The Lunch Hour - Chilaquiles

Our lunch hour has turned into a little weekly gathering for cooking and eating. This week we enjoyed chilaquiles on Thursday. It's nice because everyone brings ingredients and we just make fabulous food and then we sit to eat it. The only bad part is that I only remember to take a picture after the food is all gone.

Chilaquiles:

Tools you might need:
electric skillet
spatula

Ingredients:
20 Corn Tortillas cut into chips
1 Small Onion sliced
4 Eggs
1/2 cup Red Sauce
1/4 cup Mexican Cheese
2 Tbsp Oil

Heat the oil in your electric skillet at medium high (or the highest your skillet goes). Add the tortillas until they are all slightly crispy. Add onions and saute until they are limp and slightly see through. Break eggs into the skillet and scramble, making sure that they mix into all the tortillas and onions. Once the eggs are cooked add the sauce and cover everything with sauce. Turn off skillet and crumble cheese on top of everything. Cover up skillet and let your cheese melt a bit (about 2 minutes). Enjoy with cheese and rice or just by themselves. Enjoy!

The Lunch Hour - Enchiladas

I've been thinking about what we can do to make good food at work with the least amount of work and time. Yesterday we made green and red enchiladas. They turned out great and everyone enjoyed them.

Red Enchiladas:

Ingredients:
Red sauce
Tortillas
Shredded Chicken
Mexican Cheese

Tools you might/will need:
Toaster oven
Toaster oven pan
Plate
Plastic bag
Spatula

Green Enchiladas:

Ingredients:
Green sauce
Tortillas
Shredded Chicken
Oil for frying

Tools you might/will need:
Electric skillet
Plate
Spatula

Condiments:
Lettuce - cut up thinly
Onions - cut into thin rounds
Tomato - cut into thin rounds
Mexican Cheese - crumbled
Mexican Cream

For the oven baked red enchiladas:
Pre-heat your toaster oven to 300 degrees F. Place about 20 tortillas into a plastic bag and microwave for about a minute to make them supple enough to roll up. Pour some of your red sauce onto a plate. Place the tortilla on the red sauce and then flip the tortilla over to cover all of the tortilla with red sauce. Place shredded chicken and some cheese into your red tortilla and roll it up. Place your enchilada in your toaster oven pan and continue this until your pan is all full of enchiladas. Crumble some more cheese on top and place into the oven for 20 minutes. Bring out of the oven and let them cool a little. And then apply what ever condiments you might like to your enchiladas and enjoy!

For fried green enchiladas:
Pour some of your green sauce into a plate and microwave it until it is hot. Microwave your chicken in a little plastic bag with some water. (This keeps your chicken from drying out.) Turn on an electric skillet to high so that you can fry your tortillas. Pour about 2tbsp of oil into a small electric skillet. Place a tortilla onto the oil and fry both sides until supple and slightly crispy (if you like them that way, which I do). Lift the tortilla out of your skillet and place onto your plate of green sauce. Coat both sides of the tortilla by flipping it over a few times. Place your green enchiladas on a clean plate and fill with chicken. Apply any desired condiments and enjoy!

Tree pruning and planting

I visited the pruning meeting for the California Rare Fruit Grower's Association of the Central Coast and I think I'm going to join. One of the incentives to join was a Carob seedling and I find it delightfully interesting to add that to our list of products grown on the farm. I doubt that we can use it as a chocolate substitute, but I wish to use it to make carob desserts. We'll see if they have any left next month so that I can join. Their scion exchange takes place next month and I'm planning on attending that meeting. I met a lovely lady who lives in Atascadero who was also visiting that meeting for the first time. We'll see if I can pick up some French Prune scions from her so that I can play with them.

I had an opportunity to prune all of our trees yesterday as it was a nice dry day. I took a lot off the almond in the front as it was showing some signs of borer and I would like to keep damage to a minimum on all our trees. The peach and the apricots were also pruned to allow for top growth. I'm still uncertain on how to trim the front apple tree to help encourage the tree to grow taller. I also wrapped the trees with fencing to see if that will help discourage the geese from eating all my trees. The jerks ate my Franquette walnut tree after Zuzu had knocked of the covering that I had on there to protect it. I hope it can still grow. We'll see as I did not see any actively growing nodes on what was left of the walnut tree.

