Tag Archives: Garlic

Mohawk Valley Garlic Fest 2019

Learning Adventures, , ,

It is Tuesday morning; I have the day off and we are still slowly working our way through packing up the event supplies. Things have to be washed, sorted and organized. This has been an event saving policy for me. Nothing was forgotten this time, though I must admit supplies were not always found where they should have been. There was a scramble to find the hand soap and I thought I forgot to bring my camera.

We did adhere to Ron’s time line and were out of the house by 5:30 am and pulling into our spot just before 6:30, We were so early we beat the spot markers and had to wait for them to measure and draw the needed lines. But we weren’t the first vendors there. We made the “brilliant” decision to unload everything and get the vehicles parked. Ron’s favorite word used to describe both good and bad moves on someone’s part. Once our chalk lines were in place we jumped into down loading our stuff. We needed to get both vehicles emptied so we could get them parked and out of the way. Brother-in-law Don arrived early too. And his help was greatly appreciated as we struggled to get the tent up. It is a beast to maneuver and the fourth set of hands was a blessing. The forecast called for a rainy day and we needed the tent up fast. I thought we would then be able to take a breath and take our time getting the setup just right. I had forgotten who I was married to. I guess because we had not been the first vendor to arrive, the goal now was to be the first one ready to go.

This was easier said that done. We were able to get the cooking and samples section up and ready to go quickly, but we had to deal with how to set up our new T shirt display and a changed mushroom bolt set up. Ron’s shop class skills came into play again. He had a new sign printed and laminated but they would not able to give him the rigidity he wanted. So he needed to come up with a plan.

And he did. The wire hanger was strong but light and the sign did not flop over. Getting it secured to the middle tent post was another matter. That took some wire and the rubber bands I found.

Only a few hiccups in the process but soon everything in its place and ready to go. We have to tweak the T shirt display. The sign describing it was up too high and most people did not read it. The shirt itself, was a big hit and got a laugh out of everyone. I will be keeping my new location in the future. I liked having my skin care products on the front row as it was easier to catch attendees’ attention and make my pitch.

So there we were, set up and ready to go by 9 am. Just waiting for potential customers. One problem. They would not be arriving until 10 am. The vendor paper work clearly stated opening time. We just did not register that. Well, at least that gave me time to run over and get breakfast sandwiches for us. We were going to need the fuel in order to get through the day.

After a slow start, we had a steady stream of customers all day. The hook was Ron cooking shiitakes for samples and his constant stream of chatter. They listened and bought. Jo once again manned the sample prep table, handing them off to me for sharing with crowd. Don sold all our logs again. People who came asking about them told us again and again they had seen someone carrying one again. They wanted to know what they were for. I ran the register again. We had 11 credit card transactions this time. Ones we probably would not have made without using the Square, but cash was used for the bulk of all purchases. This is why I don’t understand why some keep pushing the idea we will and should be a cashless society.


We learned again that people can be odd. More than one person wanted to eat the shiitakes we had on display. Ron had to be vigilant in making sure they did not follow through on this process. We will have a sign at the next event stating for display only. Do Not Eat. I brought a jar of dehydrated shiitakes with us to show folks what they could do with an extra bag or two. I pulled one out to show a customer. She caught me off guard when she took it from me and bit off a piece to try it.

The rainy day did not materialize and this made the day better for all of us. The bread lady was next to us again and the garlic guy across the aisle. We had been shifted down the row a bit this year. The pickle man was on the end of the row across from us and he always has a line around his booth. The organizers wanted to make sure the aisle did not get jammed up. The crowds started thinning out after 4:45 and I was able to send Jo off to get something to eat. None of us had left the tent since the first customer stopped to watch Ron. Promptly at 5 pm everyone started breaking down their site. We pulled everything out of the tent so we could collapse it. Being so large, it would have blocked others from getting their vehicles close enough to load up their stuff. We dumped what we could back into bins and then sat down to wait for a break in the traffic congestion. I was able to get the Outback moved in and we loaded that up. Ron was finally able to bring in the trailer and we were soon heading home.

Once there we unload only what was most important, and collapsed on the couch. Jo had to work the next day so she was soon off to sleep. Ron and I talked shop while we each had a drink and decompressed. There are things we will change for our next event and others that worked out just the way we hoped. One of those was my idea to bring our “staff” Tiny House Farm T shirts and offer them for sale. And I sold one to a young lady who loved the mushroom house.

