Plant Review: Onions/Garlic

Time for another plant review! Onions and garlic this time, it's the stinky plants review...

Here we go! 

Onions

Yellow of Borettana:

A medium sized doughnut shaped onion, mild, but hell when I cut into them. I needed goggles! Many tears were shed over this onion. I left them in the ground too long and the bottom where the roots are will split open and start to kinda rot out. So for next year I will pull them in early-mid July instead of early August. They are not a keeper onion, but will last for some time in the fridge. Mine didn't last that long because they went into the salsa's! I will plant more of these next year.

Yellow Of Parma:

These were my keeper onions, but they didn't do as well as I had hoped. I put the starts in the ground when they were smaller than a pencil and I should have repotted them inside and got them a bit bigger before they went out. Most of mine were the size of my fist, medium to small ish. They have good flavor and seemed to do just fine in my soil. The tops took a while to fall over but when they did I didn't have any rotting issues like I did with the Borettana onion. Sadly I can't seem to find my picture of this onion, but it looked like the average store keeper onion. But it tasted awesome! I don't have many keepers because I used a lot of them in salsa, pasta and bbq sauce, and making onion powder. However I'll plant more of them next year in the hopes that I don't have to buy any from the farmers market. 

Evergreen Hardy: 

Bunching green onion, just standard. I still have a half row that I need to bring inside in the green onion pot. Did you know if you just cut the green part and stick the white part back in the soil (provided you didn't cut off the roots) it will regrow again and again. I have a pot that I keep in the window all year and when I need green onions I just chop them off at the soil line.

Giant Musselburgh and Blue Soliaze Leek:

I honestly can't tell the difference between these two leeks. Apart from one having slightly blue'er foliage they taste identical, or perhaps I am not much of a leek connoisseur. About half of my leek crop is still outside braving the frosts and the cold. They were surprisingly easy to grow, I did start all my onion family from seed. The leeks seemed to do the best even though they spent much of the summer hidden by the tomato jungle.

Garlic

Inchelium Red:

Softneck, keeper. This is the bulk of what I have planted and I love it! Not as easy to peel as store bought garlic. The flavor is a good midline not overpowering or hot. Some of the bulbs grew to near onion size! I have saved some of this seed and replanted it for next year's harvest. 

Georgian Crystal: 

Hardneck, Large cloves only 4 per garlic bulb, mild also good raw. This guy is a dream to peel the cloves practically jump out of the skin. Good soft flavor if you need some garlic in a dish you don't plan to cook. I saved some seed to have more of them, but the bulk of this crop was given away as gifts. 

Asian Tempest:

Hardneck, Purple striped, HOT! I used much of this in salsa and gift giving. It adds great garlic flavor and makes some of the best spicy hummus. I have this growing in the ground now for next year. I really enjoyed this garlic.

Georgian Crystal and Asian Tempest bundles:

Rabbitry Decision

We are going for it.

After long thought about producing our own meat we've decided to start raising rabbits. Being in the city limits us to an animal that makes little to no noise. Since chickens preach to the choir, often at full volume they are not an option. Also we didn't want any one else to take a hand in our own supply of food.

We've purchased 5 cages and Jacob is designing the rabbit hutch in sketch-up. I'll post pictures as this project unfolds.

My mom told me today that my great grandmother couldn't stomach raising rabbits because when the fur came off they resembled cats too much. I disagree, I had to skin a cat for Anatomy at Vet school. ( that was fun.... <--- insert sarcasm )

Plant Review: Tomato

This is going to be a long entry. If you've seen the garden list page ---> you'll know that I grew 7 tomatoes this year. I've gotta get this review written before I forget how I liked each variety. Here we go...

Long Keeper:

Small fist sized tomatoes that are uniformly round, they look like shinny green apples on the plant. They don't ripen well on the plant, they must be pulled inside to slowly ripen. If we had a normal fall we would have just pulled them off the plant. Since we didn't they've been inside about 3 weeks before we were anticipating. Regardless they look great and are just now turning colors. We should have fresh tomatoes through mid November. They ripen to a soft pink color and have good but mild flavor. I'll grow it again but only 1 plant not 5. I still am not sure what to do with them all!

