Health update

I am scheduled to start chemo to reduce the size of a GIST (gastro-intestinal stromal tumor) to prevent -- or minimize -- surgery that would require removing my whole stomach and part of my esophagus.

Now it is down to who pays. Cost of a month's meds is $11,000. There could be help on many fronts. First victory - Humana, after saying it wasn't covered, has given me approval for the name brand med, which is what the oncologist has ordered. However, the co-pay was $3,000 a month. After many calls, it is now down to $950 co-pay a month, still pretty hard to swallow.

Novartis, the maker of the med, may opt to provide it for $25 a month based on my income and the severity of the illness. My fingers are crossed. Definitely the best deal, but it could be up to three weeks wait, and there is a little discomfort that I'm hoping will go away if the tumor shrinks.

In the meantime, I am dealing with this by assuming that anything less than total removal of my stomach is a win. And even if the worst happens, it is not life threatening. So that's where I am.

I'm continuing on my low carb ketogenic diet. I've started drinking Essiac tea every night. My friend Bill reminded me that turmeric has cancer fighting properties. I can do that! Love curried anything, which is loaded with it. My daughter reminded me of the healing properties of frankincense. I rub it on the back of my neck in the morning, put a few drops on the personal diffuser I wear around my neck, and use it in my cute little diffuser that fits in the USB port on my computer and in my car.

Finally, the weather has broken and spring is here. I filled my seedling tray with organic seedling mix and filled 11 cells, mostly tomatoes, in each of 24 rows. There is one row of basil and four rows of flowers, mostly nasturtiums. See, even the flowers I grow have to be edible! And they have already started to germinate.

I spent time in the sun cleaning up my rose garden yesterday. I often say that making a dozen or so French baguettes twice a week are my moments of Zen, but I think flower beds are, too!

Cyn is coming over this afternoon to practice Tai Chi with me. You can find Brother Raymond teaching Tai Chi here. Cyn and I go to River Bend on Wednesday for first hand instructions.

Brother Raymond leading tai chi class

I am stopping to smell the roses, bake bread and do tai chi with friends. Who could ask for anything more?

Greenhouse - Part 2

Sometimes my enthusiasm outstrips realty. This greenhouse - would it be just one more example of something that wasn't nearly as much fun nor as useful as I dreamed? Oh, no, this time I was right on!

Everything is a bit late - contractors who put it up and installed electricity never seemed to hit a due date. But finally it is up and running. I'm eating radishes - at least a dozen a day, French breakfast, my favorite. The butter lettuce is wonderful. It's a little crowded, but it is working out well, a fresh salad ever couple of days.

The day before yesterday, I put in 12 kale plants, in the spaces left as I harvest radishes. They were started in the seedling tray, and once they were removed from those tiny cells, they exploded in size!

I planted two tomato seeds in every cell, except for a couple of things that my experience taught me never germinated extraordinarily well. Except this year! Wow! Germination has approached 100%. I'm giving away plants - was sure that I would have requests for a couple hundred at least. Not so much. They are late, and a lot of people already have their plants in. (Fools, I say. I've lived through killing frosts during Memorial Day Weekend.)

My kids made me promise not to turn this into a business. I didn't expect this many extra plants, though, so unless they are willing to plow up their yards, I will be selling plants here at market. The other vendors would not be happy with me giving away plants while they are trying to sell the fruits of their hard labor, so there will be a price tag on each tomato plant.

I had a commercial greenhouse on the farm, raised between 4,000 and 6,000 plants a year. Raising 300 is definitely in the "hobby" vein, and I am having a great deal of fun. It's still not too late to get some freebies, so if you want a few plants, respond to this blog and tell me how to get in touch with you so that you can get your plants.

Here are pictures from the new greenhouse in town, and from harvests at the farm. We planted around 200 plants at the farm each summer, and I just loved the old heirlooms - weird shapes, all different sizes, beautiful colors - and every one of them very tasty indeed.

Seedling tray in the hobby greenhouse in town

Seedlings potted up, going to their new owners in a couple of weeks.

