Monthly Archives: August 2009

On pearls of the garden

Posted on August 31, 2009 | 13 Comments

IMG_2623Leek blossom

It doesn’t often happen, but on occasion, those plants that you sacrifice for their seeds give you gifts other than seeds.  It’s certainly true with leeks.

P1000712Bag of seedheads along with browned-out, unpromising stalks

Sure:  let that beautiful green lance of leaves go to seed for you.  It shoots up a thick center leaf in March or April of its second year.  There goes that edible stalk, as the plant now has other plans, and the stalk becomes woodier by the day.  A seed head will appear in mid June, a gigantic lollipop of a blossom, changing colors from purple to white to green to brown.  It’s a veritable firework of bloom, alternating on and off, pollinating itself as it goes.  Eventually, in August or so, the seeds are all uniformly brown, and the five foot tall stem will begin likewise to brown and thin out.  Time to get out the clippers, the bag, and…the second meal plan for that leek!

P1000713Peel away some of the outer leaves at the base, and voila, pearls

These little bulbs found at the stalk of the plant are called leek pearls.  Genetically identical to the parent plant, they can be planted and grown for seeds too if the parent plant should fail on you.  But honestly, you should be more greedy.  These pearls are just like they sound:  crisp-crunchy, mellow leeky bulblets.  Elephant garlic is actually a leek grown for its bulb-forming, not leaf-forming, potential; leek pearls are similar to that, yet mellower somehow.  Happier.

P1000717They need to be scrubbed, but what a feast.  The one at the far left will be replanted, as it’s sprouting.

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Posted in seeds

On secret gardens

Posted on August 28, 2009 | 7 Comments

P1000567

Boothby’s Blonde cukes in the all-volunteer garden

For the last three years, my daughter has had her own garden bed.

Never one to force the issue, I figured she’d either like the idea of having a space to grow her own stuff, or she wouldn’t.  Either way, whatever is growing in that bed is “hers.”  And, for the third year in a row, she hasn’t shown much interest beyond the initial seed-starting frenzy begun last winter.

That is okay.  The compost yields its gifts quite readily, and this year, in that garden bed of hers, there are: two prolific Costata Romanesco zucchini, four pie pumpkin plants, three butternut squash plants, four tomatoes, and one (at least one, can’t tell) Hubbard squash.  Oh:  and the above cucumber.

She has been delighted with these “finds.”  She considers herself quite the successful gardener.

Who am I to tell her that the garden planted itself?

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Posted in sweat

Sometimes the grass is not greener

Posted on August 26, 2009 | 6 Comments

P1000702Galeux d’Eysenes and Triamble winter squashes

I have now seen how the other half lives and I have decided I like where I live just fine, thank you.

What could I possibly be talking about? It seems I complain, in about every third post, about my clay soil.  Never again!  I have had direct experience, in the form of the school’s garden, with soil that is not majority clay and…no thank you.  Nope.

I wouldn’t say the school’s garden has been an abject failure, because it has not!  NO, we’re harvesting all kinds of things from it.  It is rather loose soil, pretty sandy, so seedlings barely have a chance and you can almost forget about planting seeds unless you cover them with wet burlap OR can count on a wet spring.  But between that sandy soil and the *($%# deer, it’s been a…learning year in the school’s garden.

Fortunately, I realized quite early that the garden could be troublesome, so…I planted extra stuff here at home.

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Posted in school garden, seeds

On other shoes dropping

Posted on August 24, 2009 | 14 Comments

P1000670Meet your meat

On so many levels, I am glad that the “food revolution” has begun to sink in.  I surely wouldn’t say that everyone has signed on, nor do I believe there’s been enough of a revolution (that’s the anarchist in me I suppose), but I am personally glad I don’t seem like such a crank now.  Lots more work needs to be done:  lots more movies and books, lots more profitable small farms, lots more awareness, period, that our food system is neither sustainable nor particularly healthy.  In Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ steps, I would say that we’re still collectively in Denial, maybe moving toward Anger.

