Successes and failures 2016, part 1

 Cet article en français.

A show of great beauty, the peony Raspberry Sundae gave me a tremendous amount of flowers this year.

Similar article of last year:
Year 2015

Hélène:

What a wonderful year! The spring weather was somewhat unusual: there was snow until May and then it got warm really fast, skipping that brisk period so much loved by certain vegetables. Noticing that, I took a big decision: I didn't plant those cool weather vegetables. Sorry, broccolis, cauliflowers or cabbages. However, I did plant a bit of peas in containers, as I usually do  - they didn't do well at all. I also planted a bit of lettuces but the only ones that produced well did so because I placed them in the shade (exhibit A, the photo to the left).  You see, here in my garden, temperatures were reliably warm, even at night, from mid-May to mid-September. Whatever vegetables and fruits that thrive in warm, sunny weather did amazingly well this year - I'm thinking mostly about nightshade and cucurbitaceae families.

When I say my garden strawberries are a really small variety: See the difference between mine and a store variety (called Frissonnante, it's a greenhouse variety grown in Quebec that's worth sampling).

 

Successes:

I'm pretty sure I mention fruits of the garden as being successes every year. This one is no exeption of course because it is the crowning achievement of this garden. I'll give the classical mention for the strawberries and golden raspberries. A quick mention goes to the 31 delicious peaches I collected, here's the article for further details.

The juneberries have made so many fruits - so many - that for the first time ever I was able to cook with them. See, in my homestead, these berries are always eaten fresh up to the last one. With an 8 year-old kid who never had to be begged to eat fresh fruit, there was never any left for further projects. This year, the shear quantity surpassed even my son's enthousiasm for eating them fresh.

We made pancakes with them.

What was only one or two branches of redcurrant became a real harvest this year. But I don't really like the taste of redcurrant. It's an acidic and very sour fruit, even when it's ripe. So I mixed it with some juneberries to make a delicious jam I'll enjoy this winter.

A spindly plant to the left and a flowering branch to the right. Strange how those somewhat drab pale, green flowers will produce a grape of beautiful, glossy, red jewels.

Hard to see them from afar, but they're there all right!

 

Grape flowers are bizarre and adorable!

Green grapes, I was impatient for them to ripen.

The new fruit this year are grapes! I had grape vines for many years. A white one, Prairie Star that died off unfortunately and a red one called Valiant that I transplanted - oh - 3 times in 6 years. This year, it really gave lots of fruits! I didn't like them all that much, unfortunately. The taste wasn't bad but this variety as a lot of big pips. Furthermore, the skin wasn't good and the meat stays a small ball from which the aforementionned pips are hard to extract without crunching them. So instead, I made jelly!

Left and center, the grapes start to color and at the far right, there's the result of the harvest.

Two small jars (250ml-1 cup) of grape jelly and 1 big jar (500ml-2 cups) of rhubarb jam, all this right in the middle of September.

I risked planting melons this year. I never had luck with these years passed but with such weather, I thought that this would be the best time for success. And I was right! For the first time I harvested 2 tiny melons called "Collective Farm Woman", a melon coming from Ukraine! Apparently it preserves for a long time but we never got to test this and ate them as soon as they were harvested.

Yes, that melon is super small! After reading up on it on the net, I learned it was better to harvest it just as it starts to have its yellow stripes. All yellow and the meat is lumpy and faded, all green - well of course it's not sweet enough. This one was harvested just right.

The failures:
Of all the fruits I get in spring, two didn't make anything. I have dwarf blueberries and arctic kiwis on the front of my propriety but althought they were heavy with flowers, they didn't bear anything. I'll speak more about this in the "surprises" section of this article.

