Headed for the Conference

I'm off to PASA's Farming for the Future conference in a few hours.  I have two hopes.  Firstly, that winter will give us just enough of a break to make it there and back again safely.  Secondly, that I learn plenty of interesting tidbits to share with all of you, and come home with the fuel-injected sense of motivation and excitement that the conference has provided for the past four years.  Honestly, I don't know how I'd get through the impending spring busy season without this incredible boost.  It's worth every penny of the registration fee.  I'm really looking forward to the fun!

PASA Conference Coming Up

Time to put in a plug for the conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture.  The Farming for the Future conference will meet on Friday and Saturday, February 4th and 5th, next year in State College, smack in the center of the state.  This is the 20th annual conference for PASA, and the fifth consecutive year I'll be attending.  You can register additionally for a wide selection of pre-conference mini-courses that allow you to explore a single subject in depth.  If you're in the vicinity of Pennsylvania and you eat, I would urge you to check out the conference schedule and consider attending.  I always learn a ton at the conference and come away with a stupendous dose of motivation - very timely for a gardener in early February.  It's wonderful to spend just a couple of days surrounded by people who are passionately committed to ethical, sustainable, healthy food for everyone.  Farming for the Future is a bargain as conferences go.  Register by December 31st for the early bird discount.  I'd love to see you there!

Ridiculously Cheap - A Minor Rant

Last Thursday I went to the market to pick up an order of pumpkins and kabocha squash from one of my farmers.  I've been to this woman's tiny farm on the opposite side of our county.  I know how she operates and what's important to her, though I can't recall if she bothered with organic certification or not.  I'd emailed her to ask for half a dozen pumpkins, and half a dozen smallish winter squash to replace the crops that failed for us this year.  I had purchased a single pumpkin from her two weeks prior to that, so I thought I had an idea of what to expect in terms of cost for my bulk order.

When I arrived to pick up my order, it was all put together in a large cardboard box, and the farmer showed me a little receipt with the weights and totals for the two different crops.  She wanted something like $16 - total - for the dozen orbs in the box.  At first I didn't understand, thinking that was the charge for either the pumpkins or the kabocha.  But no, that was all she wanted for everything.  Thirty cents per pound, she said.  I pulled out $30 and told her she wasn't charging nearly enough money for her vegetables.  I was serious. That's about what I'd arrived expecting to pay, and I was shocked that she was asking so little for the fruits of her labor.  Of course she protested, but finally consented to take $20 for more than fifty pounds of her produce.  But only after adding a pepito pumpkin to the box.  She said it was a seed pumpkin, and then added apologetically that the flesh was not edible and that sadly, the pumpkin was a hybrid, so I couldn't save the seed.

Now I know my blog is ostensibly about frugality, and hey, I'm all for the stocking of larders with wholesome, local food purchased in season, when it should be cheapest.  October is certainly the time to stock up on winter squash if you have any storage space and didn't grow your own.  But this was ridiculous, and it has nagged at me ever since, even as I lugged my purchased bounty down into the root cellar.  I really feel this farmer should be charging more for her food.  I want her to stay in business and contribute to my foodshed more than I want to supplement my homegrown food for the lowest cost.  If she can't make a profit from her farm, she won't be around to help feed us in the future.

I suppose I should see this as a good thing, especially for those that are really struggling in this economy.  $20 for a dozen winter squash will give me the basis for at least 48 individual servings; less than 50 cents per serving.  For some people, the lower price per pound might mean the difference between kids going hungry or being fed.  But we can still afford to pay more.  I'd be happy to pay on a sliding scale for the few kinds of produce I still need to buy.  Last month I paid over $1.50 per pound for onions produced at a local farm incubator project, and was happy to do so.  So why should the squash cost so much less than the onions?  In fact, when I was in our local supermarket to buy tofu and some kosher salt the day after my farmers market purchase, I saw a whole display table of non-organic squash in the produce aisle.  You know what they were charging for winter squash?  79 cents per pound - more than 2 1/2x what the local farmer was asking.  The really big and impressive hubbards and pumpkins were going for $1/pound.

I feel like going back to the market this week and telling her about the supermarket pricing.  I don't know why this riles me so much.  Maybe it's because I know how much work it is to raise vegetable crops.  I certainly wouldn't sell my winter squash to anyone for thirty cents a pound.  It would seem downright insulting to accept that little.  I'd feel better about giving it as a gift than valuing it so cheaply.  I'm going to take that farmer a loaf of my bread the next time I have a big baking day.  It seems only fair to me.

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure where I was going with this rant.  Bottom line is, if you're worried about food security in the near term, now is an excellent time to ask a local grower about a bulk purchase of winter squash.  They are among the easiest vegetables to store.  Make sure those you buy for storage have stems intact, and don't pick them up or carry them by the stem.  Put them in a cold part of your house, (55-60F/13-16C is ideal) and use them up by spring.  For those of you concerned about long term food security without any immediate personal economic crisis looming, you might consider paying top dollar to your local farmers for what you need to get through the winter.  Food security is, after all, both personal and regional, both immediate and long term.

