Blog a la Cart

Category: Homesteading

Garlic Scape Pesto

Our first dinner inspired by our very own garden! So what if it is the bastard child of garlic, the Garlic Scape. It’s still homegrown!

I wasn’t sure what to do with these scapes, the swirly curly stems that grow out of garlic in the early summer months. All I knew is that they needed to be snipped to maximize garlic growth.

So snip we did.

After some Googling, I determined that garlic scape pesto sounded like a smart way to put these bad boys to use, guaranteeing that both baby and preschooler would also enjoy the meal. Who knew this swirly stem could be so delish!

Ingredients:
1.5 c. garlic scapes
1/2 c. pine nuts, toasted
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp salt
Pinch of black pepper
1 c. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese

Toss all ingredients in a food processor and give ’em a good blend!

And PESTO! We served it over some whole wheat pasta with fresh parm.

Courtland approved. Very much indeed.

And I couldn’t be more pleased that this seemingly useless stem is actually quite tasty!

Photos: Courtesy of Ashley Weeks Cart

Essential Reading

This little library has become an essential part of adapting to life at Cartwheel Farm.

1. Starter Vegetable Gardens, $13.57 – Exactly as the title suggests, a great resource for jump starting your own vegetable garden.

2. Serving Up the Harvest, $12.46 – Recipes for all of the fresh vegetables now coming into our home, with suggestions for how to harvest, prep and even store.

3. The Cleaner Plate Club, $11.88 – For anyone with children, a must have. Heck, for anyone, period. It’ll have you cooking vegetables in positively delicious and unexpected concoctions. Beet brownies, anyone? Of note, a local woman is a co-author of this book who I happened to meet standing in the barn of our farm CSA last summer. Gotta love small town living!

4. The Fresh Egg Cookbook, $11.15 – With 12 chickens, we’re going to be inundated with eggs. This book is filled with recipes and has great tips about keeping a backyard flock. Also written by a local woman, whose husband is the founder/director of MASSMoCA and a fellow Eph.

5. The Backyard Homestead, $12.14 – A more all encompassing book about living off your back yard, from vegetables to poultry, bees to goats.

6. Farm Anatomy, $10.98 – I’d buy this book just for the illustrations. An absolutely gorgeous, simple overview of farm living.

7. Composting Inside & Out, $11.54 – Our Bible for all things compost. Amen.

Vegetable Gardening & DIY Garden Markers

The new house has 10 kitchen garden beds. TEN!

That’s 1, 2, 3, 4… oh my lord I’m already out of breath the number is so high! And James and I have exactly ZERO experience with vegetable gardening. First thing in the morning, I was searching for New review of a Garden Hose Reel to find the right kind for this new garden that we have.

According to my math that means we’re likely to have a zero percent success rate, because anything times zero is doomed.

Thus I have predicted a crop of zero vegetables to show for these 10 beds. But that sure isn’t stopping us from trying! Courtland looks optimistic in the above image. James? Not so much.

Read more, 15 Plants That Grow Well Under Pine Trees.

We’d been resisting the urge to plant because we figured that we should educate ourselves a bit about the process, but every time I opened a book, turned to Google, or browsed on https://bestofmachinery.com for tools I need, I would become overwhelmed by sowing dates and soil quality and thus delay the process further.

One morning we decided to screw the education bit of the plan and began to till the land.

Till the land. I still cannot keep a straight face whenever I make such a claim. Me. Tilling the land. It’s an exercise in paradox.

Between a seed packet sale to benefit the local elementary school and the most thoughtful housewarming gift of seed packets from the beautiful catalogue of the Hudson Valley Seed Library, we were ready to go.

And so tilled and sowed we did…

We even mixed in some of our compost, as we have quite the pile going up at the barn. In 5 weeks or so, when the chicks are big enough to move up to their permanent coop, they’ll have full access to this compost pile to help in the process. I’ll write another post about compost. Eventually. But it also looks like a thrilling mound of dirt. Albeit healthy, nutrient rich, wonder dirt.

Courtland is a brilliant helper in all respects. Whether it’s turning compost…

Or weeding the garden…

To mark these mounds of dirt and track the success (er, failure?) of our sowing efforts, Sunny and I made up some simple garden markers using popsicle sticks, clothespins, permanent markers and her birthday water colors. It’s fairly self explanatory…

Simple yet effective. My kind of DIY.

It’s been over 4 weeks since we planted, and about half the beds are really starting to take shape. We even had our first meal with ingredients directly from the garden this evening. Details forthcoming… but I will say, thank the sweet baby Cheez-its for James, The Expert Weeder. Our garden would be netting zero without his efforts.

Photos: Courtesy of Ashley Weeks Cart

A Hognose Snake Treat

Sunny: A hognose snake would like to eat this toad.

Her Ranger would be so proud.

Hudson Valley Seed Library

Upon moving into the Vermont house, a small package arrived filled with the most beautifully designed seed packets I’ve ever seen.

Each little bundle held not only the promise of fresh, homegrown food for our family, but was delivered wrapped in a piece of miniature artwork. A bundle of art and life.

Talk about one of the most thoughtful housewarming gifts we’ve received. Thanks, Meg and Michael! We are blessed to have such incredible people in our lives.

These seeds are part of the catalogue of the Hudson Valley Seed Library. Their goal is threefold:

1.    To create an accessible and affordable source of regionally-adapted seeds that is maintained by a community of caring farmers and gardeners.
2.    To create gift-quality seed packs featuring original works designed by artists in order to celebrate the beauty and diversity of heirloom gardening.
3.    To help farmers, gardeners, and eaters understand where seeds come from, how they are grown, who grows them, and why seed saving is more important than ever.

I know where I’ll be sourcing all of my seeds for next year’s garden. More on this year’s garden in a forthcoming post.  But here is a taste of the seeds we now have germinating on Cartwheel Farm. And yes, I absolutely saved the seed pack covers. I don’t know how I’ll use them yet, but they were far too beautiful to discard.

LINK: HUDSON VALLEY SEED LIBRARY