North by North

True – a few signs of spring have manifested themselves: the house is invaded by ants and the lake is ice-free since last weekend. The roads are almost snowless and thus we can go looking for false morels – highly poisonous  and as highly delicious. Generally we stay on the safe side and sell them to restaurants – the fun part is collecting them.

The rhubarb has started well but is pestered by sweet cicely that spreads everywhere – the thing is truly a pest! I used to make soup of sweet cicely with some chive added till Pekka muttered it might be tastier without its main ingredient…

Pekka is working on the construction of the second greenhouse – should be finished by the time the aubergines and tomatoes can be transplanted. Cucumbers and melons (the first ever attempt with the latter) are in the present greenhouse during the days but have to be taken in for the nights as the temperatures are near zero.

This far they have survived astonishingly well – and the herbs are flourishing (they spend also the nights in the greenhouse).

Yesterday we transplanted leek – Musselburgh and Jolant; altogether four rolls. Lyon  2 Prizetaker is still waiting upstairs that the present rains will subside. I do admit that the transplanted ones don’t look very impressive at the moment but usually they really thrive in the roll and develop good roots for the final transplanting.

And yes – there are some flowers already (but I need more to decide it’s a real spring):

Wild Daphne almost flowering

Hellebore quite flowering

On Friday we were transplanting seedlings and decided that – as the soapstone oven had been heated in the morning – the best way to celebrate the event was to have a lunch off a Marina di Chioggia squash.

So it was put into the oven, together with onion, sweet pepper and herbs, topped with parmesan; carrots, pineapple (not grown by us…), sweet basil and a few strips of pork were fried quickly (Pekka was complaining that the colous scheme was too monotonous) and the lunch was ready. After more than half a year in room temperature, Marina was perfect. We still have one left – at this rate we’ll have it for the 1st of May…

There is still more than 50 cm snow on the ground but the days are getting longer and the whooper swans are returning, so we try to believe that the spring is here

The days have been relatively warm (+2 or so), the nights cold (-10). All the garden work has still to be done indoors -the garlic bulbs are in the fridge and there are lots of sowing and transplanting done.

On the upper shelf are those not yet transplanted

Here a closer look at the transplanted ones – in the foreground sweet peppers (New Ace) next to the window black tomatoes (Black Sea Man), in the middle bush tomatoes (Red Alert, Manitoba) and in the background greenhouse tomatoes (Alicante, Stupice). – In case you wonder where we are going to put all these (and the ones off camera – chillies, aubergines, etc.): a brand-new greenhouse is just waiting to be assembled – when the snow has melted…

Our favourite Easter flower – Ornithogalum dubium (sun star); usually orange but we fancied the yellow one.

As if we didn’t have enough of the stuff already (some 60 cm) it has been snowing relentlessly all day, about 10 cm up to now. We do say that at this time of the year the new snow is death for the old snow – but surely this is an overkill!

Bravely, we have started the sowing for pre-growing

Better have an admiring look at the seed arrangement – you will not often see me this methodical…

That was ten days ago – now the tomatoes have germinated well and so have the sweet peppers (except Sweet Banana and Marconi Rosso), of the aubergines Moneymaker is fine, Farmer’s Long tolerable, Hansel and Snowy pathetic. Unfortunately my mother has forbidden me to use expressions that would best describe my opinion of the chillies.

The empty spaces are – you guessed it! – chillies…

Well, as you can see there is not exactly a rush to get the seedlings out so we have time for at least a second sowing. If even that is a flop we’ll just have to survive without chillies.

Of course there are bright spots amid this moaning – today I went on a shopping spree, thanks to the gift certificate; all those things I have forgotten to order earlier! And last night we heard for the first time this year the call of an eagle-owl; it was very near, only 50 m from the house.

