Harvest Season

This, my friends, is the little pumpkin that could!  Let me explain…

Out here on our little farm in Nowhere, North Carolina, we decided to try raising chickens.  If you’ve read some of my other posts, you will see that it wasn’t easy, but we have enjoyed it, learned A LOT, and persevered.  Well, so did this pumpkin!  One day, while cleaning the coop, I noticed a strange plant starting to sprout.  In my usual fashion, I decided to let it be and see what happened.  It began to grow into a gorgeous vine that climbed and wrapped around the sloped side of the chicken coop.  As it grew, the leaves got huge, but they were so beautiful, giant, green, variegated with whit stripes.  It offered shade through the hot summer to the chickens inside and I found it a beautiful edition to the middle of my pasture.  The blossoms were as big as the leaves and equally as beautiful.  They also confirmed my original opinion that this was some sort of squash plant, mainly because I love a good fried squash blossom!  Then, in late June, early July, we noticed a couple of balls where the blossoms used to be!  The were perfectly round, and green.  I racked my brain to figure out what this could be and where it could have possibly come from.  As time passed, only one of the balls survived and grew…and grew….and grew, until it was obvious that this was a pumpkin from its linear stripes and shapes.  It began to turn white and go so heavy I was afraid it would break the fencing on the side of the coop.  But we left it, right where it was, and used every ounce of patience we possibly could not to pick it.  And then tragedy struck!  While cutting the grass/weeds in the front pasture someone got a little too close to the vine.  The leaves began to wilt and shrivel.  I made the executive decision to pick the giant pumpkin from the vine.  To be honest, it was a really sad decision for me.  That was in September.

I left the pumpkin as outdoor decoration for the fall season.  We bought others and carved them for Halloween.  They grew moldy and gross and had to be thrown out.  But I wouldn’t let anyone touch this guy.

I was saving him for a special purpose…Thanksgiving!  You see, Thanksgiving is my favorite day.  I get to cook and eat all day, and for days before, and for days after.  But most importantly it’s a time where people are forced to be reflective on their year and thankful for the good and the light in their life.  We spend so much time focusing on the negative.  As humans, we are psychologically wired to pull from our experiences the negative and the bad, because that is what makes a stronger biological connection through the wires in our brain.  But during this one season, we are forced to reach through our memory files and find the good.  The good usually outnumbers the bad.  It is an exercise in memory recovery that humans struggle doing on a daily basis.  But they shouldn’t, because there is way more joy in life than sorrow.  Yes, bad things happen!  Husbands turn alcoholic and abusive, family members and friends pass away, careers are ended, physical health fails, emotional health deteriorates, children suffer, pain continues.  But the sunset in your favorite corner of the world is even more beautiful when you put it in a perspective of how far you have come.

And the pumpkin pie is even more delicious when it is from the accidental pumpkin that took root in the middle of a pasture!

Roasted Pumpkin

Do’t’ ever buy canned pumpkin again!

Buy a regular pumpkin, not a baking pumpkin, and not a carving pumpkin.  I prefer the white varieties for their extra sweet taste and smooth texture, but you may need to experiment with what is available in your area.

Slice the pumpkin in half.  This can be really difficult considering the size, so choose your weapon carefully, and give yourself enough space!  I had to use a butcher knife and the kitchen floor.

Clean out the seeds and stringy insides.  Pick out the seeds to roast, washed and tossed with olive oil, salt, and a dash of cayenne pepper.  Feed the stringy insides to the chickens, goats, or cook for the dog.

Cut the monster (pumpkin) into manageable pieces.

Roast upside down in the oven at 400 degrees until the skin is fork tender.

Use a spoon to separate the flesh from the skin.  In a large bowl, or many small containers, use an immersion blender to puree the flesh until smooth.

Use 2 cups in your favorite pumpkin pie recipe, and freeze the rest for later!

My favorite use…a spoonful in my oatmeal with a drizzle of sorghum and a sprinkle of cinnamon for breakfast!

Do You Snuggle Your Chicken?

Well I sure do! How could you not when she is literally that cute!  This is Willow.  She was the runt of the 4 chicks we purchased as Christmas presents for our daughters.  We picked out 2 Silkie chicks and 2 what we thought were Ameraucanas.  I had done hours of research and searching for just the right members to our farm family.  As I always say, story of my life!  Oh, the things that we have learned in the last year and a half!

Though it is true that chickens are low maintenance, they definitely are not “no” maintenance.  Here are some of the biggest lessons learned, Through trial and error, of course!

• Make sure you see the mamma or daddy chicken! My Ameraucanas, which are usually docile and smaller in size, thus the reason I picked them, turned out to be mean, little-chicken-attacking, Rhode Island Reds or something! Yes I got 2 extra large eggs a day from them, as long as they were on organic layer feed, but they harassed chickens, dogs, humans, horses, everything!
• Free Range is great for the chicken, except in the presence of dogs.  On one occasion it was a stray that wondered into the pasture, on another it was my own dog that broke her collar to get to them, and finally there is no telling what is was that attacked.
• Growing your own feed is great, but they need tons of protein to make eggs.  I have tried fodder, beans, seeds and many variations.  Best results in egg production were from organic layer feed.  Now we do a mix of homemade and organic layer feed because these girls are just here for fun!
• Chickens are resilient!  We have survived storms, snow, hurricanes, bugs, mice, dog attacks, and our learning curve.  I have nursed all 4 from one type of injury or another in my master bath tub using syringes to not only clean wounds but also make them drink water.  Feathers grow back, skin regenerates, and they know that I take care of them, thus the reason for the snuggles!

