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Farmer Jack!

Musician Jack Johnson and his wife Kim are doing their part to support local, sustainable agriculture.

From the Santa Barbara Independent:

Strawberry shortcakes just might save the world, and that’s why Jack Johnson is spending the last Friday morning of July on his knees, picking the ripe red fruits from a green patch at Goleta’s Fairview Gardens. Surrounding the world-famous surfing rock star, UCSB alum, and sporadic Montecito resident are children gathering strawberries, including two towheaded boys of his own, but mostly kids from the garden’s summer farm camp. Together, in a much-needed exercise for all ages, they’re learning exactly where our food comes from, how it gets onto our plates, and why eating locally grown vegetables and fruits  —  even if that equates to sweet tooth-friendly strawberry shortcake  —  is the first step in global salvation.

Full article is here.

Update on the Spring Peepers!

I've fallen off a bit with updating on the peeping balls of fluff, now nearly fully grown, that John surprised us with earlier this spring.

Of the six chicks intended to join our small laying flock, three of them turned out to be roosters. I've spent the last month trying to find new homes for them via Craig's List and the local papers and as of this past weekend, they are all gone!

I had very seriously considered processing them myself (having witnessed and assisted with that process earlier this summer) but it really is a messy and labor-intensive job. One that I just didn't have the energy to tackle right now. I also am not quite ready to share the full reality of the life cycle of farm animals with my young children.

We talk about it and they seem to get it but I am not yet comfortable with them observing the process.

So I posted multiple ads and eventually found two families who were interested in taking them.

Mercifully, Lily's three favorite hens (Sarah, Cocoa, and Clarabelle) are indeed hens and will stay to live out their days in and around our barn. Phew.

The tomatoes are in!

We picked up these gorgeous tomatoes at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm on Friday.

You won't see tomatoes like these in your grocery store. Heirloom tomatoes are lumpy and bumpy and, by many standards, quite funny looking. But trust me, once you've tried a fresh, juicy heirloom tomato, (which you can do this Saturday at the Coastal Grower's Market if you are in Rhode Island), you won't want to go back to the tasteless orbs sold in grocery stores.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I decided to only eat tomatoes that are fresh and in season. (I'm not fanatical about it. If a friend serves me a tomato in January, I eat it, but I do not buy tomatoes out of season and opt out of them at restaurants whenever I can.)

The decision has not really been a big deal or one that I've given much thought to -- until this week when I saw the first tomatoes in the CSA barn! Wow! SO worth the wait!

Making Pizza!

Like just about everyone else in the world who read Barbara Kingsolver's inspiring book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, I decided that we should start having once a week homemade pizza nights.

I ordered Ricki Carroll's book from the library and started dreaming about the fresh mozzarella cheese we'd make and enjoy on our pizza.

But just like the canning kit I bought to make jam this summer, the cheese-making supplies remain on a shelf gathering dust.

As discouragement and frustration set in every time I popped another frozen pizza in the toaster, I decided to shift my perspective.

What if we started to consciously enjoy and appreciate our frozen pizzas and make eating them a special event (not just a default dinner)?

And then what if we switched from frozen pizzas to pizza shells that the kids could spread (store-bought) sauce and (store-bought) mozzarella on, so things could start to feel a little bit more homemade?

And then what if we shifted from pizza shells to store-bought dough that we could roll ourselves. And from shredded mozzarella to fresh (store-bought) mozzarella for us? (The kids prefer the shredded mozzarella.)

Eventually we'll get to the cheese-making and homemade dough and our own canned tomato sauce, but for now we are really enjoying our own mostly-homemade, fun, toddler-friendly version of pizza night!

Here are some pictures from last night's pizza-making fun...

Kneading the dough:




Rolling the dough:


Adding sauce:


Pesto pizza with tomatoes, caramelized onions, pine nuts, blue cheese and fresh mozzarella:


We roasted corn on the grill:


The herb garden on the deck (basil, parsley and nasturtiums):

In the weeds!

There is so much that I wanted to happen this summer that is not happening.

The garden has--once again--been given over to weeds. The compost bin that seemed so simple to make is still a pile of wooden pallets in the driveway. The chickens are pretty much living a feral existence in our backyard.

I was thinking this week about my (brief) tenure as a waitress and the crazy-can't-catch-a-breath feeling we used to call being "in the weeds."

In my restaurant days being "in the weeds" was a shift where nothing seemed to go right. The kitchen was running slow. The hostess was seating fast (often double or triple seating tables) and no matter how fast you moved, you could just never shake that feeling of being three steps behind.

