Victoria Bread

In the end we're all Jerry Springer Show guests, really, we just haven't been on the show. – Marilyn Manson 

A welcome sight for guests in the morning. Warm Bread. Bring on the butter!

This bread is named in honour of the long weekend, Queen Victoria and house guests.

We had a fantastic visit this weekend – a friend from Dartmouth and her dog. So I guess you could say that Henry had company this weekend too.

In the evening before bedtime.

Company is nice. We’re really glad that they came. We hadn't seen them since we moved from the city. What we’re not so glad about was the lack of cooperation from the weather. After what seems like a two-week stretch of really warm weather, well, yesterday sucked.

We were lucky if it got above 10°C all day. Couple that with the wind – cold wind – and it made for a not too glorious Saturday. Did I say the wind was cold...?

When the going gets tough...
The tough go shopping. We made the best of yesterday. We went plant shopping. We hit up the usual spots plus a new one – Indian Gardens in Hebbville. It is celebrating 150 years in operation. They have extensive-looking orchards. It’s quite a business. I'm amazed I had never been there before.

Besides the usual plants and hanging baskets they also had many fruit and veggie starters, and a produce store. We picked up several veggies to plant: eggplant, kale, pink and yellow tomatoes. All interesting, and hopefully they will grow well for us.

In the morning.

But back to the bread. If you’re going to get up and go out into the cold to windy garden centres you need something homey for breakfast. That’s where this recipe comes in.

I don’t know how often I’ve told you how easy it is to make bread. Many of my recipes remove two of the most “worrisome” aspects that make bread making a frightening activity for many novice cooks: proofing the yeast and kneading.

How easy is it?
Easy. You literally throw everything together in a bowl about 9pm, mix it and forget it until the next morning. A brief kneading and shaping and you’re ready to go.

I’m up early, usually at 6am, so my bread was out of the oven by 8am.

This loaf uses unbleached white flour and red fife flour. I’ve written about red fife before. It is a red tinged whole wheat that has direct ties to Canada’s early years. It was the wheat that went with the white settlers as they opened up the West during Victorian times.

After shaping and 45 minutes. Very responsive.

The red fife adds a little nutrition that is lacking in the processed white flour. It also adds an interesting colour. As soon as it's wet you instantly understand why its name has "red" in it.

This is very much a country-style loaf. Feel free to use any combination of flours. Just remember that low gluten flour won't have the rising ability of white. So if you're tolerant of wheat use at least 2 cups of white.

Memories are a web of tastes and smells. There’s really nothing that makes a guest’s visit more memorable than something delicious fresh from the oven. Especially at breakfast time.

If you like the idea of the aroma of baking bread filling your house on a long weekend morning you should try this recipe. It’s dead simple and really, really easy. The result speaks for itself.

Victoria Bread

Prep: overnight + 1 hour  |  Bake 35 min  |  Yield 1 loaf

3 cups unbleached white flour

1 cup red fife flour

1 tbsp yeast

1 tsp salt

2 cups warm (110°F) water

Mix together all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Knead briefly if you can (it will be very wet). Let sit, covered with plastic wrap and a towel, overnight.

In the morning, remove the bubbly dough to a slightly floured board. Knead for about a minute or two. 

Shape the dough into an oblong by flattening it and then tucking it over itself. (Kind of like rolling a towel.) You should have a loaf about 10” long.

Place on a floured baking sheet, sprinkle the top generously with a little red fife,  and let rise again for 45 min (until about doubled). 

Preheat the oven to 425°F with a pan of water on the bottom rack.

Once the loaf has risen, slash the top with 3 diagonal lines about 1/2” deep. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the water and bake for an additional 25 minutes.

Remove the loaf and let cool slightly before cutting.

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Sweet & Spicy Green Relish

A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity 'til he has tasted adversity. – Sa’Di 

Ooooh, I relish a bit of relish sometimes.

My favourite combo for both burgers and hot dogs is onions, mayo and relish. Maybe cheese too, if I'm feeling adventurous... So having relish is a necessity for me.

I can’t remember when I was introduced to that combo, but it may have been when I was working at the local Fire Department Canteen. I loved tose days. Life seemed so much simpler. I suppose it did when you’re in your early teens.

Oh well, it’s best to live in the here and now, isn’t it. But ,oh my, I do relish (pardon the pun) those moments when the “feeling” of those past times washes over me. Sometimes it’s almost palpable, especially since I now live where I grew up. It makes me feel somehow comforted and safe. If only it was more often...

