Category: Kitchen Garden

Gardening, Farming, Cooking, Recipes, Local Food, Everything that goes into meal production.

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Kitchen Garden

Pivot to Gardening

Pruned apple tree

The first spadeful of garden soil revealed an absence of frost the length of the 10-inch divot — and plenty of earthworms.

It’s time to plant peas, lettuce, turnips — the early, albeit late vegetables.

It’s also pretty exciting. Like most people in my life I’m tired of indoors and ready to do more outside in moderate temperatures.

I rose at 4 a.m. and fell into a pattern of making coffee, heading to my work space and writing.

I read newspapers and checked social media. I wrote correspondence, emails and texts. I have three different blog posts started. Sometimes I finish a post before leaving the house. Sometimes a topic requires development so I’ll sketch an outline and work on it a few days. In any case, writing is a primary creative outlet and I value the work the first few hours of each day.

It’s only a fraction of the time and that’s where cooking, gardening and outside work comes in.

I made a two egg cheese omelet for breakfast. I’ve been viewing Julia Child’s French Chef videos about omelet-making and it made a difference in technique. Using high heat, slight agitation of the egg mixture as it’s cooking, and when to add ingredients to create the finished product. I hadn’t really considered those aspects of it before. It was a fine start to the day.

Outside I started making a burn pile, finished pruning the apple trees, and parked my car outside to leave garage space for spring. I cut back the sprouted trees in the flower bed to allow early bulbs to be seen. Spring is running late, but it’s coming fast. There will be plenty to fill my days going forward.

At the home, farm and auto supply store spring shipments arrive daily. On Thursday I unloaded truckloads of bagged dirt, large bundles of wooden fence posts, and an extra load of general freight from the centralized distribution center. It felt good to be outside in 50-degree temperatures.

I found a three-ring binder with brief writing about books I owned or read in the mid-1970s. From an entry on Dec. 2, 1975:

With reluctance I must admit my pursuit of literature outside my job has been minimal. I really haven’t been spending time at home reading. So, for the present, I am going to try a month, half a month anyway, with no poets. The daily reading is what is suffering most.

What I didn’t realize then was there would be a pivot point in life where I stopped pursuit of literature and started living it, where I read less poetry and started writing. This spring day is a reminder of that, made clear by the absence of frost in soil teeming with life and begging for something to grow.

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Kitchen Garden

Germinating Leeks

Germinating Leeks

I felt very American on the way to the farm.

A flock of wild turkeys took flight from the field on the east side of our lane, and a bald eagle was picking at a deer carcass along 120th Street.

These emblematic birds inspire me every time I see them. It was a great start to a day of soil blocking.

I planted:

Rosemary: Ferry – Morse, 85 Days.

Cilantro: Ferry – Morse, 45-75 Days.

Genovese Basil: Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 68 Days.

It was an easy day in the germination shed as there were only 20 trays to block. 21 counting mine. The farmer spent time during the week playing catch up from a cold winter and the greenhouse is full. That feels great!

Summary: Kale, broccoli and leeks have germinated. Parsley and celery have not. I’m waiting a bit longer before turning soil in the garden.

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Kitchen Garden

Seeders Galore

Kale one week after planting.

I was first to break the snow on 120th Street while driving east to the farm for a soil blocking shift. There were a lot of people in the germination shed participating in a complex bartering situation. I’m not sure any money would ever change hands.

I planted:

Parsley:

Extra Triple Curled, Ferry – Morse, 75 days.

Broccoli:

Blue Wind, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 49 days.

The kale uniformly germinated since last week. I should have plenty of starts to cull, plant, and give away. No apparent action on the leeks and celery. They take longer to germinate.

I got out into the garden briefly this week. There is the usual spring week to do. The ground remains hard, even with the recent rain. Planting is a while away. Lettuce seeds are ready to go in.

Summary: Recent rain melted most of the old snow but it ran off because the ground is still frozen. New snow fell last night. We’re running behind and so is everyone. I was asked what’s new in my garden this year. I have guajillo chilies and tomatillos planned. A Mexican food sub plot. Tacos and more tacos.

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Kitchen Garden Writing

40 Acres Sans Mule

Flooded Farm Near the Cedar River, Sept. 27, 2016

There is nothing magical about 40 acres in the 21st Century. Today’s American farmers can make a living on much less, largely because of crop diversification, technology, and emerging markets for locally grown food.

For a beginning specialty-crop farmer, 40 acres might be too much to handle.

