Planting Corn

Drew and Mimi planting corn. This view shows the house in proximity.

Gardner has been asking me since we first planted seeds this year, in February, when it would be time to plant corn. Each time we planted more seeds, he would ask me, "Is it time to plant corn yet?" Each time I would explain that we had to wait until the nights warmed up reliably, and there was no danger of frost. I said if we planted too early, we would risk the corn dying or not growing right. Finally, the nights are as warm as they get here, and we moved on this project today, so we could finish it before we leave on our Yosemite vacation.

In the spot where we once had a giant scotch broom berm and hedge, and where we subsequently re-contoured the land to create two terraces on the east side of the house, Drew tractor tilled the earth and added several scoops of manure and oyster shell flour to prepare the space for corn. We also planted sunflowers and bush beans, and I've also got a few extra pumpkin starts, as well as some marigolds I wasn't sure what to do with that will go in there.

The straw bale garden isn't well suited to crops like corn, which needs a lot of food and space to grow roots. Corn also likes being grown in a block, for optimal pollination. We've never had a corn bed this size that allowed for good pollination. The further benefit of placing corn in this spot is that, if successful, the corn patch will help block wind into the rest of the yard. I have a long-term vision of planting raspberries, blueberries, artichokes, and bamboo in this spot, so an annual vegetable project will give us an idea of what that would be like, to have a permanent terrace garden at about the same height.

For now, we hope the direct sow will be successful. We don't often grow vegetables this way, due to gopher pressure, symphylans (soil pest), wind, and cold nighttime temps which make getting started difficult. I usually start my corn in flats and transplant out once they are about 4 inches high. But this patch is too big for that. This is also the first time we've used a tractor tiller to prepare a bed. It sure did go fast! I could get used to that. 

This may pave the way for similar projects in the "old" garden area, which is now dormant. We've discussed doing some light tractor farming in that area, to grow cow food, or vegetables, or maybe we will convert it to almond orchard expansion. Who knows? We are committed to letting the land guide us, and inform our decisions. For now, an experiment has been started, and we're looking forward to seeing what happens!

Mimi and Drew planting three kinds of corn

First Edibles of the Season

I just returned from a week away, but I snapped these pics before I left so I could show off my garden, in case anyone asked. No one did, but now I get to share them with all of you! 

Bok choi is an amazing plant. It cannot be stopped. It just wants to grow, and get to the part about making flowers and seeds. They really embraced this strange, grow-in-a-bale-of-straw lifestyle. For a little while before my departure, we juiced bok choi with apples, carrots and lemon, and made stir fry (yum). Several years ago, when we were daily bathing our cells in phytonutrients, we would make a half gallon of fresh veggie juice every morning with these ingredients, and drink it throughout the day. It really is refreshing and delicious and so good for you. (If you want more info about juicing, check out www.juicefeasting.com).

Moving right along, we have the row of peas, which finally seem to be taking off, though no flowers yet. This row also has arugula, radishes, spinach, and lettuce, planted underneath the peas. I don't think the nitrogen had mellowed enough for the radishes because when I pulled them up yesterday, they had 4-10 rootlets, and were not one nice round ball. This often happens with carrots if they have too much N as well. Note to self:  bales are maybe not for root crops? The book says it's fine, but I'm not so sure.

Next we come to lettuce, looking very nice. We enjoyed our first head as a salad on the night I returned home, and there's a lot more out there. We are finding, again, that lettuce does prefer the overhead watering, so we might get a few misters to water these babies, to keep them luscious and un-leathery, as well as un-bitter. In any event, home-grown lettuce is always far better than store-bought, and we have gone too long without it.

Lastly, here is the next round of bales! In addition to these, there are three more next to the pea row. Most of these are going to be for tomatoes, and other summer crops. They are almost ready. I messed up a bit when I planted my tomatoes too early this year. I used to plant in February, until I realized that the ground was never ready early enough for the February starts. Better to plant at the March new moon. But being a little out of practice, since we skipped a lot of gardening last summer, I forgot this very important detail. Our tomato plants have been ready to get out of pots for several weeks already, but the bales are only now just barely ready. Learn and forget, learn and forget. Sooner or later, we'll be experts, but not yet!

