Tag: local food

Categories
Writing

Bob Darby’s Seedling

Bob Darby's Seedling
Bob Darby’s Seedling

On the last shift of the season I walked in the test orchard picking apples.

20 minutes of bliss.

Beginning with a tree the orchard’s namesake planted in the 1980s, I picked a few there then added Connell Red, Regent and Sheepnose to my bag — about six pounds.

Bob Darby’s Seedling did not make the cut when the orchard expanded.  A lone tree sits at the head of the test grove — a reminder of the founder who collected saplings from friends and neighbors to graft to his own root stock as he increased the variety of apples to more than 120.

After cutting and tasting, the whole lot of fruit will be sauced in our kitchen.

Wilson's Orchard Oct. 30, 2016
Wilson’s Orchard Oct. 30, 2016

And so it is with this and many of the jobs I’ve worked after my career in transportation. It comes down to a beautiful fall day, enjoying the last harvest of this season, and hoping there will be another year.

On my way out of the sales barn the current orchard owner was repairing an extension cord. We live in the same political precinct so local politics was our first topic. Soon we began talking about our customers – how the long, lazy, end of season weekend produced more than its share of long conversations about apples and what people plan to do with them.

I helped a couple from western Virginia near where my father came up find fruit for apple butter. He moved to Iowa to find work when what he described as “Obama’s war on coal” took away his job in the mines. They bought a bushel. We had three separate conversations about coal country, apples, apple butter and getting by. Making apple butter is a family tradition not to be interrupted by the move north.

There were a dozen conversations like this one, each with people of different backgrounds and expectations about apples and local culture. Some found apples in the orchard and those who didn’t bought them from the cooler. I savored each conversation as it happened.

I asked my boss to work next season and he said, “absolutely.”

As long as I breathe air and need paid work to sustain our lives, that’s the plan. Hopefully Bob Darby’s Seedling will survive another year.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden Plot Three 2016

Field Tile Protecting Celery Plants
Field Tile Protecting Celery Plants

What is a kitchen garden? Garden plot three.

More than others, vegetables grown here made it to our kitchen and were used. Herbs, onions, celery, broccoli and green beans are always expected from a Midwestern garden. This year plot three delivered.

The story was of technique.

The plot is shaded by the locust tree each morning with full sun after noon. Almost everything planted here thrived. This year’s production included perennial chives and oregano, spring onions, basil, celery, broccoli and green beans.

I used drainage tile to protect young celery seedlings and it worked. Celery plants grew tall inside the 12-inch by 4-inch tile segments, producing enough for the kitchen with extra to give to library workers. There is nothing like home-grown celery.

The success of this year’s broccoli is attributable to protecting the seedlings as they grew. I put one old tomato cage around each seedling and wrapped chicken wire around the cage. As the plants grew, I removed the cages and put a 4-foot fence around the broccoli — tall enough to prevent top-nibbling by deer and close enough together to prevent them from jumping inside the fence. It all worked, producing the best broccoli crop I’ve had.

More than 100 onion sets produced spring onions well into summer. I tried seeding basil, but it didn’t take. Basil seedlings started indoors produced better results with plenty to make pesto.

What made this plot a kitchen garden was the production of aromatics — herbs, onions and celery particularly. In season I used them in everything.

Plans for next year: Split the chive and oregano plants; more basil; cherry tomatoes where the beans were; eggplant and hot peppers; and peas.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden Plot Two 2016

Frost Under the Locust Tree
Frost Under the Locust Tree

Garden plot two was productive this year.

Nothing but prairie grasses was on this, or any of the garden plots when we moved here in 1993. Shortly after we dug plot two, I planted mail order trees about 12-inches tall to grow them for transplanting. Due to neglect, the locust trees grew and grew and became a 40-foot giants. One of them blew over in a 2013 extreme storm that passed through. I cut it up and sold it for firewood. The remaining locust tree provides shade for the three northern plots, and adds value to the backyard landscape.

