Keiko Lee-Hem
print + web design
t: 604 569 6385
m: 778 997 5386
www.keikocreative.com
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Seasons Greetings to everyone
Keiko Lee-Hem
print + web design
t: 604 569 6385
m: 778 997 5386
www.keikocreative.com
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Harvest Box for September 25th
Dear Friends of our Harvest Box,
Thanks for all of your wonderful support this summer. If we haven't told you this in person, Luc, Susan & I are so honoured to have you in our community. Last week, we paid off the debt that we accumulated during our first 2 years of backyard food growing and are now in the black. Woohoo!!
As the nights get cooler, we are noticing production cutting back so this will be the last weekly box. Our next box will hopefully be available in 2 weeks, on Oct 9th or thereabouts. We hope at that time that the butternut squash will be ready!!
We have 5 boxes available this week, at $20, and we can provide the boxes on either Thursday or Friday afternoon. Let us know which works better for you.
1 bag of Salad Mix
1 bunch baby bok choi
1 bunch beets
1 bunch Swiss Chard
1 bunch carrots
Hungarian peppers
tomatoes
kohlrabi
garlic
baby Japanese eggplant
1 bouquet of zinnias
Please place your order by Wednesday and we'll have boxes ready by either Thursday or Friday at about 1pm. If we haven't already arranged drop-off with you, the pick-up spot for boxes is at Arzeena's house
Thanks for all of your wonderful support this summer. If we haven't told you this in person, Luc, Susan & I are so honoured to have you in our community. Last week, we paid off the debt that we accumulated during our first 2 years of backyard food growing and are now in the black. Woohoo!!
As the nights get cooler, we are noticing production cutting back so this will be the last weekly box. Our next box will hopefully be available in 2 weeks, on Oct 9th or thereabouts. We hope at that time that the butternut squash will be ready!!
We have 5 boxes available this week, at $20, and we can provide the boxes on either Thursday or Friday afternoon. Let us know which works better for you.
1 bag of Salad Mix
1 bunch baby bok choi
1 bunch beets
1 bunch Swiss Chard
1 bunch carrots
Hungarian peppers
tomatoes
kohlrabi
garlic
baby Japanese eggplant
1 bouquet of zinnias
Please place your order by Wednesday and we'll have boxes ready by either Thursday or Friday at about 1pm. If we haven't already arranged drop-off with you, the pick-up spot for boxes is at Arzeena's house
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Kale Chips
With the gardens in their full glory, we've been harvesting lovely, huge boxes, filled with greens. One green in particular, however, can sometimes be a bit of a challenge for a someone who's never used it. That green: Kale!!
Kale is a member of the cabbage family and is filled with nutrients, particularly iron and folic acid. It's supposedly even more nutritious than spinach! Yet even we sometimes get stumped on what to do with it.
The kale we've been growing this year is a tender, flat-leaf variety called Red Russian. Once it's de-stemmed, it can often be substituted instead of spinach with just a little bit of extra cooking.
However, one of our favourite methods of using this versatile vegetable is to make it into kale chips. Yes! Crunchy, salty chips that are just as delicious as anything found in a bag at your grocery store.
They're so easy to make, you'll wonder how you did without them.
First, de-stem your kale. You can do this with a knife but often, if you just encircle the stem with your thumb and finger making an "O" and run it down the stem, the leaves rip off easily.
Next, chop up any large pieces, but not too small. The kale will shrink when cooked.
Put all the chopped kale in a bowl and drizzle with about a tablespoon of oil and salt to taste. Toss until all the kale is coated.
Place the kale on a cookie sheet and slide it into the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes. Take out, flip - see if any are ready. You may need to put it back for another 5 minutes but that's it. Be careful not to let it burn.
Once cool, place in a bowl and watch it disappear.
Kale is a member of the cabbage family and is filled with nutrients, particularly iron and folic acid. It's supposedly even more nutritious than spinach! Yet even we sometimes get stumped on what to do with it.
The kale we've been growing this year is a tender, flat-leaf variety called Red Russian. Once it's de-stemmed, it can often be substituted instead of spinach with just a little bit of extra cooking.
However, one of our favourite methods of using this versatile vegetable is to make it into kale chips. Yes! Crunchy, salty chips that are just as delicious as anything found in a bag at your grocery store.
They're so easy to make, you'll wonder how you did without them.
First, de-stem your kale. You can do this with a knife but often, if you just encircle the stem with your thumb and finger making an "O" and run it down the stem, the leaves rip off easily.
Next, chop up any large pieces, but not too small. The kale will shrink when cooked.
Put all the chopped kale in a bowl and drizzle with about a tablespoon of oil and salt to taste. Toss until all the kale is coated.
Place the kale on a cookie sheet and slide it into the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes. Take out, flip - see if any are ready. You may need to put it back for another 5 minutes but that's it. Be careful not to let it burn.
