Categories
Urban Farming

Time to Eat Broccoli!

Broccoli

Photo by Rick Gush

The broccoli from our garden is, oh, so delicious!

Some things are going along just as planned, and today we ate our first broccoli from the garden. The really fresh stuff looked pretty good, but after being steamed for a few minutes it turned a ridiculously bright green that just radiates health.

I don’t eat broccoli because I think it’s healthy for me—I eat it because I like the way it tastes. Sometimes I put mustard on it, sometimes balsamic vinegar, and sometimes I use horseradish. My wife likes hers with lemon juice. She will also make a few vegetable-cheese pies with the broccoli, and that’s really tasty, too.

Broccoli Romana

Photo by Rick Gush

We don’t enjoy the tast of broccoli Romana as much as the green variety.

Of the 100 broccoli plants we put in the soil, only a very few are struggling, and the rest are big sprawling monsters. The trunks on the harvestable heads are 2 or even 3 inches thick, and I eat the trunks as willingly as I do the flowers. One bed still has a lot of snail damage, but there are no cabbage worms yet. I’ve seen a few cabbage moths, so I’m sure the worms will arrive at some point. But I can’t really keep spraying the Bacillus because it’s raining so often.  

Of the 100 plants, almost half of them have harvestable heads. My mother and sister-in-law are always happy to get our broccoli, so we’ll harvest some for everybody this week and let the rest grow bigger. Really, the goal is not a bunch of the big heads, but more a field from which we can pick the smaller sprouts from now until March. Although the big heads are impressive, the total number of small sprouts will be probably four times the weight of the big heads.

We did plant a few other cole crops, like Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli Romana, but it’s the green broccoli that are really doing the best at this moment. The Romana variety of broccoli looks really nice, but we don’t like the taste as much. It tastes more like cauliflower, but mealier. They sell a lot of the yellow broccoli in the market though, so somebody must like it.

It has been raining here a lot lately, and I’ve been so busy with the remodeling of the new office, I haven’t worked at all in the garden for several weeks now. I miss that activity, and this morning when I took the broccoli pictures I felt somehow guilty that I wasn’t taking proper care of this wonderful asset of ours. But even in my protracted absence, the garden seems to be dong just fine. There are a lot of lowers blooming, the lettuce and fava beans are all growing bigger, and some of the citrus are blooming again.

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Categories
Crops & Gardening

Garden Gratitude

Child gardening
Photo by Jessica Walliser
I’m thankful that my son and I can enjoy gardening together.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It might sound a bit cliché, but it really is the perfect time of year to count our blessings and give thanks for what matters to us.  When you think about it, it’s really too bad that we only do this once a year.  Shouldn’t I be thankful everyday? I do try, but I guess in the rush of life, all of that gets lost and I tend to put more value on the bigger stuff than it really deserves. Perhaps I need to remind myself a little more often to put life on hold and appreciate the little things, too, for in many ways they’re of more importance to growing a happy family. 

I have an old newspaper clipping posted on the fridge. The title is something like “10 Ways to Grow Happy Kids.” In it, the author, the child-rearing columnist Dr. John Rosemond, points out his top 10 ideas for raising independent, confident and obedient children. I’m not sure I think all 10 of them are perfect concepts, but I value all of them to some degree and try to keep them in mind when raising my son. 

One of them, though, couldn’t be more spot-on. Dr. Rosemond reminds us parents that it isn’t “things” that matter.  Having more “stuff” does not make you a better or happier person. (That’s a super-tough concept for most kids—and many adults, too, myself included!) Give your children experiences instead of plastic playthings.  Teach them the pleasures of adventure he says.  And so, here is where the garden comes in. 

I am thankful for my garden—but not just for the food it provides. It gives my son and me a place to connect. A place for so many new and different experiences to occur and a place to spend time together doing whatever makes us the dirtiest. There are so many adventures to be had in our 30- by 30-foot patch of soil. I’m also so thankful to have a son who appreciates it, who takes great pride in planting onion sets and picking blueberries. I am thankful, too, for my husband, who tolerates it all with a smile.

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Categories
Homesteading

Transformation

Snow and horse
Photo by Cherie Langlois
An early snow storm turned our farm into a winter wonderland.

I started to write a little ode-type thank you blog to our dearly departed turkeys today, but then I remembered the looks on our guests’ faces when I began reminiscing about the turkeys in their living state during Thanksgiving dinner last year. Let’s just say, it may have put a damper on peoples’ appetites, and since I want you, if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, to enjoy your delicious dinner—no matter what or who you’re eating—I’ll just hold off on that topic until next week.

