"I like when they dye their hair grey."

My new-found local bargain store is called Hoover's Discount Grocery on St. Johns Road, outside of Berrysburg, Pennsylvania.   They sell bulk quantities, expired or near-expired products, and seconds.  Yes, the prices are incredible on some of their products.  It's run by Amish and the majority of shoppers are Amish.  Today, it was pretty full of Amish shoppers.  Standing in the narrow aisle checking out the black beans with barely butt room between me and the elder Amish man pushing the cart that his wife was filling, I hear in a bold voice, "I like when they dye their hair grey."  I couldn't help my big grin when I turned to answer, "I like it too!"  And he says, "so does my wife."   It made my week, month, and year.  What a classic line!  I'll never forget the moment. (In case you don't know me, I'm very grey and never dyed my hair -- we joke I paid a lot of money to have my hair streaked grey!).

My Dad and His Childhood Chicken Story

Somewhere around 1940, a little boy in the small town of Gratz, Pennsylvania, was sent to the backyard by his mom to "go get a chicken for supper."  Everyone in Gratz had backyards full of vegetables, chickens, and a pig to eventually slaughter as a neighborhood project.  This is how folks lived and thrived in smalltown USA before industrial agriculture.  They grew and raised all their food.  If the bill at the grocery store was more than $10 a week, Dad wasn't happy.  That bill was for a family of 8.  So little boy Donnie went to the chicken pen to catch a chicken for dinner.  They all gathered around him as though it was time for their feeding.  You see, little Donnie cared for the birds and they grew fond of his handsful of feed everyday.  Little Donnie caught one of his flock, and with ax in hand and mom's orders in his head, he hesitated.  He listened to his chicken cackle, hung his head, and let her go.  He couldn't do it.  He went back to the house and his mom said, "where's the chicken?" And little Donnie said, "I couldn't catch one."  His mother mumbled some Pennsylvania dutch, calling him dumb.  I'm glad little Donnie was dumb and never killed a chicken.  And I'm more glad his 81 year old brain remembered the story and told me about it last night, on my birthday.  I loved it.  Of course he mumbled the exact same words in Pennsylvania dutch that his mom mumbled, but I'm sorry to say I never learned the language and couldn't repeat.  Thanks for the story dad!  

Gearing up for Full-time Food Production

In two weeks, my daily two-hour round trip commute to Harrisburg City in Pennsylvania, to my full-time job as a government manager, will come to an end.  I retire on October 28.   Years ago when I first started reading about going green, homesteading, living off the grid, and using less resources, I dreamt of the day I wouldn’t have to commute to work.   The day is here.   My daily commute will be by foot to the backyard to prep the gardens to grow our food.  This is the part of retirement that gets me the most excited.  I’m the type that likes many activities and I don’t always ‘stick” with one.  Being a triathlete is a good example.  From 2004 to 2008, I swam, biked, and ran my little heart out all the way to a world competition.   A bike accident put a quick halt to that short-term endeavor.  Through the years I’ve picked up and put down probably 15 or so hobbies and interests.  But through all of them, one thing stuck:  gardening of some sort.  For twenty-two years, I’ve tossed together horse manure, straw, kitchen scraps, and grass clippings to feed my food. As a kid I helped my mom harvest and preserve which instilled the canning notion in my brain.  I’m a farmer at heart.  It’s in my blood and I can’t put it aside like other hobbies.  To know I will now be able to garden every single day for the rest of my life is an awe-inspiring feeling.  To know not only can I grow it, but I’ll now have the time to preserve it  and eat it in the middle of the winter, is equally awesome.  I’m excited to grow, preserve and eat my own food on a full-time basis.  Warm up the stove... let's get cooking! 

More Posts Coming Soon

So sorry for the slacking in backyard posts. My mother fell down stairs in mid-August and fractured her pelvis; thus, I've been a tad busy since that time.  Retirement is scheduled for October 28 and I'm (very) hopeful to fire up this blog full-time immediately after that to keep my friends and family tuned in to what's happening in the backyard and around and about.  By the way, my mom is in my backyard - literally!  She's a stone's throw down over the hill in a beautiful old farmhouse, so spending time in the backyard is twofold.  I truly love having my parents so close as they age.  It's a blessing - truly. 

Summertime Whitegrass Love

Our favorite winter destination, Whitegrass in West Virginia, cooks up some fabulous dishes and puts many of those delectable recipes into two cookbooks. Both have prominent, permanent spots in my kitchen.  Today, I share "Betsy's Tomato Salad" from the first cookbook, "Whitegrass Cafe, Cross Country Cooking."  This salad is scrumptous with any tomato, onions, herbs or vinegar.  But make it with heirloom Black Krim tomatoes, sweet spanish onions, homegrown herbs, and purple basil vinegar and it's through-the-roof incredibly good.  Enjoy!