Once cool, place in a bowl and watch it disappear.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Our first ever farmer's market
We took a leap of faith and loaded up two carloads with veggies to take to the first Gastown Farmer's Market in Vancouver.
We had a wonderful time talking to locals and tourists who were very appreciative of organically-grown food in the downtown core. A couple of friends, Asifa & Sharon came to lend us a hand and provided most welcome relief for bathroom breaks.
We'd like to go back and are hoping to make it on August 23rd. We'll be selling our garlic, flowers, and lots of salad greens.
Please come by the market if you have some time - there was fantastic bread, grapes, fruit and flowers too.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A bumper harvest
It's amazing what you can grow when you put your mind to it. Today we harvested a huge variety of veggies and the box this week included:
Garlic
Turnips
Snow Peas
Snap Peas
Beets
Swiss Chard
Carrots
Salad Mix
Zucchini
Kale
Zinnias
Pretty awesome if we do say so ourselves.
Garlic
Turnips
Snow Peas
Snap Peas
Beets
Swiss Chard
Carrots
Salad Mix
Zucchini
Kale
Zinnias
Pretty awesome if we do say so ourselves.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Carpe Annum ... Grabbing the Year
We caught the tail end of last year's growing season but hopped aboard January of this year.
Lasagna Gardening ...
That's when we began preparing our third back yard, Seema's garden, by composting in situ over an existing lawn.
Recipe:
Lay down a first layer of cardboard.
Top with many bags of fall leaves gathered off the sidewalk the year before.
Followed by many visits to the beach to collect bags and bags of seaweed/seagrass
and a final layer of a couple van loads of City compost.
Finish with a dusting of rock phosphate and lime in late spring.
Now just wait for the weather to stabilize above 10 degrees and you are ready to plant..
By March we decided that as the grass layer was not fully dead let alone decomposed, we would plant fruit and leaf crops: lettuce, tomatoes and summer squashes and wait another year before rototilling and planting root crops.
Lancing Road
Preparing the beds in spring takes alot of hard work. Weeds to be removed. Amendments to be added to each bed according to what will be planted and rototilled in. Beds to be reshaped. Bean supports set up. Starting and tending trays and trays of seedlings. Many enjoyable meetings over coffee at the neighbourhood coffee shop to select seed, decide on quantities, set goals and objectives, and discuss lessons learnt.
By April we were ready to plant root crop seed; the mood full of excitement, resolve and anticipation. The stop/start beginning to the season meant we replanted seed a few times. Doubt lurked in the dark corners. Much of the seed did not come up particularly carrot, swiss chard, kale, leeks ... many differing varieties. What was going on? Why the poor results? But with some adjustments to the timers on the watering system, repositioning sprinklers and the stabilizing warmth, the garden began to grow.
We did manage to meet Jake's goal of 'all crops in the ground by the beginning of May'. I hope he is satisfied with our efforts and pleased with Joyce's decision to allow us into his beloved vegetable garden.
More Lessons Learnt at Lancing
Lancing we soon discovered, was not a garden for lettuce. The wire worms that haunt the soil there, have an insatiable appetite for it. We were glad we had other gardens that favored lettuces and concentrated other salad greens at the Lancing garden.
The blank spaces in the rows became opportunities for succession plantings, more crops to replace those we were pulling from the ground. We learnt lessons about timing, as we missed the fast paced radishes as they quickly passed their prime, rising above the earth and the slugs chewed little white craters into their red skins.
First Shares of Spring
It took a while for enough variety to be ready for harvest before we could offer shares for sale.
Each harvest feels like a celebration. We all come out and enjoy the pleasure of pulling the first baby beets, cutting the fuscia stems of crisp chard leaves. Combining the elements of a delectable salad mix then washing, cleaning and primping it into bags. Treasure hunting for sugar snap peas, reserving the plumpest one for my own mouth, as I work my way along the row.
We are proud to offer the fresh, healthy food we work hard to grow.
We do love a Free Deal
We discovered a variety of free nutrients and ammendments within the community. Some for the beds, some for the compost bin. Kitchen waste is collected regularly from our coffee shop. Coffee chaff from a small coffee roasting establishment. Soy mash from a local tofu shop. Our compost bin is smoking! All that good stuff in the compost bin will fuel next year's crops ... Cardboard boxes for distributing the harvest from the liquor store. Wood ash from Luc's fire place. Comfrey for making compost tea. and there is the added bonus of getting to know our neighbours and them getting to know us.
Harvesting the Garlic
Arzeena knew enough to plant garlic in September of last year. It tied up two beds for six months. As the curly scapes began to unwind they signaled harvest time. Who new the satisfaction of harvesting garlic. We "ooohed" and "aaahed" over the size of the largest bulbs, we felt wealthy and satisfied breathing in the pungent fragrance; admiring the great piles of garlic.