You have to strain – and then squeeze – as
much liquid out of the veggies as possible.

The word "relish" first appeared in printed English usage in 1798 and comes from the word "reles" which in Old French means "something remaining". The “remaining” vegetables at the end of their growing season were preserved for storage in the winter months by curing and pickling. Hence the name “relish.”

In English, relish is now a highly flavoured condiment which uses vinegar and sugar as preservative. Chutney, piccallilli and chow-chow all fall under the umbrella of “relishes.”

So here’s my relish, another of your staples to have on the picnic table. I have published ketchup, several mustards, barbecue sauces and homemade buns on this blog.

Relish is a bit of a wild card as different recipes have different tastes, just like mustard and ketchup. For me it has to be tart yet sweet, firm and green. If it fails on any of those counts it won’t stay in my fridge.

Homemade relish is notoriously pale. That is because most recipes require the cucumber to be peeled. The reason is that the peel is tough compared to the flesh. This recipe uses an English cucumber because I find them firmer than the usual local garden cucumbers which helps keep their shape after cooking.

If you wish, feel free to just wash the cucumber thoroughly and then chop with skin on. I didn't want to take the chance of tough skin so I peeled mine, and substituted 2 drops of green food colouring. It is very close to the colour of store bought relish. You can probably even fool the kids.

An important step to not leave out is the squeezing of the vegetables after they have been leached of their liquid with the salt. Be merciless. You’re taking as much water out as you can so the vinegar, sugar and spices will be absorbed back in while cooking.

Another important is simmering them long enough. 18-20 minutes will make it firmer when it sets up. There’s nothing worse than runny relish.

See how pale this is? Feel free to add food colouring.

Sweet & Spicy Green Relish

Time: about 2.5 hours, including draining the veggies

1 English cucumber, peeled and seeded

3/4 medium onion

1 rib of celery

1/2 large green pepper

1/2 jalapeno, seeded and white ribs removed

1-1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup white vinegar

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp pickling spice, ground

pinch cayenne

2 drops green food colouring (optional)

Use an English cucumber. They have fewer seeds and more flesh.

Cut all the vegetables into medium sized chunks. Place the celery and onion in a food processor and pulse until the desired size. Err on the small side since this is for relish, but use your common sense. You don’t want it puréed. Repeat with the peppers and then the cucumber.

Combine all the chopped vegetables in a non-reactive (glass or ceramic) bowl. Add the salt, toss well, and let sit for 2 hours. You can put a bowl or plate on top to help press out the liquid.

Place the mixture in a sieve to drain. Squeeze the mixture to extract as much liquid as possible. I removed over 1 cup from my vegetables. (See photo above.)

Bring the vinegar, sugar and pickling spice to a boil in a large saucepan. Add the vegetables and simmer for 18-20 minutes. Add the green food colouring if your vegetables are too pale for your liking. Two drops of green made the mixture very close in colour to store purchased relish.

Pour into a jar and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Let cool on the counter until the canning top pops down to prove your airtight seal.

Makes a scant 1 pint. The recipe can be scaled up to larger quantities.

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Classic Homemade Hot Dog Mustard

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour. – Truman Capote

Feeling a bit yellow today. So I thought that this recipe just might fit the bill. It’s a summer staple and, like all condiments, are actually a breeze to make at home. It’s not even all that time consuming. I can (almost) promise no failure if you make it. 

This is mustard powder. It's best to start with it rather than
grind your own. It's so much less work.

This is the classic yellow hot dog mustard that is ubiquitous burgers and hot dog cookouts throughout the summer. It’s not that “lurid” yellow like we find in stores, but it’s close. I have no idea how they get that colour, and I probably don’t want to know.

You can buy mustard powder quite inexpensively at either a bulk food store or even groceries. They have several kinds and you can tailor this recipe to your liking. Try some brown mustard flour, or throw in a little hot.

Mustard use has a very long history. Romans were most likely first off the mark to use it as a condiment as opposed to just a spice. They mixed “must” (unfermented grape juice) with ground mustard seeds to make what they called “mustum ardens,” or burning must. That’s where our term “must-ard” originates.

If you’ve ever made homemade mustard you’ll know that “burning” can be an apt description. You can make some really heady stuff.

A recipe for mustard appears in a 4th or 5th Century cookbook called Apicius, that was anonymously complied at that time. It is one of the most complete snapshots into the culinary life of the Romans. There are some very interesting recipes in that book. I have an abridged copy.

