I love the chapter in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that talks about how country people never lock their car door unless it's zucchini season for fear that someone might put a bag of excess zucchini in your front seat! I planted 6 zucchini and 6 summer squash plants this year. The zucchini took off and started producing fruit a couple of weeks ago. The squash was much slower, but started to bear a bit. We have quickly become inundated with zucchini and I've been trying to find the best way to preserve it. I've read that freezing it can make it tough and I tried dehydrating patty pan squash last year only to find out that it turns to a gray mush when you rehydrate it. Then my mom sent me a recipe for zucchini chips. They are so easy to make and they are my new favorite snack!

Just slice the zucchini very thin, put it on the dehydrator trays, and sprinkle VERY lightly with salt or garlic powder or sesame seeds. They only take a couple of hours to dry and they are like potato chips with a great zucchini flavor. They go fantastic with a sandwich at lunch and you can keep them in a ziplock bag for a long time, just make sure they are crisp when you put them in there. On the first try I used too much salt and it became more concentrated as they dried, so now I use it very sparingly.

I also steamed some zucchini and then pureed it and froze it. I've read that this will be a good thickener to spaghetti sauce, you can add it as a filler to things like meatloaf, and even make cookies with it! So just as I got excited about the prospects of a pantry full of zucchini chips, my plants started to die!

It was a big mystery for a while. I was on top of the squash bugs, hand picking them every morning, so I knew this wasn't it. The plants would be big and beautiful one day, then overnight they would wilt and die. I thought it could be squash vine borers, so I sliced open some stems, but found no worms and no sawdust like stuff from them eating, also the stems hadn't been hollowed out. I thought for sure something was in the soil as this wilt started to go right down the row from one plant to the next.

I would see these bugs that are similar to lady bugs, but more slender, no white face, and a little more rust color rather than red. I thought they looked so much like lady bugs that they must just be some other version of this beneficial insect.  I would actually praise them as I saw them and would think, "How wonderful to have your help battling the bad bugs in the garden!"  Then I spent one night looking for reasons why squash plants would wilt only to find out that cucumber beetles spread bacterial wilt on curcubit plants.  Ok, I knew cucumber beetles were yellow, but I did a Google Images search on them just to look further.  Here's what I found:

They must also come in this rust color, too! My squash plants were covered with these reddish twins! Darn! These bugs that I had been leaving alone were spreading a bacterial disease that was killing my plants. I also read that when one infected plant touches the leaf of another then it will infect the next plant in line.  My plants had gotten large enough that this was happening and I saw it spread right down the row in front of my very eyes! 

So now I battle the cucumber beetles as well.  My first morning chore is to go on bug patrol in the garden.  I have a little bucket and a roll of duct tape and I collect tomato hornworms, squash bugs and eggs, japanese beetles, and now cucubmer beetles.  In the end I have lost all but 2 yellow squash plants (and they aren't looking so good) and I have managed to keep 4 zucchini plants, which have stopped flowering and are losing all of their lowest leaves, so I'm hoping they are going to bounce back.  Luckily though, these are fast growing crops, so I've planted them again hoping that we might get another harvest before the summer is out.

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Earlier this month we processed one of our Ossabaw boars that had been growing for just over a year.  Ossabaw Pig at Nature's Harmony FarmIt hadn't achieved quite the size we would normally want from a pig, which is normally in the 250 pound range.  This one ended up weighing 175 pounds.  We decided to process anyway as we want to experiment with meat quality, fat quality and cut yield on various sizes so we can determine what's right for us and the Ossabaw.  Over the next few months, we'll be processing several more at larger sizes.

Long time blog followers may recall this post we did over two years ago when we made the decision to start raising Ossabaws.  Once we had that first bite

Raw Ossabaw Pork Chopsin June 2007, we knew that we would raise them for us, if no one else. Since that time, many people have become aware of the Ossabaw's fantastic meat qualities through publicity and great books such as Pig Perfect by Peter Kaminsky.  Ironically, in the two years since we decided to raise Ossabaw, we've had next to none for ourselves...which is slightly more than what our customers have had.  So we were very eager to savor another bite.  However, this time, something substantial was different.