Hosting the two compost piles, the locust tree, and a bed of day lilies, plot two is challenging because of the tree root structure. Pieces of roots as big a two inches in diameter had to be removed for planting. The tree suffered no apparent ill effects after cutting some of the roots.

Radishes and turnips were the first crop, followed by onions. All produced well. After the root vegetables finished, I installed four four-foot tall meshed wire containers to grow cucumbers — pickling and slicers. They produced well. High winds blew one tower over, pulling the roots from the ground and killing some plants. Lesson learned from this experiment is to spread the cages out more and better stake them. After 2016 there is no question cucumbers grow better in the air than on the ground.

Kennebec and Yukon Gold potatoes were planted in big plastic tubs as an experiment. I got the tubs from a friend who gets them with her animal feed. The technique served the purpose of keeping rodents from eating the mature vegetables before I did. Production was okay, although we don’t eat a lot of potatoes in our kitchen. It was enough. I’m not sure the soil composition in the containers was the best. It was mostly compost with some dirt spaded in. Harvest was easy once I turned the weighty tubs over and picked through the dirt for the potatoes. There was no fork or shovel damage to the crop because of the technique.

Burying four more containers about 12 inches in the ground, I planted four types of carrots. The purple ones were a disappointment, but the others produced enough to justify another year. I made a second planting of daikon radishes which produced enough for eating fresh and pickling.

Plans for next year: think and plan more about this plot; move the compost bins to different locations; dig up and move the day lilies to a more decorative place in the yard; plant Belgian lettuce and other early greens; re-mix the soil in the containers and move them along the southern border of the plot for potatoes and carrots; plant radishes and turnips again, adding beets; a second planting is in order after the greens and root vegetables: more thought needed on that. These ideas may change as I give the plot additional consideration.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Garden Plot One 2016

Bur Oak Acorns
Bur Oak Acorns

It’s time to write about this year’s garden — plot by plot.

Dedicated gardeners reflect on the past year and I am mostly serious about gardening.

As the garden has grown, so has my knowledge of how to care for the soil and grow crops. Evaluation of the year just past is part of learning.

Plot one was the first dug during spring 1994.

It is dominated by three Burr Oak trees planted from acorns collected the year our daughter graduated from high school. One tree for each of us. It is adjacent to a row of lilac bushes plants in 1994.  As drought conditions often plague Iowa, accompanied by scorching heat, it is better to plant some vegetables in a partly shady area. Shade creates a longer growing season for lettuce and reduces the amount of watering needed. The three oaks and lilacs are staying for now, although eventually may be thinned.

On the north side of the plot are some spring flower bulbs transplanted from the Indiana trucking terminal where I worked. They grew in the ditch near Highway 41 and were likely planted by a previous owner. They bloom faithfully each year and need to be dug and separated.

Next to the flowers is what used to be a row of iris. They are dying and what’s left needs to be dug and separated. Only an occasional flower now appears.

The rest of the plot was planted in garlic rescued from the town library. It eventually spread to cover the entire plot. A few years ago I placed tarps over the middle of the garlic patch to store stakes, cages and fencing. Each spring garlic pops up around the tarp perimeter. I harvest it for spring garlic, otherwise let it grow wild.

This year I pulled up one of the tarps and planted Turk’s Turban and Acorn squash. Both produced and some wait on the counter to be used.

This is the first year I tried an annual crop in plot one, and based on the results, I might try more. The near continuous shade makes crop selection the essential dynamic. While we enjoy the spring garlic, we should convert production to a regular, annual cycle of planting and harvesting garlic cloves. It is not too late this year, but with continuous daily work outside home until November, it is doubtful I’ll get a crop in.

Plans for next year: dig up the bulbs, separate and move to a more decorative spot in the yard; try an early spring crop like turnips, beets or radishes; till the entire plot after spring crop, evaluate, and likely plant beans to fix nitrogen in the soil; plant garlic in the fall.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Season’s End

Kale
Kale

Yesterday’s harvest yielded kale, some cucumbers and hot peppers.

