Preserving: Pickling cucumbers, beans and zucchini

Pickling is a method for preserving vegetables by canning. Only acidic fruits and vegetables (e.g., tomatoes) can be safely canned with the boiling-water bath method. Other non-acidic fruits and vegetables need to be acidified for safe home-canning (plus, frozen vegetables just taste better).

So our half-bushel of cucumbers and abundant green beans and zucchini got the pickling treatment. Adding a vinegar-water-salt (and sometimes sugar) solution to sterilized jars with spices and vegetables and then processing the jars in boiling water for a minimum of 10 minutes ensures safe vegetables through the winter months and spring food gap. Here's our process:

(1) Wash vegetables and cut to size so they fit into your sterilized jars with some room to spare at the top (it's important that all parts of the vegetable come into contact with the pickling solution). Seed cucumbers if you prefer.
(2) Bring to boil equal portions water and vinegar with 1/4 cup salt for every 5 cups of liquid.
(3) Pack sterilized jars with a garlic clove, 1/2 jalapeno, a few coriander seeds, a few peppercorns, a hefty pinch of mustard seeds and dill flowers. Pack in vegetables.
(4) Pour boiling pickling solution into jars, leaving about 1/2 inch of space at the top. Be sure all vegetables are covered with the solution. Seal tightly.
(5) Process in boiling water bath for at least 10 minutes (we processed the cucumber pickles for 20 minutes, as suggested by The Joy of Cooking).
(6) Leave jars to pickle for at least 1 week before opening. Store at room temperature.

Recipe with summer squash

Stuffed squash

Waiting for the gratin topping

Ingredients: large zucchini or other summer squash, onion, garlic, 1 egg, bread crumbs, parmesan cheese

Preparing: Slice squash lengthwise and scoop out pulp. Saute diced onion and garlic. Add chopped up squash pulp. Add fresh herb of your choosing or boil off some white wine, or include any other extra vegetable bits at this saute stage. Take mixture off the heat and add beaten egg, bread crumbs (about a cup, but depends on size of squash) and a good helping of grated parmesan cheese. Oil the insides of the squash shells and fill them with the mixture. Top the squash halves with a gratin (melt 1-2 tablespoons of butter and stir in about 1/2 cup of bread crumbs). Bake for 30 minutes, or until squash shells are tender.

Eating: A good vegetarian main course, especially if you can get your hands on some of those 3-5 pound squashes.

Dish history: This is simply a classic way to use some of your bounty of summer squash. Be sure to saute the stuffing enough that the liquid is cooked out or add enough bread crumbs; otherwise you may end up with a soupy stuffing.

Learning the hard way

Despite our attempts to rid our cucumbers of the striped cucumber beetle, the damage was done.

Some of our cucumber plants have been victims of cucumber bacterial wilt. The bacteria that causes this disease overwinters in the stomachs of the striped cucumber beetle, and when they damage your plants the bacteria works its way in. The disease disrupts the plant's ability to move water through its system. It reduces yield, produces misshapen fruit and can spread to other cucurbit crops, such as melon or squash.

This is a good year for us to learn about how important insect control is, since we are not beholden to any members or paying customers for our vegetables. We acted quickly, cutting away diseased vines, pulling hopeless plants and harvesting any cukes that appeared ready. We managed to get a bushel (8 gallons) of cucumbers from the harvest and may get even more if they ripen safely. We pickled half a bushel and saved the rest for cucumber salads.

Recipe with beets

Shredded summer beet salad

Ingredients: beets, basil, lime juice, olive oil, salt

Preparing: Shred beets into bowl with a cheese grater (no need to peel; the skin will end up not grating into the dish). Add chopped fresh basil, fresh lime juice, olive oil and salt to taste.

Eating: Good side dish. Could also substitute the basil/lime juice for cumin/chive/lemon juice or rice vinegar/sesame oil/scallion. We've also added leftover plain black beans to this dish to bulk it up a bit.

Dish history: On hot summer days who in the world wants to roast or boil beets?!?

Recipe with herbs

Herb salad

Ingredients: parsley, basil, cilantro, chicory, chives, arugula, garden cress, baby beet greens, baby radish greens, small kale leaves, shiso leaves (any combination of the above)

Preparing: Wash and chop up all of your greens. Toss with a vinaigrette (we use lemon juice, olive oil, a bit of honey, a smashed garlic clove, salt and pepper).

Eating: Easy side or can be an entire lunch.

Dish history: We have an abundance of herbs and baby greens in the garden. We love the explosion of fresh, diverse flavors.

Recipe with potatoes

Potatoes and greens

Ingredients: potatoes (tastes even better if they're "new" potatoes), greens (e.g., chard, spinach, beet greens, collards), oil, vinegar, salt

Preparing: Cut the potatoes to even sizes and bake as for oven-browns (we use bacon fat if on hand or vegetable oil, salt and pepper). When the potatoes are crispy and brown, add chopped greens and a splash of vinegar (we use cider), toss well with the potatoes and put back into the oven for about 5 minutes, or until greens are wilted.

Eating: Stir up the dish, being sure to scrape up the crispy browns. This goes well with any meats, but especially grilled ones. It takes care of the starch and vegetable, so it's an easy side.

