The wind is coming in strong puffs, and it’s bringing with it the smell of the lake.  I’m not too happy about the task at hand.   I am dry-plucking a chicken.  A half-grown chicken, actually, a half-grown bantam…that’s practically no chicken at all as he probably only weighs a pound, a pound and a half.  Four and twenty of them, yes, might just fit in a pie:  I am holding him by his legs and I believe I have eaten bigger frog’s legs in my lifetime.

I had to put the guy out of his misery, you see.  His foot had gotten stuck in the little fence surrounding our back yard garden, and his compatriots had pecked him into a stupor.  I seriously doubted he’d recover from his head wound.

Poor guy.  I know I am either grimacing or am biting my lip; I try to just relax and do what is needed before my husband and daughter get home.  Poultry deaths aren’t easy, unless they’re expected.

It’s been a year of lots of birth and little death around here this year.  Six turkey poults followed the original seventeen of this spring.  (We kept three.)  Twenty-eight chicks have hatched under various chicken mothers; of them, eight of those cute bantam babies died when their idiot bantam mother decided she needed her nest up on top of a box, and the chicks couldn’t reach it, dying of exposure in a 60-degree night.  I walked in to the goat shed in the morning gloom and thought, who left these kleenex lying around, when it was little bantam bodies I was seeing on the straw.  And then this little death in my hand:  we’re left with twenty.  Plus the twenty-five meat birds (Freedom Rangers, much overrated) and the five girls whose egg-eating habits have sealed their freezer fate…as you can see, exponentially, the poultry population explodes every summer here.  And it recedes in the fall.

We’re keeping two laying hens out of the twenty home-hatched babies that remain.  There are three female bantam chicks who might live another year too, depending on how generous I am feeling.  All the home-grown chicks are amazingly colorful, but all the bantams have their father’s boring white plumage.  With all of them, I stare and think “Who’s yer ma,” hearkening back to one of the putative definitions of Hoosier (i.e., one of the thing Indiana residents said in days of yore was this direct question of your parentage:  who’s your ma, who’s your pa, who’s your folks?, who’syer, hoosier).  Daddy is definitely known:  he’s our handsome Black Sex Link boy Mary Ellen, and he’s lent speckles to every baby.  All the chicks are named and cared for by our daughter, which is why I was hurrying in my grisly task.

Plucked, gutted, de-headed, de-footed; this little creature is reduced to nearly nothing.  He’s crowed his last croaking adolescent crow.  I pluck the last of his down off his waxy skin, hose him off and bag him up for the fridge.

For the first time ever, I have all my major canning* done before 1 September.

And even more importantly, I have done less of it than in years past.  What is up with that?  Shouldn’t I be, you know, squirreling away as many canned goodies as I am able for the future?  The answer I am coming up with is “No, not necessarily.”

I suppose a bit of background needed for this seemingly contrary stand.  One, I have assessed with the years what it is exactly we eat out of the canned goods and have adjusted accordingly.  Pickles are virtually nonexistent, for one example, and I will never again can beet greens for myself, as I ate them only grudgingly.  Two, I began to do a lot more root cellaring of certain vegetables, but even that has waned in the last couple of years to just potatoes, apples and onions.  And three, most importantly, I am now growing food year-round.  And considering the nutritional superiority of fresh produce over the canned stuff, I feel less compelled to run to the basement for a jar than to grab a basket and go harvest something for dinner.

The majority of the jars you see on those shelves above, then, are convenience items needed to put together a quick meal.  The bottom shelf holds stocks and beans and bean soups.  The next shelf up holds salsas, chutneys, and mustards:  these will continue to be filled as I find the time.  All of the second shelf down from the top is tomatoes and tomato products, from juices on the left progressing to sauce to sauce with stuff to ratatouille and glut sauce to barbecue sauce and ketchup.  The top shelf is fruits to butters to jam.

And the holes in the shelves?  It’s not apple season yet so one of those shelves is destined to hold apple sauce.  And, hah, the bottom-most shelf is either going to hold bottles of home-bottled wine(!) or a rack for cheese-curing later this fall.  Whee!

*I only use a pressure canner, which is how I can get away with having chicken stock and bean salsas and the like. And, produce-wise, the freezer only holds fruits, chevre and meat now, no veggies at all.

But the calico and blues top out at 5′ or so.

This time of year, I think having something like A.D.D. or O.C.D. is actually helpful.

