A long autumn and a short fall?

It's that time of year when I keep my camera in my pocket every time I go for a walk. Just can't get enough of the golden trees and changing forest. The river reflects the sky, the trees on the banks reflect in the calm water, and really, the camera can't do nature justice, but I keep on trying...

It froze last night, a light frost, but still enough to kill squash and tomatoes. I had covered some things, but wouldn't you know it, the wind blew the sheets down. I was hoping to give my cherry tomatoes more time to ripen on the vine, but I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Fortunately, I picked all the squash and larger tomatoes I could yesterday afternoon, and what a haul it is. There's enough this year to be canning tomatoes to my heart's content (and my stomach's)!

We also have a few nice squashes and pumpkins 

for jack'o'lanterns and good eating.

Autumn doesn't officially arrive until 2:21 MST on September 23 (the wee hours of tomorrow) but it feels like it's already here. Our drought stressed trees seem to be dropping leaves early this year -- but of course, that could be my imagination and the fault of the winds we've been having these last few days. Autumn is only beginning, but the fall (of leaves) is happening in a hurry.

So enjoy the beauty while it lasts. And the bounty. This is the best time of year to visit farmers' markets -- and friends with too much produce!

Working for our food

On Saturday, I spent most of the day either in the garden, catching up with the produce that ripened while we were away, or in the kitchen, turning the harvest into soup.

Root veggies and my over-abundant kale were the day's focus. I made about 14 liters of kale soup just from our onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, beets and kale. The only things that didn't come from our yard were the sausage, kidney beans, and chicken broth. Here's the recipe (which I multiplied by four) in case you'd like some of your own:

1 lb kale

1 lb potatoes

1 lb beets

1 lb sausage 

1 cup chopped onions

1/2 cup chopped carrots

2 tsp chopped garlic

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp butter

8 cups chicken broth or combination chicken and beef broth

3 lb peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes (or a large can or two)

1 cup kidney beans

Salt and pepper

Strip the leaves from the washed kale and cut diagonally into wide slices. You should end of with 6 - 8 cups lightly packed kale. Wash, peel and chop potatoes and keep in cold water. Prick sausage; blanch in boiling water for 5 - 10 minutes to release fat. Drain; cut into 1/2 inch slices; set aside. In a large saucepan, saute onions, carrots and garlic in oil and butter, cooking until softened, about 5 minutes. Add potatoes, beets and broth, and simmer, partially covered, for 15 or 20 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked. Stir in tomatoes and kidney beans and simmer for 10 - 15 minutes. Add the kale and sausage, cook 5 - 10 minutes longer and season to taste. (Serves 6 - 8)

I love that our freezer is filling up with hearty and nutritious stuff from our garden. It hasn't travelled thousands of miles to come to us, and it's organic. All those frozen strawberries, raspberries, beans, zucchini and my sisters' cherries mean that we have some local food to carry us through the winter.

But what really blows my mind is that my grandma spent all spring, summer and fall every year to put away food to carry her family through the year -- in the early years of her family's life, she couldn't turn to a grocery store every time she ran out of something. Preserving food, butchering animals, baking and parenting (12 kids) were her full time job. Especially in August and September, I find myself thinking of her and all her hard work, realizing that I don't do half of what she did. The planning alone boggles my mind!

And I think about how far our society has come from knowing how to create our own food -- how my daughter's 12-year-old friend didn't know that salsa was made from tomatoes! So much of what we find in our grocery stores comes in manufactured packages of "food-like substances" from Ontario or the US because we just don't have the time to do much from scratch any more. But I know that I'll never appreciate any of that packaged stuff as much as I will enjoy the soup made from scratch on August 22, pulled from my freezer in the middle of January, warmed and served with some homemade bread or biscuits.

Somehow, there's something satisfying about working for our food instead of taking the store-bought, easy way out...

Ralph's Romas

I talk to my garden as I work in it... and imagine it might be funny for someone on the other side of the fence to hear me tell my strawberries to stop hiding when it's time to be picked, or explain to the pumpkins that they shouldn't be taking over the broad beans' patch. This week, they might have laughed to hear me exclaim over Ralph's tomatoes!

Ralph's banana tomatoes

Ralph is my Italian friend who lives about a block from me. Last fall, he gave me some plums and grapes from his yard, and I gave him some pears. His lovely wife, Lydia, poured me a glass of orange juice and we had a lovely visit at their kitchen table. Ralph told me that he had grown a seven-foot zucchini that put him on TV and in the papers some years ago, and showed me a five-foot one hanging from a vine on his greenhouse. We had a nice visit, and he promised me some cuttings from his grape vines in the spring.

So this spring, I went back to visit Ralph and get the grape cuttings, which are now doing quite well in my yard. I took him two of my heirloom tomato plants, and he gave me two banana tomato plants in return, and a few weeks later, two more plants that are now known as 'Ralph's Romas.' I suspect both are heirloom varieties that Ralph brought with him from Italy back in the '50s.

