First Planting of the Year Is Ranunculus Frozen Tomato Soup

Yesterday it snowed, but that's not going to stop us from planting all these ranunculus and snapdragons. This weekend we are doing our first planting of the year. These are going to be filling in our greenhouses. I've been really excited about how well all these ranunculus have been growing. These are the ranunculus that we got from Unicorn Blooms and these are like my most precious ones. These are the colors that I'm really excited about. This tray is yellow, we have red, we have orange, we have neon pink. Really, really fun colors. So I'm very happy they've grown so well. They're the perfect size for getting into the greenhouse now. And then my snapdragons. Oh my god, they're like, they're massive. They're almost too big. They're so big I'm slightly worried about them going into the greenhouse. But I have a million more because I have even more snapdragons. This is my seedling bathroom and I have a ton of plants in here too. These are my feverfew and my rubeccia. These are all nice and cold hardy. These aren't going to be going into the greenhouse, so I'm still going to give them another week or two before planting them outside in the beds. And then I have some fun stuff. I got some yarrow, I have some scabiosa, and I have, look at this, some cardoon. Don't those look incredible? These can't get planted out until it's warm, so I'm getting a little bit nervous because they're getting very, very big. And that seems like a lot, but I have full racks in every single room of the outbuilding. This is another set of ranunculus. These ones, I don't know, I think they weren't wet enough. I actually started these before the unicorn bloom ranunculus, so I'm a little disappointed that they're so far behind. I brought them into a warmer spot, I'm babying them a little bit, and I think that these will be ready to be planted out next week. And you'd think, you know, that's like a thousand ranunculus, that's probably enough. But I have a whole nother rack of ranunculus and these, they need to get under lights. I'm running out of light space. So that is why, no matter what the weather is, we really need to get those ranunculus and snapdragons outside and into the ground. I have so many things that are coming up behind it. We need to keep everything cycling and everything moving. And I have so much more that's needing to come. I have 24 trays that I need to plant this week and they are going to be needing lights too. So everything starts to needing to be cycled on a very specific timeline. And if my planting out gets delayed, we're gonna have a traffic jam. So today my big job is seeding trays. I have a lot of work to do. And today I gotta work outside, I gotta get those greenhouses prepped for the ranunculus planting out tomorrow. I have a fancy new husk knife that I'm really excited about. So let's cook something. I'm gonna make a pot of cream of tomato soup. So first things first, we need to get some tomatoes. I keep my tomatoes in my chest freezer. I preserve tomatoes in a little bit of a different way, but I've been doing this for years and it works really good. All I do is I throw full tomatoes, I pick them off the plants and I throw them into the freezer. I don't do any sort of processing. I don't do any sort of prep to them and I don't bother with storing them inside bags or anything. The skins actually, you know, do a good job of keeping the tomatoes protected. And then when I need tomatoes, I just grab them and then I defrost them. But this, it saves a huge amount of time and they keep really good. So I highly, I highly recommend that technique. And this year I've also been experimenting with bell peppers, instead of chopping them up, bagging them, putting them into the freezer, I just have full bell peppers. And it's, it's worked really well for those too. This time of year, it's really hard to be working outside. It's cold, it's wet, it's tiring, it's hard on the body. It's just, it's not pleasant to be out in these winter conditions. And Ian's gonna be doing it all day today, getting those greenhouses prepped. So I want to make them a nice, warm, you know, comforting meal. And you can't get better than cream of tomato soup for that. And I'm going to make a massive pot because I'm going to have to be out in this weather all day tomorrow. Planting is, it's going to be a long day. The way that I work with the tomatoes is I defrost them in the microwave. So I bring them in my bucket and then I pop them into the microwave for five to 10 minutes, depending on how many tomatoes I have. And when they're done, they come out and they separate the liquid from the tomato really nicely when I defrost them this way. And that makes it so if I'm doing something like a tomato sauce, it's really easy to thicken it up because I'll actually pour off all this