“40 acres and a mule” entered the vernacular as a way of dealing with the question of what to do with newly freed slaves during and after the Civil War. Give them 40 acres and a mule to get started as free men, or so the line of thinking went.

In 1865, William Tecumseh Sherman provided for confiscation of 400,000 acres of land in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, to redistribute in 40-acres parcels to formerly enslaved farmers. The arrangement did not persist, although even today, presidential candidates posit the United States should pay reparations for slavery.

While specialty crop farmers work hard, long days to make ends meet and sometimes take a job in town to provide enough household cash, they increasingly seek to own their future. To a person, that means buying land. In Iowa good farmland is expensive.

For farmers, the desire to create a farm on less than 40 acres has to do with start up capital. To make a go of it as a specialty farmer on 40 acres, that means $350,000 or more for land, another $100,000 or more for an on-farm dwelling, and more for at least one barn, a couple tractors, and other equipment for cultivation, mowing, tilling, fencing and general operations. Finding a banker to finance such an operation is difficult without collateral other than the land. There is also the hurdle of what to do with all that land. While a small farm can grow into 40 acres with success and over time, a beginning farmer has much to learn and the scale can be intimidating.

Shouldn’t there be opportunities to start a farm on less than 40 acres? The county board of supervisors said no. Couldn’t you move to another county? The market is in urban centers.

In Iowa farms have an agricultural zoning exemption. Beginning farmers seek the ag exemption in order to make ends meet on narrow gross margins. To be defined as a farm in our county, and get the exemption, 40 acres is required. Some of my farmer friends have been asking for accommodation of smaller farms for many years and none has been forthcoming from the county board. The future belongs to the young and they will not be stopped.

That brings us to House Study Bill 239, an act relating to the county zoning exemption for property used for agricultural purposes. Farms are defined as follows:

The bill provides that property is used for agricultural purposes if at least 51 percent of the annual gross revenue derived from the property comes from the growing, harvesting, or selling of crops and livestock raised and produced on the property or brought to the property and not more than 49 percent of the annual gross revenue derived from the property comes from the sale of agricultural experiences and other farm-related activities.

The number of acres defining a farm becomes irrelevant should the measure pass the legislature and be signed by the governor.

This bill amounts to an end run around the county board of supervisors. While it didn’t clear the state government committee this session, it remains eligible for consideration and debate next year in the second session of the 88th Iowa General Assembly.

A representative from our county made it to the bill’s subcommittee hearing on March 5. In what was described as a long, arrogant speech, the official characterized rural residents who had been working with the county board of supervisors as “loud complainers.” Not a good look for anyone, especially a county official.

Today was a great day of spring-like weather. We can feel it in the air as farmers prepare equipment, tend livestock, and prepare for another crop. Whether on 40 acres or 4,000 there are many common threads running through farming. Whether they will be defined according to the same standard is an open question. It’s time to see if the legislature can resolve the issue for beginning farmers, since the county won’t.

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Kitchen Garden

Early Garden Planting

First Seeds Planted in the Greenhouse on March 10, 2019

I planted seeds at the greenhouse and am hopeful of the results. Here’s what I planted:

Kale:

Scarlet, Seed Savers Exchange, 60 days.
Winterbor, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 60 days.
Starbor, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 55 days.

Celery:

Tall Utah, Seed Savers Exchange, 100 days.
Conquistador, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 80 days.

Leeks:

Megaton, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 90 days.
King Richard, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, 75 days.
American Flag, Ferry-Morse, 150 days.

The garden continues to be snow covered. According to the National Weather Service, frost in the region is estimated to be 24 to 36 inches in the ground. Needless to say, until I can see the ground, I can’t dig in it.

Summary: The garden is running behind, the greenhouse is chilly, and the soil is frozen. Planting in the ground will be delayed until the soil can be worked. Hopefully the greenhouse starts will be successful. Garden work has begun.

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Environment Kitchen Garden Work Life

Wind Howled All Day

Squirrels Dining on Sunflower Seeds

The store manager from the home, farm and auto supply store phoned Sunday afternoon to ask me to work on Monday. The colleague who assumed my full time job last spring was visiting family in Nebraska and bad weather closed roads across the state, including Interstate 80. She couldn’t make it back in time for her shift.

In Iowa, helping out is part of our culture. I said yes I’d work and rearranged my plans so I could.

