Milkweed Diaries

Winter Reading

2012-01-28T08:00:00.019-05:00

Chalk it up to being raised by a librarian. No matter how busy, tired, or overextended I am, I'm always reading at least a book or two or five or six. Even if it is just a page or two in the last few bleary, half-conscious minutes before I fall asleep, reading happens almost every day.

Reading is sort of a basic element of life for me, like eating well or getting enough sleep. And I'm talking about reading books, though I spend plenty of time reading things on the internet tubes too of course. My bedside table has always been more of a bedside book cascade, with stacks of novels, poetry, and nonfiction piled up for my reading pleasure.

In recent years, I've read a lot more nonfiction than anything else - essays, practical guides to everything under the sun, books about politics and history and food - but fortunately my sister Mary keeps me supplied with fiction. She works at a used book store. Can you sense a theme in my family?

My mom is a retired librarian who reads voraciously. She read to us all from the time we were in utero, and someone once described entering my childhood home as "being in danger of being hit by a falling book."

Even though I've been ridiculously overextended with off-farm work these days, I've squeezed in some really satisfying reading lately.

Here are a few recent favorites.

The Resilient Gardener

Carol Deppe

I love this book. Carol Deppe's quirky, opinionated, and garden-geeky personality comes through on every page. Her informal, conversational tone and cheeky attitude make for a quick and enjoyable read. I felt like I was chatting with the author in her kitchen while she popped up some popbeans (special strains of garbanzos she's selected for their ability to pop like popcorn). Or maybe hanging out with her in her garden watching her flock of Ancona ducks chow down on banana slugs nearby.

I don't agree with all of Deppe's methods or opinions, and some of the approaches she discusses are geared toward the particular climate of the place she lives (Corvallis, Oregon). But I came away from her book with immense respect for the author's perspective. She has spent years experimenting and meticulously documenting her experiments. The level of detail in her book is amazing. I have read a lot of gardening books over the years that make vague, grand claims about various techniques and methods without getting down to brass tacks.

Khaki Campbells on our farm: slug-eaters extraordinaire....but how?

For example, I can't tell you the number of times I've heard people talk about using ducks to control slugs in the garden. But how? How do you prevent them from eating all of your greens while their hunting for slugs? How do you get them to stay in the garden if there's somewhere they'd rather be? What about their high-nitrogen manure - how do you avoid a projectile application of duck manure to every plant in the garden? Ducks in the garden are a nice idea, but as we've spent more and more time with our small flock, we've begun to question how practical the idea of using them in the garden really is.

Enter The Resilient Gardener. Deppe begins her section "Ducks for Garden Pest Control" like so: "That ducks are supreme for garden pest control is widely recognized and mentioned in many books and articles. Exactly how to use the ducks and still have a garden left afterwards never quite seems to be mentioned. This section is a summary of my experience." She describes her method of using portable fencing to create temporary duck pens adjacent to the garden or even just near the garden to control slugs. With years of experimentation and careful observation under her belt, she offers the most detailed and helpful overview of ducks in the garden that I've ever seen.

Deppe's basic premise is that we need to garden not just as a hobby but as a way of life, and as a way to prepare for hard times. She points out that many gardeners (and garden blogs and garden writers, I might add) are focused on expensive inputs, equipment, and gadgets and what I would call "glamour crops" rather than learning to grow basic, everyday food to support themselves and their communities.

She puts it this way: "Traditionally, gardeners have played a major role in sustaining themselves, their families, and their communities through hard times of many kinds. Would you be able to do likewise?"

After investigating that question herself for many years, Carol Deppe has a wealth of highly-detailed and practical information to share. From growing your own feed for chickens and ducks to soil fertility and seed-saving, The Resiliant Gardener is packed with useful information. I know I will be referring back to this book for years to come.

I also appreciate Deppe's perspective as a gluten-free gardener and her insight as a plant breeder - she manages to weave these aspects of herself into her book in a way that seems to make perfect sense. She thinks of special dietary needs, for instance, as a personal variation of "hard times" - and continually returns to the framework of preparing for hard times. She mentions climate change, peak oil, natural disasters, and economic instability, but doesn't dwell on the catastrophic possibilities.

Instead, she places her faith in gardeners:

"I believe that the potential role of gardeners...is more important today than ever before. In times past, a large portion of the population knew how to grow and preserve food and could survive on what they could grow and preserve. In the United States today, only about 2 percent of the population farms, and they farm largely in ways that are totally dependent upon imported oil and gas, electricity, irrigation, roads, national and international markets, and an intact financial and social infrastructure. In many kinds of mega-hard times, those farms would not be functional, and the knowledge of how to farm in those ways would be useless. In...the future, what food we have may be the result of the knowledge and skills of gardeners. I challenge all gardeners to fully accept their role as a source of resilience for their communities in mega-hard times, and to play and adventure in good times so as to develop the kinds of knowledge and skills that would most matter."

You can visit Carol Deppe's website for more....I just signed up for her newsletter and am looking forward to following her further adventures in resilient gardening.

A Nation of Farmers

Sharon Astyk & Aaron Newton

A related book that's been on my bedside table for about a year is A Nation of Farmers. I've been dipping into A Nation here and there over the months, but got inspired to get serious and really read it when my friends on the staff and board of the Organic Growers School started buzzing about it.

My friend Ruth Gonzalez wrote a great piece on A Nation of Farmers for the Organic Growers School e-newsletter recently with some fabulous old-timely photographs of front-yard farmers. I'll keep it brief here and refer you to Ruth's more in-depth article.

A Nation of Farmers proclaims itself "a call for more participation in the food system" and draws a clear distinction between "farming" as it is mostly practiced today and the kind of farming that the authors believe can transform our food system and thereby "stop the harm industrial agriculture is doing."

Astyk and Newton envision a food system made up of small-scale polyculture, with millions of small farms, homesteads, and gardens raising both animals and vegetables, providing for community needs. Calling to mind the image of a farmer that most children have, they point out: "What you dreamed of, if you were anything like most children, is the kind of small, mixed farm that hardly exists anymore. It would have some animals, a big garden, pasture, orchard, and fields. This is the farm of children's books, the farm of stories, and 75 years ago, this was the farm of reality. But gradually, as we all grew older, such farms disappeared from the landscape." In contrast, the authors point out wryly, "you probably didn't imagine yourself debeaking chickens, building a hog manure lagoon, or riding in a giant tractor while spraying Roundup."

The premise that the authors return to again and again is that "It turns out that the old sort of farm, the one we dreamed of as children, really is the best way to feed the world. Small-scale polyculture that mixes animals and multiple plant crops together is vastly more productive that industrial row crops."

In a way I see Deppe's Resilient Gardener and A Nation of Farmers as espousing the same message, one that's dear to my heart: gardeners can save the world. The line between a small farm and a big garden is a fine one, and I believe that Deppe's "gardeners" and Astyk and Newton's "farmers" are the same people - those of us growing food on a small scale for ourselves and our communities all over the world.

Nation is more about the politics -- the why-- while Resilient is more about the how. I recommend them both as good companions to one another.

Meat

Simon Fairlie

On the subject of small-scale polyculture farm systems that raise both animals and plants, another book that's rocked my world recently is Simon Fairlie's Meat.

Its cover, which looks like a somewhat cheesy hippie cookbook or maybe a children's book of the sort A Nation of Farmers references, belies the dense, academic nature of the book.

Fairlie's work is deeply detailed, thoughtful, and meticulously researched. He challenges some of the long-time core assumptions of the food justice and ethical eating movements and answers the question, "should we be farming animals" with a resounding "yes."

In my own transition in the past few years from vegetable grower to small-scale poultry and dairy goat keeper, seeing the ways that animals and vegetables are complimentary parts of a small farm or homestead system, I've experienced a dramatic shift in how I think about domestic animals that have been traditionally raised for food.

My experience as a producer of both vegetable and animal foods has given me a very different perspective on food, and in particular on foods from animal sources (milk, eggs, and meat). Producing vegetables, I've witnessed how animal inputs are essential to organic vegetable production, and thought about the fact that vegans eating only plant-based foods are quite possibly eating plant tissue that was fed with animal inputs (blood meal and manure, to name two). I've also killed thousands of insects as a vegetable grower, which has contributed to my shifting perspective on killing and food production. My experience producing eggs and milk has helped me understand the way that small-scale meat production is related in an essential way to sustainable dairy and egg operations.

Reading Fairlie's book was perfectly timed for me. I started reading it the week that I ate my first chicken in 22 years. After 20 years of strict vegetarianism and 2 years of adding fish back into my diet, I bought a whole, pastured, organic chicken from my friend Val's farm and ate it. I expect I'll write more on this subject soon, but suffice to say: it has been a big transition in my life back to the world of the omnivore. Simon Fairlie's respectful, careful, and thoughtful book has been a real gift in this transition. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the ethics of food.

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

Harvey Ussery

Speaking of eggs and meat, I am thrilled in my first year of chicken-keeping to discover Harvey Ussery's amazing manual, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.

This post is already on the extra-long side, so I won't go into great detail about this book, but suffice to say it is thorough, detailed, funny, smart, and grounded in immense respect and care for the animals that he's describing.

Ussery wastes no time in dispensing with the myth of industrial "organic" and "free-range" eggs and chicken and then gets down to the business of detailing exactly how to raise your own small flock. He covers topics I have never seen in other poultry how-to books, and like Carol Deppe, allows us to benefit from his many years of innovation, observation, and experimentation with poultry.

Not for the faint of heart or for those more on the "chickens as pets" side of the divide that runs through the chicken-keeping world, Ussery's book includes detailed (and graphic) information about butchering and processing chickens.

Returning to the theme of Fairlie's Meat, Ussery's book reminded me that we are not really being honest with ourselves if we think we can have eggs without chickens dying. Chicken lovers ordering day-old chicks from hatcheries are either contributing to male chicks being killed at the hatchery (if ordering pullets only) or will have some extra roosters to deal with down the line (if ordering "straight run" or unsexed chicks). In terms of true sustainability with farm and homestead systems, the issue of culling has to be addressed. We can either outsource it, which is what we're doing if we buy female chicks from a hatchery, or we can be responsible for it ourselves.

There's a lot more to say on this subject, a topic for another time, but for now I will leave you with a hearty recommendation of Harvey Ussery's book and the website he maintains with all sorts of interesting information, updates, and articles (The Modern Homestead).

So that's my wrap-up of my winter reading list...with a big thank-you to Ann Trigg for cultivating in me a love of the written world, and for some really great Christmas presents this year from Chelsea Green.

On Milk: Dear 16 year-old Me

2012-01-03T22:29:00.017-05:00

Mona and baby Moonpie, two of our beloved Nubian dairy goats

Dear 16 year-old me,

Hey you, pulling your PETA literature out of the family mailbox on the rural route. Good for you. You're doing your best to do the right thing. I'm proud of you for realizing that food is important, and for grasping that the way most of the food you've been eating is produced is brutal, unhealthy, and morally repugnant.

Good job saying goodbye to your beloved quarter-pounder with cheese. I'm proud of you for believing with all of your heart that our small, daily actions are important and that personal decisions have the power to create social change. You are right. You will probably be happy to know that your 38 year-old counterpart still believes in that power. I so appreciate your passion and your conviction, and your desire to know the truth and do the right thing.

Specifically, you're right about the meat industry as it exists. The meat and milk and eggs you can find on the shelves of your supermarket in the late 1980s are beyond bad. But what you don't know now is that by the time you're in your thirties, the range of food options available to you will be very different. And your perspective will be more nuanced and complex. Things will have changed, and you will have changed. We could have a long conversation about meat, animals, vegetables, and health - I would love that and it would be spirited, contentious, and fun.

Maybe I'll continue to write to you here in this format that wasn't invented (the blog) on something called the internet, which was just a glimmer in Al Gore's eye back when you were reading Peter Singer's Animal Rights.

But for now, there's one thing in particular I hear you saying that I'd like to respond to: "humans are the only animals that drink another animal's milk." I know you think it's disgusting and unnatural, and it's also wrapped up in your new-found insight into factory-farmed dairy - where sick, exhausted milk cows are hooked up to milking machines, pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, and living miserable lives. Twenty years later, there are still articles circulating on Facebook (something else that hasn't even been dreamed of yet - Mark Zuckerberg is probably in preschool) about how unhealthy and unnatural milk consumption is for humans.

Yogurt from our goats' milk

But here is the answer that pops into my head twenty years later to your impassioned, heartfelt, and true statement:

Yes. Humans are the only animals that drink the milk of another animal. We are the only animals that do many of the things that we do. Let me name a few: cultivate gardens, plant seeds, cook, build fires to keep warm. There are many more examples.

Some of the things that we do that no other animals do are destructive and morally questionable. You and I do some of them anyway. An example in this category would be driving in cars on highways. Some of the things we do that no other animal does are not destructive or morally wrong just because they are unique to us. For example, we plant potatoes.

