Restoring Irving Gill's "Williams House"

Creative with the Garden Harvest

Our garden is finally coming into its harvest glory….about one month behind schedule due to  STRANGE Spring weather. 

I was gone for four days.  Mandy did some harvesting, but I got to bring in a haul the day after I returned home.  First I went to the garden with a bowl and a colander.  Then I took three boxes out there.  Finally I enlisted help in bringing in the bounty…about 100 pounds worth.  The poundage included winter squash.

Five Pound Beet and Guinness Record Holders

My mom was so pleased with this beet that she brought in from the garden.  She didn't intend for it to go that long, but once it hits that whale-like size, it's hard not to get a bit excited.  I checked out The Guinness Book of World Records and didn't find a record for beets.  Perhaps she could have been the second in this household to make the Guinness Book of World Records had there been a category (and if we were more committed to world records than to eating). 

So does anyone want to bite?  Who is the record-holder in the family?  I'll give you one hint:  the persons are listed on this page.  And it the record actually required two people, though it is not altogether clear that both are record holders.  I want to hear lots of guesses.  You can do it.  (It might be better not to think too rationally about this one.)

Celebrating the harvest of one onion

In our journey to live simply and independently, I’ve taken to collecting my own vegetable seeds.  This is an art in itself…takes some time to master…if one ever does master it!  Anyhow, on the way to mastery I’ll just have to relax and enjoy myself.

This year’s onion bed sported one hunkin big onion.  I was exercising major self control to not pull the darling thing and take it on a bragging tour of the neighborhood.  This onion would produce seeds for my next crop. And, what a crop that would be! 

I kept the seed heads trimmed off of the other onions because I had a mix of varieties in one bed.  I was making certain there would be no cross-pollination mistakes made while I was looking the other way.

My famous show onion put up TWO seed heads.  What a performer!  Each head was about the size of a small marble….for about two weeks.  Perhaps watched seed heads don’t grow.  Finally decided to pet them a little and give some encouraging words.  I cupped one seed head in my hand.  It felt hard and uninterested.  As I examined it more closely with the fingers of my other hand, the seed head fell to pieces in my palm.  My champion seed plans were running between my fingers like so much saw dust.  Awww!

Now we needed a suitable requiem for all my plans.  So I pulled the giant onion and turned it into beer-battered onion rings.

            1 cup flour

            1 cup beer

            sprinkle of salt

I mixed up the batter, let it set for an hour to develop its sourdough-like consistency, and fried away.  Wow!  What an onion! 

Now I’m sitting here with onion breath, looking through catalogues.  Thank God there’s more than one way to get seed!

By the way, I'm Jeanie, aka GrammyCracker.

I kept the seed heads trimmed off of the other onions because I had a mix of varieties in one bed.  I was making certain there would be no cross-pollination mistakes made while I was looking the other way.

My famous show onion put up TWO seed heads.  What a performer!  Each head was about the size of a small marble….for about two weeks.  Perhaps watched seed heads don’t grow.  Finally decided to pet them a little and give some encouraging words.  I cupped one seed head in my hand.  It felt hard and uninterested.  As I examined it more closely with the fingers of my other hand, the seed head fell to pieces in my palm.  My champion seed plans were running between my fingers like so much saw dust.  Awww!

Now we needed a suitable requiem for all my plans.  So I pulled the giant onion and turned it into beer-battered onion rings.

            1 cup flour

            1 cup beer

            sprinkle of salt

I mixed up the batter, let it set for an hour to develop its sourdough-like consistency, and fried away.  Wow!  What an onion! 

Now I’m sitting here with onion breath, looking through catalogues.  Thank God there’s more than one way to get seed!

By the way, I'm Jeanie, aka GrammyCracker.

Harvesting

June 12, 2005

Today was the first day of summer heat around here.  My mom hit the garden early to harvest beets and was back in the house by 10:30.  Thank goodness our house stays fairly cool throughout the summer since we do not have air conditioning.  Gill designed the house to take advantage of the slight wind flow up the canyon.  And except for the hottest two weeks of the summer, the evening air cools the house down even if the house has gotten warm from the summer heat. 

Today was the first day of summer heat around here.  My mom hit the garden early to harvest beets and was back in the house by 10:30.  Check out these incredible beets she harvested with our good friend Marissa Myers:

Garden weeding

June 11, 2005

The weather is finally starting to warm up and we’re facing the last resurgence of weeds on the property.  We’ve had so much rain that the grass and weeds are still growing.  Add a bit of heat to the mixture and this stuff goes like crazy.  We have weeded some areas 3 or 4 times this season and we need to weed one more time.  Luckily we had a bit of help with weeds in the garden today from Adonay. 

Adonay cleared all the weeds and aging sweet peas from the lower portion of the garden to make room for some summer planting.  He put all of those weeds and plants into the compost bin and then hauled in fresh compost for my mom to work into the vegetable beds.  The compost will provide more nutrients for the summer plants.  All of our weeds, grass, leaves, and old vegetable plants go into the compost bin and, combined with the California heat, we produce a lot of compost for the garden.  We use the compost primarily in the vegetable garden, but used it as well when we put in a small family orchard of fruit trees this winter.