“Publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven and earth in any country and regardless of my opinion, editors and publishers will print what they will.”
I wrote this in a letter to the editor of the Quad City Times in 1980 reacting to a popular feature section called Soundoff.
“(It is) little more than a vanity press for many of the writers,” I wrote. “It gets pictures, letters and opinions into print as a final goal; shouldn’t there be more to public voicing of opinion than that?”
This is more applicable today than it was three and a half decades ago.
What I learned in graduate school is the same statement can be applied to almost everything written in public. Reflecting on the Times experiment to make their pages more open to comments and retain readership, chaos reigned. What has changed since then is the emphasis on viewpoint in media — corporate, social or self published — which has been formalized. It’s not all good.
As I turn to the hard yet fun work of writing this year, I plan to journal my experiences in the food system here. Four years from full retirement, there are bills to pay and a life to live. I may pick other topics from time to time. I need to make the best use of every moment.
I’m writing off line as much as I can. While I don’t like to work for free as long as there is less cash than budget, I may occasionally post about those creative endeavors.
Thanks for reading this blog. Check out the tag cloud for your interests. I hope readers will be back often.
The garden season officially ended today with gleaning that filled eight crates with tomatoes, apples, celery, Swiss chard, kale and hot and bell peppers.
I delivered a second 200-pound load of apples to the CSA for shareholders and the food pantry. While there, I picked up some potatoes, garlic, lettuce, a large squash, sweet potatoes and some onions.
With a hard frost expected early Saturday morning, I made a harvest soup with vegetables. Five quarts of it are processing in a water bath as I type.
Times like this, a list of ingredients suffices. Not as a recipe, but as a record of what went into the soup.
Fresh and canned tomato juice
Onions
Carrot
Celery
Potatoes
Kale
Swiss chard
Large winter squash cut into cubes
Bay leaves
Sea Salt
Orange lentils
Dried red beans
Pearl barley
Prepared organic vegetable broth
The draft toward winter is inescapable. Snow will soon be flying and subzero temperatures not far behind — and the comforting warmth of harvest soup.
The garden and trees turn to fall colors all at once — right now, as I write.
First frost can’t be far away, maybe next week. Leaves and grasses turn without freezing temperatures. The landscape assumes a warm brilliance.
Apple Harvest
I picked more than 200 pounds of apples Wednesday and donated them to Local Harvest CSA. Enough for shareholders to bake a pie or crisp, or even eat! The apple variety is Red Delicious.
The trees have never been sprayed, and grow as near organic as possible. Fruit sometimes develop black spotting which can be washed off easily. They are delicious in more ways than one.
I walked the garden, filling a bucket with bell peppers, Swiss chard, scarlet kale, celery, a few tomatoes, basil and oregano — what was available. Most of it became soup for dinner.
Beginning with a cup of tomato juice in the Dutch oven. I steamed a diced large onion, sliced chard stems, fine ribbons of kale and chard leaves, celery, turnips and carrots. Except the onion, all were grown in our garden. Once the vegetables softened I added savory, bay leaves, sea salt, dried orange lentils, barley and a can of prepared organic kidney beans. Tomato juice to cover. The pot boiled and I turned it down to simmer. While soup was on, I cooked a cup of organic rice. Plating was a scoop of rice in the middle of the bowl with soup ladled around it.
The next day I water bath processed two quarts of soup, along with three pints of apple butter and a quart of apple sauce. Because of the backlog of apple sauce and apple butter in the pantry, I’m making a limited amount, just to have this year’s vintage when previous jars are used up. There’s more than enough soup for winter into spring.
The tine of my apple peeler cracked, rendering it useless. I drove to the orchard to buy a new one, but in conversation with the chief apple officer, it turns out they had plenty of spare parts. He gave me a used replacement part which fit perfectly and put me back in business.
Cider, New and Apple Vinegar
We got to talking about apple cider vinegar.
This conversation began in 2012 with another friend, who also works at the orchard. He gave me some mother of vinegar which originated with his family in the 19th century. It’s still alive. The orchard used it to start a line of bottled apple cider vinegar to sell in the sales barn.
Today’s discussion was about whether or not to use brewer’s yeast. Jack, the source of the mother, has a large plastic container to which he occasionally adds new juice, but never any yeast. We decided that the yeast must have come from other sources, and therefore no new need be added. Since it works, and in a home kitchen we expect there to be variation in the level of acetic acid, I decided to forego using yeast for the time being.
Yeast is basically everywhere. As anyone who made sough dough from scratch knows, it needn’t necessarily be purchased from a store. Jack’s mother likely has yeast in it, although I rarely see bubbles forming after adding new apple juice. It makes vinegar and that’s the hope.