My favorite time of day is when the horses are all up, little chickens are running around the pasture, the hound dog is lounging in the dirt, and I am watching the pink-sky sunset on a farm I have worked my entire life to find beside my best friend and love listening to the chatter of my beautiful little people.  There may not be peace on Earth, but there is peace at home!

From the Garden

Nature’s bounty is upon us! Along with the bounty of bugs, heat, and for some reason this year, rain here in the South, I am beginning to collect the veggies from the garden!  It’s a time of celebration on my little farm.  But I often wonder if the celebration is the same in other homes and farms around the country?

I celebrate the obvious, that those teeny-tiny seeds and plants that I put in the ground actually turned into something!  In all honesty, that is not something I get to celebrate often.  Though I grew up with a grandfather who could grow 10 acres of corn and fruit in an orchard, and a father who grew enough veggies in our city garden to can and eat all year long, my experience with growing veggies in the garden has been disappointing.  There was the summer of the drought when nothing grew.  Once there was the summer of the tomato caterpillars when all the leaves disappeared, but my oldest daughter got to watch a gorgeous caterpillar go through all those life cycles she had learned about in school.  Worst of all was the summers of the condo where I tried with great desperation and angst to grow a container garden on my third floor balcony where it seemed, for good reason, that my entire existence depended on growing just one tomato (if you can’t grow it in the ground, you probably can’t grow it in an old coffee can).

This year is year 2 of our raised garden beds on the new farm and I am ECSTATIC!  Pictured above is my first picking of the year and it comes with great promise, assuming I don’t forget to water the garden, though it seems like a ridiculously wet summer this year.

If you look closely, you will see my first zucchini, which is special because there weren’t supposed to be any zucchini plants in my seedlings.  Ya see, my 84-year-old father, who has been growing everything from cotton to children his entire life decided to grow seedlings indoors this winter after I told him that I was giving it a go.  Well, my cat used ours for a litter box, while dad had so many I gave them away at Easter dinner!  But when we planted all the seedlings in his garden and in mine, it looked as if there were no zucchini.  He was sure the only squash we would get this year would be summer squash, and tons of it.  We had multiple conversations of how to make good use of it.  Then this beauty showed up!  Hallelujah!  I enjoy summer, yellow, crook-neck, or whatever you want to call it, but I have a million more uses for zucchini!

Below is one of my favorite uses for both…

Roasted Veggies

Cut veggies into like-sized pieces.  My favorite combination is zucchini, summer squash, red onion, bell pepper, and chickpeas.

Add some olive oil in a large bowl and toss the veggies around to coat. Add a large pinch of salt and a handful of basil (fresh is great if chopped fine, but will burn during roasting if not, so dried works in a dry spell)!

Pour out onto a sheet pan or roasting pan (that thing that came with your oven that you never use…you put water in the bottom of it and it keeps whatever you’re roasting from drying out).  Make sure veggies are in a single layer on the pan.  Roast at 400 for about 20 minutes, tossing veggies half way through.  They are done when they are a little browned on the outside, but soft and fork-tender on the inside.  The chickpeas should be crunch and you can eat them like potato chips!  (In fact, sometimes I roast just those with a hint of cayenne for a snack!)

I like to make a huge pan of this on Sunday to go with chicken or roast, then eat the left overs in a million different ways during the week…in my omelet, wrapped in a tortilla, over rice or quinoa, in a salad…you get the idea!

 

Happy Gardening!

Strawberry Season

For this Southern Girl, berry season is a momentous occasion!  It means the beginning of summer and all things fresh.  I don’t mind the heat and humidity, when it means I can eat all kinds of fresh fruit and veggies.  Ya see, I don’t buy strawberries in October, or tomatoes in December, because that’s not when they are in season, so the reward of waiting until the opportune moment is a farmhouse sink full of ripe, juicy strawberries that have to be washed, cut, frozen, cooked, jellied, or just eaten (that’s my favorite!).  Many of my friends call me crazy…”modern technology makes strawberries available all the time”…”I don’t have time to do all those strawberries before they go bad”…”why work so hard when you can just go to the store and buy them”.  Sorry, y’all, but 2 hours spent with my kids at the strawberry farm then an hour washing and processing (while munching) seems like a much better way to spend my Saturday!

Here’s my favorite thing to do with them:

Strawberry Shortcake

Cut about 2 cups of strawberries into extra small pieces.  Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon sugar and stir.

Cut a slice of Entenmann’s Pound Cake (or make your own, but even I’m not that ambitious!).

Whip up some homemade whip cream by combining whipping cream, a little sugar (to your liking) and a splash of vanilla.  Turn the mixer on a high setting and let it go. (Homemade whip cream is not ambitious; it’s easy!)

Layer on a plate or in a bowl and enjoy!

{Got some extra calories stored up from eating that salad for lunch?  Replace the whip cream with vanilla ice cream!}