Clean-up crew

My rosemary plant from two years ago died and dried out but I just got around to tossing it in the compost pile. After two years of growing in the house, the roots of the plant had firmly adhered to the inside of its pot. Not feeling like scrubbing it out at that moment, I set the pot on the back steps hoping the rain would do some of the cleaning for me. While sitting at the computer one day, back door open, I heard a strange ceramic clinking sound coming from outside. I was surprised to see this chipmunk earnestly chewing away all the rosemary roots from inside the container. Nature's clean-up crew had arrived! Who knew this cute, efficient, (and sometimes destructive!), little furry creature loved rosemary so much?

Thanks for the help, now please stop eating my strawberries!!

Wordless (sunless) Wednesday

fading memories of the sunshine

Gilding the Radish

The radish. Some would say it has a taste only a mother could love...or in my case, a grandmother. I remember my Nana loved a good radish, plain and unadulterated. Though I tried to enjoy this colorful little vegetable numerous times, the peppery taste always stopped me from eating more than one or two at a time, and usually in a salad with lots of dressing for disguise. Yet radishes are worthy of a second - or third, look because their roots and leaves are packed with nutrients like vitamin C, potassium, and trace minerals.

Since radishes have been included in recent CSA farm shares, and I just pulled the last of them from my garden, I was determined to find a way to enjoy this often overlooked veggie. While browsing through some online recipes, I came across one for glazed radishes. This sounded like an intriguing way to camouflage the radish's peppery bite. Then my thoughts naturally turned from glaze to maple glaze, which then flowed to maple pecan glaze. Hence, the recipe Glazed Maple Pecan Radishes was born...but would it meet my dreamy expectations?

I am happy to report that I was very pleased with the resulting taste. Even my vegetable-skeptical family ate this concoction and enjoyed it. By cooking the radishes while reducing the glaze - actually an accidental effect of adding too much water, their peppery harshness was tamed to a pleasant, light accent. The cooked radishes had the texture of less-crunchy water chestnuts, which contrasted nicely with the crispness of the toasted pecans. All-in-all, this pairing made a delicious topping for the steamed salmon we had, though I can imagine it would also be great over grilled chicken breasts. I reduced it a little more than I would have liked, so there wasn't very much liquid glaze to coat the fish. Next time I will stop the cooking process before most of the water has dissipated to leave more glaze for the meat.


The recipe:

Glazed Maple Pecan Radishes

1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans, toasted
2 cups chopped or sliced radishes (mine were peeled and sliced)
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Coarsely chop ½ cup pecans or use 1/2 cup pre-chopped pecans. Lay pieces in a baking pan in a single layer and toast in a 400 degree oven for about 4 minutes or until pecans start to brown. Set aside.

Peel and slice or coarsely chop radishes to make 2 cups. (I peeled mine because they were large and the skin was a little tough.)

In a saucepan or medium-sized frying pan, melt the butter on medium heat. Add the radishes, maple syrup, water, vinegar, sugar, and salt and stir to coat. Cook on medium until the liquid starts to bubble, stirring periodically. Continue to gently boil until the liquid has reduced in volume by about two-thirds and the radishes are starting to get translucent. The glaze will be thickening. You can cook until there is as much or as little liquid left as you prefer. Reduce heat to low, add the pecans, and stir to coat. Cook for an additional minute or two. Remove from heat and serve over your main dish of choice, or eat as a side dish.

A sweet glaze remains after reducing the water

Served over steamed salmon and with oven-roasted broccoli

To roast broccoli:

preheat oven to 400 degrees

clean and trim broccoli into small florets

coat bottom of small baking dish with olive oil

place broccoli in a shallow baking dish and
drizzle with olive oil

sprinkle with salt, pepper and onion powder

toss broccoli to coat with oil and spices

roast in oven for about 15 minutes
or until broccoli is lightly browned

Enjoy!

Confessions

I am here to admit that I am a foodaholic. Yes, I confess to thinking about food way more than I should during the day, especially now that summer is here (almost), and the fruits and vegetables are coming in at local farms and in our garden. On Thursday we had our second CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pickup from Rabbit's Dance Farm in Cumberland, RI. I am splitting a summer share with a friend; a whole share would be too much for me to eat because we have a large home garden. Even though we grow a lot of different fruits and vegetables at home, I still like to receive part of a CSA share to compensate for crop failures we might experience, and also to support local, organic agriculture. The weather is so variable from year to year that we can't depend on all our own plants producing an edible yield. It is nice to have back up.

Excited about cooking with my CSA produce, I recently joined the "Cooking Away My CSA" Challenge started by Heather on her Flour Girl blog. Beginning June 22, we are to blog about our culinary creations based on CSA fruits and vegetables as a way to inspire each other to break out of our eating ruts. For any of you localvore CSA-lovers who would like to commune with other like-minded folks, she created a group at Google so we can exchange recipes and photos. If you have ever wondered, "What the heck do I make with kohlrabi?" this group may be for you.

