Fava beans

Fava beans are fairly new for us; we've been growing them off and on, but never really processed many for cooking.  After trying once to peel the fussy little beans and getting a tiny bit of bean puree, it just seemed like too much work.  

But this year we grew Broad Windsor (from Territitorial seed), which produces really enormous beans, cutting down the work signficantly.  They say "quarter sized" and while I'm not sure if that's quite true, the beans are much thicker than a quarter.

The were very easy to grow; just stuck seeds in the ground in fall, and weeded a couple of times.  Only planted a small patch, less than 3' by 5'.

A hailstorm in May caused them to lie down, but didn't bother them particularly, though it did cause the patch up to take up quite a lot more
space. I had to tie them up so I could reach the back of the bed; the main path is overgrown with borage, which I'm leaving for the bees.

After the tomatoes and peppers are planted, I'm not as busy, so I've had time to pick favas.  So far we've got 15 pounds of pods but there's at least 10 pounds more left. 


To prepare fava beans, you shell them like peas. 


Then blanch briefly - I blanching in boiling water for 1 minute, then put in cold water to stop the cooking.  Then peel the skins from each and every bean - but after blanching, the skins just pop off.

My favas may be older and/or have thicker skins, but I've been piercing the skin with my thumbnail before squeezing out the bean. It's a lot of repetive work, but not unpleasant; it's rather like knitting.


The peeled beans are beautiful, bright green, and tender; they have a fresh flavor, a little pea-like but more savory than sweet. You can see in the picture the big container of discarded empty peels and the smaller container of vivid green favas, ready to cook.

By my calculations - which don't entirely agree with the internets - 10 pounds of fava bean pods would yield about 4 pounds of shelled beans and about 2.5 founds of peeled and ready to eat beans, maybe 7 cups.

I've been looking around the web for fava recipes, but it doesn't seem to be that challenging to cook with them.

There's the Alice Water's puree where you simmer the favas with garlic, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper, then puree; it is delicious.  But a regular hummus is also delicious. 

We added them into a sauted with vegetables and served with pasta. 

I really think you could just put them in anything and they would be pretty and tasty and nutritious.  And from what I understand they freeze well.  We've had so much that I've been freezing the peeled beans.

It's so much fun to find a new vegetable that's tasty, easy to grow, and doesn't ripens when we have no time to care! Not that there isn't food out there - there are snow peas, a little broccoli, and lettuce, the cabbages are heading and the beets are nearly eating size.

Happy Earth Day!

We observe Earth Day by planting trees. This year: a standard apple and american persimmon, a gingko, elderberry, oregon grape, and willow down by the stream, and the Mirabelle plum in the flowering border. Also planted the mystery tree up by the street, where the fig didn't make it. The mystery tree came north with us but I have NO idea what it is... though the buds do look like those on the linden.

Today was very warm and sunny (and humid... after weeks of rain) so planting trees was mostly endurance. Especially the ones in the far pasture, since we have to ford the stream and cross soggy pasture with the wheelbarrows of dirt.

But when not planting trees in the hot sun, what a beautiful day! The bees are buzzing in the cherry tree,s maples, and kale (two of the three hives made it through the winter), birds are chirping and carrying on, everything is budding or blooming or growing.

The garden paths are built or cleared, and all are mulched. Planted potatoes, and mulched onions and other early plantings... the broccoli/cabbage was looking droopy but responded well to watering. Jay's working on a second door to the duck room, which will be used for the meat chickens that are now in the brooder (after the ducks move into the old coop). He's also working on fencing for the north-side pasture, but the grass is over knee-high so we'll have to get it mowed before sheep can deal with it. They will move out there sometime after the other two sheep give birth, which could be any day now.

Lost crops of the Incas

Consider the yacon.

I've been growing this for some years now.  It's easy to grow, fairly attractive plant, at the end of the season you get these large brown tubers to eat and small nobby red parts that easily keep inside overwinter to start next year's plants.

But we don't eat them.  They are kind of like a water-chestnut but more juicy, slightly sweet.  What to do with them?  Me, I put them in bags or buckets and they sit around until they go bad.

So again this year I'm following this system, and we got to the stage last weekend where one of the buckets of yacon that's been sitting in the garage since October got tossed into the compost pile Then yesterday, I ran through the pouring rain to harvest some kale to put in a salad, and I notice that the rain had washed clean the blackened, gnarly skins and they actually looked pretty good.  So I went to the not-yet-composted bag of yacon that was sitting in the den, and pulled one out and scrubbed and peeled it.  Wow... still good!  And the 5 months storage had made it much sweeter.  We sliced it and added it to the salad, where the texture was tender but juicy and a little crisp and the sweetness really came though.  It discolored a little even from kitchen to eating... but not badly enough to be a problem. This is my very first time eating yacon as part of a meal... or for that matter eating it while sitting down.

Yacon is one of the lost crops of the Incas, it's a sunflower relative that produced tubers.  In Ashland, I had tried - and failed both times - to grow Oca, a tuberous oxalis.  I have some tubers and will try again this year.  Since last year, I've had mashua growing, with mixed success; mashua is a tuber-forming type of nasturtium.  And I just purchased Ulluco, which is related to Malabar spinach; you can also eat the leaves so I feel happier about the possibilities, although Malabar spinach is, well, mucilaginous. 