I have a dear friend who’s a shrink…a good friend to have, incidentally, much like friends who make their own food or like to repair cars or computer glitches.   Our discussions of certain-things-wrong-with-brains include many “disorders” that actually serve some purpose.  And it’s at this time of the year when I have exactly eight food-processing functions going on in the kitchen right now that I think having a piece of crazy might be helpful.  (I haven’t held up a mirror to myself lately so maybe I am already a bit nuts, and it’s already working.)

Looking for another five-pound weight to throw down on top of the parmesan cheese I am pressing, I realize the half-gallon jar of fermenting beets, sitting nobly off by itself, would do the job.  So on it goes, fitting snugly into the press, and lo, those other weights set nicely on its top.

Funky smells, sticky floors, bubbling pots, a full counter of canned jars and a sink full of drying dishes:  It’s August all right.  Every morning and evening is taken up, somehow, with some form of food preparation.  There’s other preparation that is happening daily too:  the freezer birds (turkey and chicken) need twice daily care, the egg birds need love, the goat needs milking, the weeds need pulling…and then there’s the harvests.  It’s a bit maddening.

For those of you who think I somehow squeeze more in my days than most:  I don’t quite know if I do.  I know I don’t sit down much except during working hours!   And I do go to bed really early (mainly to read) wherein I am in bed by 9:00, then up by 6.

Boundless energy?  I doubt it.  Just a serious seasonal case of put-it-away-for-later-itis!

When you read this, my one full week of vacation will have ended and my heinie will be warming my work seat.  Sigh.

Of course my vacations involve no vacating, nor really any sitting at all.  And I almost never do take a whole week off:  I just usually dribble the two-week allotment out over the course of the year, granting myself a three- or four-day weekend here and there or as Tom’s art junkets require.  This year was different.  We did some structural work to one of our outbuildings and needed a full week to do it.

Pictured with some of its victims

It’s been years since I got out my Sawzall (reciprocating saw).  Nothing satisfies more than the polite buzz of that saw tearing through something:  without the plaintive whine of the cordless saw, the zip-zip of the chop saw or the quasi-authoritative whir of the table saw, the Sawzall just gets the job done, quietly, with spooky effectiveness.  Now I am wondering if it will again be years before it’s put to use.

Structural crap aside, I did practically wear out the knees of my work pants while weeding the garden paths.  It’s been such a year (you know the ones) wherein one must shuck all unnecessary nonsense in order to simply keep the cogs of the machine well-oiled and turning, and this summer it meant I couldn’t attend to the garden paths as I would like. (Of course, had I had the 25 yards of woodchips required to cover those paths, weeds would not be a problem, but, well, it’s an off-year for the tree-cutting crews around here.)  The garden beds themselves, though, of course are weed-free; a girl needs her standards.

Princess of Pigweed, I would say to myself while creeping on those knees.  Professor of Plantain, Duchess of Dandelion.  Shepherdess of Sheep’s Sorrel, Priestess of Purslane, Lady of Lambs’ Quarters:  the irony that the majority of the weeds I was pulling were edible was not lost on me.  Bursar of Burdock, Contessa of (inedible) Crabgrass.   Luckily, the week had been a wet one, and the weeds came out in clumps, few tools required.  And as I pulled, I marveled yet again at how strong my old arms and back remain.  I can do this for another fifty years, I thought, which would bring me to 95, sweaty and muddy and happy; more wrinkled, more gray.  I am sure lifting beams and wrangling posts and heaving rafters won’t be in my future fifty years from now, but…milking a goat and pulling some path weeds?  Not a problem, no sir.

]]> http://fastgrowtheweeds.com/2010/08/16/on-working-vacations/feed/ 15 El P1040466 P1040477 http://fastgrowtheweeds.com/2010/08/09/on-almost-tomato-season-plus-the-masonry-oven/ http://fastgrowtheweeds.com/2010/08/09/on-almost-tomato-season-plus-the-masonry-oven/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:56:32 +0000 El http://fastgrowtheweeds.com/?p=5244 ]]>

The makings of Glut sauce*(including the first ripe extremely cat-faced Brandywine) plus a bit more for peach salsa

It’s not quite full season yet with the tomatoes: we’ve mostly got the little guys going (I frankly no longer bother with cherry tomatoes) and some plums…but it’s COMING.  Goodness is it ever.

Strangely, I am way ahead of the game with the peppers, eggplant and okra.  Tomatoes are usually the herald of the family solanaceae, they’re the first ones reddening up and driving me crazy but this is a great year for the peppers and, especially, eggplant.  I am beginning to wonder if it’s just a good year all around or if it’s because all of these plants are ones that I have saved from good-looking parent plants over the last couple of years.  A mystery.

