I began the September Home Grown Challenge almost two weeks ago and with only one 24 hour break, when I went to Chicago, I have been dining in on home grown fresh food. We are streaming along. The food is glorious. I do buy the raw milk that I would usually get from Daisy from down the road but other than that we are eating food off the farm all day every day. I have only allowed myself coffee, tea, (though drinks are not part of the home grown challenge yet), flour, olive oil, salt, balsamic vinegar and a little sugar.
Everything else is off the farm. Even this apple custard pie. It will be served with whipped ricotta cheese flavoured with home grown honey. Picking apples off the little trees that I planted myself has a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.
The ricotta cheese was made the cheats way with 1 gallon of raw milk heated to the first bubble, 1/4 cup of home made apple cider vinegar and a little salt. Stand, cool, strain, eat. Perfect. Today I will make a regular farmer’s cheese for the weekend pizzas. This means I will have to add rennet to my allowed list.
I am spending more time in the kitchen but this is not unusual at this time of year.
Summer Sauce to eat with home made noodles. Thank goodness the chickens are laying so well. The meat freezer is almost empty awaiting its October replenishment. Our only meat is lamb, which is not as exciting as it sounds so I am creating some fantastic vegetarian feasts.
The second to last row of potatoes is gone, I might make it to the end of the month but no further, so I am conserving them. My Irish eyes are crying.
My answer to all this talk of autumn: My last planting of sunflowers has begun to flower. Autumn is not here yet.
The bees have found their syrup.
Great Aunt Sis’s lamp stand. Finally come home to The Coupe.
My notes so far underline what I suspected, we are not growing enough of everything, we need more vegetables, better spacings and less herbs in the beds. Pots for herbs from now on. I am going to combine and extend three of the smaller gardens into one very big old fashioned garden, cutting down on the varieties. Less staggering and more bulk planting. Less pretty, more food. Staggering plantings helps me keep fresh food in the kitchen, but I need fresh food in the kitchen as well as fresh food going into jars.
I also want to add carrots and parsnips to the gardens.
Having said that, I think I should be able to coast along to the end of the month eating what I grow quite easily. I am the only one who is sticking to the home grown diet and it does not take much to feed one person. Though there won’t be much variety the food is absolutely clean, no preservatives or additives at all. The portions will be smaller but are as high in nutrients as you can get. Bliss. And we all eat too much anyway.
The next two weeks will be the challenge!!
You all have a lovely day. Take good care!
your friend on the farm, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
98 responses to “The Home Grown September Challenge is a Bliss-full Challenge.”
A slice of that lovely pie for breakfast, please? Promise I’ll do the washing-up!
I’m totally jealous of your sunflowers…every time I plant them, the rabbits eat them when they’re tiny. Have a lovely day, C!
Oooooh! I’ll take a slice of the lovely pie too!!! Gluten Free crust for mine!!! It looks incredible!!!! Will go wonderfully with my morning coffee! Then off I go to make more eggplant parmesan for the freezer! 🙂
Yes please, Mere! Do you have a GF crust recipe to share?
Gluten free pie crust:
250g chilled cream cheese – chopped
150g chilled butter – chopped
2 cups gluten free flour
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
Pinch of salt
Rub the dry into the fats – or blitz it all in a food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs
Add a little cold water (about a tablespoon) and mix till it all holds together
Turn out onto a floured board, shape into a lump, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 15 minutes
Roll out and blind bake at 200c for 10 – 15 minutes, then remove the weights and bake another 3 – 5 minutes until golden all over
This recipe is from an Australian cook called Maggie Beer. She is famous for her fabulous pies – among other things 🙂
Hmm: Feel foolish ~ I am from Oz naturally and have adored Maggie Beer forever and did not have that recipe! I do not cook gluten free, but ’tis a very simple one to make anyways! Have just received a cask {!} of her verjuice which can’t wait to get into my recipes 🙂 !
wonderful.. ! c
I have a huge collection of old metal baskets and dishwashing racks,milk bins and dishwashER racks that I put over my plants when they are little.. we seem to have more rabbits than ever this year.. c
ah freezing the eggplant parmesan.. what an excellent idea mere. Now how would I make a gluten free crust with whats on the farmy? c
The pie looks yummy and the sunflowers—-so perky and bright on this sunny and thank goodness cooler morning in North Iowa. Your home grown challenge is going so well. Good on ya!