3-4 ripe summer tomatoes, sliced (I used Black Krim)
1 thin sliced sweet onion ( my choice is sweet Spanish)
1/4 tsp. dried basil (purple ruffles - dried last winter)
1/4 tsp dried oregano (Greek oregano - dried last winter)
1/4 tsp. dried dill (dried last winter)
1/4 tsp. dried chives (I used fresh for this - that's all I had)
1/2 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. red wine vinegar or lemon juice (purple basil vinegar, made last year)
2 Tbs. Olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 tsp. black pepper

Start a layer of tomatoes in a shallow glass pan.  Then add a sprinkle of seasonings (and sugar) over the top.  Make a marinade by mixing vinegar, olive oil, garlic and pepper.  Sprinkle a little marinade over the tomatoes.  Then add a laery of onion.  Continue the layering process, cover and chill for 2 hours before serving.  The juices and marinade create the most wonderful flavor.  Makes 4-6 servings. 

A summertime delight from our friend, Betsy Reed, Owner of Canaan Realty. 

Dancing Onions

Painting by Pamela Swainson

Each spring  for more than 20 years, a portion of Chili’s backyard is reserved solely for onions – lots of onions.   I can’t recall ever planting less than 400 plants or onion sets in all those years. To keep the rotation going from year to year, I’d get creative and move the onion patch to interesting  locations.  They would circle the birdbath, line walkways, and sometimes would be in traditional tidy rows in the garden.     My entire  family eats onions with everything.    They are fried, baked, boiled and sauteed in big pieces, little pieces, and in perfect rings.   They are thrown in with soups, stews, meats, eggs, and eaten on sandwiches.  Our breath would stink, the house would wreak, and the cellar sometimes has a drip or two of rotting onion if we aren’t careful.  But hey, it’s all part of the onion love process we can’t live without.    This year, was the first time in 20 years, I think we’ve finally perfected the onion harvest, although I can’t take credit for it.  Mom nature cooked up the perfect recipe to grow, harvest, and preserve the optimum onion bounty.    The spring started damp and cool – baby onion heaven.  The rains went well into June and early July, then suddenly stopped – just about the time the onions were getting ready to finish their  growing and were getting a little obese.  As most crops were screaming for water, the onions were basking in the sun, shriveling and drying up with delight, letting me know exactly when they were ready for a little shade by hanging their weary, dried up necks.   That’s when I helped them out of the ground and settled them in under the shade canopy for some air drying for another two-three weeks.  Continuing lack of moisture gave the onions a chance to party a little more, and party they did.   They lost their skin, hair, and feet in the process.    Last night, I started to put about half of them to sleep in the cool 60ish degree cellar.  So far, only three – THREE – were rotted and thrown to the bugs.  I emphasize three because most years from ¼ to ½ of the harvest rots.    I found choice of variety, choice of sets vs. plants, and weather play a huge factor in perfecting the harvest and reducing the numbers of rots.  I found timing the harvesting and watching for dried necks before pulling are critical to preventing rotting necks as a result of pulling too soon and not allowing them to dry completely.  I found plants to be better than sets for storage.  And I found Yellow Sweet Spanish and Red Zeppelin onions to be the absolute best keepers and flavor enhancers.  And Dixondale Farms is my onion plant grower of choice.  Each year, I get my order exactly when I want it and there’s usually a few extra plants with each order.   And mom nature is the absolute best when she’s hot and sunny come onion harvest time.  This year was an  exceptional year and the onions are dancing with delight.  Thanks mom! 

3.5 years Later....

My very first post on this blog in January of 2008 talked about retiring and I mentioned not having time to garden with exercising so much and commuting two hours a day, "So I buy them (vegetables) for now, and dream of the day I retire and get back into it full time again. Its the top of my priority list of things to do after retirement."

And here it is... past that glorious day I was to retire.  BUT, I'm very proud to say the goal has not changed and the garden continues to be top priority after retirement -  probably even more so than when first written.  And when is the official day?  Very soon my friends, soon.  When confirmed, you know I'll be blogging about it!

Feeding the Caterpillars

This beauty will eventually become the beautiful Black Swallowtail butterfly.  Every year, I grow bunches of dill, fennel, carrots and parsley and they are all members of the Umbellifarae (parsley) family.  I grow them mainly to attract the tachinid flies which keeps the great tomato horn worms under control, but a bonus are these beautiful caterpillars and butterflies.  Sometimes its ok to let the caterpillars eat the plants.  In this case,  eat and enjoy!

