Survey Says!

In celebration of being stuck indoors now that the weather has turned downright blizzardly, I thought I'd respond to my friend Midge's recent blog post: a survey for farm types. (**Side note: Not only does she have a great blog, her cooking skills have landed her a go on Chopped this Winter. She just might become famous, so bookmark her right away**)

1. favorite item of clothing: My Muck Boots. I'd be frostbitten and walking on stubs without them.
2. dream breakfast: Mesclun Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette topped with a Fried Egg, preferably cooked on a skillet over an open flame in the backyard.
3. if you could grow one crop what would you grow: Nasturtiums
4. did you have braces: yes
5. how old are you: 28
6. when is your birthday: August 15
7. best holiday: Thanksgiving
8. remove one holiday: Columbus Day
9. best farming quote of the year: "I work with animals, not people. How am I supposed to have common sense?!"
10. Favorite Lunch: the one where we had like five pies in one day
11. where would you go right now for a holiday: Greece
12. preferred time of day: 7AM-8:30AM--that's when I'm at my best
13. preferred time of year: Autumn
14. sweet or savory: Savory
15. Did you shave your head this season? No, I could barely get around to shaving my legs.
16. cheap thrill: Fountain Cherry Coke, High Fructose Corn Syrup and all
17. guilty pleasure: Chocolate Chips, straight out of the bag
18. favorite tool: The Milk Crate that doubles as a footstool
19. Frank’s Hot Sauce or Industrial Sized Ketchup? Frank's Red Hot
20. favorite farm vehicle: After this week, anything but the Dodge Pickup
21. more disgusting place to be stranded: The Beach house living room or farmhouse basement? Midge responded, "if we are talking post-basement cleaning, then beach house living room." Katie rebuts, "Dear Melissa: the beach house living room is quite nice these days, thank you! I've been stranded here for several days now, and I am taken aback by its cozy grandeur. PS: Your pet rat population is now hanging out in the basement of said farmhouse where it smells like onions, feet and dryer lint."
22. most memorable farm moments: 4th of July at the Beach House, and the events therein.
23. favorite briermere pastry: berry jam squares
24. favorite farm catchphrase: Hasta Mangina.
25. favorite farm animal: TURKEYS!
26. dream farm animal: Chickens & Goats to accompany the Turkey Birds...and maybe Guinea Fowl.
27. one wish for next season: for all to flourish.

Bloggle, Bloggle.

Meet Peter, Paul & Mary. They live in my backyard.

PP & M are Bourbon Red Turkeys, a heritage breed of which there are fewer than 10,000 worldwide. Why are three of them pecking and scratching around my garden? Good question. The answer lies somewhere between piqued curiosity and a moment of weakness.

For one reason or another, the past few clutches of turkeys hatched at the farm, where we now both work, haven't fared well. So when Mark heard peeping coming from the turkey pen in late July, he did something that I would have never done. He went into the pen and scooped up three turkey hatchlings. The mama hen hated it, the baby turkeys hated it and Mark hated it too. But, it seems this was the right thing to do in the long run. They weren't eaten by raccoons as others had been. And as we found out soon after, a fourth turkey chick managed to hide out in the pen and ultimately drowned.

Mark wanted to bring them home immediately. I wasn't sold, no matter how ridiculously adorable he said they were. Luckily, a fellow farm apprentice named Chris was just beginning to raise a group of pastured chickens and agreed to let the turkeys crash his brooder. Chris also generously supplied the turkeys with feed and shelter for the first 10 weeks of their lives.

I first saw PP & M when they were just a few days old. As you can see, cute is hardly a strong enough word. They were spry, miniature ostrich-like birds with agile little bodies and tiny little bumps for snoods. My first mistake was holding one in my hands. It peeped at me like crazy, telling me off at first, but as we walked across the field a ways, it looked up at me and just stopped suddenly. We looked around the pasture and walked for a bit more. I was toast. Several weeks later, I found myself making a backyard run out of rebar mesh and feeding the remnants of my tomato garden to three growing birds. Funny enough, I named them long before I knew what mix of toms and hens we had on hand, and I got it just right somehow! Peter and Mary displayed fairly definite traits; however, "Paulie" kept me guessing until just one week ago. We've had them out back for three weeks now, making them about three months old all told.