Would you be surprised to know, dear teenaged me, that the you of the future owns dairy animals? Our animals our healthy and happy, we milk by hand, and we drink the milk raw. I also plant potatoes, something no other animals do. I believe that the milk our goats produce, like the vegetables we grow in our gardens, is healthier and more nutritious than food you can find on supermarket shelves.

Potatoes au gratin with our goat milk and goat cheese. Cooked on a woodstove - note that no other animals chop firewood, construct woodstoves, or invented the cast iron skillet. Or have cameras or "The Joy of Cooking."

Oh dear sweet, sharp, scrappy, strident, loving, and well-intentioned me, here is what I'd most like to say to you: be as gentle with yourself and others as you are with the planet. Be open to change. Be open to changing your mind.

If you could know that after 20 years of strict vegetarianism and intermittent veganism you would suffer from debilitating health problems that very likely were caused or exacerbated by your diet, would you still make the same choices? Maybe so. And maybe those choices were the right ones at the time. Looking back, I think they probably were given your options at the time. But as clearly as you know that factory-farmed meat and dairy and eggs are wrong, I know that raising animals for eggs, milk, and meat can be part of an ethical way of life.

And as for milk, I say YES, humans stand alone as a species in having domesticated other animals in order to drink their milk and make cheese, yogurt, whipped cream, and butter from it. I'm so glad we do! Milk in its natural state - not factory-farmed, processed, and lifeless but fresh from the goat (or cow) is good food. Protein. Fats. Healthy bacteria. You can read a lot about it these days when information is so very accessible compared to the way it was in the late 1980s. (Here are a few things I've posted in recent years involving milk.)

I'm fascinated by the history of this relationship between humans and our domesticated animals, and grateful to be part of the continuing tradition of caring for these animals well on a small, homestead scale.

So there you have it, 16 year-old self. You will one day make butter. No other animal does that. And you will love that butter and know how good for you it is. You will know the animals that produce the milk you use are happier in your dairy-loving care than they would be just about anywhere else. And you will believe with all of your heart that it benefits the planet for people to produce their own food, including raising dairy animals for milk.

Oh, and you'll get to see R.E.M. live four or five times in the future (which is now my distant past), the prospect of which I know is pretty thrilling to you. Enjoy!

Love you!

Thoughts on the Season

2011-12-23T11:44:00.008-05:00

I've been collecting thoughts on the season that have been accumulating around the edges of my consciousness for the past few weeks.

Here are a few of them:

"Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season."

~Jim Wallace from "The Real War on Christmas," Sojourners

"But I can’t escape this: we have cut ancient trees to give the children big houses. We poison the fields to give them bread. We manufacture toxins to give them plastic toys. We kill village children to give our children world peace. For the sake of the children, we amass wealth by ransacking the world where they will have to live. What kind of love is this?"

~Kathleen Dean Moore from a beautiful and moving reflection in Orion, "What Kind of Love is This?"

And.

In spite of all this, we still celebrate the return of the sun, the passage of the darkest days of winter and the hope that exists in dark, sad times for the return of light and life:

"Hope is not a prognostication — it's an orientation of the spirit. Each of us must find real, fundamental hope within himself. You can't delegate that to anyone else. Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It's not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope."

~Vaclav Havel, from an essay I have returned to several times over the years, including on the occasion of Havel's recent death, "Never Hope Against Hope."

I've returned too to my ruminations on the solstice from two years ago ... a time to notice and know darkness, a time to honor the dark, a time to honor the dead. It is a time to sit with the painful and the difficult things, with loss, with despair. It's the dead of winter.

And: it is the birthday of the sun--the birthday of light in the midst of the darkest time of year. A turning point, the return of the light, a time of transformation, a time of hope, and a time of rebirth.

In many ancient traditions, Winter Solstice is a time to honor the way that life emerges from death, light emerges from dark in the cycles of the natural world. A time to look forward to Spring and Summer and the bright, hot months when everything will be in fruit and flower, imagining what will come to be.

And finally, my favorite recent variation on the theme of pagan origins of modern seasonal traditions, "Santa is a Wildman" by Jeffrey Vallance.

Happy Christmas, happy Solstice, sweet bright blessings for these dark days.

On the economy of plants and hard virtues

2011-11-13T08:25:00.013-05:00

I am at home. Don't come with me.

You stay home too.

From "Stay Home" by Wendell Berry

On Wednesday night, I went next door to Warren Wilson College to see Wendell Berry with Christopher and my parents. The crowd at the college chapel where Mr. Berry spoke was so huge that we ended up watching and listening with a couple of hundred other people on a live feed from another building on campus. In his deeply humble and entirely unpretentious way, Mr. Berry read one of his short stories, At Home, and then answered a few questions from students.

At Home is a story of small details, a beautiful embodiment of Wendell Berry's ethic and way of life. His reading was slow, deliberate, and quiet. For me, listening to the story required a disciplined effort to slow my mind down and be still and patient. The pace of the story, and of Wendell Berry's whole way of being, was so radically slow compared to the pace of computers, cars, and smartphones in the world in which I usually live. Berry's words were so evocative and his pace so meditative that I almost felt like I was dreaming.

"He could not distinguish between himself and the land," Berry writes of the central character in "At Home." I emerged from "At Home" with a deep calling to my own home and land, to which I have been gradually becoming more and more inextricably connected over the past five years. Will there come a time when I can no longer distinguish myself from the land? I hope so.

After the reading was finished, Mr. Berry responded to questions from students - I first wrote "answered questions" and then realized that he was reluctant to provide "answers" in most cases, but instead gave subtle, thoughtful responses, often lightened with wry humor.

I was jotting notes as he spoke, still moving somewhat slowly after being immersed in the world of Berry's short story, but here are a few of my favorite moments:

In response to questions from students about how we can find our way out of the ecological predicament we have created: "Problem solving is not applying the maximum force as relentlessly as possible. It requires patience, resignation, and other hard virtues." And later, "No one knows the answer. Don't trust anyone who says they do. The answer will have to be lived out." And finally, "We are working from the inside, necessity is working from the outside. The world is not going to continue to yield what we have come to expect of it."

In response to a question about how "people of faith" might be involved in the environmental movement: "It's hard to think of a person who doesn't have faith in something. The human mind is by nature faithful."

He encouraged students to "Get your language right. Call things by their right names." He talked about health in communities, referencing Aldo Leopold's concept of "land community" (a concept he fleshes out in more detail in his essay "Conservation and Local Economy").

When asked about Occupy Wall Street, he reminded us that "great public movements must be accompanied by local, small, private acts." He also noted that when we are told, "inform yourself," we should remember that "to inform is to shape inwardly."

He talked about making local food economies "that will be the kindest to the home landscapes of the world."

At the end of the evening, Mr. Berry repeated twice what he called one of his "articles of faith": "Things aren't going to get so bad that someone who is willing can't make it a little better."

That is the kind of hope, small and persistent, that I can feel resonating in my heart and bones. Thank you, Wendell Berry.

Occupy the Pantry. . .

2011-10-28T13:32:00.009-04:00

. . .and the fridge, and the cupboards, and the stovetop, and the plate. And while we're at it, let's occupy the pasture and the hen house and the dairy barn and the vegetable garden.

Watching the Occupy Wall Street movement crop up, proliferate, and bloom over the past few weeks has been good for my soul.

Enough has been written about corporate control of food systems and how it serves the 1% while harming the planet, our health, and workers. I don't need to add my own long diatribe here. Suffice to say that the multinational for-profit food industry is part of the problem that OWS is rallying against. Industrial agriculture and the food policy it has spawned by way of corporate control of our political process contributes to hunger, pollution, and the destruction of small farms and farmland.

So taking control of your own food supply and working for community food justice is part of the solution. And it feels good to be aware of doing that one small part while a bigger movement grows all around us. I like thinking of planting lettuce in our winter gardens and gathering eggs in the morning and canning tomato sauce as actions in solidarity with the Occupiers all over the world.

Some of my favorite posts on related notes:

Occupy Your Kitchen (great post with lots of tips for wresting your food supply from corporate control by Laura Everage/Family Eats)

Revolution Begins In Your Kitchen: Occupy Wall Street from Your Kitchen (Lindsay Curren at Transition Voice)

Occupy the Pasture (Steph Larsen at Grist)

Along the same lines, check out this great Ted Talk on gardening as a revolutionary, subversive activity:

Roger Doiron reminds us, among other things, that "food is a form of energy...but it's also a form of power. And when we encourage people to grow some of their own food, we're encouraging them to take power into their own hands. Power over their diet, power over their health, and some power over their pocketbooks. And that's quite subversive because we are also necessarily talking about taking that power away from someone else -- from other actors in society who currently have power over food and health. You can think about who some of those actors might be." I also love his statement that "gardening is a healthy gateway drug to other forms of food freedom."

To wrap it all up, here's a great quote from the ever-amazing, Frances Moore Lappé, one of my heroes, whose recent article in The Nation I highly recommend:

‎"At its best, [the food] movement encourages us to “think like an ecosystem,” enabling us to see a place for ourselves connected to all others, for in ecological systems “there are no parts, only participants,” German physicist Hans Peter Duerr reminds us. With an “eco-mind” we can see through the productivist fixation that inexorably concentrates power, generating scarcity for some, no matter how much we produce. We’re freed from the premise of lack and the fear it feeds. Aligning food and farming with nature’s genius, we realize there’s more than enough for all."
~Frances Moore Lappé, "The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities"

Seed Saving Season

2011-10-25T07:01:00.002-04:00

My kitchen is piled high with seeds drying on screens and sheets of newspaper at the moment, along with the end-of-season glut of imperfect peppers and tomatoes. We had our first killing frost on Friday night, and everything that needs to be kept warm and dry is now crammed into our tiny seven-hundred-and-something square foot house. Being surrounded by seeds feels very comforting somehow, though. All of that potential under one roof.

Tithonia

Look out for lingering pollinators

Red Zinger hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa, also known as red sorrel or roselle) drying for seed and tea

Texas Sage seeds drying (although why I bothered, I don't know - they self-seed so prolifically that saving seed is really gilding the lily, so to speak...I'll have some seed to give away and trade).

Zinnias

Calendula

Zinnia seeds drying on a screen

Those beautiful Red Zinger calyxes again

Amaranth

2011-10-24T20:02:00.006-04:00

I harvested amaranth this week and it was so gosh darn photogenic that I just had to post some photos. I can't get enough of its beautiful colors and textures.

I blogged about growing, harvesting, threshing, and using amaranth last year around this time but this year I'm just going to post these photos.

Luscious. The varieties we grew are Mercado, Golden Giant, and Burgundy, all heirlooms.

Something about these photos just really does it for me. They just feel like the essence of this beautiful Fall to me.

If you are not into the full-on supermodel of homescale grain production photoshoot, just click over to the more practical post from last year here. But here are some more photos for those of you who feel me on this.

Pickled Peppers Two Ways

2011-10-22T12:54:00.021-04:00

Even with hoophouse protection, pepper season is over. It was a great year for peppers in our garden, probably the best pepper season in the past five years, but all good things must come to an end. We had our first killing frost last night, and the temperatures dropped low enough to blitz the last of the peppers and tomatoes that had been barely hanging on in our unheated high tunnel.

So it was time to pick the rest of the fruits, lay the unripe ones out to finish ripening on the kitchen table in the sun, and preserve the rest. I usually fall back on my tried-and-true Sweet Pepper Hash recipe for preserving peppers, but I had already put away such a tremendous stockpile of Sweet Pepper Hash this year that it was time to diversify.

I tried out two new pickled peppers recipes, both of which look very promising. Both recipes are based on ones I found in "Stocking Up," a classic Rodale publication by Carol Hupping Stoner of which I have a treasured 1977 edition. (The entire book is amazingly available online here: Stocking Up: How to Preserve the Foods You Grow Naturally, Carol Hupping Stoner, Rodale Press, 1977.)

Here are the recipes:

Pepper Pickling Method #1:

Pickled Whole Peppers

4 quarts whole, ripe long peppers (these can be hot peppers like Hungarian or Banana, or sweet frying peppers - I used Jimmy Nardellos)
1 1/2 cups salt
4 quarts plus 2 cups water
2 Tbs prepared horseradish
4 cloves garlic
10 cups apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup honey

Jimmy Nardellos after soaking in salt water for 18 hours, ready for packing into jars.

Cut two small slits along the long sides of each pepper
Dissolve salt in 4 quarts of water. Pour the salt water over the peppers and let stand for 12 to 18 hours in a cool place, covered.
Drain, rinse, and drain again thoroughly.
Combine 2 cups water and all remaining ingredients except the honey and bring to a simmer. Add honey.
Pack peppers into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Pour boiling pickling liquid over peppers, ensuring that the 1/4 inch headspace remains. Adjust sterilized lids and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Whole pickled peppers after processing

Pepper Pickling Method #2:

Pickled Sweet Pepper Strips

Wash, stem, and core peppers, and slice lengthwise into strips. Steam blanch the strips for 2 minutes, then plunge them into ice water to cool. Drain.

