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On high holiday preparations

November 23, 2009 by El

Tick tock, big roof bird:  Thanksgiving dinner

For a nonreligious family whose head cook is admittedly a bit food-mad, Thanksgiving remains THE holiday of the year.

We’re on track (again) for an all-local meal, with about 85-90% of all the ingredients grown and raised right here.  Cider and wine from 5 miles away, cranberries from 15, wheat from 80, dairy from 100.  I adore this holiday.  Admittedly, I am a bit of an overachiever and I allow nobody to help me in the kitchen…except for washing the dishes.

And admittedly, as far as food goes, there’s really not that much that’s taxing about your typical Thanksgiving spread except for the sheer quantity of food that gets made.  That’s always made me pause:  I used to do a spread with 15, 20 items, 5 courses, for three people and though it was wonderful it was REALLY over the top, all for comfort food that tastes the same!  So, every year, I have been chucking one dish to see where the “heart” of the meal truly lies.  This year, I can’t reduce further:  no stuffing?  no gravy?  gotta have the Brussels sprouts…so it’s going to be a grand total of 7 items (3 courses) plus dessert.

It’s still a lot of work, but…it’s The holiday, after all…

Posted in Eat Local Challenge, food | 18 Comments »

On gleaning

November 20, 2009 by El

Not dead yet

It usually takes giving a tour to someone unfamiliar with the gardens for me to view the place with new eyes.  Like a beloved, sometimes you just can’t get enough distance to really see what’s going on.  I had a visitor this weekend and, despite the constant attention I have recently given the outdoor gardens when putting them “to bed,” my friend said quite clearly:

“There’s still a lot of stuff growing out here, isn’t there?”

Indeed!  So I have made many furtive trips to the gardens, harvesting what I can.  The resultant food I call my “As God is my Witness”*meals:  there’s much still to harvest in the leavings, in the gleanings, in the tail-ends of what’s still in the ground.  And this is a good thing.  Much can be learned from making a meal out of these not-pretty cast-offs.  And it makes me feel…rich.  Wealthy beyond reason, and certainly beyond sense.

I’ll never be hungry again.

*Scarlett O’Hara, upon finding, then throwing up, the only vegetable in her Yankee-raided garden:  “As God is my witness, as God is my witness they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

Posted in food | 10 Comments »

On the last hot-weather crops

November 18, 2009 by El

Bell, Hungarian and jalapeno peppers

I pulled the pepper plants on Tuesday.  It was time.

Are you this way?  I always get a little wistful when *the last* of a year’s crop goes into the compost.  And peppers make me positively misty, their green fleshy leaves, their blossom-tipped branches.  The solanaceae family (peppers, eggplant, tomatoes) is the one crop we most identify with summer, and for good reason:  these plants all have tropical origins, and thus are tricked into thinking ours is the Forever Summer that is life in the tropics.  Tomatoes have figured it out, growing and definitely dying within a season, but the others haven’t really given up their desire to be perennials, bushy perennials.  Such is the case, certainly, with my peppers.

Granted, greenhouse-grown peppers have the benefit of season extension a month, two, beyond what is considered Death To Pepper Weather.  And in all honesty, these beauties could’ve held on a while longer.  But, I needed the beds!  Garlic-planting season is nigh.  It is time to say hello to 2010 crops, farewell 2009.

But:  I am still a bit misty.  Sniff!

Posted in food, seeds | 8 Comments »

Dark Days challenge, week one

November 15, 2009 by El

To start off this challenge with a big bang, how about a local dinner for 50?

_DSC9950

Granted, this dinner was in the works long before I signed up for the Challenge.  As some of you may know, I am very involved with food and food issues at our daughter’s school.  We have a garden, we source local foods, we spend the entire summer (or so it seemed) picking and freezing fruit, canning jams and salsas and pickles for the school’s Slow Snack program.  This dinner was a big “thank you” for those intrepid tomato-stained volunteers as well as for our darling teachers and students.  Mid-morning every day, the classes have Snack as an appreciation of sharing, the courtesy involved with it, and the appreciation of food.  It’s really just a bite or two of something good, but the big news this year is  Snack now includes Friday Classroom Snack.  On Thursday afternoon, the teachers come to our full pantry to get the foodstuffs and equipment (electric skillet, crockpot, toaster oven, bread machine, etc.) to prepare the day’s snack with the children.  Stone Soup is often an option.  Dal, chili, applesauce; corn pudding, whole-wheat bread, pumpkin cheesecake; zucchini muffins, colcannon, hummus have all been made in the classrooms this fall.  Whew!

_DSC9943We held the party at a 1930s lodge in a local park.  Beautiful day in the 60s, everyone played until supper

This dinner was a bit more simple.  Mostly, meat was on the menu.  I roasted one each of our geese and chickens, a friend roasted a local organic turkey.  For the vegetarians, I made two frittatas with eggs and goodies from our home gardens (red pepper/potato/garlic with Wisconsin cheddar, leek/chard with EverGreen Lane Farm goat cheese).  Kielbasa sausage from an Amish farmer across the border in Indiana went on the grill.  Two butternut squash got sacrificed for some soup.  I made two loaves of whole-wheat bread (hard red spring from Ferriss Organic Farm, Eaton Center MI) and the middle schoolers made rosemary foccacia with flour from the same place.  Salads weren’t local but were made in the spirit of “Slow Snack,” as were the roasted sweet potatoes and cornbread.  Local wine, some even homemade, for the adults; local cider from Grandpa’s.

I’m sure I am forgetting something!

But…it was tasty.

Posted in Eat Local Challenge, school garden | 12 Comments »

On turkey hormones

November 13, 2009 by El

I knew this would happen.

Our turkeys are fighting.

P1010473

Baby stands tall in the back

Granted, Thanksgiving Dinner (a/k/a Baby) was never destined to be a long-term resident around here, but…we had such peace until early this week.  It’s in the nature of things, I suppose, this desire to be “top dog,” but it’s disturbing nonetheless, this bloodlust: even the mother hen Ruby is in on it.  “What’s going on with the turkeys?” asked our daughter.  I asked her if she remembered when Mel, our mellow gander, turned mean, and she said “yeah, didn’t he have a poison in him?”  I had forgotten that I had told her he had “testosterone poisoning.”  That led me to give a lengthy explanation of hormones and how they act as chemical regulators in our bodies, “and you have a tiny bit of testosterone in you, too, girl.”

“I know, and it hurts right here,” she said, pointing to her heart.

