Kairos—“a right, opportune, or supreme moment in which something special and unique happens”
If you are so inclined, share a link to your “Kairos Moment” in the comment section. I hope you all have a blessed weekend!
homemade
Beans, Beans Everywhere
One thing is for sure, we have a LOT of beans coming through our kitchen door these days. So many beans in fact that there is no feasible way to eat them all. Enter “Operation Dilly Bean.” If you have never eaten a pickled bean, a.k.a. dilly bean, you must make it your duty to eat one this year. A dilly bean earns a solid ranking in the top 3 list of pickled veg in my book. Yum.
This past Sunday found me hovering over the kitchen island chopping beans and breathing in vinegar fumes, with visions of dilly beans dancing in my head. The past few years I used a dilly bean recipe from this book, but this year I decided to mix things up a bit and try something new. I used the basic pickling recipe from this cookbook, and based on how great Miss English’s other recipes are, I’m sure this one will not disappoint.
Our System
When we created our garden five years ago, we sectioned off a very small portion of our gardening space with chicken wire and created a compost pile. Since that time, our composting operation has been evolving because to be perfectly honest…it never really worked as well as we felt it should.
When we visited Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin a year and a half ago, we were inspired by the vermicomposting system Will Allen set up, but we were never able to get the results from our worms that he seemed to be getting. It was not until this past winter when I read Will Allen’s book Good Food Revolution, that I realized our mistake. We were overworking our worms. We were filling our vermicompost with loads of food and paper scraps and they simply were unable to keep up. While reading Allen’s book, I discovered Growing Power’s secret: Growing Power allows their collected food scraps to partially decompose first, then add the worms to the mix. Bingo.
So, after many a year of trial and error, I believe we finally have a system set up that will work. Because as Will Allen says in his book, he can predict a garden’s growing success based on “how much attention has been paid to creating fertile soil.”
We place our compostable materials (food scraps, grass clippings, leavings, paper shred, egg cartons, coffee grounds, etc.) in the wooden boxes. (We cover our boxes with burlap just to cut down on the bugs and smell, but it still allows the compost to breath.) We try to turn this pile over every couple of weeks. Once the scraps begin to brown and break down, we move them to the red garbage can, and/or the blue plastic bin, and/or the black tower. These bins have some holes drilled on the sides for aeration, and this is where our worms are. (The black tower is an actual vermicompost bin we purchased a few years back. The benefit of this type of bin is that liquid can drain off the bottom and can then be used to make compost tea.) Once the worms do their work we are left with compost the consistency of coffee grounds. This compost can then be added to our garden.
All Things Garden
With July now well under way, we find ourselves amidst the heart of our growing season, with a list of chores longer than we could ever hope to complete in a day. Although I can sometimes get frustrated by this endless to-do list, I am reminded that the jobs of a garden are never actually done, so therefore I need just to work through each day, doing what I can to tend to this growing space of ours.
In honor of this height of garden productivity, I’ve decided to designate this week as “Garden Week” here on my blog 🙂 I hope you all enjoy this fun little adventure through our week of gardening bliss.
To start things off for the week, I wanted to give you a little taste of just what our garden is looking like. Off we go…
Kairos
Kairos—“a right, opportune, or supreme moment in which something special and unique happens”
If you are so inclined, share a link to your “Kairos Moment” in the comment section. I hope you all have a blessed weekend!
First Harvest
Yesterday was a big day for our school garden project. The garden was bursting with vegetation, so we decided it would make the perfect day for our first official harvest of the season! We were able to glean lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, collards, snap peas, beans, beets and carrots from our seven-bed school garden.
Once the produce was picked, rinsed and sorted, we drove to our local food pantry to drop off our donation. Along the way, we spoke of the importance of helping those in need for God tells us “to be openhanded toward [our] brothers and toward the poor and needy in [our] land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).
If you are interested in donating to the Rock River Valley Food Pantry, visit their web site here.
What Summer Memories Are Made Of
When I think back to the summers of my youth, there are certain images that float immediately to my mind…Balmy summer nights, when the sound of chirping crickets drown out all other noise in the darkness while my sister and I camped out with our neighbors in their play house. Walking barefoot through the damp blades of grass at dusk catching lightening bugs with my mom and dad, then storing those seemingly magical creatures for just a few precious minutes in wooden bug houses my Grandpa Dit crafted. Taking long leisurely bike rides with my two best neighborhood friends, every once in a while pausing to chat with a boy we all had a crush on. Running up and down our street in the warm summer sunlight, as a lively game of capture-the-flag was underway. I have no doubt these memories will stay with me for my lifetime, for these are the moments that define summer for me in my mind.
Ever since having children, I find myself thinking about what little images will be held in their minds for the duration of their lives. After spending time in the Northwoods of Wisconsin last week, I can unequivocally say these Northwoods-memories will stay with my girls forever. For what could be better than a breakfast cooked on the beach? Or jumping off the dock at least a hundred times, never tiring because it fills you with the most thrilling feeling each and every time your body pauses for that brief moment in the air before plunging into the cool waters below? Or crunching your toes in the damp sand as the refreshing water waves over them? Or having your parents feed you bits of food in the lake because you refuse to get out of that amazingly fun water for even a second? Or dancing on a stage with your cousins while a Tom Petty song plays, without a care in the world that dozens of grown-ups are watching you, wishing they could embrace the wild abandon running through every fiber of your being? These are the moments I am sure my girls will carry with them, for this is what summer memories are made of.
In Gratitude
This Monday morning I am grateful for…
~a wonderful vacation to the Northwoods of Wisconsin. (Lots more to come in tomorrow’s post.)
~those family members and close friends who pitched in to help keep the Fagan suburban homestead running in our absence 🙂
~Downton Abbey. Oh my. I have recently discovered this show, and have been devouring the DVDs ever since. It’s like a great British novel brought to life. What could be better?
~the leader of our book club for choosing The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for our next read. I am thoroughly enjoying being transported to the isle of Guernsey in the 1940’s each and every time I unfurl the pages of this novel.
~peas and beans just bursting in our home garden.
~a first hand learning experience for my girls. We plan to head to the local food pantry this week with our first donation from our school garden.
~the Mason jars strewn across my countertop, just waiting to be filled with all kinds of canned deliciousness.
~the fermentation frenzy that is about to begin this week…woohoo! Kombucha, yogurt and kraut oh my!
~all of you gathered here today! Wishing you all much happiness and health this week!
Kairos
Kairos—“a right, opportune, or supreme moment in which something special and unique happens”
If you are so inclined, share a link to your “Kairos Moment” in the comment section. I hope you all have a blessed weekend!
Happy 4th of July
Wishing you all a fabulous Forth of July!
Making of a Home 