Italian Heirloom:

Gianormous tomatoes! 1+ pounds each! Great slicer and heavy producer. This one was the easiest from seed to start. I had so many starts I put tomatoes in spots I never intended because I didn't have the heart to toss them. The vines grew to 6 feet and were so weighed down Jake and I had to add extra twine supports for them. The fruit was a good juicy slicer, almost bigger than the average hamburger bun, but really I'm not complaining.  I'll grow this one again, but not nearly as many, 2-3 probably. The fruit picture shows it compared to a larger roma tomato.

Martino's Roma:

Wow! This guy didn't vine up like the Italian heirloom, it only got off the ground 3 feet. But those 3 feet packed a punch. The plants were loaded, I'd venture a guess at 30+ pounds per plant. We're going to get a butcher style scale next year to be sure. I digress.... The fruit was hidden under the leaves so it was deceiving. We harvested maybe 10 of these ripe on the plant, everything else has had to ripen slowly inside. The flavor is wonderful with very little juice. I've made TONS of tomato sauce. I will be growing these next year. We put in 5 plants I am thinking a few more wouldn't hurt.

Cherry Roma:

If we would've had height these guys would have kept going. They got to 6 feet easily and likely would have made it to 8+. A typical cherry tomato plant but the fruit had little juice in it. They're excellent sun dried because of all the meat on the inside. Prolific as they were we ended up drowning in them. Exceptional flavor raw that got even more intense when dried. I ate them every time I was outside, harvested daily and couldn't keep up. I had 3 of them in the garden and I'll likely only put in 1 or 2 for next year, I haven't decided yet. Fruit picture shows them green, I didn't have any ripe when I took the pictures of them. Like everything else they came inside green and slowly ripened.

Sheboygan:

A paste tomato but much bigger than the standard roma. The vine was thin with fewer leaves than the other varieties. All the fruit seemed so exposed. I love this tomato. Not as productive as the Martino's but the fruit was on average fist sized. The flavor was awesome and slightly sweet. The fruit ripens to a pink hue. Sometimes the fruit had curled bottoms like chili peppers, which was slightly adorable. I only had 4 of these guys and I will make sure I have that or more next year. The bottom fruit picture shows it's color next to a silvery fir tree tomato. I couldn't get the camera to capture the pinkness of the color. The naked eye is no match for a camera.

Silvery Fir Tree:

Another one that was so easy to grow from seed I had to chuck some out. The foliage is similar to carrots only fatter. This one was the first to flower and produce fruit. A tennis ball sized slicer with good flavor and tons of juice. The plants were so heavy loaded they didn't vine up much, very similar to the Martino's Roma. Silvery Fir only came off the ground about 2 feet and then kinda vined outward on the ground. Each plant had at least 25 pounds of fruit on it when we pulled them inside. I had 5 of them. I will grow this one again for it's early yields, but with the Italian heirloom slicer these became too much.

Green Zebra:

I didn't like this guy too much. It was fine when under ripe but got kinda mushy when ripe. The one plant I had didn't produce much either. It vined up nicely but didn't get to the going until too late. This was a trial plant to see if we liked it before growing it in mass. I'm glad we did because I doubt I will grow it again. I don't have a picture of the plant because I forgot, but I have a picture of a ripe fruit. It's sure pretty with those yellowy stripes.

This year was insane! All of our tomato processing was done after they came inside and ripened a while. I'll remember to give them more room next year and I won't plant leeks right next to each tomato plant. Poor things got lost. As much as I love tomatoes I will be really glad when canning/processing is done.

Lip Balm Update

I had to run some tests on the Lip Balm to make sure they were ready for the pocket (body heat melting). It turns out the cocoa recipe is not. It's too soft and needs more beeswax to firm it up. So today I am going to remove it from the tins and re-melt it, adding 1.5 tsp more beeswax and give this a shot. I am going to update the recipe on the previous blog entry and also here:

Cocoa
4 tsp. olive oil
2 1/2 tsp. beeswax (grated) 
1 tsp. cocoa butter
1/2 vitamin E capsule liquid

Lip Balm

I wanted to try and make my own lip balm from the bees wax we collected. Honestly it doesn't take much beeswax to do this. Only a few teaspoons. I decided to blend my recipes based on a few I've found online and just kinda wing it.

