From the Garden this Week...

Yes, I am still harvesting! Today I finally picked my first broccoli raab today. I planted several times through the spring and summer and time my plantings bolted before the the plants even got big. This was so not the year for most greens! With all the extremes in the weather, from very wet to very dry, very cold to very hot, most of my green leafy vegetables just didn't do well.  I did let one of  the bolted broccoli raab plants go to seed and self sow. The flower buds are from the self sow seeds. This batch of plants looks very healthy and lush. If a cold snap holds off, I should be able to pick flower buds for at least a few more weeks.  Today's little harvest got cooked up with potatoes, onions, and sausage and served for dinner.

I pulled my turnips today and ended up with two five gallon buckets of turnips. Turnip recipes will be coming soon in  a blog post!

Swiss chard is the one green that did very well this year. I picked and froze another eight quarts this weekend. Again if a hard freeze holds off, I should be able to continue picking Swiss card from the garden for another few weeks.

There are still cabbage, beets, carrots, kale, Brussels sprouts, and baby spinach and lettuce in the garden waiting to be harvested.

 I know a lot of people across the United States got snow this weekend. We are still snow free, but I finally did break down yesterday and light a fire in the wood stove. (Trying to be frugal with the wood that cost so much in sweat and hard work!)

Linked to Garden Life and Homestead Revival.

Gossamer Sunrise

A single thead from a spiderweb connects to a tangle of milkweed floss and frames the sunrise on a frosty morning.

Linked to Macro Monday.

New Horizons

Wow, almost a whole week went by without me taking a single photo. Monday ended with an unexpected announcement. The home health care company I work for is closing one third of its offices across the United States...and that includes the office I work out of. My head is still reeling from this announcement and most of the week has gone by in something of a daze. I am continuing to care for the patients we have and assisting them with transferring to the home care agencies of their choice, as well as exploring employment options for myself.

I've also spent some time staring blankly at the wall as I try to comprehend what is happening.

I thought I finally had my nursing career all figured out. I love the company I work for. I love the fact that they hold all their employees to high standards of integrity and honesty while giving us the tools we need to take very good care of our patients. I love my patients. I love my coworkers. I was planning to be with this company for the next 15 years at least.

I finally got outside yesterday evening and explored a new nature area that I hadn't been to before. Just needed to get outside and get away from paperwork, job hunting, and clear some of the fog out of my head. I let my mind wander as I explored the woods and wetlands and watched the sun set over the little lake in the nature area. And I took lots of photos.

And I got a little excited thinking about the possibilities ahead of me. This will give me an opportunity to once again step outside of myself, change and grow, explore new horizons, become a better nurse and in the process, hopefully become a more understanding and better person. Challenges and changes aren't bad, they can be very good, it is all what you do with them.

Linked to Skywatch Friday.

A Macro Sunrise

Linked to Macro Monday.

Sand Hill Cranes in a Wheat Field

In this part of Michigan, fall would not be fall without sand hill cranes feeding in the newly sprouted wheat fields...

(This may not be the greatest photo in the world, but sand hill cranes are one of my favorite things about living in this part of the country. I always love seeing them as I am driving through the country side visiting my patients. It is not unusual to see flocks of 100 or more in the corn, wheat, and soy fields this time of year.)

Streaked Dawn

Linked to Skywatch Friday.

Dew Drops and Silk

Dew drops on milkweed silk shimmer in the early morning light.

Little Yellow Polka Dotted Beetle

He was hiding under the folds of the cabbage I brought in from the garden for dinner tonight. After a little photo session, the little yellow polka dotted beetle was put back out into the garden.

Linked to Macro Monday.

Thanks to Victoria for identifying the beetle. It is a spotted cucumber beetle and in spite of being quite pretty is actually a garden pest.

Curried Pumpkin Coconut Soup

Baby Bear

Pumpkins aren't just for pies. In fact, I doubt that I am even going to make a pumpkin pie this year. I am currently on a grain free and dairy free diet in an attempt to treat ongoing chronic fatigue. So pumpkin pies are out for me.  My husband isn't a fan of pumpkin pie so no point in making one just for him. That doesn't mean all the wonderful little pie pumpkins I grew this year are going to waste. No way! Baby Bear and Kakai are vegetables in their own right. I have been eating at least one small pumpkin a week since harvesting the first one, and soon will be processing the ones I have left into puree to freeze for the winter.