There is just so much to share about the backyard turkey experience so far, and in coming weeks, I hope to share a whole lot more about them. They are just such neat birds! In the meantime, I'm sure I've raised a few eyebrows and laughs around my family's dinner table back in Washington. If you have any questions for us, don't hesitate to ask.

Oh...and before I forget...Paul wanted me to wish you all a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Notes from a Neophyte: The Darling Buds of May

I forgot. And as I was swearing and hastily putting straw around my newly transplanted tomato plants to protect them from a freak late frost, Mark reminded me that this was the sort of thing I was supposed to be keeping record of with this here blog o' mine. You see, I'm still new to this gardening thing. I'm also new to this blog thing, meaning that I still get anxious about sitting down to write even the most informal bits. Though I'm thoroughly garden and food literate, I'm working toward translating my bookish ways into what some might call horse sense, screwing up and succeeding all the while. So, I'm introducing Notes from a Neophyte, my weekly record of lessons learned and tricks tried. Here's what the rough winds shook up for me this month:

---Perennials really DO come back. THANK YOU Chocolate Peppermint and Egyptian Walking Onion for joining us again this year.

---The bathtub seed-starting apparatus worked like a charm. Almost too good,really. I couldn't wait to get the transplants in the ground. I was a real pain for a few weeks there.

---You too can build an earthen oven. It is SO much fun to play in the mud. However, Murphy's Law dictates that it will rain on each and every opportune day for you fire it up.

---Rototillers be damned, I love my Garden Claw. I surface tilled 250 square feet, working in all kinds of yummy humus. It took me several hours, but I felt like She-Ra, Princess of Petroleum-Free Power when I was done.

---May 15th: After a few solid days of 80 degree weather, I transplanted the Tomatoes, Eggplant and Peppers. Cherubim and Seraphim rejoiced on high.

---May 17th: I was inconveniently reminded that Frost Free Dates are mere guidelines. Luckily Mark and I had plenty of straw on hand. It worked in a pinch for quick cover, but next year I'm keeping a sheet of Reemay on hand instead. (No matter what Mark says!)

---Starting seeds in eggcrates sure is swell. In fact, garden lore dictates that you just plant the cardboard cups right out in your dirt. Just ask my Milk Maid Nasturtiums. They really admired the work of the critter who DUG THEM UP overnight. No joke, whatever animal it was left everything else intact. My newspaper pots were (luckily) untouched. But apparently cardboard=smorgasbord. Don't say I didn't warn you.

16 Blood Oranges, 7 Lemons and 10 Limes

So, you have about two dozen miscellaneous citrus fruits on your counter, poised to harden and rot if you leave them to be used casually over the week. What would a good Green do?

Mark's solution:
SURPLUS CITRUS CEBICHE

So....flipping....good. Though he'll hate me for saying it, my husband's palate has a certain Yogi Bear flair to it. It is as though he is always following his nose along some path to amazing food that nobody else can detect. Quite often this path happens to run between our house and the fish market. So, Cebiche was his plan for the citrus. All it took was 8 hours, 1 jalapeno pepper, 1thinly sliced red onion, about 2 lbs of assorted seafood (we used Flounder, Swordfish and Shinnecock Bay Scallops). With enough juice to cover, some patience, Coarse Salt and Cilantro, this turned out to be great on day one and even better on day two.

Using slices of Savoy Cabbage, Fennel, Cubanelle Peppers and Purple Spear Onions, I fired up the grill and made a slaw of sorts to serve on the side. As a diner's luck would have it, the slaw turned out to be a better match for our Cebiche than the traditional corn chips.

Katie's Solution:

The "when life hands you lemons, why bother with lemonade?" MARGARITA

The best margarita I've ever had (ok, margaritas for crying out loud) were served forth at Oba! Restaurante in Portland's Pearl District. Ditching the textbook Lime, these puppies danced with the flavors of Prickly Pear and Blood Orange. Giving the circumstances, I probably danced too. Needless to say, I wanted to try to recreate the feeling at home. Using the same mix of Blood Orange, Lime and Lemon Juices, all we needed was a dash of sweetener and a splash of Patron Silver. Oba! Salud!