My Recipes:
Plain
3 tsp. Beeswax (grated)
5 tsp. oil (I used olive oil, but any carrier oil would work)
1/2 tsp. honey
1/2 vitamin E capsule liquid

Cocoa
4 tsp. olive oil
2 1/2 tsp. beeswax (grated)
1 tsp. cocoa butter
1/2 vitamin E capsule liquid
















One recipe made 2 burts bees tins. In an effort to recycle I have been saving them. I cleaned and washed each one before refilling it with my own lip balm. Some of the links I used to make them are here:  Lemelange and Yonderwayfarm.

I used a 2 cup pyrex and a stainless steel pot to serve as a double boiler. Then I added all the ingredients, stirred it with a tooth pick until it was totally melted and mixed (which doesn't take long.) I had two tins ready and poured the liquid into them and waited about 30 minutes for it all to harden and set up. Voila, Done!

Why have I been paying 2+ dollars per tin? I made the plain recipe once and the cocoa twice, I now have 6 tins of lip balm awaiting the dry winter air.

It Gets better....

Since today is National Coming Out Day I thought I would give a quick post and a shout out to world. The bullying has got to stop. The suicide's due to the bullying has got to stop! Being a happily married hetero couple, I have no idea what that kind of torment is like. I know first hand the suffering a suicide can inflict on the family left behind. Jacob and family lost his brother John to suicide, not because he was gay but for depression reasons.

I would like to make it known to the world we support you, all of you. I had to post this video of Dan & Terry. Terry is from Spokane WA our neighboring city....  it really makes me sad how he describes it. Plus I just love Dan Savage's point of view.

With love and hope for the future!

The makings of compost

We had our two compost piles in the garden at the back of the yard, right next to the fence. According to composting guidelines a "sunny spot" is best, well right next to our fence is a down right inferno! We couldn't keep  those compost piles wet enough to do anything. Having studied the lay out of our property we decided to move them into "the chicken side yard" which only gets sun for about 4 hours a day. Compost is happening like crazy! I have also started using the leaf mulcher to break down large piles of green stuff.

I took a quick video to show the giant pile of squash vines before they get demolished.


Last year we would have just put all of the garden biomass into the trailer and hauled it down to our yard waste facility (they make compost from it too). But I wanted to utilize at least some of it. The sunflowers I have no hope of mulching since our's is a leaf mulcher you can surmise how powerful it is.  Anything with a really thick stalk or that's gone slightly woody is a no go. But just about everything else I can run through. I have to help it along by cutting stuff as I go into small pieces, and stopping to unclog but for the most part it's great.

Here's the giant pile of squash after the mulching. It was really heavy and took two people to move (thanks for the assist mom.)

In a happy bonus we now have red wiggler worms in our compost pile which won't last long as it heats up. But they sure help the breakdown process. Our compost piles went directly over the chicken guts that we had placed some red wigglers in, they found their way up to the banquet of new veggie parts and food scraps.

Chicken Experiment

Since we started eating meat again we've been extremely picky about where it comes from, who's raising it, and how. I touched more on our thoughts in the post On Meat Eating so I won't go into them here. Regardless we found a couple raising chickens that fit our criteria, for chicken the criteria is:
1. Local
2. Organic or better
3. Harvested Humanely
4. Not Cornish Cross

I will hand it to the Cornish Cross chicken and it's genetic engineers, they know how to make a bird PACK on the meat. These are the birds they show in the movie Food Inc. Birds that have so many health issues they are impossible to list, and for the most part if you eat chicken in the USA this is the bird you eat. It's the most cost effective, the 'CC' chicken can be harvested at 2 months of age, it takes normal chickens 4 months to come close to the same weight. But you also ingest all that animals health issues, um no thank you. So I decided to run an experiment. I purchased a chicken from Rocky Ridge Ranch that fit all the criteria accept that last one. Then Jake and I picked up our chickens from the Halpern's a local couple raising Delaware or RedStar's for meat. The difference's were obvious even before cooking.