Having run through all those steps myself, I do wonder what the next collective level of awareness will be.  Don’t you?  The food revolution, at the very least, has a tasty payoff.  Living life with less of what we have because, well, we’ll have to, is not something so easily changed, like just replacing our lightbulbs.  There’s lots of other half steps that will need to be taken, lots more bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

But I still wonder what will be next.  I do foresee the day when my grandchildren or maybe our great-grandkids marvel at the idea that we flush perfectly drinkable water down our toilets.  There is so much in our world that is good, but so much more that is simply wasteful and wantonly short-sighted.  And that is it, I suppose.  We were in the dark for so long about our food:  what else are we ignorant of?  What surprises lie ahead for us as individuals, as a society?  And, perhaps more importantly, what are we going to do about it?

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Posted in soapbox

On shell beans

Posted on August 21, 2009 | 14 Comments

P1000689Overgrown Rattlesnake pole beans (love these beans!)

This post is a nod to my good friend Ed.

One of the reasons I grow my own is because it opens up a world of vegetative goodness that I could not otherwise attain.  (Lest you think this is merely a condition of living in the boonies, I can assure you my city garden likewise yielded riches not so easily gotten at the myriad co-ops or snooty stores near my home.)  And shelly beans definitely qualify as vegetative goodness.

P1000683Glass of wine and turkey companionship optional, but helpful

Shell beans, shelling beans, shelly beans:  there is a point somewhere between the spectrum of green (mange-tout)  and dried beans that is a chef’s dream.  They’re certainly THIS home cook’s dream.  And as a point of absolution for you less-than-attentive gardeners, shelly beans are akin to making more than lemonade of lemons:  think a fine dessert wine from lemons instead.  Say you just happen to have ignored your pole green beans for a few days, and now…they’re quite swollen, showing their growing seeds, pregnant little bumps all in a row.   Harvest them.  Sit down with a glass of wine and shell them.  Eaten raw, they’re an unpromising crunch of starch.  But you need to get out a shallot or two, a glug of olive oil or big pat of butter or flavorful animal fat, a small saucepan, and get cooking.  Sweat the shallot, then add the beans, covering them with some broth or some water to almost cover.  Cook them until you consider them “done,” and then plate them up with some chopped fresh parsley, some toasted breadcrumbs, maybe a squeeze of lemon…a bit of heaven on your plate.

Many beans are eaten as shell beans:  Limas, butterbeans, and favas are in this category.  Before you sneer and say that you think limas are abhorrent, I think they are too unless they’re garden-fresh.  Lots of vegetables are this way and it’s yet another reason to garden, quite frankly:  garden and get rid of your food prejudices! But most other beans can qualify as shell beans too.

Oh, and ALL beans can be eaten as dry beans.  Just like most garden vegetables, there are some that are “best” as fresh, shell, or dried; I have eaten the tiny dried brown beans of “Maxibel” haricot vert beans, for example, though it was a huge effort.  But frankly I can’t think of any other vegetable that has such nascent variety, can you?

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Posted in food, seeds

On the intemperance of ideas

Posted on August 20, 2009 | 9 Comments

IMG_1297

Me, plowing the school’s garden this spring

…If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

–Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Isaac Mcpherson, August 13, 1813

The above quote was taken from a letter in which Jefferson questioned England’s patent law, and wondered whether exclusive copywriting of ideas truly benefited all of society.  (He didn’t necessarily question patents on inventions, but bare ideas themselves:  ideas are by their very nature fleeting things.)

My reasons for bringing up this quote is simple.  We ALL have ideas and skills, and we should share them.  I taught a couple of garden-related classes this past weekend.  It was really quite fun, frankly, and even if I initially doubted my qualifications, I shouldn’t have:  enough ideas and questions were thrown around in those few hours to leave everyone with something new, with new skills shared.

SO:  if there’s someone around you who’s hoarding some skills you’d love to learn, then ask them to share.  If there’s some canning you’re afraid to do on your own, then host a canning party.  If there’s a new garden you would love to put in, then get people to come over and help you.  Life is so much richer if you can share what you know.

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Posted in soapbox

On work

Posted on August 17, 2009 | 9 Comments

P1000584The school’s Verde Puebla tomatillos and Riesentraube tomatoes

I have so many irons in the fire now I can’t think straight!  But that is okay.  I feel like things are getting accomplished.

But you should see how weedy the garden is…

I will be back to post later in the week.  Until then!

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Posted in sweat

On subcontracting

Posted on August 14, 2009 | 12 Comments

On Monday morning, my calendar flashed my appointments for the week.  “What in the WORLD could I possibly have scheduled for 7:00am on Wednesday morning?” was my bleary-eyed question to myself.