Baby is something of a miracle baby, after all.  Ruby, his mom, sat on 9 eggs until she got attacked by a raccoon (the bastard got into her gated, latched pen) who ate all her eggs, and messed her up a bit.  I knew the instinct to sit was still with her, so I went on a wild egg hunt, grabbing what I could around the house/yard…tough going considering I had just sold the eggs for the week.  So, in a newly reinforced enclosure, Ruby got to sit on one fake egg from our daughter’s toy kitchen, two fertile goose eggs, seven infertile chicken/guinea eggs, and one lonely week-old turkey egg from the refrigerator.

On Mother’s Day, out hatched Baby and Jeffrey the gosling.

They’ve had a grand time ever since.  Ruby is a fabulous mother, and Earl is a fabulous though goofy father.  They’ve been a garrulous threesome ever since, following us around, making threats at the dog, in general, being rather gorgeous traffic-stopping yard statuary (“Are those turkeys?” from passing motorists).  But now Baby is in exile in the chicken pen, and sleeps by himself on the porch roof or back deck.  He’s bigger than his father, which surprises me.

P1010831Like father, like son

Posted in chickens, etc., nature | 2 Comments »

On losing the island, gaining the continent

November 11, 2009 by El

P1010876Showing his niece the well-prepared garden beds

This weekend, for the first time in a long time, I got to spend a lot of time with my brother, all by ourselves.

Life intervenes and sometimes it will be a long time before adult siblings do things with “just” themselves, no spouses or parental units or children around.  He and I had a great time.  This wasn’t always the case when we were children in the same house, certainly, but we both really looked forward to his spending the weekend on the farm, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

It is with much happiness that I recently read that the DSM-VI, due to come out in 2012, will focus on the Autism Spectrum Disorders as just that:  a disorder that has a wide spectrum.  The world of shrinkdom and the general medical, educational and, indeed, American people will then just concentrate on this one thing.  Autism.  It’s a big flipping tent, people, with a strong emphasis on “spectrum.”  Gone will be the categories of Asperger’s and P.D.D.-N.O.S., little islands in the field, one stating a putative intellectual superiority, the other a not-quite-square-peg-but-close-enough nondiagnosis.

You see, my brother is autistic.  Not Asperger’s, not P.D.D.-N.O.S., not retarded, not a savant, but autistic.

One of the things that has irked me terribly is that most discussions of autism have tended to focus almost entirely on the cute, young, odd, mostly male children affected by it.  It’s a communication disorder, and I find it entirely ironic that it has been communicated to be a developmental disorder solely found in very young children.  My brother is in his early 40s, folks; though it showed up when he was a toddler, it’s still here!   Thank goodness for Rain Man, is all I can say, as people might never know that autism affects adults as well.

What is entirely interesting to me, in watching my brother, is that the disorder has ebbs and flows itself:  it, indeed, also follows a spectrum along any individual’s life.  Many of his autistic peculiarities have receded with time, residuals of a different way of being.  Gone is the hyper-number thing he had, gone is the full knowledge of the commuter train schedule, gone are many of the odd other parlor tricks he could pull.  What remains is an encyclopedic knowledge of certain events in his life (e.g., “Sister, on May 11, 1975, you said this to me,” etc.) and a somewhat odd ability to be able to tell you what day of the week anything happened.  This latter remains in parlor-trick status, as his one icebreaker is “What’s your birthday, and the year,” and he’ll spit out that you were born on a Wednesday.

P1010838Some aftermath

He’s still the best help I could ever have around here.  Uncomplainingly, he helped me winnow over 50 pounds of beans, and move about 70 wheelbarrowloads of mulch about the garden.  He’s shelling Christmas Limas with his niece as I type this, while I’m in a kitchen redolent of dehydrating cherries and roasting chicken and bread.

He’s no island-dweller.  He’s just who he is, and he lives under the big tent that is Life On This Planet, with all its wonderful, wildly varied human forms.  And I am so glad he’s in my life.

Posted in nature, sweat | 7 Comments »

On meat-eating

November 9, 2009 by El

P1010907Not gory, not fleshy:  last night’s salad

A call came in.

“Do you want a backbone?” asked my friend.

See, I am not missing a backbone, and never could have been accused of such:  I’m pretty spiny (in more ways than one, especially if you rub me the wrong way).  No.  This call related to a pig’s backbone, as its owner didn’t know what to do with it.  Apparently, a pig came her way (these things are known to happen if you live with your ear to the local food rail) and she got smart and called the itinerant animal killer/butcher to come over and help her out.   He did, killing and hoisting that boy onto the branch of a tree.  She took it from there, with one of her children holding the butchering book.

But I didn’t want a backbone.  Backbone of poultry, backbone of beef, yes, I wouldn’t have said no.  But pigs don’t make great stock, and that would be why I would need a backbone.  (Maybe I can smoke it, then use parts to flavor bean dishes. Hmm.)

“Do you have any meat you don’t want, or fat?  Or the head?  That, that I could deal with,” I said.

Jonathan Safran Foer has a nonfiction book out now called Eating Animals.  I have never been able to stomach his fiction, but he’s a clearer, less annoying voice when he’s researching things and telling stories from his life.  A vegetarian who’s wavered between carnivory and veganism, this book prods us to think about what it is that we DO eat.  One of the more outlandish outtakes that’s been covered in the media is his questioning our taboo of pet flesh.  (I would throw horse in there too:  there are peoples all over the world who eat pets AND horses, as you might know.)  For the most part, though, the book is a look at the meat industry, and how it has accomplished its highest goal:  keeping us away from knowing what it is we eat.  Keeping us blissfully ignorant, in fact; the average American consumes 21,000 animals in his or her lifetime.  (How so many, you ask?  Ground beef in your burgers is how:  there could be up to 400 individuals in your patty.)

As a new-ish returned carnivore (two years this month, all due to producing my own meat) I obviously have very strong opinions on this issue.  My reason for 16 years of vegetarianism is that I could not be ignorant, no matter how hard I tried.  No, it was too cruel, eating meat from factory farms; it wasn’t who I was, or am.  But I am not blind to the way my own animals live and die, and I can easily eat those of the beef and pig farmers I know.

That’s all it’s about.  Being a little less cruel.  Being a little more open-eyed to the reality of our food.  And being game when backbones come your way.

Posted in books, soapbox | 15 Comments »

On life without the had-boughtens

November 6, 2009 by El

P1010804Pick me!

Driving back from Minnesota last week, my husband and I were discussing some of our old friends and acquaintances.  I had a neighbor, for instance, who spoke an odd form of the American English language, and we were wondering if her verbal tics were particular to the neighbor or particular to Minneapolis.   (We agreed it might be both.)  One thing she would always say was “borrow me” when she meant “lend me.”  Another thing, and this is the one that sticks with me, is she’d say “had boughten” instead of “bought.”