Pack the cooled strips into hot, sterilized pint or half-pint jars. Cover them with a boiling syrup made from 1/2 part honey to 2 parts apple cider vinegar. Leave 1/4 inch headspace. Cap with sterilized lids and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Red bell pepper strips ready for steam blanching, canning pot boiling on the woodstove

The finished product

The second recipe is much quicker, easier, and less involved than the first, so if you're looking for a speedy way to deal with a pepper onslaught, I recommend pickling them in strips. It turns out looking really lovely, too, especially when you mix red, orange, and yellow peppers. The pickled whole peppers didn't turn out looking as glamorous as I thought they would, I think because the horseradish makes for a little cloudiness. I'm sure the horseradish could be left out for a clear, pickling liquid that better shows off the pretty peppers.

We grew about 20 varieties of heirloom and open-pollinated sweet peppers this year, plus a few seasoning peppers and hot peppers mixed in. My long-time favorite sweet peppers are Jimmy Nardello, Corno di Toro, and Kevin's Early Orange, and they did not disappoint. But Chocolate Bell and Quadratto di Asti Rosso were standouts this year too, and we will grow them again.

Peppers are a great lesson in patience in the garden, starting out from seeds indoors as early as February and only really coming into their prime in September or even early October. The big, ripe bells always feel like treasures to me after all the months of waiting.

Having enough peppers to preserve for the winter feels like such abundance. Store-bought out of season peppers are such a luxury item, pricey both in terms of cost to the customer and cost to the planet. To have a few jars of peppers stashed away on the shelf feels like real wealth--what better riches than beautiful, bright, sweet peppers on a dark winter day!

Bean Season

2011-10-04T17:58:00.007-04:00

I spent the afternoon shelling dry beans with my sister Mary. The heirloom varieties we grew are just so lovely, so I had to post a few shots.

Calypso beans

Lina Cisco's Bird Egg beans

Ireland Creek Annie's beans

And our old standby, Cherokee Trail of Tears beans

Up-Cycled Freezer Contents

2011-09-29T11:16:00.010-04:00

Homemade ketchup from last year's frozen cherry tomatoes

It's a time of transition here on the farm, appropriately enough in this Equinox season. Two friends who have been living here for the past year are moving away, two new farm residents are arriving, the garden is winding down, we have only one more tailgate market day in the season, and everything is starting to feel cooler, slower, and quieter.

Our new neighbor-friends suggested going in on a bulk meat purchase from the WWC farm next door, which has motivated me to clean out our freezer. Since I went way overboard preserving vegetables last year when we had more produce than we could possibly sell or consume, the freezer was still full of jars of whole cherry tomatoes, wild blueberries, salsas, pestos and etc. It got to the point with the cherry tomato overload last summer that I was just rinsing them and stuffing them in half-gallon jars whole. And there quite a few of those jars still hanging out in the freezer by the end of tomato season this year (that being now).

This is what 10 quarts of frozen cherry tomatoes looks like:

Soooo, it was time for "out with the old." I made some super-delicious juice from all of the wild and tame blueberries piled up in the freezer, and am chipping away at the pesto, but what to do with gallons and gallons of thawed cherry tomatoes?

How could I use them without having to deal with all of the skins? I sure wasn't going to blanch and peel them all - that would have been a full-time job for a few days. Maybe something involving a trip through the food mill to get rid of all of the skins and seeds...something like ketchup!

Last year in the final throes of tomato overload, I made a big batch of green tomato ketchup, which we savored all through the winter. It made an especially delicious dressing for salad or fish when mixed with a little homemade mayonnaise.

All of those jars of cherry tomatoes got me thinking that the different flavors of all of the varieties -- smoky White Currant, sweet Sungold Select, tangy Black Cherry, and tomato-y Peacevine would make a delightfully complex and savory ketchup. Plus, I could throw in some last-year's frozen salsa to spice it up - all of the ingredients in the salsa (onions, peppers, parsley, garlic) are frequently included in catsup recipes, so all the better. More freezer space freed up, more flavorful ketchup.

The tomatoes and onions starting to cook

So here's the recipe:

Cherry Tomato Ketchup

10 quarts cherry tomatoes (fresh or frozen)
2-3 cups chopped onions, to taste
Sweet and/or hot peppers, parsley, oregano (optional) to taste
1 Tbs black pepper
1 Tbs dry mustard powder
1 1/2 Tbs high-quality salt
1 quart apple cider vinegar
1 cup honey
Combine tomatoes and onions in a pot with everything except the honey.
Pour the vinegar over the vegetables and cook for 4 hours over low heat, stirring occasionally.
Put the mixture through a food mill.I use a secondhand Foley food mill which works like a champ.
Return to the pot and bring to a boil again, and allow to boil until ketchup has achieved desired thickness. Be forewarned: This takes a LOOONG time! It's good to start the ketchup in the morning and let it cook down on low heat all day long, stirring and keeping an eye on it through the day. A good project for a rainy day.
Add honey.
Pour into hot, sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Cooking down, down, down!

The final product - yum! It came out very smoky and spicy, almost verging on barbecue sauce, but still with the classic ketchup balance of sweet and vinegary.

Viola. Freezer space freed up, delicious condiment stockpiled for the winter.

And a little something for the nerds among us: "A confusion has long existed over how to spell and say the name of the condiment 'ketchup', with several different forms recorded..."

Fall Garden

2011-09-04T14:50:00.036-04:00

Even though it was still in the 80s today, the garden looks like fall and the fall projects are in full swing. Here are a few shots from today.

Autumn Joy Sedum in bloom, with a few Red Spider zinnias mixed in:

And being enjoyed by the honeybees...

All Blue potatoes:

Keyhole bed put to sleep for the winter:

Seashells Cosmos in bloom ... I am in love with the frilly, tubular petals:

Winter squash bonanza...

...Neck Pumpkins...including a 9-pounder on top...

...Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash...

...and top to bottom: Uncle David's Dakota Dessert Squash (buttercup), Paydon Acorn, and Zeppelin Delicata...

Red Zinger Hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa, also known as red sorrel):

Tried and true Sensation cosmos:

Sunflowers and friends:

Marshmallow in bloom, with one honeybee per flower:

Cosmos Mona's Orange and Memories of Mona:

Ready for radishes to emerge:

Shungiku chrysanthemum, zinnias, cherry tomatoes and basil still going strong, and sunflowers:

Texas Sage and Tithonia:

Silverwhite Silverskin garlic processed, graded, and ready for sale, planting, and eating.

Fall garden seeds...

Mullein and sumac drying...

And a couple of my favorite fall gardening references:

Happy fall, and can I get a "hell yeah" for the forecast for the next week -- highs in the high-60s/low-70s and RAIN!

Duck Tales

2011-08-21T10:03:00.017-04:00

Why ducks? Why these ducks? Read on, gardeners, slug haters, and egg lovers...

I'm finally getting around to posting a little something about our newest farm residents: 14 laying ducks.

We've been looking for a local source for heritage breed laying ducks for a long time, and finally found a breeder about an hour west of here who had exactly the breeds we were looking for: Khaki Campbells and Silver Appleyards. At some point I wouldn't mind adding a few Welsh Harlequins to the flock if we can find them nearby.

We have been wanting to add ducks into the mix at our place for a couple of reasons - first, they are excellent hunters of slugs and snails, and do far less damage in the garden than chickens. As you would guess, looking at their webbed feet and round bills compared to the pointy beaks and claw-like feet of chickens, they waddle and scoop instead of pecking and scratching. And the breeds that were historically kept for eggs are excellent layers, with some breeds actually out-laying chickens. Converting slugs to eggs: could it get any better?

Campbells and Appleyards are both excellent layers and active foragers, and both on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy watch list as historic breeds at risk of extinction. The ALBC is an amazing resource if you're interested in rare and historic breeds.

If you're new to the concept of heritage breeds, consider this: heritage breeds are to animals as heirlooms are to vegetables. Just as heirloom vegetables and fruits are more suited to home gardens and small farms than plant varieties bred for modern industrial agrobusiness, heritage breeds are much better suited to small, home-scale livestock operations than the modern breeds that have been bred for factory farms and large-scale production.

The ALBC explains: "These breeds are threatened because agriculture has changed. Modern food production now favors the use of a few highly specialized breeds selected for maximum output in a controlled environment. Many traditional livestock breeds have lost popularity and are threatened with extinction. These traditional breeds are an essential part of the American agricultural inheritance. Not only do they evoke our past, they are also an important resource for our future."

Of all duck breeds, Campbells are the most famous for their prolific egg production, laying an average of about 300 eggs per year. The most productive Campbells have been known to lay in the neighborhood of 340 days a year, which is pretty darn impressive.

Silver Appleyards are less prolific layers, averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 eggs per year, and were bred as a dual purpose (meat and egg) duck. They are among the most critically endangered breeds, with the ALBC's 2000 census of domestic waterfowl in North America finding only 128 breeding Appleyards on the continent. I love the Appleyards because they're gorgeous and bold, a nice contrast to the subtle, smart, and curious Campbells.

Maybelline and Bill Murray with a Campbell cohort

I impulsively added another pair to the flock just because of their gorgeous appearance: Maybelline and Bill Murray are a pair of Welsh Harlequin x Rouen crosses, and lovely to look at. She's a superb layer and they have big personalities that are great to have around - Bill Murray is definitely the elder statesman of the flock.

I love heritage breeds for the same reason I love heirloom vegetables - they exist because of a long, careful chain of stewardship over many generations, and they were selected and valued for their usefulness to people producing food at a small home-scale level. Just like heirloom vegetables, they represent the care and nurturing of countless people down through the ages who have given their time and energy to preserving and improving their genetics. Just like heirloom vegetables, they hold within their living bodies a vital genetic heritage. And as heritage breeds become extinct, genetic diversity is lost forever.

Keeping heritage breeds is important in the same way as growing heirloom vegetables. Again from ALBC: "The need for livestock conservation is urgent. Throughout agricultural history, each generation has taken its turn as steward of the genetic trust. Our generation is now in danger of bankrupting this trust and leaving little for the future. Each day, some breeds move closer to extinction. Each extinction reduces the diversity within the livestock species and the biodiversity of the Earth."

Also, it's just fun. I love sitting down at the duck yard in the morning with my cup of tea and watching the flock waddle, forage, quack, splash, and flap. That's some good down home entertainment, right there - on par with pitching our lawn chairs out by the goat barn and watching the goats play. Who needs TV?

Click over to Picasa for the rest of the photos:

Heritage Ducks at Red Wing Farm

Experiments in Cheesemaking

2011-08-07T22:30:00.011-04:00

Since Foxy has come into her milk and baby Felix has gone to his new home at Double G Ranch, we've had lots of goat milk to spare and I've been experimenting with simple cheeses.

The simplest goat cheese, which you can make without any special ingredients or equipment, is made by heating the milk to 180 degrees and adding something acidic (such as apple cider vinegar or lemon juice), allowing the curds and whey to separate, and then draining the whey (liquid) off of the curds (solids) in a fine mesh strainer or a colander lined with cheesecloth.

Then you can hang the cheesecloth up to drain for as long as you want - the longer it drains, the drier the cheese. This is the standard "farm cheese" that Christopher used to make with the milk from his goats fifteen years ago in Tennessee, and I learned the recipe from him. I love the tangy taste and crumbly, dense texture of this simple cheese.

The only disadvantage I find with this simple cheese is that it yields a relatively small amount of final product, with a large quantity of whey left over after the cheese is made. So for a gallon of milk, you might end up with something like a cup and a half of cheese. Plus, I love variety, and wanted to try some other fresh cheeses.

So I saved up to order from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company and on Thursday my "box of bacteria" arrived via UPS.

Mail ordering cheese cultures is a bridge strategy - eventually, I'd like to make my own mother cultures which I can keep on hand for cheesemaking, but I'm a novice and readymade, pre-packaged cheese cultures allow me to try out different methods and recipes and learn the ropes without a tremendous amount of trial and tribulation. "Direct set" cultures are particularly appealing as relative shortcuts to homemade cheese.

The first cheese I tried with storebought cultures was a plain chevre. There are tons of approaches to making chevre (here are a couple from Fias Co Farm) but this time I used Ricki Carroll's basic chevre recipe.

I started with a gallon of fresh goat milk and ended up with enough cheese that I reserved several cups to use as plain chevre and made a 12-ounce batch of experimental fruit and nut cheese with the dried fruit and nuts that I happened to have around the kitchen.

The plain, unadulterated chevre is super-delicious - very different from the "vinegar cheese" that we had been making. It has the smooth, creamy, buttery texture that is typical of chevre and a very mild, neutral taste. With a tiny sprinkling of salt or just alone, it is divine.

