November and the garden's still going

If this were a commercial, our garden would be powered by Energizer.

Thanks to DH's gardening, Andy-the-guardian-llama's manure and those busy grub-scratching chickens, we're eating beautiful cauliflower and sweet turnips and Savoy cabbage this week. Also available are garden beds filled with Swiss chard (green and rainbow), beets, spinach, cos and buttercrunch lettuces, kale, cilantro (who said that stuff is a summer crop?) and another type of cabbage -- Early Jersey Wakefield, I think. Plus I'll be using the usual fresh herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary and even bay) from the garden to brine our turkey next week. There's really something for everyone growing in the garden as the chickens are enjoying freshly-sprouted greens which DH planted where the potatoes were earlier and Andy and the sheep get a share of turnip tops or other greens when picked.

This the first year we've planted Savoy cabbage. Usually DH plants Flat Dutch cabbage (early or late varieties) as our green cabbage and those are very good, too. The heads are large, heavy and excellent keepers. I've eaten that type of cabbage all my life and used it for everything from fried cabbage or soup to coleslaw and sauerkraut. But, oh man, those half-dozen heads of sweet Savoy cabbage that we've had this fall have knocked me for a loop. Who knew there was such a difference? I'm sure we'll still plant plenty of Flat Dutch but I'm holding out for at least a dozen Savoy cabbages, too. They are so sweet and tender we can eat a whole head of cabbage at one meal and all I did was saute it in a little garlic olive oil. My mother said the only way she could improve on it would be to fry a couple slices of bacon, use the grease to cook the cabbage and crumble the bacon over top. But then some people think everything tastes better with a little bacon...

Grape wine, step 2

When I went to check the water for the air lock on the carboy of grape wine last week, I realized it wasn't bubbling very much. Means it's time to siphon the in-process wine out and throw away the grapes and any sediment that remaining in the carboy.

Saturday morning DH set the carboy on the kitchen worktable and I set a large stainless steel pot on the floor beside the table. DH removed the airlock cap and ran one end of a piece of 1/2-inch tubing into the carboy, below the level of the floating grapes, with the other end hanging off the table into the pot. It's like siphoning gas except it's okay if you get a little in your mouth. Matter of fact, it's a good thing because it's an excuse to taste the wine and see if it's coming along as it should.

In this case, the answer was yes! It's robust and fruity. If nothing happens to alter its progress, I think it will be pretty good when it's ready to bottle in a few more months. For now, though, DH hefted the carboy upside down and poured (shook?) the grapes out, then I rinsed the carboy and we returned the wine to the jug and put the airlock back in place.

I'd been afraid that making it from the whole grapes instead of using juice would mean a real mess when it came time to do this step -- removing the grapes through the small neck opening on the carboy. But the grapes were mostly firm, solid globes and poured out without a fuss.

I almost felt wasteful throwing them in the compost as the chickens love grapes but the alcohol level in one grape (all I tasted) would have knocked a little red hen on her butt. Maybe pigs would be okay with a small batch like this but we won't have any till early next year. The dregs of the next wine fruit can go to them as DH is already talking about what we should try next because, unlike with the beer we usually make, we can grow and/or pick all the base ourselves.

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." -- Isaac Asimov

Fifi, the white Silkie hen, went missing this week. All we've found are clumps of fluffy white feathers in a long trail leading away from her favorite egg-laying spot towards the fence. She had taken to laying her eggs near the old apple tree in a little leafy spot she created just for that purpose instead of in the chicken house. It was off to one corner of our field-fenced backyard, away from where the other backyard girls and chicks typically hang out.

Our neighbor's farm pond hosts a fox den. He can watch the kits play there every spring. We've heard the local band of coyotes howl on the other side of the field behind us -- maybe 1/2 mile away. DH surprised what he thinks was a speedy coyote in the fenced backyard late one evening. Andy, the guardian llama, makes sure the sheep are up near the open barn when it's time to turn in at night. He positions the sheep between the barn and himself so he's always on guard. DS and I found a young skunk in the chick pen and, on another occasion, a full-sized skunk inside the electric poultry netting when we went out to close the houses up earlier this summer. We had a feral orange cat this summer who tried to catch the small chicks on occasion. There are predators all around us.