(If you have never made your own pumpkin puree, I highly recommend that you try it. It is very simple to make and and freezes well, and tastes so much better made from fresh pie pumpkins than puree out of can. Candy over at Lazy J Bar C Farm has a great post on how to make your own pumpkin puree.)

This is one of my favorite pumpkin soups and can be very easily made dairy free by substituting coconut milk for the dairy milk. (Or it could easily be made vegan if you were to substitute vegetable broth for the chicken broth.)

Curried Pumpkin Coconut Soup

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 medium chopped onions
2  cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup milk or 1 cup coconut milk (unsweetened--sold in cartons for drinking)
1 teaspoon curry powder
dash of ginger
dash of turmeric
dash ground coriander
3 cups pureed pie pumpkin
3 tablespoons  canned coconut milk (this is really thick, and is more like cream, and is very different than the coconut milk that is sold in cartons for drinking)
 rushed red pepper flakes (to taste)
Salt (to taste)

 
Heat the coconut oil in a deep pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the onions and garlic; cook until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Mix in the chicken broth, curry powder, turmeric, ginger, salt, coriander, and red pepper flakes. Cook and stir until the mixture comes to a gentle boil, about 10 minutes. Cover, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes more, stirring occasionally. Whisk in the pumpkin and milk, and simmer another 5 or so minutes. Stir in the canned coconut milk.

Do you have a favorite dairy and grain free pumpkin recipe?

Linked to Garden Life over at No Ordinary Homestead and Fall Harvest Blog Hop at My Simple Country Living.

Trio of Cranes

With October comes the flying of the sand hill cranes. The cranes roost at night in wetlands and in the morning leave family by family to gorge themselves in the newly harvested corn and soybean fields or (to the farmer's dismay) in the newly planted wheat fields. They are storing energy to make their long migration flight from Michigan to Florida where they will spend the winter.

Sand hill cranes usually only hatch out one little crane-ling each spring. The little crane stays with his parents all summer and fall and flies with them to Florida. Over the winter he finds a mate there and leaves his parents. When we see a trio of cranes in the sky most of the time we are seeing a parent with their young crane.

Linked to Skywatch Friday.

Real (Fast) Food--a book review and a giveaway.

Trina and I grew up on adjacent homesteads on the same hill top in upstate New York. Even though our families were not on speaking terms for most of that time, our lives were somewhat similar. When her family first moved out to rural NY, they lived in a tepee while her dad built a log cabin. She learned to cook over a campfire outside, then graduated to a wood cook stove inside the cabin. As she got older Trina was in charge of her family's large vegetable garden and her family raised meat chickens. Today she is a busy home schooling mom with three small children.

I learned to cook on a open fire in the fireplace in our little log cabin. I did that almost everyday from the time I was seven or so until I left home at age 26. I learned to cook with home grown vegetables and beans from our garden, whole grains, and mostly wild game meats. I leaned to bake bread in a dutch oven over the open flames and in a cast iron pan propped up in front of the coals. I made cheese and butter and yogurt from the raw milk from our cows.

I believe I'm twelve in this photo...this is a "summer fire". Just a few sticks and a small flame. It is big enough to cook a stew or bake a casserole, but not large enough to make our little log cabin hot inside.



When I left home I continued, as much as I could, to cook whole foods from scratch. I make my own soup stocks, bake my own bread, grow a lot of my own vegetables and continue to cook mostly with whole grains and beans.

  I never really got into cooking anything from packages or mixes. To this day if you hand me a mix I get confused.  There is good and bad in that. It means we don't eat much processed food or food that isn't high in nutrients. On the flip side, it also means that when I'm completely overwhelmed and don't have time to cook, we eat a lot of spaghetti (one of the few things my husband knows how to cook!) and bananas and peanut butter sandwiches. With a busy nursing job that has a somewhat unpredictable schedule, and mountains of paperwork, there are often times that  I just don't have time to cook.

