I apologize for not updating recently.

I haven't really had anytime or all that much to say. Stuff is still growing, haven't had a frost, hail, tornadoes or the Apocalypse yet. I will have a fairly large update near the end of the week. 

Cheers!

Jelly making marathon, also some really fun recipes.

Today i finished canning the chokecherries, 8 hrs in the kitchen and another few hours picking up last minute supplies. I'm beyond pleased though! I made 102 jars of jelly and syrup! I burnt myself a few times and smashed my head really hard into the exhaust fan more than once but, it was totally worth it.
During our chokecherry picking adventures we discovered we have well over 30 trees, so i don't think my chokecherry canning adventures are over just yet. Also the cranberries are about to ripen and so the cycle starts all over again. It's a good thing that i like canning things.

Here's a few pictures to sweeten the deal. 

That's my new giant pot! It's changed my life. I love it. 

A bunch of jars of jelly!

I like to think of this as a forest of jelly. 

The jars are $6.00 each. If you can't make the market and would like to purchase some please call my cell phone at 705-465-3651.

I found some absolutely amazingly mouth watering recipes to use the jelly in. Here you go. I think you may want some jelly after reading these two recipes. 

Chokecherry-Glazed Pork Chops with Parmesan Polenta

§  2 pork chops

§  Salt and black pepper, to taste

§  2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

§  1 cup chicken broth

§  6 cloves garlic, minced, divided

§  2 shallots, minced, divided

§  1/3 cup finely ground corn meal

§  1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated 

§  1/4 cup dry red wine

§  1/4 cup chokecherry jelly 

§  1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Season pork chops with salt and pepper.

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large, ovenproof saute pan until smoking hot. Add the chops and brown on both sides over high heat, about 2 minutes on each side.

Slide the pan into preheated 350-degree oven and bake until internal temperature of pork chops reaches 145 degrees, about 15 minutes.

While pork chops are cooking, prepare the polenta. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a small saucepan. Saute half of shallots and half of garlic in the hot oil for 2 minutes. Add chicken broth. Bring to a boil. Slowly whisk in cornmeal, being careful mixture does not get lumpy. Cook the polenta over medium heat until the mixture is thick, just a few minutes. Add the cheese and mix well. Season with salt and pepper.

Keep polenta warm while the pork chops finish up.

Remove pan of chops from the oven. Transfer chops to a plate and cover with foil. Add remaining shallots and garlic to pan and saute over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add red wine and boil until reduced by half. It will take just a minute or two. Add jelly and cracked pepper and stir until jelly melts. Put pork chops back in pan and turn to coat both sides with glaze. Remove from heat. Serve warm chops with polenta. Makes 2 servings.

(Souce: http://sdoeden.areavoices.com/2011/10/19/lean-pork-glazed-and-amazing/) 

Panko Pork Tenderloin with Chokecherry Mustard

Ingredients:          

4 Tbsp coarse Mustard, plus 2 Tbsp
4 Tbsp Chokecherry Jelly
1 cup Panko crumbs
2 Tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 pork tenderloins, about 1 lb each
Olive oil cooking spray
Sea salt
Freshly ground Black Pepper

Directions:

Place a rack near the bottom of the oven and preheat to 400ºF.

In a small saucepan, stir together 4 Tbsp of the Dijon mustard and all of the chokecherry jelly and heat briefly until gently bubbling. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

Combine panko crumbs and fresh thyme. Season tenderloins with salt and pepper and generously brush with 2 Tbsp mustard. Press Panko crumb mixture onto the surface of the tenderloins.

Place the tenderloins side by side (but not touching!) in a roasting pan. Press more panko crumbs onto any areas that are not thoroughly covered. Spray the top lightly with olive oil.

Roast uncovered at 400ºF for 20 - 30 minutes. Remove from oven, cover with foil and let rest for 10 minutes.

Slice into ¾ inch thick medallions and serve at the table with chokecherry mustard.

(Source: http://www.earthy.com/Panko-Pork-Tenderloin-with-Chokecherry-Mustard-W715.aspx) 

I will also have recipe cards at market this weekend. 

It has stopped raining!!

So the forecast is called for sun all week! So by the looks of things we should have a good variety for market next weekend.
The corn is starting to sprout silks, the squash finally has large squash on it, the cucumbers are producing, and the pickling cucumbers are finally starting to vine out and bloom! I'm beyond happy.
The cold frames we built over the hot peppers are working extremely well, they are covered in blooms and have loads of peppers again. We should also have a very large crop of bell peppers very soon.
I'm spending the weekend making more chokecherry jelly and the cranberries are about to ripen.
Life is looking up!