Planting the Straw Bale Garden

 Gardner pours potting soil onto our straw bales

Last Sunday, which was a gorgeous sunny day, Gardner and I got busy planting seeds into our straw bales. As per instructions, we put a layer of potting soil on top of the bales, laid down our water line, and planted away. We planted shelling peas and snow peas, arugula, carrots, radishes, and beets. You can see what a big help Gardner was. He has asked me every day since we started conditioning the bales if it is time to plant yet.

Gardner planting pea seeds

I put bird netting over the bed, because the little winter flock of dark-eyed juncos, sparrows, and scrub jays are very interested in the spare wheat seeds in the bales, and little birds often like to scratch up newly planted areas, or eat pea seedlings, especially. We are tearing down our big greenhouse, because it is in a bad location, and the plastic had torn, so we're cutting it up into pieces to use for our straw bale garden. I tried using one of these pieces, but that first night we had some of our infamous wind. It didn't want to stay put, and I was worried all the flapping might disturb our newly planted seeds. So I dug out our row covers, and that works much better, though I'm not sure it will provide much of a temperature buffer for the plants. We'll see. We have had frosty mornings the last few days.

The finished, planted bales, with bird netting and greenhouse plastic

Looking forward to spring food, fresh stuff from the garden! I also started two additional beds of bales this weekend. They are lined up in the other direction. These two new beds are a total of 16 bales. I plan to plant all the brassicas, lettuce, and onions I planted in the cold frame a few weeks ago, plus potatoes. I'm feeling excited about our garden this year.

Paying Forward Pays Dividends

Gardner drums on our giant head of winter cabbage.

Our winter garden didn't amount to much last year. We got everything in at the perfect moment, the plants did great, and then, the deer got into the garden a week later, and ate all the brussels sprouts, most of the broccoli, and half of the cauliflower, and then gophers consumed about half of the cabbage plants.

However, we still have some cabbage! These are an awesome winter cabbage called January King (from Territorial Seed Company). I love the winter garden for this reason. If you can thread the gauntlet of predators, storms, and frost, you come out in spring with fresh food, when nothing else is growing yet.

Here comes coleslaw!

All Mattole Foods Potluck 2010

Winner for Best Vegetable Dish: Lindsay's Carrot, Onion, Potato Cakes with Sliced Tomatoes and Yogurt Cheese

My Summer Veggie Quiche

Winner for Best Beverage: Ian's Yellow Jacket Apple and Cherry Juice

Winner for Best Dessert: Jim and Kristen's Lemon Blueberry Ice Cream

Winner for Best Meat Dish: Duck Dumpling Stew by Todd and Jessica

Winner for Best Overall: Ryan's Pumpkin Stew with Yogurt Chive Sauce

Each year the Mattole Self-Sufficiency Project puts on an all Mattole food potluck. Anyone can enter a dish, but all the ingredients of the dish must be raised in the Mattole watershed.

For this year's entry, I made a Garden Veggie Quiche. I grew some wheat two years ago, and ground the flour with our hand-powered mill. I made butter and ricotta cheese with milk I got from our friends' milk cow. I mixed up that butter and flour with a little milk and rolled out a crust, and then filled it with an onion, garlic, basil, egg, ricotta, corn, zucchini, and pepper filling. It was delicious.

The potluck featured a lot of lovely dishes, many of which were more complex this year due to the addition and availability of cow dairy. There were soups, stews, salads, veggie dishes, dried fruit, fruit leather, ice cream, grasshoppers, juice, alcohol, applesauce, and more.

The dishes were judged on a combination of flavor, complexity, difficulty of procuring the ingredients, and it seems there was a bonus for using other people's ingredients, as this represents community food sustainability. The winners were:

• Best Veggie Dish: Lindsay's Carrot-Potato-Onion pancakes, served with sliced tomatoes and yogurt cheese
• Best Meat Dish: Todd and Jessica's Duck Dumpling Stew
• Best Dessert: Kristen and Jim's Blueberry Ice Cream
• Best Side Dish: Mimi and Harold's Dried Fruit Collection. The presentation of this particular dish was stunning.
• Best Overall: Ryan's Pumpkin Stew, served with yogurt chive sauce

All admission prices were paid in Petols, our local currency, which is based on the value of silver, and prizes were awarded in Petols.

I think that the next kind of food category to conquer is vegetable oil, such as sunflower, rape, olive, etc. That's mostly what's missing!