Just an Idea...

Have you become accustomed to doing much of your food shopping at your local farmers' market? Is the market closing down soon for the year as winter approaches? Do you happen to live either in a densely populated neighborhood, or near a few major crossroads in a more rural area? If so, I have an idea for you.

See, our farmers' markets finish up after Thanksgiving here. Fruit and vegetable producers are pretty thin in the cold months of the year. But farmers producing eggs, meat, and dairy still have food. And they'd still like to sell direct to the consumer rather than a middleman, so as to keep more of the profits in their own pockets. Who can blame them? But with the markets shutting down until spring, these farmers have trouble connecting with their customers. Some will schedule on-farm pickup days. Some customers though don't want to travel that far, even when they know the quality is excellent.

In late 2008 I was speaking with a farmer I knew slightly who farms two counties away from where I live. My county is more densely populated, so he regularly attended markets in my immediate area. He said he was looking for drop-off sites for pre-ordered meats, cheeses, eggs, and other dairy products in my area. I immediately volunteered my home, and specifically, my garage. I live near a big hospital which is the largest employer in the area. Our home is also less than 10 minutes from two major highways that run through this region. That made my offer very attractive to the farmer.

The way it worked was that every other week, a few days before the delivery date, the farmer would send out an email to customers who signed up for his distribution list. He would let everyone know what he had in stock, and at what prices. He listed his own meats and eggs, and the raw milk dairy products and a few baked goods from the separately owned farm adjacent to his own. Orders from customers came back to him, and on delivery day he knew that everything that left his farm was already "sold." There was no guesswork involved for him. He headed home at the end of the day with an empty truck. Along with the delivery at my home, he made three other stops at delivery sites in other counties.

At our place, he put all the ordered food into one of his large coolers. This was kept in one bay of our garage. I simply opened that door on the day of delivery and he put the stuff in the cooler. Since it was winter time, there was no risk of food spoiling, even if the customers didn't arrive for a few hours. He also left a self-addressed and stamped envelope. All the customers who had ordered left their checks in it when they picked up their purchases. I put the checks in the mail to him the next day. There was little risk of theft, since he knew exactly who had ordered what and only had to compare the checks to his orders to reconcile. There was never any issue with that. Only once did we have a no-show, and that was for some beef jerky, which never spoils. So I just left that in the cooler until the next pickup date, and the customer got it then.

This was a hassle-free arrangement for us. All I had to do was make sure I was home at some point the day of the delivery, and open that bay of the garage. After all the orders were picked up, I closed the garage door, collected the envelope, and put it in the mailbox. For that little bit of effort, I got the benefit of local, pastured, organic meat and dairy delivered to my door for four months out of the year. It was a great arrangement for both us and the farmer.

At the PASA conference in early 2009 I spoke with another farmer about this arrangement. He was intrigued by the idea and thought it made a lot of sense. He said he'd think about replicating it with his own customers.

If you live where farmers' markets are seasonal and you have a home in a suitable location, why not run this idea by some of your favorite farmers and see if this idea might work for any of them after the markets shut down? If they've been collecting email addresses from their customers, they've already got a distribution list in the making. You might get free home delivery of top quality foods and help your local farmer at the same time!

History, Up Close and Personal

I've been meaning to post about a very special document that came into my hands some time ago.  It's a personal history of childhood(s) spent on a dairy farm right where I grew up.  It's not even entirely clear to me who wrote the work, but it appears to be the transcribed memories of at least one brother and sister, recalling their lives during the 1920s to the 1930s. Some stories are told twice, from slightly different perspectives.  My sense is that some sort of record was made of each person speaking, and someone later typed out the account, page by page, on a typewriter.  There are many amateur line drawings to accompany the text.  And when I say these siblings lived on a dairy farm where I was raised, I mean exactly where I grew up.  My parents bought the farmhouse that belonged to the long-since closed dairy farm in 1973.  They still live there, though the acreage of the original farm was reduced to less than two acres by the time they bought it.

When the parents of these sibling authors bought this farm there was no electricity or running water.  The pump that they used to draw water stood in the front yard, as it still does today at my parents' home.  I remember the Concord grape arbor, planted to shade the pump, still bearing fruit shortly after we moved in.  The farm's summer kitchen, which doubled as a smoke house, was enclosed and attached to the main house during my childhood.  We still call that section of the house the "summer kitchen."  My memory of early childhood is good enough to remember many things which echo the stories told in this document.  The pear tree they mention was gone, but the wisteria they remember growing up around it was still there when my family moved in. 

