My friends Carmen and Susan are hosting a Practical Farmers of Iowa field day called “ZJ to Sundog: Sharing Knowledge and Passing on the Farm” at Sundog Farm on Sunday, July 17, from 2 until 5 p.m.
The transition in farm ownership has been a long time coming and Sundog Farm is finally here.
Susan Jutz began Local Harvest CSA on ZJ Farm in 1996. After almost 20 years building a successful business and farm, she began looking for an opportunity to transition her farm to the next generation. The process was completed in May 2016, when Susan sold her farm and business to Carmen Black.
Carmen grew up nearby, was friends with Susan’s children, and had Susan as her 4-H leader. She has worked on the farm with Susan for five years. ZJ Farm has been the site for numerous Practical Farmers field day programs; this event will be the farm’s first as Sundog Farm.
The event will include a field tour and discussion with Susan and Carmen about their systems for pest management in vegetable production, including cabbage worms, cucumber beetles, flea beetles and tomato blight. They will discuss field scouting, cultural pest management, products they’ve tried and those they prefer. During the second part of the program, they will share their farm transition story.
Carmen has been part of the farm since I began working there in 2013. She called Friday to ask for help to begin the clean up in preparation for the field day. I spent part of Saturday removing weeds from around the old grain silos and barns and edging some of the fields. I was reminded of how far the farm had come since its days of being a conventional livestock operation before Susan began farming there. Sundog Farm should look good by next Sunday, so come to the field day, learn a small part about Iowa’s ongoing farm land ownership transfer, and wish Carmen well.
A potluck follows the program; bring a dish to share and your own table service. Please RSVP for the meal by July 14 to Lauren Zastrow at (515) 232-5661 or lauren@practicalfarmers.org.
Hosts:
Susan Jutz and Carmen Black
ZJ Farm and Sundog Farm
5025 120th St. NE • Solon • 52333
(319) 331-3957 • localharvestcsa@southslope.net solonsundogfarm.com
More specifically, why don’t more Community Supported Agriculture projects produce it for members and local food farmers for restaurants and markets?
I’ve been asking this question of growers and the reaction has been surprise at my results and maybe an assertion they will try it. There is substantial demand for the aromatic vegetable in kitchens and restaurants yet the perception is celery doesn’t grow well in Iowa, so farmers mostly don’t.
Celery from my garden tastes better than regular or organic available at the grocery store. In addition, celery is in the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables for use of pesticides, ranking #5. Why buy California celery when we can produce our own at least part of the year? Having the best possible flavor is important to everything cooked with celery.
Celery takes about 120 days and requires adequate water, more than most vegetables. That means seeding trays planted in late February to produce the crop being harvested this weekend. I use Conquistador OG seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Winslow, Maine. (OG stands for organic). It took me a couple of years to get successfully from seedlings to the ground to a crop as I experimented with growing. This year’s crop has been the best ever.
I attribute success to using 4-inch drainage tile cut into 8-inch lengths to protect and support young seedlings. I mulch with grass clippings and weed regularly. Each morning I make sure a substantial dose of water is applied. Larger scale farmers shun this extra work, focusing more on crops that can be mechanized (like potatoes) or are popular among customers (like cabbage, tomatoes and peppers). The flavor of local celery, and growing it pesticide-free, make the extra work worth it.
Every head of celery will be used fresh this year. There were only a dozen from the garden in this experimental year and I shared some with library workers in town. Next year I plan to double production and if there is more than can be used fresh, preserve part of it.
In June at the Global Foods Market in Kirkwood, Missouri, I bought a jar of celery salad in a glass jar. The preparation uses celery, apple juice, walnut extract and vinegar and is an example of a shelf-stable item for winter consumption. For the time being, I expect to use everything fresh in soups, stir fry and Louisiana-style beans and rice.
If the local foods movement doesn’t wake up to celery, there is a market for sales to restaurants to pursue. If they don’t exploit it, I will.
Peoples’ Coalition at the Coralville Independence Day Parade
When someone waves at a parade, wave back.
It is the polite thing to do, and every act of kindness and consideration adds to a tasty soup of life.
If one doesn’t do things with friends and colleagues relationships can wither. Engaging in society, including the thousands of people participating in and watching Independence Day parades is an important common denominator.
We did our part yesterday in Coralville.
Group Shot at the Coralville, Iowa Independence Day Parade Photo Credit: Ed Flaherty
Once August arrives every day will be a work day outside home. July is becoming a month of re-tooling before my work at Blog for Iowa and Wilson’s Orchard begins. I’m looking forward to it.