The Larder

I seem to be having difficulty regularly posting here. It's largely due to the new habits of my three-year-old. She no longer naps in the afternoons, leaving me without my mid-day space out, web-surfing moment, in which I have written a lot of my posts. I also used to write a lot after she went to bed, or even in the evening while she was playing with her dad, but the computer is now occupied with her nightly obsession with Angelina Ballerina, or one of her other DVD's, until we are all dead tired at about 9 PM. That pesky time change leads us all to the barn earlier these days.

Anyhow, back on topic, the subject of my post today is the larder, particularly how excited I am to take stock of the wares I've canned, accumulated, dried, grown or otherwise stashed for our family's consumption between now and April and beyond. The weather of winter has fully and completely arrived, meaning very short days, regular cold, cloudy, and rainy days, and cold nights. I've noted over the years here that all growth of plants basically stops, or progresses painfully slowly, during these months. Even though many of our local plants don't die back as in places where it snows, many do, while others simply pause as if mid-sentence, and wait for longer days and warmer nights to begin to stretch again. Even the grass tends to pause.

While the garden and native plants are stuck in winter limbo, we still have plenty to eat, though not as great a quantity of fresh produce as in the summer. Here is a list of what I've canned up to line our (forthcoming) pantry shelves:
2 cases of tomato
6 tomato paste
10 zucchini relish
35 or so jars of jam (apple ginger jelly, blueberry, strawberry, peach, and blackberry)
16 quarts of apple juice
1.5 cases of red tomato salsa
2 cases green tomatillo salsa
~12 tubs of pesto (frozen)
about 30 winter squash
6-8 cups of dried white beans
dried herbs
two frozen chickens whole
a several month supply of cured garlic
about 8 cups of home grown wheat berries
frozen strawberries
locally-grown frozen beef


I still have yet to can/put up:
pumpkin
green tomato chutney
saurkraut

Even though it's winter outside, we're still eating:
fresh cabbage
fresh carrots
fresh broccoli
fresh greens
fresh beets
the dregs of the tomato, eggplant, and peppers

I don't think our garden produce will last through like I always try to manifest, but it will only be a few months where we won't have anything.

Days left until the first spring planting: About 90.

Finishing the Wheat: A Backlog Post

This post has been on my backlog list for some time now. For convenience, I am linking to previous wheat entries: Walls and Wheat, and Eat Your Wheaties.

Way, way back in July, I harvested my long-awaited crop of hard red winter wheat, which was growing in two long beds inside the garden fence all throughout the winter. It took a long time to ripen, since we had a lot of cool, foggy weather in the late spring/early summer. But at last, I harvested it, and dried the bundles in the mudroom and in the open sun.

Now, this process is one of those lost homesteading arts that everyone in the old days knew how to do, but since no one grows wheat anymore, there isn't anyone around who can tell me what to do. I do have the luck of having a written source that describes how to "flail" the wheat, which basically involves beating it with a stick to get the grains loose from the dry seed heads. The ideal flail is a broom handle with a shorter stick attached to the end with a leather "thong", as the literature puts it, so that it can swing freely. You know, you get a little momentum going and it really whacks the stuff.

But since I haven't grown wheat before, nor has anyone I know, I don't have a flail. So I found a stout piece of redwood, left over from another project, with which to beat my wheat. I assumed it wouldn't be so hard, since the grain was pretty dry, but it actually took quite a bit of beating, and thorough beating at that, to get the maximum wheat grain out. Thoroughness normally wouldn't matter, but since I had such a small harvest, every last grain was VERY important to me!





Once the grain was flailed, I then winnowed the chaff from the grain, which involves a very high tech process of slowly pouring the grain between two containers outdoors where there is the right amount of wind. Pour too quickly, and none of the chaff blows away. Pour too slowly, or when the wind is gusting a little, and the hard earned wheat berries dive into the grass, never to be seen until next winter.


Wheat Berries with Chaff, ready for Winnowing

All told, my dear wheat harvest readers, I collected eight precious cups of wheat berries. Not even enough to make one batch of bread. Nor enough to sow the same amount I planted last year. Certainly, I made some gardening mistakes, which I will remedy this year. But still a bit disappointing. I'm aiming for a better turnout next year. Partly, this involves planting the wheat in the area where the chicken run was, hoping that the chicken poop will feed the wheat, will feed the people, will feed the bucket, will feed the fruit trees, will feed the chickens, will feed the wheat, and so on.

I've got some more work to do to finish closing those loops....