If you've read stories from the Great Depression, you've read similar recollections.  What makes this so special to me is that I know where these people cut their ice in the winters.  I ice skated there, with borrowed skates, as a child.  I know how long a slog it would have been from the farm to the dammed creek that made a pond to turn the millstone in the old grain mill, and incidentally provided ice to those willing to brave the weather to cut it. I can only imagine the drive over snow-covered roads on a wagon pulled by horses - a real test of fortitude and of strength.  I know the creek that the children were allowed to refresh themselves in as a special treat after summer chores were done.  I played and waded there through all the summers of my childhood, though I never knew the kind of toil the authors did.  I know how the well water tastes that these people grew up drinking.  I've seen the accounts their father kept for bacon and sausages sold to neighbors, penciled on the painted wooden walls in the dirt floor cellar.  I know where they took their horses to be shod, and where they took their apples to be pressed into cider. I've seen the attic floorboards stained black by years of hams dripping moisture and fat as they cured.  I know the screened porch on the second floor, used for sleeping on the hottest summer nights.  It was closed in by the time my parents bought the house, and used as a playroom for my brother and me.  I wasn't there in the 1920s, but still I know this story, these lives in a more immediate way than any other account of that period I've come across.  I'm not kin to the people who wrote these stories, but there's a proximity like no other.

What I don't know in my bones is the kind of hard work it took to raise a family and run a successful dairy farm on a property without electricity or running water.  If you want to know what's in these stories, it's hard work and thrift on a scale few of us have ever known.  And yet, true to form, these recollections are not told with resentment or complaint for the work done nor the austerity they were raised with.  There's evidence of an enormous body of practical knowledge.  The parents of the authors knew how to make soap, butcher chickens, hogs and cattle, how to cure meat, make sausages, raise all kinds of crops, make sauerkraut, mend burlap feed sacks, keep horse tackle clean and supple, can all kinds of foods, resole shoes, press cider, sharpen all manner of tools, and run a raw milk dairy in a hygienic manner without indoor plumbing.  They did all these things and more besides.  Make no mistake, this is very credible documentation of what would be considered extraordinary effort today.  Though they clearly were not even moderately well off by the standards of their day, they had enough extra food to share with relatives who were in even more straitened circumstances.  The family was Pennsylvania Dutch, a culture with a reputation for extreme frugality almost to the point of notoriety; nothing in this account would belie that reputation.

Here's an excerpt that gives the flavor of the whole:

Apple butter making was a yearly get together with my uncle, aunt and cousins.  We youngsters just loved this affair because there weren't that many social things to attend.  Anyway this was always done in fall after the apples were ripe.  Neighbors usually offered Dad apples from their orchards.  So Dad would hitch the horses to the wagon and we'd go for a ride into our orchard and theirs, taking us along to pick apples and pick up fallen ones.  Then he'd take them home and we'd give them a good washing.

Then Dad would take them down to Powder Valley, to Robert Schultz's cider press and have cider made for use in the apple butter.  A lot was kept for drinking, which really was tasty and refreshing after those long chores of picking up and washing all those apples.  Dad's next job was to go out into the woods and find a sassafras tree.  He would dig around the base of it and get some of its roots.  If he went after school hours I would tag along.  We would then bring the roots home.  Then it was usually Mother who would wash and scrub them, then scrape off the outer shell of the roots, put them into small cloth bags, tie them up so they were ready to put into the boiling apple butter.  What a delightful aroma, and then a taste of the finished product!

Dad would have to get out the old copper kettle to replace the cast iron kettle in the little old house. The men would gather wood from the woodshed. Then Dad would build a fire underneath the old shiny copper kettle to get the cooking started. At the same time we youngsters were peeling apples with the peeler which was clamped to the kitchen table, then placing them into a dishpan or other clean vessel. Then my mother and her sister Alverda would sit coring and cutting the apples so they were ready for cooking. The men would put 2 or 3 gallons of cider into the kettle, the small bag of sassafras root, then the apples the women had prepared. We usually had between 4 or 5 bushels of apples. As they boiled down, more apples were added, and more, and more. About 10 pounds of sugar was added to the cooking apples. Later on in the process that small bag of sassafras was removed for the last hour of cooking.

While cooking apple butter on the farm it had to be stirred continually as not to burn. Dad had a special paddle to stir the mixture. It was shaped to fit right into the kettle. It had four sections for scraping at the bottom of the kettle. He had a ten foot handle to connect to the paddle upright in the center of this paddle so no one had to sit that close to the hot kettle that was cooking, bubbling and steaming to get that apple butter thickened. There was a leather sling from the ceiling joist of the little house to hold this long handle which worked just fine to stir that apple butter.

This was an all day job. Then after it was finished and cooled we had a good tasting party with fresh bread, cottage cheese and extra fresh apple butter. Gallon crocks had to be gathered, cleaned and ready to be filled with the apple butter. Also, clean washed sugar or flour sacks were cut into squares to fit and tie over the crocks to make sure that no kind of insects or flies could get to that scrumptious spread. The crocks were left setting to cool completely. Later on, most of it was placed in the attic, so we had apple butter all year long.