The little experimental flavored batch turned out to be kind of over the top, too good to be true. Here's how to make it:

Fig, Apricot, Walnut, and Almond Chevre

You will need:

1 gallon fresh goat milk
Handful of walnuts and almonds, soaked
Handful of dried figs and apricots
1 packet of direct set chevre culture (available here from New England Cheesemaking Supply)

Heat the milk to 86 degrees. Add the starter culture and stir.
Cover ant let sit at room temperature (not below 72 degrees) for 12 hours.
Line a colander with butter muslin (a fine-weave cheesecloth). Gently ladle the curds into the colander. Tie the corners of the muslin into a knot and hang the bat over the sink or a pot to drain for 6-12 hours until the cheese reaches your desired consistency.
Set aside as much cheese as you like at this point to use as plain chevre. Fill a 12-16 ounce container with the cheese that will become fruit and nut flavored.
Drain the soaked nuts and chop them in the food processor with the dried fruit. This will make a dry, crumbly paste of figs, apricots, and nuts.
Mix the fruit and nuts into the cheese and viola! Fancy, gourmet-style cheese that would cost you ten or twelve bucks at the farmers market or posh grocery store cheese department,

I didn't weigh or measure the cheese before I dove in, but Ricki Carroll says this recipe makes 1.5 pounds, and that seems about right. The total yield was much greater using cultures than making my farm/vinegar cheese with the same volume of milk, and the milk was barely heated at all, making this a raw milk cheese.

Making cheese from fresh milk is one of the most ancient food preservation methods. In the days before electricity and UPS, cheese was either aged in environments where the desired microbial life already existed (such as a certain cave that would produce a particularly flavorful cheese), even before people understood the microbiology behind the process, or "mother cultures" were kept alive to inoculate each new batch. Fresh, unpasteurized milk has a relatively short shelf life without refrigeration, not so with cheese.

Fresh (as opposed to aged) cheeses tend to be soft and mild, like chevre. Cheeses requiring aging are typically harder in both senses of the word. It turns out that fresh cheese is a pretty simple kitchen project - certainly easier and less involved (and less sweaty) than canning, for instance. My first forays into cheesemaking have been satisfying, easy, and delicious...so, dear reader, tune in later for further adventures in cheese. Maybe I will even get around to aging some cheese -- but for now we are eating the fresh cheese so fast that it's hard to imagine mustering that kind of patience.

Bachlelorette's Liqueur

2011-07-30T20:08:00.019-04:00

Christopher is out of town, and in addition to having a "lost weekend" with my sister Mary and going out for mixed drinks with my ladyfriends, I am taking advantage of having the house to myself by engaging in a number of complicated, messy kitchen projects (for instance, learning to make mayonnaise).

My parents, who are also out of town (separately), dropped off a big basket of peaches just before they hit the road for two weeks. Their peach tree has started producing like crazy in the past couple of years, and my world is a better place because of it.

The confluence of these two events has led me to experiment with peach preservation. However it is hot as holy hell here right now, as it is pretty much everywhere else in the United States, and I cannot bring myself to endure canning. The other day I heard someone say, "Satan called, he wants his weather back." That pretty much sums up how it's been feeling here, and I am not about to fire up the stove and stand over steaming pots in the middle of the worst heat wave anyone can remember.

So I turned to this book, which I raved about in more detail last year, for assistance.

I found a great heat-free recipe for "Officer's 'Jam' or Bachelor's Liqueur" which is basically what is known in the South as Brandied Peaches, but without the canning.

Here it is. Since I'm bachin' it this week, I changed the name.

Bachelorette's Liqueur, or Brandied Peaches Sans Heat

Ingredients:

Peaches

Good Brandy

Sugar (roughly the same quantity as the fruit or less)

Cut fruit into pieces and remove pits. Layer it into a stoneware pot or a crock with a lid. After each layer, add sugar (I used far less sugar than fruit). Do not stir.
After all the layers are in the crock, pour in enough brandy to submerge everything. I topped this off with a plate that fit down inside the crock to prevent any air exposure for the fruit.
You can keep adding fruit as it ripens throughout the season, just keep topping with sugar and adding brandy. Again, do not stir.
Mrs. Defacqz of Switzerland who submitted the recipe to Terre Vivante says that the mixture should be allowed to sit for at least 6 months, and is really best after a year.

I'm letting it sit in my 2-gallon crock, alongside the apple cider vinegar in the next crock over.

I'm guessing it's going to be ridiculous over some vanilla ice cream. I'm not sure if I can wait six months.

Making Mayonnaise

2011-07-29T14:32:00.022-04:00

The source of all mayonnaise

Our household consumes a huge quantity of mayonnaise. This is mostly because of Christopher, who believes that mayonnaise makes everything better, and often serves himself such a large portion of mayo that it appears more like a side dish than a condiment. Naturally, with plenty of fresh eggs from the chickens and a great local source of cheap organic extra virgin olive oil, I decided it was time we start making our own mayonnaise.

Years ago, I made some aioli to serve with fresh asparagus and it was a triumphant kitchen moment. I had a vague memory that it involved whipping for a long time, and pouring in the oil very, very slowly. My friend Kathryn makes mayonnaise sometimes, and I remembered her saying she used a blender. I did a little googling and found this excellent recipe for "Homemade Mayonnaise Without Tears" which recommended using a mixer with whisk attachments.

I don't have whisk attachments, but I figured that couldn't be that big of a deal, so I grabbed some eggs and got started.

A couple of hours and four appliances later...I had achieved mayonnaise. But it was not easy, let me tell you. I share this story in the hopes that it may spare some future mayonnaise maker from the frustrations of mayonnaise failure.

I started out with my grandmother's Sunbeam Mixmaster. It seemed like a reasonable choice given the "No Tears" recipe, plus it is glamourous and I always like getting it out for kitchen projects.

I do not recommend a mixer like this for mayonnaise-making. The beaters only hit the center of the bowl, leaving the edges unwhipped/unblended, and the whole Sunbeam operation was a colossal failure. I ended up with an oily, un-emulsified, very un-mayonnaise-looking mixture. It looked like raw egg yolks and oil blended together. Which is what it was.

Next I switched to the hand blender (aka immersion blender). This is a tool that I love and that a number of people in the googleverse recommend for mayonnaise making. I almost burned up the motor, and created a foamy yellow oily substance. I kept whipping, waiting waiting for that magic moment of emulsification, but it never happened.

At this point, fortunately I found several references saying that failed mayonnaise could be substituted for oil to make a new batch, so I saved the failed batch and moved on to appliance number three, the hand mixer. This seemed like it would solve the problem of not reaching the edges that I had encountered with the Sunbeam, and incorporate much more air than the hand blender/immersion blender.

Wrong. No magic mayonnaise moment.

Finally I switched to the trusty Osterizer.

Why did I not use the blender to start with?

I followed the directions in this recipe precisely (with one small exception, see #2 below) including beating the eggs for one full minute in the blender before beginning to add the oil (in my case oil/egg failure mixture) and adding it at an excruciatingly slow pace.

Finally. Mayonnaise success. The magic moment of emulsification.

Here are a few tips for my fellow novice mayonnaise makers to spare yourself time and struggle:

Use a blender. Don't bother experimenting with mixers of any sort. They don't work.
Use the whites of the eggs too. Most of the recipes I looked at called for separating the eggs and using only the yolks. In the end I used whole eggs, including whites. Correlation is not causation, so it's possible that using whites too had nothing to do with my success, but when I used the whole eggs, it worked. I think keeping the whites made the mayonnaise a more familiar and thereby more appetizing color, too.
Whip the eggs on high for at least one full minute before adding any oil.
Add the oil with excruciating, ponderous, agonizing slowness. Drips to very slow, thin drizzles only.

In closing, I would like to say: how did people EVER do this before electricity?!? At some point in between appliances, in my search for ways to salvage the failed mayonnaise, I found this lovely post about how French vendors just whip up little batches of mayonnaise by hand using only a whisk and a bowl, just right there on the spot on the street to accompany orders of french fries. It was totally demoralizing to read this as I struggled with my four appliances and runny yellow oil and egg substance.

The ridiculous number of appliances employed, dirty dishes produced, and electricity expended probably don't justify just over a pint of mayonnaise. I can report, however, that it was immensely satisfying to finally see that creamy, thick, delicious substance appear like magic out of nothing but eggs, salt, and oil.

All the dishes, appliances, electricity - that's tuition, as my dad would say. Now I know, and there will be no stopping me in the pursuit of mayonnaise.

Ridiculous number of dirty dishes produced in The Mayonnaise Lesson.

Adventures and Misadventures in Fermentation

2011-07-21T12:00:00.029-04:00

Experimenting with fermentation over the years, I've learned that you win some and you lose some. And then there are the ones that you really, really lose.

When something that has just been fermenting for a few days or weeks goes awry, it's no big deal. But when it's been a lengthy, elaborate, labor-intensive process involving a months and months of fermentation...then I turn for comfort to pop-psychology clichés about learning to let go and tired yet soothing bromides such as "life is a journey, not a destination."

Last fall we borrowed a cider press, our farm interns Ali and Dau gleaned a whole bunch of apples from a neglected nearby orchard, and six of us spent an afternoon making fresh apple cider.

First the apples had to be chopped into a mash.

Then came the pressing. Lots and lots of pressing.

What was left of the apples after the pressing

Then came the straining.

Fortunately, at that point we drank quite a bit of fresh cider on the spot and bottled up a bunch for drinking fresh in the week to come. It was ridiculously good.

The last three gallons of cider we set aside for fermentation into hard cider. Two gallons were poured into glass gallon jugs with a plastic bag/rubber band lid for a controlled fermentation and the last gallon we fermented in a cloth-covered crock for a "spontaneous" hard cider a-la Wild Fermentation.

The spontaneous cider was awful. We still have a dozen or so bottles of it around because I hold on to the notion that aging in the bottle might improve it and I can't bear to let it go. The glass jugs first fermented like crazy for a while and then once they were done "working," we switched out the plastic bag/rubber band combo for an airlock.

11 months later, I tasted it. The first gallon was tolerable. The second gallon was downright ¡guácala! as they say in Español.

Because I haven't learned that aforementioned "letting go" lesson, I bottled up the first gallon and decided to convert the second into apple cider vinegar. The vinegar-making is a nice diversion - I've convinced myself it's a great use for the end product of all of that work (something about lemons and lemonade comes to mind).

We use tons of apple cider vinegar for pickling, preserving, and everyday consumption, and it seems like a staple while hard cider seems like a luxury item.

The best apple cider vinegar is apparently made from hard apple cider and here is how it's done:

Pour the hard cider into a ceramic crock or wide-mouthed glass jar
Add a bit of live-culture apple cider vinegar (not pasteurized - with "the mother")
Cover with a cloth to keep bugs out and ferment for 4-8 weeks at 70-85 degrees.

The fermentation adventures continue. Here's hoping that my trusty 1-gallon crock will come through with its magical powers of transformation and we will have a gallon of delicious apple cider vinegar in 4-8 weeks. One year, lots of effort, and lots of microbial activity later . . . . lemons / lemonade, journey / destination, etc, etc, etc.

UPDATE (September 1, 2011): The end result was the best apple cider vinegar I've ever tasted. Since we actually use a much larger volume of apple cider vinegar than hard cider, I consider myself fully satisfied with this fermentation project.

Seminal Work

2011-07-17T11:18:00.012-04:00

It's hard to believe I've never read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring before now. I've been meaning to read it for years, and I'm so glad I've finally gotten around to it.

It really is an incredible, revolutionary, prescient, and brilliant book. So much of what Rachel Carson wrote is so relevant for those of us engaged in growing food now, and really for anyone who cares about the health of the planet and our own health.

I always thought that Silent Spring was just about DDT. It is so much broader and deeper than that--it's really an indictment of the whole way of thinking that sets humans apart from the rest of the natural world.

Silent Spring has a lot to say about how we grow food. Carson's comments on agriculture are still relevant and cutting-edge, even 50 years later. She advocates polyculture/interplanting and explains the problem with monoculture (although I don't think the word had been coined yet), explains the concept of broad-spectrum insecticides--which she says should really be called "biocides," discusses the affect of pesticides on honeybees, explains the way that invasive species of plants and insects can disrupt ecosystems, and exposes the history and origins of synthetic pesticides. She explains that the first synthetic pesticides were developed during WWII, and were chemical agents developed by the military for use in chemical warfare, intended to be lethal to humans. Insects were used to test the poisons, and it was inadvertently discovered that they were also lethal to insects.

Reading Silent Spring has made me bump Linda Lear's biography of Rachel Carson to the next-up spot on my reading list - I'm just staggered by the breadth of this woman's knowledge and analysis, and moved by her beautiful writing. She apparently wrote Silent Spring while suffering from rapidly-metastasizing breast cancer, racing against the disease to finish her life's work. In the 18 months that she lived after the book was published, she was viciously attacked by the chemical industry, which branded her a "hysterical spinster."

