Backyard Farmgals

Confession: I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet.  Which is a good thing and a bad thing.  It is hard!  Not just because you crave sugar, but because everything  has sugar hidden in it.  So almost everything has to be homemade.  I cook a lot anyway and have been off sugar before, but I miss a few things (uhem... chocolate...).  I feel better, I have a lot more energy and I sleep so much better which is great! With all this no sugar stuff, I am constantly looking for creative and healthy things to make in the kitchen.  A recipe that I ran across this week was for crispy sweet potatoes from Smitten Kitchen .  I love sweet potatoes anyway, so I thought I would give this a try.  It was wonderful!  The hubby loved it and the kids even gobbled it up.  I love that the tops of the slices get crispy, it gives so much texture to a normally mushy veggie.  I thought with Thanksgiving here this week, it might be a healthy ...

Peach season is upon us!  Praise the heavens for peaches, they are here!  I have been the queen of peaches this year.  I get to harvest them day after day, and believe me, I love it.  The perk of the job is that I get to eat a few tree ripened peachy orbs of flavor every day, and it's glorious!  Juice dripping down your arm and chin, life doesn't get any more perfect. MONSTER PEACH!  1.1 lbs or 18 oz of peachy goodness that I picked at the Research Farm. I had a little reason to celebrate today.  A second paper of mine is being published.  Nothing huge, just a reference for home gardeners on how to grow currants.  Still a reason to celebrate, and I needed something to celebrate with, preferably something peachy!  My boss passed a recipe to me earlier in the week and it seemed perfect: a creamy, peachy, almost no-bake cheesecake.  I cleaned it up a bit, took out a lot of the sugar and the whipped topping and added some good...

Early morning berry patch A view of the mountains from the berry patch The raspberry patch is one of my favorite places on the Research Farm.  It is peaceful there.  I have spent several mornings there working away, watching the sun rise, usually listening to opera or some other beautiful piece of music.  It smells glorious, and it tastes even better, but don't tell anyone because I am not supposed to eat the berries, just count and weigh them! Harvesting with new harvesting crates Part of my job is learning about raspberry harvest here at the farm.  When I first heard about it, I thought to myself that it couldn't be that hard.  First wrong thought.  Harvesting raspberries consumes more time here than anything else that I have seen.  Peach harvest is a close second.  It's not just harvesting raspberries, it's also taking data (sugar percentage, counting, and weighing), packaging, sorting, and selling the berries. My fir...

Tucked away in the vegetable cover crop study was a sweet little something.  No fluff, no sticks or twigs, just a depression in the soil.  At first two speckled eggs and a crazy neurotic bird screeching and playing dead simultaneously (still not sure how she did that).  Long legs and a cute little run.  Mama killdeer ( Charadrius vociferous ) did everything to distract me as I approached her little clutch.   A week later, I braved the shrieking to find four eggs, all tucked together, bits of dried grass tucked around the eggs.  Softness.  This time, a much more crazy bird, flapping furiously while she laid on her side.  Like she was dying and she knew I was soft hearted and I would help.  Silly bird, instead of running to her, I snapped a photo of her soon-to-be family.   Buckwheat growing up all around the depression, each time I peeked it became more difficult to find as the plant cover grew taller and t...

I have taken a hiatus from life, so it seems.  Blog, farm, life all tossed aside for the last three and a bit more months.  Why?  To learn.  A marvelous opportunity came my way; a chance to learn from some wonderfully intelligent people about how to farm with both vegetables and fruits.  I look back to three months ago, watching myself walk away in slow motion, especially from my nursing job.  Many of you know that I am an operating room nurse.  I have worked with some of the most well known and respected surgeons in the country.  I have worked trauma, seeing everything imaginable; some sights and smells that I wish I could forget, other things, miraculous, that are still like dreams to me.  It's not that I didn't love that life, it's just that I couldn't handle the stress of it anymore.  Handing instruments with my hands covered in someone else's blood and putting amputated feet in boxes became too much for me.  Nurses have a burno...

I recently had a request for strawberry shortcake for a party.  I think about strawberry shortcake and get flashes about dry store-bought angel food cake, cool whip, and strawberries; all of which seem to be a recurring nightmare in my neck of the woods.  I am not a cool whip girl, it freaks me out.  Plus the whole angel food cake thing lacks texture and flavor and moisture... With all this on my mind, I got a little crazy.  Okay, maybe a lot crazy, and I whipped up a glorious version that will take your taste buds to new heights.  I started with an almost pound cake make from scratch with farm fresh eggs.  Then I added homemade vanilla pastry cream to the mix, fresh strawberries, and whipped cream piped onto the cake for frosting. It was to die for. And I ate a lot of it. I am NOT telling you how much of it I ate, but I will say this, it makes a wonderful weekend morning breakfast... This is what hot yoga is for: getting rid of strawberry shor...

I took this photo of my youngest farmhand holding a tiny egg.  After I took it, I couldn't stop thinking.  Our children have the whole world in their hands right at this moment.  That little egg has the potential to change his whole world, it can teach him about life, about caring, about love, about dreams and opportunity.  As they grow, we hope our children have every opportunity to explore, learn, grow, and find themselves in this world. The question came to my mind: how do I keep my children holding all of these opportunities in their hands?  The world can be a tough place where dreams can crumble and doors shut out opportunity.  How do we help our children keep hope and learn to maneuver around these obstacles that will come in their lives?  The answer is different for each child. Over many years, I have decided that one way I can help my boys hold the world in their hands is to give them a broad point of view.  We take our children eve...