Baking Delicata Squash

Delicata squash - one of our favorites!

Mmmm, we baked some of our Delicata squash last night. Boy was it delicious! here's how we prepared it.

Delicata skins are quite thin and tasty so we always wash them well so we can eat them once they're baked. Preheat oven to 375 - 400F degrees

Slice the squash open the long way and scoop out the seeds.

The seeds are probably too small to be worth baking. We just put them in our compost and the mice enjoy finding them.

Lightly oil the bottom of a shallow baking pan. This will make it much easier to wash later.

Spread butter or salted oil on the inside of the squash. This pic shows about how much to use on each one.

...and place them in the pan face down and cover with tin-foil - this helps keep the moisture in so the squash stays moist during baking.

Bake for 40 minutes (until you can easily poke a fork into them).

Take the squash out of the oven, remove tin-foil and turn them face-up and put them back in the oven and bake for another 10-15 min till they start to brown a bit.

Enjoy!

We grow a variety of bush Delicata. Here's a row of them.

Delicata are ripe (or cured) when the skin is too hard to dent with your fingernail (this is true of all winter-squash). Here's are three crates we harvested in 2017. They store for several months if kept in a cool, dry place - out of the direct sun.

It Takes a Village...Gratitude and update

It's been a beautiful spring this year. Though much of eastern Oregon is experiencing severe drought, the Willamette Valley, where we live, has been receiving adequate rainfall, spaced nicely apart. This keeps the grass growing (a major source of mulch and compost-building) and has meant that we spend less time hand-watering our outside crops which is especially crucial when they're first sown or transplanted.

March in the Ark greenhouse.

May in the Sunship greenhouse. Scarlet runner beans (left) were seeded in January and now (mid-June) are already loaded with beans!

Though we're in a bit of a lull now between the spring greens (lettuce, kale and such) and summer's bounteous, heat-loving crops, we've still managed to fill six CSA boxes per week, feed ourselves and our volunteers and still been able to donate a surplus of over 180 pounds of vegetables to food charities in our area. Once the summer bounty comes on, the number will go way up!

Chris, transplanting clusters of bunching onions.

Our largest greenhouse, the Sunship, had the honor of hosting a litter of three baby bunnies last month. One of our volunteers was startled by the mulch moving just inches from where he was preparing a bed for planting. They've already left the nest just two weeks after we discovered them. Hopefully the neighborhood cats won't find them. The wild rabbits have never been a problem in our garden as they seem to prefer eating the clover in our lawns to any domesticated veggies we grow.

Three baby bunnies the first day we found them nested in the mulch in our greenhouse.

Three weeks later, we spotted this one near our wood-shed, a week after s/he left the nest. We've seen another one that likes to hide under the scarlet runner beans in the greenhouse where s/he was born.

We have birds and butterflies and other pollinators galore. Our Showy Milkweed patches continue to expand and though we've yet to see any Monarch butterflies (for which they are a host plant), there are plenty of other pollinators (including hummingbirds) that seem to enjoy the flowers' sweet scent.

Milkweed started from seed four years ago is now naturalized in three places on our land and comes back each year. A favorite of many pollinators - including hummingbirds.

There's a saying from African tribal peoples that "It takes a village to raise a child". Here at the Sharing Gardens, it "takes a village," to grow the food, provide habitat for wildlife and a sanctuary to those people who visit here for respite from the hubbub of day-to-day life. It has been our goal all along to demonstrate a model of "mutual generosity",  where "sharing" is an experience of reciprocity; of giving and receiving, but not everyone is in a position to be generous. Though some folks are primarily at the receiving end of the gardens, there are others who primarily give and some for whom the giving and receiving happen more or less equally. By everyone doing what they can do, this keeps the project sustainable over time. (LINK: Overview and Benefits of the Sharing Gardens Model).

As Anne Frank has been purported to say, "No one has ever become poorer by giving." It has actually been our experience that generosity has increased our sense of abundance and prosperity. 

We've received $2,190 in cash donations since our last gratitude-post in February. Thank you to the South Benton Food Pantry (LINK), John and Donna Dillard, Karen and Stan Salot and Cathy Rose.