Chicken Egg Jackpot

A few days ago, Ella and I went out to the chicken run to let them out of their stylish, turquoise horse-trailer coop, and lo and behold, there was an egg lying quietly next to the chicken water dish. Oooo! Ella, Look! So we collected it, and I was SO delighted that our little hens have begun to lay eggs!

For weeks, we've been hearing the characteristic call the chickens make when they have laid an egg, but we haven't yet found any. We would rush out and have a look around the coop and the run, and walk away empty handed. But the best part of the above story is that later in the day, when I went to make a delivery of kitchen scraps to my grateful feathered buddies, I noticed an egg near the back of the trailer, and when I bent down to pick it up, I noticed a whole PILE of eggs under the bumper of the trailer! There were a whole dozen in all, two of which Ella broke before we got them all put away in an egg carton.

So the next morning, I had my first all homegrown breakfast from our land, some fresh tomato cooked into home grown scrambled eggs. Mmmmm. Nothing like it.

Here's to chickens and their fabulous ability to create so much useful resource for us humans.

Reaping What We Sow

Yesterday was a harvest day, of sorts. It's one of those days when I become present to just what I've done by planting those little tiny seeds in pots back in February, or March. This year, I wondered if I should even do it at all, since we are so busy with our house. I am definitely distracted from our house during my Ella-free time by the need to put food up. But I can't really help myself, because when I contemplate the alternative, eating food that someone far away grew, I just can't quite stomach it. I truly prefer growing my own, and immensely enjoy the satisfaction of watching it emerge, bulge into ripeness, and disappear into my body, my cells becoming the very land we live upon. So no regrets here. Quite the contrary, I feel like dancing a little jig!

I'm glad I did harvest yesterday, because today it is raining and some of my produce would have been set back a little. Once again, my instincts told me to do it. I didn't realize the rain was coming. I was just guided to harvest. I continue to find that those little voices are worth listening to.

Ella and I descended into the garden with cardboard boxes, scissors, and clippers, picking ripe tomatoes, a flat of tomatillos, a bucket full of Bingo beans (like pintos), and about 13 delicata squash. I also canned some zucchini relish, something I've never done before. It's a recipe Deva likes to use. It's basically pickle relish, with zukes instead of cukes. What was so remarkable about the experience for me was that I grew all the produce: the onions, zucchinis, and the peppers. Usually, if I want to make something like that, I need to buy at least the onions. But not this year! It feels like a milestone for me.

There are a lot more tomatoes still to ripen, and more tomatillos than we could possible use or can. In fact yesterday I gave the tomatillo plant the name of "The Giving Tree". It just keeps on giving, and at this point, I'm confident we will never need to plant them in our garden again. I kept thanking the spirit of that generous plant, for giving us material to make salsa and enchilada sauce!

May we all experience the abundance of our own sowing seeds, real or symbolic...

The Downside of Animal Husbandry

When we brought home our chicks last April, we knew some of them would be roosters, but that only one could stay. Too many testosterone-touting red-combed dude chickens are bad news for the ladies of the house. They argue, and take out their frustrations at not being top dog on the hens, trying to prove who's who. And they all crow, which some feel to be a rather endearing and acceptable trait. But when you live 100 feet away in a tent, and one of them wakes up because the moon is full at 2 AM, let alone when ALL of them wake up at the crack of dawn like they're supposed to, the matter takes on a little extra urgency.

So at last, today, our three "extra" roosters met their maker. Neither of us thought it was a good idea to let Ella witness the actual slaughter (though we could have an interesting discussion another day about whether or not this is so), so I took her out visiting, while Drew stayed home to operate the guillotine. Which brings me to the "downside" of animal husbandry. The remaining chickens are terrified of us.

Many people try to intimate that "lower" beings have no feelings, don't think any advanced thoughts, or grieve, etc. There are many variations on this theme. But the mood in the chicken pen this afternoon is decidedly morbid, as though they are mourning for their lost comrades, even though they were a pain in the rear. When I went out with a bucket of kitchen scraps, they all took cover under their trailer. Ordinarily, the moment they see the silver bowl from a long ways off, they come running to the door, eager to see what goodies I have brought. Not today.

The problem, for me, is my ability to empathize with their grief and discomfort. If someone came and mysteriously removed several members of my family, I probably wouldn't feel comfortable either. I might not have an appetite. And yet, we need to eat. I have dabbled in vegetarianism, for many years, and find that my body cannot adequately do what it needs to do without meat. I have been buying chicken from the store, but I would rather grow it here, on our own land, and treat it right until the moment of its death, than buy the meat from a bird that never saw the open sky, even if it was allowed to "free range" shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other chickens in a barn. The obvious choice is to raise the chickens with integrity and love, and offer them an honorable passing.

