The Home Grown September Challenge is going splendidly. Though when you get really down to it there is not enough food out there so I am not sure how Long the challenge will last.
It is very dry now and I am going to have to do some serious watering lest my greens give up on me. Not being able to reach for a bag of frozen peas as an easy green addition to a meal makes life interesting.
Though this is an excellent way to ensure that the list for next years gardens is thorough. I am already running out of potatoes and onions. So MORE is a recurrent word in the list.
I have plenty of tomatoes, aubergine, sweet capsicums, beets, celery, zuchinni and jalapenos. There are two cabbages left and a stand of swiss chard that is taking a beating as I eat it every day. But is there enough of all that to last over three weeks? We will see. No eating out of cans. No eating packaged frozen vegetables. No eating the foods I am processing for the winter.
The late summer vegetables will not be ready for a month or so and the beans are suddenly infected with a leaf eating bug. Hmm.
One entire planting of tomatoes has gone brown and is dying but I still have plenty in another garden and scattered through the flower beds as snacks for when I am gardening.
It is possible that I may lose weight after all! Oops. However I do have a little beef and a reasonable amount of lamb in the freezer. No chicken or pork.
I chose September on purpose for the challenge because it is kind of a middle month, the first flush is over and the garden is puddling along now. I knew I would be short of some things. And hoping that the challenge would point out the weaknesses in the month. The first weakness seems to be that my staggered plantings are not staggered close enough. The second weakness is that there is not ENOUGH of everything to put down for the winter Plus eat all summer.
The hens are still laying extravagantly (even though I just caught 6 fat hens yesterday to give to Red Hat Matt as a house warming present) so I can always eat eggs. But using no store bought cheese at all is tedious.
I will make more fresh cheese next week. Today I am going to focus on the gardens, weeding and watering my new crops. And getting more worm fertiliser into their roots.
Now I know this sounds a little grim however I am excited by all these revelations. Sometimes the only way to actually see something clearly is to DO it. It is all very well to say Oh I eat out of the gardens but when I made myself eat ONLY out of the gardens for a good length of time I see immediately where I am topping up from outside the farm. Plus I am now counting my crops as I work considering how long each will feed us for. This is good, very good. Already I am out there more often with seeds for autumn food. I am taking more careful note of what I have ahead of me and what needs special care. I am eating less so that the food lasts longer.
In fact the ‘eating less to make the food last’ is probably a very old fashioned thing. And a BIG lesson. On a normal day we are able to go to the supermarket or farmers market and yank huge bundles of cheap food off the shelves or tables. We stuff our cars full to the brim and drive cheerfully home. There is no thought of conserving our resources, or buying or eating less so that there is enough to go around. We cannot raise our hands to shield our eyes and peer to the end of the row, we have no knowledge in fact of how much food there is out here or even where the farms actually are and if they also have crops failing. So we take and eat as much as we can afford. We gaily trust that in the cool mornings and hot afternoons out in some field somewhere a little man and his wife will pick more for us, another little man will drive more produce in a truck through the dawn to our purchasing point and some one will restock the shelves or lay out her produce so all we have to do is drive back and Buy More. Do you think this is one of the reasons people are eating more, piling up their plates and having second helpings and getting fatter at each meal? Because they cannot see to the end of the row?
I remember saying to my kids: There is no point in me making a cake – all you do is eat it. Do you know how long it took to make that cake? I would say to them as they stuffed the last crumbs into their mouths ten minutes after I took it out of the oven. Now that they are all grown and pretty good cooks themselves, they savor their food more and think about the tastes and discuss how to make it better. I have never thought of it this way before. So the Challenge is teaching me to eat slower and less.
I have read that in any given city, there is a three day supply of food in the supermarkets. So if there is a major disaster and that truck cannot get through the food and drink will run out in three days. I think I can last longer than that.
Today I am making an aubergine and tomato, cheese free, lasagne, with the home made pasta. Thank goodness you suggested I allow myself flour and olive oil.
Have a lovely day.