Portrait of Rachel Carson from Robert Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell the Truth" series.

I honor the "hysterical spinsters" of days gone by as my feminist foremothers, and am so grateful for Rachel Carson's courage, vision, and brilliance in defense of systems of life on the planet.

Here are some quotes from what I've read so far:

"Under primitive agricultural conditions the farmer had few insect problems. These arose with the intensification of agriculture--the devotion of immense acreages to a single crop. Such a system set the stage for explosive increases in specific insect populations. Single-crop farming does not take advantage of the principles by which nature works; it is agriculture as an engineer might conceive it to be. Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds. One important natural check is a limit on the amount of suitable habitat for each species. Obviously then, an insect that lives of wheat can build up its populatio nto much higher levels on a farm devoted to wheat than on one in which wheat is intermingled with other crops to which the insect is not adapted."

"The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very nature of its life."

"Future historians will be amazed at our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind?"

"It seems reasonable to believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction."

seminal (ˈsɛmɪnəl)

— adj
1. highly original, influential, and important
2. (botany) of or relating to seed

[origin: from Late Latin sēminālis belonging to seed, from Latin sēmen seed]

Easy, Creamy, Dreamy: Raw Goat Milk Yogurt

2011-07-08T08:00:00.002-04:00

So I have discovered that there is almost no work at all involved in making yogurt from raw goat milk. The goats and the microbes do all the work for you! Put some milk in a jar with a little bit of yogurt and viola: creamy, thick, sour-delicious yogurt.

Raw milk yogurt is so easy to make it's hard to even use the word "recipe" here, but here's the recipe:

Goat Milk Yogurt

Fill a clean quart jar almost to the top with raw goat milk
Add a spoonful or two of live culture yogurt
Screw on the lid and let sit for 18 hours or so in a warm place.
Enjoy. Save a couple of spoonfuls for the next batch.

Yum. After the past few years of perpetual move-busting, it's nice to do something that is easy.

I would like to thank the fabulous Ms. Foxy Brown for providing the milk for this adventure in cultured dairy.

On the Unexpected Rewards of Falling Behind

2011-07-07T06:58:00.002-04:00

Volunteer potato

For the past few months, I've been bitterly lamenting the fact that our garden has been neglected to the point of chaos because of goats, plant sales, and off-farm work. Last fall, my life was consumed by managing a political campaign. Then our amazing interns finished their summer garden commitment, decreasing the garden labor available substantially. And it's only gotten worse since then.

In the Spring, our business selling heirloom plant starts exploded, and we grew and sold thousands of seedlings to gardeners in Asheville, Hendersonville, and Black Mountain. Plus our goat herd expanded (and will continue to, as pregnant goat bellies swell). All of this farm business was wonderful, but was only possible at the expense of our own garden.

By the first of June, the garden was totally out of control. Weeds were as tall as me in some places, and thick. We had a dense cover crop of ragweed and poke. We were planting annual vegetables at least a month later than usual--in some cases two months later than we had intended. As two Virgo first child overacheivers, and as a household that relies on the garden for all of our fresh produce and much of our food year round, we were getting pretty depressed about the whole situation.

The last of last year's mixed heirloom dry beans

I kept reminding myself of something that a friend said to me in the past few years along the lines of "Everyone's always in such a hurry to get their plants in the ground in the Spring, but it's really no rush - we have such a long growing season here, and there's plenty of time."

Dry beans and winter squash that need 100 days to maturity still have plenty of time before first frosts here, even being planted in early July. Which is a good thing since I just planted the last beans and squash today. Of course the pests get worse and worse the later in the summer it gets, but c'est la vie.

So now to the part about unexpected rewards. Last fall during campaign season, which was also goat barn-building season, we did a thing that we tell the students in our gardening classes never to do. We left almost all of our permanent raised beds exposed - no cover crops, no mulch, nothing but whatever was left of the straw mulch from last season. The only exceptions were the beds we planted with fava beans and garlic in the fall for spring harvest.

I was cursing our negligence as I pulled 5-foot tall Queen Anne's lace and dock from the beds to clear them for my ultra-late bean and squash planting. Until I realized this: we had a whole unexpected crop of volunteer potatoes. Pulling weeds was like hitting the potato jackpot in those ten or so beds. Each 40-foot bed that we weeded yielded about 15 pounds of potatoes. (yesterday's haul from weeding two beds pictured above).

And: there is nothing like volunteer potatoes to aerate a raised bed. The soil was so loose and ready for planting by the time the potatoes were all dug out that we were able to skip the broadforking that's usually part of our no-till bed prep regimen. All and all, it worked out pretty well.

I'm not saying that I ever want to do it again (fight an epic battle with weeds and still be planting beans in July) but I am saying that it's a really good lesson for me that sometimes there are unexpected rewards for not doing things according to plan. Last night we dined on potatoes au gratin made with new potatoes from yesterday's harvest and fresh raw goat milk. Even when things don't work out as planned, sometimes they really work out.

Taking Care of Babies

2011-07-06T10:49:00.011-04:00

2011 is The Year of the Animal on Red Wing Farm.

First there were our girls -- three young Nubian does (Zuzu, Jojo, and Foxy Brown) and a Sannen doe named Rosie. And Buckley, a handsome Nubian buck. These goats came to us from Three Graces Dairy up in Madison County and piled out of the truck into the newly-built barn and made themselves right at home.

Then came more two more goats from Three Graces, a dog, and a brief duck experiment. 13 chickens and one deranged pea hen have been bustling around in the background through it all.

We have been taking care of babies all Spring. It started in February with the spontaneous adoption of Mona, a wonderful mama Nubian, and her 9-day old doeling Moonpie (pictured a few days after their arrival, above).

Then came little Merlin, a 4-month old buckling given to us by our friend Val at Double G Ranch, a "buck trade" on the promise of a future buckling of ours to go to Double G.

On June 1st, our Nubian first freshener Foxy Brown gave birth to the first baby born on the farm, little Felix. Motherhood did not come naturally to Ms. Foxy--she looked at Felix first with confusion and then with fear. She rejected him completely, refusing to let him get anywhere near her to nurse. We had to hold her and force her to let him nurse at three hour intervals for the first four days of his fragile little goat life, and then, miraculously, she figured it out.

The same week Felix was born, we found a listing for a full-blooded Border Collie surrendered by a breeder to an animal shelter in eastern Tennessee. We had been looking for quite some time for a rescued Border Collie to train as a goat herder, and we had to act fast. So I drove to Chuckie, TN and collected Maisey, a sweet and smart 3-month old pup who everyone has fallen in love with.

In the midst of this animal explosion, we tended and sent to new homes somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 annual and perennial seedlings. The plant babies were demanding in their own way, requiring daily attention from February through the end of May.

Three more goats are pregnant, so the babies are going to keep on coming through the fall, and we will very likely have a small flock of Khaki Campbell laying ducks established down by the pond by the end of the year.

It has been an exhausting, gratifying, and humbling experience caring for and connecting with all of the new nonhuman members of our farm family.

I've fallen off the blog wagon as animal and plant chores have eclipsed everything else. But I wouldn't have it any other way - our fridge is full of goat milk, goat sour cream and yogurt are culturing on the counter, Maisey's crashing into things on the porch chasing her tail, and baby Felix is frolicking up a storm. And The Year of the Animal continues!

Christopher and Moonpie at 4 months

Newborn Felix

Little Felix at about two weeks old with Mama Foxy

On Product Placement and Free Things

2011-05-23T13:00:00.010-04:00

I admit that I am not immune to the bright, shiny, appeal of good design and eco-consumer-culture. I have an expensive refrigerator along those lines. However, the "green" products market has really reached a point of absurdity lately. And I am usually skeptical, and often even downright testy when people start pitching products to me. This holds true whether the product is a breakfast cereal, some supplement or herbal formula that will supposedly make me feel like I am 21 again, a kitchen or garden tool that will cut my work in half, or the newest eco-designer item that looks like it is going to save the planet one purchase at a time.

Recently this skepticism/testiness was engaged when I saw this post from the Sierra Club about "furniture made from reclaimed materials." Always up for some inspiring DIY projects that keep "waste" out of the trash cycle and look cool doing it, I clicked on over. Turns out the post features "green" consumer items ranging in price from $220 to $2,450. Really, Sierra Club, has it come to this? Is product placement really the best you have to offer?

There used to be a cult in Asheville that produced and disseminated bumper stickers reading, "Stop Bitching and Start A Revolution." This slogan has become a useful catchphrase in our household, and in that spirit, I offer this reply to all of those pitching green products:

Five Free or Super-Cheap Things Greener, Healthier, and Cooler Than Any Newfangled Product

Clotheslines: You can buy one if you want to get fancy, or you can make one out of practically any string- or rope-like material. In Nicaragua, we saw clotheslines made of barbed wire. Which reminds me, if you want to see ingenious and inspiring, simple, and inexpensive design solutions, I suggest looking to the Third World. People who don't have much in the way of material resources do amazing and beautiful things with trash. Something about necessity being the mother of invention comes to mind, and I wonder if maybe we could do with a little more necessity. If you really want to splurge, get a clothes-drying rack - for under $10 you can experience the pinnacle of non-electric clothes-drying technology.
Potato Patches: Of course growing your own food in general is a way to reduce your carbon footprint, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I mention potatoes in particular because they are a) easy, b) able to grow practically anywhere, and c) able to produce more food per square food than any other common garden vegetable (although I think sweet potatoes can give them a run for their money) and d) full of the calories and starch that are the bulk of what we eat, unlike let's say goji berries or pomegranate juice. Chop up some potatoes. Throw them on the ground and pile some soil or straw on top of them. Wait a few months. Enjoy your home fries, vichyssoise, or latkes. And guess what? It's gluten-free, organic, and local and you didn't have to pay extra for it!
Libraries: One of my favorite examples of the commons. I was raised by a librarian, and spent some of the best times of my childhood in the cool, quiet, aisles of libraries. Watching a movie recently that included a scene depicting the looting and burning of the Library of Alexandria, I cried my book-nerd eyes out. The internet, of course, is kind of like a big library, but libraries have the advantage of being a place - a physical space devoted to sharing information, stories, knowledge, and art. What could be better?
Gleaning: The term gleaning was originally used to refer to collecting leftover crops from farmers' fields after the harvest. But these days there are many food-producing plants left unattended and food left unharvested altogether. Old fruit trees, in particular, are often ignored. I always imagine someone hurrying by an old apple tree on the way to the car on the way to the grocery store, where s/he will buy apple juice, or maybe even an actual apple (in rare cases). The crabapples pictured at the top of this post were gleaned from trees that produce abundantly every year - and are ignored as the fruit ripens, drops, and rots. Another form of gleaning is (with permission, of course) digging up plants from friends' gardens. Along with seed swaps, this is a great way to participate in the gift economy. There is no reason for garden centers to sell lemon balm, for instance, or anything else in the mint family. Plants make food. Plants make more plants. Don't let all that food and all those plants go to waste.
Rescuing cool stuff from the waste stream: At the risk of embodying the Portlandia Dumpster Divers stereotype, I have to note that a lot of useful and beautiful things are thrown "away." Long ago, someone pointed out to me that there is no "away." It's one of the things I've noticed when travelling in the Third World, where trash is often not hidden away. Walking down the street in some towns in Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Mexico that I've visited, I initially bristled at trash being strewn everywhere seemingly at random. Then I thought about the fact that we produce way more trash here in the USA, but we hide it, or export it to poorer countries. I have come to appreciate the honesty of just leaving trash out in the open, where someone who might use it can come across it. I'm not advocating litter, just saying that when a place looks "trashy" or "redneck" it might be because people are hanging on to potentially-useful stuff, things that need repair, or materials for making things, rather than just sending broken or messy items to the landfill. My friend Puma is the queen of making truly beautiful, artistic, and useful stuff from scraps and trash and someday I should do a whole post on his craft. In the meantime, I refer you to a cool little collection of photos that he sent me the other day involving furniture made from shipping pallets. Now those are some reclaimed, repurposed, recycled objects I can get behind.

Stepping down off the soapbox. Time to go earn some money so I can buy some stuff.

Swarming

2011-05-02T17:37:00.007-04:00

After day three of the three busiest days in our farm's life (selling more than 2,500 plants at the biggest grower-to-gardener sale in the region, with an estimated turnout of 25,000 people) I was ready for a slow and easy evening with a glass of wine and my couch. Christopher and I had finally collapsed in a limp pile of plant-selling exhaustion and were preparing to lie still for as long as possible when Christopher looked out the window and said, "WHAT IS THAT?!?!?!"

A beautiful swarm of honeybees had settled in a small hawthorn tree in the garden, about three feet off the ground! (If you click on the image above, you can see a larger version in which you can see the individual bees.) From the depths of my foggy, exhausted brain, I somehow located a dusty memory of learning about swarms at Bee School. I remembered that it is a rare and special occasion when a swarm crosses your path, and I felt certain it was beyond my beginning beekeeping skills to capture it. But I knew you have to act fast with a swarm, or risk the bees moving on.