Had Boughten!

I say this all the time, in its negative:  “This salad is so much better than any I had boughten.”  “My gah, this roast chicken is fantastic, better than anything I had boughten in a restaurant.”  “Okay I am going to die quite happy, this cider vinegar dressing I made is out of this world, much better than any bottle I had boughten.”  I say all these things to myself, of course, in my head:  saying such things aloud could bring some strange looks.  (Okay, I could have said them out loud to my old neighbor.)

But here’s my point:  there’s no contest between the home-grown and the had-boughten.

Why don’t people see this, know this?  Why do people settle for convenience?  Is a supermarket salad really that much more convenient than a home-grown one?  Unless it’s salad-in-a-bag (horrors), you still need to wash and separate and mix and dress it.  The time it takes me to come home, grab the salad spinner, trade work shoes for garden shoes, harvest the salad, rinse it, bowl it and dress it is STILL much shorter than me swinging by the grocery store and had-boughening the salad fixings.  I can even poach an egg for the top and still come out ahead on the clock.

And the chicken.  Granted, not everyone either wants to or can raise chickens for eggs or for meat.  But home-grown eggs are a separate kingdom altogether, might as well be from different species of animal…same with the meat of those home-grown chickens.  As is doing little things like making your own salad dressing:  clipping your own herbs, mincing your own shallot, shaking it all in your own little jar with your had-boughten olive oil and salt.

Okay, okay; so there are very few things that I get around to had-boughtening.  That olive oil, that salt, in bulk.  Boxes of pasta (in a pinch).  Butter, sugar.  Selected seafood, and not from the grocery store.  Wine.  Everything else, though, really, everything, is grown here or are things that I had boughten through local farmers:  wheat, oats, corn, cow, pig, all in bulk, all purchased and stored for the year.

I get a lot of questions, mainly because people assume I don’t work and doing all this MUST take the hours of a day job just to keep on top of it all.  “How is it that you have time to can things?  I certainly don’t have the time to garden, much less can,” was a statement (how can this be a question) from a mother at our daughter’s school.  How am I to answer that?  That I spend wonderful time daily with my daughter in the garden, in the kitchen?  That my life with her is not spent in a minivan, getting drive-through food between soccer and ballet?  That eating breakfast and dinner, seated at the table with cloth napkins and candles with my family every flipping day is the best kind of quality of life that I can imagine?  That it is a choice to live this way, to eat this way, to be this way?

To just say no to the had boughtens?  Because that is what this is: saying nonono, while greedily saying yesyesyes to the best food money can’t buy.  And I’m having the best time making it all happen: much better than anything I could have had boughten.

Posted in soapbox | 26 Comments »

On late fall garden crops

November 4, 2009 by El

While I am tidying up, I am also running around harvesting the last crops out of the garden.  There are quite a few that needed the whole season to reach maturity, and there are others that I planted in August that are ready to eat now.

P1010781Twinned roots!  Complete with lots of worm-filled dirt:  Brilliant celeriac

Celeriac, or celery root, is one of the former.  I started these puppies indoors with the celery, Italian parsley, cutting celery (wonderful crop:  tastes like a mix of celery and curly parsley), and Chinese parsley all going in under the lights way back in February.  While I have been harvesting all these other crops all spring, summer and fall, the celeriac gets a pass until now.  I appreciate its knobby ugliness mashed with potatoes, or sliced raw in a salad, or used as a subtle “what is that taste” in a creamed soup.  The tops and stalks likewise can be used like celery, though they’re admittedly stringier.

P1010795

Garden-planted fennel

August-planted crops include bulb fennel and kohlrabi, baby turnips and rapini.  I actually never plant these crops in the spring, and always wait for August:  they tend to get big, spicy, woody, and bolt into seed if they’re spring planted.  Fennel is another one of those miraculous vegetables that can be cooked or eaten raw:  indeed, when salad lettuces are scarce, a fennel/apple salad is quite welcome, and wonderfully crunchy too.  And the fronds are tasty little garnishes to add to any dish. When my fish-averse husband is out of town, the girl and I usually chow down on a bouillabaisse in which fennel plays a major part.

P1010794Purple kohlrabi: a bit on the small side but tasty

I have converted more people to kohlrabi than I have to any other vegetable.  I am not quite sure why this is:  were they afraid to try it otherwise?  It does look otherworldly.  This is another better-as-salad vegetable, but that could just be me.  Its subtle broccoli-stem flavor tends to go away when cooked.  We eat it julienned or chopped or even just shredded in a salad.

Turnips and Swedes (rutabagas) are actually something I do plant in spring, but most turnips get infernally hot unless I pick them as babies.  Fall turnips, though, are just sweet things, accepting life as part of a roasted root veg dish, as part of a stew, or–of course–eaten raw in a salad.  I have found a variety, the Gilfeather turnip, that doesn’t get terribly hot as a spring-planted veg, but that’s mainly because it’s part rutabaga.  My mother, an Atkins zombie, eats rutabagas like candy, so I always grow a few rows for her.

Late August-seeded rapini joins late July-seeded broccoli in avoiding the summer cabbage-worm infestation that all my coles undergo.  Rapini (broccoli raab) likewise can get blasted-hot if planted in the spring or summer, but it comes into its own quite well in the fall garden.  This is one of our favorite sauteed greens.  And broccoli.  No need for explanation there.

P1010801And finally, a peek in the fennel forest in the new greenhouse.  I harvest the big ones first, thus letting the others grow bigger; this crop should last until Christmas

Posted in food, seeds | 14 Comments »

On late fall garden tasks

November 3, 2009 by El

P1010769Little Edie for scale:  bean bed with monster weeds

November!  It’s time for stews, simmering stock and lots of roasts. It’s also my last chance to put the garden to bed.

We have about a month before we can expect snow in earnest, which is good:  that garden is still a weedy mess, I confess.  Despite my usual routine of grass mulch and close plantings, the perennial weeds like dandelion and thin-leaved plantain will take hold between plants, and it is only now that the plants are gone that I notice.  So I am on a rigid routine of hand-weeding beds and paths, about 6 a day, before I cover them deeply in compost and grass clippings and leaf mulch.  All 26 outdoor beds will be covered about 5-6″ thick with this stuff, and some beds, like the cardoon/artichoke beds, will be covered by a foot or more.

Deep cover on the beds serves two purposes.  One, for the beds with winter crops on them (leeks, root veggies), the mulch prevents frost from settling in deeply…at least for a while.  The second reason for deep mulch is for the benefit of the soil itself.  The worms and other creatures will consume the mulch, tunneling through it, tilling it into the soil.  My thick soil has vastly improved these five years by doing this one thing:  mulching in fall, slightly tilling in the remaining mulch in the spring.

