El Rancho de las Golondrinas

BIG (unrelated to garden) NEWS!

I am now, as of last Monday, officially a Big Sister through Big Brothers Big Sisters!  :-)

Usually when being "matched" with a Little through Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS), a Big & Little match is set up by the staff at BBBS using the information obtained in your interviews based on interests and similarities expressed by both parties.  However, my Little and I are unique in that we have known each other for almost 8 years through the after school program I manage.  She started with us at age 5 and, now that she's 13 and in Middle School, has "aged" out of our program.

Now, P (as she'll be called in this space) and I met while she was in foster care and going through the process of being adopted.  I attended her adoption ceremony and have been right there with her through lots of transitions and challenges.  We have experienced a lot together over the past several years so it was obvious that we would need to continue to spend time together once she aged out of our program.

The beginning commitment through BBBS is one year of seeing each other a couple of times a month for a few hours each time.  The goal is to have fun, get to know each other on another level and share our common interests.  As we share time together, I just might share some of our experiences in this space...especially since P has expressed that she would like to teach me how to care for horses and maybe even how to ride them...I think you might get a good laugh out of that ;-)

Anyhow...yesterday, for our first official outing, P chose to go to Las Golondrinas.  It is her favorite place in Santa Fe and since I haven't been there since I was a kid, I was happy to fulfill her request.

Las Golondrinas is a living, historic museum in a rural farming valley on the south side of town.  It's original incarnation was an a stopping place on the Camino Rael, the path from Mexico City to Santa Fe.  Many existing historic buildings have been restored and authentic structures have been erected on existing foundations.  The whole encampment sits on 200 acres and is like a little slice of heaven.  There are multiple structures strew over the property, many garden plots (full of corn, chile, squash...), goats and sheep.  There are abandoned pens that one can imagine housing chickens or pigs.  There is a horse drawn wagon on which you can tour the property (we just walked) and a couple of acequias that must be crossed (luckily, the caretakers have built and maintained a few bridges as well).  Fresh bread from the orno is served with honey-butter and or freshly harvested and roasted green chile and the employees are dressed like they are stuck in the 1700s.

Las Golondrinas feels like a comfortable, secure, beautiful community.  I am sure it wasn't always peaceful, and I spent a bit of time thinking about how hard it must have been to actually live a life of constant work just to keep food on the table and the horses taken care of.  However, the couple of hours we spent there reminded me how deeply I long to get out of the city and be surrounded by nature and animals and hard (real, tangible) work.  I love all of our modern conveniences, but I could happily trade a few of them for some good rural living.

Luckily, P feels the same way, so we had a few good chats about horses vs. cars and texting vs. having an actual conversation (face to face...imagine that) while we walked around the property.

It was a good day, and a good reminder about what's really important in the grand scheme of things.  I am very excited about our future time together :-)

Mystery Melon

Last year, as part of our CSA share, we received a delicious Mystery Melon.  First, it looked like a Cantaloupe on the outside, but the flesh inside was green.  Second, the taste fell somewhere between Honey Dew and Cantaloupe.  Very interesting and incredibly delicious.

So I saved some seeds.

Fast forward to this June.  In one of my front yard beds there was a tiny spot where some of my bush beans didn't propagate, so I stuck a few of my Mystery Melon seeds in there and and forgot about them.

Well, they germinated and grew happily (though never into the sun, always away from it) and, remarkably, we have a few actual melons on the vines!  While a couple of the melons look healthy and happy, this guy did not.  We left him alone, pretty much out of laziness, until he fell off the vine yesterday.

Thinking that whatever would be inside would be just as ugly (maybe rotting out?), we cut him open just to see and, magically, the flesh was (almost) perfect!

Not only did it look good, but it tasted amazing!  Who knew?  Our very first, super sweet and very juicy  melon!  WooHoo!

You really can't judge a book by it's cover, can you?

Now, anyone have any ideas as to what this beauty might actually be called?  I'd love to hear your ideas because, while Mystery Melon sounds fun, it's not incredibly official ;-)  Cheers!

