Category: Kitchen Garden

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

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Kitchen Garden

Garden Turning Point

Zucchini Seedling
Zucchini Seedling

LAKE MACBRIDE— Last year at this time, I offered spring garlic, lettuce and radishes at the first farmers market. This year, they are not close to ready because of the cold, wet spring. It has been a season of adapting to the climate reality.

Yesterday began the seasoning, or hardening of the indoor seedlings. The were out in the full sunlight for several hours and received a long misting from the garden hose. This morning, in my bathrobe, I ran them outside in the pre-dawn light with temperatures around 50 degrees. The only real question inhibiting planting action is when will the last frost come? According to the Weather.com 30-day forecast, we have had the last frost, so some of the seedlings will go in the ground today. If things turn cold, I have a box of old sheets that can be spread over the plants in the garden. It’s time to turn to planting.

Of course, a lot of things are already in the ground. I planted onion sets yesterday— another late start— and green beans. To recap, already in the garden are yesterday’s plantings, chives, oregano, garlic, radishes, spinach, arugula, lettuce and turnips. If I accomplish anything today, it will be locating places for the major crops.

A whole plot is devoted to herbs, leafy greens, radishes and a few other items. I planted half of a plot in onions, hoping to grow more this year. I threw up a low chicken wire fence to prevent loose dogs from digging around in the bed of onions. I can cut back on tomatoes because of my work for vegetables at the CSA where I will receive a number of varieties of heirloom tomatoes. I also agreed to can tomatoes for a local grower in exchange for some of the canned goods. There should be plenty of tomatoes this year, so I adjusted by adding different varieties. This is about as far as I have gotten with the planning. As you can see, it is not much of a plan.

A gardener plays a balancing act between planning and doing. Whimsy and experimentation enter into it. Sometimes we do dumb things, like planting trees in the garden, intended to be moved later, then becoming so engaged in a job or career that they grow to 40 feet high without our realizing it. Now they are too nice to take out, and provided morning shade for the leafy green vegetables during last year’s drought. A gardener’s process isn’t always logical, but it is hard to fail.

As a home gardener, one always feels able to rely on the grocery store, or other growers, should something fail to produce. It is a social safety net we have come to take for granted. Food is abundant and relatively inexpensive in Iowa and elsewhere in the U. S., but what matters more is the interconnectedness we have with other growers, large scale and small. That is the true fabric of our food system, and it provides comfort and security the way a blanket does.

I look forward to the day when our food system is more sustainable. For now, I accept the fact that Florida, Texas, Mexico and California will continue to provide produce for the Midwest. But at some point, the cost of transportation will be too much because of the quality and quantity of locally grown foods. Planting a garden, no matter how disorganized, is a step toward sustainability.

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Kitchen Garden

Garden Prep Day

Garden Tools
Garden Tools

LAKE MACBRIDE— The schedule for the rototiller changed from next weekend to this shortly after writing yesterday’s post. No panic or complaints, I just got to work as soon as I found out.

First things first, a cooler full of drinks: three mason jars filled with filtered water, on ice. A solar powered radio set on the compost pile to listen to the Metropolitan Opera on public radio: a series of arias was featured yesterday. A ball cap and a pair of leather gloves completed the pre-work inventory.

The cold, wet spring delayed clearing the brush, so that had to be done first. Broken limbs and branches from the trees and lilac bushes were cut, collected and added to the brush pile. Next, I cleared last year’s growth from the remaining garden plots and piled that on. A light breeze was evident, light enough to determine it was okay to burn the brush. I did, exposing the third of three plots targeted for the dig.

When we moved to Big Grove, built our home, and established a garden, the lot was vacant, filled with a semblance of the tall grasses that once were here. The first shovel full of earth revealed the developer’s practice of skimming the topsoil and removing it. Heavy clay and hardly an earthworm was to be found below the grasses. Almost twenty years of working the soil changed all that. It is now filled with earthworms and the multitude of living things that make soil fertile.

With my long handled spade, I turned the plots slowly and methodically. The act of spading the soil connects to the memories of doing so each year. A gardener lives for this common thread to the roots of our humanity. Halfway through, my right hand started to cramp and I took a break to make dinner reservations and check in on my smart phone. When I returned, a couple of birds had landed to dine on the earthworms revealed by the digging. In all, it took three and a half hours to turn the garden plots. The rototiller arrived just as I was finishing.

