WEST BRANCH—Driving back roads learned during the 2012 drought I arrived for my 9:30 meeting. It was, and still is a summer day as good as it gets. Wildflowers were everywhere and in bloom.
I can’t name them, there are too many for that, just take in their beauty in the marginal places along the sectioned farm land.
On the way home I stopped at the road side stand and bought sweet corn. Leveraging the local grower makes the most sense as our lot bordering the state park and a 25-acre wood is laden with corn-eaters.
Dinner will be ears of corn, garden green beans and a slice of cheddar cheese. This is summer in Iowa.
If a task or event is on the white board, it is likely to get some attention. Yesterday I wrote “make real food” on it.
I knew I would draw from the garden, ice box and pantry for the meal, but what I would make—had no clue.
It became is a sort of enchilada, but not really Mexican. The intent was to use Swiss chard and other summer vegetables. Here’s what I did:
Cook 6 raw tortillas in a dry pan. Set aside.
Make tomato sauce by draining a quart of diced tomatoes and processing them in the blender. (In retrospect, I should have seasoned the sauce, but left it just tomato puree).
Prepare 6-8 Swiss chard leaves by removing the veins. Chop the veins and stems into bits and the leaves into one inch ribbons.
Using olive oil, sautee one third onion, chard stalks and veins, quarter cup chopped celery seedlings, one third of a zucchini cut into quarter inch cubes, and season with sea salt.
When the veg is softened, add one 15 ounce can prepared black beans.
Add the Swiss chard leaves, a generous tablespoon of lemon juice, and stir gently until the leaves start to wilt. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Into a rectangular baking dish pour enough tomato sauce to cover the bottom.
Take a cooked tortilla and spoon the vegetable mixture on the middle. Sprinkle on a tablespoon of feta cheese, tightly roll the tortilla and place it in the baking dish on top of the sauce. Repeat until the dish is full.
Pour the remainder of the tomato sauce on top, cover with aluminum foil and bake for about an hour in a 360 degree oven.
Remove the casserole and place on a rack. Remove the foil and sprinkle more feta cheese on top. Let sit on the counter for 10-15 minutes to cool.
Serve with a favorite accompaniment, such as hot sauce, sour cream or chutney.
The first harvest of green beans is finished as humans enter a race with nature to get the best of what’s in the garden patch.
Rodents, slugs and insects all want a piece of the action. Today I’ll pull up the plants, harvest what remains that is edible and prep the soil for replanting.
Green beans are one of our favorites. We have about ten pounds in the ice box ready for cooking—not enough to preserve.
Yesterday I harvested Swiss Chard. While the preparation is a bit boring—slice leaves into ribbons, saute with onions and garlic—it is a tasty, seasonal side dish. With the kale and lettuce we have an abundance of leafy green vegetables.
The broccoli seedlings are coming along, and if there is time, I hope to prepare a plot for the planting today.
There is one other garden patch ready for second cropping, and it will likely be turnips and radishes. The weather has been very cool, and there may be a window to get them in before the traditional July 25. With the crazy weather, we press against preconceived notions about seasonality and try new things.
And we weed the garden, never catching up with the work as nature works incessantly to take over the plots again.
This year’s garden work reached its summer pivot point neatly on the solstice. Main crops of tomatoes, peppers, beans, kale, carrots and cucumbers have been planted. There are some kitchen herbs, garlic, celery and a bumper crop of apples and pears. More planting will be done soon, as a couple of plots have space for a second crop. Of course July 25 is by tradition planting day for second crop turnips.
Good news is my car was parked inside the garage last night after being outside for two months. It is a sign summer is really here. I am halfway through my ritual read of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, arguably the best novel of summer. Before I get too deep in iced tea, new summer projects, and leisure, let me record some tomato experiences.
I planted tomato seeds the third week in March and it was too early for the garden. It would be better to time them as I expect to plant them, with one batch ready to go into the ground mid-May, and a second mid-June.
