LAKE MACBRIDE— The crock on the lower level of our split foyer home showed evidence of bacterial action this morning. A small pool of bubbles formed on the surface of my first-ever batch of dill pickles— evidence of fermentation at work. Experiments with home fermentation began last year, when I made a large batch of sauerkraut and a jar of apple cider vinegar. It’s an arena about which I knew little and am not sure I know much yet. Hopefully practice will make perfect.
Using the first pick of the cucumbers, I cleaned up a crock, mixed five and a half ounces of pickling salt in a gallon of distilled water, added dill seed, crushed garlic, and peppercorns to the crock, then submerged the cucumbers in the brine. Next, I waited, hoping for what I witnessed this morning. It took about three days for the bacterial action to start.
More cucumbers are forming on the vine, so worries about losing the first pick for this experiment have subsided. One prepares for experiments to be a complete loss, paving the way for enjoyment if they turn out well. Nature is providing an abundant garden this year, so there is no worry about a shortage of cucumbers and other vine produce.
Now, more waiting and cleaning the scum off the surface each day. The smell is of dill, so things seem to be heading the right direction as the cucumbers pickle.
RURAL CEDAR TOWNSHIP— Having worked in the greenhouse, high tunnel or barn every week since early March, yesterday’s shift at the Community Supported Agriculture farm was pretty exciting— I worked in the fields for the first time. Because of the Independence Day holiday, beginning at 7 a.m., a large crew worked to get the shares ready for distribution a day early and take care of other farm work.
Four activities were mine: helping a crew of three harvest kale, harvesting, cleaning and packaging Swiss chard, making a basket of oregano for shareholders to select from, and planting a row of tomatoes with another person. Each activity provided a learning experience on how to work quickly, yet gently with the plants. In addition to that, I made a trip to the field to check on the quantity of sugar snap peas being harvested and to inspect the progress of the green beans (not ready). The work was steady, but not too hard. I appreciated the variety as my fingerprints filled deeply with soil.
The best part of the day came at the end of the shift when the crew gathered at the farm house for lunch. Thirteen of us went through the serving line set up on the kitchen island, and gathered around the table to partake of squash casserole made with Frisian Farms Gouda cheese from Oskaloosa, a slaw made with daikon radish and cabbage, and for carnivores and flexitarians, grass-fed lamb burgers raised on the farm. There was plenty of food and good conversation.
A neighbor had provided a kettle of fresh cherries. I’m not sure “kettle” is a unit of measure, but I brought back a sack of fresh cherries and made a cherry cobbler with dark brown caramelized sugar on top. I had it for dinner… and breakfast.
One of my work partners, a student from a neighboring state visiting a woman he was dating in college, had been persuaded to help out on the farm. He was bored as he dug holes for tomato seedlings. I thought of my solar powered Freeplay radio as we finished planting the long row. Maybe I should put it in the trunk of my car for times like this to assuage youth, but probably won’t. We talked instead.
Afterward, I thought of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s experience on the Blythedale commune. How he wrote in flowery language about it in The Blythedale Romance, only to find the reality of work more difficult than he expected or wanted. Hawthorne wrote of the commune,
Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to affirm—nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New England,—had dreamed of Paradise that day except as the pole suggests the tropic. Nor, with such materials as were at hand, could the most skilful architect have constructed any better imitation of Eve’s bower than might be seen in the snow hut of an Esquimaux.
A day of work on a CSA farm may not be a trip to Eve’s bower, but it has its rewards and challenges— and plenty of hard work.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Summer’s harvest has been bountiful and we are less than two weeks in. Keeping up with the vegetables we grow and get from the CSA, has been a challenge of cooking, preserving, refrigerator and freezer space, and rotation. Thus far, little that was brought into the house spoiled. We are thankful to have enough food to eat in a society where so many people go hungry. Even our small town of 2,037 souls requires a food bank, making adequate food for everyone a tangible, local issue.
Yesterday was the first pick of green beans and we steamed them for dinner. Over the years Asian aphids have been a pest for this annual favorite— to the extent I quit planting them for a while. This year they were pristine in the basket. Not sure what happened, but I suspect row-crop farmers didn’t care for the damage to soybeans, and “did something” during the past few years.
I picked broccoli for dinner, and some Swiss chard. Spinach is ready to harvest, the last before the fall planting. There is also lettuce ready to go and plenty of herbs. The apple trees are still looking good: no sign of dreaded Popillia japonica, or Japanese beetle, which during previous years had made its debut by the first of July. Last year was a horrible year with them, and they are sure to arrive soon.
A summer indulgence is to make pesto. The process is simple. Into blender put a cup of first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, with equal amounts of chopped garlic scapes, basil leaves and kale leaves with the stems removed. Blend the mixture, adding enough olive oil to make it a liquid, or additional garlic and basil to thicken it. Then add a handful of pine nuts, half a cup of Parmesan cheese and salt to taste. Blend until the mixture is a thick puree. The recipe produced enough to fill Mason jars with pesto for the freezer. I reserved some for immediate use, of course.
