Independence Days Week 29: Peaches for Free, Peaches for Me
Anybody else remember that song? We are still rather fond of it at our house and it gets regular play on my iPod, even more so this week when we harvested our first peaches! We don’t have millions of them, but it looks like we might get a couple dozen this year. This is vast improvement over last year when the urban wildlife (a combination of rats, raccoons, and squirrels methinks) stole every last one of our nearly ripe peaches. I might be a vegetarian pacifist, but after they stole my food I had some decidedly un-PETA like thoughts. Happily this year, the rat population has been culled and while about half of our peaches have gone missing, the other half is now ready or nearly ready to be picked. I plucked off six this evening and we devoured two of them mere steps away from the peach tree, fuzzy skin and all. Besides the peaches we’ve:
Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):
- Green Beans (from seed)
- Sugar Pie Pumpkins (from seed)
- Waltham Butternut Squash (from seed) I already have some ripening, but I decided that one can never have too many butternut squash.
- Cucumbers (Marketmore 76, from seed) Sow bugs ate all my seedlings so I am trying again for a late crop.
Harvest something:
- Bell Peppers
- Anaheim Peppers (We had a week of very hot weather which seemed to act as a catalyst for dozens of peppers to ripen.)
- Carrots
- Tomatoes (There are so many green tomatoes on the plants – very exciting – like the food equivalent of a stack of unread books.)
- Eggplant (Such a pretty plant with purple and white flowers and purple and white striped fruit.)
- Shallots (Grown from a few bulbs saved from last year’s crop.)
- Cannelloni Beans
- Burgess Buttercup Squash
- Blackberries
- Raspberries
- Strawberries
- Peaches
Seriously, all the above from our backyard! How awesome is that?
Preserve something:
- 11 cups carrots (shredded, frozen)
- 2 cups cannelloni beans (dried)
Waste Not:
- Reusing plastic seedling pots as protective covers for newly sprouted seeds. This year we have had a problem with sow bugs eating the leaves of newly sprouted seeds – especially squash and beans. I cut the bottom off of a pot, place it a centimeter or so down into the dirt, and then plant a seed in the middle of it. The plant emerges and grows up through the bottomless pot. Once the plant clears the sides of the pot the leaves are out of sow bug territory and I remove the pot.
Want Not:
- Lately I have been feeling very fortunate and not wanting much of anything save perhaps an afternoon nap every day.
Eat the food:
- Cooked eggplant for the first time by making homemade Baba Ghanoush. When I first looked up recipes for Baba Ghanoush I was disappointed to find that they all contained tahini – sesame paste. Thomas is severely allergic to sesame so it is forbidden in our house. I then found a recipe online for sunflower seed tahini and blended some up. The sunflower seed Baba Ghanoush was delicious and we ate it all in one sitting with fresh homemade bread. Even Thomas tried some and proclaimed in a somewhat surprised tone, “I like it.”
- Cooked Burgess Buttercup squash for the first time.
- Back in a really good groove of making bread approximately every other day – that’s about our rate of consumption. I can only imagine how much bread I’ll have to bake when the boys are teenagers. (I am not complaining, I love making massive amounts of food.)
Build community food systems:
- Does “sharing” half of my peaches this year with the squirrel and raccoon communities count?
How’s your summer going?
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:46 am
Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man, in a factory downtown. What is this nonsense about a peach tree?
Congrats on the harvest. Birds took nearly all our blueberries. We got a couple of the early ripening ones, but after that the birds swooped in and stole the rest. It is now tomato season here and we our guarding our ripening tomatees jealously (which involves aluminium foil and spinning cds to scare the birds).
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:54 am
I also had my entire first set of cucumber seedlings devoured – the second time around I surrounded them with lots of crushed eggshells, which did the trick but needed regular replenishing (I think some birds were snacking on the shells or something?) – next time I’ll try combining this approach with yours.
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:23 am
I love this time of year.
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:43 am
We desperately need a natural way to get rid of the sow bugs. Any Ideas? I like the egg shell idea, but I think Djuna is right birds need a regular supply of calcium and will eat the shells.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:55 am
You’re inspiring me. We have a couple of fruit trees and a spot to plant one more. What might be a good fruit tree that I could also sit under and enjoy the shade? Is that asking too much?
July 23rd, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Mike and I sing that song to Christopher all the time. He loves peaches!
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:27 pm
1st of all Happy Brithday Gina, Fresh peaches would be great baked into a pie or made into Mom’s peach crude, oh how Tony and I love that peach crud. As for those un PETA Thoughts, squirrel and raccoon and rats are not good eating except down in Texas and Lousianna. ( note they will eat about anything down there)
We have lots of tomatoes and cucumbers coming out of our garden here in Stockton, the local apricot and peach harvest is just getting into full swing and yes they are canning lots of them at one of my customers as I had a meeting yesterday and there were many truck loads of them coming into the cannery. Our local canning tomato harvest is running about 3 weeks behind due to the wet and cool weather up north here but it will be in full swing in another week. I need to get Mom to bake some bread for us. Our peppers are just now get lots of peppers on them and we should have a good harvest of spicy one to make some chili powder and some hot PAPA dave chili.
