What's Cooking in Your Garden?
Notreadytoquit
Posts: 234 Member
I am a professional horticulturist turned "accidental chicken farmer". I know many clean eaters raise chickens and there are many skilled gardeners on MFP. This is a space to strut our stuff ... from the day's harvest to your garden in all it's glory.Please share all that goes on outdoors and in the kitchen..
Questions, pictures, just plain bragging - all are welcome.
One of our new girls.
Questions, pictures, just plain bragging - all are welcome.
One of our new girls.
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So beautiful...you're amazing!0
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Mason jar salads. Pasta chicken veggies. Below0
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So sorry about the size. Ugh. I am just happy that I followed through and made these. They are great for dinner when I get home late and am too tired...it's fresh and tasty and not a frozen meal. Nothing came from my garden as I do not have one. Maybe some day...a little garden on my patio.
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Thanks for sharing. I was laughing yesterday...I harvested 4 small potatoes....I could see my Dad rolling on the clouds laughing...at my great endeavor. My daughter is so much a better gardener than me...she can grow potatoes and sweet potatoes. so fun.0
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It's almost chestnut season.
Chili paste from mixed hot peppers.
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@magic very pretty & clever. Will have to keep in mind for excellent travel food. Did you use dressing?0
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Great thread! I eat eggs from our chickens every morning. We planted a small garden for our boys to pick from, but my family owns a farm so we get most of the produce from there.0
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We need a "like" button!...and recipes! Pretty hen! My dogs just killed my 2 little barred rock hens who were just getting ready to start laying...grrr....so I gave my other 5 hens and roo to a friend.0
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@SandiKani Nothing like farm fresh. You have total control over what you eat. I eat quail eggs as our hens like to raise their chicks and get quite aggravated when we steal their eggs.
@Stef1959 Our dogs don't kill our chickens, although our big guy likes to bounce them sometimes. We have ferocious predator problems. The chickens that don't go up in trees put themselves in a safety bunker at night. Some come to the porch for us to carry them to individual crates, pens, etc. Some of them crave human touch & warmth, I think. I'll get pictures.
Plymouth Rock girls are new. Just getting to know them. They have nice personalities.
Will note to put recipe or link in future. Will try to collect them up and post in a few days or feel free to PM me.
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This week was all about apples. Applesauce, apple cider, apple cider vinegar made 3 ways ... with white sugar, raw honey & molasses, apple wine. Also DH and #1 son made a batch of Jalapeno jelly.
allrecipes.com/recipe/47520/jalapeno-jelly/
The apple cider vinegar is homework project for my herbalism course.0 -
This week is all about chestnuts ... a superfood we use to thicken soups and stews, to replace 1/3 - 1/2 of flour in recipes, and for a healthy crusty batter. Planted the trees from saplings in 1975. Usually produce 50-60# nut meat, but due to rain while they were in full bloom crop is down 1/3 this year.
Involucres or prickly pods surrounding the nuts are very sharp, hence the leather gauntlet gloves.
We process within a day or two, otherwise the nuts will get wormy. Easy safe way to prepare ... use round edged pruners to cut nut in half. Using a pot with perforated liner bring water to boil. As shells pop off the nuts, skim and throw in compost. I like to slightly under cook my chestnuts and drain in colander set in sink of cold water to cool down immediately. Nuts should be bright yellow still, but edible. If they are brown and mushy they are overcooked. Drain on cookie sheet lined with paper towel or dishcloth.
Most nuts are frozen, some are dehydrated to make flour. Anyone have an Italian grandma with great chestnut recipes?
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I had my first chestnuts 2 years ago when my hubs and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in Paris at Christmas. Street vendor roasting chestnuts. OMG! They are amazing! (I have lived in warm weather places that aren't big chestnut zones my whole life. )0
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Awesome work! All those beautiful photos.
I am a long time veggie gardener (currently harvesting the last of the tomatoes, peppers, fall raspberries, lettuce). We also added 6 chickens this year. They are barred rock pullets, should be laying any day. So hopefully they will lay all winter!
We built the Ana White a-fame chicken coop, which holds 4-6 girls, and cost about 200$ all in, which I felt was a reasonable up front cost. Lots of coops are crazy fancy and very expensive. This works for us since we might relocate.
Now I am just working on teaching my autistic son not to chase the chickens. It's just so fun! It's so hard to resist! They make such lovely flapping noises!0 -
@martabeerich Oh, the smell of roasting chestnuts. So glad you got to meet chestnuts in such a beautiful romantic way. I will go back through the archives and find picture of tree in flower.
@Suzan06 All of our coops were built from scrap or recycled materials. To avoid the Ma & Pa Kettle look I paint them for uniformity in the garden. My son started free range flock to control ticks. It took off from there and now our flock is about 125 - 150 birds. Some free range, but the predators are fierce, and some are breeding stock or back up roosters. Chickens like plants are very therapeutic.