In addition, the farmer decided the weather was bad enough she didn’t want people venturing out to the farm. The roads were iced over and the wind howled at 30 miles per hour all day. Her sister, the shepherdess, posted social media photos of installing a new anemometer and weather station. Its LED panel displayed the digital message, “hold onto your hat!”

As I was settling in last night, the Washington Post put up an article about White House plans to form an “ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet.”

In other words, the Fourth National Climate Assessment told the story of how dire our future could be without climate action. Rather than doing something, the administration is arguing with their own scientists that global warming is not caused by burning fossil fuels. These are times that will fry men’s souls.

Which part of yesterday’s howling wind was an amplification caused by global warming? The answer doesn’t matter because it’s the wrong question. We know the deleterious effect of burning fossil fuels. We also know thawing permafrost, agriculture, methane releases during oil production, building construction, manufacturing processes, air transport, deforestation, landfill decomposition and other human activities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. We can’t get bogged down in details when the bigger picture is we have an obstructionist government led by Republicans and their conservative, dark-moneyed think tanks who would interpret the howling wind as something else. The better question is when will voters do something to fix this?

Yesterday’s wind was the kind that calls for hunkering down until it ends. Eventually we will have a calm, sunny day and the opportunity to work as normal. Or maybe it is something else, as Bob Dylan sang in the 1970s,

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

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Kitchen Garden

Moving the Goal Posts

Farm Landscape

More than at any previous time I feel a goal line was crossed when I left full time work last spring.

So what’s next?

I don’t anticipate buying a fancy television with new, matching easy chairs to put in front of it.

My late aunt and uncle had that. When we visited their Alabama home our conversations turned to the evangelical Christianity their family had undertaken. It was a distance from the socialist and Catholic household in which she grew up with her brothers and sisters. I suspect aunt and uncle watched FOX News, although we talked the entire visit without turning on the T.V. Dinner was a tuna-noodle casserole taking me back to a time I hardly remembered. Mom never made tuna-noodle casserole at home. My uncle died shortly after we left them and she died soon after that. All that’s left are memories.

My fear is if we had a digital television I’d sit back in an easy chair, watch too much, and my mind would succumb to the blather that invades people’s lives from cable news. I’d spend the rest of this life talking about, to and at the television.

There is only one answer to the question, and that’s to stay active physically, emotionally and mentally. That’s really a lie. There are plenty of answers, although doing these three things can form a foundation upon which an answer can be built. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.

Birds eat from the feeder and a freezing rain falls on the county. Snow melt is filling the ditches and running toward the lake. Soon there will be floods in Iowa as the crazy weather continues.

Tomorrow I return to the farm for the first round of soil blocking. They already started seeds in the house, but these will go into the greenhouse despite the coming cold spell. I’m waiting another week to plant celery. At 120 days, celery has the longest plant to pick cycle.

Will farm work bring catharsis to my search for truth and meaning? I don’t know, but I’ll be spending time with friends again and that means something.

I’ll get to see the lambs, those sad but cute creatures destined for someone’s dinner table. I’ll be careful not to get attached but new life is always a pleasure. That’s what I need in the rainy, snowy, flooded Iowa I call home as the cycle of the growing season begins anew.

Moving the goal posts once they are set is not a good option in retirement. We may only get one chance for new goals and it’s important to be sure. I’ll be thinking about that as I make the soil blocks tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to getting started.

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Kitchen Garden

Cook Not A Chef

Italian Spaghetti

Is there a difference between being a cook and a chef?

An immediate answer has to do with training, tutelage, apprenticeship or working in a professional capacity. I know several chefs, and they are among the best in the area. I eat at their restaurants, appreciate their presentations, and respect what they have learned.

Cooks know their limits. My main goal is to get a satisfying meal on a plate, matched to the individual tastes of diners. Even in a small gathering there is rarely a single taste. Working with well-known diners, attempting the satisfying rather than the sublime, makes me a cook first — a journeyman raw food processor if you will.

Understanding flavors that produce great meals is important and flavor is foremost in the mind of a cook. Will the diners welcome a dish? What from the repertory will please? How do I use a seasonal vegetable? Will diners notice when the flavor stands out? Above all, will they eat it? We worry less about replicating specific dishes and more about the making the routine sublime.

I recently bought a large bag of Mexican oregano on line. Used in many dishes now that it is on hand and convenient, it is mostly an experiment with taco fillings, red sauces and stir fry. I like it because of the mild citrus flavor it imparts. Although I’ve been using it a couple of months, the experimentation is just getting under way. A cook’s process can be quite long.