Beans had some difficulties, but are not a total loss, either. The first variety I'm talking about is called Nebraska Beauty, it looks a lot like Jacob's Cattle, but is a climber instead of a bush and is ready to harvest later. It was a good success, let's say it. The next variety, Mandan Black (the tiny completely black bean on the top of the bean pile on the picture below) didn't produce a lot of beans but still did better than the black variety I had from last year called Hopi Black. My Scarlet Runner have produced amazingly, as always, but the Painted Lady didn't. Finally, the two white varieties that can be seen on the picture below are called Early Mohawk (cream and mauve, it did well) and Jumbo Roma (cream and coffee stripes, it didn't do well but had potential) - that last variety succombed to an illness where the pod became twisted and broken and thus the beans themselves suffered.

The beans of this year all together can almost fill this dish! The small quantity of Mandan Black are on top of the pile, the next ones are a mix of white beans, hard to differentiate in such a picture: the cream and mauve - sometime one bean is entirely mauve - is the Early Mohawk. The cream and coffee striped beans are called Jumbo Roma, they didn't do too good. On the bottom is my favorite: Scarlet Runner Bean. Between the Scarlet and the white mix, there's the Nebraska Beauty who are half white, half burgundy, with collored spots here and there. The beans on the table are a mix of everything that wasn't quite ripe enough and needed a special treatment to be dryed properly. I used my dehydrator and am happy to report that it worked really well.

The surprises:

Snails' highway!

Again this year, the snails had a good presence throughout the garden! But beyond these shelled gastropods, there were many other surprises!

To continue the discussion about my blueberries and kiwis who would flower but not fruit, I have a theory about the cause that cristallyzed itself this spring (althought the phenomenon has been ongoing for a couple of years, now).

So I have on the front of my house a couple of dwarf blueberry plants and two vines of arctic kiwis (Actinidia Kolomikta), since the kiwi needs both a male and a female plant to bare fruits. My two kiwis climb on both sides of my front stairs and make a quantity of flowers in synchronicity (this year the flowers promised an amazing amount of fruits), but no fruits came out of that... Same for the blueberries that produced a lot of flowers but no fruits. And that's where I noticed how few pollinating insects visited that specific spot in the garden, during the blooming time of these plants. If I find the right type of flowering perennials that attract pollinators at that time, maybe - just maybe - my problem would be solved.  Only time will tell...

Newcomer this year, a small gray treefrog!

 Another weird thing that happened is pictured below. Some years ago, I installed creeping thyme between the  veranda's stones in the garden... Now this thyme has colonised a lot of it and is doing well. But when it flowered, surprise! One of the tuft beared white blooms. I didn't add a different plant of anything, that happened on its own. It's similar to that mystery that make my Painted Lady beans come out a different color than the beans I plant (I speak about that happenstance in this article, it's located around the three quarter of it).

Conclusion:

The beauty of my garden is especially breathtaking in spring and the beginning of summer. I have yet to find the trick to make it last all season: my autumn garden looks especially unkempt. Here's some pictures expressing the spring beauty here.

  

Neither rain, wind... nor apparently cherry petals will prevent her from sleeping on that sofa!

Side note:

Many cities have interesting programs aimed at protecting the environment available for their residents. Here, my municipality distributes rain barrels to the residents at very good prices. I got the pleasure to have one this year and I'm so happy about it! I wholeheartedly suggest you to enquire what's available in your own communities - you could have a lot of good things coming your way too!

Agrotourism, a real pleasant experience

Cet article en français.

 A superb pear, as soon harvested, is passing from a grandson's hand to his grandmother's.

Hélène:

Fruit picking - like apples, strawberries, raspberries... - just as we know it today, is not a new trend. But it developped far behond harvesting produce. Agrotourism offers many recreational activities in rural areas, magnifying our experience, and our family's. 

Many ways to cook pears!

There are many places everywhere in Quebec that offer such an experience.
In October, we made a trip to a marvelous village south-west of mount Yamaska, St-Paul d'Abbotsford (look at the tourism section on this municipality's site). In the orchard Verger du Relais, we harvested pears and apples to make jams and preserves. Louise wanted to bring back a bushel of 'Beauté Flamande' pears mainly to eat them fresh. To her and her family's delight, we can keep them whole for many weeks in the refrigerator's produce drawer. In fact, one month after this harvest, she still has a good stock of them. She deposits a handful in a basket placed on the counter and let them rippen. 