I [HEART] Straw Bale Gardening

Of all the factors to be considered when planning for a garden, for me it is important that my garden be sustainable above all else. Now, this is a term that gets thrown around quite a bit, but beyond the implicit link to growing organically (kapow! another loaded term), for a something to be sustainable in my eyes it must be low-impact, inexpensive and dare I say, it ought leave things better than they began.

So when it came time to plan for last year's Spring/Summer garden, I was in a real dilly of a pickle. Though I would have LOVED to ditch the lawn and all of the toxic socio-chemical upkeep that comes with it, my landlords probably wouldn't be too keen on the idea. And what about container gardening? Though I ended up planting a few herbs this way, I decided it wouldn't work for the my scale. Each tomato plant needs 12" to grow, and let me tell you, 12" pots add up in co$t. I would have loved to find the garage sale of my dreams, you know, where some old bird with a potting shed kicked the bucket leaving behind an overabundance of funky pots and well, buckets. But, I figured this was unlikely.

Luckily, I stumbled upon an article that the folks at Nichols Garden Nursery posted about Straw Bale Culture. After mulling it around with Mark, we decided to give a Straw Bale Garden a shot, and I'm glad we did. Here are a few reasons why I think you should too.

Straw Bales don't cost much. At only 5-7$ per bale, your cost is easily half of what it might be otherwise. You can plant multiple seedlings in each bale, and if you line them up side by side, you can plant even more in between the bales themselves.

A Straw Bale Garden is not a permanent structure. Straw is organic matter and biodegrades like a charm. So at the end of the season, you have plenty of brown matter to add in with your green. You can also use the straw as winter mulch. The impermanence of straw structure is great for renters like us, but it also seems like a great feature for homeowners who haven't figured out the perfect spot to put an herb garden. Rather than dig up five plots in search of perfect sunlight, hauling in load after load of soil and lumber, why not try straw instead? In fact, Straw Bale Gardens are actually soil-free, so you do not have to bring in topsoil of any kind. You will need plenty of compost, but so does any garden worth discussing.

Straw Bales stimulate growth. One of the first things that you will do is successively drench your bales in water, allow them to heat and cool. This is in part to keep the straw from combusting. (You know, like in the wacko dream scene in Oklahoma!). After the bale has gone through The Big Chill, it will produce and retain just enough heat to keep roots happy. Speaking of roots, I should mention that Straw Bale Gardening is NOT reccomended for growing root crops. Just picture it and you'll understand why.

Back to the good, Straw Bale Gardening is easy on the body. Since there is no tilling required, and the "beds" themselves are raised, it makes gardening accessible to folks with limited moblity and kids too. The hardest part is moving the bales to your desired site, which for obvious reasons, you must do before you begin wetting them down. If you don't, you will need to enlist the assistance of a forklift or hulking giant.

And the best part, Straw Bale Gardening improves soil. If you've placed your bales above soil, you'll find the most amazing soil and earthworm jungle thriving beneath when you draw back the straw in the Fall. You will not have any plant life; however, you will have some seriously light and nutrient rich soil to work with in that spot. Imagine strapping down-filled pillows to each foot before going on a walk. That is what it feels like beneath.

Straw Bale gardening met my criteria in a big way. I was able to grow beautiful flowers, delicious herbs and a variety of vegetables on about $50 including seed. Each day, I brought in about 5 pounds of produce from the garden over the course of three months. The straw has been decomposing for several months and will become the compost for this year's garden, so I'd say I'm getting a pretty decent return on my investment.

March Madness

Though I do not begrudge those who do, or even those who simply enjoy getting caught up in the collective fervor, I do not enjoy televised basketball in the least. (I just found out that my graduate alma mater, ole' pdx.edu will appear on the NCAA bracket for at least another five hours. Yikes!) No, for me the month of March marks a different sort of excitement. After months of playing the waiting game, I finally get to seed in preparation for the no-guts, no-glory main event--the Spring/Summer garden.

Let it be known that I am not a big risk taker. Even the lowest of stakes are often more than I can bear. So when I decided to try my hand at gardening for the first time, I stuck with transplants. I learned a great deal that year, including but not limited to the following:
1. Blisters and the importance of good work gloves
2. A really awesome Catwoman-style backflipping inversion during my yoga practice that became a dorky physical metaphor for trusting myself more and wussing out less
3. Soil is divine.
4. The real reason that my grandfather wore overalls
5. With skills that were accidental at best, I could grow food.

