Biodynamic gardening classes in Taos New Mexico

Biodynamics is my favorite farming topic, in spite of feeling like I am  practicing some form of witchcraft, cow horns stuffed with cow manure and buried for 8 months, then removed from the earth,  2 or 3 TBSP added to a bucket of water, the whole mess stirred for one hour in vortexes, droplets sprayed over your farm or garden and Viola  real soil?  Sounds too good to be true? or like voodoo??? Well I tried it over 15 years ago, and it  WORKED!
So I have been practicing and studying ever since.
I am offering a weekend workshop on basic Biodynamic techniques this coming weekend April 12th and 13th.
Class will include stirring and applying 500, the soil prep, stirring and applying Barrel Compost, and making a compost pile using the 6 Biodynamic compost preparations.
Students will have the opportunity to take home and apply 500 and Barrel Compost to their gardens and farms.
Class starts April 12th at 1:00 and continues at 10:00 on the 13th,  The course in Biodynamics takes place at Farmhouse Cafe gardens, in Taos New Mexico.
For more info, go to morningstarfarmoftaos.com.

Classes continue with How to eat year round from your garden, Season Extension

This coming week March 22nd I will be teaching another 2 hour class from 3 to 5. This week's topic is Season Extension. This translates to HOW TO EAT SOMETHING FROM YOUR GARDEN YEAR ROUND! For me this is the ultimate goal of season extension.
I am still eating fermented carrots, summer squash and sauerkraut that I made last fall. I have some storage carrots, beets, onions and garlic. I just started digging parsnips last week. I even shared some yummy parsnip cake with friends and workers on the farm.
Then there is the salad mix, arugula, spinach and dill coming from the greenhouse plantings.
Come join me to learn how you can easily and successfully do this from your home garden.

Gardening classes with Farmer Melinda

I am once again teaching 3 saturday afternoons, session covering basic organic gardening methods for Taos based on my 20 years of experience growing here in Taos.
Classes cover What to Grow, When to Grow it and How!  We will cover topics such as basic soil compost, irrigation, and season extension techniques sure to get your gardening efforts off to a successful start and keep you going strong through the growing season.
Classes will be held at the Stewart House starting this coming Saturday, March 15th, March 22nd and March 29th from 3 to 5 pm. Cost is $75.00 for all three classes or $30.00 for individual classes.
For complete information and class descriptions, go to morningstarfarmoftaos.com

Seed ordering ideas, suggestions and tips

Is it really January 24th? Yikes!! Time to order seeds and get the onions and leeks started for spring planting.

Browsing through seed catalogs can be such a great way to spend a few winter evenings, dreaming of all the great veggies, herbs and flowers you will grow in the coming spring months, but before ordering I have  several words of advice or wisdom. First make a plan of what you want to plant, how much of it you want to plant and inventory your old seeds! Then you can order more exactly what you want. It can be hard to resist all the great descriptions in the catalogs. Having a plan can help to curb your winter appetite and enthusiasm  so that you can stick to a garden of manageable size and doable veggies. I always allow myself a few trials or experiments but avoid getting carried away! If you take on too much and are not successful it becomes discouraging and stressful to garden.  Why turn your hobbies and passions into drudgery by making it too hard?!

 Just for an example, lets say you want 20 heads of lettuce every month. I would suggest planting 15 to 20 seeds in short rows every 2 weeks during your growing season. For your first two planting, try this suggestion, plant the seeds closer together, say 4 to 6 inches, thin the lettuce at 4 weeks and get something to eat while waiting for the remaining heads to mature. 2 plantings in April, 2 in May, 2 in June and on through September in most climates. 6 months x 40 seeds = 240 seeds. Do you want to grow a spring lettuce like Forellenschluss, also called Black Trout or Speckles, or a summer lettuce like                          Sierra?and a fall lettuce like Rouge d'Hiver? Your seed company should tell you the approximate number of seeds per packet, allowing you to order what you need. This helps keep the cost of your orders down,limits the amount of seeds you have laying around taking up storage space and you can order new seed for better germination, instead of having to use up old seed that you feel guilty about not using. You can always germ test older seed by putting 20 seeds on a wet paper towel, fold the towel and place in a zip loc bag and put in a warm dark place, top of the fridge is a good spot. In 7 days, check to see how many seed have sprouted. If 10 out of 20 have sprouted, that's a 50% germination rate. Not so great, seed companies sell seeds with a 85% or higher for germination rates. Germination rates should also be readily available when ordering seeds.