Here’s what the calendar said:  “7:00 a.m. Chicks 12 weeks”

Ah.  It’s much more clear now.  The meat birds are ready to be butchered.

P1000594

And boy howdy are they!  Unlike the last two batches of meat birds that I have raised, these feathered friends are actually CROWING in the morning.  It’s past time, it would seem like, for them to be freezer fare.  What a big task ahead for me:  I received 52 chicks in the mail the first week of June.  Eleven of these creatures were exempt from butchering, as they’re the new crop of laying hens (plus rooster).  Chicken Patty gets a husband and at least two sister-wives, so there go another 3 chickens.  And then there’s the turkey baby, and then there’s the 5 goslings, who are now full-sized geese.  Thirty-eight chickens, one turkey, and five geese.

help!

I happened to be on a post-movie panel discussion last month with the woman who runs our Eat Local listserve.  She came out to the farm and graciously took three of my new laying hen chicks, plus extra rooster, off my hands, as she had decided Speckled Sussex was what she wanted to concentrate on for her own dual-purpose birds, but (sadly) a raccoon ate all but two of hers.  So we were doing the Chicken Talk thing, and I asked her how often she made it out to my neck of the woods (she lives closer to Kalamazoo, about 45 minutes east of me) and she said “every time I need to butcher the chickens.”

Apparently, the guy in town with the sign on his lawn that advertises deer processing is an all-around butcher, and he charges $2.50 a chicken, and $7.00 for geese.

Part of the reason I am doing this whole poultry-ranching thing is to have a complete connection with the entirety of what goes into our meals.  Butchering the birds is a part of that, albeit a not terribly pleasant part; I do it alone, as my husband wants no part of it but the eating, and all my friends are not exactly…the types of folks who get into this kind of thing.  To do all those birds would take every weekend day from now until October.  But:  $2.50 a bird!

I checked out the guy’s facilities, chatted with him for a while, and have made another calendar date regarding the chickens.  But this time the date won’t surprise me.

P1000608Turkey girls love playing King of the Hill.  Earl of course just likes to show off his stuff “to the ladies.”

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Posted in chickens, etc., death

An act of contrition

Posted on August 12, 2009 | 11 Comments

Wow.  Perhaps it’s just that my Catholic upbringing is still really residually strong (goodness knows the last time I went to mass:  perhaps in service to some dear person’s wedding or funeral, but it has been a while) but Saturday morning whilst canning up some peaches I started reciting the Act as if whom I was offending with the commission/omission of my sins was the winter pantry!

(For those blissfully unaware, the leadoff of a penitent’s confession to one’s priest begins with reciting the first line of the Act of Contrition, following with how long it’s been since the penitent last took the rite of Penance. “It’s been two weeks,” you’d say, or “It’s been twenty years.”)

MY “act” was recited in reference to the fact that it had been almost a month since I last put away some fruit!

P1000578Peach jam and peach/cranberry conserve

Ah, the wonder that is small-batch jams, conserves, preserves:  you can really mix it up.  I am awash in peaches now, finally ripening in my car (more on that in a minute), and I am still going through the freezer to use up the old stuff.  *Why* ripen peaches in the car, El?  No fruit flies that way, and it’s nice and cool in the garage.  Granted, I just can’t go anywhere, but that’s fine.

Mix it up and try some small-batch jams. Generally using only 3-4 cups of fruit, 2-3 cups sugar (or not), they stew in a large saucepan, reducing all that juicewater nicely, until you have some delicious thick jam.  I find it a good way to use up the tail ends of a fruit harvest, or to find a place for some frozen fruit.

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Posted in food

On food preservation

Posted on August 10, 2009 | 20 Comments

P1000560New greenhouse on an August morning

Other than the fact that the front and back seats of my car are filled with ripening peaches as I type this, I think I have a handle on food preservation for the year.  It’s not much of a juggle, I do swear to you.  Nope; it’s more like cooking an extra course with each dinner, with the occasional five-course dinner thrown in every week or two.  Seriously.  It’s not that hard if you’re used to cooking your own food.

