Tag: local food

Categories
Environment

Will it Rain?

Morning Harvest
Morning Harvest

LAKE MACBRIDE— The question at the farm today was “will it rain?” We hope so. This spring was the wettest on record, and gardeners are harvesting an abundant crop. The crops in the farm fields also look good. As someone posted on Facebook, “walk out to the garden with a shaker of salt and no fear. Ahhhhh Iowa summer.” But we have been in a dry spell since the season turned. The fear is last year’s record drought is part of a pattern that repeats this year.

Another drought would be disastrous for farmers that depend upon keeping customers happy with vegetables that are the opposite of fungible commodities. Crop insurance might pay the expenses, but customers who can buy fresh vegetables trucked in from Florida, California, Mexico, Texas, and as far away as China might get discouraged. They are all-in with the farmer to share in the risk of the season. In a consumer society that means they could find other sources of vegetables next season if things turn out badly.

The ten day forecast shows a 60 percent chance of scattered thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. After that, the chances diminish to 10 or 20 percent. The prospect for rain is not good.

At my meeting in the county seat tonight the same question was asked. Will it rain? No one was optimistic.

I shared my garden’s abundance at the meeting, taking zucchini, yellow squash, kale, basil, flat leaf parsley and kohlrabi in a cooler. The basil and parsley were popular, with everyone taking some. Everything else, except one kohlrabi found a home. The fragrance of basil filled the room while we met— it was intoxicating.

My sense is we are in for another drought. It already feels that way, despite tonight’s forecast. I hope I’m wrong. We can irrigate if we have to. When the county studied the Silurian aquifer, there was plenty of water. But more is at stake than a single crop, or a couple of bad seasons in a row. The extreme variation in weather is concerning and is consistent with what scientists are saying about the effects of global warming. Let’s hope our questions will be answered, “yes, it rained.”

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Transition Kitchen

Morning Shade
Morning Shade

LAKE MACBRIDE— Scum is forming on the surface of the crock liquid, and that’s a good thing: a sign of bacteria working the cucumbers, transforming them into pickles. Sounds kind of gross, but hopefully fermentation is going as it should— there are only so many times one can check the progress in a day, then it’s time to move on to something else.

Saturday’s weather was hot, but otherwise gorgeous. The work outside was invigorating and sweaty. The pest du jour was swarms of gnats which, upon arrival in the garden, were a reminder to apply repellent. An application of imitation vanilla around my nose and mouth took care of the annoyance, and unintentional ingestion of gnat protein.

The main garden task was to turn over soil where the spinach and radishes were to plant lettuce seedlings. It seems hot to be planting lettuce, but with the shade of the locust trees protecting the plot in the morning, I am hopeful of another crop. Much of gardening consists of experimentation and my newly found ability to start seeds in the garage has me doing more of it this year.

I cleaned up the plot, removing the fence to cut the grass, weeds and small trees growing around its base. Then I picked a bushel of lettuce from the previous plantings, and sorted, washed and dried it to make two bags for salads. There were a couple of small turnips, one of which was later grated onto a dinner salad. When the work was done, the garden plot looked well groomed.

As the kitchen fills with food, it is time to process the new and do something with the old. I separated the leaves from the stems to make a quart jar of dried oregano for winter cooking. I cleared some space in the freezer by removing bags of last year’s Anaheim, Jalapeno and red and green bell pepper and cooked them in a Dutch oven in a cup of white vinegar. When they were tender, I ran them through a food mill and put the resulting green hot sauce in a Mason jar in the refrigerator to use in Mexican-style dishes.

Using four pounds of yellow squash and zucchini, I made a casserole, which will keep for a few days. The idea was to use the squash, and I made a large recipe with the idea of following the chef’s instructions to produce the desired result. Next time, and it won’t be long, I’ll scale it down to portions for a household of two.

How many kohlrabi can a person eat in one season? I intend to find out. I made mashed potatoes for dinner using leftover roasted turnips and two kohlrabi cut into half inch dice and cooked in a separate pan. When the potatoes and kohlrabi were cooked, I added them to a large bowl with the turnip and mashed them. Once the blend seemed right, I added some salt, butter, sour cream and chopped fresh rosemary. It seems wrong to mixed potatoes with cruciferous vegetables, but what came out passed the taste test.