... and the Sweet Peas are Blooming
We planted zinnias and sweetpeas as - 'man does not live by bread alone'. The first georgeous stems went to our benefactor, Joyce because we are grateful and we have to express it somehow.
Balancing the hard work with Pleasure
Market gardening is aching, sweaty, wet and cold in turn, slow, laborious work with many rewards. Seeing the very best in the companions you depend upon to do what they do best. Doing all that you know how and surrending the outcome to nature. The deep, ancient, fundamental satisfaction of simple pleasures - popping a small, straight carrot from the earth and admiring it, relaxing in the shade, comparing notes and lessons learnt. Stepping in time to the primordial heartbeat of the earth.
Lasagna Gardening ...
That's when we began preparing our third back yard, Seema's garden, by composting in situ over an existing lawn.
Recipe:
Lay down a first layer of cardboard.
Top with many bags of fall leaves gathered off the sidewalk the year before.
Followed by many visits to the beach to collect bags and bags of seaweed/seagrass
and a final layer of a couple van loads of City compost.
Finish with a dusting of rock phosphate and lime in late spring.
Now just wait for the weather to stabilize above 10 degrees and you are ready to plant..
By March we decided that as the grass layer was not fully dead let alone decomposed, we would plant fruit and leaf crops: lettuce, tomatoes and summer squashes and wait another year before rototilling and planting root crops.
Lancing Road
Preparing the beds in spring takes alot of hard work. Weeds to be removed. Amendments to be added to each bed according to what will be planted and rototilled in. Beds to be reshaped. Bean supports set up. Starting and tending trays and trays of seedlings. Many enjoyable meetings over coffee at the neighbourhood coffee shop to select seed, decide on quantities, set goals and objectives, and discuss lessons learnt.
By April we were ready to plant root crop seed; the mood full of excitement, resolve and anticipation. The stop/start beginning to the season meant we replanted seed a few times. Doubt lurked in the dark corners. Much of the seed did not come up particularly carrot, swiss chard, kale, leeks ... many differing varieties. What was going on? Why the poor results? But with some adjustments to the timers on the watering system, repositioning sprinklers and the stabilizing warmth, the garden began to grow.
We did manage to meet Jake's goal of 'all crops in the ground by the beginning of May'. I hope he is satisfied with our efforts and pleased with Joyce's decision to allow us into his beloved vegetable garden.
More Lessons Learnt at Lancing
Lancing we soon discovered, was not a garden for lettuce. The wire worms that haunt the soil there, have an insatiable appetite for it. We were glad we had other gardens that favored lettuces and concentrated other salad greens at the Lancing garden.
The blank spaces in the rows became opportunities for succession plantings, more crops to replace those we were pulling from the ground. We learnt lessons about timing, as we missed the fast paced radishes as they quickly passed their prime, rising above the earth and the slugs chewed little white craters into their red skins.
First Shares of Spring
It took a while for enough variety to be ready for harvest before we could offer shares for sale.
Each harvest feels like a celebration. We all come out and enjoy the pleasure of pulling the first baby beets, cutting the fuscia stems of crisp chard leaves. Combining the elements of a delectable salad mix then washing, cleaning and primping it into bags. Treasure hunting for sugar snap peas, reserving the plumpest one for my own mouth, as I work my way along the row.
We are proud to offer the fresh, healthy food we work hard to grow.
We do love a Free Deal
We discovered a variety of free nutrients and ammendments within the community. Some for the beds, some for the compost bin. Kitchen waste is collected regularly from our coffee shop. Coffee chaff from a small coffee roasting establishment. Soy mash from a local tofu shop. Our compost bin is smoking! All that good stuff in the compost bin will fuel next year's crops ... Cardboard boxes for distributing the harvest from the liquor store. Wood ash from Luc's fire place. Comfrey for making compost tea. and there is the added bonus of getting to know our neighbours and them getting to know us.
Harvesting the Garlic
Arzeena knew enough to plant garlic in September of last year. It tied up two beds for six months. As the curly scapes began to unwind they signaled harvest time. Who new the satisfaction of harvesting garlic. We "ooohed" and "aaahed" over the size of the largest bulbs, we felt wealthy and satisfied breathing in the pungent fragrance; admiring the great piles of garlic.
... and the Sweet Peas are Blooming
We planted zinnias and sweetpeas as - 'man does not live by bread alone'. The first georgeous stems went to our benefactor, Joyce because we are grateful and we have to express it somehow.
Balancing the hard work with Pleasure
Market gardening is aching, sweaty, wet and cold in turn, slow, laborious work with many rewards. Seeing the very best in the companions you depend upon to do what they do best. Doing all that you know how and surrending the outcome to nature. The deep, ancient, fundamental satisfaction of simple pleasures - popping a small, straight carrot from the earth and admiring it, relaxing in the shade, comparing notes and lessons learnt. Stepping in time to the primordial heartbeat of the earth.
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