I sent another box of kale to the library for workers. It has been filled with kale countless times in recent years. It’s better quality than what’s available at grocery stores and they use it almost every day — good use for an abundant crop.

The aroma of Bangkok peppers in the dehydrator pervaded the kitchen air as I prepared a simple dinner of spaghetti with tomato sauce made of canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, olive oil and oregano. I peeled and diced cucumbers to make a salad with Kalamata olives, feta cheese, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. There was fresh apple cider from the orchard.

I tasted the pickled red onions and decided to stop at two half-gallon jars. There are plenty to last until spring. Three crates of onions remain — more than enough for our small family.

The solace of kitchen work occupies hands and mind to help us forget what seems intolerable in society. At season’s end it is welcome relief.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Pressing the Limits

Garden Plot with Kale and Peppers
Garden Plot with Kale and Peppers

For the first time in a long time I missed work on Wednesday.

After a futile attempt to shave, shower and drive into the home, farm and auto supply store, I called off and slept until 2 p.m. — a total of 19 hours in bed.

I’m back to normal and scheduled four days vacation at the end of the month. If approved, I will use the time to catch up around the house and rest.

I don’t want to admit it, but 100 days of work may have been too much to attempt.

In an effort to understand low wage work life and the exigencies of lives where there is not enough income, I dealt with it as many do by adding more jobs. A predictable conclusion has been it doesn’t resolve the issue.

A key driver in the financial shortfall is buying health insurance, an expense that takes 34 percent of my wages from a full-time job. As the two of us approach Medicare age we’ll see some relief. We’ll also be approaching full retirement and presumably slowing our outside work. I look to my maternal grandmother’s example: she did alterations into her eighties. I expect to be doing something to earn money as long as I’m physically able. My current work on area farms is setting the stage for that.

Trying not to complain, these are observations about a life. In the spirit of Cotton Mather I’ve self-inoculated to see what happens. While believing in unlimited potential of a human, the brief illness is evidence of a physical limit. Knowing one’s limits will make us stronger and hopefully more effective.

We are well into the apple harvest at the u-pick orchard where I spend my weekends. It is an abundant crop and I enjoy interacting with hundreds of apple pickers each day. It is something like a fair, about which Garrison Keillor wrote in the Washington Post this week.

“The Fair is an escape from digitology and other obsessions, phobias and intolerances,” Keillor wrote, “also a vacation from the presidential election which has obsessed many people I know, including myself.”

The lone evidence of politics I spotted at the orchard last weekend was a single too-young-to-vote teen wearing a Trump T-shirt. Discussion of politics was completely absent within my hearing. I don’t know the demographics of apple pickers except from my own observations over the last four seasons. What I’d say is apple culture is an equalizer, something almost everyone with transportation can take part in and one in which I am happy to participate.

For me, it’s about forgetting a life that’s challenging and sometimes too hard for a shift at a time. It’s also about hope that society will find common ground.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Poblanos, Onions and Pickles

Fermenting Dill Pickles
Fermenting Dill Pickles

JOHNSON COUNTY, Iowa — In the margins of time between social engagements lives a local food movement available to all who seek it.

There is inadequate time in life’s span to become an enthusiast, however pursuit of local food culture is not only okay, it can be rewarded with meals that comfort more ways than imaginable.

While Jacque was in town with her sister, I made last night’s supper of seconds of poblano peppers and yellow onions from the farm, a couple of links of vegetarian sausage, and a variety of home made pickles.

After removing bad spots from the onions and peppers, I cut them into thin strips and piled them on the cutting board. I cut the sausages on the bias and browned them in a pan. Once finished, I removed them to a paper napkin sitting on a plate and began sauteing the onions and peppers in olive oil, seasoning with a bit of cilantro, granulated garlic, salt and pepper.

