A short mountain of green beans were transformed tonight - with the aid of fresh dill, garlic and salt - into a friend-favorite known as Dilly Beans.   

Beans were sourced from Thistledown Farm.

The stack netted 7 widemouth pints worth.

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It was another canning extravaganza in the OHW kitchen this weekend.

Leading the way were pickled red onions.  Amy loves them on the salads served at McMenamins, so this is primarily an attempt to mimic those.  The ingredient list is simple - thinly sliced onions, white wine vinegar and peppercorns with a little sugar added.  The concoction is boiled and then finished with a basic canning process.

Next up is a jalapeno pepper jelly.  Again pretty simple: thin-sliced jalapenos added to cider vinegar and sugar.  Pectin is included in this mix for the gel effect.  Oh, and a little food coloring to brighten up the green.  I sampled this one and it’s a perfect mix of heat and sweet.

And last is the round-up of our remaining tomatoes.  Some whole, some sauce.  Lots and lots of quarts, still in process as of this writing.

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“I’m DONE with pickles.”

These were my co-author’s first words after she spent two near-full days of a splendid weekend cleaning, cutting, boiling, mixing, sealing, etc – in other words, canning - what is intended to be a two-year supply of staples here at the ranch. 

 A few days ago Amy made a special run to Thistledown Farm for the bulk supply.  The purchase included (3) 10 pound bags of pickling cucumbers and (2) 30-pound lugs of roma tomatoes.   Yes folks, almost 100 pounds of raw product.

The net end product of the pickles tallied 31 pint jars and 10 quart jars.  For the Romas, 21 quarts total.  Amy tells me this is about 1/2 of the tomatoes we’ll need for the 2-year goal, so another run will be undertaken soon.

While Amy sweated it out in the kitchen today, I worked the garden.  I harvested a few things: (more) tomatillos, the last of our corn, and a couple handfuls of golden raspberries.  The main effort was reseeding several rows of our winter garden that had failed, primarily due to our industrious free-ranging hens.  An extra task today was implementing a short wire barrier to keep the chickens out.   

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Buying a plant start of an unknown vegetable variety can be risky business.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  This is a story about a winner.

Coming off of a successful tomatillo experience in 2008, we decided to expand our horizons this year. A few months ago we drove down to Territorial Seed Company in Cottage Grove to pick up starts, primarily tomatoes.  While browsing their selection of tomatillos, we ran across a plant with an intriguing name and description.  A Pineapple Ground Cherry.  It was noted as having a unique flavor equal to its name, and characteristics much like a tomatillo.

Over the past 2 weeks, we have been harvesting.  As advertised, it is seriously sweet and does have a pineapple flavor.  The fruit is much smaller than a tomatillo, even smaller than a common cherry tomato.  Actually, more like a cranberry.  They do have the characteristic tomatillo husk, so factor that in with its size - they are labor intensive to extract in mass quantity.  But worth it.

Harvest is easy.  When the fruit is ripe it drops on the ground.  They are fine on the ground at least a few days, as the husks keep them well protected.  The process is as easy as lifting the vines and raking them with your hand.  

After husking, I ended up with several cups worth of them total.  I decided to substitute them into a Salsa Verde recipe from Weber’s Big Book of Grilling.   I’m not a stickler for measurements (and have a bad memory to boot), but here’s roughly what it involved, that I can remember:

          4 cups pineapple ground cherries

          2 small onions

          extra virgin olive oil

          1 fresh chile pepper, most of the seeds removed

          2 cloves garlic

          2 tbsp lime juice

          1/2 cup cilantro

          1/2 tsp salt

          1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Wash vegetables.  Slice onions into 1/4″ thick rings.  Coat with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  Grill on medium/high heat for approximately 10 minutes, until outsides are browned and insides are soft.   Remove from grill and allow to cool before adding to food processor.  Add remaining ingredients and run processor until ingredients are well mixed and to desired level of chunkiness.  

Grab yourself a cerveza, and enjoy your salsa as a dip for tortilla chips or as a topping on any number of related dishes.

I also used this basic recipe with traditional green tomatillos, as identified in the Weber book.  In that case a little brown sugar addition is recommended - about 1 tbsp.