Granted, I am well acquainted with my canner and my carving knife, my fingers are nimble at harvesting, and I have a certain knack for vegetable gardening, but putting your own food away for the year is not  an overwhelming challenge.  Every night or so, I probably put away four dinners’ worth of food.  It could simply be something like four dinners’ worth of green beans for the freezer, but the next day or two will see tomato sauce for four pasta dishes.  The potatoes are plumping, doing their thing; the winter squash likewise are just out there absorbing the sun, no help from me at all, both are instameals, plucked from storage on a snowy day.  And six three-hour days will see all those chickens magically become frozen chicken dinners of the future:  three long hours at six birds apiece:  six birds for the three of us is a LOT of dinners, lunches, soups and gravy; 36 birds is a year’s worth.

The reason I mention any of this is I met yet another person recently who thought I simply must not have a day job.  This happens to me fairly frequently, frankly.  “Oh, I thought you just farmed,” comes the comment, with its half-sister “Oh, I didn’t think you worked full time.”  Huh!  Wow, well, those 40-50 hours I spend at my job would put a LOT more food in the freezer, I think to myself, and again I demur that it’s not that much work.  Because it isn’t, but then again, this is what I wish to do with my free time.

It beats tv.

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Posted in soapbox

On squash vine borers

Posted on August 8, 2009 | 15 Comments

P1000544Uh oh!  Trouble in squash paradise!  Amish Pie Pumpkin looking peaked

If your squash plants appear perkily green one day and wilted and yellow the next, a squash vine borer might just be your nemesis.  This year has been a productive one for squash vine borers in my garden, so I thought I would show you the signs–and maybe cures–to slow down this pest’s rampages.

The adult moth, which looks something like a red-legged wasp, lays its eggs on either the base of a leaf or the base of the plant’s stem.  The larvae, then, either chew their way through the leaf stem and down to the base of the plant or they just have a prime banquet at the base.  So, one way to prevent the moths from laying is to cover the plants until they start blooming (most squash plants rely on insect pollination and need to be uncovered).  This works fine for small summer squash, but for me, well, my 30′ long pumpkin vines are really not going to be covered in row cover any time soon.

P1000546

Crap!  Frass!  (But frass IS crap…) Plus, the stem is no longer green; all bad signs

So, I remain vigilant, checking the stems (right about where they go into the ground) for frass (the chewed pulp of the stem:  it looks like sawdust) and for squishy spots.  Out comes my utility knife and a piece of wire.  I cut the plant where I find the hole or the soft spot, and I excise the larva, hopefully whole for the chickens, or squished up with the wire if it’s in an impossible spot.  I make sure to run the long way with my cut (that is, in the direction the plant is growing:  like a tree, most of the moisture flows around the outer diameter of the stem) so I make sure my cuts are vertical, not girding it at all.  After surgery, I bury the whole area where the stem was cut, add more compost to the roots, and water the plant well.

P1000551Little white grubby-looking larva:  this stem was a veritable nursery school of them.  I don’t know if it will recover.

Another thing I do is to make sure the vining plant has more than one rooting spot, so I bury the growing canes anywhere they hit the dirt:  the plant won’t die this way if it is really struck hard by the borer.  Most vines will do this by themselves, incidentally, but it’s nice to help them out.  Another trick I have heard about but not practiced is to wrap the base of the plant in tinfoil to discourage the wasp from laying.  I am not sure this would work, so my roll of tinfoil remains in the pantry.

The one bad thing about my method is it’s not exactly proactive, it’s reactive.  With the exception of burying the branching vines, it’s a daily diligence to verify the borer’s presence.  Another thing on the task list, that is.  But that’s okay.  It’s gainful, rather gross employment!

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Posted in nature, sweat

On squash

Posted on August 7, 2009 | 11 Comments

P1000534Butternut squash does very well trained to a trellis

I am quite happily overwhelmed with winter squash this year.  Considering how late I planted everything, and how many times I had to replant things due to nongermination (it was a cold and wet spring), I suppose I didn’t hold out much hope.  The compost comes through in a pinch though:  I planted out quite a few seedlings found in its general vicinity and quite a few of them came through as pure.  Not all did; that’s what makes it fun:  am I creating a new squash or two?  Probably.  Are they keepers?  Doubtful, but…they’re colorful.

Summer squash, well, meh.  Admittedly it’s never been my favorite.  Beer-batter fried, sure; that was my dad’s specialty, but he’s been dead for 30 years now so that’s a long time to be missing that particular yellow crookneck preparation.  I will say that I am growing an eightball variety of zucchini this year and its small size has much to recommend it.  I don’t think it tastes anything like my standby (Costata Romanesco), but the fact that it doesn’t balloon to a baseball bat overnight is celebration alone.

