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On appropriate technology

February 9, 2010 by El

New milk stand with recycled materials:  reused 1×4s, old metal base from the basement’s concrete washtubs, and our daughter’s old table’s top.  It is wider than it needs to be:  I intend to sit on it to milk her.  “Scootch over, sister!”

I got an interesting technology request the other day from a reader.

She’s trying to do more things herself, whether it’s growing or preserving or just looking at lifestyle choices.  Considering that many people reading this blog are on a similar path, I must mention that where she is making this quest is a little different:  it’s in a now-peaceful, war-ravaged country, and she’s not completely at home in the language.  She doesn’t have the liberty of being able to choose which big-box store to shop in for her greenhouse plastic or her canning jars or gardening equipment.  She can’t just go to the local library to read up on these things.  And simply ordering goods over the internet is not exactly something one can do in a not-fully-operational state.  Even considering her circumstances, though, there are many parallels we can draw to our own quests:  sometimes it’s money that’s the limit, sometimes it’s time, sometimes, it’s know-how.  But always, we should consider what’s appropriate.

The great equalizer, thankfully, is the internet!  So much information found “out there,” some of dubious value certainly, but if you have your own bullsh*t-o-meter pretty highly tuned, you can find some gems.  What I recommended to her is that she’s got the great good fortune to be living in an area that’s not as cold as Michigan (!) so there is a lot open to her, greenery-wise.  You don’t need a lot of technology to grow your own food:  a hoe, a shovel, maybe a garden fork and a decent hand tool can be found in any corner of the globe.  Seeds are cheap.  And compost happens everywhere….even north of the arctic circle.

So grow more of your own, and try to grow it year-round.  Build your own cold frame or greenhouse to extend the season.  Use scraps!  There’s no shame at all in recycling; you’re making a better environmental choice by reusing what you can find.  My first cold frame was a transparent plastic sweater box, frankly, the first winter I lived here:  that’s where I sprouted my first salads and hardened off my tomato plants.  And you don’t need to can things if you can try to figure out a way of growing year-round.  Swear off tomatoes for half a year if you have no way of preserving them, but…drying the small ones is something most people can do in their ovens or on the roofs of their buildings in the summer sun.  Pickling, lacto-fermenting, and salt-curing are other methods of preserving one’s harvest.  As is a root cellar:  that could simply be a box in your basement or garage, it doesn’t need to be a proper cellar.

I think so much of this…whatever it is I am doing (homesteading? DIY?) is simply a mindshift.  I could not duplicate what I was eating before, so I switched our diet.  (I can no longer walk to get sushi, for example, or a cappuccino, or that delivered-to-my-door CSA, or get Thai food delivered; but I can get fresh eggs and fruit and garden produce.)  It’s not the same; it’s different.  And it takes longer, and I have less time.  (I am a parent now too so I’m dividing that time pie into pretty thin slices, come to think of it.)  But I am far happier for learning these new skills, for choosing to live this life, financial challenges, failed harvests, blisters and all.

Here’s a few sources of decent information:

The only thing I had to buy was the hook and eye to keep the head gate locked.  This was her maiden voyage so I hadn’t set the eye yet.  Appropriate technology:  no milking machine, just me and a bucket and a milk stand.  Oh and a goat!

Posted in dairy goats, sweat | 1 Comment »

Dark Days week 12

February 7, 2010 by El

Serious child minding the crepe.  It’s a glorious, wonderful, spectacular day when your child becomes tall enough to reach the stove unassisted!  It also means she can turn on the kitchen faucet and load the dishwasher.

Illness has visited our house this week, so Saturday night it was just the girl and me eating solid foods.  And, as is typical, I revert to my vegetarian ways when I don’t need to feed my husband, so…the girl and I made crepes.  Crepes are wonderful.  They can be savory, they can be sweet, they can be in-between.   And they hide all manner of leftovers, should you have them.  Leftovers, or food failures, as was the case with the feta I made this week, which came out decidedly unset and lumpy (oh it tasted fantastic, the texture was off), so melted with a little butter and milk, it became the topping for the crepes.

Menu:

  • Whole-wheat crepes (milk share milk, our eggs, Ferris Organics wheat berries, Michigan butter)
  • Choice of fillings: our leftover oven-roasted chicken with sauteed Bleu de Solaize leeks for the girl; Grex beet greens/Bleu de Solaize leeks/white onions for me
  • Feta/cream sauce topping (milk share milk)
  • Big greenhouse salad (carrots, turnips, lots of arugula and mache; homemade yogurt/shallot/parsley dressing)
  • Applesauce for dessert (our apples, Michigan sugar)

Cropped photo so you can’t see the unpretty feta sauce

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 4 Comments »

On gardening from the outdoor pantry

February 5, 2010 by El

I have blogged a bit of a theme this week:  how to plan my spring garden according to what I will eat next February.

By looking into shortcuts (and take them where I can), and by doing a tally of this February’s stored goods, I can see what needs to go into the ground this spring.  But I have not mentioned one very important piece of this puzzle:  eating out of the greenhouses, and eating out of the outdoor gardens.

Yes, it’s February on 42N, 86W point of this globe, so indeed the gardens are covered with about a foot of that white frozen stuff.  And the earth remains unfrozen but by no means warm inside the greenhouses.  Still:  I am pulling fresh produce from these two plastic-covered tunnels daily.  Other than my lettuces which I continually blah-blah about, it’s the root and cole crops that shine in there now.  And outdoors I can likewise dig up a rutabaga, carrot, or a leek at my leisure, it just takes me a bit more work.

So here’s a partial list:  at least 30 types of lettuces; sorrel, chard, beet greens; endive/escarole; lacinato and red kale and savoyed cabbage; leeks, onions, scallions, shallots; beets, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, turnips, rutabagas; celery, par-cel cutting celery, parsley; and some herbs like thyme, sage, savory, and rosemary.  AND:  they’ll all be eaten (excepting the perennials like the herbs, the sorrel and scallions) by the time the peas are ripe.