These four tubers are among the Lost Crops of the Incas, a set of edible plants domesticated in the highlands of South America and described in a book of that name.  These plants would include the potato except that the potato is definitely not lost.  Besides many tubers, this includes Quinoa, Amaranth, Chilean Guava, Pepino and others.  The problem of growing many of them is that they are from high elevation tropics - the equator runs through Ecuador, after all - so while they are adapted to coolish temperatures, usually they don't take frost, and day length issues can cause problems.  For example, Oca just starts to form tubers when the days get shorter in fall, and may not form anything if the frosts come before they have time to do their thing.

The Ulluco came from Fry Road nursery in Albany, who produce a lot of greenhouse tropicals.  They have a number of other interesting tubers, like taro and canna root as well as coffee plants.  But given that it's taken me more than 5 years to go from growing to eating the yacon, and my list of as-yet-untasted lost crops; it's better not to try to push things too much....

The project that ate winter

I've been working on a Garden Resource Guide for East Linn County.  This is stuff I love - collecting information and spreading it around - but boy, I didn't realize how much time it would take.  But I'm very happy with the results.  I just hope that this information will be helpful for people!

We haven't started looking for a permanent online home for this - since it's done under TRFW, presumably their site, but since their website is kind of a blog I don't know how I'd integrate it.  But I put in on the farm site to stake a place.
http://www.fwfarm.com/trifolds/GRG-Linn-Spring2012.pdf

Meanwhile, while working with the rest of the TRFWEL group to get the information collecting, fact-checking and reviewing done, I've been using dropbox.  I don't get a kickback from them, but I really, really like it - such an easy way to share large files on the internet and between computers.

Now, back to the sadly-neglected spring garden work!  Over the last months or so we did get a bunch of trees, shrubs and groundcovers planted - probably two dozen; prepped and/or dug two garden beds, topped off with dirt and planted about 3/4 bed's worth (seeded roots and a few starts), and started 2 trays of cabbage family and lettuces.  But we are behind in garden prep and orchard attention, and the tomato and peppers will begin starting this week, eek!

Is it spring?

We've had some warmer weather the last couple of days, the frogs are making a lot of noise and the grass is starting to grow.  This afternoon I checked on the beehives, and all three hives had bees coming in and out, enjoying some sunshine.  Then this evening when I went out after dark to pick some kale for dinner.... the garden is full of... slugs!  And cutworms and even a few earwigs.  So I did the first slug pick of the year, into a jar to dispose of by duck in the morning.  Not many huge brown slugs, it was mostly the striped ones that don't get as big, but they were full size, many an inch and some two-inchers. The cutworms were fat and healthy looking.  In Portland the cutworms were a problem, but I saw more cutworms tonight than I've seen in the last decade.  But it really seems to early to have to deal with this, it's January.

For dinner: meatballs made of lamb heart, cooked with onions and garlic and kale and served over spaghetti squash.  That's the last of our "offal" from the sheep butchering, we ate liver and kidneys over the weekend, I think I've figured out how to cook these parts so they are pleasant in texture and flavor. The squashes are starting to go, at least the large ones have some spots, so we have to cut out bits before cooking.  The delicatas in the garage seem to keep better, maybe it's too cold in the "root cellar"  The onions are keeping well, but the garlic is getting dry, and the kale is at an awkward stage (as well having to inspect for slugs).  The onion and lettuce starts are spending their first night in the greenhouse tonight.  It does seem to be rolling along for spring.

What, exactly, do I do with a lot of turmeric? Or, I love the greenhouse

So our greenhouse is wonderful, but it's not heated.  The "tropicals" I've been growing are mostly happy, but not all of them.

Both basil are dead, as is the tomato.

There are 5 citrus which are all doing very well, insofar as I have been able to keep the scale and aphids under control.

Of the 10 peppers that started into fall, 6 are alive.  There were 5 jalapenos, of which only one died (two of these jalapenos overwintered last winter too), and at least one is making baby peppers.  The anaheims are both dead, but the Yankee Bell, while fruitless and ratty looking, is alive, and the Nardello keeps ripening but not making more peppers.  Since we have lots of hot sauce, I'm not sure what to do with all the jalapenos.

The coffee tree is very unhappy; I brought it into the house but I think it's too late to save it. Too bad, it was looking really good and probably 4 years old.  It did fine in the garage the last two winters.

The turmeric - well, I'm impressed.  The leaves all died down so I harvested the tubers, and there's almost two pounds of pretty good looking roots!  That's from a 2-3 gallon pot, after repotting 3 smaller plants, although it was 2 years in the pot since I thought it was all dead last winter. I don't know what to do with it all!  I can see that it should have been harvested earlier, there's some browning.   Tumeric is a beautiful plant, with big, tropical banana leaves.  I put the pot inside a larger pot with no holes, elevated on some rocks.  So it usually had water under the roots, which helped when the greenhouse gets so warm in the summer.

The aloe and scented geranium are doing fine with this degree of chill.  The vietnamese coriander is okay (better than the spearming and peppermint, actually).  The unknown variety of banana plant that Don gave me seems unphased by the cold, although it's not actually growing.