Sunday morning was unload day for Ron and me. Jo missed all the fun by being at work. We also had to head out to THF to check on the shiitakes and drop off the supplies. We took a chance and drove the Transit onto the property. It made it so much easier to unload the trailer. One trip in and out. Neither one of us was up for a lot of work. We picked what shiitakes we could and headed home. The plan was to dehydrate them for later use. Over the next few days we will get the rest of the supplies stored away. Lists have already been started with the things we need to replace and ideas for what we need or can change. One big take away is my taking time off before and after is a huge benefit. I was able to help Ron bring in the mushrooms and supplies. And now I am able to get the stuff all put away.

It was another good day for Tiny House Farm. And we are looking forward to attending again in 2020. It is anyone’s guess what Ron will come up with for us to add into our product line.

“eat my shiitakes”

Learning Adventures, , ,

Though Ron would love to find a few more events for THF to sell our wares at, Mohawk Valley Garlic Fest is the last one we are doing this year. He has looked into a few others in our area; but we are not ready for two day events and others are too far away or just cost too much. Sometimes you are just not a good fit for the event too. That is something a vendor always has to factor in when deciding which events to sign up for. It can be very disheartening to run your tally at day’s end and discover you have just barely covered your costs. You also have to factor in the expected clientele at each event. That will change the items that you bring to sell.

We have made a few changes this year to our set up. The biggest (pun indeed) was purchase of a larger tent. Most event sites are ten feet wide but you can pay for a double space. We have done that for the past few years as ten feet is really not that much. At the CCE Herb & Flower Fest we had great wings on each side that gave us more covered space to work with. Turns out Ron thinks it does not look “professional” and he pushed for a different tent. That way we won’t have to worry about getting enough protection from the elements. Because we liked the brand we had, we went with their larger model.

We had a beautiful Saturday morning to work with so we loaded up the new tent; along with the tables, coolers and stove and headed out to Tiny House Farm for a practice set up. There was no way this testing could be done in our yard; the tent was just too big. A practice run was necessary as we did not want to be struggling to get the darn thing up at the Garlic fest on September 14th. We had set up and taken down the smaller tent numerous times over the past few year. It should have been easy enough, but the new one was a totally difference beast. The thing is twice the size of our other tent, obviously. But it took more than twice the effort to get it set up. You have to put the canopy on before you raise the tent frame up. Unless you are someone who can float in midair, you are not going to get it on after the fact. The problem is that once it is on the frame it adds to much weight that Jo and I struggled to get the legs we were working with up high enough to set the pegs.

This is going to be such a change for us. There is so much space inside the tent now that it feels a bit empty. But the biggest difference I will have to deal with is being inside, not outside. My table has always been outside and that left me free to move around, bagging the shiitakes, handling sales, and hawking my products. Now most of my time will be inside and I will have some figuring out to do. We will no longer have our logs outside on right side either. Which will change the way our salesman, Don is going to manage. Right now Ron is planning on having the logs front and center (literally) and Don working his magic from there. Ron will be cooking on the right side of the tent with Jo behind him getting the samples ready.

Once again our mushroom bolts will be sold un-soaked as we are offering them as Christmas presents. I am making special bows for them too. Ones with a more Christmassy feel. But not going over the top.

Ron will be hawking our bolts as the perfect gift when you are looking for something unusual. My skin care products will also be included in the Christmas push. They will make great stocking stuffers. They just need to right signage to catch the attention of those walking by.

A big attention getter we will have at this event and one we hope will sell well, is our new Tiny House Farm T shirts. We had THF shirts made three years ago but they were planned for staff wearing and giving to our returning shitake inoculation volunteers. This shirt was specifically designed for us to see. Ron went all out with it. The shirt itself is a combination of hemp and organic cotton, all sourced from the US. Did you know that New York states is new one of the sources for hemp? And before anyone asks, suggests or even thinks about it… NO we will not be growing hemp on Tiny House Farm. Turns out that crop is even more fiddley than shiitakes are.

The process of getting these shirts made was more than a struggle. To start with we had to decide if the large investment would be worth it. Once we all agreed it was, Ron tweaked his design until he was happy with it. Finding the right company to work with is made much easier by the internet. He was able to contact multiple companies at the same time. The price point was a huge factor in choosing the printing company. But then we had to deal with additional expenses as they advised we needed to use 6 different ink colors in order to get Ron’s desired result. We even took a hit from Labor Day as our shipping was delayed until the day after. BUT, the boxes arrived on Friday. Ron sent me a picture and my response was… Are you happy? It was a stressful couple of minutes before he replied with a strong yes. Both of us took huge deep breaths of relief. The whole process had been nerve racking. Until we had shirts in hand we had no way of knowing if they were going to be right. We also had no idea what the heck we would have done if they were terribly wrong.