Can you see how I avoid the grocery store?  Even in winter’s cold depths?

Posted in greenhouses, seeds | 12 Comments »

On gardening for the pantry

February 3, 2010 by El

Spooky dark basement storage

A big part of garden planning involves, for me, checking the State of the Stored.  Here it is, the first week of February:  how are my supplies doing downstairs?  Do I have enough tomato sauce to last me until this year’s harvest?  Salsa, chutneys?  How are the dried and canned beans doing?  How about popcorn, frozen green beans, jams, canned peaches?  How about pickles?  Applesauce, veggie broth, canned chicken broth?  Frozen fruits?  Ketchup, barbecue sauce, garlic jelly?  And the all-important apples, onions, garlic, shallots, potatoes, winter squash?  A quick check of my stash tells me what I need to plant this year, and what holes need to be patched.

All seems swell downstairs:  my general approach of “put away more than you can eat in two years” has worked well.  Not that I am a pessimist, but better gardeners than me tend to make a big harvest as insurance against a bad year.   Had the late blight hit my tomatoes last year (it did not, but took out half the school garden’s crop), I would still be in pretty good shape, except for ketchup and barbecue sauce.  As it is, canning twice the normal year’s amount frees me, somewhat, from the drudgery of canning every crop every year.  (This doesn’t work for frozen things, but canned goods:  check!)  And pressure-canned stuff is “good” for a long time.

Calico popcorn

Always, though, there are certain experimental things that I wish I had made more of (apple/pear moutarde, green apple/tomato chutney) but this can backfire too if I make a lot of something and it’s not quite so tasty (gooseberry jam).  But even failures can have second lives.  My calico popcorn, which I adore, is not the best at popping (hardly any homegrown one is: it has to do with moisture in the kernels and timing harvests perfectly…which requires a hydrometer, not something I am willing to spring for) but ground-up as a meal for cornbread or polenta?  Hooeey!  Hand me the honey!

Posted in food, seeds | 23 Comments »

On gardening shortcuts

February 1, 2010 by El

A pretty summer cabbage, from seed started in February

February!  Hark, I hear the swoosh of the swing of the season!

Admittedly, this is wishful thinking on my part.  We’re a long way off from spring, but we’re not far at all from spring planning.  And most gardening folk are thinking about the upcoming growing season, myself included.  I am about two weeks from stringing up the basement lights for early onions, for example; exciting, but also…the worst part of my own garden calendar.  I abhor indoor gardening.

No, I am thinking about how much less work I can do this year.  Every year, it’s my goal to bite off less, to realize the value of my most precious resource:  my time.  I will say that the longer one gardens, the more shortcuts one finds.  One needs to pay attention, though.  If I don’t want to weed, I must mulch; if I want to maximize the harvest out of one bed, I must be merciless about pulling plants and reseeding/replanting.  It becomes a bit of a game.  And games can be mastered.

So I am trying to master the game that is the onion family.  I seeded three greenhouse beds with those little hard black seeds yesterday:  leeks, red and white and yellow onions.  I placed them between the green sprouts of the rows of garlic.  If all goes well, this one step will save me days of anxiety pampering those damned indoor seed trays.   They’ll take longer to grow, but the conditions in the greenhouses are both out of my control and perfect for seed-sprouting, if you happen to be an onion seed.

I will of course plant them indoors, too, but, if it’s a successful experiment, then next year the basement lights will only come out for the tomatoes and peppers, and maybe celery/parsley.  And THAT will save me lots of time.  And swearing.

Posted in seeds | 20 Comments »

Dark Days, Week 11

January 29, 2010 by El

Bean carnage

Let’s just say our meal this week is terribly…beany.

Gosh, I think I have even posted about beans, what, twice before for this challenge?  Three times, maybe?  We do love our beans, it is true; probably one dinner a week is Beans.  That leaves six other meals per week that I could choose from that are Not Beans, pretty good odds!  I have a couple of things to say in my defense, though.

Mainly, it’s a bit of a crazy week.  Our daughter turns 6, and every day, it appears, there’s something else to be done to aid the celebration.  There are at least three meals that are directly birthday-related (food is love) and sadly not all of them will be Dark Days-worthy…or they would be if Michigan grew chocolate.  But!  My husband wanted to cook (is the sky falling?  was that just a pig I saw flying?  did hell freeze?) and he said he wanted to make some beans.

A LOT of beans, it turns out!  And:  I was so shocked I forgot to photograph it.

Menu:

  • Cuban Black Beans: our Black Turtle beans, Turino red (sweet) pepper, Hungarian (hot) ground red pepper, Copra onions, garlic, nonlocal cumin/pepper/salt, and greenhouse thyme and my friend’s greenhouse bay leaves.
  • Baked Beans: our Navy beans, Copra onions, garlic, Golden Self-Blanching celery, smoked pork belly, local honey, and a friend’s maple syrup.
  • Biscuits: home-milled hard red spring wheat, butter, home-made yogurt from our milk share.
  • Greenhouse salad with homemade, homegrown yogurt dressing (yogurt, shallots, apple cider vinegar, parsley, applesauce with Michigan sugar).

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 9 Comments »

On the hidden costs of cheesemaking

January 27, 2010 by El

Last week’s (top) and this week’s yogurt made from our milk share

Over the years my husband and I have had a bit of a tussle over finances.  This of course is the typical marital story.  Defining our particular story is my yen to DIY, and almost every little project I undertake, financially, has a big start-up cost.  It has a start-up cost (mainly in materials) that almost always requires no huge outlay of later cash…no bubble, as it were; only maintenance money.  So I have been able to persuade him that my *needs* are, well, inexpensive if you amortize!  At this point he trusts me.