We youngsters all remember real well all the fun we had taking turns peeling those apples. Some of the peelings came off all in one piece. They would look like real long curls. They were also tempting for eating, which we at times would do. But that was cheating the hogs because they also were anxiously awaiting them. Apple butter custard was my brother Earl's favorite dessert that Mother used to make.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  Reading these stories brings home to me that people really, really lived this way.  Not in some fairy tale, or in a time so ancient that it is shrouded in mystery.  And not in a far country with a tradition different from my own.  As I read the stories, I could see them happening in a real place, just a few short decades before I lived there.  These were all ordinary lives, full of unstinting industriousness, thrift, and skilled work. 

Very Devious Am I

I like hacking things together, coming up with my own ways of getting things done, and generally making things work without resorting to purchased solutions.  But sometimes I'm not above paying for a partial fix.

Though it didn't make my formal list of goals for 2010, this was meant to be the year of experimentation with lacto-fermentation.  I actually started last year, trying to make some sauerkraut in a half-gallon glass canning jar.  It probably would have worked, except that I had trouble keeping the top of the kraut submerged below the surface of the liquid.  So the part sticking up above the liquid got funkier than I was comfortable with.  I tossed the whole batch, which really disappointed me.  I later learned I could have just scraped off the funky part, and the kraut underneath probably would have been fine.  More disappointment.

Now, there exists a brilliantly designed, patented, and well-marketed solution to this problem of top spoilage with sauerkraut.  Which is to say: an expensive product.  Like $100+ expensive, and that for the smallest model in the product line.  They're ceramic fermentation crocks and they're made in Germany.  They have a neat fix to hold whatever vegetables you put in there below the liquid, and a neat-o liquid airlock as well, which allows gas to escape the fermentation chamber but not get in, supposedly preventing contamination.  Since they're patented, they can't legally be copied here.  And since they're made in Germany and very heavy, they have a very high carbon footprint when brought to the area I live.  But here's the thing - I don't care about the airlock, because from what I've read, the lacto-bacillus will outcompete just about any other organism if you give it suitable conditions.  I don't really care about the aesthetics of glazed ceramic either.  All I want is something to keep my vegetables submerged while they ferment.

So a while back I went to a local potter with a one-gallon glass jar and asked him to make me simple, unglazed, half-moon weights that fit snugly inside the glass jar.  I have several of these glass jars, bought cheaply at our local bulk foods store.  These will be my new fermentation crocks.  The ceramic pieces will hold my vegetables down below the waterline, where airborne stuff won't have a chance to spoil it.  At less than $3 for the glass jar and $16 per pair of weights (tax included in both cases), that's less than $20 per gallon-sized crock.  That's a huge savings over what I'd pay for the ready-made crock.  Not only that, but since I have several of the glass jars, my weights can be moved from jar to jar as each batch finishes.  I couldn't do that with the weights from a purchased set.  If I were still a student with access to a pottery class, I probably would have tried making these for myself.  You could certainly do that if you have access to a wheel and the use of a kiln.

The embodied energy of these simple pieces of ceramic is still quite high.  After all, the clay was almost certainly not local, so it was probably transported in a wet state, and clay is heavy.  Pottery kilns consume an enormous amount of energy.  But at least my money went to support a local craftsman practicing an important skill.  And these are tools that will help me with the lowest energy method of food preservation for years or decades to come if I'm careful with them.  Indeed, the ceramic will never wear out, though they could break.  Potentially, these could still be in use centuries from now.  Ask an archaeologist what the most common artifact is worldwide.  Even if the weights should break, chances are very good that I could simply continue using them in a broken state.  I think that qualifies as appropriate technology.

I put three types of cabbage in the garden for a fall crop, two dozen plants all together.  Though I'm eager to get started, waiting isn't such a bad thing in this case.  Lacto-fermentation is best done at cooler temperatures.  I plan to try at least a few different recipes, including one with caraway and cranberry.  I'll let you know what my favorites turn out to be.  In the meantime, if you have favorite lacto-fermented recipes, I'd love to hear about them.

Hard Work

We had an overcast and coolish day on Friday.  It only got up to 77 F (25 C).  So I worked my butt off outside, moving mulch, planting the last few transplants that needed homes, watering, weeding, weeding, weeding, hilling potatoes, and generally doing much of the stuff that hadn't gotten done because the unseasonably hot temperatures had been driving me inside for too many hours each day.  We're now out of cardboard and newspaper.  It all got used up in lasagna mulching, and there are still pathways in the garden that haven't gotten the treatment.  I had to finally do a spit and shine on my filthy car, since I'd agreed to drive to the strawberry picking farm.  Then I spent a good chunk of time in the evening cleaning up some filthy canning jars I'd picked up for very little money through craigslist and trying to triage the kitchen mess.  It was a long day, was Friday.  After a shower I was more than ready for sleep but had to wait on the girls to retire for the evening before I could fall into bed.

