New Fall-ish header

I’ve redesigned the header again now that we’re half-way through a new season.  Left to right:
Anneke at the State Fair — not posed.  She picked up a piece of straw and put it in her mouth and started walking around like an old farmer.  It was hilarious.
Raspberry bushes with a brand new blanket of about [...]

Fall happenings

Couple of random things going on today.  First:

Adam made a very local pie: he used raspberries and apples right from our yard (via the freezer for several weeks).  It is with great sadness that I report we have now eaten all of our frozen raspberries.  And it’s only Oct. 24.  It’s going to be a [...]

Fall chore: raspberry pruning

The raspberries are completely done now for 2009.  We had a really great haul.  We ate raspberries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the entire month of July and I also froze 7 quarts.
Raspberries are bi-annuals.  So what happens is each plant, or “cane” spends its first year just growing (including sending out underground runners [...]

Recipe: chocolate zucchini cake with raspberry sauce

As long as we’re on the subject of my Grandma Rensenbrink, here is her recipe for zucchini cake, which I made tonight.  The raspberry sauce addition was Adam’s excellent idea.
Chocolate zucchini cake:
1/2 c. butter, softened
1/4 c. coconut oil (or other neutral oil)
3/4 c. sugar
1/4 c. honey
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. buttermilk
2 1/2 c. [...]

Book review: Perennial Vegetables

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles
By: Eric Toensmeier
Here’s another recent library book that I breezed through pretty quickly.  Why such a quick read?  Once again, much of the information within does not pertain to the frozen tundra on which we live.
I’m really [...]

Two posts for the price of one

I’m doing two posts tonight, that’s right.  This first one is my summary, mostly in pictures, of what we’ve been up to lately.  Harvest season has really begun and we’re up to our eyeballs in green beans and up to our, well, ankles in raspberries (they only just started).  No complaints, really.  Anyway after this [...]

Why not?

It’s odd that it only recently occurred to me that much of my yard could be used to grow food for my family.  Kind-of a forehead-slapper, really.
Exactly two years ago, I was hugely pregnant with the twins, and a fellow teacher at Adam’s school said she wanted to give us a gift: raspberry plants.  Her [...]