I wake up ridiculously early on Thursdays (4:00!).  Thursdays have become my Cook Everything Possible In Loven And Then Eat It All Until Next Thursday day.  It’s a bit of a marathon, but then again, I am cooking for (potentially) a week, and cooking bread loaves to sell…of course it’s arduous.  But in the oven, in order of its hotness, goes

1. Caramelization session in the hot coals:  2 cast-iron skillets with some chopped veg like onions in one pan, zucchini in the other; this requires some frequent stirring.  It cooks from the top and the bottom.  The veg go into bread salads, or frittatas, or on pasta; whatever, it’s cooked! and with a woodsy flavor punch!
2. Push the coals back and then bake pizzas/focaccias (2 per session, turned around 3x in front of the hot flames)
3. The fire burns way down.  Tom scrapes it out, mops the floor, closes the door to equalize the oven’s hot spots.  About an hour later, I now fill the oven with the massive bread and roast chicken baking (bread takes 1/2 hour, chicken closer to an hour)
4. Remove the bread, leave the chicken in there and set a skillet full of frittata, individual potatoes (pierced with a fork, set on the floor), soaked/parboiled beans and/or rice and baked dessert (custard, souffle, etc.) and start on roasting things overnight like the glut sauce or juicy peaches.  Later in the season I will have 2-3 steam table pans* full of tomatoes cooking overnight (the temp. goes from about 200 down to 150 or so)
5. Dinner happens (if we’re not too stuffed with pizza) when we pull the chicken out.  I made a cold veg salad the day before.
6. Remove things by doneness, check temperature, and leave the glut sauce and peaches in there to cook overnight.  Also overnight, in goes a glass casserole filled with a cultured milk product (buttermilk, kefir) that…cooks all night to become quark or kefir cheese.  The heat separates the curds from the whey; this lovely sweet tasting caramelized grainy cheese, then, becomes one of my favorite things to spread on my morning toast.

It’s fun!  And…exhausting!  But heck, no cooking the rest of the week…unless we’d like to, of course.

* don’t waste your money on buying a spendy turkey roasting pan this year; 4″ or 6″ deep stainless steel steamer pans will work quite well.  Buy them thick enough and they completely take the heat of my oven, too.  Lasagna, dehydrating veggies, etc. etc. etc.!

Gosh:  who knew taxes were the third rail of garden blogging?  What social scab shall I pick next:   Capital punishment?  Religion, maybe?

In all seriousness, these last two posts have been fun? something for me to think about, and I enjoyed your responses to them.  All I am really trying to say in both is “do what you can, can what you do,” and hopefully others can benefit from your home-grown goodness too.  So many of our problems are beyond our control.  Our weeds (mostly) and our own small steps toward self-sufficiency and teaching and wide-eyed learning are definitely in our control.  So, in the Hebrew then, amen:  meaning, so be it.  Do what you can.

And it is with wide-eyed wonderment that my old eyes see things when I go through the gardens or henyard accompanied by a small-ish child.  Even without such a companion, the garden world is plenty inspiring.  Add a goat in milk and the process of changing that milk into food and I am agog, and pleased.  Pleased, and worried, as there is so much!  This brand-new month of August hangs heavy with the fecundity of the farm:  the babies, the leaves, the weeds, some bugs and all that food!!  Do you have enough time to deal with it all and still sleep at night?

There’s wide-eyed, and there’s wild eyed.  Unbelievably, our flightiest chicken, Pauline, is now a mom.  Her chick brings the chick total to 38 for the year.

Mama Pauline with Jellybean

Granted, it’s new for us, Tomato Season.  It’s only Sunday that there were enough tomatoes to harvest for dinner.  Most of gardening and farm-type living is doing this exact thing:  treading water until the deluge.  The weeds can be attended to now, but soon, they can wait.   And then, all that canning.  And then, it ends.

Amen.  And let us feast.

The first tomato dish is probably also the easiest:  dump hot pasta atop finely chopped garlic, onions, tomatoes and torn basil.  Add olive oil and salt and pepper, splash of Balsamic, then mangia.

Many, many good points and questions were brought up in the comments section of my last post on the cottage industry law that recently took effect in Michigan.  The legality of home-baked, home-produced goods was but one facet of the conversation, with bartering, taxes, and general farm-based living issues wrapped up in it too.