While the vegetables were cooking I arranged three kinds of pickles, sweet, dill and daikon radish in a bowl. Once the vegetable mix was finished I spooned it into the bowl beside the pickles and topped it with the cooked sausage. With a glass of iced water, it made a meal.

After dinner I went downstairs and checked the crock full of cucumbers. Fermentation bubbles had begun to appear after two days, indicating a successful pickling process. Patience is a key ingredient when making pickles. I hope I have enough of it on hand to make it 11 additional days when the dill pickles will be ready to eat.

Simple stir fries and pickles become a way of life when vegetables are available from the farm and garden in abundance. Cooking in the local food culture is an act of rebellion from a consumer culture that engendered us in the Western hemisphere. It represents taking control of our lives.

Do I always cook locally produced food at home? No. I pay attention to the seasonality of food and align with it as much as possible. I’ve found it makes for better ingredients and depending on the cook, for better eating.

There is more to the seasons of food than common affection for sweet corn and tomatoes. Learning more is a step toward living a better life and who doesn’t want to do that?

Categories
Work Life

Into Fall

Box of Onions
Crate of Onions

The first leaves on our Autumn Blaze maple tree turned over the weekend — a reminder of summer’s imminent end.

A lesson learned this season was of the limits of worklife and the tendency to let personal things go when engaged in a big endeavor.

The garden, yard and house cleaning fell to the bottom of the priority list as I worked four jobs. It is ironic that in a year when my skills as a gardener improved, I was unable to keep up with the weeding and harvesting, which when combined with the lack of mowing for a month, created a jungle in our back yard. The birds and rabbits may be happy, but I was not.

Harvesting will continue. The garden paid for itself many times over. The question is what level of abundance is enough? I’m already thinking about preparing the plots for winter. It won’t be long before I pull the plants, stack the cages, roll up the fencing and mow. It assuages my guilt from leaving so much produce — tomatoes and pears especially — in the field.

Thunder and lightning blew past the orchard Sunday afternoon and I was released from work early. Because of the lightning, I skipped the greenhouse work at the farm — we don’t work when there is lightning. The storm created an opportunity to rest and after finishing my last post during Trish Nelson’s hiatus from Blog for Iowa, I did.

This week I hope to finish the onion trimming work and move on to what’s next. The presidential election is sucking up oxygen, so dealing with that is out there.

More importantly, what do I want to do next with my remaining years.

I used an on-line life expectancy calculator which determined I have a 75 percent chance of living past age 80, with an estimated life expectancy of 87 years. If that’s true, there’s a lot of living to do.

It will take a full day, maybe two, to clean up the tangled mess the yard and garden have become. Some time — not too much — must needs be spent learning to choose my occupations wisely.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Work Life

An Iowa Onion Trimmer

Curing Onions
Curing Onions

Between picture perfect onions and the compost heap lies an opportunity.

A friend grows onions using organic practices as part of a Community Supported Agriculture project. Onions are harvested from the field then dried in the greenhouse for storage. Sorting, trimming the tops and roots, and removing excess skin comes next.

As an experienced onion trimmer I work for farmers I know and trust. My compensation is an hourly rate above the current minimum wage plus all the seconds I can use. It’s a good deal, so I take it when offered. For an hour or two after a full time job at the home, farm and auto supply company, and on weekends after a shift at the orchard, I work in the onion shed.

Onion Trimming Work Station
Onion Trimming Work Station

The work is seasonal and temporary. Cognizant of potential competition from other itinerant workers, I work as quickly and as well as I can. The daily chore serves as respite from an intense schedule of lowly paid work that provides income destined mostly to corporations in exchange for stuff needed to operate the household: utilities, insurance, taxes, fuel and the like. I will have worked 100 days in a row by the November election — I’m not complaining, just sayin’.

