The Modern "Victory Garden"

There really is nothing quite like soup when you are feeling a little worn out or under the weather.   Even better - soup that starts with good chicken stock and builds upon that base with an abundance of great tasting vegetables!   I really slept badly last night and was headachy and tired all day today as a result.   I decided some comfort food was in order for dinner tonight but did not want to spend much time in the kitchen to get it accomplished.   Inspired by the culinary efforts of a friend and colleague, I decided to make some tomato and roasted pepper soup with crusty toasted cheese sandwiches.   I modified the soup recipe to fit with what I have on hand and since I did not write down the recipe I was pretty much winging it – despite all that it turned out really delicious.              

Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup

• ½ cup of chopped onion
• 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and diced
• Olive oil (enough to coat the bottom of the pan)
• 1-quart jar of diced tomatoes (drained)
• 1 cup of roasted red peppers, diced
• ½ box of organic free-range chicken stock (box is 32 ounces)
• Dried basil (not sure how much I added really)
• Pinch of sugar (to taste as needed to cut the acid of the tomatoes a bit)
• Dried red pepper flakes (hot!) – as much or as little as you like

In a large heavy bottomed stockpot, sauté onion and garlic in the oil until it starts to become translucent.   Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a low boil.   As soon as the peppers are generally softened, use a stick (immersion) blender and blend the soup until it reaches a nice chunky puree consistency.   Continue to simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes or until the flavors are well blended.   Adjust seasonings as needed.   That's it!

I used up the last of the storage onions last weekend, so I am using diced frozen onions currently.    Hopefully the freezer supply will last me until the green onions are ready to start being harvested.   The roasted peppers are also from my freezer supplies and while many of them were red and yellow, I also used some roasted jalepeno peppers too.  So this was actually a "Tomato & Roasted Multi-Colored Pepper" soup!    The home canned tomatoes are from the pantry.   I am afraid I did not think to take pictures of this soup because my head is fuzzy this evening and my focus was just on cooking, eating, and getting to bed early.    I have managed two out of the three objectives so far!                 

The seedlings in the shop under lights are doing splendidly. I watered them last evening and checked on them after dinner tonight.   The cabbages and pac choi started last Saturday are substantially emerged.   I am going to leave the humidity dome cover on them for one more day and then pull it off.   The Chinese cabbages and kale I started in mid December are continuing to really size up.            

These will be planted up in the unheated greenhouse in less than two weeks.

I hope you are having a good week and enjoying some of the bounty of your garden in your daily meals too.

I live a busy life.   I don’t think I am unique in that regard.   The technology and work ethic that makes us efficient and productive as a nation, means that the responsibilities of work and family often become interwoven into every waking hour of every day.   I embrace the technology that we have at our disposal.   It allows me to share images and thoughts with all of you about something I feel quite passionate about (home food production gardening), and it allows me to be a high performer in my professional life.   Those are good things.   It does come with a burden though, and some risks.          

The intensity of a typical modern day life can result in a serious erosion of time for just being “still”.    Ironically, it is my belief that the value of such time is inversely important in relation to the time available to devote to it.    The less you have of it - the more we need it.   My own experience is that I am most honest with myself and am more likely to find the hard answers to problems that are troubling me – when I step away from the constant noise and demands on my attention and allow something quite foreign in our society to occur – being alone for a while and savoring a moment of relative silence.   I say “relative” because even if all technology were to magically disappear and the cars, planes, and other mechanical noises that are in the background of all but the most remote locations were to disappear, there would still be lots of sounds that are occurring in our natural world.   They are just hard to hear sometimes because the other noises and demands on our attention, drown them out.   Sometimes our own inner voice of reason and truth are similarly drowned out.                                             

People often ask me (with genuine incredulity I might add) -  how I can possibly fit food production gardening (and related tasks that typically come with such an undertaking such as preserving and cooking from scratch) into a life that is demanding professionally and with it’s share of family demands as well?    To this I must respond, “my success in all the daily roles I fulfill can only come if my body and my mind are well nourished and periodically refreshed.”     It is the very act of physically working in a non-technology based effort; producing something tangible for my efforts; and having regular periods of time spent outside (away from the phone, the television, the radio, the computer, and the mobile phone) – it is those very things that make my effectiveness greater when I then step back into them again.   My attention is greater, my mental state more steady, and I bring greater energy to bear on whatever is currently in need of attention.   In addition, my family eats an abundance of quality, nutritious food, and I believe my general good health must be largely attributed to that fact, because it certainly cannot be attributed to any adherence to a regular exercise regimen!     In short, choosing to have a food production garden be a daily part of my life is an investment that I think pays many dividends. 