After a week of cold but sunny weather, today was a mix of snow with cold and some sun and some gray.  Winter in Oregon...  I've got most of my seeds orders done, started onion seeds already, and some arugula and lettuce... but it's time to work on the greenhouse floor, rather than play with seeds.  We worked on the duckhouse floor and foundation yesterday, so we've got the really heavy work done for that.

Diet and Forks over Knives

I was recently annoyed by a video called Forks over Knives. I've been reading off and on about nutrition over the past few years, and so I did come into the movie with some existing beliefs (I tried to keep an open mind, but I am not sure it was successful). But the movie didn't give much information, it was dramatic and entertaining with lots of graphics, but not much convincing argument. Over and over, it set up a comparison between "industrial food including animal products" and "natural foods with no animal products". The message seems to be that the problem is the animal products, not the industrial food!

I didn't realize it at the time, but Forks over Knives is by a Dr. Campbell, who did write a book with the same material called the China Study, and that book caused some uproar and discussion in the paleo-nutrition blogosphere that I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to at the time. Here's the article: China Study Response (pdf).

When I was looking for that article, I found a critique of the science in Forks over Knives, written by the same writer: forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique
It's great; it expands and goes into excruciating detail on many of the points that bothered me, so I don't have to even start trying to figure out the problems. Warning, though, it's very, very long and full of data.

Myself, I'm kind of with the Dr. Weston Pricers, and believe that animal meat and fat are healthy. Dr. Cate Shanahan wrote a book called "Deep Nutrition" that is by far my favorite; it's against sugar (including starches) and seed oils, and in favor of meat especially bone broth and organ meats. While I see her points (and some of the data from the Paleo people) about the problems with starches and especially wheat, I'm just not sure - I don't do well without some starches.

The bottom line for us, though, is that any sort of diet philosophy has to work with the foods we can grow for ourselves at different times of the year. Since we do grow so much, it's a reality test that makes more sense for us than for almost everyone else (at least in the industrial world) who just buys food at the store. I was reading another book that said to avoid root vegetables since they were too startchy. Well, that's what we have right now, and no one's going to take away my carrots!

And don't forget to get plenty of sleep and exercise regularly.

Sugar

So I watched this video, Forks over Knives. More on that later, but I did start wondering about sugar alternatives like honey, since I've never been entirely clear on the whole business. Sugar's not good for us, but is honey much better?

• glucose and fructose are the basic sugars.
• sucrose (table sugar) is disaccharide made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose; it's broken down into glucose and fructose in the digestive tract.
• There are also maltose, lactose and other sugars that I'm not consdering here.

Fruit and vegetables contain both sucrose, and free glucose and fructose; the proportions vary.

• Apples and Pear have a much higher percent of fructose (total).
• Apricots, plums, and sweetcorn have a somewhat lower percent of fructose (total).

Considering sucrose separately:

• relively more sucrose in apricots, peaches, pineapple, beets, carrots and sweet potatoes
• relatively less sucrose in figs, grapes, pears, sweetcorn, sweet peppers, and sweet onion

Other sweeteners are made of of some combination of sucrose, fructose and glucose, plus water (for liquids) and traces of this and that:

• Honey - varies, for example: 38% fructose, 31% glucose, 7% maltose, 1% sucrose
• Maple syrup - mostly sucrose with variable amounts of fructose and glucose
• Agave - variable and not regulated, some sources give 92% fructose and 8% glucose; another gives 56% fructose and 20% glucose.   Agave nectar is hydrolized from agave juice by heating or using enzymes.
• Corn sugar/dextrose - entirely glucose.  Derived from corn (via a chemical process)
• HFCS - the one in soft drinks is 55% fructose and 42% glucose.  Derived from corn syrup via further chemical process.

Fructose is much sweeter than glucose (so less can be used) and has a lower glyemic index, but has equivalent impact on diabetes. Unlike glucose, fructose must be metabolized by the liver and excessive amounts may cause liver problems (such as fatty liver)

It's not clear why HFCS would be worse than sugar, but rats did gain more weight and get more unhealthy on HFCS than on plain sugar. See Princeton study on rats. They hypothesize that glucose and fructose bound together into sucrose metabolizes differently than as free glucose and fructose.

There's a number of studies that are particularly focused on HFCS, and of course the usual it's-all-just-sugar, but I don't find the results conclusive; everyone has an agenda. Here's one analysis and an article on liver issues.

Given my personal opinions about nutrition, and this is fairly well supported by all the information out there; the right answer is certainly "none of the above". Honey is not that different in proportion from HFCS but is the least processed, the most local, and has minerals, enzymes, and antioxidants.

Winter is almost here

It's that damp cold outside, but with Christmas sort of under control, we might go out and move some rock or put up some tree protection anyway. The two sheep appear to have eaten all the grass, and when the ladies come back from their visit with the ram, we'll need to put them on the upper pasture. And since at least one will go into the freezer soon, we want them to be eating...

Last week there was a low of 19 degrees, so the garden is a bit sad looking. There's still a lot growing; kale, lots of parsnips, turnips, beets, fennel, and carrots (for seed), plus parlsey and some odds and ends. Some of the lettuce doesn't look bad but when you get it in there's frost damage. But making dinner is much more work when you have to dig, scrub and peel roots. We have been enjoying the spaghetti squash very much. My expectations weren't high, but put some sauce on and it's actually quite good, and surprisingly satisfying. This was an excellent addition to our diet. This year I also starting making squash spoon-bread, which encourages us to eat squash, and oven-roasted tomato sauce, which is what we've been putting on the spaghetti squash.

