Birthday Equipment

Today was Vicki's Birthday. I could tell you how old she is but I think she might kill me!!! Anyway, one of benefits of getting a year older is that you get PRESENTS!

For the last two/three years the bulk of the work at Long Bean Farm has been done with a combination of a tractor (basic land prep) and a hoe. Both pieces of equipment are very useful and have their place. But the farm seemed to be missing something.

Mostly more hoes!!! I say that in the most polite way....but you just never seem to have enough hoes around when the spring and summer grass starts sprouting.

How do we fix this issue??? This has been a question that comes up almost every weekend. The answer seemed to be that we needed something smaller than a tractor but bigger than a hoe. It was decided that we would get a tiller that would be big enough to make rows yet narrow enough to till between rows. The decision was made.....

After hours and hours of surfing the net and mucho phone calls to equipment sales people we were more confused than ever! It seemed like there were 100's of choices. All had benefits and drawbacks. The project would require more thought! Well, the discussions continued...and the grass continued to grow. At some point you just need to close your eyes and hope for the best.

So, this week for a "not so romantic birthday present" Vicki got a tiller that is self propelled and can put up rows.

Ok, we all know that birthdays for your wife require a "romantic present". Too many of us husbands buy practical gifts for our wives birthdays thinking that we are doing something to make their lives easier and that our wives will really like that. But, we very soon find out that we missed the boat entirely and we should have just bought something soft, lacy or chocolate.

Well, I hope I didn't fall into that trap....but you never can tell. So, to hedge my bets (really the tiller) we made an impromptu stop at the nail salon after the farmers market!

Once Vicki gets the hang of her mechanical hoe I'll post some photo's and a review of the equipment.....

Got any Bread man...

We wouldn't want you to think that all we do is farm...that would be boring. Not to say that farming is boring but if that really was all we did then we would be boring!

For the last few years I have been on a quest to learn how to make 3 breads.

• Homemade "light" bread like my Grandma
• French Country Bread
• Ciabatta Bread

The "light" bread was not that hard to get a handle on. It is a simple yeast bread that you can make and eat every day. In our house we now make almost all of our daily bread using this or a variation of my Grandma's recipe.

Next on my list was French Country bread. I have great memories of the fresh baked Country bread I picked up every couple of days from Valentine's Bakery in Albury, Australia. I don't have any idea how they made the bread and still today they will not share any of their secrets.

This crusty bread with a light and somewhat airy crumb has proved to be my biggest challenge. To this day I have not been able to master this loaf! I can make bread with the right crust but the wrong crumb. I can make bread with the right crumb but not the right crust. But, never have I been able to combine the two! If you have any good recipes LET ME KNOW. Don't get me wrong....I am not giving up.... But, I needed to try something else for a while.

So, bring on the Ciabatta! I tried a half dozen recipes. But, none of them were just what I was looking for...nice crust with a light and holey crumb. Then I saw a recipe on "The Fresh Loaf" website. Here is the link... ciabatta. I couldn't believe how simple this recipe sounded!!

I started the bread in the morning and it mixed just as was stated. Believe it or not it really does take about 20 minutes of mixing in my Kitchen Aid for the pancake batter you start with to become a dough. After the dough came together I poured it into a bucket to grow!

As you can see there wasn't a lot of dough. But, the recipe said I could expect it to triple in size....so, I had high hopes!

Well, after the dough was packed away for the rise I went to work at the farm. Oh, right I am not talking about that in this post.

When I returned from a very hot morning with my hoe.... Ok, i said I wasn't going to talk about farming in this post but that time I was! Much to my surprise the dough had MORE THAN TRIPLED and was full of bubbles!!

So far so good... Now came the hard part. That was to get the dough out of the bucket. But, as the bucket was well oiled that was not an issue and the dough slid right out onto the counter and settled in on top of the flour. I looked at the dough and it was FULL of all sizes of bubbles. The recipe wanted me to cut the dough into 3 pieces...but as we had already planned to make a fresh tomato sauce and salad with veggies we collected that day from the garden I figured 1 big ciabatta would work best. Also, I was a little worried about killing all of those great bubbles!

I made a couple of light folds to shape the bread and drizzled a little olive oil over the top and put it on a section of bakers paper for the final rise. The bubbles were still intact and it looked like this just might work.....

The oven was pre-heating and all was on schedule for a nice dinner. After the oven reached it very high 500F I slid the bread into the oven closed the door (that's right no extra water for steam) and hoped for the best.

After 15 minutes the house was beginning to sell like bread and I had my first look. It looked GREAT!! There was HUGH spring in this dough!! But, it didn't look done yet....so I let it go another 5 minutes. After the 20 minutes I pulled the bread and sat it on the counter. Maybe this was the one. Maybe this ciabatta was the one I had been searching for!

The crust was right...light brown, a little hard but not thick. One test to go....the crumb...would it be too dry, too wet, NO HOLES!! Only one way to find out and a by now the fresh salad and tomato sauce was on the table. No turning back now, just cut the bread!!!!

Amazing!! It was full of holes of all sizes. It was light, not too wet or dry. The crust held the crumb but was not over powering. But, how did it taste? Again...Amazing!! It was flavorful without being to yeasty. This was going to add just the right touch to our fresh meal.

I was hoping there would be some bread for me to have with butter and jam (peaches from the farm) for breakfast. But, that was not to be. I guess that is a positive vote from the family! During dinner we all talked about the veggies and about the bread. We all agreed this is something we should make at least once a week!!

