I love doing morning chores this time of year. You get the peace of pre-dawn, plus a chance to see the world wake up at sunrise. This week provided a couple of stunning sunrises with crescent moons. I wish I could carry my good camera during chores, but the cell phone shot will have to do.

It’s been downright difficult getting back into the flow of menu planning this fall!  As a result, I’ve been eating too many dining hall meals, and my immune system hasn’t been appreciative.

However, this week represents a transition.  Term 1, which included teaching a new “solid” class, with new curriculum, has come to an end.  Term 2 will begin this Wednesday, with different challenges.  My class schedule is a little lighter, and the farmers’ market season has come to a close.  However, it’s time for the rifle team to get cranking, which means coaching every night.  And, for a couple of weeks, overlapping Lancer Band preparations for Veterans’ Day.  While winter sports seasons do tend to go on forever, I’m excited for this year’s rifle team.  We have a couple of very strong leaders returning, and a push towards national rankings for Junior Olympics from a couple of students (plus the success of our first Junior Olympian to compete at nationals last season for motivation).

All of this highlights both the difficulty and importance of getting back on the ball with menu planning.  So, let’s get this week’s menu going!

New from the farm: The garden is finishing a bit early this year, as we work on infrastructure things.  Brussels sprouts are coming in, and should appreciate cold weather late this week (we haven’t had a frost yet!).  Baby turnips, radishes, a few tomatoes and pepper are hanging in, and we’ll need to pull the basil before late week coldness kills it anyway.

Groceries: Kroger –  $67.27 (I stocked up on some things that were on great sales)

Just a small portion of our trench, showing a new hydrant install, as well as the partially-repaired electric that was cut by the backhoe, and phone line still waiting for repair

So, my weekly gratitude photo is a bit different this week.  This time, I’ve never been so grateful that I decided NOT to do a project myself.

We’re having some serious infrastructure work done on the farm.  We’re running electrical to the barn (no more extension cord from the house to the air compressor or block heater on the tractor!  Lights in the winter!), the summer kitchen to be, and the greenhouse/X’s shop.  We’re also putting in a two inch irrigation mainline from the well out about 480 feet, which should allow much lower maintenance and higher efficiency irrigation of the veggie field.

I was a bit worried about all of the underground obstacles to work around, so we hired a local electrician friend.  Such a good call!  Besides the fact that they have a lot more equipment and experience, he brought a 5 person crew out to work, expecting it to take a day and a half.  Well, until they cut the pipe from the well with the backhoe.  Then the electrical with the backhoe.  Then couldn’t find the phone/internet (it wasn’t where the location service flagged it), until they decided to dig the electrical a bit deeper to make it easier to repair.  Oops, the phone was in the same trench, just a bit deeper than the electric.    Then they ran the trencher through the drain line from the geothermal system.  Then two drain lines from the septic…

This all makes them sound incompetent, but that’s really not the case.  Things at our place were just not done in a normal manner.  I almost certainly would have run into each and every one of the same problems they did.  But wouldn’t have insurance to cover it, nor the experience fixing it all, nor the time to deal with the setbacks.  Suffice it to say, we still have no internet, the well is only producing a fraction of the flow rate it should, the lane is all torn up, and they’re probably only about half way done.  Hiring it out, even though somewhat more expensive than what I expected it would cost to have done it myself, may just be the most cost effective of choices we could have made!

Meanwhile, we did an OK, job following the menu last week.  The Tromboncini Fajitas turned out to be an amazing inspiration – really, the best fajitas I’ve had.  So, we’re going to repeat significant chunks of the same menu this week.  It’s seasonal, an yummy, and, well, there’s a lot of stuff and only a little inspiration.

New from the farm: The current produce list is over 25 items long!

Groceries: Park N. Shop – $2.82

Onions on our farmers’ market display

The weekly menu returns after its summer vacation this week!

We’re back to school with a partial week of classes under our belt, so it’s time to get back in the routine of planning meals.  Spending most of my time off-farm means we won’t be snacking on veggies while working in the field, and cooking around the schedule needs forethought.

Meanwhile, things are really hopping at the farm!  We have a huge volume of produce coming in. We’ve hauled over a ton of produce to market each of the last four weeks, with more to come.  The late summer/early fall crops have done well.  Of particular note, and a great personal existential victory, is onions.  It’s embarrassing as someone people think of as a gardening guru, but I’ve never been successful growing bulbing onions.  I’ve tried multiple methods, in gardens with widely varying conditions over 15 years, with no success.  Until this year!