The thing about pesto, is it can be made with a number of summer greens and herbs. It’s a way to preserve the summer harvest. The other thing is a person can consume only so much of the delicious spread/sauce at a time. For now, we’re living the high life and contemplating dishes, other than just spreading it on bread, in which to use it. Pesto pasta will definitely be one dish on the menu.
Once one is plugged into the local food system, there is little cost to make pesto, except for the olive oil, which is always a luxury. During the summer harvest, a gardener and cook can live in the lap of luxury, even on a limited budget.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Summer arrived and the battle for the cruciferous vegetables has begun in earnest. The progeny of the white butterflies— that were flitting about laying eggs less than two weeks ago— have arrived in large numbers. Too many to count, the small green caterpillars have done their damage to broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collards and kale leaves planted in the middle southern garden plot. They either like something or they don’t because the Swiss chard planted between the kale and collards was untouched by the caterpillars. The bugs also appeared in the spring vegetable plot where I put a few extra broccoli and kohlrabi seedlings. They don’t seem to bother the turnips, radishes and arugula, also cruciferous vegetables, although something else pokes tiny holes in those leaves.
I don’t have many defenses, except to limit the damage by picking off the caterpillars and dropping them into a bucket of soapy water. Because my fingers are so big compared to the bugs, I went to the medical supply house and bought a surgical grade, stainless steel forceps to aid me in plucking them off the leaves. It’s a nice piece of equipment.
I harvested all of the kale to get rid of one food source for them. It is now debugged, washed, dried and stored in the refrigerator. I have new collard, Swiss chard and kale seedlings ready to plant, so I need to consider where to put them. Outside the current colony/restaurant for caterpillar dining, methinks.
While I mull that over, I’ll make a smoothie with kale, strawberries, peach, Greek yogurt, honey and ice. By acting quickly, I got my share of the kale harvest and intend to enjoy it.
LAKE MACBRIDE— When President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, it seemed wrong. It was one more in a series of his actions I didn’t like. The political reasons for denying federal employee benefits were easy to understand. The blatant discrimination was not, and time and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision yesterday vindicated the judgment of those who felt like I did.
Yesterday, bills were introduced in the U.S. House and Senate to remove DOMA completely, as some don’t feel SCOTUS went far enough in saying, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.” The decision was good enough for me, although I downloaded the text and will read it— comparing it to Iowa’s Brien v. Varnum, dated April 3, 2009, that held the state’s limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.
After three days of rain, thunder, lightning and hail, I spent time in the garden yesterday. Contrary to my previous post, I found hail damage, particularly on leaves of cucumber and squash plants. The damage was not severe, but a lot of leaves had small punctures.
Food production is outpacing our kitchen’s ability to store and process it. This afternoon’s local food shift at home will include harvesting turnips, preparing and freezing broccoli, planting seedlings and rearranging the fencing in the plot where the green beans are located. With the rain and fair weather, combined with more knowledgeable planting, this year’s garden is already a bin buster. More food will be given away as the week progresses.
At the farm, I soil blocked for the seventeenth week yesterday. The seeds planted are for fall harvest of cucumbers, broccoli and cabbage. While I was working, one crew had finished and was doing bicycle maintenance near the machine shed, and another was processing kohlrabi for share holders. The germination building was completely empty, and when I entered to get trays for soil blocking, the temperature was intensely warm. Seedlings trays were on wagons under a nearby tree to avoid the heat while they waited for planting.
With the rain, trip to Des Moines and farm work, everything is behind this week. Hopefully today will be a catch up day as I endeavor to stay on the property, with nose to the grindstone.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Herbs are abundant in the garden, so I have been making dishes that taste better with fresh herbs: red beans and rice with fresh thyme, pasta sauce with fresh basil, and bread with sun-dried tomato and fresh rosemary. Each iteration of a dish, prepared in a moment of time, has consequence in our lives. Every bowl of soup, sandwich and plate of pasta is different for a home cook. Sometimes the food is better than others— our homemade meals speak to who we are, what we want to be and what we can be.
The idea of local food Saturday is simple. In order for there to be a vibrant and sustainable local food system, individuals must want to find, purchase and cook with local food items. We have to make a market in the things we hold dear. That’s how I landed on the important role home cooks can play in sustaining a local food system. Saturday is a weekend choice that fits a lot of people. It’s not like I am the first to come up with this— I’m not.
It is possible, and rewarding, to change our outlook from a being a consumer who goes to market to being a producer of home cooked meals that includes local food. One could do as well to develop a meal plan that includes local food and local food outlets, since almost no one cooks all, or even most of their own food at home.
The act of buying is such a brief part of our lives. We should make the most of it by unchaining ourselves from the mega-mart and relegating grocery stores to a more proper role as supplemental sources of provisions. It costs nothing to change one’s perspective, and the financial and personal payoff can be superior.
What did I do with the items in the photo from last Saturday’s farmers market?
The turnips were an impulse purchase as I could have waited a week to get fresh from my garden. I cut and washed the greens, cutting about a cup into quarter inch strips for soup, and putting the remainder in a container to use as cooking greens later in the week. Using the bulbs, I made turnip soup that included a quart of homemade stock, carrot, onion, celery, the turnip greens and the finely sliced stalk of the broccoli in the photo. I added dried chervil, salt and a bay leaf to make four servings.