The Season of Preservation

I started off the Season of Preservation with the best of intentions.  I created an excel spreadsheet and planned on updating it each time we canned an item.  This being only our second year of preserving anything, I was very excited about learning how to preserve a small variety of new-to-us items using both our water bath canner and our pressure canner.  The plan was to preserve anything that came from our garden that we couldn't eat fresh and maybe, if we were lucky, any fruits or veggies given to us by friends or family.  We were thinking we'd maybe fill a single shelf with our home processed goods and that would be "a good start" that we could then build on in future years.

Then, the season was upon us and life was happening and I didn't write down a single processed can.  Imagine that.  My beautiful (er...useful) excel sheet just sat there (virtually) untouched for months.  That is, until now.  I finally decided it was time to play catch up, so I took my computer out into the garage and then into the pantry with me last night and typed up all of the lovely jars that currently sit on our shelves.  I also reached back into the recesses of my currently school filled brain to recover the items that have been consumed or given away over the past several months.

I thought it might be fun to share the list with you all here.  While we've accomplished a lot, (believe it or not) I've found my head spinning in a potentially unhealthy/dramatic worry of, "But it's not enough!  It won't get us through the winter!"  And then I get sane again...Oh, right...I guess there's always the grocery store, right?  Ha!  Modern conveniences ROCK!

Anyhow, it's not perfect, but here's the list:

Apricot Jam - 3 pints + 10 half pints
Honied Apricots - 4 half pints
Honey Lemon Apple Jam - 5 pints
Apple Sauce - 19 quarts + 16 pints
Apple Butter - 11 pints
Apple Pie in a Jar - 5 quarts
Apple Wedges in Cinnamon Hot Syrup - 10 pints
Boozy Peaches - 1 pint + 7 half pints
Rhubarb (pickled) - 4 pint and a half jars
Rhubarb Jam - 3 half pints
Strawberry Jam - 2 half pints
Strawberry Rhubarb Jam - 7 half pints
Yellow Tomato Basil Jam - 9 half pints

Pickled Rhubarb

Asparagus - 4 pints
Pinto Beans - 42 quarts
Black Beans - 14 pints
Kidney Beans - 14 pints
White Northern Beans - 6 pints
Beets (pickled with ginger) - 4 pints
Carrots - 4 pints + 6 half pints
Corn - 6 pints
Creamed Corn - 6 pints
Green beans - 4 pint and a half jars
Green Chile - 54 pints
Whole Tomatoes - 5 pints
Diced Tomatoes - 4 pints
Tomato Paste - 5 half pints
Zucchini (pickled) - 4 pints

Green (and a little red) Chile

Ketchup - 3 half pints
Relish (Lemon Cucumber) - 4 half pints + 12 quarter pints
Salsa - 8 pints

Vegetable Stew - 5 quarts
Bean & Chicken Stew - 4 quarts

Honey - 2 quarts + 2 pints + 8 pints comb & honey

Honey - not sealed, just jarred ;-)

Now, if you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're saying to yourself, "What, are they just going to live on sugar all winter long?  That's a lot of sweet stuff and not a lot of savories!"  Yeah...agreed.  We're working on it.  We're not done yet....there will be much more to come as we continue to pull in the fading veggies from the garden in the next few weeks.  However, all those sweets will offer some yumminess to many, many breakfasts and snacks as well as some wonderful additions to baked goods and holiday giveaways!

Mind you, we are not trying to never go the the grocery store again...that is probably never going to happen...at least not anytime soon.  The intention is to simply eat what we grow, learn some new skills and maybe save a little money along the way on our future grocery bills.

This year has been a huge learning curve for us and I would like to be able to take our lessons and use them to plan our plantings and preservations better in future years :-)  In the meantime, I have to say, it feels really good to walk into the pantry and see all those glowing jars of home grown goodness on our shelves!

Linking up to Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways #50

The Business of Art

Art, until about a year ago, was always one of those things that I'd done from time to time for fun.  Not anything I did to earn money or to really put out into the world.  Then, about a year ago, I decided to make a go of it.