The best possible scenario is we get a few light frosts between now and mid-December and THEN blammo we get a foot and a half of snow, which most likely will remain (and get deeper) for the rest of the winter.  The mulch will stay in place that way.  Wait:  did I just say I want it to snow?

Posted in sweat | 6 Comments »

Happy Halloween

October 31, 2009 by El

P1010756Nixie Knox says bawwwkbawwk!

We tried to tell her “But Nixie, everyone LOVES chicken!”

P1010746Nixie says I am so not amused.

Have a spooky holiday!  And parents:  Try to save some candy for the kids.

Posted in chickens, etc. | 9 Comments »

On winter squash

October 29, 2009 by El

P1010729-1The girl with a pink banana squash while Mary Ellen the rooster looks on

There is a good reason I don’t normally flaunt the harvests around here, and yesterday’s squash post demonstrates why:  I tend to harvest things by the wheelbarrowload.  I kind of don’t like showing off how crazy I am so I try to keep things under wraps.  (It’s probably not working, though.)

I did, however, get a few serious questions about winter squash yesterday.  It has taken me a few years to figure out what makes them grow well, so I thought I would share with you the secrets of a successful harvest.  Barring my local conditions (fertile clay soil, lots of sun, lots of rain) here are my tips:

  • My first tip?  Compost!  Ever since my best harvests of cantaloupe and birdhouse gourds came from volunteers in the compost heap, I realized that compost is a squash plant’s best friend.  Last year I moved the compost pile to a different location and I allowed a few volunteers to pop up in the former location, as well as nutrient-hungry corn and popcorn.  I had never been terribly serious about winter squash before last year, because the squash bugs made sure that there was never a serious SUMMER squash harvest.  Squash bugs are vile creatures, bent on the destruction of any squash plant, but crookneck yellow squash (my personal favorite) is its primary target.  I have always succession-planted summer squash (once when the ground warms, the second once the squash bugs hit) and have usually beaten them that way.  But I never figured winter squash was a viable crop until I literally planted them in compost.
  • My second tip is vigilance against vine borers and the aforementioned squash bugs.  Vine borer damage is obvious, and quick; squash bug infestations are slow but sure.  Daily examination helps both.  I got over my “ick” reaction and began squashing squash bug eggs as soon as I could find them, whether I had gloves on or not.  (I seem to be able to handle any vile thing if there’s a protective layer between me and it.)  As long as any one plant has only ONE colony of eggs on it, the plant will live, albeit in a reduced capacity.
  • My third tip is compost tea and a steady application of new compost, especially where the vining plants dig into the ground again (this happens with pumpkins, not with butternuts).  Compost tea for me is just compost sitting in a bucket of water for 2 days; I pour it and the wet compost onto the plant’s roots and  new runners.  No aeration, no straining, nothing fancy.

Geez this sounds like a lot of work.  And I suppose it could be but the winter squash season is a long one, the bug-infestation season a short one.  For the most part I just stand back and watch them grow.

And as to what I am to do with all this?  Well, we’ll eat maybe one or two squash a week, in various guises.  I tend to tuck puree’d squash into anything (breads, mashed potatoes, soups, pies) but honestly only one dinner a week will feature “obvious” squash (as soup, roasted as a side dish, tucked in with some pasta or in risotto).

Posted in food, seeds, sweat | 11 Comments »

On Moving Day

October 28, 2009 by El

P1010692Yesterday was Move the Squash Day.  I left them to ripen/cure in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks, but the mice have developed a serious affinity to those of the pie pumpkin family so it’s in to the house they all go.

P1010695Here’s a closer pic of the wheelbarrowload of blues.  In here you’ll find the Oregon heirloom Sweet Meat (bottom left), the familiar Blue Hubbard (dead center, top right and middle right), and the unfamiliar folded-over three-lobed Triamble, from seed from this crazy woman in Oakland.  The little green squash is actually an unripe Triamble.  Not seen, but buried, is a Jarrahdale Blue, an Australian heirloom.  Having eaten none of them, I was most impressed with the Triamble; the Jarrahdale and Sweet Meat were all hat and no cattle, if you know what I mean.  The Hubbards were volunteers.

P1010698Next up is the load of orange squash.  The big ones are Galeux d’Eysenes, surprisingly wart-free; the greens are unripe pie pumpkins and there are also a couple of kuri/kabocha squash in here too.  The yellow one in the center?  That’s (seriously) an eight-ball zucchini.  Whoops!

P1010706Last up is the butternut squash.  It was a good year for butternuts.

We had an early-ish frost here, followed by lots of rain:  both conditions seriously disrupt a winter squash’s ability to live a long sweet life in storage, so I harvested everyone about three weeks ago.  Many, many people will tell you that “a little frost” will not unduly injure your squash, to which I say either they are compulsive liars or that the sole exception to this rule is (and only is) my one small squash-growing patch on this planet.  Therefore, I harvest once the temperature drops, the stormclouds threaten.

I like squash, as you can see.  It’s not all for me, though.  The deer got our garden at school, so many of these beauties are destined for schoolchildren’s tummies.

Posted in school garden, seeds | 15 Comments »

The Art Report

October 22, 2009 by El

foley_allen_epilogue-12Epilogue, by Thomas Allen (c-print, 2009)

We’re off again on another art junket!  This time we’re bound for the old stomping grounds of Minneapolis.

We’d love to see you at Tom’s opening on Sat., October 24th, from 6-8 p.m. at Thomas Barry Fine Arts, 530 N. Third St., Minneapolis.

au revoir!

Posted in sweat | 7 Comments »

On other animal harvests

October 21, 2009 by El

P1010565Bug-eyed deer mouse (top) and sneaky little house mouse (bottom)

One of the seasonal routines that gets fired up here in the fall is the Rodent Harvest.

Yes, admittedly, this is a gross topic, but…one we’re all probably familiar with:  mice do outnumber us, greatly, and once it becomes cold, they like to come inside, too.  The greenhouses are especially plagued, and overnight I will notice that one of the 6 precious Delicata squash, while curing, has been entirely EATEN, blossom to stem, by obviously more than one gnawing creature.  GRR.  War!

We (my daughter and I) bait regular old mousetraps with a solitary sunflower seed (in the shell).  It’s highly effective because the mice really like sunflower seeds, and try very hard to get the seed out of the trap with a satisfyingly predictable result.

Now, mice like squash but usually leave my lettuces alone.  They like to chew the exposed tops of my carrots, and will climb a tomato plant for the fruit.  The voles, my lettuce-eating nemeses, are fairly resistant to sunflower seed bait.  They are, however, fairly stupid, so if I put mousetraps, unbaited, around the inside of the lettuce beds, they’ll run across them and inadvertently get trapped.