The greenhouse is again really doing well. The floor isn't done, but I'll start back working on that... one of these days. With that cold spell, it did not give total protection; the basil and one pepper plant seems to be suffering from cold. But there must be 4 or 5 jalapeno plants (two from 2010 that overwintered last year) that are doing fine and covered with peppers, the bell has a pepper, the nardellos appear to be ripening, and even the tomato plant, although suffering, doesn't seem to have given up. The ripe yuzus are hanging on and the one orange is sloooowly starting to turn orange.

Any day now I want to start some onions, since it seems like the more time they have to grow the better. I got some shallot seed so we'll give that a try too. I keep forgetting about the daffodil bulbs (I don't think it's quite too late...) and it's high time to order fruit/nut trees. Once the river rock is removed from the area in front of the house I'll put in low-growing fruiting groundcovers, kinnikinnick and salal and wintergreen and wild blueberry.

Garden report 2011

We are winding down the summer garden - they are expecting rain the next few days, which is often the transition from a happy late-summer garden to an unpleasnt mess. The various roots and kales will be happy, though, and slugs will come out to be collected and fed to the ducks. So while it's not the end of the garden, really, it's coming on the end of the glamor part of the garden.

This was really a bumper year in the garden; possibly the best ever, although it was a slow start so maybe I'm getting the wrong impression from this late bounty.

The tomatoes were 2-3 weeks late, but I've NEVER had such perfect, beautiful specimens of the large heirlooms. Even on the last day of September there's hardly any cracked or rotten fruit. Chickens lose out... And we've been canning and canning and drying and drying and the freezer is full of giant bags of tomatoes.

We have been overwhelmed with melons. We had two hills of Haogen and one of Chanterais, and they are producing dozens and dozens of small melons. Most I've had before in a year was about 6, and that only in greenhouses! They are a bit watery, I think, but sweet and fragrant.

The cucumbers were very prolific, but the powdery mildew has pretty much stopped them at this point. The chickens did win out with cucumbers, there was no way to even hope to keep up. The Poona keera wasn't that great, and even Mideast Peace wasn't as delicious as I recall.

While the tomatillos did okay, the were particularly badly located between the rather aggressive melons and the peppers. So I haven't been paying much attention to them. Still short on good recipes to use them.

We are still picking green beans, in spite of more in the freezer than I had targetted. While I still love Rattlesnake the best, the other ones - I don't recall, Oregon Blue lake and/or Kentucky Wonder - were considerably more productive. A lesson: even when you think you have reached perfection, in bean variety or whatever, you still might be wrong.

The storage onions were a reasonable crop, although smaller than I'd like to see, but there was less bolting than usual. They went out late, but were really affected by slugs early on.
Sweet onions did very poorly; I tried a new ways of starting the seeds that did not work well, and they didn't recover.

I planted four types of potatoes; Yukon Gold (our old fav), Carola, German Butterball and a purple potatoe. While I did do some early harvesting, it looks like the yields from the yukon gold are so much lower than carola and butterball, and butterball seems to have yielded better than carola. The butterball was the latest, though, the vines weren't entirely dead when I dug the patch. I just don't know if Yukon Gold is really what I should be planting, except for new potatoes.

Corn did pretty well, the second planting was not nearly as good as the first. Not sure why. Possibly the giant borage plant was siphoning off the N. The bees sure loved the borage. We had to ripe it out so Sophie could get the vole that ate one of the squashes.

The winter squash plants seems to have done very well - we haven't eaten any yet - but there are a lot of squashes out there. The butternut started fruiting very late so I'm not sure if all of them are ripe. Several of the plants have pretty much succumbed to the powderly mildew. I damaged an unripe tetsukabuto so we harvested and prepared it as a summer squash and it was very nice, much more flavorful than zucchini. Been meaning to pick off the small butternuts and try... but there's too many tomoatoes.

We grew Costata Romanesco and Magda summer squashes, reputed to be delicious, but they were just another blah zucchini. I've never seem as large leaves on a squash as on the Costata, though. I had to hack it back to save some carrots.

A dud year for cilantro - nothing that didn't bolt immediately. But I've never got a good crop of cilantro in summer, so my aspirations are low.

The one area that feel really short was peppers. I think the cool weather - it was a very cool summer well into August - stunted them. And the slugs were serious problems, eating off the tops of several plants as well as ruining more peppers than we've been able to harvest.
The King of the North seems to be making a late play for a good crop, and the Cuneo that were under remay for seed saving are large. But otherwise it's been thin; no green chile relish this year. I did have enough green Jalapenos to figure out a jalapeno hot pepper sauce like the Tabasco one we love. I hope I can collect another pound of jalapenos to make another batch. They keep turning red.

Sustainable Food Choices

This is an article I wrote some years ago, but it's not on the SPRG website any more, so I figured I should make sure it's not lost.
We are up to our eyeballs in tomatoes - best year ever for heirlooms, although they are all very late.

