Fifth Floor Farm Kitchen

Harvested one hundred thirteen pounds of potatoes the last two days. I asked Faye if that was enough until next harvest........She said it depends on how good they taste. Six different kinds.

A UKRAINIAN RECIPE, STUFFED BEET GREENS. Wilt the greens and cut off the stem. FILLING: Toast 2 cup rice add 2 teaspoon salt and bring to boil in 2 cup water. (I was gutting tomato for stuffing and I had juice.) or a combo of water and tomato juice. Cover and turn off heat and let stand until absorbed. The rice will be partially cooked. COOK 1 medium onion in 4 or 5 tablespoons butter or fat. (I used pork fat the Faye had salted and froze.) Mix with rice, Heat through, season & cool. Drop a spoonful on a beet green make an envelope w/ filling. Put in a baking dish and cover lightly & 375F 1 1/2 hrs. Serve w/ sour cream or yogurt.

Faye's trellis, made from recycled greenhouse frame. The plastic greenhouse met the end of its working life. Stuffed tomatoes I made for the first time. Stuffed with rice, ground meat & garden herbs. The topping is whole wheat bread crumbs & Parmeson cheese.

Some of what Faye harvested from her gardens and orchards. As it might say in the bible....parallax is a bitch.

A SHIITAKE TEST Faye was watching Chinese television documentary and saw a woman make a small hole in what we assume was suitable log and insert a piece of mushroom! She then seemed to close the hole with some moss! To remove shade from one of Faye's garden I cut down a pretty large wild cherry tree. And then starting from the base of the tree I cut three four foot logs, the rest is firewood. I drilled 6 and 8 holes in the log and put in pieces of fresh shiitake, was...hed and air dried but still pliable. Then covered the holes with the shiitake in them with wax. As is my way currently, I used the posthole digger to get hole a foot deep that will hold the log and put the logs upright in the hole. I then put a couple of pages of newspaper without color ads on the end of the logs and tied them on. This will slow the loss of water in the log if it should get dry before the mushroom mycelium colonizes the log. The paper will not stay on forever and will eventually fall off. The optimum time to fell trees for this purpose is when there is a lot of sap in the tree, not in the leaves. But this is July and the garden demanded that the shade be removed. So we shall see what happens. See more