Fennel!

My husband and I love fennel. We have a favorite Italian recipe that showcases fennel and sweet Italian sausage as the main ingredients. I decided this past fall to sow some fennel seeds, and now the fennel crop is ready to harvest! I picked the largest one first.

They are not all this huge, but we were so excited by how massive this one was.

We knew that Rio, our dog, loved cilantro, but I had no idea he was just as crazy about fennel. While I was waiting for a photo opportunity, he just walked up and chomped down on one of the stalks.

Because we weren't planning on doing anything with the stalks or fronds besides composting them, we decided to share out bounty with both dogs.

That evening we enjoyed fresh fennel! This is the life!

Thanksgiving!

I decided the dogs needed a treat for Thanksgiving too. I had fun spending the day doing things around the house that I wanted to do which included baking a homemade loaf of bread for me and pumpkin dog biscuits for Callie and Rio.

They both seemed to like the biscuits just fine, and I thoroughly enjoyed too many pieces of homemade bread. The dog biscuit recipe called for brown rice flower which required a trip to the local health food grocery store, but I think they enjoyed the extra crunch this flour is supposed to provide. Supposedly this flour is also better (being gluten free and all) than regular wheat flour. I've never noticed the dogs having trouble with wheat in the past, but I thought it would be fun to give the original recipe a try nonetheless. So now it will be a Happy Thanksgiving for everyone!

Signs of Hope

Some stuff has sprouted in the garden, and I broke down and bought some sweet onion starts, so we'll see if I'm able to eek out any produce this fall and winter. I haven't given up hope yet.

And hopefully not to be too cheesy, but as I relaxed with a little yard work this weekend (and yes, I have always found working in the yard to be relaxing and rarely grueling), I spotted a few signs of hope.

For one, I let a certain weed survive and even thrive on the fence surrounding the chicken coop.

I know the plant as a "tie wine" as my Grammie used to call them. English was her second language, and her czech accent persisted her whole life with the swapping of her v's and her w's. The chickens pecked off the lower leaves, but they somehow didn't kill the vine. I was up early enough to catch a glimpse of the tiny, beautiful blooms.

Then I decided to check up on the lime tree. We planted the lime tree in a bare spot in the yard at the same time we planted a slew of mint. We had dreams of fresh mojitos all summer long. We enjoyed a few, but with store-bought limes. I suppose our small tree is finally comfortable enough to fulfill its duty.

We have one, yes only one, small lime on our tree. So far so good.

As I said above, I don't mind all the labor. But getting a little reward in the end is good, too. Signs of hope are good. And I don't need much. Just a little reminder here and there, that yep, the sweat and mosquito spray are all worth it.

Seeds of Disappointment

I'm having mixed success with the fall garden. I'm living so far south at the moment that I've decided I need to think of the fall and winter as prime gardening season and not the summer because the harsh heat just seems to bake everything in its desert-like conditions.

To be frugal and to practice my gardening skills, I decided to focus my efforts this fall on sowing seeds instead of investing in more expensive transplant. (Plus the gardening centers in the area don't seem to share my enthusiasm for fall gardening, and the baby vegetable plants are in short supply.)

So here is the range of my results:

Yep, I'm not seeing much sprouting either. I can't seem to get the spinach to cooperate. I've sown two sets of seeds and still almost nothin'.

On the other hand, the green beans seem to be giving it a go:

I'm not sure if they will produce or not, but so far so good.

I have to say this makes me nervous. When I was young, I seemed to have no trouble getting a garden in our back yard to grow even if it were just from seed. I know my current garden plot is a little challenging. There is a large tree that shades the area somewhat. It needs to be removed, and I'm very good with the small electric chain saw, but it's location is so close to the power lines that it is beyond my expertise and comfort level. I'm trying to put sun loving plants in sunnier areas, and I'm trying shade tolerant leafy vegetables in others. We'll see.

A friend of mine said those who get their garden planted are so full of hope. The expectation of a fruitful harvest is all they can think about. But results are another matter. Well, my hope is still here. I'll keep sowing seeds trying to get my fruitful harvest. That's all we can do in life anyway. Keep hoping and working for the best.