Fall’s progress is one of the best times of the year. Squirrels scour oak trees for every last acorn. Birds roost on tomato cages where vines still produce.
It takes a walk in the garden to remind us of Earth’s potential, providing soup for dinner and apples for the sweet and sour of life.
I connected with Local Harvest CSA last week. The farm looked great.
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey stopped there with my state representative, Bobby Kaufmann. I spent a couple of hours chatting and collecting information for an article that appeared Saturday in the Iowa City Press Citizen.
The next day Susan provided three crates of bell pepper seconds to eat and preserve. The freezer and vegetable drawer are now full. The good news is there weren’t many clinkers among them.
Our garden kept me busy this summer, producing more than enough for our kitchen and some to give some away. Tomatoes, kale and hot peppers are in abundance. The rest of the Red Delicious apples will soon be harvested. I spent most of Monday in the kitchen preserving food.
The kitchen day began with picking a bucket of tomatoes and jalapeno peppers in the garden.
Cutting the bad spots from the tomatoes, I cooked them and made sauce using an old timey tomato juicer with a wooden cone. The byproduct was 1-1/2 quarts of juice which is chilling in the ice box, ready for soup.
Coring and cutting bell peppers into slabs for the freezer is straightforward. I freeze them on a cookie sheet, then bag them for storage. That way they don’t freeze together. Two bags left from last year were in good shape so I added six more — a full year’s supply.
A bag of roasted red peppers and one of jalapenos was left in the freezer from last year. After thawing, I cut the jalapenos in half and put both into the Dutch oven. Adding bits and pieces of pepper leftover from the freezing operation, once tender, the lot went into the food processor until the mixture reached the consistency of relish. I put the result into half-pint jars and processed in a water bath.
I make some applesauce each year even though there is plenty in the pantry. The labor produced two quarts which wait in the ice box until more jars are ready to process in the water bath.
The remainder of the first crate of Red Delicious apples was juiced. I spent half an hour managing vinegar, bottling what was finished from the two-quart jar started in the spring and adding new juice to the mother. There are three finished quarts in the pantry. I may never buy apple cider vinegar again.
When the sun set, the implements of preservation were scattered on the counter — clean and drying. Yesterday I used my hand tomato juicer, a sieve, an apple peeler, an electric juicer, the food processor, a turkey baster, the granite ware water-bath canner, and the usual lot of bowls, jars, lids and rings. Knowing what to do makes it easier with each passing year.
There is a sense that these days of harvest cookery can’t go on forever. Suffice it I’ll keep living them for as long as possible, trying to learn from every season.
Thursday yielded six jars of hot sauce made from jalapeno peppers, onion, garlic and tomato, plus seven quarts of apple-rhubarb sauce. In addition, I made a quesadilla with finely diced jalapeno pepper and thinly sliced tomato, reheated a bowl of home made soup and had a bit of homemade tapioca for dessert.
The day was mostly about staying home and processing garden produce. There was a side benefit of clearing a little space in the refrigerator, as all but one jar of hot sauce was processed in a water bath. The lids sealed so the jars are ready for storage.
I hardly made a dent in the produce.
The Amish Paste, Rose, Brandywine and Beefsteak tomatoes are flavorful and abundant. Other varieties are producing as well.
The cooking hardly made a dent in the abundance.
It was the last day of my three-day holiday. Today I return to the warehouse for a final shift before changing to seasonal orchard work tomorrow. I hope to have more to say about my 18 months at the warehouse next week.
Now that the holiday is over, it’s time to generate income and figure out what’s next. I spent time preparing a studio for creative work by increasing the table space to work on things. I booked a couple of speaking engagement in October and need to prepare for those. There is never an idle moment on the prairie.
You’d think I had never been through an abundant harvest before. Bushels of fruit, tomatoes aplenty, and more kale than my regulars can eat in a year. Everywhere fresh produce is abundant as Iowa produced one of the best growing seasons ever for small-scale gardeners.
Most of yesterday’s outdoors time was spent picking pears and tomatoes. There are three crates full of apples and pears in the kitchen ready for processing, along with a counter full of tomatoes. The pressure is on to preserve some of this food for winter and beyond.
The branches on the Red Delicious apple tree are bending with the weight of the fruit. They are not sweet enough to pick, but when they are, there will be bushels more than can be used. People don’t generally like to receive home apples as gifts, but I plan to try to give some away.
The last of the basil made pasta sauce for an Italian spaghetti dinner. I used all of the small-sized tomatoes and it didn’t make a dent in the supply.
