Weather: It was rainy in the morning. The rain moved out during the early afternoon and it was partly cloudy for the remainder of the day – perfect for picking asparagus and making for a daily highlight. (Detailed Summary – click here)
Plantings: Now that the weather is warming, we purchased:
- 2x Mr. Stripey heirloom tomato plants,
- 1x Basil plant,
- 1x Jalapeno plant, and
- 1x Habanero plant.
Harvest: The asparagus are in their third year and now we are enjoying the reward for our patience. We cut two spears a week ago and sauteed them with squash – a taste treat. Today, we doubled the number picked. The spears are thick, juicy, and surprisingly tender. See our daily highlight for what we did with them.
Beets: We planted 28 Early Blood Turnip-rooted Beet seeds ten days ago. Two have germinated and are seeking sunlight.
Collards: We planted 20 Georgia Southern Collard seeds on the same day we planted the beets. Several have germinated and are happy with the recent rain.
Apple Trees: We have six apple trees. All are in blossom. Two look like they will produce abundantly this year. The remaining four are not doing as well. With proper conditions, there will be plenty of apple juice, apple sauce, and apple butter for the holidays.
Daring Dairy: We made butter in the evening. It took nearly 25 minutes of churning, which is unusually long. Perhaps the problem was that we used a different brand of heavy whipping cream. (Click here to see how we make butter.)
Daily Highlight: My amazingly talented wife took those four asparagus spears she picked and used them in an Asparagus Risotto recipe from Simply Recipes.* It made for one great meal. She has experimented with this recipe on several occasions and has made it much better. Here are the changes she made to the original:
- olive oil instead of unsalted butter,
- 1/2 onion instead of chopped shallots,
- Calrose Japanese style rice instead of arborio rice, and
- vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.
*To see the original Asparagus Risotto recipe click here.