Harvest from the farm. 

Offering tastes at the market

A Brandywine from the farm

Canning the market leftovers

Aren't they beautiful?

Bumper crop of yellow tomatoes

Getting ready to can

Tomato plate - tasty treat!

Seedling trays at the farm - thousands, not hundreds!

A lot of plants  were grown in the 18' x 24' greenhouse! I miss it.

The greenhouse!

At last, my new hobby greenhouse is up and running. I thought this day would never come. So many things went wrong, so many delays, terrible instructions, installers who didn't keep their promised dates, who had to do things twice because they misinterpreted the pictures (the only instructions).

This greenhouse is pretty much a mini version of the one I had at the farm - 6' x 8' instead of an 18' x 24' commercial greenhouse in which I grew several thousand plants each season. So I knew what I needed here. No sense putting up a greenhouse if you do not follow some basic principles that will get you lovely home-grown plants.

I looked at a $200 (sale price) hobby greenhouse at Harbor Freight. After doing a good bit of research, I decided on one a little heavier, with more features. I got it at Home Depot. The one I chose had some pretty good reviews, and some pretty horrible ones. Since I always read the bad ones first, I decided I could get around the problems many purchasers had with this model by doing a more robust installation.

I hired two men to put it together for me, me being a single 75 year old woman. In spite of lifting weights three days a week, I am pretty sure it was beyond the scope of my capabilities, even with a little help. Since I wanted much more than the "normal" greenhouse, it cost a pretty penny. There is electricity run to it (how to plug in heat mats, radios, lights and fans?), and after looking at pictures of these greenhouses lying in pieces on the ground after a strong wind, I bought the tie-down kit. The installers set the anchors into concrete instead of just screwing them into the ground. They also built a 4' x 8' frame made of 4" x 4" untreated lumber (still doing that organic thing, so no treated lumber) and set it on corner posts, also set in concrete.  In addition, I bought the automatic vent opener and a shade cloth. So many people think that you want all of the sun and heat you can get, but the sun will scald your precious plants if they get direct sunlight, and the heat will cook them.

Here are a whole bunch of pictures of the project, from start (parts all over the ground) to finish (heat mat plugged in and bringing the temp up to 80℉ to optimize tomato seed germination). I have no idea what I am going to do with 300 plants. I have room for maybe 50 of them here, including the flowers I am growing. Tomatoes? I can plant about 10 of them in pots on my deck, and I'm going to try growing a few in the greenhouse. They are organic heirloom plants, indeterminate, and I'm going to try to grow them on twine in the greenhouse, where I can control heat and light. I can dream, right?

I'm happy.

The puzzle laid out on the ground

Getting there

Electricity done

Note guy wires - the anchors are in concrete!

A place for indoor growing - I'm dreaming of fresh organic kale in January.

Shelving had to be jury-rigged to get 8' of continuous shelf. Bad design! But we made it work.

French Breakfast adishes and butter lettuce coming along

Seedling tray - finally arrived and filled with organic seedling mix

Note the split door. This means I can get a cross breeze without having to keep the door open. Too many geese in this neighborhood! I can imagine them going in and having butter lettuce and French Breakfast radishes for lunch. If not geese, then the rabbits. Or perhaps Fred will go on a digging expedition.

Hoping to get a crop before it gets too hot. Blistering yesterday! 

Erin and Tim came over, and Tim got the end shelves level. I still need to add wire cable in the corner, but I'm ready to roll!

Thermostat to control heat mat. It's working on getting temp up to 80℉

At last! Growing things!!

Vent still closed this morning, but it will open as the temperature rises.

NEW RECIPES - three low carb recipes for the holidays

You will not have to feel left out at the Thanksgiving table with these three treats.

Crackers:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Line a half sheet or cookie sheet with parchment or use a silpat sheet. Put six to eight piles of shredded cheese, evenly spaced, on the sheet. (You can get eight on the sheet if you form them into ovals.) I use about two tbsp. per cracker. Put in the hot oven for 7 minutes. Watch them closely so they don't burn!

