Growing and using figs

Figs

Fruit trees are a delightful way to grow edibles in the Florida landscape.  Figs do especially well with little effort after they are established.  The fruit is delicious and eating a fig right off the tree is extremely satisfying,  but the leaves are wonderful as well.  They can be used in many ways and are surprisingly good! Fig leaf tea has many health benefits and taste lovely so thats what we have been making each morning in our kitchen. Curry is another great way  to use the leaves as they have a smell and taste that is similar to coconut!

TEA RECIPE:  Choose 3-4 smaller fig leaves and wash.  Cover in a saucepan with 8oz of water and simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove the leaves and sweeten with agave.  Serve hot or chilled.

CURRY:  1 jar of red curry paste, coconut milk, chicken breast, brown sugar, fish sauce, 2 large fig leaves, red chili peppers, green peppers, 1/4 cup basil leaves.  

simply sauté chicken cut in cubes in a bit of oil, add the jar of curry paste till warm, then add the fig leaves, green peppers (sliced) and the coconut milk.  Boil for 10 minutes.  Remove the fig leaves and add brown sugar and 2 Tablespoons fish sauce.  Garnish with sliced red chili peppers and basil leaves before serving 

 

New Barbed Wire Browns Article in

Molly Green Magazine!

Holly Giles has written an article for Molly Green Magazine on our family life and business, that really captures the heart of Barbed Wire Browns....she is a gifted speaker and writer and I think you will enjoy a visit to her site so click on her name to take a little visit to the Giles Frontier today!

See the article From Junk to Jewels: A Fresh Perspective

5 things I learned the hard way about Central Florida Gardening

URBAN HOMESTEADING 

Sprouting been sprouts, fresh picked veggies and eggs

When I moved to central florida 11 years ago I started a garden.  I had already gardened successfully in Colorado for a number of years and I just "knew" florida would be even better.  Well after basically everything went wrong the first year I gave a new location in the yard a try!  That flopped too!  Then I started to notice not many people had gardens...hhhhmmm.  So I gave up!  

The problem is that I was born to garden.  It's just part of who I am and  I was kinda at a loss.  

My Daughter with the mornings harvest

But then I visited a neighbor and they had started a garden that was doing great!  And I was determined to give it another go.  I started reading and visiting more successful gardens, asking the right questions and getting some answers and now 11 years later I can say, it is a lot more difficult here but it is getting easier every year.  So here are some things you probably already know but I had to Learn the hard way.

• Central florida has 4 growing seasons.  You can plant something every month!  But if you want to garden in the summer like the rest of the country pretty much, you will be very limited because of the heat and humidity.
• Compost, manure, organic soil additives are essential.  Sandy soil dries out quick and does not hold nutrients so you must amend.  I use mushroom compost by the truck full literally!
• Raised beds and container gardens are really smart because your soil additives stay put instead of running off with each rainfall.
• Mulch!  This is vital for me.  Mulch keeps out the weeds and keeps in the moisture.  The earthworms seem to love being under it too!  And earthworms are free workers, you want them!



Add caption

• When you want accurate information go to the Florida Extension Office website.  When to plant, how to plant, what to plant, how to compost, so much information!

Plan to learn as you go.  The spot you choose to garden will have it's own quirks and you will need to see what works for you! Now go plant something!

What is Malabar Spinach?

Gardening in Central Florida is not always an easy endeavor.  So when you find ways to make it work you get pretty excited about it.  That's why I want to bring up Malabar Spinach.  This vine is grown in India and other tropical places.  It thrives in Hot, Humid, and above 90 degree conditions.  Well that's Central Florida in the summer for sure! This summer I have been experimenting a lot with it and here's what I have learned.  

• Not a true spinach but a terrific replacement for summer when most greens especially salad and spinach won't stand a chance.
• 
  
• It germinates great from seed even when I just toss them in the ground in mid July and water somewhat regularly.  
• 
  
• The leaves are thick and juicy and have a very mild flavor with hints of citrus and pepper.
• 
  
• Malabar Spinach well vertically so you cangrow it up a trellis, or grow it in a container with something to climb on or keep it trimmed like a bush.
• 
  
• It is a good source of vitamin A, C, calcium and iron.
• 
  
• You can toss it in a salad, soup, stir fry, frittata, or cook it like spinach. 

• All this being said it is not an amazing flavor you will rave about, what it is, is a summer source of home grown healthiness, we have a saying you "feed your body not just your mouth,"at our home.  We like our foods to taste great but we also like to eat nutrient dense homegrown foods to take care of our bodies.  So add this to your hot summer gardening possibilities. (Okra, eggplant, sweet potatoes, hot peppers, and Malabar Spinach are all thriving right now in our Hot Humid Florida garden)

easy to grow in a pot, great for kids because its so easy!

Frugality, Friendship, and Florida Pear Pies

Florida Pears are not so pretty!

 One of my simple delights is free foraged food.  Digging my own clams, catching crabs off a dock, gathering wild berries, hunting the elusive Morel Mushroom, discovering an abandon fruit tree and filling my skirt with the promise of a sweet smelling kitchen coming up, these things just delight me!

So when my neighbor came by with a pool skimming net full of Florida Pears, I gave him a silly smiling thank you and made a mental note to make an extra pie for him too!

pretty in a pie!

I have tried to find out a little history on these hard speckled skinned pears and here is what I have come up with after finding Sherry Boas's article from September 25, 2011 in the Orlando Sentinel:

                                               1.  They are an old Fashioned Southern Pear

                                               2.  Varieties such as Orient, Kieffer, and Pineapple pear were                                                                            staples of Florida Homesteads    

                                               3. They are nicknames "sand pears"

                                               4. They are used for baking and canning

                                               5. They thrive in our Florida climate but are mainly forgotten.

My Thank you pie for a very thoughtful friend!