And yesterday the family’s oldest dog (Pusu, 15 years) and youngest human (granddaughter Alexandra, 8 months) were together enjoying a rare day of sunshine

There are moments when it’s difficult to agree enthusiastically with that statement (of course it might be on its way to somewhere else…). When we walk out of our front door and turn right this is what we see

Going a bit nearer (if you dare – but then there is not much snow left on the roof to avalanche) you see that an effort has been made to reach the fuelwood, dog food and vegetable freezers we have in the Old House…

Maybe we should be glad we use it as a storage and not as our home…

The weekend was beautiful and we were watching dippers and long-tailed tits. Yesterday our son with family came for dog sleigh driving and general fun; our daughter-in-law asked whether we still have vegetables to share or whether they should go to the supermarket for Baby Alexandra’s dinners. Four freezers full of homegrown stuff – and she asks that!!

And now for the normal process of contradicting myself – today the neighbour lady and I made plans for the sowing of tomatoes (7 types of determinate,  3 types of cordon, a few types of cherry tomatoes), sweet peppers (10 types), chillies (6-7) and aubergine (6). Would anyone have windowsills to lend?

You see, it’s not so much this spring as last summer that is haunting me…

That’s how we call this time of the year (absolutely nothing to do with St. Valentine’s Day!). And the winter has been of classic style:

For the last ten days the temperatures have been between -25 and -36; fortunately there has been hardly any wind. Now it’s reasonably mild (-7) – and a high wind. The dogs haven’t minded it – rather on the contrary – but I haven’t been best pleased.

Yes, of course it’s very decorative and all that but only consider – in between those stakes in the foreground there is our garlic patch;

not much hope of productive garden work for quite a while… On the other hand, we are not (yet) running short of vegetables – we rearranged yesterday the big (400 l) freezer as the temperature was -26 and thus we could move the frozen stuff out during the process. Now they are back:

carrots and leeks in the vacuum bags, oven-baked squash in the white containers, sweet peppers in the blue ones, chilli sauce, beans, parsnips, mangetouts, cranberries, chantarelles galore – to mention the items on the top.

Plenty of time to moan, though – six more weeks before we can start the sowing for pre-growing; no use to do it earlier as the seedlings would grow too leggy and suffer in the transplanting.

So for a while yet it only remains to try to like the heart of winter

For several months our one and only remaining Musquee de Provence has received admiring comments from all visitors. Today we decided to use it while it still is admirable – the other possibility would have been to sell it but actually we have been curious as we have never tasted Musquee de Provence. Well, now we have – and it was well worth the while! The texture is slightly rougher than, say, Crown Prince,  the taste sweet and fruity.

As the squah is 10+ kg we didn’t use it all but  took a good-sized wedge, peeled and cubed it, seasoned with shallots, garlic, marjoram, chilli and lemon, topped it with parmesan and put it into oven. It took about an hour in 200C.

After dinner we steamed half of the fruit in cubes that we froze. The other half will be done tomorrow.

Once again I have read the blogs with envy – no hope for any sowing here till mid-March (and even then of course in the house). But I have been planning… Chillies now – a few years ago I thought a chilli is a chilli (more or less cayenne pepper) and that’s that. Now we know better and plan accordingly. Hungarian Black to be used fresh; Hungarian Hot Wax and Inferno for chilli sauce and Devil’s Jam; Jamaican Bell to stuff with cheese and smoked reindeer; Fish Pepper and either Bulgarian Carrot or Numex Big Jim for drying

Last season the dried ones were a medley – anything that upon nibbling proved very hot (Hungarian Hot Wax and Inferno can be very deceptive) went into the dryer and from there to the grinder; we use quite a lot of them.

Once again we and the dogs have survived the Russian season; for the first half of it the weather was miserable and there was practically no snow and on lakes no ice – but as there was a general clamour for dog sleigh riding we tried to drive more or less on (poorly) frozen morning dew. Vipsa’s expression tells it all, “AM I really supposed to run THERE?”

Once again the shops have closed at noon, the  Christmas  Peace has been declared for the whole country and we all are preparing for the evening festivities . It seems that this year Father Christmas has to hire a car (or a boat) to reach Southern Finland – here we do have snow, more or less (rather less). But snow or not – we wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

An old Finnish saying – and like most sayings, not quite accurate. Having grown up between two brothers (at times literally) I can assure you that the years are exactly like brothers – clashing every so often. – At this time last year we had -20C, blue skies and fairly deep snow – now we have -0.3C, miserably dark and a layer of wet slush. A thin layer, yes, but enough to show that our lynx is around again – these tracks are some 100 m from the house

You might see from the peaceful pacing that the blue mountain hare and the lynx have not been at the same time on the spot.

