Today’s Vegetable Harvest

I suppose it has been a week since the last vegetable harvest, at least for the pole beans. Today I walked away from our garden at Farm Chastain with enough beans for the family, 3 ears of Silver Queen corn, and one of Silver King. I also picked a cucumber for Martha and some squash for this week. The corn was a little early to be picked but it sure was good. I think it has another 10 days of fattening up to go, but I ran across several worms which made me nervous so I went ahead and picked some for dinner. Picking the green beans is a challenge for sure, they are super healthy so there is a ton of foliage to get through to find the beans.

I am most proud of the corn. If I were to be stranded on an island it would be a must have for me. You can also see a yellow pepper in the picture above. It needs a couple of days to sweeten up, but also looked in danger of getting eaten up out there, so I went ahead and picked.

We had two watermelons growing nicely only to come back today to find them totally rotted out. Not sure what got to them, but they were super nasty. I'll spare you that picture.

Thanks,

Carson Matthews

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Runnemede Row at Farm Chastain

This year my friend Peyton McWhirter and I have been working a garden at Farm Chastain, part of the Chastain Park Conservancy. Life has gotten in the way of me posting about it from the beginning, but you can catch up through pictures at http://www.carsonmatthewsphotography.com/ChastainParkConservancy/Runnemede-Row-Farm-Chastain/

Today we got back from a week at the beach and things are coming along nicely. We definitely have a squirrel problem, and as a result no tomatoes. We probably have 100 on the vine, but they are eaten well before becoming ripe.

The corn is pretty impressive to someone that hasn’t grown corn before. We have two rows of Silver Queen and the back row is Silver King. In the last week it has grown at least a foot and ears of corn have emerged everywhere.

Moving to the left and pretty much taking over all available space is the watermelon. At my last visit our first melon was the size of a fat cucumber, today it’s the size of a rugby ball.

To the left of the melons are cucumbers, squash, bush beans, pole beans and more beans. Only the first teepee of pole beans is producing, but I definitely got enough to feed the family.

Everything in the middle is getting rampaged by squirrels. I bet there were 50 cherry tomatoes half eaten on the ground, and a couple of peppers had been eaten through. It’s time to spend a day there weeding for sure. Here is a picture of what I walked away with.

All of these pictures of our plot at Farm Chastain and many more are on my website http://www.carsonmatthewsphotography.com/ChastainParkConservancy/Runnemede-Row-Farm-Chastain/

Carson Matthews
www.CarsonMatthews.com

Pictures and Videos of April Storms Rolling Through Atlanta

Over the past several days Atlanta has seen damaging storms roll through town. On Monday alone there were 20 confirmed tornados in Georgia. On Wednesday that same front turned around and came back through as a warm front, countered by a bigger cold front from the west. When it wasn’t storming the skies were perfect for photography. On Tuesday it was beautiful; here is a picture of the moon late that afternoon.

On Wednesday we had early storms in the morning. I set up my GoPro in the front window on timelapse and caught this strike of lightning over the trees.

When the morning storms cleared the coloring was beautiful outside with the sun trying to break through the clouds. Here is a picture of the calm between the storms.

Wednesday night we got the 3rd round of storms which went late into the night. Again I set up the GoPro, this time doing timelapse video, capturing the storm from the time the sun went down until it came back up Thursday morning. Here is a condensed version of that video, showing the stormy phase of Wednesday evening and the beautiful sunrise Thursday morning.

And finally here is a picture of the sunrise Thursday morning.

Enjoy!

Carson Matthews

All images are available on my website. Please visit the link below for options to download. 
www.CarsonMatthewsPhotography.com

My First Crock-Pot Pork Shoulder

Years ago I bought a crock pot with ideas of all the wonderful recipes I would create. Well I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago and have used it once with solid results. With the thunder snow accumulation projections up to 7 inches in Atlanta I wanted to cook up my first pork shoulder. I grew up in Macon GA and my best friend’s family owned a BBQ restaurant. I won’t go into all of the details, just visit Fincher’s BBQ on Houston Avenue, you’ll figure it out. Anyway I have a problem where things don’t get done because I’m waiting on them to be perfect. I know Jake isn’t going to give me his recipe, and I love Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce, so I decided to go for it.

