Insanity & An Early Tourist Season

It's been hectic around here in an over-the-top manner that I did not think we were capable of achieving!  I've felt terribly guiltily for having had to actually turn potential guests away, simply because we had too many projects going on to manage guests on top of that.  Well, the projects are still not complete (sigh), but we've finally got guests staying here again.  This week/end is actually perfect for B&B guests - temperatures in the high 60s, partly cloudy, ripe strawberries, and loads of fragrant flowers!  I've filled numerous vases around the inn with irises, valerian, heirloom roses, and honeysuckle.  The entire house is perfumed...

Lots of tasty breakfasts planned for this weekend too!  I have added two new dishes to my normal repertoire: a frittata, and an apple-oatmeal crisp.  Your taste buds will love you for staying here, and your eyes will be delighted by these culinary masterpieces of color and presentation!  But don't take my word for it (I'll let the prior evidence speak for itself)...

Early Spring Frittata Recipe

This is the time of year when everything is just beginning to emerge from the ground, but there isn't too much to eat out of the garden yet (however, if you're a "pasture comber" like me, there are always plentiful amounts of wild edibles to forage).  The chickens and ducks are also laying heavily (in our case, 14 eggs PER day), so many of my spring and summer recipes use high volumes of eggs. 

If you are like me, this is the time of year when the lust for fresh greens hits the hardest.  The good news is that there are some vegetables ready for eating this time of year - beyond the normal sorrel and kale - and with a little foraging, you can prepare a delicious meal.

This recipe can be made either vegetarian or non.  If you are a vegetarian, simply omit the sausage portion of the ingredients list.  You are also not limited to the vegetables given below - feel free to experiment with whatever is growing in your own garden this time of year!

EARLY SPRING FRITTATA RECIPE

Ingredients:

• 12 eggs
• 1 lb locally-raised pork sausage (NOT the links - I mean just the "loose" plain ground sausage)
• 1 large handful/bundle of freshly-picked asparagus stalks, chopped into ~1 inch long chunks (discard stalk ends)
• 2-3 early spring Walking Onion bulbs, peeled and chopped
• 1 large handful dandelion leaves, chopped
• 1 small handful freshly-picked oregano leaves, chopped
• 1 small half-handful freshly-picked thyme leaves, chopped
• 1 cup breadcrumbs (preferably from homemade, day-old sourdough bread)
• 1 cup grated cheese (we generally use cheddar)
• 1/2 cup milk
• Dash of cayenne pepper
• ~2 tbsp butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place butter in a large frying pan, and turn heat on to ~medium.  Saute pork sausage and onions until pork is fully cooked and onions are clear (usually about 5-10 minutes).  Toss in asparagus, and saute for another 1-2 minutes.  Remove pan from heat, and pour ingredients into a medium mixing bowl.  Toss in dandelion leaves, oregano, and thyme, and add breadcrumbs, milk, and grated cheese.  Mix all ingredients together.  Add 12 eggs, and mix again thoroughly until yolks are broken and all ingredients have satisfactorily combined (you can, alternatively, beat together the 12 eggs in a large measuring cup and then pour them in with the other ingredients, but I never do this as it simply dirties an extra dish and anyway it's just as easy to mix the eggs with everything else in the mixing bowl).

Pour all ingredients from mixing bowl into a buttered pie dish.  Bake in oven for 40-45 minutes, or until top is golden brown and center doesn't wobble like liquid when you gentle shake the pan.  Allow to cool 10-15 minutes, then serve warm.

This recipe is excellent for both breakfast and dinner!

Pruning's the Word!

February and March always mean one thing on a farm: PRUNING!  This is the time when everything gets hacked back into submission - grapes, roses, fruit trees, raspberries, herbs, etc.  Just this past weekend, I finally finished pruning all of the roses.  The previous weekend, Ryan pruned all of our fruit trees.  I'm now working on cutting back the perennials, weeding the herb garden, and just generally trying to get everything ready for spring and the opening up of the B&B at the end of this month (yikes!).  My To-Do list is rather intimidating...and since this is the first major outdoor work any of us have done since winter began, there is the normal amount of very sore muscles, and just general exhaustion.  On the bright side, I've been sleeping like a baby at night!