So again, the obvious.  I wouldn’t mind being taxed on my egg money, not at all, which is why my CPA knows about the contents of my farm earnings  jar.  My point in the last post is that the farm’s output has repeatedly exceeded the consumption pattern of its residents.  What to do with this excess?  I could bank it against a cold and rainy day, and do.  I could give it away to the food shelves, but I have been discouraged from doing so:  the ones in town don’t want anything that’s not already in a tin can or box, thanks.  I grow and can things for my daughter’s school.  I could give it away to friends and relatives and generally, this has been my operational model.  But my friends think they’re taking advantage of the bounty, especially now that there’s a high-value, rare item involved (goat’s milk products).  Thus, the filling jar.

Let me first make a personal state-of-the-homestead/farmer statement.  I am avowedly on the left side of the political spectrum, and I surely do not think I am taxed enough.  In my particular worldview, I am taxed little and get little in return.  Locally, our property taxes are a pittance, and I suppose that grants us the pittance we receive:  our roads are plowed and paved, and we have 911 service if we can afford to have a telephone.  One example: Despite the hefty share they receive from local and state funding, the public schools in my area are awful.  Every referendum on an increase in millage (basically a percentage increase to pay for school “improvements” based upon property taxes) has gone down in flames.  I consider this short-sighted, crass, and anti-community, and really a part of a larger social problem that is frankly beyond the scope of this blog post.  (And no, my daughter is not in public school, and won’t be:  this in no way affects my opinion on paying for those children who are.)  But the (non)value of schools is an illustration of my larger point.  If we don’t care for school-aged non-tax-paying children, we’re probably not caring much for many others in my community.  But hey!  What about them low property taxes?

Bringing this one-sided conversation from this particular person to the general readership.  The bigger picture is how do you, dear reader, take the next step in your own little homemade-food world?  If you live in Michigan, the steps for putting up a tent in a farmer’s market are now a lot clearer.  Those cookies everyone raves about?  Wrap them up, list the potential allergens, the ingredients in descending order, your home phone and address and you can legally sell them, if you’re so inclined!  Likewise your home-decanted vinegars, dried herbal teas, killer pickles, jewel-toned fruit jams and more can be legally sold.  Grow enough vegetables, you can start a CSA along with your Saturday stall.  The world is your oyster, or at least your zebra mussel.

If, however,  someone were to ask me the course I would chart to, say, move from city to country and make a livable wage off the products of one’s labors, I would snarkily ask to see their trust fund disbursements.  It’s more than a gamble, frankly, and there’s a lot of work and head-banging ahead of you.  For the foreseeable future, one needs off-farm income to make a go at this kind of life.  I feel I am in good company (Wendell Berry, Gene Logsdon, Barbara Kingsolver) when I say this.  You can raise as many heirloom vegetables, meat animals, and make as many artisan cheeses and wool products as you would like to sell but it will in all likelihood be a losing venture, economically.

I am still trying to ride the razor of the livelihood/lifestyle that is what it is that I do.  I like producing food because I like CONSUMING food.  I like to share; so do others, which is why barter is fun.  I like the idea that I could be a bigger part of something should the lights go out and my neighborhood worries about its food supply.  I like to teach.  Money is in no way a motivation for me mainly because I am as yet secure in my off-farm income.  This cottage food industry bill that has become law is a boon to me, should I really fire up the Loven more than once a week, or if I should decide to can more veg than we consume.

My point to all of this:  For me, it is not about the money, and so far has not been.  It’s about the life, and about sharing that life with others.  We moved here knowing we’d make a third of our city income.  That income still stands, but the quality of our life has vastly improved, of which diet is the first obvious part.  Am I saying “follow me”?  No, not unless you’re already so inclined.

But hey:  those taxes are sure low.

Okay, so it’s not quite a full bowl.

Things like dried herbs, teas, and tinctures are likewise covered in this bill.  A second bill regarding honey and maple syrup are soon to be passed and signed.

These bills (and now law) make me happy.  Granted, I always have been skirting a bit shy of the law in that what baked goods I have sold I sold before this law took effect.  Likewise, I illegally sell my milk products to friends.  I have made it quite clear to my friends that we’re running afoul of the law, but… the sheer quantity and (frankly) tastiness of the cheeses and kefir and yogurt have been their own kind of advertisement.  You have it at my house, you want it, end of story.  With hope, Michigan will come around and write a law stating that raw milk products can be sold (outside a herd share agreement, that is).

Money only seems to work with those with nothing to trade

I have been quite paranoid too about this influx of cash.  Pin money, egg money, funny money…  Yes it sits in a jar.  Yes my accountant knows about it.  I withdraw cash for things like new animals or delivery of hay or straw…and I leave a tally of what is taken out.  In general the goat has paid for herself and (at this point) 75% of her care.  Give me another two months and she’s a free animal.  The cheese/cultured milk products have paid for the capital outlay of the cheese making equipment and the cultures.  And the products of purchasing a pregnant goat: I’ve made a very even trade of three wethers (neutered baby boy goats) for one doeling…our new girl, Cricket.