It's terrifying to work hard to create something beautiful, and then hope others think it's beautiful, too!  However, there's really nothing like receiving an order or having a conversation with someone about what they'd like to custom order or receiving feedback that, once they held my piece in their hands, they thought it was even more beautiful than when they ordered it!

Someday, I do hope to earn a bit of my living from my art sales.  I don't have any illusions that my art can support us fully, though that would be amazing, but I'd love to earn a good supplemental income and for it to come from something I absolutely love doing.

Now, I'm sure I could be doing more for my fledgling business than posting to etsy and handing out business cards here and there, but aside from figuring out how to participate in arts and crafts fairs, I'm kind of at a loss and am completely open to any ideas or advice you, Dear reader, might have to offer me.  Have you started your own small business?  What do you sell?  How did you get started?  Any information/inspiration/tricks you would be willing to share about any aspect of a small business would be so greatly appreciated!

Thanks you in advance for your wisdom :-)

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

According to the Farmer's Almanac, we are in for a cold, wet winter!  I'll take the snow, but am hopeful the cold part is a normal cold and not a frigid one!

We are planning two hoop houses in the backyard this year in which to over winter a few crops.  In addition to plastic sheeting and water bottles to help keep the greens from freezing, I'm also investigating a reflective sheeting I recently read about which, if placed correctly, will help build and maintain another level of warmth in there.  I'll have to elaborate later, once my research is complete and I've begun the process ;-)

Onward!

As some of you already know, this week brought us our very first, very abundant apple harvest!  This is, most definitely, a very exciting time for us!  Growing and harvesting fruit is a big deal for us and, with our warm spring, it's been a very good fruit year for our young trees!  Now, there are still several apples on the trees, so I anticipate another harvest in the next couple of weeks, but this is the bulk of it :-)

Also, the pears you see in the tally below are only the ones that have fallen off the tree.  Most of them on the tree aren't ready, but the fall offs (while a little bruised) are totally fine and the juiciest, most delicious pears I've ever tasted!  I can't wait to see how many we'll actually wind up with!  It won't hit anywhere near our apple totals, but I will be happy with whatever we get!

This week also brought the last of the Summer Squash and Zucchini as well as the last of the Bell Peppers.  Most things are looking a little ragged around the edges and it's becoming the time of year when I have a little battle inside about just how long I should leave it all in the ground.  It's hard to watch it all die back, but there's definitely a part of me that's ready to not think about so much vegetation anymore.  Not yet, but soon.

This weeks totals:

• Apples = 36 lb 2 oz
• Cucumbers 
• Lemon = 2 lb 9 oz 
• Pears = 3 lb 2 oz
• Peppers
• Bell (Green) = 5 oz
• Happy Hot = 4 oz
• Jalapeno =  3 oz
• Mystery = 2 oz
• Shishito = 3 oz
• Pole Beans = 5 oz
• Pumpkins (Pie) = 3 lb 5 oz
• Summer Squash = 6 oz
• Tomatillos = 1 lb 3 oz
• Tomatoes = 11 lb 9 oz
• Zucchini = 1 lb 13 oz
• Eggs = 69

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Happy harvesting!

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions

Apple Season

Apple season is officially upon us and, I have to say, I am so incredibly excited about it!

Since we've processed all 150 pounds of gifted apples, it's finally time to start harvesting the apples from our own tiny trees!

Now, we put in our apple trees just a few years ago and this is the first year we've really seen them be successful!  I'm not sure if it was the warm spring or simply that they're maturing well (or a combination of both), but their growth this year has been quite amazing!

Each of our two apple trees are 1) espalier and 2) hold four different varieties on each of their four different branches.  They stand against our fence in the front yard and are like a mini orchard all by themselves :-)

Each tree holds Gala, Granny Smith, Red Fuji and Golden Delicious apples.  The winning branch this year, in term of volume of apples, was the golden delicious, which we've been enjoying in mini-harvests for the past several weeks.  So crisp and sweet and juicy!  Magic!

A diagram of where each variety grows and the best uses for each.
I tend to forget which variety grows where when there aren't
actual apples on the tree!