Want not: What I want, more time to visit you and the kids. An afternoon nap also sounds good.
Waste not: We are going to relay ( reuse) at 2 miles of used rail we bought from the UPRR to build some yard tracks, We are using 2nd concrete crossing panels to make 4 road crossing smoother. All our old wood railroad ties are being ground up and then sent to a cogeneration/biomass facility to be burned to make steam for making electrictiy.
Last we take any removed concrete and crush and grind it down at a local recycle yard for use as road base and for building railroad subgrade so more rock does not have to be mined. Remember Railroads are the green way to ship one train takes over 400 trucks off the hiway and we move one ton of freight over 520 miles on a gallon of fuel.
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Well,Gina, you know we had a lot of raspberries, for our first year. I got about 1 Gal – I froze them. I probably ate another half a gallon while I picked them. Lots of big cucumbers. I love them peeled, sliced, and with vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper. MMM. Also have lots of green tomatoes. I will be canning lots of them. Green peppers are not so good. Don’t think I watered them enough. My one blueberry plant did OK, but I need to get another one and they will do much better. It has been such a strange year. Such a lot of cool weather in the beginning of the summer – but I love my PGE bill! Put extra shades up to keep more of the sun out, (helps a lot on the elec. bill). Gave at least 1/5 of my old clothes to Goodwill and my churches yard sale. No longer buy plastic bags for lining my kitchen garbage cans, (use our old newspapers, instead). And this week we will try to eat out of our pantry, and use what we have in there. Only buy milk, cheese, and eggs if we need to. Best way not to spend money? Don’t go to the store, even to just look. It is SO tempting to buy something, especially if it is on sale. Also, don’t buy magazines at the store. Go to the library and read them for free, or go to Barnes and Nobles. You can sit there and read all you want and not buy a thing!
July 24th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Good thanks! Does making bread need one to be home a lot? I was relying on my breadmaker till Douglas lost the paddle… Is this a doable thing to do daily if you’re out and about?
July 24th, 2010 at 1:56 am
Just discovered your blog on google and read a few of your other posts – do you freelance or guest write for other blogs? I just added you to my news reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
July 25th, 2010 at 1:47 am
@Gregg, I forgot to add birds to the list! Yes, birds are surely responsible for some of the damage too.
@Djuna, I have never heard of the eggshell trick, I will have to experiment with that as well.
@Petrea, I love our peach tree. It started out as a stick two years ago and is now looking quite large. It is also absolutely beautiful when flowering. The variety is “August Pride”. We also did something unique with blackberries,
See: http://gallery.mendolo.com/garden/IMG_7073.JPG.php
We created a wall of blackberries with trellising which provides us with shade and a “fence” from one part of our backyard to another.
@Diane, Completely doable. I use a number of recipes, some of them long with lots of kneading and some very quick. The quickest is based on the NY Times no-knead bread recipe. It seriously take less than 10 minutes hads on time. I often mix it up after the kids are asleep (takes about 3 minutes) and then bake it the next day after I have a minute to put it in the pan. Easy. My version is:
Ingredients:
*450 grams flour
*345 grams water
*1 1/4 t salt
*1/4 t yeast
Directions:
Remove from oven and attempt to wait until bread cools to slice it.
1) Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
2) Cover with plastic wrap or a silicone mat and let sit for 12 – 24 hours at room temperature.
3) After 12 – 24 hours (whenever you have a few minutes), place a large covered baking dish/casserole dish (a Dutch oven works perfectly) in the oven and preheat the oven and dish to 425 degrees F.
4) After oven is preheated, sprinkle dough liberally with flour and form into a loose ball with your hands (no kneading necessary).
5) Open the oven and the dish and dump your dough ball into the dish and cover.
6) Bake for 30 minutes, covered.
7) After 30 minutes, uncover and bake an additional 5 – 8 minutes until bread is golden brown.
July 27th, 2010 at 10:19 am
My parents’ peach tree is ready but no one is there as they are on a long trip. I am going this weekend to check out the damage. My dad loses >50% of the load to squirrels and birds every year. Some years, he stands out there with a broom and every time one comes and takes a bite, throws it down, snatches another one to take a bite, etc. my Dad starts hollering, “eat the whole damn thing you damn animal” while waving the broom and trying to smack the squirrel. It’s a good thing we didn’t have the peach tree when I was a kid.
July 28th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I’m so impressed. I’ve yet to enjoy a peach off my tree. The squirrels beat me every time despite the fact that I went to STATS and purchased four mirrored disco balls and stuck them on it. My critters mock me…domestic and wild