·:[ high hopes gardens ]:·
• • • • •

Today we found that the mushroom logs we had “planted” with shiitake mushroom spawn decided this wet spring was a good time to pop.  Earlier we showed the process to innoculate the logs by drilling plug spawns into logs.

Here’s a couple growing on a log.

Finally, here are a few in the kitchen on the cutting board.  We are looking so forward to trying some. Waiting a year after planting these is kind of like waiting 9 months to have a baby - you can’t beleive it when they really arrive!

one year ago…”Trailer Guy”

Over the past few years there have been a number of web sites that challenge people to eat local foods. One I remember was a site where each week people posted a photo of a locally-sourced meal and told about it, giving mileages for each item. It’s harder in the midwest to do that at the end of winter, but tonight we had a meal I thought I’d share.

Egg drop soup with real free-range eggs from our farm and the first green harvest of the year - some chives from the herb garden can be seen adding a splash of color to the soup.

Second course is egg foo young, featuring, eggs from the farm, and chicken from last year’s broilers. We look forward to an increasing percentage of farm-raised ingredients in our meals.
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #67″

Today we ventured to Cedar Rapids for the 13th annual Iowa Network for Community Agriculture annual meeting.  The morning’s speaker was tangerine farmer and film-maker Lisa Brenneis from Ojai, California.  You may ask, what is a California farmer doing in Iowa talking at a local food conference?  Quite simply, if you followed yesterday’s blog entry - she was taking us down a different road.

Her film “Eat at Bills” profiles the wildly successful Montery Produce Market - a kind of market that currently does not exist in Iowa.  It was her job to stretch our understanding how local foods could be offered to eaters.

Here’s Lisa showing off some of the just-picked Mandarin Oranges from her orchard.  We got to take some home to share with the kids!  What a treat in February.

one year ago…

Once again this year we are offering gift boxes with hand-made goodies from our farm, including hand-made goat milk soap, jams from organic fruit, and beeswax candles.

This is the large sampler box with jam, honey, goat milk soap, a beeswax pillar candle and two votive candles offered for $25.

This is the medium sampler box with jam, honey, goat milk soap, a beeswax votive candle offered for $15.

This is the small sampler box with three kinds of jam made with organic fruit from the farm offered for $10.

We offer these first to our regular customers but have a few left, so we are showing them on the blog.  They are in mail-ready boxes and we can mail them to you or your gift recipient for just the actual shipping charges. Contact us if you’d like to order some or get a shipping estimate.

one year ago… 

It’s the time of year for the annual latke fry at hgh hopes. The kids were very excited to find out it was latke night.  There was actual utternaces of joy and clapping.

As a bonus, the potatoes, eggs, and onions were all straight off the farm.

one year ago…

I think we needed a snow day. Yesterday while everything was shut down outside, it was time for something completely different.

It was time to make gingerbread cookies and homemade bread! The tasks that should availed themselves (house cleaning etc,) were just too risky because you just never knew when the power might go out in the middle of vacuuming a rug!  So, it was cookies and bread.  Martin loves the honey wheat bread - so much so he calls it “dessert” and doesn’t want anything on it.  He even wanted to bring a PB&J sandwich to school instead of a school lunch of corndogs!

Here Martin shows off his moose and Minnesota cookie with important places in Minnesota for him marked with an X. He’s at the age where he loves cooking.  A few days ago we were working in the attic and as soon as we got up, I realized I needed another tool, so asked him to find a good radio station on the dial while I went to fetch it from the garage.  When I got up,he had dialed into NPR and was listening to Lynne Rossetto-Kasper on the “Splendid Table” and he was all excited because they were talking about spices and reported that most cinnamon in the stores is fake.

one year ago…

When people wander to the basement and see our assortment of canned goods, they accuse us of being Mormon or survivalists! Since we’re near the end of the canning season, I thought it would be a good time to show the canned goods. This reminds me a bit of the inside cover of Bill Bryson’s “Thunderbolt Kid” that shows a family of the 50’s posing in front of all the food they’d consume in a year. (Though, I didn’t drag out all the frozen stuff from the freezer or root crops for this photo.) I wondered how drastically that picture would change if you did the same today for the average American family - it would be dominated by pre-packaged foods and fast food containers.