Dish history: We started eating this in Argentina where there was an abundance of greens, and not so many potato plants planted. It's an especially good way to stretch those tiny new potatoes.

Recipe with cilantro

Cilantro chimichurri

Ingredients: cilantro, fresh hot pepper (e.g., jalapeño, serrano, cayenne, habanero), scallions, garlic (optional), vinegar, vegetable oil

Preparing: Finely mince the cilantro, hot pepper, scallions and garlic. Add some vinegar (we use white), but not too much, and some oil, but not too much. The chimichurri should be fresh tasting, not as oily as pesto and not as vinegary as a salad dressing.

Eating: Serve alongside grilled steak or with fish.

Dish history: A chimichurri is a classic accompaniment to grilled steaks in Argentina. Although they usually use parsley and a lot less hot pepper, the cilantro adds a really refreshing taste.

PS: An additional though on fresh cilantro: It is great on top of pasta dishes for a change from the classic fresh parsley or basil.

Recipe with chard

Saag-style chard

Ingredients: chard, clarified butter, garlic, ginger, hot peppers, salt

Note: You need a lot of chard for this recipe: for 2 adults, the uncooked and sliced chard should fill a 5-qt pot. It will cook down a lot.

Preparing: Cook finely sliced chard until it is wilted and you are able to mash it with a potato masher. Clarify your butter (heat butter, let the milk solids fall to the bottom, and cook with the "clarified" butter left on top). Add equal parts finely diced garlic, finely diced ginger, finely diced hot peppers to the clarified butter (the more you add, the more flavorful your chard... to feed 2, use at least 8 cloves of garlic). Add the mashed chard and mix.

Eating: Serve with rice or naan.

Dish history: While in Buenos Aires, we saw a story about a temple in India that serves  lunch to 10,000 people a day (!) and this was the simple recipe they profiled that day. We made it on the farm all the time when we harvested an abundance of chard.

Recipe with green beans

Green beans with ginger

Ingredients: green beans, butter, salt, ginger

Preparing: I think many people overcook green beans. Blanch the beans in boiling water for 3 minutes and then move to an ice water bath to stop the cooking. Melt butter in a saucepan, add matchstick-sized ginger slices, add salt if your butter is unsalted. Once the ginger is cooked to your liking, toss in the green beans to coat with butter and serve.

Eating: Good summer side dish. Can substitute fresh mint for ginger. Because butter is used, it really is best served warm/hot. If you wanted to make this an outdoor party side dish, I'd use a good tasting oil instead of the butter or wait for a hot day.

Dish history: We make this simple dish all the time... even made 20 pounds of it for a friend's wedding we were catering (where we, unfortunately, realized the room temperature butter version is not as appetizing).

Preserving: Freezing vegetables

With our storage room all set up and the freezer running efficiently (estimated $37 worth of annual electricity usage), we are in prime freezing mode right now.


There are many sources on freezing vegetables to refer to; we use Seymour's Self-Sufficient Gardener and The Joy of Cooking. As Seymour writes: "all fruit and vegetables should go to the freezer as soon as they are harvested. To leave them sitting about allows the sugars to start turning into starches and thereby the flavor is lost." So right from our garden harvest, we cold water rinse, blanch, flash cool and pack our vegetables. The JC gives appropriate blanching times for vegetables. Here are the ones we've tried or plan on trying this season:

Beans, green - 2.5 min
Beans, broad in pod - 4 min
Beet greens - 2.5 min
Beets, small - until tender
Broccoli - 3-4.5 min
Brussels sprouts - 3-4.5 min
Cabbage, leaf or shredded - 1.5 min
Carrots, sliced - 3 min
Celery, diced - 3 min
Chard - 2.5 min
Chinese cabbage, shredded - 1.5 min
Collards - 2.5 min
Kale - 2.5 min
Mustard greens - 2.5 min
Parsnips - 2 min
Peas, green - 1.5-2.5 min
Peppers - 2 min
Spinach - 2.5 min
Pumpkin, pureed - until tender
Squash, summer, sliced - 3 min
Squash, winter, pureed - until tender
Turnip greens - 2.5
Turnips, diced - 3 min

Once the vegetables have been blanched, cooled and packed, we use Seymour's tip of sucking out the air using a drinking straw (rather than buying a vacuum sealer). Yesterday, although the hottest day on record in our area, we harvested our collards after we noticed some pest damage and ended up with 40 packed cups worth. We even saved the stems and may try pickling them.

Who doesn't think frozen veggies are far superior to canned?

Recipe with borage

Borage cocktail

Ingredients: borage leaves, vodka or gin, club soda or tonic (optional), borage flowers

Borage plant

Preparing: Rip up some borage leaves into a cocktail shaker (or muddle them for more flavor). Add the alcohol of your choice and shake.

Drinking: Strain the cocktail straight for a borage-tini and garnish with borage flowers and a thin lemon round. Or mix with club soda or tonic for a refreshing mixed drink.

Drink history: We read in our Seymour book that borage leaves have a "cooling effect" in drinks. With our master-drink-maker friend visiting, we decided to give them a try in our cocktails. If muddled, they produce a very green drink; just shaking in a shaker with ice might still produce the same taste effect, but the drink will be a milder color. The smell and taste are both very cucumber-like. You could also try to use them while making a simple syrup or leave them in alcohol or tea or water to steep for a few days.

