Category Archives: Reflections

Planting Garlic 2022

Planting Garlic, Reflections

Hello and welcome!

If you are thinking about planting garlic and live in northern parts of the US or Canada, it’s time to plant. We planted ours this week.

The sky was blue and temperatures warm as we arrived at the farm Tuesday (October 11) afternoon to plant garlic. With rain in the forecast for Wednesday and temperatures cooling after that, Tuesday was our best opportunity to complete this task and it was a great day to “play in the dirt”.

We had about 330 cloves to plant. A bit more than last year but nowhere near the up to 8000 we have planted in previous years. I had split the bulbs into cloves the day before.

My husband had prepared the ground earlier in the day and laid out the line for our first row. The soil was like dust. I don’t ever remember it being so dry when we planted garlic. According to the US drought monitor map we are in a moderate drought.

Long time followers will likely remember how we use the lattice as a grid for planting our rows. We plant the spaces that have four across and leave empty the ones that have three across. Our lattice panels are 2 ft. by 8 ft. We can plant 64 cloves spaced 6 inches apart in each panel.

Ranger and Ruby ran around and played in the area as we worked. They are such good dogs.

It only took about an hour to get the planting done. I was surprised at how quickly we were finished. We decided to wait to mulch it hoping it would get a little rain first.

As we finished this task there was still time to enjoy some of this beautiful day. 🙂

Thanks for visiting.

An Autumn Walk at the Farm

Autumn, Reflections, The Farm

It was a lovely autumn day yesterday, so I took the opportunity to take a walk with my camera in hand. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Fall colors are showing up everywhere.

Despite some frosty mornings some flowers continue to bloom.

Few wildflowers are still in bloom – asters among them.

I could hear the buzz of bees foraging these flowers as I took my photos.

Notice the bee at the top of this (above) photo.

Leaves are dropping.

A few trees are completely bare.

Thanks for joining me.

What is your favorite thing about fall?

End of the Cucumbers

Cucumbers, Reflections, soap

As I mentioned in previous posts it was a stellar year for growing cucumbers. I lost track of how many jars of various of pickles I canned. The cucumber plants did stop producing and the vines dried up, so my husband has pulled them out and added them to the compost pile.

We gave cucumbers to family, friends and neighbors – pretty much anyone who we came in contact with was a least offered some cucumbers. I guess by early this week we had also had our fill of fresh cucumbers since there were four cucumbers that had been sitting in the refrigerator for several days and neither my husband nor I had offered up any suggestions on what we should do with them.

On Wednesday it occurred to me, I hadn’t saved any cucumber for one of my favorite soap recipes. That’s right – soap. I created this recipe several years ago. It contains cucumber and yogurt and has rosemary infused into the olive oil. Since many of the ingredients might be found in a salad, I named it Salad Bar (as in bar of soap). Don’t Eat It!

I pureed those last four cucumbers and put the puree in the freezer until I have time to turn it into soap.

If anyone is interested in this soap recipe leave me a comment and I will post it for you.

Thanks for visiting.

More Canning

canning, Reflections

Hello and welcome.

Last week’s canning and preserving efforts resulted in 14 quarts of tomato juice, 7 pints of pickled banana peppers and 6 half pints of ketchup. We dehydrated another batch of potatoes and a batch of eggplant. I also put about 6 gallon-size bags of tomatoes in the freezer because I just didn’t have time to can them. They will keep well there until I get around to them.

Cooking Ketchup

For the pickled peppers and the ketchup, I used recipes from the Ball Blue Book. We haven’t tasted the peppers yet, but my husband says he never wants to eat store bought ketchup again.

There are still tomatoes ripening and this week’s tomato canning efforts (juice and ketchup) are underway. So, if you’re looking for me, I’ll likely be in the kitchen. 🙂

Until next time be well.

Do you like ketchup? What is your favorite condiment?