I will be disappearing into the gardens again today. (yes, some of the weeds are that tall!)
your friend on the farm, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
94 responses to “The Home Grown September Challenge”
I need to do some harvesting in the micro farm…the basil has gone bonkers again! Any suggestions for what I can do with/preserve all of these cayenne peppers I’ve got? Morning miss c…t
Dry them! I just pull the whole plant and hang it upside down pegged to a line by its clean roots, then when they are all dry, take off the peppers, and store in a jar or grind up and store in a jar. OR if you cannot dry them throw the lot in the freezer as is, you can pull them out and chop them as you need them. have a gorgeous day! c
Thanks 🙂
A beautiful plan. I love how you approach these challenges…methodically, but with good humor and pragmatism! Have a beautiful day!
It is another stunning day, and my favourite challenges are ones I choose for myself, so I have control over the lessons and the successes.. c
Yes, yes, yes, I agree absolutely today with all that you say – we all know this stuff in our hearts and I must admit the thought of Marie Antoinette always springs to mind when I pick my few home grown bits and pieces from the garden and I know that I wouldn’t be able to feed myself and B on what we grow at all. But, the joy and the delight of putting the food you grow yourself into your mouth, or feeling its warm sunkissed skin in your hand, and knowing that you have chosen when to pick it so that it is perfectly ripe, hints at something deep in my soul, some atavistic longing, to get back to the garden. Oops, better go and play some Joni Mitchell right away. xx Jo
I love that word atavistic, and you are so right Jo, it is one of our oldest of memories I think, akin to childbirth – to grow, to eat, to feed our families.. dirt in our hands.. c
A wonderful method of learning, c…small tests to get the scope of the Big Project.
Totally true about the three-day supply, but for the meat, it’s only a day if the refrigeration goes. It’s also the reason New Englanders stock up on bread, milk and eggs before a snowstorm – in the Blizzard of ’78 (I’m told) the trucks couldn’t get through for a week. Nothing that bad has happened since then, so I guess everyone has lots of French Toast after…
Have a good day! 😀
The meat in summer is always a worry. If the electricity goes out the freezers slowly lose their cold. Out here in the winter we can just heave boxes of meat onto the verandah, it will stay frozen outside!! The Old Codger told me they used to hang a whole steer in the barn in late autumn to keep it frozen for the winter. c
parsley?
Oh yes i have parsley, My grandmother would roll over in her grave if i ran out of parsley, she ate it every day.. Is that what you meant? c
Yes – I love it too!
Your lasagna sounds delicious! And the September challenge is very interesting. I bet you are learning a great deal. Enjoy the cool morning C!
Morning kristy, you will be back from your holiday on the farm, i will pop over and read all about it!.. c
this gives me so much to think about. i bet if you make a really rich tomato sauce for the lasagna, you won’t miss the cheese too much. have you ever made parmesan cheese? if you could make that in the future maybe it would get you through your lean cheese times?
Yes you are right. this was definitely a failing, but the new cellar quite ruined my cheeses. They all grew a terrific mold and I lost heart there for a while. The parmesan is the easiest to make too, i just need to work on a better aging venue. c
All so true, Celi. My husband and I have been “dieting” for several months now, and although we aren’t dependent on what we grow ourselves (which is nil, at this point), we have become much more conscious of *how much* food goes in our mouths (and how much more *fresh* food costs at the store than the canned or frozen or ready-to-eat stuff). I’d say we’ve cut our portions in half, which turns out to be a good thing. On a slightly different note: when I was visiting the new grandson, my son made a kind of succotash from yellow squash, zucchini (bought at their local organic market), fresh tomatoes out of their garden, onions, and fresh corn, all cooked up until tender and seasoned with a dash of white wine and a little chicken stock and salt and pepper. It was so simple and delicious (you probably make something like this already). He served it over rice, but it would be wonderful over fresh pasta and was certainly hearty enough for a meal. I’ll be making it myself soon.
Hmm, no i have not made anything like that before.. i might look that up, it sounds perfect! I could definitely make that.. Thank you Gerry.
Gerry, that sounds good, I’m going to try it. Thank you.
I have only visited the US of A for five days. We eat out every night and I was gobsmacked at the size of the food portions. They were enormous and nobody ever cleaned their plates, half the food was consigned to the rubbish bin! I asked for half portions, we do those over here, there is more than enough for an adult in them.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my food and at times suffer hollow legs syndrome! Yes, I have days where I am hungry all day. I prefer my plate half filled with the option to come back for more than an over filled plate.