Holy tomato

We harvested our first Cherokee purple heirloom tomato. She was growing in a 3-pronged manner, quite strangely. But she sure did taste good with just a few flecks of salt.

Deposito

Every aspiring self-sufficient household needs to have a lot of space for food storage. As we harvest right now, we are freezing, pickling and canning for the winter months and spring food gap.

And now, thanks to the sharp carpentry skills of our friend (also our parrilla-builder) we have built-in storage shelves in our deposito. We foraged the old stables and wood piles around the property for forgotten wood and managed to build the 9-ft long by 9-ft high, floor-to-ceiling, fully-notched shelves without any home-cheapo-bought pressure-treated 2x4s. It is gorgeous and fits with with the style of the old tack room we've chosen for our food storage space. We fixed a rotting baseboard and animal-proofed it. The saddle shelves are still there and we'll use them to hang onions, garlic and squash. The feed holder is still there and we'll use it to store potatoes, beets and celeriac. And we've added a 15-cu.ft. chest freezer to sit below the window on the open wall. The finishing touches will be to insulate the windows once the winter freezes settle in.

It may take years to get to the point where we're filling the deposito to capacity... what a satisfying time that will be.

Rotten baseboard out

New baseboard in

Building the shelves

Finished shelving

Holy oven

With all of the canning and preserving we see in our future, and temperatures in the 90s these peak harvest times, the thought of heating the kitchen up with pots of boiling water is quite unappealing. So we are thanking our lucky stars that a restaurant-grade 6-burner dual oven has landed in our garage.

A friend of ours was clearing out his storage space in Brooklyn the day before he was moving to Texas. We drove down, with our trailer hitched on, to meet him. In addition to some great catering gear, he offered us this amazing oven after the deal he had set up fell through.

So we loaded up the 900-lb beast, strapped her on, and took off down bumpy Atlantic Avenue. Five stops, a broken ratchet, a moving griddle pan, a breaking back leg and 4 hours later, we pulled into Longhaul.

Jason cleaned her spic-n-span and now we need to hook her up to our propane and rearrange the garage. And blanching our veggies and canning our preserves will be so much more pleasant now, especially with temperatures reaching 99 at the end of the week. Our next project: setting up the food storage room.

Blueberry harvest

With our seven blueberry bushes no more than a foot high and barren, we've harvested blueberries from three different sources recently.

The first was a local farm which sprays their fruit but has a very cheap price per pound. It was a really pleasant experience. The berries are just becoming ripe, so I felt good about my picking, knowing it would spur on the other green ones on the cluster to ripen. The highbush varieties were at least 6 feet tall, and the rows between them were pleasantly wide and grassy. The berries were much smaller than the ones you buy in the grocery store, as expected.

Then we drove south to another local farm that produces organic fruit. At $6 per pound, I was happy I filled up at the cheaper farm. I didn't notice a difference in the berries or their bushes between the organic and non-organic farm. What I did notice is that the organic farm was weedier and not as pleasant to walk through, especially because there was poison ivy EVerywhere. Our friend's almost-2-year-old dumped her bucket of blueberries in the path and her mom started picking them up until I, with my poison-ivy-eye, told her to stand back and stop what she was doing. Oy.

And finally, we hit our dream spot: a wild blueberry grove tucked away behind a beautiful field of grasses and wild flowers in some nearby publicly-owned land. These highbushes were 7-9 feet tall, also in the early stages of ripeness, but gorgeous. The paths between them were overgrown with yarrow and cattails and virginia creeper, the breeze blowing through them ever so gently. There were also wild grapes using the highbush blueberries as natural trellises, green and hard and far from ripe. It was so peaceful to pick in silence with the birds.

So now we have a freezer-ful of blueberries, many pints of blueberry jam and some blueberry cakes and muffins coming soon.

Recipe with black currant

Black currant and bacon pizza

Ingredients: pizza dough, sauce, cheese, blackcurrants, bacon, maple syrup, arugula

Preparing: Top your basic pizza with fresh blackcurrants, crispy bacon and arugula (or spinach) and drizzle a bit of maple syrup on it. We used mozzarella, but I bet ricotta or feta would be great, too.

Eating: As is.

Dish history: We had a few handfuls of leftover blackcurrants after having made jams and tarts for the past few days and figured we'd give it a try. The flavors work well together, plus, bacon makes everything better.

Got cigarette butts?

Something productive has come out of the business of tobacco cultivation: an organic insecticide.

Spraying our cukes

According to our gardening guru, John Seymour, nicotine spray is one of the most powerful organic sprays out there for getting rid of insects. Get a smoker you love to save their butts for you, boil 4 ounces of butts to 1.2 gallons of water, strain and dilute to a 1:2 solution of nicotine:water. Spray this solution on plant foliage and stems (and even fruits since it degrades so quickly, but we're not comfortable doing that yet) and you'll witness the insects dropping like flies... not dead, but knocked out and not wanting to get back onto the plant. The main caution of such an insecticide is that it gets rid of both pests and beneficial insects. Therefore, Seymour recommends using it only if the manual picking-and-crushing-between-your-fingers-method is getting out of control...

