Seeds planted in soil trigger feelings in gardeners akin to giving birth. It’s all about birthing life in the garden. Reading about seeds is almost as good. Many of us consult seed catalogues throughout the winter in anticipation of spring planting. Often, we will stick to plants that have performed well for us.

Heirloom seeds go far beyond the heirloom tomato and other vegetables offered at local DIY outlets and garden centers. And Baker Creek isn’t the only seed company with a catalog and shops that sell heirlooms. But they’ve worked very hard at making the Baker Creek name synonymous with the grow-your-own-food revolution that focuses on seed not altered by scientists. In other words, the seed has not been genetically modified (GMO).

Thousands of types of heirloom vegetable seeds are available when you know where to look for them. Search for catalogues online. Among others, check out: https://www.seedsavers.org/catalog, https://www.rareseeds.com, and https://www.edenbrothers.com/store/heirloom_seeds.html

The sight of bees collecting pollen makes me happy. Always has. Honeybees are vital to the production of the foods we love such as almonds, apples, citrus, melons, and a large variety of vegetables. My vegetable garden and fruit trees are incredibly productive because of my backyard bees. I guess you could say they feed my family through pollination.

Bees swarming on the Henny Penny Farmette

Bees are pollinators. Without them there’s a good chance we’d suffer food scarcity on our planet. Three out of four crops around the globe that are foods that we humans eat are dependent in large part on pollinators. Honeybees also produce honey, nature’s most delicious sweetener, in my opinion.

I keep hives of honeybees on my farmette. It’s not a commercial operation but a backyard hobby that supplies honey for my family and friends as well as pollinating a huge variety of vegetables, fruits, and berries that I grow. Caring for the bees is relatively easy. Harvesting honey, on the other hand, is a bit of work but work I am happy to do.

The first step in harvesting honey is to open the hives. The use of a smoker helps calm the bees. Working quickly is a good idea. We never remove all frames of honey from the hive, but rather leave frames with baby bees and some frames with honey so the bees have food, too.

Honeybees surround a white, wooden hive box

New frames (some are previously used frames that have the wax structure intact) are inserted to replace the removed frames of honey. A super with 10 frames of honey is carried into my kitchen. Inevitably, I have to capture and release a half dozen live bees that ride in on the frames.

Each frame then gets a hot knife slipped just under the layer of wax. With the wax removed from both sides of the frame, only honey is left. This must be spun out or drained off.

I put four frames of honey at a time into the spinning machine in my kitchen. Beneath the machine’s spigot is freshly washed honey bucket, draped with a new cloth strainer that I’ve taped in place over the top of the bucket. It will catch any pieces of wax or other debris.

A knife is used to uncap wax

When the bucket is full, the strained honey is poured into jars to use, store, or give away as gifts. I put a tight-fitting lid on the bucket and keep the bucket within easy reach on the kitchen countertop.

A single frame produces several jars of honey

We eat honey year round. I especially love it in the winter because it reminds me of the honey-flow in spring when the farmette smells like honey and my kitchen is saturated with the scent after pulling some frames from the hive.

Also, the vegetables and fruits that I harvest throughout the growing season are either immediately consumed or preserved through hot-water canning, dehydration, flash freezing.  I thank Mother Nature for the blessing of bees that pollinate our foods and give us delicious honey from their hive–up to six gallons for ten frames from a full-depth box!

*NOTE: Learn more about honey bees at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/h/honeybee/

Also, check out: https://honeybeenet.gsfc.nasa.gov/Honeybees.htm

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Get the three-book series of cozy mysteries with elements based on the real Henny Penny Farmette

Enjoy reading about country living? Check out my Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries that also include lists of farm chores, delicious recipes, farm sayings, and tips for healthy living. Or, take a look at  my health, wellness, and spirituality books. All are available online and everywhere books are sold.

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I called my neighbor just after sunup this morning and asked her to come help me pick plums. I have trees of ripe plums, three different varieties, as well as apricots that are ripening too fast for me to keep up with drying and jam-making.

The smallest plums we picked have tart skin but sweet flesh

She came laden with a dozen boxes. I had ladders and buckets and bowls ready. We were soon joined by her husband who also brought a ladder. We picked until the containers were full and still the trees held a ton of fruit.