The spices.

From the Mediterranean, mustard seeds were probably taken to old Gaul (currently France). By the 10th Century monks were making their own mustards to accompany their meagre meals. Many of the famous French mustards owe their early origins to monasteries in towns around the countryside.

All the European countries have their own individual mustards, made not only from ground seeds but also cracked, or whole. Taste differences are accounted for in what is put with the seeds.

This site contains several mustard recipes including two Dijon, Oktoberfest, Cognac and beer thyme mustard, plus a few more.

On this side of the Atlantic, mustard as a condiment was first introduced at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. The product was French’s Mustard, by the R.T. French Company. It is arguably still the most common North American mustard for hotdogs and hamburgers to this day.

A version of this common hot dog/hamburger mustard is the recipe outlined below. Like all mustards, this one benefits from sitting for about one week, but it can be used immediately after cooling if required.

I don’t know if it’s because I made this or not, but I quite like it. I usually don’t like “plain” yellow mustard. It must be a self-sufficiency satisfaction thing. Whatever makes it taste so good, t this one’s certainly going to be made again for this summer.

Homemade Yellow Mustard

Prep: 2 min  |  Cook: 10 min  |  Purée: 2 min  |  Yield: about 2 cups

1 cup ground mustard (regular or hot)

1 cup water

3/4 cup white vinegar

1 tsp flour

2 tsp salt

1 tsp turmeric

3/4 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp paprika

1 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)

1 tbsp lemon juice

Combine all ingredients except for the cayenne and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Whisk until smooth and then bring to a boil. Regular mustard powder yields a mild mustard.

Once the mixture boils, reduce the heat to medium and let cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from the heat and let cool slightly. Taste for spiciness.

Pour the mustard into a food processor. Add as much cayenne as you feel you want (if any), and the lemon juice.

Purée for 2 minutes to mix well and smooth the mustard out even more.

If the mustard appears a little grainy don’t worry. Sitting in the refrigerator will help smooth it out even a little more. It will also thicken when cooled.

Place in jars and refrigerate.

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Ancient Grain Honey Spelt Bread

Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today. – Arthur Erickson

Excellent sandwich loaf. Excellent anything loaf.

It’s a wonderful thing to have fresh bread on a regular basis. It makes sandwiches, breakfast or dinners just that much more special.

This was the dough 9pm.

It’s not all that difficult to pull off if you use the “overnight” technique that I do. It almost entirely eliminates kneading, and your bread is out of the oven in the morning before you’re even fully awake.

Now it’s pretty easy to make interesting bread too, thanks to bulk food stores like our local Bulk Barn. Not that long ago to buy specialty “ancient” grains you had to purchase expensive packets at health food stores. Now you can just drop by and purchase exactly the amount you need.

Spelt is one that is widely available now. Spelt is an ancient grain that has a nut-like flavour and a dark(ish) colour. It is a cousin of wheat and traces its heritage back 6,000 years, well before our common wheat hybrids.

Benefits of spelt

This was the dough 6am.

Much of the health benefits associated with spelt are due to the broad spectrum of nutrients that have been bred out of modern wheat. Interestingly, spelt doesn’t seem to cause as much in the way of sensitivity as modern wheat.

It’s mostly due to the type of gluten in spelt – it’s water soluble, degraded by heat and is easily broken down by mixing. Wheat gluten does not break down in water and only relaxes when exposed to heat and seems to get stronger as it is mixed. Bakers refer to kneading as “developing the gluten.”

Since the gluten is water soluble it make the grain more easy to digest and therefore the nutrients in wheat more available to the body. That’s not the only difference. Spelt is high in protein (much higher than wheat), higher in B complex vitamins, and is high in both simple and complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates aid in blod clotting and help boost the body’s immune system.

Generously grease that pan.

But for best results...

Now this difference in gluten does have a drawback for those of us who love our fluffy bread. All spelt makes for a lower rise bread. So in my recipe I did a 50/50 with unbleached white wheat.

At least it’s not all white. This bead actually surprised me. The colour is somewhere between a brown bread and white, even though no colouring (other than the spelt) was used.

This made for an amazing looking loaf. Don’t worry if the crust seems very hard after baking. It will soften up as the bread cools, if you can wait that long.

The taste is quite amazing, too. It is fantastic warm with butter, and made one dandy Westphalian ham and Swiss cheese sandwich for lunch. Mmmm.

It will rise in 1 hour to fill the pan.