This year’s onion crop produced a great harvest of salad onions in the late spring and early summer, and now we’re harvesting good-sized bulbs, with great flavor.  It’s also a variety known to be a good long-storing variety, so we should be set for the winter (though they sold like crazy at market this weekend, which surprised me a bit).

New from the farm: The current produce list is over 25 items long!

Groceries: No grocery shopping this week!

Getting ready to set up at the farmers’ market – over 1800 lbs of produce!

So I’ve received a few comments about missing menus.  Why haven’t I posted any?  Am I giving up my all-organic, all-unprocessed diet ambitions?  Or did all of the health stuff I talk about on the why page suddenly reverse itself?

Alas, I’m still fighting the autoimmune problem (though it has improved a great deal).  It’s more like the weekly menu has taken a summer vacation.

The end of the school year is crazy busy for most teachers.  For band directors at private boarding schools with many complex ceremonial needs, it’s insane.  Add to that running an organic farm, and, well, planned eating is a bit challenging.  Eating is a bit challenging…  Thus, I intentionally didn’t plan the last couple weeks of classes and all-day faculty meetings.

Immediately following that, I was way behind on the farm, due to health problems in the winter and the school schedule, but our annual Hole in the Woodstock event was just a couple of weeks away.  So, crazy days there.

From there on out, the garden has been dominating life.  Two days a week of farmers’ markets (a market may only appear to be a few hours from the outside, but it’s way more than a full days’ work!), a full day of harvesting for both…  Those are times it’s difficult to do a meal.

Ironically, they’re also times full of great food!  Every morning begins with a walk down each garden bed checking on the progress of our 2 1/2 acres of veggies.  There’s a lot of sampling that goes on during those walks!  And, of course, I spent a fair bit of time developing recipes for the onslaught of zucchini!

So, all told, I don’t really need to plan menus in the summer.  Much of my eating isn’t even in meals anyway.  However, school’s starting to come back to life.  We’ve had a few meetings and workshops already, and the band is back this weekend.  Then we jump in, with the matriculation ceremony during the eclipse!

So, I’ll be posting menus again shortly.  The next couple of weeks are going to be weird transition stuff, so I may not do so until classes get going.  But stay tuned, and we’ll be back at it soon!

Our irises bloomed this week

I’m a little late getting a menu plan posted this week.  That’s because last weekend was Alumni Reunion weekend, and extraordinarily busy for band director/rifle coach/corps of drums director/Lancer Band director type folks.  Barely a moment to breathe!

However, our asparagus has recovered from the wacko weather, so we’re back to harvesting twice a day, and distributing it widely.  I’m actually a bit tired of eating it already this year, which is strange.  I think the weather had us actually eating a bit more, because there wasn’t really enough harvest to sell during the frosts and freezes, but there was some to eat.

Keeping up with the meal plan combined with busy season both at work and on the farm, plus the start of the farmers’ market season, has been rough.  I just don’t have the energy I used to before developing this autoimmune thingy.  Nonetheless, I feel good that we pretty much stayed on menu last week through Wednesday.  This week is a transitional one, then the following will be grad week – the most insane of the year.  But summer is in sight!

New from the farm: The asparagus and radishes are the main fare right now.  Hopefully salad greens will be along shortly.  Can’t believe they’ve been this long.

Groceries: Whole Foods – $13.  Kroger – $128.17.  Park N’ Shop – $42.92.

Our medlar trees are blooming profusely!

The weather really kicked us last week.  4 days of frost and a 29 degree frost, meaning we lost about 50 pounds of asparagus harvest.  Sigh.  Also, our almond trees, tree cherries (but not bush cherries), peaches, and nectarines all failed to bloom this year!

On the other hand, our medlar trees are blooming like crazy!  Medlars are a fruit that was very popular during the medieval era.  Similar to persimmons, they are left on the tree to ripen and soften (actually, bletted – over-ripened and softened.  They are inedible until this occurs), giving fruit at a time of year it often is not available locally.  I actually don’t know if we like medlars or not.  Our trees are new, and we had one set last year. We waited until it was ready to eat, but something else ate it before we had the chance…  Rare fruit can be a challenge. Our hazelnuts are also blooming!

Getting this thing off, rolled up hill, and into the truck by myself nearly killed me. In addition to the rim, hub, tire, and tube, the thing was filled with about 380 pounds of water and calcium chloride for ballast!

This week will be an enormous challenge.  It’s crazy busy at work, with alumni reunion weekend taking top billing in the mind of band directors.  Lots of ceremonies and performances from Thursday all the way through Sunday.  We’re also crazy busy in the garden – way behind planting and transplanting due to the weather, my illness, and having a flat tractor tire last week at a horribly inopportune moment (is there ever a good time to have a tractor problem?).  Also, I’m going to need to set up irrigation – despite the flooding of the past couple of weeks, our sand is already dry, and it’s not supposed to rain again for at least a week.  Can’t transplant seedlings into a desert and expect them to take hold!

