they are going.

The turkey adventure is over; something (most likely a racoon) ate or scared away one male and both females. So we butchered the last two males. The narragansetts are smaller (about 20# live weight at 9mo) and with less breast then the BBB but we smoked him, it was still a very satisfactory turkey. Better a 20# live weight turkey than a 50# or 60#! We'll try again this year, trading tomato plants for poults or eggs.

I just ordered potatoes - forgot to separate and mark the seed potatoes after harvest last year, and I can't handle not knowing if I'm planing yukon gold or carola. I still need asparagus - new aspargus bed in the orchard is dug. And sweet potatoes, going to try again this year. I've received orders for nearly 200 tomato and pepper plants already, I'll start the seed starting this weekend. And we're still milking Lily; Calla and the sheep are due this month. The grass isn't really growing strongly yet in the pastures but the sheep need to come off the hayfield this weekend - we're trying to fence off the side yard so the sheep can act as lawn mowers.