Apricots are sweet treats eaten right from the tree

He backed up their van and we loaded the fruit containers inside. They would drive the containers full of fruit to our local food pantry–the Contra Costa County Food Bank Warehouse at 4010 Nelson Avenue in Concord to distribute to needy families.

Saying thanks didn’t seem adequate enough, so I took my neighbors to my veggie patch to find some items just for them. I promised to deliver pumpkins when they were ready but for now we found heirloom zucchini, summer squash, and tomatoes.

Their gift of time and energy spent picking and packing fruit and delivering it to the food bank freed me up to start my jam-making.  A friend once told me that what blesses one blesses others. It certainly proved true today.

Heirloom tomatoes on the vine

If you’re interested in donating fresh food from your backyard garden, contact the Contra Costa Food Bank warehouse, located at 4010 Nelson Avenue, Concord, CA 94520 or call 925. 676.7543.  Hours are Monday through Thursday: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday: 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Pumpkins will ripen in autumn

If you don’t have lovely, helpful neighbors who will assist you harvesting your bounty, contact gleaners in Contra Costa County at  www.theurbanfarmers.org

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If you enjoy reading this blog about my Henny Penny Farmette activities, check out my cozy mystery series (A BEELINE TO MURDER, MURDER OF A QUEEN BEE, and A HIVE OF HOMICIDES) as well as my current nonfiction books.

All are available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart as well as traditional bookstores everywhere. The cozy mysteries are chocked full of delicious farmette recipes, tips of keeping honeybees and chickens, and farm trivia.

Novel #1

Novel #2

Novel #3

A special book that will be treasured for a lifetime of spiritual pursuits and practices

Packed full of ideas for creating the life you want

Under the searing summer sun, the clay soil of my farmette will grow amazing pin oaks, white oaks, and pine trees. But for a gardener like me who wants to grow  vegetables and herbs, clay soil frustrates and challenges.

Plants can be coaxed to grow in clay soil with help from the resident gardener

Before planting next year’s kitchen garden in a new area of the property, I’ll have to change the soil structure now. This will take time and a lot of effort, but it will pay huge dividends over the long term.

Here are a few things things a gardener can do to improve clay soil.

1. A few weeks before working an area, mulch the area with an eight to ten-inch layer of wood chips to help the soil retain moisture and regain structure.

2. Use a pickax to break up the soil to the depth of 10 inches and work in composted organic material.

3. Avoid working the soil after a rain or when the ground is wet because the soil will ball up into unwieldy clumps.

4. Work in sand or perlite to create more pore space for aeration and drainage. Beware of adding too much sand; the soil becomes like concrete. Ideally, the soil should have roughly fifty percent pore space with minerals and organic matter filling in the rest.

5. When not growing plants, sow a cover crop of legumes to reduce weed germination, prevent erosion, and help water penetrate deeply into the soil. A legume cover crop provides plant matter that can be turned back into the soil or mowed, leaving the plant’s bio mass  in place. Legumes fix the nitrogen in the soil that will nourish the plants of the kitchen garden.

6. Repeat all of the above steps annually and dig, turn, rake, and water. Over time, the soil should support healthy roots of plants and give you a robust kitchen garden that will provide many tasty vegetables and culinary herbs.

A healthy garden visually delights

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If you enjoy reading cozy mysteries and are interested in gardening/farming topics, keeping bees and chickens, or creating delicious recipes from heirloom vegetables and herbs, check out my Henny Penny Farmette series. All are available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other traditional and online bookstores everywhere.

Coming 9/27/17

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As a member of the grow-your-own-food movement, I pore over seed catalogs this time of year to search for heirloom vegetables that I want to grow on my farmette. If you’ve ever been inspired by the heirlooms (and not just tomatoes) displayed at a farmer’s market, you know what I mean.

Some wonderful heirlooms have fallen out of favor over the years and through generations. That’s a shame for those of us interested in maintaining the widest possible plant diversity. Gardeners often can find lots of heirloom tomatoes such as Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, and the “blue” tomatoes, including Indigo Apple. However, finding a great variety of heirloom vegetable seedlings might not be as easy as locating the tomatoes. That’s where rare seeds come in to play.

