I’ve pretty much run out of produce (except for lettuces and radish which we pulled from our own garden this week) and am dreading having to put in a visit to the grocery store to buy their ‘fresh’ product.

I’m not sure why Saturday mornings are becoming difficult (3 kids under 3.5 years old) but we’re having a hard time getting out of the house in time to make the markets.

I think this week we will visit the Eco-market at Hempola farms. We’ve been talking about it for a year, but Friday nights come and go and we always forget!

Ack – a note from the tech side of my personality… Apparently Hempola Farms haven’t updated their site since 2004! The good news is their Eco-Market will be up and running again in the spring of 2005! Doh! I missed it! Come on Hempola, I know farms aren’t always thought of as being part of the most tech-savvy industry, but try to make at least ANNUAL updates to your site if you are going to go to the trouble of having one!

The 2008 garden is a little below 25 X 30 feet, or ~850 square feet.

Biggest pests so far:

• Mosquitos – Installed bat boxes and spray on repellent
• Ants – Don’t know what to do about this menace!

Grown:

We’ve planted the following:

• Corn
• Eggplant
• Various Heritage Tomatoes
• Ground Cherries
• Various Peppers (green, red, orange etc)
• Jalapeño
• Horseradish

• Turnip
• Radish
• Peas
• Beans
• Parsnip
• Various Carrots
• Various Potatoes
• Various Lettuces
• Various Radichios
• Cucumbers
• Various Onions
• Garlic
• Pumpkin
• Cantaloupe
• Broccoli
• Rhubarb
• And not necessarily in that order (I’m probably forgetting something too!)

So please ignore any short term randomness as I disable plugins, upgrade and (hopefully not) troubleshoot. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program shortly!

Thanks for your patience.

* Update (15 minutes later) – Upgrade complete. If you notice any further randomness, it is completely my fault!

I took a few days off work to celebrate an extra long holiday weekend (and my birthday – yay me!-) and that generally means a little more time to plan a nice meal.

And in typical fashion, I went with a few new dishes…

Thursday night meant Breaded veal in a rich mushroom gravy (a hunters-style gravy) and lemon beans (with lemon zest and more mushrooms) .

I’ve never actually cooked veal before and it was has been one of those items on my cooking to-do list for awhile. I know, veal isn’t exactly uncommon, the reason I’ve never cooked it before is actually that I am much more of a vegetarian than a carnivore. Oh, I love my BBQ, never fear… but I generally follow a meat-centric meal with several days of veggie-centric foods.

So, first time cooking veal it was!

The Veal

I choose a scallopini cut, figuring it would be easy to manage (as long as I didn’t overcook it!) and breading was acheived through a simple 3 bowl method (dip in bowl of flour, followed by dip in a bowl of milk & egg, followed by a dip in breadcrumbs). Veal was then cooked for a very short period of time (5 ish minutes flipping once).

Sauce was a combination of freshly sauteed mushrooms in a rich-dark gravy. (writing this is making me hungry!)

The Beans

This was a simple recipe:

About a pound of beans were boiled just long enough to soften.

1 Fresh lemon was zested (grate the outside layer of peel into a bowl!) and juiced.

About 1/4 lb of button mushrooms were sauteed in olive oil(about 5 minutes with one stir in the middle!)

Once the mushrooms were ready, beans and lemon (both zest and juice) were added to the pan along with pepper, and a dash of dill and basil; and the whole thing was mixed over medium heat for a few minutes.

Thats it. The entire meal took about 20 minutes to prepare AND cook and was delicious!

Served with salad (which we always have pre-prepared) and fresh bread!

Next time I’ll try and remember the photos!

Unfortunately, and if you followed along last summer you probably know, we live in the city. Not that living in the city is unfortunate, there are plenty of good things about living in the city and at this point in our lives it just makes sense to be close to everything. But, I was raised in the country and would like to find my way back sometime before I retire

The unfortunate thing, and likely my least favourite part of city living, is our postage-stamp sized back yard. It’s big enough for a shed, a small deck and a large childrens play center (slide and swings), with just enough grass left over for the dog to do her serious business.

…definitely NOT large enough for a garden.

Community Supported Agriculture

Last year we signed up for a local CSA (a what!?), which was a great experience. It was a particularly hot and dry year, so the produce occasionally left something to be desired, but on a whole we were very happy to participate and the kids will miss not being able to visit the animals every week (my son is already talking about Flash, the farm horse!)

We’d be signing up again this year too, but the opportunity arose to plant our own garden on a plot of land about 27×35 feet (or just shy of 1000 square feet), and we couldn’t pass it up. My wife’s parents own about 4 acres off of Lake Simcoe and despite the fact that it is a 45 minute drive away, we tilled the land and are ready for a summer of Sundays at the inlaws.

If you can’t grow your own garden and have thought about CSA, or have never even heard of CSA before, you should stop by Heritage Hill Organics, just outside of Barrie, for their open house on May 10th. I think we’ll be making excuses to stop by over the summer a few times still.

The Summer Garden Series

So, long story short, this is the first installment of our ‘Summer Garden’ series. Actually, I have a lot to tell already as I spent a month clearing and double-turning the land last fall, began an epic battle against the ant hordes and started growing veggies in the basement almost a month ago now!

In fact, we put our first vegetables in the garden today: onions, cucumbers, cantaloupe, and garlic. It’s still a bit early, but I’m making some clotches (I think that’s the right spelling) and loaded on the mulch to keep the ground temp. up as much as possible… So we’ll see; this whole summer is going to be an experiment in organic gardening and I wanted to test how early I could get things in the ground (my fingers are x’d against any late frosts).

Wintered Vegetables

Not only did I plant today, I already began the harvest! There are a few things growing that were in the ground still from last summer (in a pre-existing garden) and we picked a pile of onions whose tops were already over 2 feet high! We’re going to use the tops as ‘green onions’ and replant the smallish bulbs!

My goal for the next week is to figure out which vegetables I still need to pick up, whether that will be in seed or plant form and the general layout of the entire garden (got to go in with a plan!). I have to finish the clotches, pick up more peat and mulch and find a hot tub to soak in (Hey! I have a desk job… I’m sore after a day in the garden.)

So much to do… so little time!