While my blog team is away for this Thanksgiving Week, I thought I'd share some of our favorite entries. Here's one originally posted last November 20, 2023.
Whether you're preparing a holiday dish or rushing to make a quick weekday meal, fresh herbs make any recipe stand out.
Herbs are one of my favorite things to grow in the garden. Every year, I grow lots of parsley, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, dill, basil, oregano, sage, chervil, and more. They're easy to grow and they're prolific - almost every herb is a cut-and-come-again variety, meaning one can harvest from the same plant more than once. Herbs can also be grown in raised beds or in containers, from seed or by transplanting. And, many herbs last until the first hard frost. Here at my Bedford, New York farm, we were still picking various herbs from the garden just last week.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
I am so pleased with my new raised bed garden. We had such a wonderful summer – so many delicious and nutritious vegetables and herbs grew here this year.
If you follow my blog regularly, you may have seen how I designed and planned this half-acre garden. It is located closer to my home just south of the stable in a pasture that was once used by my donkeys.
Our summer crops are done, but the weather was still quite mild last week, so many of the herbs were still doing well. These cuttings are parsley, cilantro, sage, chervil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and fennel.
Here is sage. Salvia officinalis, the common sage or sage, is a perennial, evergreen subshrub, with woody stems, grayish leaves, and blue to purplish flowers. It is a member of the mint family Lamiaceae and native to the Mediterranean region. It is popular in fall and winter cooking and baking.
This year, I planted herbs at both ends of each bed in my garden. Here is the sage growing at the end of one of our center beds, where we also grew beans, cucumbers, and sunflowers. Sage should be planted in well-draining soil and in full sun.
Oregano is also an herb from the mint, or Lamiaceae family. Oregano is strongly aromatic and has a slightly bitter, pungent flavor.
Oregano leaves are generally oval, dark green, and positioned in opposite pairs along the stems. Some varieties have fuzzy leaves.
I always grow parsley – I use it in my daily green juice. Parsley, or garden parsley, is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae. It’s great in sauces, soups, and stews. It may be finely minced and rubbed on meats before cooking. It is often added to pesto and salads and it is commonly used as a garnish.
This is curly parsley. It is a bit more bitter than flat parsley, and has a light fragrance.
Over the summer, our curly parsley grew so well. Everyone who visited the gardens admired our crop of curly parsley.
Thyme, Thymus vulgaris, is an herb rich in vitamins A and C. The flowers, leaves, and oil are commonly used to flavor foods.
Here is our thyme growing in the bed. The flowers are tiny, tubular, and colors vary from white, pink, and purple. The flowers of thyme are rich in nectar and attractive to bees and butterflies.
Rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis L. is an evergreen bushy shrub which grows along the Mediterranean Sea, and sub-Himalayan areas. It is widely used as a spice when cooking, especially in Mediterranean dishes.
Here is our rosemary planted around the asparagus bed. Everything was so prolific.
We also grew dill. Dill, Anethum graveolens, is an annual herb in the celery family Apiaceae. It is native to North Africa, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula. Dill has a distinctive taste which is likened to fennel and celery. Closely related to parsley, its fresh aroma is popularly used with fish and seafood dishes.
The leaves of fennel are almost identical to those of dill. Fennel plants, which are native to the Mediterranean basin, have a bulbous base that can be eaten like a vegetable, feathery fronds that are used as an herb, and seeds that can be dried for a spice.
And then there is cilantro. Some love it and some hate it. Of course some of this dislike may be preference, but for those whom the plant tastes like soap, the issue is genetic. Some individuals have a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes that allows them to strongly perceive the soapy-flavored aldehydes in cilantro leaves. I love cilantro and often call it coriander. Cilantro is the name for the leaves and stems of the coriander plant. When the plant flowers and turns to seed, the seeds are called coriander.
Another popular herb in my garden is basil. Basil is an herb in the mint family that is in season primarily June through September. It adds flavor to meals, and its nutrients are said to have some health benefits, such as reducing stress and supporting the cardiovascular system. Sweet basil plays a role in many Mediterranean, and particularly Italian, cuisines.
Basil is a tender plant that can be sown outdoors once temperatures warm up in early summer.
Now, the garden is nearly all cleaned up for the season. We’ve already started planting our crops in the vegetable greenhouse. But come spring, we’ll be out here again, tending the beds for another year of delicious, natural foods.
It started off as a day of much needed rain, which then developed into snow - the first of the season.
Until now, it's been unusually dry and warm here at my farm, but yesterday we got a couple inches of wet snow - enough to cover much of the landscape in white. Fortunately, all the plants are tucked away in temperature-controlled greenhouses and hoop houses, but we are still in the process of preparing for the winter season ahead. Soon all the shrubs, hedges, and cold-sensitive garden containers will be covered in burlap.
Here are a few photos, enjoy.
Even if one is not a big fan of cold weather, there is always a bit of excitement with the first snow of the season. On this early morning, my stable manager, Helen Peparo, captured some photos of the newly fallen snow from inside and outside the stable.
