Garlic Cleaning Day

In my last post 11 days ago I mentioned that I harvested garlic.  I hung the garlic in the basement for all this time to cure.  Garlic needs a curing time of 10-14 days and that makes it better for long term storage.  So today I spent the afternoon cleaning it up and preparing it for our market booth this Thursday.   It was a nice cool, low humidity day - only 69 for a high temp.  I took everything out on the porch and spent time listening to all the animal life around the yard.   Birds were singing, the trumpeter swans were honking, the bees were buzzing, the wind was whispering through the trees, and every now and then I would hear the splash of the beavers in the pond.  It was all very relaxing and a good break from worrying about covid and the craziness of the world!

I took everything out on our front porch to work with, as cleaning garlic can be a dirty job. 

I used scissors to cut off the dry stems to about an inch above the garlic head, and used a soft old toothbrush to scrub away dry soil.  Also trimmed the roots to 1/4 inch with scissors.   It took me most of the afternoon to clean over 100 heads of garlic, but it was very relaxing. 

This is what the garlic looks like before cleaning and trimming.

I ended up with a nice big box full of garlic to sell at market.  I usually package up several sizes in a bag to sell, so that a cook has options as to what size garlic to use. 

Fresh garlic has a very mild and mellow taste, unlike older boxed garlic you buy at the store.  Old garlic can have a very strong and pungent taste, sometimes almost rancid.   Fresh garlic is very smooth tasting and quite mild when cooked.    Many supermarkets sell garlic from China.   Please don't buy that!  Be sure to look at the country of origin.  Garlic is very easy to grow, so I am surprised that our country would even import garlic. 
     While sitting on the porch I enjoyed just looking at the scenery.  It is always so peaceful here on the farm.

A view of our pasture land and part of the lower garden and some of our woodland. 

A view of our lake and some of the wildflowers that support our bees, and more of our woodland area. 

I've been picking a quart of raspberries every day, and now there will be another fruit to pick!  Gooseberries!  They are very sweet to eat when they are dark red.

Lots of gooseberries ready to pick.  When the berries turn dark red, they are ready to pick and eat.  One has to be careful picking, though, as the bushes have sharp thorns.   You can see some of these thorns in the photo.   These gooseberries are almost an inch in diameter. 

I used some of the fresh garlic today while cooking our lunch.  We enjoyed baked chicken, a vegetable rice casserole, and some freshly picked yellow crookneck squash cooked with garlic and butter and Parmesan cheese.  For dessert we had peaches with fresh raspberries from the back yard.  Yum!

An Early July Day at Honey B Farm

After all the rain and high heat of the last couple weeks, today was pretty decent.  Harold and I were able to get out and catch up on yard and garden chores, as the humidity was fair and the temp was about 81.  We certainly had some weeding to do!!  Some of the weeds were 2 or 3 feet high!  Yes!  that high.  When the temps were in the 90's and the humidity extremely high there was no way we were going to do weeding.   The other day we actually mowed the weeds with the mulching mower in between the rows. 
     I took some photos of how things are as of today.  Our bees are working hard on sweet clover and trefoil and garden blossoms.  The yard is humming.  Things are growing nicely in the garden in spite of the weeds.   Within the next week we will be eating fresh new potatoes, zucchini, summer squash, peas, peppers, and cabbage.  I have been enjoying fresh raspberries for several days now.  I pick almost a quart a day.  It has taken me almost 8 years to get a good raspberry patch going.   This year the berries are extremely abundant.

Some raspberries I just picked this afternoon.  Raspberries are definitely my favorite fruit.

In a few days we will be eating fresh green beans!   Nothing better than fresh beans.

Today I harvested the garlic from the greenhouse.  I got a very nice harvest of various sizes of garlic heads.  After they dry for about 2 weeks we can sell some at our market booth.

Two full buckets of garlic, about 100 heads.

A variety of sizes in the garlic.  Some heads are really big, some quite small.  I prefer small to medium heads for cooking and making pickles.   Surface dirt is left on the tender heads right now, as taking off all the soil will damage the thin outer coating of the heads and they will not keep as well.  After the heads dry for about 10-14 days, the surface dirt comes off easily without damaging the thin skin of the garlic.   I then trim the roots to about 1/4 inch, and trim the stem to about an inch.

From the amount of weeds in the rows you can see how much weeding we had to do today!  On our hands and knees, pulling and pulling and pulling.....but the peppers and cabbages look good now.

Last week Harold worked on the potato patch, laying down straw to deter the potato bugs.   It looks great, eh?  We can eat tiny new potatoes now, but we will let them grow just a bit more.  Creamed new potatoes will soon be on the lunch menu! You can see our sweet corn is growing well behind the potatoes.

The pumpkin patch and winter squash is growing nicely.  I think we will have an abundant supply of pie pumpkins and squash.  This area of the newly expanded garden used to be a 'farm graveyard' of old tractors and equipment.  A lot of work this spring made it into a usable garden space!  We had to bust new sod and unearth pieces of metal and old machinery parts.

Harold made a rough looking scarecrow in an attempt to foil the deer.  He used one of his old shirts and an old pair of jeans.  From the side and back, it sort of looks like him!  I tease Harold about just "hanging around in the garden".  So far I think it has worked to foil the deer.

My farm cats have had a tough time finding places to keep cool.  The hot sun makes everything boiling.   In the afternoons they hide under tall weeds, coming out only to drink some cool water.

A couple of this year's kittens take refuge in some tall burdock plants.

Here are three more of this spring's kittens hiding in burdock leaves.  Not only does the burdock keep them cool in the hot sun, but helps them to escape the ever present deer flies and mosquitoes.

During the last couple week's hot spell, I spent some time in my basement craft room working on a new quilt.  I am making a bedspread size quilt for our bedroom in a pinwheel pattern.  I love to work with scraps, and my fabric stash is full of a variety of cottons.  Here are some of the squares I have made so far.  I think I need to make about 80 or 90 of these squares for a bedspread size!  This project should really make a good dent in my stash of fabric scraps!

Here are 4 squares I have completed.  The quilt will have light blue sashing and stripping, and I will tie the quilt with blue and white crochet thread.

This is the basic pattern I am working with.  I got the pattern off the internet.  The horizontal and vertical lines will be light blue.  I think this will look charming in our blue and white wallpapered bedroom. It's nice and cool in the basement in the summer, and warm down there in the winter.  So my spare moments are spent sewing.

So far we have escaped all the very bad weather and hail and tornadoes.   We are praying that the rest of the summer will bring us many more blessings.  And we look forward to our honey harvest at the end of August.