All this, incidentally, makes working around the greenhouses a fairly fraught affair…SNAP!

Posted in nature | 15 Comments »

On goose stories

October 20, 2009 by El

P1010365

Happy days in the back pasture: Mama, Daddy and baby geese

The grand goose experiment is over.

We found a great home for our mated pair, Mel and Yoli, on Friday.  Monday was the day their babies went to the butcher.

IMG_2750Geese, chicks and tiny turkey at the far right center

I am a little wistful about Mel and Yoli. As goslings, I loved their soulful eyes, their yellow-trimmed gray coats, how solicitous they were to the turkeys (same age, but much tinier), allowing them to climb onto their backs and under their wings to sleep.  They grew to be sweet full-grown geese, flying around the place when released from their pen, always up for a gambol, a stroll about the property with us.  Puberty happened in spring and we found out I didn’t have two ganders and a goose, we had two geese and a gander.  The non-bonded girl goose became the odd girl out, and the first in the freezer.

IMG_1233Nest-sitting Yoli and three-day-old Jeffrey

Mel and Yoli (named after Tom’s great uncle and aunt, a kooky couple) had a radical personality transplant when they became parents.  Jeffrey was their first-hatched gosling, brought out into the world by Ruby our turkey hen.  Ruby knew he was no turkey, so in the pen with his parents he went, little fluffball that he was.  I figured Mel would either attack him or accept him.  (Yoli was sitting 10 eggs, her parenting energies thus directed elsewhere.)  Mel of course accepted Jeffrey and the six goslings that followed him.

P1010483Baby Turkey and the geese, doing a little puddle work in the driveway.  This is as close as I could ever get to them.

Nine geese is a lot for any farm, especially one without a pond.  Of the seven goslings, one died fairly soon after hatching and one gosling got “spirited away,” just vanished one night (first time that ever happened here).

Like anything on this farm, any new undertaking has to be a joint venture.  Tom neither liked the live geese nor liked them as dinner, so…I can cross geese off the list of self-sustaining, easily-raised home poultry.  It’s a bit of a shame because they’re more flavorful and easier to care for than chickens; they graze constantly when the grass is green and otherwise are much more self-sufficient.  They don’t even need a shelter in our climate!  They just need some dry straw to nest in so their feet don’t freeze overnight.  I am really glad Yoli and Mel have the opportunity to raise more babies in the future.  I really thought they were adorable.

Posted in chickens, etc. | 9 Comments »

Happy harvest!

October 19, 2009 by El

P1010358Tomatoes and peppers and popcorn (oh my)

If everyone is as busy as we seem to be lately then you’ll easily understand the lack of posts!  We’ll be back soon…with harvest news.

Posted in food, sweat | 7 Comments »

On tomatoes (a mini-confession)

October 16, 2009 by El

P1000738The near-nightly occurrence.  The handmade knife was a surprise (read:  off-registry) wedding gift, and I SO love it.  It’s by a metalsmith somewhere in the Cascades, in Washington or Oregon.  If anyone knows the maker, lemme know:  I adore the thing.  It is stamped “MH”,  and it’s a foot long, with a 4 1/2″ high blade.

Coming to the end of the season, I do feel like I have spent the last four months chopping up tomatoes, and I wouldn’t be exaggerating.  Between our own garden’s output (extreme), the school garden’s output (dimmed by late blight but still prolific) and the gleanings from some local farms, the tomatoes were absolutely crazy this year.  I believe we made close to 100 quarts of salsa and chopped tomatoes and pasta sauce *just* for the school, and then there’s our own larder that I am too scared to list.

P1010445

Brandywine tomatoes ripening on the kitchen window

For a woman whose family members won’t even EAT a raw tomato (salsa’s the one exception) it is a bit crazy that I grow as many as I do.  Considering the 2008 tally was likewise as big and there were still quarts of juice, sauce, ketchup, barbecue sauce and plain tomatoes downstairs when I began to harvest in 2009, I am beginning to believe I am slightly crazy.  Tomatoes *love* the greenhouse conditions, and I *love* growing tomatoes is my only excuse.

I think the blight elsewhere also got me going.  Well, I thought, at least they’re working for ME. Some kind of survivalist tendency or something, some ghost of Depressions past.

I am kind of happy to see the tomatoes go, though.

Except there IS this last bit of green harvest that has yet to ripen:P1010352

Chop chop!

Posted in seeds, sweat | 17 Comments »

Greenhouse update: First frost of autumn

October 14, 2009 by El

Fall has come a bit early this year.  Considering how cold it has been all year, the arrival of a cold autumn wasn’t too much of a switch.  Seriously:  I took neither the feather bed nor the down comforter off the bed all summer.  And:  I swam in our (unheated) pool only twice, in Lake Michigan once.  So, heck!  Bring on the killing frost, three weeks early: who cares?

I guess *I* care.  I mean, everyone loves a nice, crisp autumn day, right?  Pretty turning leaves, the smells, the sights, the harvests.  I do feel we were kind of shorted a summer, though.  Can I complain just a little bit about that?  That we didn’t even get above 90* here, and barely got into the 80s at all?  And now we seem to be bypassing autumn too!!

P1010548-1Old greenhouse, toward the front

Sigh.  The only thing that’s happened that has made me this crabby is that I have closed up the greenhouses.  This one task, above all others, means the outdoor growing season is kaput.  Finito, done, signed off, gone!  Now the greenhouses are buttoned up for winter, and their beds are planted…excepting garlic.   I plant garlic very late as it gets big too fast in the 80-90* greenhouse days.

Wait a second:  Summer’s still here, it’s just moved indoors!!

P1010555Rather spare-looking new greenhouse.  The plants are just small, thus hard to see.

P1010556Ladder in use!  Bags of drying beans and, gah, another winter squash.  Note how I haven’t fully enclosed the top of that side wall.  Still need some ventilation.

P1010558Baby lettuces, typical bed.

Posted in greenhouses | 10 Comments »

On new eggs

October 12, 2009 by El

P1010538

The daylight is shortening yet we’re getting lots more eggs.  Magic?  Nope!  Young chickens.

Since we have kept chickens, I have always known who laid what.  This was not rocket science, as it’s rather easy to tell a white egg from a light or dark brown one, a spotted from a blue. This has been a rather convenient ability, as we can tell who’s ailing and who’s well, plus, it makes breakfast choices more easy:  “Whose eggs do you want today,” I ask the girl, “Pauline’s?  Letha’s?  You haven’t had Maggie’s in a while.”

