Sunday, September 16, 2012

early september harvests

 my garden is in full swing now. yeah, it's late. it's always late. this year it's partly because i got everything planted so late in the season, and partly because i'm growing a lot of long-season heirlooms.



 first pair of lemon cukes. i always have bad luck with cucumbers. this year i planted them three or four times, and almost every time the seedlings were taken down by either slugs or earwigs, no matter how hard i tried to protect them. finally got them properly started in early july.


 lots of green left on the branches. hurry up and ripen!

 wall o'maters. i put up a row of about 15 tomato cages all attached to the wire fence that separates the garden from the rest of the yard. that way they wouldn't topple over. and it made a neat little tomato hedgerow.

 these gourds had the same problem as the cukes, getting eaten over and over as seedlings. now they're huge! you can't quite tell from the photo, but the vines have climbed all the way to the very top of that lilac tree behind them. most of the gourds are high up. harvesting could be tricky.

 squashes got a kinda slow start too, but now they're rolling.

 i juiced a big batch of cukes and tomatoes, and the chickens LOVED eating the leftover pulp. i haven't needed to compost anything all summer thanks to the chickens.

 mega-egg! someone laid a double-yolker last week.



 i picked up a couple little tiny egg pans. it really is a handy size. very easy to wash. also very easy to leave in the sink and not wash for a few days, which is part of the reason i got two.


 and they make for a very round meal. this almost looks like some kind of bland future-food from a dystopian film.

 i'm all about eggs over easy, but i've finally started branching out a little bit. i made stir fried rice, and hard boiled eggs:

 they were pretty impossible to peel nicely though.

 a few fun tomato specimens!



 it's my second year growing reisetomate, a.k.a. clusterfuck tomatoes, one of my all-time favorites in both looks and taste. they're like fused clusters of grape tomatoes.


Thursday, September 6, 2012

earthly delights tomato tasting

 jason and i went to the earthly delights farm tomato tasting tonight. some of the tomatoes came from earthly delights and morning owl farms, the rest were brought by attendees--j brought black and red boars, and i brought monkey asses.




 the tasting was awesome. so many tomatoes, so many incredibly different, intense and wonderful flavors. i saved seeds from a few favorites to grow next year.




 i didn't realize this little csa farm is right in our neighborhood! just about three blocks from my house.




Monday, September 3, 2012

dogshaming (+chickenshaming)

 my dogs have many shames, but compared to a lot of the other shameful dogs, they're pretty well behaved.

 "putting anything in the bathroom trash can is the same as feeding it to me."
this trash can is now just a vessel for carrying things to a larger, lidded trash can.

 "manifest destiny: i spread out my bedding materials in an ever-expanding territory grab"
andy is gradually laying claim to the living room.

 "i eat my mom's hair! (while it's attached)"
he likes to wake me up with cuddles and hair munching.

 "i feast on chicken poo and rotten apples from the yard"
potato had his first vet visit yesterday--bowels full of tapeworm, probably thanks to some random nastiness he ate in the backyard. mon pauvre petit pomme de terre. he's fine now, and back to nomming wormy ground apples.

"we poop on the porch"
making it much easier for potato to find his snacks.