The Heat of the Summer

Central Pennsylvania is under a heat wave the past two weeks and watering the gardens has become a nightly event.   Little did I realize how much time mother nature saves me when she throws some drops our way -- at least an hour a night.  My decision to NOT train for an October bike race was a wise decision and perfectly timed.  The training was to start last week - just about the time the heat wave came and I started watering in the evenings.  We are smack dab in the middle of the summer right now and the harvesting and storing has begun.  Below is a run down of what's happening in the backyard on a routine basis right now.  The harvesting, preparing, and storing will continue until mid or the end of October.  Lots of work is ahead.

• Onions! I'm pulling them as the tops lay over and have dried for a day or two, then setting them on a drying screen under a covered area to cure (dry some more)  for a couple weeks. As more are pulled, others that are "finished" are moved to storage in our 60 degree cellar.   I'll use the last of them for the filling for Christmas dinner.  Those with thick necks that may rot are cut up, cooked slightly, then froze.  When the dry are gone, we dig into the freezer.  A perfect year of stored onions.
• Spinach!  I got lucky this year and all the seeds planted sprouted.  What I can't eat fresh, I'm cutting, washing, chopping, and cooking just until wilted, then freezing in 10 oz sizes.  Most recipes call for 10 oz of frozen, chopped spinach.  I'll be happy to find the spinach in the freezer sometime in January.
• Chard! Eating fresh with eggs and also mixing in salads.  I may freeze some of this in single servings to cook with eggs this winter.
• Tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and zucchini - they are all starting to ripen.  I made zucchini patties and have been using the other goodies in salads. 
• Sweet Potatoes!  Yup - I already have some and I'm very, very excited to be eating them already.  I have 50 plants in the ground that will produce at least 4 or 5 potatoes per plant.  I'm gonna have a LOT of sweet potatoes to eat.
• Red Potatoes!  Yup, they are ready too.  Not too many of those, so I'm saving for in recipes and focusing on the sweet potatoes.
• Butternut Squash - not ready yet, but there are at least 3 dozen squash growing on the vines.  The rabbits (or ground hogs??) were munching on the newly sprouted seeds in the spring, so I planted more seeds in a separate garden and low and behold they ALL kept growing.  We're going to have a bumper crop of squash along with the sweet potatoes.  We'll be orange this winter!
• Volunteers - I have two heirloom tomatoes that seeded themselves and came up this year.  "Grandma Cantrell's Red tomato" is ripening beautifully.  A handful of sunflowers also came up on their own.  Oh, and an heirloom muskmelon (forgot the name)  is gonna produce two or three melons. 
• Parsley - I grow this for my dear old mom.  She dried 6 jars already.  I'll dry about two.  
• Basil - I'll dry some of this for winter meals.
• Fall and Winter seeds:  Planted and being watered every night.  We'll have carrots, red beets, radishes, and spinach.  The beets and radishes have already sprouted and in this heat need daily attention (water).  I'll have to watch them carefully.

Other than that, not much going on.

Can You Really "Live Off the Land?"

A 30-something, former city-boy asked my parents that question 30 years ago while he was touring their farm for the possibility of renting it. My parents -- both country folk -- snickered under their breath and said, "sure." To an individual that never experienced farming or a garden, it IS a question to be asked. But to a native country, daughter and granddaughter of generations of farming and gardening, it's not even something to think about -- it's just done. Most of us have gotten spoiled in the past 40 or 50 years. Conveniences galore: fast food, pre-packaged food, humongous servings at a restaurant, and super-sweet tasting, luscious ice-cream stands. Why would we go to all the hard work to live off the land? Why raise chickens when you can get eggs for $1.50/dozen and the whole bird for $5 bucks at your local Walmart. Well, our grandparents did it because they had no choice. Money was hard to come by, there simply wasn't plastic bags of already-frozen ready-to-eat meals and there wasn't a grocery store on every corner not to mention the choices were slim-pickens in those stores. But many people today are going back to the land or never left it like the Amish. "Homesteading" is growing in leaps and bounds while others choose to get off the grid and grow their own food for environmental reasons. My husband and I may soon join these ranks. I was planning to disband this blog due to lack of time to update, but now that the possibility is very real that I may become a full-time homesteader in 4 months, (well, my idea of homesteading focuses on the food production, not-so-much the extreme life changes like no refrigerator or using a composting toilet), I'm going to continue posting. Why might we be homesteaders? Early retirement - forced for hubby (awaiting final word coming on Thursday) - by choice for me. Stay tuned and watch for lots of posts on living off the land and early retirement.