But the winter squash.  The sheer enthusiasm of the vines, the size of the leaves:  you want to feel like a denizen of Lilliput, then plant some of the cucurbita maxima clan and stand back!

P1000542Not enough room in THIS garden for me:  how about out there? Jarrahdale (blue Australian) pumpkin climbs garden fence seeking alternate accommodation, a good 20′ from where I planted its seed

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Posted in seeds

On school snack: salsa

Posted on August 5, 2009 | 10 Comments

Last night, two of my friends and I jostled for space in my small kitchen and made salsa for our children’s school’s snack program.

P1000529In the foreground are six quart-sized bags of tomatillo salsa concentrate:  they need another quart of chopped tomatoes to make salsa in the heat index that schoolkids will tolerate.  Tomatillo-based salsas don’t can well:  it’s better to freeze concentrates like these and add stuff later (plus, our school’s freezer isn’t terribly large).  The 23 quarts and one pint you see in the back row are black bean/corn salsa.  These have been pressure canned, and having noshy tidbits like corn and beans in there means the salsa comes through the rigors of the canner quite well, no mush.

Salsa is one of the kids’ favorite snacks.  In the bad old days, they got by with a gallon of the stuff from Gordon’s, rather abominable.  How is it, you ask, that store-bought jars of salsa DON’T turn the tomatoes to mush? They go through the same canning process, after all.  Well, they use unripe tomatoes that have been put into chambers of ethylene gas to cause the red color (but not the ripeness).  I don’t know.  I don’t want my kid eating that.

So:  the school (about 135 kids) will go through two quarts during salsa snack, once a week.  (It’s a small shared snack, not a meal:  one of the principles of Montessori is the grace and courtesy required of a shared experience, like a communal snack.)   The tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, onions, and garlic were grown by us; the corn is local, and the beans are from the Thumb (of Michigan, northeast of Detroit).

As things ripen, we’ll have a lot more canning to do, and at least another two batches of salsa-making.  And then it’s on to the other days of the week:  one snack day is Pizza Day, after all…lots more sauce needed!

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Posted in school garden

On small truths

Posted on August 4, 2009 | 11 Comments

P1000521Sometimes, not often, food can be better than sex.

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Posted in food

On changing up the routine

Posted on August 3, 2009 | 17 Comments

I find it hard to do anything consistently year to year.  I guess I like to monkey with routines, just to keep things interesting –slash–entertaining.  There is a lot of repeated work done in the garden and the food preservation kitchen, and, true to form, I tend to monkey with that too.  For the most part my manipulations have the stated aim of efficiency.  I do tend to keep what works, admittedly.  Other times, well, I am simply prone to tinker.

And this year, I am not waiting until fall to harvest my tomato seeds.  NOPE!  I am doing it now, as the tomatoes ripen.  I pick the biggest and most ripe fruit, slice open the bottom, squish the pulp and seeds into a glass canning jar, add a tiny bit of water, put a label and a lid on it, and…wait for science to happen.  [note: I tend to get two fruits, from two different plants, just to keep my genetics open.]

P1000509-1Granted, seeing moldering produce on one’s kitchen counter is not everyone’s cup of tea.  In the general chaos that is my canning kitchen, however, this is not much of a hardship.  I also have the advantage of being fully aware of how the seeds are doing: they are under my nose, after all, vying for space on the butcher block.  Toward the end of the season, when I normally tackle this task, I am so fed up with tomatoes that saving their seeds is generally accompanied by my resentment of the things, with a lot of “never again” oaths thrown in.  This does not work in the tomatoes’ favor, not at all.  Now, well, now I have the fresh eyes and enthusiasms of a newbie!

So, after about a week, a nice blue-green mold will grace the surface layer of the watery seed pulp.  Fungi Are Our Friends here, as they break down the slimy seed sack in which the seeds are floating.  I take the moldy jars outside, dump the seeds into a very fine meshed colander and spray off all the goo with the hose.  Then I take the seeds back indoors and let them dry a little bit.  I spread them out individually onto a labeled white paper towel:  they’ll stick to this, but I just cut a bit of the towel around the seed when it’s time to plant them.  I let them dry fully, then I roll up the paper towel and store it in a jar in the basement with all the other seeds.

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Posted in seeds