Summer to Fall, A Quick Transition

Our first frost came just when it was supposed to, between September 25-30, so I guess fall is really here. Monsoon rains are over, pine needles are dropping, the yellow zucchini plants look droopy, the maple tree is shedding its leaves and bees and butterflies are having last call drinks from the yellow chamisa blossoms. But days still feel like summer. A friend who was harvesting onions yesterday remarked on how searing the sun felt.

We have crazy apples this year, so apple juice, canned apple pie filling, dried apples, and who knows what else will be preserved.  This is one of three different trees, so I look at them with love and also with dread. It's lot of work to put up all these apples, but worth it when I don't have to buy something at the store.

Red Delicious Apple Tree

Last week we had friends over for dinner: chuck roast, potatoes, country style green beans and a cucumber and tomato salad. I realized later that the only thing we'd bought from the store were potatoes. That's a good feeling.

This stuff was grown inside our Growing Dome

Although the grama grass grew well this past summer, look at that dry dirt! Let's hope for snow.

 This isn't about fall, but just an update on the new pup, Liza Jane. She's a crazy nut, enjoys fetching, and likes to be out and about exploring the ranch, digging holes, and thinking about what it might be like to herd four legged ruminants. Here she is contemplating the neighboring yak herd.

I am still amazed at the changing seasons and don't think I will ever tire of it.

Letter From Northern New Mexico

Hello, Friends,

Summer is almost gone: Nights are cooler, leaves are turning, and a successful monsoon season is drawing to a close. That said, it's time for a big old catch-up session because I haven't been writing and there's much to see here in Northern New Mexico.

We've been here for 8 years now and even though there were a few bets that we wouldn't last, here we are.

So let's get to it.

We still have cattle, but it's a rotating cast of characters. These guys were Regis and Phil(bin). Tom named them; not I. 

Regis and Phil(bin) are gone now to the great pasture in the sky and we are grateful to them.

Our new pup, Liza Jane, has been a handful. We went from exceedingly polite Ms. Pearl to a bossy tornado. This is a rare puppy pic of her lying still.

Summer gardening was successful. I think having a canine tornado keeps the bunnies from eating too much.

 This was early in the season. We had asparagus, green beans, kale, carrots, strawberries, sugar snap peas, and there's some broccoli I'm hoping will weather the upcoming cooler weather. The kale was especially pretty. I even froze some and I will tell you how another time. I used this kale for Zuppa Toscana. I found a copycat recipe for this Olive Garden favorite and it was yum!

Inside the Growing Dome we had a good season, too. Up here at 7200 feet it can be iffy for tomatoes and indoor gardening solves this problem. This year I grew five plants: Golden Jubilee, Black Cherry, Chocolate Sprinkles, good old Early Girl and Brad's Atomic Grape. All did well and I froze some, made a tomato and gruyere galette, and sometimes leaned  over the sink, salt shaker in hand, and ate them like apples, juice everywhere.

Tomato Plants Growing Like Crazy

Straight Eight Cucumber Plants and Burgundy Green Beans

A Few Tomatoes

Tom has been cutting up a cottonwood tree that split in two.

We really don't need firewood because last winter was so mild, we didn't even touch the artistic wood piles I made.

And he chopped thousands of thistles, which are noxious, invasive weeds. I don't have any photos of that.

I set up a sewing area on the porch.

Here was my view:

There was a field trip to Santa Fe's Botanical Gardens.

And to the Santa Fe Opera, twice! It was my first time experiencing opera and I loved it. People have tailgate dinners here, so we did the same. The big difference was our tailgate had road dust inside and out, and just as I was taking the photo, there was a wine mishap, but you get the idea.

I think I'm growing up. Opera? Wow.

It's always nice to come back home, though, to our little bubble.

See you next time!

Schlubbing Through Summer

Okay, I admit it: I've been a schlub this summer. That's Yiddish for an unkempt lazy butt.

Well, not totally lazy, but blogging has taken a back seat. Priorities. Work on that.

What have I been doing this summer?

Sitting on the porch, watching this little feller grow up. Miss Bonnie almost killed him, but he shook it off and survived. Bonnie is still patrolling the perimeter of the porch, just in case Little Bunnyboy gets careless.