Now, as a full-time at-home parent of two little children, being "in the weeds" is when I don't get a chance to shower (sometimes for several days), and the dishes start overflowing the sink. The grass is suddenly knee-high and I can't get from one room to the next without tripping over toys and other junk. And the kids' needs (my full and undivided attention) and my needs (quiet time to clear my head and write) feel completely at odds and we spend most of the day annoying each other or trying to figure out how to get ourselves out of the muck we are stuck in.

And that's where we've been lately. In the weeds.

But even here in the muck, when I'm struggling to catch a breath, wonderful things are happening!

My Morning Glories are absolutely splendid.





We have been "putting up" as much food as we can. We're picking blueberries a couple of times a week (or buying them pre-picked when that feels much easier) and freezing them. (I lay them out on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper and put them in the cold oven over night to ripen. In the morning I move the cookie sheets into the freezer and when they are frozen I transfer them to bags.)



John has been making weekly batches of pesto, which we freeze in ice cube trays for later use.

And I have been chopping and freezing greens (like curly kale and rainbow chard) to mix into omelets, casseroles, sauces and smoothies.



And I've started dreaming and sketching and talking about "next summer's garden," when hopefully, I'll be feeling a little less "in the weeds."

CSA Cutting Garden: July 11

The benefits of knowing your farmer!

It's blueberry-picking time and my friends and I have again begun compiling lists of pesticide-free places to pick berries with our kids. It seems each year one of us discovers a new place that does not spray!

Today I spoke with my friend, who is also my children's daycare provider, and she had just returned from berry-picking at a nearby farm with good news.

Although the farmer is still using pesticides to combat worms, he is spraying significantly less than he did last year (he's now spraying once every three-four weeks, instead of weekly) due to numerous requests from customers who want safer berries for their families.

It's still not organic, and I know some purists would still consider it unacceptable, but I feel like it is a really good sign -- a consumer-led shift towards more sustainable and healthy way of farming!

In related news, my friend recently asked me to help her write a letter to her favorite local breakfast restaurant to encourage them to start serving local, pastured eggs. I think it's a great idea and decided to create a template letter that others might copy and tweak a little to follow suit. I will post it here as soon as it's complete!

DIY Project: Compost Bins

I borrowed this great book from the library and am feeling ready to 'dig' into composting.

We have been tossing scraps outside and calling it compost for as long as we've lived here. (Nearly all of our food scraps get thrown in the chicken pen where the hens scratch at it and take what they want.) But we've yet to cross over into actually cultivating compost for the benefit of our garden -- and that's just what I'd like to do next!

I've been looking around online and found some plans to build simple compost bins out of recycled wood pallets. (I e-mailed the local master gardeners' info desk to make sure that the pallets are suitable for use in an organic garden and they gave me a thumbs up.) And I found pallets at the nearby farm and garden store for $1.25 a piece.

The kids are spending the afternoon with my mom (basking in her air-conditioned first floor) and I'm heading out into the heat to start building!

CSA Cutting Garden: July 5

There are flowers in the garden this week!

Carrots!

We picked out these gorgeous carrots at our CSA this week. It's really hard to get excited about uniformly cut, pre-peeled "baby" carrots when you can enjoy these beauties:

The sweet sound of silence!

This morning was our first rooster-free morning since last fall when I got the idea that it would be really fun to have a rooster to fertilize our hen's eggs -- and hopefully, eventually, hatch out some chicks!

Lily was an easy sell. Quinn was too young to understand what was going on. John, on the other hand, was opposed to the plan from day one.

Unfortunately for my beloved husband, once I get an idea in my head (especially when it involves baby animals, or in this case the mere promise of possible baby animals), there is little that can be done to deter me.

So sometime last September a handsome young Dominique rooster joined our small flock of laying hens. Things were pretty good at first. He was still young and had not quite developed his full crowing ability. And then we moved into winter and the later sunrise and tightly-sealed windows made his morning crowing bearable for John and kind of charming for me.

Then spring (this year with its earlier changing of the clocks) and open-window season and a rooster who had most certainly found his crow -- and preferred to show it off starting at 4:30 a.m. and continue right on through to sundown -- was too much even for me to take.

I placed a couple of ads on Craig's List with no responses and was starting to feel desperate. He really needed to go. I composed another ad, posted it on the free stuff listing and hoped for the best.

I got a flury of responses this time but only one person who followed up and was willing and able to come pick "Roosty" up.

As we e-mailed back and forth I also offered her four of our laying hens (I want to clean out the stall and shore up the pen before we put the new layers in there), which she was happy to take.

When she and her son came to pick them up on Thursday, I felt a tiny pang of sadness. It wasn't so much that I was going to miss having a rooster around, but more just the realization that my vision of having a rooster home and how that would help to solidify the "farm" status of our yard, didn't work out the way I thought it would.