Eat Your Weeds!

One of my new favorite early spring meals is homemade naan bread topped with sauteed greens. At this time of year, there really isn't much growing in the garden except for sorrel, onions, and some of the hardier perennial herbs (such as parsley and chives). Of course, I incorporate all of this into the sauteed greens. However, this often is not enough to satisfy my lust for veg (and one never wants to eat too much of sorrel, since it contains oxalic acid - same as spinach - which isn't good for you in large quantities). Since we are lucky to have 5 beautiful acres to roam around on, with plenty of pasture, I have begun taking long walks around the property, munching my way through the fields!

I have received a great deal of interest and questions when I talk about searching for edible greens. I preface all of the following with: I am not an expert! In no way should you attempt to taste any unfamiliar plant unless you are absolutely certain of your identification (or have already had an expert identify it). There are a great deal of poisonous plants, many that can be easily mistaken for other, edible plants. It's easy to make a mistake in identification, and sometimes that mistake can be FATAL. Please be careful!! Also, please make sure that wherever you decide to gather your wild edibles has not been sprayed with pesticides!

That being said, I thought folks would enjoy a blog post briefly discussing some of the wild edibles in my own pastures and how to identify them.

Let's start with the easiest of all - that "pest" the infamous DANDELION!

The poor little dandelion gets such an undeservedly bad rap. This so-called "weed" is actually a wonderful edible, full of vitamins and minerals, and has even been used for centuries to make dandelion wine! Dandelion leaves are higher in beta carotene than carrots, and have a higher iron and calcium content than spinach. It is an excellent early spring tonic plant, helping to "flush out" the system of its winter blues. The name dandelion means "lion's tooth" in Old French for its long, lance-shaped (or "toothed") leaves, which grow around a basal rosette.

Dandelion leaves can be anywhere from 3-12 inches in length, depending on the "happiness" of the plant. Dandelion is easily identifiable due to its well-known, sunshine yellow flowers. Because of this, and the fact that it has no poisonous lookalikes, dandelion is an excellent wild edible. You can eat both the leaves and flowers.

The leaves are actually best before the plant flowers - less bitter - but I think they taste great all season long!

MINER'S LETTUCE

Miner's Lettuce is a succulent wild edible, related to purslane (which makes it a bit easier to identify, in my opinion!). If you have ever harvested wild purslane (and we definitely do on our property), you'll notice that purslane and miner's lettuce have leaves that are quite similar in textural appearance.

Miner's Lettuce can grow anywhere from 3-12 inches tall, with leaves that are a wide oval shape with a pointed tip.

Miner's Lettuce was a major food source during the California Gold Rush, and one bite will show you why! Both the leaves and flowers are edible (currently, it's too early in the season for our plants to be blooming). The leaves are best eaten raw, but can be sauteed as well. Miner's Lettuce is an excellent source of vitamin C!


(ENGLISH) PLANTAIN

One of the great things about plantain is that it is easy to identify, and has no poisonous lookalikes! Here on the farm, we have English plantain growing wild in our fields. English Plantain plants grow in basal rosettes and have long, slightly hairy, lance-shaped leaves that grow upward as though standing at attention.

The leaves have very distinct parallel veins running lengthwise. English Plantain is one of the earliest spring edibles to come up, braving the cold weather before anything else. The smallest, youngest leaves are the tastiest - larger, older leaves are quite fibrous and tough to chew. Both the leaves and the seeds are edible.

According to Steve Brill & Evelyn Dean in their book, "Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places," Plantains were inadvertently brought from Europe by the first settlers, and by the early 1700s, people already thought of them as native plants.

For more information on identifying and eating wild edibles, I do highly recommend the book by Steve Brill & Evelyn Dean, "Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places"

T is for TULIPS!

April is "Tulip Month" around here, as that is the time when all of the tulips in our front yard burst into a beautiful display of color!

The bees especially love these flowers.
Who can be depressed when surrounded by such beauty?!

