The Daily: 10 July 2023

Here we are, one third of the way through the month of July and heading into the last quarter of the Strawberry Moon. I had a couple good weeks of strawberry harvest before the rodents took over. There are still green berries out there, but they’re gone before they turn red. More precisely, those with the palest wash of pink are bitten into and usually discarded — because not even the rodents like green berries. The favorite dumping ground for mangled berries that nobody gets to eat seems to be on the new chair I bought for my backyard sitting space. So not only do I not get to eat berries, but if I want to sit out there I have to first clean all the ruined but uneaten berries off the chair.

Not that I’ve wanted to sit out there that much in the last week or two. It’s been miserably hot and humid. There have been storms, so we’re not in drought conditions now, but the rains never cool anything down. Rain in a humid climate does not clear the humidity out of the air like it does in the desert. So, after a downpour that soaks everything and makes the air even more muggy, it just seems to get hotter. That I know that the temperature is not actually going up and it’s just my body reacting to high air moisture has no effect on perceiving it as increased heat, unfortunately. But all that moisture does, in fact, hold the heat at ground level. So it does not cool down after sunset, and night brings no relief.

Another problem with heat and rain every day is that it’s a bad idea to leave the windows open. I have wood floors and window frames. Puddles are not good. But if I can’t open the attic and basement windows to create a convection current in the house, then the heat just pools in the upper floors. And if I can’t open the rest of the windows at night, then there is no release of heat. Right now, I live in a sticky oven. I have box fans blowing directly on me as much as possible, and I keep all the curtains shut to block out the sunlight. But there’s little relief. Everything is sticky and airless.

I’m down to eating cold food. Just the thought of cooking is wearisome, and at times eating itself is more effort than I can muster. I have days where the only meal is a bowl of fruit, granola, and yoghurt. Often I can’t finish it in one sitting.

The garden is in between salad days and full summer harvest. The greens have all bolted or been flattened in the heavy downpours. The pea plants that survived the drought and the rodents are hardly producing a pod a week. The radishes and slicing turnips are eaten — either by me or by the bugs. But there aren’t tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash or beans yet.

There are raspberries, however. I’ve picked several gallons and they’re still going strong. These are very thorny canes, so the rodents are not interested. (I have scratches all over my hands and arms.) I’ve planted several varieties to give me a harvest from July to the first frost. Most of the early ones are black fruited, so that’s what is going into my belly and the freezer right now. Ordinarily, I’d also make scones and freeze those, but baking has been cut back to just a loaf of bread a week to keep the sourdough culture viable. I’ll do the baking with frozen berries when the heat backs off. I think this might be better for my chest freezer anyway. Bagged berries take up less space and make for less air space in between the bags than bagged scones. And air is not a good thing in the freezer.

The groundhogs are finally starting to live up to their reputation as garden marauders. Not nearly as wastefully destructive as squirrels, but maybe more damaging to the plants. Groundhogs are rather efficient at defoliating their favorite plants, leaving nothing but a few inches of stem poking out of the ground. And their favorite plants are beans. They still will not climb into the taller raised beds — maybe can’t climb, I guess — but they’ve eaten every plant at ground level. I will not be freezing or drying gallons of beans this year. At this point, I’m hoping for a few meals now and then a fall harvest later when the woodchucks are slowing down and staying close to their dens. (Because they’re too fat to escape if they have more than a few feet to get to safety.)

The groundhogs also inexplicably wiped out the sunchokes I planted in the bank on the south side of the veg patch. They left all the sumac and alder and blackthorn shoots and annihilated the plants that I’d hoped would outcompete the messy shrubs and do just as well at maintaining the steep bank. So it’s back to the drawing board on that.

This has prompted me to start next year’s garden planning earlier than usual. I think I’ll be buying more row cover and planting nearly everything under that, removing the cover only when the plants are tall enough to tolerate defoliation on the bottom foot or so of plant. I probably won’t plant bush beans at all next year, and I may allow the wild grape and creeper vines to take over the bank. The hogs don’t like those and both are good shelter for beneficial bugs. I’ll probably add more viburnum and red osier dogwood. If I can find it, steeplebush is probably a good idea also. I have the uglier variants of spirea all around the property and nobody eats them. If all else fails, I can just transplant the ubiquitous lilac suckers, but I hope it doesn’t come to that. Lilacs are rather high maintenance plants that are attractive for about two weeks of the year, and those two weeks of flowering don’t do much good to any other creatures because the flowers come too early in the spring for wildlife.

So those are goals for next year to make up for this year’s mistakes. I find that is what typically drives garden planning. I wonder what would happen if everything went exactly to plan. I’d probably die from the shock…

Meanwhile here is a recipe for small-batch jam that can use up a day’s harvest without putting much heat into the kitchen. It’s written for strawberries, since it’s strawberry season, rodents notwithstanding. However, you can make this jam with all kinds of berries. For raspberries and blackberries, the recipe needs no modification. For berries with more skin, use an immersion blender to pulp the berries before cooking. Or cook on lower heat for a longer time, as you might do to make cranberry sauce.

Easy Strawberry Jam

Ingredients

2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups ripe strawberries, mashed
2 tsp lemon juice

Instructions

Remove strawberry stems and most of the hulls (the white center bits).

Place berries in a pan and mash them with a potato masher.

Add sugar and lemon juice.

If berries are dry, you may want to add a few tablespoons of water to keep the sugars from scorching.

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently to ensure all the sugar is dissolved.

Boil for 5 minutes over medium high heat, stirring constantly but not too vigorously. The goal is to keep it from boiling over, sticking to the pan, or turning into a foaming mess.

The jam is done when it forms rounded drops that stick to the stirring spoon.

You can preserve this jam, ladling it into 2-3 hot sterilized pint jars and boiling the jars in a water bath canner for 10 minutes. Or you can just pour it into a heat-proof storage container and put it in the fridge or freezer. It is ready to eat as soon as it is cool.

This is not jam. But this week’s hummus was so unusual and delicious I had to share. I used cooked chick peas for the base. I added a heaped tablespoon of sunflower butter, the juice of a lemon, and few tablespoons of olive oil. Then it went completely off-script.

I chopped up a large plum and added that. The spice mix was dried Aleppo peppers, za’atar, and pink salt (all to taste). Then I decided to go full Georgian and added a handful of walnuts before grinding it all with an immersion blender.

This will make the heat bearable!

©Elizabeth Anker 2023