The Recipe: Florida Pear Pie
Two pie crust (top and bottom)
1/2 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoons each nutmeg, allspice, and ground cloves
1 teaspoon lemon zest
5 cups peeled and sliced Florida Pears
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:  Combine sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, and lemon zest and juice in a mixing bowl. mix then toss into the peeled and slice pears covering them.  Layer the pears in the crust and dot with butter, moisten rim of bottom crust and gently place top crust over filling.  fold edges and press to seal.  Use a fork to vent the top of the crust by gently piercing it a few times.  

Bake at 450 degrees F.  for 10 minutes and then reduce to 350 degrees F and bake 30 more minutes.  Check the crust and cover with foil if it is browning too fast.  Enjoy!

My five favorite vegetables to grow in Central Florida. 

1.  Yard long beans (asparagus beans, Chinese long beans). These grow so well here and look terrific in the garden with their extremely long pods.  Cook like regular green beans or stir fry.

\

2. Pickling cucumbers.  I love these for slicing and eating.  We make them into cucumber salad with a little sugar and rice vinegar, toss slices into our drinking water, or make cold cucumber soup with  onion and garlic. Mine are growing on a simple and free pallet trellis.

3. Heirloom tomatoes in Pots!  This is my biggest gardening advice here in central Florida, grow your tomato plants in pots, not in your garden.  There are some things to know however.  The pots need to be big, they need to have enough calcium added(egg shells) to prevent blossom end rot and they need to be watered regularly at the same time each day or few days without getting their leaves wet.  (unless you are watering with compost tea)  There is so much I could say on this but I will end with something about germination.  Heirloom tomato seeds need light and should not be planted too deep or they will not germinate.   Just a little dusting of soil over top.

4.  Pineapples.  These are just cool.  I mean you buy a pineapple, eat it and then plant the top and wait.  Now they do like to be fertilized.  Mine are in a sunny spot in the front yard.  They are planted very close together to deter any critters from getting in the patch.  So far I have never lost one to a critter but I expect to sometime.  I pick them when they just start turning yellow and let them ripen on the counter.  When they are all yellow its time to eat them up!  A side note is that pineapple is good for our pet rabbits to reduce hair balls, so we give them a little too!

5.  Greens.  Really all kinds. Collards, Mustard, Swiss Chard, Turnips, Kale.

These grow great and you can add just a little to so many different meals.  I chop it up like an herb and add greens to soups, tomato sauces,  salads, eggs, you do not just have to serve it by itself.  Add those vitamin packed leaves to almost anything you cook. You can make stuffed Collared or Kale leaves in place of cabbage.  Or instead of Kale Chips, try Collard Chips!

Happy Planting!

Studio shelving from free materials

One thing that really gets us excited here at the Brown Homestead is finding the materials we use in our projects!   We recently found a number of dresser drawers being thrown away at a local hotel and with some pallets we picked up from around town we were able to build wall to wall and floor to ceiling shelving in our art studio.  We wanted a way to see more of our supplies so we did not spend so much time looking for just the right thing all the time.  Since we all like to make things in our studio the hope is that it will be easier to keep it organized. So for the cost of the nails and screws, and our time we were able to put together a really useful wall of shelves. This would be great for a garage too!

One thing to learn about is how pallets are marked.  Their are codes on them that tell you if they have been chemically or heat treated so look into that by searching on your computer before you start a project!

How we got our pop up shop!

Before it was ours, when I saw our vintage Apache Ramada camper In very sad shape in the neighbors yard I started to get an idea...an idea that, even though my husband has been hearing my crazy ideas for over 25 years now,  made his jaw drop.   I can still picture him stamping his foot as he said he would have no part in this one, and I almost gave up right there.

 Now I had already been longingly gazing at vintage trailers and girlie campers, but knew they were out of reach, those cute Air streams and Shastas cost a good amount of hard earned money, but what about an abandon pop up camper that needed a ridiculous amount of work, Could it be cute?  Could it be a way for our creative bunch to share our vision and art with others! I thought it just might work.  So, I made a very special dinner and when my husband was sitting back full and content I made my move.  I usually just blurt things out but I waited for a good moment this time, (I had seen this camper) Now I wasn't expecting his reaction at all.  I thought he would catch the same fever I had already caught right away. He had not seen the Pinterest boards and the magazine articles,  but...he had already seen the camper, He already knew that what I call sad shape was really much worse.  I am not sure why he
changed his mind but I can tell you that after a few months of working all day Saturday, I had lost some of the dream and was kicking myself big time for letting my impulsiveness drive me.   This is something I have learned about myself and my husband.  I am great at getting an idea and jumping in, then I second guess myself, doubt and fret a bit when it takes longer than I thought.  Now my husband is cautious  at the beginning because he likes to have all the facts before starting and his impatient wife wants to just start, But then he gets going on the idea and stays steady working it unto fruition and inspires me with his love, loyalty and kindness.  The more we see how our differences compliment each other then we are free to appreciate those differences.  I know I need to research and have some answers for him upfront and he is getting better at learning as we go and letting mistakes be part of the learning process.  We can laugh and relax about how different our approach is because we know our destination is the exact same place!  Now that the project is done and we can look back to see what we learned, I will have to say he became a serious woodworking machine, we found out that pallets are an incredible free building material and that spurned on what I will tell you about some other time....a studio makeover with pallets!

Working on the inside with one of my girls!

All Done!

Thanks so much Scott!