Remove from oven and immediately put on cooling rack. Experiment with size, also with types of cheese. Even the brand of cheese will affect the outcome, so when you find one you really like, make note of it for future batches.

6 of these crackers provide ONLY 1 GRAM OF CARBOHYDRATE! And they will stand up to dip.

Faux mashed potatoes:

Boil a head and a half of cauliflower (or two smallish heads) roughly chopped in a large pan of water with 1-1/2 tsp. sea salt. Drain thoroughly. In fact, I put the cooked cauliflower in the sink in a colander and forget about it for an hour or more so it gets good and dry. Put the drained cauliflower back into the pot you used to boil it. Throw in half (or more) of an 8 oz. package of cream cheese. Use a stick blender to thoroughly blend, or use a food processor and do in batches. When ready to use, heat in a heavy bottom sauce pan over very low heat, watching to make sure it doesn't burn. Use like mashed potatoes.

Four ounces of cauliflower provides 3 net carbs, and the cream cheese will add about another gram to that four ounce serving.

Gravy:

The better the stock you use, the better the gravy will taste. I have even used canned broth, and it's pretty good. Start with two cups of broth or stock. Heat it and reduce it by about a fourth to enrich the flavor. Lower the heat and add about a tbsp. (or to reach the consistency you like) of xanthan gum. Beat well with a wire whisk while you increase heat and bring it back to a boil. It takes a bit before it thickens. Start on the low side with the xanthan gum, as it will thicken as it sits. Last thing, add some heavy whipping cream. I put about a half cup of cream in the amount listed here. Bring back up just to the boil and immediately remove from heat.

So now you too can have "potatoes" and gravy on Thanksgiving Day. What a deal if you can get the hostess to give you a bit of turkey stock, a pan and a whisk (bring your own stash of xanthan gum) and make your own gravy. I doubt the diners will know which is the low carb gravy!

Per 1/4 C. of gravy  - less than one carb.

Let's talk dessert:

Forget the pie. Just cross it off your list. But how about a big bowl of whipped cream with vanilla? You can add a tbsp. of sugar free vanilla pudding, or go all natural and add a tsp. of real maple syrup. If you are really, truly minimizing carbs and using little or no artificial sweeteners in your diet, that tsp. of maple syrup will add only 4 carbs and will provide an explosion of sweetness! The cream is about 3/4 grams carbs per ounce. You do the math and decide how much you want to splurge.

For a point of reference, a piece of pumpkin pie has 43.4 net carbs. Does that help you make a choice?

Oh, one last note - a slice of turkey, any size - 0 grams carbs. :)

Decisions, decisions . . .

I have been a staunch supporter of Purple Porch since its inception and am a stockholder there. I have also supported them by being a producer at their Wednesday evening farmers market.

When I was on the farm, I had plenty of products to offer. There were organic garden produce, greenhouse plants in the spring, fruit, baked goods made with organic ingredients and items from my line of skin care products from Ceres & Co. (click this link to get to my website, or come on down to the South Bend Farmers Market, 1105 Northside Blvd., South Bend, IN.).

Then I sold the farm. No more plants, no more garden produce, no more sour cherries - the list got much shorter. People come to the Wednesday evening market at the Porch mainly for produce, which I no longer had. But I still had a pretty good following for my baked goods. Adding my line of soaked and dried nuts as well as my Trail Mix, all organic ingredients, made it worth my while to show up most weeks, and I like the community of the producers and customers.

As I wrote recently in this blog Passionate Phoenix can feel it coming on. I am ready to make some changes in my life. For me, anyway, change is the spice of life. But if something new is coming, then I acknowledge that something else has to go. I want time to hit the river in my kayak, throw a line in the water, tend my gardens. No more 12 hour days!

Last night was my last night to bring product to Purple Porch. It was the "something" that had to go. I have mixed emotions about it. I reminded my customers that I am still at the Farmers Market, at least for the time being, and they can always call for special orders.