But secretly I've always believed they wouldn't kill any of our animals. You know, I suffered from a variation of the NIMBY or not-in-my-backyard syndrome even though earlier this summer, Petrock Trelawney's hatchmate, a little cockerel who wasn't around long enough even to secure a name such as Stewpot or Potpie went missing, too. We never found feathers or any sign of what happened to him but he and Petrock (photo on left) had developed the bad habit of hanging back instead of going straight into the house at night. DS and I would have to shoo the two of them in, sometimes resorting to waiting till they had settled into a bush or low-hanging tree branch then plucking them off their perch and stuffing them in the house. One night we couldn't find the cockerel. Either he was well-hidden (to us, at least) or he'd already been nabbed. Whichever way, he was still missing come morning so we concluded he had been devoured by some hungry animal.

Fifi will be much missed. She was the best mama hen we've had. Regularly setting on a hatch even in the coldest weather. Always shepherded her fledglings with the stereotypical "mother hen" approach. She stood up to the "big girls" and kept them from bothering her chicks. Even taking on Turkey, the naked neck hen and backyard leader, for their sake. Fifi's sometimes feisty attitude towards other chickens, her blue bill and earlobes (typical of Silkies) and her general cocky yet friendly stance towards us, her people, made her stand out amongst the other backyard girls.

At not quite 6 months old, her daughter, Snowball, hasn't yet shown any indication of broodiness or the strong personality Fifi exhibited but I hope she grows to fill the space her mother left not only in our hatching scheme but in my heart. I miss Fifi. We all do.

Garden: Still going

Mid-week, while picking more tomatoes, I spotted a perfect little bok choy bunch in the garden and told DH we'd have that for supper on Friday. So last evening when he went out in the rain to harvest it, I thought I'd just make a quick side dish to go with the defrosting chicken breasts. But when he came in with a handful of tender young green beans and a couple of yellow squash, too, I quickly chopped up the chicken and threw it in a bowl with some seasonings to marinate while I sliced a few Egyptian onions and scrubbed the potatoes. A meat and veg stir fry seemed like the best use of the available produce.

It took me about 20 minutes to get the vegetables prepped and the potatoes cooking. In less than 40 minutes from the time he walked in the door with the fresh garden produce it was on the table and we were sitting down to eat. We had crushed new potatoes instead of rice along with the chicken-bok choy-squash-green beans-and-onion stir fry. And sliced tomatoes, because we always have sliced tomatoes on the table when they're ripe from the garden.

With the rain still coming down today, we'll have more tomatoes, tomatillos, squash and green beans right up till frost. And the lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, beets, turnips and cabbage should continue till the real cold weather sets in or beyond. Our potato onions from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange arrived this week and they'll go in the ground soon. Though the Egyptian or walking onions stay in the garden year-round, I'm looking forward to trying the potato onions as they're more like a globe onion than a green onion and with careful stewardship will multiply and be able to provide for most of our onion needs within a few years.

The marinade I mixed up was a blend of soy sauce, cornstarch, gingerroot, garlic, sesame oil, oyster sauce, balsamic vinegar and sugar that I use for chicken or pork.

Stir fry sauce

1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 to 2 teaspoons gingerroot, grated
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 to 2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1/8 to 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar

Mix all ingredients together and add meat. Let sit at room temperature for at least 10 minutes or up to 30 minutes. Drain before cooking.

If I don't have fresh ginger I use refrigerated gingerroot I've preserved in sherry. And sometimes I use sherry instead of balsamic vinegar but I first started using the vinegar because it's a pantry staple here and sherry isn't always at hand.

Chicken update

Here's a picture taken September 1 of Fifi's latest brood of 4 chicks which hatched August 11. Mr. Fluff and Valentine, a pullet Fifi managed to hatch in 0°F. weather this past February, are also featured. At least one of the chicks, the silvery one, is a cockerel but we're hopeful the other three are pullets.

This photo was taken this morning and shows the chicks out-growing Fifi. She still takes them under her wing (literally!) and shelters them from the rain, tho. And when we had a hawk scare on Tuesday, she sounded the alarm and the chicks stayed put, hunkered under the sweet annie and peonies around the deck, until the still-hungry hawk left the area.

Fifi and family live in the backyard rather than in the portable electric netting we use for the 2 full-size roosters and their hens. She shares the small backyard coop with another of her hatchlings, a green egg layer now almost a year old, known as Bronwyn. Bronwyn is well-known to our closest neighbor as she enjoys going on walk-about regularly. Every time we spot her out of the fenced backyard, she quickly heads home without any fuss on our part but she's determined to check out the surrounding green space at least a couple of times each week.