Yesterday I was up early, getting my large containers ready for strawberry picking.  Serious gardening friend and I carpooled over to the U-pick farm, where I zipped through a little over 16 pound's worth of picked strawberries.  My lower back informed me that the strawberry picking felt an awful (and I mean awful) lot like gardening.  After that we nipped over to a tiny farmer's market organized by farming friend, where we found we were too late for asparagus or rhubarb. We consoled ourselves by grabbing evil baked goods for lunch (pecan-brioche sticky bun for me), and I picked up some raw milk cheese, spinach and scallions that were half way to being proper onions.

Back home by 1:30, I spent the next four-and-a-half hours processing my strawberries into 15 pints of jam and three half-sheet pans of frozen berries.  Amazingly, all the jam set up beautifully.  The secret, I found, is to simply follow the directions exactly.  (Well, except for skimming off the foam; I can't be expected to follow directions that lead to either waste or sugar overdose.)  This whole do-it-the-way-they-tell-you thing is surely obvious to other, saner people.  I'm just not much of a direction-taker in the kitchen.  I'm slow that way.  Anyway, we ended up with five well-set pints each of three different types of jam: straight up strawberry, strawberry-balsamic, and strawberry-ginger.  One special jar of the strawberry-balsamic also got several twists of very finely ground black pepper.  The quality control testing indicated that they were all delicious, though there wasn't any extra of that last black pepper variation.  That'll have to wait until we open that jar.  Of those we sampled, I think the strawberry-ginger may narrowly edge out the other two for our top pick.  We'll see.  This supply of jam had better suffice for the next year, considering how much sugar disappeared into those pint jars.  We should have some to give away as gifts too.  Now I kinda wish I'd put some into half-pint jars so that I could be generous, but you know, not too generous.

Around 5:30, my husband decided he wanted to make ice cream after all, so he snagged some of my frozen berries.  When that was done we improvised a very late dinner of hot dogs grilled with the oversized scallions, and washed them down with homemade strawberry ice cream for dessert.  It wasn't a day marked by the healthiest of meals, but as I've said before, executive decision making authority about what constitutes dinner is one of the few perqs of being an adult. I fell into bed and slept like the dead.

I'm glad to have gotten the jam made yesterday, when the temperature only flirted with 80 F (27 C).  Today it's going to flirt with 90 F (32 C).

Just as I was writing this post and loading the images, my husband killed a rabbit which he caught in flagrante delicto in our garden, using nothing stronger than a BB pellet gun.  I skinned it, gutted it, trimmed it, washed it, and had it inside before breakfast.  (Sorry, no pictures.  Next time.)  Since it's a wild rabbit, it's very lean and weighed in at only 1 pound, 10 ounces once reduced to the main edible portions.  It's going to be dinner, one way or the other, tonight.  Suggestions are welcome.

But for a morning and evening putter in the garden, plus dinner preparation, I'm resting today.  I may fold the mountain of clean laundry in the hampers.  I may lie under the ceiling fan and read escapist fiction most of the day.  I feel like I've earned it.

Favors & Rewards, Or, Why It's Good to Know Your Food Network

Free salmon

So farming friend called me up Wednesday night and inquired about the state of my chest freezer. Was there, perhaps, room in there for 50 pounds of salmon filets? See, she runs a monthly on-farm market during the winter season when the local farmer's markets don't operate. She invites a few choice vendors to show up and sell their goods, but also will sell the products of a few other local vendors. One of those products is wild caught Alaskan sockeye salmon. The couple that sells this delectable treat maintains a fishing license and a fishing boat in Alaska, and that's how they spend their summers. The quality is outstanding, and as carbon footprints go for fish, this is pretty light on the earth.

So farming friend needed another couple cases of the filets to be ready for her on-farm market this weekend. But she has a day job, and no one was going to be at her farm yesterday to take delivery. So she asked me and the salmon lady if it could be dropped by our place in the course of her delivery rounds. No problem for me: I was around and having dinner with farming friend that night, so my freezer space wouldn't be tied up long. No problem for salmon lady as we live closer to the day's other stops than farming friend does.

I spent between 5 and 10 minutes chatting with salmon lady and helping her pack 50 pounds of salmon into our freezer and then some into a cooler with ice packs. That evening I put the fish back in the boxes and took it with me when I went to dinner at farming friend's house. It was nothing. But salmon lady was so appreciative - as if I were doing her a big favor - that she offered me a free fillet. Now, I'm already on record as never saying no to handouts. You can believe I didn't turning down ethically fished wild Alaskan salmon that sells for $12.75 per pound. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

Just for Ali, a bonus picture of the cats with free mushroom bags

But the bounty didn't end there. When I got to farming friend's house for dinner, the first topic of conversation after getting the salmon in her freezer was all the mushroom bags she'd gotten from local mushroom producers. Like battery egg facilities that kill "retirement age" laying hens, (who are still capable of years of egg-laying) because their production is no longer optimal, mushroom farmers keep mushroom substrate only through the first few and most abundant flushes of mushroom production. Of course, there's no cruelty involved in either packing bags of inoculated sawdust as close together as possible, nor in getting rid of them as soon as they pass a peak of production. Nonetheless, farming friend had been given several large bags of sawdust inoculated with oyster mushroom spores. And she wanted to know if I wanted a couple of them. What did I say? (Altogether now; say it with me:) "Sure! Thank you!"