Standing partially still for a change

This is a more typical picture

The egg chickens, by comparison, have never paid for themselves.  (The meat birds are not sold; we consume all of them ourselves…this is far cheaper than purchasing meat chickens of similar quality.)  I would expect the turkey I am raising for a friend to pay for himself.  And like the bunnies, the 14 surviving turkey poults were all sold or traded.

So I am now into farm barter.  I got into a heated discussion recently with the whole idea of barter with a friend of mine.  Aren’t you cheating the government?  he contended.  The sale of, say, a goat is not taxed or frankly worried about by the state of Michigan, I replied; it’s the same as if I sold an ATV or a lawn tractor that I had.  I suppose it is considered on-farm income, but then, I don’t list “farm” anywhere on my taxes.  But goodness if you think about what we’ve sunk into the living-on-a-farm project…we’re in no way being compensated by any government for living the life that we do.  I told him it’s a false way of thinking of things.  Indeed, I told him, I don’t give my architectural services away for free:  if I do volunteer, I actually fill out a form saying so.  So farming is not a professional goal of mine.  That money has entered into the equation is…not something that makes me entirely comfortable.  It helps the bottom line, surely, and helps my husband come along for the ride but…it was not a goal.

It’s odd.  I get requests from friends asking, basically, how much more work would it really be for you to bust up another half acre and supply them with vegetables year-round too?  It appears the one CSA that supplies our town friends with victuals has come waaaay down in quantity/quality (and I have seen it and agree).  They like what we do here and buy my $5/gal. bags of salad.  If I look at things THAT way, the greenhouses have paid for themselves many times over.

I am in no way saying we’re a model for a way to earn a living.  But in this post I am saying that with some little effort greater than what you already produce, you might be able to produce for other households too.   I think that without even the monetary reward you can feel good enough to grow and to make things for others:  talk about appreciation!  And even if money doesn’t change hands (it often does not with mine), you may be able to be recompensed with services.  I traded four turkeys for horseback riding lessons for the girl.  That’s so much more enjoyable than money in a quart jar.

Bell and Cricket out doing what they do as the resident Poison Ivy and Bramble Eradication Crew.  Cricket was born toward the end of April, and Bell is on the big side for an American Alpine.  Bell’s coloring is called sundgau and Cricket’s chamoisee.

Penny is barking mad!

Sorry all.  I am not quite sure what happened but my gmail account has been compromised.  I can’t access it and won’t be able to do so for 24 hours or so.  Then, well, we’ll see what damage has been done.

Spooky stuff!  My apologies.  Even when you have high firewalls, I guess it doesn’t always work.  I have no contacts in that email account; the virus seems to have contacted everyone through dint of my emailing or replying to people via that account.

Most assuredly, I am still whiling away the days here in Michigan.  Here’s our beach two nights ago.

Finally:  I got the plastic up on my mom’s greenhouse recently.

I am beginning to question my sanity in late winter.  Really.  It’s usually in March that I crazily, stupidly commit to all sorts of extracurricular projects, of which my mother’s new greenhouse was but one.  Granted of all of them this one taskoid took the least of my time but it hung the heaviest as my mother lives 50 miles away…so it’s not a quick trip to go fix things up for her.  Plus, it’s for my mother, and I said I would do it.

It didn’t help that the greenhouse company shipped us the wrong size of plastic.  Oops.  That was one wasted day.

Drapery, this time with the correct size

Anyway, here it is.  She’s a bit of a fool for tomatoes so we have them fairly crowded in there.  The soil is topsoil carted in from down the road that’s heavily mixed with mushroom compost.  (This is sand we’re building on, after all.)

Using those dipped gloves (clean AND new) really helps get a grip.  This is the hold-down system for the plastic.  It’s a small channel screwed to the two middle hoops into which I fasten this “wiggle wire.”  It helps to have two people do this:  one pulls the plastic, the other wrangling the wire.  But I did it solo, so…  And the two ends have a sandwich of two 1×2 furring strips.  These were left to soak in a tarp for a few days (the better to bend and hold their shape) then I tapped the bottom strips to accept the metal-tapping screws.  The plastic gets stapled to it, the top strips then screwed to the bottom one with wood screws.  Voila.  The top one can be unscrewed then to accept the side plastic this fall.