It is cooler here too, but i am ignoring it, i am sure summer will be back soon!! c
Kudos Celi – you are an inspiration to us all!
Have a beautiful weekend.
🙂 Mandy xo
Morning Mandy, hope that mail hurrys up!! c
You and me both C! xo
Well done you! I know what you mean about losing the “pretty” ornamental garden feeling for good food spacing. Something I struggle with even if I only have this tiny city plot. In my case it’s the commercially available bag of potatoes. There are too many of them to plant ornamentally and I never want to throw a bunch away. I’ve got an overabundance of herbs going on too, but they are in a super heated little raised bed completely south facing and baking against the garage wall and I can’t think of anything else which will take that heat except a few rose and a fig. You know, I used to make beautiful chèvre with goat milk and mushroom rennet. I wonder why I stopped making it? Mmm chèvre and figs… 🙂
mushroom rennet, must look into that.. hmm.. I love goats cheese, it would be the only reason to milk goats for me, but milking a cow AND goats seems a little over the top! Morning Veronica.. c
Morning C, wonder if that rennet can be made at home. I’ve no idea. Do you collect your own wild mushrooms? I do but I’ve grown up in a culture where it’s normal to identify and collect wild mushrooms. Actually, collecting wild food always sounds like a great idea. Do you have any time for that? It’s coming up to mushroom season here and they dry and store beautifully, (Except for the shaggy manes, they have to be cooked because they liquefy otherwise.)
There is no wild ANYTHING out here, every corner in the midwest is either mown, sprayed or cropped. Over here they buy abandoned farms so they can knock the buildings down and plant more GM corn. I have never even seen a wild mushroom here, of any kind. Or wild blackberries, or gnarly old orchards. The land has been assaulted by fake fertilisers which leach every iota of nutrient from the surrounding soil and increasingly strong aerial pesticides and fungicides, not to mention the round-up build-up in the ground and all the waterways. Osmosis deals with the rest. Nothing grows wild here Veronica. Not for miles and miles and miles. Sad aye. I would love to go finding wild food with you one day, sounds like somthing i would really enjoy too! c
o that just makes me want to cry to read this! No wild food, I would be at a loss..
Industrial horticulture is very tidy like that. c
Oh groan! Time to move to an organic island int he middle of nowhere with no ill winds blowing the pesticides around. Tuesday I wrote a post featuring magazine articles from the 1960’s about dunking logs in various chemical solutions to burn them in colour flames. I said I can’t believe how many things we used to do to try to kill ourselves and now Monsanto has taken that out of our hands. 😦
wild and crazy days! c
I love it! Thought of you today when I was at the market buying things we can’t grow…such is city life. I do not think I could sustain this family with plantings on our polluted little balcony…but I can dream and live vicariously.
It would be hard with only a balcony but at least you know where you can buy local foods, that in itself is a dream! Just the research to find what is in season and being brought into town and finding it .. is a win! I lived in big cities for years! So I do know what you mean..c
That last comment was supposed to be from me. Forgot to log out and log back in! Blogger confusion!