Dolly and Turkey are two more of the backyard girls. Turkey is an extra-large Turken who sees herself as a pet instead of a laying hen. Oh, she comes up with an egg regularly but apparently believes her main purpose in life is to set on one's knee and be petted and fed tidbits. Sort of like Holly-dog with feathers. Dolly makes a very distinctive coo-ing sound and sometimes finds herself being trailed by Mr. Fluff. He usually leaves the larger hens alone but has decided Dolly's the hen for him.

Grapes - juice, jelly and wine

The grapes came in three batches this year -- most of what we picked were concords and all were growing within a 2-mile circle but they ripened over several weeks instead of all at once. A change from the last few years.

The first batch, picked from my mom's two grape vines, we turned into grape juice just like last year. We put up a little over 40 quarts. The next batch, a little over three 5-gallon buckets full, came from vines at my sister's old house. No one wanted the grapes so we picked them, used one bucketful to make grape jelly and gave the rest to some friends for making grape juice.

While we were picking my sister's grapes we exchanged greetings with a neighboring friend and got to talking about what we'd do with the grapes. She's a winemaker and before we knew it we decided to take the carboy we use for beer-making out of storage and try our hand at a batch of grape wine, too. Since we'd already promised those grapes to some other friends, we waited till the last vines we usually pick were ready and used them to mix up a small batch of concord grape wine.

The recipe is very straightforward. After rinsing and stemming, we measured grapes by the quart and added the same number of quarts of water to the carboy as we did grapes. The sugar was calculated by cup with a measure of one cup to each quart of grapes used. We were advised if we wanted a slightly sweet wine to increase the sugar by roughly a scant 1/4-cup per quart or no more than four cups to 5-gallons of combined water and grapes. The wine yeast we used, Red Star's Montrachet, was what I already had on hand from an earlier field trip to Dinosaurland.

After combining the grapes, sugar, yeast, and water (mixing the yeast with a little of the water first), DH moved the carboy from the kitchen worktable to an empty corner in the home office. It's far enough from the woodstove to stay relatively cool come cold weather yet in a spot where I see it every day so can monitor the water level in the jar in order to maintain the necessary airlock. The first day or two, I found myself talking to the dog only to discover she wasn't in the room. The sound of the air escaping from the tube into the jar of water is the same sound Holly-dog makes when she's asleep and dreaming -- little ruff, ruff, ruffs emanate from that corner all the time now.

So the fruit and sugar went into the carboy on September 19. It wasn't particularly difficult to prepare though none of my funnels were the right size to channel the grapes into the narrow opening on the carboy. I did that slow but steady job by picking up grapes by the handful and letting them roll into the jar using my other hand as a shield. When DH tried it grapes bounced everywhere but into the carboy so I did the grapes then he handled the sugar and water with yeast. I've been assured that it will look terrible, what with fermenting grapes and all, before we get to the next step in roughly three months but our adviser promised to come help with that...

Here's what it looked like today, the fourth day of fermentation. And below are a couple pictures of DH and DS from last week, picking the last of the summer (wine) grapes.

Fresh blackberries

Today's featured home-grown food was blackberries. DS's been picking them every morning for breakfast but today we each had a bowl of berries with some top cream and a couple of honey wafers for dessert with our lunch. The honey wafers are similar to a sugar cookie or thin shortbread. They only take 4 ingredients and are good keepers -- if you can keep them hidden, that is.

I kept the rest of the meal simple, too. DH grilled our garden-fresh squash (green and yellow zucchini), onions and potatoes over the gas grill. Prior to grilling I par-boiled the potatoes and drizzled a little olive oil and soy sauce over the squash and onions. Also made a tomato and mozzarella salad using our yellow pear tomatoes and Genovese basil plus cheese I'd picked up Saturday at the farmer's market. When the grilled veg was ready I sprinkled chopped chives over the potatoes and passed butter, as desired, at the table.

Honey Wafers

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
2 cups all-purpose flour (I use fresh-ground soft wheat)
1 teaspoon baking soda

Cream together butter and honey, warming them carefully for a minute or two, if desired, for easier blending. Combine dry ingredients and add to (cooled) creamed mixture.

