Some Lil' Dar Pickles

I hadn't bought cucumber seeds in a long long time, not that I'm not a fan, I just never had the trellis network I wanted. This year I ordered "Dar" cucumber seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Wow, these are great, and they are exactly how Baker Creek described them. They're juicy and plump little things and the colouration is very unique - just what I was looking for. I collected a few for pickling the other day - made some quick dill pickles from a generic online recipe.

I should have taken a picture where you can see the size of these guys!

Chickens are dirty. Let's Make it Clean!

Keeping chickens is a blast. It comes with many rewards and some of which are the challenges it brings. You learn responsibility, accountability, perseverance, and discipline. These things come naturally to the farmer, and farm-kids. I wasn't as fortunate to grow up on farm, instead now I'm living out a mini fantasy by keeping dozens of animals in my house and yard. With that  desire to be a farm kid comes the grim reality of farm chores and cleaning, getting up early and dealing with things you don't want to deal with, no matter how cold, wet or hot it is outside...or how tipsy you got last night.

Learning what it takes to raise animals and keep chickens, has certainly moulded my work ethic and pushing my skills to be responsible with my animal husbandry. For months and years before I got my first chickens, I read countless books, blogs, web forums and asked questions, I did my research. One thing, that whole time was omitted - how dusty chickens can be and what it's really like to clean up after them. You'll see countless beautiful coops on Pinterest, you'll see pretty chickens in glorious gardens, but you wont see what I'm about to show you! Warning: dust, manure and gross cleaning pictures ahead.

In side the shed area, not actually including the chicken coop area.
You can see the dust build up on the bin lids on the left. It's time for some changes!
Just look at that floor of shame!

An Article on Miniature Horse Therapy!

I came across this article on my Facebook feed just hours after I posted about my field trip to a miniature horse breeders boarding facility, coincidence or not - this is a great article and the pictures make me melt and smile. I am all for animal therapy and Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses is doing something amazing, check them out!

Click here to read the article on Huffington Post. 

Miniature Horse Field Trip

I recently went on a little field trip to Elmira Ontario to go visit some miniature horses! Yes they're beautiful, yes, they're small, but how would they fair on the micro-farm? This question, is exactly what I wanted to find out about. 

At first glance, I scratched my head, "This woman has horses in her backyard?" Our first stop on the field trip was the downtown Elmira home of a sweet a Mennonite woman and owner of several miniature horses - Sweet Dreams Miniature Horses - her business and hobby. Low and behold we stepped into her backyard 15 metres from a public school to find an immaculate annual garden with three mini horses in a back paddock, munching hay under a small shady tree. They didn't smell, and they were very quiet and peaceful. 

You are looking at half her yard! Micro-animal husbandry? It's happening in more backyards then you think!

Take in all that colour!

Walking and weeding (it never ends!) around the garden last night I noticed an abundance of brilliant colour. The final fruits of summer are ripening up and and sadly fall approaches - which brings frost. It's very important for me to capture the garden as it evolves in the year and look back on it's beauty, hues and successes while the season of warmth persists. Some of my all time garden favourites are ready right now! Feast your eyes and enjoy this pic-heavy post!

Gorgeous "Anne" fall amber raspberries!
Very hard to find and the most delicate taste!

I have small hands, but these are big berries!

Gardening books on the Small-side

I buy gardening books and "grow your own" books fairly often, maybe a dozen or so a year, but the cost of new books isn't cheap. More frequently I take books out from the library - to gather ideas or decide if it's worth the buy. My latest finds are certainly worth the purchase!

Small Space Garden Ideas by Philippa Pearson

A book chalk-full of colourful full page pictures, illustrations and ideas. There's a good mix of projects and they're all achievable both financially and for the time-limited individual. Definitely one of the best small space gardening books I've come across, but is also wonderful for the gardener with less space because you've already filled your yard. It also introduces you to some out of the box ideas in terms of plant material - like a carnivorous plant bog garden. Not edible, but a very unique touch to a garden, certainly a conversation starter. In terms of edible ideas, there are plenty and of course all of which are adaptable. I give this book 5 heirloom tomatoes out of 5 heirloom tomatoes. You need this book - novice or veteran.

Gardening in miniature: Create Your Own Tiny Living World by Janit Calvo

Miniature gardening seems to be the next big gardening fad - although in some sense, small zen gardens and bonsai have been around for centuries and fairy gardens date back to the 1600's. Out of all the mini gardening books out there, this one is a star. It doesn't concentrate on the whimsical fairy world of nymphs and acorn bowls - but rather the scaled down sophisticated realm of gardening we all desire in our gardens at a regular size. 

