Finishing the Broccoli Bed

My broccoli bed was an unexpected success this year after getting off to a disappointing start.  I had already harvested four huge heads of broccoli over the previous few weeks which promptly went into the freezer.  I think at my last count I was up to over twenty bags of broccoli frozen for the winter from just those four heads.

Today I went through and picked some of the smaller heads that looked like they were at just the right point for harvesting.  They weren't as impressive as my first harvests, but they filled up a large bowl just the same.

I made quick work of washing and chopping the heads into manageable pieces and then blanched them in a pot of boiling water.  I love the bright green color of freshly cooked broccoli.  It looks so much more appealing to me than the dull blue green of raw broccoli.

When it was all said and done I added six more bags of broccoli florets to my freezer.  The chickens got the tough stems and whatever trimmings that I didn't want so nothing was wasted.  I think I will have plenty of broccoli to tide me over until the next growing season thanks to my very productive garden patch.

A Glut of Peppers

The summer is drawing to a close here and the temperature at night has been steadily creeping down closer to freezing.  The garden is still producing well for me but the forecast is calling for a possible hard freeze in the next few days.  I decided that I needed to harvest all of my peppers while I had the time even if it meant that they wouldn't fully ripen.

The bell peppers were loaded.  Even after thinning them out to make salsa a few times I still managed to find plenty of large peppers everywhere.  The sweet banana and green chili peppers didn't have quite the amount that the bell peppers had, but they had also been more heavily harvested this summer because they seemed to grow faster and be more prolific.  I carried bowl after bowl of peppers into the house and unloaded them into a box that I had left over from bringing home fruit from the farmer's market.  I was amazed when I filled the box completely and still had more peppers to bring in.  I wound up using the box lid to hold the chili and banana peppers.

There were a few peppers that had slug holes in them and those will be going into the use first pile.  I do plan on making another batch of salsa with some of these peppers, but I don't need this many peppers for how much I want to make.  

I was planning on freezing my extra peppers to cook with for the next year, but I don't think I could possibly eat this many peppers by myself in a year.  I already have three gallon bags stuffed full of peppers in my freezer.  My only other options are to dehydrate some of them and can some of them.  I think I might try a few recipes for pepper jelly and cowboy candy just to use them up.  I would hate for them to go to waste after all the effort that I put into growing them.  If the canning experiments turn out well, then they might just become Christmas gifts for friends and family when the holidays roll around.

First Frost

The weather is getting cooler here and it seems that winter is in a hurry to arrive this year.  A few weeks ago the mountaintops to the south of here got a layer a snow.  This weekend a cold front brought the first frost down into the valley.  It was a couple of weeks ahead of schedule and I wasn't quite prepared for it, but I did what I could and prioritized the crops that I wanted to save.

My main concern was the tomato bed because they had been so slow to ripen this year.  The plants were huge and loaded with green tomatoes so I wasn't ready to give up on this crop yet.  My make shift plan was to simply drape a sheet of plastic over the bed, using the trellis to support it in the middle like a big tent.  I bought a large roll of clear poly plastic last year with the intention of using it to cover the chicken pen in the winter and for green house material in the future.  I am glad that I had it because it was a perfect size to cover multiple beds at the same time.

The t-posts that supported the trellis did poke a few hole in the plastic but a little ventilation is good since I will have to leave this up during the day when I leave for work and I didn't want it to get too hot in there.  The edges were held down with a number of good sized rocks from my yard and so far it seems to be holding up well.  The three beds that it is covering contain my tomatoes (middle), peppers (left) and potatoes (right).  I didn't intend to include the potatoes in the protected crops, but it made the most sense to keep the plastic from touching the tomatoes too much in the middle.

Today when I uncovered the beds, they still looked like they were in fairly decent shape so I was quite happy with my last minute decision to protect them this way.

The peppers along the outside edge took a hit, but I had already gone through and harvested the best ones so I wasn't too sad about that damage.  The tomatoes only had a little bit of frost damage on the outside edges where the leaves touched the plastic so I should be able to keep harvesting them for a while longer yet.  This was my main goal and if I keep them covered so they get good and warm during the day, I expect they will start to ripen more quickly for me as well.  The potatoes also get a brief reprieve from the cold though I am sure they are ready to harvest.  Honestly I can't remember growing potatoes that stayed green and flowering this long, but I am not complaining.  They will be keeping me well fed through the winter.

Other crops didn't fare as well, but I was ready to let them go at this point in the season.  The cucumbers were already on their way out and I had pickled about 50 quarts of them this year, so I wasn't sad to see them go.  The summer squash bed was already mostly dead from squash bugs so the frost was just a final blow for them.  The stopped producing weeks ago but I still have a few that I kept for eating fresh and have dried several quarts of chips from the abundant harvest I got while they were going strong.  The watermelons had died back as well, but I picked three good sized melons the night before so I will be able to enjoy a late summer treat even after the weather gets cold.  The final crop that died with the frost were my green beans.  They had a short but productive season and I wound up with about 25 bags of beans in my freezer before it was all said and done.