So … what now?  

Well, thanks to an early-season snow storm, our farm has been quilted with nearly 12 inches of snow and utterly transformed from the soggy, muddy mess it was just a few days ago. I know—though lovely, snow can be a total pain, as I rediscovered this morning while slogging and slipping around to feed animals, haul hot water buckets and blow on latches to unfreeze them. But snow is such a rare thing here in the Puget Sound region that I can’t help feeling completely enchanted today. And also oddly free and relaxed—like a kid who just woke up to discover school had called a snow day (which, by the way, schools here will do at the drop of a snowflake; we’re complete snow wimps). 

So this afternoon I declared a snow break from writing, bundled up, clicked into my cross-country skis and headed out into the bright, crisp new world to savor it before it melts away in the next rain. With our Coonhound, Pippin, trotting along beside me (and sometimes following behind me and stepping on my skis), I shushed and looped around our pastures as the horses watched and the sun shone coldly and little glittering waterfalls of snow cascaded off the firs.

I didn’t get much of a workout (we only have five acres, after all) and it was just too tempting to keep stopping so I could marvel at the snow’s magical powers of transformation. How it softly smoothed over our farm’s many imperfections (a broken fence here, a pile of old lumber there) and turned our woodlot into an impressionist’s gold-and-blue-dappled work of art. The way it hung on the alder trees with tiny dripping ice diamonds and made the sky look that special, wintry shade of blue I love. 

I didn’t want to stop and go back inside, but then one ski hit a boggy spot and iced up enough it wouldn’t glide anymore, and I thought I’d better start writing this blog. So … here I am.  

Wishing you and your family a beautiful Thanksgiving!

~ Cherie   

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Categories
Urban Farming

Leftovers

Thanksgiving turkey

Don’t let the joys of turkey end on Thanksgiving. Take cues from The Lefovers Queen (aka me), there are a lot more delicious meals ahead.

There’s nothing The Leftovers Queen likes better than Thanksgiving. The secret is to think of those bowls, containers and wrapped bundles in the fridge as inspiration and to recombine them with a fresh slant to make a second, terrific seasonal meal. Only the pies shouldn’t be messed with if you even have any left over.

Turkey and Vegetables

Recipe:
Cranberry Sauce Muffins

Ingredients

  • 2 cups white flour, or a combination of whole wheat and white flour
  • 2½ tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup or more sugar (optional)
  • 1/4 cup cornmeal (optional)
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 1 egg
  • 2 T. vegetable oil or cooled, melted butter
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup whole cranberry sauce or relish

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease a 12-muffin tin. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and sugar and cornmeal if using, in a medium bowl. Beat together the milk, egg, oil or butter, and cranberry sauce in another bowl or large measuring cup.

Pour this liquid mixture into the flour mixture. Mix quickly with a dozen thorough strokes, being careful not to over mix. A few dry places or lumps in the mix are fine. If very dry, add a few more tablespoons of milk. Spoon immediately into greased muffin cups to about two-thirds full. Bake 20 minutes. Cool briefly before removing from tin.

Yield: 12 muffins

I always throw the turkey carcass into a soup pot right away, and my family loves turkey sandwiches. But heritage-breed turkeys may not leave you as much white breast meat to slice.

Instead, add chopped turkey to chili, which is really easy and may make use also of random seasonal vegetables, such as carrots and last peppers. Sauté these with an onion and a couple of garlic cloves. You can proudly share the first quart of tomatoes you put up or just open and add a large can of stewed or diced tomatoes. That corn you froze is a good add, too. Simmer; add beans, chili powder, salt, hot pepper and cumin to taste.

Turkey hash is another fave. Sauté some chopped onion in butter, add leftover cooked potatoes of any style or even leftover bread stuffing to the pan, along with chopped leftover turkey, cooked Brussels sprouts, carrots and so on. Try to keep it as a mass so it cooks together like a cake. Patiently allow to brown and season well with plenty of pepper. Then you can fry an egg or two right next to the hash in the pan.