Before departing from the orchard, we spread a blanket over a grass patch bordering the fruit trees and savoured our picnic.

Régis.

Then, we headed for the King of the Strawberry, le Roi de la Fraise, a farm offering diverse produce according to the season, from strawberries, to apples, to squashes, even preserves and homemade pies. We were interested to visit their miniature farm (for free!), home of some chickens, rabbits, ducks, poneys, goats, llamas and a pig named Régis. Furthermore, there was a picnic area and a big playground for the kids. It was Louise's second visit this year, as she brought her class the week before. Many farms involved in agrotourism open their doors to school groups. 

A Tic Tac Toe game at le Roi de la Fraise

In this day-trip, we had only time to skim over the proverbial cornucopia. Agrotourism offers us so many different activities: farm stays, tractor rides, sports, patrimonial tours, country-style tables where we can taste farm produce, etc. Many farms in our countryside (elsewhere in the world, too) open their door to welcome us, a nation of food lovers avid to reconnect with the source of our sustenance!

A pumpkin field - we found the perfect one for Halloween!

Rhubarb: juice, syrup and compote all at once

Cet article en français.

Our rhubarb plants, behind the squashes.

Louise : 

I mentionned previously that rhubarb was used in different ways besides compote or dessert in this household. My harvest at the end of August of 2016 gave me 6 kg (13 lbs) of rhubarb cut out in cubes. It took me 3 hours to wash, peel and dice the stuff (I did it in front of the tv, it helps). The following evening, out of this quantity, I used a little over 2 kg to cook the triple recipe I'm describing here. I was mixing with one hand and taking pictures with the other! I didn't precisely note how much time each step took, but after 90 minutes, I was scrubbing the last corner of my kitchen counter  before closing the room for the night.

   

Three different products from the same
harvest. From left to right, compote, sweetened
juice and non sweetened juice in the bottle.

 Here, in pictures, is my step by step  process to make, in order:

 - Non sweetened juice that can replace  lemon juice in recipes.

 - Sweetened juice or syrup (depending  on the consistency), that is the base for  a sparkly drink.

 - Compote that's less acidic than the  traditionnal recipes.

My ingredients : 

 - 5 pounds (2,27Kg) of rhubarb, peeled  and diced, that gave me a volume of 5,5  liters. (Hélène on her side doesn't bother  peeling the rhubarb. Her juice comes out  pinker than mine.)

 - 1 cup of water.

 - Sugar according to your taste (I  added  about 1,5 cups). You can replace  sugar with another type of sugaring  ingredient. Maple syrup, for instance.

 Utensils and containers : 

- Cooking pot of 6 liters with a lid

- Wooden spoon

- Small sieve (made out of metal is fine)

- Small bowl or measuring cup to collect the juice

- Big sieve

- 2 big bowls

- Measuring cup for the sugar

- Jam funnel (big hole for the jam to pass through)

- Glass mason jars
- Funnel for the liquid

- Empty bottles, small containers for the juice and syrup

Photo 1 - As soon as the rhubarb cubes start to
 collapse under the  pressure of your spoon,
they have cooked enough. You can see me start
 extracting the non sweetend juice with a
ladle on this picture.

First step : Cooking the rhubarb

1. Place the rhubarb dices in your cooking pot and add the water.

2. Over a medium flame, bring to a boil while stiring regularly so the rhubarb doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. Adjust the heat if needed.

3. Bring the heat down and let simmer until the dices are soft and start to fall apart under the pressure of your spoon (photo 1). In traditionnal recipes, cooking takes a lot longer to give time for most of the liquid to evaporate. By collecting this liquid, we collect a useful byproduct instead of wasting it. Even better, we save time by skipping the evaporating step altogether.

Photo 2 - The non sweetened juice passes through
a sieve to separate it from the inevitable rhubarb
pulp. Note : the 3 jars behind the measuring
cup contain canned tomatoes that I cooked
during that same evening.