The ashes from the burn pile and two buckets of corn gluten meal served to fertilize this year. I raked the ashes to spread them around the plot where the burn was, and cast the corn gluten meal over all three plots. The distribution was not as even as in the anhydrous ammonia application that was going on in a field about half a mile from here, but was more ecologically friendly.

The rototiller was an old Sears model with widely spaced tines. A neighbor had borrowed and shared it. I fired up the engine, gripped the handles, and allowed the machine to do its work. It became clear it would be the best tilling yet done in my garden. The soil was aerated, and light, and one could sense that living things would grow there. After cleaning the tiller, another neighbor came to pick it up. I raked the furrows level and cleaned up the workspace. My bird friends returned to finish their meal.

The day’s work produced three blank canvasses upon which to plant more of this season’s promise.

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Kitchen Garden

Garden is Calling

Last Year's Tomato Patch
Last Year’s Tomato Patch

LAKE MACBRIDE— Unexpectedly, there were no roadside deer as I drove back to Big Grove after midnight this morning. I am getting to know their grazing areas, and crossing points. Most post-midnights there are half a dozen or more encounters. Watching for them heightens my awareness of the world in which we live.

For shift workers, the last day of the week still means letting loose from the disciplines of a Monday through Friday job. The anticipation increases the last hour of the shift, when everyone is focused on finishing the day’s work and punching out. My warehouse peers did not invite me along to socialize after work, and I’m okay with that. During the wee hours of morning, I’d rather take a load off my feet, enjoy a snack and a glass of chilled water and head to bed. Actually, I’m not sure what I would do if asked into their non-work lives. Another new adventure, perhaps?

Today’s weather looks perfect for outdoors work. I’m off to the newspaper for a while, then the balance of the day is planned in the yard and garden— ending at a restaurant for dinner with out of town friends.

The list of garden tasks is long, but today I want to clear three of the plots for machine tilling next weekend. I’ll take some of the seedlings outside to season them and bring them back indoors at the end of the day. If the wind is down, I’ll burn the brush pile. Little time for computer life today. The garden is calling.

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Kitchen Garden Writing

Working in the High Tunnel

In the High Tunnel
In the High Tunnel

RURAL CEDAR TOWNSHIP— We soil-blocked the rest of the seed trays in the greenhouse yesterday, and planting is well underway at the CSA. My weekly work sessions give me a snapshot of  what is a much broader amount of activity in local food production. The experience is paying dividends in understanding the cycle of growth to support the market.

Used this to prepare the bed
Cultivator

For the first time, I worked in the high tunnel, preparing a bed for planting. High tunnels extend the growing season, producing vegetables for an early or late crop. They also serve to mitigate risk of cool temperatures, and of disease and pests. On a farm, margins mean everything, and high tunnels create an opportunity to increase them. They also create the ability for new customer offerings in the form of a spring or fall share.

My life is richer for working in a limited way on a CSA farm. It is a way of life that survives on the cusp of an agricultural landscape dominated by row crop agriculture. Like the high tunnel, the work is around the margins, and there are plenty of those for local food to be a vital force.

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Kitchen Garden

Rainy Morning

Work Bench
Work Bench

LAKE MACBRIDE— The forecast was rain and raining it is. The debate was whether to don my wax jacket and rubberized boots and venture out to clear last year’s tomato plot in the garden. It was not really a debate, but an internal dialogue balancing the need to get the garden ready for planting and the common sense notion that we should be in out of the rain. Not sure which side will dominate, but I’m leaning toward going outside. Actually I did go outside and explored the garden. It was showering small pellets of ice, not big enough to be hail, but not snow either. After checking yesterday’s work and the tomato patch, I headed back to the house.

Watering Station
Watering Station

I’m hauling the trays of seedlings to the garage, one at a time to water them. We use our bedroom window for exposure to sunlight, and am watering the trays from the bottom.  The soil has been continually moist, and the seedlings are growing. The idea seems to be working.

