Mom and Dad bought us an Aero-grow hydroponic system a few weeks ago, and I finally got around to setting it up today. It’s a pretty neat little contraption. I’ve turned my laundry room closet into a little grow-room. For salad greens! We’re growing lettuce! I swear!
There’s a few more photos in the gallery.
There’s blurry photos from the day in the gallery.
The story begins last April, when Mark and I paid $325 for a half vegetable share and a full fruit share of the Colorado State University Community Supported Agriculture (CSU CSA) program. This is a large organic vegetable garden that is part of the CSU horticulture research department. We paid for a share in the spring, and for the past 20 weeks we’ve gotten a huge pile of food to take home and eat every Thursday afternoon. The garden/farm has been a huge producer this year of everything from melons, to corn, to tomatoes, onions, peppers, broccoli, kale, chard, spinach, eggplant and various other herbs and veggies, too numerous to count.
At the beginning of October, we received the first of our killing frosts, and the growing season was officially over. On Harvest Day, we drove out to the farm for the first time (until now, we had been picking up previously harvested food on the college campus). We spent almost two hours ranging the fields, filling a huge bin with our own dug carrots, broccoli, spinach, leeks, kale, pumpkins, squash, peppers and even raspberries. It was so nice to have Mark’s Mom and Dad there with us, who have kept veggie gardens for years, and knew all kinds of useful tips about things as varied as “how to pull carrots out of the ground without leaving the bottom half in” and “how to recognize spinach when it just looks like a weed between rows.”
At the end of the day, we enjoyed fire-roasted chillies, stone soup, and carrying home the three biggest pumpkins in the whole patch.
Sunday night we spent making a huge batch of some of the freshest, best tasting vegetable soup you can find anywhere. And we, in fact, found it in the mud and dirt of our own home town. I think that’s about the coolest food you can make.
Malcolm Gladwell has been one of Mark and my heros ever since we listened to Blink while traveling around to climbing and mountain biking trails last summer. I remember driving Rachel home from Vedauwoo one day last year, playing his book. Mark and I were fascinated by the story of New Coke, and Rachel was sound asleep in the back seat. Oh well.
Here he is in a speech about revolutions in marketing from the food industry that have brought bountiful choice to American grocery stores. In the end, this actually leaves me wondering. I do love my coffee milky and weak, but was the explosion of choice good or bad? The Omnivore’s Dilemma might argue the opposite point, but its nice to see both sides of the tomato. As it were.
The first full moon after the autumnal equninox is traditionally the Harvest Moon. This especially means a lot to us this year as all of our local food sources (the CSA, Deb’s Farm, and my garden) are all producing bountiful amounts of food! I wish I had more time for preserving. Plus, our freshly processed cow arrived home yesterday!
In the last three days, I’ve been miserably ill with a nasty summer cold. Isn’t that how the plague starts in The Stand? “Oh, those summer colds are the worst…”
But, the FedEx guys just keep bringing me fun new toys! First came my little package of camera goodies. I had to buy a few accessories before we head to Italy, so now I get to play with a new compact tripod, a nice new polarizer and a brand new flash!
On the next day, my new laptop came! As has been previously discussed, I recently destroyed the main board of my laptop with a glass of chocolate milk. Mom and Dad, being the wonderful people that they are, offered to buy me a replacement as an early graduation present! While I probably won’t be getting a degree until late this summer, I couldn’t refuse.
So, now I’m blogging and editing photos on my new Intel dual-core MacBook Pro. It’s soooo wonderful! Oooo sooo shibbee!
And then, on top of all of that, tonight I harvested the first of my garden strawberries. These are tasty little treats! I may not be able to breathe through my nose, and my eyeballs really hurt, but I’m still a happy girl.
I’ve been working on raising a few different types of plants: tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. The tomatoes are doing great, but these peppers just won’t flower. They’ve had these little buds for two weeks now. I’m posting the pictures to see if anybody has any ideas for what I can do to coax those little flowers out?
Well, the weather this weekend is pretty icky. I guess it’s not quite summer yet. The blossums are out on our trees and flowers are sprouting from the ground. On the Front Range, that means it’s time for more snow!
Mark and I are staying in this weekend and getting stuff done that we’ve been putting off (house work, taxes, stuff like that).
Have a Happy Easter everybody!
Well, we had another rainy Saturday today! I just can’t believe it’s been wet two weekends in a row!! We got in a great climb at Vedauwoo before it got too wet, and Mark took some pictures so I might post one of those tomorrow.
For now, this is a shot from a dog walk last week. We have a communal garden in our neighborhood, and sunflowers seem to be popular crops. I tried to take a picture of the flower and clouds several times, and the bee just wouldn’t get out of the frame! When I finally looked at the pictures on the computer, I think it’s not so bad any more.