The things I am thinking of are the chicken coop, the chicken tractor, the greenhouses, the goat(s), the (so far unfinished) masonry oven.  Smaller things likewise can be considered:  the pressure canner, the grain mill, the chest freezers, the tiller.  The orchard.  Raised beds for the gardens.  All of them have paid for themselves or will do so within the first year or so of owning them.  And any of my kookier ideas also have an out, financially:  2010, to name one example, will be the first year I don’t have to order chicks because we have roosters and a tom turkey, thus, self-sufficiency in egg and meat birds.

But cheesemaking.  I mentioned a while back how I found life as a single vegetarian to be much less expensive than omnivory…mainly because I almost never bought cheese!  I adore cheese, but it was rare that I would shell out for it, despite my love of the stuff…good butter being the one exception.  NOW there’s a goat in the shed, and she’s bagging up quite nicely, and within about a month I will don the bonnet of Resident Milkmaid.  And fresh milk means cheese.  And homemade cheese means…damn, another start-up cost!

A few years back when the homemade cheese bug bit me, I purchased a starter kit from Hoegger Goat Supply.  It’s served me nicely and I haven’t gone back to that well, but then again, I didn’t try to make hard cheeses or aged cheeses.  Now, though, now I have printed out little plans for my husband to build me a cheese press (he likes to feel handy) and now I have finally purchased and read Ricki Carroll’s Home Cheese Making.  And I am discovering that that woman is a pusher.  Seriously:  is she any different than the guy on the corner who’s giving you a little taste for free so you can keep coming back to feed your habit?  I read the recipes and I think:  hmmm, thermophilic culture, I need that; how about a bag of penicillium candidum, and might as well get a bag of p. roquefortii while I am at it.  And then, well, use it up and keep coming back for more.  Yogurt sure doesn’t have this problem:  make it once, always have it (like sourdough).

Man!  What would Ma Ingalls do?  She’d culture her own.  Something else to figure out, I guess…stay tuned.

Posted in food, soapbox, sweat | 25 Comments »

Goat coat!

January 26, 2010 by El

Farmyard fashion.  Caprine couture.  Goat glam.  Dairy duds.  Ruminators’ raiment.  You get it.

Posted in dairy goats | 10 Comments »

On getting one’s (pregnant) goat

January 25, 2010 by El

Forever, it seems, I have wanted to own a couple of goats.  I have always considered them singular creatures, intelligent and goofy at the same time, regal and clown-ish.  Dairy goats figure in quite well with small farms like ours, too.  Their needs are few yet their byproducts are many (bedding for the compost, milk for us, and kids to sell or to add to the herd).  Unlike sheep, goats don’t think you’re always going to kill them; unlike cows, you don’t need acres of pasture for their sustenance; unlike non-draft horses, goats are actively contributing members of the small farmstead.  T-bell is a friendly, happy soul, and I feel terribly lucky to have her.

I found her on Craigslist, if you can believe it.

Our goat girl is a sundgau-colored French Alpine.  She’s kidded before, twice; both times unassisted…in point of fact, she kidded before the family could get there in time to assist her: her kids were there in the straw!  She is in every way very much what they call “an easy keeper.”  I found a housecall-making vet who specializes in goats and sheep and she has confirmed that T-bell is in great shape, AND pregnant (yay!).  And, the vet confirmed she’s free of a certain disease that is fairly common in dairy goats…this was a big concern of mine, as it would require that I sterilize the kids’ milk (it seems convoluted, but I will milk her to bottle-feed her kids).  Heating colostrum (first milk) is tricky because it wants to turn into caramel!  (No disease = no need to pasteurize the milk.)

At her previous home, she spent much of her time indoors, so her coat is not as thick as those hardy Michigan goats kept outdoors.  Like people, they’ll avoid going out into the snow if they can help it…wouldn’t you?  Anyway, my vet and I were concerned.  Her new home is draft-free, but it’s an unheated, concrete-floored shed.  She’s in deep bedding in her pen but we figured a little goat coat wouldn’t hurt.  And my mother-in-law loves to sew.  (Oh:  and the kids will need coats for their first week or so…depending upon the weather.)

Look at the header to see how much plumper she’s getting

She’s due Feb. 26th.

All my dabbling in cheesemaking will soon find some purpose.  And the gardens can’t wait, frankly, for the additions of this great bedding…just think how I’ve doubled my compost quantity by adding one animal.  And I keep having dreams, too, about the birth.  My daughter thinks she’ll have four kids.  Two is more like it, but, well…let’s hope for at least one little doeling!

It’s all about the poop you know

Posted in dairy goats | 19 Comments »

On January gardening

January 22, 2010 by El

It was another sunny day yesterday, which prompted me to spend my lunch hour in the greenhouses.

Normally, the greenhouses require zero active gardening attention between December and February.  This is a time of harvests only; it’s rather freeing, I must say.  But December through February, in this hemisphere, are when a gardener misses gardening most!  Luckily, I am a succession-planting fool.  I’m not “required” to garden, but garden I do.

Cute little babies!  YES, things grow through the winter, albeit very very slowly.

I threw down a whole bunch of Red Sails seeds on a 1′x3′ patch in one bed in November.  I was putting seeds away, and noticed that a mouse had decided to make her nest in the paper bag where I was drying this particular lettuce’s seeds…it was quite pee-filled and disgusting.  No way I could’ve saved those seeds.  So I tipped out the bag to let the baby mice “escape” to the waiting jaws of Penny, Little Edie and a few chickens (hey: it’s recycling) and then I stomped on and shook out the remaining seeds and fluff into this bed.  They’d be fine to transplant in January, I thought, and I was right.

Each lettuce bed has a few holes where the resident plants died due to the cold or an overzealous harvest.  I plant two baby lettuce plants per hole.  They’ll be in shock for a bit but they’ll start puffing up when their neighbors wind down.  I expect to eat lettuce out of the greenhouses until late April, just about the time when I transplant little lettuce seedlings and plant lettuce seeds out of doors.  Mangia!

