My dream job.

Anyone who knows me can imagine my excitement when I heard that our local Community Supported Agriculture was hiring for a Lead Farmer Click here to read about the CSA  Yes, I totally freaked!!!....I had to get this job. After all this job description was written for me. Of course, there was that little voice in my head saying "You're crazy....you haven't worked on a CSA before... you'll never get the job."  Regardless, I submitted my resume and I interviewed for the position. Then, after waiting for what seemed like forever I finally received the phone call. I almost laughed when I was told that the job was mine if I still wanted it...This is my dream job...Of course I want it!!!  : )

I've always said if I could garden for a living I'd do it in a heartbeat. (Or part of a living anyway). Most  people think I'm strange but I love digging in the dirt. I love planting seeds, nurturing plants and watching them grow. I especially like sharing the garden bounty with friends, family and the local food bank. And I don't even mind weeding. Need I say more? This job seems like a natural fit for me. And, the fact that the community garden is located in the neighborhood where I grew up makes it even more exciting.

So, you might be wondering what exactly a CSA farmer does. Here are just a few things I will be responsible for at the CSA: crop selection/seed selection, planting, helping with the weekly harvesting, managing the irrigation, equipment and tool maintenance, chicken tending, arranging volunteer labor, and community education. I'm sure there are many more duties that will arise but you get the idea.

I must add that I am both very honored but very nervous to take over where former lead farmer, Caleb Goss left off. Let's just say I have a lot to live up to. There are approximately 30 shareholders that depend on receiving a box of 7-9 different vegetables each week for about 16 weeks. This means timing and succession planting are essential to making sure everyone gets a nice variety of vegetables and herbs....no pressure...lol!

I feel extremely blessed to be given the opportunity to do what I love and I look forward to working with some pretty awesome people.

There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.  ~Mirabel Osler





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Spring Fever!!!

I have a bad case of Spring Fever. I know, it's only January, but I'm not the type of gardener that lets the weather keep me from growing. I simply can't sit around and wait for Spring to get here. (62 days, 5 hours, and 48 minutes...not that I'm counting) Besides, I have a new grow room. Yep, I  upgraded my growing space from the closet to a spare bedroom. My son, Dustin, recently moved out on his own so I decided to turn his bedroom into my plant starting room. It's working great but I will need to add a couple more grow lights soon.

In December I started "a few" herbs and a couple cucumber plants to see how well they would grow indoors and so far, so good. I started Cucino cukes, sweet basil, red basil, cilantro, marjoram, thyme, oregano, lavender, and sage. I usually grow basil and parsley in my windowsill all year round but I wanted to see how much I could actually harvest for drying. I harvested the basil, cilantro, and marjoram several times now but the oregano and thyme are slower growing. That's probably a good thing....sometimes I go overboard when it comes to seeding and then I have a zillion plants to harvest all at once.  : ) 

I hope to gain a couple weeks of grow time with the new set up. The plan is to successively start my herbs, flowers and fussy vegetable plants in the grow room. Some plants are started in February and some in March. Then, near the end of  March, I will fire up the greenhouse and have the cold frames ready. By this time, many of the cole crops will be ready for the cold frames or the garden. The peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and herbs most likely will stay in the greenhouse until the end of May. We will see if the weather cooperates though : )

Happy Growing!!!

Keith's Bent Stick Lager will be ready for New Years Eve

As you know by the earlier post, we have been playing with the carboys again and we whipped out a nice batch of hefeweizen a couple of weeks ago, which was spectacular (my reserve was gone on Christmas Eve). But, we also brewed a European Lager that is intended to be as close to Stella Artois as possible.

Stella was originally brewed in the 1300s as a holiday beer, so it only seemed fitting to bring some to life in Keith's garage this holiday season... plus Keith has one of those beverage coolers that we used to cold ferment the beer, which is the true way to brew an authentic Lager. It was my first time using this method, and so far I am pleased with the results -- with one minor exception.

Look at my last post with the picture of the carboys sitting in the beverage cooler... can you see anything wrong with that picture? Of course, I can see my mistake now, but I missed it completely at the beginning of the fermentation process.

Anyone who understands brewing and proper storage of beer should be able to spot the mistake too. Thankfully, it did not damage the brew too much and there are some people who actually like the added effect that was created.