I went to Sprouts and picked up a pork shoulder. The recipe I found on Chowhound was pretty simple, apply a rub, add chicken broth, and cook for 9 hours in the crock pot.

 

I turned on the Crock-Pot at midnight, excited to see what would become of it by morning. At 4:30 I was awoken to “what in the world is going on in the kitchen?” It was the dankest smell in the world, like a wet blanket of pork belly filling every crevice in our house. I got up and decided to move the crock-pot to the garage for the second 4.5 hours. Once it was done I took it outside to see how it turned out.

The first thing you will notice outside is that there is zero snow. Nope, nada, just the remnants of the freezing rain and sleet that we got throughout the night. Ben called it the ultimate disappointment. We move on… Just as the recipe read, the pork  was literally falling off of the bone. It was perfect!

We ended up getting out of town and heading up to Cartersville, GA to visit with family and get our hands on some snow. That worked out just fine since I had 4 lbs of pulled pork. On the stove I combined the pulled pork and Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce, mixed up some cole slaw, and we were in business with some BBQ sandwiches.

My favorite way to enjoy BBQ.

I hope to try out some different recipes, and will most likely do it next time on the Big Green Egg. Stick around and see how it turns out.

 

Carson Matthews

2016 SuperMoon Pictures

Over the past few days I have taken several photographs of the moon as it made it’s way towards tonight’s SuperMoon status. We were traveling over the weekend in Palm Beach, Florida giving me the opportunity to get a great shot of the moon in a dark sky over the ocean. The photo below was taken Saturday night.

Nikon D800, 70-200mm, ISO 400 1/200 sec @ f/8

This next photograph was taken last night with my iPhone over the Publix back in Atlanta at the Chastain Square Shopping Center. “Don’t forget to dot the ‘b'”. Based on the number of likes it got, I’m not sure many people realized it was the moon above the ‘b’ in Publix.

iPhone

This morning the Sun was not going to be out-shined by the Moon, so it put on it’s own show at sunrise thanks to the haze of smoke covering Atlanta right now due to wildfires in the North Georgia Mountains and the North Carolina Mountains. Here is a picture of the sun this morning as it rose. Typically you wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot like this without glare.

Nikon D800, 28-300mm, ISO 250 1/8000 sec @ f/8

 

Finally this evening the true SuperMoon came along. The day was full of haze, blue skies muffled and gray as the wildfire smoke moved across Atlanta. This evening was no different and I almost abandoned the photo trek all together. Convinced by my friend Lily to try it anyway I headed to Tower Place in Buckhead to see if I could get a good shot with a building in the foreground. It wasn’t happening, at least when I needed it to. Last night it seemed to rise earlier, and tonight I just didn’t have as much time. After walking around for 45 minutes with no moon, I headed back to the car (after being chased down Peachtree Road by a lunatic screaming “come here bitch-ass” at me). I drove closer to Lenox Mall and decided to check out the roof top parking at Pirch above Dick’s Sporting Goods. While it wasn’t a great spot, it did turn out a couple of pictures of a ghostly blood orange moon rising above the trees looking east.

Nikon D800, 70-200mm – ISO 5000 1/13 sec @ f/5.6

It was clearly affected by the haze, and much darker than usual, so I proceeded to head back to Chastain Park to see if I could grab one more picture on the way home. I got several pictures of the SuperMoon as it continued to rise over Chastain Park.

Once I got home I snapped a couple more from the front porch, probably the clearest shots of the night.

Nikon D800, 28-300mm, ISO 800 1/200 sec @ f/6.3

All of these pictures can be seen at http://www.carsonmatthewsphotography.com/Photography/Supermoon-2016/

 

Thanks,

Carson Matthews
www.CarsonMatthewsPhotography.com 

Tomatoes and Green Beans

Over the past couple of days I have noticed some of the green beans getting pretty big in the garden. This morning I picked a couple of handfuls of beans and two pretty red tomatoes. Tomorrow night I believe we will be having green beans, tomatoes with basil and a cucumber for dinner!

Stay tuned for more harvesting.

