Piggies Halfway, Fall Garden

Our pigs are halfway to their send off date (mid/end November).  They are about 16 weeks old, when we send them off they will be around 25 weeks old.  At 16 weeks old, we estimate they weigh a little over 100lbs.  If you spread out that weight gain across their whole life, that's like putting on 6.25lbs a week (assuming they start at 0lbs from birth which they don't).
Here are some shots of them enjoying being lazy, nosey and doing what they do best.... digging-

The 2013 piggie clan-

Getting their vitamin D (note: Piggies can sunburn which is one of the reasons they like to cover themselves in mud.  No one thinks elephants are gross for doing it.)-

Digging and finding vitamins and minerals-

Also to create a cool place to lay; nice cool earth-

Piggie kisses-

Though they are very intelligent, piggies don't talk :)... human talk anyway.  Piggies are very vocal though, they grunt and squeal regularly even if nothing is wrong-

If we were keeping a female for breeding I would keep this girl.  She is a good lookin' gilt-

I have to admit I am getting somewhat attached to this one.  She is the smallest and gets picked on, she  also seemingly has a knee problems.  Must reframe from naming her and making her my pet-

Kids enjoy visiting them and throwing them food scraps.  The piggies have had LOTS of vegetable leftovers from the garden.  They seem to love all our root vegetables and their greens the most (second to our sweet corn of course)-

Tangent-  just a reminder how fast time flies.  Look at baby girl just a year ago.  It's crazy how fast they grow.  Even through the challenging days of parenthood I MUST remember to enjoy ALL OF IT.

A quick shot of the garden.... still growing food.  The vines to the left of the drying corn stalks are the sweet potatoes (5 heirloom plants, 1 Georgia Jet).  I assume we will be digging them in the next month once the vines start to die (or before a hard freeze if that happens first)-

We still have turnips, leaf lettuce and beets doing well.  The recent weather has been ideal for them (cool and occasional rains)-

I finally picked my heirloom Calypso Beans (dried beans for soups and such).  They finished drying on the plant, maybe will get one meal worth out of them.

Quinoa update for those interested.  I delayed growing it until next year after multiple attempts to get the seeds to germinate properly.  Quinoa is not hard nor tricky to grow (or so I have read) so I think doing the suggested spring planting will prove to be a better idea.  My guess is the late summer soil was warmer than the seeds prefer.  Only concern is the hot summer days in mid summer here when temperature are in the 90s.  Apparently hot, hot days can stunt the plant.  Its worth a try though.  I also hope to plant 'naked' oats in the garden next year (to make our own steel cut oats)..... and hoping we can add a few meat lambs to our pasture. Yes, I am always dreaming about growing our little operation here.... don't worry my husband is aware. :)

Don't Be An Eggplant Hater

Don't be a hater, they are pretty nice, versatile little vegetables.
Yes I put googly eyes on vegetables....

Who needs Mr. Potato Head...

The above eggplant is obviously a mutant, eggplants are quite lovely looking vegetables-

Though they are a part of the shady nightshade vegetable family (but so are tomatoes and potatoes),  their health benefits are abundant, most notably the antioxidant content in the skin and dietary fiber content.

I admit, I did not eat eggplant myself before I was married.  My husband influenced me to cook with it because he loved eggplant parmesan.  His love for this dish led to us growing it ourselves and then I had no choice but learn to do other things with it.  True and gripping story, I know.

This year has been a good year for eggplant to say the least.  So far we have harvested around 63 eggplants.  I have kept up with the poundage as well so we can compare what that would equal if we would have bought that amount.  (Spoiler alert: I have kept the poundage amounts of everything we have harvested to see how much money growing your own food can save you, blog post about that sometime this fall).

Here is what I have done with the eggplants-

• Roasted with pasta
• Sliced thin, rolled and stuffed with ricotta (good substitution for pasta)
• Grilled with herbs, as a side dish
• Baba ghanoush (roasted eggplant dip, froze many small containers for wraps and such)
• Moussaka (like a greek lasagna, I was surprised that I liked this.  everyone else did as well)
• Eggplant Parmesan
• Roasted with other veggies in balsamic vinegar for wraps (good with hummus)
• Stacks (including tomato, portobello mushroom caps, mozzarella cheese and herb oil)
• Vegetable Lasagna (like regular lasagna with some extra veggies layered in.  my friend Stephanie generously made us one using our eggplant, it was REALLY good)
• Ratatouille (not just a movie, an amazingly delicious French Provencal vegetable stew)

Still planning to try (because there are a ton left in the garden):

• Other varieties of Vegetable Lasagna (freezes well)
• Chop and freeze (as a filler for vegetable soups, stews and chilli.  heard this works well)
• Eggplant pizza

Any other suggestions?

Photo compliments from The Phoenix

Back to Ratatouille.... we watched it one night as a family.  Such a cute movie-

My hope was it would make the kids more excited to try and eat this new dish (it was everyone's first time eating it).  And it worked!  They liked it!  We all loved it!

Notice the empty bowl-

It was a lovely looking dish when assembling.  I used The Harvest Eating cookbook's recipe-

So thats my current mommy rant.  As Daniel Tiger sings to a catchy jingle, "you should try new foods 'cause they might taste go-od."  Sigh, I might need to get out more.

Fixin' Some Stuff

Seems like everything is in need of fixing around here.  That's home ownership I hear.  I recently learned that the Golden Gate Bridge is constantly being painted.  As soon as they finish they just start again.  Maintenance, maintenance....

Speaking of which, our back stairs have been in need of maintenance for some time.  The steps were all rotten and on the verge of breaking.  A few months ago one step finally fell off.  Looks awesome right, combined with all the surrounding overgrowth-

With the recent long weekend Jonathan was able to get to the job (yay! not being sarcastic, he has been busy elsewhere).  Of course, all jobs that daddy does draws some attention.

Cute with his little tools and attentive look.  These pictures are the main reason I felt this repair was worth sharing. :)

Unfortunately he is not a silent helper, always asking questions and "Can I do something?".

He finally resorts to his own imagination-

He did get to help some here, helping read the number on the tape measure (not with the miter saw)-

Progress using the newish 'birthday bench'.  The stair carriage (or stringer, is this the same thing?)-

And done, exciting stuff right-

The rest of the deck is in poor shape as well, but it is not a top priority at the moment.  Someday...

Jonathan also updated his homemade feeding trough from last year-

To a gravity feeder (the existing trough became the bottom part, just added the 'hopper' on top to hold the feed).  It has been working great-

Thinking of adding a motivational message to it?  Like-

-OR-

Did you know that pigs eat less feed when it is constantly available to them?  Proven stuff people, farmers do their research (not referring to us here, we are wanna-be's).  Anyway, I will share more on the pigs later.  They have almost reached their halfway point until.... well, you know.