Now, there are still some apples on the trees since they're not all ready to be harvested yet, but so far this is how the totals break down this week:

• Red Fuji = 1 lb 9 oz (10 apples)
• Granny Smith = 6 lb 10 oz (25 apples)
• Gala = 8 lb (37 apples)
• Golden Delicious = 19 lb 9 oz (82 apples)

That's right - a total of over 35 pounds of apples from our little trees just this week!  Not a bad haul for our little trees :-)  Especially since there are still some on the trees to harvest later!

Red Fuji, Granny Smith, Gala, Golden Delicious

Now, since apples are in abundance this year, we're thinking that we will save our own apples for eating fresh (apple slices and almond butter or apple and cheese slices are among my absolute favorite snacks!) and use any additional apples we're given for preserving (I'd like to make some more Apple Pie in a Jar and try some dried/dehydrated apple slices).

Golden Delicious, Red Fuji, Granny Smith, Gala

What about you?  Are the apples bountiful in your area?  If so, how are you handling the bounty this year?  I'd love to hear your tricks and favorite recipes!

Hatch Chile

Chile is a staple here.  We eat it on and with everything (burgers and pizza included).  It is full of vitamins and minerals and makes for the perfect of comfort foods.  When ordering it on your food, you'll always be asked, "Red, Green or Christmas?"  Christmas means having both red and green sharing your plate.  I have always preferred green chile, but red is beginning to nudge it's way into my heart, too...it just has to be cooked just right...but that's another story.

Growing up, we ate chile every once in a while at home, but it was a special treat to go to Tomasita's Restaurant and enjoy what I've always believed to be the best green chile in town (now I also believe they have the best Swirls in the world...a frozen margarita "swirled" with Sangria...but that's another story, too).

As a Little One I always ordered my chile on the side, and I remember the pride I felt the first time I was able to order and eat my burrito smothered in chile.  Good times :-)

As an adult, I have begun the tradition of purchasing my chile in bulk and getting it roasted onsite before bringing it home to let it steam up and cool down before bagging it up and freezing it.

The amount of chile purchased was always determined by the size of my freezer, so in the beginning my purchases weren't incredibly large.  Regardless of how little I purchased, I always felt it was worth it since the little store bought pints of chile in plastic tubs don't ever really stack up in comparison.

When Tool Lady and I purchased our home 5 years ago, we decided it would be necessary to purchase a chest freezer in order to store our new batch of chile each year.  There are other things in the freezer, too, but we did actually purchase it with chile in mind.

Yeah...it's a that important.

We have learned that 2-3 sacks of chile is enough to get us through a year of burrito/enchilada/quesadilla/omelette-smothered-in-chile eating so that's what we purchase and process each year.  The cost is right around $100 and pales in comparison to what it would cost if we purchased the above mentioned tubs throughout the year.

We have also learned that it is much better to purchase from the farmer than the store.  Cut out the middle man and get to know some real people  :-)  Our favorite people to purchase chile from are the nice folks at Berridge Farms.  They always set up shop in the big parking lot behind Tecolote and are a joy to deal with.  The young woman who takes the orders and handles the money has a mind like a steal trap...I swear, her brain remembers everything despite so many different orders, faces and side requests.

Occasionally, if you purchase your chile later in the season, it will also include a few that have begun to their shift to red (green chile is unripe red chile).  This is a good thing because, not only is it pretty, but it adds a touch of wonderful deep, almost smokey taste to the chile.  This year, though, Berridge Farms were actually offering sacks of red chile along side their sacks of green!  Oh, happy day!  So, we purchased 2 sacks of green and a 1/2 sack of red, had them roasted separately (the roasting times are different) and then mixed them together later.

In past years we've always frozen our chile in quart sized freezer bags, but this year we decided to switch it up a bit and try canning it all!  See, the problem with freezing it is that, after a long day at work, the last thing you want to do is thaw a bag of chile, peel it, then cook it up to make your dinner.  The other side of the coin here is, if we were to experience a loss in power for TEOTWAWKI or whatever, we would lose all of our chile!  Now, you can't live on chile alone, but it is absolutely a comfort food, and if the shit hits the fan, I'm going to want some comfort ;-)

So, while the work put in ahead of time is incredibly intense (peel, rinse, chop, repeat at least a thousand time), our joys throughout the rest of the year will be apparent every time we pull out a jar of chile and simply simmer it on the stove to prep for dinner.