Here are some focus points:
1. Home and yard maintenance.
2. Develop a story board for the blog.
3. Tend the garden and preserve the harvest.
4. Increase financial margins on our economic life.
5. Maintain physical and spiritual health.
Many thanks to my friends and colleagues for yesterday’s conversations.
It takes longer to process vegetables from the garden than it does to harvest them.
That means a lot of summer spent in the kitchen.
I focus on each job — sorting kale leaves, parboiling and freezing green beans, cutting turnips for storage — yet the mind wanders along paths hidden in a day’s activities.
We opened the house and listened to birds at the feeder. From time to time we watched as rabbit, squirrel, chipmunk, and a variety of birds sought seeds. The weather was perfect for anything and my choice was to preserve some of the harvest for later in the year.
Birds scattered when I opened the screen door and cast sunflower seeds in the grass. Eventually they returned to forage for them. It is a predictable behavior that encourages their proximity and my seed-buying. That’s not what was on my mind as I made pesto, bagged kale leaves and prepared luncheon of vegetable soup served on rice.
We live in a violent world and acceptance of such violence is part of who we are.
The list of recent bombings and killings is long, getting longer: Orlando, Florida; Istanbul, Turkey; Quetta, Pakistan; Baghdad, Iraq; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. These violent and regrettable incidents in the last month may seem bad, and are. What is worse is the long history of genocide embedded in our civilization. The ability to tolerate genocide is a passive crime and a forgotten legacy.
The web site United to End Genocide lists our recent genocides: Armenia (1915), the Holocaust (1933), Cambodia (1975), Rwanda (1990), Bosnia (1995), and Darfur (2003). The passing this weekend of Elie Wiesel reminds us of the need to remember humanity’s crimes and do something to prevent them going forward. For Wiesel, and for many, this process begins by telling the story.
Immaculée Ilibagiza’s memoir, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, tells a story of how personal genocide is to those involved. She recounts specific incidents of machete killings too graphic to repeat. Her purpose is similar to that of other holocaust survivors.
“I believe that our lives are interconnected,” Ilibagiza wrote. “that we’re meant to learn from one another’s experiences. I wrote this book hoping that others may benefit from my story.”
The history of genocide against the first people in the Americas is under-recognized and little discussed. The common story is of colonial conflict, disease, specific atrocities and policies of discrimination, according to United to End Genocide. Last week an ailing and imprisoned Leonard Peltier released a letter in which he told a different story.
As the First Peoples of Turtle Island, we live with daily reminders of the centuries of efforts to terminate our nations, eliminate our cultures, and destroy our relatives and families. To this day, everywhere we go there are reminders — souvenirs and monuments of the near extermination of a glorious population of Indigenous Peoples. Native Peoples as mascots, the disproportionately high incarceration of our relatives, the appropriation of our culture, the never-ending efforts to take even more of Native Peoples’ land, and the poisoning of that land all serve as reminders of our history as survivors of a massive genocide. We live with this trauma every day. We breathe, eat and drink it. We pass it on to our children. And we struggle to overcome it.
Today the United States celebrates the signing of a declaration of independence from England with parades, barbecue, family gatherings, food, fireworks, music, travel and intoxication. The opportunity for such revelry came at a high cost.
With each cut of the knife and batch of green beans placed in the freezer I focus on the task at hand. Partly to make something that wasn’t here, and partly to forget the stains on the soul of American society.
As the garden produces more food than we can eat fresh, attention turns toward the kitchen where preservation, along with preparation of tasty fresh food meals, are the priorities.
Kitchen work started Saturday afternoon and continues.
I prepared a simple dinner while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. For appetizer there was basil pesto spread on a piece of toast, a slice of cheese, and raw carrots. The main course was brown rice cooked in homemade soup stock sprinkled with scallions, steamed green beans, a burger patty topped with home made barbecue sauce, and a Belgian beer. Dessert was fresh cherries mixed in a cup of Greek yogurt. Each plate exuded summer goodness.
A full row of basil produced enough leaves to make pesto. Here is the recipe:
Simple Basil Pesto
2 cups fresh basil leaves (packed)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts
3 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper to taste
In the bowl of a food processor take the following steps:
Pour basil leaves in the bottom and add pine nuts.
Pulse for about 30-45 seconds.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add garlic and cheese.
Pulse for 30-45 seconds.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Stream the olive oil into the bowl while it is running, scraping down the sides from time to time.
Stir in salt and pepper to taste.
Pesto must be used quickly or frozen to prevent oxidation. The plan is to make a pasta dish using pesto as the dressing.
Michigan Cherries
On a working class payday it feels like there is money so I did some shopping, buying some special items: two kinds of bird seed, a case of Stella Artois, a case of brewed root beer, and three pounds of fresh, Michigan sweet cherries. The beverages should last the rest of the summer.
