If you remember from earlier this week, I got a nice spinach harvest. I was digging the trench for the asparagus and the over wintered spinach was in the way. I probably had to pull a little over half of it out to dig the trench. It was sad to do it, but it did get me a harvest.
I got 8.5 oz of spinach.
It made two meals for me. The first was a salad for lunch one day with homemade honey mustard dressing (using my homegrown garlic). The second was cooked with a bit of balsamic vinegar on it. The chicken in the salad photo was a really yummy smoked chicken breast that I bought last fall from the farmer's market to stock up.
Currently I have two pounds of hamburger, two whole chickens, three double chicken breasts, and two more of the smoked chicken breasts (just one breast each, not a double one). This week we will get a quarter of a pig to add to that (though I've been told the smoked things will take a couple of weeks). A friend of my townhouse mates is a farmer and the pig is from her. I occasionally get her eggs (which are better than the free range eggs at the farmers market). This is the second time I've gotten meat from her. In January she had two extra chickens she was trying to get rid of, so I bought them. My husband called them gamey, but OK. I thought they were delicious, but I guess I had wild birds growing up. My dad hunted and the birds my mom raised had a large pen to roam in. And I'm guessing this farmer's birds are very free ranged birds.
Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.
The spinach is a nice harvest and that salad looks absolutely scrumptious! I am in the same position with my overwintered spinach in that the unusually cold weather we have been having for weeks on end has stalled out the spinach such that it is just now starting to "wake up" and produce some harvestable baby spinach leaves. Sadly it is doing it so late that I am needing to yank them out soon to make way for the tomato bed that is destined to go in that spot. Frustrating!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful spinach! We have finished our current batch of homegrown meat - sadly, not homegrown by us. It is so tasty! My 15 year old son is planning on raising some meat birds in the fall. He sold his free range egg business a few months ago. I'm hankering to get some chicks again - just a few for the family's needs this time.
ReplyDeleteOh yum, some fresh spinach! We have only one package of frozen spinach left from last year. I have to plant spinach in the cold frames this fall so we have some in the winter or spring.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, my overwintered spinach didn't fair very well because of the field mice but my spring sown spinach should be ready to harvest in a week or so.
ReplyDeleteYours looks great though!
Spinach looks great. The spinach that I overwintered in the cold frame is starting to bolt. I guess I better harvest the leaves that it does have before they are too far gone.
ReplyDeleteMy relatives on my mother side live in very rural area. When we visit them we usually are serve with chicken dishes that have just been slaughtered the time we arrived at their home. Nice spinach harvest Daphne!
ReplyDeleteTht's a tasty looking meal! Funny you mention about the taste of the chicken as we just wrote in our Southern Fried Chicken post about how today's factory-farmed chicken (which includes organic factory farming) is so tasteless.
ReplyDeleteMy overwintered spinach is bolting already, but I have some spring planted for backup. We get free range chickens every month from our meat CSA. They have a lot more taste than the usual birds. It would be hard for me to go back to the CAFO kind now. I think the spinach for asparagus trade will be worth it when the asparagus is grown!
ReplyDeleteI didn't even know that chicken could taste gamey. Doesn't chicken just taste like... chicken? :-) No, I guess I can imagine that home-raised chickens' flavors are much different from commercially sold chickens. Yay for another edible harvest!
ReplyDeleteI am so wanting a fresh spinach salad. I could have had one last night, but I didn't think fish emulsion dressing would be very palatable, LOL! I should have picked some before I sprayed.
ReplyDeleteThe smoked chicken salad look so yummy. I'm waiting for my overwintered spinach to bolt any day now, for some reasons I cannot get spring spinach seeds to sprout for me, seems like fall is the only time I can grow them.
ReplyDeleteAnd a nice little harvest it is too. Sounds like a delicious meal.
ReplyDeleteSmoked chicken with homegrown spinach: YUMMY! I don't grow spinach...just chard...I think I'll add a bit of spinach to the garden...your's is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI haven't had fresh spinach in so long! And I don't have the space for it in my little balcony garden, so it'll be a while yet until I can grow some again.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to buy frozen, either, so I'm making do with chickweed from the forest as a replacement.
That salad looks yummy!
ReplyDeleteJoining in late today. Your spinach looks lovely- wish I could find a local and humane source for meat around here. SOunds like you've got something good there!
ReplyDeleteSalad looks delish. I'm going to raise some meat chickens and it's frustrating that nearly all meat birds are the Cornish Cross eating machines. There are alternatives (Freedom Ranger chickens)but starting out I don't want to raise 25 chicks.
ReplyDeleteI have spinach envy! For some reason I have a hard time growing spinach. Maybe I can't my timing right. I only got 1 (overwintered) spinach out of all the seeds I sowed last fall.... and it was all chewed up by slugs. But, I still ate it and it was yummy!
