Need we say more?
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This afternoon, I strolled (ok - hobbled - but that’s for another post) through the garden and saw a very simple, fast, easy, and gourmet (!) dinner before me: first-of-the-season garlic scapes, first snow peas, salad greens, & thinnings - all tossed together in a tortilla. Here’s the recipe (loosely defined — I don’t really believe in recipes, just guidelines): Spring Garden Tour Tortillas
Just an aside - I don’t believe in wasting anything. I feed scraggly hairy roots to my worms, but eat just about everything else. Stems are good. Radish leaves loose their prickles when lightly cooked. But the idea here is to get creative with whatever you have on hand. Here we go: Heat a frying pan hot - toss in a little olive oil - and then toss in the scapes, peas, the little beets, & stems from the beets & chard. Cook a couple minutes at most. Snack on the radishes while you cook everything. Toss in the chicken, give it a stir, & the chopped greens (beet leaves, chard, radish tops). Sprinkle with a little balsamic vinegar - not much, because it can be overpowering - just enough to give it a little tang. Stir & cover. As soon as the greens are wilted (about 1 minute), fill a tortilla, top with fresh lettuces & spinach, and eat. The wilted greens add a bit of moisture to the mix, so you might have to tilt the pan to let it drain to one side. Cheese would also be good, but some of us are lactose-sensitive, and it is just fine without. Chopped nuts might be nice. Too bad I forgot chopped chives! Fast - fresh - fabulous - fun - several reasons to grow your own or buy from your neighbor! Ok - I realize it is officially June 1 - but the month of May was just extraordinarily beautiful this year, despite some typical windstorms that made me thankful we bolted our greenhouse to the fence, and I have been meaning to post some photos that illustrate how privileged we are to live where we do.
And for those of you who live in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley - if you have not been to the Dungeness Valley Creamery to sample their fresh raw milk, I must responsibly issue this warning: This Stuff is Highly Addictive! These Jersey cows are known for having a high cream content, but in May, when the pasture grass is particularly green and lush, the milk is so incredibly rich, it is a pale shade of yellow. I stopped by there one morning just 15 minutes after a calf had been born! Now if that isn’t worth the price of milk, I just don’t know what is! We are so fortunate to have this source of raw milk available! Many thanks to the Brown family!
Awwwww…. Thank you for your patience while we are revising our site! We wanted to get a table in here listing all our 2009 varieties of garlic, and in the process, give the site a bright new look and a better forum for talking about sustainable living!
Latest news from the Barbolian back acre: we’ve just installed our first rainwater collection system. It is hard to believe that water quantity might be an issue in the rainy Pacific Northwest, but here in Sequim, it is becoming contentious as the requirements of wildlife and agriculture clash with the demands of an ever-increasing population. Water, or rather, lack thereof, could well be the most effective growth management tool in our region. This is hardly the forum to delve deeply into watershed management, the effects of climate change, and balancing the needs of humans and salmon, but residents here recently got a rude awakening when the Department of Ecology notified us of pending water restrictions on new developments. Fortunately for the Barbolian homestead, we are grandfathered in, having purchased rights to the irrigation ditch along with our home. Being on the ditch is a real advantage; however, every once in awhile, particularly in September when things are getting really dry, without warning, it shuts down. Sometimes completely. Shut-downs are based on river levels; there must be adequate water for the salmon runs. I agree with that. So what to do? We can switch to our well, but at that time of year, our well water is also getting low, and we start finding small grains of sediment in our tap water. Not good. We’re not talking about watering fancy lawns here. We’re talking about keeping plants alive that we have nurtured since the beginning of spring. We’re talking about food that feeds