Fresh Food, it's What's for Dinner

A shot of zucchini (on right) and basil (on left) in one of our hoophouses

We are finally able to eat fresh from the garden and not the freezer. We have lots of lettuce, arugula, kale and other greens coming in now as well as zucchinis, squash blossoms, radishes, cilantro, fresh basil, chives & tarragon. We took a trip to the old farm to see if there was any asparagus there and there was some that had not gone into its' fronding stage and it is very good. We also got some rhubarb too.

Tonight's dinner is almost all grown by us. I am roasting a 5.25 pound chicken we raised last year. I put a rub of kosher salt, rubbed sage, garlic powder and rosemary all over the outside and in the cavity and now it is in a 400˚F oven. Along with the chicken I will make squash lyonaise from a costata Romanesque zuke Eugene harvested 2 days ago and some of our onions from last year. I will probably also make a salad from a left over bag of spring mix and put some radishes and feta cheese on the greens oh and may some organic vidalia onion I bought at Jungle Jim's. made some brownies for dessert which have nothing local in them but will be yummy none the less.

Soon enough we will also have snow peas, garlic scapes, spinach (unless it gets too warm which is pretty likely), cukes, cherry tomatoes (the cukes and maters are being grown in a hoophouse so will be about 6 to 8 weeks earlier than the main crop of these items), small sweet onions.

We have been quite busy getting things ready for the peppers and eggplant to go out. We have had to burn holes into landscaping fabric for the above mentioned crops as well as the winter squash and melons we will be planting in another 10 to 15 days and the tomatoes that will be going out in about 5 to 7 days. Eugene was burning holes in some landscape fabric before lunch and when we came back out after lunch we saw that one sectioned had burned completely up leaving a 3' x 50' burned area. So when we got started again we were VERY careful about starting another fire. He was doing two layers at a time to save time and the under layer must have caught fire and smoldered hidden from view for a while than caught and burned up 100' of mulch. I wish I had seen this happen, it was likely a cool fire. We managed to get the other 12 or so pieces prepared and put away with no further mishaps. The next step is to put down the irrigation tapes and than put down the fabric and dig the edges in than plant the seedlings.

It's just that simple (not).