To forget the weather I have carried on buying seeds. Christmas does interfere with this activity – what with all Christmas cards, toy catalogues (rather toy encyclopedias) and announcements of various vaguely Christmas-related festivities the postman seems to have mislaid the latest VegSeeds parcel – I’m waiting impatiently for my new calabrese, lettuces, sweet marjoram, beans and other goodies…

Like everybody, we are preparing for Christmas. We still have a fair amount of squashes (though the gourmet restaurant feeds its customers on our squashes) and thus we can make oven-baked squash pudding. The recipe (an encore from last year) follows:

Steamed cubes of squash, grated lemon rind, parmesan and fresh ginger, chilli-salt mixture (also grated), onion, garlic, nutmeg, cloves, thyme, some additional salt, breadcrumbs soaked in cream

Blend everything into a smooth purée, fill the containers, sieve on them some breadcrumbs and dot with butter, bake in +175-200 oven for 1 – 1.5 hours.

Take out and enjoy. The three forms on the right side are gluten-free, for a friend with Celiac disease. – The Jerusalem artichoke pudding is prepared basically the same way but with different spices.

Every dinner has some elements of our harvest – here is a stew of Jerusalem artichokes, onion and parmesan (and a few frankfurters), with a side dish of mushroom salad (fen chantarelles, red onion, garlic, etc).

The snow seems to have an identity crisis this year: here yesterday

and gone today – and definitely gone with the wind!

The greenhouse used to be (yesterday) quite nicely and carefully covered… The days are so dark and miserable that it has been necessary to buy a lot of seeds to be able to dream about next season. With all mouth-watering varieties of aubergines, chillies, sweet peppers, etc. a second greenhouse would really be needed!

The beds in the first photo are those of garlic and Jerusalem artichoke, all ready for next season.  A bit more artichoke than this year; it’s so tasty in soups and stews. – Hopefully they don’t start sprouting too early; at least the garlic upstairs has had a burst of unforeseen activity

The tiny cloves (rather bulbs) we have seen before and also flowers (ours are winter garlic so the quality doesn’t deteriorate if and when they have flowers) but this is something new…

As the summer was rather wet we were worried about the herbs – sweet marjoram suffered badly but for instance thyme harvest was better than we expected (though it took rather long to dry)

The last bunches are still in the sauna but it’s about time to transfer them into jars. The extended family uses lots of thyme but I suspect we might even have a bit extra for the catering enterprise.

Once again I visited my daughter – a traditional before-Christmas visit. Felt really like at home: got squash for dinner every day. – And speaking of squashes, these beauties decorate nowadays our livingroom

Two Marina di Chioggia and a Musquee de Provence.

…we are today. Yesterday Pekka had a look at the weather forecast and made tracks to the vegetable patch: up with carrots, parsnips, leeks, Hamburg parsleys and thyme. The Jerusalem artichokes were already harvested but still out; now they also are in the (unheated) sauna, waiting to be taken to the restaurant. Yesterday we peeled, sliced, steamed and froze parsnips and Hamburg parsley; today’s programme is slicing leeks, putting them in vacuum bags and freezing them – the only way not to have the wild strawberries in the freezer smell like leeks.

Last week we went to Helsinki and (among other things) took some firewood and vegetables to my daughter’s family. As usually, the squash selection was rather formidable

The two biggest ones – Marina di Chioggia and Crown Prince – are off camera.  She wants to have a few squash plants herself next year – Gold Nugget (lower left hand corner) was our first suggestion as their yard is relatively small.

It’s not as if we’d have a shortage of squashes left to us. Here again is a dinner

Cornell’s Bush Delicata with carrots, onions, garlic and chicken.

Last weekend we were cruising round the vicinity in the hope of still seeing migratory birds. Nothing – till a few kilometres from home we found them: 30+ whooper swans

Very late for them but as you see, quite a few this year’s cygnets and it takes a long time for them to learn to fly. Fortunately it has been warm and the lakes are not frozen.