Anyway, I can't wait to try the finished product, which should be close to done by News Years Eve... we bottled a few in Grolch style bottles to help speed the carbonation... I'll post the pictures of the finished product once it's complete...

Oh, and the name? It is derived from our pseudonyms on the Spokesman Review's Huckleberries Online Blog: Keithincda, Bent, and Stickman...

Here are some pictures on our bottling party yesterday. In the picture above, Stickman is doing the honors of filling the bottles this time.

Let the siphoning begin... 

Capping the 22-ouncers after Stickman filled them up...

Those growler bottles sure hold the beer nicely...

Beering up the Garden a bit...

Sunny tells me its time to balance the blog with a little beer talk now that we are in a dormant season in the garden, so Keith (in Cd'A), Stickman and I got busy with a 20-gallon batch last weekend. We went with a 10-gallon batch of European Lager that we are bottom fermenting in a fridge in Keith's garage for a true Lager. This beer will take longer because it ferments in the 55-58 degree range, where most beers ferment at 65-70 degree range. I think this will be our closest attempt yet a faux Stella Artois...  

The other 10-gallon batch is a German Hefeweizen. This beer should be bottled next weekend, and we should be ready for tasting in Stickman's driveway on Sunday, Dec. 12th. The Lager wont be bottled until at least Christmas weekend. If it is ready by then, we should be able to crack open a few bottles of that beer on New Year's Eve! We'll keep our fingers crossed on that one...

(I'll put up some better pictures once Daisy Girl sends them to me)

And the winners are.....

Here are the results of the great pumpkin weigh-in:

In the family category, we have son-in-law Dan as our 1st place winner. His guess was 162 lbs. Dan, you win $25.00!

Our 2nd place winner (and our youngest winner)  is my great nephew Bradyn. His guess was 172 lbs. Bradyn, you win $10.00!

In our friend's category we have our 1st place winner as the lovely Kerri Thoreson. Her guess was 152 lbs. Kerri, you win the satisfaction of being the closest guess in our friend category : )

Our 2nd place friend winner was Keith Allen. His guess was 167 lbs. Keith, you win the satisfaction of being the 2nd closest guess in our friend's category : )

And the real weight is............. 158 lbs!

Not as big as we had hoped but we doubled in size from last year's pumpkin. I'd say that's not too shabby for our 2nd year of growing them. Next year we will shoot for 200 plus.

Thanks to everyone for participating!!!!

The Weigh In

It has become a fun family tradition to grow giant pumpkins. At the end of the season we have this little contest called "guess the pumpkin weight".  The person closest to the actual weight wins a monetary prize. This year the prize is $25.00 for the closest guess or $30.00 if you are spot on the weight. Last year's largest pumpkin weighed in at 76 lbs which we thought was a decent weight considering we are new at giant pumpkin growing. http://bentsbeergarden.blogspot.com/2009/10/jack-2-before-after.html

I guess we learned some stuff about growing them because this year the pumpkin looks to be at least double the size from last year. For the sake of fairness though, my dad is keeping the pumpkin weight a secret. In order to accurately weigh it he had to drive it through the local landfill scales. This year he placed a "floor" of 150 lbs on the pumpkin because so many guesses were way under the actual weight.

Yes, this is a family game but I consider my blogging friends to be family too....(you just don't get the prize money lol! ) so what's your guess??? Results to be posted on November 12th.

Mushrooms, Remodels, and a little R & R.

 The past several months have been entirely crazy but fun filled. What have we been up to? Well, besides canning our garden vegetables, gardening, working at the farmer's market, participating in barbecue competitions, and catering parties we have also been learning how to grow mushrooms, remodeling our home, and we recently got to go camping too. I hope to get back to the blog world now that things are settling down. Here are a few shots of our recent happenings.


Sonoma Brown Oyster mushroom log.



Ready to harvest!



Son Dustin and my dad installing the new windows!






Our camping destination overlooking beautiful Pend Oreille Lake.



























Update on a successful BBQ season

Overall our BBQ team had a great season considering that we only planned to compete once this year. Starting in May, we began winning right out of the gate. Our team split into teams of two to cook at a judging school, in which the cooks engaged in an amateur competition to supply the meat to train the judges. My team took Grand Champion and my Dad's team took 3rd out 11 teams that participated.

