Monthly Archives: October 2009

Happy Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2009 | 9 Comments

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.

→ 9 Comments

Posted in chickens, etc.

On winter squash

Posted on October 29, 2009 | 11 Comments

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).

→ 11 Comments

Posted in food, seeds, sweat

On Moving Day

Posted on October 28, 2009 | 16 Comments

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.

→ 16 Comments

Posted in school garden, seeds

The Art Report

Posted on October 22, 2009 | 7 Comments

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!

→ 7 Comments

Posted in sweat

On other animal harvests

Posted on October 21, 2009 | 15 Comments

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!

→ 15 Comments

Posted in nature

On goose stories

Posted on October 20, 2009 | 9 Comments

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.

→ 9 Comments

Posted in chickens, etc.

Happy harvest!

Posted on October 19, 2009 | 7 Comments

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.

→ 7 Comments

Posted in food, sweat

On tomatoes (a mini-confession)

Posted on October 16, 2009 | 19 Comments

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!

→ 19 Comments

Posted in seeds, sweat

Greenhouse update: First frost of autumn

Posted on October 14, 2009 | 10 Comments

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.

→ 10 Comments

Posted in greenhouses

On new eggs

Posted on October 12, 2009 | 13 Comments

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!

→ 13 Comments

Posted in chickens, etc.

On Erdkinder

Posted on October 9, 2009 | 11 Comments

_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

→ 11 Comments

Posted in school garden

On fall foraging

Posted on October 7, 2009 | 12 Comments

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


→ 12 Comments

Posted in sweat, weather

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

Posted on October 6, 2009 | 10 Comments

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

→ 10 Comments

Posted in seeds

On long-stored squash

Posted on October 2, 2009 | 13 Comments

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.

→ 13 Comments

Posted in food, seeds