I ate several pears that were getting soft in the middle, scooping out the softness with a spoon. There is a short season for pears, and last year produced enough pear butter to last another year. Looking for a recipe for pear-apple-rhubarb sauce for canning, or maybe I will just mix them together and see what happens.
Days without need to leave the property are rare, but much appreciated. They provide time for a life as we choose to live it. Having the luxury of a family home, reasonably far from neighborhood noise, and large enough to create a generous space is just that — luxury.
Harvest days make one appreciate what we have, with hope to sustain our lives another season in Big Grove.
The word “cooking” was on the calendar this afternoon. I went into the kitchen at the appointed time and stood there.
After a while I turned the radio to National Public Radio news, and stood there.
I stood there and let the quiet of a placid summer afternoon sink in.
Filling a wide-mouth Mason jar with ice, I drew filtered water from the icebox and drank.
I refilled the jar.
The green beans had gone bad, so into the compost. A moldy squash was removed to the compost bucket.
There were too many cucumbers, so the small ones were made into sweet pickles (I hope).
When I selected Brandywine tomato seeds last winter I had no idea the fruit would be so good. A dozen were lined up on the counter in the order of ripeness. I took the biggest one and made two slices from it. I diced one more that was injured from growing between wires on the tomato cage and piled it on top. With salt, pepper and feta cheese, it made two meals by itself.
I cleaned and picked over a crate of kale and found a couple of green worms on the leaves. The predators have arrived. Removing my guests, I tore the leaves and filled up the salad spinner. The kale dried on the counter.
I stood there a while longer, but now I knew. The other dish would be a kale stir fry.
Slicing half an onion, seven cloves of garlic, and a yellow squash, I sauteed them in extra virgin olive oil until tender. Then I piled on the kale and stirred gently. First it turned bright green, then it wilted. It cooked down to two servings, which was just right.
The meal was satisfying, and unexpected. Which is what happens if one would but stand in the kitchen and live.
The ground is dry with eighth-inch cracks under the apple trees. There has been talk about a wet spring, yet the rasp on knees as I picked up wind-fallen apples before mowing was uncomfortable… and harrowing.
Relenting, I poured a gallon of water on the cucumber plants which were withered in the sun from lack of moisture. It helped—they recovered this time.
Ripening Apples
The garlic patch is also dry, in fact the whole garden could use rain. I had better see if the 50 percent chance of precipitation materializes later this morning and then water if it doesn’t.
The branches of the apple trees are burdened with fruit, making it difficult to get under them to mow. The walking mower wouldn’t start, so I spent half an hour cleaning and troubleshooting it. After replacing the spark plug and adding fuel, it fired up. I mowed under the fruit trees and in the ditch near the road pushing the small machine.
Taking a quart of canned whole tomatoes to the kitchen, I went back outside and gathered basil, Swiss chard and an Amish Paste tomato for pasta sauce. Along with a kale salad it made a satisfying dinner… sustenance against tough times.
Summer’s abundant produce has us conjuring new recipes based on what’s available. We made a quick meal from leftover tomato-basil sauce, penne pasta made with lentils and the following salad.
Cut zucchini and cucumber into quarter inch cubes and place in a large bowl. Slice 4-5 peeled, small carrots and add with 2/3 cup cooked sweet corn. Halve and add about a dozen cherry tomatoes. Add two dozen Kalamata olives. For dressing, use a favorite, which in our household is a mixture of balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Add fresh herbs as desired. Mix gently with a large spoon and refrigerate until ready to serve.
July 25 has been the traditional day to plant second crops in the garden. Turnips, radishes, green beans, broccoli and more stand at the ready. If I can break away from paid work for a while they’ll go in Tuesday or Wednesday.
Wildflowers
I planted lettuce in pots, but it germinated poorly—likely due to too hot temperatures. The broccoli seedlings are ready to be planted, but there is a fatalistic cloud hanging over them as some critter got under the fence and ate up the cruciferous vegetable in the spring. My tolerance policy may enable it to return and bring its friends once the tender crops are in the ground again.
Reflections of Clouds
A neighbor has been out of town for a couple of weeks and offered their garden produce while gone. Their squash, tomatoes and cucumbers filled a gap in our garden, and I made notes for next season. Two zucchini plants is more than enough for a family, plant cucumbers earlier, grow a couple of early yielding tomato plants to supplement the later big crop.
Queen Anne’s Lace
Mostly though this time of year is about wild flowers. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has some prairie restoration projects going and each patch is redolent with the scent of summer.
It’s time to stop and take it in before midsummer turns to fall and winter.
Journey Home 
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