Our Happy Acres

The summer vegetable harvests have slowed down considerably here, and I must say we have mixed emotions about that. The heat and drought have definitely made for a lousy year for peppers and eggplant, and the pole beans suffered as well. Last year was a banner year for all three.
But in a flip-flop, last years [...]

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I haven’t posted much about gardening of late, but I’ve been busy dealing with the harvests. Even though this has been an unusually hot and dry year (5 degrees warmer than average, and 8 inches less rain than “normal”) our heavily mulched and intensively planted gardens have been extremely productive.
As of today we’ve harvested over [...]

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Grilling eggplant is one of my favorite ways to cook it. In this meatless main dish casserole, grilled eggplant is layered with cheese and a tomato and mushroom sauce and then baked. The leftovers are good frozen – if you have any leftovers!

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Things are cooking here at Happy Acres, both literally and figuratively. We are in the grips of another heat wave, with temps hitting 100F yesterday and heading for 102 today. And even though it’s been a hot, dry summer, the garden here is still producing great for us, with over 620 pounds harvested so far [...]

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For many gardeners summer means homegrown, backyard tomatoes. This tomato sauce is a great way to preserve the bounty and goodness of tomatoes, homegrown or otherwise.
It’s not highly seasoned, so the tomato taste can really shine. It can be used in any dish calling for canned tomato sauce, which makes it very versatile in the [...]

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I loved reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”. The book is the story of how she and her family spent a year growing most of their own food, and is written in chronological order. The chapter for August is titled “Life In a Red State”. Here in southern Indiana, we usually hit the Red [...]

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