... as it was with our curcurbits (cucumber, melon, squash, zucchini). The black and yellow-striped cucumber beetles were shamelessly mating on the leaves, even in some of the blossoms.

Nicotine spray is considered a natural insecticide because it is derived from a plant (others include pyrethrum and neem, for example). Nicotine is found in the nightshade family of plants (solanaceae), predominantly in tobacco, and in lower quantities in tomato, potato, eggplant and pepper. Nicotine-based sprays appear to be in the process of being banned as insecticides in the U.S. (if only it could be banned as a cancer-and-disease-causing stick as well) because of its potential link to bee susceptibility to disease, which has now made me think twice about using it again. Back to the old manual removal method.

Preserving: Black currant jam

A big part of our longhaul way of life is to try to eat from the food we grow year-round. This means preserving fruit when it's at its peak so it can be enjoyed throughout the year. Since our fruit garden is in its infancy, we decided that picking local fruit and preserving it is the best and only way to get vitamin C and other antioxidants during the winter and early spring.

In the Hudson Valley right now black currants are ripe and ready. Some strawberries are, too, and this week we should have blueberries (but our early June cherry crop didn't come this year due to lots of rain and cloudy days). So I went to a local pick-your-own farm and harvested 5 pounds of currants in about an hour. After the first 15 minutes of picking, I remembered that it's hard and tedious work. Each currant bush had dozens of branches with hundreds of berries on them. Not all of them are ripe at the same time, so you have to pick your way through. And since I was planning on making jam right away, I painstakingly made sure there was nothing in that bucket but berries.

We preserved a lot of dulces (jams) and fruit down in Argentina, so I just followed the same method up here:

(1) Wash and sterilize your jars. (Wash jars with warm soapy water, then rinse them in water with a bit of bleach to sterilize them. Then rinse again in clean water. Wash tops with warm soapy water and then sterilize in boiling water. Let jars and tops air dry - don't dry with a towel, etc.)


(2) Use a large pot - big enough so that the fruit and sugar only fill it halfway (the jam rises as you cook it). Add your fruit and sugar in a 5:4 ratio. Since I had 5 pounds of black currants, I added 4 pounds of sugar. (This ratio preserves the jam sufficiently to store jars of it at room temperature for four years.)

(3) Cook the fruit and sugar over high heat, boiling and stirring constantly. You can add a bit of butter to prevent foaming. Cook time can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the amount you're cooking and the type of fruit. (Black currants are naturally high in pectin, so they take a shorter amount of time. Strawberries, on the other hand, are low in pectin so take longer to reach the right consistency.)

(4) Test for the right consistency by spooning a small amount on a cold, clean plate. Once it cools, tip the plate to see if it runs:  when it runs ever so slightly, cook for 1-2 minutes more.

(5) Pour the hot jam directly into your sterilized jars and close immediately. Be sure to use gloves and keep the jar in a metal pot while pouring in case it shatters.

Small doses

I am happy to say that I have been poison ivy free for one month now.

I haven't been avoiding it, as I probably should during these summer months when the oils appear to be dripping off of the leaves. In fact, I've taken a fork to many a plant to remove them from our garden area, which involves picking up the leaves and vines with gloved hands and disposing of them.

I would like to attribute my string of good luck to Oral Ivy, a homeopathic product that builds up your body's natural defenses against the toxic oils of poison ivy, oak and sumac. I take 3 drops of the concentrated rhus toxicodendron a day.

Like any homeopathic product, Oral Ivy works in small doses. Such remedies are made by potentizing a substance (serially diluting in water or alcohol, for example, and vigorously shaking it). The substance to be potentized is usually similar to the ailment one is trying to prevent (e.g., potentize poison ivy oil to prevent poison ivy; potentize pollen to prevent pollen allergies), but others are less intuitive. It is a complex science, despite the fact that it is not recognized by strict scientists nor the FDA as a viable "medicine."

I've always believed that small is beautiful (in the economic sense, and also in the social and cultural ones). There is a rhyme and reason to the practice of homeopathic remedies, just as there is one to the concept of peppering in biodynamic farming. In a time and space where bigness, globalism, heavy consumption, needless accumulation and frivolous expansion dominate the collective consciousness, recognizing and participating in the smallness of things is the best remedy I can think of.

R.I.P., Groundhogs

So you might be aware of our pest problem, and the fact that we have no more cilantro, broccoli, cauliflower or red cabbage plants growing in our garden. They even got to some kale, beet greens and radish tops.

Now we are less two groundhogs who were wreaking havoc on our vegetables. Without any detail, we actively got rid of one and passively got rid of another. But the big, fat, lumbering momma is still out there, although hopefully has moved her home since her presumed two offspring are gone.

It is a lot stranger to get rid of a 7-pound rodent than to squish a beetle between your fingers. We have not yet used a .22 (but are well-trained now, thanks to a very professional lesson from my father), but I can only imagine that killing an animal with one would be too easy (as long as you're a good shot)... you're physically removed from the being, pulling a trigger isn't innately violent and we've all seen it done millions of times in movies.