liquid and not use it. Today, because we are making a tomato soup, I'm going to keep some of this. It does have good tomato flavor in it. Not completely because I'm also going to use some stock. I take the skins off of the tomatoes by, you know, just putting them over top of whatever it is I'm going to be cooking in. I'll peel off the skin, which comes off really easily on most of the varieties. And I'll just throw the tomato meat into the bucket. I find skinning tomatoes to be one of the difficult parts of processing tomatoes. And by having them in the freezer with the skins on, it comes off very nicely, very dry meat. I really like working with the tomatoes this way. I'm making a big pot of soup, so let's fill up this pot. I don't share very many recipes on this channel because I'm not really a recipe person. I actually do all of my cooking just kind of making up amounts and ingredients based on what I have and, you know, just going with the flow. So when it comes to making this tomato soup, which I make all the time, I can't tell you to use five cups of tomatoes and two cups of stock and two cups of water because I just kind of do it by taste. So what I'm adding in next here is some chicken stock that I have in my freezer. It's just some homemade stuff. It's a good chance to use up things that you have in the house. And then I just do it by taste. While the tomato soup is cooking, I am going to make a cream sauce because we're making cream of tomato soup. The first step is you have to make a roux. So a normal, normal roux is one part fat to one part flour. But I tend to usually use a little bit more flour, you know, sometimes even up to two parts flour to one part butter. Then when the butter's melted, I'm going to add in my flour. I'm going to mix it in with the butter so that it makes a paste. At this point, I move over to a whisk and I start adding in my milk or my cream because this is soup. I like to use creams in soups, makes them a little bit richer. So I start by adding just a little bit. I don't want pure whipping cream sauce, so now I'm going to lighten it a little bit with some milk. Because I used half a cup of butter, this, I usually add three, three cups, about maybe four cups. I like to add it little bits at a time so I can make sure to break down all the chunks to have a nice smooth sauce. Another name for a sauce like this is a bake-mal sauce. With a cream sauce, you just want to stir it until it thickens. You want the heat to come into it to thicken it up and get it to the texture that you want, but you don't want to actually get this to the point that it's simmering. You're constantly paying attention to it and when it's done, just take it off the heat. I've let the soup cook for a little bit, so now it's ready to get finished by putting the cream sauce in. How does it taste? It's good. Soup isn't going to be enough for my hard-working man, so we're also going to make a really decadent caramelized onion and brie grilled cheese sandwich, which I'm really excited about. We have a new knife from Husk and a discount code to share with all of you. The knife has a really interesting design, which I enjoy. It has this hole in it, and so I don't necessarily use the hole when I'm chopping downwards, but I love the hole for if I'm working away. It's made out of Japanese stainless steel and it's, it's really sharp. I'm trying to be careful with it because it's brand new out of the box. It's also really beautiful. I love the aesthetic look of it with this deeply textured pattern. It's, it's quite heavy. It's, it's a heavier knife than I'm used to, but it feels, feels good in the hand. I think we can all agree that a knife is the number one most commonly used tool we all have in our homes, so I'm excited to have this Husk knife joining my collection. Currently, for all my viewers, Husk is running a 70% discount on their authentic Japanese-inspired knives. You can test the Husk knife with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The deal won't last long, so make sure to check it out by clicking my special link in the video description and the pinned comment below. Onions. Onion eyes. I'm gonna put a bunch of butter into this pan and then I'm slowly gonna caramelize these onions. Now I'm gonna load up those caramelized onions onto the bread and then decadent brie. We love brie. Okay, let's eat and then we're back to work. All those ranunculus and snapdragons are getting planted into these first two greenhouses right there, but those greenhouses aren't ready yet. This first greenhouse has some plants that we overwintered. Some flowers are planted in the middle here. You can see them right along there, so I just have to weed the path and the outside on this one. And then this second greenhouse still has the landscape fabric down and it still has the irrigation down, so I'm gonna