There is always work to support the garden, rain or no, although the continued cold and rainy weather feels like another setback. One feels this year’s garden is either going to be the greatest one ever, or a complete disaster, as long as the weather continues the way it has been.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden Work

Three Rows Planted Today
Three Rows Planted Today

LAKE MACBRIDE— Today was the first real work session in the garden and I cleaned up two of the plots, built my burn pile, evened out the ground near where the backhoe dug to fix the waterline leak last fall, and planted Cherry Belle Radishes, Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach and Purple Top White Globe turnips. The arugula and lettuce seeds have sprouted and survived the gully washer of a rain a few days ago. There are chives ready to cut, and the garlic patch is growing well. Three types of bulb flowers are growing, and after they flower, will be transplanted somewhere else. That is, except for the daylilies, which will be dug and transplanted as soon as I get around to it: nothing can kill those things.

A neighbor messaged me on Facebook, and a group of us is planning to go in on a rototiller rental. I usually dig by hand, but am okay with community projects like this. Partly, it means three plots have to be turned by spade to get ready for the rototiller in two weeks.

Last week, an experienced gardener said we had missed the opportunity for spring turnips, but I don’t know. I planted a row today, and will likely do another in a week or so. She said if one misses spring turnips, the date is July 25 for turnip planting. I’ll reserve some seeds for then and attempt a double crop.

It feels good to work in the sun and soil in the morning.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Red Beans and Rice

Red Beans and Rice
Red Beans and Rice

LAKE MACBRIDE— Welcome new readers of On Our Own: Sustainability in a Turbulent World. Since I opened the site up to search engines, people from all around the U.S. have been taking a look and liking and following my posts. I sincerely appreciate the interest, as it inspires me to do a better job when I post here. Believe it or not, I spend time crafting the prose to develop my own voice from a perspective grounded in rural Iowa. One would think there would be fewer typos with all of that so-called writing.

By far, the most immediately positive post was my recipe for Buttermilk Biscuits. Recipes are a solution to problems in life, in this case, how to make a buttermilk biscuit that was light, crunchy and split into layers, and didn’t require the purchase of a quart of buttermilk at a time. If I knew recipes would be so popular, I would have posted more of them. Knowing how to do something, cooking included, is a step along a path of sustainability, so going forward, I’ll post recipes that solve problems in the kitchen from time to time.

Sometimes recipes are a conundrum. Red beans and rice is one of those. The dish is different things to different people, and mine is partly a remembrance of many Saturdays in a motel in Thomasville, Georgia, where I discovered the food network, and Emeril Lagasse’s version of Louisiana cooking. He taught me about the trinity— onion, bell pepper and celery— and my version showcases this basic ingredient. My red beans and rice is also about Midwest semi-vegetarian cooking, and it has become a way of weekend cooking to make extra portions for weekday luncheons. It goes like this:

Heat a dutch oven over medium high heat for a couple of minutes.
Add two to three tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, enough to generously coat the bottom of the pan.
Add crushed red pepper flakes to taste, about a teaspoon for starters, and cook them a minute or so.
Add one yellow onion, one bell pepper and two stalks of celery, medium dice, and sauté for a minute or so.
Season with salt, garlic powder, a prepared dry seasoning with hot peppers in it, and add three bay leaves. Add a few splashes of Louisiana-style hot sauce if available.
Continue cooking until the vegetables are soft.
Squeeze in the juice of a lime and stir.
Add one pint canned, diced tomatoes (fresh if you have them), one cup brown rice, one 15 ounce can prepared red beans (drained and washed), and a pint of home made soup stock. Add several sprigs of fresh thyme.
Stir, bring to a boil, and turn the heat down to just above a simmer. Cook until the moisture is absorbed and the rice is done.
In a separate frying pan, brown eight ounces of seitan in a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil and cook with thinly sliced spring onions. Set aside.
When the Dutch oven mixture is finished, and all the moisture is gone, re-season as appropriate. Add the seitan mixture and stir gently.
Serves five or six as a main course, more as a side dish.