More Vintage Fun & Excitement (For Me, Anyway)!

Another great shopping day at the thrift store, at least if you were looking for vintage!

I found 4 dresses (one of which unfortunately doesn't quite fit, so I will have to do some creative altering if I want to wear it...I know, I know, ANOTHER sewing project to add to my list), and also helped my vintage buyer to purchase a 1960s/70s Lilli Ann nautical coat and matching sheath dress (it was too big for me or I would have snagged it), as well as a real python skin black purse! In some ways it's fun knowing another lovely lady who buys/sells vintage!

One of the dresses I purchased today (label reads "Miss Elliette") was in need of some serious TLC. The original zipper had been completely destroyed, so I had to carefully remove the old one and sew a new one in.

The good news is that thanks to my yard sale hopping, I have a grocery bag full of old metal zippers in assorted lengths and colors, so I already had one on hand that worked perfectly.

I may not be an expert seamstress, but putting in a new zipper isn't that difficult, especially now that I have finally discovered the zipper foot attachment to my sewing machine (oh, where have you been all of my life?!?!). This of course prompted the internal question of: How in the world did I sew in zippers all of these years WITHOUT it???

I received my 1940's "birthday hat" in the mail today! I have been drooling over it for months on Etsy, and finally scrounged together the funds to buy it. I'm a sucker for unique '40s hats.

My grandmother also gave me one of her house coats from the 1950's, which I managed to alter into an adorable dress. I'll get pictures of that soon, as well as the awesome "Square Dance" dress that I bought at the last yard sale for ~$1. It was HUGE (I looked like I was wearing a tent when I first tried it on), but after taking it in 6" on either side of the bodice, I managed to make it fit. Need to buy a large white belt for it though...

Speaking of dollar dresses from that last yard sale, I finally picked up this lovely ruched and bubbled 1950's prom dress from the dry cleaners. While the dress was beyond cheap, the dry cleaning bill was NOT. Talk about sticker shock: $28! OUCH! But the good news is that it's cleaned and pressed and (after I take it in a bit to fit me) ready to be worn.

So, for all of my lovely fellow gardeners who read this blog and wonder why, with spring here, am I not posting more plant-related materials? Well, we have had an abnormally cool, wet spring. Lots and lots and lots of "fun" frosts. My peas and favas germinated, and have just been sitting there, not knowing what to do with this crazy weather. The aphids are trying to take over my greenhouse (and my tomato starts), which always seems to happen about this time of year. So, in short, gardening right now is at a depressing stand still, while we all hold our breath and wait for truly warm temperatures. In the meantime, here is what a million tomato and pepper starts look like when they are crammed into a greenhouse. :)

But who can be depressed for long with so many tulips blooming in the front yard??:

Crazy Weekend (What Else is New?)

Our unusually-high levels of weekend insanity began Friday evening, when I made the mistake of asking Ryan to use the tractor to till my 2nd Garden. It's pretty much been raining here constantly for as long as my short term memory can remember. Friday showed a small break in the weather, and I thought that it would be a GREAT time to clear out the muck in the donkey pasture and put it on the garden! What I didn't take into consideration is that I should have given the soil a full day to dry out. Oooops. So, the tractor got a little stuck...okay, a LOT stuck...as in, literally "knee deep (or axle deep) in sh*t." Poor Ryan had to shovel the thing out. Don't worry - I made sure to buy him a LARGE beer later that evening! So on Saturday, we mostly ran errands: I purchased Adirondack Blue potatoes from a local gardening store, and new luxury bed sheets for the Apothecary Suite. The weather stayed relatively dry throughout the day, so that by the time late afternoon came, the soil in the 2nd Garden was dry enough to try another go at tilling it. This time: SUCCESS! So now, my 2nd Garden is completely tilled and ready for all of its planting! We also managed to get the first tilling/amending performed on the Pasture Garden that day too. I was pretty pleased!

I noticed on Friday that my turnip seeds and kohlrabi seeds were germinating in the 2nd Garden! Yay! Sunday morning, we planted a fennel/dill raised bed.