At the end of each shift in the onion shed, I take home ten or more pounds of seconds. I remove the bad parts in our kitchen and am left with half the original amount in fresh onions. There’ no long term storage for these so they go into the ice box until used. If left on the counter, bad spots would quickly re-emerge.

Onion Shed
Onion Shed

I made and canned the first batch of vegetable soup with three pounds of fresh onions and a bit of everything on hand from the farm and garden. By the time the onions at the farm are in storage, there will be enough canned vegetable soup put up to last until the next growing season. Soup that can make a meal.

With the concurrent harvest of tomatoes and basil from our garden, I plan to make and can pints of marinara sauce using a simple, four-part recipe of tomatoes, onions, basil and garlic. Onion trimming blocks out time from vegetable processing, and some good ones will head to the compost bin before I can get to them. I am hopeful about getting a dozen pints of marinara sauce canned.

The life of an itinerant low wage worker lies on the margin between harvest and the compost bin, That’s true for a lot of professions, not just onion trimmers. If you think about it, that’s where we all live our lives in the 99 percent of the population that isn’t wealthy.

I’m okay with working a job with friends doing work that directly impacts our family’s sustainability. It may be easier to take a big job with responsibilities and varied compensation, but I’d rather deal with the questions like whether something can be made of each onion I encounter.

The pile of second represents hope in a tangible and meaningful way. What’s life for unless that?

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Home Life

Perhaps It Was a Sign

Water Damaged Memorabilia Drying
Water Damaged Memorabilia Drying

For the first time since we covered our foundation with earth in 1993 we had water downstairs after a heavy rainfall.

Perhaps it was a sign.

As soon as we discovered the problem, we reacted. Later in the day I bought a 20-inch fan at the home, farm and auto supply store to circulate air as the cement floor dries. It’s muffling out every other sound as I write.

Most of our storage items are on pallets, and planning paid off. About half a dozen boxes on the floor did get damp. We caught it soon enough to remove the contents and dry papers out before getting ruined. My musical instruments were also on the floor, but they were dried off before wreckage.

Casualties included a small collection of Franklin Mint items, a box of letters from pre-email days, and a banker’s box full of political memorabilia going back to when I worked on LBJ’s 1964 campaign. It looks like everything will be okay.

We don’t plan to build an ark, and must figure out what is happening then take action. By the end of today, I’ll inspect the wall inside and out and develop an action plan. I’ve learned to pay attention when nature and the forces behind it give us a sign.

The last thing we needed was one more thing on the Big Grove do list. On Thursday I made a schedule at the home, farm and auto supply store during a break. It must now be modified.

Weekend Schedule Draft
Weekend Schedule Draft

With such a schedule it is hard to relax. In fact, it is easy to see why people turn to methamphetamine to get through everything that needs doing in 24 hours. Maybe I need to pull a couple of all nighters, as a substitute since I eschew meth and stimulants except coffee.

A friend of mine who attended Georgetown University continued the collegiate practice of pulling all nighters well into the 1980s as a way of catching up with things that could not be delayed. The trouble is there is no “next day” for me to crash with my constant schedule through the end of the apple season.

Mine is the situation of any low wage worker, and I don’t see it being fixed in the U.S. by the “fight for $15,” an advocacy effort to raise the minimum wage. I will suck the pap of life dry with constant activities regardless of economic status. What would help from government is hard to accomplish: universal health care; bolster Social Security so our pensions will be there;  and preserve and protect the commons. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Onion Trimming Progress
Onion Trimming Progress

Meanwhile, the onion trimming is going well. Instead of crossing the lakes after work, I head East on Interstate 80 to Highway One and spend a couple of hours in the nearby greenhouse.

I’m about a third of the way through summer onions, after which I’ll do storage onions. The crates are custom made and have slats in the bottom for aeration. As part of my compensation I keep the seconds, so there are plenty of onions in our house for the next few weeks.

It’s all part of sustaining a life in a turbulent world.