But now, I find I am rather stymied at egg harvest time.  Lined up on their towel, newly washed and wet, I turn them over with my fingers.  It’s like we have chicken company or something, and the feeling is quite surprising.  Whose are YOU, little speckled one, little pointy brown one.  And new eggs from new chickens are indeed surprising.  Often, they don’t have the kinks worked out in the system, so double yolks are quite common, as is the somewhat gross jelly egg (soft, unformed shell) and–once–the egg-within-the-egg total freakout.

I am glad we like eggs.  With the wee bantam eggs, hard-shelled guinea eggs (guineas are stalwart daily layers in warm months, feedburners the cold months, so I guess it averages out), and now eggs from both laying hens AND meat chickens…we had better like them!

Posted in chickens, etc. | 13 Comments »

On Erdkinder

October 9, 2009 by El

_DSC7391

Grape harvest with the Middle Schoolers

Maria Montessori, when studying early adolescents, realized that there was much in the way to teaching them academics.  Rapidly growing bodies and minds and the distractions associated with both made for some tough going book learning, so she figured out a way to “teach” these children by radically changing their environment.  The environment she selected was Erdkinder, “earth children,” in reality, farm school.

_DSC7383Middle-school aged children, therefore, were to live and work on a farm.  Under the tutelage of adult farmers, the children would be able to see how the business of a farm worked, and thus learn the math, chemistry, biology, marketing, and various skills associated with a productive farm livelihood.

_DSC7451Early adolescence is a tough time all around.  Frankly, I do not think I learned a thing between 12 and 14, except how to get into trouble. Becoming aware of yourself in the scheme of the world, the great “what do I do, what do I know” abstraction that is oncoming adulthood:  it’s tough, especially when you have one foot still firmly planted in childhood.  Erdkinder removed that abstraction, because earth children were valuable assets to the farm. The responsibilities assumed by the children were adult ones, thus creating an immense sense of accomplishment, and an immense boost to the children’s self-esteem.

_DSC7425And strategizing the picking, figuring mechanical things out (like the grape squisher above), working together to accomplish these tasks, getting over one’s fear of bees and bugs, and then figuring out how to market their harvest of juice:  granted, they’re not LIVING at our farm but they certainly learned from it.

I have a feeling they’ll be back.

_DSC7231

Posted in school garden | 11 Comments »

On fall foraging

October 7, 2009 by El

P1010392Evening foraging trip to the pond behind our property

There is something about winter, you know?  Passing through this harsh and food-free season makes me eager to shake off winter’s traces with a rash of spring-green foraging.  I do it again now that fall breathes winter’s foreboding breath.  I seldom forage in summer.  Spring, though, and fall, and I am in kneeboots and gloves, briar-wicking clothing, knives, pruners, bags and baskets on my person.  Sometimes I cannot wait until I am past the age of respectability and can go about my business looking like a bag lady at all times a year; as it is, it’s only when it’s time for a free harvest that you’ll find me, wild-eyed and eager, tromping through the woods and fields.

Some years are good, some not so good.  What often holds true in the garden holds true in the neighboring fields, deserted orchards and woods around here.  This, despite the cold, was a good year.

P1010415

The boletes are in.  And it was a great year.

I am not about to tell you how to find wild mushrooms, or where.  Consider the world of mushrooms to be a bell curve:  at one low end, the edible mushrooms; those in the hugely humped middle are inedible; the other low end are mushrooms that will outright kill you.  The ones that you can eat, though, well:  woodland heaven.

P1010417


Posted in sweat, weather | 11 Comments »

The annual “I won’t grow that again” plant

October 6, 2009 by El

P1010312Groundnuts:  ngubu, from the Bantu Kikongo language:  goobers, or peanuts

Every year I attempt to grow a few new-to-me plants.  One never knows what’ll do well here until one tries it, right?  And this year’s experimental plant was peanuts, in the greenhouse.

Ostensibly, this plant was a perfect candidate:  requiring 120-150 days to mature, it is self-fertile, prefers warm temperatures, and prefers sandy-loam soil.  Excepting the latter, I could meet all the requirements it needs; my soil isn’t sandy-loam in the greenhouse but it’s as close as I am ever going to get to it, barring a midnight raid with a flatbed truck to the beach a mile away.  So.  I ordered a variety from Southern Exposure that likes our clay and northern climate, uprooted three beds of lettuces back in April, and planted them.

They were slow to grow, but eventually became monster plants.  The yellow/orange flowers wrinkle up after pollination and bury themselves in the ground, ripening to a single seedpod.  I watched and I watched the flowers wrinkle and aim downward…and never bury themselves.  Even when I staked them to the ground, they didn’t do much in the way of peanut-making.  The plants were spectacular, fleshy-leaved specimens that showed no signs of knowing The End was coming.  And The End was, once I noticed that someone had been harvesting them for me.

Voles!  Hungry little diggers they are.  I wouldn’t say that half my harvest went to them, but probably a third did.

So, I pulled them all up.  I got probably two gallons’ worth of nuts (in their shells mind) for a single packet of seeds.  That’s a decent harvest, but…I don’t like to share.  No more peanuts here, absolutely none for the voles.

P1010315

Posted in seeds | 10 Comments »

On long-stored squash

October 2, 2009 by El

P1010318

Penny and the girl with the final harvest of last year

This gorgeous and gigantic thing is the last of my butternut squash…from 2008!

Obviously, something that grew this large, tasted this good and (most importantly) stored for as long as this one did needs to be saved in perpetuity.  Butternuts (cucurbita moschata) don’t easily cross with the four other types of typical garden squash, as most of its relatives are rare.  Personally, butternuts are the one squash I reliably seed-save because I don’t grow varieties that could cross it, nor do any of my neighbors.  So, these seeds are washed and are drying for next year’s garden.

Butternuts have the distinction of being the one unadulterated squash (read: not covered in brown sugar) that my picky husband will eat.  Me, I love them all, and now that fall is upon us, my desire to eat squash has returned with the turning leaves and the cooler temperatures.  By far my favorite butternut squash dish is hand-made squash-filled ravioli with a shallot/sage/browned butter sauce (eat, die happy!) but my weeknights are usually harried, with no time to craft a stuffed pasta.  ‘Sokay.  Shortcuts can be taken.  Oven-roasted squash chunks can be made while the store-bought pasta boils and the shallots caramelize in their own pan of butter.  Sizzle the sage in the shallot butter, drain the pasta, toss all in a big pasta bowl, testing for salt…and voila, a quicker, near-enough dish for a Wednesday night.

P1010334Whoops:  Steam on the lens.  Take my word, it was tasty.  I used broken-up lasagna noodles.