I'm starting a little before the challenge begins because I so enjoyed my breakfast that I wanted to share it with all of you - ok, not literally, because I ate it, so there is none left! Here's what we received in our CSA share this week:

beets
kale
mixed baby lettuce
garlic scapes
peas
thyme
and the infamous kohlrabi

How they will be used:

beets - steamed and sliced
kale - blanched and possibly added to soup
mixed baby lettuce - salad
garlic scapes - chopped and sauteed with shredded kohlrabi and Parmesan cheese (see below)
peas - eaten raw and slightly boiled
thyme - given to share partner
kohlrabi - shredded and sauteed with chopped garlic scapes and Parmesan cheese (see below)

The peas were you-pick, in the rain, but still fun none-the-less. I re-discovered that there is nothing like the crisp sweetness of a freshly picked pea right out of the field. We ate a few raw and blanched the rest, which were so much better cooked than their canned or frozen cousins.

This morning, for breakfast, I made a one-egg omelet which included the kohlrabi and some garlic scapes. Fresh and mouth-watering strawberries from nearby Cook's Valley Farm added a touch of sweetness to my meal.

How it was prepared (a quick, unofficial recipe):

wash and remove stems & leaves from one small kohlrabi
(save leaves for another meal)
peel kohlrabi and shred
rinse and chop garlic scapes (I used four)

sautee kohlrabi using approximately a tablespoon of olive oil and
a teaspoon of butter until it is softened and starting to brown

add chopped scapes and a drizzle of oil
cook for a couple of minutes

in a small bowl, fork-blend one egg, salt, pepper, and a tablespoon of water
add to scapes and kohlrabi, still in the pan on the stove
stir to mix

sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese - about 1/4 cup on top of the egg/veggie mix
let cook until the egg starts to set
carefully loosen sides of omelet and slip a spatula under it
flip over and brown the other side

remove from pan and eat before anyone else comes into the kitchen!

As I post this, I realize that I do a lot of vegetable and egg scrambles with my CSA items because they are quick to make and a great way to use up odds and ends. You can add any vegetables, meats, or cheeses that you have leftover too. But I need to break out of this one-lane road and try something more exciting. I am looking forward to the Challenge posts for further inspiration!

Some days...

...it's all about the visuals. I can understand the attraction of the "Wordless Wednesday" feature that has become so popular around the internet. By the middle of the week you get tired and you decide to let pictures do the talking. While not an official Wordless Wednesday post (being a wordy person I can't go without saying something about each photo), this is a close approximation.

Please enjoy a quick peek at what's happening in the garden today.


I never realized how delicate and lovely a chive flower was until I accidentally broke one off and brought it inside to beautify my windowsill.

The sage bed that started as a few seed-grown plants two years ago has exploded into a hedge of flowers and a paradise for bees of all kinds.


A friend gave me a sad little cutting of comfrey a couple of summers past. Her husband was going to kill it because it wandered into the lawn, but she rescued it and gave it to me. I wondered if the poor thing would survive. Guess it did because now it's four feet tall!

Comfrey flowers in variegated shades of purple create a haven for bees. Besides being an amazing herb for healing skin wounds and mending broken bones, comfrey also has beneficial qualities as a garden fertilizer when used either as a green manure (mulch), or stewed into a liquid amendment. For more about how to use comfrey to nourish your garden, see this article.

I looked out my kitchen window to see this female wild turkey perched on top of our garden arbor. Below, at the bird feeders, was the male who made the daily visit with her. After a few minutes, he wandered off towards the edge of the woods and gobbled persistently for her to follow. The female seemed to be ignoring him as she remained on the arbor, surveying the landscape. Eventually the male gave up and returned to the feeder to wait for her, at which time the female hopped down and enjoyed her afternoon meal.


Who are you calling a TURKEY?


Remember those little seedlings I showed you on April 23? They are all grown up and getting used to being outside prior to transplanting this weekend. Wish them luck.


Little drops of water pooled in the leaves of a lupine plant become exquisite jewels. I was taken aback at how much it looked like crystal beads had been attached to the plant as if by the hand of a magical garden sprite.


Have a gem of a Thursday!

A little of this and that

Where does the week go? Is universal time becoming faster these days? I think it is. At the beginning of the week I noticed that my blog had just celebrated its one year "blog-aversary." There was no fanfare, there were no party hats, and sadly, there was no cake. Sigh. There was only a casual nod to the passing of internet time and some reflection on the way blogs capture little segments of our lives and cast them into the larger sea of thoughts and commentary that form this web community. By making my life - or at least a little bit of it, publicly viewable, I have stepped into the current and become part of the online din that whizzes past our eyes and ears every day. I can only hope I have contributed to the stream in a some small, positive way.