The deer are voracious and bold here too so I put chicken wire over the two open ends and the area below the roll-up side.  The ends and side will be open until the nights begin to go frosty.  We hope to take down one towering but rather anemic-looking oak in the side yard to give her a lot more sun.

Ta-daaa!  One more thing struck off the list.

The outdoor cooking kitchen is complete!  L-R: New built-in table, Loven, rocket stove.  Oh, and camera-shy Penny.

I learned many things at the side of my chef friend Catharine.  The most important thing I learned is “Heat is heat.”

Sure, we can dream of having zoomy gas-fired indoor ranges with ultimate control.  In a past life and if I were a cajillionaire and there was no such thing as global warming (that’s a lot of “ifs”) I might gladly install an Aga or–better–a Lacanche in my kitchen; surely, I would have to reinforce the floor to hold one.  But really, heat IS heat.  Catharine cooked the most fantastic meals on the humblest of kitchen stoves.  And I left my spendy red-knobbed range back in Minneapolis: now I bang pots on a 1967 electric Hotpoint range (maybe $100 when it was new).  It’s not the equipment, therefore, it’s the will.

Emilie is terribly curious about the hole I have dug for the slab.

And heat.  With experimentation, one can cook everything in our outdoor kitchen.  The rocket stove is truly third world technology and likewise was the simplest thing to build:  I used 66 bricks, one 24″ long, 4″ diameter stove flue, one 4″ flue elbow, one bag of concrete and one and a half bags of mortar (as I am a horrible mason; a good one would’ve built it with one bag).  I already had the grill grate, and for a lid I purchased the 16″x16″ red concrete patio paver…this little stove cost me a whopping $65 with had-boughten materials.  Building it stretched two days:  concrete slab on day one, oven chimney on day two, about five total hours of my time.

New potatoes coming up

Like the masonry oven, there is a learning curve (where ISN’T there a learning curve) but this isn’t a steep hill to climb.  It uses skinny waste wood too like all that stuff that falls from your trees after a storm.  Get out your cast-iron skillets, your big boiling pots.  Use it like a barbecue.  It’s chow time!

And it’s even a fire I can set that stays lit!

Notes in the comments!

Not full power but coming close.  See this post for what it looked like two months ago.

Wet.  Sunny.  Hot.  Wet.  Sunny.  Hot.  There’s not been much that has been unpredictable, weather-wise, in the late spring/early summer around here.

This certainly isn’t anything to complain about.  No, really; the last year we had insane amounts of rain is the last one to which I can directly compare, and I will take this year, thanks.  And I am much happier with the garden’s reaction to this rain now.  My sweat has turned into equity.

You see, in 2007, we had lots of rain.  We’d been here for a year and a half and thus had only two summers’ worth of observation and (more importantly) soil and land improvement under my belt.  I lost a whole flotilla of crops that summer due to the unending drip-drop…everything got hit.  Badly hit.  Drowned roots = dead plants, see; gone were my hopes of complete veg self-sufficiency…that year was my first attempt.  So that fall I trenched and installed perforated drain pipe around the garden (300 or so feet of the stuff, and through clay, too) and I have consistently added more and more vegetative matter to the existing outdoor beds.  It’s helped, a lot.  The plants are healthier and the growing ground is less wet.

Here’s something new:  black garbanzo beans

But a little less rain would help things along!  Every spring, I do actually till two small areas of my garden:  these zones are too big for raised beds but wonderful for the sprawl that is The Winter Squash Vine.  This year, though, no dice.  Can’t till in wet clay, and it never goes longer than two days without rain.  So it looks like I will have to forego another ginormous winter squash harvest…which is just as well considering how unloved that fruit becomes in our household come January.  Likewise, I have seeded the outdoor root crops three times now, which are some truly awful gambling odds.  I don’t like to gamble with my carrots, man!  Luckily, July is around the corner so indoor carrot season is fast approaching.

Purple Peruvian fingerling potato flower

Interestingly, I read a recent article about my extension service’s adoption of greenhouses (high hoops, hoop houses) in my area for…fruit growing.  Really.  This shouldn’t surprise me as I live in The Fruit Belt but I can definitely see the advantage of growing cherry trees under cover here.  Doesn’t that sound…odd?  It makes sense though.  Wet/Sunny/Hot/Repeat means your cherries are going to explode on the branch, their roots are taking up too much water.  Modulate the water, the wind, the bugs, the birds, and the temperature swings and indeed these plastic bubbles will grow fruit just as easily as they grow veg.