I called two super-knowledgable local beekeepers, Joan Chesick and Calvin Robinson. Joan wasn't home, and Calvin was in another state, but answered his phone and talked me through the process, encouraging me and telling me I could do it, giving me step-by-step instructions and the confidence to peel my tired self off the couch and get out there and give that swarm a home!

Thanks to Calvin's calm and clear instructions and my best efforts, the new bee colony is housed in an empty hive body I had. The hardest part was robbing a frame of drawn comb and honey from my existing hive to keep the swarm interested in their new home. Normally our bees are easygoing and don't seem to mind my intrusion, but this time they were riled up, and I got stung a few times through my clothes and even through my rubber gloves.

Dealing with the swarm was much easier, and really magical. Here's a poor-quality video Christopher shot on my phone - it was dusk, so it's a bit hard to see, but captures the process.

What a blessing from the universe on a busy Beltane. I am so grateful for the overflowing abundance - the overwhelming turnout at the plant sale, the hundreds of gardeners who bought plants from us and the few who even brought us gifts of special and rare plants, the other vendors who created a lively barter and gift economy at the sale, and the BEES who decided to make Red Wing Farm their home!

Eating from the garden in the very early spring

2011-04-06T19:56:00.022-04:00

Our spring garlic at the tailgate market this time last year

This time of year things are just on the cusp of full-on Spring in the garden. Perennials are pushing their miraculous first green shoots up through the April mud, crabapples and apple trees are coming into bloom, and the summer annual veggies are hard at work growing inside, waiting waiting for the moment that it's warm enough to plant them out.

It's a time of year that I find deeply satisfying as a kitchen gardener and garden stockpiler. Having put away food in every way imaginable in order to eat from the garden through the winter (and maybe going a bit overboard, I have to admit), I'm still pulling jars and baskets off the shelf and finding canned goods, dry beans and peas, cured winter squash and sweet potatoes and garlic, dried tomatoes, and the last of the (slightly spongy, at this point) fall potatoes. There is still pesto in the freezer and the last of the fall-planted carrots are lingering in the bottom of the crisper drawer.

I always start the winter out hoarding those preserved foods, rationing out tomato sauce, weighing sweet potatoes in my hand to measure out just the right quantity for dinner, and skimping on the garlic. As the Spring gardening season begins, a sense of impending abundance overtakes me, and those preserved foods start flying in the kitchen as I dive into the stockpiles with reckless abandon.

And just as the preserved foods have their last hurrah, the first few early Spring vegetables and herbs are beginning: spring garlic, sorrel, chives, and hearty biennials and perennials like celery, lovage, and parsley.

I still get a thrill being able to make a meal at this time of year, before spring and summer abundance begin, with foods almost exclusively harvested from our garden.

Here's tonight's homegrown soup:

2 cups dried soup peas (I used some of the Blauwschokkers we dried last Spring)
4-5 cups of water
A couple/few bay leaves
3 good sized potatoes, thinly sliced
A few carrots (I used some lovely little oxhearts from our fall garden), thinly sliced
One large onion, chopped
4 or 5 spring garlics, greens and bulb, chopped
A handful of lovage, parsley, celery, mustard greens, sorrel -- whatever combination of greens you can get your hands on, roughly chopped
A generous Tbs or so of dried thyme leaves
Salt to taste
Butter and/or olive oil for sautéing
Pinch of dry mustard
Splash of red wine
1/4 or so of red wine vinegar

Gorgeous heirloom Blauwschokker peas as they looked on the vine last May

And the Blauwschokkers today after cooking all day on low heat

Lovage, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic....

Soak the peas overnight and cook on low heat all day with bay leaves in a crock pot or over a low wood fire
Sauté everything else in butter or olive oil with salt and thyme, adding the greens at the last minute so that they just get cooked to bright-green and tender
Pour a little of the pea broth over the veggies and let simmer for a few minutes until all of the flavors meld and the veggies are soft enough for soup.
Combine everything in the soup pot, and add wine, vinegar, and dry mustard. Add salt to taste.

Pea soup, yum. A perfect combination of fresh Spring garden goodness and the last of the winter kitchen stockpile. With a glass of red wine and a hunk of bread and a little cheese, this is a meal that makes me very happy.

On Splitting Atoms to Boil Water

2011-03-30T09:11:00.007-04:00

Most of the time, we cook on a wood cookstove, which is also our only heat source.

The model we use is a modern Amish design called the "Baker's Choice" - it cranks out a ton of heat fast with a relatively small firebox and big oven. With a good woodstove, tight and well-insulated construction, and passive solar design, the temperature in our house is super comfy.

This year we will be hooking up our household hot water to the Baker's Choice too--it's designed so that you can heat or pre-heat your hot water by running it through pipes in the firebox, and send it back to your hot water heater for storage.

Our main fuel source for the stove is scrap wood from pallets that would otherwise be headed to the landfill.

We don't use a wood cookstove because of some romantic notion of picturesque old-fashioned homesteading. We do it because household appliances that create heat (namely hot water heaters, ovens, and ranges) are major consumers of energy.

Where we live, our electricity is produced mostly by burning coal and splitting atoms. (The mix for our household, according to the EPA, is about 40% nuclear and 50% coal, with renewables making up less than 3% of the remainder, of which most comes from massive hydroelectric projects involving dammed rivers). You can find out where your electricity comes from by entering your zip code here: http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/how-clean.html.

To get the bigger picture of how electricity is made, you can also see maps by state with sites of coal and nuclear power facilities here: http://www.eia.doe.gov/state/state-energy-profiles.cfm?sid=NC.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not out here on the farm huddled over a fire in the dark. I like my modern conveniences - refrigeration, lights that turn on with the flip of a switch, my trusty Toshiba laptop, and the occasionally-used kitchen appliance (I'm particularly fond of my hand blender). But I just can't justify splitting an atom or blowing up a mountain to boil water for my cup of tea in the morning.

Knowing that the lion's share of our electricity comes from Mountaintop Removal coal and dangerous and toxic nuclear power makes me highly motivated to cut our consumption as much as possible. Similar to knowing where your food comes from, knowing where your power comes from is a good first step.

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima has brought all of this to the forefront of my mind, so I thought I would post a little something about energy here. Not that I expect everyone in the United States to install a wood cookstove, or that even if something that ridiculous happened that it would solve our energy problems.

But I stoke the fire in our stove as a small prayer for sane and simple solutions to our energy needs, solutions that work with the planet's natural forces - air, water, sunlight, tides - rather than destroying the earth and leaving toxic waste behind for future generations. It's a tiny act of resistance to the ridiculously complicated and irresponsible energy systems that humans have created.

My hope is that we learn from the tragedy at Fukushima - that the contamination of air, soil, water, and food in Japan and the low-level radiation dispersing around the planet are finally enough to teach us the lesson we need to learn about nuclear power: it's not worth the risk. Even without accidents, it's not worth the burden of the waste. (Here's an article I read recently that sums up the opportunity for learning and changing our behavior: The Lessons of Fukushima).

More broadly, my hope is that we begin to understand the foolishness of the philosophy that leads us to engage in acts like Mountaintop Removal and the creation of nuclear energy. The idea that the goal of science is "to attain a gradually greater and greater control of nature" as Oppenheimer famously put it, is arrogant and naive. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident in Japan have shown us nothing if not that the idea that we can control nature is delusional. I want us to look back at Fukushima as a turning point: the moment when we stopped trying to control nature and started working with and for the natural systems of the planet, understanding that we are part of the community of life on the planet and dependent upon those systems for our survival.

Rant complete. Now off to check on my nuclear-fueled tomato seedlings.

Dances With Goats

2011-02-06T10:56:00.004-05:00

With the unexpected addition of a Nubian mama and 10-day old doeling to our goat herd, our goat total is up to SEVEN!

Friends and family have reassured me that I am not an animal hoarder.

There is a whole lot of frolicking going on around here these days, with the young Nubians and the new baby, and we have been getting our first milk - yay!

Goats are such curious, friendly, and playful creatures - we are loving having them around! Here's how the little doeling spends her days:

Homegrown Foods in the Wintertime

2011-01-24T12:20:00.020-05:00

Canned foods and bottled meads and ciders ready for action...

The path from gardening to food preservation is a short and well-traveled one. In the ongoing quest to eat from our garden year-round, I've gone further and further down that path over the past few years. It's been a sweaty journey (standing over steaming pots in August) but a satisfying one.

I loved this recent story on NPR about the home canning renaissance - it made me feel a little less odd, or at least not alone in my oddity, as I perused my shelves and cabinets full of homegrown items.

Christopher finally had to build more shelves for food storage this year, as my jars of canned goods had begun to creep across the floor and down the hallway and our clothes were being squeezed out of the closet by winter squash and sweet potatoes.

We have finally reached the point this year where we really can eat homegrown foods every day in the winter, and where a large part of our winter diet comes from foods we preserved from the garden.

A few heroic vegetables like winter squash, sweet potatoes, garlic, dry beans, and potatoes make it easy - no canning, freezing, fermenting, or packing in oil required.

Greek Sweet Red squash

Cured sweet potatoes in storage.

Of course there are also a few unbelievably hardy vegetables like this chard harvested in mid-January, thanks to floating row cover, make a nice fresh addition to all of the roots and relishes too.

One day we'll get in the rhythm of hoophouse greens in the winter -- all of our lettuces and winter greens growing under cover in the hoophouse now are too tiny to harvest, since we planted them a bit too late.

Bruchetta with local bread (made with NC-grown wheat!) topped with a bunch of preserved spreads -- frozen mole paste and frozen pesto, and canned sweet pepper hash andgreen tomato marmalade.

There is something magical about eating those precious preserved foods in the wintertime - it seems like such a special treat.

I always feel like I'm opening a little gift from myself when I pop open a jar of tomatoes or peppers or dilly beans.

Cherry tomatoes, basil, and pearl onions preserved in salt and oil (recipe and details here) - I sauteed them in olive oil and added fresh greens, garlic, and garbanzos for a hearty winter stew.

Sweet peppers roasted and packed in oil.

Homegrown dry black beans with garlic and preserved sweet peppers, pesto from last summer's basil, and homegrown German Butterball potato "bruchettas" with various homegrown/homemade toppings, including creamy sweet potatoes.

Dilly beans, pickled green cherry tomatoes, and various other preserved things.

And then there is the occasional special winter food gift - Chinese chestnuts from Ali in this case.

Goats!

2011-01-06T17:03:00.005-05:00

I don't have time to write much, but thought I'd post a few photos of the new farm residents. . .more to come!

Goat Field Trip

2010-12-09T13:48:00.014-05:00

Today we visited Three Graces Dairy to pick out our dairy goats. Three Graces is a beautiful farm in the Shelton Laurel community in Madison County that produces super-delicious cheeses made from goat, sheep, and cow's milks.

Roberta, the matriarch of the farm family, and Romalio, who works with the goats, showed us around. They have over 100 milking goats - Saanens, Nubians, and Nigerian Dwarves - as well as sheep and Guernsey cows. Big time, by our standards!

Nubian doe

The farmstead cheese that Three Graces produces is incredible - it was served to the Obamas at the Grove Park Inn as part of a showcase of local foods from the NC mountains, and is highly acclaimed by farmers market customers. We loved trading produce for Three Graces cheese at the tailgate market this season and Christopher is rarin' to get our own milk operation going.

Saanen and Nubian

We decided on four young does--three Nubians and a Saanen--and a Nubian buck to get them knocked up. I'm still holding out for a Nigerian Dwarf, but we decided to wait until next year instead of trying to manage the breeding logistics that would have been involved with adding a Nigerian buck to our little herdlet.

We're very excited about welcoming these new residents to Red Wing Farm...and the babies that will be born in the Spring! Yay goats!

Young Nubians snuggling

Stay tuned for goat updates....the new arrivals should be appearing on the farm sometime around Christmas. And you can be sure that I will post photos!

The Saanen doe we're adopting

And up close....

Nubians

Saanen

Nubian and Nigerian Dwarf

Nigerian doe

Those ears! That smile!

A lovely Nubian girl

Amaranth

2010-11-13T10:18:00.021-05:00

Ornamental "Love Lies Bleeding" Amaranth and edible "Golden Giant" Amaranth in the garden.

Amaranth is one of those crops that starry-eyed and sunlight-deprived gardeners perusing seed catalogs in the dead of winter eagerly tack on to their seed orders, enticed by beautiful photos, alluring descriptions of edible leaves and seeds, references to ancient food traditions, and the novelty of growing grains in the garden. At least that's my experience as one of those starry-eyed gardeners.

