As you may have realized, the Fair Hills Farm website has undergone quite a change.  We were having considerable problems with our yahoo site, and so we changed over a few weeks ago.  In the process, we have super simplified everything, and at this point, this particular page is mostly a blog.  We have plans to expand gradually, but it will take a bit of time because my web person (daughter Amanda) has a lot going on.    A lot of information we had on the other site is no longer here, including some earlier blogposts.  I will try to retrieve them or re-write some of them, such as the one with the horseradish recipe.  I am currently working on my e-book, Nurturing The Generations, and making it into a study guide with recipes, and worksheets, etc.   This is going on while I am tending the garden, cleaning out and organizing the house (which is really a perpetual job, isn’t it?) and carrying our 9th baby, which is due around December 5th, the Lord willing!  We are all excited and delighted, and I keep thinking of things to add to the e-book.  I hope to add a section on the joys of being an older mom (since I am 46).  I really am enjoying being pregnant, which I have not always done in the past.  I think as you get older, the surge in hormones is such a delight to your body that you really feel better than when you did as a younger person.  It seems that way for me, at least.  I marvel at how the Lord God in His awesome plans can do the most wonderful things in allowing women the privilege of bringing forth life, by His hand and with His help.  He is so worthy of praise!

We have been enjoying some wonderful dishes from our garden.  Last night we had a meal that consisted of a grass-fed beef roast, mashed potatoes and cauliflower,  fresh zucchini and onion gently simmered on the stove and seasoned with butter and sea salt,  fresh tomato relish, and homemade bread.  I think the tomato relish is my favorite way to eat tomatoes, and it goes so wonderfully with practically everything.  If you have never heard of this dish, I will share with you how we make it.   I was telling my husband that I never had any such thing until I ate it at his grandparent’s house, perhaps 24-25 years ago.  He told me he thought it was just a family recipe, but I am certainly going to include it in Nurturing The Generations.  Very simply, you cut up 4-5 fresh tomatoes, 1 onion, 1-2 cayenne peppers (sliced open, with seeds removed, then chopped).  Add to this some sea salt to taste and a dash of raw apple cider vinegar (or plain white vinegar if that is all you have on hand).  Mix well and let sit for a few minutes so the flavors blend.  This is a spicy recipe, but not too hot.  Even my four year old daughter likes this!  I will have Abigail down load some pictures (she is my photo person!) so you can see what it looks like.

Another simple recipe for a delicious raw, fresh garden food, is cucumbers in sour cream with dill.  We just wash our cucumbers and then slice them up (3 or 4 of them), add a little raw onion chopped as well, and then toss with a few tablespoons of sour cream.  To this add some dill weed and sea salt, and voila, another dish that I think my children could eat forever.  One interesting thing to note is that cucumbers, watermelons and cantalope contain a wonderful amino acid, citrulline,  which is a precursor to human growth hormone that the body makes naturally.   These have anti-aging and rejuvinating properties.  Citrulline is also found in walnut seedlings, flaxseed, and in the milk protein casein.  Flaxseed is another thing we consume in our house – I put it freshly ground in our bread dough, and sometimes we eat it freshly ground mixed into some fruit juice.  It is very nourishing.

If anyone has questions for me, please e-mail me at info@fairhillsfarm.com  ~ I hope everyone is having a good summer and may the Lord bless and keep each one of you!

Christine

Tomato Relish

Cucumbers in Dill Sauce

Beth with the chickens in our backyard

4 year old Beth in the Bradford pear tree in our front yard

3 year old Benjamin with Rex in our front yard

New Flower Garden

Other side of the Flower Garden

Flower Garden

Path in the Flower Garden

Today we worked outside planting lettuce, fertilizing the roses and fruit trees, and treating the yard with a natural fertilizer from Gardens Alive. We also turned the soil over in the garden beds and I applied an organic fertilizer that was derived from poultry manure, bloodmeal, and potash. I need to get some lime as well. Our soil tends to be acidic which is good for the blueberries, but not so good for the rest of the garden produce and field grasses.

A book I started reading back in December is by Steve Solomon and called, Gardening When It Counts. The subtitle is “Growing Food in Hard Times.” This is a very practical book. In the book’s introduction, Solomon writes about the “coming hard times.” Although the book was published in 2005, he sensed that with the price of oil going higher and higher, and the housing bubble on the verge of bursting, that an economic crisis was just around the corner. It appears he as well as many others, was right.

Solomon gardens because he wants to grow much of what his family eats. He started a seed business called Territorial Seed Company back in 1979. He ran his mail order seed business from his 5 acre homestead and grew and tested and ate the produce from the seeds he sold. He subsequently wrote several gardening books on intensive gardening. He also began experimenting with row gardening in such a way so as to not need irrigation. That is to say, he tried gardening the old – fashioned way and basically let the rain do all the watering. He found that one could actually grow a garden without having to use so much water, which is what one usually has to do with intensive, raised-bed gardening. He found that even in places that receive limited rainfall, you could still have a productive garden. The book he wrote on this subject is Waterwise Vegetables, which is now out of print. He now lives in Australia and gardens using his own method of semi-intensive beds and plant spacing which allows the growth of the plants to mature using less water. In short, he has figured out how to grow the most nutritious and productive vegetables using minimal resources. He has a fantastic natural fertilizer recipe, tells the reader how to make all kinds of compost, and explains how to start a garden with the barest of means, and then how to enrich even the poorest soil. I have to say that if I could only have one book on gardening, I would have this one. It is actually one of the best ones I have ever read. It is not fancy and there are not any pretty color photos (though I sure would like to see what his current place looks like), but there are helpful diagrams and 323+ pages of pure gardening wisdom. You can start knowing nothing about what you are doing and probably actually grow a nice garden in a year’s time, just going on what this man tells you.

So I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what a garden really needs and how to grow a productive one. Get your copy now while you still have a little time before you need to get those plants in the ground! I got mine at Amazon.com.

Blessings to all,

Chris