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Sustainable Food Choices

This is an area where the individual can do a great deal. We all eat, and collectively our eating habits have a huge impact on the world. 10% of all the energy used in the US goes to producing, processing shipping, and cooking food.

Eating more local and more in season is the biggest impact. The average food item travels 1500 miles to your table. Eating out of season almost guarentees that the food will have come from far away - I've seen peppers from Israel and Apples from New zealand in the store, just in the produce section. Does our food need to travel more than we do?

It can be hard to find out if grocery store food is local; reading labels helps. Buying something made in Portland rather than New York isn't huge but it's going in the right direction. If you are inclined, asking the grocery store where items come from. Making it clear that you, the shopper, wants local food, will eventually push the stores to respond, although I'd expect the Co-op to be more responsive than Albertsons.

Buying from the grower's market and asking the farmer will assure you have local food with minimal transportatation. It will be fresher and therefor more nutritious. It supports the small farmer who needs it more than agribiz. You could also join a CSA and get a weekly basket of fresh vegetables - this is easier for the farmer who can plan ahead.

Even better, grow your own! That reduces the transport of your food down to a few yards. Grow basic crops in the right season and they are easy to grow. Again this is where if we all do it, it makes a huge difference - one lettuce plant isn't much, but if everyone in Ashland (pop. 26,000 or so) grew one lettuce plant each, that is a whole lot of lettuce.

Plus you know exactly how it's been grown. Even those so-called organic
standards now have loopholes you could thow a dog through. The most healthy food is the fresh food you've grown yourself and picked moments before eating. It's also the most delicious.

Speaking of organic, buying organic is a good thing. It may cost more but
voting with our dollars is important and food is cheap in the big picture. But don't feel too warm fuzzy about it in the big picture of sustainability and climate change. A lot of this organic food is grown on mega-farms where they use twice as much machinery and oil to make up for not using chemicals. It's certainly better for you to eat, and poisons the planet less, but a lot of organic food production isn't in any way really sustainable.

The less processed the food you eat, the less processing (which equals energy use and factories) is needed. This does involves changing our preferences - raw apples or applesauce or frozen apple pie? Making your own soup rather than buying soup is a tricker calculation, but eating more foods raw as nature provided, or barely cooked, is a sure win.

As an aside, you can make your own solar oven, or buy a nice one for about $250, which will bake and steam very nicely and not use any extra power at all.

Changing our preferences isn't fun, we like what we like, but we can do it if we think about the true costs. You can eat all the in season strawberries you like, but when they aren't in season you have the choice of trucking them from Mexico or processing. While strawberries are delicious, we don't really *need* to eat strawberries in January. Waiting for a special food to come in season used to be one of the special delights of the year. If you can always get them, they aren't special, right? So while it feels like giving up something we enjoy in life, it's also putting that something on a pedestal and perhaps enjoying it a little bit more as a result.

This applies to non-local foods too. Tropical foods like mangos are less special when you can buy then any time - so think of the airplane fuel and don't buy them. If you love mangos, buy them only for special occassions, you will enjoy them much more for the waiting.

Buy in bulk, too, whenever possible. Packaging is pure waste, even if some of it is recyclable, that doesn't excuse all the energy and materials that went into manufacturing it and printing all sorts of designs on it and shipping it empty, filling it, shipping it to the store... you get the picture. If you do have the opportunity to buy bulk, bring your own containers or bags. And of course bringing canvas bags whereever you shop means less packaging.

If you can't buy bulk, you can buy in larger containers - those individual small packages of raisins or juice have a great deal more package for the same amount of contents than a large single box. Usually the larger quantity costs less too, so it's win-win, as long as it's something you will use before it goes bad. Or freeze it.

Figure out how to not waste food. A study in Scandanavia found more than half the food that's purchased is thrown away. This seems to disagree with the buy large packages suggestion, but it's really depends on what you are doing now, where the easy wins are for you and your family - if a lot of food spoils in your fridge, maybe consider making some effort in this area. Observe your shopping and eating habits. Take a few things out of the grocery cart before you check out; supress your impluse to buy food. Make an extra effort to eat what is in the fridge before it goes bad. You can also get a dog, or chickens, or start a worm bin, or even just a compost pile, to deal with the waste - but far better not to have that food grown somewhere, shipped all around carefully refrigerated, handled in the store, and cooked: just for the worms.

Eating "low on the food chain" - plants rather than animals - is also good. There's an inherent loss in feeding a cow or chickens, they use a fair amount of the food to walk around and moo or squawk. Industrially produced animal products (including milk and eggs as well as meat) come from animals that are treated very badly and is neither sustainable, moral or healthy.

However, animals can also eat things that we don't care for (like grass) and scraps like carrot tops. Animals can lead enjoyable lives on small farms. If you eat meat, seek out animals raised in these more sustainable ways.

Learn to cook from more basic foods. For example, while canned beans are handy, it's not that much more work to soak and cook dried beans - just a matter of learning and practice. Baking bread isn't hard either, and the results are better tasting, cheaper and much more rewarding than store bought.

Try new kinds of foods - sustainable local foods - learn about native and wild edibles. Try unusual things in your salad; sorrel soup is a french delicacy that's made from a perennial weed. Try serving millet with dinner. Go wild and learn how to process acorns for food. I don't know that this is so really a suggestion for individual action for sustainability, but it's a way to get in touch on a whole new level with food and history and the land that supports us.