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@Notreadytoquit Ours was about half old wood we found, and half purchased. It is built like Ft. Knox so no predators can get in the coop, but my girls are out all day, and this week a hawk tried to get them. We have hawks, raccoons, weasels, etc. Hawks are the big issue though because they prevent some people from free ranging. Not me- yet anyway!0
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Notreadytoquit wrote: »@magic very pretty & clever. Will have to keep in mind for excellent travel food. Did you use dressing?
I am so sorry I never got back to you...
Yes, I did use dressing...you can use a separate container or if you choose to put it in the jar, it goes at the very bottom with the hearty veggies. I was amazed that the lettuce stayed crisp and fresh at the top. I had seen mason jar salads before, but poo poo'd the idea...yay, right...the lettuce will stay crisp. Uh huh. REALLY IT DOES.
Great time saver for people on the go or who are too tired to cook when they get home...or it is a great lunch to take to work.
No garden for me to share my bounty...but I am making all fresh food these days with no help from the frozen food section. That is huge plus for me.
I sure am enjoying all the beautiful pictures posted by you all.
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Have been busy harvesting Hawthorn berries, rose hips, nuts and many herbs for the chickens and us. The vegetable garden was fallow this year as the chickens ate everything for the last two years. Fennel and dill have naturalized the area. I went to harvest seeds and ended up harvesting a forest of fennel and dill. Tucked into coops for winter health and amusement.
Rose hips from native multiflora rose, dill, comfrey chopped ... in box for drying for winter use, calendula, solar & lunar infused oils and other berries and herbs drying in paper bags. Must go around and shake them all today.
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As first frost approached I went into a frenzy of harvest and putting herbs and food by. Tomorrow is the harvest moon. A class assignment is to make a lunar infused oil. I chose plantain ... one of the most versatile of the healing plants. Also called settlers footsteps as it is found most anywhere people have journeyed. My oil was created on the blood moon and will be bottled tomorrow night hopefully in the presence of the harvest moon.
I almost always have a pot of stock cooking. Bone stock or vegetarian potassium essence are my favorites for high quality stock with lots of flavor and nutrients. A new cooking pot from Cabella. No, I don't get a commission. I searched for a new crock pot for quite a while when mine old friend exhausted itself. I finally settled on this multipurpose cooker. It has a rack for roasting, baking, infusing oils or cooking as per regular crock pot with temperature control.
Bone Stock
After cooking and removing protein, I slip the bones into broth/water. Any herbs, vegetables that cooked under the meat are removed and eaten or given to chickens as most of the nutrients have leached out (if braising) and chickens are amused by scraps. New herbs and a teaspoon of sea salt are added along with 2 tablespoons - 1/2 cup of vinegar. Keep at slow simmer for 3 days adding more water, nettle infusion, dandelion or Echinacea tea to up the potassium and calcium values. Strain and refrigerate. If you are counting calories skim off fat. Pot holds 25-30 cups
If you find your stock is gelatinous, you did good. When mine is like that I thin it down, add lots of herbs and make stock soup. Great for nursing winter flus and colds or everyday health.
A note about sourcing bones. I was recently researching nutritional value of bone stock. Came across alarming reports of even organic purchased bones/stocks having high levels of heavy metals leaching out of the bones from ? feed, air pollution or other environmental sources. Just might want to research source
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Everything is looking good. I'm down to turnips, peas, tomatoes, peppers and cilantro in my outside garden. Margie made unstuffed Mini Sweet Peppers last night. We made lots more hot peppers than sweet, but few of them get ate. I did blend up about half a gallon of Jalapeno, Serrano and Cayenne today to make pepper spray.0
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The guys made stuffed habaneros yesterday. Way out of my comfort zone. 10 minutes of intense habanero heat per bite. So is the pepper spray for plants or people?0
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This fall we harvested & processed our organic (never been sprayed) apples. We made fermented apple cider vinegar, applesauce, cider, hard cider, apple wine, fruit roll ups this winter from the applesauce and all the mash was recycled to the chickens or dehydrated for winter gruel.
16 bushels, 5 trees pruned and weeded and 125 #'s of mash.
Littlemisscruciferious.com for a recipe to make your own fermented apple cider vinegar from apple peels. ( I had to use search to find it.)
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What do you do with the apple mash for winter gruel?
I am still harvesting lettuce and cilantro! We have had a super warm fall, and I have one bed of fall lettuce that I covered with a floating row cover. I have lost some outer leaves to hard frosts, but most is still great. Nothing beats fresh butterhead lettuce in December!