My life hasn't been the same since. That first Fall, my overall-wearing grandfather passed away, and I buried myself in the best possible form of diversion--learning. Mania really. I read every book on plant propagation that I could get my hands on at the library, and when I'd exhausted that resource, I went to the library in the next town over. I took it all in, and without the cramming or anxiety of my University years, I found myself sowing Heirlooms in the basement that March. Cautious as ever, I seeded three times as many plants than I had space or wherewithal to plant out. I figured that the majority of them wouldn't even come around to sprout, and that 1 out of 8 wouldn't be bad. Besides, from all of my new learning, I gathered that Heirloom varieties could be fickle. Here's what I learned last year:
1. If you seed 40 plants, you just might get 40 plants. I did. I think I have my grandfather's good sense of humor and grace to thank for that.
2. Always label your seedlings. If you think that you will remember what is what, you are wrong.
3. I should have kept better records, hence the blog.
4. I grow a damn good tomato.

That being said, starting from seed is not to be taken casually. It is one of the most thoroughly exciting and terrifying things I have ever done. It requires patience, attention and sacrifice. This time around, I'm taking this to new heights. No basement this year, and I wouldn't let Mark build the greenhouse for me that he wanted to. No, no. Just as The Roaring Twenties were the heyday of bathtub gin, 2009 will mark the year of Bathtub Veg. Yes, we have suspended a frame with adjustable lighting above the (empty) Jacuzzi bath. What's great about starting the seeds above the tub? Bathrooms are warm, and you can adjust moisture and circulate air at the drop of a hat. Or so it seems thus far. I am well aware that I may have lost my mind on this one, as I am forgoing nice comfy baths until the end of April for the sake of my seedlings. I guess being the Madwoman Gardener in March can't be half bad--as long as things pan out deliciously in August.

Dusting off my Overalls

Winter schminter. Cold, harsh and unwavering. Sobering, heartbreaking and crippling. In just three days, Spring gardening begins for me. I've spent months evaluating past gardens, and calculating what this year's plantings will call for in terms of seed, soil, irrigation, succession and design. I'm feeling ambitious this year, planting enough vegetables to share far more than I could possibly keep or even preserve. I plan to split the excess with close neighbors, donate some to hungry folk, and if there is still some left over, perhaps we'll have a little curbside farmstand. I remain cautious. Mark, however, wanted to lease 16 acres for me this year. What can I say? He loves "Katie's Tomaties" and gets just as excited about the garden as I do. Though I was flattered, I declined this time around.

Gardens hold such promise, and each year, I approach the process not only with a new set of sketches and skill, but with a new set of desired outcomes. This year's mindset has everything to to with prudence and abundance. In a world ridden with crises of all kinds, I find solace in the power of kinship, stewardship and community. And there is great hope in knowing that I am not the only one.

This week, I was reading an essay by Wendell Berry, a self proclaimed mad farmer/writer whom I have held in great esteem ever since reading the words, "Eating is an agricultural act." Furthermore, anyone who can so eloquently make a case for the human and environmental condition by way of Shakespeare and Blake is good in my book. In Life is a Miracle: an Essay Against Modern Superstition, Berry writes, "the standards of our behavior must be derived, not from the capability of technology, but from the nature of places and communities. We must shift the priority from production to local adaptation, from innovation to familiarity, from power to elegance, from costliness to thrift. We must learn to think about propriety in scale and design, as determined by human and ecological health. By such changes we might again make our work an answer to despair" (12).

I spend a great deal of time considering the standards on which my behavior rests, and with every pitch of my fork I am reminded of the world in which I am participating. When I consider this with any seriousness, I get angry and I pitch harder. But after several turns (and fits of rage), all of that pitching and turning results in rich compost. It will get spread around, feed the soil and eventually become food to be shared with my community and kin. On Friday morning, when my pepper seeds are sown, I'm invoking an end to the Winter of our discontent.

What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

A couple of weeks ago, Grammy sent me her hand-cranked pasta machine. Though it is time consuming, I've been looking for any old excuse and expanse of hours to play around with pasta dough. Valentines Day, a centuries old celebration of Catholic martyrs and all things pink and red, seemed the perfect occasion for a kitchen massacre--Beet Red Pasta.