Watching Mr. Robot while the lawn grows is an afternoon must. The rain has been amazing this year.

I've been outdoors a lot, pulling weeds and tending The Potager, which is a fancy way of saying The Garden.

We had asparagus and strawberries early in the season. Grasshoppers ate the shallot sets and the garlic was small this year since the rains started late.

The tomato plants look great, with lots of green ones, but the picking has been slow with all this rain and the clouds.  Hope reigns, though, since we a few moisture free days forecast. And those tomato bags may be my saving grace since we can take them into the Growing Dome if it gets too cold.

The climbing purple green beans are thriving, an homage to my dad who loved showing off his purple green beans. When they are properly cooked, they turn green. Magic. "Purpipple." He liked to say that.

The steers are growing large and still curious. Here's St. Thomas, saying hi.

We've had time for dinner with friends.

And I've been tidying up the fabric and sewing area. This is an ironic pic, don't you think? You may recognize this best selling book.

There are a few finished quilt tops and a couple quilts finally quilted, but minus their binding and a load of unfinished projects, but isn't that how it goes?

Next post will be quilts. Yep.

Sugar Sprint Peas

During the winter months I grow Sugar Snap peas in the growing dome because they like cool weather and unless it gets below freezing inside, they do well in there. Around May, though, it begins to get too hot inside and I must pull out the vines.

This year I decided to take my chances growing Sugar Snaps outdoors. I figured the moderate temps would be kind to them, so why the heck not. Because our weather is so "iffy," with snow, hail or rain likely any month of the year, I tried a variety called Sugar Sprint. The peas can be harvested at around 58 days, which is a plus in this high altitude growing region.

On May 9 I planted the seeds and placed a few tomato cages in the 4 by 4 bed, even though the envelope said 2 feet tall. I didn't want them drooping over the edges, tempting any passing critters into a snack. They might like that plant too much and that would be all she wrote. Then it rained and rained and I didn't even have to water.

I did a little weeding in that bed, but pretty much forgot those peas until July 4th, when I realized there were a zillion mature pods busting out on there! Talk about a forgetful gardener!

I've picked peas three times so far and each time I get about a pound of peas, enough to fill this strawberry clamshell.

My friends from around here get excited this time of year when roadside venders sell bags of traditional peas that you take out of the pod, but I am too lazy to shell them and just like eating the whole thing. It's the only way I can get Tom to eat peas.

Here are some links for snap pea recipes that I really like.

This is a copycat recipe for PF Chang's Garlic Snap Peas. The secret is to add the garlic at the end and very quickly get everything out of the pan and onto a plate. Otherwise you burn the garlic and it gets bitter when it's burned. Experience.

This recipe is easy! Ina Garten's Sauteed Sugar Snap Peas

Honey Glazed Pea Pods and Carrots is also an easy way to cook snap peas. I don't use the cornstarch and they still come out yum.

Last, because it's summer, here is Guy Fieri's Black Bean and Corn Salad recipe. I sub snap peas for the snow peas and it's just fine.

Miss Bonnie says hello to you all and wants you to know that rodent hunting is going well this year. She looks skinny, but eats all she wants. Last time Bonnie visited the vet, she (the vet) called her assistants (we are Bonnie's assistants) to have a good look at a cat at a healthy weight. I guess it's a rare sighting, a non-fat cat.

Bonnie is now 15 years old.

Kitchen Garden Early Summer 2015

Man, do I suck at blogging! It seems like there are so many other things to do..."Look! Squirrel!"

But I haven't forgotten you and hope this has been excellent summer season so far. Our part of Northern New Mexico has been blessed with rain, so much rain that we are out of our drought and the drought map says we are unusually dry, instead.

Tell that to the mosquitoes, who have been enjoying this moist weather just a little too much. Afternoons and shady spots are their favorite time for blood sucking, but if it's breezy they don't hang out too long, so I'm not complaining.

I've been working on are both the Growing Dome and kitchen gardens. The heat loving plants, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, thrive in their warm dome house, but that story is for another day.

Anyway, here are some kitchen garden photos. I truly love the raised beds, which allow me to garden without crawling around.

