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! 

Summer's Bounty

The land yields its harvest; God, our God blesses us.

~Psalm 67:6

2015 was a very different growing year for a few reasons:

First, it was the hottest summer on record, and even providing ample water could not protect some leaves and fruit from singeing in the oppressive heat. 

For example, many of our marionberries withered on the vine before we could pick them or before they had even grown large enough. We still had plenty though!

Marionberry Harvest in early July

Second, we planted our garden and then were madly busy with a house remodel and preparing to leave for China. I noticed that weeds were encroaching but simply did not have the time or inclination to deal with them before we left. By the time we returned from China at the end of June, knee-high weeds blanketed most of our garden. (Come on Grandparents, could you not watch three of our children, 17 chickens, two cows, two goats, two dogs, two goldfish and one cat, PLUS weed our garden??? Seriously, they were heroic.) It took several hours of weeding to get it back under control and we lost some valuable growing time while we were gone, which was a critical point in the season. 

The happy side

Third, Caleb set up a new irrigation system because I had to water so much by hand last year. (Bless that man!) One row was on a soaker hose - a porous hose that seeps water along its whole length, and one row was on a drip system -a long tube attached to smaller emitter tubes that drip water at the base of a plant. As the summer progressed, you could clearly see by the luscious foliage and prolific fruiting, which row was happiest. Any guesses? The drip-hose row was clearly thriving, while the soaker-hose row was clearly suffering. We will certainly repair this for next year, but by the time we realized our error, we had lost all of our cucumber plants, except for one sad little lemon cucumber that produced about ten billiard-ball sized cucumbers all summer. 

It irked me to buy 20 pounds of pickling cucumbers at $1.50/lb when I had already spent $10 on pickling cucumber plants that died. But, seeing as how much Caleb loves my garlic dills, and how stingy I had to be all last year rationing them because I refused to buy any pickling cucumbers that didn't come from my own garden, it seemed like money well spent. (And an appropriate thank you for not making me water by hand each day as I had to last summer.)

Some of my pickles, photo courtesy of atthepicketfence.com

Fourth, I had other priorities this summer. I was settling our fifth child into our family and I just didn't spend as much time in my garden as I did last summer. But you know what is so amazing? On some level, Nature, via the miracle that is God's Creation, just does its thing. So even though there were weeds and pests and water issues, our harvest was still bountiful. Our family still ate fresh food all summer and will continue to eat what we've canned, dried, and frozen throughout the coming year. 

I had always told myself when I had a larger kitchen I would allow the kids to help me with canning. (It literally was not possible in my old kitchen.) Well, I made good on it and had them help me with marionberry jam. Phew, was it stressful (and slightly terrifying) with all those gallons of boiling water and pounds of berries that need to be stirred constantly so as not to burn and the delicate timing of everything. But it turned out well and we will enjoy it all winter. 

Maybe it was fitting that it was a different growing year, as it was also a different life year, with a lot of change: good, hard, beautiful change. Months without a kitchen, but then moving into a space that will bless our family for years to come, an exhilarating trip to China and becoming a mother again, getting to know this sweet boy who is now part of our family, trying to figure out how to homeschool with a two and three year old (I'll let you know if I figure it out). There are so many variables in growing a garden, in growing up children, in growing into the person God intends me to be, but the one invariable is God himself, for which I am thankful. 

Every good and perfect gift is from above, 

coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, 

who does not change like shifting shadows.

~James 1:17

A Summer of Small Moments

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; 

to me those have always been the two most 

beautiful words in the English language.” 

~Henry James

A common annual refrain is that summer flew by and we can't believe school is upon us and where did the time go? But not this year. We lived summer this year. We lived it in slow, ordinary moments. As Sherlock Holmes says, "There is nothing so important as trifles." We had a very trifling summer, in the best possible way. 

Maybe it was that after arriving home from China at the end of June, we did not do any traveling, aside from a weekend trip to the beach. 

Or maybe it was because we stuck fairly close to home, while settling Graham into our family and our routines. 

Or maybe it was because it was the hottest summer on record and we found ourselves longing for a gentle autumn shower to quench our parched pastures. 