I admit I am susceptible to seed catalog propaganda. I can't help it. I get caught up in the excitement: the possibility of growing artichokes, saffron from crocuses, and garbanzos -- I just have to try it and see if it's possible! The benefit of this eternal gardening optimism is that sometimes the long shot, novelty crop pans out. With these experimental, impulse-buy crops, I've found that cautious optimism is the way to go: investing a little attention and energy, and experimenting with small batches before going whole hog. This year, one of those experiments exceeded expectations: amaranth.

A jar of dried amaranth after threshing.

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that amaranth grows well here - its wild cousin, pigweed, is a common weed in these parts. Still, it was amazing to me how productive amaranth was in our Western North Carolina garden. We grew a couple of small patches this year and tried several different edible varieties. The ones that did best were Golden Giant and Burgundy, both from Seed Savers Exchange. Golden Giant was particularly productive, a towering presence in the garden, true to its name.

I've grown amaranth before, but lacked the commitment and follow-through to use it for anything other than a gorgeous and dramatic ornamental in the garden. This year, though, we harvested some of the huge and seed-laden flower heads to dry and thresh for grain. We didn't harvest it all (too much else going on), but we cut enough heads to experiment with drying and threshing.

I'm excited about the possibilities of amaranth as a grain crop on a larger scale on our farm -- it's a nutritious, gluten-free "supergrain" that is high in protein and contains essential amino acids, calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, and vitamins A and C. Amaranth is high in fiber -- its fiber content is three times higher than wheat. More on the health benefits of amaranth here. Like all grains, it's well suited to storage, which makes it a great crop for year-round homegrown food.

Amaranth is an ancient, traditional crop from South America, and I've eaten it in the past in breads, cereals, and as a cooked whole grain - it's nutty and hearty and slightly sweet. It's great as a breakfast cereal with butter and honey or as a grain for pilafs or serving with legumes, fish, or veggies at dinner time. You can pop it, sprout it, or grind it. In other words, its a great all-purpose grain.

Amaranth is easy to grow -- just give it good soil and water and plenty of sun.

Harvesting is easy too. Just lop off the heads when they start to go to seed (and before the birds start feasting on them) and put them in a warm, dry place with good air circulation.

We laid the seed heads out under our porch roof on an old window screen on sawhorses with a sheet underneath and let it dry for about a month.

Seed heads drying

As they dried, seeds fell through the screen and collected in the sheet below. When the seed heads were totally dry, we scuffed them around on top of the screen to knock more seeds out, and then stripped the chaff and remaining seeds from the stems. It was a breezy day, so we rubbed the chaffy fronds of seeds between our hands and let them fall from a few feet above the screen, letting the wind carry off some of the chaff.

Then we just sifted the seeds a few times through a fine-mesh strainer into jars and viola! Grain on the shelf for the winter! Very exciting.

Sifting.

I put the seeds through this strainer three times, each time removing a bit more stem and chaff. I'm sure there is a more efficient way to do this on a large scale, but this fine-mesh kitchen strainer and a canning funnel work fine on a small scale.

Amaranth ready for storage!

Hurrah for experimentation -- next year, we'll bump up amaranth production and sock away more grain for the winter! And maybe I'll finally harvest an artichoke or some garbanzos from my garden after repeated failed attempts. But I'm not holding my breath.

Further Adventures in Green Tomatoes: Pickling

2010-11-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

Determined to plow through the surfeit of green tomatoes piled on every surface in my house, I have continued my tomato-preserving marathon.

Today's installment: Pickled whole green cherry tomatoes and pickled green tomatoes.

Both of these recipes are adapted from Putting Food By by Janet Green, Ruth Hertzberg, and Beatrice Vaughan, a very fine food-preserving reference book.

I made big batches of each of these last week, and I can report that the whole pickled cherries were a satisfying and relatively quick project, while the sweet and sour tomatoes were much more time consuming (lots of steps), with a relatively small yield for all of the work (because the tomatoes cook down so much). The final Sweet and Sour Pickled Greens did taste and smell divine, though, so maybe it's worth all the effort. When we crack open a jar in the dead of winter and the memory of standing over a hot stove for all those hours has faded a bit, I imagine it will seem worth it.

Here are both of the recipes:

Pickled Sweet and Sour Green Tomatoes

7 1/2 pounds green tomatoes (about 30 medium tomatoes)
2 large red onions or 2 cups pearl onions
3/4 cup high-quality fine-ground salt
1 Tbs celery seed
1 Tbs mustard seed
1 Tbs dry mustard
1 Tbs whole cloves
1 Tbs peppercorns
3 lemons, thinly sliced plus 1 lemon, juiced
2 sweet red peppers
2 1/2 cups honey
3 cups apple cider vinegar

Wash tomatoes well and cut off blossom ends, blemishes and stems.
Slice tomatoes and peel and slice onions.
Sprinkle salt over alternate layers of tomatoes and let stand in a cool place overnight
Drain off the brine, rinse the vegetables thoroughly in cold water, and drain well.
Slice the lemons and remove the seeds; wash the peppers well, remove seeds and stems, and slice thinly crossways.
Put the spices in a muslin bag or large tea ball, submerge in vinegar, and bring to a boil.
Add tomatoes, onions, lemons, and peppers. Cook for 30 minutes after the mixture returns to a boil, stirring gently to prevent scorching.
Remove spice bag and add honey.
Pack the pickles in sterilized jars, and cover with boiling liquid, leaving 1/2 inch of headroom.
Scorch lids, cap the jars and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Pickled Cherry Tomatoes

24 cups hard, entirely unripe green cherry tomatoes
Bay leaves, mustard seeds, dry or fresh hot peppers, black pepper corns, celery seed, dill (fresh or dried), and garlic to taste
1 sliced red onion'
3 lemons, peeled and thinly sliced
4 cups water
2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup high quality, fine-ground salt

Sterilize 12 pint jars and in the bottom of each jar put a bay leaf or two, a clove or two of garlic, a dried or fresh hot pepper, 1/2 tsp of mustard seed, a couple of heads of dill or a Tbs of dried dill, and other seasonings to taste.
Pack the jars with tomatoes, layering in onion slices here and there. Leave about 1/4 inch head space, and pack the tomatoes tightly.
Make the brine by combining the water, vinegar, and salt. Bring to a boil.
Pour the boiling brine into the jars to just cover the tomatoes. Wait a couple of minutes for the brine to settle and add more brine if necessary to make sure the tomatoes are covered, still leaving head room. I found that the tomatoes have a tendency to float, so I added a slice of lemon on the top of each jar to weigh them down.
Scald the jar lids and cap the jars. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

I'm imagining using these pickled cherries as an elegant little antipasto-type dish. I can't report yet on how they will taste, but rumor has it they are a bit like olives. I predict they will be salty, tart, and sour, with a satisfying cherry tomato pop when you bite them. We'll see. I am also anticipating bringing them out for farm-style cocktails -- since they can also be used in martinis!

Green Tomato Catsup

2010-11-08T13:34:00.004-05:00

This week the Milkweed Diaries is brought to you by green tomatoes.

I emerged from three months of intense off-farm work and found myself facing an onslaught of green tomatoes. They are everywhere I look. I realize that a normal person would chuck them, but I have an obsessive drive to use as much of the food that comes out of our gardens as possible.

So here's one of the things I did with them:

Green Tomato Catsup

This recipe is adapted from the classic Rodale publication, Stocking Up, the 1977 edition of which I have a beloved, battered, hardcover copy.
6 pounds green tomatoes
3 pounds onions
1 Tbs black pepper
1 Tbs dry mustard powder
1 1/2 Tbs high-quality salt
1 quart apple cider vinegar
1 cup honey
Slice tomatoes and onions and combine in a pot with everything except the honey.
Pour vinegar over the vegetables and cook for 4 hours over low heat, stirring occasionally.
Put mixture through a sieve or food mill.
Return to the pot and bring to a boil again, allow to boil until catsup has achieved desired thickness.
Add honey.
Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal at once.
Process in a hot water bath for 5 minutes.

Before cooking....

...the amazing food mill that my friend LJ found at Goodwill, and all that was left of the cooked tomatoes and onions after milling....

...and the final product: catsup!

Green Tomato Ginger Marmalade

2010-11-04T14:26:00.006-04:00

In my ongoing quest to not waste food from the garden, I have been processing my way through pounds and pounds of green tomatoes picked before the first hard frost. I've been chopping and cooking and canning up a storm over the past week, and suffice to say that if you receive a holiday gift from me this year, it will probably involve green tomatoes.

My first experiment was a couple of huge pots of green tomato apple chutney yielding 38 half pint jars of sweet-sour chutney deliciousness. Next up: marmalade. Marmalade?! Yes, marmalade. In the search for creative green tomato uses, I came across this one and had to try it. And it turns out it's amazing.

This recipe is modified from one I found in Marilyn Kluger's classic food-preservation reference and recipe book, "Preserving Summer's Bounty", which is an indispensable resource in my kitchen. I added the ginger and some notes about how to process the lemons.

Green Tomato Ginger Marmalade

6 pounds unpeeled green tomatoes
6 lemons
1 cup water
6 cups honey
A generous handful of coarsely chopped crystalized (candied) ginger
1 tsp powdered ginger

Wash and chop the tomatoes. I used a food processor.
Slice 6 lemons into thin slices, removing seeds and retaining as much of the peel as you want, depending on how bitter you like your marmalade
Boil the lemons in the 1 cup water. Strain off any unwanted peels and seeds that you may have missed and keep the water, lemon pulp, and as many ribbons of peel as you want to retain (they're beautiful floating in the finished product)
Stir the lemony water, honey, tomatoes, and powdered ginger together. Cook slowly, stirring constantly until the mixture is thick and clear. This takes a long time. I kept the marmalade on a low simmer for several hours, stirring every so often, and it reduced considerably and became more and more marmalade-like as it cooked.
Add the candied ginger and cook for a few more minutes.
Pour hot marmalade into jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space, adjust lids, and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

What an unexpected and fabulous coping strategy for green tomato overload. So good I could eat it with a spoon (and have). The perfectly melded flavors of honey, lemon peel, and tart green tomatoes are a delight, and the ginger gives it an extra snap.

I still have five bushel baskets full of green tomatoes to process, even with all of the marmalade jarred up and cooling on the counter and enough chutney for years to come. So, dear reader, expect more green tomato recipes coming up!

Green Tomato Chutney

2010-11-03T11:29:00.003-04:00

The question of what to do with green tomatoes at the end of the season used to be so simple when my garden was smaller. Fried green tomatoes are a delicious fall treat that I've come to associate with the first frost, when all of the tomatoes have to be harvested and brought inside whether they're ripe or not. Tart and sweet, crispy and juicy, fried green tomatoes are delightful sign that cold weather is setting in. But no matter how many mouths you have to feed, you can only consume so many fried green tomatoes.

This year, we grew more than twenty varieties of tomatoes, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 tomato plants in a 40-foot hoophouse and scattered around the ever-growing garden. We sold hundreds of pounds of tomatoes at farmers markets and I canned gallons and gallons of whole tomatoes and tomato sauce, made and froze scads of salsa, preserved boatloads of cherry tomatoes in oil, and generally sacked away enough homemade tomato products to last for a long time to come.

Tomato fatigue set in a while ago, and with the chaotic schedule of my job running a political campaign this fall, the last thing I wanted to think about was processing more tomatoes. But there they were: dozens and dozens of them. Piles of them. Bushels of them.

Fortunately, my friend Penryn sent me her recipe for Green Tomato Chutney, which turned out to be extraordinary. I canned a batch this afternoon, and saved some for eating right away, since it is pretty much irresistible: sweet, tart, saucy, and divinely delicious.

Penryn's Green Tomato Chutney

3 C currants or raisins (or cranberries or a mix)*
2 lemons that you have peeled, seeded, quartered and sliced thinly**
4 1/2 C finely chopped tart apples
4 1/2 C finely chopped green tomatoes
2 cloves garlic***
1/2 C honey
2 C finely chopped onions
1 C vinegar****
1 C filtered water
2 T mustard seed
2 tsp ground ginger (or slightly more fresh grated ginger)*****
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or 1 chopped fresh, ripe red cayenne pepper
2 tsp cinnamon

Combine all ingredients except honey and simmer until they are soft (probably 30 min or so). Add honey. Pack into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Process for 10 minutes in boiling water bath. Makes about 6 pints.

Notes:

*I used a scant 2 cups, which was certainly enough

**I substituted lemon juice

***I almost always at least double the garlic in recipes! I used 5 cloves put through a press

****I recommend organic apple cider vinegar

I used a food processor, which worked quite well for all the finely chopping.

The final product was super-delicious. Unfortunately, the chutney only made a small dent in my green tomato glut--I canned 38 half-pint jars, and would have to make another half-dozen batches to see the light at the end of the tomato processing tunnel. Tune in tomorrow for further adventures in green tomato usage.

PS: Apologies for the long absence from the Milkweed Diaries...I was caught up in the biennial whirlwind of running my friend Susan's campaign for North Carolina House. She won. And I am glad to be back in the kitchen, and writing again!