I can’t find your comment Charlotte, but i sure it was lovely, i shall go and check spam, surely you did not end up in there.. c
I really enjoy reading your blog! This is the way we live all the time…not in a challenge…so I find it most intersting that you are trying this way of life out and having such a great time! I can see that you are truly getting into it! It is hard work and the hours are long, but farm life is a great way to live. I married a farmer and before this major life …I was a Cali girl who shopped the farmers market in the Bay area of SF! I loved my life in CA. but when I met this wonderful man from the high plains…well…that is just the beginning of the story! I fell in love with not only him…but the way of life out here. I have never worked physically this hard in my life…not even working out in the gym everyday was this physical! 🙂 No comparison! LOL
I am a research hound and recipe thief! I love your recipes and will be make the cheeses you have posted. I do make cheese for my cheesecakes by hanging plain Greek Yogurt in cheese cloth and letting it drain. Will purchase some rennet and try the farmers cheese. Thank you for sharing!
Just finished freezing corn and canning tomato sauces! My salsa is in the jars ready for football and tomato soups are in the pantry ready to sip when our summer is over!!! Fall is breathing down the back of my neck!!! Brrrrrr……
Still have the heirloom pumpkins and buttercup squash to can. Then I am done!!!! Will make my jellies, jams and preserves after the beans are harvested.
Have a great day! Sincerely, Mere
Morning Mere and thank you for being so supportive. I grew up on a BEACH! So this life is far removed from my roots. No comparison, then big cities all my life until only 6 years ago when I came out here to marry and develop a real farm out of a industrially cropped flat field. So it has been a lot of work creating and establishing every SINGLE stage, right down to the fences, growing the grass (no forage here when I came), making gates, digging and planting every garden – there was not even ONE flower or bush – and rebuilding the interior of a ruined old barn and raising each animal including the milking cow and the beef cows from birth myself. Turning a broken down workshop into a hen house and importing the bees. Not to mention our home. So to get this far in this short a time is filling me with excitement. You are right I really do love this life. You must have the most beautiful collection of food in the cellar for winter. c
And look at what you have done, Celi…it is most amazing! We all applaud you. And on top of all that you write and you photograph and you take us all along!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
I love to have you all along with me.. imagine life without the fellowship, it does not bear thinking about.. c
For me it would a tad lonely!
Linda
It all looks yummy. But how could you manage without carrots and parsnips? The potatoes will be a problem, and I guess you’ll be eating a lot of home-made pasta. I can’t somehow see rice growing in Illinois! Could you make balsamic vinegar, I wonder?
It’s gone all grey and miserable here and I’m fed up with being in bed.
You have a nice day. Love, ViV
I could grow balsamic grapes (though it may be too cold) but i would have to wait 8 years for the vinegar to cure. I have definitely looked into it. i love balsamic. Just stay there in bed until you can’t bear it, I hope you have started your exercises to build those muscles back up though or is it too early? c
It sounds like you are doing well on the challenge, and learning. Now you mentioned, lamb, which I’ve never eaten. But the college my son is now attending serves lamb. Yes. Incredible. Good eats for those college kids.
I love all the fresh vegetables this time of year. Good thing I really love veggies.
Lamb and hogget are so easy to grow, just add grass! How wonderful that they serve it at the college.. I know of almost no person around here who has eaten or wants to try lamb. Thats why we have so much of it. We can’t even give it away! c
oh please send your lamb to me!!!! I love lamb (and Mutton). Roast with mint sauce, chops, Shepherd Pie, Lamb Shanks in stews and casseroles. What’s not to love? The thing I really miss is the traditional Roast Leg of Lamb at Easter, with Jersey new potatoes and spring peas! And a rich brown gravy. Here they have ham for Easter??? which is really not the same. Lamb is so really expensive here in VA. Although I have found a farmer that sells pasture raised and finished lamb an we are becoming good friends!
Tell your new farmer friend you will raise orphan lambs for him and he can pay you in kind. Bet you would do a great job and the little fellas would fit right in with your menagerie! imagine what the neighbours would say then!! However if it is cheaper for me to send you some frozen lamb i can do that too, just let me know. c
Congratulations on your challenge so far! It’s certainly a great way to learn how to adjust your gardening practises. I altered mine slightly this year as in the past we’ve had far too many cabbages and caulis for the two of us and they also take up such a lot of room which can be used more efficiently – for more staggered plantings for instance. The problem that I have with staggered planting is remembering to do it at the height of the B an B season!
