For Easter we have pineapple casserole, rolls, mushrooms and spinach, peas, ham, a duck, jell-o salad, deviled eggs, potato salad. Wait a duck!? 

 

 



Happy Easter

Happy Easter from Sweet Summer Farm!



Spring has dawned at the farm

      It's spring at the farm. All the flowers are blooming and the chickens are laying. We were hoping that around this old homeplace we would see lots of old bulbs pop up, like daffodils. Sadly none have appeared. We think it is because the previous owner sprayed with broadleaf weed killer. However, we are seeing a few other wildflowers. Such as violets and vincas. There are also some really tiny flowers. We're not sure what they're are called but they're everywhere. We will show pictures down below. It's obviously some kind of weed plant but I think it's very cute. Please comment if you know what it is. Another thing we saw is some forsythia bushes across the creek. They are very overgrown and are in deep shade. We are planning to move them to a nice sunny spot. Also, our peach trees are blooming and the bees are busy visiting them. We don't think we will get any blooms on our apple or pear trees but maybe next year. We are really looking forward to what our first spring and summer on the farm will bring.

Seed Planting Time

   
     It's seed planting time and guess what? Some of our new seed have already sprouted!!! Two kinds of our tomato seed have sprouted and also two kinds of our pepper seed have also sprouted. We have them on our seed rack. We are planting many different tomatoes. We now have 150 plants. We planted Better Boys and Mortgage Lifters and we are even going to plant a white tomato called white tomesol. So far the Better Boys and the Mortgage Lifters have sprouted. The peppers that have sprouted are the Corno Di Torro Rosso and the Marconi red pepper. We are planning to plant many more types of seed like okra, eggplant, carrots, onions, green beans, broccoli and we are even going to try some peanuts.



Oh, and the Sweet Annie came up.

Matie's Tennessee Spinning Top Gourds.

Better Boys and Mortgage Lifters raring to go.

Here's our farm.

More seed.

 

Pork Chop Casserole

Ingredients

4 to 6 pork chops

4 to 6 large potatoes

1 onion

½ of a green bell pepper

½ of a red bell pepper

2 cups of milk

4 tablespoons of flour

4 tablespoons of butter

Salt and Pepper for taste

1 cup of cheese or more

Breadcrumbs or French fried onions

Directions

1. Season your pork chops and then lightly brown them in a frying pan. Set them aside
2. Chop potatoes, peppers, and onions into small cubes. 
3. In a saucepan melt butter and whisk in flour, milk and cook on medium heat until it starts to thickened. Stir in cheese and stir until melted. Add salt and pepper
4. Butter a 9x13 pan.
5. Place potatoes, onions, and peppers in the 9x13 pan. Pour thickened cheese sauce over potatoes mixture. Mix together. Place pork chops on top. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about an hour until potatoes are tender.
6. Top with other half cup of cheese but remember the more cheese the better!
7. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the cheese or a can of french fried onions are really good.
8. Place back in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and french onions/bread crumbs are lightly brown.

Hints From Grand

• The length of time it takes to cook this casserole depends on the size you cut your potatoes. The smaller cubes take less time.
• A quick version of this recipe is a bag of Ore-Ida O'Brien Hashbrown Potatoes, a can of Cream of Mushroom Soup, and a half a cup of milk.

Learning to grow our own mushrooms

It all started when we went to the Mother Earth News Fair. We bought two types of mushrooms, Oyster mushrooms in a bag and shiitake mushroom plugs. The Oyster mushrooms we grew, and they turned out great, but the shiitake mushroom plugs were left in the refrigerator languishing. Well, now mushrooms languish no more. Because this week we visited Mr. Ron Cabe's mushroom farm. We met him at our local Farmers Market and have been buying mushrooms from him for years. He grows beautiful mushrooms and my little brother will only eat his mushrooms. We have been to his farm once before, where we enjoyed seeing how he grows his mushrooms. On this trip, we learned many things to grow our own mushrooms, such as drilling holes in the logs, how to put the mushroom plugs in the holes and waxing the logs. There are many different ways to grow mushrooms. The Oyster mushrooms were in a growing bag.We also did a blog post on those. Oyster mushroom post. You can also use mushroom plugs wich is what we just did. You can also grow mushrooms in straw or sawdust.

1.Well, first you're going to need logs to put the mushroom plugs in. While you can use some other logs white oak, red oak, and wild cherry are the best. Long, lean logs are better than large heavy logs.Remember you are going to be moving them around.

2.Then you need to drill holes in the log. The hole size will depend on your plug size. You need to drill the holes in a diamond pattern about four to six inches apart all the way around the log.

3.Next you need to place the plugs into the holes you drilled in the log. Tap the plugs gently with a hammer or mallet if necessary.

4.Now you need to wax the logs. Brush wax on the mushroom plugs, on the ends of the logs and any other stop that is cut or open.This will seal out any other fungus or bug that could possibly harm your mushrooms. The kind of wax to use is a food-grade wax such as cheese wax. Also, you need to tag your logs somehow.