I also planted too many tomatoes indoors. I could reduce the quantity by two thirds. After consulting with a local farmer, I restricted myself to one plant per cage. Too, I double cropped with the early peas, so the seedlings got very big in too small a container before planting the last ones yesterday. For future reference, if I plant 1.5 times the number of seeds I expect to plant as seedlings, that should be more than enough for the season.
The Brandywine tomatoes have a distinctive leaf shape and texture, so I am looking forward to seeing how those turn out. Now comes the growing and I am off to the warehouse for a shift.
Folks who live near me need not worry about kale this year. Already, our icebox is full of leaves, and as they are picked, such picking spurs growth. It is expected to be a long, abundant kale season with a massive giveaway.
There’s a lot of work in the hopper this morning, but I couldn’t resist posting this photo of the morning kale harvest.
I planted tomatoes where the peas grew, tilled the soil where the rabbits had dined on my broccoli to put in hot peppers, and spent time mulching, weeding and watering. I made a dent in the work.
Without the bartering agreement at the CSA this year, the garden must produce and so far, it has.
What’s currently growing best is green beans, kale, carrots, garlic, herbs, tomatoes, herbs and daikon radishes. A lot of crops have a way to go before producing.
Morning Harvest
The relationship between food, retailers, diet, health, wellness, exercise and tradition is complicated. Almost too complicated. Understanding it is embedded in our culture and often we trade off one value for another. There are no absolutes.
Kale
A vivid narrative about food’s role in society was written by William Kamkwambe in The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. He described the relationship of his family to food in Malawi, recounting the seasonality of the maize harvest, the relationship between the weather and land, and the role governmental organizations play in the food economy. The picture Kamkwambe paints is simplistic, and that’s why it is so vivid. It is the definition of subsistence living.
In the West we have a different approach. Everywhere around us there is an abundance of food. Grocery stores are filled with tens of thousands of items. A host of local farmers crowd each local market making diverse, seasonal produce available for reasonable prices. While there are people who are food insecure—who don’t know where their next meal is coming from—the food is available in the retail supply chain. The problem is often inadequate funds to buy it.
Marketmore Cucumbers
Adding value to raw materials is what business and industry does and this applies to food. Taking scraggly-looking produce from the garden, an experienced cook can make something from it to feed both the body and soul. If retailers derive a margin from processing raw ingredients into meals and other food items, there is still an inexpensive opportunity for people to cook themselves, even if busy schedules are an excuse to buy prepackaged, precooked meals or dine out.
In the six years since leaving my transportation career, food has been about developing a sustainable culture. It involved producing and preparing local food, but also commerce. It’s about getting along in society–and garden work days.
Weeding kale produced a peck of leaves for the kitchen. The garden plants are healthy enough I sent 12 kale seedlings reserved as replacements into town for re-distribution. They found a suitable home as I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen preparing dinner.
Yesterday was the first day in a while where life produced time to work in the garden when weather was sunny and without rain. The ground was soaked, making weeding easier. I hardly made a dent in the work, however, a garden waits for no one and there was plenty to harvest. In addition to kale, there were carrots, sweet peas and turnips.
My editor assigned a new story in the morning, so I went to Iowa City to interview the subject. On the way home, I stopped at the grand opening of the new Hy-Vee on North Dodge Street.
It was different from the store where we had shopped for more than 20 years. Expecting the latest in supermarket merchandising I was prepared—for the most part.
My shopping list included one item: a six-pack of beer for a beverage with dinner. Using the latest tactics to resist over spending, I grabbed a hand-held basket instead of a cart. I picked up one extra item, some Iowa-grown Jolly Time popcorn, which is a pantry staple and was on sale.
The produce section and bakery were just inside the front door. I stopped and took it in. The space was crammed full of people and products. About eight people were serving food samples on toothpicks. Management staff was present in abundance. It took me a while to find the regular produce section, which had a misting tube above, giving the broccoli, peppers and other items a shiny appearance, but condemning them to a shorter shelf life. I thought about the scruffy look of the produce I had just picked, and longed for another carrot just pulled from the ground.