Chill dough 1 hour or until firm enough to roll easily. Roll out 1/8" to 1/4"-thick on lightly floured surface. Cut with floured cookie or biscuit cutter. Can also be chilled in log shape and then sliced 1/8" to 1/4" and baked as needed.

Bake on greased cookie sheet in 350°F. for 8-10 minutes if 1/8"-thick or 12-15 minutes for 1/4"-thick cookies.

I usually prefer a mild honey in these but orange-flower honey with bits of orange zest added is a wonderful variation. Try adding 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon each ground cloves and allspice to make a spice-scented version.

Yield: 36 2" cookies

How does my garden grow?

Yellow pear tomatoes plus blackberries. Green beans, potatoes, red and yellow onions and more.

The last few weeks it's felt like the dam broke. We put up over 50 quarts of green beans from one short (15'?) double row and that's not counting the many pickings we ate and gave away. The two rows of potatoes DH's dug so far yielded 2 bushel baskets plus another 20 pounds we ate or gave away. I have a half-bushel of yellow onions and almost that many red (purple) onions lying on newspaper in the shed. Haven't done anything with the garlic except pull some to eat -- still have to harvest and lay it out to dry before storing. Squash, cucumbers and now Sugar Baby watermelons are coming in daily, too.

And blackberries! This past week, DS has been picking blackberries every morning for our breakfast. Today he's over at my mom's and they're planning to pick her blackberries before he comes home. It's anyone's guess how many will make it in the bucket vs. how many get eaten but I'm sure we'll have enough to freeze a few bags for use this winter in smoothies or maybe in a cobbler.

Tomatoes started ripening in mid-July but it wasn't till this past week we had many worth eating. The first all had blossom-end rot, the curse of well-dependent gardeners, I think. Now we have them coming in by the dishpan and I'll be canning tomorrow -- probably ketchup as we're on the last jar from last year.

This year we planted some new-to-us yellow pear tomatoes. I've had them from friends' gardens but never tried growing our own till early this spring when I started about a dozen peat pots with seeds. They're so small and perfectly pear-shaped. The taste is sweet but with just enough tang it keeps them from being bland. And the color's lovely in salads or chopped for salsa. When we get overrun with them, I'll just toss the extras in with the other tomatoes for canning but I'm thinking some yellow tomato preserves would be pretty on the shelf and tasty, too.

The county fair's coming up and I always like to have a few entries in the canning classes. I'm wondering how the yellow pear tomatoes would look in a canned salsa, maybe using red onions, too. I know I'll like them dried and can already picture them as bruschetta -- they'll be darker dried than they are fresh but the yellow color stays true enough to add a nice dash of color to the table in the winter months.

Another marinated summer salad -- this time with homemade Catalina dressing

The days of the week blur together lately. I put up 19 quarts of green beans, 15 quarts of pickled beets, dried 8 pounds of beets, 16 pounds of various types of summer squash, 9 pounds of cucumbers and more this past week. I swear the corner of the kitchen in this photo is never empty. As soon as I take care of one dishpan of vegetables, another seems to magically fill and take its place.

To get us through busy weeks like this, I rely on make-ahead dishes and "twice is nice" menus. The latest addition to my cookery repertoire is a marinated salad that can be made in advance, uses up lots of garden produce and makes a great side dish or topping for use with a tortilla roll-up and which, with the addition of chopped cooked chicken, sliced hard-boiled eggs or a can of rinsed and drained beans, can serve as a main dish.
For one of our completely local meals this week I included this salad, topped with hard-boiled eggs and accompanied by zucchini chips and a glass of mint tea. All but the tomatoes came from our homestead and those came from the local farmers' market. Next week when I make another bowl, I'll add a couple of our just-ready peppers, either bell or sweet banana.

The dressing I use is a homemade Catalina. You could use a bottle from the store but I don't because the homemade is so easy to make and it has the spicy tang I can't find in a bottled version these days.

The recipe allows for a lot of variation. Just be sure to use fresh vegetables that won't go limp sitting in the dressing. For that reason, I prefer to use a meaty plum tomato and remove the seeds before chopping. Chop as much of each vegetable as you want to include. I don't measure but just use a bowl that will hold a little more than I want to make. That way I have room to toss the salad in the dressing without spilling it. When I have enough veg chopped, I pour on the dressing, toss to coat then cover and refrigerate till serving time. It needs at least an hour or two to blend flavors before serving. Leftovers will keep 3 days or so in the fridge.

