2022 Garden Haul & Food Storage

This year marked our 3rd on the homestead and our 2nd year of garden! I’m realizing more and more how important it is to know where your food is coming from and it doesn’t get much more transparent than just growing it yourself. It’s hard work but I’ve found a lot of joy in the process and so far each year has gotten much easier (it’s still frickin hard).

June 2022 - The garden has begun!

Before moving to upstate NY we lived in the concrete jungle of Brooklyn with our above ground garden. More and more I’ve realized just how much living there had affected me and my perspective. While energetic and inspiring I always felt not quite right like I wasn’t meant to stay.

It was never my plan to live in the city but I got a sick job that at the time I really loved but jobs aren’t the only reason to be somewhere. Standing amongst thousands of blurry bodies hustling around trying to make a living, find love, find themselves etc was overwhelming for me. So we left and started our next chapter upstate.

Our garden now stands in hopefully it’s forever home and boyyyyyy am I so frickin proud of the it this year. We’ve started to figure out what we really like to eat (kale, tomatoes, squash) and what gets wasted (eggplant, cucumbers, green peppers) along with how we can store food for the winter. And what seemed really daunting last year felt so much easier this year, which I was really thankful for. Currently we freeze, dehydrate and use the water canning method to store our food.

Dehydrating was probably one of my favorites. After a month of drought we finally had a weekend of rain and with moisture comes mushrooms. I was in luck because on our land was a ton of oyster mushrooms ready to be harvested. The ones we couldn’t eat right away were then dehydrated to use for soups and other recipes. Also a fun veggie to dehydrate is squash & zucchini! Scroll down to see what it looks like.

Next year we plan to start our seeds early esp the luffa, which you know I’ve been trying really hard to grow but our growing season is very short. In other news - we’ll be expanding the garden to include a chicken run that is full of fruiting trees, building out water collection and drainage systems, we’ll grow as many strawberries as possible (my favorite jam), finally making hot sauce… and much more. Can’t wait to start planning!

Let me know in the comments what you’re excited to grow or looking forward to in Spring

Last haul of the 2022 season

Dehydrated Summer Squash & Zucchini - great for soups and stews

Homemade Fire Cider for the days we need a boost in immunity or just a little extra flavor in our soups - Recipe

Some of our canned food - mostly tomato sauce and paste

Foraged Oyster Mushrooms - Our summer was so dry soI didn’t expect to see any mushrooms. These popped up at the very end of Summer after a few days of rain. The majority of these were cleaned, cut up and dehydrated for soups and stews.

Leaf Peeping in Mountaindale

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
― Albert Camus

Fallen Beech Tree leaf found on the Mountaindale Rails to Trails

In 2021 we had a quick and mediocre fall. Right as the leaves began to change an enormous storm rolled in. Within a few days most trees were completely barren. It was a pretty strange feeling to be tossed into the visuals of winter so quickly. Thankfully this year was different.

The first year of us living in Mountaindale we collected fall leaves and other plants to press. Once completely pressed we used a float frame to create a first year memory collage.

Take a look at all the beautiful leaves we saw this season and let us know your favorite!

Our studio at sunset right at the start of fall

“Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like
they're falling in love with the ground.”
― Andrea Gibson

“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Easily one of my favorites - red oak leaf

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.”

―Rainer Maria Rilke,Letters on Cézanne

Beautiful yellow maple leaf

Fresh Peach Tart

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter

What an insane summer! Typically our April is super rainy but the summer has really soaked us. So our normal exploration on the weekends have been washed out quite regularly, which means that we haven’t been “picking our own" in quite a while! Well, ask/wish and you shall receive. We happened to be at the right place at the right time to receive a beautiful bag full of freshly picked peaches just waiting to be transformed into something sweet and delicious though I could have probably eaten each peach on their own.

We did a poll on our Instagram page to see what folks thought we should make. One of the big winners was the peach tart. Simple and sunny we found our Peach Tart recipe from Food52. I didn’t follow their crust recipe because I had plans to make pies and quiches so I just made extra pie crust but I did follow the rest.

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter surrounded by Sun Ray appetizer plates and textured side bowls

The Best Zucchini Bread

Zucchini Bread served on Wild Bower Studio Sun Ray Serving Platter

When you start a garden there are so many moments where you wonder what will happen and if the garden will be a success. Will we get even one tomato or one squash? Well, we’ve officially surpassed our expectations. Every few weeks a new veggie starts to ripen and thus a new question starts to unfurl…

Recently, as I start the pile of veggies, I’ve found myself getting to a point where I say “What am I going to do with all this?” Today that question was focused on our Zucchini haul. The green gourds sometimes get lost behind the big leaves so we’ve had a few unexpected “monsters”. Some have grown larger than my forearm!

