OK, that was a little bit too much rain. I spent a few rainy days in town writing something for the Chicago Reader and by the time I got back to the farm I didn’t realize how much rain had fallen. Oh, sure, on the drive out there I did notice a few fields in Indiana with standing water but I was keeping my eye on the road construction on the highway. On the farm I walked out into the field to find my rain gauge which for some reason had disappeared. I know I had put it in the middle of the field and I don’t think the groundhogs took it. There were no telltale tracks except for a few wild turkeys, a deer, and raccoons. The cultivated fields had turned to sponges and everyone, including me, sank deep in the mud.
My bootprints
White-tailed deer, wild turkey, and groundhog tracks. Looks like there was a party in my garden.
A field this water-logged means I have to wait for it to dry before doing any work. Walking on or cultivating soggy soil will compact it turning it to concrete when it dries and less “air” will get to the plants roots. Instead I worked a bit in the greenhouse, waiting for my brother to shift his tomato plants outdoors to harden off so I’d have more room to place my flats filled with basil seeds. On a whim I bought more seeds: sweet basil, large-leaf Toscano, lemon, and cinnamon basil. Somewhere I have heirloom basil seeds saved which I’ll direct-seed. They were given to me by a family friend who’s been growing them in her Chicago backyard from seeds brought back from the Mostar region of Bosnia. It’s highly aromatic basil is used to prepare holy water in the Orthodox Christian church and I usually use the plants as decorations in the flower beds or along the garden borders. I haven’t read the studies on it, but I notice that the basil plants help keep down pests and the basil flowers are filled with bees – which pollinate the vegetables.
We’re planning on the fields drying out by the end of the week so we can start planting seedlings, beans, cucumbers, and melons. Planning, yes. . . depending on how the fields drain and how much predicted rain falls to slow the process down.
Petunias
Ivy Geraniums
Rainy days mean I can run errands off the farm without feeling guilty (or anxious) about not tending the garden. After a 15-minute drive to the Benton Harbor farm supply store I discovered several of my farming friends had the same idea. In the parking lot I ran into my sister-in-law’s cousin who told me he was already planning summer snowmobile race events on his pond and we chatted about how we hoped this summer wouldn’t be as bad as the last. Inside I ran into another friend with a 9-5 job but farms after hours. He was on his “lunch break” and had his arms full of spark plugs and oil for his lawnmower. As I passed the baby chicks, ducks, and geese bins another customer was buying baby runner ducks. As I looked at the poster describing the different breeds, debating if I wanted runners or those cute White Pekins. . . or if I should buy those little geese that tilted their baby heads to look at me. . . I turned around and realized I knew the runner duck-buyer from the Benton Harbor Fruit Market’s package shop where she worked and I buy all my market containers and waxed vegetable boxes. It seems a rainy day had everyone running out to get some shopping done.
By this time I was starting to realize the farm store didn’t carry anything on my shopping list: fungicide to prevent late blight on my tomatoes and potatoes, fruit tree spray, onion sets, or salt blocks without copper for the sheep. It seems farm stores cater to those with lawnmowers, All Terrain Vehicles, or horses. . . or backyard poultry.
So back in the car I drove down to Baroda to buy more onion sets from the feed mill. I was out of radish seeds and they were out of French Breakfast in bulk so I bought a few of their smaller packages. For my bulk purchase I bought a pound of Sparkler radishes, which are similar to the French Breakfast with a white tip but round. I also bought a few pounds of onion sets – and debated buying a thirty pound bag but thought about trying to harvest all those scallions.
By now the sky started clearing up but I was loving the freedom of not working in the garden and headed to Hills Road in Buchanan and passed all the wineries that, midweek, still had Illinois license plates pulling into their driveways. I was heading for Teifke (pronounced “tife key”) Farms to bother my friend David Teifke in his greenhouses. David was two years ahead of me in high school and we end up gossiping about everyone we knew as well as talked about our favorite flowers – mine are always those with deep rich colors like the Merlot geranium or the petunias picture above. The Teifke’s have been farming hundreds of acres for a few generations and David cares for nine greenhouses full of flats of annuals that the family starts to sell in early May in the farm shop. That means countless hours of work that start in January, planting tiny seeds, transplanting, making sure the furnaces don’t go out in the middle of the night, fighting voles for pepper and tomato seedlings. . . but the result is stunning.