I hope to be able to garden until the day that I am planted into the soil myself.    I wish for others the same oasis of calm and nourishment in their lives as well.   I think it is missing in too many lives today.   That is just one (of many) reasons why I share my garden and part of my life with all of you through this site.   In the hope that perhaps others might be encouraged in their pursuit of food production gardening and that they too may discover how truly wonderful it is to simply be “still” in the garden and allow our mind as well as our bodies to be well nourished and refreshed. 

A package arrived late last week and inside was a gift of a little homemade TLC to brighten up my winter months.   Annette from Sustainable Eats sent me a jar of her homemade body lotion.                                   

Wow!  This stuff is wonderful.    It really does a great job of hydrating the skin - making it feel smooth, and the residual faint scent of beeswax has me wanting to smell my own hands.    I had read her blog post earlier in December about making this body lotion and was properly amazed at how simple it sounded and yet would have never occurred to me to try to do such a thing.   Imagine my surprise when I was then a subsequent recipient of my very own jar!        

If you have not spent time at Annette’s blog, I would encourage you to go check it out.   Gardening is definitely part of the mix of topics, but is just one element of an overall effort of eating more sustainably.   She really walks the talk and is truly inspiring in her efforts.                                

Annette lives in the greater Seattle, Washington area and is just a short car and ferry ride away from our homestead.   I hope to be able to meet her in person later this year for a garden visit.    In the meantime… thank you Annette for the thoughtful surprise gift!

This is the season of the dreamtime.   That quiet period when nights are long, temperatures are chill, and the garden is largely hibernating for the winter.   The rush of the annual garden season grows still, and there is time – time to plan, consider options, and most of all … time to dream.               

For many of us the Muse of our aspirations is delivered right to our mailbox.   Glossy and beautiful, every variety described in glowing terms - the annual parade of seed catalogs cannot fail to excite the imagination and provides much needed distraction as we while away the long winter nights.   I must get at least 15 catalogs a year.   Enjoy reading through all of them, but usually order (seeds and supplies) from only about 4.   A few of my particular favorites:

The catalogs set the dreams in motion, but the seeds… oh the seeds!   They are like a rare treasure that must be acquired, admired, inventoried, and stored with great care.   My seeds have all been requested, saved, or purchased for the 2010 garden season and as of today several of them are here, but many more are yet to still arrive.    Some recent arrivals:

The really big order from Territorial Seed should be coming any day now and it will largely complete the annual seed acquisition process.        

The seed order arrivals tend to just throw gasoline on my fire of excitement and impatience for spring to arrive.   I have gardened all of my adult life and yet I still get a bad case of spring fever year after year.   It helps to find useful employment for my energy and enthusiasm.   One form of off-season entertainment is to busy oneself with the construction of various garden structures or equipment.   Last year my shop project was the horizontal pea trellis, which turned out to be a resounding success.   This year, I have a simple idea in my head for a planting jig to make closely spaced planting easier to do – uniform spacing and fast to employ.   I spent a little time in the shop yesterday evening refining the idea and figuring out what supplies are already on hand, and what will need to be purchased.   Hoping to purchase the few items I need this coming weekend and get the working prototype put together.   I will need to clear off a section of the shop bench before I can do much work though!   All the small hand tools seem to just end up there as permanent residents.                                        

Sources of garden dreams also come in the form of surprise gifts that come my way.   I paid a visit to my sister and her husband on Christmas eve day.   She had acquired some really nice looking (and large!) planting containers – the kind that medium to large potted trees are sold in.   She gifted me with four of these beauties and I must have spent a good week enjoying thinking about all the possibilities of what I could grow in them next season.         

For now, I have settled on the idea of using them to grow four “Siletz” tomato plants.                                                                      

So what are dreams made of?   For me it would be seed catalogs, seeds, garden related shop projects, unexpected gifts of containers, but most of all, the first trays of seedling starts growing on under lights - promises of bounty to come.       

What are your garden dreams made of?

