Category Archives: potatoes

Our Garden Dinner

garden, garlic, Green Beans, potatoes, Reflections, Swiss Chard

Thursday we decided to grill up a steak for dinner. It would be delicious with some fresh-from-the-garden veggies.

So we dug up some potatoes.

We picked some Swiss chard. (We like to pick it when it is young and tender.)

And we picked green beans.

I sauteed the Swiss chard in olive oil with minced (freshly dug) garlic. I boiled the potatoes and steamed the green beans, and both were topped with garlic butter.

It was a delicious meal. Such a blessing!

Do you have a favorite fresh-from-the -garden dish?

Thanks for visiting.

A Spring Walk at the Farm

Birds, Cherries, Cherry Tree, garden, garlic scapes,, Killdeer, Nature, potatoes, Prayer Garrden, Primrose, Reflections, Roses, Strawberries, The Farm, Wild Flowers, Windmill, , , ,

Hello and welcome! It’s a beautiful morning and I thought you might like to join me for a walk at the farm.

We are seeing new blossoms every day.

The white phlox that we added to the prayer garden last year are flowering.

The primrose are beginning to bloom.

and the roses are blooming.

Our peony has only a single flower this year, but it sure is a beautiful one.

We will be picking strawberries later.

But we won’t be cutting garlic scapes for about a week. The scape is the light colored, curved shoot in the middle. They are just beginning to form.

The wild roses are in full bloom. They are very fragrant – in fact you might have smelled their lovely scent before you saw the blossoms.

Daisies scattered here and there.

A flowering shrub that I have not identified. It does have a light pleasant fragrance.

A short stroll through the woods is shady and lush.

Beyond the woods the sun shines on the neighbor’s yard.

Mixed among the grasses you might notice wild plants such as selfheal (the purple flowers) and black medic (the yellow flowers). Both are edible and medicinal.

Fleabane is a common daisy-like wildflower in our area.

Our gardens are doing well so far. Some of the tomatoes have blossoms already.

Potatoes are also doing well.

Cabbage is coming along nicely. There are also green beans, eggplant and a few other things in this patch.

Our apple trees are loaded with apples this year. It’s looking like a we may have a bumper crop this fall.

Ripe cherries on one of our new trees. I harvest three wonderful, sweet cherries from this tree. Hoping for a bigger harvest next year.

The killdeer quadruplets are still running around. They are nearly as big as the parents so I expect they will be flying off soon.

But in about a week this killdeer and its mate, who decided to nest in the middle of our driveway (forcing us to detour around the area) should have four more babies running around.

And about a week after that these four killdeer eggs, that are being incubated in an unused area of the garden, should be hatching.

In the back field we see clover,

and these yellow flowers birdsfoot trefoil.

Butter cups under the spruce tree.

And look at those pinecones.

We have a large patch of milkweed in the back field. I have seen a couple of monarch butterflies in the area, so they likely have laid eggs as their caterpillars feed on milkweed leaves once they hatch.

Milkweed.

I believe this yellow flower is called common cat’s ear. It is scattered throughout the field.

More wild roses in the wood line. Enjoy their lovely fragrance.

When we arrive back by the prayer garden my husband points out the nest that some birds (sparrows I think) have built in the top of the windmill. That was not there two days ago. Fortunately, it does not interfere with the operations of the windmill.

Thanks for joining me for a spring walk at the farm. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

As a special treat for spending this time with me I am sharing this rare glimpse of the mourning dove who is nesting in the maple tree above our deck. It has been there about two weeks now and I have tried taking pictures many times but mostly I can’t see it through the leaves. I finally got a good photo. I have not seen its mate around, but I read that mourning doves take turns sitting on the nest with males usually there during the daytime and females on the nest at night.

Planting Potatoes and Happy Chickens

Chickens, Eggs, Planting, potatoes, Reflections,

We planted potatoes on Tuesday. It was a beautiful spring day.

The chickens love the freshly worked soil. Lots of bugs, grubs and worms. Yum!

My husband tilled the area then measured, marked and dug the furrows. Then I placed the potatoes in the rows. He came back later and covered the potatoes with soil. Before leaving we fenced in the area so the chickens couldn’t scratch up the seedlings. There are plenty of other things around to keep the chickens happy. We planted about 160 row feet of potatoes.

Chickens don’t spend all of their time scratching and pecking. They also like to dust bathe as these girls were doing. Dust baths are actually how chickens clean themselves. It sounds counterproductive but it works for them.

Rex is our only rooster – I think that makes him happy.

Chickens, chickens everywhere!

Made From Scratch 🙂

Happy chickens give the best eggs. We are getting about 15 -17 eggs a day right now – that makes me happy.

Thanks for visiting.

Rehydrating Potatoes and Our Garden Meal

potatoes, Recipe, Reflections,

Hello and welcome!

We dehydrated a second batch of potatoes over the weekend. This time rather than slicing them we decided to do shredded potatoes – like would cook up into hashbrowns. After peeling them my husband boiled them until they were nearly done. He then used the food processor with the shredding blade to cut them up. It took about 6 hours at 125 degrees in the dehydrator to dry them.