our families. Let it all dry up right when it’s time to harvest? No way! A rainwater collection system just makes sense. We have an advantage: a metal roof on our barn provides a lot of surface area. A phenomenal amount of rain drains off, and other than a little debris, it is relatively clean. For less than $250, including hardware, we used a simple adapter to connect the downspout from one side of the roof to a 275-gallon storage tank with a spigot near the bottom. (Ok - so it’s still a little funky - but we are thankful for Ziplock Ties and plumbers’ tape inventions! We will refine the setup as we test the system.) Interestingly enough, our local Co-Op provides the cheapest system around. You can connect a series of 50-gallon barrels, but the 275-gallon system costs a whole lot less. We didn’t find anything close to it online. We built a foundation for it with some old pumice-block bricks, which elevates it enough to increase the water pressure. This system is long overdue! It is simple and effective. It may not provide all the water we need, but it will definitely help us through the dry spells. We want to set up another one for the other side of the roof. Water is our most valuable resource. Even with access to the irrigation ditches or other water supplies, if more home owners do what they can both to conserve water and collect their own, more water will be left for other uses. So - How exciting! Here we’ve been so tired of all this wind and rain and sleet and snow we’ve had lately, and now, we just can’t wait for those heavy clouds to cut loose!  Garlic is up! Time to get weeding! Ok, folks, spring is officially here, and there is no time to lose! Barbolian Garlic Status Report: The garlic is growing strong! Better than strong: these sprouts look like my best crop ever! All that work that went into building the beds has really paid off! Of course, alongside the garlic, the weeds. With longer days and warmer temps, they are already taking off and robbing the garlic of all those nutrients I carefully worked into the soil. Garlic does not compete well with weeds. The garlic may be strong, but the weeds want to take over the world. We must not let them get that first stranglehold. The war begins, quietly. The weeds are thick on the southern sides, testimony to the benefits of a raised bed and a southern exposure. Over the winter, they have served their purpose, holding the soil in place during heavy rains and strong winds. But now they must go. The beds keep the soil soft. Weeding is labor-intensive, but easy. I toss them into the paths between the beds, let them dry out for a few days, and then till them into the soil. Usually just turning them over with a shovel is enough, but I have a little tiller if I want to fire it up. I am finding more and more that the tiller isn’t that much faster, and it comes at a cost, but that discussion should be saved for a different post. Next, I will help the garlic be strong in the face of adversity. I will support its drive to reproduce. (And then I will eat its delectable young.) For now, it is primarily a leafy plant. The more it grows now, the more reserves it will have later for making bulbs. After eradicating the weeds, I will be side-dressing the garlic with a little blood meal to give it a nitrogen boost. Over the next few weeks, I will also periodically spray the plants with diluted seaweed and fish fertilizer, but will minimize any nitrogen fixes once the bulb formation starts. Fortunately, the garlic pretty much holds it own at the moment, which leaves time for all the other spring chores: starting seeds, getting the veggie garden in shape, tilling in the green manure, doing any last-minute pruning, cleaning out the dead debris so plants can breathe - and tragic site: picking up all those branches that broke off the big fir tree after that recent heavy snow! Ah, but that first daffodil! It is our assurance that warmer days are ahead (it’s still so freakin’ cold!). If I work hard, I stay warm. A little effort now will pay off big-time later. Visions of garlic sauce over pasta keep me going. Heavy on the garlic, please.
Hmmm…I seem to have figured how to get my pictures back up on my posts, although not necessarily where I want them. After my recent WordPress upgrade, I have had a few problems. Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but in the meantime, please put up with this amateur hacker!