And then, it’s harvest time:  July-seeded Scarlet Keeper:  insane size, but…look at the one to the right center!  “What did you have for dinner last night?”  “A carrot.”

Posted in greenhouses, seeds | 10 Comments »

Dark days, Week 10

January 20, 2010 by El

I’m cheating this week by showing you something I made for dinner last week.

Oxtails:  The majority of Americans just have never eaten them, despite their high overall beef consumption. As a newly-returned carnivore, I was shocked by how much meat cost, even the “cheap” cuts of meat!  Sixteen years of not having a “meat tax” on my budget…let’s just say life as a veg was cheaper.  S0 as a carnivore I’m predisposed to be cheap, or, rather, thrifty. Well.  This means I’m not afraid to try new-to-me cuts, and oxtails were a revelation.  So much flavor!

Of course by cheap I don’t mean cuts from cruelly treated feedlot animals.  Nope.  We buy our beef and pork by the quarter and half, respectively, from small farmers who pasture their animals, raising only a few per season.  By ordering these quantities, you can usually have your say about how you want the meat processed (lots of chops, say, or more ground) AND if you are adventurous, you can request the odd bits that the butcher usually just takes as his, er, cut of the cuts.  Like oxtail, which is simply the tail of a steer.  In my last beef order, I asked for it: and got all 3!  It seems nobody else wanted it so the farmer sent all the tails to my order, gratis.

So maybe Americans don’t eat it much (hey: more for me at the butcher), but leave it to thrifty folks like the French (indeed) and Koreans (among others, of course) to really know how to use oxtail.  Pot-au-feu is a double dish:  a beef broth, then a meat dish; pho, likewise, often utilizes oxtail to give it its strength.  Many French recipes do suggest oxtail be used for two meals.  Gotta like THAT kind of meat thrift.

Singularly unattractive photo

Menu:

  • Gnocchi in Oxtail Ragu: Russet potatoes, winter white flour in the gnocchi.  Roasted cut-up oxtail, braised in red wine then stewed in our tomato sauce with our celery, onion, garlic, and herbs.  Recipe very loosely based on this one.
  • Mokum Carrots, julienned and pan-roasted in brown butter and thyme
  • Greenhouse salad
  • And the rest of that red wine, a Meritage.

Yum!

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 15 Comments »

On winter squash…in winter

January 18, 2010 by El

Congratulations!  8lb, 1oz and 18 1/2″ long…pink banana squash!

One astute commenter noted that my family’s probably not hurting for Vitamin A in our diets, what with the monster winter squash harvest this year.  And it’s true, we’re awash in the things.  It’s okay, really it is, especially since the school garden’s squash patch was a bust (deer predation) so I have a…somewhat willing population to whom I can feed the things.  AND:  happily:  all our animals (except T-bell the goat) eat squash.

Surprisingly easy to slice, especially when you have a great hand-made chopper like this one

I do love squash, always have.  But I find that, as a gardener, my esteem of any one vegetable goes up or down in direct proportion to how well it grows for me.  Squash is quite the flatterer, so…I love it.  I’ve got a very fox-and-the-grapes attitude about things that don’t grow so well for me (i.e.,”bah, Brussels sprouts, who needs ‘em) and it proves to me that if nothing else I am terribly…human.

The now-indispensable food mill.  Usually reserved for separating tomatoes from their seeds and peels, and stewed whole apples during the saucing sessions, I realized how handy this thing was once I killed my immersion blender.  It’s now out all the time, especially to cream hot soups and hot squash.  And, unlike the damned hand-held stick blender, I could never break this thing.

But my family is on the “likes” squash part of the spectrum:  it ain’t “love.”  I therefore only feed them one squash per week, if that.  Mostly, we love creamy squash soup (with a splash of curry), but it also finds its way into baked goods.  Only butternut is tolerated in other forms (pan-roasted, say; or candied) and luckily I planted plenty of those, too.

5 cups of puree for us people!  The basement worms get the skins, the poultry and bunnies vie for the seeds and pulp…a true no-waste food.

Sunday, though, I brought out one of the pink bananas.  They were one of the first escape artists of the squash patch (up and over the fence, 16′ away) and one plant put out, what, three squash total of similar size to this one.  They’re really easy to cut up (bonus!) and I found the chickens and turkeys appreciated the seeds and pulp if I chopped it for them.  I baked these, cut-side down, arranged diagonally across my two largest rimmed cookie sheets.  Scooped, run through the food mill, and sweet!  Its great advantage appears to be its readiness to be cut into rings, and baked a la most acorn squash.  It did take a bit longer to fruit out than many of the other winter squash I had, and Fedco says it is not terribly reliable in really short summer areas but, well…if you like winter squash, you might want to try to grow this one this year.

Posted in food, school garden, seeds | 13 Comments »

On the other reason to get a greenhouse

January 15, 2010 by El

World events can rock you pretty hard, but surprisingly so can little things like crummy weather.  I’m telling you:  weeks of snow and no sunshine can mess with even stalwart seasonal affective disorder naysayers like me.  All that bright snow outdoors, which otherwise perks up the darkest day, can wear you down!

Enter, sunshine.  Time to run out to the old greenhouse for some personal light therapy.

Doesn’t look very bright and cheery, but it was 75 degrees in there.  Can you find Penny?

May as well throw back the covers to see what’s growing.  Here, mache has self-seeded and is crowding out the resident lettuces.

Here’s a closeup of the mache.  I couldn’t help but nibble.

And speaking of nibbling, I might as well bring some of the greenhouse’s celery to the bunnies.  I wonder if our heretofore picky goat T-bell might like to try some.

Hmm:  what do you have here?  Hey, that’s rather tasty…

Burp!  (Excuse me!)

Looks like the bunnies will need another bundle.  And:  I feel a lot better.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and be sure to support The International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent or find out how else you can help through The Center for International Disaster Information.