I don't want to create the impression that people chuck free food at me on a daily basis, but similar things have happened more than a few times since I've gotten to know my local farmers and producers on a personal basis. Free eggs, free bones to make stock, free pork jowls, the loan of useful and expensive tools, and now enough free salmon for four modest portions and a decent chance at a small crop of oyster mushrooms. Obviously, I also just like to know where my food comes from, even when I pay a fair price for it. But there really are multiple advantages to getting to know your farmers.

Of course, I try to be open handed too. I've arranged to loan our beater pickup truck this weekend to a young Agricultural Extension agent who needs to haul some horse manure for her own garden. And our broadfork will be loaned out this spring too. Farming friend got her vermicomposting system going with some red wiggler worms from our bins, and I plan to take containers of worms to the last meeting of my soils class next week to get some fellow students started on vermicomposting as well. It seems to me that farmers and other sustainability minded folks are far more open to bartering, and interested in making just a little more effort to share resources, and ensuring that nothing goes to waste. That's a good group of people to know and be a part of.

Just the Aftermath

We don't entertain as often as we would like to. Probably because it involves cleaning the house, and my credentials in that department are really nothing to brag about. But it was obligatory to prepare spaghetti alla carbonara with the guanciale I made from those freebie hog jowls. And I couldn't do that without inviting the farming couple who donated them. If you're going to clean the house for one couple, I figured, why not invite a few? So two other gardening couples were included as well, including Kelly and Meg of Future House Farm.

Spaghetti alla carbonara waits for no man; you serve it the instant it's ready. So we didn't pause for a picture - we ate. And then the rest of the evening was so filled with gardening, farming, and food talk that we never got out the camera. We talked about local producers of pastured meats and dairy, how to transplant blueberry bushes, the best way to control mint's exuberant growth in a container, organic certification and its value - or lack of value - for small-scale farmers selling to a local market, the abomination of eggs from battery hens, wwoofing, the nitrogen content of human urine and its use for gardeners, the current scarcity of real butchering skills, coq au vin and the flavor merits of roosters or old laying hens, the advantages of vermicomposting over regular composting for those in very small spaces, various local vendors of premises-made ice cream, raw milk ice cream, various cane berries and how to tell when blueberries and wineberries are truly ripe, the necessity of bird netting when growing blueberries, how much we'd pay for our meal if it were served to us in a restaurant, Oprah Winfrey having Michael Pollan on her show, and all the phone calls our farming friends are suddenly getting about their pastured eggs and meat. My kind of conversation.

It was a kick to have such a local meal in January. We ate our own eggs and garlic, plus the home cured guanciale in the carbonara, incredibly awesome fresh salad greens from a local farm, a shallot from the same farm in the vinaigrette, and lemon balm from our own backyard to finish out the meal with a simple herbal tissane. I've prepared carbonara any number of times with American style bacon, which is the best most of us can usually do with that recipe. Guanciale, which is the authentic ingredient, adds a distinctively different taste to this dish. It was sweeter than bacon, and meatier, yet it didn't dominate the other ingredients to the degree that bacon does. This is counter-intuitive to me, since the guanciale is drier and much more concentrated than bacon. I honestly think I prefer the guanciale version. I also used (my version of) Kathy Harrison's "instant" fruit crisp topping for our dessert. (Note to self: make another batch of that soon.) The peaches and blackberries in the crisp were admittedly frozen and store bought, but at least organic, as was the vanilla ice cream.

I ate too much. I don't think I was entirely alone in this. That table was grazed. In a way that would delight the heart of any cook. It's been a while since I overindulged like that. I just couldn't help myself. I may have to skip a couple meals today, just to give my system a rest. But it was a great time.

That picture up there? All that was left of a batch of carbonara made with two full pounds of dried spaghetti, snapped during clean up.

PASA Conference Coming Up Soon

I have no idea how many readers visit this blog from my home state of Pennsylvania, but any of you that do might want to check out the annual conference coming up soon for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. The conference is called Farming for the Future, and it's held each year on the first Friday-Saturday in February in State College, smack in the middle of the state. This will be my fourth year attending, and I wouldn't miss it! I always come back from the conference bursting with excitement about my gardening projects for the year. I learn so much from the speakers, and my fellow attendees as well. It is both comforting and hugely energizing to be surrounded - just once in the year - by people committed to healthy food, to preserving the living soils that we depend upon utterly, to finding workable solutions to the problems agriculture is facing and will face in this century, and to teaching a new generation of farmers.