On Saturday I also made my way to Bay Laurel Nursery and I find it funny that I keep getting the same worker helping me. She's a bit... prickly.. and every time I talk to her I wonder why she's working with the public if she lacks the skills to communicate with someone in an easy fashion. I'm glad she enjoys doing what she does, but it would also be nice to have a person who you enjoy talking to whom you wouldn't mind going back to visit. Honestly, I've only gone twice (once to order and once to pick up my order) and I don't really see a reason to go back if that's the way I'll be treated. They have nice produce, but I think I'll pay extra to have my trees and items shipped from Peaceful Valley if I can feel like a valued costumer. That's just my opinion. But anyways, I stopped by on Saturday to see if I could add to my order and it turned out that the bare root trees were in so I picked up my ordered Muir peach and my Fugu persimmon. I was able to plant those last night although the persimmon turned out a bit more eventful than I would have liked. We have a lot of trees and we're quickly running out of spots to plant them, so I decided to plant the persimmon off to one side. That spot seemed to have 2 1/2 ft of pure rock which I had to dig through. I kept sending up sparks and breaking rocks in half. The shards would jump up and hit my face and I was glad that I was wearing my glasses as they ended up getting scratched from one of the rocks. I would hate to think of what my eye would have looked like if I was wearing my contacts.

I have one almond and the small bushes left to plant. I hope they are all right and that they grow well for us. I look forward to another year of awesome fruit growth.

Freezing

We've been going through a cold spell in California and that means we have frozen pipes in the morning. As we don't have a weather station yet, we have to rely on the pipes freezing to indicate that our night temperatures were in the teens. Our pond was also frozen yesterday, which cause the ducks to slide across the surface in a very ticked off manner. The pond did not melt until late afternoon yesterday as it was even cool during the hottest part of the day. The cold spell is supposed to finish by the end of this week and we're hoping for warmer temperatures. I'm not sure what the trees will do, but I hope they don't get overly confused by all this change in the temperatures.

The Lunch Hour - Rice Crispy Treats

This was actually the first thing I did at work as a treat and you don't need a toaster oven at all, just a microwave.

Tools needed:
Large bowl
Plastic spatula
Large (9x11) glass pan to make a form.

Ingredients:
1 16 oz. or 2 8-10oz Bag(s) of marshmallows
1 box of puffed Rice cereal
1/2 cup of butter (1 stick) - cut up into pieces

Place the butter into a large bowl and microwave until it is all melted; usually about 1 minute on high. Place all the marshmallows in the bowl and melt for about a minute and a half. As with chocolate, the marshmallows will look solid but when you start stirring they will dissolve into a gooey, swirly, marshmallowy blob. As soon as the marshmallows have turned into a huge blog then add the box of crispy rice cereal. Keep stirring with your spatula until all the cereal is coated with marshmallow. As soon as it is all blended pour into your glas pan and pat down to form. You can either let it cool out on the counter or place it in the fridge to cool down quicker. Just to warn you, this recipe makes for some extra marshmallowy goodness, if you would like your a bit drier just put in less marshmallows. As soon as it it cool you can start cutting up your treats into whatever size you would like. Enjoy!

Trees - Past, Present, and Future

Just thought I'd recap what happened in this last year with our trees. As previously stated, some trees were eaten by goats, others by geese, some caught fireblight (I like it when they later post oh, by the way... this tree is highly susceptible to fireblight.. thanks) and some just couldn't keep up.

Those who did not make it this year: Apple Fuji (goats), Apple Honey Crisp (geese), regrowth of rootstock on one of Trees of Antiquities tree (geese), Navel Orange (geese), Grapefruit (geese), Lemon (geese/freeze), Apple Pink Lady (fireblight), Plum Santa Rosa (geese),

Those who were damaged by geese or goats include - Apple White Pearmaine, Apricots Patterson, Pistachios, Pear Bartlett, Pear White Doyenne, Apple Granny Smith, Cherry Rainer.

Actually, the more I review this list, the more I want to punch a goose in the face. I'll just have to remind myself that I'll just have to eat all their tasty, tasty eggs and children.. in front of them. Some of the trees that were damaged also managed to come back and seem poised to have a good growth year for 2013, for that I'll only eat the remaining non breeding pair geese.

The remaining fruit trees include: Apple - White Pearmain, Apple - Golden Delicious Combo, Apple - Granny Smith, Apple - Braeburn, Apple - Summer Rambo, Apple rootstock from pink lady (to be grafted with different apple),  Pear - White Doyenne, Pear - Keiffer, Pear - Bartlett, Peach - Ranger, Mulberry Pakistan (2), Blood Orange, Mandarin (2), Pomegranate (2),  Mango, Orange - Valencia, Pistachios (3), Cherry - Rainer, Cherry - Bing, Pecan, Almond, Apricot - Patterson (2).