Posted in dairy goats, greenhouses | 15 Comments »

Dark days, week 9

January 13, 2010 by El

Throughout this Dark Days challenge, I never go into each week thinking:  Tonight’s dinner is IT!  Time to post! Nope; it’s more like, what’s photogenic? I have, quite honestly, tried very hard not to show off for this challenge.  No real food pyrotechnics or frankly anything terribly difficult for someone with less-than-average kitchen skillz; what’s the point?  There’s enough to do just growing all this stuff, people!  AND:  that’s what I am trying to get you all to do:  get out and GROW IT!

bread and buttah

Tonight’s fare is, again, very simple.  This morning, I started the bread on a fast no-knead schedule (normally, 12-18 hours, I went with 6: just up the yeast!) so I could take advantage of the sprouting spelt berries I had growing on the counter.  Thinking, “what goes well with bread,” I retrieved a can of “bean starter” from my stash of canned goods and started some soup.

I’m always so happy when I can my dried beans for quick meals:  there are jars of black bean/carrot/onion, black bean/tomatoes/peppers, lentil*/kale/carrot/onion, and white bean/kale/onion, as well as just plain jars of beans downstairs.  I canned them in my pressure canner:  I would make the bases when I was making some other bean-y dish; I would chop a whole bunch of stuff and then, in a couple wine-besotted evenings with a friend, canned them all.  All I need to do now, then, is harvest something to augment one of those jars, or…open more of my own cans to create soup, chili or whatever.

Makes dinner really a no-brainer on those days I have no brain.

Menu:

  • No-knead loaf: half winter red, half winter white wheat ground up in my brand-new mill (!!) with sprouted spelt berries
  • Stew-y soup:  Black bean/carrot/onion starter, canned from our produce last October; one Mokum Red carrot, one Chantenay carrot, Red Russian kale, Lacinato kale, Par-Cel cutting celery and one Bleu de Solaize leek, all from the greenhouses; garlic from storage; homemade red wine vinegar to finish, with butter.
  • Salad:  Lots of reds in this salad, mostly lettuce.  Vinaigrette made with our vinegar, herbs, shallot; nonlocal olive oil (duh!) and mustard.  Nonlocal but home-sprouted alfalfa.

*Lentils are the only thing not home-grown.  With only 2 beans per pod, good golly who has that kind of time to shell them!

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 19 Comments »

On sprouts

January 11, 2010 by El

Alfalfa sprouts

I’m making edible sprouts again:  it must be snowy outside.

Everything we eat here has a season.  With the exception of frozen meat* and the seemingly unending jars of tomatoes, every other food item has an on and an off period…everything has its season.  Lettuce cannot be found from mid-July to the beginning of September.  Potatoes are only found from July to March.  Stored garlic (sniff!!) winds down just when green garlic winds up.  And so on.  All of these things are seasonal by the fact that the calendar makes them so.  There are some harvests, though, that have me to blame for their seasonality.  Sprouts are one of those things.

I posted a while back about sprouting things. I find I have a higher tolerance for the sprouting process when two things happen:  1.  when it’s abominably cold out and 2.  when I don’t have vegetables growing under the lights downstairs, and thus am sick of seeing seeds.  So, in other words, the season of edible sprouts is a short one:  from December to February, usually.  I do tend to sprout wheat year-round, though, because I like sprouted wheat in my breads and pancakes etc….but that’s an exception.

And I could get all wackadoo and tell you the reason why I think sprouts are so very important…but I won’t.  Suffice it to say I think raw, living food is a very important part of our diets (and by “living” I mean sprouts, but I also mean yogurt, kefir, krauts, and of course my insistent salads); I feel their lack when I leave home and have to…you know, fend for myself!  To my gut flora’s** sincere dismay, I might add!

*Frozen meat has a season, too:  I “harvest” our birds, and we order meat shares (1/2 hog, 1/4 cow) and when the harvest happens, the freezer fills.

**Gut flora:  The human body, consisting of about 10 trillion cells, carries about ten times as many microorganisms in the intestines.

Posted in food, seeds | 11 Comments »

Dark days, Week 8

January 9, 2010 by El

Today we put our muscles into our dinner!  This dinner illustrates three things:  one, how to feed a family of 3 on one little chicken breast; two, how delicious a non-rice pilaf can be, and three, how sometimes it’s too cold to go outside to fetch a salad.  Thus, the pantry/freezer meal.

She’s wondering if she can make dimples with the end

Menu:

  • Chicken breast prosciutto-free saltimbocca (thin-sliced chicken breast smashed into submission with rolling pin, dredged in flour and quick-sauted in butter; gravy from the drippings of garlic jelly, homemade white wine vinegar, hard white wheat flour and thyme)
  • Blue Coco green beans from the freezer
  • Spelt berry “pilaf” (butter, Copra onion, Golden Self-Blanching celery, Par-cel cutting celery/thyme/sage/oregano, in chicken stock)

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 10 Comments »

On the egg onslaught

January 7, 2010 by El

“She’s set it down, but it’s not food!” Disappointing Blanche, Nice Rose and Emilie just for a photo

So we passed something of a farm record last Friday:  one dozen eggs in one day.

Then, the next day, we got 13.  The next, 15.  Holy frittati!

This surprises me, though the numbers shouldn’t.  It’s one of those math puzzles I have such a mental block about:  I am getting eggs from hens whom I don’t consider egg-layers.  So, philosophically, I have three categories of chickens:  egg-layers, meat birds, and bantams.  The bantams, quarter-sized chickens, are simply cute yard decorations.  But all three categories of chicken (25 girls) lay eggs.  Year-round, apparently!  It really picked up after the December solstice.  So:  each bird lays an egg every 36 hours or so (less if they’re young) and so, duh, I should have a dozen eggs a day.