Below are some Northeaster runner beans climbing up their netting. This is the first time I've grown these, but a neighbor had good luck with them and when I tasted their flat-podded wonderfulness, I decided they would be part of this year's garden.

You can see that black patch on the ground, which is weed barrier cloth. I need to spread some more bark to cover it.

The beds beyond the beans have strawberries, which are starting to bear, and asparagus in the background, now gone to seed after a couple weeks of judicious picking. The asparagus is three years old now, so next year I will be able to pick as much as we want. My friends say the rain has extended the wild asparagus crop along the roads and acequias, so they're still picking!

Below is another shot of the garden. On the left are white cauliflower, broccoli and garlic. Those grow bags contain potatoes: Magic Molly, Purple Viking, Sangre Red and Yukon Gold. Someone said the first three potato names sound like weed. I think they're right.

And here's the last shot. That long bed in the back has more cauliflower (green and orange varieties), carrots and corn. The corn is called Spring Treat, but we shall see what happens, since most people say sweet corn grown around here tastes like sawdust.

 

In the far beds, which each measure four by four, I have a rhubarb plant, some Sugar Sprint snap peas, a valerian plant which the bees love, and some more cauliflower. I've decided to roast cauliflower and freeze it if there's too much. We could use a little more outdoor growing space, so next year we hope to build some more raised beds.

Next up, inside The Dome.

Even Though We Live Miles Away, We Are Neighbors

I laughed reading a friend's email yesterday because she looked forward to a neighborly gathering, and she lives 27.9 miles away, a 49 minute drive, according to Google maps. But yes, we are neighbors.

Our closest neighbor is half a mile away as the crow flies.  If one doesn't have wings and must drive or walk, it's closer to a mile.

Yesterday I visited a friend who lives about three miles down the road to pick up some carrots because she planted way too many. Since my carrots didn't do too well, I'm all for picking up some carrots. Earlier I gave her some garlic and she said I may have some pesto, too. Yum!

Here's our road. The road grader was here since our last rainstorm, so it looks good.

It's fun looking at our neighboring ranches. This one is around 1300 acres and has pines, cacti, and ferns: three different ecosystems at work.

 Friend Raye lives closer to the village with neighbors nearby.

Her house is adobe and the original structure was built in the early 1900's. That's Goldie, the almost fourteen year old Labrador.

               A smiling farmer out standing in her field, ready to dig. We barely made a dent in the row where Raye is standing, but I still ended up with plenty of carrots.

That's about five pounds of carrots, a zucchini, yellow squash and a lemon cucumber.

Goldie decided to cool off in the acequia, one of a series of water ditches that runs through many of the ranches in New Mexico.

Labradors and water equal fun!

We had some tea on the porch and Goldie had a few more pets. She's a happy oldster.

And then it was back toward home. Don't you love those clouds?

Now about those carrots: Stay tuned.

Asparagus!

Of course, I could go foraging and find some wild asparagus like Betsy and I did last year, but we wanted something closer to home, so why not use those raised beds?

Here was the garden last year, around September:

Planting weather is just starting, and a couple months ago I ordered some Jersey Knight asparagus roots. I ordered two year old crowns, because asparagii must grow for several years before they are ready to harvest enough to amount to something.  (I have since learned that there is no advantage to ordering two year asparagus crowns, that one year one will do just fine.) Oh, well.

So on an overcast day in the 70's (woo hoo! it was hot out there!), I planted my asparagus crowns.

First I dug a trench and piled the dirt in our rickety wheelbarrow.

The wheelbarrow only tipped over once. 

Here is one of the asparagus crowns. They look very unassuming, don't they?

For each asparagus crown, I made a little mound of compost so it would have a nice spreading out place.

After that, I shoveled the soil back into the garden bed and added a top dressing of more compost. When some shoots appear, I think I will add some old dried cow manure to the bed. We have plenty of that around here.

Now the waiting begins. So I will water and fertilize and someday, in the not so distant future....

In the meantime, here is a link to a recipe for Cherry Tomato and Asparagus Salad which is amazingly good, and just the way to start the summer picnic season. We've had it twice now and even Mr. Picky likes it, minus the avocado.