Another thing I learned over the years ordering seed, I have limited the number of companies I order from. Every company will charge some fee for ordering, so one season I added up all the fees I paid for shipping and realized I could have purchased $75.00 worth of seed instead of spending it on shipping costs and fees.

Seed exchanges are getting more popular, and using local seed from other growers who have been successful with a certain crop or variety is a good place to start. This also gets you away from the hornets nest of the politics that surround seeds and seed companies. Monsanto owns a lot of seeds, sticking to heirloom, non-hybrid seeds keeps you away from using any seeds they own or produce, if this is a concern for you. Once again, a good seed company should be willing to share with you the source of their seeds. I still struggle with this when it comes to onion seeds as I can only grow good onions if I plant day neutral onions. All the good day neutral onion seeds in America are owned my Monsanto. A neighbor up north is starting to produce and sell some acceptable seed for onions, but the onions are about 2/3 the size, and lack some of the sweetness.

Check back for more ideas and advice. Happy gardening!

Just spreading the word. We are looking for a Intern for Morning Star Farm for the 2014 Farm Season. We want to find someone seriously interested in farming as a career path, and able to commit for the entire season. Roughly April 15th to October 31st.

There is a complete description of the internship on the web page, morningstarfarmoftaos.

Three Kings Preparation

I always love the twelve holy nights. These deep nights of darkness offer me a invitation  to delve into my inner life, examining my dreams, hopes and desires for the farm and my personal life. It is also the time to work with and apply the Three Kings Preparation.

A bit of history about this unusual preparation. It was created by Hugo Erbe, a student of Steiner's after the bombing of Hiroshima. He created this preparation to protect elementals from the negative effects of the various forms of pollution man is increasingly creating.

The Three Kings preparation is made from the substances that the Three Kings from the Orient brought to the Christ child on January 6th, Ephinany or Three Kings day.  Frankincense, Gold and Myrrh are the main ingredients. These ingredients get ground together and mixed with some rain water and glycerin to form a richly scented, resinous, golden paste on New Years Eve. Then on Ephinany, the preparation gets stirred and applied. This preparation differs from other applications of BD preparations as it is used as a Perimeter spray being sprayed away from the farm or garden to create a safe, protected space for the elementals. 

This preparation is said to offer protection from various negative forces, EMF's, nuclear contamination, and weather events, such as frost, hail, heavy rains, droughts.

I can share a story about my experiences. Last year I was away in El Salvador over the Holy Nights. I had run out of Three Kings Preparation, ( one batch can be used for several years ) and figured it would not matter if we skipped applying it for one year since we have been applying if for 12 years. When I returned to the farm in late March I jumped into farming once again. One particularly windy May day, a twister type wind came across the farm and went into the Greenhouse. Once inside the Greenhouse, this twister lifted up, destroying over $3,000.00 worth of plastic and shade cloth. In hindsight I will always wonder if this event would have happened if the Three Kings preparation had been applied.

Weed-n-Wine

Okay, we have been having a lot of fun weeding on friday afternoons, and then switching to drinking some wine and sharing snacks afterwards.  So the girls and I decided to invite everyone and share the fun.

Weeding is just the pulling type, no smoking.  You know, bindweed, purslane and such. Not noxious, but definitely obnoxious!

We start around 4 or 5, weed till 7 and then drink some wine and nibble on snacks.  Last week we had roasted garlic, crackers, some goat cheese and fruit.