(If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, El…)

I “expect” eggs from my stalwarts like crazy Pauline the Egg Machine (she’s a Leghorn) and Verloe, the RIR.  And all the new egg birds are just that, new, so they’re in their most productive year.  Likewise, all those extra meat birds I couldn’t bring myself to slaughter (3 thus, still unnamed) AND their clutchmates are eggy now too…as are the cute Bantam chickens (Janet, LaToya, Rebbie and Featherfoot) with their even cuter half-sized eggs.

But yeah, we’re awash in eggs.  Luckily, I have customers!

Posted in chickens, etc. | 17 Comments »

On the weather

January 5, 2010 by El

They’re 9 1/2 feet tall in the center if you’re wondering about how deep it all is.

When we lived in Minneapolis, weather WAS the common point of conversation.  I am not quite sure why this was:  if it had one cause, say, or many.  Was it because winter weather could KILL you in Minnesota, and thus isn’t it fine we’ve escaped death, or was it because it was a common point of misery thus shared?  I would not say that Minnesota is filled with miserable people, so I think it was more of the former.

Here in Michigan, though, winter’s really not much of a point of conversation.  By the unwilling, it’s endured; by the winter-lovers, it’s smiled upon; in general, though, it’s not much discussed.  I cannot tell you how far down in a typical conversation with a friend that the weather factors in:  maybe Item #20, and only because the weather could interfere with our plans. Or:  the conversations go like this:  “Can you believe they didn’t close down school today?” when the local schools were closed due to the 8″ of white stuff that fell overnight.

Ruby, Earl and the poultry condos

But I know many people read this blog from snow-shy locales; places blessed by only a few frosts in the winter months.  And I know it seems, to them, just weird that we happily endure life in the snowbelt.  The snow has begun to fall in earnest now (earnest means a daily 2-8″).  This means my morning chore list grows a bit longer:  the poultry, because they’re so numerous this year, appreciate a daily plow through their run.  Their coop is in one area, I set water in another area, feed and their condominiums in a third area so that they’re forced to walk quite a bit during the day…which means I have a lot to shovel.  Makes them less stir-crazy, less (literally) cooped up.

And I dig out my greenhouses every morning.  It’s just something I like to do, as it makes the evening quest for salad so much easier.

The daily drift…

…and the evening salad…

See?  Salad, in January, in Michigan!  Come hungry for dinner!

Posted in greenhouses, weather | 23 Comments »

Dark Days, Week 7

January 3, 2010 by El

One thing you need to realize about dinner in this house, ANY dinner, is that it’s a bit of a process.

First, there’s the harvest, then the impromptu semaphore dance with the leeks.

Then, there’s the lengthy discussion about meat or no meat in this dish:  we went with meat.

Then, unseen, the kitchen fairies made pate brisee.  Salad.  Soup.  Galette, and pie.

Dinner:

  • Mache salad with Long Keeper carrot, toasted scavenged walnuts and non-local but homemade mustard vinaigrette (our herbs, shallots)
  • Chicken soup (our bird, Scarlet Nantes carrot, Golden Self-Blanching celery, Copra onion, our herbs)
  • Leek galette (2 Bleu de Solaize leeks, one cube smoked pork belly, thyme; spelt flour/butter crust)
  • Pumpkin pie (spelt flour/butter crust, Amish Pie pumpkin, our eggs, cream from our milk share, and nonlocal spices)

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 16 Comments »

On the new year

January 1, 2010 by El

New Year, blue moon, new decade (well, okay, technically a new decade begins a year from today)…I am trying to square the idea that “it’s all new.”  Have you ever awakened from a nap and have had no clue what year it is, much less the time of day?  I swear I have these Rip Van Winkle moments a lot; it’s the main reason I don’t take naps.  And somehow this New Year’s has snuck up on me too.

BUT:  the turn of the calendar does indeed goad me into recognizing that It’s New.  And, being an American girl, I have been taught to believe that all that is new = good.  Haven’t you?  This has been an amazingly hard thing to unlearn.  But unlearn I have, and you’ll find that I am happier if gifted something old rather than new; “new to me” being good enough, and more than likely hugely appreciated.

New Year’s is typically the era of resolution:  one resolves to, more often than not, change something, be it a behavior or an outlook.  I admit I am not one for resolutions either, not that I think I don’t need to change things (I do).  This is also the time we do look back, at the year we just left:  but I would rather not.  (“Not a good year,” end of story.) It’s all forward-moving we’re doing, not backward; each DAY is a point of resolution, and yes I know that in my saying this I sound like a 12-step graduate.  Alas, no; I just think every day is precious.

And each day is.  Today, New Year’s Day, I planted garlic (in the greenhouse) with my daughter, the third year in a row we have done such a thing.  And that, alone, is reason enough to celebrate the day:  planting the first seeds of the calendar year.

Happy 2010, everyone.

Posted in seeds | 18 Comments »

On making do with what’s available

December 30, 2009 by El

Had we moved to a “regular” farm (you know, the one in your imagination:  turn-of-the-last-century farmhouse with big red barn, tall silo, chicken shack, smokehouse, big fenced pastures, etc.), owning many kinds of farm animals would have been a natural thing.  But we moved to a fruit farm.  Fruit farms aren’t all that heavy on outbuildings.  In fact, all that remains in your mind’s eye about our place is the big old farmhouse.  What few outbuildings there are here were specifically used for fruit processing and storing tools…and now house cars and the lawn tractor just fine, thank you.  Housing chickens, pigs, the family milk cow were secondary concerns to the original owners.

Luckily, our chosen animals aren’t terribly picky.  Goats, in particular, just want a dry place to flop down.

Wait:  Did she just say “goats?”

Doesn’t everyone have a goat in the back seat of their old hatchback?  Yes, we were humming the themes of Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies as we drove down the highway.

Meet our newest critter, an Alpine doe.  She’s a 4 year old family milker.  And:  she’s due to have kids on Feb. 21st.  And:  she’s living, with the rabbits, in my potting shed!  Whee!