Determinate and indeterminate vines produce loads of heirloom tomatoes

Seed companies that offer myriad heirloom varieties of vegetables and herbs send out their catalogs around mid-January each year. But their seed offerings can be perused and purchased online as well. Some of my favorite seed companies and their websites include:

Territorial Seed Company, http://www.territorialseed.com/
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, http://www.rareseeds.com/
Heirloom Seeds, http://heirloomseeds.com
Sustainable Seed Company, http://sustainableseedco.com/
Annie’s Heirloom Seeds, http://www.anniesheirloomseeds.com/
High Mowing Organic Seeds, http://www.highmowingseeds.com/
Eden Brothers Seed,nhttp://www.edenbrothers.com/store/heirloom_seeds.htm
Victory Seeds,http://www.victoryseeds.com/main_vegies.html

The heirloom Anaheim pepper has plenty of sizzle

I’ve already removed empty cell packs, potting soil, and ice cream sticks(for plant labels) and placed them on the patio in preparation for starting my own seedlings from seed.

Once the seeds are planted in the cells, I’ll nurture along the seedlings until they are ready to go in the garden (after all chance of frost has passed). Then, Mother Nature will take over. I’ll enjoy sampling new varieties and saving seeds from those I want to grow again.

Up at seven o’clock today meant I caught the sunrise while letting the chickens out of the hen house to forage around the farmette in frigid temperatures.

Basted turkey is ready to slice

I got a good head start on prepping the turkey today. I popped it into the oven by 7:30 a.m. before starting the other side dishes like cornbread stuffing, butternut squash with cranberries and cinnamon-spiced nuts, and the other vegetable and appetizers.

The pumpkin pie is made. I only have to make homemade whipped cream for a dollop on top. Last night, I whipped out two versions of cranberry relish–the traditional stove-top relish and the other made with fresh cranberries.

Cubes of butternut squash with dried cranberries and cinnamon-spiced almonds and just a hint of honey for a little sweetness

The fresh cranberry relish was exceedingly easy to make–two small pippin apples and an orange right from my backyard tree, plus three cups of freshly washed cranberries. I washed the apple and orange, cored the apple and removed the seeds from the orange. Then I just pulsed everything together in a food processor, poured it all into a glass jar and put it in the fridge.

So all the food goes into the car around lunchtime. We’ll serve it at my daughter’s home where the rest of our family will gather together to give thanks for our blessings. We’ll pray for those far from home and those without a home and the less fortunate on our planet.

Some have ordered my novel,  A BEELINE TO MURDER, for me to sign. I’ll give them jars of lavender honey as a thank you.

God bless you, my readers. Happy Thanksgiving.

For more tips on farming and beekeeping, plus delicious recipes, check out my newest mystery–A BEELINE TO MURDER. See, http://tinyurl.com/p8d6owd

Every story needs a setting, a world in which something happens. For my cozy mysteries, I didn’t set out to create a new world for my coterie of characters, I just appropriated details of the life I am living as a farmette dweller.

Spring beekeeping involves rescuing swarms, which can be quite dramatic

Daily chores on our Henny Penny Farmette provide plenty of fodder for my fictional stories. Our daily activities include chicken care, garden and orchard work, beekeeping, cooking and preservation of vegetables and fruits, renovating the antiquated farm house, fixing sheds, and building fences and retaining walls.

Stories need a sense of verisimilitude for readers to suspend disbelief and join the fictional journey. Drawing upon my real-life experiences, I can easily integrate my adventures in my books. And not only my activities, but also experiences of my architect husband who is ever-occupied with making our old house more liveable.

In this 1953 photo, our little house sat in a great, big field with not much around it; the dwelling faced Mount Diablo (still does) and the Delta and great central valley lie to the northeast

The tax assessor told me that our dwelling might have been a mining shack in the late 1940s (we live near Mt. Diablo and Lime Ridge where mining and rock quarrying were once important industries). We’ve also been told that our little house might have later served as a farm home (we live less than two miles from designated agricultural farmland). The structure desperately needed updating when we found it almost five years ago. But as settings go, the house and farmette work great.

Creating a pattern for the kitchen counter back splash

We have since used recycled and reclaimed materials, sale items at big box DIY stores, and gifts (like lumber, stone, and windows/doors) from friends who do demolition on estates. We’ve visited companies that sell granite and asked for permission to take broken stone from their dumpsters. Thus, we’ve created a lovely bathroom floor with found materials that we’ve cut and sanded.

Light from a crystal chandelier dances off the new granite counter, but the floors were not yet installed when this photo was taken

Of course, the exact details of our daily activities may not make their way into my stories, but versions of them sometimes do. At the very least, such activities inform my storytelling. I daresay the chickens and bees serve important roles in my mysteries. And each new day brings new adventures, from foxes showing up to skunks and raccoons raiding our fruit and nut trees.