If only Mrs. Groundhog and her family had been feeding on the acres of grasses around us rather than our 2000-sq-ft vegetable beds, we could have all lived together.

Recipe with arugula

Arugula and prosciutto pizza

Ingredients: pizza dough, tomato sauce, cheese, prosciutto, arugula, lemon

Preparing: Make your pizza dough. Roll out dough and top with sauce, a bit of cheese, red hot pepper flakes and oregano (if desired), prosciutto, more cheese. Pop in oven at 500F for 10-ish minutes. When nearly done, completely cover pizza with fresh arugula and bake for 1 more minute.

Eating: Splash fresh lemon juice on your slice.

Dish history: This also originated for us in Argentina. Pizza Fridays were never the same once our butcher let us taste his home-salted prosciutto and we were able to cut fresh arugula from the garden.

Experimenting

Now that we've reached our goal of 20 double-dug beds, we are experimenting with other ways to loosen and add fertility to our soil.

First, we're trying a no-dig method:
Place sheets of newspaper or cardboard directly on the grass/sod. Add organic material in layers, alternating browns and greens (we're adding leftover sod from other beds, leaves, grass clippings, coffee grounds, 2-year old wood chips and soil from our leaf pile that has been decomposing for years) until you've built a "raised bed." Hopefully by mid-July we'll have built up enough material so we can plant a tap-rooting cover crop in there to break up the soil even more. This method is also referred to as the "lasagna" method due to the layering of materials. I honestly don't have highest hopes for this method, since I already know there are a few large rocks just below the surface and hundreds of smaller ones, and organic decomposition doesn't help us with that. But we are assuming that by next spring we'll be able to stick our forks into loosened, highly fertile soil.

Next, we're trying single-digging:
Remove the sod. Use a pick-axe to loosen the soil, remove all of the rocks and weed debris, continue to fork and pick-axe the loosened soil until the fork goes in 12 inches. So we are saving ourselves the steps of moving the top 12 inches of soil and loosening the next 12 inches of subsoil, cutting our bed-digging time in half. I have higher hopes for this one since we are getting a lot of rocks out. We will add manure and other organic material to the loosened soil, mulch it heavily and plant a green manure crop. We're hoping the winter freezes will have heaved a few more rocks upwards into the loosened soil so we can remove them in early spring and plant some vegetable crops there.

Finally, we may experiment with some long-row, tractor-tilled space:
If a friend of ours can come in to till some 100-foot rows for us, we'll do the work of removing rocks and planting the green manure. These long rows could be a great space for main crop potatoes, carrots, corn or blueberry bushes.

In any case, all new beds will be receiving full soil fertility treatment: no more vegetable sowing, just adding organic material, cover crops, and liming in the fall when we till in the green manure.

Treated seeds

We've decided that once we pull an early crop (e.g., spinach, arugula) out of the ground, we should replant with peas while it's still early in the season. That way we supply some nitrogen to the soil (since peas are legumes) and get a vegetable to harvest in the fall. Much to my dismay, I opened up my 5-lb bag of shelling peas to find I had accidentally ordered treated peas. (The seed company we were dealing with was great and agreed to take back the bag and credit my account.)  

The red peas (L) are treated.

Treated seeds are treated with a fungicidal powder (typically Thiram or Captan) as a preventative against damping off diseases and seeds rotting in cold damp soil. The chemicals used to treat seeds can be harmful to human health, and although they are designed to have short half-lives and cling to soil particles so they erode and pollute less, they are also harmful to the environment. Many corn, bean, peas, lettuce and melon seeds, among others, are available treated. 

Treated seeds were developed primarily so large scale growers could benefit from an early yield: treated seeds planted in cold damp soil in early spring are less likely to rot. This increases the germination rate and future yield. But if profit's not your motive, you can just wait until the time is right, when the soil's warmed appropriately for whatever seed variety you are putting into the ground, and you don't have to worry about rotting seeds. With increasing population, high-demand global markets and rising food prices, how could we ever wean ourselves from big ag's use of treated seeds?

As a small-scale grower or home gardener, we have the choice to buy treated, untreated conventional or organic seeds. When you buy seeds online you can be sure to check the box that says "will NOT accept treated seeds" if you plan on growing organically and you will never be shipped a treated product. But another way to avoid treated seeds is to save your own and maybe eve join a seed saver exchange. That way you and your fellow exchange members control both the seed and the growing conditions, ensuring a safer, more locally-appropriate crop.

Recipe with kale

Kale chips

Ingredients: kale, olive oil, salt, pepper, red hot pepper flakes

Preparing: Wash kale and cut out tough stems. Toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and red hot pepper flakes. Grill for 10 minutes (or place under broiler) - until the edges of the leaves have crisped up nicely.

Eating: Eat with your fingers as a tasty appetizer or side dish to other grilled foods.

Dish history: We became obsessed with these "kale chips" in Argentina: there was an abundance of kale in the garden and we loved our parrilla. Simple.

The perils of public health: the case of raw milk

I'm sure many of us have tasted raw milk... years ago as small children or, more recently, fresh from a cow on a farm. Isn't it so much creamier and tastier? Don't you feel healthier after a glass?

Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized. Following the Industrial Revolution, the

Our nearly gone half-gal of raw milk.

swarms of people leaving behind their cows and rural homes for urban life, the discovery of the pasteurization process, and the up-scaling of dairy production on huge industrial farms, raw milk has been harder and harder to find. For all the good the field of public health brings us, it has brought us peril in the case of milk. The turn of the twentieth century saw the spread and dominance of the germ theory, the belief that disease was spread through microorganisms, such as bacteria.* Public health professionals, of course, were correct: many diseases are indeed spread through "germs." However, where we went wrong as a profession was our unfiltered, widespread push for pasteurization. In effect, all farmer's milk is treated as potentially contagious. This gives us peace of mind in an era of not being able to connect our milk bottle to a farmer's or cow's face. But is has also created a culture that assumes all unpasteurized products are dangerous.

These days selling raw milk is illegal in over 20 states. But there is a movement afoot to bring it back into trade, albeit at the small scale. It is sometimes available at farmer's markets, as part of CSA shares or for pick-up on farms. Raw milk proponents believe their unpasteurized version has more nutritive value and health-promoting bacteria than their mass-produced, highly-heated, bland-tasting counterpart. Its producers say that as long as their practices are sanitary (which can be more easily controlled when it is a small operation, for example), their milk is healthy for you. And its fans say it just tastes better.

Too bad I live in New York State, where the sale of raw milk at farmer's markets is illegal. (Luckily, we got one delicious week's installment before the farmer was told to halt sales.)

* Admittedly, a much better theory than the previous generation of public health professionals held onto: the miasma theory, the belief that miasma, a rotten, toxic form of air, caused disease and death.

Recipe with basil

Basil pesto (I'm doing such a basic basil recipe because it's a cheaper and easier one)

Ingredients: basil, pepitas (de-hulled pumpkin or squash seeds), parmesan cheese, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice

Preparing: If you have full/tall stems of basil, remove the stem from below the bottom set of leaves and keep the rest of the stems and leaves (you don't even have to chop them). Combine in a food processor the basil (leaves and adjoining stems), parmesan, pepitas (cheapter than pine nuts) and garlic. Slowly add the olive oil (or vegetable oil, even cheaper). When you get the right consistency, squeeze in some fresh lemon juice. Store in a jar in the refrigerator.

(Note: 8 cups of very loosely packed basil made 2 cups of pesto)

Eating: Really tasty on toasted raisin bread.

Dish history: Down in Argentina we made pesto all of the time, which is where we learned the stem-and-all trick, vegetable oil trick and non-pine-nut trick (we used walnuts that we harvested from the farm).

Peppering

Pests are a part of our ecology, and for this reason, I respect them. But when they do damage to my livelihood, I don't feel so bad about taking measures to get rid of them.

A farmer battles with many forms of pests: animals, insects, bacteria, fungi, viruses and weeds. Each battle depends on the pest at hand. And some battles can take over your life... this is, presumably, why insecticides, agricultural antibiotics and herbicides were invented and are now overused. But as an organic producer, we won't use synthetic or chemical products to protect our plants. 

Instead, we use row covers, our fingers, predator urine, companion planting, beneficial insects, we make sure our soil's healthy, and some use organic sprays. And after a recent visit to a biodynamic farm, the Pfeiffer Center, I was introduced to the concept of "peppering."

You can read about this art in Rudolf Steiner's own words to understand the meaning behind the method. I'll explain briefly in the case of peppering to prevent weeds: When a weed goes to seed, collect the seeds, place them in a metal container and burn them in a hot fire. Collect the ashes from these seeds, mix them with the wood ash from the fire, and sprinkle this ash around your garden where you do not want these weeds to grow. With the case of insects you would burn the whole insect and with the case of animals you would burn the hide. You can repeat this process several times a year and you can follow Steiner's word on the appropriate times to do it (based on the moon and other cosmic forces). After three to four years, you should be virtually pest-free.

There is a lot to remark on this method. For one, if you kill the groundhog eating your broccoli and you do this in successive years, you'll have exterminated the problem and maybe the burning/sprinkling didn't do anything. Also, if it takes three to four years, what should I do in the meantime to protect my plants?!? But if you do read Steiner's lecture and study biodynamic farming, you might be led to believe in the power of peppering.

Recipe with peas

Fresh pea risotto w/ mint

Ingredients: onion, butter, olive oil, risotto rice, white wine or dry vermouth, stock, fresh peas, parmesan cheese, fresh mint, pepper

Preparing: Prepare as any risotto dish. Saute the onions in butter and olive oil. Then add and slightly toast the rice (we use 1 cup rice for a 2-person meal with a little leftovers). Add a hefty amount of white wine (or dry vermouth) and let the alcohol boil off. Then start adding the hot stock in small quantities, stirring often. When you add your last installment of broth, add the peas and fresh mint. Then stir in parmesan cheese and crack a lot of black pepper in it.

Eating: Sprinkle with some fresh lemon juice. A tasty main course or side for duck breast.

Dish history: If you are not going to eat fresh peas right out of the pod, this is a nice way to present them, still crispy and paired with their companion herb. Made this for the first time a few years back with a good friend who had the habit of only eating things when they were in season and this dish made such a fresh impression.