5.After you have completed your logs you will want to put them in a moist and shady place. They need at least an inch of water either from rainfall or a garden sprinkler. You can place a rain gauge beside your mushrooms to make sure they get enough water.

6.Last but not least you will need to soak your logs in six to eight months. You can wait up to a year. If you started in January like we did then you will want to start soaking in July or August. The longer the better. Then you will need to soak every eight weeks after that. Hopefully, you will have mushrooms soon.

Our mushroom plugs 

Mr. Ron getting ready to drill holes in the logs

Drilling the logs

Matie drilling a log

Insert the plugs into the log

Push them into the log

Mushroom plug in the log

Tap the plugs with a hammer

Putting plugs in the second log

Mr. Ron has wheels to turn the logs when inserting plugs

Mr. Ron uses Sawdust Spawn for his logs

He inserts his spawn using this tool

Sawdust Spawn

Melted wax used on the logs

Rubbing the wax on the plugs

Matie rubs some wax on one of the logs

The logs on a pallet in the woods. Now we wait.

Why we haven't been posting

Sorry, we haven't been posting lately. Our mother and little brother were in a bad car accident. Fortunately, our little brother wasn't hurt but our mother was life-flighted to Asheville. She is back home now and is doing much better. We've been staying with Grand for the last two weeks, and she has been doing all the cooking. That's been the best part, eating Grand's cooking every day. Daddy has been taking good care of mama. Daddy is going back to work and we will be taking good care of Mama with Grand. Thanks for bearing with us.

Grand's Scrumptious Cheese Bread

This is a fantastic little bread recipe that grand has been making for years.The ingredients are something you'd have on hand in the kitchen. It can be from mixing bowl to oven to table in less than one hour. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Ingredients

3¼ cups of All-Purpose Flour

¼ of a cup of white sugar

5 teaspoons of baking powder

1½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon of garlic powder 

2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese

2 beaten eggs

2 cups of milk

2/3 of a cup of vegetable oil

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 400°
2. Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans
3. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and garlic powder
4. In a second large bowl beat togeather eggs, milk, and oil
5. Stir the wet ingredients (eggs, milk, and oil) into the large bowl of dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and garlic powder)
6. After mixing well stir in the two cups of cheese. If you would like, you may save 1/4 cup of cheese to sprinkle on top of the loaves before baking. However, we like to top the loaves with nuts and seeds, Poppy seeds, Sunflower seed (Used in photos), Sesame seed, and, of course, chopped pecans.
7. Pour the batter into the greased pan
8. Bake in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

Remember this recipe makes two loaves

Hints From Grand

1. It's a good idea to line the loaf pan with parchment paper
2. If you would like, this bread can be baked in a 9x13 pan instead of two loaf pans.
3. We think this bread is very good topped with pepper jelly
4. Chopped green onions are also very good in this recipe
5. Grand's favorite hint for this recipe is...divide the batter in half adding the garlic powder to only half of the batter. That way you have one loaf with garlic and one without. The way you remember which has garlic is to put different topping like poppy seeds on the garlic one and chopped pecans on the one with no garlic. This way you have one for supper (with garlic) and one for breakfast (no garlic). The loaf with pecans (no garlic) in great toasted with butter and served with strawberry preserves.

Chicks are growing up!

       Remember the chicks we ordered in the mail? They are growing into beautiful birds. We got exactly what we were hoping for, one rooster and six hens. Our chicks are growing up so fast. Our rooster is already growing his iridescent tail feathers and Cock-a-doodle-dooing. His comb and waddle are reddening up too. He is turning out to be a Fantastic Feathered Fellow. Now on to our hens, they are turning into gorgeous birds. They look like they are covered in beautiful black and white lace hence the name Silver Lace Wyandottes. Our hens haven't started laying yet but we have the nest boxes ready for when they do. Now we're just waiting for the eggs to start rolling in. If you would like to see our Fantastic Feathered Friends the pictures are down below.

Say Cheese!

The beautiful black and white lace pattern 

Standing Guard

Patrolling the Grounds

Our Fantastic Feathered Fellow

Chickens and Polkadot barn boots. What could be better!

Happy New Year!

     To celebrate 2016, we decided to tell you all the things we would like to do in the new year.

• When we put in our circular driveway, it created a half circle of vacant space. That we would like to landscape with flowers and our farm sign. First, we need a low retaining wall because it is starting to wash.
• We would like to powerwash the house including the front porch to brighten it up and paint the back porch.
• We also want to clean out the barn so we can put that space to use.
• Tomatoes and potatoes are items we buy a lot at the grocery store so we want to plant enough of these to be self-sufficient.
• We also want to fence in the farm and keep the deer away from our crops.
• We'd like to clean the bank of the creek and build a bridge so we can have better access to the woods
• We want to plant more blueberries and raspberries and eventually have separate beds for both. 
• We need to till more beds to plant peas, carrots, lettuce,  onions.
• We use a lot of honey and are planning to get bees this year.

And that is what we would like to finish in 2016. Happy New Year!