The chicken on the left is a "real" chicken, what chickens are supposed to look like. Long legs that can support the body weight, proportional leg and breast meat. The chicken on the right is the Cornish Cross, short fat legs that can't walk far or at all, and giant breast meat. I affectionately refer to the CC chicken as the freak show chicken. We wanted to see if we could taste the difference in the meat. Being solid vegetarians for 3+ years and only eating "real" chicken not freak show chicken when ever we did eat meat. We wanted to know, can we taste a difference between them? So I decided to slow cook each one.

With a resounding YES we can taste the difference! The CC fell apart, that was sure nice but I am wondering if it's because through tampering with it's genetics it's joints and ligaments were weakened. Or is it just because this bird didn't walk much in it's life. In any case the meat has NO flavor of it's own, and if it weren't cooked in anything would be really yucky. But what was truly bad about this bird was the texture of the meat. Mushy, soft, and lacking any firmness at all. The 'real' chicken had a much richer taste like mushrooms. That might not make sense but, that's the closest taste I could come up with. I wonder if that's what people mean by "gamey" when referring to meat. Maybe we are all so used to the mush flavor of CC meat that if it's not breast meat it's gamey? I don't know. The real chicken didn't fall apart however, but retained much of it's consistency and was lovely to cut into. It didn't produce as much meat as the CC did, but I knew it wouldn't. Nothing can compare with mutant tampering.

It was a good experiment to run, eye opening for sure. For a much more through Cornish Cross vs. Heritage chicken experiment see Antiquity Oaks Chicken for dinner?: part one, part two, part three.

Pepper flakes

Cayenne Pepper flakes from both green and red cayenne's dried then ran through the food processor to make flakes and seeds. I think this will last us for 2 years unless we gift some of it away....

Leeks

I harvested some leeks this morning. About half of the crop is going to stay in the ground and I'll attempt to overwinter them. I am new at crop rotation so I kinda screwed it up and had leeks planted where I'll need to get garlic in the ground. Oh well, so I pulled some the leeks and plan to slice and freeze them for quick access for soups. Mmmm.... potato leek soup.

They didn't get very big because I had inter planted them with the tomatoes... as in buried within the tomato jungle/wilderness. Poor things did admirably considering sunshine must have been absent for most of their life.

Thank you GoDaddy!!!!

I just had the greatest customer service experience with GoDaddy.com. Jen and I originally used Blogger for our blog. After a while of using Blogger, we switched to WordPress because we liked the look of it and we could get our own domain name through them. Well, after setting up and using WordPress for awhile, we were extremely disappointed with them. Their customer service seemed very elitist and rude. It's definitely not a place for inexperienced bloggers.

So we finally decided to go back to Blogger. The downside was that people could not type in oxrayfarm.com in the address bar and get to our site. You were forced to put the www. beforehand or else it wouldn't work.

It's been almost a year now and our domain name is expiring through WordPress. We decided to go with GoDaddy.com. I went to their site and easily found out that I could have the domain transferred to GoDaddy without having to let it expire. So I went through GoDaddy's very nice directions on how to have the domain transferred. Everything went as it showed and in just 15-20 minutes, we had the domain transferred to GoDaddy. It was relatively easy and it cost $8 for the first year. So we were pretty happy with that. We did that on Sunday evening.

So today (Tuesday), I get a phone call from GoDaddy. At first, I'm thinking "oh crap" what's wrong. I get on the phone and it's Matt from GoDaddy. He's incredibly pleasant sounding and says that he's calling to welcome me, thank me for choosing GoDaddy, and ask a few questions. He's wondering why we're transferring to GoDaddy. I explain to him how we weren't happy with WordPress and from what we could tell, GoDaddy would be better. He then tells me how I'm the first person he's ever seen have a transfer go through in less than three days! During the call, he also told me how he's in Phoenix, AZ,  it's pouring buckets of rain for the third time today, and lightning struck a tree in their parking lot. He was very pleasant for such a crazy day. Then he followed up with asking me if I had any questions or anything he could help me with. I told him about still having to add the www. in front of our domain name even after the transfer. He said no problem, took 20 seconds to make a change, and fixed it for me.

I thanked him for his help and the call was over. I hung up the phone, turned to Jen, and said, "That was just one of the best customer service experiences I've ever had in my life!"

So I'm thanking GoDaddy again for such a great experience!!!!