Now on to the rest of the week. With the monthly meeting of our local spinning and knitting group, I returned to my patient, and sometimes lonely, Kromski Sonata spinning wheel to tackle a new wool and mohair roving dyed a delicious melange of pink and yellow. After much groaning and struggle, I had finally dispatched the sticky and persnickety blue wool that looked so pretty but spun with such difficulty. Oh it was not all the beauty it pretended to be! The fibers were long but stuck together with some sort of super bond that tested my patience. However, after heavily drafting it, I did spin it down to the end. The result was one bobbin of embarrassingly overspun and kinked yarn that I wound into a center-pull ball for plying.

Let me tell you that plying an overspun yarn this way - taking yarn from the inside and outside of a center-pull ball at the same time, was an exercise in frustration for me. Only later, after having stopped plying and removing the offending yarn from the wheel forever, did I learn (at my spinning group), that there is a trick to plying this way which involves some clever manipulation of the ball and the yarns within the non-plying hand. ( Actually, the description sounded like a third hand might be needed!) As I was itching to spin something new, I followed my weaving teacher's advice and unwound the remaining single yarn in the ball and wrapped it on my warping board, after which I gently hung the hank on a peg with a small weight to release some of the overspun twist. At some point, I will use this as a weft yarn on my Ashford Knitter's Loom, combining it with some 5/2 perle cotton in blue that I have hanging around, to make a scarf.

In contrast, this latest roving is a dream to spin and the color is a yummy fuchsia-lemon blend that is a nice change from the blues and browns I have been spinning. It's almost a pencil roving and it needs very little pre-drafting before spinning. (Hooray!) I purchased this 50-50 wool and mohair blend from Friend's Folly Farm of Monmouth, ME, while I was at a fiber fair weekend months ago. The mohair lends a fuzzier effect to the finished yarn, so it will be interesting to see how this looks once plied and washed. I am already envisioning it woven into something soft and comforting to wear. I just need to find a coordinating warp yarn, probably in yellow.

It's coming along nicely, don't you think?

So why not use this yummy yarn for knitting, you ask? Well, it is a possibility of course. But there's that weaving business that seems to have taken over my brain and woven itself into the fiber of my thoughts. (Sorry for the puns!) I am starting to dream in warp and weft rather than knit and purl. The advantage of weaving is the ability to make cloth a lot faster than I can by knitting. Plus my hands don't go numb when weaving like they do while knitting. Of course, the loom set-up time is considerable, and my back curses me after leaning over the loom for hours while putting on and threading the yarns. But like people say of childbirth, you forget all that once you are throwing the shuttle and watching your fledgling fabric grow by the minute. The magic of actually weaving overshadows the preparation time.

Now that my weaving class has come to and end for summer vacation, I am working on two weaving projects at home. First, I have twill cotton dishcloths in pale blue and white on my Leclerc floor loom. I would have made more progress on these by now if not for the mistakes I made while sleying the reed: in two places I put four rather than two yarns per dent. I had already woven 32 rows before I decided that this error was going to be noticeable (at least to me), and that I needed to correct these areas. It really didn't take long to fix (just like the weaving teacher predicted), but I feared the effort and thus, put it off too long. Procrastination, you are my middle name.

Second, I have a scarf on my Ashford rigid heddle Knitter's Loom that was working up fairly quickly until I had to take a break to take care of some jewelry business and also to plant some vegetable seeds in the garden while the timing of the moon was right. (I am attempting to follow the Gardening by the Moon method posted on the Farmer's Almanac site.) The scarf has a warp of deep blue 5/2 perle cotton, a free yarn from the Weaver's Guild stash, and a weft of a white and blue synthetic chenille of unknown fiber content, which was received through Freecycle. I am tempted to throw in a narrow stripe here and there of a multi-colored ribbon yarn, just for a bit of color, but I have not made that executive decision just yet. I can see how scarves to weavers can become like socks to knitters; they are both addictive little projects which can be completed relatively quickly and with small amounts of materials.

7" done so far
Add a stripe or not, what is your vote?

Then there are the lovely polymer flowers from ZudaGay waiting on my crafting table to be made into necklaces and bracelets. But here I am writing a blog post rather than working on jewelry and it is already 10 pm. Will someone please slow down the universe so I can catch up??

Moody Tuesday Musings

I took a little walk around the front yard yesterday with my camera to see what was popping up in the garden beds nearest the house. Watching nature always reminds me that life is filled with change and that things are often not as I expect (or want) them to be. I may plant that flower over there to the right, under the holly bush, but it comes up next year on the left, by the front steps. That herb that I planted two years ago that looked quite dead the second year, suddenly appears, full of life, in the third season. Yet, something that was robust last year at this time hasn't even poked a single leaf out of the ground this spring. Unwanted weeds will grow much better than any cultivated plant. Does this mean if I choose to grow weeds that they won't flourish? (Hmm, perhaps a good theory to test!)

Change is nature's way of keeping me on my toes. Nature is a source of infinite fascination because I never know what I might see at any time, day or night. Just when I think I know what birds I'll see in a certain area, some unusual avian delight flutters in - just for a moment. Better keep my eyes, ears, and heart open or I might miss that once-in-a-lifetime message from the Universe that conveys the meaning-of-it-all.