Gathering Around the Table

2010-08-21T09:13:00.011-04:00

Heirloom winter squash stuffed with walnut-fig-goat cheese quinoa and served with fresh figs, elder- berries, and chevre.

To me, the kitchen table is the hearth, the center of the home, an altar, a canvass, and a hub of family and community.

This summer we've been hosting weekly "family dinners," gathering around a big, long table and sharing food, drink, and stories from the farm. I have loved these dinners--of course for the flavors of the foods coming out of the garden, but also for the sense of community that is created when friends and family come together over food. Sharing food seems to be one of the oldest, most universal ways that we connect with each other.

This time of year it is so easy to fill the table with beautiful and delicious foods from the farm and garden--it's the height of harvest season and we are eating well.

And many friends with gardens have reached that point that gardeners know so well when the volume of food coming out of the garden has become more than the gardener can handle and s/he has to issue a call for help in dealing with the onslaught of produce.

Sharon put out such a call because her fig tree was laden down with fruit, and Puma couldn't keep up with the elderberries in his front yard. So in between meetings and office time at work this week, I slipped over to my friends' yards in my and harvested the surplus fruit. Deep in the foliage of the fig tree in Sharon's back yard, reaching for the higher branches, wearing my professional attire, and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, I thought about how grateful I am for the gift economy in my community, and for the shared appreciation of good, fresh food.

Last week, we invited friends who have worked on the farm over the course of this growing season to come out for family dinner and celebrate the harvest--including figs and elderberries, along with the annual vegetables pouring out of our garden right now.

Trading with other vendors at the farmers markets has brought even more amazing food on to our table -- artisan cheeses and breads that are a perfect complement to the fruit and vegetables.

All-local bruschetta with homegrown tomatoes, beet green and basil pesto, local bread, and local goat cheese ... by Christopher

Friends bring their own delightful concoctions full of fresh local goodness to the table, too -- and the abundance almost seems too good to be true sometimes.

Blueberry cobbler by Michael ... with blueberries he picked that morning in Leicester

And as soon as the table is cleared, there is room for the next meal, and the next. Later in the week, we celebrated with our farm interns over breakfast with more incredible local food, and the abundance continued.

Butter homemade by Nicole from raw milk from Katie the cow next door.

Eggs from Gecko's chickens cooked to perfection by Dau

Butternut squash bread by Nicole

Homemade jams

I am deeply grateful not only for the abundance of nourishing, beautiful, and delicious food that we get to enjoy, but for the wealth of community that we create by connecting across kitchen tables and chopping blocks and farmers market stands.

Some of the people who helped grow food on the farm this year.

Garden Microcosm: Bloodflower

2010-08-15T20:42:00.004-04:00

Bloodflower, also known as Scarlet Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) in the garden this week.

Bloodflower is a beautiful plant that has traditional medicinal uses, but I just grow it for the butterflies, hummingbirds, and beneficial insects.

All of a sudden, the garden is all full of oranges, reds, and yellows. Golden Giant amaranth, Burgundy amaranth, sunflowers, red and yellow zinnias, Texas sage, and goldenrod. Fall colors.

Wild Harvests

2010-08-07T19:32:00.008-04:00

With the avalanche of cultivated foods coming out of the garden right now, and gardening fatigue setting in, it's nice to pause and remember that there is food all around us, available for free, growing wild.

Our first human ancestors nourished themselves by foraging, and I believe that there is something deep in our collective memory that calls us back to wild foods. There's a childlike delight that I've witnessed when people encounter food, free for the taking, outside of a cultivated garden. It's a reminder that food is not a commodity, but a gift from the Earth and part of our connection to the Earth.

Last week my sister Mary and I took our farm interns blueberry picking on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where the five of us picked about 11 pounds of wild blueberries in a couple of hours. It was a lovely excursion, complete with a dip in one of my favorite swimming holes (pictured below) and enough steep uphill hiking to leave my leg muscles sore for a couple of days.

Picking blueberries on the parkway is an annual tradition for me, infused with childhood memories, radical politics, and love of all things wild -- I wrote about all of these things last year here: "Wild Blueberries Fresh from the Commons."

We brought this year's blueberries home and made all manner of blueberry treats, including sourmilk blueberry pancakes, 5 gallons of blueberry mead, a blueberry crisp, and of course, a blueberry pie.

The mead is bubbling away, the pie and crisp and pancakes are long-since gone, and a meager quart of blueberries are preserved in a mason jar in my freezer for some winter day when we need a little burst of antioxidant-packed, wild summer goodness. Our interns are harvesting Autumn Olives and Sumac this week for more wild foods preservation projects on the farm this week. And I'm feeling gratitude for all of the nourishment, wild and tame, that's available to us if we pause and look around.

Pausing for Gratitude

2010-08-07T08:22:00.022-04:00

This time of year, marked with harvest festivals in many earth-based cultures, is a time to pause from the garden frenzy, take stock, enjoy the fruits of our labor, and be grateful. In the ancient Celtic calendar, one of the four major festivals of the year was observed at the beginning of August, called Lá Lúnasa, Lughnasadh, or Lammas, which was in that part of the world at that time the beginning of the main harvest season.

In years past, we have celebrated this time of year with fanfare; this year Lúnasa came and went without any vegetables being launched down the Swannanoa river or harvest altars being constructed, but I have been taking time to pause and give thanks for the garden this week.

I spent some time this week in the garden taking photos and feeling immense gratitude for all of the labor that created this bounty, and for the Earth's incredible abundance.

Here are a few shots from the past week in the garden and at market. Happy harvest!

Zinnias and Purslane

tail

Cherokee Trail of Tears Black Beans

Edamame

Bush beans, edamame, and lots and lots of pole beans

Depp's Pink Firefly tomato - a gorgeous and delicious Appalachian heirloom that has been a heavy producer for us this year.

Tomato jungle in the hoophouse...

Cucumbers and Globe Amaranth

Sweet potatoes, squash, and pole beans

Edamame surrounded by pole beans

Cardoon flowering

Magenta spreen lambsquarters

Love-Lies-Bleeding and Autumn Joy Sedum

Moonflower climbing

Our tomatoes for sale at the West Asheville Tailgate Market

Italian heirloom frying peppers at market

Cherry tomatoes at market. We are growing the varieties White Currant, Peacevine, Sungold, and Black Cherry.

More tomatoes! Two of my all-time favorite slicers. The green-ripening Emerald Evergreen and the beautiful Flame/ Hillbilly.

Orange Banana, Pearly Pink, and Cream Sausage tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes, sunflowers, and zinnias in the garden...plus some found- object garden art!

Book Review, Transatlantic Gift Economy, and Cherry Tomato Art Installation

2010-08-01T21:46:00.021-04:00

One day sometime in the past year, I issued a plaintive call to friends across the intertubes for someone to lend me a book I had built up a powerful urge to peruse: Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivante. My Internet Friend Annie Levy* (who is always referred to like so by her full title) promptly responded by GIVING me a copy! A woman who I have never met, who lives far across the ocean in Wales sent me a present in the mail! A really good present.

As soon as the book arrived I promptly read it from cover to cover and then commenced to re-reading, savoring, and luxuriating in each of its 197 pages. With prefaces by no less luminaries than Eliot Coleman and Deborah Madison, this dense little treasure of a book is a new favorite kitchen reference in our house.

The recipes and descriptions of techniques are simple, practical, and clearly held dear by the gardeners and farmers who offer them. Each entry includes the contributor's name and place of residence, and sometimes also information about growing, harvesting, or wildcrafting the ingredients and/or using the finished product. Over 100 people contributed to the book, and the brief personal notes that accompany their contributions make reading the book feel like sitting around a table sharing stories and techniques with other gardeners and cooks.

Some of my favorite entries are the simplest:

Plums, Variation 2.

Plums
Small crate

A pane of glass

Place whole plums in a small, well-ventilated crate, covered with a pane of glass. Keep the crate in the sun (ideally against a wall facing south).

~Annie Dijoud, St Joseph-de-Rivi
ère

The book begins with a section on root cellaring and other methods of in-ground preservation, including pits, trenches, and packing apples in elderflowers to impart a pineapple flavor. That is the sort of tidbit that I love. It continues on with chapters on drying; lactic fermentation; and preserving in oil, vinegar, salt, sugar, and alcohol. All of these methods are ancient, pre-electric food traditions that retain flavor and nutrients far better than modern methods. The flavors, textures, and look of these preserved foods remind me of shopping in open air markets in little towns in the South of France: encountering simple, delicious, and beautiful foods handcrafted with old-world grace.

I pulled this lovely little book down today when I was considering the abundance of cherry tomatoes coming out of the garden, and envisioning how nice they would look packed in a jar. But how to preserve their beauty and sweetness without compromising their vitamin-packed nutritional punch?

I looked up "cherry tomatoes" in the index of PFWFC and discovered this recipe:

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes

Small onions or shallots

Cider vinegar or lemon juice ( 1-2 Tbs per 16-oz jar)

Fresh basil, tarragon, oregano, etc. (to taste)

Coarse salt

Olive oil

Canning jars and lids

"You must start with cherry tomatoes that are very firm and ripe. ...Wash and dry the tomatoes. Peel...the onions or shallots.

Prepare scalded or serilized 16-ounce jars. Fill them with tomatoes, alternating with a few onions and herbs. When the jars are filled to about one and half inches from the rim, sprinkel with a pinch of coarse salt. Add one or two tablespoons of cider vinegar or lemon juice, and cover with olive oil.

Close the jars with a very clean lid, and store them in a rather cool place (10 to 15 C/50-59 F). The tomatoes will be ready to eat in two to three months and will keep for up to a year."

~Anne Duran, St. Front

Jars ready for capping and storing: Pearly Pinks packed in oil with basil and mixed cherry tomatoes packed in oil with pearl onions and basil.

One of the great things about simple, heat-free preservation methods such as this one is that you can quickly process small batches without lots of effort -- I packed two 16 ounce jars and an 8 ounce jar this evening and I'll continue packing more as the tomato season continues.

The jars of little jewel-tone tomatoes are as lovely as I had hoped. They feel like a little art installation on the top shelf of my fridge.

Thank you, Annie Levy, for your generosity. And thank you to the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivante.

*I met My Internet Friend Annie Levy via the Wild Fermentation facebook group. A wonderful resource for fermentation lovers, and it turns out, a place to encounter lovely, facinating, and generous people.

Homesteading Summer Camp

2010-07-30T12:57:00.024-04:00

Extracting honey

With our three interns and various visitors coming and going all through the summer, things have been very lively at the Red Wing for the past few months. "The 'terns," as they are affectionately known, are incredibly hard workers, smart as whips, and excited about all things garden- and homestead- related.

Because we don't want to exploit the 'terns and their youthful energy, we have tried to break up the hard work with fun and educational activities such as the Farm Tour, field trips, and kitchen projects.

Also, we've been hosting long- and short- term visitors, various friends and family who come to stay for days or weeks and sometimes help out with farm work or participate in Big Projects while they're here. Andriana is here from Manhattan, experiencing composting and chicken butchering for the first time, among other things. Fer was a "day camper" for two weeks while she was visiting from Mexico City, pulling weeds, spreading mulch, and generally jumping right into the fray.

Sometimes it feels like we are running a summer camp --the kind of summer camp I'd like to attend: one where the activities are shoveling manure, chopping vegetables, squishing bugs, extracting honey, discussing heirloom tomato varieties, saving seeds, identifying insects, and fermenting things.

Along those lines, we spent a day extracting honey and making mead with the 'terns and various visitors a few weeks ago. It was one of the stickiest and most delicious ways to spend a day you can possibly imagine. Here are a few shots of the process; you can view more photographs here: honey extraction and here: meadmaking.

Yesterday the campers (aka interns) convened in the kitchen and we made a big crock of sauerkraut and jarred up some brine-pickled (fermented) garlic scapes after a brief lesson on fermentation.

We followed up the festival of fermentation with a garlic tasting, sampling the ten heirloom varieties that we grew this year, cleansing our palates between rounds of baked garlic with a variety of homemade jams, baked brie, and sliced tomatoes from the garden.

Friends and family joined us to gorge on garlic and offer comments on the varieties to help us decide what to grow next year.

I was struck by how our collective work produced this incredibly delicious, nutritious, and beautiful food. Gathered around the table were people who had helped with all of the different pieces of the work of growing food: Shannon and Sharon helped dig and prepare beds, Ali and Nicole and Dau harvested and processed hundreds of heads of garlic this summer, Christopher and I chose varieties, saved seed garlic, and planted and mulched and cared for the plants. And we all savored the fruits of our labor together. It was lovely.

Best summer camp ever.

Harvests

2010-07-07T10:18:00.011-04:00

Summer squash, beets, fingerlings, and new potatoes at our farmers market booth in West Asheville.

Garlic

Ali, Nicole, and the last of the shell peas

Onions