pull all of that back and then spread out some compost and then till it all in. Literally right before I filmed this, the truck dropped by with our 25 yards of compost. This stuff is beautiful and it's part of the reason that our soil looks so nice. It's exactly what we need. We have so much sand in our soil here that it's nice to have all this organic matter to really help soak up some of the water so it doesn't all just drain away. Once I get the ground prepped on both of these two greenhouses, then I have to close them up and water them and hopefully start warming up some of the soil. We're not really going to get any more really cold weather this year. I'm sure we'll still get some nights where it goes below zero, but for the most part the days are going to be a little bit warmer and I don't expect us to get any more large amounts of snow. The ranunculus, they like the cool weather and so do the snapdragons, but putting them in the greenhouses and getting the soil all warmed up, that'll just help give them a little bit of an extra boost to the season. Hopefully when they do start blooming, it's super early so we can be one of the first farms to market with snapdragons and ranunculus. The kids are going to be so excited about the big pile of compost. I think everybody knows that a kid's favorite toy is a big pile of something. Whether it's snow or dirt, they just seem to find endless fun in climbing them. All of our time is basically booked from here until October now. There's no time for rest. We must always be working, but you know, the farm is rewarding because the work that is required is all fun stuff. I'm really excited to get the first plants of the year planted outside into the farm. That's always like a fun little milestone that kind of kicks off the season. This year I'm just excited about expanding our repertoire of flowers that we grow because we're growing so much more new stuff this year. So I'm just excited to see how the bouquets will change and how the customers will react to it. And also I'm really, really, really excited that we're starting the season with the roadside stand. That roadside stand is going to completely change the way that the farm operates this year. And it's something that we only got finished right at the end of the season last year. So we didn't have a lot of time to try it out. This year is when we get to really see, you know, what happens when we know what we're doing and we know how to do it. And can we actually make money now? You know, like that's, that's the big question. So it's time to find out. I didn't get everything done on Saturday night for the prep work, but I'm going to go out there now and I'm going to finish a little bit of weeding, some spreading of the compost. I'm going to fire up the tiller and then, uh, and then everything should be ready to plant out the ranunculus. All right. I finally got the last of the compost spread. So we should be ready to plant out the ranunculus now. Your timing is perfect. I'm just finishing everything up. Oh, give me the tour. Here's where you can plant your snapdragon. Oh, it looks so clean. It was all weedy in here. I know. It smells like compost. Yeah. I like it. It's fresh. So much space, so much potential. This one is all tilled up. Oh, nice. This is where we need to start. We need to get the ranunculus in here. Okay. Let's go back to the outbuilding. Serena, you can show me what ranunculus, uh, need to bring down here. I'm guessing just basically all of it pretty much. Yep. And, uh, and you can start planting. I'm all geared up. Oh, you're looking very fashionable. Ready to plant. Gotta put on your rain gear for crawling around in the muck. And we need to get some plants, some ranunculus, and then it's officially first planting of the year time. Super exciting. It is very exciting. Especially because it's ranunculus and there's so many of them. It is going to be incredible to have it. Like, unless something like drastic happens, if we kill these all, it's going to be really incredible to have this many ranunculus this spring. Is this all of our ranunculus that we're planting? This is what we're planting today, but this is only half of our ranunculus. We also have like successions coming, but I only have space for one bed of ranunculus in a greenhouse. Um, the other bed or two of ranunculus is going to be out in the main farm. What I'm going to do is I need to pull them out of the tray and they're pretty big. They're, they're, they're pretty, they've been grown a long time. If they're more like this, they'd probably be easier to plant. Um, but I have a lot that are like this. So we're going to kind of loosen them all up from each other and get these into the ground. To your choice of shovels. Oh, I need a fat one for these because there's lots of roots. Number one, the very first planting of the