Honey Spelt Bread

Prep: Overnight + 1 hour  |  Bake: 30 min  |  Yield 1 loaf

1-1/2 cups spelt flour

1-1/2 cups unbleached white flour

3/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp honey

3 tsp yeast

1-1/2 cups warm water

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and beat with a spoon for about 2 minutes. The mixture will be very, very wet and sticky. Make sure that all the flour is incorporated.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel. Let rise overnight.

In the morning, pour the dough out onto a lightly floured board. Lightly flour your hands and knead for about 2 minutes. The dough will still be sticky.

Generously butter a 5” x 9” bread pan. Place the dough in the pan and let rise for 1 hour. Don't worry if it looks like only a little dough. It will fill the pan on second rise.

Preheat the oven to 450°F, with a pan of water in the bottom to hydrate the oven.

Bake the loaf for 30 minutes, removing the pan of water after the first 10 minutes.

Let cool on a rack. The crust will soften as it cools.

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Weekend Three Bean Salad

Beans are neither fruit nor musical. – Nancy Cartwright

Delicious, crisp and colourful.

I’m preempting today’s scheduled broadcast to bring you this timely recipe. I was going to post Tuscan Chicken, but that will just have to wait.

Instead, I’m bringing back a favourite. I believe I am going to start a tradition of reposting this recipe every year. The warmer weather brings out the barbecues and this is perfect for with steak, chicken, hot dogs or hamburgers. It is hands-down THE best three bean salad I have ever had.

I dislike most three bean salads. When you buy it at the store you get a usually soggy, vinegary, sugary mess. Who would like that?

This ain’t no store-bought three bean. Make lots of it. It will keep in jars for a while, like a week or two. But you won’t have to worry. You’ll be amazed at how fast it disappears.

Use fresh green beans. Photo: zoyachubby, Flickr ccl

Bean salad is a common backyard or picnic dish that – oddly enough – is composed mainly of various beans. It is almost always served in a sweet vinegar marinade. What the particular beans used are—or the number (three, four, five…)—is up to the cook.

The trick with a bean salad is to make it colourful, and fresh. If you want to go to the trouble, you can pick and shell beans. Just remember any fresh veggies should be blanched before adding. It helps the vinaigrette to be absorbed.

Use canned chickpeas and kidney beans. It’s just so much easier and faster. But don’t use canned green beans – blanch fresh ones. You won’t be happy with the result. Yuck… If using dried chickpeas or beans they would have to be soaked and boiled, of course.

Blanching is boiling vegetables in salted water for a few minutes. It partially cooks them but they are still crisp. It also helps them retain their fresh-picked colour. Vegetables are routinely blanched before being frozen. 

Keep that in the back of your mind to preserve from this coming harvest season. That’s a bit of news I’ll have to remember when our garden grows...

Chickpeas (garbanzo beans). Photo: Mink, Flickr ccl

Pretty much any bean, or other legume, can be used in this type of salad. The decision is mostly based on how much eye-appeal you want in the end result. 

Most bean salads call for chickpeas (garbanzos), kidney beans and fresh green beans. That way you have white, red and green (the Italian flag, although I don’t think there’s supposed to be any connection). In my recipe I also added orange in the form of carrots. Radishes, green onions, yellow beans are all potential contenders for inclusion.

I have read that bean salad has been a common picnic staple since the 1800s (on Wikipedia) but I can’t find any independent verification. Since picnicking became popular during the Victorian Age I have no real reason to dispute it.

Bean salad gained popularity on this side of the big pond in the 1950s-60s with the advent of the suburban expansive backyard and barbecue entertaining. That was when dad cooked the meat and mom did pretty much everything else… Anyone remember that?

Bean salad is an excellent dish to serve if you have vegetarian friends. The beans are full of dietary fibre, protein, and contain several essential vitamins and minerals. So except for the sugar it’s not a bad thing. It can serve as a main dish for those so inclined.

Three bean salad usually seems to go a long way. The amounts in the recipe would supposedly serve eight folks as a side dish. I have a funny feeling that it’s not the case with this recipe.

This is good. Really good.

This is supposed to be enough salad for 8.
Yeah.. right.

Three Bean Salad

Prep: 15 min  |  Marinate: 2-24 hours  |  Serves 8-12

19oz (540 ml) can chick peas

19 oz can (540 ml) can red kidney beans

3/4 lb green beans

1 medium carrot, julienned

1 rib celery, diced

1 small onion, sliced and chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 cup vinegar

1/2 cup honey

1/2 to 1 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp cracked black pepper

salt to taste (see recipe)

Rinse the chick peas and kidney beans under water until the water runs clear. Place in a bowl that will hold all the assembled ingredients.