Ok, perhaps I am exaggerating just a little! Or maybe not. That is the point. You never know what unique insight might be standing there, three feet from your back door unless you venture outside on occasion, outside the ordinary, outside the routine. Look to your left instead of to your usual right when you glance out the window. Take a walk on the wild side today and get outside yourself. That is, stroll through nature's ever-changing scene and see if anything is blooming in a place you wouldn't expect it to be. Let me know if you happen to find the answer to the "meaning-of-it all" question while you are out there because I can't watch everywhere all at once. We need each other to get a 360 degree view.

**************************************************************

Where did this lovely Lily of the Valley underneath my window come from? I don't remember planting it. I think they were growing wild under a tree next to the house. What magical little creative transplanted it during the night?

These gorgeous, black-purple Johnny Jump-ups jumped up about five feet away from where they were planted last year. One plant decided it liked the shelter of the stone stairs, while the other preferred life in the open, springing up on two sides of a garden fence and in between the walkway and the garden bed. How reflective of the differing personalities of living things; even plants have preferences.

Chocolate mint moves forward with its plot to take over the world...or at least my front garden. Before you get too excited by the word "chocolate," this herb only has a hint of that beloved flavor and is mostly still mint. I also have pineapple, orange, and apple mints, plus spearmint, and peppermint in the back garden. All of them must have been in communication with the chocolate variety in the front yard as they are refusing to stay within the bounds of their allotted territory.

Ever notice that each yard seems to favor one color or another of violet? Some friends of ours only have a white variety, while our previous house only had a medium-dark purple type. This year our yard is inundated by this delicate and delightful pinkish-purple violet. I don't remember there being such a profusion of them in past seasons. I am not sure where they come from, but they are certainly always a cheerful presence in my yard.

This chive plant has had the benefit of a full southern exposure and is already making blooms, whereas its cousin in the north-facing back yard is just now receiving sunlight, so it is still in the small, green stages.

Sprouting

It's about time I got back to blogging, and a lot of other things that have been in deep hibernation these past few months. Lots of seedlings have been sprouting here, and I'm not just talking about young plants. Ideas have also been growing in the back of my mind. Some idea-seeds have fallen on fertile soil and are taking root, while others never broke out of their protective shells to find nourishment and grow. Alas, such is the precarious life of a seed. Here's a quick look at what is sprouting at the moment.

"Hello, I hope to be a grown-up tomato plant some day."

At this time of year, the subtle caresses of spring sunshine and the melodious songs of mating-hopeful birds awaken the gardener in many of us. I finally stopped hitting the snooze button on this seasonal alarm clock and started some vegetable and flower seeds in flats indoors under fluorescent lights. In an effort to pare down my starts to manageable levels this year, I limited my indoor veggie plantings to tomato, pepper, broccoli, basil and celery seeds. The rest of the seeds will be going into outdoor beds very shortly (weather permitting). In previous years I started too many seeds indoors and then struggled to pot them up into larger containers and keep them under the lights until it was time to transplant into the garden. Inevitably I had to give away lots of plants...not a bad thing, but I felt the need to be less overwhelmed this year.

My husband has been able to arrange my indoor plant lighting so that it is powered (mostly) by energy collected from two small solar panels stationed in the yard, next to the greenhouse.

On the crafting front, I have been weaving! It's only taken me about...um, 16 years, to really pursue my interest in creating textiles via a loom. I may be slow, but I get to almost everything eventually! Thanks to a wonderful "weaving buddy" and teacher from the Weaver's Guild of Boston, my Leclerc Nilus floor loom is now "dressed" (yarns put on and threaded) and ready for action. Looking back at my previous post on the loom's arrival, I realized that it had been almost a year since the loom came into my life. I was feeling a little guilty every time I passed it, sitting alone and untouched, in the corner of the bedroom. But in March of this year, a switch in my inner workings finally flipped on and I found myself calling the Guild for help in learning to weave. A teacher came to my home and spent six hours showing me how to plan a project, measure out the yarns, get them onto the loom, thread the heddles which are attached to the harnesses, "sley" or thread the reed which also is used to beat the weave in place, and finally, to tie the yarns onto the loom where weaving takes place. Oh yes, and then there is the weaving process itself to learn. Making textiles is a complicated process!

While I began to work at home on my own floor loom, I decided I needed to repeat the "dressing" process again so that it would be clearer in my mind, which was reeling from the input of too many details in too short a time. So I jumped into a weaving class at the Guild which was taught by the same wonderful mentor that had come to my home. Taking the class really helped to imprint the weaving process a little further onto my brain cells. I also encountered a problem or two which served to teach me even more about what not to do; our mistakes often teach us much more than our successes do. At the end of three weeks, all that leaning over a borrowed Louet table loom and determined concentration resulted in my being the proud owner of my first handmade textile: a yellow, green and white, plaid, cotton dish cloth/table runner. (It started out as a dishcloth but I can't bear to use my first woven child to wipe up anything messy! So it has graduated to a table decoration.)