Since it is Farmer Melinda's Birthday too, party favors of garlic for all working guests!

Morning Star Farm, 544 Hondo-Seco Road, Arroyo Hondo NM

See you there!!!!

garlic scapes

Okay, here are the garlic scapes in all their curly glory!  Cut off the tip, or seed pod and the remaining stalk can be cooked and eaten in so many ways.

Ellen took home a bucket full and made pesto, froze some and sautéed some to toss in with stir-fry veggies.  She found lots of recipes and information on freezing scapes on the internet.

We are harvesting garlic this coming Thursday, July 4th.  The two bottom leaves on the stalks of the garlic are dry and brown, indicating that the garlic is ready.  I often have folks ask if the garlic will grow bigger if they leave it in the ground longer.  The sad truth is NO!  And the quality declines.  The bulbs get discolored and sometimes get moldy too.  The stalk gets weak making it difficult to pull the garlic out of the ground, then you have to dig each bulb.  The heads also tend to break apart and then the garlic does not keep very long.

I am really looking forward to one of my favorite things to eat every year, FRESH ROASTED GARLIC.  The texture and flavor of fresh roasted garlic is something you will never forget.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees, find a small glass or ceramic baking dish that you can cover, either with a lid or with foil.  Cut the roots off the bottom so that the garlic can sit up right in the baking dish.  Trim a bit of the top off each bulb, drizzle a bit of olive oil over each bulb, sprinkle a very light bit of sea salt, cover the pan and put it in the hot oven.  Check in 30 minutes, if the garlic is really soft, it's done.  It can take up to an hour to roast the garlic.

Eat with some crusty french bread or crackers.  You can squeeze the roasted garlic out of the papery skins and add it to other recipes, like salad dressing. I eat whole heads as a side dish with whatever else I happen to be eating.

ENJOY! Farmer Melinda

Garlic is looking really good this year in spite of the late emergence date.  Most years I see the green shoots or tips by mid-March, but this year it was April before the shoots started showing. Now we have lots of big sturdy plants with large stems which will turn into good large size bulbs.  Yummy! I can hardly wait to roast up a batch.  Fresh harvested roasted garlic is just one of the better things to eat, period!  

In the meanwhile, the garlic scapes have emerged and will be ready to eat and harvest shortly. What is a garlic scape?  It is actually a seed stalk that a top setting garlic sends up to scatter seed with.  These small seeds are called bulbils.  To grow out these bulbils into full sized garlic bulbs takes two seasons.  

The first season these bulbils will form a solid hard round bulb, the following season this single bulb will grow into separate cloves.  I don't recommend this as a way to grow garlic.  It is slow and difficult to keep the first year growth from being overcome by weeds. But it is fun to see the curling scape progress.  In my imagination I always see the scape uncurling and flinging seed to continue the life cycle of the garlic.

The good news for the home grower is that the garlic scape needs to be cut off the growing garlic as it robs energy that the garlic uses to grow a bigger bulb that also keeps or stores longer. What makes this good news is that the garlic scape is tasty to eat!  You can chop it up and use it for many things.  I like it chopped small, like in 1/2inch pieces and sauteed in place of garlic and onions in just about everything.  Like scrambled eggs with other veggies, or vegetables for eating with rice or pasta, or as a side dish for poultry and meat.

Photos of garlic scapes coming up soon!

Parsnips, spring treats!

Parsnips just dug in the field

Parsnips awaiting scrubbing and chopping

Parsnips cooking!!!

Here is one of my favorite treats of the farm harvest year.  These spring dug, overwintered Parsnips are one of the tastier things in life.  You just cannot purchase parsnips with flavor like this in a grocery store.

It takes a bit of planning, and parsnip planting time is coming right up.  I like to get seeds in the ground in late April or early May.  Parsnip seed is only viable for one season, so make sure you get seed for the 2013 season. Don't plant last years left over seed either, get new seed.  Then Parsnips take about 30 days to germinate, so patience is required.  Many home growers plant a line of radishes an inch away from the Parsnips.  Radishes mature in 30 days so the timing is usually good.