But they are fabulous. I had pushed Ron into getting 4 sizes; small, medium, large and extra large. That was really all we could afford to go with as we had to get 50 of each size. So that ending up being a total of 200 shirts. We are going to be selling them for $30, tax included. I know that seems a bit high for a t shirt, but these are 60% hemp and 40% organic cotton. We had them printed by a company in North Carolina so we can state, truthfully this is a completely American made product. We did have one last battle over the shirts. Ron is determined that people will notice the shirts so just stacking them neatly on our tables was not going to do. I do believe that if he had his way, a female model wearing the shirt with the full sales pitch memorized would be a new addition to our event set up. He went through the gambit of possibilities from a simple carboard shirt form to a set of 2 human sized standing forms that would cost us $200. I put the kibosh on that plan. He settled to two flat torso forms that we can hang from the tent frame.

Ron’s immediate thought for advertising our new product was to go back to his friend Jennifer and have her do a make over of her previous shiitake shot. The two of us headed to Rome with cell phones and camera in hand. I tend to get better results with my trusty camera and those shots are easier to upload into my blog. Jen was happy to sign off on his model release with payment of the t shirt, some shiitakes and the promise of lifelong friendship. What she doesn’t realize is that her continued participation in our shiitake inoculation events is assumed.

He has already posted the final result on THF Facebook and our Instagram pages. But I got a couple good shots of him tweaking the scene. He really does love to tweak.

And you can bet Ron will be doing some serious tweaking on to our event planning right up to opening time.

Garlic is good for your heart

Our 3 Acres

But growing it really stress us out.

On November 17, 2018 we  had our first significant snowfall here in Upstate NY. This is much too early and THF is simply not ready for this.  Once again Mother Nature is reminding us that she is in charge and we had scramble to get caught up with our prewinter chores.  It is always a  matter of getting things picked up, stored away and prepped for the cold weather and snow.  We had so many plans that fell by the wayside.  Getting the lavender pruned was one of the bigger ones.  The wet and nasty weather we had in October prevented us from getting out to THF for more than the absolute necessities.

At the last possible minute we made a mad dash to get just one row of garlic planted.   We lucked into a  Saturday when Jo was not working and amazingly, it was not raining.  What it was; cold and very muddy. 

I offered up the unused but already tilled row that I had planned to test some medicinal herbs in.  We just had to pull off the landscape cloth and till it up a bit more.  Sounds a lot  easier than it actually was.  The ground was so wet from the constant rain that it stuck to everything. Our boots, hands and tools.  And the tiller, making it a major bear to work with.  Ron had to do some serious manhandling to get the blasted thing up and down the row.  And of course we had to deal with the rocks. Lots and lots of rocks.   

There was no way we were going to make the same lazy mistake we did last year.  We made sure we took the needed extra time to run the straw through the chipper shredder.  It is the only way to get rid of most of the seeds.  I cannot be sure but am pretty convinced that it was the massive amount of straw growing along side our garlic that caused the majority of our losses.  It was a long day with hours of hard work and exhausting, but such a relief when we were finally finished.  One important thing checked off our must get done list.   

In the midst of all the things we really needed to get done, Ron was busy working on his next project.  Finally getting what will actually look like a “Tiny House” on the farm.  He went back to his Amish farmer/builder to have him get started on another shed.  This one would be taller with a loft on each end.  These will be used for storage and other future projects.  We have already learned that up is best when it comes to protection of our stuff.   Vivid memories of the flooding in July 2017 still make us worry when a flash flood warning pops up on the TV or cell phone. And I want to use it to store all the props needed for our selling events.  The purpose of our house shaped shed will really be preparation for our many products, especially the shiitake cleaning.  It is time to move more of the operations out of our home and out to the actual farm.  Our first shed will be for storage of our equipment and the drying processes.   In the coming years we will have our lavender and calendula air drying there.  As well as our garlic.

Of course Ron (being Ron) he just had to complicate the issue by deciding that we needed to move the first shed from it’s original site.  It was getting too much of a full day’s sun which left the interior too hot for our purposes.  Even with the solar fans running full speed, the temps were going to be just too high to safely dry our herbs.  In the new location, the afternoon sun should heat it just enough.