 The author, Janit Calvo (pictured below) is an actual miniaturist, a blend of the visual artist, sculptor and landscape architect. She creates these amazing scaled down mini gardens both down in the garden and in containers. With the hobby expanding - this book is definitely the best out there. I even noticed the other day that Michael's Craft store is selling miniature garden items. Her use of containers and scenarios within the gardens are superbly creative and ingenious - she's got a great eye. She even has a mini farm scape with miniature tomatoes and sprouts, with to-scale Schleich chickens and a tiny coop - definitely on my to do list for next spring - a great place to grow the micro-tom tomatoes again.

Adorable and look at that flagstone!

These books are available on Amazon - a great gift for that gardener or yourself (the personal collection - you know).  I hope to be building a small garden space myself again soon. Keep those hands in the dirt - except when handling your new books!

Nasturtium, Capers, Jelly & Vinegar

I've been wanting to make nasturtium products for a while now, having only used them as edible flowers in salads and as edible decoration. While scrolling through a pickling book I picked up "brand new" at a used book sale - I noticed a recipe for nasturtium capers. I love smoked salmon with all the fixings, so I did some research and found that you can make larger sized - poor man's capers - if you will, out of the smaller light green seed pods. They don't get that dark brown colouring, but they taste nearly the same, and basically free if you grow nasturtiums and can spare a cup of vinegar and a dash of salt.

A lovely sunshine-yellow and peachy-salmon Alaska Nasturtium

I found that when using the flowers in recipes - the darker flowers were the real colour makers - the light yellow to light orange flowers emitted a very faint colour, whereas the darker flowers produced a strong orange red colour almost right away.

A pile of red and orange flowers collected for the recipes.

Other recipes I encountered were simple and seemed like worth the experiment. Nasturtium jelly - a sweet and spicy spread for crackers and cheeses, this sounded amazing, so I gathered a large amount of flowers for this and another clump of flowers for a herb vinegar with the light flavour and colouring of nasturtiums.

With the addition of plenty of chicken manure and new garden space - my nasturtiums are monsters this year. I also used epsom salt and fish emulsion sprays, which no doubt have strongly influenced the growth habits of these plants. Although I'm finding that the fertilizers create more foliage and less fruit - which displays as crazy thick leaf clusters in nasturtiums and less flowers overall - yet still more flowers per plant then in past non-fertilizer years.

Gorgeous dark red flowers a-top dark green foliage - this variety was a proven producer of flowers.

After collecting a few cups of flowers the plants looked rather bare - but, within the next two to three days they tripled the amount of flowers in a flower explosion - which was perfect for boosting the amount of seed pods for the capers.

 For making the nasturtium jelly, it's pretty straight forward - pick about 2 1/2 cups of fresh nasturtium flowers - darker the colour the more colour in your jelly. Rinse and clean them like a delicate salad.

 

Pour about 3 cups of boiling water over the flowers in a large glass bowl - metal bowl will tamper with the flavour and colour. The water will immediately change colour - but don't be alarmed, the first time I did this I actually thought I had somehow overcooked the flowers because the water appeared purple-brown - but this is just an illusion created by the flowers. Leave the bowl of water and flowers to sit overnight. You can put them in the fridge once they cool down completely, but I simply covered the bowl with plastic wrap and left it on the kitchen table for about 24 hours.

Next step after allowing the flowers to soak is to prepare a strainer lined with paper towel over a metal pot. Just note that if you use paper towel to filter, you must gently squeeze out the remaining flower "juice" and be careful not to press any paper towel fibres into your pot.

Squeeze the flowers over the strainer with your hand to extract any remaining juice and flavour and carefully squeeze the paper towel. If the water smells faintly floral - this a great thing, it will only get stronger as it cooks down!

Once all of the nasturtium juice is drained into the pot, you're ready to add sugar and a touch of spice. As you can see the juice isn't brown at all compared to how it appeared in the glass mixing bowl, it's a lovely shade of red-orange and it smells like nasturtium flowers. Place the pot on the stove and add about a cup or so of sugar and a 1/4 teaspoon of your favourite (non garlic containing) hot sauce - I added Sriracha.

Bring to a rolling boil for maybe 15 minutes or until the mixture sticks to your spoon and it immediately sticky to touch, add a dash of lemon juice and pectin. If you overcook the jelly it will turn to solid candy (another experiment, another day) and undercooking it will keep it too liquid to use as jelly.

 In the end I had two smallish jars of jelly. Pour the hot liquid carefully into each jar, wipe away and drips or spills (jars should be preheated by the oven at 125F for 10 mins) and the lids in boiling water. The jelly and jars are hot enough to seal without a hot bath. It is important to leave the jars undisturbed at room temperature - you don't want to create condensation in the jars by placing them in the fridge and the jelly needs like to solidify. Within 24 hours your batch of jelly is ready to enjoy and should be kept in the fridge once opened.

Finished product! Wowza - look at that colour!