Posted in dairy goats | 25 Comments »

On the art front

December 29, 2009 by El

Pine (Remembering Andrew Sie), by Thomas Allen, 2009

Not much happening on the garden front, so I thought I would share art stuff.  Tom’s got a portfolio in the January issue of Harper’s.

You can see more of his work here.

Posted in sweat | 6 Comments »

On a cold end

December 27, 2009 by El

Stepping into the new greenhouse, it smells…kinda like damp licorice.

This isn’t a bad smell at all, incidentally.  Outside now it’s all crisp, white…winter blandness; that particular fresh smell that accompanies the howl of blowing snow. It’s a scent you’d love to bottle, this clean frostiness, but it is particularly devoid of botanical stink. The greenhouses are a bit of a relief to that whiteness.  Step inside, and even if it’s early morning, you still smell…earth.

But back to the licorice.  The anise-y smell is coming from The Fennel Forest.  I said they’d be good until Christmas, and they are, barely.  A bit of frostbite, but that’s fine; chopped, tossed up with some crisp apples and a yogurt dressing…mmm.

Posted in seeds, weather | 7 Comments »

Dark Days, Week 5

December 20, 2009 by El

I looked forward to posting this week’s meal because I figured it would well illustrate two things:  one, what it is I eat when I eat alone, and two, how much of a glutton I can be on really simple peasant fare.  You see, I planned on telling you all about a lovely vegetarian dinner of polenta with foraged wild mushrooms:  both main ingredients being things verboten, nay, HATED by my family…thus, best to eat when they’re away.  And:  it’s a meal I *crave* for them to leave so I can make it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to dinner.

I had to dig, deep, in the bigger chest freezer to retrieve the last two-pound bag of Bloody Butcher cornmeal from a grower in Nashville, MI: wonderful meal that yields gritty, deeply-flavored polenta or cornbread; cornmeal well worth digging to the bottom of a freezer for.  But, with each successive layer of frozen items I dug through, the angrier, and colder, I got.  And:  what I was digging through was so much more…in the way of instant gratification (i.e., steaks) that I finally said SCREW IT!  gimme some MEAT!

So, here’s the meal:

And it went down well with two glasses of red wine put up by a friend of ours in honor of his son’s birth, six years ago.

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 17 Comments »

On flock protectors

December 17, 2009 by El

Don’t mess with her

It’s a good thing that Ruby is in with the chickens!

The dog was whining terribly, and as I couldn’t really hear anything over the music I was playing, I let her out…to see a hawk in the chicken run, fighting with our hen turkey.

Ruby got the upper hand, I have not a clue how.  The hawk was terribly injured, so I put it out of its misery.

Ruby is fine, though flustered.

Don’t blame me for this one, says Little Edie

Posted in chickens, etc., death | 20 Comments »

On the flock

December 16, 2009 by El

Welcome, Edna!

About a week ago, we got a knock at the back door.  It was dark out (and we have no lights on the back porch) so we figured it was something pretty important.  Honestly, the only visitors we have out here are delivery people, and that is with enough regularity that we know their names, even their birthdates…anyway.  The other people who come to our door are proselytizing types, but that’s usually during daylight hours.

This was a neighbor who lived two doors down.  I had never met her.  But:  she had a chicken!  A poor, lonely chicken whose sisters had all been eaten by a raccoon who had clawed his way into their pen.  Could we possibly find a home for her in our flock?

So, here she is.  She’s a Buff Orpington, but is really tiny, and shy.  I’m hoping her ashy comb reddens up, but she’s beginning to feather out nicely.  I cornered her in the chicken condo for this picture:  you should have heard her clucking with indignation.  She’s been picked on, but she just usually hangs out with the other low-totempole chickens.

Queen Ruby

Ruby and Earl (the turkeys) are living with the chickens now too, because, well, they like the company as they miss the geese.  So:  this makes 31 birds in the back yard.  Wait:  did I just say that?  That’s a looottt of birds.

Posted in chickens, etc. | 3 Comments »

Greenhouse update, early winter edition

December 14, 2009 by El

“New” greenhouse on a chilly but sunny morning; that’s snow outdoors and on the plastic.  I removed the covers to show you the growth. Sorry about the drunken, pre-coffee angle.

Thankfully, gratefully, I report a gentle fall to round out the growing year of 2009.  Though our weather this growing season wasn’t as calamitous as many experienced it, it was an unusual year, definitely on the cool side.

Many people don’t realize it, but late spring and late fall are times of moderation, as far as temperatures go:  the swing on our thermometer only changes 20* or so between daytime highs/nighttime lows.  Inside the greenhouse, things are more moderate, too, with a 40* swing found on a sunny day, 20-30* on a cloudy one.  The temperatures slowly drop, but the highs drop too, so now we’re still seeing that swing but it’s happening between cold and colder, not cool and cooler.

This hasn’t always been the case.  Often, November hits us with a bang, and we’ve even  been known to have snow accumulation in mid-October.  Finally, in late November, it got cold.  And I got the Reemay out.

Reemay fabric covers, which stay on until mid-Feb. for warmth.  I always think of Madeline when I see these little beds (there are 12 in the new greenhouse, in two straight lines…

Lettuces fairly well packed into a bed:  notice how they’re not full sized.  I transfered them in as tiny plants in late October.  They’ll grow very slowly throughout the winter, but I’ve made sure there’s enough growth to 1. have a decent harvest and 2.  keep the lettuces smaller to avoid too much frost damage

I invested a mere $20 for 1/2″ PVC sun-resistant conduit to use as the Reemay supports this year.  #9 wire (9/16″ diameter) is recommended:  it’s easily bent, can be stuck in the ground with ease, and the rowcover fabric can easily be clipped to stay in place with clothespins.  But I couldn’t find it at a price I was willing to pay, so the conduit will do just fine…plus, I can reuse it on outdoor beds if I ever do find cheap wire.  Fastening the fabric to the hoops helps the fabric from bellying downward under the weight of frozen condensation.  In the greenhouse, see, there’s no chance of wind blowing the fabric off, but the fabric does get damp.  It can therefore freeze to your lettuces, poor babies.  But:  bow it will.  And as long as you aren’t expecting salad for breakfast, that’s fine.