Here’s how I told the story on social media,
After work at the home, farm and auto supply store I bought two kinds of bird seed: straight safflower seeds and a mix of sunflower kernels, peanuts, sunflower seed, safflower seed, hulled pumpkin seed, raisins and dried cranberries. We’ve already tried straight millet, and straight sunflower seeds, plus a traditional mix.
Next I went to the warehouse club up the hill where I bought a big bag of garlic (to make basil pesto on Saturday) and some root beer for the holiday weekend.
After that, to the orchard where I bought these cherries. I met Paul’s brother once at the orchard and these are his cherries, grown in Michigan. Know the face of your farmer is my best advice on eating good food. I also confirmed the start of my employment when the season begins July 30. With my other jobs that will be seven days a week of work until November, but it’s so much fun, it’s not really work. Hope my Facebook friends have a great weekend.
Use of greens turned from turnip tops to kale. I gave library workers a reprieve and have a large plastic bag full of kale in the refrigerator. While not sure what to do with it, it will be revealed when I return to the kitchen. Fresh soup certainly; a kale salad for lunch most likely. Kale freezes well, however, if everything goes well in the garden, plants will continue to produce until November — no need to fill up the freezer with kale today. It is encouragement to pick the best leaves now and compost the rest.
It is sad more people don’t appreciate kale.
Cut stems of oregano are on the drying rack. The herb returns each year and we don’t use much of it. The plan is to dry enough to fill a small jar for winter. Whatever basil is left after another jar of pesto will also go on the drying rack.
Day Lily
One of the deficiencies of our garden is not enough flowers. In fact, the only flowers are some volunteer day lilies and milkweed. After many years of fruit and vegetable growing, I may be proficient enough to plan a flower garden plot. That idea will go into the planning hopper for next year.
We are going home and three events this weekend reminded us of that.
Elie Wiesel died, silencing an important voice for human rights. I will never forget the Holocaust as one of the genocides that make us who we are. While visiting Dachau in 1974 I learned the reason Jews were exterminated with poison gas was bullets were too expensive, according to the Nazis. My visit highlighted the importance of treating every human being with kindness and dignity — a lesson that continues today.
Garrison Keillor performed for the last time as host of A Prairie Home Companion. During a previous “last show” in the 1980s I turned on the cassette recorder and went for a walk with our daughter. I wanted to be with her constantly before she left home for school. As we now know, Keillor’s departure in the ’80s was more hiatus. Preparing dinner with the radio tuned in has become a part of my life, reinforced during the years in Big Grove. I’ll get over the change. I listened to the whole program last night.
Paul Simon is ready to give up writing and performing music. “Showbiz doesn’t hold any interest for me,” Simon told Jim Dwyer of the New York Times. “None.” If he does give up music after his current world tour, it will have been a great run for the septuagenarian. I was a fan of Simon and Garfunkel in high school and have vinyl of their first album with “Hey School Girl.” On the album jacket it reads, “Contained in this album is a generous sampling of two stars of tomorrow who are the talk of the record world today.” Simon continues to be the talk of the recording world, so cross off the part about the future. Early Paul Simon inspired me to write. Modern day Paul Simon teaches us to keep learning and changing.
Celebrity departures from life in society are one thing, but it’s closer to home. My parents’ generation is dying and so many of my high school classmates have left us. There is a meme going around social media expressing this sentiment. Here is a sample with my response:
Michael Martinez explained why the elves left Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings. While not exactly the same it articulates a relevant sentiment:
The elves were compelled to leave Middle Earth by a spiritual summons of the Valar, calling them to their ultimate destinies within time and space. In The Simarillion J.R.R. Tolkien explains how the Valar — the guardians of the world — felt that the long-lived elves would be better off living near the Valar in the blessed realm, far from the mortal lands where men were destined to build their civilizations and live out their lives.
It is time to let go and let others build their lives. The kale and basil won’t preserve themselves, so I’m off to the kitchen.
Sunday will mark completion of the seventh year since I retired from transportation. It was a risky decision.
Nonetheless, my blood pressure immediately dropped into the normal range, and I began engaging differently in society with results that mattered more than pursuit of monetary compensation from a private company. Outcomes weren’t always positive, but are they ever?
This Independence Day weekend affirms that decision was the right one. It is a time to enact the future and it begins close to home.
Supper was a leftover jar of bean soup, sage and cheddar biscuits, and apple crisp from last year’s crop.
It was delicious… an apple joke.
I set my alarm for 4 p.m. to begin two hours of cooking. I also wanted to hear Garrison Keillor’s radio show from Tanglewood. He’s retiring in July.