The most elaborate leftover dish I like is a turkey pot pie. Make a standard white sauce (you can add leftover gravy or creamy green bean casserole to it as it thickens). Then add cooked, diced everything: cauliflower, onions, turkey, whatever there is. To use random, leftover crudités, chop and sauté them to soften first. Fill a greased casserole, cover it and pop it into a 375 degree F oven. Meanwhile, mix up a recipe of simple biscuits (OK, cheat and use Bisquick) using any leftover sour cream or yogurt-based dips (onion, spinach, ranch) you have for the dairy product. You can add some grated cheese, too, if you like. Roll and cut out circles of the dough or just drop the dough in large spoonfuls onto the hot turkey mix. Bake until the biscuits brown. Yum!

Winter Squash

If your family does the marshmallow topping thing or adds crushed pineapple to squash or pumpkin purée, you can use the leftovers to make muffins, a quick bread (use your banana bread recipe and sub in the squash instead) or great pancakes.

If it’s not too sweet, however, go the soup route. Just thin the squash purée with broth and season either with curry, chili powder or crumbled sage, to taste. You can garnish the soup with a swirl of cream or sour cream and a few croutons, made from your leftover bread or dinner rolls. If local for you means using sweet potatoes instead of squash, follow the same rules. These seasonings work just as well with sweet potatoes.

Cranberry Sauce

For me, cranberries are conceivably local or at least regional, if you discount that Michigan now grows more of them than Massachusetts does. Sometimes I fill oatmeal jam bars with leftover whole cranberry sauce or I bake these easy muffins (recipe to the right) with it for a special holiday breakfast. Any homemade, canned or gourmet cranberry relish will do just fine, and you can add a bit more milk if the batter seems dry or sugar if your cranberry condiment isn’t too sweet. The quarter-cup of cornmeal added to the dry ingredients adds a bit of crunch.

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Categories
Equipment

Anvils: Not Just For Blacksmiths

Anvil
Courtesy Castle Books
The anvil, traditionally used by blacksmiths, is a tool that I’d like to add to my farm shop.

I’ve got a wish list a mile long for shop tools and fixtures, but one thing stands out among them all … an anvil. Growing up on a farm, the anvil was just there. We used it sporadically, but mostly just took it for granted. In fact, properly equipped and used, it’s an amazing tool for anyone who works with metal.

Traditionally, the anvil was a part of every blacksmith shop and most farm shops. It was where you bent and straightened metal, and made or sized horseshoes, metal rings and other metal objects needed on the farm. Today, it is more likely to gather dust in the corner … unless you know how to take advantage of its unique features.

The traditional anvil is essentially a rectangular steel or cast-iron block with a flat, smooth and hardened face. At one or both ends you will find a cone-shaped horn. Some anvils have a square horn at one end and cone shaped horn at the other. Usually at one end, often between the horn and the face is a step or pad, also referred to as the table, set at a level slightly lower than the face.

Another key feature of an anvil is the hardy hole. This square hole is used to hold special accessory tools, appropriately called hardy tools, for cutting and working metal. A final feature found on many modern anvils is a pritchel hole. It is used mainly for punching holes in metal, but may also be used as a tool holder.

For a simple tool, the anvil has much hidden complexity. Over the next two weeks, I will share some of that complexity, as well as why it sits so high on my wish list … and why I have yet to add it to my shop.

Next week—putting the anvil to work.

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Categories
News

Time to Inventory Hay

Cows and hay
Courtesy Stock.XCHNG
Consult your local county extension services for help determining how much hay you’ll need to feed your livestock this winter.

Due to dry conditions, many livestock producers around the country are already into their winter feeding programs—some of which began as early as September. Farmers need to inventory their hay supplies now to ensure they have enough to last through the winter.

If you find you’re short on your hay supply, buying additional hay now can save you a lot of headaches later, says Tom Keene, hay marketing specialist with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.  

The good news in Kentucky, he says, is local forage producers had prime haymaking weather earlier this year and were able to get good yields because of adequate springtime moisture.

“During a normal season, we would have had a surplus of hay,” Keene said.

However, the timely rains diminished in July for some areas of the state and haven’t returned in significant amounts in most places since then. According to the most recent Kentucky Weekly Crop and Weather Report, about 90 percent of the state’s pastureland was rated either poor or very poor.

“Even if we get some much-needed rain, it’s unlikely that pastures will recover enough to provide very many grazing days before cold weather sets in during December and January,” he says. “So those currently feeding hay will probably be doing so through March 2011.”

When calculating the need for additional hay, farmers should consider their current supply, how much hay they feed their livestock each day and feeding and storage losses. You can get assistance determining these calculations from your county extension agent for agriculture and natural resources.