Wee bit of frost during first light of day:  this Romaine will be fine

This second covering of the veggies adds another 10* or so of temperature moderation.  If the outdoor air hits 30*, the indoor air will be 40*, but below the rowcovers, it might stay at 50* overnight.  A string of cloudy days will drop everyone’s temperature, yet it will still be warmer under the covers.

Winter’s here, though.  Daytime sunny highs hit 80* in the greenhouses while it’s 35* outside; nighttime lows in the low 20s outdoors…but not even 30* in.  I’ll take it!

Posted in greenhouses | 19 Comments »

Dark Days, week 4

December 11, 2009 by El

For this week’s Dark Days dinner, the selected meal was a pantry-raided, complex-carbohydrate-rich affair.

We were itchy for something toothsome the night before, so the next day I baked some beans and bread.  Baked beans, bread and salad:  simple, hearty fare that was so welcome on this, the first harsh night of our winter season.

  • Beans: One cup of our cranberry beans, one Copra onion, two cloves of Big Stinky (an unknown but huge hardneck garlic), with dried sage and other garden herbs; two chunks of smoked pork belly (Hopeful Farms pork from Ligonier, IN; smoked at Miller’s Smoke House of Middlebury, IN: both these are Amish-run, so, no websites), and honey from Honey Hound Bee Farms, Eau Clare, MI.
  • Bread: Whole-wheat boule with 50/50 spelt/hard red spring wheat from Ferriss Organics;  butter made from cream from the school’s cow share
  • Salad: greenhouse goodies

Posted in Eat Local Challenge | 7 Comments »

On LOVEN (our wood-fired masonry oven)

December 9, 2009 by El

The time has come:  I have helped make two of these things, so now, after much agitta and self-denial, I bring you (taDA!!) the beginnings of our own outdoor masonry oven.

Truth be told:  these things are not for everyone.  I was already a baker; we live on a farm with lots of trees; I’ve been looking for ways to lower our food-production footprint steadily for years.  And truth be told:  I know how to build things.  That said, feel free to 1.  ask questions  2.  live vicariously.

The Skinny: Modified Alan Scott plan; no, it’s not complete yet, though we’ve passed the halfway point to its first firing.   They can be quick to make it but is certainly not a Weekend Warrior kind of thing…more like 8 weekends, plus.  Easily-found materials.

The Plan: I will use this once or twice a week, year-round.   There’ll be a once-a-week breadmaking day, then the cooling oven will cook things like casseroles, and, overnight, things like dried beans or yogurt.  I will probably be selling some of the food.  It’s also great for dehydrating food, making jerky, drying fruit, etc.  And no, the food doesn’t have to taste like wood.

The Concept: Masonry ovens store heat.  They’re thick:  the thermal mass involved leaks the heat out slowly; there’s a door to the oven that even keeps the smoke from escaping.  You fire it up, scrape out the ashes, wipe it clean and then stick in  your food.  And yes:  leave the fire burning in the back and you can cook pizzas directly on the floor of the hearth.

Mon., 16 Nov:  slabWed., 18 Nov:  side wallsSat., 2o Nov:  formwork/reinforcing

Sun., 21 Nov:  hearth slabs pouredSat., 28 Nov:  hearth fire bricks laidMon., 30 Nov:  back, side walls set2009 December through 2010 March:  Winter!  SNIFF!

Posted in masonry oven | 24 Comments »

On manual labor

December 7, 2009 by El

Until the weather turned “normal” late last week, I’ve been obsessively building something outside.  It’s something that will bring a lot of my efforts together, not necessarily effortlessly, but certainly enjoyably.  We should all aim to get a lot of enjoyment out of life.

But I wanted to talk about the process of building.  I have mostly LOVED getting extremely sore:  I enjoy this about gardening, too.  Certainly, I haven’t strained myself into a hospital visit, but solid hours of lifting anything is not part of my normal day:  at most, I lift my laptop and piles of drawings, sometimes a book…my normal work is not exactly physically demanding.  But construction!

I am trying to puzzle out what it is about manual labor that is so immediately appealing to me.  We discussed something similar to this over the Thanksgiving table.  My father in law seriously believes I should go into pie-baking as a sideline.  “But once you do it for a living, you probably wouldn’t enjoy it,” he said, taking another bite.  So:  is it the novelty of construction?  I build things all the time for a living, and though the same kind of thought process goes into it, doing architecture on the computer isn’t the same as constructing architecture with my hands.  But I think I have figured it out, why I enjoy it so much:  it’s the time required.

I believe I get more accomplished in 3 hours of laying bricks than I do in 3 hours of computer time.  It’s actually productive time, well-spent, with progress observed and felt.

Don’t get me wrong:  if it wasn’t for computers, I wouldn’t be able to work from home.  I wouldn’t have all of you in my life, and life would be a lot less easy in so many respects.  But computers are A HUGE TIME-SUCK.  Really!  This is not a unique observation, nor certainly is it new to me, but this contrast between outdoor work and computer work has been very jarring.  Computers steal time from our lives, minute by uploading minute, autosave by refresh by page load.  Somehow, we’ve acquiesced to this, we’ve agreed to spend a large portion of our lives allowing our asses to grow ever larger, sitting in front of a screen, all because we think these tools are indispensable, and helpful.  And so muscles atrophy, brain synapses misfire.  I’ve always thought the television was bad but now I am reconsidering this damned internet connection, seeing it as the black hole of time that it is.

All the more reason to pick up a hammer.

Posted in masonry oven, soapbox, sweat | 15 Comments »

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