So when Trina wrote an e-cook book that includes many time saving methods for cooking real food, I was very interested to see how it would help me. After reading and using this book for a few months, I would recommend it almost anyone who has a busy life and still wants to prepare real food from scratch. It isn't just a cookbook. Real (Fast) Food includes lots of  recipes, but more importantly, shows you how to take a lot of the work out of cooking real food.

The two chapters I found especially helpful  for me and being able to toss together a quick real food meal  are Menu Planning Made Simple and Batch Cooking, She shows you how to plan your menus (and even includes a printable blank menu for you  to print and fill out so you can get started.) then shows you how to prepare ingredients in advance so you can quickly make a real meal when you are crunched for time.

In addition there are sections dedicated to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as some healthy desert recipes. Trina shows you how to make whole wheat sandwich bread,  how to make whole wheat pasta, how to sprout your own grains then grind them for breads, how to make yogurt, how to make chicken and beef stock, as well as many other real food basics.

My big disappointment with the book is that vegetables barely get mentioned. When I cook, vegetables make up the base of most of my meals, and since they take the most time to prepare, when I am in a crunch for time they are the first thing to get pushed aside. I would have liked to see at least a chapter on ways to incorporate vegetables into real fast food cooking. 

The other thing is, Trina 's recipes tend  feature a lot of animal and dairy products. If you are a vegetarian or allergic to dairy, many of the recipes will not be helpful. However, you will still find her time saving tips and chapters and the chapters on breads and grains helpful. (Case in point--I am allergic to dairy, but still found her book very helpful in a lot of ways.)

One of the chapters I enjoyed a lot is her chapter on soaking quick breads and muffins. Soaking grains to make them easier to digest is something  I had been wanting to learn to do properly. And actually it fits right in with a busy schedule. I make a husband a batch of whole grain muffins every week so he has something to tuck in his lunch box for a healthy snack. I often mix up the batter in the evening and put it in the fridge to bake in the next day or two as I get time. Properly soaking the muffin batter takes no more time and you end up with an amazingly moist and tender muffin, even with whole wheat flour. I'm sold on it and would soak muffin batter for no other reason than to get a more delicious product.

Trina has graciously offered to give away a copy of her book to one of my blog readers. Here is how you can win a copy of  Real (Fast) Food:

1) If you already follow Dandelion Haven, or are a regular commenter, just leave a comment. If you aren't already a follower, please go to the right upper hand corner of this page and subscribe in one of the three convenient options, then come back and let me know that you did so.

2) For a second chance to win, go over and like the Real (Fast) Food facebook page, then come back and let me know that you did.

This giveway ends 10/18/11 at 9:00 pm. I must have a way to contact you to let you know that you have won.

Trina is also doing a giveway at her own blog, All That is Good. Go over then and enter for a chance to win, not only the book, but also a lovely handmade apron, and other prizes.

Linked to Farm Girl Friday. and The Barn Hop.

When Every Leaf is a Flower...

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." -Albert Camus

Butterfly and Pebbles

An Eastern comma butterfly pauses for a a moment on our gravel driveway.

Linked to Macro Monday.

October Day

I got up this morning with a long to do list. Laundry to do, the chicken coop to clean, canning apple sauce, picking and freezing the last of the green beans, mulching some of the garden rows, vacuuming, 

 I started the day with a quick walk to watch the sun rise through the mist over a field of Michigan soybeans.

The back to the house to start on my list. Except somehow with the warm sun shining outside, the list completely lost its appeal. Blue skies and butterflies gently beckoned through our glass front door.  The hammock between two pine trees in the side yard was calling my name. It had been woefully neglected since my husband put it up for me this summer.

The hammock and a  couple of books won out over the pile of laundry and gardening chores.

I spent most of the day reading and sleeping and watching the chickadees that flew in and out of the pine branches, often landing on the hammock and looking at me, trying to decide, it appeared,  if I really was a human or not.

I don't take a lot of days off and just decide to do nothing. Most days when I do nothing it because I'm not feeling well, and I always feel guilty about it. Today, I just decided to do nothing and not feel guilty about it. The nature of a woman is to nurture and care of others and in doing so we often forget to nurture ourselves. Nurses are especially notorious for this and it is one of the reasons there is a high burn out rate in nursing. We are always caring and doing and don't take a lot of time just for ourselves to just be.