Sunday was the truly crazy day. I had read in the weather report that we were due for a severe wind/rain storm in the afternoon. So, after some quick gardening tasks in the morning, Ryan and I decided to head out and do a little relaxing and wine tasting before the storm hit (what can I say? We have either great or terrible timing...I can't tell which...). We wandered out to Wooldridge Creek Winery, where there were friendly staff, great wines, a warm fire, and a napping kitty. In short, a wonderful place to spend an afternoon! We had just finished our wine tasting, when we were offered a glass of wine (on the house) and the chance to sit and chat for a while longer. Wisely, we accepted. I was about two sips into my glass when the storm hit. Lightning, hail, winds so high that they sounded like a train coming at us, and practically horizontal rain fall! The wind blew the rain so hard that water came pooling in under the doors. At that point, the power went out. Thankfully, we had wine and a roaring fire, so all of us just sat and chatted some more until the worst of it died down. I have to say, that's not a bad way to spend a blackout! When the worst of the storm seemed to have passed, Ryan and I ventured back out to the car and homeward. Signs of the storm were EVERYWHERE in the tree fall and debris on the road. This was a doozy of a storm. When we got home, we said a little prayer of thanks for the front gate (which is electric, but has a back-up battery just for situations such as this) which still opened to let us in. The power was out at our property too (pretty impressive, since the winery was technically in Grants Pass!), so Ryan and I decided to use our gas-powered log splitter to get a big stack of firewood and then get both woodstoves going. First we checked on the neighbors and my grandparents, making sure everybody was ok and had everything they needed. Then, we lit candles, and played board games by the warmth of the living room woodstove. Dinner was cold leftover hamburgers from Saturday evening's cooking session. Finally, we decided to call it a night and crawl into bed. About 9:30 pm or so the power came back on, but blipped out again for a bit later in the evening. I was thankful that the night wasn't too cold since my greenhouse is powered by electric heaters, but if I had had to, I could have kept it warm using the living room woodstove. I suppose that is the benefit of having a greenhouse attached to your living room!

So that, in short, was our crazy weekend. No one can ever claim that life around here is boring!

THINK SPRING!

As I was (very belatedly) pruning my last roses today, look what I noticed poking up to say hello!:

The asparagus is up!!

We always plant our asparagus with our strawberries and garlic, and thus far it's been a great companion planting arrangement. Maybe it's not the "approved" method, but if it works for us, then I'm sticking to it!

Some random pictures...

Here's a plate of heirloom dry pole & runner beans saved from 2010.

Here are my Scarlet Runner Bean seeds ready for planting this year! Most people don't realize that, besides being incredibly ornamental, you CAN eat runner beans as both snap and dry. I love multi-tasking vegetables!

Spring & A New Set of Wheels...

Can't wait to take this baby out for a spin!

It's been an unusual level of stressful insanity around here lately, but then what else is new? On the bright side, signs of spring are EVERYWHERE, and my favorite ones are shown below:

The peach trees are waking up, and soon will be decorating the property with their beautiful blossoms!

The Valerian is waking up!

The Black Cumin is sprouting!!

Here's one of my baby Applegate Valley Heirloom Tomato sprouts. This is one of about 700 sprouts or so currently in my greenhouse. I can almost taste those delicious, fresh tomatoes!!

We have decided to increase and diversify our poultry flock this year. I have ordered 26 assorted female "rainbow egg layer" chicks, 10 black Indian Runner ducklings (1 drake, 9 females), and 15+ bronze turkeys. We have been wanting ducks for ages - especially for the delicious eggs! - and we finally decided to just go ahead and get them! I can't wait to have the option of cooking with chicken OR duck eggs! And Runner ducks are so hysterical to watch...

Just today I finally purchased my long-awaited gigantic green "garden wagon," so that I can wheel loads of plants in and out of the greenhouse. Exciting! Also this year, we've put in more apple, plum, and cherry trees on the property! Our original apple trees are old enough to produce, and I think we'll get a decent harvest this year. Can't wait for apple cider some day!! Ryan has plans to build a cider press, and I know we are going to need it when all of our trees start really producing fruit in the coming years...