It took me a while to find the dairy aisle, which was, of course, furthest from the front door. In all, I spent less than 15 minutes inside, and look forward to returning to evaluate the tens of thousands of items inside when there aren’t so many people.
Preliminary Plating
At home, I put the six-pack of LaBatt Blue in the ice box and brought the garden produce upstairs. I opened a beer.
The concept was a dinner made from locally produced kale, peas, carrots and eggs. I put rice on to cook and got to work cleaning the harvest. By the time I finished, almost three hours had elapsed.
Dinner was the process of preparation—including the trip to Iowa City—and a vision of the final plating.
Final Plating
There were four distinct dishes: peas and carrots; kale sauteed with onions and spring garlic; brown rice cooked in vegetable broth; and eggs over easy. I plated the kale, rice and peas and carrots as above, then topped it with two eggs, sprinkled with feta cheese and a tablespoon of home made bell pepper sauce.
I covered one plate without the eggs and left it on the counter for Jacque’s dinner after work. Mine was too much to eat, so there were leftovers to be made into a breakfast burrito later in the week.
This was slow cooking. More than that, it was a life. A day of retreat from low wage work, doing things that matter. We need a slow food day in the context of busy lives—more than we understand.
Here’s what is surprising. The vegetables outside the garden fences are mostly untouched by rabbits, deer and other critters. Some behind fences are getting nibbled.
Who knew I could leave lettuce, turnips, carrots, radishes, spinach and other plants unfenced and the animals would stay away. Maybe I’m just lucky… or maybe someone knows an answer.
Next garden workday I’ll harvest and see how it goes the rest of the season.
Growing broccoli from seeds is tough without a germination shed and controlled environment. Miraculously, I made it from seeds to plants in the ground, with hope of a crop. I fenced them in before rain came yesterday.
This morning I inspected the plants and all survived. Each has the prospect of a head of broccoli, one of our favorite vegetables. We’ll see how they fare on the next step of the journey, but the hardest part is over.
I also planted several varieties of radishes, arugula and the first eight Amish Paste tomato plants before the rain. It felt as though I got some things done, but not nearly enough. Now the ground will have to dry out before I can get in the garden for the next round of planting.
Someone gave me a treatment to speed removal of mucus from my sinuses, which has been an ongoing problem for the last three weeks. I mixed up a quart of water with two teaspoons of salt and one teaspoon of baking soda and applied the liquid into my nostrils with a turkey baster. I mentioned the treatment to several people, and they all mentioned the neti pot, which was news to me.
I gained a better understanding of what’s going on in my noggin—I never understood it was open space in there. The treatments made me feel better for a while, but the mucus keeps coming. It’s a weird sickness where I feel much like normal, but cough to void the rheum of the mucus presumably gathering in response to an irritation or infection.
So today I am hunkered in with my neti pot substitute, saline solution and lemon water, hoping to get some writing done. Plus there’s the prospect of broccoli.
It’s been a tough couple of weeks complicated by a lingering and persistent impulse to void the rheum of excess mucus. I don’t feel ill for the most part, but the coughing has been terrible.
Missing work without sick pay means less income and a further exploration of the life of low wage workers. Well into the experiment in alternative lifestyle, I don’t see how people can make ends meet, even working three jobs as I have been doing this spring. That said, I won’t give up and expect to continue hacking through this rough patch—literally.
I picked lettuce, spinach and radishes from the garden the last two nights and made a frittata for dinner with greens from the CSA, spring garlic and onions. It was satisfying served with a salad, and there were leftovers. Already garden production is worth savoring. Between now and Memorial Day, the focus is on getting the spring planting done.
For the moment that’s all there is to say except change is coming. To make this life more sustainable, to improve our economic base. How change will look is an open question. I look forward to seeing how it comes together.
Journey Home 
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