I read two books today. That is something I don't often do these days, take the time to read a book from cover to cover, without interruption. The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker is the gentle story of healing and restoration that came to the author through watching and learning from her small backyard flock of hens. As a chicken lover myself a lot of her story resonated with me.

When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull up a Chair by Geneen Roth is a gentle and humorous book that encourages women of all shapes and sizes and brokenness to discover their true beauty and nurture themselves. A good reminder for this often busy and stressed out nurse.

All in all it was a good day. I didn't accomplish anything tangible, but did something much better--fully lived--mostly outside, on a perfect October day.

I ended the day with another walk--this time to watch the almost full moon rise over Michigan farm country.

And I will end with a quote that rings so true with me:

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. - Saint Augustine (354-430)

Linking to Straight out of the Camera (unedited photos) and Imperfect Prose.

Silent Tree

A silent tree

under a half moon

against an October twilight

warm air

growing chill

I stop for a moment

on the edge of the road

to take it all in

then turn

and head for home

the ending to a long day

Linked to Skywatch Friday.

A Tiny Pink Spider

Alone in the Woods

The woods have always been a lifeline and a refuge for me. Growing up, our little home was surrounded by thousands of acres of woods.  As an introvert  in a very large family in a very small house, I often escaped to the woods to be alone.  Alone in the deep forest I felt free.

Expressing emotions was something that was discouraged in my family, especially if they were negative emotions. When I was angry or upset I would turn to the woods and the maze of logging trails within it for comfort. The music of the wind in the treetops would soothe my soul and alone with the trees, I could cry and be real.

As a teenager I took my hopes and dreams (the few I allowed myself to dream) to the woods. I spent many hours wandering logging trails hoping, praying, dreaming.  

As a young adult, as the poison of patriarchy and unhealthy, stifling family dynamics began to kill my soul, I continued to turn to the woods to find peace and hope and escape from the pain, confusion, and anger that I carefully kept hidden  in my heart.

I fell in love and it was a love of the woods that connected us. It was a marriage, at least with the mindset I had back then, that could never be. I loved him anyway and would sometimes slip away to the woods to feel close to him.

I really wasn't supposed to go wandering in the woods by myself. One of the family rules was that girls should stay within sight of the house unless they had someone with them for safety reasons. It was one of the few rules I broke growing up and I broke it all the time. The forest was my lifeline. By the time I left home at 26 my feet had pretty much memorized all the logging trails in all the woods around us. I could wander them at night without getting lost. (Today that amazes me, because I have the worse sense of direction of just about anyone you have every met. I can get lost driving down my own street in the dark!)

After leaving home, I have always  found woods to wander in.

 I spent a year at Madonna House in Ontario when I first left. Again, one was the rules there, was that guests weren't to go wandering in the woods by themselves. It was the only rule I broke. I will admit I felt a little guilty about it, but I did it anyway. The woods in that part of Ontario were very different from the woods I grew up in, but they had a beauty of their own and I felt at home in them. And again, it was an escape from constantly being with people. (Unlike the woods I grew up in, the woods there did have an actual element of danger--there were both wolves and bears in the woods. I never did see any, but other guests and staff members would occasionally see them.)

As a nursing student in Michigan, I spent a lot of time in the woods behind the college campus. I slipped away there between classes and I often came to school early to do my homework there. I would go there before exams to clear my head and review notes. While it wasn't a large woods, it was a pretty one, with lots of wild flowers, a small stream, and many different kinds of birds. In fact the only other person I would sometimes see there was one of the biology instructors who would go out to the woods to birdwatch.

Living in town was hard for me in that I felt completely out of my element, but the one redeeming factor about the little city I lived in for several years was that there were many parcels of woods set aside as city parks with nothing in them but walking trails. One particularly beautiful woods became my lifeline while I lived there. I walked there almost every day for 9 years.

When we were first dating, my future husband and I spent many hours walking together in that woods. The trails ran through a beautiful woods that in the springtime was a fairyland of native woodland flowers, then down to a river across a foot bridge and through a native prairie meadow. Walking the full several miles of those trails was almost as good as being back in the woods and meadows of upstate NY.

