Somehow, I nearly forgot that we had a garden at Two Barn Farm.  It was a nice, warm, fall-feeling night, and I was itching to work.  We had 90 minutes of light left after work, and I intended to do something.

I took Grampy down there, and we got some trim and insulation hung up.  Grampy also pre-cut a few pieces of siding.  It was getting dim, but I got the first 3 pieces of siding on the East end of the crib.  After we picked up the tools, I thought about checking the gardens.  There might be some lunker of a zucchini hiding over there.

Tomatoes.  I nearly filled a 5 gallon bucket with bright red tomatoes.  Reagan has already canned sauce, diced tomatoes, garden relish, salsa, and a few other things out of the garden.  We have storerooms and freezers full of peas and onions too.  Now there is another batch of tomatoes to deal with.  Maybe we should check into Carla’s soup recipie…..

The whole canning process has gotten me into a fury as well.  I had to put up some barley and hops of course.  My hop vines only grew about 8 inches this year.  I used my business trip to St Paul as an excuse to visit the homebrew store that I usually order from.  Somehow, I came home with enough grain for 2 more batches of brew, even though I had that much at home already.

I started with the oldest first, which was something called “Big Honking Stout”  I realized that my power drill can replace the handle on this thing labeled the “Barley Crusher”.  It took care of 12lbs of grain in a minute!  Much better than cranking by hand.  I have quite the setup, and have started doing all-grain batches last year.  So there was a huge production of interconnected coolers and tubing and hot water sprinklers, and pots all over the kitchen.  Crazy to the untrained eye, but it was much more manageable than normal.
That batch is sitting in one of my large conical fermenters.  Next on deck for tomorrow is a Belgium Dubbel.  Next week might entail an Irish Red Ale followed by a Strong Dark Belgium Trappist Ale.  Notice that nothing seems to be labeled as American style?  Yes, there is a reason for that.
Hopefully this warm streak will continue for a few more nights and into the weekend.  I might get some more corn crib work done.

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Our garden hasn’t done TOO bad, but this being our first year in Iowa, I don’t have anything to compare it to.  Colorado gardening is quite a bit different.  Plus Two Barn Farm being 9 miles away right now,  I can’t give it the attention I usually do.  I haven’t watered this year.  The garden also looks a bit like the “lazy” version of organic (ie. weedy).
My results so far:

Miserable failure:
Heirloom Tomatoes
Healthy Red Bell Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Banana Peppers
Blackeyed Peas

Only slightly better than failure:
Jalapenos (harvested 2 each about 1″ long)
Spaghetti Squash (harvested 3 small, 3 more on vine)
Edamame (I think enough will make it to have a small snack)
Sweet Corn (2 ears harvested, haha!)
Giant Pumpkins
Melons

Moderate success:
Potatoes
Zucchini
Yellow Summer Squash
Pickling Cucumbers
Heinz Tomatoes
Cauliflower (plants are looking good, we’ll see)

Major Success:
Roma Tomatoes
Onions (Copra, Walla Walla and Red Burgermaster)
Leeks
Snow Peas
Spinach
Butterhead
Crisphead
Sunflowers

Although, I think I am getting a pretty decent harvest from my tomatoes, the plants are REALLY REALLY small.  In Colorado my plants were usually around 6 feet tall.  Also, I have started canning tomatoes way earlier than in Colorado.

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While in the garden picking onions a few days ago, the 8 year old asks, “Can I sweat these onions??” Later, while making marinated tomatoes, he instructs you on proper knife techniques and how to defrost your duck. We are starting to think he watches too much of Alton Brown’s Good Eats shows. We’ve started calling him “Mason Brown”

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Rich got the driveway at the farm opened up. There were 4 full trees and many limbs down. We haven’t even started on getting parts of the barn out of Bill Sutton’s corn field!

My achilles tendon has been bugging me, so I stayed in the least physical part of the farm. Weeding massive weeds from my organic garden. It took me an hour to weed one row of tomatoes. We have 4! Got all those done and started to unearth the cauliflower, jalapenos and banana peppers. Despite the lack of attention we gave the garden this spring, it’s doing pretty well.

I made marinated tomato and onion salad with our early crop of a few romas and massive red burgermaster onions. I used a variation of Rich’s Mom’s Gazpacho recipe. Yum!

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Post title sung to Aerosmith’s Back in the saddle again.

Last weekend was a good weekend.  I love getting work done.  Maybe you don’t consider getting 12 feet of sill plate installed and/or replaced exciting, but I do.

The cool part is, that the new section of sill plate was across the back of the new slab of concrete.  Not only is it something new, but I had to cut old rotten sill plate at the major corners, jack up the barn again (see last year) and shove the new wood underneath.  We even got the main electrical panel and meter socket installed.  We’ll have electricity in no time.
I have another great thing to report.  Although we got into this situation in the first place, we reclaimed the garden.  The front PTO on the mower seemed to burn out, so I need to fix that.  The flood producing rains and warm weather caused everything to grow.  Grass, weeds, and vegetables all grow with water and heat.  I used both a weed-eater, and the push mower from the house to trim out the gardens.  Then used the trail-mower to  clean up everything else.

We did claim some zucchini, squash, cucumbers, a large onion, and more lettuce out of the garden so far.  We are eating good.  The taste is unbelievable.  Yum!  One of the cukes, is sitting in some leftover pickle juice.  We’ll make some proper ones later, and hopefully avoid any kerosene cucumber references.
Next, Order some 10′ 2×6’s and frame in the East end of the corn crib.  I found a huge 38×42″ double casement window for that wall at the Habit for Humanity Restore in Des Moines.  That, and some siding…..oh boy!

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