Anyway, I look back at 2007 and realize it too was the year we put up our first greenhouse.  With that greenhouse went my worries about weather extremes…and up shot my odds for veg self-sufficiency.  You wanna improve your own odds?

You know what I am going to say, don’t you?

It’s great for drying things, for extending your seed-saving efforts, and of course for many different kinds of veggies and herbs

Cheese:  Milk’s leap toward immortality  –Clifton Fadiman

Post-milking, pre-gardening, wake-up-and-take-the-edge-off early breakfast:  coffee and camembert on a toasted oatmeal/flaxseed sourdough ciabatta

I have detected a pattern with every new project I take on:  I go through a period of anticipatory excitement, then of intense freak-out, then I relax somewhat, and then I wonder what I did before said project entered my life.

The most obvious project in my life that follows this pattern–and one that would be familiar to many of you–is parenthood.  Owning a milking animal is neither as hard nor as long-term, but indeed, I went through these exact same steps.  I’m happy to let you know I am in the “what did I do (with all my time, mainly) before I had a goat?”  Freak-out moments aside, it’s been a fun endeavor.

It’s true what they say about dairy folk.  We are early to bed and early to rise…the first time in my life that I have ever been so inclined.  And I get up excited and fresh and ready to start the day!  Highly annoying, it’s true; luckily, I wake up a good two hours before anyone else does so I don’t have anyone to offend.  But a part of every one of my days is devoted to milk and its management.

Lovely fluff in the strainer: our dog is the lucky recipient of the foam

Making cheese has been a huge part of the “fun” of this new project.  I make cheese about three days* a week.  I devote one day of  these three to take on one new aged and/or procedurally difficult cheese.  The other two days’ cheesemaking are usually devoted to making feta (our daughter is a Feta Fool) or to the easy-peasy kinds like a chevre, an unaged pressed cheese, or ricotta or paneer/queso fresco. Ricotta and paneer and queso fresco aren’t technically cheeses** (did you know that?) but still, that’s what I make. And I make a weekly rotation of buttermilk and yogurt and sour cream…the first two can also be used as cultures for the above cheeses and the last one is because I selfishly love sour cream. And what with all the eggs around here, ice cream, custards, puddings are happening.  Let’s just say I am not getting thinner with my new hobby.

Haloumi atop salt at left and feta at right:  time these things well, and you’ll have a new cheese per week

Most cheeses excepting the fresh kinds require a long aging process. In other words, for many of them, it will be months (months!!) before one can even taste them. Talk about slow food! Some are much slower than others. Parmesan will take a year. Blue cheese, up to a year. Cheddar, brick, and colby, six months plus. Brie and Camembert, six weeks. Feta, a month. This is not a hobby for those bent on instant gratification.  Gratification, though, why yes.

Our goat, however:  Having triplets and then producing all this wonderful white stuff has taken quite a lot out of her.  I do remember this with my own breast-feeding days:  I could eat for three, and often did, yet the pounds kept coming off…let’s just say that’s not a good thing if you’re a skinny goat.  So I am slowly stepping back the milking to once a day.  This is a win-win:  she’s not stressed and can put the weight back on, I am not stressed and I’ve got more time to weed those gardens.  The milk quantity should reduce further too.  At the top, I was getting almost two gallons a day.  I would be quite happy with 3/4 of a gallon.  Considering that she potentially can be milked for a year and a half or longer, that’s still a lot of milk.  Lucky us.

*Not all day obviously.  The process starts with the morning’s milk and usually ends around dinnertime, say, for a chevre.  They’re pressed or hung to dry.  Some are heated somewhere in there; some are inoculated with other molds and good beasties, some require lots more of your time and some require nearly none.  It’s a big world, cheese.

**Cheese snobs tend to categorize according to technique. It’s a cheese if the milk has been subjected to an enzymatic action and/or lactic acid fermentation; it’s not if it’s made by simply acidifying (via vinegar or lemon juice) the milk as these three are. The most common enzymatic action used to make cheese is by using rennet, a derivative found in one of the four stomachs of nursing ruminants (calves, kids or lambs) which contains the enzyme protease that helps a nursling break down and digest milk solids.  There are other non-stomach rennets out there, some derived from plants or molds with coagulant properties.  There’s even a genetically engineered rennet available.  Me, I use both vegetative and stomach-based rennets, both work, but there’s a taste difference in some cheesses.  And lactic acid fermentation:  quickly, this is the aging process all milk and milk products and even pickles and kimchi and sauerkraut undergo with time.

Blue cheese, molding up nicely

It is with much rejoicing and carrying-on that I announce the maiden burning of our Loven (wood-fired masonry oven).