ReplyDeleteOops! I meant to link to my indoor lettuce plant: http://www.mysuburbanhomestead.com/happy-indoor-lettuce-plant-produce-home-gardens-tastes/
ReplyDeleteHello Daphne, I have been waiting for this monda to show off my first harvest that I sowed during winter..
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see your spinach, I am a first time gardener and my hubby told me the spinach might have gotten curl leaf lol , I told him it is suppose to be like that and then I doubted myself but it's good and delicious :)
Hello Daphne, I have been waiting for this monda to show off my first harvest that I sowed during winter..
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see your spinach, I am a first time gardener and my hubby told me the spinach might have gotten curl leaf lol , I told him it is suppose to be like that and then I doubted myself but it's good and delicious :)
That smoked chicken sounds great! I think there is a smokehouse stand at the Olympia Farmer's Market ... I'm going to have to check that out...
ReplyDeleteNo harvest for me due to circumstances beyond my control....
I noticed the way you inventoried your meat supply and described your suppliers. That's unique! I can tell how carefully you choose your suppliers. That's very exciting, because we do too. I'll be sure to make it a part of our blog like yours. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteWell since you *had to* pull the spinach, that looks like a delicious way to "get rid of it"! Nom, nom, nom...
ReplyDeleteI can't wait until I get a big pile of spinach like you! Mine is almost showing its little sprout for the second leaves. Once those come, it's only a matter of weeks until I'll be picking my own! Meanwhile, slim Harvest Monday pickin's in my garden - salad burnet is what I got, herbed vinegar is what I made.
ReplyDeleteLaura, My spring spinach is slow this year since it was late getting in. I hope it is out in time for my tomatoes which go into the garden in may.
ReplyDeleteMelissa, How nice to have a son that does that. The rest of my family just hates physical work and hates to get their hands dirty. I swear they aren't my kids.
Robin, I have two packets of chard still. They will be gone very soon. Then I'll just have canned stuff left.
Thomas, my spring spinach has a few weeks left to go before it is ready to harvest. It just came up.
Emily, Wow bolting already? I guess in a cold frame they can get pretty hot at times.
Diana, all my chicken now gets frozen and stored. I never get fresh anymore.
foodgardenkitchen, it is tasteless. I love the taste of chicken broth made from those chickens. It is just so good.
villager, I think the trade will be good too, but right then it was hard to pull all the healthy spinach out. I knew I was going to have to do it too. I was hoping the crowns wouldn't get here until may so I would have more harvests.
Thyme, they do taste very very different, but yes they all taste like chicken.
Granny, I can see fish and spinach, but fish emulsion and spinach yuck!
Mac, that is why I chit my seed before planting. Otherwise it just never comes up. I'm thinking if you plant it in the late fall though it will come up in the spring. I wonder if I should try that next year.
ReplyDeleteOttawa Gardener, thanks
Lynda, I love chard too. It is such a good workhorse in the garden. I likes the cold; it likes the heat. It is just works.
Ivynettle, I've never had chickweed.
Katrina, thanks
Barbie, it is hard to find around here too. The chickens are ground beef are easy as you can get them at the farmers market. But you can't get any fresh meat, which is hard on me for cooking. We only have two people and they pack for 4 or 6 people. Always frozen. I've talked with the farmer about that, but she claims that it is just too expensive to package in small quantities. No one would buy it. Ah well. I've become very good at barely dethawing a double chicken breast and cutting the frozen meat off and then refreezing the one I'm not using.
Gardenvariety-hoosier, Those birds can barely stand on their own feet when they get big too. It seems so sad. I'm happy to have a good source of chicken meat as I can't raise them here for slaughter. They did make it legal to have hens for eggs, but slaughtering on property is illegal still.
Sherry, The slugs are hard to deal with. This year the garden is slug free, but not the rock wall garden. It got a snail invasion. I'm sure by the end of this year I'll have slugs and snails all through it all, but it is nice for once not having them. It is the one good thing about the new yard. Nothing is here yet.
Vegetable Garden Cook, I think I have the link fixed for you.
Andrea, I've never had issues with diseases in my spinach. It lives for such a short time. Insects yes, but diseases have yet to take hold.
ReplyDeleteDeb Fitz, it was delicious
Jody, I did the inventory because I had just cleaned out and defrosted my freezer so the pig will have a place to go. I always wonder how much to stock up on each year. So I inventory what I buy and what I have left over at times. The blog is the only place it won't disappear.
Just Jenn, it was
Really Rose, My spring spinach is just starting to get its first true leaves. I can't wait for that to be ready. I'll be eating spinach every day for a while. I'll probably freeze some too for the winter if I get a lot. I certainly seeded a lot.
Your salad looks wonderful. I can't wait until my lettuce and spinach are ready to harvest. I've been looking on several of the blogs and I might break down and build myself a cold frame.
ReplyDelete