Two down....one to go......

Dig This!

For the last few years we have tried to grow potatoes. Each year we have tried different approaches and if I were to be honest the results have been disappointing each year. However, as this is a learning project I will add that each has been just a little better than the year before!

Just like in years past we prepared the soil and added compost to the tops of our planting beds. As in years past we bought our seed potatoes from the local farmers Co-op. Lastly, like the other years we planted on February 14th. Ok, planting potatoes isn't very romantic but at least you get to spend time with your "hoe"....LOL....

Well, now we get to the changes....we planted the seed potatoes about 6 inches deep and then covered them with compost. NOT soil as in the past. We also added (as a side dressing) all the ashes from BBQ joints we could find. We figured that since potash is good for root development this should help with the potatoes development. After all, they are roots!

Ok, I won't bore you with photos of plant development, etc. But, let me just say that we had good weather in general between February and April. There were only a few frosting nights and not too much rain. There didn't seem to be any insect issue, at least above the ground.

Fast forward to April 26 and it is dewberry season. The potatoes have grown to near waist high and have great foliage and you can even see some of the potatoes pushing out of the soil. As you can see the plants are healthy and seem very happy.

I didn't mention this before but we planted 2 types of potatoes. One was a Red skinned and we planted 10lb of this one. The other was a White skinned one. We only planted 5 lb of this type.

It looked like all the plants had grown very well..... If you are not familiar with potatoes they are the plants to the left of the lime green "greens".

We let the spuds go for another month. They had flowered and the plants themselves had started to turn yellow and seemed to be dying. We had already harvested a few plants just to get a taste of what was to come.... So we knew that most of the plants were indeed ready.

May 17. That was harvest day! We were all very eager to see just how many potatoes we had

gotten. Even my brother from Vega, TX was here for the event!! As you can see the digging was manual. We started at the East end of the garden and moved West. Little by little more of the tasty spuds were brought to the surface. It was a nice cool and overcast day so the work wasn't that hard but boy was it humid!!

As made our way down the rows we laughed about how we would prepare our favorite potatoes recipes. Baked with all the fixin's...boiled and then pan seared with fresh herbs. Broiled with fresh garlic and onions...soup...french fried...it seemed like the list went on and on and on.

As you can see we go all sizes! The crop was MUCH bigger than we had expected!! It was MUCH bigger than any other potato crop we had ever had!!! We got big ones, small ones (which we are saving for planting in the fall), round ones and long ones. Oh, that reminds me...we planted some fingerling potatoes in our back yard. They yielded great too!!! We even got some cool purple ones.

Ok, not all was good in spudville. As we went down the row we noticed that we were only digging up red potatoes. So, it appears that we don't have what it takes to grow the white potatoes. OH well....

Anyway, when all was said and done we harvested a HUGE 71.43 pounds of potatoes. What was the return?? well, we planted 10 pounds of seed potatoes so, if my math is correct that would be 7.143 pounds of harvested potatoes per pound of seed planted. Would that be a 714% return? Maybe I should have invested my retirement in potatoes and not Tech Stocks!!!

Needless to say we we were pretty happy about what we dug up......and we will now have a farming practice for future production! I do have a question...does the amount of BBQ consumed during the growing season have any relation to the total production of potatoes or is it only the amount of potash applied???

Who's Hoeing Now?

I wanted to let everybody know that not only Farmer Vicki works out at Longbean Farm! That's right we all (the family) get to help. No, I'm not complaining. I enjoy hoeing weeds....it gives your brain a chance to wide down and put all the worries of the day behind you.

I am sure hoping those peppers in the foreground start flowering and setting peppers soon! I am looking forward to some of farmer Vicki's fresh stuffed peppers! It is one of the many things that make the work that much more worthwhile.

If like me, you like peppers let us know. We would be happy to hear what kind you like and how you like to fix them.

The Cucumber Scamper

For the last two years despite having great looking cucumber plants with lots of flowers and little cucumbers, we have harvested very few cucumbers. I have tried everything ...extra compost , bone meal to decrease blossom end rot , extra water during dry times and nothing seemed to increase the harvest numbers .

Then today as I was inspecting the response of my plants to the wonderful rain we had yesterday our yard squirrel "Roger" as he is called by the boys decided to visit me in the garden . Usually he just watches from the power lines but my little teacup rat terrier "Baby " who likes to chase him was inside sleeping ,so he ventured right in with me standing just 10 or less feet away. He watched me pick the radishes and then ventured over to the cucumber vines. I thought he was trying to hide and tried to get him to come out for a radish. Roger has eaten pieces of cantaloupe from my husbands hand and even took an ice cube one time.

Well, anyways he wouldn't come out . I noticed that he was nibbling on the cucumber blossoms. I'm willing to share and was kind of tickled to see him enjoying the blossoms so much. I decided I would go in and get my camera. Obviously Roger must have better eyesight than me because even though I had looked closely at those vines for fruit , when I came out he was on the fence with a 3 inch cucumber in tow. Mystery solved...The good news is the garden out back is just for test and family / squirrel use. The big garden is a few miles away with lots of cucumbers and not a squirrel in sight.

Roger has been a part of our family for for about 3 years now . We have some great pictures of him. He even attended our wedding ceremony on the rock patio garden in December 2006 watching. Enjoy these pics . Roger will be featured in future blogs as he provides lots of family entertainment.