Rhubarb Curd

The best part about Spring is asparagus and rhubarb.

I harvested my first crop of rhubarb this weekend, over two pounds. (2.15lbs, to be exact.  One of my homesteading goals for this year is to track the amount of food we produce.)

My favorite rhubarb recipe is no longer an option to my gluten free husband - Suzanne McMinn's Rhubarb Bread and I discovered I still have some rhubarb left over from last year in the freezer, so I decided to try something new.  I fell across a recipe for rhubarb curd.  I love lemon curd and rhubarb is another favorite of mine for its tart flavor, so I was naturally attracted to the idea. This is a really simple recipe:

Rhubarb Curd

1 lbs. rhubarb
1/2 cup honey
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
6 egg yolks
4 Tbsp. butter 

Wash and chop rhubarb into 1/2 inch chunks. There is no need to peel, but if your stalks are particularly large, you might trim off any tough parts. Stir the rhubarb and 1/4 cup of honey together and let sit for about 10 minutes. Place in a medium sized pot with about 1/4 cup of water and cook over low heat until you can no longer see whole pieces. Turn off the heat and let cool to room temperature. Blend to a smooth puree if you desire (this will remove any remaining little stringy bits, but it isn't necessary). 

In a double boiler whisk the egg yolks, remaining honey and salt. Whisk until well combined and warm. Add about 1 cup of the stewed rhubarb and the lemon zest. Keep stirring until the mixture is warm again. Check for taste and add the rest of the pureed rhubarb. Remove from heat and stir in the butter chunks.

If you are not using the curd immediately, let it cool to room temperature and then store refrigerated for up to a week.  I am going to store mine in the freezer.

If you want inspiration for more rhubarb recipes, check out this treasure trove of rhubarb recipes at Punk Domestics.  I will be looking into the rhubarb liqueur to use the frozen rhubarb cubes from last year.

Friday Farm - Raspberry Wine

The Hubs and I broke open a bottle of the raspberry wine I started over a year ago.  You can see my post about it here.

The flavors are amazing.  It is light, crisp and very dry, but the raspberry flavor comes through strongly in the nose and in flavor.  It almost seems like a sweet wine because the raspberry is so intense. I think it will continue to improve over the next  few months, so I will not be drinking them all at once.  I need to start another batch...should have done it six months ago!  There are plenty of raspberries waiting in the freezer from last summer.

Spring Planting

The weather today was amazingly beautiful and glorious. Every single person in this moss covered, mildew laden city was outside walking, biking and playing.  Having grown up in this place, and having lived in a sunnier clime for years and then moved back, I feel I have earned the right to criticize our dreary wet, cold winters.  Don't get me wrong, I love how green it is year round, I love living minutes away from temperate rain forests, sandy beaches and a gorgeous mountain range.  However, I despise the days of endless rain in the winter. November to March is dreary...some years (like 2011) the dreariness continues well into July.

But days like today, 81 degrees and blue skies, in April, make it all worth it.  We got out our bikes and rode down one of the many dedicated bikeway streets, across the river to the downtown waterfront.  The place was so packed we had to walk our bikes.  We watched the hordes playing in the huge public fountain and then biked our way back home.  Lovely day.

Now onto more important topics....the asparagus is coming up!!

All three of my plants survived (I planted crowns here for my mom about 5 years ago) and are sending up delicious shoots of green and purple.

Our cherry tree has just about finished blooming. I need to go get the netting to place over the bamboo frame we set last weekend.

You can see all the plant tags from the seeds Neverella and I planted last weekend below.  Some of the herb seeds are already sprouting today.

Hope everyone enjoyed this weekend as much as we did.

Friday Farm - Clematis Blooming

This weekend the temperature is supposed to reach 79 degrees here in Portlandia!  The excitement is palpable.  Everyone I talk to at work, at the grocery store, my colleagues are all planning to soak up the rays this weekend.  Please let the winter weather be over!

Sun on the evergreen clematis

Chicken Butt

This weekend was gorgeous and sunny and warm! We took advantage of the weather and made some grand strides on the garden.  I planted the potatoes in a nice hill and topped them with straw. We set up the cage around our cherry tree, just need to buy the netting and wrap it before the cherries start to form--the birds are NOT the only ones that will enjoy cherries this year. Neverella and I weeded a large section of the flower bed in a sunny part of the yard and planted all the herb starts and also lots of flower seeds along our fence; amaranth, sunflowers and hollyhocks.

I also enlarged the chicken run for the girls and decided it was time for another photoshoot:

Myrtle the Gold Laced Wyandotte

Nugget the Light Brahma

Eureka the Speckled Sussex

Ebony the Black Australorp

Double butt - Nugget and Godzilla the Americauna

Seed Starting Challenge

April's Urban Farm Challenge is seed starting!  Erica at Northwest Edible Life has all the details HERE.  If you leave a comment on her blog about what you are growing this month you will be entered to win a year of Urban Farm Magazine.  Yes, there is a magazine for that.  I have bought a few copies over the years and learned some great information about bee keeping and soil building.

You can see my current seed growing operation here and here.

This is where my seed starting experience started at my old house.  The only space I had was the top of my washer and dryer...and I used a desk lamp.  To my surprise this worked out fine.  I grew some great tomato's that year.

Are those not lovely August toms?  All started on top of my dryer in February.














This years setup comes complete with a guard cat:

This year I have planted seed for an herb garden Neverella and I are going to plant in the sunny part of the backyard.  Now that the chickens are being penned in a rotating field style operation, I can plant what I want in the flower beds.

New to me herbs started this year include borage, chamomile, echinacea, sage, bergamot, calendula.

I am also using NW Edible's seed database this year, it is fantastic and she offers it on her blog for FREE.

What are you growing this year that is new to you?

New Roof for the Chook Palace

Last weekend, The Hubs and I built and placed a new roof on the coop.  The recent amount of rain we were having and the fact that we built a half-assed roof on this coop in 2010 because we had to move the chickens to our new home in under two weeks, resulted in a mud bath in the girls palace.

Muddy feet do not a happy chicken make.  Nor a happy chicken keeper.

We built a new frame out of 2x4's we salvaged from the boxing gym where The Hubs works.  We have found we never have to buy lumber or plywood, as there always seems to be some in someone's "free" pile.  This time we decided to go with a metal roof, and we believe the coop will now collapse way before this roof will give out.

This coop is DIY, in every sense. I do know a little something about how buildings are built and how materials go together given my architecture experience, but a talented carpenter I am not.  That said, our girls are very happy and secure in this coop.

Today we put on the finishing touches by adding a gutter at the rear of the coop (to the left in the photo above) and then adding a rain chain to the gutter to keep the water from splashing at the coop corner.  In the future we plan to move our rain barrel to this location to collect water for the girls from their own coop roof.

Here is the rain chain, from the vantage of the raspberries. I threw some pea gravel back there for good measure to try to keep the mud from splashing on and into the coop.

All the new growth on the raspberry canes!  Spring is definitely here.