Lately, a new chicken showed up on our property (a heritage chicken that had the ability to fly over my neighbor’s fence). She’s been staying here ever since. Wild turkeys often take a path through the property and once or twice a gorgeous stallion named Romeo and its owner ride by and say hello. Such events can add textural details to the setting of a story.

Eating fresh means growing it yourself or purchasing the food for your table direct from its source. California farmers’ markets offer a dazzling variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts directly from local area farmettes, orchards, small and commercial farms, specialty growers, and ranchers.

Red pomegranates are available September through November

Many fruits and vegetables are certified organic. That means the farmers and growers are registered and in compliance with state and local regulations designed to protect consumers and ensure food quality and safety.

Fuji apple tree

Annually, California produces nearly half of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and vegetables, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. See http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/ 

The San Joaquin Valley of central California has earned the moniker of the World’s Food Basket since its crops account for 12.8 percent of all agricultural products from California.

California produces 88% of the nation’s strawberries

In fact, California leads the nation in production of figs, dates, plums, melons, nectarines, peaches (Clingstone and Freestone), pears (Bartlett), persimmons, raspberries, and apricots.

California apricots are available May through July

In the Golden State, you can find dozens of types of fruits offered at 350 farmers’ markets (some open all year long). For a list by county, see http://www.pcfma.com/markets.php.

From the Pacific Coast Farmer’s Market Association, the following list (recapped below) reveals when these fruits are in season in California.

Apples: January-February; August-December

Apricots: May-July

Blackberries: June-September

Blueberries: May-August

Boysenberries: June-August

Cantaloupe: May-September

Cherries: April-June

Citrus: January-March; November-December

Dates: September-December

Figs: September-November

Grapes: August-November

Kiwi: January-April; October-December

Melons: June-September

Nectarines:May-September

Peaches: May-September

Pears: September-December

Persimmons: September-November

Plums: May-October

Pluots: May-September

Pomegranates: September-November

Prunes: May-September

Raspberries: May-October

Strawberries: February-November

Watermelon: July-September

These locally grown chilies turn red when ripe

California is especially blessed with rich soil and that lovely Mediterranean climate with the near-perfect amount of heat and chilling that our agricultural products require.

Just picked from the tree, fresh Elberta peaches

You might not know that Northern California leads the nation in production of nearly three dozen different commodities, including artichokes, strawberries, peaches, and walnuts. Many products can be found at local farmers’ markets. See http://www.pcfma.com/

Our state offers more than 350 farmers’ markets and many are year-round. With growing interest in healthy eating as advocated by First Lady Michelle Obama, whose position about the importance of healthier food for kids and their families has been highly publicized, community participation in local farmers’ markets is growing.

Ripe cherries can be eaten fresh, made into preserves, or mixed with oranges for a marmalade

Buy fresh and buy local. I love that adage because in practice your dollars spent at farmers’ markets or in direct purchases from farms preserves our  farmlands, local growers, and small businesses selling locally grown fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts, and citrus.

Bowls of citrus and persimmons

The Pacific Coast Farmers’ Market Association has produced a comprehensive listing of agricultural products available in our area for each month of the year. I’ve recapped the list of vegetables here. The fruit and berries will be the subject of a future blog.

Asian Vegetables: January-December

Asparagus: March-June

Beans:  January-December

Broccoli: January-December

Brussels sprouts: January-March; September-December

Carrots: January-December

Cauliflower: January-June; October-December

Celery: January-December

Corn: July-September

Cucumber: May-November

Eggplant: May-October

Garlic: January-December

Lettuce: January-December

Mushrooms: January-December

Onions: January-December

Parsnips: January-May; October-December

Peas: April-October

Peppers: May-November

Potatoes: January-December

Spinach: January-December

Squash (summer): May-September

Squash (winter): January-February; October-December

Sweet Potatoes: January; September-December

Tomatoes: May-October

Red onions grown from sets laid onto the dirt and barely covered with soil produce bountiful crops

Help preserve California’s rich heritage of plant diversity. Support your local farmers’ market by buying fresh, often just-picked vegetables and fruits, the result of our long growing season and rich soil. You’ll be supporting our state’s farmers and growers.