Planning, Planning, Planning

February 27, 2012 in Farm Business, Garden | Tags: , , | 3 comments

SquashBaby

You really CAN have too much summer squash. Because when you have it, EVERYONE has it. I go easy on this one, and try to harvest young and grow unusual varieties.

Now that I have one year of market gardening under my belt, I am determined to do a better job of record keeping this year. Last year, I used one of those free wall calendars that came in the mail and wrote down whatever I was doing in the garden (planting, first harvest, last harvest, gopher issues etc.) in the little squares (this is not a bad method, but makes future planning a pain because you need to flip through the months to figure out when you planted, sprayed or harvested a particular crop). In some cases (green beans, peas, potatoes, cucumbers, an estimate on carrots) I kept track of the number of pounds I was able to harvest.

But a lot went unrecorded. How much lettuce did I actually plant? How many pounds did I harvest as small greens and how much as full heads? You get the idea. What I did have a good grasp of was what I wish I had planted more of (carrots, green onions) and what I planted too much of (kale, lettuce). This year, I’ve discovered a lot more resources for use when planning. (See a list of resources at the end of this post). Read the rest of this entry »

Anticipation

February 15, 2012 in Farm Business, Farm Life | Tags: , , , , , | 1 comment

DayLillyUpIt’s been a busy January/February so far here at Miles Away Farm. On overcast foggy cold days, I’m indoors planning the garden, ordering seeds, researching fruit varieties for the perennial garden, paying my business taxes (Washington bases their business tax on gross, not net. What’s up with that!), and researching new personal care products (vanilla sugar scrub anyone?).

I’m also trying to line up product liability insurance, which is proving to be difficult because I want to be so diversified. Some are scared off by eggs, some by fragrance in toiletry products, some by the foot traffic for classes I might teach in the commercial kitchen. I’m starting to feel like Joel Salatin in his book “Everything I Want To Do is Illegal”.

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Muesli – Granola without the Guilt

February 5, 2012 in Health, Meals | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

MuesliBowlIn my quest to eat healthier in January, I’ve been avoiding added sugar. This means that my several times a week fruit, plain yogurt and granola habit has been tabled of late. Then I ran across this recipe for Hazelnut Cherry Muesli. I’d been collecting muesli recipes for a while, but had never gotten around to trying one out. This one seemed like a great place to start.

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Just Move It!

January 26, 2012 in Health | Tags: | 2 comments

Confession. I am not an athlete. I’m actually not much of an exerciser, period. I was a small kid. My family moved around a lot (six moves, 5 states by the time I was in 6th grade). I’m an only child and my early socialization was primarily with adults. My first experience with kick ball, in 1st grade, felt like being dropped into another country without a passport. I was weak, had no control over the ball, and wasn’t very fast. I NEVER made it to 1st base. It was humiliating.

And that pretty much sums up my experience with all group or school sanctioned sports right through high school. I always seemed to miss the part where they actually taught you how to play the sport, and everyone was new to it and kind of sucked. Yup, I was the stereotypical “last kid picked for the team” over and over.

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Nutrition 501

January 17, 2012 in Health | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Part 101 here
Part 201 here
Part 301 here
Part 401 here

Nutrition Buzz Words and What You Need to Know

Omega 3’s and Omega 6’s.
You’ve heard about them. They seem to be mentioned everywhere. Omega 3’s and 6’s are simply essential fatty acids (remember, that means the body can’t make them itself) involved in the body’s ability to synthesize hormones.  Sources of omega-6 fatty acids are numerous. Soybean oil alone (um…that would be big ag) is now so ubiquitous in fast foods and processed foods that it is estimated that 20 percent of the calories in the American diet come from this single source.

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Nutrition (and Diet) 401

January 15, 2012 in Health | 3 comments

Part 101 here
Part 201 here
Part 301 here

Learn to Try New Things

One of the best things about going on a diet is that you get bored. Yup, boredom. Because when you are bored, you’ll try new things just for the novelty. Lets face it. We get into ruts. We eat the same 15 meals week in and week out because we are 1) pressed for time or imagination 2) don’t know how to cook anything else or 3) don’t want to try anything new. It’s an evolutionary advantage to eat the same things all the time. That red berry on that bush? It might be great. It might just kill us. Best to just stick with what we already know. We’re inherently creatures of habit.

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Nutrition (and Diet) 301

January 13, 2012 in Health | Tags: , , | 3 comments

For 101, click here. For 201 click here.

It seems to me that we humans fall into several categories when it comes to food. There is the simple “I live to eat” vs ” I eat to live” category. I’m clearly in the “live to eat” camp. Food is a great pleasure in life, and I probably spend more time than the average person thinking about it (how it’s made, where it comes from, how it’s processed, how much it costs, how healthy is it, and can I grow it or make it myself, just to start). I know there are people who simply see food as fuel for their bodies, and don’t really give it much thought after that (like about 80% of all teenage boys I have met).

And then there are the Justifiers and the Controllers.  The Justifiers: “I want to eat what I want when I want it in any quantity, and I will go to great lengths to defend this behavior. Red wine contains antioxidants… why yes, I’ll have another glass. And could you please poach that chicken in butter, because butter adds so much flavor!” The Controllers: “the world is a scary and chaotic place. I need to set boundaries about what goes into my mouth, because at least I can have control over that. So I’ll have a vegan raw cookie, please, with a shot of wheat grass juice on the side.”

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Nutrition (and diet) 201

January 11, 2012 in Health | Tags: , | 5 comments

For part 1, start here.

I’m self diagnosed as somewhat hypoglycemic. This is basically the opposite of being diabetic. In diabetes, the body does not produce enough insulin (the hormone that helps glucose [sugar] in the blood stream move into the cells for storage). With hypoglycemia, the body overproduces insulin in response to a sugary meal, causing too much circulating blood sugar to be removed.

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Nutrition 101

January 9, 2012 in Health | Tags: , , , | 8 comments

YoungJen

Summer 1970 I'm guessing. My father is about 47 here, mom about 39. Me, I'm about 4. The dog is a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Charlie. He was my buddy.

Yup, it’s that time of year. The time when we come out of the holiday season and say, holy crap, how did that happen, I gained 5 lbs! And we resolve to cut back and get real and lay off the dessert menu.

And I am no exception. I was a skinny kid. So skinny in fact that at one point a pediatrician recommended a glass of chocolate milk every day as a midday snack to try to put some meat on my bones (of course, now days they serve that with the hot lunch at school…childhood obesity, huh, wonder where that comes from). I’m 5’3″, small boned, and weighed 105 lbs through high school (last seen in my early 30’s after a difficult break up – serious stress makes me lose my appetite). I had the metabolism of a hamster when I was young. I could drink milkshakes as an after dinner snack every night and never gain an ounce. If I got sick, I dropped a few pounds in a few days. Honestly, I was too thin and would have loved to have gained 10 lbs.

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Jack Frost

January 2, 2012 in Farm Life | Tags: , | Leave a comment

So Walla Walla is known to get rather foggy and overcast in the winter, and this winter is no exception. We still have green grass in the yard, and our days have been in the high 30’s/low 40’s, but we haven’t been seeing the sun much over the last month. And on a few occasions, we’ve actually had just the right combination of temperature and moisture to make fantastic ice crystals on…well…everything. It makes the cloudy gray days easier to take.

AspenFrost Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Kleffner

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