Just planted include: Walnut Franquette, Walnut -Hartley, Almond (Nuplus).

On order: Peach - Muir, Plum - French Prune, Quince - Russian, Persimmon. 

Will pick up more to propagate: Pomegranate and figs, possibly some apples to graft.

Would really like some olives, nectarines, and possibly some other nuts. We also planted some pine nuts and some chestnuts to see if they grow from seed. My goal is to actually have fruit/nuts all year round from our trees. Having them be in season just seems to give them a better flavor and helps us savor them that much more.

The year in review: 2012

This last year has been very trying and an excercise in perserverence.

I wrote this in early May. I realized how desperate I sounded:
Our winter was on the harsh side. No snow, but it started freezing in November and the temperature stayed cold until April, when the temps soared to the 100's. The animal's water stayed frozen throughout the day, my trees froze, I couldn't water due to the cold temps, the plants did not want to put forth much fruit/veg, the animals did not appreciate the cold(except Zuzu), it did not rain until March, and we almost ran out of firewood. All in all it was a new experience and a very daunting one with a new little man in the house. Having a baby in the house ends up kicking your butt and making you realize that you have other priorities. /End original post

I was unable to do many things around the farm, including milking animals while Ivan was young. I had the help of many friends to get to do these chores and to you friends I am eternally greatful.

We brought cow home in late winter and we've milked her ever since. She was bred in May (around the 21st) and we're looking forward to a baby calf at the end of this winter or early spring.

We had our goats grow up and we ate them. The male sheep grew and we ate them. In all there is a theme here, most animals grew up and we ate them. At the start of this year we still have some geese and some ducks to slaughter, but we'll see when we can get to them.

The goats did get out a few times and ate my trees, in particular my cherry trees but they had enough time to grow a bit before the hard frosts hit. Our other trees have grown and have gotten over the geese and goats. I think it's something with animals that start with the letter g; they are all just bastards. I'm looking forward to having the trees do a lot better for this upcoming year. Our peach tree grew a lot and it is starting to look like a full grown tree; my baby is growing up. I get to trim them soon to help determine their growth for this upcoming season. The willows and the ash have taken off as well. They provide enough shade to have all the poultry and fowl sit under them.

Projects were started, projects were abandoned or altered. The bread oven was destroyed and a new one was begun. I had my nephews come to stay with us, but I'm pretty sure that did not work out so well for us. Nothing was done around the house, but much food was consumed so in the end I think we ended up at a loss from that. I was at least able to milk cow, but we'll have to see what we can do in the future. If we do have another child Ivan will be my slave monkey and be in charge of any younger sibling.

Our plants out front had mixed results. The sorghum, buckwheat, early corn, pumpkins and cherry tomatoes did well. All other tomatoes and beans did not. We had enough tomatoes but the beans never seemed to take off. We had one late eggplant but no real produce from there. The strawberries did great, as did the apples, the berries, and the grapes. We'll see how the rest of the fruit do in this next year.

We keep on morphing the layout of the back yard and we alter and move things around in the front as we find out what does well and what needs to be altered to improve our production. Now to work on the goals for the backyard so that Jed can sleep better and the area near the house can become more productive.

There was very little rain and much heat. There was very little food and much desire to shoot every animal in the face. I think cutting back to just the necessary animals will help out a lot. As the year cycles through again we start to think of all the things we need to get to and all the things we would like to start with. I wrote up a list of goals I have for this next year, and I dearly hope to be able to accomplish them and more.

Over all, it was a very exhausting trying year and I'm glad it is done. We learned a lot with the birth of many of our animals as we had to help with a few of the deliveries and with the passing of some of the young. We learned that it is vital to stay with the sick young and to do all we can to keep the young alive. We learned that animals will kick out the young if they do not believe it can live and that all young animals (including humans) take up a lot of time and a lot of sleep is sacrificed for the sake of the animals. We learned that there are certain times of the year that work best for slaughters and that there are bad times that we should not. We learned that there are ways to preserve our meat and food while there are other ways that should not be used. I know we did not post much and we hope to post more frequently this year as it will help us keep track of what goes on in the farm and how we can learn from it.

I've recently read a few blogs from people that I love following and some of them have decided to sell off their animals and stop farming. I don't think I can go back. Who knows, I might think differently if something unexpected happens, but I value our way of life so much more through this process.

For those of you following and for those who wish to join in. Enjoy and we hope see you all at the farm in this coming year. Cheers!