Water, weed, thin and wait.  You can mulch the parsnips in the fall, but the freezing of the soil will not damage the root and just improves the flavor.  Try it for yourself, dig a parsnip in the fall, the flavor will be a bit harsh, almost bitter.  But after a few months of freezing weather in the fall and winter, dig up another one, the flavor will be rich, sweet and irresistible!  Parsnips are easy to store, just leave them in the ground! If you have any left, you will need to dig them in the spring once they start to grow a new green top again. The texture of the root will change and get too woody to eat.  You can always leave a few to go to seed if you like to collect your own seeds.

My current favorite cooking method is just to wash, slice and slowly braise or sauté' the roots in coconut oil with a pat of butter added about 10 to 15 minutes into the process, I also sometimes add a 1/4 cup of water and put a lid over the pan for 5 minutes to soften the parsnips a bit more.  Parsnips are also great added to roasts, chicken or meat or veggies.  Shredded raw parsnips can make a great curry style coleslaw.  You can go to my web site, www.morningstarfarmoftaos.com and click on the recipe link for more recipes.

ENJOY!  Farmer Melinda

Here is the finished pile, with me the proud author and teacher!  Notice that in El Salvador the readily available material for covering the pile was banana leaves.

Here is Rosa, watering the compost pile, note the leaves on top of the manure.

Compost 101

Seems like it might be time to discuss this magical and mystical stuff "Compost"

I have been making and using the stuff for twenty years now, and it seems that there is a lot of mystique surrounding the making of compost. I have to wonder about that. Compost is pretty straightforward stuff. Maybe like learning to bake a good load of bread.

Let's start with a general list of ingredients. What is needed for success is a combination or mix of materials. Stuff rich in carbon, (not carharcol ), like dry plant material, leaves, straw and such. Then you need something for nitrogen, like fresh green plant materials, your kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, or manure.  What else? Water and time! The correct percentage of nitrogen to carbon is 25 to 30% nitrogen to 70 or 75% carbon.

I think the problems start when you have to guess the amounts of carbon vs nitrogen any given material contains . I try for a mix based on volume. One good tip off is the ordor level of the pile. A pile too rich in nitrogen gives off a rather putrid ordor for several weeks. A thick covering of leaves or straw can often right this problem.

Then comes the water element. In the southwest we have to drench the pile as we build it such that water pools up and really makes a muddy mess! Then we have to find a porous covering that retains moisture. I like to use carpet, old funky stuff that is being torn out and taken to the dump. In a wetter climate you might have to consider keeping water out of the pile, but microbes won't grow and live in a dry pile and without them your pile will be a flop!

Time? I allow 5 to 6 months for my pile to complete the digestion process of the microbes. In a warmer climate less time will be needed. Also if you start with smaller pieces of material the process is faster too. I think here in El Salvador a pile with manure and leaves will finish in 3 months. One farmer wants to make pile with some large stuff, banana plants, palm leaves, whole corn stalks. I guess this pile might take up to year to break down.

How do you know the pile is ready? Smell and looks. The pile will smell like rich sweet soil and large plant stems, leaves and such will be smaller, broken down.

I build piles by layering materials and watering each additional ingredient. For example, in Romero we started with a bottom layer of large dry stalky plant material, ie carbon. We watered that thoroughly. Next we spread a layer of manure, water, dry leaves, water, manure and so on. We covered the pile with a deep layer of dry leaves and then topped it off with a layer of banana leaves.

Other problems you may encounter are animal pests digging in your pile. I don't have much trouvé with this. A disturbed pile can just be reformed . If need be you will have to get creative with chicken wire, pallets and such.

I hope you are getting the idea that this a process, and one that you will certainly perfect with some trial and error. Until you find a good mix of materials to work with, I would suggest that you keep a record of what you use, the date you started the pile and what you think of the results.