My hardier crops are still doing just fine and I think they will keep growing for at least a few more weeks.  I only have a few more heads of broccoli to harvest and I may get a couple of heads of cabbage if they can head up in the next couple of weeks.  The carrots and parsnips are safe in the ground and I will probably harvest them as needed over the winter.  I find they keep better in the garden than they do in my fridge anyway.  The peas also survived the frost and are still flowering a lot, so perhaps I will get a few more weeks of harvests from them too.

The first frost may be a signal that the garden season has come to a close, but there is still plenty more work to be done there before the snow flies.  For now I am happy that the busy days of preserving my harvests can slow down.  I think I only need to make a couple more batches of salsa while the peppers and tomatoes are still fresh and then the rest of the tomatoes that I get for the season will go in the freezer until I have the time to turn them into sauce.  I also have a box of apples that will become applesauce and apple pie filling in the next few days and then the canner just might get put away for a while for a well deserved rest.

Chief Ouray Mine Hike

My schedule has been pretty busy during this time of year, but I was able to squeeze in a good long hike on one of my days off.  I decided I needed a day to play after all the work I have been doing.

The hike was new for me, at least partially.  The trail to Chief Ouray Mine branches off the Portland Trail Loop located to the south of Ouray.  The Portland loop is fast becoming one of my favorite local hikes if only because there are so few people that I encounter on that trail.  It is also fairly close to town so I can hike it before work if I have a few hours to spare.



The trail winds back and forth up the mountain side and then branches off to the north.  The trail is generally shady pine and aspen forest alternating with scree fields and open meadows.  Along the way there are plenty of gaps where the view opens up and you can see down two different valleys.

The trail also happens to take you past the Upper Cascade Falls which I was surprised to see still flowing well for this time of year.  The falls originate high on the mountainside and tumble down hundreds of feet on their journey down the rocky terrain.

This is the view looking down a steep drop in the falls.  The trail crosses here so there was much to investigate.  The view up the falls from the same spot reveals dozens of small cascades tumbling down the mountainside.

Chief Ouray Mine was a bit of a letdown.  The entryway was barred off to keep foolish people from hurting themselves.  There were lots of loose rocks that looked like they were starting to fill in the entrance hole.  The old miner's camp however was still fairly intact.  If you look closely at the left top of the cliff you can see the building with galvanized metal walls.  That was the miner's bunkhouse and it still held their cast iron stove and old mattress coils in their sleeping quarters.  There was another building on the cliff side where they must have processed the ore to extract the precious metals.  

 From various vantage points along the trail you could also see cavernous hollows dug into the mountainside.  There were likely pilot holes dug by the miners looking for a vein of ore that could prove lucrative.

On the way back there is an overlook by the amphitheater.  There are dozen of small waterfalls flowing down the mountain side across the valley.  I felt like the longer I stared at the valley, the more waterfalls I found.  They all  come together at one point and become Portland Creek.

The trail back wound it's way down the mountainside through more pine forests and meadows.  Along the way I came across some impressive dead trees that were still proudly standing despite  having probably been struck by lightning.

I love that I am able to take a day for a nice hike like this every now and again.  Working in this area is not quite the same as getting out and exploring it.  Even on trails that I have hiked before I always notice something new along the way.  No two hikes are ever the same.

A Beautiful Disaster

I was reading through some of my older posts this week and I came across a picture of my garden area from early spring.  The area looked so barren to me compared to the way it looks now.

This picture was taken in May.  At this point in the season I had a couple of established cold tolerant crops like onions and garlic.  Most of the other beds had just been or were soon to be planted.

A little father along in the season, the beds were filling in.  I seemed to have had enough time here to keep up with weeds and trellising in most of the beds, though I will admit that this was the time in the season that pulling weeds began to slip father down in the order of things that needed to get done.

Looking the other direction up this side of the garden you can see that each garden bed was brimming over with vegetation.

Now in the early fall my neglect has become apparent.  Some of my main pathways have become lost under the cover of weeds as the main focus of my gardening became harvesting.  I am spending enough time now harvesting and processing my crops for storage that I don't have the time or energy to fight the weeds any longer.

 This picture is the same view as the very first picture from early spring.  It doesn't even remotely resemble the blank slate that was my spring garden.  Most of my garden beds have plenty of weeds in them, but the crops are growing so strongly that I am not worried about weeding the beds.  When I find time along the way I might pull a couple of the larger weeds that have grown up in the paths between the beds, but most of the garden clean up will have to wait until after the first frost.