Stem the green beans and cut into thirds or quarters. Peel and cut the carrot into matchsticks about 2” long. Rinse both well and blanch in boiling water for 3-5 minutes. Rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process and add to the bowl.

Add the celery, onion and garlic to the bowl and toss well to combine.

In a small bowl combine the vinegar, honey, cayenne and black pepper. Pour over the vegetables and toss. Do not add salt at this time. (Sometimes the kidney beans and chickpeas are already salty.)

Cover with plastic wrap and let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or for a whole day.

Just before serving, taste for salt and add if desired.

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Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.

On the Grill Sweet ‘n Smoky Barbecue Sauce

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. – William Shakespeare 

This is one good barbecue sauce.

It wasn’t very pleasant yesterday here in Nova Scotia but the weather is warm now and summer is on its way. It may (or may not) be sunny this weekend, but we may as well prepare. That means making your own mustards (search this blog), ketchup, relish and barbecue sauce.

Photo: Wiki CC

There’s one recipe I’ll be making and posting here in the near future, chipotle ketchup, but this barbecue sauce will have to do for now. It keeps in the refrigerator for weeks if well sealed.

Making your own barbecue sauce can be a tricky business. It needs to be thick  so it doesn’t get watery, and flavourful. That’s one thing I find lacking in many of the store-bought sauces – good flavour.

But there’s always been a taste that I wanted to incorporate but just couldn’t seem to. That flavour? Smoke.

It’s the quintessential taste of barbecue – that deep, sort of sweet flavour that permeates your barbecued goodies and makes them so delicious. To incorporate that flavour you usually have to actually use wood chips to smoulder on your coals.

There is another way, and until recently I thought it had to be a chemical cocktail. But I was wrong – it's pretty much as natural as “smoking” with wood chips. The whole process of barbecuing is sort of carcinogenic so why let a little more bother you?

Liquid smoke

The secret is “liquid smoke.” Liquid smoke…even the name sounds like something very artificial. That’s a misnomer, because it consists of only two ingredients. It is made by smoke being passed through water.

This product is cited in a document released by the World Health Organization. They state “Their [liquid smokes'] use reduces contamination by carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and enables the intensity of the flavour in the final product to be accurately controlled.” http://whqlibdoc.who.int/trs/WHO_TRS_576.pdf, page 12. (There's more about it on page 15.)

There are many different types of liquid smoke, depending on the wood used to make it. I used hickory, the same as the picture above, but my brand was different.

Liquid smoke certainly adds smoky flavour to whatever it is used in, without the necessity of wood chips. Now there will be purists that will say there's no substitute for the real thing, but in blind taste tests many people couldn’t tell the difference.

This is what the sauce looks like at the start of simmering.

Liquid smoke sounds like something out of a bad 1950s lab, but it actually has been in existence for over 110 years. It all started with a man called Ernest H. Wright who began bottling and selling a product called “condensed smoke” way back in 1895.

Condensed smoke may well be a better term for this ingredient because his inspiration of the product was water he saw condensing on the wood stove pipe in a print shop where he worked. Not a very appetizing-sounding start, but it's the genesis none the less.

His company grew to become a national USA brand, and in 1997 Wright’s Liquid Smoke was purchased by B&G Foods. They continue its manufacture to this day. Other brands in B&G’s stable include Emeril’s, Mrs. Dash, Sugar Twin and Cream of Wheat.

This barbecue sauce is a “must have” and I say that with no puffed-up sense of pride. It’s very simple, deep tasting and delicious.  

To me this tastes like what I believe barbecue sauce should be. It doesn’t even need a barbecue to have that outdoor flavour. Broiling works every bit as well.

The recipe makes about 1-1/2 cups, so for your one hour investment in time you will have enough barbecue sauce to thrill a crowd, or last for a good portion of the season if you’re not a hardcore barbecuer.

For a great accompaniment look here. It's a three bean salad that even people who usually dislike it can get enough of.

This is a good little sauce. I cant wait to try it on tofu for
a vegetarian friend of ours. I have a mean three bean salad
that would go perfectly with this. Do a blog search.

