Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Monday, July 25, 2011

The 100 foot dinner

Sunday we finally got some warm weather in Seattle and I think it got close to about 80 degrees. Of course, we're back to cold weather and rain today, but I'll take what I can get.

Over the weekend, I harvested all of our onions and got them ready for storage. Same thing with the garlic - they've been drying outside for a while now and I clipped them and got them ready for final drying before I store them. I've never grown hardneck garlic so I did things differently than I normally do, which is braid them and hang them in the basement. This time around I trimmed the roots and the stalk and brushed off the outer skin that was covered in dirt.

Sunday night our dinner consisted of snappy salted potatoes from our backyard, grilled cauliflower with garlic and hot peppers (the cauliflower was also from the backyard) and fresh wild salmon. Dessert consisted of lavender shortbread cookies from the lavender I dried a few weeks ago. I still have more lavender to process and store, but it was a great taste of things to come.

Our blueberries are producing nicely and the kale, swiss chard, lettuce and sugar snap peas are all still going to town. Our mint is continuing to rebound and, when Paco isn't stealing strawberries, we are still getting some from that bed.

I'm in dire need of putting in some more plant starts (namely more lettuce and greens) before the end of the month. I meant to do that Sunday, but ended up spending 2 hours weeding instead. I'm losing hope on all my pumpkin plants due to the cold.

Sarah, our white orpington chicken, is still broody. We finally did the chicken water-boarding over the weekend. She got perfectly wet but when we lowered the ramp later in the day, she ran back up to work on those imaginary eggs. I think I need to put an ice block under her butt next. She's making it exceedingly difficult to get what eggs we are getting from the other chickens so I'd like to see this end sooner rather than later.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's a good haul of goodies from your garden! As for your chicken, have you tried the open bottom cage overnight? Hope she gives up the fight soon.

Free Range Mama said...

We have had some broodies that wouldn't stop until we made a broody bin. It was a wire cage about 2 ft cube and you put food and water in it. The important part is that it is off the ground so their bum is cold. They have nothing to snuggle down on. They just perch on the wire cage bottom. You could probably use a very small wire, but chicken wire works too, or even 2 inch by 4 inch. It is our last resort for broodies... and works wonders. Of course if you want to hatch a few just get some fertile eggs. That stops them in 21 days and they turn into wonderful mothers! I LOVE watching and learning from my broody hens. They are such good mothers. I think a lot of people could learn a lot about mothering from mama hens!

Telebrands said...

Sounds like you had a great dinner using food from your own garden. Thanks for the post.

Sue Sullivan said...

Maybe you should trade her out to someone who is looking for a broody hen, someone who has a rooster and would like to hatch out their own chicks. Advertise on Craigslist's farm section perhaps?
Seems like it would be a win-win instead of a battle then.

ravenfeathers said...

i have a buff orp who goes broody about once a year. she's also a monster and nearly pecks me to death every evening. however, i've found that it's just easier to let her brood than to battle with her. she gets over it in about five weeks and then we all get on with our lives. i just need to make sure i bring gloves to the coop with me, ow.

Julia's Child said...

Good crop! Did you go hard-neck because it keeps longer? Just curious.

Our blueberries are almost finished, but the blackberries are kicking in.

I only planted a few pumpkins this year--or so I thought. The compost pile had other plans. There are now more pumpkins in the compost pile than in the pumpkin patch. Whoops.

Dmarie said...

impressive harvesting going on at your place! we're having a bit of a cold snap here in western Kentucky--today's expected to get no warmer than 80!

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen a post in a bit and hope all is well with your family. Hopefully you are only backlogged in blueberries. Cynthia in Denver.