Following the green chile canning guidelines provided by New Mexico State University we prepped and pressure canned 54 pints of chile which are now sitting happily on the shelf waiting to be consumed.  It took Tool Lady and I 10 full hours of processing and waiting for the jars to come out of the canner.  Holy cow, were we tired!

Sore backs aside, it was so worth the time it took.  Very good times, indeed.

Environmental Education

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's back to school I go...

Some of you might remember that, a year ago, I went back to school to complete my long awaited degree.  

Yes, I have been taking classes and working towards a BA for over a decade now and the end is finally in sight!  I have to say, there have been months at a time when I thought I would never be as close to this goal as I am right now.  Sometimes it takes a bit longer for a seed to germinate than we might like, but ultimately, it'll get there ;-)

Well, I started classes yesterday on what will be my final semester of college.  Though I am completely overwhelmed by the prospect of completing 16 credit hours while working full time and trying to stay present as a mother and a partner (let alone garden, chicken and bee misc.), I am very excited.  It has been a long and winding road, but I can see the finish line and, come December, I will finally have my degree in Environmental Education!

As part of this process, I am planning a bit of an integration of my love of nature, my passion for the environment, my belief that our children hold the balance of our fragile planet in their hands, and (of course) my Senior Project.

I am still formulating exactly what this will look like and how it might translate here, but I do plan to include you, Dear Readers!

I do hope that you will be as excited about my idea as I am.  Please stay tuned (and wish me luck)!

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

The past week has brought us all kinds of weather...clear and cold, cloudy and rainy, clear and warm...short sleeve days followed by two layers of long sleeves and then short sleeves again.  Welcome to fall in Santa Fe! The garden and chickens don't like it very much, but I'm used to it :-)

The beans are almost completely dead, the tomatoes and chickens are slowing their production and the beets are happy.  Ah well, you can't please everyone all the time!

In the way of news:  This week brought us our very first Barnes Mountain Yellow tomato and the very last Hubbard Squash.  The tomato will definitely make it into our garden next year!  Big fruit, delicious taste, good stuff.  The squash?  Not so much.  I planted three hubbards...each produced one squash bringing our potential total to measly three...but then one rotted on the vine, one rotted on our pantry shelf within a week of falling off it's dried up vine and the third...well, we'll see how long it lasts now that it's in the house, too.  Regardless of how long it lasts or how delicious it might be, it's just not worth the space those babies take up to have such a small yield.  I'm not too heartbroken over it, though, since next years winter squash space will be devoted strictly to pie pumpkins and butternuts :-)

Fresh veggies become the most delicious stew!

Even though seeing our weekly totals go consistently down, I am trying to remember a couple of things...1) We still have the  potatoes, apples and pears (one of which fell off the tree on Saturday and is included in the below totals) to harvest which each have the potential to bring in pretty nice hauls and 2) The fall, winter and early spring will provide a nice respite from the (sometimes overwhelming) garden and all her bounty.  I am super grateful for this summer's bounty and (at the same time) I'm very tired!

This weeks totals:

• Apples = 1 lb 4 oz
• Basil = 2 oz
• Beets = 1 lb 4 oz
• Cucumbers 
• Lemon = 1 lb 8 oz 
• Hubbard Squash = 2 lb
• Mixed Greens = 6 oz
• Pears = 5 oz
• Peppers
• Jalapeno =  1 oz
• Shishito = 2 oz
• Pole Beans = 1 oz
• Swiss Chard = 15 oz
• Tomatoes = 8 lb 13 oz
• Zucchini = 1 lb
• Eggs = 58

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Happy harvesting!

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions

Barnes Mountain Yellow Tomato

Last summer, I was given a couple of packets of heirloom tomato seeds by a friend/co-worker.  I couldn't think of a better gift!  One of those packets contained a few tiny Barnes Mountain Yellow Tomato seeds!  I had never before heard of such a thing, was super excited to try them out this spring and had no idea what to expect!

