HARVEST?

We're not waiting for autumn, Thanksgiving, or any date at all. Febrero, junio, septiembre, doesn't matter! Harvest is ALL YEAR LONG in these parts! From the farm this week, may I proudly present our second ayote squash, patiently awaiting its debut in Mildred's special del almuerzo, Sopa Vegetariana.


And feast your eyes on these TANGERINES (not limes)! You can wait for them to get orangey sweet or use them green in tangy sour refrescos (fruit drinks)!

OK seriously, the weather is balmy all year so it is possible to cultivate and harvest continuously. this is obvious. However there are SEASONS here, and i'm still trying to figure them out. When i arrived here last July, it was HOT. basically summer. easy. Slowly but surely the rain showers increased in length and frequency, by Oct we welcomed La Epoca de Lluvia. again, easy. Come January, I was expecting warming temps, spring-like, and so i began planting seeds. Scarlet Runner Beans to be exact. Turns out, surprise! It's the Windy Season, silly! At first it seemed refreshing, pleasant even. Six weeks later, allow me to reflect:
Serious strong gusts of wind day AND night. Bike riding? challenging to say the least. Sleeping soundly? impossible, as doors and windows and the roof rattle and shake and shiver. Being at the farm? loose dirt in your eyes gets old FAST. Growing pole beans????? sad, sad, amateur mistake. here's hoping the winds will fade before my bean babies reach heights worthy of wind ravage.

My contribution to the ongoing harvest this week: Tons of Kombucha! Our liquor cabinet has been transformed, bottles of booze reused as bottles of 'buch. Did you spot the old Carlo Rossi wine bottle now harboring a fizzy ginger-lemon brew? (see ginger floating in the bottom)


here's a bubbly glass of kombucha de jamaica, a simple infusion of hibiscus tea. DElicious!

La Casita

By popular demand, our house plans! Yes, the place will be ROUND. it will have 3 enormous "entrances"--gates that can be opened to create an airy open ambiance. Two bedrooms around the edge, as well as an open kitchen; and the middle area will serve as living room/dining room/hammock hang. We decided to go with rock, as the quarry is only a few miles down the road, but we are planning to complete part of the inside walls with a homemade cobb/adobe material. And hopefully with lots of helpful hands!!!










Silvio is building a bike-generated water pump, fun! and we're hoping to get a solar panel up there to heat the shower. At some point in the future we want to install a bio-digester, in which somehow the byproduct (gas) of our waste (poop) will fuel a gas stove! I think we also need a composting toilet in a discreet location out on the farm.
anyway, seeing a crew out there actually WORKING on the site is making it seem REAL! although it doesn't look like much at this point...

GOIN' BANANAS!

Where we live in the semi-tropical lowlands of pacific Nicaragua, every season is BANANA SEASON!!!!
Recently though, we've been swimming in them. And they turn quickly here, I guess because of our high temperatures. Sooo, I have been creatively transforming the plentiful yellow bounty into edible treats.

The pic does not capture the fantastic pinky-orange color of my


Banana Papaya Smoothie
4 frozen bananas (our bananas are small)
1 cup frozen papaya
1 Tbsp ground flax seeds
1 cup of plain kefir
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of cinnamon
Blend it up for breakfast!

My chocolate chip banana bread didn't last long enough for fotos....but I did make sure to document my first ever Banana Cream Pie! I was shooting for a simple graham cracker crust; unfortunately it's not that simple to find graham crackers in Diriamba. Instead I crunched up a bunch of these generic vanilla-like galletas. The crust turned out to be tasty and even held
together ok. (1.5 cups of crunched cookies + 1/2 cup sugar + 3TBSP of butter=easy crust)
I found a simple Banana Cream Pie recipe on Allrecipes.com: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Cream-Pie-I/Detail.aspx
I was quite proud:









Next I am eying "Chocolate-Banana Enchiladas"!! For now I will have to buy cocoa, one day I'll have homemade chocolate from the farm. When/if these enchiladas happen, I'll make sure to add pics of our cacao saplings that I started in December.

Upside-Down Tomatoes

Checking in on my tomato experiment, 2 months now growing upside-down in buckets in my backyard. The idea is that tomato-lovers without ample cultivation space can still grow their favorite fruit. And I read online claims that in the bucket, the tomato plants are less susceptible to pests and disease.this is what I've ended up with. what'd ya think?

To be completely honest, these tomato plants have not been as pampered as their Right-Side Up kin--they receive less sunlight because of the walls in the back patio, not to mention the shade of the bucket! I am also dubious of how much water their root balls are actually receiving. Current results are scraggly, disfigured plants with small fruits.
Maybe it's too early to give an overall assessment of the experiment, but can you see the skepticism on my face? Perhaps I should not be too harsh; I'll be certain to give a detailed account of their flavor when ,and if, they ripen.

KOMBUCHA

Here is the kombucha (japanese fermented tea, supposed to be super healthy; think fizzy ginger-ale meets cider?) project: in the bowl, our scoby (mother mushroom) floating in the most recent batch of kombucha tea; in the jar is 1 gallon of freshly brewed black tea + 1 cup of white sugar; finally, we transfer the scoby into the jar, adding 1 Tbsp of the k-tea to the top. Now, 7-10 days of fermentation!
p.s. Even if this stuff doesn't meet the supposed health benefit hype expectations, it's tasty and cheap. so there.

Fungus: Friend and Foe

Bad news first: some tomates y ayote squash are apparently suffering from blossom-end rot. Caused by lack of calcium, the plants' foliage sucks up all the calcium and the fruit is deprived; the first fruits on the plant develop black rotten spots, as seen here on my poor tomates. Hopefully, with a more regular watering schedule, the rest of the fruit will develop normally and deliciously. I also added more crushed eggshell to the affected tomato plants, supposedly an easy and effective way to add calcium. [I assume rot is fungus, but maybe not always?] Luckily, in other regions of the squash forest, fruit is growing like crazy! I am enchanted by the bright bodacious squash blossoms (and still waiting to harvest enough at once to use them in a recipe). check out the beautiful ayote squash hiding in the leaves!
Anyway, on to the good fungus: Kombucha!
See fotos above of the making of my 5th batch of the mushroom-derived elixir. Kombucha is the flat, round mushroom floating in the top of the bowl. The jar will sit in the cupboard for the next 7-10 days, after which time the té negro will transform into tangy sparkly kombucha tea. I am currently experimenting with flavors. One day I'll be able to flavor with my very own nispero y melon plants! For now, it's jenhibre (ginger), límon, and jamaica. yuuuum!

¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!

January, finally back to my garden! After 5 weeks away, both to my delight and dismay, my tiny cultivated piece of paradise was overGROWN. Some of the plants thrived (check my latino oregano, big leafy guy, probably wouldn't know it's oregano unless you smelled it--it is); sunflowers BLOOMING! squash full-on hijacked the rest of the garden, which was slightly tramatic for me. By hijacked i mean Squash Jungle vining and groping and suffocating other innocent plant babies (all six canteloupes: dead upon arrival); here is a pic of the squash climbing a coffee plant (see the curly tendril?)!! arrrrgh.
I'm currently drying my first batch of oregano and basil, yum.
Right-side up tomates have li'l green fruits! Upside-down tomates, not so much. bummer. they are starting to flower, so maybe they'll just be late bloomers?
So that's that in the garden. Soon I will really and truly share a recipe. think: Pesto and Hummus, but neither...