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My co-author and I reached a major milestone in our partnership over the weekend.  10 years ago, we went on what we consider our first date.  I am a nostalgia and tradition guy, so I proposed we repeat elements from that initial connection - the basics being a movie and dinner.  The 1999 inaugural date included the flick “Runaway Bride” at Valley River cinema, a meal at Red Robin, and a ride to and from in my chariot, a ‘91 Camaro named Zeke.  No lie.  

Since our tastes have - shall we say, evolved - since then, the 2009 version took a little different path.  First, we rode our bicycles to the theatre.  Second, the theatre was the Bijou.  Third, we went to “Food, Inc.” a documentary about the industrialization of the US farm and food system.  And last, we had a fabulous dinner on the terrace at Belly.  By the way, I highly recommend both the movie and the dining spot - although a further recommendation is to reverse the order: dinner first, movie second.  

I’d say in 10 years, we’ve advanced ourselves in the dating category (although we both miss pressing Zeke’s gas pedal from time to time).

Sunday was just a great Sunset Magazine day.  We kicked it off with some Dutch Babies (from Joy of Cooking) featuring local blueberries harvested last week by good friends.  The left photo is of our niece overwhelmed by the sight of them!

We then made plans for our fall/winter garden, which included an assessment of our seed inventory.  Then it was a run to Down to Earth for starts and more seeds.  Supply was thin, so we just picked up a few packets of seeds (Amy actually went back today to pick up starts from a fresh order that came in).

Next stop was Benedettis in Springfield to stock up a little on our meat supply.  Love that place!

For lunch, I grilled up a couple of Benedettis specialty sausages and Amy made a green salad including fresh cherry tomatoes from the backyard.

In the afternoon, I worked away at neglected mini-projects on the side yard while Amy processed our first harvest of tomatoes into sauce.  

Meanwhile, the chickens were free ranging and taking dirt baths and bees worked blossoms all over our property (the top picture is of echinacea in our front yard).

In the late afternoon, Amy turned 3 rows of our fava bean field over and got them ready for new crops.  The hens were fans of this fresh dirt.  We ran out of gas and time, so seeding and planting will have to wait another day.

Dinner was a summer linguini pasta featuring a medley of fresh vegetables.  We had another green salad, this one featuring figs from our tree - roasted and folded into a vinaigrette.  Outstanding.

What a great weekend and great life.  The next 10 sure look sweet.

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I eat the cherry (and sour cherry) jam mixed with homemade yogurt throughout the winter and Matt puts it on english muffins.  The cherry dessert sauce is a new one for us - but we have high hopes that it will be perfect over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  The cherry sherry is another new experiment.  I made strawberry sherry last year and it was amazing.  Hopefully the cherry sherry works out as well.  I only wish that it was easier to say - cherry sherry doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Next up is pickled baby carrots.  I found the most amazing baby carrots (not the weird, nubby things in bags in the grocery store) grown by a local farmer, Herman Hemke of Quality Acres in Coburg, OR.  In addition to baby carrots, he also sells the most beautiful multi-colored carrots.  The man knows his carrots!  You can buy them at Eugene Local Foods.

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We had a great cherry orchard adventure this weekend at Hentze Family Farm.  This fruit is my co-author’s favorite and they rate in my top 3.  The farm hosted a festival on Saturday, but we went a day later.  

We proceeded directly to the retail shop thinking we’d just pick up a few varieties and drive home.  Amy had heard of a special dark variety and inquired about them with the clerk.  We were informed that they indeed grow them, but they were in the orchard only and that we’d have to pick them ourselves.  

With a farm-provided red gallon bucket each we marched out to the nearby orchard.  What an incredible experience.  A field packed with many dozens of thriving large trees absolutely loaded with perfect fruit.  We went hunting for this special variety and along the way passed many other types we could not resist sampling.  

When we were done, we had picked about 8 pounds worth.  On the way back we found more exquisite Raniers (my personal favorite) and added them to the buckets.  At the shop, we added a full lug (20 lbs) of pre-picked Bings.