Some folks don't like to cook with beets, and it is easy to understand why. The vibrant red hue that makes a beet so delectable is the very same substance that will stain a cook's clothes, hands, countertops and pans. For every minute that you spend preparing a red beet, you might spend another scrubbing out bright pink spots. I often stick to preparing Golden or Candy varieties when it is time for beets. But for coloring pasta, only true red would do.

I began by making a beet puree. Putting a small saucepan on the stove to boil, I trimmed the remnants of the beet greens from the roots and gave them a good hard scrub. Then I tossed the beets in for a 10 minute boil, then carefully without scalding anybody, slipped them from their skins and cut them in half. (You can also roast them in the oven, but I wanted to reserve the red cooking liquid for boiling my pasta later on.) From there, I was just a teaspoon of olive oil and a few pulses of the food processor away from my puree, which I set aside to cool while I began making my dough.

When I make pasta (I've done this twice, so this sounds somewhat disingenuous), I start with a big bowl in which I mix together 3 cups of Unbleached All Purpose Flour and 3/4 teaspoon of Salt. Then I make a well in the center of the Flour, crack in three whole Eggs and pour in 3 tablespoons of my best tasting Olive Oil. I was surprised to learn that you don't need fancy flour to get started making pasta. You do need to make sure that your bare bones components taste good, because as you'll see, there's not much but olive oil and salt to fall back on in terms of flavor.

THIS is where things got a little "Double, double toil and trouble." It didn't help that I'd watched Polanski's film rendering of The Scottish Play just one week before, but seriously, if I wanted Bloody Valentine, I got it. I tossed three tablespoons of the beet puree among the eggs in my flour well, and as I had done before, beat the ingredients in the well together with my bare hands. Seriously, the whole process should have ended with a newt's eyeball or by my spitting in the goo and smearing it on some unfortunate Thane. Luckily for my husband, it didn't.

Working from the inside of the bowl, I incorporated the flour mix with my hands until I had sort of a shaggy ball of dough. At this point, I worked in more beet puree, one tablespoon at a time (using 2-3 max), until the dough came together. Then I turned the ball onto a floured surface, kneaded the dough for ten minutes, and then left the ball to rest beneath the big bowl while I made a short-lived attempt to clean up after the carnage. The beet juice spots multiplied before my eyes, so for sake of my sanity, I gave up on mopping and strapped the pasta machine to the countertop.

Now as I've mentioned, I'm pretty new to using a pasta machine. It is a lot like a play-doh fun factory--one that is actually intended for edible ends. I have yet to use the cutting attachments without gumming up the machine royally, so for now I stick to just using the rollers and cutting my sheets by hand into something like Fettucine or Pappardelle. This way, the noodles look fair enough and have that nice handcrafted thing going. Because I was going to cook my pasta right away, and because I didn't want my house to look any more like Dunsinane than it already did, I opted out of hanging the noodles to dry. I just tossed the cut pieces in a touch of flour and laid them onto a sheet of wax paper. I could have spread them flat or made nests I suppose.

Next, I put my reserved beet water into a large stockpot, topping the pot off with water from the tap. I added plenty of salt to the pot, and brought the water to a boil. Meanwhile, I decided to roast up some Chioggia "Candy" Beets, to have on the side. (I promised my husband that I wouldn't make him eat beets for a while.)

With the Chioggias in the oven, I made my sauce for the pasta. Many folks like to serve a cream sauce with their beet pastas. I opted to make spicy sauce using the leafy beet tops, diced tomatoes, garlic, onion, crushed red pepper and a touch of vermouth. I threw in what was left of the beet puree for good measure, and I ended up with a sauce that would make Technicolor nervous.

Once my red water came to a rolling boil, I raked through the noodles to unstick them a bit, and dropped them into the water to boil for 6 minutes. I knew from what I read that the pasta color was going to fade upon boiling from magenta to something more along the lines of, say, salmon. *Sniff* What came out of the pot actually had a variegated quality--marbled like strips of bacon. It seemed unnatural to say the very least, like purple ketchup or blue raspberry. But every bit of color, from the stripes of the candy beets to the red ribs of the greens, came from one vegetable. (Oh, sure Katie, one magical, delicious vegetable.) Happy Valentines Day to mine, you and yours.