Or maybe it was because we had a record-breaking zero minutes of screen time for seven straight weeks, which helped us savor those fleeting summer moments a little more deeply.

Whatever the reason, come September, we were ready for routine and cooler days and the end of summer, and school. And we did not grieve because we lived summer, and who could begrudge September her rightful place in time? 

September...

"This strangely still pause between summer and autumn, 

greenery and gold, and the heat and rising wind 

that is once again readying itself to 

rush it all away in a climactic symphony 

of color and scent is - in my opinion, 

one of the best parts about living on earth."

~ Victoria Erickson

China in Two Blog Posts... Part II

When I left off in my first post we had just received Graham, who was so solemn and reserved it broke my heart. Sometime the next day Britton coaxed the first smile from him. He absolutely loves Britton and having him on the trip with us certainly helped ease Graham's transition. 

Guangzhou

Graham's first flight

The American Consulate in China is in Guangzhou in South Eastern China, just across the water from Hong Kong. All American families must stay there a week to complete Visa paperwork and a medical exam. As I mentioned in my last post, we had two fewer days in Graham's province than usual and two extra days in Guangzhou. This meant we were leaving on a plane with Graham less than 48 hours after we met him. Thankfully, he did great on the flight, mostly because he was still so tentative, reserved, and unsure of us that he sat still, flipped through a book and ate snacks. He had certainly "found his voice" by the time we travelled home. 

Guangzhou is a pleasant, heavily western influenced, tropical city, and we had a lot of time in between our fixed appointments to explore. The heat and humidity were stifling (95 degrees with 90% humidity) but we tried to be troopers. Graham continued to warm up to us and we saw glimpses of his playful personality. Here is a sampling of how we passed our eight days:

Attending Graham's medical exam

Visiting the most amazing zoo we've
 ever been to

Introducing Graham to McDonald's (which we
never eat at home, but I must admit,
tasted pretty good half a world away).

Bonding with Graham

Swimming

Strolling around

Working hard for smiles

Visiting the best Starbucks in the world
(a renovated British Colonial Building on Shamian Island)

Doing "real life" stuff (We needed a stroller and other necessities.) 

Taking a river cruise with the 20 other Holt families

The time passed quickly and enjoyably, though we were definitely ready to head home at the appointed time! 

Inspiration

Our Holt adoption group 

Aside from meeting our son, the highlight of the trip for me was watching the stories unfold around us. I kept thinking of Psalm 68:6: God sets the lonely in families. In our group alone, I saw twenty orphans become sons and daughters. I'm tearing up just writing that. I witnessed families welcome long awaited first children, long-awaited second children, long-awaited first daughters, and a few families like ours that were welcoming a younger sibling with many older siblings. Many of these children have significant medical needs. One child will likely need a heart transplant. One child is missing both his hands and feet. One child is deaf and his new family has spent the past several months learning sign language. He had never had a way to communicate and after meeting his new family he eagerly pointed to every object in sight wanting to learn the sign for what he was seeing. Several little girls had cleft lip and palate which brought all kinds of emotions, reminding me of Rosie. The reality is that these children have little hope and bleak futures in China. But each of these adoptive families saw that these beautiful children have worth and wanted to give them a home where they could grow and thrive and be loved. God bless you all.   

Home Sweet Home

Three weeks home and we're doing amazingly well. Watching Graham get to know his siblings, begin to understand that we are his people, and become comfortable in his new surroundings has been heart warming. He was terrified of our dogs and chickens (hysterical crying anytime they were in sight) but within three days began petting them. He is seeking out interaction with me and fussing sometimes when I leave the room. (Yay for attachment!) He has many English words already and understands almost all that we say to him. We see more smiles from him every day, though I do think he has a cautious and reserved nature. God has answered every single prayer and worry and fear with His faithfulness. The biggest blessing this time around has been perspective. I understand the journey better, and it is a journey. When I reflect on how far Rosie had come in two years, how far I have come in two years, I understand that this is only the very beginning opening paragraph of Graham's story. And we all still have so much growing and changing and learning to do. But thankfully there is Joy in the Journey. 

How did I get to be these amazing kids' Mom?

Brother time

The Williams 5