Cooking has to do with ingredient sourcing, cooking techniques and trying dishes with varying seasonings. I feel little pressure for repeatable tastes so a dish can be listed on a menu. Being a cook is living life in each moment, a prepared dish as its own reward.

If I am a cook, not a chef, then so be it. I’d rather be a journeyman and get the work done.

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Kitchen Garden Writing

Soup for the Polar Vortex

Vegetable Soup on a Wintry Day

Monday I made a big pot of vegetable soup using what has become a standard process.

Mirepoix of onion, celery, carrot and salt sautéed in a couple tablespoons of vegetable broth.

Potatoes peeled and cut in large chunks, a 15 ounce can of rinsed, prepared beans, a pint of diced tomatoes, a quarter cup of barley, a half cup of dried lentils, a few bay leaves, two cups frozen sweet corn, a quart of home made tomato juice and vegetable broth to cover. I added lots of potatoes and carrots for texture and flavor. Toward the end of cooking I added a cup of frozen peas.

The soup cooks up thick and hearty, just the thing for subzero temperatures the polar vortex is bringing our way tonight and tomorrow.

Other soups I make are similar, adding every kind of vegetable we have on hand — after harvest or after cleaning the refrigerator. The limited number of ingredients in this recipe standardizes the outcome into something recognizable and delicious. Importantly, it is repeatable.

Over the weekend I sorted recipes, an act of curation. I found I’m much less attached to dessert recipes. Over the course of a year I make a few batches of cookies, an apple crisp or two, maybe a spiced raisin or applesauce cake. Those recipes are well used and written in my red book. I love dessert, but not that much.

The dessert recipes I kept included blueberry buckle, a seasonal item we serve at the orchard after the first blueberries come in from Michigan. The recipe our bakers use is called “Betty’s Blueberry Buckle,” but the one I have will serve.

While in graduate school I conducted a series of interviews with a subject for a class on aging. She had a letter from William F. Cody inquiring about his legacy in Davenport. I kept her recipe for custard for the memory, although I’m not sure if and when I might use it.

I find it hard to dispose of artifacts of consumption, although about half of the unsorted pile of recipes went into the paper recycling bin. That I got rid of anything is a sign of progress. So many things compete for attention that piles of artifacts, like these recipes, sit around indefinitely.

Winter is a great time to enjoy a bowl of soup and sort through the detritus of a life on the prairie. I look forward to spring.

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Kitchen Garden Writing

Bunkering in During Snowfall

Last of the Fresh Kale

Snow began overnight and is expected to continue all day — the first real snow this winter.

We need more from winter, a week of subzero temperatures to kill bugs in the ground and to stop the sap flow in trees before pruning. Today’s snowfall gets us started, although the long-range forecast shows ambient temperatures well above zero the rest of the month.

We are ready to bunker in. We have reading piles, plenty of food, an internet connection, and an operational forced air furnace. I expect to drive my spouse into town for work so she doesn’t have to scrape windshields afterward. Having lived in Iowa and the Midwest most of our lives we know what to do.

Breakfast was kale cooked in a style of central Mexico with caramelized onions, finely chopped garlic and red pepper flakes. This recipe is worth trying because it allays the bitterness sometimes associated with kale, making a hearty and delicious vegetarian meal. Here’s what I did.

In a medium sized frying pan warm extra virgin olive oil on medium high heat. Cut three medium onions in half,  slice them into quarter-inch ribbons, and add to the olive oil. Salt generously to taste. Once the mixture is cooking, reduce the heat and caramelize the onions. Finely chop three cloves of garlic and add them to the caramelized onions along with red pepper flakes to taste. Mix and cook just until the garlic loses it’s raw taste. Add one half cup of vegetable broth and a generous amount of kale. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for five minutes on medium low heat or until the kale is tender. Mix the ingredients thoroughly. At this point I laid two home made bean burgers from the freezer on top of the kale and covered again until the pre-cooked burgers were warmed through and the moisture evaporated. (If you want to use the kale mixture as a taco filling, the bean burgers aren’t needed). Transfer the kale and a burger to plates and top with Mexican cheese and fresh salsa. If you have it, freshly chopped cilantro would be a nice addition. The breakfast of champions.

Five weeks remain until soil blocking begins at the farms. It’s a chance to garage the car for days at a time and turn inward as if there is just us in the world. The snow is getting deep enough to shovel the driveway before heading to town.

Already it is becoming a productive, mostly indoors day. Winter at its best.