Putting "Scraps" To Work

There are so many parts of plants that are discarded. Leaves, flowers, roots - you name it. One of these that I think is VERY overlooked is garlic scapes. These thick, vine-like things grow out of growing garlic bulbs.

And they are good. Very, very good. They taste like an odd, yet interesting mix of garlic and green onion. They are crisp and burst with flavor, especially the younger they are.

The swollen part in the center there is actually a very teeny tiny garlic bulb. There are people who say not to eat it (they say it is bitter), but I tried one and really it's not! I just chopped it up with the rest of the scapes.

Choppity chop!

The finished product - about 1.5 cups of chopped scapes, ready for stewing, stir-frying, or other nummy delights! I just froze these straight - no need to blanch.

This came from about 75 garlic plants (we have about 100 total). 

Seeds? Oh, we've got seeds.

This, my friends, is the beginning of our spring/summer 2012 garden.
The beginning. This is set one of three.

We tried a new way to start seeds. The wood boxes are filled with compressed plugs of dirt, where we put a seed. The bottom black trays are "traditional" cells with dirt and seeds. The plugs worked... okay. However, the effort and pain in the rear factor of making them outweighed the benefits, so we stuck to the black trays.

We have everything from chammomile to regular ole' tomatoes in there. Some lettuces, broccoli, melons, and kiwi. Did you know there is a hardy kiwi that can live in our zone? I think we're 6A. Anyway, hubby introduced me to kiwi about a week ago and I'm in love.

In the back, we also have strawberries, lettuces, asparagus, carrots, and spinach coming up. Those are already planted. We have corn planted that should be sprouting any day now.

Luckily we have plenty of space to put all this stuff!

Wordless Wednesay: 'allo!

'allo!

Checkers says hi.

New Four-feets

Spring is always crazy on the farm (and I do consider us a farm now).

Last year I went back to work full time, so we put most things on hold. We sold our goats, paused the gardening, and paused the house renovations.

This year we're back in full swing. I'm no longer working (at least not for pay), so I'm back "in the saddle" so to speak. Here's a quick farm tour update!

One of the most recent (and most important) projects was the goat shed. We had to build that before we could get any animals, since they were tearing up our garage-barn.

Yes, those are pallets. The roof was made with some aluminum roofing materials that Ben's dad gave us. Overall the shed cost about $10, because we had to buy long screws to hold the pallets together. The next step is to nail on some plywood (that we got for free at work) for siding, paint it, and scatter a ton of straw on the ground.

In that picture you can see the new goat additions as well: Snowcap (brown) and Maggie (black).

We also were lucky enough to acquire a pretty little fuzzball:

Meet Checkers! She's a 4 week old holestein heifer. She's an absolute sweetie and follows you around. She licks you. Her ears are amazingly soft. She's had a hard life so far (more on that later) but has bounced back.

Later on i'll take you through a tour of our gardens, but for now, here is a glimpse!