Lisa Almarode 2006

Paths and garden growing

One question I don't really see asked is how wide paths should be between raised beds. I don't actually have an answer. I like to use a 3' wide path, but once the plants start growing there is no path left. And this is just potatoes and kohlrabi. A 4' wide main path is wide enough for walking now (the zucchini only takes up about half the space), but that's partly since onions are well behaved and beets don't stick out more than a foot or so. In the tomato area, I left 5' between rows, and there's just about enough space to walk; at least half the plants have stuck branches several feet out into the path. I've done hard pruning of the tomatoes at the ends where there's a 3' path, so I can walk, but a couple of days later there's another branch in my face.

The squash of course have eaten the path, and are invading everywhere. All that plenty-of-space was nothing like enough. The cucumbers are invading the onions, the melons are overwhelming the tomatatillos, which are leaning over to menace the peppers; those poor peppers that have a 5' high wall of squash vines massing on their border.

But I'm happy that all the plants are happy, and we can eat as much zucchini as we want, the potatoes are ready, there's cucumbers, beans, beets, onions and all sort of good things to eat.

More on ducks and slugs

What a year it has been for slugs! Wow, they are big and everywhere. Not just us, either, almost everyone I've talked to says this is one of the worst years. I even lost a tomato plant to slugs - this was shocking; I didn't even know that would be a problem, earwigs never bother tomato plants. And tiny slugs were eating off the onions and corn seedlings, too (as well as everything else).

But there is a solution. Our ducks are 6 weeks old now. From day 1 (well, day 3) they have been eating slugs - I have to pick them off the plants for them, but they do the hard part. Even tiny little ducklings a few days old will tackle any size slug, although I worried a lot about choking when they were smaller. They can eat an awful lot of slugs and are always ready for more. I can't wait until they can start harvesting their own.

It would have been a very discouraging spring without the ducks... at least there is some up-side to the slug invasion. Picking slugs has some advantages over earwigs... low-tech, no vacuum needed; slugs don't run very fast; and they often come out before dark.

Other than that, we are up to 4 sheep, who are not keeping up with the grass at all; chickens are laying, meat chickens ready to go to the butcher; the garden is in and growing, and the slugs are really not too much trouble any more. Things really are beautiful and bounteous here!

Ancona ducks, from Boondockers farm, south of Eugene. From the left; Duckie, Bill, Donald, Cenk, Ping, and Ryan, and the 7th, Quacky, is not apparently in the photo. (unless I have mixed up Quacky and Ryan)

Seed companies

So, now that I'm living only 15 miles from Nichol's Garden Nursery, I have a chance to pop in. (It's actually much more inconvenient for me since we move - I used to drive past Nichols twice a month during daylight hours, and it was well positioned for a break from driving. Oh well). Anyway, I've been having less than warm feelings about Nichols since about 2007, when Monsanto bought Semenis and I took a strong position against Semenis seeds. I wrote to Nichols and they weren't very helpful, they were relucant to clarify sources on their various varieties. I had a little better luck with Territorial, perhaps since I stopped in their store in person when the product manager happened to be around and we looked up some varieties in his system.

Anyway, now I learn that Nichols is phasing out the Semenis varieties, that they are no going to be carrying them. The Semenis varieties are on a separate rack, away from the regular seeds. This is good; I feel much better about them and trusting them for something as important as the very source of our food!

And I think it's wonderful that we have seed companies so close! Oregon is blessed with many wonderful small seed companies as well as larger ones like Nichols and Territorial/Abundant Life. One I've found recently is Adaptive Seeds. These folks are pretty close to us (as the crow flies, there's some hills between). They are big advocates of seed saving and have a wonderful instruction book: Seed Saving 'zine.

I've also discovered that Tom Wagner, the seed breeder who came up with Green Zebra (as well as many other well-known tomato varieties), is around here, Washington state somewhere, breeding tomatoes and potatoes. Tom Wagner's blog He will sell an assortment of seed potatoes from his breeding lines. It's tempting, but we are so fussy about potatoes.

And finally short plugs for Peace Seedlings/Peace Seeds (I'm not sure why these are distinct) and for Wild Garden Seed.

I don't really need more seed this year, though, I already have more than I can possibly use

Ducks, cold and rain and slugs

Some years ago in southern oregon we tried raising ducks (it was during the period where Jay had to limit me to one new species per month). We got 3 Khaki Campbells and raised them in the master shower in the mobile home. They were very stinky. They were nervous and high-strung. They got moved to the orchard, where they messed up the tree mulch. Their wading pool water was always filthy. One lost to a hawk, one disappeared, so we got 3 Indian Runners. They were even more nervous, and at least two of them were males resulting in some inapproproiate behavior :-). Finally we gave them away to someone with a pond. It was Not A Success.

So, moving ahead 8 years and 200 miles, to the Willamette valley. I'm reading Deppe's book, "the resiliant gardener". She's in Corvallis, less then 30 miles from me, so her observations are more relevant to me than they used to be. She points out that ducks eat slugs. Hey, we have lots of slugs here, all over the greens! She notes ducks like rainy weather. Well, we have that in spades now! It won't stop raining! She claims not all ducks are nervous and unfriendly - well, we'll wait and see, but perhaps I've been unfair to duckdom. Hey, you can eat ducks! Last go round, I was still pretty much vegetarian; but now we've learned how to smoke poultry, which makes even fatty meat like turkey legs delicious.

