We closed on our new house this morning and are starting the moving process. We’re going to be very, very busy for the next couple of weeks, so I’m not planning on trying to update regularly. Once we’re settled in though, I’ll catch up on the clean up work we did with the plants at the end of the season, a few other various and sundry things, and then it will be on into the planning for next year. 
Well, we bought a house. At least, we’re in the process of doing so. What this means to me is that I’ll be able to take over the entire yard with garden beds, and there will be no landlord to complain. *happy grin*
Rest assured that after the initial stress of moving (and then the holiday madness which happens after) that I shall be intently studying garden catalogs and books, planning the new beds and what varieties I shall plant. *glee!*
We’ll be closing and moving at the end of this month. Right in time for it to snow! (We got quite a bit this morning, at least for this time of year. I know other parts of the state have already gotten snow but this was our first since June.) In truth though, it’s probably a really good time for it. We’re done with our harvests for this year, we pulled out everything from the existing beds (we’re leaving them because they’re infested with bindweed, and we really don’t want to import that over to the new place), and it’s getting cold, yes, but at least it’s not the heat of summer. (I’m not so sure about that last one being a really good point, but at least it sounds good. The ironic thing is that the Engineer HATES winter moves. Heh. Well, this one was his fault.)
The picture, obviously, has nothing to do with winter. It’s a poppy that showed up in the Engineer’s wildflower garden quite unexpectedly. I took pictures of it, and then a deer came by that night - and - well, the poppy was no more. So I’m glad we have the pictures.
I love Fall. Despite the fact that Spring has growing things, I think Fall might be my very favorite season. I love wearing sweaters, I love the crisp fall air, I love how it’s not terribly soggy (like it is in Spring) but still cool enough to do outdoor things. I love the occasional warm afternoons, I love the colors the trees turn, and I especially love the return of fall cooking… apple pies, warm stews and chilies. The chilly air makes me want to bake pumpkins. Not necessarily for pie, but just for the aroma of baking pumpkin in the house.
Fall makes me think of cinnamon, of warm socks, hot chocolate and indian food. (Yes, I know the last one is a bit weird, but garam masala has to be the best smelling spice combination in the world, and we tend to eat more of that style of food in the colder months.)
There’s trees all over Missoula that have or are in the process of turning color. They’re gorgeous. I don’t think I would normally notice some of them in the course of a summer, but now they stand out like ladies at a ball, shaking their petticoats out before the last dance.
Two weekends ago, the Engineer and I pulled out all the curcubit plants, uprooted the last of the peas, beans, and bolted lettuce. We won’t be using the beds next year, so we pulled out all the plants and dug most of the roots out in hopes of getting them mostly ready for whoever does use them. This weekend I picked the rest of the peppers and most of the tomatoes. And last night was our first real frost - it got down to 25 degrees in the greenhouse, and a layer of frost was coating everything in the morning.
This is the time of year that I get my “nesting” urge. I want to have non-perishable food in the cupboard and cans of beans stashed away. I don’t can yet, I’m planning on doing that next year, but this year I’ve paid more attention to those urges. The result is bison meat in the chest freezer, packages of frozen rhubarb and berries in the main freezer, and plans to grab extra veggies to freeze as the farmers market winds down.
I’m looking forward to planning my spring garden over the winter, leisurely browsing through catalogs, making and breaking plans for new beds, and dreaming of next summer’s bounty. But for right now I’m basking in fall.
(As a side note: I’m not sure how many people are actually reading this, but I wanted to give an explanation for not posting for the last… two weeks. One of my cats was diagnosed with cancer and the last week and a half has been very emotional and busy. He had surgery last Monday and is recovering well, but I’ve been concerned much more with that than with this blog. Things should be more “normal” now.)
We did it. We bought a quarter of a buffalo. It was a very serendipitous thing, actually. We’ve been contemplating taking this step for a long time. We’ve been buying buffalo from Paige the Bison Lady down at the Clark Fork Market on the weekends for a while, and have talked about buying a whole or a half of a lamb or a pig or a cow for a few years. Buffalo though, seemed like a much better choice. Nutritionally, it’s slightly better for the Engineer, environmentally, it’s better because the buffalo are raised here in Montana, are native to the area, and are less hard on the grass lands than a cow would be. Plus, buffalo tastes very, very good, and since the wholesale price is better than buying it a few pieces at time at market or from the Good Food Store, we decided to take our commitment to eating more sustainably to the next level.
