The Future of Food

There's a documentary out called "The Future of Food", which someone loaned to us recently. While I'd known about the creeping dangers of GMO and agribusiness, this documentary really makes it clear how systematic and organized the system is: the government, the courts, and Monsanto and the rest of agribusiness are setting up a system that will make it virtually impossible for farmers to not live indebted or owned by big chemical companies, and give us no choice about what's available for the consumer to eat. I have a renewed mistrust of any bit of food that I didn't grow myself; organic food is better, but it's still probably not a good idea to trust anything. And what about eating when I'm away from home? I don't eat fast food, but even at nicer restaurants: what's really in the corn chips or the tofu?

It seems to be much worse in the US than other countries; other countries have wisely rejected or required labelling on GMO foods. I think we are so out of touch with where food comes from, and have had our taste buds dulled if not killed outright by fast food (I read recently that one quarter of all meals in the US are fast food), that we are more vulnerable to the transformation of our food supply into something that does not fill the needs of healthy support for our bodies, nor healthy support for the land, and utterly ignores the future in favor of making a little cash today.

I strongly recommend everyone try to see this documentary, although it's pretty depressing. We all need to be aware of what we eat and vote with our food dollars against this evil.

Scaling up the garden

Our climate is mild enough that we can grow a lot of vegetables outside over the winter without much in the way of protection. But mere lack of single-digit temps doesn't mean that we get enough sunshine in winter to actually allow plants to grow and for example put out new leaves; what's there in mid-October is as much as you get. If your aim is to grow all your own vegetables, you have to make sure to plant what seems like an unreasonable quantity. For the average person (well, at least for me), 6 kale plants seems like an awful lot of kale - and it is, in April. But in December, you can eat them to the ground in a week or two, and then it's store bought veggies for the rest of the winter. In the abundance of midsummer, it's very hard to think ahead to the cold dark days where that kale plant will be precious, and make sure there's a nice, rich spot for them all that won't get too soggy in the rains.

This problem of scale goes for things like onions and potatoes - many (most) people have no idea how many onions or potatoes or garlic they actually eat in a year, and how much that is; yet if you want to grow your own, you need to think on that scale. And that means some awareness of how much you planted last year, so you can tell if you should plant the same next year, or if you need to plant more. And of course, even then, things change from year to year - our potato crop was low this year, my guess is that after replanting tubers for some years we have built up viruses. So new seed potatoes this spring (from Ronningers - organic heirlooms from a family business).
And we are already getting low in potatoes to eat - we're having to eat All-Blue potatoes (which did very well) in the chicken noodle soup, and the potato pancakes, making some dishes look a little surreal (they really are blue - very funky with carrots). We're also low on onions (I saw this coming in June, but the later planted onions did poorly - and interplanting with tomatoes didn't work, the tomatoes ate the onions for breakfast). Fortunately, we do have what appears to be a vast amount of acorn and sweet dumpling squash (from just two hills!). We also have plenty of garlic. Oh, and the jerusalem artichokes, there's no end of those . All we need, really, is the right recipes.

I'm not sure if assuring an even stream of vegetables, without the feast-or-famine, is even possible when gardening, or if someday I'll have that kind of skill. Partly it may be accepting eating the less appealing foods when the good stuff is gone (like those tasteless tomatoes ripening in the pantry, "Longkeeper", and the jerusalem artichokes). But thinking ahead, learning how much you eat, and planting it in spite of how much it looks, is a set of hurdles to overcome or skills to acquire in the process of taking control of your food supply.

Sheep-to-lamb

First: don't read this if you're squeamish.

This is a garden blog site, but one thing we grow in our gardens is sheep, which we eat. Now that the garden is resting, and there's not enough grass left in the pastures for all the sheep, it's butchering time. We have it done; cutting up meat is quite a skill. But when the mobile butcher normally takes away the "guts" for discard, we try to use as much of them as we can; it honors the sheep to allow him to provide more value to us. At least, this is how we think. To a ex-vegetarian who's never been much interested in "variety meats" it's a real challenge; I have enough trouble with roasts, never mind hearts. So there's a lot of parts that still don't get used (tongue?), but we do our best.

