Oh what fun!

This is the time to be starting fall vegetable seeds. Actually, I think I could have pushed it and started a few weeks ago, but I played it safer. It's still very hot, and cool weather veggies may not survive the heat, once transplanted.

Our new deck in the back of the building is proving to be a wonderfully multifunctional space! Besides giving wheelchair accessibility to the building and providing a shaded outdoor "meeting" space it also has great cool shade underneath where seedlings have nearly ideal place for germinating! I sowed lettuce, spinach and chard seeds 2 days ago, and lettuces have already sprouted!!! In the spring it took at least a week, if I remember correctly. It may also have helped, that I kept the seeds in the freezer, and took them out just the night before.

Today I planted many different types of Brassicas - cabbages, broccoli, asian greens etc. Can't wait to eat 'em!

My Mother's Garden; Part 2

As promised - more pictures of Estonian gardens. I didn't have my camera handy all the time, to record how much Estonians still garden. Most people have carved out a plot somewhere next to their house, to grow some veggies and flowers. Most housing developments (remnants of the soviet time) have a community garden plot, available to anyone wishing to grow fresh produce.

People living in the city usually have some land in the countryside, where they spend most of their time in the summer, weeding and sweating, canning and preserving.

Next few pictures are of my mom's "across the creek" vegetable garden. As far as I can remember - this is the third location for the veggie garden. It has moved farther away from the house in the years, for various reasons, but still provides the family with all the needed veggies.

When we were there zucchini plants were still tiny, but already starting to produce. And lucky for Estonians - there are no Squash bugs!

Potatoes were not too happy this year. Same time (mid July) in NC farmers were picking potatoes already.

In Estonia they were just starting to bloom, and the long cold and wet spring had not been kind to young potato plants.
Cabbages, carrots, onions, beans - all sorts of cool weather vegetables... Neighbors from across the field also use a few rows of my parents land to grow their food.
Here's the view from the house towards the vegetable garden and fields. The wooden structure in the foreground is "kiik" - a sledge swing, a type of swing original to Estonia. In the olden days young people used to gather during the long summer nights around the "kiigeplats" - "swinging grounds" to swing, sing and dance and eye suitable marriage partners... my dad was the first in the village to build one of those swings after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The original kiik had to be replaced at one point as the beams eventually rotted. But we had many fun times swinging with other village kids, or gathering with family for summer solstice or other summer holidays on that particular "swinging ground".

We all love tomatoes!!!

Interesting ARTICLE in NYTimes about tomatoes, late blight, some choices we as growers make, and call to be more inclusive and diverse, as gardeners...

On another note - TONY my pal and our Biodiesel guru - fixed my USB ports last week! Yepeeee!

Apparently, on MAC's, if you take out the battery, it sort of reboots or resets everything... or something like that... anyway. I was finally able to put all the 600 photos on my I-Photo last week, and will start sharing our Estonia experiences soon:)

I would like to thank again the people who helped me out during this 3 weeks of vacation and enabled me to visit my family!!! Thanks Nancy for being such a flexible boss, and for understanding the need to recharge batteries! Thank you Tony, Gloria and Evan, for looking after the garden, and dealing with the mess I left behind! (The tomatoes got the better of me this year, and grew into a tangled mess, before I left...) Thanks for helping Rick and Henrietta, and Bill and Dianna to keep selling their produce and eggs. Thanks for picking, pruning, weed eating, killing the squash bugs etc. YA'll rock!

Local - food bill up for House vote

He doesn't know what the purpose of it is????!??!??!??!!

Click on the title to get to the article.

Can you guys help him out here?

Changing foodways

Another article highlighting Local meat becoming more mainstream through CSA's.

Youtube is quite a source for information, as well as entertainment - here is Michael Pollan talking about his book "Omnivore's Dilemma".

I Still have not been able to put pictures on my computer :((((( Hopefully sooner than later, as I have some delicious shots from Estonian farmers markets. While we were there - Chanterelles were being picked all over Estonia, and sold in markets - as well as grocery stores, alongside with local wild blueberries and wild strawberries. I am proud to see the foraging still going strong in Estonian mainstream, and people being very selective about locally grown (Since Estonia is so small - potatoes from southern counties are still relatively local in northern Estonia, compared to fruits and veggies coming from Spain or Ukraine)

Occasionally, however, you can see oddities like "Estonian" bananas being sold in the marketplace... Since local sells - people sometimes bypass reason... After all - we tend to trust labels more than our eyes or common knowledge...