If you live in Pennsylvania and eat, you should know about PASA. If you garden or farm, or aspire to do either of these things, you'd be giving yourself a huge treat by attending this conference. The amazing selection of workshops and speakers at this year's conference is going to make it tough to choose which ones I attend. Check it out. And let me know if you'll be there!

Second Annual Grass-Fed Beef Cookoff

I've no idea how many local-ish readers I have, but I wanted to alert those of you in Pennsylvania to an upcoming event designed to showcase sustainably raised Pennsylvania beef. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) is hosting the second annual Grass-Fed Beef Cookoff in Fogelsville on Sunday, August 2nd. I volunteered at the inaugural cookoff last year and will be doing so again this year. Believe me, this is a fun event for sustainable foodie types.

This year at least fourteen Pennsylvania beef producers who raise their animals on pasture will be competing with steaks to be judged on the basis of taste, texture and appearance. Last year's winner, Harvest Home Meats, was from Northampton county, close enough to us that we got our prime rib for Christmas dinner from them, and believe me, that was a decadent piece of beef. Cookoff attendees will enjoy a sample of beef stew and a burger, all made from Pennsylvania 100% grass-fed beef. There will be live music, local beer, and the setting at the Glasbern Inn and Farm is simply gorgeous. If you can make it, keep an eye out for me and please say hello!

More info, and ticket information, here.

A Chilly Classroom

I'm off this afternoon to take a hands-on class on pruning fruit and nut trees, courtesy of the county Agricultural Extension Office. The cost? Eight dollars. This is great since the guy who said he was willing to barter some of my bread for the pruning of our old apple tree has never followed up. For $8 I can learn how to maintain the tree myself.

It's an outdoor class of course, and our temperature should peak just below freezing today. Add to that a stiff 20 mph wind, and this will be a test of my fortitude. And my long underwear. Good thing my sweetie got me some lovely fleece-lined leather work gloves for Christmas last year. (Yes, they've already seen some service.) What a great present!

If you live in the US and have any interest in gardening related topics, you should get to know your county's Agricultural Extension Office. There are a lot of resources (such as the Master Gardeners) for your immediate area under that roof, and your tax dollars are supporting it. In many areas they offer classes such as the one I'll be attending today. My county offered a free class on composting last year, with a free compost bin given away to each attendee. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend. Maybe they'll offer it again this year; I wouldn't mind a free extra compost bin. Our county's Extension Office also offers bare root tree and fruit seedling sales each spring. This year I'm getting four blueberry bushes (two each of two different varieties) for $32, with no delivery charge since I'm picking them up myself. Hard to beat that.

Check your local Extension Office out. You might be delighted at the resources and values you find!

Local, Raw, and Bartered

This was my breakfast this morning: yogurt and honey. What makes this simple meal so special to me is that both ingredients are local, sustainably produced, raw, and I bartered for them.

I bartered for a quart of the raw milk yogurt just a few days ago. The texture of the yogurt when I opened the container was slightly lumpy, and the creamy fat had risen to the top. The taste reminded me of the superb yogurt I'd bought at a farmer's market in Europe. It bears absolutely no resemblance to store-bought yogurt. I stirred up the yogurt until it was smooth again and served myself some.

Now I confess that "local" in this case is a bit of a stretch by my standards. This yogurt comes from a farm almost 80 miles (128 km) away. That's very local by US standards, but incredibly distant by average global standards. I don't know of any closer dairy that raises their cows on grass, sells raw-milk products, and avoids hormones and antibiotics. And I would know, because I'm well connected to the sustainable farming network in my area. For the moment, 80 miles is the best I can do for sustainable cow's milk dairy. I don't do the driving myself either. The yogurt arrived at my house by way of the farmer who uses my home as a customer pick-up site for pre-ordered, grass-fed meats, dairy, and eggs every other week. So the food is delivered to my home, and I can barter my bread for it. And yes, I do feel pretty smug about that, in case you were wondering.

The raw honey is produced much, much closer to home, and I know the beekeeper personally. This is the lightest of her three honeys from last year's harvest. I'm almost out of it, but it sure is good. Just eight miles (13 km) away, she has an apple and pear orchard that she sprays only with baking soda, and she keeps hens along with a few hives of bees. Again, I bartered some homemade baked goods for a jar of this pure, raw honey.

Breakfast was absolutely delicious in its own right. Knowing that the constituent parts were produced completely sustainably, and acquired reasonably sustainably, and that I bartered for them, and that they are really healthy for me only makes this simplest of meals that much more satisfying.

I don't manage to prepare many meals in this fashion. But when I do pull it off, I'm inspired to keep trying more and more to live my life this way.

January Is A Good Time To...