Teifke’s Plants, 12371 Hills Rd., Buchanan MI 49107
Peterson Garden - May 2, 2010
Craving a little bit of green space? The Yarden’s Lamanda Joy is thinking about you. She’s reviving a traditional vegetable garden on the site of an original 1942-1945 Chicago victory garden at the grassy corner of Peterson and Campbell.
The original victory gardens were a result of pooling resources and boosting moral during the world wars. Resources were reserved for the war effort and supporting the war effort meant armies needed to be fed. Foods like sugar, butter, eggs, and coffee were rationed for citzens by the government. At the time labor and gasoline were in short supply and both are needed to grow food on farms and to transport produce to customers. It’s estimated up to 20 million Americans planted vegetables in back yards and empty lots in the name of patriotism.
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The Peterson Garden is scheduled to break ground on May 24 (following a fundraiser on May 20). That’s less than a month to get gardeners, volunteers, and supplies for their 140 24-square-foot plots off the ground. Literally. Breaking with tradition these new plots will be raised beds and LaManda’s encouraging gardeners to grow some of the vegetable varieties that were grown in the original Victory Garden. It’s estimated 60% of those seeds are available today.
The Peterson and Campbell location gets plenty of daylight, though a bit of afternoon shade may hit the west side of the garden by afternoon. Plans are in the works for access to water, shared tools, vacation helpers, and other logistical issues. A few folks working on the project are Master Gardeners so there’ll be plenty of information for newbies. There’s a learning curve on trying to grow vegetables on a 6′x4′ raised bed (think vertically!) and only those with plots will have access to the space as the garden is surrounded by a high chain-link fence and gardeners will be sharing a padlock combination.
A Peterson Garden space requires a committment to growing organically and visits (at least!) 2-3 days a week. Families or restaurants without the time to tend their garden can sign up for Farm 4 You, another option for those who want access to the produce and a chance to learn about seed diversity, urban gardening, and Chicago history.
Follow the Peterson Garden on Facebook (Peterson Garden Project) and Twitter.
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There are other Chicago community garden spaces available and a good resource Neighborspace.
A bit of Chicago history from a flyer I found while thrift store shopping: “In 1973, Chicago’s Department of Human Services sponsored the nation’s first city-operated neighborhood farm program, providing city-owned land for Chicago residents to grow vegetables in their own neighborhoods. This very popular Chicago program expanded rapidly each ensuing year from 21 sites in 1973, to over 1,900 sites in 1980.”
I’ve also been following food systems planner Lynn Peemoeller’s blog about urban agriculture (Berlin, Lisbon, etc). It’s said that waiting for a kitchen garden space (potager) in Paris may take three years. Also, while visiting relatives in the former Yugoslavia I learned it was common for those who’d moved to urban centers to keep their family homes in the villages as “vikendice” (there’s the English word “weekend” in there) which are similar to the Russian dacha. The rural land was used to grow fresh vegetables and fruit that they didn’t have space in their urban apartments. The fruit was, I swear, mainly used to make brandy. And jam. Talk about moral boosters!
Oak leaves and cherry blossoms - rarely seen open at the same time: April 18, 2010.
Signs of life came early this spring. Despite another extreme winter I managed to get into the fields a little earlier this year than last, where the ground was still frozen into early April. This past winter had such an early and sustained snowfall that the ground never really froze underneath and I managed to harvest garlic shoots for and Empty Bottle Farmers Market and the last winter indoor market at Logan Square.
My first deadline of the year is always to plant potatoes on Good Friday. Usually I have a few extra weeks as I follow the Julian calendar to observe the holy days but every four years (this year) Easter falls on the same day. I made a run to the local feed mill/seed store and stocked up on Austrian Crescent Fingerlings, ran the tiller through a few rows, and planted them on March 26. Now on April 22 I’m seeing the first dark shoots come out of the sandy soil . . . along with the first few weeds of the season. Last summer’s tomato blight also attacked my late potato crop so I’ll be running to the feed mill soon to look for something to treat the disease, which can linger for a while in the soil.
