Tag: local food

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Writing

Return to the Orchard

Wilson's Orchard
Wilson’s Orchard

For the third year I’m working as a mapper at Wilson’s Orchard near Iowa City. It is a u-pick operation all about apples and apple culture.

In my 5-6 hour shifts guiding people through the orchard to find what’s ripe and ready to pick, I hear countless stories of why they come, their plans for the apples they pick, and their relationship with America’s second most popular fruit (regrettably bananas are number one).

I work there for the people more than pay, and yesterday spent half of what I earned on ten pounds of Honeycrisp apples, and a bag of mixed varieties to turn into apple crisp and juice. Given the fact our home trees will produce an abundance of apples this year, its not about nourishment. Once one is part of the apple culture it’s hard to get enough.

As I write this post, a pot of apples is steaming on the stove top for sauce. The goal is to use up the first pick of early apples from my trees and mix it with a quart of leftover rhubarb sauce from the spring. If all goes well, I’ll process the result in a water bath, adding more quarts for storage before heading back to the orchard and another shift.

I left the job in the warehouse to spend time with friends selling apples and apple experiences. I started work about four weeks into the season, so this year will be short, maybe six weeks. Some of the people who stop by the orchard are the same ones I saw at the warehouse—tractor ride seekers, apple eaters, and families of all kinds.

Better to spend my time with these folks than at the end of an industrial food supply chain. A place where the apples are grown not far from where they are sold.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Taking A Break – Cooking

Rough Cut Tomato, Peppers and Onion
Rough Cut Tomato, Peppers and Onion

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.

But we need to eat.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Taking A Break – Harvest

Testing the Red Delicious Apples
Testing the Red Delicious Apples

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.

Categories
Writing

Taking A Break – Shopping

Apples
Orchard Apples

Tuesday was the first of three days of holiday in Big Grove. It began with commerce.

Meeting mercantile needs inevitably leads me to the county seat, and to people in the community I’ve known for years.

To get a long past due oil change I went to the Jiffy Lube on Highway One in Iowa City. “Jiffy” had been removed from the process, as each oil change takes 20 minutes, and they have crew enough to do only one car at a time. I left unwilling to wait an hour and headed to the Mobil 1 Lube Express on Riverside Drive, which I noticed for the first time on my drive in. In and out in 10 minutes. I asked the cashier, “is this place new?” “We’ve been here ten years,” he said.

Next stop the HyVee grocery store on North Dodge for two items, both of which they carry, but our main store does not: a certain size plastic storage bag, and whole mustard seed. I ended up paying more to get some Morton & Bassett brown mustard seed which proclaims it is “all natural, salt free, gluten free, non-GMO, preservative free, no MSG and non-irradiated.” I didn’t know irradiation was a thing with spices. I also picked up four links of vegetarian sausage for gumbo. There’s a bag of okra in the freezer that needs using. The new store is nice, but pricey.

Orchard Apples
Orchard Apples

Turning east on Dingleberry Road off Highway One, I headed to Wilson’s Apple Orchard where I’ll spend the next six weekends as the mapper in a u-pick operation. I spent two hours walking through the 110 acres, re-familiarizing myself with the layout, the new groves, and which apples are ripe where. Gala are at peak now, and this Labor Day weekend is the Honeycrisp weekend. I tasted some Honeycrisp and they are almost there… just a couple of days away. The rough creek crossing was flooding over the rocks, so I rolled up my pants and felt the cool water running across my sandal-clad feet. When I got back to the barn, I was covered with sweat. I bought a gallon of fresh apple cider and a small bag of apples, and talked for a while to the manager while dripping sweat from my arms to the floor.

Apple SignNorth on Highway One, Rebal’s Sweet Corn had their sign up so I stopped and bought a bag of ears. The farmer said there were two more patches to harvest. One for the Labor Day weekend, and the second was uncertain with it being so late in summer for sweet corn. It’s only the second time we’ve bought sweet corn this season.

The final stop was at the hardware store in Solon where I bought four boxes of canning jar lids and a box of rings. It’s more expensive there, but I enjoy my visits to get hardware close to home. The folks that run the store are making a business out of it, and there is something to learn about small town life each time I stop.

Once home, I picked tomatoes for dinner, which was sweet corn, thick-sliced tomatoes and apple cider. The whole day set me back $117.53 plus fuel.

A bargain vacation while sustaining a life in a turbulent world.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Stand In The Kitchen

Scarlet Kale
Scarlet Kale

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.

Categories
Writing

Apple Tree Takes a Hit

Vroken Branch
Broken Branch

The Golden Delicious apple tree had been having trouble for a long time. Last night it took a hit as the combination of a fruit-laden branch attached to a disease weakened trunk broke off.

It was one of the last crop bearing limbs, so this winter the tree will have to come down.

It’s not a crisis. More a sign of what’s to come.

I planted six apple trees, including this one, after my mother-in-law’s funeral. The rest of the family drove to her home near Ames where I would join them once the bare root stock from Stark Brothers was in the ground. That was more than 20 years ago.

Since then, two more trees have been lost—this one makes three. The remaining trees produce enough fruit for our household which is loaded with cider vinegar, applesauce, apple butter and dried apples. We pick the best and leave or give away the rest. We’ll be fine.