As the mother and son loaded Roosty into their truck, I heard her enthusiastically assuring her son that he'll get to have his chicks someday now that he has a rooster.

And I hope that's just how it works out for them.

Meanwhile, we are savoring the sweet sound of silence and the gift of sleeping past sunrise.

More nocturnal nibbling

Ugh. The pumpkins have also fallen victim to the night visitor.

I noticed yesterday that our garden is in the shade in the morning (something I knew but hadn't really tuned into before). This morning the kids are at their sitter's house so I was looking forward to a quiet morning working and dreaming in the garden.

Instead I found myself feeling totally overwhelmed and defeated. Whatever helped itself to our garden earlier in the week returned last night for the pumpkin plants. (It seems the only thing the nocturnal nibbler isn't interested in is the weeds, many of which are knee-high.)

I tried to muster some more optimism and thought about replanting (as I'm just beginning to learn about the moon cycles in relation to farming and today, new moon, is the perfect time to plant seeds) but it just felt too overwhelming.

I decided instead to come back up to the house and do some writing, send out a couple of query letters (which I've also read is a good "new moon" activity), and wait for the woman who is coming to relieve us of early-morning crowing (I found someone to take the rooster via Craig's List - yay!).

Perhaps in a little while I'll go back out and plant some seeds but for now it feels best to turn my attention to other things like the gorgeous Morning Glory (photo below) that is blooming on our back deck.

I have planted Morning Glory seeds/seedlings, just about every year for the last 10 years without ever growing anything more than a weak looking vine that never that quite establishes itself.

This year I started indoors, soaked and notched the seeds, and watered the seedlings daily before moving them to a planter on the back deck, where I continue to water them regularly.

The result has been most satisfying!

Munch, munch, crunch!

Something decimated our garden last night. Our dog was outside (not intentionally - sorry buddy) and he went crazy barking and then chased something off into the woods.

Eventually we got him back into the house and went to bed. I forgot about the whole incident -- until this afternoon when I went out to check the garden while the kids were napping/resting.

The first thing I noticed was the sunflowers -- the knee-high sunflowers that were the pride of my garden -- were now just stems. I had actually been thinking earlier in the day that even though the rest of the garden looks pretty bad (weeds are out of control), at least I have strong, healthy sunflowers growing in my garden for the first time ever. Or I, should say, did have strong, healthy sunflowers growing in my garden.

The next thing I noticed was the peas, which are trellised into a bean pole Tepee, broken and lying on the ground.

And then I saw the big, bushy wax bean plants were now also just straggly chewed off stems.

Lily and I went out to the garden together later in the afternoon. I mustered all the optimism I could find as we watered the damaged plants and sprinkled them with Rescue Remedy, which we've found the plants (and chickens), seem to respond really well to.

I'm so frustrated and disappointed and sad that I will (once again) not have big, beautiful sunflowers growing in my yard (last year it was the squirrels that took them out as seedlings).

But mostly I am very grateful that I am not dependant on the garden harvest for my livelihood or for my family's sole food supply and that this is just a minor aggravation and not a major catastrophe.

Well...I did it!

Here's a picture of Jim and me taking a break from our work (Did what? You ask. Background is here - see "in other news".):



I definitely intend to write more about this experience. But the short story is - I did it! I pushed through some big blocks and did things that I didn't know I was capable of doing. It was very intense and I am very grateful.

Tomorrow is the day!

I'm feeling quite a wide range of emotions, but primarily, oddly, excitement!

This feels like a really important step for me both personally and professionally and I'm honored that I get to be part of this "behind the scenes" farm experience.

I spoke with the farm manager today and he confirmed that Jim, a very nice community college teacher who I talked with for quite a while at last week's Solstice potluck, will be joining us. He, like myself, is a conflicted omnivore and he said he was inspired by his conversation with me (yay!) to come learn more about the food he is eating.

There are also several young farmhands (high school and college age) who will be part of the team -- though not for the first time like Jim and I.

I'm feeling a greater sense of peace knowing that this will be a multi-generational community experience!

CSA Cutting Garden: June 28

CSA - week two

Things were a little sparse at our CSA pick-up yesterday.

We got there towards the end of pick-up (which runs from 1-7 p.m.) and a few things (like broccoli rabe) had been cleaned out and there were (very) few peas to be found in the PYO field.

In the barn:

Green garlic
Beets
Spinach
Garlic scapes (I skipped them because I'm still not sure what to do with them and the green garlic seemed like enough garlic for one week)
Sunflower sprouts
Lettuce

In the fields, PYO:

Strawberries
Peas (though we didn't manage to find any)

No complaints though. We had a wonderful time picking TWO pints of strawberries (and probably eating close to that while we picked).