Our ducks used to hide their eggs in the grass and they were always filthy, so I'm not that enthusiastic about duck eggs, but they are a bonus.

Jay has always liked ducks, and I guess he's on duty to change their water. Ducks do have the ability to hang out and be happy in a way chickens never are. I think ducks are type B personalities, while chickens are type As and are only happy when they have projects to work on. Perhaps I identify too much with the chickens...

Record keeping (and some rambling)

We have very bad records for this year. Record keeping is one of the unsung but important things in food production - and it's hard to keep good records in your head. But without knowing what you did, what worked and what didn't work, you won't be able to reproduce success or avoid doing repeating something that didn't work.

Some things are burned into my mind; like the tomato ripening issues. While we hope that this year, with it's late cold wet spring and early wet fall, is not typical and we'll have decent tomatoes in future years, I still need to plant the tomatoes in a sunnier spot, with more space between them. I'm used to so much hot sun and no shade at all, it's not been easy to consider that factor.

But when we planted things and when they were ripe - like the existing apple tree here, down by the creek. It's an early type, the apples were ripe a while back, but now that it's been some time (in the time warp of September), I don't remember exactly when we noticed they were ripe...

Other than that... the turkeys are going to the processor this week, we just got the last of the first planting of corn in the freezer, there are lots of peppers to deal with, I have another round of tomatoes to can (sad though our yield is this year) before vacation. We planted a fig, a hazelnut, all three potted grapes, and moved the pawpaw, and finally got the big old Japanese Raisin in the ground - and all deer protected. We are hoping to get the bees dealt with in the next few days, that will be an adventure.

This past weekend was full of social events, a potluck at Seed Ambassadors (fascinating place! They have a seed company and a seed saving organization) on Saturday, and on Sunday, an event for the online farmer's market (Willamette Local Foods) that was cancelled but we didn't know so we had a delightful potluck anyway. So we didn't get as much done as we might, but we met lots of wonderful folks.

Local farm

There's a rather cool farm not too far from us, in Sweet Home. It's name is Sweet Home Farms. I met the owners, Carla Green and Mike Polen (not the famous guy with the similar name) at a food event earlier this year (she got the door prize of chocolates that I was eyeing, but I'm happy with the chicken butchering certificate). They are Salatin-ites who work a day job from home and are overworked. They remind me a lot of us (but much more serious about the farming). They even have an English Shepherd dog.

I was trying to buy a half a lamb a few weeks back and had trouble with their website, and didn't understand their pricing. I know how hard it is, and they are trying to make a profit... but with the confusion and delay means I got sucked into other things, by now they presumably have butchered and the opportunity has gone by.

They also sell by the piece but I CANNOT find their website using google. So just so I can find it again, it is sweethomefarms.com. It sure seems like if you can't be googled, you don't really exist, maybe this link will help them.

Quick update

We're coming up on living here a year, and often think about what a lot we've got done. It's too much to catalog now, but some updates, so I don't forget when we got the first green beans, the way I've forgotten just when the first blueberries showed up.

I'm enjoying the greenhouse very much; though ceiling painting is no fun (heat rises!). The plants are thriving in the greenhouse, I'll be happen when painting is done and they can move into the final locations. I found a tiny little tree frog at eye level in the melon plant, which was a treat. Alas, spider mites on the kiwi.

Of the two roosters that showed up in place of the pullets we ordered, one leaked out of a fence, found by Sophie, and died a week later from the injuries. We gave the other to the Hess's (who gave us in return some very delicious blueberries). 12 cornish cross went to Scio for butchering, which went smoothly. We have six cornish left, which we'll butcher ourselves with the Hess's. The 5 turkeys have a ways to go yet. These guys are stuck in the barn stall until we get fencing.... which had to wait until the leftover construction dirt pile was moved... which just happened. So, progress, but unhappy poultry meanwhile. I bring them dandelions and sow thistles, since they've gone through the kale and collard bolts.

We had our first pickings of green beans this week, they have been delicious. I've only seen two cucumber beetles so far, but the second one got away so we're doommed :-). I check tomatoes frequently but nothing has ripened yet. The peppers look small but we do have some eating size jalapenos. Potatoes have started to die back, they potatoes look great. The cucumbers, squash, and melon plants look good. The corn has just barely started to tassle up. We made a second planting of corn, a bit late on July 20, but we will see. Onions are finally getting large. The garlic, which all sprouted in the ground in spring, has been depressing and I've tried to ignore it. Starting to feel the pressure to get ready for the fall/winter garden; need dirt. We haven't had rain for some weeks, the ground surface is pretty dry, the grass is still green. Keeping things watered has been easy (well, with the irrigiation in...). We haven't yet watered the orchard, though I exect to soon; all the black plastic over the grass must be helping a lot.