After I planted the Good Friday potatoes I threw in a double row of sugar peas, spinach, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and kale. Being frugal with space I threw in radish seeds into each row since they’re a 21-28 day crop and will be out of the way by the time the other plants start to take off. The peas are now an inch tall and I ran some recycled old sheep fencing along the row as a trellis.
Trying to meet my second-planting deadline a friend came by with a tractor and larger tiller to break up larger portions of my field:
The larger tiller did break ground deeper than my smaller rototiller but left large chunks of weeds/grass and awkward mounds of soil. Not to complain with the extra help. . . just saying it’s hard to deal with later when I’m weeding. I started my smaller tiller crumbled up the larger soil bits and leveled the soil for about five rows before the engine sputtered, sputtered, and died. My mechanic brother came to take a look and announced the engine was blown. A quick internet search found a replacement – in southern Indiana – for $240 (minus shipping costs). Not wanting to deal with another setback and a setting sun, I went back into the field and planted a few rows of parsley, transplanted lavender and Swiss chard, threw in more potato sets, and seeded the rest of the finely prepared soil with beets (more radishes) and onion sets for scallions.
So on today, Earth Day, I’ll be harvesting for market tomorrow at the University of Chicago’s Earth Fest. In addition to the green garlic and sorrel I’ve been harvesting (and selling through Green Grocer Chicago) now I’ve got some early mint and baby fennel.
Late March and early April are busy times – after a long winter away from the garden and fields I’ve got my work cut out for me. Tree limbs and branches need to be cleared from the wooded areas of the sheep pasture. The garden sage needs to be trimmed back. Asparagus needs to be mulched. Manure needs to be spread before I even think about pulling out the rototiller. . . but I get easily distracted by the sheep. My own fault. I’ve tamed them down to make caring for them easier (try chasing after a scared flock in muck boots during shearing time!) but now they’ve gotten used to being handled and nearly beg for attention whenever I walk past.
Nibbles for greetings
Another nibbler
Twins!
The ram
There’s still a little bit of life in the Chicago winter farmers markets. The last weekend of March has a few indoor markets scheduled including the Portage Park Farmers Market and Green City (with an amazing chef demo lineup). I’ll be at the final indoor Logan Square Farmers Market (with green garlic and baby sorrel) inside the Congress Theater with my fellow vendors Cook au Vin, Crumb, Tomato Mountain, Macaron Chicago, Herbally Yours, and others.
Logan Square Farmers Market * Videnovich Farms handspun wool
Logan Square Farmers Market * Cook au Vin's bread
Logan Square Farmers Market * Cook au Vin
Logan Square Farmers Market * Anne from Crumb
Logan Square Farmers Market * Tomato Mountain
Logan Square Farmers Market * Macaron Chicago
Logan Square Farmers Market * Herbally Yours
Hard to imagine we’re still in winter when it’s 60 degrees outside. What’s the old joke about the weather in Chicago? If you don’t like it just wait until this afternoon!
It’s been a long winter and the warming weather and sunshine is bringing back spring’s hope of early crops. Last autumn I left frost blankets on anything that might spring up at the first sign of thaw: kale, Swiss chard, collards, mint, sorrel, and a test patch of celery. Waiting to see if this low-cost, low-maintenance season extender will yield crops for markets I’ve got scheduled for the next month.
My winter was full of sporadic markets throughout the city including those organized by Faith in Place at various churches, the indoor Logan Square Farmers Market in the Congress Theater on Milwaukee Avenue, and the new Empty Bottle Farmers Market. I ran out of cold weather veggies in December and have been trying to sell hand-spun wool yarn (most sheared from my own sheep) but the state of the economy has showed itself in dismal sales. You can imagine I can’t wait until I have food to sell!
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Here are some photos taken at various winter farmers market, proof that farmers have specialized products that can bring sales through the winter.