Well, we've just harvested our very first BMY tomato from the vines of our incredibly out of control plant (I kid you not, we have not been able to keep up with this plant...it is like a monster tomato and the vines are probably 8 feet long, minimum...but I can't really tell because I am not tall enough to help this poor girl contain herself)!

Here are a couple of shots of this 1 pound 1 ounce beauty in Tool Lady's hands...

And another shot of it on top of a can of tuna in order to give you an idea of it's size ;-)  Yes, sometimes we're just plain silly around here!

On the Baker Creek website there is a single review of this tomato and I couldn't agree more with the positivity of it...

The vines have topped eight feet here in Northern California. The fruit have been large enough to cover the palm of my hand, (I wear extra large gloves) somewhat inconsistent in texture and firmness initially, but now they are consistently large, firm and keeping well on the vine. I have packed a couple for lunch, and when they are cold, they are especially delicious; very mild flavored, low acid, firm fleshed and surprising. I keep looking at that orange color and wonder if it should taste like a tomato! These go very well with a little bit of crumbled queso fresco, feta and turkish spices. The color adds interest to a basket full of produce too.

If you're looking for a fun new tomato to experiment with (and you have the space), I highly recommend this one the next time you're looking for seeds!

You Know a Cuke is Good...

 ...When your daughter eats it like an apple ;-)

Winter Tomatoes, continued

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my hope/goal of growing some winter tomatoes throughout the cold months.  Well, here's the progress so far...

On August 13th I took 3 cuttings from each cherry tomato (a bi-color cherry and a small sweet cherry), trimmed them of their bottom leaves and placed them in a 5 gallon bucket about 1/2 full with water until I saw roots beginning to form.

On September 3rd, I transplanted 2 of each tomato (only four of the six put out roots) into two large pots.  I staked them, watered them and put them on the back porch to establish themselves for a bit while the weather is still warm.

So far they seem to be doing well.  Some of the leaves have died back, so they're looking pretty long and lanky, but their tops look healthy and are beginning to put out some new growth, so there is hope in that :-)

Harvest Monday

Happy Monday everyone!!!

I didn't take many pictures this week (I was too busy taking pictures of our guests and the shenanigans that occurred with said guests ;-) ).  Luckily, the lack of pictures is not representative of what's actually coming in from the garden!

While the tomato tally is lower this week than the past several, we are again harvesting Cherokee Purples and Italian Heirlooms (in addition the the Romas, Yellow Taxis and Cherries that have been trickling in in a continuous stream) and are anxiously anticipating the arrival of our Barnes Mountain Yellows and Orange Flesh Purple Smudges.

Cherry tomatoes and a single Happy Yummy Pepper

Lemon cukes, tomatoes and eggs

The big winner this week were our Lemon Cucumbers!  I have a huge bag of them in the fridge just waiting to be turned into pickles and relish!  Any day now.  Really.  I'd love to hear about favorite relish recipes if anyone would like to share!!!

The temperatures over the next week are supposed to be rising only into the 70s throughout the day and down into the 40s/low 50s at night...While this makes for nice tea weather (and cozy/comfy clothing choices), I am wondering how much longer our garden will produce as wonderfully as it has been this summer.  Fall is definitely descending.

This weeks totals:

• Apples = 5 lb
• Cucumbers 
• Lemon = 6 lb 5 oz 
• Mystery = 1 lb 15 oz
• Mint = 4 oz
• Mixed Greens = 8 oz
• Peppers
• Bell = 10 oz
• Happy Yummy = 1 oz
• Mystery = 13 oz
• Shishito = 2 oz
• Pole Beans = 12 oz
• Summer Squash = 5 oz
• Swiss Chard = 5 oz
• Tomatillos = 9 oz
• Tomatoes = 4 lb 14 oz
• Zucchini = 2 lb 9 oz
• Eggs = 65

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Happy harvesting!

Linking up to Harvest Monday @ Daphne's Dandelions