Today, I don't go to the woods to escape. I'm finally in a place in my life where don't have anything to escape from. I find peace and rest and belonging on our little plot of land. I have a job I enjoy. A husband who loves me. The God I know today, is a God of love, not a God of rules.  But I still go to the woods. In addition to the small ones on our 13 acres, we are surrounded by  state land and many nature areas. Today I go to the woods to rejuvenate. With chronic fatigue, and the mental fatigue that goes along with it, there are many days that I feel I can hardly get off the couch. A slow ramble in the woods helps brings me back into balance and restores a bit of energy.

 A day partly spent in the woods, even if I don't get anything else done, is never a day wasted.

Linked to Imperfect Prose.

Frosted Wild Flowers

We woke up to our first frost this morning. Frost always first hits on the lowest part of our property. The vegetable garden which is on one of the highest parts of our property was spared at least for today, which is a good thing, because I haven't yet harvested all the frost sensitive vegetables.

Wild Aster



Daisy Fleabane



Queen Anne's Lace

Yarrow

Linked to Macro Monday.

Thoughts on Squash Vine Borers

To celebrate the first day of October, I harvested my pumpkins. Successfully growing pumpkins this year makes me feel very accomplished. It is the first time I have had a pumpkin harvest from my own garden since I have been living in Michigan. In the past, when I planted them, the squash vine borers quickly infested the stems, and the plants would die a slow and horrible death, leaving me with one or two immature green pumpkins. This year though, I was determined to outwit the borers.

None of the research I did was encouraging. The consensus across the board was that no matter what organic methods you take, you are going to end up with dead vines and few, if any pumpkins. But, today I am here to tell you---yes, it is possible to have organically grown pumpkins and squash in spite of the dreaded squash vine borers.



Baby Bear Pie Pumpkins

In late June I set to work fighting the squash vine borers. The plants were about 2 weeks old. The three  most reasonable suggestions I had read where to lay foil around the base of the plants to confuse the borers, put oil on the stems weekly to suffocate the eggs, and to hand pick the eggs at least once a week. I decided to try a combination of the three.

I foiled about half my plants--I didn't do them all so that I could compare them with the plants that weren't foiled. I honestly don't think the foiling made any difference. It was a lot of work and I have decided not to do it next year.

Oiling the stems was a lot messier and more time consuming that I thought it would be be--but I was treating 12 hills of pumpkins, 4 hills of winter squash, and 6 hills of summer squash. It took me all morning (3-4 hours) to complete this task each time I did it. If you were just doing a few hills, it wouldn't take that long. At first I tried to apply the oil with a rag, but that got so dirty I ended up just using my fingers. Oil and dirt don't mix very well. I had very dirty, hard to clean hands and finger nails by the time I was done. I used a high quality olive oil--I was going to use cheap vegetable oil, but my husband pointed out that extra virgin olive oil is very hard to wash off of dishes, so wouldn't that be better to use? It wouldn't wash off so easily in the rain.

Before oiling the stems I inspected the plants carefully for eggs and picked them off. This was easy, but also time consuming. The eggs are small, but dark and are easy to see.

I oiled the stems and hand picked eggs once a week from June 27th to July 10th. When I went out the next week to do it, the plants were vining heavily and it would have caused damage to the vines to try to get to the stems.

The vines did eventually get infested with borers, but the oiling and picking the eggs off gave the plants a chance to grow and become healthy and vibrant before the borers started to sap the strength out of them. Most of the pumpkin vines did die the last few weeks of September, but not before 95% of the pumpkins ripened. As for the summer squash, for the first time since I've been in Michigan, I had too many of them. In fact, zucchini and yellow crooknecks are still going strong. I made a huge batch of zucchini muffins today as well as a pasta dish with yellow squash. I've filled a freezer half full of squash.  I've never had summer squash this late in the year.  



Pumpkins and squash lined up on our balcony.

The extra work and effort was well worth in my opinion. Next year besides oiling the stems and picking off the eggs, I want to try putting tanglefoot around the stems to catch the moths as they lay the eggs. This is my own idea and I haven't seen it any  where else. It will be interesting to see if it helps as well.

What about you--do any of my readers have a tried and true way of dealing with squash vine borers?

Linked to Farm Girl Friday, The Barn Hop, and Garden Life.