Wishes and goals for the new year

I have many goals but as of yet, I have not posted them all. I think this year I'll make my list of items I would like to do or accomplish in this next year. I'll try to make it a To Do list on the side so that I can see how I am progressing this year. My goal is to accomplish at least 2 a month.

1. Finish the Cow Hall - This is important because we need a place for the baby animals to be warm and safe as well as a place all the animals can get out of the hot sun.
2. Make a portable Chicken/Turkey Tractor - Not too big but not too small so that I can move them all around the backyard. I have a few ideas for the portable coop that will also have the Anglo-Saxon motif on a medieval cart. This will also include tearing down the other coops.
3. Make as many dump runs as needed to get all the garbage out of the backyard.
4. Use all the glass wine bottles that we have. Either save some in a secure location for future brewing or for a structure (either a raised planter or a bench).
5. Secure all trees and build an easily climbable fence that will allow me to maintain the trees but keep all the herbivores out.
6. Finish planting the last of the trees that we want on the property. Plant out berries and look into the figs, pomegranates, and olives.
7. Sew together a blanket box for the bees for the winter and a shade spot (or tree) for the summer.
8. Finish permanent bbq/bread oven/smoker. - Initial bricks are laid for bbq and the base outline for bread oven. Need to pour the concrete into the bbq base and install the posts for the bbq. Will also need to pour the base for the bread oven over the bricks that form the round. After that we'll build the actual oven. I'm hoping a more stable secure base will keep it from being destroyed as easily as the last one by the animals.
9. Lay out the bricks under the veranda.
10. Figure out a way to keep my house cleaner and be able to maintain it easier. 11. Clean (and keep clean/organized) the garage so that I can move the Shadow in there. Sell/Donate/Get rid of anything that is not needed.
12. Fix up the wall in the master bathroom.
13. Keep up with all the weeding of the thistle on the property.
14. Set up permanent fence for garden/piggy area.
15. Start the back garden.
16. Dig the hole and install the freezer root cellar.
17. Lay out the paths in the backyard. (Try to place a rock on path at least once a day.)
18. Fix the electrical wiring in the kitchen.
19. Build a better table/layout for the bees.
20. Keep the front patio clean.
21. Build the seat/bookshelf I've wanted to for a while.
22. Organize books and distribute those I no longer need.
23. Finish sidewalk around the house.
24. Build greenhouse/shed. Make it look like the TARDIS if at all possible.

The Lunch Hour - Rigatoni

When I was living with the girls (Kari, Martha, and Tabitha) we had a very interesting eating style, which was large stacks of soda with maybe a side of chocolate bars. Sometimes we would actually cook, and we would greatly enjoy those times, but it was very hard to try to balance everything while working and attending Cal Poly. In hind sight, I think more cooked home meals would have helped all of us ground and help each other out. One such dish was created by Kari. She said that her family used to make baked rigatoni all the time as a quick dish. For some reason her recipe stuck with me and I occassionaly find myself making it as a quick meal that takes minimal work.

Today I walked down to the little local Cookie Crock Market and could not decide on what to have for lunch so I grabbed a bag of noodles, some tomato sauce, and some cheese. Honestly, the recipe just includes mixing everything and putting it in to bake. The office smelled of lovely pasta, making my co-workers sneak into the kitchen to get some rigatoni throughout the afternoon. I made the little toaster oven pan's worth of pasta so I had extra to bring home for Ivan.

Ingredients:

Uncooked pasta to fill your desired pan
Enough tomato sauce/spaghetti sauce to coat all the noodles plus extra
Cheese

In this example I used a medium sized bag of rigatoni noodles, one large container of tomato/basil sauce, and a tub of romano, asiago, and parmesan cheese. I think in college we used to put mozzarella cheese because we liked the melty, stringy type of pasta. 

Preheat toaster oven to 350 degrees F. Place your noodles in your tin/pan and coat with sauce. I added about a 1/2 cup of water to the empty glass jar and shook it to get all the tomato sauce out and then poured it over the noodles. Place in toaster oven for about 15 minutes. At this time mix the pasta a bit more to get the bottom done pasta to mix around and to give the toasty top pasta a little more moisture. At this point sprinkle the cheese on top and place back into the toaster oven for another 15 minutes. This will allow the top noodles to crisp up and the cheese to get all melty. Let it cool a little and then enjoy.

Winterizing the Front yard - The Berry Bramble

My brother Steven has a blackberry bramble in the back yard that they have not managed to tame, cut, goatify, or burn. It's origin is their neighbor's yard, but even so the bramble stretches the whole width of the backyard with it penetrating 5-10 feet in, in some areas. The only thing is that he has not been able to get a consistent production from the bramble and most years they don't even get a pint of berries. I would like to avoid this with my berry production.