We are grateful to our small but mighty volunteer crew: Donn and Marilyn Dussell, Jim, Cindy and Adri Kitchen, Rook Stillwater, and Becky Bauer. There's still room for a few more folks on our crew. For more info, CLICK HERE.

Donn, tilling a bed for squash to grow in.

Marilyn loves to mow!

Jim's our other champion mower. Just look at all that luscious mulch!

Llyn and Cindy always look forward to gardening together each week. Here we are planting lettuce and onions.

Adri, dead-heading the calendula flowers.

Rook, digging compost, coffee-grounds and wood-ash into the garden beds.

Becky, starting seeds.

Our collection site for bagged leaves and grass clippings continues to be very successful. This is a clear example of reciprocal generosity: the Sharing Gardens provides free re-used leaf bags and a free site for people to dispose of their yard-waste (which would otherwise end up in burn-piles or the land fill) and we receive as much organic matter as we can use to mulch and feed our gardens. (LINK: Create your own 'veganic' potting mix).

Our collection site for leaves and grass-clippings in front of our wonderful yellow house.

A special thank you to our friend John Kinsey who generated hundreds of pellet-bags of compost for us over the winter and continues to bring us coffee grounds from a local drive-through cafe' every week. Thanks also to Lua who brought us a load of leaf mold (from Harry McCormack at Sunbow Farms - one of the founders of Oregon Tilth and a pioneer in the organics movement) to enhance our garden's fertility.

John Kinsey with garlic "seeds".

Just a fraction of the "tea" John makes from his worm-compost. We use it to feed our plants.

Firewood is our only source of heat, and our primary means of cooking and drying our laundry in the winter. This year we are feeling especially grateful for the community's generosity regarding firewood. We have received donations of wood "rounds" from David and Jo Crosby (who had a couple of oak trees fall down in a bad storm two years ago). Bob and Cheryl Ballard brought us a load of fir to be split. Thank you to the Dussells for the loan of your splitter too!

Chris, splitting firewood.

We are grateful to our five and a half CSA subscribers and to David Roux and Dallice Drake for their $250 scholarship donation which covers most of the second half of the membership to a low-income family who is committed to eating healthy food to stay cancer-free after the Mom contracted an aggressive case several years ago. (She's been cancer-free for over a year now and attributes some of her success to receiving a CSA box last year as well.) Thanks to Catherine Henry who perused our Wish List and keeps finding items we can use.

Thanks to Communities Magazine and Chris Roth, editor - for publishing our article on Veganic Soil Fertility with Local Materials - in their latest issue on "Ecological Culture" Whatever your living situation, whether in a large community or small household, you can adapt these methods to grow food with a lighter footprint on the planet. (LINK to order a copy of the whole issue on Ecological Culture ($5.00 for digital copy. $10 for digital copy and hard copy mailed to you in the USA - see drop down menu) LINK to Global Ecovillage Network - USA - publishers of the magazine.

And last, but not least: thanks to all our unsung partners in garden abundance: the pollinators, bug- and slug-eaters (birds) and the billions of microbes and soil organisms for whom without their contributions, the gardens would soon cease to exist.

If you feel inspired to leave a comment, please do so below so everyone can enjoy it. Thanks.

Saving pea seeds- a low tech method to prevent Pea Weevle damage

Saving Pea Seeds: an updated version of this post can be found here: Saving pea seeds - a low tech method to prevent Pea Weevle damage

Here in the Pacific NW, and in many other parts of the world, varieties of an insect called the Pea Weevil (Sitona lineatus) can destroy the peas you are saving as seed crop. As the peas mature in the pod, the weevil lays an egg in each pea. If you store these pea-seeds as-is, by spring time each one will have a tiny hole bored by the larvae, from the inside out, destroying the seeds' ability to sprout and grow. A year ago, we had a whole stash of our pea seeds destroyed from these weevils and we didn't want it to happen again.

