The Last Summer Post

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change."

~ E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

Today is the last day of summer, but in truth, it has not felt like summer for a couple of weeks. The stifling heat has relented, the parched ground has been satiated, the crickets have indeed spread word of change, and our carefree days have been replaced with schedules and routine.

A few summer notables:

* My 40th birthday gift from last December is finished and installed at the end of our driveway. We are official now. I could not love it more.

* My beloved, beautiful, tabby cat Digory was hit by a car. 

Thorin and Digory

For 24-hours we thought we were going to be able to save him, but we ended up having to put him down. He was the best farm cat, killing (and often eating) 1-3 critters every day, and he loved me so much he even dropped a squirrel at my feet in the middle of dinner. His favorite place to be was on my shoulder, and I would carry him around as I did my farm chores. True, he was an imfamous chicken killer and we have not lost a single chick or juvenile chicken since he died, so that is just a very faint silver-lining. He would often be absent for days at a time, so I always knew I needed to hold him loosely out here in the country. I just thought he'd go as a wild animal's dinner, not by car. 

I waited exactly one week before going to Salem Friends of Felines to find another cat. (I promised Caleb if anything ever happens to him I will wait significantly longer before replacing him.) Since we just did the kitten thing with Thorin a few months ago, I wasn't super excited to do that again. We ended up with the sweetest 9-month old cat. The kids wanted him even over the adorable kittens because he was an absolute love. 

We named him Huckleberry Finn Williams, and he has yet to catch a single critter (aside from a couple of moths). He may be our lover, while Thorin, who was Digory's protege, is turning into our fierce hunter.

Huck and Thorin have become friends

and bravely protect our driveway.

* For years we have been looking for a cider press. New presses are $600-$1000, which is hard to justify for a once/year use. Occasionally we would find a used one on Craigslist for $200-$300, only to have it slip through our fingers. They always sold extremely quickly and were often too far away for us to get to them in time. I was getting my haircut when I received a text from my dear farm neighbor, who knew of my desire for a cider press. (I speak of these neighbors often, as they have been so generous and gracious in helping us to learn these country ropes.) She sent me a picture and said her husband was at a farm sale and a cider press was $150 and did I want them to buy it for us? BUY IT!!! And they did, and her husband worked them down to $120.

They even did a little internet research on my behalf and determined it was built in 1874. Cleaned up versions are selling for $1,000 on ebay. We may take a sandblaster to the rust at some point... or we may not. We're hoping to press some cider and wine this fall, but even if we never use it, it is a beautiful piece of history. 

*Caleb built a long-dreamed of firepit and we were able to get one fire in before the burn ban took effect. 

Firepits seem to bring out the love in everyone.

*After a very slow start, and despairing that I would have little produce to show for my gardening efforts this year, the last month has seen me canning and freezing and overall, quite pleased with what I've been able to salvage from this unusual year. 

Last year, I took a break from tomatillos because I had so much salsa still from the previous year. But this year the pantry was depleted, so I again planted tomatillos.

I canned salsa verde

and Mexican tomatillo salsa.

 We've decided that we do not care for the texture of blanched, frozen green beans, so I turned all of our excess beans into pickled dilly beans.

 

In September I finally had tomatoes to process. I froze enough for my two girls' birthday dinners next spring and then set about canning salsa and chopped tomatoes. (We still have plenty of marinara.)

We also grew berries, grapes, broccoli, beets, carrots, cucumbers, corn, potatoes, radishes, squash and peas. Most of these were not stellar crops for us this year, but we enjoyed what we had.

As the sun sets on summer, we are thankful for all of God's Good Gifts to us: animals that we love enough to miss when they're gone, friends who generously lend their time and talent for a gift that truly pleases, neighbors who help make dreams come true, and of course, the bounty of our land which will feed us through the coming winter. Welcome, autumn.

Go Local

He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely, 

but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully.

