Homegrown Dinner

This is last night's supper just before it went into the oven before milking. It was done when we came in and, alas, eaten before I thought to take the "after" photo.

Everything involved was homegrown except the celery, vinegar, some garlic powder (didn't plant any last fall) and a dash of Italian seasoning. It was so much fun to assemble that I can scarcely call it work. The first potatoes of the year, two plants worth, were dug fresh from the bed behind the house and the big sheep pen garden the guys made me this year. One plant was started from some leftover sprouting potatoes that we bought to eat from the supermarket. The other was from seed potatoes we bought to plant. Oddly enough the supermarket hill yielded perfect orbs of potato goodness. The ones from certified seed potatoes were covered with potato scab.
Go figure. Didn't matter anyhow; they were all delicious, but I will dig the scabby ones first before they get too nasty.
Digging potatoes is kind of like treasure hunting to me. You never know what will come out of each hill and the anticipation is worth the sweat.

The carrots are rainbow carrots from Pinetree Garden Seeds. They are simply the best variety we have ever tried and I don't bother with anything else now. I grow them in half 15-gallon acid barrels from the milk house, in a mixture of sand, plain old dirt and compost. They thrive. I love the wet paint scent of a carrot fresh out of the ground....kind of fond of the taste too and not all the ones I pulled made it into the dinner. We are speculating about bringing a clean half barrel indoors this winter and trying to grow some like we do the indoor lettuce. Seems like we can never get enough of them.

The stew beef (I bake stew beef this way when I run out of chuck roast...turns out real tasty and tender) is from that Calbret HH Champion bull I bought the boss for Father's Day a couple of years ago....the one who didn't pass his blood test from the Holstein Association because somebody goofed on his dam's sire. Hated to eat such a well bred animal, but we couldn't use him as intended because the maternal grandsire was Ocean View Extra Special, a bull we used very heavily ourselves. (Right now in my first ten cows there are five by him, Bariole, Bubbles, Camry, Junie and Lemonade.) When we draw a bull of our own to use AI, it needs to be at least somewhat unrelated to most of the animals in the herd. This was just too close bred for comfort.

Anyhow, homegrown is kind of a favorite brand around here and the leftovers were pretty sparse. Now I can't wait for an excuse to dig more potatoes.