Thanks again for reading my posts. I hope you will check back often.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Buttermilk Biscuits

Buttermilk Buscuits
Buttermilk Biscuits

Here is a new recipe for buttermilk biscuits. It produces a light biscuit with a crunchy exterior, and uses one-half pint of buttermilk, which is the smallest size sold in grocery stores.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
Scant teaspoon salt
4 tbs cold butter, grated
1 cup cold buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, grating the butter directly into the dry ingredients using a box grater or equivalent. Using your fingertips, mix the butter into the flour. Don’t over-do it. Add buttermilk and make a dough, which will be sticky.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and fold in half 8-10 times. This action causes the biscuits to be flaky and separate along the ghost of the fold after baking. Press the dough into a one inch thick slab. Cut with a 2-1/2 inch biscuit cutter and place on a baking sheet.

Bake until the biscuits rise and are lightly browned on top, about 14-15 minutes.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

My Vegetable Life

Dandelion Greens
Dandelion Greens

LAKE MACBRIDE— For the first time in a few days, the concrete driveway was dry when the sun came up this morning. Temperatures are in the mid-30s presently, with a forecast of snow and/or rain, and a high of 43 degrees today. No planting in the garden for now.

I failed to notice the dandelion greens while shooting the photo of the culvert at the end of our driveway. They are at a stage ready for salads and cooking. The wreck that was the contractor ditch work last fall yielded something positive, at least in a culinary way. When the rain abates, I’ll repair the ditch damage, but today will be harvesting the greens. There is a yellow squash from the grocery store in the kitchen, so maybe a side dish of squash sauteed in olive oil, with onions and dandelion greens. Mmm.

My work at the CSA earns me a share of the vegetable harvest, so we should have enough vegetables to use fresh once the shares start coming in. Likewise, my relationships with other growers, combined with our home garden should yield enough to put up some items for winter. I have been avoiding this planning of the garden for too long.

Garden Seedlings
Garden Seedlings

Immersion in the local food producing culture means my focus in the home garden can be on a smaller number of vegetables. Items like kohlrabi, cabbage, potatoes, sweet corn and fresh tomatoes can be outsourced to others who will provide them in abundance as part of the normal process. My space can be used for items that more closely integrate into our garden kitchen, which serves two purposes, cooking fresh and local ingredients, and putting up vegetables as specialty items for off-season.

In practical terms, this means an expanded herb garden, more leafy greens, different kinds of tomatoes (the CSA will provide heirloom and Roma), and more onions, turnips, broccoli, bell peppers, cucumbers and squash. I will also plant some different kinds of hot peppers. The intention is to use all of this fresh, with some of the spinach leaves frozen whole, and any excess either given away or sold at a farmers market.

On my canning repertory is: vegetarian soup stock (using turnip greens, and the green parts of leeks if I have them), various tomato products (diced, juice, sauce), an annual garden ends salsa (sweet and savory types), sauerkraut, pickled hot peppers, apples (sauce, butter, juice), and some other items. Notably absent is pickles, and I have not found a recipe we like. Whatever I grow in my garden plots will also support the canning effort.

Under overcast skies, there are greens to harvest, and much more planning to get done before spring bursts on the scene— which should be soon (we hope).

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Buds Everywhere

Fallen Maple Tree Buds
Fallen Maple Tree Buds

LAKE MACBRIDE— After the gully-washer yesterday, one noticed the buds of trees and bushes coming out. Lilacs, maple, oak, apple, pear— all of them. Spring has been here by the calendar, but these buds are a better sign of the season’s actuality.

At the same time, gardeners and vegetable farmers are itching to get into the ground, but debating whether it is warm enough to transfer from the greenhouse to the hoop house. It’s still too cold and wet to put much in  the ground.

A few earlies are in, spinach, and broadcast lettuce and arugula, and there are considerations. Should we skip spring turnips and peas, and get into the soil with transplants from the greenhouse trays instead. That is, when the danger of frost is past.

Someone received a shipment of chicks and is working to keep them warm in the garage. Hundreds of pounds of seed potatoes await planting, something that is traditionally done much earlier in the spring. It’s warm in the greenhouse, but seeds planted six weeks ago are past time for planting in the ground. There is a backlog of field work that will burst upon us, just as the buds on the trees and bushes are doing now.

There is a pent up energy soon to be unleashed in gardens and fields everywhere. If only we could get going. The time is not yet right.