And then in April 2019, we knew we had done good again. The lovely reward of our hard, wet work. Yeah, we ran out of our chopped straw for the row, but the ones on the end still grew nicely. Always so nice to see the garlic sprouts, but there was no time to revel in it. We were so busy getting ready for the new year that we walked by our rows without much thought most days. We always grow the hard neck varieties of garlic as we really like the scapes. I make a fabulous garlic scape pesto from them. It can be frozen too, so we can enjoy it all year long. This year I decided to try pickling the scapes. They won’t be ready for months, so they are sitting out of the way in our frig. I will let you know how they turn out.

We had some seriously hot days in July which made all of us think twice about working on out on Tiny House Farm, but the garlic had to be harvested. I was not going to lose it again. Armed with pitchfork and my trusty hat, I tackled the job. We didn’t have the yield that we had back in 2015 and 2016, but it was respectable and I was happy with it. For the first time since we first got the 4 wheeler, I actually drove it around the field. Ron was busy with him own project so it was up to me to get the garlic from field into drying shed.

And there it is. The fruits of our labor that we can now enjoy for many months. For all you garlic lovers out there, whether you grow it yourself or buy from another grower; do some research about fermenting it. I did that in 2017 using the directions on the internet for what they call lacto-fermented garlic and we used the delicious results until they ran out in June of this year. My first attempt was only two pint sized jars. I will be setting up many more jars this year. I just have to make sure I have enough room in our frig for what I ferment. I froze several bags of the really small cloves we salvaged but they don’t work as well as the fermented garlic does.

Yesterday was another lovely morning and it was finally time to get our garlic out of the shed and safely into our cellar. There would be no leaving it as not so important and waiting until we find time on another day. That is what we did last year and what garlic we did have froze and thawed several times over the course of late October and November last year. We ended up tossing out all of it out. That was a very sad day.

This is our end result. This picture doesn’t do our haul justice as we have just over 12 pounds of garlic. Not enough to sell to anyone, but more than enough for our needs. And more set aside that we will be planting again come fall. We will stick with growing just for ourselves from now on. Our original plans were to grow enough to sell. But there are so many growers in our area, including many home gardeners that we could not find consistent buyers for THF garlic. We made the decision last year when we did just one row. Before we knew that our local restaurant customers would be looking for good quality garlic in quantity. At the Syracuse Regional Farmers Market, Ron struck up a conversation with one of local farmers. That resulted in a north country garlic contact who will sell their certified organic garlic to us in multiple pound increments. They also have organic shallots that Ron buys. He then re-sells these products to our customers. And we will make it available to family and friends who are looking for the good stuff, one pound at a time. Ron is all about making good and solid local connections. He tends to find a lot of same minded folks who are happy to work with him. This has expanded his access to variety of local products. As our growing list of customers has found out. They ask him if he has or knows where they can find this or that and he proceeds to find a way to get it for them. Ron thrives in his new role as facilitator. He does love a challenge. As anyone who knows him will attest.

THF wrap-up for 2018

Our 3 Acres, ,

This is the time of year when all of us sit and look back to see what we have done and how far we have come.   We had some major changes at THF and more than a few ups and downs.   Money was spent on repairing our equipment such as our fabulous and much needed trailer/wagon.  We use it to haul just about everything around the farm.  Money was made by selling our shiitakes and my new skin care products.  We added a third event to our schedule and kept our eyes open for any other potential customers.   New people were met and a wonderful friend, Bob Crane was lost.

The weather played havoc with our schedule and plans.  Too much rain at the wrong times kept us from harvesting, planting and painting.  Yes, we had more painting to do.  Ron finally moved forward on getting buildings for THF.  It was a big deal when our shed arrived.  It was Amish made and just what we needed to store our equipment.  Well remembering the time involved in painting our first tiny house, we decided to have the builder paint the shed for us.  We still have a few tweaks do to.  I want to paint green around the windows and door to break up the massive sameness.   And we desperately need more of Ron’s whimsies to hang on the building.   Especially now that it has been moved.

Yes, after all the time and effort Ron spent to have the shed set in just the right position, he decided to have it moved.   He pulled the trigger and had the same Amish man build another shed for him.  The two families we have been working with have been a huge help to us.   Ron has plans for them to build him a few other things over the next few years.   And kids are just delightful.   The second shed is bigger so we can use as for processing our products.  Cleaning and bagging the shiitakes, sorting the elderberries and drying our calendula and lavender.