First Dozen!

Here it is! Our first dozen eggs! The ladies started laying a week or two ago. With a total of five hens, the most I've found is three eggs in one day. This is so exciting to me. I've been telling everyone whom I think might at least feign interest or at least half-heartedly wish me congratulations. My brother says I may soon have more eggs than I know what to do with. I sure hope so!

With all of the egg-laying activity, it was time to get serious about the grit and oyster shell distribution. I found the idea online to use pvc caps screwed into the legs of the coop. After a quick trip to the hardware store and a few minutes with the power drill, the ladies were set. They quickly figured out the new addition was for them, and they seem to approve of the new set-up.

I can't believe it. Nothing is more peaceful for me than stepping outside after work. letting the chickens out of their fenced yard, and watching them scratch around the larger back yard looking for bugs and eating the grass. This heals my heart and soul. As cheesy as it sounds, I know this is what makes me feel complete, being "close to nature."

We did it! 70 feet of fence!

Okay, so in light of being able to run a whole farm, building a fence is just one small skill we are going to need. But we did it! We decided to give it a try and just do it ourselves.

I've grown up watching my brothers and family build fence. I've heard them talk about how digging the post holes is the hardest part. After that, it's just a matter of doing it. So how hard could it be? Why not give it a try? So we did.

As city-dwellers, my husband and I haven't needed to do much handy-work. So when a storm with tornado-like winds knocked down seventy feet of our backyard fence, my husband surprised me when he rather enthusiastically volunteered us to do it ourselves.

He dug the postholes. (Luckily the storm rains had softened the ground, and he didn't hit any rocks.) We took our time getting the cross boards and pickets put up. (It is summer in Texas afterall. There are only so many hours in the day before it hits 100 degrees!)

I think the best part is how proud we are of ourselves. For the first few weeks after the fence was completely done, we'd walk outside and just spend a while staring at the fence with big goofy grins on our faces. He and I both agreed that we felt more sense of accomplishment out of this fence than we had in a long time. Is this what farming will be like? Lots of hard work in the hot sun? I sure hope so! I think I could live this way.

Food that Feels Right

I don't consider myself the greatest cook in the world. As a matter of fact, my husband is a much better cook than I am. I'm the baker in the family. But I've recently cooked a meal that just feels good in the comforting sense, but also it feels right in the core of my being. But to fully understand what I mean, a little background is required.

I've lived my entire life in the suburbs, but I've been blessed with spending my entire life eating what most people would call "organic, free-range, grass fed" beef. We just called it beef. My grandparents owned a farm where they kept a small herd. My mom eventually took over managing everything long distance, hiring the help that she needed to maintain a small herd in order to keep her Ag exemption and pay for the taxes on the land. As a little girl and young woman, I was so sick of eating beef all the time that I would go to nice restaurants and order the fish - never the steak. It wasn't until much later in life that I realized how blessed I was. And how blessed I still am. But isn't that how it usually goes? We don't always realize until later in life how blessed we were in our youth.

Last night I thawed out two steaks raised on mom's land. As they rested on the table, I peeled and cut up fresh red beets from my backyard. On the salad, I cut up fresh tomatoes also from my garden. I fixed a cobbler for dessert made from frozen peaches I had bought in season on a vacation to Fredericksburg, TX.

This is food that feels right. I had bought the spinach and cucumbers from the grocery store, so I didn't remember or even precisely know where they came from, but I looked on my meal with pride and was happy that I knew from where most of the ingredients came. The food was reasonably local and delicious. Grass fed beef has so much more flavor than the steaks I see in the grocery store displayed under plastic and dyed an artificial red. The beets, tomatoes and peaches were all picked at the peak of their perfection. They were not picked too early to survive shipping and then gassed in order to ripen as the produce in the grocery store so often is. My taste buds confirmed that this meal is the way food should be. And there are so many other reasons why this meal was on the right track.

I dream of a day (hopefully soon!) when I can list the source of every ingredient in the entire meal. I work a little everyday to making this a reality. In my heart, I know this is the way food should be.