Signs of pea weevils

An on-line search revealed no low-tech solutions for seed-savers. We read about research to create genetically modified seeds (GMO's) and super-cold flash-freezing done with dried ice. The dry-ice idea got Chris to thinking so we decided to experiment. We took our whole stash of pea seed (about six cups) and put it in an air-tight zip-lock bag, in a regular freezer, way in the back corner, and left it there from August to January (four and a half months). The seeds were fully ripe and dry when we put them in the freezer. (There was evidence that the weevils had already laid their eggs as virtually every seed had a small, brown spot--a sign of their entry point.)

Pea weevil cycle

In early January, we conducted a germination test. We wrapped about 50 seeds in a wet paper towel and kept them moist in a dish for five days. At that time, we counted how many had begun to sprout (about 40) which means they have a germination rate of at least 80%. This is excellent! Then, to be sure that there weren't any pea weevil larvae still dormant in our seed stock, we put about 30 in a tightly sealed plastic bag and left them out at room temperature for two weeks to see if any would hatch. None did. Though it appears we have killed the larvae, we're not taking any chances and we're leaving the pea seeds in our freezer till it's time to start plants this spring.

To save pea seeds, grow them to maturity and leave the pods attached to the pea vines until they are starting to turn tan and shrivel. Strip the pods from the vines and place them in a warm, dry place to finish drying (we lay them out on nursery trays on the top shelf of our garden shed for about a week.) Pop the peas out of their pods, place in freezer-bags (properly labeled with variety of seed and date) in the freezer, way in the back (or bottom)--the coldest spot. Leave them there until you're ready to plant next year's cycle.

If you have comments or anything to add to this post, please do so directly below so everyone benefits from your experience.

Healthy Soil - Healthy People - Healthy Planet! Dr. Zach Bush

Hi Folks - The gardens are really growing beautifully now. We're harvesting spring-greens for the S. Benton Food Pantry and our CSA boxes and busily planting out crops - both inside and outside the greenhouses.

This post features a link to a very important video by an amazing doctor, Zach Bush who details the connections between the health of soil and our physical health.

Over the past thirty years, our food system has become increasingly more toxic at the same time that there have been radical increases in many chronic illnesses. It's only reasonable to assume that many of these disease conditions are the result of depleted soils and ever more toxic chemicals in our environment. Many people have become increasingly dependent on the so-called "health-care" industry (which is often more about "disease-care" if you really look at it!) - seeking health through dependence on pharmaceutical drugs and a woefully misinformed medical establishment rather than taking responsibility for healthy life-style choices. 

This video contains important info that you won't find through the main-stream media or from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization or other main-stream health professionals. We hope you'll take the time to watch the video all the way through. We think you will find this info both informative and inspirational.

 LINK to video: Chemical Farming & The Loss of Human Health - Dr. Zach Bush

Dr. Zach Bush (image: below) is as an MD who specializes in internal medicine and endocrinology, who is also an internationally recognized thought leader on the importance of microbiomes when it comes to health, disease, and nutrition. He’s doing remarkable work to save our planet, and he believes that we still have an opportunity to reverse the damage done and create the most verdant, bio-diverse planet to have ever existed. 

Dr Bush says on his site:“My work is dedicated to the health of humanity and the planet we call home. It is critical that our pursuit of optimal health and longevity begin with an effort toward a collective rise in consciousness such that we would begin to thrive within nature, instead of fighting that nature that is life itself.

If you'd like more info, here is a beautifully written post about Dr Bush's work published on the Natural Blaze news aggregate. It features several other video clips as well.

We've begun sending out CSA boxes of early spring greens!

If you're local and would like to increase your family's consumption of organically-grown fruits and veggies, it's not too late to sign up for a CSA membership. LINK

Our food is slow-grown, without the use of any chemicals. Our gardens not only feed our CSA members and volunteers, and serve two food pantries but we provide habitat for much local wildlife as well. 

 

Last year, members' costs averaged out to be about $2.00/pound for some of the finest, freshest organically grown produce around. Our prices haven't risen in three years though the quality and variety of foods we offer has multiplied. For info about our CSA, here is the LINK.

We're not doctors but we do operate a "farm-acy"!