Posted in food, seeds | 13 Comments »

On sweet things

September 30, 2009 by El

P1010310Get the biscuits!

When I was in New York earlier this month, the governor put forward an initiative to tax all sugary sodas by 18%.  “Sugary” is a relative word.   If you follow the sweetened beverage industry at all, you know that sugar is kind of hard to come by in a carbonated drink:  it’s all corncorncorn in the form of HFCS.  Indeed, any pop (yes, POP, as I am a Midwesterner) that actually contains sugar has been spun as a retro beverage, a throwback to better days:  it’s even hawked in old-fashioned small bottles.

My daughter and I are big fans of Antiques Roadshow, and on a rerun recently someone questioned the original purpose of a small chest their family owned.  It was a sugar safe.  Yes, I explained to our girl, at one point in time, cane sugar was so precious that one would lock it up in a chest, using it only for special occasions!

I thought of that chest when I roasted a ham in the smoker on Saturday morning.  The glaze with which I basted the meat was a sorghum/mustard/garlic glaze.  Way back when sugar (from cane or beets) was expensive, Southern and Midwestern families tended to grow their own sweetener in the form of sweet sorghum.  Sorghum is a tall, corn-like grass (minus the cobs) whose canes are stripped of their leaves and then put through a wringer to extract the juice.  Much like maple syrup, the resulting sap needs to be boiled/evaporated to get the concentrated end product, sorghum.  And fall was traditionally the time when the stalks were harvested, the evaporators fired up.  And as things would have it, the upside-down world we live in now has my jar of Indiana sorghum about eight times more expensive than the beet-derived Michigan sugar in the same pantry.

Is taxing sodas the answer to our ills?  I am unsure, mainly because, like cigarette taxes, the tax disproportionately affects the poor, the ignorant, and the addicted.  Perhaps if we ceased to subsidize corn production at the levels we do, we wouldn’t need these kinds of taxes.  Perhaps there’s something to that sugar safe, to the idea of growing your own sweetener, that shouldn’t be discarded too:  if it’s precious, you might not guzzle it.

Posted in food, politics | 18 Comments »

On small garden hands

September 28, 2009 by El

Gardening with children can be a wonderful thing.  Their enthusiasm is catching, as is their curiosity:  you want to see your garden differently?  Get on your knees and turn over leaves and rocks with a two year old.  Our girl is growing up in these gardens and it is a fun thing to watch.  And, even better, her help becomes more and more useful with time.

P1010273Sewing project

She’s admired the strings of dried peppers hung in the pantry for a couple of years now.  I pull what I need, grinding it or merely flaking it into a dish.  When the new peppers were tiny flowering plants this spring, she asked if she could string them when the time came.  Well, the time was this Sunday, when the peppers were quite ripe.  And quite ably, she strung three two-foot long strings for the pantry.

I sure hope she’s still willing to help at 14.

Posted in food | 9 Comments »

A tale of four roosters, in Seven Easy Steps

September 25, 2009 by El

This is the year that we decided to move our chicken ranching up a level by breeding our own meat and egg birds.  Raising chicks, though rewarding, is hardly any human’s idea of a fun time:  it’s an ordeal.  And frankly, there is no substitute for Mama Hen as far as chicken smarts goes.  There’s too much to learn and we humans are poor teachers in the ways of All Things Chicken.

Step One in this venture: we’ll need two roosters, one for our egg girls and one for our meat girls.

Step Two was to decide what kind of egg-laying birds we wanted to breed.  Our motley egg-laying flock currently includes six dual-purpose (egg/meat) breeds (Australorps (Maggie), Orpington (Sarah), Wyandotte (Helen), Rhode Island (Verloe), Plymouth (Letha), Black Sex Link (Mary Ellen)), and two egg-laying breeds (Leghorn (Pauline), Ameraucana (Phyllis)); all hardy souls that can be found readily in almost any American henyard.  We wanted to try to raise birds that were threatened with disappearing according to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, and were a hardy, low-maintenance, calm bird, so we selected the dual-purpose Speckled Sussex, a breed known for its curiosity and kindness.

P1010337The Colonel

Step Three is to decide which of the meat roosters will remain to be THE rooster.  Chicken Patty raised six adopted meat chicks this spring, of which three were cockerels.  They are all currently in the henyard and so far one white slow-growing Cornish (like mama Patty) is showing promise of being a gentle soul. Chicken Patty, two red broiler chicks (Nice Rose and Sister) and one more white slow-growing Cornish hen (Girly) round out the meat bird crop, and all will soon have their own coop and run.  SO:  The name for the new meat-bird rooster?  The Colonel, of course!

Step Four in this venture was the acquisition of five bantam chicks.  Bantams are diminutive chickens:  usually they are a third to a quarter the size of regular ones.  Because they were bred for their size, chicken traits common in other birds (eggs, meat) were not a factor, nor quite frankly has any bantam selected for docility.  In fact, they’re rather flighty birds, both literally (they can fly anywhere) and figuratively, as in, they’re unapproachable.  They’re a lot like our guineas, in other words; lots of sturm-und-drang.  One of the quite useful traits that hasn’t been bred out of bantam chickens is the urge to sit eggs and raise chicks.  Should any of our girls decide not to sit their (now newly fertile) eggs, I figured having a few banty hens around would help as bantams don’t care whose eggs they sit on.  Consider them the surrogate mothers of the henhouse, our Plan B for incubation and hatching.

P1000703Poor little Ellis

Step Five isn’t really a step, as I thought I had thought this through.  Of the six Speckled Sussexes we had, one was a boy, Ellis, and therefore destined to be Egg Chicken King.  However, he became sick!  His illness caused me to break the #1 House Rule (No Poultry In The House Unless Plucked and Gutted) and did time in my office in a cardboard box, enjoying his scrambled eggs, milk and cornbread. I didn’t hold out much hope that he’d live, though, and it breaks my heart because he was so pretty.  Indeed, he died, a few days later.  There goes my hope of having home-hatched Speckled Sussex chicks next year.

_DSC7237Michael Jackson

Step Six:  what in the WORLD am I going to do with five bantam roosters?  Only one crows, though, and is quite a terror.  He’s the cute white chick my daughter insisted upon buying this spring.  As putative songster king of five boys, I started calling him Michael (as in Jackson), way before His Weirdness’ death of course.  He even crows his name!  MiCHAEL JACKson.  Then, magically, we started to find little bantam eggs in the nestbox.  Apparently, the other four are girls!  (sigh)  And, unlike his namesake, our little Michael actually likes girls.

_DSC7235Mary Ellen

Step Seven:  WHY is the Black Sex Link pullet, Mary Ellen, crowing?  Ah.  I think we have found Ellis’ successor in the egg-bird rooster department.  Mary Ellen (whose name is sure to be changed, or not) is a nice calm bird, very attentive and solicitous of everyone but Michael Jackson (who terrorizes any and all birds).