There are a few clear areas despite my neglect.  The onion beds were weeded very well when I harvested them, so that is one area that still looks like it is under control.  The bed that held my volunteer potatoes also looks pretty good, since I have dug up most of that bed too.  One by one the beds will return to their empty state as the weather turns to autumn and the crops are harvested.  Until then I will continue to reap the benefits of my hard work and fill my freezers and pantry shelves with delicious fresh bounty grown right in my front yard.

End of Season Bounty

Summer is drawing to a close here.  I can feel it in the cooler evenings and shorter days.  The trees have begun to display their fall fireworks up and down the mountains nearby.  Just a few days ago a rainstorm down here in the valley brought snow to the higher elevations and dusted the tops of the mountains to the south and east of me.  I fear that it won't be long until the snow flies here as well.

In the meantime I have been keeping busy trying to keep up with all the harvests in the garden.  Here and there I have been pulling up carrots as I need them and these beauties went into a batch of chicken stock that I was working on today.

The pickling cucumbers have slowed down considerably, but they are still producing.  They are showing signs of powdery mildew, but I think they will be able to hang on until the first frost.

The tomatoes are finally starting to ripen in larger numbers, though if they wait too much longer they will all end up ripening in my kitchen when the weather gets too cold.  This round of harvesting will get to ripen for a couple more days until I can find the time to turn them into salsa.

The peppers are producing very heavily right now.  Today I went through and picked the largest and most ripe of them, but I left plenty on the plants so they could continue to change into their final colors.  

 All of the sweet chili peppers went into the freezer today, but I left out the bell peppers for when I make salsa again in a few days.  I already have three gallon bags packed tightly with frozen peppers in the freezer and I will probably get at least three more in there before they are done for the year.

 The tops of the peppers that didn't make it into the freezer were chopped into smaller pieces and spread out on a tray for the dehydrator.  I want to try making a dry salsa mix from my left over pepper pieces and using up the tops means that I waste even less of my hard earned harvest.

This week at the farmers market I got some good deals on the local fruit grower's end of season crops as well.  I had been wanting to get more plums from the market to make a second batch of plum wine and was rewarded with the very last box of plums for the season for $10.  They were over ripe and some were beginning to go bad, but they were going to be fermenting so that didn't matter as much.  I simply picked through the box and scrubbed the keepers before I pitted and chopped them to begin the wine making process.

 All in all I wound up with about twelve pounds of plums that were usable from the whole box.  I won't be making a large batch of wine from this many plums, but I hope to get at least nine or ten bottles of wine for my trouble. 

The other final fruit crop that I was able to snag at the market was the last pears of the season.  I only had a couple of jars of canned pears from this year and wanted more, so I bought up all the pears that they had left.  They are still green yet, but they will ripen over the next few days and I should be able to find time to can them before they go bad.

Winter will be here before too long, so I am happy to fill my days preserving the bounty of my labors.  Every week I am putting more filled jars on my shelves and bags of veggies in my freezer.  It is becoming a balancing act of having enough space for everything and having enough time to process it all.  I have been going through older things in my freezer and trying to use them up to make room for all of the incoming produce.  Not everything that goes into the freezer will be staying there all winter, but freezing crops like tomatoes really helps because once they are frozen I can process and can them at my leisure.  These last few weeks before the first frost can be hectic with all that needs to get done and I look forward to the break that is coming with the colder weather.

Broccoli Harvest Begins

This year the broccoli got off to a late start, but they have made up for lost time from the looks of things.  My starts didn't grow well and died off within weeks of planting so I ended up planting a flat of broccoli from the local nursery.  They were slow to start growing also and I was afraid that I wouldn't be getting much of a broccoli harvest this year, but I have been pleasantly surprised.

The broccoli bed hasn't gotten much attention in the past few weeks since I have been so busy harvesting the squash, beans and cucumbers.  I did notice that they had started to growing their flowering heads but they were small and unripe the last time I got a good look at them so I thought it would be awhile before I could harvest anything.  I am glad that I had a chance to check on them today.  The heads were huge and a couple of them were on the verge of bolting so I made a beeline for my knife and a bowl and promptly harvested two enormous heads.

I think broccoli stores best frozen so I made short work of one of the heads by chopping it up into manageable florets and blanching it in boiling water for 3-5 minutes.  Once they were blanched I transferred them to an ice water bath so they would cool quickly.

After they cooled down enough I drained them into the sink and let them drip dry for a few minutes

This year I am only freezing the florets for myself and giving the chickens the scraps of the thick, tough stems.  I think I will still have plenty for the freezer despite giving half the head to the chickens.  This one broccoli head gave me at least eight servings of broccoli that I will be freezing for later.

They are so fresh and tender when they get frozen this fast.  It will add nice variety to my dinners this winter and it will be tastier than anything that I could buy from the store with the bonus of costing me nearly nothing.  In a few weeks this harvest will soon be over and my freezer will be fuller with many fine veggies from my front yard.