Sweet Relish and "No Right To Eat or Produce Food"

Yesterday, I teased the very last of the cucumbers (just a few) from the high tunnel to make a batch of sweet relish.  I love homemade relish.  As I cook it, it's one of those foods whose smell makes my mouth water.  The flavor of homemade relish is like the difference between a store-bought tomato and a home-grown tomato.  You can't describe how it's different, but the flavor is so much more ... there.  Yum!

I love growing my own food.  I love that the food I'm feeding my family is more nutritionally dense then what I would buy at the store.  And the food I grow is, I feel, safer than what I buy at the store.  

But my right to eat and produce food seems to be under attack.

In Wisconsin, during a raw milk trial (the sale of raw milk has been targeted in sting operations leading to court cases) a judge said that, "Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume foods of their choice."  Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm, writes about it here.

In a previous post, Walter writes about the attack on small American farmers seen in the movie Farmageddon: The Unseen War On American Family Farms.  

I have to wonder if someday I'll be on a back alley selling my freshly grown - in dirt - carrots like they're  contraband?

To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.

 ~Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural."

- Thomas Jefferson

Winter Squash Harvest 2011

The past few weeks have been a frenzy of harvesting and putting up vegetables before the first hard frost hits. 

 We've had one light frost already!  

This week we harvested all the winter squash out of my summer and winter squash garden (the summer squash is finished).  

While this looks like a lot of winter squash, it wasn't nearly the harvest I had hoped for.  I think - no, I know - the early summer drought we had cut into yields.  I'm not complaining though.  This section of my garden was dust dry during the drought and I'm happy I pulled anything at all off it!  

We had to get out and harvest everything that was in that section of my gardens because the chickens had figured out how to get in and were having a very good time pecking at everything.  They certainly can put a hurting on some vegetables.  Look at this poor hubbard squash!    

(You can actually see the beak marks!)

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together.  For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.  ~Edwin Way Teale

Pig Goes For A Stroll!

I woke up on the first chance to sleep in a little bit, looked out the window, and saw one of the pigs walking around my yard!  Boy did I hustle fast into my clothes and run out to get it before it took a walk over to the neighbor's houses!

Luckily, it came when it saw me and I was able to get it to go back into the pen when I filled the feed trough.  

I'm not sure how it got out, but when I wanted it to go in it wouldn't even step over the lowest fence wire.  I had to undo all three gate wires for it to go into the pen.  I think maybe it just got really hungry and went looking for more food.  The damage that a hungry pig does to a lawn is amazing.  It dug up at least  20 feet of grass!   

They're getting to the size now where all they do is eat all day and scream for me to bring more food.  I'm a slave to bringing them goodies to nosh on.  Corn stalks, apples, old tomatoes, giant zucchini - they eat it all!  Don't be concerned if you see a lady picking up buckets of dropped apples along the road (the apple crop is phenomenal this year)... that'll be me!  

Liebster Blog Award

Dr. momi over at Homesteading at Red Tail Ridge surprised me with this award!  Thank you!  What a great way to tell the world about all the newly started and oh-so-very-talented bloggers out there whom I'm lucky enough to read.
                                                

Liebster" is a German word meaning dear, sweet, kind, nice, good, beloved, lovely, kindly, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.

The Liebster is awarded to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers.

How fun!! Now for the rules:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.

5. And most of all - have fun!

So, without further ado, here are my five picks to receive this special honor:

1.  Wooleylot's Blog

2.  On The Metzger's Farm

3.  BitsnBrambles

4. The Apple Pie Gal

5.  A Home Grown Journal

Good Reading

Although I know they're considered Young Adult books, I've been enjoying reading my way through the Anne of Green Gables series and anything else I can find by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  It's refreshing to read about a time with simpler and more elegant manners and a 

much slower pace of life.  

What fiction do you read that refreshes you?  

Purple Beans

I love growing purple beans.  We sell them at the Farmer's Market as "Barney Beans" and let the kids taste them.  They usually like them!

Last year I grew purple pole beans and they were pretty good, but I really liked the tenderness of the variety I grew this year: 

"Burpees Organic Garden Bean Royalty Purple Pod" - a bush snap bean. 

Here's the funny thing about cooking purple beans - they turn green!  

Fresh picked beans in the basket waiting to be blanched for freezing: 

Beans with the tops snipped off and broken into pieces - look at the green insides:  

Beans dropped into a pot of boiling water and starting to turn green!:

And finally, blanched and cooled purple beans that have turned green:

Isn't that fun?  

A Day of Sadness and Anger

The military had moved us to Japan two days before.  It was the middle of the night.  The phone rang and I'll never forget my husband answering it and saying, "Is this a joke?"

Never Forget