Both warp and weft are 5/2 perle cotton

I was fairly pleased with this first completed weaving project. Of course, the selvages are a little uneven, but I was told that it might take years of practice to get these right, and even then, they might not be perfect. One can always stitch the sides rather than leave them exposed; sewn hems cover a multitude of errors!

The pattern is a plaid, but I learned that there is much more to a pleasing plaid than meets the eye. Apparently there is a certain mathematical set of proportions required to create a balanced plaid or stripe pattern. My teacher explained that Italian mathematician Leonardo Pisano, better known as Fibonacci, and his sequence of Fibonacci Numbers provided us with a simple way to plot out stripes and plaids in a way that mimicked balanced patterns found in nature, thus making them pleasing to view. I admit, my eyes grew wide and a feeling of panic washed over me as she jotted down lots of numbers and looked at me for some glimmer of understanding. In the end, I got the general gist of the concept but I will rely on others to fully explain how these number patterns are calculated and used. A couple of useful sites about this topic are:
http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-fascination-with-fibonacci.html
http://www.fuzzygalore.biz/articles/fibonacci_seq.shtml

My current project, still in process, is to make fabric yardage for a handbag or two (my current plan, always subject to change) using my new rigid heddle Ashford knitter's loom, a lucky, discounted find that I had purchased on eBay earlier this year. There are so many types of looms and I would love to try them all at some point. The rigid heddle loom is different than the floor and table looms that I have been using in that it does not have multiple harnesses that move the heddles up and down to create a complex pattern. The rigid heddle has one reed which keeps the yarns separate, acts as a beater, and is moved up and down to create an opening called a "shed" through which a shuttle is passed, drawing the weft yarns to cross the warp yarns, thus creating a plain over-under weave. On a harnessed loom, the harnesses are moved up and down to create the shed while the reed is used more as a beater. (For more about weaving and looms, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom, http://mktag.org/projects/cassandraChoosingLoom/content.html, and http://www.fibrecrafts.com/resource/fact_file/looms/types_loom.asp)

Four feet made so far. Only five more to go!

The Ashford Knitter's Loom has several great features such as portability, a wide range of reeds including one with large eyes that accepts handspun or bulky yarns, and the ability to fold down into its custom carry bag. It was easy to take to class, where I put on yarn, then closed it with yarns in place to take home for further weaving. My loom came with a matching floor stand which is useful for holding the loom when no table is available against which to lean the loom while working.

What I am weaving:
Plain weave
Warp is an older cone of Maysville 8/4 cotton carpet warp in natural.
Weft is Schachenmayr Nomotta Safari; 35% cotton, 20% viscose, 15% flax, 15% acrylic, 15% polyester - a blue-gray and natural toned boucle made in Italy and received from a generous Freecycler (thank you!)

My Ashford is a 20" wide loom but my actual weaving width measures about 18".

This combination of yarns is making an interesting texture. I wonder how it will look and feel when washed?

At the last weaving class, my teacher showed me how to use an inkle loom and she put the notion in my head that, if I had one, I could make matching straps for bags made from my handmade fabric. Hmmm...dangerously interesting idea! When the Guild holds its silent auction next month I might be lucky enough to get a bargain inkle.

Lest you think I have abandoned jewelry-making, I am still slowly making a few new pieces here and there, trying to catch up on the backlog of designs I started and have strewn about my work table. I am hoping to achieve some sort of balance between jewelry creation, weaving and gardening in the coming months. I find it incredibly easy to come up with project ideas for all these pursuits but very difficult to follow through on those ideas in any organized way. If anyone has found a solution to this problem I would love to hear it!

Hearts and Flowers Necklace

Tiger Lily Bracelet

Harvesting

The end of summer comes faster each year it seems, and with it comes the bittersweet flood of freshly harvested garden vegetables. Though I adore the taste of sweet yellow pear tomatoes straight from the vine and the crisp crunch of home-grown cucumbers, this last mad influx of produce means that the long winter and a time of fallow fields is not far behind. Already the squash vines are browning and fading away, the herbs are setting seeds, and the sunflowers are bowing their heads to the ever-shortening hours of sunlight. I will surely miss the wonderful flavors of summer when the greenery is gone and the garden is bathed in frost.

Yet there are many ways to preserve the pleasures of the harvest long into the winter. For the moment, my crafting life must take a back seat to food preservation. Hours and hours spent now skinning, seeding and simmering fresh tomatoes means having a taste of summer in January in the form of spaghetti sauce kept fresh in a chest freezer. I have been busy putting up dozens of pints of freezer pickles, sweet relish, tomato sauce, and quarts of mashed potatoes made with red and white potatoes from our bountiful crop. Some things are dried with a dehydrator and packed in glass jars, such as oregano, basil, chocolate mint, and sage. Other vegetables can be kept for weeks in a cool section of the basement; the balance of our potatoes is stored in perforated brown paper bags sitting on top of an unused air hockey table. Not the ideal root cellar arrangement, but it will have to do until we can build a more proper storage area.