First, sausage casings are really made of well-cleaned intenstines. It's laborious but not difficult to clean them. I have a new sausage stuffer, so we made some sausages (defrosted some ground rooster), and fried them up. Amazing to make your own sausages - lamb casings make small sausages, the diameter of a thumb - and the sausages look good and are delicious!

Then, haggis, though I chickened out from using the actual stomach of the sheep. The stomach is impressive to see but not appealing to use for food. Proper haggis contains the liver, heart, and lung, along with oatmeal, onion and spices, and steamed. Traditionally it's cooked inside the stomach, but I used a foil-covered bowl. It's not bad, but not that great, either; a fluffy, spicy, dark colored meatloaf with a liver favor. But I don't like meatloaf that much - Jay does, and he liked the haggis a lot.

Last year we sauteed liver and onions, and used heart and liver in shepherd's pie, both of which were fine. We still have a liver and a heart left, and four kidneys. Steak and kidney pie?

Another thing that comes from sheep butchering is the skins. We salt and dry them, then send them off to the Amish to be tanned, and get back sheepskins with long, wavy fleece, very soft.

I wish sheep were made entirely from steaks and chops, but they aren't, and eating meat means taking responsibility; for us "variety meats" are free food that would otherwise be thrown away (commercially they mainly go into pet food), it's highly nutritious, and most traditional cultures have highly esteemed these parts.

Our deep thanks to Baa-52 and his half brother.

Early tomatoes - variety trial report

It's time so start tomato retrospective (as I clear out the dead tomato plants - one of my least favorite chores). We plant a large variety of tomatoes, and usually we take careful records of which ones people like and their opinions. This year was so hectic we only have good data in the category of early tomatoes. But that was a good trial.

The early tomatoes tested this year were Stupice, 4th of July, Polar baby, Silvery Fir Tree, Early Pick, Oregon Spring, and Red Robin - all red tomatoes. The best find was Polar Baby - wow, it's early. It's unclear which of 4th of July, Stupice and Early Pick we'll grow; Early Pick and 4th of July have better flavor, but Stupice is open pollinated. Silvery Fir Tree and Oregon Spring are out. Red Robin only if I'm inspired to experiment more in containers - it wasn't really worth it.

The Data:

(note on dates: we had an exceptionally late, wet, spring this year - lots of rain in May and June. With our cold nights and clay soil, it takes tomatoes a while to get started and most production is in August, September and October. Official last frost is April 30, locals say May 15 is tomato-safe, but last couple of years we've had killing frosts in late May. This year we had no frosts after April 25 or so. And the killing frosts in late October were right on time - though we were spared the usual regular light frosts earlier in the month.)

Stupice (OP/Peter's Seed)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 4/30
first ripe 7/20
Small red salad type. Very sweet ("too sweet"). Productive for a long time.

4th of July (Hybrid/Burpee)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 4/30
first ripe 7/20
Small red salad type. Great flavor, much more flavor than stupice but not as sweet ("too sweet"). Productive for a long time. tends to crack.

Polar baby (OP/Peter's seed)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 4/30
first ripe 7/2 (maybe before, I wasn't checking!)
entered in county fair 7/16; won first in "red tomatoes"
Very small plant. Tomatoes were small, red, sweet but not much flavor - only worth it since they are remarkably early, several weeks before any others. Gave up producing in midsummer.

Silvery Fir Tree (OP/containerseeds.com)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 5/14
first ripe in august
Medium-small tomatoes, larger than salad type. Nice foliage. Terrible flavor in our trail. Not productive, had disease problems.

Early Pick (Hybrid/Burpee)
seeds started early March, planted in garden 5/14
first ripe 7/29
Medium-small tomatoes, larger than salad type. Lots of flavor: more flavor but less sweet than stupice.

Oregon Spring (OP/Pinetree)
seeds started early March; planted in garden 4/30
first ripe mid-july
Medium-small tomatoes, larger than salad type. more acidic, less flavor, consistency not great.