Keillor lucked into radio.
“Through a series of coincidences, I lucked onto this show, for which I had no aptitude to speak of, sort of like a kid in Port-au-Prince who’s never seen ice becoming captain of the Haitian Olympic hockey team,” Keillor wrote in an email sent Saturday afternoon. “I was never in theater, never sang in public, but I had grown up at the end of the radio era so I had some ideas about how it might sound. I was a plodder, but persistent.”
So did I luck into a pattern of preparing Saturday dinner with A Prairie Home Companion in the background. All of my other favorite Saturday shows on public radio are gone – likely as a result of budget cuts. Soon Keillor will be gone too. New times require new patterns and I’m okay with that.
Saturday’s harvest included a head of cauliflower, carrots, turnips, an onion, two bunches of celery, and lots of kale for the kitchen and to give to library employees. The herb garden is coming along. I didn’t pick basil but will need to soon.
Planting included an acorn squash seedling and some dill, both given to me by a library worker. The Swiss chard seedlings went into the ground, as did some more jalapeno peppers. I planted lettuce where the carrots grew. The overnight thunderstorm provided needed rain.
Turk’s Turban Squash Plant
The harvest was shortly after sunrise. I was out in time to see dew around the edges of the Turk’s Turban heirloom squash plant leaves. It’s as if the leaf was a large moisture collection device, and the drops waiting to get big enough to roll to the ground and provide moisture to the roots. Summer Saturday harvest is becoming one of my favorite times.
After lunch I organized and cleaned the garage, which is to say I put things away, swept the floor and laundered the rags. I decided to leave the bagging attachment on the John Deere for another pass at collecting garden mulch. It’s debatable whether more is needed. It can always be composted if not used.
It’s been a couple of tough weeks in the news, making it difficult to process what’s happened in society. The murders at Pulse Orlando kicked off a series of news cycles that have been enervating at best, at worst a beginning of the end of society as we know it.
There’s a lot to write about. The futile efforts of the U.S. Congress to call attention to gun violence and do something about it, the referendum in Great Britain about whether to leave the European Union, a slate of Supreme Court decision announcements, the peace agreement between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government, and more.
What caught my attention midst the swirl of current events was yesterday’s 140th anniversary of Custer’s last stand during the battle of Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana. During a visit to the battlefield it occurred to me Custer was a fool. The idea the Seventh U.S. Cavalry Regiment could prevail in that open terrain was ridiculous.
Little Big Horn was part of a genocide that began shortly after arrival of Europeans in the west. It found it’s last practical expression 14 years later in 1890 on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee. Leonard Peltier’s case notwithstanding, our war with native populations in the Americas is finished.
The removal of cultures is in many ways the history of the country. We removed native populations, trees and wildlife and called it “settling.” Surveyors laid out a pattern of land use that enabled us to settle the prairie and forget what once was here. Oak-hickory forests, tall grasses and bison as far as human eyes could see have been relegated to special heritage sites. It’s not all been good but it is what we live with.
As rain falls, reminding me to clean the gutters, it’s hard to miss the need to engage in society outside a surveyed lot in Big Grove. To sustain a single life requires engagement in everything around us and many things that no longer are here. At least that’s how I cope with American violence and sustain the will to do something more about it.
I posted a request for summer reading suggestions on Facebook and Twitter. There were a lot of replies and suggestions, some I would not have considered had I not asked.
My summer usually begins with a re-read of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This year I am re-reading Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March instead. If there’s time, I’ll read something by Joan Didion from the 1970s and some William Carlos Williams.
In no particular order, here is a gleaned list of reading suggestions from social media:
Water by Jennifer Wilson
Dark Money by Jane Mayer
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
Diet for a Hot Planet by Anna Lappe
The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba by Julia Cooke
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
A benefit of an American lifestyle is having the occasional weekend off.
Yet the weekend is more French than American — le weekend!
In June 1977, over two weekends, I was in France with a French infantry marine unit. Those days imprinted the meaning of “weekend” on me even if I don’t get to weekend very often.
My guide for the exchange officer experience was an infantry marine platoon leader stationed on the Atlantic coast in Vannes. The unit was on alert to deploy to Djibouti, which had recently declared its independence from France. If there was trouble in the transition, the unit would head there.
Upon arrival at the train station I was driven straight to the officer’s club. I drank too many pastis before attending a reception in my honor — no one told me about the reception until several pastis had passed my lips. The non-commissioned officers lined up one aperitif after another in front of me with glee. Too drunk to be embarrassed, when someone mentioned the reception, I decided to leave the remaining drinks on the table, sober up, and listen and learn about the culture.