If the calculations show a need for additional hay, go ahead and purchase some, Keene says.

“By buying hay now, producers will have a bigger selection of quality hay, be more likely to find hay close to home and in the packaging they want,” he says. “The longer it’s put off, the more trouble [farmers] will have meeting these criteria.”

To get the most out of current hay supplies, farmers should have their hay tested.

“Hay testing helps [farmers] feed the correct amount of hay with the right amount of supplements to meet their animals’ nutritional needs,” Keene says. “It can help [farmers] feed hay more economically and efficiently.”

Categories
News

Conserving Heritage Turkeys

Heritage turkeys
Courtesy American Livestock Breed Conservancy/ Phil Sponenberg
Farmers interested in raising rare heritage turkey breeds, like the Jersey Buff, are helping to preserve a time-honored tradition.

With growing consumer demand for tasty heritage turkeys to grace holiday tables, more farmers are trying their hands at raising them. However, farmers often find themselves struggling to find production information specific to raising the colorful cousins of the Broad Breasted White turkey found in supermarket freezers. Since the industrialization of turkeys in the late 1950s, much of the knowledge and printed information on how to select, raise and breed traditional turkeys has slowly been lost.

In response to this demand, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy released a new heritage turkey resource. Selecting Your Best Turkeys for Breeding is the second publication in the ALBC Master Breeder series, which is a collaboration of known master breeders, researchers and ALBC staff to codify knowledge and historic information about heritage-breed selection, husbandry and breeding.

The information found in Selecting Your Best Turkeys for Breeding was once widely available when small-scale agriculture and pastured poultry keeping was commonplace. Changes in agricultural practices have caused this information to be largely lost to subsequent generations.

“ALBC recognized that there was a knowledge gap when it came to raising and breeding heritage turkeys and many other rare breeds,” says Marjorie Bender, ALBC research and technical program director. “If we want to establish a sustainable market for these birds, we’ve got to give the farmers the tools they need to raise and breed quality animals.”

As recently as 1997, heritage turkeys were in danger of extinction. At that time, only 1,335 breeding heritage turkeys were found in the United States. Today, thanks to the efforts of breeders, producers and consumers, the heritage turkey’s numbers are on the rise, with 10,404 turkeys reported in the 2006 census.

 

Categories
Urban Farming

Student Who Patents Solar Motorcycle Rides On

Solar-powered motorcycle

Courtesy Purdue University

A Purdue University student patented a solar-powered motorcycle, and then started a club to work with other students on creating other electric vehicles.

Physics major Tony Danger Coiro, a junior from South Bend, Ind., received a provisional patent for his motorcycle that uses solar energy to cut his transportation costs down to well less than a penny per mile. The lead acid batteries also can charge from plug-in AC current.

After purchasing a 1978 Suzuki for $50, Coiro spent $2,500 redesigning and retrofitting the bike, which gives him a range of up to 24 miles per charge and a top speed of 45 miles per hour.

“The riding experience is surreal,” Coiro says. “I get instant, silent, constant acceleration that outpaces urban traffic. It’s like riding a magic carpet.”

Coiro co-launched the Purdue Electric Vehicles Club with Jim Danielson and Sean Kleinschmidt, both sophomores from suburban Chicago. Danielson and Kleinschmidt spent their summer after high school converting a 1987 Porsche 924S to electric power.

Kleinschmidt, a mechanical engineering major, translated that success into a summer internship at Tesla, where he helped develop batteries for the makers of the world-class, all-electric sports car. Danielson, who is majoring in electrical and computer engineering, spent his summer developing motor control electronics for Electro Motive Diesel, which designs and manufactures diesel-electric locomotives.

“Purdue Electric Vehicles will encourage enthusiasm for, and knowledge and development of, electric vehicles by students and the community,” Coiro says.

Coiro says the Purdue Electric Vehicle Club will patent and commercialize its breakthrough technologies and feed proceeds back into research and development of new prototypes. Coiro is already designing a 100-horsepower motorcycle that will travel up to 100 miles per charge, top 100 mph and draw even more of its energy from the sun. The all-wheel-drive bike will include motors in each hub and no drive trains.

“I’ve learned a lot building this first bike, and now I’m ready to make a game-changer,” he says.

Coiro, Danielson and Kleinschmidt oversaw construction of the 17 electric race karts that students built for the first-ever electric vehicle grand prix, held at Purdue in spring 2010.