Red Robin (OP/containerseeds.com)
seeds started early March; planted in pots in late April
First ripe late June
entered in county fair 7/16, won first in "cherry tomatoes".
Very small, compact, designed for containers.
In container outside: very small, very flavorful tomatoes. In greenhouse: much larger, watery and bland. Haven't tested in the ground.

"Vegetable Surprise" recipe (or way of life)

When you work full time, and have gardens and animals to care for, plus lots of other projects, something tends to get less attention. For us that is cooking. Often we just come in at dusk and look at each other and hope the other has some great dinner idea... but rather than order out for pizza, since we do strongly believe in eating our own food as much as possible, we've come up with quick meals that use whatever vegetables are available.

Besides Top Ramen (which I'm embarrassed to say we do eat from time to time) the main thing we make is what I call Vegetable Surpise. (I think the name is funny, since it's not a surprise - but no one else thinks it's funny; just humor me). Here's the "recipe". You can make as much or little as you like by adding more vegetables, but when vegetables are the main part of the meal you need a surprising amount - I rarely manage to cook up enough for leftovers.

Vegetable Surprise
- onion (one small or 1/2 large)
- garlic ( as much as you like; I use a big spoonful of that canned chopped stuff, or 2-4 cloves fresh)
- oil
- vegetables (such as cabbage, kale, collards, chard, gailahn, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, beets, dried tomatoes, peppers, jerusalem artichokes, green beans, snap peas, zucchini, winter squash, kohlrabi) cut in bite size peices.

You may need to parboil beets and winter squash; it's hard to get them soft enough in saute.

Chop onion and garlic and saute in medium hot oil. After a couple of minutes, add vegatables in order of hardness (hard to soft). Cook vegetables until done to taste (we like them undercooked, but then, we're hungry at this point).

Serve over pasta and top with grated hard cheese such as parmesan or pecorino romano (or any cheese, really - gorgonzola is good, cheddar works)

Or serve over baked potatoes and top with cheddar.

Or add a couple of eggs with the cooking vegetables, and some soy sauce, and serve over rice.

Or add a lot of eggs, let cook for 10min, flip over and cook on the other side, and call it a frittata (we usually add sliced potates to the vegetables when we do this)

Or only cook vegetables halfway, remove from heat, add a lot of beaten eggs and a little milk, and pour into a pie crust and bake, call it a quiche.

Or you can add cream (after the end of cooking to make a cream sauce), or ricotta; but these require more sense of adventure and having some leftovers that need using up.

Fresh tomatoes don't generally work, they release too much liquid when cooked so you get a runny, sloppy dish. However, if you add cut up small fresh tomatoes shortly before serving, so they just get barely hot, it's particularly delicious over pasta with grated cheese.

End of the season

Our first serious frost was last week - 27 degrees. So the tomato plants are history, and my life is my own again. There's a sadness in all the dead plants, but relief in not having to worry or work anymore. And as the days get shorter and colder and wetter, the indoors becomes more appealing. We'll still be enjoying the garden, from the freezer or pantry or the cool place in the barn where we keep potatoes and squash. And of course the greens are growing happily outside now, and there are beets and carrots still to be dug up.

The "Long Keeper" tomatoes we keep in the pantry in the house; last year we had fresh tomatoes until February. (they were terrible, but Jay ate them happily). And there are still peppers growing in the greenhouse - I don't know what I'll do with them all - we don't grow that many, really, but we don't normally use that many. And I have *got* to dig up the jersalem artichokes - last year I never got to it, which meant a 9' jungle; they grow into a reasonable stand if you do carefully harvest them all. I haven't been happy with the dishes of jersalem artichokes lately - maybe peeling really is necessary.

We picked the last of the melons in the greenhouse last week, just before the frost. This is the first year we had a decent crop of melons. This year we tried ha-ogen in a large planter box in the greenhouse, trellised on a tomato cage, and they grew lushly and produced perhaps 5 or 6 fragrant, juicy, perfect melons - I knew they were ready to pick when I would go into the greenhouse and the fragrance filled the air.

And lastly, surprising observations: yacons are not at all frost hardy, hopefully the tubers are okay. But chickpeas didn't seem bothered by the frost. Of course there are about 10 actual chickpeas in the patch, so it doesn't really matter...