Castration and Boar Taint

Unlike the Ossabaw we had tasted two years prior, this meat would be from a boar that had not been Seasoned Chops in Cast Iron Skilletcastrated.  Liz and I decided some time ago to not castrate hogs, just as many European countries are now enforcing. Click here if you're interested in reading a recent post I did on this in the Farmer's Forum.  We believe that boar taint really is not an issue and indeed research shows that it either is not present or most people cannot detect it. I doubt too many hunters only aim for deer in November that have been castrated.  Even if some eaters can detect it, our view is that this is part of the experience and we consumers need to adjust our taste preferences to what the animals give us instead of forcing everything to comform to the perfect ideal of what we want.  Uh...there I go again; ranting.  Back to the story.

Like usual, we wanted to cook this very simply so we could savor what the meat had to offer, and not taste brine and heavy-handed spices.  The first impression was remarkable, as the first photo shows.  The other white meat?  Try the other RED meat.  Just look at that color and marbling!  We were salivating from the start.

Finishing/Steaming Chops

I seasoned the chops with sea salt, black pepper and fresh oregano from the garden.  From there, a little butter and olive oil was heated in a cast iron skillet until bubbling, and the chops were placed in.  I kind of eyeball these things like most cooks do, but I'd say the chops were cooked 4 minutes or so each side.  Keep in mind that we don't cook things to death the way many people do, and the way you have to for supermarket meat, so we're not afraid if it's on the rare/medium-rare side.  We like that.

After the chops were cooked, I shut off the heat and put a lid on.  This steaming allowed the chops to finish cooking, which was done for about 7-8 minutes.  At that time they were removed, placed in a warming drawer and a Rouxquick roux was made by adding a little more butter and flour to the pan drippings.  This was served over the chops, on top of a turkey-broth risotto, grilled zucchini and fresh collards.

Yeah, so, how was it? I mean, it's hard to describe how amazing this experience was for Liz and me.  We both just exclaimed "wow" on the first bite.  I never hear Liz say something like that (unless it's dark chocolate), but you just couldn't help yourself. In a way, this experience is just as forbidden as chocolate used to be.  These chops just melted in our mouth. Now we understand how to actually have slow food. Food like this makes it easy to savor, to slow down. Most food lends itself to gulping. Not this. This was one of the more memorable, more pleasurable meals of our lives.  Anytime in the past that we would feel that way, it would have more to do with the company or the event, but rarely the food. Still, where can someone even find something like this?

Dinner is ServedWe're looking forward to being part of the answer to that question as we produce more and more Ossabaw pork. Regrettably, I'm not overly optimistic that enough other farmers are lining up to do so, in part due to the low yields and slow growth of the pig.  But it's worth the wait, as connoisseurs of Spanish ham can attest.  We raise Berkshires, Ossabaws and, starting next month, Large Blacks.  The Berkshires taste great, but, for us, they don't compare to the Ossabaw.

Oh, and by the way, if you're wondering, there was ZERO detection of boar taint.

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Yeah!!  The bees have found the garden!!  They are buzzing in and out of the squash and melon flowers.  I am so happy to have them visit!

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Organic gardening is tough!  I swear, I drive by the neighbor's garden and every time I look at it it has doubled in size.  I'm so jealous!  They also don't really have any weeds AND I never even see them out there working!  How do they do it?  Tim tells me that they must be using Miracle Gro and weed killers and that I shouldn't try to compare our garden to theirs.  They've also probably got great soil because they have had their garden in the same plot for years and years. 

I shouldn't complain...our garden is better that last year, so we're headed in the right direction.  Our cool season crops really got away from us and so all we really ended up with was lots of lettuce.  What we had was delicious though!  The potatoes really got taken over by weeds and I think they had too much competition for water that the potatoes kind of stopped growing.  We finally gave up on them and dug them all.  It did manage to produce a small basket full though.  And the first round of onions got quite trampled by the chickens and dogs that would run in the garden after Honey, our milk cow, broke the fence down so they only produced a small bunch of tiny bulbs.  I also gave up waiting for the cabbage to grow and finally picked it.  We've got a good bunch of small heads of cabbage though to eat.  And the broccoli, which was first eaten by the peacocks, bolted before the heads got bigger than just 2 inches wide, so I just picked the leaves to cook and cut the rest down. Well, at least it's something!