Second step : Separation of the non sweetened juice

Since I only needed a modest quantity of non sweetened juice for my needs, I used a ladle, a small sieve and a measuring cup.

4. Sink the ladle slowly in the compote so only juice will trickle into it (photo 1).

Photo 3 - Don't throw away the pulp left in the
sieve. Just put it back in the cooking pot.

5. Pass this juice through the small sieve placed over the measuring cup or over a small container that can resist high heat (photo 2).

6. The sieve will catch any rhubarb pulp that ended up in your ladle (photo 3). It's pretty much inevitable, so just put it back in the cooking pot after the juice has been extracted.

 7. Let the juice cool. Once it is done, you can freeze it in smaller portions and use it instead of using lemon juice. I give instructions on the freezing process under Photo 10.

Third step : Add the sugar

Photo 4 - The amount of added sugar
depends largely on personnal taste.

8. Incorporate the sugar and let the compote cook for 10 more minutes so the sugar as time to dissolve (photo 4). 

Photo 5  - Don't squeeze the pulp. This way, none
 of it will pass through into the juice. Besides,
it's a good thing to keep some of the juice into
the mixture.

Fourth step : Sweetened juice separation

9. Carefully transfer the compote into the big sieve that you put over a bowl. The juice will slowly pass into the bowl. Of course, the tighter the weaving of your sieve is, the less pulp will pass through, too (photo 5). You can also use cheesecloth to have a better filtration process.

Place the pulp left in the sieve in another big bowl and pursue the operation until all the compote has been separated: juice on one side, pulp on the other (photo 6). I think it's a good idea to leave a little bit of juice in the compote, so it doesn't end up tasteless and dry, but also because the rhubarb juice is sufficiently acidic to prevent bacteria formation.



Juice or syrup?

Photo 6 - The rhubarb juice, sweetened or not, has a nice
pink hue, just like the syrup. The pulp, without the
 juice, looses a lot of it trademark acidic taste.

10.To obtain a syrup, put the juice back on the stove and let it evaporate until the consistency of syrup is achieved.


Last step : Preparing the compote

Photo 7 - Watch out! The compote minus its juices
sticks to the bottom of the pot more readily.

10. Put back the pulp in the cooking pot and bring back to a boil while stirring frequently to prevent burning. Taste it and add sugar if needed (photo 7). 

11. The compote is ready. You can let it cool for either further freezing it or simply putting it in the fridge.

You can also transfer it still blistering hot in sterilized Mason jars, close them tight, put them in a large pot  and cook them in boiling water for twenty minutes. It's the basic canning method that you can find all over the net. Here's one. Here's Ricardo's method, if you don't mind reading it in French.

Photo 8 - A large-mouth funnel makes it easy to fill
Mason jars without making a mess.

Photo 9 -I like to recycle old pill bottles 
(thoroughly washed) to preserve the non
sweetened juice in small portions. I fill them at 
80%, so once frozen, they won't overflow.

Photo 10. I gather my pill bottles inside a bigger 
plastic container and I freeze the batch 
without the lids on, so the bottles won't distort
through the process. The juice doesn't expand
that much so it generally doesn't overflow.
Once it's frozen, I just place the lids on.
There's a very useful preserve!

Photo 11 - One last tip : rhubarb is a very acidic plant,
it can alter the material of your sieves, if they are not
made of stainless steel. So it's a good idea to rinse your 
sieves under water as quickly as possible after you have
used them.

Conclusion

I recently used my non sweetened juice on fish - replacing the classic lemon juice. I used it on apples to prevent them turning brown and I used it in a couple of recipes that called for standard lemon juice. I added it to a cocktail and I used it as a base for lemonade.
As for the syrup and the sweetened juice, there are a couple of things that I can envision: adding a dash over ice cream or drizzle some on fresh fruits, for instance. But up to now, my preference goes to a simple drink : half rhubarb juice with half carbonated natural source water, add a couple of ice cubes and drink in good company. Cheers!