I've roasted one of the three for our dinner this evening. For me, it always causes a more measured pace and style of eating, to eat what you have known when it was alive. We will surely honor tonight's rooster, in the many ways it has enriched our life, and the ways in which it will allow us to continue to enrich our own lives. I give thanks for the multiple ways in which the land continues to feed us.

Incidentally, as the photos show, when Ella and I returned home, Drew had finished plucking the chickens, but had not yet gutted and cleaned them. I set to work immediately removing pin feathers, while Drew did the butchering. Ella was not in the least bit disturbed by this part of the process, and we had a very real and hands on kind of anatomy study. She asked about why we were eating these, and were these our roosters? And we explained that too many roosters aren't good for the flock. She wanted to try touching the chickens. She wanted to hold the feet. I guess we'll cover the earlier part of the process when she's older.

Canning Moments

Collect jars and pots, large and small;
Slice, pitch, slice, pitch;
De-top, slice, slice, pitch;
Wash jars, squeeze lemon juice,
Consult with Carla Emery.

Wonder if women
Did this work together,
Or if they did it solo, in their own kitchens
As I
Slice, pitch, slice, pitch, slice, pitch.
Wonder how many jars this will fill.
Wonder how many jars my garden will fill.
Think of lasagna in January,
Of white bean and sausage
Stew
With canned tomatoes.
Wonder about the sanity of
This.
Homesteading. What does this mean
For us still living between modern and not?
When I run out of tomato jars,
Because I didn't grow enough,
I run to the store,
Filling up on tin cans.
Slice, pitch, slice, pitch, slice, pitch.

Realize that every pizza I've ever eaten
Has contained tomatoes that someone canned
Even if it was a giant machine;
A tomato that grew in the sun somewhere,
And was bottled up, and shipped to the Italian restaurant.

But now I eat my own.
Slice, pitch, slice, pitch.
Stir.
Squish.
Stir, squish.
Boil, scoop, cap, ring.
Sputtering pressure canner, steamy house.
Clattering stainless bowls and knives.

Silence in the pantry.
Hush.

Seaweed in the Bowl

Seaweed-covered rocks south of the Mattole mouth




Sea Palm, far out on the rocks




The Catch- Drying on screens in the garden




Close up of the lovely colors



Though we live very close to the ocean, I often forget to visit it frequently, or just how abundant of a resource it can be for us. This morning, I rose at 5:15 AM and fixed a very light, quick breakfast so I could leave for the beach. Last night's full moon brought a -2.1 foot low tide this morning, and right now is high seaweed season. Our seaweed stash is rather low, since Drew and I haven't made the half-hour trek south of the Mattole mouth to collect it since before Ella was born.

It was a lovely, if cold morning. Being a parent of a late-sleeping child, I rarely see the pre-sunrise day in all it's shape-shifting glory. The birds' morning chorus was in full effect, a sweet cacophony of melodic tunes overlapping. This birdsong is made even sweeter by the fact that it is so short-lived. We will really only be graced by it for another month or so. The moon was hanging low in the western sky as I drove away.



I stopped to photograph the Mattole River as I crossed the Hideaway bridge. There was mist hanging around, the greens of the riparian forest were so vibrant, and the river was reflecting the sky. The swainson's thrushes were singing in the brush by the parking lot, and I hoisted my empty pack and headed south. What a treat a solo walk in the early morning by the ocean is!

It's probably a mile to the third collection of rocks, that jut out from the continent into the Pacific ocean. This spot stretches out the furthest into the sea. On my approach, I startled a family of sea lions, who were relaxing on the rocks. I imagine they would have been long gone had I been with someone else and talking. I timed my arrival perfectly. I made it out to my farthest reach just as the tide began to shift. I was surprised that the turning was such a palpable feeling, but I was way out from shore, and everything was calm and still, pulling away, quieting, and then suddenly, it wasn't anymore. The swell seemed a little more urgent, and the waves began pressing inward again. Time to begin my return, picking carefully over the very slippery rocks, collecting various kinds of seaweed as I go: wakame, iridescent seaweed, and unidentified green seaweed, sea lettuce, and so on. I tried to remember what nori looks like, but embarassingly, I couldn't remember. I think it's been four years since I last collected seaweed!