It hasn't rained yet today...

Well we were up to our knees in mud today but we got a fair amount of work done. We even had a fair amount of growth last night so i have some pictures today.

Finally we have squash!!! This is scallop squash. 

Long island cheese. It's a butternut.

Tomatillo's

Giant tomato 

Black cherry tomatoes. 

Red cabbage.

Lemon cucumbers.

Green beans. 

Yellow beans. 

With all the wind on Saturday and the insane amount of rain a good portion of the corn has fallen over. I'm really not sure if we'll get cobs this year. 

This is what we worked on for most of the day. We wrapped all the hot peppers. They are having a really really rough time with all this cold weather so this should help. 

The inside of the make shift greenhouse. 

The bell peppers are doing really well. They're producing a lot of peppers, i'm just not sure they're going to ripen without any sun. 

Yes it could possibly rain more...

This rain is exhausting and depressing. I think i may have picked the wrong summer to open my own farm. Everything is having such a rough time with the cold nights and wet days. Panic is starting to set in for me, my pickling cucumbers aren't doing anything and my beans just flowered. I have no pictures today because nothing has changed. I have a million little bell peppers that may never ripen if the sun never comes out.
To make myself feel better i ordered the seeds for my winter greenhouse crop. I found some really really fun stuff, so i hope everyone is pumped, cause i am!

My land will be tilled and mulched in about 2 weeks time. It will quadruple our size for next year. I also located some native hazelnut trees on the property and my goal is to clone them so i can grow hazel nuts. I am so excited for next year it's unbelievable.

We also have some other fun stuff in the works for next year that i will share with you later this winter. I think everyone will be pretty excited about it!

Could it possibly rain anymore?

Well the last few weeks have been good and also really depressing. All it does is rain! This summer has been rough, it's not August 8th and i still have very little ready. Even the carrots are dragging their asses. The lack of sun has really put a damper on pepper production and the cold nights aren't helping. Being a farmer is sometimes really really depressing.

Enough of my misery and whining, here's a picture update!

Unfortunately we won't have peppers at Saturday's market, Soon though. 

Pepper plants and my dog's butt. 

This is the same basil I've been growing since March. 

We harvested the garlic! Sadly we're using it all as seed for next year. 

Little baby scallop squash.

Red Romaine. This will be at market on Saturday. 

Boston white! I love this lettuce. We made Asian lettuce wraps the other day with it and it was amazing. 

The lemon cucumbers! We will have some at market on Saturday. 

The carrot stocks are huge but the carrots are still pretty tiny. 

My onions!! Yes these are the ones i started from seed. There will be some at market on Saturday. 

Corn! The spears are coming out, the roots on most of them look really good. If the corn tastes good next year i will be growing a lot of it. 

So pretty!

More onions and arugula.

The beans are coming along, not there yet. A few more weeks. 

Cilantro!

Borage! A really pretty edible flower. 

Tomatoes.

Tomatillo's. 

The squash row. 

This watermelon isn't doing so shit hot, but it does have a fair amount of little melons on it. 

My favorite thing in the world is Choke cherry jelly and i haven't really had that much of it since my grandma passed away many years ago. Today i was driving around the property checking out the wild raspberries to see if would can harvest a fair amount to bring to market and i stumbled on not one but 5 big ass choke cherry trees that i have apparently never noticed in the last 23 years that my family has lived on the property. Most of them were ready to be harvested, the birds didn't get them yet. I honestly thought it was a lie, so my mom offered to eat one just in case they weren't choke cherries. Luckily i was right and they weren't weird poisonous berries. So we spent the afternoon harvesting choke cherries. I'm so pumped to make jelly!

We have been diligently working on the expansion for next year. We hauled probably 3 tandem loads of manure over the weekend. I have a guy coming to mulch and till all the trees and weeds for me. 

Things are going pretty well, now all we need is some nice warm sunny days!

We Harvested the Mustard!!

Well market went extremely well last week, i just wish we had more ready. Unfortunately we won't be at market this weekend due an extreme amount of work that has to be done on Saturday.

We have got all the stumps taken out of the expansion for next year. We start tilling and digging on Saturday. 

So many stumps!

We finally got to harvest the mustard today!! Took most of the day and we got 6 of those big brown paper bags filled with greens.

This picture makes it seem like we don't have that much, but it's a load of mustard. I suppose we'll have too see how much seed we got. 

We also re organized and repainted the greenhouse. SO MUCH ROOM FOR ACTIVITIES!!!

Well that's all for today. Everything in the garden is very wet but doing extremely well, harvest looks like it will be bountiful!