We called two Saturday mornings ago, and surprisingly, Mike (one of the folks at the butcher shop) answered. We’d been told that we had probably a 3 to 4 week wait to get our order, but when we asked about a quarter, he said he had just finished a butcher job and had two unsold quarters in the freezer. We’d also been told that we’d need to drive to Plains (where the shop is located) or coordinate with Paige and the market to get our order. Mike was driving Missoula that evening to make a delivery to another gentleman down here, and said he’d bring our order with him. What could be easier? Other than doing some back and forth driving to get to exactly where we needed to be to meet him, the transaction went off without a hitch, and we now have 90 pounds of ground, steak and roast buffalo in our freezer. YUM.
I’ll use the meat for meatloaf, slow cooked recipes and tacos, at the very least, throughout the winter. Perhaps it’s the small part of me that anticipates an apocalypse, especially with the economy behaving the way it is and the anticipation of Peak Oil, but it makes me feel comforted to have a small fortune of edibles tucked away in the freezer.
Google tells me that a “peck” is a British Imperial liquid or dry measurement, equal to two pounds, or a American dry measure equal to 8 quarts or 537.605 cubic inches. I’ve always wanted to know what a “peck” was. Now I know. And I’m really glad we don’t use it commonly. The metric system would be great… measuring things in pecks? Just… boggling. If that wasn’t enough for you, two pecks make a kenning, and four pecks make a bushel. Now that’s a little easier to get my head around, even if I think I’ve never seen a real bushel measurement in my life.
I’m amazed by how well the peppers did this year. I’ve only eaten two of them so far, but despite pots which might be slightly too small, and an aphid infestation, and late start in the year, they’ve produced a rather surprising amount of peppers, and now those peppers are starting to get red, yellow, and purplish.
(Excuse me while I do a little happy dance.
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Ok. Back now.)
I’m looking forward to eating those peppers in a myriad of ways. One of the favorites in my household is to slow roast them in the oven with garlic and olive oil. After that treatment, they’re good on grilled meat, pizza, pasta, or just by themselves. It’s an easy recipe… just wash and cut the peppers into slices long ways down the fruit. I usually make the slices 2 - 3 inches thick, but they can certainly be bigger, even quartered or halved peppers would work. It depends a little on what you want to use them for after baking. Slice or mince 1 medium clove of garlic per pepper. Coat the bottom of a baking pan with olive oil and layer the peppers in the bottom. Sprinkle the garlic over the peppers, and drizzle some more olive oil on top. Bake the peppers in the oven at about 300 degrees for 45 minutes or until the peppers look limp and are soft to the touch. Yummy!
I think next year I need to thin the peppers early on though. There are a few cases where I think there’s just too many for the plant to handle. That might have also been the reason the plants succumbed to the aphids so easily… certainly the plants never regained their early vigor after that. So having seen how the pepper plants produce flowers for a longer period of time over the summer, I think I’ll concentrate on thinning a few of the flowers, and trying to pace the plants so that some peppers are ready sooner, and some later. It will probably take some experimentation to get it right.
I’m already looking forward to next year! I think given everything that will happening in the spring, I’ll probably get starts from the Pink Grizzly nursery again, but who knows.
Fridays always seem to be a good time for pretty pictures. It feels like the garden is slowing down, so while I still have things to talk about I tend to want to “hoard” those topics so I have enough to talk about each week. I haven’t yet found the “voice” of this blog. So without further ado, here are the picture picks of this week…
I think the Engineer and I need to build a bigger bed for the strawberries. We started with just 10 plants. Of those, four died early in the season, but the others have more than made up for their lack.
