Quote of the Day: Weston A Price
”The quality of our food determines in large part the quality of our lives. And the quality of what we eat is determined by every step that goes into production and processing – the feeding of the animals, care of the soil, preservation, storage and even cooking methods.”
Weston A. Price (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration)
Yesterday, I made a batch of butter using the spring grass milk I picked up from a local farm. This time of year it’s always amazing to note how yellow the cream starts to get. In the winter, you can see the cream line in the milk, but this time of year it’s like night and day. The milk is white and the cream is a vibrant yellow. This yellow cream makes the most beautifully yellow butter. You can see the nourishment as you’re rinsing it.
The cream is so yellow because the cows are eating the lush spring grass. Our farmer pastures her cows, they’re 100% grass fed. The results are easy to see and taste. While winter milk is still much tastier than store bought milk, spring milk is out of this world in creaminess and sweetness.
There’s nothing I love more than freshly made butter slathered on a piece of homemade sourdough bread. Life is certainly good this morning here at Chiot’s Run!
What delicious seasonal foods are you enjoying this week?
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Food from a Truck?
Yesterday, Mr Chiots and I had to run a bunch of errands. While out and about, we decided to stop at a food truck for lunch. Generally, this wouldn’t be something we would do, in fact I’ve never purchased food from a food truck before. This one is different, Good ‘n’ You in Belfast has homemade food with many ingredients sourced from local farms.
Mr Chiots ordered a burrito and I got a Maine shrimp taco, we split an order of jalapeño poppers as well. We grabbed our food and headed down to the shore and chatted while we watched a few boats and tourists walking around.
With Dailon back in Ohio for a few weeks and all of our guests gone, it’s really nice to be able to spend some time together. Next week, we’ll celebrate our 15 year anniversary. It’s certainly hard to believe that it’s been that long, yet hard to imagine a time when we weren’t together. We’re not big on celebrating events like this, yesterday was probably as much celebrating as we’ll do.
Have you ever purchased food from a food truck?
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Friday Favorite: Bird Baths
A couple weeks ago we were at a local greenhouse and I spotted this lovely concrete birdbath. It’s quite a beauty, intricate, yet understated. I’ve always wanted a birdbath in my garden, they’re my favorite form of garden ornamentation.
Somehow, I have never had a birdbath and most likely won’t for quite a while. If you want a nice one they’re rather pricey, I think this one was $190. There are always so many other things that take up my garden budget long before I can even think about adding a birdbath to my garden. Perhaps I’ll find one under the Christmas tree some year.
Do you have a birdbath in your garden? What’s your favorite garden ornament?
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Hello Johnny
As I’ve been working in the potager behind the house, I’ve been finding Johnny Jump Ups everywhere. I started digging them and using them edge the beds in the potager, figuring them bring some much needed color. Not only that, they’re edible beauties, I can pick the blossoms and add them to salads.
Lucky me, I ended up with enough of these beauties to line the inside and outside of the main circle in my potager. I can’t wait for them to fill in and start blooming more profusely.
I love flowers that self sow readily, at least for the most part. Things like nicotiana, forget-me-nots and anise hyssop. I don’t know if I have found any self sowing flowers that I don’t like yet.
Do you have any flowers self-sow in the garden? Do you love them or hate them?
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It’s Not a Race
This is the fifth installment in the 5×5 Garden Challenge Series. Every Wednesday I’ll be posting about the challenge, covering topics that will help all the new gardeners get started. If you haven’t heard about the challenge head on over to the 5×5 Challenge Website, we’ll also be putting up a page here that pulls in all the 5×5 Challenge posts.
This week I had great intentions of mixing up the soil to fill my beautiful timberframe raised bed built by Mr Chiots, but….I haven’t been feeling well for the past week. Tired, achey, nauseous, out of sorts, just not quite 100% myself. I actually spent the entire day last Thursday in bed, if you know me, you know how out of character this is for me. Generally you won’t find me sitting still. I think I’m just tired, worn out, and overworked. About the time I started gaining my energy back again, it started to rain.
As a result, my raised bed sits empty, the seed packets are still on the table, and none of my garden tasks were checked off the list. That’s OK though, because gardening is not a race. The beauty if gardening is that it is very forgiving. Plants often don’t mind being planted a week late. One of the only things you really need to stay on top of in gardening is the weeding. So I’m giving myself a few days off, catching up on all my office work, and generally just trying to rest up for the busy days ahead. Remember, gardening is about enjoying it, it’s a hobby. Don’t get too caught up in all you have to do and make it unpleasant. There are times when you really do need to take a few days off!
Do you ever have to force yourself to take time away from garden chores?