They seem so exposed - so vulnerable. I did not mulch. There is no snow cover for protection…. I encourage them to be strong. Stay tuned…. And in the meantime, I have had several discussions with fellow gardeners over the past few weeks about mulching, watering, the bed/no-bed dilemma, irrigation, building the soil, which varieties of garlic are best, other good crops, and an assortment of innovative gardening ideas. I will be posting on these in the near future as the growing season kicks in. Thanks for visiting my site - and please come back - come back often! And I sure hope I can get this little snafu fixed! Blythe
Hooray! The garlic is harvested and is now 2 weeks into the curing process. What do 1300 bulbs of hanging garlic look like? Granted, by some standards, that is not a lot. But for me - and for many who buy a few bulbs now and then - it’s like, wow - over one thousand bulbs! How to describe what it is like to step into a small room, surrounded by hanging garlic, and inhale the dense pungent aroma … It makes you slip into visions of roasted bulbs, garlic bread, rich sauces, stir fries, pestos, tapenades …. It’s enough to make one swoon …. Do we have to wait? No! Indulge NOW! I promised you all my favorite hummus recipe. But first, I’d like to know how a bunch of smashed chick peas mixed with a little this and that, and a name that sounds like something related to compost, has become such an exotic dish among pseudo yuppies like myself. Indeed. Ok - I have a confession. I don’t really have a “favorite” hummus recipe. I make it different every time. But see, that’s the beauty of it. Here’s how I made it the other day - and everyone woofed it: Put in a blender or otherwise chop, smash, and blend:
Chop it, blend it, or whatever you need to do to make this a relatively smooth paste. Add back in about 1/4 cup of the drained bean juice if it looks too thick. This hummus version is very green. People won’t know it’s hummus, which they think of as being kind of tan and something they’d maybe rather not describe. Yes - it’s very garlicky and very lemony. It’s also heavy on parsley. I love all these things. Hummus is wonderful. Think of the many things you can do with this stuff! Here are some ideas:
This humble dish is one of the oldest known to man - and you can see why - it can be whatever you like or whatever you have or a mixture of all you have and like. It’s wonderful. It’s eaten daily all over the Arab world, and many other cultures have a version they call their own. In fact, it’s known to have been around 5000 years before Christ! Now that’s amazing. My guess is that it helped the Egyptians build the pyramids. Just think what YOU can do with it! Plus, it’s full of protein, iron, vitamin C, fiber, and more, depending on how it’s made. I figure that anything that looks like a glob but gets your kids to eat beans, whole-grain crackers, and vegetables must be a good thing. Enjoy!
EATING THIS STUFF CAN BE ADDICTIVE! And to lure you into my web, I also offer a recipe for homemade crackers to go with them. Go ahead…try these…don’t let anyone see you…scoop them into small bowls and go off to your happy place…we’ll see you in a few days. I tantalize you first with the pesto. You have to come back for the hummus and crackers. GARLIC SCAPE PESTO: First, a caveat: the problem with this recipe - or maybe it’s me - is that nothing is really measured and substitutions are made freely, depending on what you have on hand. If you are a freestyle cook, you understand this mentality. There are a few things you must have, namely, garlic and olive oil, or it simply isn’t pesto. Personally, I grow a lot of basil and several varieties, but I am not terribly fond of it in pesto (I know, this is blasphemy to my Sicilian heritage), because most recipes ask for a lot of it and it is too overpowering. Now the garlic - I grow lots - I use lots - it is incredibly overpowering - and if you are a true garlic lover, that is just how it should be. Ok - the recipe: 1 doz. garlic scapes Chop, blend, or whatever you need to do to make it smooth. Yes, you can add Parmesan if you have it - or if you have pine nuts, those are great - and of course, you can totally change the taste with aromatic fresh basils, but I don’t always have those things, and the craving must be fed, regardless. What kind of recipe is this, you ask? Ok, not really a recipe, more like a guideline. But now that you’ve made it, you must face your ethical dilemma: go hide or go share. Your choice. I won’t tell. |
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I have been getting a lot of questions about garlic scapes lately - and in checking my blog stats, a lot of people are searching for recipes using scapes. Scapes, those curly flower shoots from the hardneck varieties of garlic, arrive just as we are running out of our green garlic harvest. My favorite way to use them is in 
Daffodils. Why do I keep taking pictures of daffodils? Every year, I keep trying to capture that near-perfect essence of spring. Of course, every year, the pictures fall a tad bit short. I don’t need more pictures of daffodils. I just keep taking them. Because they’re just so gosh-darned beautiful - and there is really no better reason.
What is this tree? Some kind of magnolia? It is relatively short - and the blossoms are fragrant enough to make a bee swoon & think he’d gone to heaven.
Welcome back New Garlic Shoots! Welcome back Garlic Lovers!
Brrr! It is frosty outside! As you know, January and February can be a real mixture of weather, and here in the Pacific Northwest, we are no exception. The rain and snow this year for us were a statistician’s dream. Even without extremes, storms regularly blow in off the west coast with winds strong enough to break trees, while other afternoons can be deceivingly warm with the promise of spring. Then the nights freeze solid again, glare ice coats the roadways, and thick frost ices every nook and crevice.
It might be a time for us to hunker down inside, but things are happening in the backyard garlic patch! Tender garlic shoots are bravely poking through the soil. Trust me on this. Look closely. I DO SEE GREEN!!!
