Foraged Morels

One of my favorite things about visiting my mother's farm in Eastern Oregon is that her neighbors are always dropping by with fresh veggies from their garden or eggs from their coop. Today's surprise was a grocery bag full of foraged Morel Mushrooms. For a city dweller like me, who will easily drop 8 bucks for 5 morels at the Whole Foods, this was a miracle. Tonight, I'll be cooking up a mushroom feast for my family. And I'll probably do something like THIS. Thank you Oregon. Thank you neighbors. Thank you nature!

Summer Chickens

My backyard hens are doing well in the summer heat, although they get a little pissy in the late afternoons. I've been letting them eat around the edges of my vegetable beds. This adds a healthy dose of kale, mint, and oregano to their diet. Their favorite snack is still a handful of meal worms, though. When it gets over 100 degrees, I usually take a shallow pan of ice to the hens. The ice melts quickly, but the water is cool and refreshing for the ladies. Gladys likes to stand in the water and cool off her feet.

Hot Garden

Here in Dallas, we've had temperatures in the high 90s for about a week. The heat is hard on the humans, but the tomatoes and melons seem to love it. My garden has definitely made the transition from spring to summer. The green beans are done and almost all of my greens are giving up the ghost. Now the cucumbers, melons and tomatoes are marching forward for their moment in the sun.

I took a carbon gardening class today at the Texas Worm Ranch. It was super informative and I'll be able to apply my new knowledge to my own garden as well as our school garden. If you're in the area and would like a hands-on garden education, please check them out. They have on going classes HERE. Here are some snapshots from the garden this week!

Kale and Nasturtium Salad

Baby Cucumber and Tomato Relish

Edible Nasturtium Blossoms

Waiting for Tomatoes

Canteloupe

Wisteria is still kicking out some blooms!

Lemon Queen Sunflower

Pearl the Hen

Heirloom French Zucchini

Fresh Eggs from the Hen House

June Garden Report & Natural Mosquito Repellent

The garden is pretty idyllic right now. Everything is lush, but not overgrown. The pollinators are having orgies over all of the new life and our family is harvesting food every morning. Kale, chard, eggs, herbs, onions, yellow neck squash, French zucchini, green beans and more. Even our salads get a colorful sprinkling of Nasturtium flowers for fun and color. Our tomatoes are almost ready and this year they look plentiful! I'm so thrilled. There are six varieties of tomato in our garden this year, many of which we've never grown or eaten. It will be a new adventure!

Natural Mosquito Repellent Tip
Also - I want to talk about my new successful method for keeping mosquitoes at bay. These buggers are thick this year in Texas. We didn't have a real freeze this winter, so they're especially bad right now. I hate all of the chemical sprays, and even the essential oil based sprays have a really intense odor and residue on our yard. So, I've started burning incense in the garden to smoke them out. It gives our garden the feel of sacred space, smokes out the bugs and smells divine. I just bought the huge pack if India Incense from World Market. It's inexpensive and beautiful.

What's growing in your garden right now?

May Garden Report

May is here and I'm so happy for the glorious weather and growing greens! This weekend, our little upcycled coop was featured on an urban coop tour. My favorite description of it came from a neighbor who called it "a steampunk gypsy wagon". Perfect!

The garden is in great shape. The heat of summer is still a ways off and the scattered rain has kept my beds deeply watered and happy. Right now in my garden, I have 6 heirloom tomato varieties, lazy wife pole beans, one pickling cucumber, four different varieties of squash and zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, kale, chard, red and yellow onions, basil, mint, oregano, sage, lavender, sunflower, nasturtiums and one lone strawberry plant. I also planted a Jersey Black Apple tree this spring. It won't see fruit for a few years, but it's nice to plan way out in advance. I also have a happy Asian Pear tree and a Meyer Lemon, which is in its first year of bearing fruit!

Here are some photos of my May garden. I'll be transplanting the watermelon elsewhere in the garden this month, because I can already tell its going to take over! I'll keep posting throughout the summer so you can see what thrives and what dies. (Something always dies. I'm a trial and error gardener, so I don't mind when something tanks.)

How is your garden this month? 

What are you growing? 

Are you trying something new? 

What are your old favorites that you always grow? 

I'd love to hear from you in the comments section!

We had a post-coop-tour afterparty and this was the cake!

So cute, right?

My Favorite Backyard Farm on Instagram

If afternoons on the back patio, chicken in lap and handcrafted Belgium ale in hand, sounds good to you, then let me introduce my friend Deanna - who I met briefly back in school days in Santa Maria, CA. Deanna and her husband are urban homesteaders in Santa Barbara County who share their work on Instagram. Its my favorite feed on the web right now and I thought I'd share it with YOU! (Although, as evidenced by her almost 19K followers, you may already know all about her.)

Deanna and her husband grow veggies, raise hens, can and ferment their harvest, make Kombucha by the batch and build awesome shit in their yard. I'm envious. Not in a cloying grass-is-greener kind of way, but in an inspired get-out-there-and-make-the-world-a-better-place kind of way. Take a look at Deanna's photos below and definitely hop over to her Insta-feed and enjoy!

Find her on Instagram HERE.