The new kittens, Greta and Sundance, are starting to adjust. Greta is much braver and will stick around when we are outside, but we rarely glimpse Sundance. Greta actually came up behind the barn yesterday where we were watching turkey TV, in spite of Sophie being with us. Greta followed Buddy and sat down in the dirt along with the other cats and dog. I think she was hungry. Buddy likes the kittens (Greta, anyway), but KitCat has not been himself since they arrived; he's stayed away for long periods and is grumpy when he's around. He hisses at the kittens, if you pick him up, or sometimes when just walking along. But sometimes he comes and sits on your lap, so we hope he'll eventually adjust. Sophie thinks Greta is a squirrel and behaves accordingly. The kittens are very, very cute (well, the hostile expression always on Sundance's face isn't that cute).

Moving gap

It's been a long time since I posted. We moved! 200 miles north, to the cool, moist Willamette valley. Moving a farm is a horrific task, though we sold off the stock and only took a few chickens (besides the dog and cats). But we did bring hayfeeders, rolls of fencing, water tanks, and a small greenhouse with us, we didn't exactly move light.

Starting over again in a new place is not easy; there was nothing here, we've had to put in a garden, fruit trees, and build a barn, and still have some fencing to do. Relying on store-bought food has been challenging. Eating your own food is a pipeline, where you start things at one point, tend them for a while, and eat them much later. But I didn't realize just how long the pipeline is. Some things you get pretty soon - we've had kale and eggs from an early point of living here, plus this place has oaks and acorns to experiment with. But it's been over eight months now, the carrots, parnips and potatoes we brought with us are long ago eaten, we just ran out of onions, and there isn't much to replace it. We're buying most of our food, and the freezer looks bare and empty.

The soil here is pretty good, so we've managed to put in pretty extensive beds and should have more to harvest starting maybe in a month or so. Chicks and Poults are growing fast now in the barn, so some meat's in the pipeline, but we won't be harvesting any lamb until next year the earliest. Unexpectedly we might have a couple of cherry-producing cherry trees (there are any number of fruitless flowering cherries, so sad).

This land can certainly be abundant, the grass is shoulder high and the weeds are lush. So some future point we've have food again. Then we'll have to wean ourselves off bananas and barbecued salmon :-)

People eat a lot: producing more and bigger

It's easy to grow some food, and growing your own makes a big impact on your diet, since you can grow the most delectable and interesting parts of your diet; summer tomatoes, basil, cilantro, green beans. Once you go beyond the glamous stars, and start producing the everyday and mundane, and filling in more of the background, every day, every month, then producing your own food means producing volume, storing, and much more cooking. Maybe I'm a gardener first, but I find producing the food is the fun part, while storing and cooking it is a lot of sorting dirty roots, peeling and chopping, standing over a hot canner of boiling water, and cleaning up the mess. And I don't even want to start on how unpleasant it is to "harvest" chickens.

Coming as I do from a normal backgroud, a fairly small family of light eaters, we'd cook meals that would produce leftovers but still quite modest quantities. I imagine familiies with 5 or more childen or teenage boys would have a very different perspective! One of my challenges has been to "think big". For example, my chili recipe made enough for two meals. But it's not that much more work to double it. Last time I ended up making 3 gallons of chili, which was perhaps a little over the top; 11 people barely ate half of it. But it freezes fine, and it's so nice to have some quarts of chili handy. It was a lot of peeling tomatoes, but with so much it's worth it to get the food processor out for the onions and peppers, and the kitchen only had to be cleaned up once.

The same is true of canning. Much of the work of canning is dealing with the hot water bath. I used to end up canning only a couple of quarts of sauce or quarters, a few pints of salsa. But it's much more efficient in kitchen work to can a full canner load (7-9 jars), or two loads. We got the larger 9-quart size canning kettle this year.

Getting more serious about producing food is the other part (the part that comes first, really). You need to have enough reliable if not exciting producers. I most enjoy growing interesting and exotic heirloom tomatoes, but the interesting colors, odd shapes and shy production just don't work as well for processing. It's been a road to learn to grow a bunch of dull but productive plants to get serious tomatoes, enough to make gallons of chili and gallons of salsa. Giving up growing a few of the intesting ones - but how many interesting tomatoes can you really eat? I'm more of a graze-on-cherry-toms-right-from-plant person, myself. The interesting tomatoes go into tomato juice which seems to even things out, I can even put a few green-when-ripe in there.


Lisa’s Vegetarian Chili

2 tablespoons oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 large red or green pepper, chopped
1 lb.Tofu, frozen, thawed, and crumbled
4 cloves garlic, mashed
15oz can tomato sauce
1 lb. Can whole or diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons chili powder, or more to taste
A little cayenne flakes, if desired
1 can corn
1 can black beans

Squeeze water out of thawed, crumbled tofu, and mix with part of the chili powder. Add a little liquid from the canned tomatoes and mix well, squeezing to let the spice color the tofu.

Fry onions and peppers in oil until soft and just starting to brown. Add tofu and garlic and cook a few minutes. Add other ingredients and cook for at least an hour, longer is better, until it looks like chili.

Serve over cornbread or rice and garnished with shredded cheese, chopped onions, and chopped jalapenos.

Notes:
- all quantities are general and I use fresh instead of canned when possible.
- Cook beans before adding, and peel and quarter tomatoes, but everything else can go in fresh.
- Using all fresh tomatoes increases cooking time.
- It's important to freeze and thaw the tofu before using, to get the right texture.
- I usually use a lot more chili powder but it depends on the quality of the chili powder you have.