Once Ron decided where he wanted this new building, he also decided this was the time to move the shed too. He did not like the current location as it got too much sun and there is no way the two fans we had installed would keep the shed cool enough to dry but not damage either our lavender or calendula. So we had two cement slabs poured. Though I fretted about our budget, it was exciting to move forward with his plans.

By the time both sheds were moved into their new spots it was late November and too late to get a coat of primer on it. Hey, I have a great idea. We need to have a painting event come spring. I am sure we will have lots of volunteers for that project

You can tell from this photo that we had one big project that didn’t get done. We had planned to mow down the proposed future site of our juneberries and get the landscape cloth rows set up. We just didn’t get to it. Too much rain, too many other things to get done and too much inference from our normal daily lives. Things like our jobs caused us to miss some wonderful THF work days.

I continued working on my calendula products, though by the time our events started I stopped making our goat’s milk soap. I had enough of that to sell in 2018. I did learn that soap making can be wonderful fun but frustrating. You will remember that my first attempt of making soap was a simple calendula soap and the bar Josi and I made turned out great. I decided to try making more but this time a double batch using larger molds. I used the on-line lye calculator which is a fabulous tool for all soap makers. It will take any recipe and allow you to increase or decrease the batch size. Or change your ingredients but always making sure you end up with a usable bar of soap. What they can not help you with is making sure you pay attention to your process. When I poured the soap into the molds, I immediately realized something was wrong. I didn’t have enough to completely fill both molds. I couldn’t figure what I had missed. While driving home from work the next day, it hit me. I had not added enough water. I used the amount from the original recipe.

That is when I learned about rebatching. That is when you chop up your not quite right soap and melt it down, adding what you need in order to fix it. That goodness I had a large crockpot to use for this.

I actually kinda like the way it turned out. But it was a lot of extra work. Especially as you cannot be sure you have fixed the problem. This was not the end of my troubles. I tried again with the same recipe but this time it was too oily. I think that was because I put the soap molds right into the insulated box I used for the goat’s milk soap. That meant the soap stayed hot much longer that it should have. So crockpot to the rescue again.

In the middle of all this I also made my first attempt at elderberry jelly. And that turned out to be a huge success. I cannot wait until we have it ready to sell. I plan to make more from the berries I have stashed in our freezer. Our elderberries bushes produced so many berries. I make elderberry tincture and syrup. We sold more than a few pounds, gave away some and froze the rest. I deliberately did this in order to have jelly to sell at the CCE Herb and Flower Fest in June 2019. That means more work between now and then as Ron has to come up with the label design. But first we have to decide on the right jar. Needs to be 4 ounces and able to go into a water bath. We are thinking that the Ball jelly jars while the right size and easy to pick up locally, will not work. Their quilted outside will not take a label easily.

Another hit we had was the pawpaw butter I made. Ron came home with a box of pawpaws from Cornell and I stumbled onto a recipe to turn them into a butter. I learned one of the best ways to cook the pawpaws too. You peel the soft fruit and then toss the whole thing in to the pot. Once it is cooked enough you run it through a fool mill to remove the seeds and any peel that is still in there. It was a solid home run from almost everyone we had try it. Now we just have to wait to have our own fruit to use. That will a few more years. I really do like being able to offer more than one nonperishable product that I can make ahead and not worry about. And both the jelly and butter would be wonderful on a toasted English muffin.

We had a huge set back with our garlic. We had planted 4 rows again in 2017 and were expecting to see another great harvest. But it was not to be. We are not quite sure what happened but we tossed out more than we salvaged and got the remaining set up for curing by hanging it from the rails in our work tent.

Once it was fully cured we moved it to the shed. That was another mistake as time got away from us and we left it there too long. We had a surprise cold spell here. And by cold I mean several days well below 32 degrees. When we finally got out to pull it in, we discovered it had frozen and then thawed. We had to toss most of it. It was very depressing.

Also depressing was the set back I had with growing calendula. I had watched a video from a farm in Maine that grows this herb and they used a bed of straw as mulch. Since we had a bale left over, I thought it would be a good idea. Yeah, it really wasn’t. We didn’t think much of it when the straw started growing in the beds, thinking we could spend some time weeding it out. Of course that didn’t happen either.

In the beginning the flowers were lovely and grew much better than Ron expected.

This is what I had come fall. You can barely see a few yellow flowers amid all the straw. Now I have to wait until spring so I can mow all the old dead stuff down and try again with more seeds and serious commitment to weed pulling. We left most of flower heads to go to seed and drop where they where. I did snag seeds from a few orange flowers to grow next year for sale. We are going to plant again next year in our old garlic rows.