We got enough snow just to cover the ground and the tops of the boxwood. My allée is still due to be covered in protective burlap, but this snow will be brushed off all the boxwood around the farm by hand… and broom.
Jude “JJ” Junior, one of my five donkeys, is looking out onto the snow covered pasture. Donkeys are not as adaptable to the cold weather as horses, but my donkeys don’t seem to mind the chill in the air or the snow under their hooves.
Meanwhile, my Friesian horses and Fell pony enjoy the cooler temperatures. They stayed inside overnight while the storm passed through, but were then let out into my run-in paddock first thing in the morning.
This is Mayo, also known as “May-May’ – one of my two stable kittens. This is the first snow for the feline sisters, and while May May appears to be hiding under the boxwood here, it didn’t take long before she was out exploring her winter wonderland.
This photo shows the gray skies. Gray skies are caused by a phenomenon called a temperature inversion, where cold air near the ground is trapped by a layer of warmer air above, leading to the formation of thick, flat stratus clouds that block sunlight and leave only gray.
Footprints in the snow… I wonder what little creature left them.
While the morning skies were gray, some patches of color were still visible down below. Here, one can see the reddish tint of the blueberry bushes and the green in the lawn and boxwood.
These are the stone pavers outside my Tenant House – outlined in snow. The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts this winter will be wet and cold. We certainly need more precipitation, so we’ll see.
My operations manager, Matt Krack, took this closeup of the snow melting on fallen leaf later in the day. Snow forms when the temperature is at or below 32-degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, water vapor in the atmosphere condenses directly into ice crystals. The day warmed quickly to the mid 40s.
The pachysandra in front of my Winter House was nearly all covered in snow…
… And so were the horizontal tops of the antique fence rails.
Snow fell around the apple trees, leaving patches of earth still exposed.
But it did stick to the stone walls.
This is the snow covered ground through the mid section of my long pergola. The uprights for this pergola are antique granite posts from China – originally used as grape supports. They’re perfect as posts because they don’t rot over time like the wood overhead.
And the cobblestones in the courtyard outside my stable are also coated with snow.
And by late afternoon, the sun was back out and the skies were blue. Today’s weather is expected to be mostly sunny with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the high 40s. And the next chance of rain… maybe Tuesday.
It takes a lot of work to maintain the fencing here at my Bedford, New York farm.
My pasture fencing is made from 100-year-old white spruce railings I purchased in Canada. When the fences were built, I used new cedar uprights to support them. They've held up very well over the years, but a number of posts are now deteriorated and need replacing. Pete Sherpa and Fernando Ferrari, longtime members of my outdoor grounds crew, take on the task whenever they can. It's a tedious process and has to be done by hand so as not to damage the antique wood.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
I have lots of fencing here at the farm. It surrounds my horse paddocks, my orchard, and various other trees. The antique railings were constructed into a split rail fence and are in good shape, but many of the cedar uprights are deteriorated, wobbly and no longer support the railings as they should.
This fence surrounds a maple tree inside a paddock to keep the horses from rubbing against it.
Many of you have commented on how much you admire these fences. The railings are sandwiched between two cedar posts buried deep into the ground.
My donkeys, Friesian horses, and Fell pony get turned out into their paddocks every day, so it is important to maintain the fences and ensure they are all in good condition. Truman “TJ” Junior and Jude “JJ” Junior spend most of the days in their large fenced-in enclosure.
I pay close attention to everything at the farm. Here is one upright post that needs replacing. It was part of a broken fence section around my orchard.
One of the tools used is this post hole digger on the right – this tool is available at any hardware store. A post hole digger is also known as a clamshell digger, because of its resemblance to the seaside shell.
Strong, metal tamping bars are great for digging postholes and tamping the soil around a post once it is set.
The nails used to secure the railings are quite long – four inches. It takes a bit of time to remove them so they can be reused.
Pete already removed the visible section of post, but it broke in two and the bottom is still in the hole. He tries to loosen the soil around it by hand using the tamping bar.
Pete uses the post hole digger to try to pull the rest of the post out, but it doesn’t budge.
He tries again with the tamping bar. One can see the remaining piece of the post still wedged in pretty tightly.
Pete secures one end of a chain to the piece stuck in the hole and the other end to the bar.
Pete then pulls out the old, deteriorated base.
These posts will be chipped and repurposed as top dressing for woodland trees at a later time.
Fernando takes away the old post…
… As Pete brings in the new.
All the new uprights are placed next to the ones being removed.
Once a new post is positioned three feet down into the hole, Pete and Fernando adjust it for level, and turn the post so that the nicest side faces out. The new posts will be very secure here – and no cement is needed.
Once backfilled, Pete uses a tamping bar to pack the soil tightly around the post.
Fernando rakes around the post to make the area neat and tidy.
The new upright is secured with the same four-inch nails to keep it in line with the railings and the other post.
The next step is to cut the tops of the new posts, so they are all the same height as the fence. This project will take some time to complete with all the fencing on the property, but we’re making good progress. Thanks, Pete and Fernando.
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