My Milk Lady has returned! The cows calved and had a nice rest, and once again I’m getting my recycled gallon jar of milk every week. She had to raise her prices because the price of hay and fuel have gone up so much, and although I assured her it was fine, I understood, I still found a surprise present of a dozen duck eggs in my box last week. I don’t know if all the health claims for raw milk are true, but I do know that it’s worth what I pay for a real food product, produced and…
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A big weekend of gardening — I dug the crabgrass and feral mint (I love my mint, but it was taking over everything) from the perennial beds. It was hard. There was digging, and pulling, and tugging, and sprays of dirt. I have an entire trash receptacle full of roots out there on the parkway waiting for the first yard waste pickup of the year. My perennial beds have moments of gorgeousness, followed by long periods of bedragglement, caused in part by the weeds. My lawn too, is plagued by weeds — not dandelions so much, I don’t mind dandelions,…
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Finally! A day of real progress in the garden. I was very surly yesterday morning — it was cold. Too cold and icy to get any garden work done. I was taking it personally — storming around doing my errands, grumping about the damp wind. Then, finally, about one, it warmed up and I managed to get my compost corner cleaned up. My composting system has been a frustration for a couple of years. I had three different backyard composters — one square one that came apart in layers that the waste district in California sold me for cheap years…
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I have a lot of gardening books — I’m one of those people who learns how to do things from books, so the first couple of years I had this garden, I bought a lot of different things (especially if they were in the bargain bin at Borders). But there’s a very short list of books I go back to again and again: Second Nature by Michael Pollan and This Organic Life by Joan Dye Grussow. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstal’s River Cottage Cookbook is also probably in this category (except that every time I look at it I have such livestock-envy that…
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Well, the dogs are on the mend — Ray’s stitches come out on Friday and I took Owen off to have his dressings changed today. I wish I’d had my camera with me — that external fixature is quite something. My little FrankenPuppy. His Fenatyl patch is also off, which is making him a little less groggy — thank goodness we have the mysterious “anaglesic elixir” because he’s still intermittently uncomfortable. In other news — the tomatoes are getting their true leaves down in the basement, although I didn’t have the germination rates with the pepper seedlings that I’d hoped…
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My friend Max was telling me about his in-laws’ declicious ham salad the other day at the party. He said it’s really addictive and one of the things he looks forward to after a family ham. Since I have a lot of ham left, the thought had been niggling in the back of my head. And I often find myself scrambling to figure out what to eat for lunch. Hmm. Ham salad. I’ve never made ham salad in my life — so I did what anyone would do and googled it: Ham Salad. And because I’m me, I fiddled with…
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I hosted Easter yesterday — sent out invitations and invited everyone I know to stop by — it was great fun, there were probably 30 or 40 people over the afternoon, luckily not all at once since my house isn’t that big. I did a big ham, cured and smoked by our local butcher, Matt. He does wonderful hams (we keep trying to convince him to eschew CAFO meat, and while he does do some local sourcing, he’s unconvinced people around here will pay for it. Considering half the kids in the county get free lunch, he might be right,…
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Take one pint mason jar of leftover lentil/lamb/mushroom soup (made from leftover lamb braised with mushrooms), one pyrex half-pint dish of leftover braised cabbage/onion/carrot/tomato, and one of Matt’s Meat’s good homemade German sausages. Dump them all in a pot, stir, add enough water to bring to a soupy consistency and simmer until the frozen sausage is cooked. Chop up the sausage into smaller pieces, make some toast, and you have a delicious lunch that will last for several days. When we were kids, Monday was Garbage Dinner night, a name we found hilarious in that way that kids love a…
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During my blogging hiatus, I did a lot of little projects — and one of them was cleaning out the vegetable beds in prep for planting. I still need to order compost but I’m waiting for my new fence to go in because I want to build a new raised bed. But I spent a glorious warm Saturday cleaning out the dead stuff. I’ve learned the last couple of years that although it looks messy all winter, it makes more sense to clean up in the spring instead. If you also plan to clean your whole house, these quality home…
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It’s that time of year again! Time to start the seeds. This is the fourth year I’m set up to start seeds in my oh-so-fancy basement seed starting lair — I have two germination mats — they’re the 2-flat size. Because it’s chilly in my basement, without them, I don’t think I’d get much action. You can’t see it here, because I hiked it up so I could work on the bench, but there’s a cheap shop light with full-spectrum tubes hanging from a ceiling beam. Once the little guys sprout, I’ll lower it — they do best when the…