I’ve read (and heard) repeatedly that you’re supposed to pinch back any runners and blossoms the first year of up until July 1st because that makes the plant more productive in the second year or later in the season. We didn’t do this. The strawberry plants were an experiment for us, and we fully expected them to not do well at all and didn’t really anticipate that they’d produce fruit. According to some sources, ever bearing strawberries (the type we have except for one lone woodland strawberry) don’t produce a lot of runners. Either the variety we picked (I can’t remember the name at the moment, but they came from Caras Nursery on Third Street) doesn’t conform to that standard or our plants are very, very happy, because they’ve gone jungle on us. Again, this isn’t how you’re supposed to tend strawberries, but this is one giant experiment for us, and it’s surprising to see how tenacious the plants are. In a couple of cases, runners have planted themselves in our pepper pots.
On Sunday I picked a small handful of berries (we’ll get a few more and then it looks like that will be the last) for the second or third time. We don’t have enough plants to produce a lot of fruit, but what we have gotten tastes nothing like what I’ve gotten in the store. They’re much lighter in flavor, a bit sharper in tone, slightly more tart, but still delicious.
I’ve been telling the Engineer that we need to knock together a bigger bed and transplant them, so I’m hoping that we’ll do that soon as a fall project and then move the plants into the garage or cover them with straw for the winter. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next year.
I saw my first honey bee of the season yesterday… rather late, I’m afraid. It was a bitter sweet experience, really. We’d seen some bumble bees earlier this year, but no honey bees. It makes me sad. Where were they earlier this year as the wildflowers started to bloom? Where were they when all my petunias and the catnip and the chives and rosemary were in bloom?
It’s no longer “where have all the flowers gone” (if you know or remember that song), it’s “where have all the bees gone?” (Improper metric apologies.)
This little honey bee tackled my African basil (the one I let flower because I didn’t like the taste) for about 20 minutes. The poor little thing seemed rather frantic, I don’t know if she got much nectar. I hope she did. And I’m glad now that I let the basil go to flower, since she needed it. (I’d been half-heartedly regretting it.) It’s gotten very cold here and fall seems to be just around the corner. No Indian summer for us this year. Hopefully that bee and her sisters will find enough nutrients to get them through the winter.
In lieu of talking about my garden (again), I give you, pictures from the past… again, photos that I’ve taken but haven’t had a chance to use (or at least don’t think I’ve used) in my posts.
Two weekends ago, we went to Seattle for downtime, dancing (the Engineer and I do Ballroom and Argentine Tango) and general fun, but one of the things I absolutely wanted to do was go to one of Seattle 13 Farmer’s Markets. So Saturday morning we found one (getting lost in the process, but that was fun) and took a look at the offerings in the big city markets.
I have to say I was very slightly disappointed. It was beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but I was hoping to find more homemade, not-as-perishable foods there than I did. Mostly, my hopes existed because I had no way to take a bunch of vegetables home (although how I wanted to take home some blackberries!) but I very much wanted to get something. I think my disappointment was less the fault of the market and more a problem inherent to where we went.
We ended up at the University Farmers Market, the one on 50th and University Way. I really liked how they took over an entire parking lot (as opposed to closing a street down like ours does) and how the block was fenced off with gateways on each corner. I also really liked their “Chef in Residence” (the gentleman in this picture is Matt) who is there to talk to customers about ways to prepare the produce they are buying. I wish that our farmer’s market did something similar.
I also was intrigued by the huge variety of veggies - many more than we have here. We saw several kinds of tomatoes, peppers, melons and broccolis that I’ve never seen in Missoula. I don’t know if that’s because of our climate or if it’s because it’s basically three families that supply nearly the entire market (Hmong families and I think they must grow the same varieties of veggies). It was very entertaining to look at the flowers and veggies that we don’t see here. Among those were some gorgeous red and yellow flowers (the seller told me they were dahlias), and ginormous blackberries that sold out nearly as soon as we got there.
What we did find to take home was some delicious cheese from Apple Farms and fresh pressed apple-blackberry cider from Rockridge Orchards. Yum!
I also talked to a woman who raises Wooly pigs. (Click through the link to see the picture… they’re really furry! Or hairy, as I suppose pigs really should be, given their bristles.) She told me that her breeding stock was imported from Austria (the pigs live in Hungry and Austria) and are the only breeding stock (she believes) in the Western hemisphere.
All in all, I’m really glad we went. I just wish I could have snagged some of those veggies to bring home.