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”
Celi, no doubt you have marinated and grilled eggplant, right? It is so very, very delicious. So good you could eat it for every meal….maybe just changing the herbal marinade….your herbs and olive oil. Also, okra is so delicious when grilled too! But I don’t think you can grow okra very well in your area. it’s definitely a southern crop. What a fabulous gift of the chickens for Red Hat Matt and his family! They are well on their way to being farmers too and taking control over what they eat, thanks to you!
I have grilled it but marinated it Di, how exciting, how long do you marinade for? We do eat the eggplant at every meal and I would love to know how you prepare it.. c
Well, what we do is to slice it, then salt it and leave it for awhile…maybe 15 to 30 minutes, which brings out flavors and softens it. Then rinse the salt away. Sprinkle olive oil and then garlic pepper seasoning or another dry rub seasoning, or a salad dressing you make with olive oil and a mixture of your garden herbs over it and let marinate for another 15 to 30 minutes…while enjoying a glass of wine on the porch, of course. Throw on the grill, cook and enjoy! Delicious! Oh, be sure to read yesterday’s blog, as I let you know what is happening here on the farm. xo
send me the link to your blog! I have been very remiss in visiting!! c
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I like your reasoning but Jock doesn’t want you to fade away to a shadow before we’ve met
There’s a haiku about Tonton on my blog together with a picture pinched from you.
Love
ViV
Morning Viv! I read your haiku about my Guardian angel and you have him pegged exactly.. wonderful! c
You are so right! NOTHING goes to waste of what food I grow. Every inch of everything edible gets eaten, and every shred of what isn’t edible gets composted. I’m even yanking the dandelions out of my neighbors yards – the greens are delicious (and *really* nutritious) sauted while the roots are dried for tea. Every natural resource is protected and used. Right now that means spending an hour a day collecting and killing the August plague of earthworm eaters – non-native land planarians. They have no predators… except me. Vile creatures.
This summer I’ve been thrilled to have frogs and toads move into my yard 🙂 If I leave a pail of water about for a day or two a frog makes a home of it. Hopefully, they will have lots of babies and help keep down the slug population next spring…
The first time I met a toad out here I almost died of shock, I had never seen such an ugly animal before.. for some reason there are less toads and frogs this year, last year we had heaps in the garden and it was a drought.. but don’t they sound lovely out there when they are calling.. I have never made dandelion tea, we eat our dandelions in salads but i must try it.. c
What an eye-opening revelation! It makes me think of Matron of Husbandry and her large gardens and greenhouses. Not to mention her pastures full of beef, and her house cow, Jane. What a great deal of time, effort and excellent planning it takes to raise all their own food (except, as with your challenge, a few store-bought items like oil and coffee)! And “seeing to the end of the row” is the PERFECT phrase for the awareness you describe! I love it! On another note, I am so glad Red Hat Matt will have a few chickens on his new place! That will make it truly feel like a farmy!
She has a wonderful informative blog doesn’t she and as she is farming her grandfathers land, where she grew up, she has an affinity with the land and knowledge of her animals that is just wonderful.. c
I am just loving your challenge, Celi, which means more than just standing on the sidelines enjoying your conservation, i’m sort of doing a version of the same–not identical, but with what we have on hand.I have recently become very sensitive to waste…there is just too much of it, and I’m as guilty as the next. So we have been eating from what we have with minimal additions, and it’s been a creative process with some unusual meals, but we’re having fun with the personal challenge. And we have discussed how much better we could do, which also translates into a big financial savings. I don’t know why, but just reading along with you encourages me. So thank you!
You too! Excellent, that is three of us doing our own versions – Just another day on the Farm is doing a personal September challenge as well. Creating the meals is the fun bit isn’t it! i had better get busy and start my pasta and the pastry.. i thought I might make an apple pie! c
I have been weeding myself. Yesterday in-between hopper loads I cut and weeded down the tree-size rag weeds. July was terrible for me…Misty sick, the lovely rains …the weeds loved it. The heat was horrid with high, high humidity, but I made it. I only collapsed once. 🙂 It is such a joy to look out there and NOT see those hideous tall weeds.
Farming is such a joy of labor and love, isn’t it?
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
I also finished an entire garden that i have been struggling with today and it IS a joy to see the edges again. No more collapsing! take care Linda.. c
This is really nice to read — I can feel how real the limits and abundance of the garden are to you in this experiment. I am not sure I would last much more than a week off the garden in its current state, but of course that is the goal — to grow it all at home. What a great house warming present! Friends gave us our first chickens when we moved into the garden five years ago and it got us off to a great start.
Your garden is gorgeous and I bet like mine it is getting overgrown at this time of year.. But there is still food in there.. c
Definitely food for thought. In 2008, Portland had a snowstorm which never happens here and trucks couldn’t get to the city for close to a week and stores were running out of food. It was eye opening.
It is an eye opener isn’t it. It is as though we have cheerfully handed the power over our food to an uninterested local government and greedy conglomerates (sadly often these are one in the same!).. before the war everyone had a garden, or an allotment or knew someone with a garden, or went home on the weekends and Mum had a garden, it is terrifying how far away from the Row of Beans we have come. c
This is my first summer with a vegetable garden. A couple of raised beds overwhelm me, I am amazed daily at all you do!
a couple of raised beds can produce a lot of food, with staggered planting, my biggest problem is getting the weeds before they get me!
I have to admit that I usually completely avoid celebrity cookbooks, but years ago I bought Trudy Styler’s The Lake House Cookbook, and one thing which has stayed with me for so long form that book, is how a person, with a private chef, with acres and acres of organic garden and hand raised meat plus her own trout pond, how that person is ever so conscious of the quality of food and food waste and seasonal optimum. It was really good to read, (even if I can be skeptical that it may not all be true; celebrities have ghost writers and spin drs…etc…after all), But it still left a good feeling of care and reverence for the land and respect and gratitude for the food. Not sure why I’m telling you all this, but I respect what you are trying to do so much.