After dinner, I inspected and watered the garden. The new lettuce will need watering more often, and there is more to harvest Sunday: zucchini, green onions, herbs and broccoli. Chard and collards are plentiful, but there are enough leafy green vegetables in the refrigerator, so they’ll stay in the garden for now.

Septoria Leaf Spotting blighted some of the tomato plants. The ones with the first cherry tomatoes look like they will make it to harvest, but not much longer. I noted the last planted tomatoes have not shown evidence of the disease. Will observe them as the season progresses to see if any conclusions can be drawn. We are a week or two away from some ripe cherry tomatoes.

This is how it goes in a kitchen garden. A constant activity that is not tremendously exciting, but a template for living and eating well on mostly locally grown food and the work of our hands. Life could be a lot worse than this.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Friday Fermentation

Cucumber Plants
Cucumber Plants

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.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Harvest Day on the Farm

Local Harvest CSA
Local Harvest CSA

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.

Categories
Writing

It’s Zucchini Time

Fried Zucchini
Fried Zucchini

LAKE MACBRIDE— It’s the time of year for zucchini, and they are coming in with bounty. What to do with them? Over the years, I have tried a lot of techniques, and here are some do’s and don’ts.

Don’t dehydrate them unless seeking to occupy space in the cupboard. I dehydrated zucchini as recently as last year, and either forgot they were there when making soup, or they weren’t the right ingredient. If one chooses to dehydrate zucchini, a little goes a long way.  Try making a quart Mason jar of quarter inch dehydrated rounds or half moons first. That has been more than enough to last the year.

Do use zucchini fresh in recipes, of course. When you or neighboring gardeners or farmers have a load of extra zucchini for cheap, get what you may need for the year, and using a box grater, grate them into one cup servings and freeze them in a freezer-style, zip-top bag. I started with six cups, and will see how long it lasts.

Do try new recipes. Today, for lunch I made fried zucchini (see photo) coated with corn meal. There are dozens of combinations of shapes and coatings, and they can be baked or fried. Once you get past inertia to trying out an idea, working with zucchini can be fun.

Realizing there is a seasonality to vegetables, and using them when they are in season is an idea at the heart of the local food movement. Zucchini is just one tasty example.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Making Pesto and Other Things

Fresh Kale
Fresh Kale

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.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Battle for the Cruciferous Vegetables

Fresh Kale
Fresh Kale

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.

Categories
Writing

Turnip Harvest

Turnip Harvest
Turnip Harvest

LAKE MACBRIDE— Today was the turnip harvest, and the crop was the best ever: plenty to use this season, and more to give away. There were so many greens that once I reserved a couple of gallons for soup stock, the rest went into the compost. It is turnip city over here.

We have a tradition to make soup stock in our household when the turnips are in. A large pot is coming to a boil on the stove. It includes, broccoli stalks, carrots, onions, celery, zucchini, yellow squash, bay leaves and importantly, the turnip greens which color the stock deep brown and add a delicious flavor. No salt is added until the stock is used in the final application. After cooking for a few hours, the stock will be turned off, to sit on the stove overnight, and canned in Mason jars tomorrow. In the past, I’ve used the cooked vegetables from stock making as a base for barbeque sauce, but I have several jars leftover from the last batch.

Great Grandmother with Turnips
Great Grandmother with Turnips

With all of the large roots, we’ll have roasted root vegetables with turnips, potatoes and onions. If we had similarly size beets, those would be added. The recipe is easy— cut everything in half, approximately the same size. Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, and place open side down on a cookie sheet. Roast at 350 degrees for one hour or until done. It is a highlight of the season.

According to a CSA farmer, July 25 is the date to plant the second crop of turnips, and I’m about ready. One more row this year should be sufficient, and if I can find beet seeds, I’ll plant those as well. The question is how to arrange the spring vegetable patch for optimal July planting. A topic for another day as I bask in a successful harvest of a traditional vegetable in our family.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Living in Society

Vegetable Gardening and DOMA

After the Storm
After the Storm

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.

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden

A Local Food Saturday

Saturday Farmers Market Produce
Saturday Farmers Market Produce

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.