On my way home, I practiced some tracking in the sand and low light conditions. On my way out, I had noticed one and then two trotting tracks of coyote that basically stretched the entire way out to my destination, and continued on. They were fresh, having been laid while the tide was on its way out, evidenced by the erasure of a few of them. I caught this image of the animal clearly stopping to look over its left shoulder behind itself. I've always wondered how you would see that in tracks, but here is a clear example.


Coyote turns to look over his left shoulder before continuing down the beach




Close up of Coyote's over-the-shoulder glance



A nice direct-register gait, "making tracks" while conserving energy



I also followed a series of raccoon tracks, one and then two (and then one again) trails winding their way through the sand. They were perfect raccoon tracks, and I photographed a sequence of the four feet, as well as its trail, which looks like two feet side-by-side, but is actually left hind next to right front, and the opposite. They seemed to like to travel along the surf line where there is a lot of debris. Presumably, they were looking for a tasty morsel.



Two side-by-side Raccoon trails



One set of all four raccoon feet



I returned home, and cleaned the seaweed with Ella and laid it out to dry in the sun. It's now almost dry and ready to put away. And then, I moved right on to canning strawberry jam! It's a food preservation kind of day! I feel so grateful that the seaweed resource is available to us just down the coast in a short walking distance...

Eat Your Wheaties

In case anyone was on the edge of their seat, I have a wheat update! Last evening, after putting away the chickens, I thought I'd see just how ready the winter wheat was. I've checked on it periodically, and thought that it didn't seem as though it had even flowered and been pollinated yet. But I believe I have been mistaken, and that they are just rather small, not-so-swollen seeds. Our soil preparation for this project was dismal at best, so this is something to strive for in the future. I'd LIKE to see a chicken tractor prepare the space...hmmm, (mumbling to self, with a far-away look) add constructing a chicken tractor to the list.

Anyway, the wheat is getting close to ready for harvest. We've had a spell of moist, drizzly, foggy, rainy weather all week. I suspect that when it changes, we will have hot and windy weather, which will dry the seed heads and all the grasses out in no time. Yellow hills are on the way. I've never done this before, so I'm not sure exactly when to do it. My reading suggests that you need to do it when it's partly dried out, but not too dry, otherwise the seeds will all fall off the stalks as you are moving it to your threshing area. It's gonna be an experiment. I do feel just a little proud that we did this, though I look forward to making it even better in years to come.

Garden!

Providence has descended upon me, and I have had TWO full days of garden work, uninterrupted (well, mostly) the last two days. I not only have used the time to complete almost all of my bed prep for our summer annual garden, but I also created a new sheet mulch bed, cleaned out the shed from the time the chickens spent there, installed more irrigation, weeded out problem areas, installed our irrigation timers and programmed them, allowing automatic watering, and I bird-netted the strawberries to keep that pesky scrub jay out of there. Whew! I'm tired! The annual bed digging included weeding, amending, and turning two 100-square-foot beds, remulching them, and layout out the drip lines. In one of them, I had to remove a trellis from our failed :( shelling pea experiment (too many gophers). Speaking of gophers, Drew set a pair of MacAbee traps in a run this morning, and caught TWO gophers, one on either side! Between Drew, the dog, and the cats, we are in the gopher catching business. Things are looking up for our little garden. Hopefully, we won't suffer too many more casualties, and our garden will compliment our CSA share perfectly.

It's a good thing I've got all this bed space prepared, because I have a lot of starts to put in the ground: eggplants, peppers, zuchinni, butternut squash, bush delicata squash, hubbard squash, kale, cucumbers, and pumpkins. They will all be glad to get growing before they reach the outer edges of their pots.

I'll post some photos soon...

The CHICKS Have Arrived!

I took my first solo town trip since Ella was born last Friday. I had a doctors appointment, and our chicks were scheduled to arrive at a local feed store.

While I was waiting to be seen at the clinic, I got a call from the feed store...they said, "The hatchery shorted us 20 chicks, so we're calling everyone to come as soon as you can, and it's first-come, first-served at this point." **ARG** Well, I'd already been waiting a half hour, so I asked at the window when I would be seen. The surly desk attendant phoned to the bowels of the clinic, and nodded, and hmmmed, and uh-huh'ed, and hung up. "It's going to be at least another half hour". Well geez. I decided to go pick out the chicks, lest they get snatched by someone else.