We packaged the shredded dehydrated potatoes in two-ounce packages.

I had found instructions online that said when rehydrating vegetables, a rule of thumb was to use two parts water to one part vegetable so that’s where I started. I’m not sharing the link because I found out it was inaccurate.

I put the dehydrated potatoes in a metal bowl on the scale. It read 1.9 ounces.

I then reset the scale to zero and added twice as much boiling water as I had potatoes – 3.8 ounces. (I know the scale says 3.9 – .1 ounce over is acceptable.) Hot or boiling water speeds up the rehydration process. I stirred the potatoes and water together and found that once all of the water was absorbed some of the potatoes were still too dry. I again zeroed out the scale and added another 1.9 ounces of water.

I again stirred the mixture and once all of the water was absorbed I had perfectly rehydrated potatoes to make into hashbrowns.

I learned that in order to rehydrate these potatoes I need a 1:3 ratio of potatoes to water.

I put some butter in the cast iron skillet and cooked up these wonderful hashbrowns that tasted as fresh as if I had just dug the potatoes.

It was a breakfast for dinner night, so I cooked up a garden omelet to go with the hashbrowns and sausage. It’ not pretty but it was delicious.

I started, of course, with farm fresh eggs. Added some sautéed Swiss chard, a diced banana pepper, a diced jalapeno pepper and a diced tomato. I then topped it with American cheese which did not come from our farm but was the perfect finishing touch.

Yum!!!

Thanks for visiting.

Preserving Pickles, Peppers and Potatoes

Applesauce Cake Recipe, Cucumbers, Peppers, Pickles, potatoes, Preserving, Reflections, Stuffed Peppers

Hello and Welcome! Good News – We got rain 🙂 I’m guessing somewhere around 2 1/2 inches between Wednesday and Thursday. The gardens, the lawns, the trees – everything needed that rain. So while we get at least a few days off from watering let me tell you about some of the preserving we’ve been doing.

PICKLES

Dill Pickles

Dill pickles – It’s been many years since I’ve made dill pickles using the water bath (canning) method. In more recent years I have fermented pickles and made refrigerator pickles, but both take up space in the refrigerator, so I decided to try canning dill pickles again. One of the reasons I had not canned pickles recently is because they tended to get mushy. I did some reading about making crisp dill pickles and one of the suggestions was to use distilled water since the chemicals (chlorine) added to water can cause the pickles to become mushy. I canned three quarts of dill pickles so far using distilled water. I also used our home-grown dill and garlic. We will try them in a couple weeks to see how they turned out.

Bread and Butter pickles – Yesterday I made bread and butter pickles – a tried and true recipe from the Ball Blue Book. The yield was 5 pints and my husband, who loves these pickles, is thrilled.

Bread and Butter Pickles and Red Hot Sauce

PEPPERS

Cayenne – Another recipe that I found in the Ball Blue Book was for red hot sauce. Hot sauce is not something we use a lot of, but my husband likes to add a few drops to certain foods. The recipe that called for two quarts of tomatoes and about 24 cayenne peppers made two pints of sauce. That will likely be enough to last us through the year.

Cayenne Peppers

Cayenne plants tend to be heavy producers and somehow we ended up with a bunch of cayenne plants this year. Rather than use the dehydrator to dry then We decided to string them and hang them to dry. I think I have some daughters that will appreciate a string of hot peppers. Once they are dry they can be used by adding a whole pepper to a pot of chili or similar dish or they can be ground in a spice grinder or food processor to make red pepper flakes or crushed red pepper.

Notice they are turning red (continuing to ripen) as they hang.

Jalapeno and Banana peppers – Thus far I used banana and jalapeno peppers to make poppers. I have several packages of these in the freezer. They freeze well and can easily be cooked up in the oven or microwave. If we continue to harvest a lot of these, I might make up a batch of pickled peppers as well.

Bell peppers – Tuesday night I made stuffed bell peppers for dinner. I also made an additional five packages of stuffed peppers to freeze for future meals.

POTATOES

In past years storing potatoes has been a challenge for us as we don’t have a root cellar so we must try to eat them before they go bad. This year we decided to experiment with dehydrating them. My husband peeled and par boiled the potatoes than sliced them in the food processor to get and even thickness. The took about 4 hours on 140 degrees to dry to a crispy texture (much like the potatoes you would find in a box mix of au gratin potatoes). We then vacuum sealed them.

I have found directions for rehydrating them, but we have yet to try it. I will let you know when we do.

Of course not everything we harvest is being preserved. We are enjoying fresh vegetables daily. I do plan on writing about some of our garden meals but soon, but I don’t want to drag this post out too long so I’m just going to share a recipe I came across that we are REALLY ENJOYING.

I still have several jars of applesauce that I canned last year and wanted to use some up, so I decided to look for an applesauce cake recipe. I found this recipe for Land o Lakes Applesauce Spice Cake. I omitted the pecans in the recipe as I didn’t have any on hand. I also cheated and used a can of store bought frosting. Even with these changes this cake turned out sooo good.

Thanks for reading