Week 2: Berries (pt 1)

In the second week "Garden to Garnish" a lot happened.

Some of the activities included going to the farmer's market, purchasing berries, learning more about the berry growing cycle, and creating yummy little treats with these berries. We had originally thought that strawberries would be ripe this past week, but that turned out to not be the case. After talking to some vendors, we learned that most of them will start to become ready early next week. This slightly altered our plans since we were not able to pick the berries out ourselves, an important part of the project that we were looking forward to. Alas, there were still some berries available for purchase, which made us wonder why we couldn't pick them ourselves if they could sell the ones from the farms, but we came to the conclusion that this was because of the fact that there were not enough for them to open "berry pick season" up to the general public.

Pics from the farmers market adventure

A slight setback that I faced this week was when I woke up Sunday morning to a bunny eating some of the lettuce. This was super not ideal since the bunny ate about two of the lettuce heads before I could use them. The story goes like this: I wake up from a very unrestful night of sleep on Sunday morning. I lie in my bed since it is foggy and rainy outside for about 10 minutes. I then walk into my living room and kitchen that have large windows looking out onto the deal and patio. There I see my small planter boxes with an average-sized wild buddy just munching away at the lettuce. Its little paws were propped up against the rim of the bucket and its face was buried in the lettuce. When I saw this sight I was not happy since I was already slightly annoyed from my bad night of sleep, so I opened the door and the bunny immediately took off running.

THE CULPRIT

This is something that I could have seen coming. From living in Idaho and having all sorts of deer and elk eat the trees in the backyard this situation does not shock me, more of a general annoyance. So after I assessed the situation, I realized that I did not lose too much lettuce, and I found a better place to put my planters. Which is a plus of being so movable and small. The bunny did not eat any of my tomato plants or herbs which is good because those are growing quite well.

From this week I learned a lot about bunny protection for my plants. I also learned that bunnies really only like lettuce, but that may have been circumstantial. From our small setback with the berry picking a learned that strawberries will be ready first and that they are usually available to pick the first week of June. I also learned how to make jam without using pectin or a substance that makes it have the "jelly effect." This was a great improvement for my cooking skills. In the second half of our project, I am hoping that we will begin to use the lettuce that Katherine and I both have as well as maybe make some dressings for a salad week. In terms of our goals, I think that we are making good progress. This week we supported a few local businesses in our endeavors, and we were able to be creative in our wats of making jam!

Here are some photos of some of the things that we made this week in the kitchen. We actually did not use a recipe for any of them (#freelance) but leave a comment down below if you want to know how to make anything!