So how did the garden grow this year and what is still left to be harvested? It was a strange summer in terms of weather. Early warmth was followed by weeks of rain. Then a cool August was followed by a hot and humid first week of September. Mid-summer rains caused the tomatoes to stay green until late in August meaning a relentless number of red fruits are now coming in. Green and wax beans were plentiful again this year. The sage grew like weeds. Our two-year-old peach tree produced a dozen delicious fruits. The cucumbers flourished on trellises, a method we will use next year as well. Radishes happily germinated and almost all the garlic plants produced healthy bulbs. The new asparagus bed is now well populated by lacy asparagus ferns. On the downside, the squashes were attacked by vine borers yet again, causing a reduced winter squash yield, although a few new summer squash bush varieties were very productive. In the future we'll plant only the bush type to save space and make the borers more manageable. Unfortunately beetles and grasshoppers feasted on the basil and kale, making the crop mostly unusable, and the broccoli never produced heads for the second year in a row.

There were a few wonderful surprises in the garden this summer. After a poor showing by potatoes planted in containers in 2007, we planted several in-ground rows of plants this year. Having survived an early attack of Colorado potato beetles, the plants went on to surpass our wildest expectations by yielding over 110 pounds of potatoes! And before you ask, no, we don't have a farm! We live in a suburban neighborhood and have a back yard garden that comprises only about 3% of our land. It is amazing how much food can be produced in a small area if the popular focus on large expanses of green lawn is traded for a love of well-placed, intensive gardens.


One other interesting twist occurred in a last minute raised bed we created in our south-facing front yard. Running out of space and time, we tossed some watermelon seeds and the extra home-grown tomato seedlings into this new bed. We waited and waited and yet no little watermelon seedlings appeared. Then, one day, seemingly overnight, watermelon vines began covering the bare soil at an incredible rate. The prolonged heat in the front yard apparently fueled their growth spurt and soon several green melons were forming under the lush foliage. One of these green beauties is now over 18 inches long! We are anxiously waiting for the day that this giant surprise baby can be opened. Will the center be sweet, red and juicy? Or will it be pale and lacking flavor? Only time will tell.

Like the hidden and mysterious interior of the watermelon, one never knows what will grow in the garden each year; its progress cannot be rushed and the outcome is always unpredictable. Sometimes waiting for the harvest can be a stressful and tedious process. Those long, quiet days when nothing seems to be happening are masking the intense changes taking place underneath the surface. Watching a garden grow builds patience and forces our acceptance of things beyond our control. It develops our appreciation of success and failure as two sides of the same coin; the flourishing of one thing balances the shortcomings of another. Gardening encourages us to be unafraid of trying something new for the results may lead us in an entirely unexpected and rewarding direction. Of course these lessons are more acceptable in hindsight at the end of the season. I am sure I will need to relearn them again next year as I curse at the bugs and wait impatiently for fruit to ripen. Hindsight may be 20/20 but it has a short memory. Luckily Mother Nature is always willing to repeat the lesson.

Growing Local

Daily cooking tasks always seem more pleasant and interesting in the summer when fresh, local produce is arriving in great abundance. It is no surprise that my culinary creativity peaks from July through September. In addition to the herbs, fruits and vegetables growing in my own small garden, we have been reaping the edible benefits of our purchased share in a local CSA called Rabbit's Dance Farm, located just off the beaten path in Cumberland, RI, near the the Massachusetts border. This lovely pocket of farmland is tucked away on a small back road that is not far from the commercial shopping strip on Route 114 in Woonsocket, RI. One would never know that this unassuming rural gem existed so close to big box megamarts like Walmart and Lowes. In contrast to the oceans of pavement and energy-draining lights of the stores on the main road, Rabbit's Dance is a quiet oasis of trees and fields gently striped with rows of lush, green plants in various stages of bloom and growth.

I came upon a mention of Rabbit's Dance last year while perusing the listings of local farms at Farm Fresh Rhode Island, a comprehensive and informative site for budding localvores like me which provides links to area CSAs, farms, farmers markets, community gardens, and related events. I was delighted to find an organic CSA within a 15 minute drive of my home. Right away I contacted Rabbit's Dance manager, Kristin Lewis, to inquire about a share. I was just in time to sign up for a 2007 winter share, which offered delicious fresh fall produce such as mixed greens, squashes, potatoes, garlic, sweet potatoes, beets and carrots. This year I am splitting a full summer share with a friend. Though I have enlarged my gardening area at home, I know I cannot grow all my own produce. Buying supermarket chain fruits and vegetables is an option, but buying locally-grown food has many advantages both for my family's health and for the well-being of the environment. Obtaining additional produce from a CSA or farmers market nicely fills gaps in my home food production.