The shelves contain stewed tomatoes, pickled dilly beans, peaches, blueberries, blackberries, salsa, raspberries, applesauce, and about six diffferent types of jam.

one year ago…

Today was another big picking day - both raspberries and apples.  I even got tired of picking raspberries today.  We also started on the peach harvest, they seem to ripen better off the tree.  But those will be for another day.

So, 24 more jars of canned raspberries, 11 pints of peach-applesauce, and 22 pints of raspberry-applesauce.  The apple sauce was from some apples we had peeled and frozen earlier in the season, plus some apples the girls picked and peeled today. ‘Tis the season for harvest.  I was thinking, although it might seem like a lot, 33 pints of applesauce is not even one jar a week.  OK, you can subtract summer months when other fruits are in season, and that leaves us with one jar a week from today’s batch!

one year ago…

Today was another big canning push.

We moved the stainless steel table out under the shade - the heat has returned, but not the humidity.

Today’s haul was 35 quarts of tomatoes and about 55 jars of raspberry jam.  It’s not bad with many hands.  One of Emma’s favorite tasks is blanching and cutting up tomatoes.  Even after all this, we still snarfed down sliced tomatoes at dinner - it’s hard to get sick of something so good!

one year ago…

Finally, the meal begins!  We’re not sure exactly how many people ate, but it may have been around 110.
The first people move through the local food line.  We used up all the plates and forks! The dishes all had notecards explaining what the dish is and the source of the food.

This is one dish that Iowans can eat locally year-round - salsa and corn tortilla chips.  I enjoyed eating from the mobile salsa tray!

Finally, the meal is over and the event grand organizer can breathe a sigh of satisfaction following a first-time event pulled off successfully.

one year ago…

Today the preparations started for the all-Iowa lunch after church tomorrow. As part of the focus on sustainability this month in church, we helped plan a local meal for the congregation - so they could taste what local cooking can be and be mindful of where their food comes from.

When you start out with fresh, local ingredients, it’s hard to go wrong.

This meal was from scratch - we even picked up flour from Paul’s Grains in Laurel and the crew made pasta from scratch.

It was an afternoon of cooking, fun (and even some impromptu dancing) to get ready for the meal the next day. The woman Claire is dancing with is a good person to know - she was born in Venezuala and then moved to Italy before ending up here. Now there’s some cuisine! Linda decided that being this kind of church lady is a good thing!

one year ago…

I thought I’d post the list of local food resources (many, but not all are specific to Iowa) for those of you asking - where do I find good local food?

Directories

Do it Yourself

Social Networks

General Information

Reading List

one year ago…

Today was the first big canning day of the season.   We had made a few batches of jam earlier, but this is the first time we rolled out the stainless steel counter and old cooktop from the house and set up in the shed, since there was a chance of rain and it was hot out in the sun.

All the “stuff” ready to go. It beats making the big mess in the kitchen.

Martin got the jars ready for tomatoes - he measured out the lemon juice (for acidification to allow boiling water canning instead of pressure canning).  He also measured out the salt for the jars as well - stylistically decked out in his “Bob the Builder” apron! Can we can it, yes we can!

Emma’s job is to help blanch the tomatoes to get the skins off before making the crushed tomatoes.

Finally, the afternoon’s haul - 24 quarts of tomatoes, a few jars of blackberries and raspberries, along with the frozen beans.

one year ago…

In our quest to remain the undisputed “Live Music Capital of Logan Township,” (of course a township is a block of land 6 x 6 miles) we hired the Blue Moon Players and threw a party.  We hope this is the first of many such summer events.  There’s something nice about live music out in the country, with the wide-wide world of the farm and barn for the kids to run wild in. The older folks can forego the games of Sardines or capture the flag by sitting in the shade and listening to some great music.

For my money, any time you’ve got an upright string bass propped up on your hay wagon, you’re living the good life!  The day was incredibly hot, but we all managed just fine.

Of course, no party is complete without a spread of food, so here’s the food table showing some of the delights of a midwestern potluck in August.

one year ago…