Whee!  Of course I paid homage to Prometheus, Hestia, Brigid and Haphaestos:  mortal and immortal tenders of flame.  The patron saint of bricklayers and masons (St. Stephen) and architects (the apostle Thomas) got their due.  While I was at it I thanked the patron saints of bakers (St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Nicholas), winemakers (St. Martin of Tours) and farmers (St. Isidore) and gardeners (St. Fiacre).  It was quite a crowd:  I invoked them all by tossing my flour onto the hot floor of the oven and saying a simple “thanks a lot!” to the whole lot.  Grazie!

In reality, it was just my family here to celebrate.  First out of the oven:  two pizzas, with our cheese and herbs and veg.  Followed quickly by four loaves of sourdough bread (I have a new levain and love it), then in went one small pot of lentils with homemade chix sausage/sage and one roasting chicken, cooked simultaneously.  The oven cooled and I set in it a quick clafouti with local sweet cherries (our milk and eggs) and then, overnight, I let the oven cool completely and roast out some of our new fresh garlic for future garlic jelly.

Watch the smoke!  As you can see, it’s still a construction zone, but…we’ve got a certificate of occupancy so we’re fired up and functional

I can tell I am going to have a LOT of fun with my new toy.

What is it about this home-grown crop that makes a gardener foolishly go on a quest of The Perfect Bulb?  It turns us otherwise carefree folk into obsessive Mother Hens, clucking and agonizing amongst the fronds as to is it big yet?  is it as big as it will get?  what if I pick it too early?

That portion of the garden is somehow sacrosanct, stored-food-wise.  Such flavor packed into these husk-wrapped clumps, such promise of future meals changed from “meh” to “heeeyyy!”  And most gardeners, once they try growing garlic, do realize that The Perfect(ly Large) Bulb is really just a goal, not a year-to-year reality.  Or if they do grow plenty of large ones, they realize there’s no way they’ll use them up before they go sprouty and sulfurous and gross.  In other words, most gardeners who grow garlic are pursuing an idea.

They also probably have long memories.  Many are the February days when I am stuck peeling the tiniest of cloves for our meals from the tiniest of heads, those heads that I *saved* for this purpose.  Yes, it’s then I get wistful for the “idea” of Perfect Bulb garlic.

But back to this quest.  There is nothing at all wrong with wanting large, beautiful heads of garlic grown on your own patch of earth.  And those in the know do know it often takes years to procure, cultivate, and harvest those varieties that will perform the best for their portion of the planet.  It’s a fun quest, actually; where would we be without garlic?

She’s going on a snipe scape hunt.  She’s 4′-2″ so this gives you an indication about how tall the plants can get in the greenhouses.  They’re planted in rows of 6, 6″ apart, in rows 6″ apart so…72 bulbs per bed

My problem with this pursuit is that like all noble journeys (think Odysseus, think Jason, think Captain Ahab) sometimes the pilgrim brooks no detours, and more’s the pity.   There is something rather…unattractive about single-mindedness in pursuit of a goal, after all.  Life is a journey; so, too, should your garlic-growing be.  Don’t reserve them ALL for a final harvest.  Green garlic is a gorgeous, fleeting thing:  before forming a bulb, the stem and end can be eaten like a gigantic scallion, only better.  It’s not bitter, it slices easily, and you can use most of the neck right up to the leaves.  Scapes of course are the fun pre-harvest benefit of growing hard-neck garlic:  these topset stalks are a great addition to any item in a wok or a saute pan, and I often use the smaller ones coined into the bottom of a bowl of salad, topping a soup, or boiled in with some of the last potatoes for a final mash.  Terribly versatile, said scapes.  It’s a gardener’s reparation for the fact that hardneck garlic does not store well.

Scapes are pretty, too.

But don’t get all snooty and think you can’t plant the smaller cloves of garlic.  I often plant the end of a bed with them in very early spring.  Using them green or even all bulbed up:  this is the bed I raid when making my own version of green goddess or ranch/buttermilk dressing.  Who cares how big they are when it’s their flavor you are after.

Outside, I have a bed of those small annoyingly sprouted cloves.  I planted these in late February.  The center clump, however, has been in this bed for years.

All I am saying is that garlic should be a fun crop, not an anxiety-prone one.  Granted, I sometimes grow close to The Perfect Bulb but I also grow a whole bunch of little ones.  I also have these greenhouses, which certainly help on my quest.  But honestly, I like to see myself more as a wandering pilgrim than one suffering from monomania:  all garlic is good.