year. Monumentus. Monumentus. One done. 500 to go. We have 500 in total to put into this bed. Hopefully in an hour. Do you want a string line so you can do it nice and straight? That doesn't sound very like me. I was thinking more like... I know what you're thinking. last year like does. Yeah, totally. Like maybe it means we get a whole extra month of flowers. Yeah. Apparently they take 10 weeks is how long it takes until they bloom. March to April. April to May. Beginning of May. Um, that'd be great if we could get, if we could be picking off of them for like six weeks. Roadside starts in end of April with the tulips. Yeah. But maybe we'll be able to pair ranunculus and tulips together. Maybe we'll be able to make like these like bouquets that are a mix of stuff that, you know, because last year all we had was ranunculus. It was like we have ranunculus and kale. It was like the only thing we had. Um, and they still were incredible. So to be able to have more bits and pieces. Yeah. Tulips are my favorite flower. Tulips? Really? More than ranunculus? Because they're so big and they come out so early. They're just like such a cool way to start the season. And they are pretty special. Ranunculus are in my top five. I feel on it. I mean, I feel Ian, if you had to be honest, you don't have a top five or a favorite or a top 10. You have like a top 100 and whichever one of that hundred that is coming up next is your favorite. And every time I plant something new, you're like, Oh no, now it's top 101. You love them all. I am team flowers. So what's the spacing that you're doing on these? So the spacing is like six inches. Um, but it's, it's like a Serena six inches where, you know, fluctuates from, you know, five inches to eight inches. Cause I'm just eyeballing it. Um, you know, I was thinking that I was going to do them, um, four across, but you know, I have 500 and this is so like a hundred of every color. So I'm thinking maybe it's going to have to be five, five across to be able to fit all five of them in. Um, but we'll not afraid to plant things tight. Yeah. Yeah. These like they, these can go pretty tight. I've seen people say to do them four inches even. Yeah. Um, that is quite tight. Yeah, that's pretty tight. But I was looking back at our, at our footage from last year, they didn't become this big, huge blush plant that was like really crowding each other. Um, which means there was, there was space. There's space to plant them tighter. Yeah. Well, but with flowers specifically, you, you often want them to be tight because you want them to be kind of competing and crowding with each other because that's how they throw up the really long stems. You want them to think that their babies aren't going to survive. So they have to make their babies as tall as possible. Oh, it's a race. It's a race to the sun. Yeah. These are cool because they like send out these big fleshy roots, you know, and the roots don't, I always thought that the roots would come out of the tips of the, of the little octopus legs, but the roots kind of come from the top. I have the greenhouse planted with all the ranunculus or I should say, I have the greenhouse filled with the ranunculus. I still have a few leftover and I need to figure out where to put them, but it's dark now. And so my plan is I'm going to save the snap dragons and the other cold hardy annuals for planting tomorrow. Um, we'll leave it there, but it's exciting. March is always really a strange time of year on the farm because February goes from being very much winter, one of our coldest months of the year. And then all of a sudden the weather warms up just that little bit and the snow melts and it's go time goes from having nothing to do to having everything to do. Um, so we're, we're definitely feeling a little bit of the pressure right now. Getting this greenhouse planted is a really important first step to us being able to actually have those early flowers. So it feels really good to know that we're making progress on it, but you know, after the greenhouse comes having to plant the farm comes having to start all the, all the extra seedlings that need to get started. It's, it's really, we're into the busiest time of year. Um, and it's, it always takes a little bit to, to get the energy levels up to, to match the work levels. Um, so I was hoping to get more done today, but it, it still feels amazing to be out there and have hands in the soil. If you enjoy Ranunculus, make sure to check out our harvest video from last spring. And thanks again to our sponsor Husk. Currently for all my viewers, Husk is running a 70% discount on their authentic Japanese inspired knives. You can test the Husk knife with a 30 day money back guarantee. The deal won't last long. So make sure to check it out by clicking my special link in the video description in the pinned comment below.