Fallen Branch
Fallen Branch

After taking the photos, an hour in the kitchen produced juice for cider vinegar. I filled the two-quart jar that holds the mother for another season of fermentation.

We recently turned up a few old items of food. We have some vintage 2008 Duncan Hines cake mix, which I decided would be a reasonable vehicle to eat more apple butter. I made the lemon flavored one first. Squares of cake topped with vintage apple butter makes a delicious dessert. When I say “vintage apple butter” I mean the jars are labeled so the variety and circumstances from which the apples originated is known.

This morning I made a batch of tapioca. It’s not like pudding, but it is close enough that I plan to make more at least until the three boxes are used up. Not sure what prompted that purchase circa 2007, but the result, prepared according to instructions on the box was decent. If I can figure out the layers, it would be great to make a parfait. Perhaps to be served like ice cream.

The garden yielded a dozen cucumbers, the same number of Brandywine tomatoes, celery, green peppers and a few cherry and grape tomatoes. There is plenty of kale, but I’m letting the plants rest for a while before resuming regular harvest. No noticeable bugs have invaded… yet.

This report and its observations aside, it is a peculiar time.

The fallen apple tree branch is a reminder of the life’s brief span. Accepting the tree’s demise has long been avoided. Until this morning.

I accept it. Despite the downward curve of the arc, there is time to plant another tree. If not for me, then for whoever inhabits this plot of ground after we are gone. Looking forward to putting new stock in the ground.

Categories
Writing

Taking Local Out Of Local Food

Kale Salad
Kale Salad

Ingredients for this kale salad were grown within 100 feet of our kitchen. It is as local as food gets.

We enjoy garden produce in high summer — when nature’s bounty yields so much food we either preserve or give it away. Any more our household gives away more than it preserves because the pantry is well stocked with previous years’ harvests.

Friends and family talk about the “local food movement.” In Iowa it is being assimilated into lifestyles that gladly incorporate ingredients from all over the globe. This assimilation has taken the local out of local food.

From an intellectual standpoint, it wouldn’t be hard to replace food grown in China, Mexico, California and Florida with crops grown here in Iowa. The number of acres required is surprisingly small. For example, local farmer Paul Rasch once estimated it would take about 110 acres to keep a county of 160,000 people in apples all year. The political will to encourage home-grown solutions in the food supply chain doesn’t currently exist. Until it does, rational, local solutions to food supply remain in the ether of unrealized ideas.

A vendor at the Iowa City Farmers Market was recently suspended for violating a rule that produce sold there must be grown by the vendor. Just walk the market and ask booth workers from where they hail. Often he/she is an employee or contractor working for a farm seeking coverage around many Eastern Iowa farmers markets. Too often they are anything but local growers. What’s been lost in this commercialization of local food is the face of the farmer.

Knowing where one’s food comes from is a basic tenant of the local foods movement. I enjoy working with local growers on a small acreage to produce food for families. At the same time, I seldom purchase a box of cereal from the supermarket even though I’ve seen the grain trucks queue up to unload at the cereal mills in Cedar Rapids.

For example, my garden doesn’t produce enough garlic for the year. I’d rather buy a supplemental bag of peeled garlic cloves produced at Christopher Ranch in Gilroy, Calif. than cloves lacking discernible origin at a farmers market. I know how Christopher Ranch produces their garlic. Absent the face of the farmer, there is value in understanding food origins, and that means some percentage of a household’s food supply will not be local.

There is a lot of marketing hype around “organic,” “GMO-free,” and “gluten free” foods, and this has to be impacting the customer base of local food producers. If consumers feel they can get a reasonably priced, “healthy option” at the supermarket, why make an extra trip to the farmers market, except for the occasional special experience? Why wouldn’t one pick up a bag of Earthbound Farms organic carrots when local growers can never produce enough to meet demand? At the same time, marketing hype is just what the name suggests.

Food security and sustainability are complicated. Before the local foods movement came into its own, it already is being assimilated faster than one can say snap peas. From a consumer standpoint the local came out of local foods some time ago, and it may not be back.

Categories
Writing

First Tomato

First Tomatoes Ripening
First Tomatoes Ripening

Barb called from the orchard.

She wanted to know if I planned to work as a mapper this season. The mapper helps people find apples in a u-pick operation. I said I thought so, but would have to confirm in a couple of weeks, well before the busy season.

Life is complicated for low wage workers working multiple jobs — a constant juggling act of tasks and priorities.

I went to my backyard grove of fruit trees and tasted an apple.

Sweetness is coming, but not here yet. The seeds are not mature, indicating we are a ways off. It won’t be long though. First order of business will be extracting juice from ripe apples to make more cider vinegar. After that, I’m not sure.

It is surprising how big the Amish Paste tomatoes are. I was expecting them to be like plum tomatoes, but they are much bigger. The first two are ripening. As with the apples, it won’t be long.

Lot’s to do on Ruhetag from the warehouse. Better get after it.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Chopped Salad

Dinner Salad
Dinner Salad

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.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Middle of the Gardening Year

Lake Macbride
Lake Macbride

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
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
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
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.