You are right there. Sometimes if we serve a smaller portion and then eat slowly, then Pause we find that our tummies have caught up with the food and already sent the message up that we are full. I am a horror for eating too fast and wanting more just because it tastes so good! c
I eat too fast when I am home alone, in company I am usually the last to finish, do you think I should not talk at the table? 😉
I know what you mean, i will sometimes stand and eat when i am alone! c
When I first moved to the USA, I too found the portions way to big. Plus it was hard that as kids we were told we had to clean our plates (“think of the starving children in India’,we were told, or “no dessert”). I had to ignore my upbringing as I started to put on so much weight. Also no one seemed to cook at home? I invited some work friends to dinner one night, cooked Chinese from scratch, and they wolfed it down and were ready to leave within an hour of getting to our house!!?? Unlike in England where a meal would last all night and was a big social occasion with friends.
Now I am semi-retired I seldom eat out and much prefer my cozy meals at home anyway!
John does it too, I make a lovely meal, he sits he eats and he leaves, I am left with my plate half empty and all alone at the table. The first time it happened i just cried. It is better now, well a little better, my biggest change was making sure he was sat in a really comfy chair! After being married 6 years and we are eating in the covered verandah he has begun to sit and talk at the dinner table.. it is nice. Such a shame you don’t live closer.. oh lordy we would be sitting at the table all night.. c
thanks for the overview, I misunderstood the plan. my version of the challenge, eating off the farm with whatever I raised grew or have in the garden, pantry or freezers, with added salt, flour and olive oil, is coming along swimmingly.. maybe I will try a week on your rules next week lol as for the meat, with no fridge, you kept it live on claw or hoof till needed, you can it or cure it..
Your version is just about the same! I am certainly eating meat out of the freezers. But no pantry. Though when I think about it if you only ate what was in the house and gardens it would be a great way to finish up all those strange jars of bits and bobs that tend to hang on in the pantry!! c
Absolutely invaluable lessons being learnt this month Celi. Amazing how very different the theory and practical can be!
Please don’t lose too much weight though – you are already so skinny.
Have a beautiful happy farmy day.
🙂 Mandy xo
Skinny Shminny. When I lose a few pounds and i always do at this time of year, I can fit all my favourite clothes! .. Have a lovely day Mandy.. c
Just remember this is a self-imposed challenge . . . don’t wither away to nothing to “prove a point.” We would miss you if you disappeared from view. 😛
Self imposed are the best kind.. it would take more than an empty garden to make me dissappear from view. morning nancy.. c
Celi, this is your best post to date, an important one that needs to be read by others, so I am reblogging it. You have cut right to the heart of the matter in your usual fine way. I read it out loud to my husband and friends this morning and when I got to the part about the little man harvesting our food in the field, I choked up so that it was hard to finish. but finish I did and you have gained a couple of new fans. I am really looking forward to more of your observations. Here’s your book!
I had you in mind when I was writing some of this Maggie, you and your weekend warriors work until your backs ache and your hands bleed and i do know about the bleeding hands, gardeners are always scratched and beaten up in some way but when you are growing such large amounts for clients as you do then the toll is very physical. When we fill our bags at the farmers market we often forget that the people serving us have put on their best tidy gear to come into town to sell to us, and have been up since 3.30. loading trucks and picking the last of the leafy greens and sunflowers and then driving in to set up by 6. very hard work. Thank goodness it is only for the summer!! You are a star Maggie.. thank you for REBLOGGING.. c
I know Maggie personally and to watch a field go from waste to what it is now is amazing and yes she gets lots of help from her family to get it done. Glad you now know each other 🙂
Eunice
Wow, c, your grapes are way ahead of mine. Everything seems so slow to mature this summer. Rain enmass arriving tomorrow, which is good since we don’t really give the border much extra water beyond natural rainfall. The new plants get a bit but not the established ones. It’s toughen up or die around here. 🙂
They will be grateful for a good watering in then. I think plants are hardier when they are not regularly watered. c
When I visit the supermarket next time your words will be ringing in my ears….however we do not over buy or over eat…not possible when you only have pension money coming in. Our first year in Bg in 2007 we did try to grow our own but everything was eaten by the mole..so we gave up and so did the mole. He went elsewhere!
Living on a pension is an exercise in frugal! I know, as I raised a whole bunch of kids on the smell of an oily rag, maybe that the mole has gone you can start a garden again, there are many plants that grow quite merrily in pots too, lettuce would be the one I am sowing into pots now.. c