So I've been watching Ralph's Romas and bananas growing this summer, but I was paying more attention to the banana tomatoes because I've had Romas for years... and last night, when I was checking to see if any of the Romas were ripening, I got the surprise of my life. I knew there was one big one on there, and I told it, "Look at you, you're huge." It is -- the size of two of my fists held together. But then I peeked further under the plant and exclaimed, "Holy ....!!!" Hidden behind the big one was the mother of all tomatoes, the largest I've ever been able to grow, so big I can't get two hands around it.

Ralph's Romas

It seems Ralph's Romas don't want to let his zucchini put them to shame or something. I'll save seed from the monster/mother tomato, and make a whole pot of spaghetti sauce from it, I suspect. I'm guessing my rather ordinary heirloom tomato plants have no power to impress the Tomato and Zucchini King! But life isn't about impressing people... though his tomato varieties have impressed me! Thanks, Ralph!

Simple Suggestion #212... Meet a farmer or two...

I've taken a long break from my Simple Suggestions for making life easier on the planet and us, but I'm a long way from running out of them! They just keep coming, fast and furious, and I could probably post several a day... but my friend SuperSu does that already on Twitter (you can find her by clicking here), and besides, with various beds in the garden demanding the hands of a harvester, I don't have enough time for dealing with all that produce plus moodling AND tweeting! (Besides, I've never really gotten into Twitter much...)

Here's a suggestion for Albertans this weekend -- it's Open Farm Days August 23rd and 24th -- the weekend that farmers welcome visitors to meet them and learn about their operations and the local production of the food we eat. This video made my mouth water a few times... and has me hoping to spend Sunday visiting a few farms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnTNBebcHA

For more information, check out http://www.albertafarmdays.com/. And if you're not from Alberta, check around and see if there isn't something similar in your neck of the woods. You might be happily surprised!

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Simple Suggestion #82... Buy local where possible

My local shopping mall has a nice little farmer's market every Saturday. One day I was there buying some onions, and a tiny little senior citizen shuffled up to me and asked, "Nice onions?"
"Yes," I replied.
She came in closer to see for herself, then said, "Hmmph. They're cheaper at Safeway." And off she went to the big grocery store further down the mall.

Don't you just hate it when you think of what to say long after the opportunity has passed? What I should have said was that Safeway's onions probably come from California, and they're not so cheap when you add in the poorly-paid labour of the migrant workers who harvested them, the cost of the gasoline to transport them thousands of kilometres, and the carbon emissions of the trucks that brought them so far north. I could have suggested that we really ought to be supporting our local farmers, encouraging them by buying their produce so that they can grow more food for local markets, because there may come a day when the price of transporting onions from California will be prohibitive, or crops down there will fail, or there will be other reasons that we will need our farmers here to be doing well. If I would have pointed out to her that I don't mind paying a little more for my onions because they taste fresher than Safeway's and I like to kibbitz with the man who grew them and brought them to the mall in his truck, I wonder if she might have understood the happiness that comes from knowing where my produce originates and who is benefitting from its sale.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Next time, I'll be more prepared to defend the simplicity of buying from my local producer.

What's your favourite local product?

P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

Pears, anyone?

One of the features that sold me on my dream home is two pear trees. The wonderful people who were the original owners were a gardener and a grafter. Years ago, John Makar planted two young apple trees and somehow got some pear grafts for them, and every year at this time we bless him for them. (I also bless his wife Ann for the wonderful perennials in our yard).

On Saturday morning, I went outside with my morning coffee, and as I sat in a patio chair, a pear fell to the ground at my feet. So I got up, picked a pear from the tree, and bit into it. As my teeth broke the skin and sank into the soft flesh, a sweet and delicious juiciness trickled into my mouth, and I knew it was Pear Day. I spent two hours up on the garage roof, picking enough pears to fill a large rubbermaid bin while our girls picked from the ground or the tree. After lunch, I got up on a ladder and picked another dozen pails full. Lee pruned the section of the tree that we didn't do last year, and we finished clean up by seven p.m. It was a busy day (that included 5 loads of laundry hung out to dry).

Here's Julia's handy pear picking pulley set up.

Lee, pruning the tree. (Hey, I'm a poet!)

View from the step ladder.

I had to get up on the top step, eventually.

Here's most of the harvest, though there are still some we didn't reach.

So, if you're interested in getting some delicious, juicy little pears this week, there's a bin full sitting on my front step. Bring a pail, and help yourself! The other bin went to The Edmonton Food Bank this morning -- 31 kilos, or 65 lbs worth. We still have that much again, so as for me, it's time to dehydrate pears, and make pear pies, pear kuchen, pear muffins... and anything else pear that I can come up with. If you have a good pear recipe, send it my way!