Amy has since pitted and dried our self-picked cherries, and they turned out great.  These will find a variety of uses over the next few months.  The Bings will meet their maker tomorrow.  

If you’re in the area, get out to Hentze’s and pick some for yourself before the heat takes them away. Pick-your-own’s are a steal at just one buck per pound.  The farm is open until 6:00 PM daily.

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We did a lot of business at Lane Forest Products this spring.  We made about a dozen trips to dump off sod strippings and to pick up soil amendments and mulch for our lawn-to-crop conversion in the front 40.  Part of Lane’s check-out system is a drive-by display of their bulk products.  It’s a totally practical system, so you can preview what you are getting before a loader dumps scoopfuls into your truck or trailer.  It’s also an effective way to show off a wide range of materials that cause a customer’s brain - this one included – to ponder other projects.   In my case, it was seeing their decomposed granite – referred to “DG” in the trade - that triggered a vision for remodeling our deck perimeter and firepit area.

It’s a material we’ve been intrigued with incorporating into our yard for a couple of years, after seeing it frequently used on a vacation we made to Santa Cruz and the Bay Area.  We particularly liked the buff color and it’s texture.  The job was also an opportunity to install some clay brick, another desire that’s been brewing.

First task was to remove an existing skim coat of 3/8 minus crushed rock and good amount of soil below it.  Not fun, but I did unearth an artifact and good omen in the process – an old rusty horseshoe.  I set the new subgrade to about 4” below where I wanted the finished surface.  I used several string lines and one eyeball to dial it in.  Meanwhile I picked up over 100 bricks, to establish an edge between the DG and plant bed interfaces.  I broke them all in half (with a cold chisel and mallet) so I could set them on end with shallower excavation and to “double” the material – ie less work and less cost.  Bricks were acquired from Willamette Graystone, Inca red color. 

After resetting about a dozen existing square walking pavers, I put down about 2” of 3/8” minus crushed rock, tamped it in and then added the topping coat of the DG, about 2”.  I then fanned the whole area with water, let it settle and then added more material and repeated the shower.  Start to finish, the whole process filled the better part of a weekend and then a couple of evenings after that, completed just in time for an office party last week.  The total DG volume for the job was about 1 yard.  

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Getting chickens was perhaps one of the best decisions we have made - we get so much enjoyment out of watching them and petting them, not to mention eating their eggs.  The only downside so far is that two of them (the two white cochins) have begun making excessive noise at sunrise to announce that they are awake and everyone else should be too.  It usually stops after about 10 minutes, but I typically run out to quiet them down to keep peace with our neighbors.  They do seem to quiet down if I show up and let them out.

We think our chickens are going through a teenage, picky-eater stage.  Talking with friends, their chickens eat most anything.  Ours are partial to grass, broadleaf weeds (still in the ground), cracked corn, slugs, and bugs.  I sometimes throw a random slug eated strawberry, fava bean, or other treat in and they peck at it once and then ignore it.  You would think a strawberry or fava bean would be more interesting than a blade of grass.

The neighbor cat disappeared for a few days last week, so Matt let them free range for a couple hours each evening.  They could not have been more happy.  I was a little worried about how we were going to corral them back into their coop, but it was really easy.  They all stick together and are easily coaxed in one direction.

Our garden has really taken off in the last few weeks.  We are eating fava beans several times a week and giving away bags to friends on a regular basis.  The strawberries are just starting to ripen, the peas are getting close to done, and the tomatoes are going crazy.  We have had green fruit on the vines for about 3 weeks now.  It looks like we will have a huge raspberry crop this year, probably because we learned how to prune them correctly!

Matt has been an absolute trooper, completing project after project over the last couple of months.  The latest one is a patio consisting of decomposed granite that contains our firepit.  He was out until 11pm earlier this week working on it.

That is the very abridged version of getting caught up.   Thanks for bearing with us the last month or so!  I hope to post some photos of the above referenced projects in the next few days.

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We’ve landed on names - at least working titles - for all the hens.  The light brama shown below is “Pepper” aka “Pepa” (ala Salt n Pepa).

I hope to post a garden update this weekend.  We are drowning in Fava Beans!

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