In 2011, that race is expected to draw student teams from throughout the Midwest. The race was created by Purdue’s Indiana Advanced Electric Vehicle Training and Education Consortium to demonstrate the possibilities of electric vehicles and train a new breed of young engineers to improve them and reshape the auto industry in Indiana and beyond.

“Electric vehicles are four to five times more efficient than internal combustion engines—that’s a big difference,” Coiro says. “They’re not the solution to our energy problems, but they will be an increasingly bigger piece of the puzzle.”

When he graduates, Coiro plans to launch a company that develops electric vehicles. Eventually, he foresees launching a nonprofit energy company.

“Gas is not in infinite supply, so we need to go to another energy source in the future, be it nuclear fusion or fission, solar, or wind,” he says. “It’s going to be a lot easier to charge an electrical vehicle off of the grid.”

Categories
Animals

Giving Thanks

Baby goats
Photo by Sue Weaver
We are all thankful for Biscuit and Bijou. Bijou is already eating yummy leaves!

Did you know goats might have contributed milk and cheese to the first Thanksgiving feast? It’s true. The first Thanksgiving took place at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass., in 1621. There were animals onboard the Mayflower and historians think some might have been goats. Otherwise, they came to Plymouth soon after that because a document called the Plymouth Colony Division of Livestock issued in 1647 mentions 22 “shee goats.” 

President George Washington proclaimed the first official Thanksgiving Day in 1786, but it didn’t become an annual event until 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln made it so. In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill into law making Thanksgiving fall on the fourth Thursday every November.

We’re thankful for lots of things this year:

  • Salem is thankful he didn’t eat any more yummy acorns than he did.
  • Big Mama, Bon Bon and Jadzia are thankful for the beautiful babies I helped them make this year. (I am such a studly guy!)
  • Sam the lamb is thankful for the milk Mom fed him after his real mama died, and for Miss Maple and Cordelia, who are his friends and slept with him and kept him warm.
  • The rams are thankful it’s rut and they have an excuse to make goo-goo eyes at the ewes and bash their heads together all the time. (What showoffs!) The ewes are thankful we have strong fences.
  • And Mom and I are thankful we write things for Hobby Farms and for all of you nice people who read my column every week.

Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s hoping you get pumpkin pie slivers, too!

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Categories
Urban Farming

Dropping Like Flies

Stall roof

Photo by Audrey Pavia

Flies like to hang out in the stall roof.

Urban farmers in Southern California don’t normally have to deal with rain. Doing chores in wet weather just isn’t on our regular agenda.

But this past weekend, one of the first storms of the season blew into town and I had no choice but to do my outside work in the intermittent rain. This gave me an opportunity to do something I have always loved to do: kill flies.

When I was a kid hanging out at riding stables, I’d bring my fly swatter with me and go around smacking flies for what seemed like hours at a time. It wasn’t sadism that motivated me. It was my love for horses. I saw how the flies tormented the horses, crawling inside their eyes and biting viciously at their legs. In my mind, for every fly I killed, there was a happier horse. 

I didn’t realize it at first, but rainy days are a great time to kill flies. I found this out when I happened to look up at the ceiling of the stall roof over my three pipe corrals. I’ve often wondered where the flies go during cold weather and at night, the only times in this part of the world when they aren’t pestering the horses. It turns out flies like to hang out on the stall ceiling. They were lined up all over the place, probably 100 or more, from one end of the stall covering to the other. 

How often do you get to see so many flies all gathered in one place, immobile and vulnerable? Usually, they are buzzing around the horses’ faces or clustered on the horses’ legs. But here they were, chilled from the cold air, just resting on the stall ceiling.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to wipe out as many of them as possible. I ran to the tack shed and grabbed the most toxic fly spray I could find, but then reconsidered. If the flies died and fell to the ground, the chickens would eat them and ingest the toxic chemicals. So I instead opted for the all-natural fly spray, which, according to the label, killed flies with only natural ingredients.

Standing beneath the stall cover, I began firing away with my spray bottle, nailing one fly after another with the pleasant smelling insecticide. Most of the flies took off as soon as the stuff hit them, but others stayed where they were, staggering around in a drunken stupor. Those flies got an extra dose of spray for good measure until they dropped to the stall floor.

After 15 minutes of this anti-fly crusade, I decided I had done enough damage to the winged fiends. I’ll be interested to see if the fly population seems lesser in the next week when things warm up. If so, you can bet I’ll be outside armed with that fly spray bottle whenever it rains.

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