Looking out

One of the most amazing parts of starting Longhaul Farm has been family, friends and neighbors looking out for us. A good number of people are genuinely interested in what we do, they feel bad when our broccolis are beheaded, they are psyched to share a home-grown salad and they are eager to haul rocks and dig beds with us.

Just the other day a young couple from across the river dropped by, the old-fashioned way, so they say, to see what we were up to. It was so refreshing and informative and calming to have two new neighbors take a random interest in what we were doing... not to mention they know a lot about native plants in our area and are seemingly equally obsessed with my arch nemesis, the black swallow wort, as I am.

And we received messages from a few good friends saying "sorry about those pests - have you tried coyote urine?," a neighbor down the road dropped off supplies for us to harvest with and Jason's father helped us weed after the rains we had the past few days. A community that is looking out is a very comfortable thing.

On a related-but-not-so-related note about this "looking out" concept... I think people are capable of looking out... but a corporation?!? And even worse, a bank? Scenario: Jason is up in Canada on a week-long trip in the wilderness of Restoule Lake. He's buying groceries (presumably) at the local supermarket, tries to use his <bank name> debit card to pay for it, and it gets denied. So <bank name>'s Fraud Department calls our HOME phone to check that this "activity" is approved.

Sparing many of the details of what went through my mind and the conversation that ensued... I called back this <bank name> Fraud Department and because I am not on Jason's account, couldn't approve his purchase, but as an angry partner and angry <bank name> customer, could complain. This whole fraud-prevention-thing is billed as "consumer protection," but in this case I see it as a serious inconvenience and a way for <bank name> to be sure it doesn't have to lose money on any fraudulent activity on an account. Seriously... he's in Canada! Can't we go for a vacation and have our money work for us? (No, we can't: according to the <bank name> supervisor I spoke with: he said it is the consumer's responsibility to notify <bank name> of any impending unusual activity. Relatedly, Jason's account was hacked while we lived in Argentina and <bank name> didn't pick up on it for 6 days and $2,500 later, once Jason caught it and put in a call.)

Just recently I had to call <bank name> to ask that my daily ATM withdrawal limit be increased to a reasonable level. Yes, there are "consumer protection" reasons to put a limit on this, but, digging deeper, my email request to them stated, "Dear Sir or Madam, Please increase my daily ATM withdrawal limit. I would prefer $X00. I have no idea why it is set at $Y00, other than so you, <bank name>, can keep more of my money for your own investments. Cordially, Jocelyn."

So if you haven't read our posts on moving your money into a local bank, you might consider now (or not, because I understand many people like the comfort of fraud prevention at the expense of your privacy and daily purchasing being monitored by a computer program and then flagged and sent to some employee of the <bank name> Fraud Department who is overworked now from the inane daily checks they do on their hundreds of thousands of customers and is responsible for trying to get in touch with you while you are unreachable and on your vacation and in the end you can't even buy your groceries or pay for gas). I'm getting back on the task of finding an institution I respect to put my money into... and enjoying small personal pleasures in life of real live individuals just dropping by and looking out for us.

Please excuse the rant.

Black gold, made on-site

Since we launched our compost collective in mid-March, we collect organic matter from 10 families on our road, a deli on route 9 and a local supermarket in Peekskill. We now have 2 heaps of finished compost... about 4 cubic yards worth of black gold.

Sifting the compost

Black gold

Every week for the past 3 months we have layered our browns and greens, throwing in a little horse manure and lime here and there, and turned each pile to encourage the microorganisms to do their job. We have two more heaps that we've been working on for the past month. We sift the compost through a screen to separate out rocks, sticks and things that are not fully broken down and then apply it to our vegetable beds. Our tomato plants and asparagus seem to be starving for some nutrients, so we know they'll be happy.

Thanks to all of our neighbors who are participating!

Why we're double-digging (part II)

We are celebrating our hitting the 20-double-dug bed mark: 2,000 square feet of 24-inch-deep soft, aerated, amended soil.

Even though people still think we're crazy for doing it, we have a slow-and-steady-to-develop garden, we've got our own plans to experiment with the next few beds using newspaper sheets, organic matter, green manure crops and tap rooters, and Jason's muscles are bursting and his back is aching, we have a really, really, really good answer for "why double-dig?"

R.O.C.K.S.

No matter how much you build up your beds, there's no escaping the huge boulders we pull out just a few inches below the surface. These rocks are impenetrable barriers to plant roots, never to be dealt with unless we get into the ground.

And hopefully we will never have to dig this deep again.

Recipe with chard

Acelga (Swiss chard) pie

Ingredients: pie crust, onions, garlic, Swiss chard, bechamel sauce (butter, milk, flour, nutmeg), s+p

Preparing: Prepare and roll out any savory pie crust. Saute onions and garlic in olive oil. Add lots of chopped Swiss chard (or any other juicy green in season... spinach, bok choy, tatsoi cabbage) and cook down. Stir in bechamel sauce that has been flavored with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Pour the greens mixture into the pie crust and bake at 375 for about 45 minutes (or until crust is browned).

Eating: We top the pie with spicy tomato sauce.

Dish history: This is a classic Argentinian dish that we made so many times on the farm because they had the most booming crop of acelga.