Take your recycling efforts and your garden soil to the next level and build a compost pile in 2013!

Wow, lots going on here, but all at this slow pace of  Latin American.
I met with a few local growers and shared a bit about Morning Star Farm. What I grow, how and to whom I sell veggies to. Also about my growing practices. I was fore warned that even these small growers who wanted to use organic growing methods used chemicals. It was still shocking to see my host family father all dressed in rainwear with a dust mask on spraying some kind of pesticide .  Not very appealing to come onto his finca and weed for a few hours anymore.
Today I had an even bigger shock. Helicopters spraying pesticides on sugar came crops. Just plain nasty! The backyard wells here are all contaminated, and it is common for kids and older men mostly to die of kidney failure. What for? So the one large landowner can make a buck! The spraying really affects these small guys tryin to feed their families using organic methods.
What happens is that these blanket sprayings is that the entire insect population is killed, both the pest and the beneficial insects. As nature works the pests are faster at repopulating themselves, with the beneficial lagging behind a bit, must have a secure food supply you know? Anyhow when you blanket spray even with an organic pesticide, you continually disrupt this balance and your crops take the brunt of this imbalance. Here and in Baja it seems that white fly populations just take over.
My immediate response was just to shoot down the helicopter. This of course creates so many more problems than it solves, but, well , it is a very real feeling. As the day has unfolded I realize a far better solution would be for consumers to purchase organic sugar. I now know up close how much damage the chemical agriculture of sugar came causes.
Oops , hard to stay on track, back to the small growers. I ended the meeting by offering to come out to their parcelas, get a tour, and make a compost pile. I got permission to make a pile at the research garden and was feeling pretty comfortable about finding a good balance of carbon to nitrogenous materials with which to build a good pile. Have I already mentioned how eager I was upon my arrival to make some compost out of all this great manure . Have I lost my marbles or what?!? Been practicing BioDynamics for too many years now and I have never had the opportunity to use such great manure. Fresh cow manure from grass fed milk cows, like a pig in the mud.  I have made 2 piles with appointments to make 2 more in January.

First week of work in El Salvador

El Salvador continued......
Last week was my first official week of work and true to Latin American culture, it got off to a slow start.
I did get a better look at the demonstration garden at the center in Cudidad Romero. I am still thinking about how to up grade the drip system there and stick with the original idea to create one using   various material readily available and spending as little money as possible.
I spent Thursday getting dirty working with Freddy and Geraldo, the two gardeners at the center. We spent the day making a batch of Bocashi compost. I was quite pleased until I heard the pile had to be turned everyday for the next two weeks. I never turn compost piles! I was pleased to learn that they are paying good attention to the composting process and turn the pile because it heats up too much other wise and kills all the microbiology. I am hoping we can build a few other piles and experiment with creating a quality compost that does not require the labour  of turning it!
Another exciting thing to me is their new seed bank! So great to see their traditional seeds beimg saved and re-used. There are 4 or 5 types of corn commonly used, about the same amount of beans and various other vegetables. Other farmers are dropping seeds by, so the collection is growing .

I took advantage of my weekend and headed up to Alergria a lovely small town on the side of the Volcano Tecapa. I got out for a 3 hour hike up
And over the volcano with a great of lakes, the rio Lempa, the Pacific and beyond. 
I better quit while I am ahead so to speak, this technology is getting the best of me and I am reduced to posting blogs using the screen on my I phone. So please excuse any typo's. Onward
Melinda 