"CSA" stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A CSA is a partnership between a local farm and the community which is mutually beneficial: community members buy shares in the upcoming harvest in advance, which pays for farm expenses such as seeds, labor, land costs, and equipment maintenance, and in exchange, the shareholders receive a portion of the seasonal produce grown on the farm. Most CSAs expect their shareholders to spend a little time volunteering on the farm, either helping on share distribution days, in the fields, or in the greenhouse. Spending some time on the farm and interacting with farm owners or managers and other shareholders increases interactions between members of the community, builds a personal relationship between growers and consumers, keeps local farmland in food production and out of development, and allows people to develop closer connections to the origins of their food. For more information on Community Supported Agriculture and to find a CSA in your area, visit LocalHarvest.org.

Basil from Rabbit's Dance waits to become pesto!

Having tried my hand at growing food at home, I know how hard it is to be successful in the face of variable weather conditions, animal theft (oh those woodchucks and chipmunks are hungry!), insect invasions, and plant disease outbreaks. I have great respect for local farmers, especially owners of small farms, who persist despite all these natural barriers, and while being pressured to compete with "cheap" food that is sold at big chain stores. However, it is becoming more apparent each year that seemingly cheap food has hidden costs in terms of health dangers, increased shipping energy expenses, and loss of natural habitat that highlight how important it is to maintain support for our local food sources. No farmland and no farmers equals no food.

Beyond buying a CSA share, frequenting farmers markets and farm stands are two additional ways to buy local produce as well as to support local food production. Located not more than a few miles from Rabbit's Dance, is the farm stand at Cooks Valley Farm in Wrentham, MA. After having picked up my share at the CSA, it has become my pleasurable habit to drive a few minutes down the road to Cook's to purchase a few fruits and vegetables from the wonderful, large assortment of their own produce grown on site on this 300 year-old family farm. Though Cooks is not an organic farm, they do strive to grow with the least chemical input possible; for example, they use methods such as integrated pest management which is also used by organic growers. I am always amazed by the wide variety of produce that the Cook farm grows. The farm stand, located in the historic, white barn by the side of the road and adjacent to the family farmhouse, displays numerous baskets of lettuce, broccoli, radishes, peppers, squash, peaches, berries (in season), cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, corn, amongst other vegetable delights. Right now bunches of garlic can be seen hanging from the barn rafters while curing for future storage. In the fall, the farm has pumpkins, winter squash, and a sizable number of apple varieties available for sale. The stand is open quite late in the year too: I bought bags of their apple seconds to make applesauce just before Christmas last year!

This year, Rabbit's Dance has teamed up with Cooks to offer summer fruit shares and a coupon program for purchasing additional vegetables at the farm stand. The two farms seem a natural blend considering their close proximity and mutual devotion to local food. Since my food shopping this week included the bounty from both farms, I decided to try to make an (almost) entirely local meal.

On the menu:

• Crustless Broccoli, Baby Red Onion, and Cheese Quiche
• Oven-roasted Mixed Summer Squash, Italian Style
• Sliced Fresh Cucumbers

Ingredient origins:

• baby red onions, sweet yellow pepper, cucumbers, summer squash - Rabbit's Dance Farm, Cumberland, RI
• broccoli - Cook's Valley Farm, Wrentham, MA
• garlic - my own garden
• Atwell's Gold cheese - Narragansett Creamery, Providence, RI (sold at Rabbit's Dance)
  
• eggs - Ferrucci Egg Farm (A. Ferrucci & Sons), Milford, MA
• milk - Munroe Dairy, E. Providence, RI (delivered by Maple Farm Dairy, Mendon, MA)
• butter - Kate's Homemade Butter, Old Orchard Beach, ME
• salt and pepper, seasonings, olive oil (not local)

Why not try to make a locally-sourced meal, especially during the summer when produce is readily available? You'll be challenged to think creatively and to explore the food resources in your own area. It will also be an eye-opening experience that will make you look much more closely at the origins of what you are eating.

Bon appetit!


Resources:
What is a "localvore?"
http://www.postoilsolutions.org/localvore

Where to find food grown near you
http://www.localharvest.org

More about CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture)
http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Farm Fresh RI (CSA, farms and farmers markets)
http://www.farmfreshri.org

Massachusetts CSA Programs
http://www.nofamass.org/programs/csa.php

Massachusetts Farmers Markets
http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/farmers_markets.htm
http://www.nofamass.org/programs/ofg/markets.php

Massachusetts Department of Agriculture Consumer Resources
http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown

Rabbit's Dance Farm CSA, Cumberland, RI
http://www.rabbitsdancefarm.com

Cooks Valley Farm, Wrentham, MA
http://www.cooksvalleyfarm.com

Narragansett Creamery
http://www.richeeses.com

Munroe Dairy
http://www.cowtruck.com

Maple Farm Dairy
http://www.maplefarmdairy.com

Kate's Homemade Butter
http://www.kateshomemadebutter.com

Ferrucci Egg Farms
508-473-7015
Milford, MA (sold in local stores and through Maple Farm Dairy)