When I got to 3G's, they still had 17 of the 25 buff orpington hens we had ordered. I then randomly chose seven more birds from the mixed breed brooder box. Two of them are roosters for sure, but the other five are anyone's guess. Hope they turn out to be hens. I picked pretty looking ones, it will be interesting to see what they turn out like. While I was choosing them, the phone rang again, and the clinic receptionist told me "They're ready to see you now." It had only been 12 minutes.

They had quite a wild day, driving all over the county, culminating in a trip over the Wildcat on their way back to the ranch here. They took it all in stride, and though it probably wasn't a very good idea, I couldn't help but hold a few of them while I was hurtling down the highway at 65 mph.

All but one are doing really well. It's kind of like having newborn around, just a little. They need a constant temperature of 95, and continuous supply of food and water. We've been experimenting with lodging and lights, litter, trays and hot water bottles. We doubled their brooder by attaching a second box, with a door cut through it...now they have a bedroom with a warm light, and a living room with the food and water. They are really fun to watch! They already scratch in the food, and peck at specks that they think might be bugs, and they zip around unexpectedly when spooked. My favorite is when one of them falls asleep in the food dish, just lays down and droops it's head, and closes its eyes. There is sure to be more chicken writing in the months ahead. Stay tuned!

Politics, again

Sorry about all the political stuff, but I just can't help myself. There is so much going on out there, it's difficult not to make commentary...although today's business has something to do with the overall topic of this blog...food. But first, check out this film clip from a McCain town hall meeting:

McCain clip

A little frightening, eh? And at least we see Mr. McCain trying to stand up for the decency and humanity of Mr. Obama.

Anyhow, check out this Michael Pollan article about food politics, and our food system's connection to energy policy and foreign policy. It's long but very interesting.

The Food Issue: Farmer in Chief

Garlic

Garlic Cloves Laid Out for Planting in Our Raised Beds

As promised, I planted my garlic this morning, into our raised beds. The soil was so nice to work in, and I added some more chicken manure and oyster shell flour. The moisture level was PERFECT for planting. I also planted some more fava beans in the beds closest to the yurt, and took out a giant tree collard, the peppers, eggplants, and cucumbers. Yep, summer is coming to a close.

In any event, I am hopeful that we will have LOTS of yummy garlic to eat come next summer. May we never have to buy garlic again!

Black Beans and Winter Squash

I'm not sure what possessed me this morning, but after a lot of hemming and hawing about whether my beans and squash were ready to harvest, and wondering how to go about harvesting the beans, I decided this morning that the time was NOW. After the several inches of rain the other day, the bean understory had become dank and slimy, with all the dead leaves turning into compost. I was afraid the bean pods themselves would begin to rot, and compromise the viability of the beans. Or maybe it was the fact that I kept seeing the hint of gopher activity in the bed, like gnawed pods, and snipped stems. And the squash, having grown themselves into shady tall-grass (weedy) spots around their bed, were nestled into moist retreats without hope of drying.

I clipped all the bean stems in my 20-foot by 5-foot bed, and laid them on a tarp. With all the forecasted dry weather, they should air dry and then be ready for shucking soon. This action reminded me of the saying, "Make hay while the sun shines," or do things when it makes most sense to do them. Some individual vines had 20 or more pods on them. I felt excited seeing all those future beans. I'm not sure about quantity yet, but I am sure that I out-produced last year by a long shot. I plan on weighing my harvest, so I'll post it another time, and compare with what John Jeavons says is possible in a 100 square-foot bed.

I also had the pleasure of conducting a winter squash scavenger hunt, digging through the understory of grass, cornstalks, pole beans, and squash vines to find all the lovely mottled and swollen fruits. I knew there were a lot of them, but I was surprised, even so, by the quantity: 12 butternuts, 6 spaghettis, 10 or so acorns, 4 delicatas, 6 kabochas, and 3 of an unknown buttercup-type. Wow! It's a decent amount of squash, certainly all we need for the season, enough for us to eat squash when we want it, up until the fruits go bad. Some of the butternuts are truly large, probably 5 pounders! (All the spaghetti squash are that size, but we both find them less desirable...) I became further enamored with our squash because of the fact that this same 100 square feet has already produced a delicious and abundant corn harvest, and an ongoing supply of string beans. Now that's stacking functions!