Jed grew up in an area where blackberries roamed wild through the forest snatching up unsuspecting children and eating up errant livestock... or so he says. I was allowed to add berries to our property on the condition that I maintained them and kept them from taking over the acre. This I've been doing with our front boysenberry during the late fall/early winter time. The canes that had berry production during the previous summer die off and I'm able to cut those canes down to the ground and sort out the new growth that will produce berries the following summer. I'm happy with the growth we've had with our original boysenberry plant as it seems to double if not quadruple the size every year. The previous summer Ivan, Franky, and I were able to go out every day during June and eat handfuls of berries, honestly, I was tired of boysenberries by the time July rolled around and we were ready for apples and strawberries. But now I find myself craving berries again and so I spent New Year's day working on the front berry bramble. The boysenberry starts canes whenever the tips bury themselves in the soil and start up new roots, when I clean up the front I take these new canes and I move the to different parts of the property so that we can have more berries, a barrier around the property to keep the predators out and a nice green screen to keep busybodies from counting my chickens. The roots on these tips are fairly shallow and the plants are mostly dormant so it's all right to dig them up and move them to a new location provided you've cut them off from the main cane that they came from. This year I dug up about 37 new canes that I was able to then place along the fence line in the backyard. I hope they grow as vigorously as they did in the front.

As with last year, I've woven the berry canes along the fence line. The only change this year is that I transplanted the little grape that was near the Breaburn apple tree to a new location and moved some canes into that area to double our boysenberry bramble for the future. Jed mentioned that this year he would like to get more than just 4 berries. He only ate some when I would bring them into the house for him. I let him know that I was going to be at work, so the he and Ivan would be able to spend hours out in the front just eating berries. And as I greatly enjoy berries as well, I'll make sure to find the time either before I leave for work, or after I get home to sneak some berries off the bramble. After all, if I'm maintaining the berries it only seems right that I get to enjoy some of the sun soaked sugary goodness.

Saturation Point

As some of you know we have not had that much rain for the last two years. Last year we did not receive enough rain to saturate the soil. Thus resulting in a year of having to buy most of our animal food and not enough plant growth. This year, it seems we have hit it. We have not had that much rain, but it is slow and steady. As such, all our rain barrels are full and there are puddles all over the backyard, with out pond and stream being full. I might add that the ducks and the geese are having a great time playing. This does cause a great mucking mess in the back pasture area as cow is a bit heavy and our clay soil turns to a mess as soon as it gets wet. We'll have to see what we can do to minimize any damage to the soil. We hope this steady rain continues so that we can dry farm all our grains and winter beans. I might add that "rain" is used to mean any time the sky spits on us. A local farmer and I were talking excitedly the other day about getting 1/18th of an inch of rain the night before. I suppose after a year of less than 10 inches of rain we get excited about any water that we can get.

Propagating grapes - aka making more grapes vines

I realize that California winter is nothing like winter anywhere else, but it does provide a brief break that allows me to tend to my plants. So far I've been able to work on the boysen berry bramble and the grapes in the front yard. One thing that I really appreciate about these perennials is that I'm able to propagate from them so easily.

We have a very productive and prolific flame grape that I decided to propagate from. Have you ever gone to the store to pick up some grapes and realized that they are cheaper than most other plants? Well, the reason for this is because you can make 20-40 new grape plants from one vine that had moderate growth in the previous year. After you trim your grapes during dormancy, simply take those new bits that are about the thickness of a pencil and cut them into foot long sections, just make sure they have about 3+ nodes on those sections.


 In order to help you decipher the root end cut it straight and the top section at an angle. Make sure that your cuts are close to the nodes but not so close that they will affect the root growth, about half an inch. This allows the roots to grow from the bottom straight cut but also from the lower nodes that will be buried in the ground.

Once you have all your bits cut up place them all together in a bundle and wrap them with newspaper. Dampen the paper around the trimmings and place in a black plastic bag. This will keep the moisture and heat in, which will help the trimmings produce new root growth. Place the wrapped up bundle in a warm dark place. I've placed mine in a dark corner near the wood burning stove. Last year I placed the bundle over the fridge and that seemed to do the trick. Leave your bundle for 4-5 weeks.

Try not to check on them too often but make sure that they have a damp environment to encourage root growth. Once you notice roots forming place in soil. I'll post additional information as this year's batch of grapes grow.