...get your bicycle tuned up. If you live in the northern hemisphere, your local bike shops are probably all but deserted right now. The small holiday sales rush they might have seen is definitely over, and business is as slow as can be. Right now they've got plenty of time to do a thorough tune up of your bike. You may not get a discount, and frankly, I never look for discounts from small local businesses when they're hurting anyway. But what you can count on from a bike shop in January is no service backlog to create delays. So why not give them your business now when your bike will have their undivided and careful expert attention?

A tuneup done on your bicycle now will have pretty good "shelf life." That is, there's little disadvantage to having your bike tuned up five months before you start riding it heavily as opposed to a week before you start riding. The tires will need to be checked and maybe pumped up again. But all the other adjustments will keep for quite a while.

If you ride only during part of the year, it's a much better idea to get your bicycle serviced now rather than wait until everyone else is thinking about getting back in the saddle again. While they all curse the delays caused by their lack of foresight, you'll be enjoying those glorious first great riding days of spring. And you'll help a local business in one of the leanest times of the year as well. And if you're one of the intrepid souls who ride year-round, this is still a good time for a tuneup. You definitely don't want to be stranded by a mechanical failure at this time of year.

Ride carefully out there!

How I Benefit from My Local Taxes

My husband and I bought our first home less than two years ago. With that purchase came the pride of homeownership (even though we owe the bank big time), a fair amount of maintenance responsibility, and coming in on the enjoyability spectrum just ahead of monthly mortgage payments, three hefty tax bills per year. We pay property tax to our county, a separate school tax to the school district we live in, and income tax to our township.

Since we don't have kids, we don't get much benefit out of the school tax. I am hopeful though that current education is good enough that those kids won't screw up when they're measuring out my meds fifty years from now. The county provides some necessary but not particularly exciting services for our tax dollars, such as a police force and snow plowing in the winter time. The local fire department is not supported by tax dollars. It's an all volunteer force that's supported by donations and fundraisers.

Where we really see a big payoff for our involuntarily spent money is at the township level. Here our tax dollars are converted into "free" services that I have found incredibly valuable. We have a top notch new library that I visit just about every week. I borrow DVD's for free, get all the books I want to read, and even pick up a few magazines now and then. I've gotten to a first-name basis with several staff members, including the woman who handles inter-library loans. While the library's catalog is not vast, she can usually obtain any book and most DVD's I want within ten days or so. Sure, it's not instant gratification, and I don't get to keep the books. But with her help and the library's resources I've managed to reduce my reading budget to nearly nothing, and I've put my Netflix account on indefinite hold. My husband regularly prowls through the music cd's. So we've spent almost nothing for our music over the past year.

The next biggest benefit is the free compost and mulch that goes into my garden. This is a precious resource for a gardener. Now that we have a beater pickup truck, it's possible to make one trip to the yard waste facility and get quite a large load of this stuff. It's not organic, but it's free! True, we have to load it and unload it ourselves, at least most of the time. But it's enjoyable outdoor work, and the mulch saves me a lot of weeding time and effort later on. Apparently there are times of the year when the supply is so abundant that they'll load a pickup truck for a nominal $5 fee. That's an option I'd be happy to jump on. So I'll be keeping my eye out for that offer.

The last area I see real value for our township tax dollars happens in the fall. If I wish, I can simply rake all our leaves out to the streetfront, where they'll eventually be sucked up by the giant vacuum cleaner trucks. Leaf raking is a serious fall chore around here. For the first few weeks it's enjoyable to work outside in the crisp autumn air. But as the leaves continue to fall and fall and fall, it gets a little repetitive and frustrating. (We have a surprising number of very large trees on our not very big property.) It would be even more frustrating if I had to bend down and scoop up all those leaves and bag them armful by armful. Being able to just rake them to the edge of the property is a nice pass. I keep a supply of leaves for additional mulching around the garden. But the township handles the excess for me, and then adds it to the compost they give out in the spring. We can also take any branches knocked down in storms to the township to be chipped into the communal mulch pile.

I've tried to guesstimate the value of the services and goods that I now get for "free" from the township. I used to have a fairly serious book-buying habit, which had long been exempted from austerity measures. My husband had a similar arrangement for his music budget. Very conservatively, I'd guess we spent $1000 per year on books and music. As for compost and mulch, I had previously used the trick of showing up early at the hardware store to pick up the torn open bags for half price. But even so, each large bag would routinely cost me $1.50 to $2.50. Now I pay nothing most of the time. I'd happily pay $5 for a pickup bed load of either compost or mulch. Considering how much free compost and mulch we've used, we must be getting at least a $100 value each year. So, at the township level, I'd say we're getting a direct return of $1100 or more per year on our income tax. Not bad!

It's useful to remind myself of these benefits when the tax bills come in. It takes the sting out of it to some extent. What tax-funded services are available in your area? Do you take advantage of them? How much money do you save by doing so?