We have January, February and March hash out our plans for 2019. There will be another log inoculation event, more planting, much more weeding, and painting. Lots of decisions to make and assorted mistakes too. And I will certainly collect a few more bruises. But we will have tons of fun, meet more great people and if all goes well, we will make some money in the bargain. We are all really looking forward to it.

The sweet smell of success

Backyard Gardening

It is mid July now and our 4 beds garlic are ready to be harvested. Not only do we have to get the garlic pulled and curing, but the beds need to be readied for next season’s garlic. We will plant that come September. This year we are trying 3 different varieties of hard neck garlic; German red, German white and Italian red. No soft neck for us. We don’t care about being able to braid the garlic, we want the scapes.
First thing we had to do is get our canopy set up in the backyard. We learned the hard way that you need to have an extra tarp over the top. That way you don’t get so much sun damage to the canopy top. Several years ago Ron built two screen bottom beds to try growing greens on the deck. He didn’t have much luck with that project, but the beds have been perfect for garlic drying. They are showing their age now, so we will have to come up with another plan soon. And the two beds just barely hold 4 beds of garlic. When we start growing larger amounts, they will just not work.
Jo and I started by pulling the garlic out of the beds, shaking off what dirt we could. The smell was just amazing. There will be no vampires around our place for weeks to come. Each load of garlic was dropped into the wheel barrow where Ron set up with the clippers. DSCN0681
For the first two years, we didn’t cut the stalks off. Just laid the whole thing across the rack to cure. After attending a few more classes on garlic, Ron decided this year we could cut the stalks off when we pulled them. That made it much easier to get the garlic into the canopy. Now when it is cured, all we will have to do is trim off the beard, brush off the remaining dirt and bag the heads up.
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Ron showing his skill at clipping the garlic stalks.
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Another good year. Only three heads were split and had to tossed into compost bin. It will take between 2 – 4 weeks for the curing to be complete. That will depend on the weather too. During the day we will leave the canopy flaps open for the breeze to do its magic. Unless the forecast calls for rain. At least we don’t have to worry about the rabbits and deer eating our garlic. Apparently they don’t like the stuff.
All this is good practice for when we have garlic growing out in the field on Tiny House Farm. Am not sure what kind of contraption we will have out there to use for curing. Even if we only do 1/3 of our field in garlic, that is going to be a lot to deal with. Some serious planning to be done between now and then.

The great g’scape

Food

Wednesday I got home from work, changed clothes, pulled Jo away from her computer and headed out to harvest our garlic scapes. When you grow what is called hard neck garlic there is a yummy bonus. Ron calls it a Two-ferer. The scapes are a flower stem that garlic plants produce before the bulbs mature. They can be used in so many ways, even eaten raw if you get them young enough. We are still trying to figure out exactly when we should harvest them. Some say before they start to curl, but other sites show them all curled up. That is one of the problems with the internet. Everyone has their own opinion and does things differently. Sometimes it is information overload.
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Ron had left instructions that now was the week to get them all picked. Before they straightened out and became too tough to use. He, of course was nowhere to be found when it came to getting this done. He is the one who ordered the garlic last fall and ended up with enough for four beds of the stuff. Since the day we dropped all those cloves into the dirt and covered it all with straw, all he has done is the occasional weed pulling. Jo and I spent just over an hour actual harvesting, but we also had to chop them into small pieces. Since our plan is to make lots of pesto and freeze it, we chopped up 10 scapes at a time and bowled them up.
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This weekend will be pesto making time. Our first attempt at pesto was 3 years ago and that was interesting. I didn’t have a actual food processor and tried using the tiny food processor thingy Mom gave me years ago. So did not work. Ended up with a very chunky but tasty spread. But not really pesto. That was the final push I needed to get myself a proper food processor. We have to buy some spinach and basil before I can get going. While we do like the pesto made with just scapes, adding herbs or other greens gives it a whole new flavor. Ron tried growing spinach the first two years but did not have much luck. It bolted so fast. And my attempts at basil have not been good either. No matter how early I get it started inside, once it is planted outside things don’t go so well. This year we had a hard frost and even though I covered everything up, I still took a hit. Will have to figure it out eventually as Ron has long term plans for us to make and sell organic frozen pesto. Remember, he sold this farm idea to me with much talk of growing garlic. Such a liar.