El Salvador

Hey, I finally got back onto my blogspot! I have been living on El
Salvador these past three weeks, and today starts my first month volunteering with the Mangrove association.
I spent my first two weeks in the capital San Salvador living with a Salvadorian family attending classes in Spanish . My family consisted of two women who did a great job mothering me and showing me around. They fixed my hair, painted my fingernails, went to the beach with me and Nena took me out Salsa dancing.
Spanish classes were great. The second week I was the only student at my level, so I got some great private lessons. I spent my afternoons in a Cultural and Political program. This turned out to be daily field trips with Don Oscar a great guide, so well versed in history. He was delightful and we went to many  museums, a few cathedrals, the war memorial, the Jardin Botanical, a organic coffee plantation owed by a cooperative, the Devils door, which is a really great formation of rocks that affords a view of half the country. Keep in mind that El Salvador is the size of Virgina and takes about 3 hours to get across the entire country.
The violence and grief from the Civil war is still very present here . Everywhere you go there are paintings and posters of Father Romero. He made a profound statemt shortly before his assisination, he said"If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the actions of my people". I am also in awe of how involved and educated everyone seems to be about matters of Political and Social justice. Americans seem so uninformed and apathetic in comparison .
Let me give some quick background information. At the end of the Civil War, 12 years ago the peace accords broke up the largest land holdings on this country and started a process to give parcels
of land to campesinos. Some of this land has returned to larger holdings, but most of the land here in the Bajo Lempa region is now owned by small land owners and they are building new communities with schools, public water systems and farming.  I am continually impressed by their knowledge of the enviremt, and there willingness to make personal sacrifices for the bigger good. Let me give a specfic example or two. Last week I got to see a Mangrove restoration project. The people in the surrounding pueblos dig out a canal by hand, hauling mud out by hand on canoes. It took them about 3months. The results just 3 months later are astounding , partially because they did not have access to large earth moving equipment and so had a very low impact on the environment as they worked. Mangroves must have a certain mix of salt with fresh water to thrive. Then in this Eco system there is particular type of crab. The emviromental impact studies showed they could sustainably harvest about 2000 a month instead of the 5000 they were harvesting. So the communities came together and agreed to a system of harvesting so that they were harvesting the 2000 crabs instead of the 5000.
I must wrap things up for today, I need to pick up my bike from the repair shop now. I will get back soon and share more about the Agriculture here and get some photos posted .
Ciao Farmer Melinda

I am calling this post Onions 101.

 Here we have a great visual of onions that will keep and onions that will not keep or store well.  Both onions look good, nice size, shape or form.  But notice that the white onion has a very shrunken stem or neck and the yellow onion has a nice fat strong green stem and neck.  The fat stemmed yellow onion will not keep well. Once you cut that stem off, it will sprout a new growing shoot, and get soft and mushy.  Why did the white onion end up with the shrunken stem that will allow it to sit dormant, not re-sprout, and therefore store well?

Here comes the onion 101; Onions are day length sensitive.  What does this mean?  Well in the northern United States at summer solstice they have a pretty long day, lots of light.  In the southern United States, they do not have such long days of light.  The onions get triggered to bulb up by the amount of day light, so there are 3 types of onions you can buy, either as seed, or starts.  Long day length onions, like the classic Walla Walla onion that does well in the Pacific Northwest, Short Day length onions, like the Vidalia that do well in Georgia or Texas, or a Day length neutral onion.

Add to this mix the choice of onions, sweet, storage, red, white and yellow and you get a lot of choices going on.  To narrow your choices, first choose an onion that suits the day length of your climate.  I can only choose Day Neutral onions.  Nothing else finishes here in Taos at latitude 36.  If I still lived in Oregon in the Willamette Valley, I would choose a long day length onion at latitude 45.

Once you choose a good onion for your location, it can be pretty easy to grow, harvest and store a nice big 50 lb sack with a 100 or so onions. Start your own onions from seed in late January. I start mine in square flats, about 16 inches by 16 inches.  You can sprinkle a generous amount of seed onto the flat, since you can plant them out in March or April, they can stand some crowding.  I put 30 to 50 seeds in the flat.  Or it is getting easier to purchase good onion starts from seed catalogs.

Onions will tolerate a lot of cold weather and still produce a good crop.  If it drops into the teens too many nights, they can get stressed, and the result is that the onion sends up a seed stalk.  You can still eat these onions, but they will not keep or store well.  I usually plant my onions out in April, but we have cold springs here in Taos.  I think March would be fine in many locations.