Happy eating,
Christine
I am thinking of naming a day, Monday for instance, for when I either plant out or sow. I also just quietly need more control in the vegetable gardens, to date it has been Johns territory. he does the greens and the picking and I do the animals. But maybe I can just sneak more plantings in there, I do all the weeding anyway. We will see, i have to approach this carefully.. c
I’m trying hard to stick to my BD planting calendar……..I just need to mark it in the diary. Its making me a more efficient timekeeper.
it is an excellent idea, i have a calender open on my desk at all times but that is because i am a bear of very little brain, if I don’t write it down i forget! c
That apple custard pie looks amazing 😉
Any chance on the recipe for the apple custard pie? Looks wonderful!
Left over pastry from the other night, line with apples, and pour over the custard. Cook at 350 – 325 for an hour. Custard was um.. 3 eggs, 3/4 cup of milk, 2 big tablespoons honey or 1/4 cup of sugar. I grated nutmeg and lemon zest on top. As a side note. I always cook the pies on a hot pizza stone so the base cooks crunchy. and i am always in too much of a hurry to blind cook it first! My sister in law makes the same pie but with pears! Yum! c
OK I have ‘saved’ that to my “Real Food” file and will try it next weekend. This weekend I am being ‘Sociable’ and going to a cocktail party Saturday night and a Bridal Brunch on Sunday. The most I have been out all year LOL
Hah! Celi, I didn’t even have to ask! It looked so good, that everyone else wanted it too! Thanks for sharing! 😀
The only suggestion I would have for you for gluten free flour would be to grow almonds. But they take an age to grow big enough to amount to much. Do they even grow where you are? If so, then perhaps you could barter with someone who has the established trees? Then it’s hulling and grinding them to a fine flour. There are many online recipes using almond flour, but perhaps Mere Frost will share a good one with us! 😀
Thank fully I am not allergic to gluten.. it is preservative that make me queasy.. c
great overview, amazing photo’s a always..if you like beets and turnips, they are both easer to grow good amounts then carrots/parnips..
yes we can and do grow piles of beetroot and turnips but i do miss my parsnips.. c
You know what is amazing as either vegetarian or lamb? CURRY! I love, love, love me some curry. It’s also easy to make (20 minutes start to finish) and can be frozen in ziplocs for later if you make a huge pot of it! I don’t know if you’re allowed spices from your cabinet for cooking but if you are, brew up a big pot of curry and feat on it for days with some rice or home-made bread!
We love curry too and eat a good curry at least once a week in the winter when i cook it on the wood stove, what is your favourite vegetarian curry? c
My favorite vegetarian curry is one with a bit of nutmeg, ground white pepper, Thai chilies, and some butternut squash. Spicy and sweet! But I usually make a one-pan quick veggie curry with lots of garlic and Japanese influence.
divine! c
Gorgeous pie and I love the way this challenge has helped you rethink your planting and planning!
it is a good exercise.. only half over though! your sauce was wonderful by the way! c
A wonderful challenge. We’re far from self sufficient though at the moment most of our fruit and veg are from the garden, the meat is home reared or from local farms and our bread from home grown wheat. But with carrots, beetroot, beans, courgette, potatoes or tomatoes for supper every day, the rest of the family are pleading for something different. I shall obviously have to be more inventive.
I can’t believe lamb is such a luxury. We have it all the time here in the UK.
I’m originally from the UK so now you know why I miss it so much LOL
I think you are pretty close.. this is why i am giving it a serious try, and really, it is great, with your big garden and the farm I am sure you would be surprised how long you could go without using bought stuff. But you are right about the boredom of the same ingredients every time.. we have to be clever! c