Side note: Just harvested a giant bowl of tomatoes form the Vancouver garden. Better get canning. 🙂
Doesn’t that sound like heaven, acres of organic vegetables and fruit and gardeners and even a chef! PICK ME!! Whe i was working in the film industry I met many very rich and famous people, some more rich than famous actually and it always surprised me how clever and onto it they were. They had the money to do it right and so they did. They did not care that I was just the PA, they just loved how we connected over good food. I must say I often enjoyed our wild conversations (and the champagne!) .. Vancouver must have had some sun this summer! excellent.. c
Love today’s post, it really hit home! My midwestern parents always had a big vegetable garden and all summer long we ate homegrown vegetables with very little meat – enough, but not like people do now-a-days. Every year my mom would “put up” at least a hundred quart jars of tomatoes & tomato sauce and freeze loads of green beans and corn in our huge chest freezer. We’d go berry picking and she’d make jam and freeze whole berries. Come winter, we ate lots of homemade soup – again, with very little meat but lots of vegetables and beans (cranberry beans, split peas, lentils, white beans, kidney beans). All of our treats were homemade – no “store bought” cookies or cakes for us. At the time, I hated it, but now I understand. There were six kids to feed and she wanted us to have good healthy food. For my parents (who lived through the depression), wasting food was the worst sin imaginable. Before every meal, we were told to eat SLOW! As I’ve grown older, I’ve embraced all of those lessons. It wasn’t until my sister and I began to bake that we came to realize how time consuming some recipes can be. One cookie in particular – a favorite that I wolfed down as fast has humanly possible as a child – is so difficult, it forced me to pick up the phone and apologize to my mom for not savoring them. She just laughed. Anyhow, thanks for the reminder. Although I don’t have enough land to grow all of my own food, I try to grow as much as possible and even forage whenever possible. Today, I gathered windfall apples that fell from my neighbor’s tree and would otherwise go to waste (they sit and rot, aren’t even composted!) I managed to get enough to make a crumble for dessert tonight. Every little bit that isn’t “store bought” is a move in the right direction. Sorry for the long-winded comment, but you really sang to me today. Thank you again!
I loved your long winded comment! And you mentioned very little meat, this was absolutely true with us too, we had a slice of meat (often mutton) .. we certainly never ate meat at every meal. There were 6 of us kids too, gosh our mothers worked hard. That triangle of garden stove, sink. thank you for the great comment, we all enjoy reading things like this. c
You and everyone in the “Comments Lounge” are the neighbors I wish I had!
same, You and the fellowship we have collected around us are a stunning group.. c
Actually growing enough to be completely self-sufficient is a huge ask – I don’t think we really comprehend how much we all need to eat to survive. I think it’s wonderful that after less than a week in, you’ve already figured out so much about your garden and what it produces! 🙂
I know – 365 Onions, 700 Potatoes, that is my first goal, I have NEVER made it, 30 cabbages (we do do that well enough) I use at least two jars of tomatoes (summer sauce) a week, the apples and pears are so far the most successful. I have not even begun to grow successful carrots or parsnips. But my silverbeet is marvellous! I am going to have to plant more intelligently celia, but what do you do about the weather!! and the time!! Each year I get closer though.. c
Celi, therein lies the clincher, doesn’t it…you can’t control the weather. Or the bugs. And some years, stuff just grows unpredictably – we have consistent success with silverbeet and broccoli, but kale and peas can be spectacular one year and not grow at all the next. I wonder if the secret is to massively overplant, and then to eat whatever comes up. Potatoes vary enormously in our garden, and carrots take SO long – I can’t understand how they can sell them for $1/kg when it takes me 8 months to get any in the ground!
I saw a wonderful documentary a couple of years ago about organic garlic growers near Canberra. Prior to growing garlic, they’d spent twenty years trying all sorts of different crops on their land, most with limited success. When it was time to prepare a meal, they would wander over their (now) wild fields, and forage – they’d come in with a few strawberries, or a veg – all self-sown from their previous efforts. They basically just ate whatever they could find. 🙂
You have planted so much more than I! I had a decent year with potatoes and onions, and though the tomatoes started out slow, they are in full production now. I’m envious of you!! My jalapenos are not doing a THING!! So disappointing too. I always have a bumper crop and this year I have maybe gotten 3 jalapenos.
With Daisy deer checking out my cukes, yellow squash and zuchinni… we won’t be eating much of any of those!
I have jalapeno coming out my ears plants and plants of them but I wanted thai peppers for my sweet sauce and they never even grew. What does one do with so many jalapenos? c
I saw a comment somewhere about candied jalapenos. Michael likes them pickled but we really love jalapeno poppers! Freeze them and dry them for soups and stews and egg dishes!
Ha! – puppy or piggy kisses – Great Captures – Happy Thursday:)
I love this challenge. I hope one day to be able to grow some of my own food. I’ve got herbs down, but not the real sustenance.
Re growing enough potatoes, do you think this could a collaborative effort like raising the chickens? There is a small village in the uk that tries to grow all of its fresh meat and veg (http://www.futurefarms.co.uk/) They grow their whole crop of potatoes in one go in a field using a tractor to plant and the whole community to pull out and sack up the potatoes for the whole year. If you or one of your neighbours has a plough attachment to their tractor and or a patch of land to plough this might work for you. And it sounds like the number of people around you who are becoming intereted in such projects is growing all the time due to your influence.
Your chooks always look so healthy and lovely in the pictures I would love to hear about their care in more detail in a post one day.