Catalina Dressing

2/3 cup mild-tasting vegetable oil
1/4 cup ketchup*
2 tablespoons honey (or 1/4 cup sugar)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon grated onion
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Combine all ingredients in a jar with tight-fitting lid. Shake to blend and then let sit for an hour or so before using. Shake thoroughly or use wire whip each time before serving.

Makes about 1-1/2 cups.

*I use Farm Journal's "Western Gourmet Ketchup" which I can every year using our garden tomatoes. (Recipe available here.) It has a sweet tangy flavor and works well in this recipe but probably any flavorful bottled ketchup would serve.

Making apple cider vinegar

It's a little early in the year here to be thinking of making cider but we're using a lot of apple cider vinegar for pickling and salads these days so now's as good a time as any to explain the process for turning non-pasteurized apple cider into vinegar.

First thing to know about making your own vinegar is that you shouldn't use it for canning unless it has an acidity level of at least 4.5% and some canning recipes call for 5%, which is what many store-bought jug vinegars say they have. However, there's no need to test the acidity level if you just want to use it for salad dressings, regular recipes or other general household use.

Next thing is, the directions I've included here are how I do it. There are lots of variations that will yield similar results. And there are vinegar connoisseurs just like with wine. So try my method if you want but look around and you'll find other ideas on how to do it and what to use. Vinegar can be made from almost any liquid that contains enough sugar so don't stop with apples -- experiment with grapes (how about making wine vinegar?), peaches, beets, berries or what have you.

If you press your own apple cider, you're well on your way to making vinegar but if you buy it, be sure to choose non-pasteurized cider. Also, check the label to be sure it's preservative-free. Many cider mills add sodium benzoate as a preservative and that can make it less likely that your cider will ferment or turn into hard cider which is the first step in making apple cider vinegar.

When I make vinegar, I set aside a couple gallons of cider in crocks. I make sure to leave lots of headroom in the crock as the cider will be frothy and may foam over the top during the first fermentation stage. There's nothing wrong if it does this -- just wipe the crock off and let it continue to sit -- but it can be messy and draw fruit flies. So I use a 2-gallon crock to hold 1-1/2 gallons of cider. I cover the container with a clean cotton tea towel, tying it with a piece of string so dust and bugs can't get into the crock over the next few months.

As the sugar in the cider changes to alcohol, it becomes hard cider. That can take anywhere from 1 week to 6 weeks, depending on the temperature and the sugar content of the apples used to make the cider. Some people choose to hurry this stage along by adding yeast but I prefer the easy path and just set the crock in a corner of the pantry for several months.
If I have a mother-of-vinegar (pictured above) from a previous batch of vinegar I may carefully pour that into the crock, on top of the vinegar, to help the process along but wild spores floating in the air will start the fermenting process, too. Check the cider after a few months to see if it's strong enough. The process usually takes from 4 to 6 months, start to finish. And that's all there is to it.

If you do want to use homemade vinegar for canning, this link offers a good description of the steps for vinegar titration. The process is similar to testing the acidity level of wine. But, again, if you don't plan to use your vinegar for canning you don't have to bother with this. Just go with vinegar that tastes and smells good to you.

Sweet pickles or how to use up a few cucumbers

My mom always made 14-day pickles and I still make them but they take so long I try to can enough to last a couple of years. So on the "off" years I've been making Helen Witty's bread-and-butter pickles with onions from her "Fancy Pantry" cookbook. We really like their sweet crunch and any extra pickling juice goes over a jarful of sliced onions that I stash in the fridge for use in salads or on sandwiches.

This weekend I put up 25 pints of bread-and-butter pickles minus the onions as these jars are intended for my mother's pantry instead of ours. She doesn't do much canning anymore but likes to keep her pantry shelves full of good things my sister or I have put up.

The recipe is easy and though timing plays a part, it doesn't require a do-or-die schedule. Also, I use Witty's ingredient list as written but I play fast and loose with the directions because I rarely have ONLY a dozen cucumbers ready for pickling at one time. I most often prepare my cucumbers by washing, slicing and putting into a clean food-safe 5-gallon plastic bucket. Pour clean water by measured gallon over the cucumbers and then pour the water off and mix up lime and water as needed to cover cucumbers using Witty's proportions of 1 cup pickling lime to 1 gallon cool water. And add the sliced cucumbers to the lime-water mixture. This way I'm sure to have enough water to cover any amount of cucumbers I have on hand.When it comes time to mix up the pickling liquid, I multiply the ingredient amounts so the yield will be about two-thirds of the amount of water required to cover pickles in the first step. If I have any liquid left over after canning, I pour it over onion slices and store the mixture in the fridge to use fresh.