So…maybe I will have mutt egg-laying chickens after all.  There are surely worse things, including raising the chicks yourself.

Posted in chickens, etc. | 12 Comments »

On the balance of the equinox

September 23, 2009 by El

P1010241In about a month, I might actually be able to find the paths in the garden again, too (butternut squash, beans, and grapes at the top)

Happy September equinox, everyone.

Depending on your hemisphere, this means it’s either the first full day of spring or the first full day of autumn for us all.  Fall, in the days before my greenhouses, was a point on the calendar where I felt the most mortally vulnerable.  Ack!  All my plants are winding down and dying on me, I would think…and I am of course winding down too!  But, now that I am a year-round gardener, the end of one thing simply means the beginning of another.  Bye-bye tomatoes, hello turnips.  Hello, escarole; see you next year, peppers.  And look at the promise of all those little seedlings!

What I need to remind myself is that the beginning of fall is not the end of something, it’s the balance of the calendar.  Equal day and night and all that, no extremes, just a slow slide into darker days, a slow fade from the time of doing outdoor chores in the light-filled 10:00 evenings.  And darker days mean more time with the oven turned on, as I am more inclined to bake and roast and make pots of stew, cure and smoke meats, and, of course, take care of the bounty that is Apple Season.

I do adore the smell of autumn, though:  the high sweetness of the ripe grapes and apples, the fecund mustiness of fallen leaves, the acrid whiff of burning leaves and woodsmoke.  It might not hold the verdant promise of spring within its scents but it does hold its own promise:  a bountiful Harvest, and thanksgiving.

Can’t you just smell the applesauce bubbling on the stove?

Posted in weather | 11 Comments »

NO more Ms. Nice Guy

September 21, 2009 by El

P1010236It has taken me years, but I believe I am a happy plant murderer now.

Perhaps it is a matter of scale:  scale up one’s garden considerably, there’s not much wiggle room for the slackers of the garden world.  If a seedling looks stunted compared to its fellows, then I pull it.  If half a tomato plant’s production of fruit has blossom-end rot, then I kill it.  If I don’t need any more broccoli out of a perfectly fine plant, then I uproot it.

And with this newfound bloodlust (okay:  if plants don’t have blood, should I say chlorophyll-killing lust?), I am a happier person.  I don’t have that groaning maternalistic impulse to save all seedlings, nurture all volunteers.  It’s liberating, this new relationship with my Felco pruners, these limber muscles normally utilized solely in weed-pulling.  I can now happily lay waste to any garden bed, regardless of contents.  And I did so recently!  All but the paste tomatoes are history, as are the eggplants, okra and tomatillos.  Whee!

This is so contrary to my upbringing and training that it’s quite remarkable.  But it’s a point of evolution most gardeners undergo, I suppose, especially we gardeners bent on year-round food production for our households, because succession planting and efficient use of space both outweigh the needs of any one individual, ailing plant.  And seed-saving likewise does not favor the slackers, the malingerers; instead, it’s all hurry-up-and-grow.  Then:  Quick death in my hands.

I would hate this to be a general policy toward everything, but accepting the full mantle of Plant Grower, Nurturer and Compost-filling Killer is not a terribly heavy burden on my shoulders.  It did take me a long time to get here, though.

Posted in death | 14 Comments »

On being wrapped up

September 19, 2009 by El

P1000186

Some of the 150 pounds are dehydrated, some in salsa, some in jam, but most are still frozen for future snacks

Passion is a curious thing.  Its pursuit, on occasion, excludes all other things, and this can be a problem.

I’m not doing any on-the-couch time, no analysis here, but my passion for good, real food has led me to be a bit nutty as far as volunteering for our daughter’s school goes.  I am not at the point of needing an intervention, but doing the school garden and rethinking how the school supplies, cooks, and distributes its food to the children has been a rather time-consuming affair for me these last few months.

Both gardens are weedy, but both populations (home and school) are well-fed due to my efforts, as well as the efforts of many others.

Here’s the passion:  I feel absolutely HORRIBLE, and sorry, for people who aren’t eating the way my family eats.  Is this some kind of epicurean snobbery?  No.  Simply, we eat fresh, whole foods, year-round.  Minimal processing, minimal transport, tasty simply by the fact that it’s real food, not too far from its origins.

Here’s a typical snack rundown for a typical school week:

  • Monday:  Fruit day.  Apples, pears, peaches and blueberries are in season.  These are served raw.  We’ll have apples throughout the year, but we have applesauce, peach and pear butter, and lots of frozen fruit for the rest of the year.
  • Tuesday:  Vegetable, Parent-instigated food day.  Roasted potatoes from the garden are next Tuesday’s snack.  Hummous and classroom-made pita, our jam with school-made crackers or oat cakes, etc.
  • Wednesday:  Muffin Day.  We make the muffin mix (actually, the kids make it and bag it) and a child from each classroom takes the bag home.  The basic mix requires you add two eggs, a quarter cup of oil, and some water.  You can add fruit or nuts or a crumbled topping as you wish, but the mix is nice by itself too.
  • Thursday:  Chips and Salsa Day.  We’ve made salsa for the year at my house.  Black bean/corn, regular, tomatillo (salsa verde), peach, and cherry salsas are in the pantry and in the freezer.  The chips come from a reliable manufacturer in Chicago, where our students practice their Spanish when they make the monthly order.
  • Friday:  Classroom-supplied Snack Day.  We have given each class suggestions, and the school has crock pots, hotplates, toaster ovens and electric griddles to use.  So, classes might make Stone Soup (where each child brings in something to add), or even make tortillas from scratch (or at least a bag of masa harina) for quesadillas.  Either way, this is a way for the children to directly participate and also to really see what it takes to produce a small snack for the entire class.

We have other irons in the fire, too.  We are getting a milk share, and will be using the milk to make yogurt, yogurt cheese, kefir and smoothies for Monday’s Fruit Day with the older kids.  The milk will also be used for baking.  (It won’t be directly consumed because it’s raw and we don’t want the hassle.)  Trips to a beekeeper and a cider maker and a maple syrup maker (sugarer) are scheduled for October.  I have a 20-gallon crock in the Upper School’s classroom (grades 5-9, 9-14 year olds) that is currently filled with brine and cucumbers, and in three weeks will be filled with shredded cabbage for kraut.

Where is your passion taking YOU?

Mine has been keeping me away from the blog, unfortunately.  I’ve been thinking of you lately, though.

Posted in school garden, soapbox | 18 Comments »

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