2nd week of May 2010

Chive Blossoms Spring rains came this week which made everything grow, including the weeds. I'm hoping for a dry day where I can get the whole family to do a hoe session and tackle the weeds while they are small. The beet and carrot beds will need some fine tuning by hand and there are still some areas of quack grass to be tackled. I am starting to harvest the lettuce planted out in the garden without protection along with other greens, radishes and onion scallions. This is the time of year where salad is piled on our plates for every meal and the kids enjoy eating whole heads of Buttercrunch. Standing ready to top those incredible salads are plenty of edible flowers. Here are chive blossoms which I pull apart and sprinkle along with arugula blossoms, kale flowers, violas and pea blossoms. Soon the nasturtiums, calendula and borage will add to the color riot of petals for salads. It makes me feel like we are eating in a gourmet restaurant right in our own kitchen.

Fingerling Potatoes Once the ground dried out enough from the rain, Olin disked an area for the next potato planting. Planting potatoes is an excellent kid activity so I got to sit at the end of the row and cut seed potatoes and keep a map of where everything while the kids did the planting. The varieties we planted were Yukon Golds, Red Chiefton, Kennebecs, Blue potatoes, Rose Finn fingerlings and Red Thumb fingerlings. The Red Thumbs are my fun experimental potato for the season and they have a red/pink flesh while the Rose Finn are yellow inside. The market gardener I bought the fingerlings from gave me extras that were left over from a group order. Since I'm trying to keep my garden at a manageable size, I resisted the urge to plant the extra 5# of fingerlings all myself. So I am enjoying passing them out to gardening friends who stop by and am trying to expand the potato horizons of a couple Amish produce growers.

Ice Cream Freezer Here is my Mother's Day gift in action. Olin and the boys were successful in using a salvaged motor and gear reducer, handlebars from a bicycle, wheels from a mower and other stray parts to transform our handcrank ice-cream freezer into an electric model. This was our first batch of homemade ice-cream for the season and it was extra delicious with the cherry pies my daughter baked. With the luxury of not needing to hand crank, I think ice-cream may show up on our summer menu more often and won't only be saved for special occasions with guests. Or maybe that will mean that we invite more guests to join us for dessert. So stop on over and we'll gladly feed you ice-cream (after you help weed for a spell!) Next week the variety will be strawberry ice-cream - yum!