The next competition we cooked was a rib cook off at Tim's Meats also in May. Our team actually split up to compete against each other. I took fourth overall out of 17 teams and Steve and Jana on our team won first place in Spare Ribs.

Then it is was off to McKinley Springs Winery BBQ Showdown in Prosser Washington in June... AGAIN, our team split up with my brother Bobby and I cooking on our own team to make the event a national qualifier. We scored 4th on ribs out of 25 teams and 9th overall.

Later in June, our team finally cooked together -- in the only competition we planned to cook in -- at the Coeur d'Alene Fairgrounds on Father's Day! We scored 5th in chicken and 13th overall out of 29 teams.

Then we had an opportunity to cook with "BBQ Rock star" Harry Soo in Boise, so we packed up and went to Boise in July to cook with some real pros... We wound up taking 6th in Ribs and 13th overall out 27 teams... There were at least 10 of the nations top performing pitmasters at this event. We were jazzed...

We did a couple of amateur events and fun cooks where we always won something, and then finally wrapped up the season cooking at the Tree Top Apple Festival in Yakima earlier this month. We placed 10th in ribs and tied for 10th in chicken out of 70 teams... it was a massive event. We place 24th out of 70 overall. Here are some pictures of the food we turned in at that event:

 Smoked Apple Fritters (done on my Weber):

Smoked Pork Tenderloin and Apple Skewers:

Smoked Chicken:

Spare Ribs:

BBQ Pork:

Smoked Brisket (partial box):

No applesauce this year.

A couple days ago I headed to the family garden in great anticipation. I had been patiently waiting to harvest the McIntosh apples from our 100 year old apple tree for quite some time. Just a few days prior to this, I checked on their ripeness and was thrilled to see they were nearly ready to pick.

When I arrived at the family garden, my dad waved me over and told me he had some bad news. He was getting ready to mow the pasture that morning and made his routine stop at the apple tree to make sure all of the fallen apples were picked up....only there weren't any on the ground. Finding that pretty unusual, he looked up in the tree only to find it empty...literally, there were no apples left. Yep, we were robbed.

At first I was angry...who would do this? I calmed down after a bit and realized (with the help of my family's positive outlook) that perhaps someone else needed those apples more than we did. There will be no homemade applesauce this year but I have much more to be thankful for.... my family.... and all the memories that we have. You see, the apple tree has stood the test of time just as our family's love for one another. And the tree keeps on giving just as our family does for one another. So all is well and I'm at peace with the fact that someone took our apples. After all, there is always next year : )

On a side note: I blogged about our apple tree a while back and talked about its significance to our family : http://bentsbeergarden.blogspot.com/2010/02/family-tree.html. In the story, I mentioned that my mom used to make applesauce each season. Actually, I failed to mention that my dad also helped my mom with this task. In fact, they would spend countless hours in the kitchen making enough applesauce to last our family all winter long. I loved the cooked apple aroma emanating from our home on a crisp fall day. But I especially loved watching my parents work together....they always had a way to make work seem like fun.

Patience...

An heirloom tomato gone crazy

Cherokee Purples



Cherry Tomatoes



I know, I sound like a broken record but....I'm still blaming the cool weather we had in June for this year's substandard garden performance. The cool weather crops such as broccoli, lettuce, spinach and onions were a huge success. But, for the most part, the warm weather crops like the tomatoes, melons, and eggplant are just now starting to show signs of ripening. This is a good month behind what we normally experience. Granted, we have plucked many cherry tomatoes thus far, but it's really the large Beefsteaks and the Cherokee Purples we want the most and they are taking their sweet time. Optimist and patient person that I am, (ha, ha) I am keeping the faith that even the big guys will ripen before the first frost.

The Rossa Bianca eggplant is slowly but surely growing. This is my first year growing eggplant so it will be a miracle if they actually make it. lol...Regardless, they are quite pretty.

The Tango celery is a success again this year. In fact, this is the second year we won a blue ribbon at the fair with it.  It's amazing how much more flavorful it is compared to store bought celery. I froze some yesterday so that we will have plenty for making soup this winter.

Although, the purple bells are smaller than normal this year at least they are ripening. And...

the purple tomatillos aren't quite purple yet.

The good news is that the temperatures should stay in the 70's range for a few days and that should help things along....Who said patience is a virtue? I say hurry up and ripen tomatoes...I want to preserve some tomato sauce.