Monthly Archives: November 2009

On late fall non-food harvests

Posted on November 30, 2009 | 9 Comments

Sunday found me dodging the raindrops of a late autumn thunderstorm.  What’s with the fireworks, I ask that cloudy sky, don’t you know there’s outdoor work to be done? I got doused for my impertinence.

Plan B had me harvesting the last of the calendula blossoms for another batch of balm.  “Make balm while the rain falls,” then, became the activity of the afternoon.  I upped the quantity of beeswax considerably in this batch:  I enjoyed the easy spreading of the first recipe but this batch is solely for gifts, and I don’t like complaints about greasiness.  (Unbelievably, yes, people tell me to my face that they didn’t like to use that last batch, as it didn’t melt into their hands with the rapidity that alcohol-based commercial products will do.  This either means that I am the type of person who won’t take offense, or this means I have some loose-lipped, patently unworthy friends:  you be the judge.)

Really, there’s nothing easier than growing calendula:  once you have it, you always will.  And if you can melt oil in a pan and grate a bar of beeswax, this, too, can be yours.

And the consistency:  it’s up to you, so…no complaints!

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Posted in sweat

Dark Days recap, week 2

Posted on November 29, 2009 | 2 Comments

Our Thanksgiving was fabulously local, and mostly home-grown.  But I’m not going to blah-blah about Thanksgiving for Week 2.  Nope.  Saturday night’s dinner will be discussed instead.

The Dark Days Challenge was put together by Laura of (not so) Urban Hennery to get people to try to eat locally at least one meal per week.  Her encouragement also went so far as to challenge us to source that food within the guidelines of SOLE:  sustainable, organic, local and ethical.  She asked me to join because Michigan is not exactly a hothouse of fresh produce in winter, but she knew that we eat as fresh as we can, thanks to our greenhouses and root cellar.

Steering away from turkey and fixings, then, we barbecued a pork loin roast from the now-defunct Providence Farm, serving it with steamed Red Norland potatoes (gotta hurry and eat this crop, as it’s one of the first to sprout) in a butter/parsley/chive mix, as well as Marconi strain Romano beans from the freezer, a greenhouse salad of cold-hardy lettuces (Amish Deer Tongue, Brune d’Hiver, Forellenschuss, Grand Rapids, arugula, mache and others) with Red Beard bunching onions, a gigantic Scarlet Nantes carrot, and a medium-sized Zefa Fino fennel bulb with some fronds thrown in.  Buttermilk/yogurt dressing (our cultures of both) with lots of garlic.  And, yum, Galeux d’Eysines pumpkin custard for dessert!  Local wine too:  Round Barn Red Demi-Sec.

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Posted in Eat Local Challenge

On anticipating the Thanksgiving feast

Posted on November 27, 2009 | 7 Comments

I knew it.

I knew at first sight back in May that THIS was a specimen worthy of the Thanksgiving table.  All summer and fall I spent many hours feeding and watering.  I was vigilant against predatory attacks from birds and insects.  I covetously watched growth, being ever surprised, day by day, by how big this thing was getting.

Monsterous growth!  So big, there is no way we could eat it all at one sitting!!!  Yay:  Thanksgiving, after all, is the one time of year that we look forward to leftovers.

And then, one chilly day in November, I killed it.

But, gutted and peeled, it came in a quarter of a pound less than Baby Turkey did.

(Galeux d’Eysines squash:  quite sweet flesh!  Pumpkin bread, pumpkin soup, and pumpkin pie…plus, a ton of puree for the freezer.)

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday…

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Posted in death, food

On high holiday preparations

Posted on November 23, 2009 | 19 Comments

Tick tock, big roof bird:  Thanksgiving dinner

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

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

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

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

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Posted in Eat Local Challenge, food

On gleaning

Posted on November 20, 2009 | 10 Comments

Not dead yet

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

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

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

I’ll never be hungry again.

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

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Posted in food

On the last hot-weather crops

Posted on November 18, 2009 | 8 Comments

Bell, Hungarian and jalapeno peppers

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

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

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

But:  I am still a bit misty.  Sniff!

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Posted in food, seeds

Dark Days challenge, week one

Posted on November 15, 2009 | 12 Comments

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

_DSC9950

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

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

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

I’m sure I am forgetting something!

But…it was tasty.

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Posted in Eat Local Challenge, school garden

On turkey hormones

Posted on November 13, 2009 | 2 Comments

I knew this would happen.

Our turkeys are fighting.

P1010473

Baby stands tall in the back

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

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

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

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

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

P1010831Like father, like son

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Posted in chickens, etc., nature

On losing the island, gaining the continent

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 7 Comments

P1010876Showing his niece the well-prepared garden beds

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

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

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

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

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

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

P1010838Some aftermath

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

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

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Posted in nature, sweat

On meat-eating

Posted on November 9, 2009 | 15 Comments

P1010907Not gory, not fleshy:  last night’s salad

A call came in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in books, soapbox

On life without the had-boughtens

Posted on November 6, 2009 | 27 Comments

P1010804Pick me!

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

Had Boughten!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in soapbox

On late fall garden crops

Posted on November 4, 2009 | 14 Comments

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

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

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

P1010795

Garden-planted fennel

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

P1010794Purple kohlrabi: a bit on the small side but tasty

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

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

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

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

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Posted in food, seeds

On late fall garden tasks

Posted on November 3, 2009 | 7 Comments

P1010769Little Edie for scale:  bean bed with monster weeds

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

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

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

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

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Posted in sweat