I tried to go through all of the recipes that I’ve made in the past to figure out my plan of attack. So today we made Zucchini bread, which should honestly be outlawed - it’s so dang good and more like cake than bread.

Zucchini Bread served on Wild Bower Studio textured ceramic dinnerware & Sun Ray platter.

I’m a simple potter and while with cooking I can confidently ad lib, baking on the other hand I tend to find sticking to the recipes (to start) helpful for success. After a quick search I discovered Mom’s Zucchini Bread recipe. Best part it has over 9K 5 stars reviews so you know it’ll be good.

We made this recipe twice, the first following exactly and the second adding some nutmeg, ginger and allspice to the mix. Both were delicious and for sure a treat you’ll want to share with your friends and family.

Tomato Caprese Salad

I’ve never been a right off the vine type of tomato eater… until now. The first tomatoes to ripen this year were these adorable orange ones (don’t ask me the name because I have no idea). They are sweet and honestly taste a bit like happiness. Just look at these droplets of sunshine!

There are so many ways to eat tomatoes but my go to has been a simple caprese salad. Now let’s be honest, a Caprese salad might not be one of those things that require a recipe but here we are so I thought I’d share my favorite combo served on one of our newest sun ray textured dinner plates.

This garden has been a labor of love. When we purchased our home, the garden was located deep in the forrest. Last year we tried growing in that area but it was very unsuccessful. Since we love growing our own vegetables we decided that this year we’d have to move the garden closer to the house and into a much sunnier area. Though it was a lot of work building a new fence and getting the soil together, the garden did not disappoint. We’ve had a plethora of delicious treats come out of the garden from kale to squash to peppers and now tomatoes.

Squiggle Oil Cruet handmade by Wild Bower Studio sits along side a variety of textured bowls and beautiful cherry tomatoes

What you’ll need:

• Tomatoes - pick your favorite but we recommend fresh cherry tomatoes or beefsteak

• Fresh Basil

• Mozzarella or Burrata

• Salt & Pepper to taste

• Cobram Australian Extra Virgin Oil Olive (trust me, it’s the best)

Pick your favorite medium sized Wild Bower bowl. Cut up your tomatoes into halves or quarters depending on size. Chop or ripe your basil and Mozzarella. Add these ingredients to a bowl. Top with salt & pepper to taste. Finally add your EVOO and mix. Sometimes when I’m feeling a little wild, I’ll add a fresh jalapeño, garlic or red pepper flakes. Once fully coated plate your salad on your Wild Bower Studio dinnerware or eat directly from one of our bowls.

When I’m serving this meal to guests I’ll put the herbs & spices on the table in our ceramic catchalls along with the EEVO in one of our oil cruets rather than directly on the salad. It’s a nice addition to any meal and allows guests to really get into the process.

Our bright and beautiful tomato caprese salad is plated on our Sun Ray Dinner Plate along side our Squiggle Oil Curet with a variety of our ceramic bowls in the background.

Strawberry Picking + Oatmeal Bars

Our goal was to make homemade strawberry preserves, which is my home’s overall favorite jam. For those who are new to Preserves - they are a thick fruit spread made from fruit cooked with sugar, but in this case, large pieces of the fruit, or the whole fruit that are suspended in a firm jelly or less-gelled syrupy base. Read more here.

Anyway, with that in mind, we probably went a bit overboard with the amount of strawberries that we picked - 5 Quarts! With about 3.5 quarts went towards the jam we now needed to figure out what to do with the rest…

Lost Quarry and Wild Bower Ceramics <3

Hey Friends!

Have you ever tasted a perfectly ripe strawberry? Though, I’ll probably claim this for every in season fruit, I must say that freshly picked strawberries are pretty dang heavenly.

As you can probably tell, strawberry season is upon us in Upstate New York (mid to late June) and wow, is it magical! These beautiful little red fruits are abundant and ripe for picking so that’s exactly what we did.

Early one morning Lost Quarry and I set out for Saunders Kill Farm in Accord NY to pick our own.

This is where Strawberry Oatmeal bars comes in. Now, I’m not a baker or a chef so most of the recipes here will be linked back to other talented folks who actually create recipes.

These Oatmeal Bars from Well Plated are so easy to make and contain almost no processed white sugar.