Summer, at last.

 It is SO hard to keep up with all things farm and homestead related during the school (work) year.  At last it's summer and I can try to settle in to the rhythm of growing things, baking things and hopefully at some point deep cleaning the house. These last couple days I've been able to use food from our gardens to make dinner and a desert. With prices as they are, the more we can grow, the more we can save. 

First up Haskap/ Honeyberry cake! We have a great crop of these berries this year. Getting our first plant years ago (on clearance) was a great choice and now I pick up one or two more should I happen to find them on end of season clearance. These berries grow so well in our area, they can deal with the cold winter temperatures. The berries are not as sweet as blueberries but they are very good especially when fully ripe. 

honeyberries on bush

The berry cake it was nearly all gone by the time I took the picture!

We also have some veggies ready in the gardens. I started plants indoors very early and the result is nice large Kale and other greens plants. As for the garlic that I started last fall, some are now at the point of growing scapes which can be used to give a garlicky taste to recipes. I used the garlic scapes cut up small, along with chives, in some rolls and bread. I also used the scapes in a stir fry along with various garden greens and some green onions and small onion bulbs (which have grown a bit out of control again this year) The onions that we planted years ago have perrenialized and go on and on and....So we will harvest some of them small and use that way to free up space where these have taken over. 

Garlic Scapes

KitKat helping

So many little and not so little onion plants!

Curly Kale

"Dinosaur" Kale

Chives

Garlic Scape and Chive rolls well the last few anyway! They were very garlicky but I think everyone liked them.