~Proverbs 10:5 

One blessing of living in this lush, fertile valley is that whatever we don't grow ourselves, due to lack of space, lack of energy, or a failed crop, is almost always available locally. We have been unsuccessful with blueberries. We will keep trying, but in the meantime, one mile down the road from our house is a blueberry farm where we picked 45 pounds of blueberries this summer. I froze them on cookie sheets and then loaded them into gallon ziplock bags. We will eat them in smoothies, pancakes, and as a plain frozen snack all year long. 

Our strawberries completely failed this year, whereas last year we had a bountiful crop: plenty to eat, plenty to can, and some to freeze. (We have some work to do this winter to get them going again.) Fortunately, we were able to pick at a farm a short drive from us and freeze 20 pounds for the coming year. 

We would like to plant peach trees, but have not yet, so are at least several years out from having our own peaches. Every summer we drive twenty minutes to a local farm and pick by the basketful. 

This year we left with 65 pounds. I canned a bit of peach jam, we made homemade peach ice cream, and ate many plain. But the majority I sliced and froze, with skins on (hate to peel off all those nutrients), to be used in smoothies throughout the year. 

Our favorite smoothie recipe (I triple it for the kids and I):

1 banana
1 sliced peach
1 cup blueberries
1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
1/2 scoop vanilla whey protein powder
1 Tbs almond butter
Almond milk as needed to thin if fruit is frozen

Graham ate his first peach here and is definitely a fan!

At the peach farm, in this very rural location, I was surprised to see an Asian woman on the little wagon taking us out to the orchard. (The orchard owners tired of cars running over their irrigation pipes and so require us to be transported.) She kept staring at us and smiling and I was fairly certain she was Chinese. When we got off at the same stop to pick the same variety of peaches she asked if my children were Chinese. I told her they were and then she hugged me and said, "Thank you." She had a thick accent, but her English was good. We proceeded to have a pleasant conversation in which I discovered she has been here in the States for 6 years and married an American. She hugged me and thanked me no less than three times in our short five-minute conversation. I stressed what a blessing our Chinese children are to us, but she was clearly moved by what we had done. I am always equally moved when Chinese people, who truly understand the desperate plight of the Chinese orphan, share their feelings about our adoptions with us. I believe this moment in a peach orchard in rural Oregon was a sweetly ordained moment by God. 

Though we have six apple trees, we had a very small crop this year. The two that appear to be Gravensteins have only every borne a few apples each season, and the other four (two Golden Delicious and two Red Delicious) were either not pruned enough, pruned too much, or pruned too late in the season. I could tell by the scarcity of blossoms in Spring that we would not have many apples. We also did not follow the prescribed organic spray schedule as we had planned to, so the majority of the apples we did grow were scabby and wormy. Biting into one them was like a game of russian roulette. I would not recommend it. I was able to cut away the yuck and make a fair amount of apple butter, and a few of our Golden Delicious were beautiful for eating. But for the remaining dozens of quarts of applesauce and pints of apple butter, we returned to a place we had not been in a few years: our favorite apple farm, Beilke Family Farms.   

We picked about 70 pounds of Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith. They were gorgeous. I'd risk biting into one of those any day!  

Last weekend, I got to work, after a welcome month-long break from canning:

I don't think I can adequately express how much of a joy canning on my new stove is, compared to my old, small, ceramic-top stove with a broken large burner, where it would take an hour just to bring my pot to boil.

I wrote last year about my favorite applesauce and apple butter method and recipes and also about the amazing Kitchenaid attachment that makes perfectly textured applesauce. 

We feed the apple scraps to the cows and goats and it feels very satisfying to know absolutely nothing is going to waste. 

I had several quarts of applesauce left from last year, but I opened the last apple butter in July. We shall now make it through another year!

We are very thankful to live in a place where we can so easily live out our beliefs that it is best to buy local, both to support the local economy and also to buy food with the highest nutritional quality (so much is lost during transport and on store shelves) from people who we know are farming their land responsibly. In our VERY modest foray into growing our own (both plants and animals), we are in awe of people who do this for a living. We love Oregon and our local farmers!