Au revoir, Purple Porch. I will still be there for your excellent salad and soup bar. I'll stop by on Wednesday evenings to shop, but I won't be behind a table selling my wares anymore. It is bittersweet, but while I am floating on the river from the dam back home, it is a decision I will not be regretting.

Where I want to be

Sharing with the goslings

I am glad for the rain, but . . .

We need to put in some new corner posts in the dairy cow pastures.  We had to special order them because they cannot be made of treated wood on our organic farm.  But the rain has softened the earth, and we are looking for some dryer weather to get them installed.

In addition, the deer did their usual number on the fencing over the winter months. Now begins the tedious job of replacing broken or missing insulators and repairing wire that was snapped by deer who didn't leap quite high enough.  Okay, I'll admit it, the cows can do a number on the wires too.

We are staying on top of planting by the biodynamic calendar (Stella Natura is our guide), both in the greenhouse and the garden.  Last year was a disaster, everything late and not because of the weather.  This is as much as I want to say about that. 

In addition, the rain is making the grass grow, and in spite of the cool and rather sunless spring, soon the cows will be milking even better once they are on their diet of 100% fresh, green spring grass.  I am swimming in milk, making a three to four pound wheel of hard cheese once or twice a week.  I've been making a lot of Cheddar, but made Caerphilly, a Welsh cheese, the last two times.  Today it is Colby.  Maybe then I will go back to Cheddar, since it is pretty awesome.  I broke open a wheel that went into the cheese cave on August 2, 2013, and it is very nice, very nice indeed!

Well, back to work schedule for next week.  Never a dull moment on a farm in the spring.

Busy, busy, busy!

I forget just how busy this time of year is.  Nothing ever goes without a hitch.  This year, it was The Invasion of the Seed Snatchers!  Mice took out about 85% of our first two plantings - about 1,500 tomato and pepper seeds.  I had decided not to buy any new seeds this year, instead running down inventory.  So when this happened, there were very few seeds left in the seed bins for replanting.

Seeds separated by Flower, Fruit, Leaf and Root

Thankfully I still had Brandywine tomato seeds.  Two of 30 came up the first time, mice taking care of the rest.  But we planted more, and the reseeded cells are popping with tiny plants.  However, there are still many, many empty cells.  You can see in the picture that we separate the seeds so that it is easier to follow biodynamic organic planting principles.  Thursday is a Fruit day, and we will be busily filling in more empty spots in the seedling trays containing peppers and tomatoes.  We will also be planting our Tom Thumb Pea Bowls.

Empty cells!

Second planting of Brandywine tomatoes - looking good

Unfortunately, I had to order many more seeds.  One of my suppliers has a wonderful selection, but they are slow to ship.  I finally got their seeds last night and found out they were out of Green Zebra, Green Grape, Hugh's and Hillbilly.  The big losses on this list are Hugh's and Green Zebra.  It is really getting pretty late to order more seeds.  I guess we will just do without this year.  My customers will let me know what they think of that!  :(

This afternoon and all day tomorrow are Leaf days, so we will be trimming and transplanting the last of the lettuces from the greenhouse.  That will give us a bit of a jump on the garden season.  We'll also direct seed lettuce into the garden with our seeding machine.

Red leaf lettuce ready to transplant to garden.

 If you live near Walkerton / South Bend, Indiana and are interested in joining our Market Basket CSA or want greenhouse plants for your own garden, give me a holler.  I'll send you information.  Contact me at susan@ceres-co.com and I'll get the information to you right away.

I do believe spring has actually arrived!  At last!!!

Addendum:  Okay, I did it.  I ordered more seeds.  So we are covered for Hugh's, Green Zebra, Hillbilly and Green Grape.  Fortunately I found a supplier who had all four of them.  And while I was at it, I had a request on Saturday for Black Cherry tomatoes, so I ordered those.  And I finally found Ancho chile peppers, which have been out just about everywhere, so they are on their way as well.  I have a seed addiction!!!

Kim and I just finished planting our first seeds of the season - about 760 seeds give or take a few.  Hot peppers and sweet peppers.  We plant by the biodynamic calendar (see more here), peppers are "fruit," next fruit day will be the 23rd, when we will get first planting of tomato seeds done.  It is always fun to work out there, but it is brutally cold! 