Creative Composting

Writing has always been one of my favorite pastimes, but my inspiration for it comes in waves, and I don't produce a steady stream of written works all year long. I tend to focus my energies on different projects in different seasons. I haven’t been attending to my writing during the past few months because I have been researching, planning, and nurturing my incipient garden, which is promising to be bigger than it was last year at this time. For the past two summers I have been experimenting with one method of raised bed gardening that reminds me of the ebb and flow of my writing endeavors: lasagna or sheet-mulch planting. For those not familiar with this method, here is a summary. Place a thick layer of newspapers and cardboard over the grass. Soak thoroughly with water. One can construct foot-high, wooden walls for the new garden bed, but it isn’t entirely necessary. Add straw and other organic waste matter – wood chips, kitchen vegetable scraps, grass clippings, leaves, yard trimmings, or any kind of non-toxic plant matter. Then pile on a layer of compost, and mulch generously. One option is to cover this layer cake with a sheet of black plastic to speed up the decomposition process, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. And voila, in a couple of months, depending on the temperature, you will start to have a nice, rich earthy mass of nutrients to feed your plants. No double-digging or sweating for hours with a hoe and shovel trying to encourage our rocky New England soil to part with its rubble. This method builds up rather than excavates down. With any luck, you will also be able to dig down into the rotting pile of biological refuse to find a squirming layer of earthworms busy doing their job churning life into the future soil you have started.

It’s really quite a magical natural process, and it all happens without much effort on the gardener’s part beyond the initial set-up. One can even toss in non-animal food scraps and grass clippings over the course of the year and enrich the pile, heaping on new fodder for future gardening. Keep adding organic matter to the mess as time goes on and the soil just gets better and better. And it all happens underneath the surface, under the cover of mulch or plastic, and completely out of view. The magic happens so subtly that peeking under the outer layer during the incubating period would not be advised. Allow the mystery to stay behind Mother Nature’s magic curtain. It is best just to have faith and believe that, indeed, a voluptuous brown earth, steaming and teeming with vital nutrients, will be waiting to nourish your plants and, in the end, you.

Our "Arbor Garden" with its archway made from a recycled cedar swing set.
Hinged, arched doors were created out of reclaimed, old barn boards.

How does decaying vegetal matter remind me of writing you ask? Well I don’t want to reveal too much of what goes on under my mulch, but trust me, covering up the brain and letting the worms work into that gray matter is an absolutely necessary part of my creative process. I suppose that doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, but I warned you not to peek under the outer layer until it’s time to plant! I’ve been very guilty of lifting up that thought-incubating plastic way too many times before the soil was ripe; I was often repulsed and discouraged against creating anything by the nasty sight of ideas not yet fully ready for growing into fully-leafed projects. Remember: Never peek! Trust that nature is stewing and churning beneath the surface of your skull.

When the time is right, and the temperature has the reached proper level, the stink of rotting thoughts subsides and the pleasantly sweet aroma of creative compost will signal that your mind-garden is ready for cultivation. Lift up the top mulch, throw in some seeds, and watch what grows. A veritable cornucopia of essays and poems, art work, and literary fruits will blossom if you just let the land between your ears lay fallow for a little while. Composing in the compost increases your creative yield. Trust me, decay and dirt are good things despite what your mother may have taught you. Now pardon me while I put back my mulch. My artistic compost pile needs to stew a little longer.

When I am not looking...

...great things grow. I am gradually learning to let go of my natural tendency to fuss over things, like my garden. Planning is necessary, of course, to get the plantings established, and I do put some effort into arranging the vegetables and herbs so that they are next to companions that they like. However, once the plants are in the ground, the more I worry and tend to them, the more they are beleaguered by insect pests and disease.

This year, for a variety of reasons, I planted and walked away. One could say that I almost neglected the garden for about three weeks; I didn't weed or prune or inspect the plants for bugs. And yet, when we returned from vacation this past weekend, we were surprised to find many vegetable gems hidden under all that wild, green foliage. Pickling cucumbers had grown seemingly overnight, and the long, plump D'Avignon radishes were popping out of the dirt like stout fingers reaching up from the soil. Under an unassuming canopy of leaves, we found the bean plants were heavily laden with both green and yellow pods. We harvested 2 1/2 pounds of beans and still more young ones await to grow on the vine.

Nature will follow it's own course, for good or bad, whether or not I fret and hover. I wish I didn't have to repeatedly learn this lesson in gardening as well as in other areas of my life. I am sure I can't let go of trying to control every tiny detail because I lack a trust that life will take care of itself; I feel a need to force events to be just so. I should follow the lead of my plants and grow with abandon when the season is right, knowing that the sun won't always be shining and that the rain will ebb and flow. Be fruitful when opportunity strikes and don't dwell on what is less than perfection. Everything grows very well in its own way and in its own time, bugs and all. Should it be any other way?

The wall of cucumbers!

An onion plant flowers after being rescued from the compost bin

A tall variety of phlox