Carson Matthews

Spring 2016 Back Yard Garden Update

At Matthews Farm, 2016 will be the year that I defeat the squirrels and chipmunks. Each year my garden has grown bigger and bigger, and each year more critters come out to enjoy the harvests the night before I come out to pick the fruits of my labor.

This offseason I decided to build real cages around each raised bed, and my strawberry & carrot bed has a hinged top as well. The other bed cages will be organic, as in they will grow with the crops as needed. I plan to build trellis’s for the tomatoes, cucumbers & squash, and keeping those caged in will be an ongoing process.

Below are lots of pictures of the evolution of the garden, the planted crops, and some early seed bloomers (pole beans) that will grow in a bamboo teepee. I am also quite proud of the set of sawhorses that I built thanks to direction from familyhandyman.com.

I’m looking forward to a summer full of fruits and veggies from the back yard!

 

Garden coming out of the Fall

the first cage going in

First Raised Garden Cage

Right of Passage Sawhorses doing their thing

Strawberry Patch Cage with Top

Faithful Sidekick Cody

Nifty hinged top

tools of the trade

Finished Cage Top

Broccoli

Blueberries

Strawberries

Green Beans

Green Beans

Strawberry Patch

DIY Soaker Hose

Strawberry Ready to Eat

Vegetables and diy soaker hose

Blueberry Patch

Matthews Farm

Thanks,

Carson Matthews

Pictures of the Chastain Park Playground

Yesterday we took the kids to check out the newly renovated Chastain Park Playground. You can read all about it at ChastainParkBlog.com. Here are a few of the pictures I got of the new playground, it’s truly one of a kind. More pictures are on my website www.CarsonMatthewsPhotography.com/ChastainPark

 

Thanks,
Carson Matthews

 

Elf on the Shelf 2015

Rudy the Elf on the Shelf is happy to have a Christmas tree to hide in. Photographed while watching U2 play in Paris. As I type this they are teasing Burning Down the House with a cool lady moving in mysterious ways.

Shoutout to Peachtree Bikes

I wanted to give a quick shoutout to Peachtree Bikes. Yesterday Ben and I took his Diamondback BMX bike up there to get a new tire put on.  Of course that was a quick and easy fix done on the spot.  An hour later we were back after some user errors putting it back together.  The chain was slipping and the brakes were rubbing, so they went back to work on the bike. Apparantly Santa Claus didn’t do too good of a job last year putting it together as they almost completely rebuilt the bike.  Fixing the brakes wasn’t too much of a deal, but during the process they realized the front fork was installed backwards which took some hammering, but they got it all fixed up.  I’m feeling much better about Ben cruising around on his bike now thanks to Peachtree Bikes.

Many thanks to the guys over there for their extra time and effort on Ben’s bike.

They have 3 locations in Atlanta, online at www.PeachtreeBikes.com

Buckhead · 2905 Peachtree Road NE · Atlanta, GA 30305 · 404.262.9853
Sandy Springs · 225 Hilderbrand Drive · Sandy Springs, GA 30328 · 404.254.4116
Serenbe · 9119 Selborne Lane · Palmetto, GA 30268 · 404.262.9854

Rear Brake

Diamondback Viper BMX Bike

Swimming at Chastain Pool

Last weekend we took our new GoPro out for a spin at Chastain Pool. We had a lot of fun trying it out and getting some underwater footage.

 

Carson Matthews

Thanksgiving Turkey Preparation Timelapse Video

Here is a iPhone 6 timelapse video of our Thanksgiving turkey preparation on Thanksgiving morning. After this it went into the Big Green Egg for several hours and came out perfect!

Timelapse Compilation of Sunrise and Weather

Here is a video compilation of time-lapse videos out of our front window. Our house faces East so we get great sunrises and a consistent look at clouds and storms moving through.

Sunset over the Chattahoochee River

Here is a picture of the sun tonight as it began setting over the Chattahoochee River in Atlanta. This shot was taken from the East Palisades Trail of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area looking west to Cobb Parkway as it crossed the Hooch.

Nikon D800, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8

70mm f/8.0 5 frames processed in Photomatix and Lightroom

Saturday Down South

Saturday Down South