The kohlrabi was for an experiment cooking it with potatoes. There will be a number of kohlrabi from the CSA, and a couple are growing in the garden. I’m trying to figure out how to use them. They also go well in a salad, cut into raw, matchstick-sized bits.
The radishes, cucumbers and zucchini were for fresh salads. The garden and CSA are producing lots of lettuce, and we have salad almost every night— sometimes as a meal. Lettuce and other leafy green vegetables are an important part of a local food system, and because we produce our own, there are none in the photo. The yellow squash was to slice and cook with greens.
Broccoli was to steam with dinner as it is a favorite and the broccoli in the garden was not ready yet. One stalk is not much, so we also steamed the last of the fresh asparagus from the CSA. A vegetable side dish to soup and a salad seems a bit weird, but was delicious nonetheless.
Finally there is the local honey. I got it home and realized there was another open jar in the pantry. I made the previously mentioned bread with local honey, fresh rosemary, sun dried tomatoes and a custom mix of flours.
In all, I spent about two hours in the kitchen with local food preparation, not including the rising time of the bread. On average, people spend a lot less kitchen time in a day, but ganging up on the prep work on Saturday made for better meals later during the week.
The revolution in local food will come when we change our attitude from being a consumer of goods to a producer. There will be a time when our lives are more interesting than who gets booted on the television program “Chopped.” For some of us, that time is already here, at least on Saturday afternoons.
LAKE MACBRIDE— According to a local organic farmer, “one of the most common mistakes home gardeners make is not planting sequentially.” What does that mean?
Certain crops, like lettuce, spinach and radishes, have a short planting to harvest cycle, and multiple crops can be planted during a season. That is, as soon as one row is harvested, another can be planted as long as the plants can tolerate weather as it get hotter and dryer.
What I learned at the farm this year is that lettuce produces the best crops when they are planted as individual seeds in a starter tray, then transferred to the garden as seedlings when the ground is ready. This accomplishes two things.
First, and this is really important, when planting lettuce, plant individual seeds, using a starter tray, or an old egg carton. Because lettuce seeds are so small, the temptation is to sow more than one together. By using a starter tray, and one seed per cell, if one cell fails to germinate, no problem when planting the seedlings in the rows in the soil. If the seed didn’t produce in the starter tray, there is no seedling to transplant. Planting single seeds ensures sufficient moisture and nutrients for each head of lettuce by avoiding over-crowding. It makes for larger leaves.
Second, by planting seeds in trays, the garden space can be more productive. A four week old seedling will take less time to mature once it is planted in the garden. If timed properly, a garden can be in lettuce most of the summer, into fall. For example, I have two and four week seedlings started in successive trays. They’ll be ready to plant when the current crop is harvested.
Avoid a common mistake, plant lettuce sequentially this June.
CEDAR RAPIDS— Saturday was my first trip to a farmers market this season. An abundant garden, combined with a share from our CSA, reduced demand for outside produce. Until now, the cucumbers, zucchini and squash for our salads have come from the grocery store. Greenhouse operators now have local ones available, and that is reason enough to switch to the market.
There are more reasons. Depending upon how busy the farmers were at the market, they were a source of information about how they grew produce. It is a form of community knowledge about weather, temperatures and techniques for gardeners and producers that is hard to match. Hearing stories about how the early season was wet and cold, and the impact on growing, either taught me something new or ratified my own experience. Communal knowledge is part of being a producer, even small scale ones like a home gardener.
The market served to address some deficiencies in my planning this year. Not enough radishes, turnips behind schedule because of delayed planting, and kohlrabi fizzled as seeds. The farmers market made up for most of this.
The leafy green vegetables all looked good at vendor stalls, but my garden has plenty. I bought some broccoli to allow mine to grow a few more days before harvesting. Cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squash looked much better than what is available at the grocery store— everything did. Here’s what I ended up purchasing.
Farmers Market Purchases
Some of the produce was cheap, turnips with greens for $0.50 each, cucumbers for a dollar. At $3 a head, lettuce seemed pricey, but I bought a pound of local honey because the pricing point seemed right at $5. Maple syrup was too dear, and I didn’t stop at any of the prepared food stalls. I budgeted the $18 I had in my wallet for the shopping trip, and spent it all.
Musician
My approach was to consider what was priced right and how items would fit into the coming week’s meals. Honey for bread making; radishes, cucumber, zucchini and yellow squash for salads; the turnips to make soup; broccoli for dinner that night and kohlrabi for an experiment of cooking it with potatoes— getting ready for the generous supply from the CSA. I kept looking at the beautiful greens, but sensibly resisted the temptation to buy more— really, I did.
As many as 20,000 shoppers come to the Cedar Rapids market on a Saturday. It’s what makes the market. It is cheap entertainment for a family, and produce is fresh and tasty raw material for an afternoon of transforming it into dishes and meals. There is a lot to write about farmers markets, but, importantly, they are a key part of the current local food system. How to use the combination of a home garden, grocery store, farmers market and CSA will be the topic of my next post. It is the case for sustainability of a local food system, beginning in a home kitchen.
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