F'er weed update

Now that I'm obsessed with this invasive plant, I figured I'd share it's official name:  

Black or Louis' Swallow Wort (Cynanchum louiseae). 

FKA: F***er weed.

Pun intended: it's in for a long-haul chemical-free, cultural, mechanical and biodynamical control battle.

Pests

We've got pests. And they come in insect and mammal form.

How many little green wormy things can you count?

Our brassicas, for now, are taking the biggest hit. The flea beetles have turned our Chinese cabbage into swiss cheese. The cabbage loopers (not really sure what they're called) have eaten away at our broccoli and cabbage leaves. And a loafy gopher has beheaded many a broccoli and collard plant.

I'm sure there's more to come.

A healthy broccoli plant

Dealing with pests in an organic way includes diverse techniques. There are still organic sprays you can purchase that will kill the pest, such as garlic barrier, rotenone copper dust, hot pepper wax or neem oil. For now, we are trying two methods: row cover and picking the pests off the plant and killing them ourselves.**

Row cover is a lightweight fabric that many organic gardeners use to prevent insects and other pests from getting to their crops. It is so light that you can put the fabric directly on your plants. The trick is to put the cover on them immediately after you transplant them out. We did not do this, which is why so many of our leaves have been victim to the flea beetle. But it's never too late to try: if we put the row cover on now we'll at least prevent more flea beetles from feasting on our future food.

Be-headed broccoli plants

As for picking the pests off ourselves... I've started inspecting all of our brassica plants daily, pulling off the little green caterpillar things and squashing them. It's kind of easy to find them: just look for eaten leaves.

Now we have to figure out what to do with the gopher we've seen lumbering across our pasture. He prefers the brassicas, too, although I have seen a few lettuce heads chopped off. We're hoping the row covers help with him. Last night we put out a radio in the garden and left it on, hoping to scare him off with noise. We plan to buy a motion detector light or noise maker to also scare him off. Otherwise, we'll have to find his gopher hole and smoke him out.

The row cover

** After a visit to a local biodynamic farm, I have stumbled upon another long haul method for ridding your garden of pests. More on this in an upcoming post.

Recipe with Tatsoi cabbage

Pasta with Tatsoi cabbage

Ingredients: olive oil, garlic, Tatsoi cabbage (small leaves like baby spinach), zucchini (or any other vegetable you'd like), parmesan cheese, lemon, pasta

Preparing: Prepare the pasta as you normally do. To prepare the "sauce": Cook up the garlic in olive oil. (Add some white wine or herbs at this point if you'd like.) Add the Tatsoi cabbage leaves and other vegetable and saute for just 2-3 minutes. The Tatsoi will be just wilted and the other vegetable will still be crunchy and fresh.

Eating: Serve the greens over the pasta with shaved parmesan and fresh lemon juice.

Dish history: You figure out lots of ways to eat Tatsoi cabbage when you planted 200 plants of it and they are all ready for harvest within two weeks. We use it in any recipe you'd use spinach.

F***er weed

They're everywhere. And so aptly named by an 82-year-old gentleman farmer friend who recently toured our farm and has been farming in the Hudson Valley his whole life.

The roots

These weeds have the most intense root system I've ever seen, can grow without light, and apparently thrive in our acidic soil. I've seriously found the roots of these weeds at the bottom of compost piles and a plant has grown in the dark, for two feet, until it emerges on top of the pile. We find the roots everywhere in our sod when we dig beds. And now we find the plant everywhere in our vegetable beds, sprouting from roots we missed. You can't just pull them out; their roots are always so deep you have to dig them out. If you get lazy and just pull, I swear, three pop up for each one you've angrily teared away at.

What to do with these f'er weeds?

The weed

The other day we visited Glynwood Farm here in Putnam County. It is a non-profit farm whose mission is to help small- and mid-sized farmers to thrive. The farm has a long history, but its current non-profit status means that it is always willing to advise anyone on how to improve soil, raise livestock, build irrigation systems and so much more, all in the spirit of self-sufficiency. So we took a tour with the lead livestock farmer to learn about how they sustainably raise chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, cows and horses. What does livestock at Glynwood have to do with our weeds?

The livestock farmer has a nemesis as well: they are an invasive rose bush. You see them almost everywhere at Glynwood. He received a grant from the USDA to raise goats in an attempt to control this invasive weed (rather than excavate all of the land). Goats will eat anything, so he sets them out to graze in these fields of grass and the invasive rose bush. They can't take down the entire bush because the branches are actually quite thick and brambly. But they do eat the leaves and small twigs. And what he's found, and I've seen with my own eyes, is that in the fields where he set the goats out in last year, the rose bushes are much smaller and more compact than in fields where the goats have yet to graze. So after a harsh winter where everything dies back, these rose bushes grow back smaller the following spring after having been nibbled on the previous season.

It got me thinking...

We need animals. BUT, before we bite off more than we can chew, we did decide to cut back all of the f'er weeds we could see. They were starting to get little flowers, so it was almost getting too late (we don't want their seeds dropping anywhere). Maybe if we continually cut them this season, we'll start stunting their growth. Although I'd really just prefer them to cease to exist.