Sweet ‘n Smoky Barbecue Sauce

Prep: 10 min  |  Cook 45 min  |  Yield: 1.5 cups

1 tbsp oil

3/4 cup onions, chopped

1 tbsp liquid smoke

1/2 cup honey

3/4 cup ketchup

3/4 cup water

1/4 cup vinegar

juice of 1 lime

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp dried mustard

1 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp salt

1 tsp cracked black pepper

Heat the oil in a medium sized saucepan. Saute the onion until slightly browned. 

Add the remaining ingredients. Bring the mixture to a boil and then let simmer for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally to avoid it sticking. The sauce will become very thick and darken in colour considerably. 

Place in a jar and refrigerate. It will thicken further as it cools.

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Questions? Comments? Derogatory remarks? Just ask! I’ll answer quickly and as best as I can. If you like this post feel free to share it. If you repost, please give me credit and a link back to this site.

The Small Veggie Garden

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance? – Abdul Kalam 

Small but sufficient.

It rained last night. That was a very good thing. We were hoping for it. We planted our small garden patch with vegetables yesterday. So the rain certainly came at a good time.

We used birch poles for fencing.

This was part of the plan of moving to the country. We wanted to drastically cut costs (we no longer have a $1200+ mortgage, $3700 property taxes, water bill, a large draughty house to heat, etc.) and become somewhat more self reliant with regard to our food stream.

I heard my father’s voice in my ear the whole time we were doing it. He would have been proud, I think. He also would have been telling me we were doing some things “wrong.” Or at least not the way he would have.

Dad used to plant a garden about 60’ x 80’ every year. It helped feed us and many of the “cabin people” who summer around the lake. His garden had a real social aspect for him.

Cheek by jowl at 20'x14'

Ours is considerably smaller at about 20’ x 14”. In it we have jammed so much seed... peas, beans, carrots (orange and purple), radishes, cucumbers, Swiss chard, mesclun greens, squash, cucumbers, onions and corn. Oh, and a few tomato sets. I don't think I forgot anything.

One of our pair of pears.

In the same area we have 2 young pear trees, an apricot, a jostaberry, black currant and gooseberry. They're all small so won't interfere with anything else this year.

We have beans and peas in large cast iron urns as well, plus I'm going to be growing fresh herbs in another. Hopefully with more success than in the past. At least they'll have much more sun than when we were city folk.

The garden is thick, to say the least. There’s only two of us so if even half the seed grows we’ll have quite a lot on our hands. We may even have to give some away.

The main benefit of a small garden is that it’s... small. It’s easy to tend, weed and harvest. I remember groaning the times I had to help weed dad’s garden. I didn’t help nearly as much as I should have. I regret that now that I'm grown up.

A drawback of a thickly planted garden is that the soil will become depleted of nutrients far more quickly. So we’ll have to remember to fertilize part way through the season. We also have to get some straw for between the rows to keep down weeds. It will stay through the winter and be turned into the soil to help enrich it for next year.

I think we did pretty well. The area we used was once covered by a very large Rosa Multiflora. They’re akin to a weed. The thing had grown to monstrous size. Interestingly, when my spouse cut it out the ground underneath was completely bare. No sod to remove.

The black currant will fruit this year.
It came from Spencer's in Shelburne.

No wonder the rose was so big. The soil seemed to be some of the best in the whole yard. Nice and chocolately brown, crumbly with a lot of organic matter. The soil seemed “friable.” That means that it has a crumbly texture that can hold moisture and allow deep root growth. The sun is on the plot almost the whole day as well.

We prepared the bed with shovels – no tiller. We went down about 10” deep so everything should have a nice loose soil for optimal growth. We also added organic matter and manure.

We did have to remove the extremely large and crawling roots leftover from the previous plot occupant, the rose. That took some doing. We worked from 9:30am to about 2pm. That took us from unturned soil to neatly planted rows. It also included putting up birch stakes as a bit of deer deterrent.

Time will tell if we can actually taste the fruits of our labour, but I do have to admit I had fun.

I’m a bit sore today, not being used to much in the way of outdoor labour. That will be a benefit of gardening too. Out of necessity we will have to be outside in the sun.

There is more to come. I want Roma tomatoes and we have one row that has nothing in it yet. Who knows what will go there. Come late summer I’ll be canning and preserving for days – hopefully.

The garden looks good. There was a real sense of pride when we were done. That was an unexpected benefit. Tending it as it grows should be equally as rewarding –  hopefully kind of a vegetable soup for the soul.

Carrots, purple and orange, and beets.

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