As the onions finish, make sure to cut back the water.  If you keep the soil too moist, your onions will end up with various molds and fungus, once again ruining their keeping qualities.  I sometimes leave mine in the field for several weeks at the end of the season with out irrigating them.  Onions will develop more of a papery skin as they cure after harvesting.  I put mine in re-used onions sacks that I get from the local grocery stores, or restaurants.  I like to leave them out on a rack for a few weeks before bagging them for storage.  This process also gives me a chance to inspect the onions, sorting out any that have nicks or soft spots, or discolorations.  I still use these onions, but I use them up first as they do not keep as well. Onions keep well in a colder place, 32 to 36 with low humidity is the ideal.

I do not do anything special or different to the soil that I plant onions into. I add good quality bio-dynamic compost that I make to all my garden beds.  It can give you a good head start if you add the compost to the bed for your onions in the fall.  This way if you have a wet or difficult spring, your planting site will be ready.  Onions do need to be kept clean and free of weeds in order to get big.

I love a good onion soup, and years ago I found a recipe in the Miso Cookbook that is so easy and delicious. I will share it with you here:

ONION SOUP RECIPE
Get a heavy bottomed pan, I use a cast iron pot.  Add a few TBSP of oil, I use olive oil.  On a very low heat, add several onion sliced thinly.  About 3 cups worth on onions is a good amount. Sprinkle with a 1/4 tsp or less of salt. Stir the onions occasionally , maybe you can wash the dishes, or make a batch of corn bread, or put some squash to bake while the onions cook slowly.  After the onions are all translucent and starting to brown add water.  1 to 2 quarts, bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and let cook for 30 minutes to 1 hour.  Put a generous TBSP of a good miso in each individual soup bowl, ladle the soup in and smash or mix up the miso.  Add more miso if you like more of a saltily taste.  You can also add the classic croutons and cheese to the top too!

Here they all are, the shining winter squash, freshly harvested!

But wait, what do you do with all these yummy beauties?  Well, first you need to wait at least a few weeks before eating one.  Winter Squash need some time to convert the starches they produce into sugars.  One year I read somewhere that Delicata squash can be eaten the same day as it is harvested.  I tried it, and did not cook another one for months because the one I did cook and eat had no flavor.  Long story short, the second one was yummy.  So it is worth the wait!

Storing squash can be a bit tricky.  It likes best to be around 50 degrees. Much colder is not better.  My dad used to store his hubbard squash under the bed in the spare bedroom that did not get heated.  I bag mine up after a few weeks out on the porch, and leave them in an unheated back room.

As you can see from the photo, I grow several varieties, and folks are often curious about which are my favorites, and how I cook them.  Favorites first!  I like the Sweet Dumplings, and Buttercups the best.  My yoga teacher likes the Sunshine, the bright orange ones best.

My favorite way to cook squash is to slice or cut it in half, scoop out the seed, place the flesh side down in a glass baking pan, add a few inches of water, cover with foil and bake for approx 1 hour in a 400 degree oven.  You can tell they are done when you poke the squash and it is soft under your finger.  Smaller squash can cook in 45 minutes, like the delicata.  And yes, I add butter to the cavity!

okay, enough farming!  I had to take a day off, so I went hiking in the mountains for a few hours.  This is my favorite time of the year, the Aspens are just starting to turn color.
As an added bonus on my way home I picked a shopping bag of pears that will last for a long time if I can find a cool spot in the house to keep them.
I am getting a bit tried of trying to keep up with all the abundance of the garden, but will tackle making sauerkraut in the next days.  Food processors make short work of shredding, or actually slicing the cabbage.  Then I have this super healthy raw food that keeps for months!  I have also been making other fermented vegetables.  My version of Kim Chee.  I will post a few photos and recipe suggestions later this week.

Love all the veggie art!