On to the winter garden projects...tomorrow I will plant my garlic in the raised beds around the patio. And we received our RainTree Nursery catalog today. It's already time to dream about long-lived perennials that we will plant next spring.

Local Foods Potluck

Petols: Local Mattole Currency


Beets Extraordinaire: Beets with Lemon Zest, Peppermint, and Roasted Sunflower Seeds


Blueberry Puree with Filbert Milk


Native Grass Seed and Home Grown Corn Crackers with Dipping Sauces


Ahhh, just my kind of public event. Today was the Mattole Foods Potluck, a friendly competition to make the most complex and delicious dish of food possible with exclusively locally grown or gathered foods. Folks congregated at the Mattole Grange at noon, and paid their fee for voting rights in "Petols", our local currency created by resident Ken Y. (Petols are minted in silver, and therefore their value fluctuates depending on the current value of silver.)

I made a black bean stew for the potluck. Here is the list of ingredients:
Home grown:
Black beans, Amish paste tomatoes, mixed peppers, summer squash, sweet corn, home ground coriander (cilantro seeds), oregano, and basil.

Gathered: Local seaweed, collected at summer solstice low tide south of the Mattole River mouth.

Collected from other local sources:
Ground Beef from my neighbor Dick S.
2005 Pinot Gris from neighbor Bob B.
A white onion from the Little Dipper Farm (our CSA farm)
Apple Cider vinegar from neighbor Seth Z.

I thought it would be a rather impressive list of ingredients, and it truly is, considering how much stuff we normally buy at the store, but it turned out my chili was one of several bean soups. Local food advocates Merlin and Ken have been growing their own beans, and made black bean soup, white bean soup, spicy mixed bean soup, etc. So my dish wasn't so out of the ordinary. Not to mention that there were two other meat stews that were simply delicious, even more so than my own, oh well.

But the most delectable, difficult, and fascinating dish was made by Jen H., who concocted homemade crackers, made with ground native grass seeds and home grown grinding corn, and she also provided three delicious toppings to go with them. Wow. They were nutty and impressive. There was also an interesting invention involving "filbert milk" mixed with pureed blueberries, which won for best dessert. My friend Seth had created a brilliant sweetener by reducing home pressed apple juice into syrup, which I had the pleasure of trying before the event, and found it quite tasty. He used this to sweeten an apple tart, whose crust was made with homegrown and ground corn and home-rendered duck fat (Seth raises ducks). And alas, even my idea of growing wheat this fall is not so original, as one contestant used their own home grown wheat to make pasta noodles, and topped it with a very delicious mixture of summer vegetables.

What a fun experience, playing with what we have, and leaving out what we don't have. With the exception of the noodles, grains and dairy were conspicuously missing, and I think all of us, if my guts are any indication, are probably suffering from a stinky bed tonight after all the leguminous offerings. Definitely, we're gonna have to tackle the grain and dairy issue to be eating locally and nutritionally correct, while avoiding digestive disturbance.

I'll post some photos another day, when my camera is living inside the house again (I left it in the car!)

Food Revolutionary

The other day as I was placing sealing lids on my hot jars of pear butter, it occurred to me what a revolutionary act it was. I was thinking through my reasons for why I was doing it. And I thought to myself that most people would scoff at the sweat and dirt, mussed hair, and heavy breathing necessary to grow the food, let alone to process it while standing over boiling water in the middle of August. I imagine lots of folks wondering, well, why don't you just buy it at the store, for a convenient, low price? Why all the sticky bother?

In these moments, I remind myself, first of all, that one cannot FIND pear butter at the store, or if you happen to find it, say at a kitschy, specialty shop, you will pay a dear premium for a product that likely has sugar and other additives together with the pears. The kitschy pear butter may not be local. And besides these groovy food quality, price, and local factors, it is worth it to have our own pear butter because it is delicious on pancakes in February, when fresh, ripe pears are a distant memory (unless you are lucky enough to have a root cellar or an electrical cold storage!). Besides, it's much more exotic than applesauce, though we make some of that, too.

But what's really radical about it is just the unplugging: unplugging from a disposable waste stream (no throw-away container), unplugging from far away, trucked-in food, unplugging from the distance between grower and eater, from the need to go to the grocery store to purchase the food we eat, unplugging even from the idea that one must spend cash money to eat. It's simple, clean, delicious, saves resources, and is therefore healthier for everyone involved. So I feel good when I am canning and sweating, despite 90 degrees, in the kitchen, in August.