2009 ended for us on a rather sad note.   We had to have our elderly dog (Spotty) put down on New Years Eve day.   She was extremely deaf, mostly blind, and was in failing health.   She took a significant turn for the worse several days ago and it was time to ease her suffering.   She was almost 13 years old and lived a good life.   I know we made the right decision, but it does not make it any easier.          

(Spotty 1997 – 2009 / Photo taken in 2003)           

I spent most of New Years day working on The Modern Victory Garden site – wrapping up 2009 and getting things set up for 2010.   Undertook a little reorganization so that the seed starting info, harvest tally, preserving tally, and garden economics data are now under one web page link for each year.   The 2009 Garden Season info link (on the side menu bar to the right) is now finalized with a last update to the garden economics page.   The calculated net economic benefit of my garden for 2009 (values after annualized costs) was $258.62.   The detail of costs and calculated benefits is included on the page.   I have already done the vast majority of my expenditures for the 2010 garden season purchasing seed, seed potatoes (necessary this year because of the late blight infection last year), raspberry plants, fertilizers, and germinating soil mix.   I always do a big purchase process at the beginning of the season and then make very little expenditures through the remainder of the year.   The purchases combined with what I have on hand generally get me through the season.   The only other purchases to be made (that I am aware of!) is for some additional half whiskey barrels and potting soil for the greenhouse.                            

The 2010 Garden Season info link is largely just set up with empty templates for future entries with the exception of the Seed Starting page, which is complete.   I changed this up a bit for 2010 by putting all of the seed starting activity on the schedule – both indoor starting and direct seeding.   It provides a more comprehensive schedule this way and also gives a more complete inventory of what I am growing in the given year.                

The kale and Chinese cabbage starts (in the shop under grow lights) are coming along nicely.   The lettuce seedlings had really poor germination (older seed).   I threw away the remaining lettuce seeds as a result and will just wait until the fresh seed order arrives to get the early spring lettuces started.   I also got the main bed of root crops (parsnips and carrots) covered with a grow tunnel last weekend.   The primary reason to cover it is to keep my visiting rabbit out of the bed.   Up till now he has only been  bothering the back beds of carrots and has not found this main winter root crop planting area.   However, it was only a matter of time before he did, so I wanted to get it protected.   Covering the bed also provides the benefit of keeping the soil warmer so it is easier to dig after periods of hard freezes. 

In just a few short weeks, it will be time to get the seed starting process underway for 2010.   In the meantime, I am hoping to get started on my winter shop project to make some planting jigs.  

The first freeze arrived this week.   It didn’t just arrive in a gentle way either.   It seems with the weather in the past few years that everything occurs in an abrupt and significant manner.   The month of November is always our rainiest month in these parts, but this year it was setting records.   We had rain virtually every day through the month of November and plenty of them were deluge type soakers.   While it was soggy all through November the temperature was relatively moderate and warm for the time of year.   Then December arrived and it is like the spigot was just turned off by someone.   A stretch of dry and (mostly) sunny days has since ensued and is forecasted to continue through mid month and with the change came a sudden drop in temperatures – almost down to record lows for our area.   We have an arctic blast hitting us, which brought our nighttime temperatures into the mid 20’s .   The significant and hard freezes have taken down the vegetation on the semi hardy crops.   The tops of the parsnips are done but the roots will continue to reside safely in the ground.   The lettuce is also quite done in and I need to brave the cold today and remove them.   So far the brussel sprouts are holding up, but I should harvest the rest of the sprouts over the coming week just to be safe. Yesterday, I stepped out into the cold just long enough to dig up a nice mix of parsnips and carrots to slice and sauté in butter for dinner.   

I’ve got a few lists going at the moment.   Some are in my head and some are actually on paper.   And despite what you are probably thinking, the lists I am referring to are not related to the impending Christmas holiday!   Instead, they are about getting myself organized for the annual seed and supply ordering process.   I generally place orders for the bulk of seeds, nursery stock, and garden supplies right after Christmas.   I find it works better if I spend most of December taking an inventory of supplies, and developing / refining my garden plan for the coming year.   In addition to thinking about what to plant in the garden and what supplies might be needed, I also give some consideration to what projects should be completed prior to the growing season getting underway.   So far, here are the things I am thinking about:

• I need to replace the 4 Heritage raspberry plants that did not make it last year.   We also need to construct a proper support structure for the raspberry bed this year. 
• The broad-spectrum light tubes in the grow light fixture need to be replaced before the big seed-starting season gets underway.  The current tubes are quite a few years old and appear to be losing some intensity. I have some spares on hand but will order another set of spares to replace the ones I will use.   
• I am totally out of seed starting soil mix and need to stock up. 
• I want to add 4 more half-whiskey barrel containers to the greenhouse (have three in there now) – need to watch for a good sale on these, as they are kind of pricey.  As an alternative, I may give some serious consideration to constructing deep raised beds in the greenhouse using up the remaining timbers from last year's garden expansion project.
• After blogging this week about intercropping, I am inspired to give the 3 Sisters planting combination another try – using a half runner dried bean variety (probably pinto beans) and just a few squash plants in an attempt to keep it more manageable and produtive.
• This winter’s shop project is going to be the creation of some planting jigs to make it easier to do precise planting without excessive fussing around on my part.   I have an idea in mind and just need to go purchase a few materials and make a prototype of it.   I will blog about the shop project when it get's underway.   Last year’s idea and project was the horizontal pea trellis, which turned out to be a great success.

What’s on your lists?

This year’s preserving efforts had a few new recipes and a return of some old favorites.   I thought it might be fun to do a follow up to the previous posts and let you know what my judgment is on how several items turned out. 

In the totally new to me category there was pickled jalapeño peppers and spiced red cabbage relish.   We just opened the first jar of the pickled jalapeño peppers this evening and gave them a try.   Wow!   Those turned out very good.   I am glad I added the crushed red pepper flakes to the recipe because the peppers were not very hot this year and the red pepper flakes added a really nice heat.   This recipe (as modified by me) earns big thumbs up.   Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the spiced red cabbage relish.   I opened the first jar of this several weeks ago and could not even finish the first spoonful.   Yuck.   This recipe earns a big thumbs down and I am going to have to just empty the remaining jars out before someone injures themselves trying to eat some of it.   Yikes!                      

In the old favorites category we had dill pickle relish, pickled beets, and dilly green beans. True to form, these old standbys delivered to expectations.   I have to say though that I had forgotten how much I love dilly green beans. Once a jar is opened, it gets consumed almost immediately.   Nothing like a crisp croccantini flatbread cracker with a schmear of fromage blanc and then topped with a crisp dilly green bean. The spicy heat of the bean is complemented by the smooth creaminess of the cheese.  Heaven.           

So there you have it.   With the exception of the horrific spiced red cabbage relish, the rest of the specialty preserved items turned out wonderful.   If you used that spiced red cabbage relish recipe because I posted it…. you have my most sincere apology!

I woke up extra early this morning (it happens sometimes) and since I know from experience that forcing myself to get more sleep never works out - I just got up and made use of the additional time.   I pulled up the Word file that has the current garden configuration graphically laid out and began the initial process of moving the crops around to test ideas of what to plant next year and where.   This initial exercise is mainly one of exploring possibilities.   Obviously, I have a lot of time in the coming months to really fine tune next season's garden plan, but it was a good exercise to do this first look while the memory is still fresh on what worked (and what did not) in this year's garden.                                                

Invariably even when the plan is deemed "final" -  I end up changing it (at least somewhat) almost the moment I start planting!   However, it does provide a general blue print and some guidance in the selection of seed varieties.                        

I have initially decided to skip a few crops next year so I can rotate in a crop of dried beans - something I have not grown for at least two years now.   Specifically, I am going to pass on growing beets, kohlrabi, and probably even brussel sprouts, so that I have more room to add a sizeable crop of dried beans.   I confess that I am wavering on the brussel sprouts decision because we love them, but they do occupy a lot of space and for a long time (slow maturing).  

Do you have your garden layout drawn out on graph paper or electronically to allow for this kind of planning process?

There is life in the ground; it goes into the seed; and also, when it is stirred up, goes into the person who stirs it.

~Charles Dudley Warner~

I aspire to be more than just a passive "consumer".   In fact, I want to be actively engaged in the business of living.   My passion for food production gardening is very much rooted in this desire to live in closer connection and contact with the sources of my material life.   Working to grow our food and then laboring to prepare it, makes all of it much more nourishing than the sum of it's nutrients and calories alone.