Saturday, April 4, 2009

Better than candy



One thing we loved about early spring last year is that we noticed that we had forgotten to harvest a few carrots from our patch and they started to re-sprout as soon as it got warm enough. I decided to try it again last year and left quite a few in the ground but they were found by some sort of animal so we ended up with only about 5 or 6 total, but boy were they tasty!! How delicious are home grown carrots? Better than candy.

Also in our efforts to go organic and also decrease refined sugar intake I made Henry popsicles out of blended watermelon, strawberries and black raspberries. They are really tasty!

3 comments:

Tracie said...

Henry is getting so old! He totally looks like Justin in that last picture.

Sara said...

It's good to hear from you! I checked out your profile to find your blog and I couldn't tell which one to comment on so I chose the food one. You can't go wrong with food. :)

How's life? Your kids are adorable, congrats! I visited Sandra a few weeks ago and she told me you guys are doing well. Where are you guys? We're in LA after spending 6 years in Vegas and love it. Ben's in USC's international MBA program so we are learning tons about different cultures and customs, it's been fun. We'll be here another year so Ben can get his master of real estate and then who knows.

It's fun to see you! Ben says hi. KIT. :)

Amy said...

Hi Amelia! Nice to "meet" you too. I've heard lots of good things about you from Christi. We have a book about four-season gardening by Elliot Coleman and he leaves carrots in the ground all year and calls them "candy carrots," something about how the sugars intensify in the cold ground... Anyway, about bees; we have this great company in SLC called hansen hives (hansenhives.com, I think). They place hives all over the city in people's yards and maintain the hives, harvest the honey and sell it (at a discount to the hosts if they want). The hosts don't have to do anything with the hive if they don't want to. The benefit to the hosts is that you get lots of helpful pollinators and you feel good for helping out the bees. The other major benefit as I see it is that every time they come over to work on the hive I get to watch and pester them with a million questions and even help out (they bring spare suits) until I feel comfortable enough to take over on my own. At which point, we can buy the hive from them (I'm not sure what that costs). Pretty sweet deal. As for mites and critters, I know they have a thing at the bottom to trap and track the mites, but I don't know how much of a problem it is yet. And so far I've only seen stray cats in our back yard, which I assume will be more of a nuisance to the chickens than the bees. If there isn't a similar company near you, I imagine there must be groups of local beekeepers that would be willing to give advice and help you get set up. Good luck!