My girls (hens) are laying 3 eggs a day for 6 hens. I started the winter light a week ago, not uptick in eggs yet. I should see it in the next week. I have a 60 watt LED on a timer from 4-8am. The days have been 40's and 50's, and the girls spend the whole day outside digging and eating and their yolks are still dark orange. Yum.
I have 3/4 a bushel of storage apples left (only got one bushel this year, poor planning on my part). And my lettuce. In all other areas we are eating down the pantry and freezer.0 -
It's going to be in the mid 60's here today ... in December. Hooray! So jealous you're still harvesting, although row covers are great idea. My garden isn't chicken proof so we need a new plan for next year. It's evolving slowly to include patches of alfalfa and a big patch of nettles.
A lot of the used mash was dehydrated for inclusion in winter gruel and our flock gorged on apple mash for a month.
Most of our free range chickens don't lay this time of year. Last year we started to cook our scraps with rice and oats. The winter was brutal, snow abundant, I was worried. Figured warm gruel in morning will jumpstart their cold blooded bodies. It seems to calm the flock. I use an herbal supplement mix I found on frugallysustainable.com. combined with rice, oats, scraps and left overs. It's delicious, smells and tastes amazing in rice or porridge. The chickens go from hysterical anticipation to contented purring instantly.
If you can't find the recipe sent me a message and I'll find it for you. Thanks for sharing about your girls. We ran heat lights last winter for our quail and they laid all winter, but it wore them out. Keep me updated on how that's working out , please.0 -
So far I have no idea how it is working, because the high was 67 today! In Ohio! What the heck?
My girls are pullets so they should be fine to lay all winter. I incorrectly called them hens because most people have no idea what a pullet is, so I tend to just call them hens. We will see. So far they are eating a ton more feed, even though they are out all day and the ground is still green. I think there is not enough new growth and not enough bugs around to fill them up like in the summer.
Still harvesting lettuce and cilantro, probably only 1 or 2 more pickings until we are out.0 -
Sorry suzan, been some time. How are your pullets? Did they lay through short days? I found an herbal supplement at sustainably frugal.com that i fed all winter. Every morning i cook up a big pot of gruel for our flock. Using herbal mix, our compost, fruit, vegetables, 6 cups rice, 6 cups organic steel oats and spaghetti. They love spaghetti. I started last winter which was bitter cold, to help jump start their metabolism. It really works. We have an abundance of eggs, their feathers lustourous and they see calmer. Normally they get corn and herbs (weeds) when that is available, so shortly they are going to be disappointed.
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Beautiful! Mine are still laying, although not quite as strong- I think they are sick of winter! I am getting 4 to 6 eggs a day from 6 girls. 7 chicks have been ordered for end of March!
I just finished a pantry clear-out for the chickens- they add down a bunch of applesauce that no one liked (I left peels on and the picky kids did not approve!) and a bunch of wheat berries that I ordered accidentally instead of flour. They LOVE pasta and wheatberries.
I started seeds in a friend's greenhouse- Mizuna is up already. I will go next week and start another round of lettuce. Hopefully I will put lettuce in the ground at the end of March. Spinach and other greens maybe mid March. That is "too early" compared to what most do around here but I find the plants hang out and wait and don't die, even if they don't grow much for a few weeks. Plus I am impatient.0 -
Beautiful! Mine are still laying, although not quite as strong- I think they are sick of winter! I am getting 4 to 6 eggs a day from 6 girls. 7 chicks have been ordered for end of March!
I just finished a pantry clear-out for the chickens- they add down a bunch of applesauce that no one liked (I left peels on and the picky kids did not approve!) and a bunch of wheat berries that I ordered accidentally instead of flour. They LOVE pasta and wheatberries.
I started seeds in a friend's greenhouse- Mizuna is up already. I will go next week and start another round of lettuce. Hopefully I will put lettuce in the ground at the end of March. Spinach and other greens maybe mid March. That is "too early" compared to what most do around here but I find the plants hang out and wait and don't die, even if they don't grow much for a few weeks. Plus I am impatient.
I have never grown my own leafy greens but want to this year. Indiana weather is crazy, so I'm not sure when to plant. I want to plant spinach, but I'm not sure what else. What do you like and have success with?0 -
Spinach can be tricky because as soon as it gets hot, it gets bitter. You have to plant early. I have good luck with lettuce of all types, spinach if I plant early, all Asian geens (mizuna, tatsoi, bok Choi) kale, collards, arugula. and Swiss chard. If you like Swiss chard it is great because it goes nuts all summer, while most greens get bitter when it gets hot. I personally don't care much for chard, I wish I did, because nothing eats it and it never dies.0
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The Great Maple Syrup experiment has ended. Want to tap maples and birches this year. A delivery truck broke a branch on my Maple tree in January. When the exact moment arrived for the sap to rise it poured out of the wound. I call the first pic redneck maple syruping.
We tied a bucket
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