Late summer evenings

It's been nearly a month since I wrote in the blog.  A lot of good has happened in that month mainly in the form of rain.  Not that all the bad from the drought has been erased, but at least some of the vegetable plants are really starting to look good.  It is this time of year that my husband and I enjoy walking the field in the evening and look at the results of the last 4 months of hard work.  The evenings are cooler and this year especially the bugs are minimal.  An idyllic setting for a nice evening walk.

Yesterday I was outside doing poultry chores and just thoroughly enjoying the late afternoon.  Directly across the road from our chicken barn is our neighbor's cow pasture.  Years ago when I was a youngin', I used to do a little bit of work with dairy cows.  Occasionally I miss being around them, but with a dairy farmer as a neighbor, I get to enjoy watching the cows without any of the work.  I like this arrangement.  Best part is that in the summer, the cows give birth out on pasture so every once in awhile I will catch a view of a cow and calf before the farmer makes it out to the field to take the calf away.  There ain't nothing much cuter than a baby cow.

And an equally fun part of cow watching is that they are so darn curious.  It doesn't take much for them to walk up to the edge of the pasture and watch the human that is watching them.

After chores were done, Mike asked me if I wanted to walk back to the garden with him.  On such a fine evening, there was no way I could say no.  I had already turned the beagles loose in the pasture behind the barn about an hour earlier and they were happily baying and trailing rabbits round and round.  That is a sound I never get tired of hearing.

The cabbage is looking very good.  I particularly like the Savoy cabbage.  The plants are beautiful and the heads of cabbage that form are just as beautiful.  There are banana peppers to the left of the Savoy cabbage.  All is well in this part of the garden.

The purple bell peppers are doing well too.

And the eggplant is doing very well.  Somehow Mike has become the king of eggplant.  He jokes about it because neither one of us likes the taste of eggplant at all.  But he has a knack for growing gorgeous eggplant that is in high demand.

We spent a good bit of time walking up and down the rows of cauliflower searching for signs they were forming heads.  The plants are tall and gorgeous, but only a couple of plants have formed cauliflower heads so far.  It is a little bizarre to see these beautiful plants not doing what they are suppose to do - an effect of the drought for sure.  On the other hand, as miserable looking at the first planting of broccoli turned out, the next planting of broccoli is turning out some awesome looking heads.  These are a few that went to market last week and tonight for dinner, I steamed an equally beautiful looking head of broccoli.  Good stuff right here.

And at the very back of the garden, the soybean field starts.  The beans are starting to turn and in spite of the mild weather, this is a sure sign on the farm that fall is just around the corner.

And then there were eight

The final eight laying hens.  The pens look so empty with just eight hens.  Normally I keep about 35-40 hens in this barn.  Last Sunday, I butchered another group consisting of 8 hens and 1 rooster.  Instead of keeping these birds whole, I deboned all the thigh, leg and breast meat and stored it in the refrigerator until I had more time to work on it, which turned out to be today. 

Today's project was to get all the meat run through the grinder and then packaged into either 1 lb. packages of ground chicken or into packages of four 1/4 lb. chicken burgers.  Funny how colorful the ground chicken meat is with both white and dark meat all mixed together.  The leg and thigh meat of those old hens is particularly dark in color especially compared to the 9 week old meat chickens.

I love having these pre-made patties to throw on the grill at a moment's notice.  They only have to thaw enough to separate which isn't very much since I pack them with wax paper in between the patties.  These make such a nice healthy burger and it's a good way to use the meat from those old hens.  I believe I put 7 packages of chicken burger in the freezer today.  I had a pound and a half left over that I made into chicken taco burgers and cooked them on the grill tonight for dinner.  Mike told me tonight he really likes these chicken taco burgers.  Thanks honey!

The other part of dinner was some homemade cream of veggies soup.  Mike had brought some celery root up from the garden a couple days ago.  I have never ever made anything with celery root before and since it is soup season, I thought soup seemed appropriate.  I very loosely followed this Food Network recipe for Cream of Celery Root Soup.  I cut up four approximately 1/2 lb. celery roots although after peeling, I'm sure there was a bit less.  I also had 6 small leftover potatoes from our garden that I wanted to use up. so I cut those up too.  The potatoes are on the left in the picture and the celery root is on the right.

Then some celery, onion and garlic.  I only had one quart of homemade chicken broth in the freezer so that is all I used.  I did use the amount of celery salt called for, but did not have any white wine so I left that out.  I cooked the cut up vegetables in the broth in the crockpot on low all day. 

When cooked, I ran the veggies through the food processor, added them back to the broth, added the cream and turned the crockpot on high for about 30-40 minutes.  It tasted pretty darn good, but both Mike and I decided it needed more salt and we are not big salt users.  The final amount of soup was probably more than in the recipe due to the extra potatoes and extra celery I added so needing a little more salt would make sense.  Perhaps if I had used regular salt rather than celery salt, that would have been enough.

While I was inside cooking and staying warm, Mike continued picking and boxing produce for today's Fresh Fork order.  Yes, we are still picking.  We have just barely avoided two frosts in the last couple weeks.  Lots of other farms that sell at the farmer's markets we go to have got hit by the frost, but not us.  Yet.  Only a matter of time, but we will count our blessings that we are still able to pick produce this late into October.  Today's order was 140 lbs. of Brussels sprouts, 180ish turnips, 280ish celery roots, 20 heads of red cabbage and 20 bunches of golden beets.  The garage served as temporary storage until Trevor showed up with the truck.  Nothing like loading the truck in 45 degrees and rain.  Such is October in northeast Ohio.  Tomorrow the weather should be more of the same.  Mike and Ed get to pick for Saturday's market.  Have fun fellas! 

As a side note, I can hear ice pellets hitting the window as I sit here and type this blog.  Won't be long until the "s" word creeps into the forecast.