This menu is ambitious given the schedule, but I think I stand a chance of making it happen…

New from the farm: The asparagus is starting to make a comeback.  Rhubarb is being harvested, as are radishes.  Fresh herbs are starting to come in as well, adding a great boost to flavors.  Normally we’d be awash in salad greens, but they’re still at least a week from harvest.

Groceries: Kroger –

Some of our Asparagus harvest. We usually harvest about 800 pounds of asparagus a year!

Last week, the asparagus really started to come in.  This is always an exciting, if somewhat exhausting time on the farm.  We’re focused on getting much of our planting done, but also harvesting asparagus at least once a day.  Sometimes twice a day!

Asparagus is an important marker on our farm.  It starts the season of great fresh eating.  It also marks the point where we start to have a positive cash flow.  And, because the market hasn’t started yet, we get to visit a lot of our customers as we deliver the asparagus.  It’s also pretty.

Last week was a bit tough keeping on-menu, so you’ll see some repeats.  They’re repeats on the plan, not so much repeat meals, because I never made them.  This next few weeks is going to be extraordinarily crazy as we pack three months worth of activities into four weeks of school, plus the farmers’ market  starts up (I’m the vendor coordinator, so in addition to being a vendor ourselves, we’re organizing the other vendors).  If I can manage even eating one home-prepared meal a day over the next several weeks, Ill consider it a success!

New from the farm: The asparagus is reaching it’s peak.  Rhubarb and radishes are coming along.  Salad greens are running a bit behind due to all of the cold weather lately…

Groceries: Kroger – $98.13

Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart blossom

We survived parents’ weekend! Actually, it was a very successful weekend, musically.  It wasn’t pretty as far as following the meal plan (and, in truth, involved way too many cookies, too much ice cream, and too many dining hall meals).  This week, I need to get refocused on following the meal plan.

Also, you may have noticed the addition of a lilac photo last week.  I decided to add a bit of photo gratitude to the menus, so each week I plan to include a photo of something on the farm that is indicative of the week and makes me happy.  The last week was rainy, and started a change in the types of flowers that are blooming.  I spent a bit of time in the rain Saturday morning playing with my macro extension tubes.  The wind was annoying (when you’re 1/2″ from your photo subject, and it moves just a little bit, it’s gonna go out of focus), but I enjoyed the quiet time in the midst of a crazy weekend.  Had a hard time deciding on the one to use for the post, though.  Here are others I thought were worthwhile.  Which should I have used?

• Wild strawberry blossom
• Orange wildflower
• Redbud blossoms
• More redbud blossoms

New from the farm: The asparagus is really coming in strong!

Groceries:

Lilacs are blooming!

The asparagus is finally coming in!  We ate asparagus for 4 meals last week (though it wasn’t on the menu yet).  The harvest is picking up, and so are the pre-orders.  I imagine we’ll be fulfilling asparagus pre-orders this week, and need to begin marketing it next week.  Exciting/exhausting times!

Meanwhile, this week will be packed.  I was unable to do much while I was sick for 5 weeks (which is the reason I started this whole meal planning adventure), and this past several weeks has involved constant pushing to get caught up – at school, on the farm, and with my graduate classes.

Yes, I’m working on another degree, this one an MA in Public History.  I was in the early part of one of the classes I was most excited about in the whole degree program, Theory and Practice of Oral History.  Alas, missing 5 weeks of an 8 week class is problematic.  So I was given a 30 day extension to make up the work.  Wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if I wasn’t behind on everything else in life.  At any rate, that extension ends Sunday.  We also have parents’ weekend at school beginning Thursday, and that doesn’t offer much in the way of time to breathe for band director types!

Despite all of those challenges, we’ll try to both celebrate asparagus, and get as many home-prepared, all-organic meals in as possible this week.  Thankfully, I prepared a couple of freezer meals over the past few weeks, and have a slow cooker.  I wasn’t too happy with how the Crock Pot Chicken Tika Masala turned out last week, so I’m going to make a few changes and try again this week.  We are down to only 4 chickens left in the freezer (which probably makes X happy…), though, and 1 of those will lose its thighs for this…

Groceries:  Kroger – $99.38

New from the farm:  Asparagus!  Also, rhubarb is starting to fill in, so that might make a dinner appearance early this year.  We’ll see.  Lettuce, spinach, and arugula germinated slowly this year, and is still probably 3 weeks from harvest.