                                                                                              

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

Someone who plants 30 tomato plants has pretty much forfeited the right to complain about being inundated with tomatoes. So I won't complain. I will just state that the sheer volume was daunting at times. Above is a picture of my harvest twice per week. But considering that my family had not tasted a fresh tomato since the end of our harvest last summer (I refuse to buy tomatoes out of season), they truly were a welcome sight. How did we use them? For starters, we introduced our kids to the delights of Caprese: fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled with Himalayan pink salt. Yum! They became fans. Okay, so that used three tomatoes at a time. What else? 

There are two "fresh tomato" recipes that I look forward to making each summer. 

The first is truly the essence of Summer. When I taste it, I always give a little sigh and savor that first bite. Though it is a soup, it is served just slightly warmed, so even during the hottest summer on record in my un-air-conditioned house, I made this several times. The simplicity of the ingredients and the 20 minute prep time always amaze me.  Serve with crusty bread to sop up every last drop.

Warm Tomato and White Bean Stew (from Sunset Magazine)

Ingredients:

Photo Credit: Sunset Magazine

3 pounds ripe tomatoes, rinsed (The riper and redder the tomatoes, the tastier it will be.)
1/2 cup slivered fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced or pressed
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
Fresh-ground pepper
1 can (15 oz.) white beans, drained and rinsed
8 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, drained and cut into cubes (1/2 in.)
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Core and dice tomatoes. In a 4- to 5-quart pan, combine tomatoes, basil, olive oil, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste. Let stand until tomatoes are very juicy, about 15 minutes.
2. Set pan over medium-low heat and gently stir in beans. Stir occasionally until mixture is warm to touch, about 5 minutes.
3. Add mozzarella and parmesan cheese. Gently stir just until mozzarella has softened and starts to melt into strings, 2 to 3 minutes. Taste and stir in more salt if desired. Spoon stew into bowls and top each serving with a sprinkling of more basil and parmesan cheese.

Elisabeth has actually requested this for her next birthday dinner in March. Considering that last year she was obsessed with her dislike of tomatoes and was happy that summer was over just so our family would be tomato-free, I consider this a HUGE victory! So I chopped and froze 6 pounds of tomatoes to accommodate. I'm hoping that the texture won't be too compromised. Since the tomatoes break down in the soup, I think it should be fine. I'm sure by March we'll all be ready for a reminder of the summer goodness that awaits us just around the corner.    

The second recipe is the freshest, most delicious spaghetti I've ever had. However, I have to wait for one of those cooler summer day because of all the stove-top cooking involved. 

Spaghetti With Meat Sauce and Mozzarella (from Real Simple magazine)

Ingredients:
12 oz spaghetti
1 TBS olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
kosher salt and black pepper
3/4 pound ground beef chuck
1 Tbs tomato paste
2 lbs beefsteak or plum tomatoes, chopped
6 oz fresh mozzarella, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

Directions:
1. Cook the pasta according to the package directions; drain and return it to the pot.
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, and ½ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion begins to soften, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Add the beef and cook, breaking it up with a spoon, until browned, 3 to 5 minutes.
4. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften, 5 to 7 minutes more (add up to ¼ cup water if the pan is dry).
5. Add the beef mixture, bocconcini, and basil to the pasta and toss to combine.


Finally, I canned many quarts and pints of chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce to use in soups and pastas, as well as many pints of salsa. All vegetables must be pressure canned, whereas most fruits have enough acidity on their own to be safely water-bath canned. But just as the age old question asks, is tomato a fruit or vegetable? In terms of PH, the tomato refuses to delare itself, landing squarely in the middle of the spectrum. Thus, tomatoes can be tricky to water-bath can because they are right on the edge of not having enough acidity. Lemon juice or vinegar (for salsas) must be added and very few, if any, alliums (garlic, onions, etc.) can be added because their low  acidity will compromise the safety of a water-bath. It is therefore difficult to home-can a rich, flavorful sauce, so I just make a basic sauce that can be doctored up upon opening of the jar, like the one in Food in Jars, one of my favorite canning books. 

Pounds and pounds of green tomatoes are still on the vine, and I'm debating if I want to ripen them indoors or just be finished with them. In any case, until next summer, I affectionately bid adieu to fresh tomatoes. See you in July!