At the reception I practiced my French and mustered a dim comment about the Concorde, which was still new. The alcohol drove out my vocabulary so it was the best I could do.
In homes and apartments I briefly lived as French do. There was a continuous series of meals and events tied together with a notion of forgetting about work for a while. Weekends continue to be French in Big Grove, although with much less alcohol and no drunkenness. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.
Last Saturday of Spring Harvest – kale, peas, carrots, celery, oregano, basil and spring onions.
The garden is in, harvest begun and work remains to be done this Father’s Day weekend.
Weekends at home are a way to avoid expenses as I navigate from semi-retirement to full retirement in a few years. There is no extra money to drive into the county seat for “shopping,” nor is there adequate clothing in the closet to attend any galas to which I may be invited. Working at home avoids expense.
Saturday was the first of many harvests from the vegetable garden. Untold hours were devoted to planting, cultivation and now harvest of kale, celery, carrots, peas, spring onions, basil and oregano. It was exciting.
Garden Shares for Library Workers
One of my outlets for excess produce has been workers at the public library. I prepared shares of onions, kale, oregano and basil in a cooler and drove them into town. One of the library workers gave me an acorn squash seedling for which I will find room.
Next I went to the grocery store where a neighbor and I talked for ten minutes about beer selections. He didn’t carry the union-made Pabst Blue Ribbon that would have been my first choice, nor did he have made in Canada Labatt’s Blue which would have been my second. Partly as political commentary I settled for a six-pack of a Mexican mass produced brand. Upon return home I iced three of them and two cans of Royal Crown Cola in the cooler.
Broccoli in Cages
The garden entered the summer phase and it’s time to break loose the broccoli.
Last year the broccoli crop was a failure. I decided to protect the seedlings with chicken wire a
nd they survived initial growth. It’s time to take the chicken wire off the individual plants and create a close fence that will keep deer from jumping in and allow the plants to spread their leaves. I scoped it out on Saturday and hope to free the broccoli later this morning.
Peas and Carrots
Harvest is unfinished until the produce is washed, distributed and processed. In a kitchen garden like ours that means cleaning, storage and cooking which takes more time than one might expect.
For dinner I made peas and carrots, and kale-black bean-vegetable soup poured over brown rice made with a jar of home made tomato juice. By the end of Saturday I was very tired.
I took a course in African American Studies while in graduate school.
Kale – Black Bean Soup on Brown Rice
The late Jonathan Walton made the case that slaves were likely too tired to do much organizing after working a shift on Southern plantations. I learned a lot about the literature of slavery and its narratives because of Walton. I wasn’t sure what to make of his assertion, other than that slaves were people just as we are.
I yawned during class from time to time and Walton called me on it, inquiring about my condition… was the subject matter too tedious? Had I been up late the previous night? I tried to stay awake. It was a dry topic.
Peas and Carrots
Everyone has an opinion about slavery. For the most part, people don’t directly favor it. It is a stain on our public consciousness that has not been removed, nor likely will be in my lifetime. I’m not sure what exactly that means in 21st Century America.
The term “wage-slave” is popular today, especially among people ascendant from low-paying work. Forced labor continues to exist unawares, notably through labor trafficking. Neither is the same thing the peculiar institution was.
Modern life has us removed from the actuality of things like neighboring, sharing and slavery and we are the less for it. This Father’s Day Weekend I plan to commune with what is actual — what is real. By doing so sustain our lives in a turbulent world.
With planting of Fairy Tale eggplant, Turk’s Turban squash, a sweet potato that sprouted on the counter and 18 bell pepper plants, I declare the initial garden planting finished.
Food is growing in six plots this year and all that remains is the weeding, water management and harvesting.
The days get longer for another week when summer begins.
Yesterday morning was soil blocking at the CSA for the fall crop — blocks for 2,160 seedlings. Afterward I walked the farm to inspect the progress of the crops. I’m not sure how often I will make it back now that my work is done for the season. The crops look fine as the farm transitions from one owner to the next.
What’s next?
With all the produce, cooking will be part of it, but that’s not really what I mean. Politics has devolved to hearing more than a person can stand about the 2016 presidential race. Not that either. My next significant gig is editing Blog for Iowa in August, so there’s time for a break in the action — a focus on maintenance of the house and my small circle of family and friends.
It’s a time to look at the garden I’ve planted and make plans for next year.
My friends Carmen and Susan are hosting a Practical Farmers of Iowa field day called “ZJ to Sundog: Sharing Knowledge and Passing on the Farm” at Sundog Farm on Sunday, July 17, from 2 until 5 p.m.
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