Yesterday morning I cleared out the fridge from last week's CSA left-overs (not that everything was "bad" but just because I'm wanting to stay ahead of the produce this summer). There was a bit more than I'd like to be in there at the end of the week, but the good thing about having chickens is that nothing really goes to waste. The chickens (and rooster, who is still here, but we hope, moving on to a new home soon) happily feasted on sunflower sprouts, spinach, chard, and lettuce, which we will absorb the benefits of via their eggs!

This morning we made pancakes with fresh strawberries - delicious!



In other news...

I have two "dates" set up in the coming weeks. During the first I will be helping to "process" chickens at our CSA farm and for the second I will be riding along with my friend Don, from whom we buy our grass-fed beef, when he brings three steer for "processing."

I sought out both of these experiences and crazy as it might sound, I am really looking forward to them.

But I am also find myself taking lots of deep breaths every time I think about it.

I was a vegetarian for over 17 years -- from sophomore year in high school until I was pregnant with our second child, while still nursing our first, and my body SCREAMED for red meat.

I tried to offer high-quality vegetable proteins and upped my intake of fresh eggs from our hens (as I had done during my first pregnancy) but the messages from my body were loud and clear -- it had to be red meat!

I tracked down a local source for grass-fed beef and we have been eating, and thoroughly enjoying, it ever since. (And incidentally learned that I was one of many former vegetarians who were now loyal grass-fed customers.)

I feel very much in alignment with eating (local compassionately raised) meat (more so in the winter or when I have extra demands on my body from pregnancy/nursing) but I am still not fully in alignment with the "process" by which a living animal becomes my food.

And so I've decided to lean into that discomfort and learn more about this process (I'm trying to type "slaughter" but my hands don't even want to type it).

I know, from talking extensively with local farmers every chance I get, that there are many gentle, peaceful, spiritual, loving people who raise animals for meat. I know some of them are former vegetarians themselves and so I want to talk to them more and learn from them and see if I can find peace around this subject.

Wish me luck...

Getting to know the "shuffle hoe"

Today was my first day working solo at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. My job, along with three other people, is to spend four hours a week weeding the cutting garden.

As I parked my car and walked over to the garden I felt a wave of discomfort realizing that I really don't actually know how to weed a garden. I mean I generally have an idea that involves picking out plants that you don't want to be growing in the garden so that the plants you do want to be growing in the garden have less competition for water and sunlight and nutrients.

But the flower fields are pretty large and the thought of hand-plucking stray grasses and other unwelcome shoots was pretty daunting.

After surveying the fields (and thinking that they really didn't look all that bad) I went over to the adjoining field where the farmer's market was taking shape. I located Pat, the farm manager, and told him I was there to work but not quite sure where to begin.

I actually felt really bad doing that. I really didn't want to bother him when he was obviously busy but I really wasn't sure what needed to be done.

But just like Rae, the assistant farm manager who I met two weeks ago, Pat seems to have a very deep well of patience for all the little questions farm-hands, volunteers, market customers, CSA members, field-tripping students and teachers, and visitors to the farm must throw at him every day.

He gave me a friendly welcome and noted that the weeds were already "getting pretty bad" (so much for my assessment). He asked me if I had ever used a "shuffle hoe", which I didn't know because I had no idea what a shuffle hoe was.

Once Megan, the other assistant farm manager, explained that it looks like the stirrup at the end of a long pole, I remembered one of my fellow weeders waxing poetic about the wonders of this hoe.

During a pre-season meeting where we set up a loose schedule of who would be weeding when, she told me that she loved this tool so much that last year she asked for one for Mother's Day.

So now that I knew what tool I was to use, I set off to find one in the tool barn, and returned to the market tent for a very quick tutorial.

Megan, who I was meeting for the first time, showed me the basic motion, which looks something like sweeping with a big push broom (the big institutional size ones).

Once I got back to the field and gave it a go, I learned that the shuffle hoe (which a later Google search told me is sometimes called a scuttle hoe, a scuffle hoe or a double edged action hoe) is a LOT of fun to use!

As I read on numerous blogs and gardening forums, the shuffle hoe really does glide through the dirt and as you move it back and forth the double edge blades chop the weeds at the roots.

Because the weeds were still pretty small, I was able to mostly just pull and occasionally push a little, which made it even easier, and I'm really not kidding, lots of fun!

Here's a before/after picture of the second field. The left side of the picture is before and the right side of the picture is after a once-over with the shuffle hoe.

CSA Cutting Garden: June 14