I wonder how many records we have broken this year.  It isn't just the cold, it is the INCESSANT cold that is getting to me.  Our first calf is living in the barn.  We never keep the calves in when they are born.  It is healthier for them to be outside.  But not this year.  We are expecting two more calves this week, a beef calf and a dairy calf.  Where will be put them all?  Their little lean-to in the calf pen is just not enough for them.

Looking at the 10 day forecast, there are only three days when the temperature does not dip below zero in the nighttime.  This is just not right!

We have to crank the greenhouse temp up now that the seeds are in.  They are in seedling trays on a heat mat, but the 35º temperature that we maintain for the winter greens out there is just not good enough any longer.  Thermostat has been moved up to 55º, and furnace is running pretty often to maintain that.  Ca-ching, ca-ching. $$$$$$$$$$$$$

Well, spring officially begins on Thursday.  Perhaps things will get better in a week or two.  Or not.  Sigh . . .

I may not be crowing tomorrow, but . . .

My trusty Canon MP640 is a real workhorse.  For a little and fairly inexpensive printer, it does a lot a things.  It is a little slow, but it prints on two sides - without having to remove the finished prints and flipping them.  Imagine my consternation when I got my Epson and found out that "prints on two sides" meant that instructions for how to flip the paper popped up when you were done with the first side!

My mighty Canon can be filled with 25 lb. paper, the printing for 30 of my two sided flyers for the Walkerton Dairy Herd Association  (see more here) or my skin care products (more about that here) programmed, and then I really don't care how slow it is, because I can shower, or make a batch of soap, or load the dishwasher while it is doing its thing - it prints two sides without any further input from the operator.  It even senses when you have new ink cartridges and it lets the ink dry a little longer before it does the second side.  Good machine!

Today my color was off -- I use a lot of brown in my printed material, and it was lavender/pink instead of brown -- and even though it hadn't said to clean the print heads, I did it anyway; but the yellow just didn't work.   Then I got a printer error message.  I have already changed the print head once.  They are expensive!  I went out to the internet to see if I could find a good cleaning kit so I could save $75.  One site said to remove the print head and reinstall and sometimes that would clear it.  I did.  Oops!  Now it wouldn't print at all!!  Perfectly blank paper, even after it made all the sounds of printing.  I reinstalled it three times, figured I had damaged something and would have to buy a new one.

I found another site that showed you how to clean the head by putting it under warm running water.  Say what?  Would that really work?  Well, what did I have to lose?  I rinsed it until the water ran clear, dried the contacts thoroughly, reinstalled it, and voila! it printed again.  Yellow still wasn't good, so I ran a cleaning cycle, and all is well!!  Who'd of thunk it?  $75 for a print head, $8 plus shipping for a cleaning kit, and this cost me a couple of paper towels.  :)

Go to this site (video on how to clean a Canon print head) to see it done if you have a Canon with a sticky print head.

I can only hope it is still printing tomorrow morning.  Soon I'll be printing greenhouse labels, can't do without it.

Pot of gold in a pepper

A few years ago, my meter reader stopped to talk to me while I was working in the greenhouse.  He told me about this wonderful pepper that his family had grown for years, called a Melrose.  He gave me some seeds the next time he was at the farm and told me the history of these peppers.  When many Italian farmers migrated to Melrose Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, they brought with them seeds for these wonderful sweet red peppers.  Those farmers brought bushels of them to the farmers' market in Melrose Park, and the peppers came to be known simply as Melrose peppers.

I gratefully took the seeds and have been growing them for years.  I looked on line from time to time to see if I could find the seeds, just in case.  Nice to have a backup, you know.  Well, lo and behold, I found the seeds a couple of years ago, and with it the same story my meter reader had told me.  Truly, that is their origin in the US. 