Extra-Crisp Bread and Butter Pickle Slices
from "Fancy Pantry" by Helen Witty

12 firm, fresh pickling cucumbers (6-inches long)
1 gallon cool water
1 cup pickling lime
64 ounces apple cider vinegar
5 cups sugar
1 tablespoon fine non-iodized salt
1 tablespoon mustard seed
1-1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 quart of sliced onions, cut 1/4-inch thick

Wash cucumbers. Cut off and discard both ends, then cut cucumbers into 1/4-inch thick slices.

Measure cool water into a ceramic, stainless steel or other non-reactive container (do not use an aluminum container) and stir in the pickling lime very thoroughly. It will not dissolve completely. Add sliced cucumbers, stir, cover, and set aside overnight or for up to 24 hours. Stir them once or twice.

Drain the cucumbers into a colander. Return them to the rinsed out container and rinse them in three more batches of cool water, stirring them well as you do so. Drain them again and add cool water to cover them by an inch or two. Set them aside for three hours.

Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt and other seasonings in a non-reactive saucepan. Heat the mixture to boiling, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then boil it, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, drain the cucumbers well and return them to the first container along with the sliced onions. When the syrup has boiled 5 minutes, pour it over the slices. Stir the slices gently, then push them under the surface, cover the bowl with a towel, and set it aside overnight.

Transfer the cucumbers and syrup to a large preserving pan and cook the whole business, covered, over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally (be careful not to break the brittle slices), until the cucumbers are translucent, 20 to 30 minutes.

Using a funnel, spoon, long fork or tongs, arrange the pickle slices in 8 hot, clean pint canning jars, leaving about 1/2-inch of headspace. Divide the spices from the syrup among the jars, then add boiling-hot syrup to reach 1/4-inch from rims. Remove any bubbles and add more syrup, if necessary. Seal the jars with two-piece canning lids and process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath. Cool, label and store the jars. Be sure to let the pickles mellow for 4-6 weeks, then chill before opening.

If you're new to canning or using the water bath method, please refer to the latest Ball Blue Book of Preserving or the USDA-funded website, National Center for Home Food Preserving, for detailed directions.

Besides pickles, I put up cucumbers by drying them. They make a tasty vegetable cracker substitute similar to zucchini chips -- DS even prefers the cucumber chips to the zucchini chips. And they are wonderful to use for making cucumber dip. Just grind up a couple tablespoons of dried cucumber slices and add the powder to sour cream, yogurt, cream cheese or your favorite blend of the same. It also makes a delicious cucumber spread for sandwiches in the middle of winter.

Lunch in a hurry, as usual

The garden's doing great this year and that means when we're home we're usually working out there or in the kitchen putting up produce. Strange as it seems, amongst all this food, it can be hard to get a meal on the table some days.

Saturday's meal, put together on the run between garden chores and a little holiday merry-making, was meatloaf made with local, grass-fed beef from the freezer, red cabbage and summer squash from our garden, grain from down the road in Raphine (Wade's Mill) and a few new potatoes I couldn't resist picking up at the farmers market that morning. The squash casserole and rolls included eggs from our backyard hens, plus butter and a bit of top cream from a dairy at Burnt Chimneys. The meatloaf and squash also included onions from the garden and the meatloaf utilized a few tablespoons of the wonderful tomato powder I made earlier this spring with what was left of last year's dried tomatoes. Red cabbage required a dash of homemade apple cider vinegar and local honey, too.

Too get it on the table fast, I prepared the squash casserole in the morning and refrigerated it, unbaked, till close to lunch time. The red cabbage went in the oven with the meatloaf a little over an hour before lunch. And the rolls were made with refrigerator dough I try to keep on hand so we can enjoy fresh hot bread with most meals. They spent most of the morning rising in their baking pan on the counter and then went into the hot oven as the meatloaf and squash casserole came out.

We had ice-cold apple cider we made and froze late last fall. I often can cider, too, but then it just becomes apple juice, in my book. This stuff was still the real thing and a perfect sweet yet refreshing drink to go with the rest of our local meal.