Friends, Foes, and Flowers

The Herd made some new friends this past weekend! They were excited to get some grain snacks. The girls are looking wistfully at Dark Star’s good fortune. 

Not to worry though, Cherise stepped right up for her turn at the bucket. Peggy-O did not partake, though it may be a bit hard to see with that mop on her head.

One thing they all agreed upon was that those dogs are under suspicion. The alpacas are standing guard and have a few choice scary clickety-clicks to share with the four-legged guests. 

But not to worry, those girls were tied up safely at the other end of the pasture, enjoying a snooze and the occasional wrestling! (And super adorable. I did not capture a still shot, sadly.)

Finally, here are some spring flowers to mark their dates of bloom. March 25

March 10

March 15

Enjoy the changing season!

The Garden Awakens

*garter snake alert - 9 photos down. Some find them alarming; I think garter snakes are cute and helpful.

Spending Memorial Day weekend at my mom’s house means that you get to take home “all the plants.” This year, the Lady with the Greenest Thumbs” planted extra pepper and tomato seeds, “just in case some don’t come up.” 

They all came up!!! And the majority got put into the entire back of the Subaru. It’s becoming quite the Farm Car.

I thought it would be a good idea to freshen up the garden beds with not one, but TWO yards of compost/topsoil mix. I may have overestimated my dirt needs.

Some of the first butterflies to visit the newly added soil.

Garden bed number 1 finally ridded of weeds, aerated, new soil added, and ready for planting. Look at those amazing roots on those tomato plants!

20 minutes later…

20 minutes after that…

Round 2…

A third bed of tomato plants…

Garden friends! Someone had babies, and there were at least 5 cute garter snakes that I saw this week. Go eat those insects!

Fourth bed with peppers! Sadly I didn’t get a fifth bed finished before leaving the Farm for a spell. But my neighbor took the remaining 20 pepper plants to his church and gave them away. Looking forward to harvest and lots of tomato sauce!

The Queen's Fireworks

Usually I spend my time at my mom's house helping out around the house and garden, even during a short visit passing through from one location to another. But at the end of July, we just celebrated a flower fireworks for the whole evening. Below is a 50+ year-old Selenicereus grandflorus, or Queen of the Night cactus, that she got from a friend many years ago. The flowers on this amazing plant open for only one night. It takes about three hours to get from closed to open, and then the blooms mostly close by morning. Since it is a sizeable bloom, you can literally see the bloom open. Typically, the cactus might flower once or twice in a season, one flower at a time. On this night, there were five buds ready to open. Four opened at once, and the fifth opened one night later. Four flowers at once was a first for this plant, and so so incredible to watch! The photos are shown in chronological order.

Late afternoon on July 30, four flowers have grown several inches during the day.

First signs of the white flower beneath the tan exterior leaves.

It's getting a little dusky. Time is around 9:00PM. 

All four flowers opening.

Just after dark, the blooms are wide open! 

Human provided for scale. Those flowers are ENORMOUS!

 

The next morning, the flowers have mostly closed again.

In a week or so, the finished flowers hang from the plant. 

Finally, the plant forms a fruit.

I feel a strong connection to this plant as well. It lived on my desk while I was growing up, much smaller back then. I don't think I saw it in bloom until I was in college. What a lovely night to share with my mom, who is very passionate about this flower! She invites the neighborhood for every flowering, but this night it was just us, and that was wonderful too!

Baking and Food Updates

Hang on, friends, it's going to be a long post! I have so many windows open on my phone and computer, "saving" all the recipes that I have used to make our life delicious at home for the last few months. It's time to close all the browsers and save the info someplace more useful. It's still the pandemic and there is still a baking trend that I am a part of!

I found a new recipe for the Sachertorte. I really like how easy the chocolate shell was to apply and smooth. My comment for improvement would be to add additional apricot jam between the layers of the cake, or split the layers into more layers for more jam to sink in. This cake was moist and delicious and lasted most of a week at room temperature.

The popularity of regular challah bread at our house was lapped by even greater excitement about rye challah! I used Molly Yeh's recipe and promptly needed to purchase more caraway seeds. The nutty texture of the bread is delightful. The only downside of the recipe is that it only makes one loaf. I was smart and froze half immediately before it disappeared.

Some people want me to believe that cream cheese and olives is the best way to enjoy this bread.

The next cake we had to make and eat was pistachio cake with cream cheese frosting. Check the sweetness after adding each cup of sugar in the frosting. I used a lot less than recommended and still thought it was well-sweetened. The cake was outstanding!

Around this same time, we started harvesting our first arugula greens from the garden. 

And also were happy to have some radishes, though they quickly got woody.

I thought I would make a strawberry pie with this sourdough discard pie crust recipe, but it was such an unusual and savory flavor that I made a veggie pot pie instead. I highly recommend warming up the leftovers in the oven to avoid soggy crust syndrome. Super yummy, even if you substitute some veggies for others that you have on hand.

Impulse purchase of plantains? Make some plantain chips with olive oil and salt in the oven for 20 minutes!

Hands down the most delicious food I have ever eaten was this almond torte with strawberry sauce. I skipped the rhubarb because I don't really like it and didn't have any. This will be our birthday cake moving forward. WOW!

I once again had to save the gooseberries before the chipmunks sampled all the unripe ones. Instead of freezing the green berries right away, I stored them in the fridge for a few weeks and they ended up turning red after all!

Instead of making jam, I decided to try a gooseberry chutney instead. It was a nice change to the normal sweet stuff. The type of vinegar you use makes a difference, so I recommend not changing to, for example, apple cider vinegar...

I found the lemon lavender scone recipe my friend won the Indiana State Fair with a few years back. This was to celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary. I used Ponderosa lemon juice and rind from our own lemon tree.

New beets at the farmers market inspired an experiment to duplicate the salt roasted beets at the Purple Pig restaurant in Chicago. 

I cut and roasted the beets for 30-ish minutes with olive oil and salt at 350* in the oven. I mixed them up once or twice during the baking. Then I smeared peanut butter on the bottom of a plate, piled the cooled beets on top, added salt to taste, crumbled chevre and chopped pistachios on top. Oh my YUM!

Not pictured in this culinary wonderland was the peanut butter granola that The Farmer made, the "artisan" sourdough bread that turned out nothing like the video, but tasted amazingly of molasses, and an emergency peach crisp that I had to make when a box of peaches wouldn't ripen but started spoiling. 

Have a delicious day!