Dropstone Farms

Shelling peas on the couch, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

The shelling peas are coming on strong so we picked a big bowlful to shell while watching Buffy. I use the shells to make stock in case we need to feed any vegetarians, and I blanched and then quick-cooled the peas right in the colander we shelled them into.

3 cups shelling peas, June 22 2009, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Does what it says on the tin.

4 Comments »

So it’s Spring and the chickens are sleeping in the coop and are still in the sacrificial paddock when the fence keeps them in and free-ranging when it doesn’t. I prefer to think of it as a Sacrifice Zone but that’s because I’m a nerd.

The result is that we’ve got a mess of tomato starts potted up in 4″ soil blocks and a shortage of space in the greenhouse and a spare chicken tractor. In the best idea I’ve had in a long time, it occurred to me to remove the blue tarp covering the tractor and replace it with clear plastic. Ta-daaa! Instant greenhouse.

In use, the tractor is partially covered with a blue tarp to let the ladies to get out of the sun or rain, depending.

Because of the poultry cloth on the tractor we couldn’t clip the plastic to the PVC hoops as is our usual custom. Instead we attached the plastic by laying it on top and zig-zagging twine over the plastic in the manner we learned during the Tilth Producers farm walk at Terry’s Berries. This has proven to be faster and more reliable that the clips with the added bonus that the greenhouse can be vented by sliding the plastic up without fiddling with any clips and potentially tearing the plastic.

So, yeah, I’m pretty pleased with myself.

Here is the tractor greenhouse with the plastic fully deployed for maximum heat.

Here is the tractor cum greenhouse with the sides pushed up for venting. Noticing how much easier this is than farting around with clips?

Look how happy the tomatoes are in their roomy new soil blocks. I'm pretty sure we started them too late but, you know, first year farming.

2 Comments »

We made a lot of progress on the expanded chicken coop this weekend! Its name is now Chicken Bunker, on account of how cozy and built-into-the-hill it is. All that’s left to do is get the roof on and wire up the sides, which is only a few more hours of work. The old coop will need mucked out and composted, and the whole thing re-lined with hay, and then we can deploy the chickens! We are well ahead of schedule to have it finished before we go to the Tilth conference; now I don’t feel bad about asking the neighbors to check on the critters, as they will all be in one place and will not need to be let out and put away.

Chicken bunker in progress, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Last weekend I broke my glasses, but I got new ones!

Nose Tomato models my new glasses, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

5 Comments »

We’ve been processing tomatoes, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

… a little at a time. We don’t have a pot that holds more than four quart-jars anyway so it works out.

We have also slow-roasted and frozen a couple of pounds, and have dried some too.

Pictured: Green Zebra; Ananas Noire; Black Prince; Brandywine; more varieties whose names I don’t know; some basil; an apple.

No Comments »

I was sure it was just going to rain all through August (which it did) and into September and then for the rest of the winter, with no breaks. But it has warmed up and cleared up, and we have some tomatoes coming in after all. In fact, we harvested enough on Thursday to make two delicious pizzas.

We had a tomato taste test, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Unfortunately, I don’t know all their names, but, left to right, #2 is Black Prince — VERY delicious!; yellow (#4, let’s say) is Limmony, also tasty; #6, a favorite for 3 years now, is Green Zebra. One of the red bumpy ones (either #1 or #3) is a Brandywine and delicious as always. #7 is, I think, an Ananas Noire (”black pineapple”).

Delicious awesome pizza, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Background pizza: Red Tomato Pizza, cooked.
Foreground pizza: Funny-Colored Tomato Pizza, yet uncooked. Yellow, green, and black/purple/brown tomatoes.

Both have fresh mozzarella from the grocery store, and for sauce they have chopped basil and garlic, mixed with olive oil and some grated parmigiano — a sort of loose pesto.

There has been much more preserving around here. But most of it was today and I am too tired to post more, so, further updates … in the future!

No Comments »

Burrito fixins, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Stew meat (from our quarter cow) was braising in the oven. Garden potatoes boiled like normal. Garden zucchini and garden tomatoes grilled briefly. All combined in a delicious tortilla with a sauce of sour cream + goat yogurt (island grown!) plus garden basil. Garden cabbage on top. Yum.

2 Comments »

Colors that tomatoes might be: orange; yellow; red.*

See the whole set (reproduced here in its entirety).

Click on any picture to view it in Flickr.

Orange cherry tomatoes get some color, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Yellow Pear tomatoes get some color, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Oregon Cherry tomatoes get some color, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Brandywine is turning too!!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Our first Big Tomato to turn colors!!

* We will also have several plants of green and purple/brownish fruits, too, but those don’t seem to be doing much yet.

3 Comments »

I had some chicken stories to tell, but there really are other things going on in our lives, which isn’t evident from the past few posts, so I will discuss those other things instead. So here is a list of things I meant to write about when they were current, and didn’t.

• We built 3 raised beds. Spent the hottest weekend of the summer so far hauling dirt across the yard to fill them up. Planted one immediately, with kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, chard. Planted the 2nd one a few weeks later, with a second succession of winter squash, peas, beans, and carrots, as well as new parsnips (which we overlooked before). The third we started planting just this week, with 2 more rows of carrots, some lettuce, and 2 rows of beans. We’ll put more in this weekend.
• We made friends with folks who run the stable down the street and our compost area has grown from one pile to three. One (Ruby’s old haunt) is half-rotted leaves and kitchen scraps. One is horse poo and sawdust from the stable, and grass, and leaf litter from our woods. And the last one is the bad evil weeds I pulled up, mixed in with horse poo, so that it will rot hotly and the weeds will all die and not propagate. Thanks, horse poo!
• We have been haphazardly measuring our garden foods and photographing the meals thereof. I always mean to, but yesterday, for example, I forgot to weigh and photograph dinner with E&K that included a second round of potato and fava bean salad. At some point we’ll get a spreadsheet up and running with harvest dates, weights, etc., so we can figure out what produces best. An initial observation is that the Swedish Peanut potatoes don’t produce nearly as well as the Red Clouds, which are crazy prolific.

All my posts always have lists in them. I like lists, I guess. I’m going to try to have more frequent, shorter, non-listified posts.

1 Comment »

When Garth and I were first starting to learn to cook (which was conveniently right about the same time we were starting to be together), we ate a lot of mustard greens, which we both liked a great deal. Full of character and a little bit bitey, but easy to cook and good with any number of proteins and starches. But then we started to learn how to shop, too, and we stopped getting groceries at Fred Meyer and started getting them at the farmers’ markets and at Pike Place, (which is of course also a farmers’ market), or at Whole Foods as a last resort, and so we lost track of mustard greens. Apparently not many folks are growing them around here, and/or not many folks are growing them organically nation-wide.

So finding mustard green seeds in our preferred seed catalog, Territorial, was very exciting to both of us. I wasn’t very careful when I scattered them, and didn’t really scatter so much as pour directly onto the ground, apparently, as they represent the largest green lump here:

And tonight the green lump is smaller by at least 50-75 plants:



(Note our totally sweet wire harvest basket from the ever-awesome Path to Freedom and their new Urban Homestead journal! Note also the dirt still on the roots, which are still on the plants.)

My thinning accomplished approximately nothing, though, at least visually, though I failed to take a picture due to some pretty serious rain today. That will have to come later. But the end product was delicious sautéed greens with garlic, on brown rice, with quick pan-fried halibut cheeks from the market yesterday.

No Comments »