One of my greenhouse plant customers grows nothing but Melrose peppers and usually gets a dozen plants a year.  Alas, this year it was not to be!  Steve had some problems with germination in the greenhouse, and by the time I discovered what was going on out there, I found that he had used every last Melrose seed, and his germination rate was about 5%, as opposed to the 90% to 95% germination rate I always got.  Only nine plants total!  I sold six to my regular Melrose customer and kept three for myself, planting one in a bed well away from the main garden.  There can be some cross pollination with peppers and I grow a lot of others that might mix up the results, so I wanted the "mother plant" to be isolated.

My customer had promised to save me some seeds.  But then he stopped by my booth to tell me that the rabbits got all but one of his plants.

I am so relieved that my lone plant sitting in the middle of a bunch of tomatoes in a small caged area behind my garage had three beautiful red peppers on it.  Two of them were very ripe.  I picked them a few days ago, pulled the seeds out and spread them on a plate.  I let them dry a couple more days, packaged them and can now rest assured that I will have Melrose peppers galore next year! 

Here are some pictures of the peppers and the seeds.  Back in business!  Melrose peppers will live on at Ceres & Co.!

Melrose peppers in the garden

   

Two extra ripe ones harvested for seed

Chock full of seeds

Big ripe bundles of seeds

Too many to count!

Melrose pepper seeds in their origami packet

I'm ferpused . . .

My mom used to say that she was ferpused when she was very worn out after a busy day.  I have no idea where the word came from, and I am probably not spelling it correctly, but there you have it.  Today, this evening, I am ferpused.

We have had some greenhouse problems - the winter lettuce hogged space that was sorely needed for plant starts, and the temperature was never right - either too hot for the lettuce or too cold for the pepper starts.  Today, I looked around and told Steve that we needed to play catch-up and fast, or we were really going to feel the revenue pinch.  Steve started hauling out flats of lettuce that could be transplanted in the garden.  I grabbed seedling trays and started planting - the end of April, and I'm planting!

I went over all of the poorly germinated trays of peppers and tomatoes and had Steve pot up anything that was worth salvaging.  I continued to plant - and plant - and plant.  I finally quit a few minutes ago, having planted about 1,600 seeds.

Like I said, I'm ferpused.  I just hope that they will germinate and grow fast enough to profit from the late plant market.  These will be nice and fresh at a time when most of the vendors' plants are looking tired and leggy.  I can hope.

Early to bed tonight.

Lettuce is ready

Finally, I am doing the first cutting of lettuce today and taking to the restaurant in LaPorte.  There is plenty of mizuna, and I'm clipping a bit of the specialty lettuces.  The mizuna grows the fastest, and it is what the restaurant specifically requested, so I'm thinking that most of our flats will be full of it as the winter season progresses.

Here are pictures of the lettuces before cutting.

Mizuna - this one will be the real cash crop!

Asian Red

Marveille de quatre saison

These will be next cutting

More for next cutting

Aren't they pretty?

New babies - always more trays need to be started

Raising heirloom lettuce this winter

The new restaurant in LaPorte that I have been supplying with garden produce has been a good thing for me here at the farm.   After I took care of my CSA customers, they took just about everything I produced. 

Steve, who puts in a little time around here every now and then, said he could rig the greenhouse so that I could raise lettuce all winter without having to use the furnace.  Okay, I thought I would give it a try. 
Trusting that this was going to work out and could perhaps provide enough income that I could move to town and keep the farm too, I approached a restaurant in LaPorte to sell them winter heirloom lettuce.  He put in an order!  The restaurant

I took the greenhouse catalog from last year and told him to pick what he wanted us to grow next season.  He said he felt like a kid in a candy store and gave us a list of about 30 items that he would like.  But right now, I have to get going with the lettuce.  I started about 3,000 seeds in seedling trays.  Today the first of the germinated lettuces were big enough to pot up into a big growing tray. 

Here are some pictures of what is happening in the greenhouse.

Barrels of water to control heat

More barrels

Planting first tray of cutting lettuce

Finished tray of cutting lettuce in water bath

Gravel around foundation to discourage mice

Organic potting soil - 58 bags!

Seedling trays on heating mats