Grass clippings mulchBut the warm season crops...dare I say...are looking pretty good!  I decided that mulch was my friend and that I would need a lot of it in order to keep the weeds from taking over.  I've been experimenting with different types and found that grass clippings are the best!  Shredded paper worked pretty well, but was hard to get lots of it.  Wood shavings did not work at all and the weeds have grown right through.  Straw mulch was cheap and easy to use, but sprouted and now I have wheat growing all in the melon row - Darn!  I did read too late though that you can presprout the bales of wheat straw by watering them every day and leaving them in the sun.  Let all the seeds sprout and then when you spread the straw in the garden you will disturb the sprouts enough that they will die.  And dead leaves as mulch work very wellStraw mulch sprouted! as long as you chop them up first.  The grass is the best for me though because it is easy for us to get a lot of clippings and you have to spread it on very thick in order for it to work.  It really smooshes down as it dries out.  Also, we'll be able to till this in after the crops are done and it will add great organic matter to the soil.  In the meantime, it keeps the weed seeds from germinating, helps keep the soil from drying out, and is providing a great habitat for beneficial insects and worms.  Yes!  We have worms!  They have started moving in and I'm so happyWhat happens without mulch about it!! 

So the yellow squash and zucchini are the first producers and we're quickly being taken over by them so I have to find some good ways of preserving them.  I've been on top of the squash bugs and go out every morning and squish the adults I see.  I aslo use duct tape to pull the eggs off of the leaves.  So far, not one single egg has hatched and I only see one or two adult bugs each morning.  I learned a good lesson about the mulch though - pull it away from the base of the plant a few inches.  I didn't do this and it kept the stems of the squash plants too wet and after a good rain they started to rot.  I think we'll lose about 3 plants from this, but luckily the others are still looking strong.  We've also got a few small cucumbers starting, one little okra, and couple of small jalepenos!  There is one watermelon that is about 3 inches big and I'm going to put a paper plate under it to stop it from rotting on the bottom.  And the tomoatoes have grown tall enough that Tim has had to make three levels to the Florida weave trellis.  So I'm trying not to jinx it, but if things continue in this direction, then we just might actually have veggies to eat this year!!!

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Well, we've canned the first item of the year and it reminded me how much fun I had canning last year, but also how much work it is. A couple of weekends ago we passed by a row of roadside stands with South Carolina peaches for sale.  We bought a big basket full with the intention of canning most of them.  Only one of our peach trees in the orchard survived our attack goats, so alas, we will have no peaches of our own this year, but that's ok, I can be patient.  So one night Tim and I spent hours in the kitchen ready to can peaches.  Everything that I read said to blanch the peaches (put them in boiling water for just a few seconds, then put them in ice water).  And the skins will slip right off.  Then you are supposed to cut the peach in half to remove the pit and then slice it up.  From here, you can simmer the slices in a simple sugar syrup for just a few minutes, then can them.  It sounded easy enough, but we found that after the peaches were blanched, they would just mush apart as you tried to remove the pit.  I think the peaches we bought were too ripe or maybe peeling by hand without blanching would have been a better way. 

We did manage to get 5 quarts of mangled peach slices canned in syrup, but it took us 4 hours!! So, since the peaches were very ripe, I decided to try to preserve them by making fruit leather in the dehydrator.  This also sounded simple: just puree the peaches and then spread them on the dehydrator tray for 14 hours and you will get peach fruit roll-ups!  I did this just before bed one night so the dehydrator could run all night long.  I checked it at 10 hours figuring that this would not nearly be long enough and found an over dried brittle mess.  Whoops!  It doesn't taste very good at all.  I think I need to work on this. Now I'm trying to figure out what I can possibly use this peach brittle for.

Well, with all that done, we still have a number of peaches left, but I've just decided to eat them fresh!  The wild blackberries by the pond are just starting to ripen and so I've been eating fresh peaches and wild blackberries with just a drizzle of honey for dessert - it doesn't get any better than that!

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