River Valley Ranch mushrooms (Matt and Robin)
Earth First Farms apples and cider
Plapp Family Organics eggs
Fraternite Notre Dame cakes and pastries
I can’t seem to extend my vegetable harvesting season past Thanksgiving. My fingers end up feeling as crunchy as the ice and snow that blanket the ground. There may be a Swiss chard, collards, and other greens under my frost blankets but they’ll have to wait for spring or a few days in the 40s before I’ll harvest them.
Now into the new year and the snow a few feet thick I don’t really want to start thinking about the garden without a little bit of rest. The seed catalogs that come in the mail. . . daily. . . aren’t helping. I’m already trying to decide how many varieties of peppers and eggplants I can squeeze into the less-than-two-acre market garden.
Videnovich Farms sheep in snow
While my brother, George, does the outdoor winter chores on the farm I try to finish spinning up the wool that I sheared, by hand, back in April. A freezer full of flowers and leaved gathered in late summer provide some dye but I sometimes sneak in bright acid dyes to relieve my boredom I get from the yellows the plants give me. Other (warmer) regions of the world give you indigo’s blues or cochineal’s pinks and reds. Plants in the Midwest give you yellow and khaki and brown. My time is now spent catching up on last summer’s DVRd TV shows and movies and spinning, spinning, spinning on one of two spinning wheels. Two wheels because, you know, I get bored.
My winter season extension is, of course, hand-spun wool and the knitwear I make from it. I’ve been selling them for years at craft fairs and farmers’ markets, usually two separate entities. One craft fair I regularly sell at is the monthly Handmade Market Chicago at the Empty Bottle. Last month the Bottle’s production manager, Pete Falknor, and bar manager, Bruce Lamont, organized an indoor winter farmers’ market in the bar despite their busy end-of-the year nightclub schedule. The inaugural market ran on December 19 with nearly 15 vendors and a few hundred laid-back customers who enjoyed drinks while shopping. Here’s the write-up from the Chicago Sun-Times.
The next Bottle market is Saturday, January 16 and is scheduled to run from noon-5pm. Those hours are very forgiving to the late-night crowd who may not be able to make it to Lincoln Park by 1pm for the Green City Market. Many of the Bottle’s December farm vendors are returning, including Earth First Farms (apples, pies, and award-winning cider), Hasselman Family Farm (eggs, pork, and beef), Tomato Mountain Farm (soups, sauces, preserves) and AquaRanch (Tilapia, herbs, and vinaigrettes). Local roasters Grinderman Coffee will be back with fair-trade coffee beans. New vendors include Provenance Wine and Cheese (locally-sourced cheese), Celestial Kitchens (savory pies, scones, maybe soups), Crumb (breads), and Besto Pesto. Rounding out the list are Nice Cream, One Sister, and Dinner’s Ready.
green tomatoes on the vine.
Am I a tomato snob? I see tomatoes in the stores all year and have been known to buy Romas or “vine-ripened” in the winter out of desperation. I always complain when I taste the store-bought version. Last week I tried my first summer field-ripened tomato of the season: a Sun Gold (from Tomato Mountain). It makes me wonder why I buy them in the stores off season.
I’ve been selling other veggies at Chicago markets (Logan Square and Andersonville) since early Jun. This explains why I’m not blogging for the Local Beet as much. There are still customers at that time who come asking for tomatoes. It’s nearly August and I still don’t have any ripe tomatoes. I often wonder if it’s worth the effort to force the season with plastic hoop-houses when I have so many other seasonal field-grown veggies to deal with. Yes, “field-grown.” I’m a tomato snob that loves to taste the summer sun in her tomatoes, not a forced imitation. I think it has something to do with a combination of full sun and warm soil that gives the tomatoes their flavor.
This year I doubled my tomato production. I finally pounded in tomato stakes last week every 4 to 6 feet in the rows and wrapped the plants with baling twine to the posts. I use the Florida Weave, a high-density planting system that lets me use less space for more plants. Since the plants are off the ground they’re easier to pick and less prone to disease. I hope.
It took a few days to finish trellising because I worked it around my harvesting/weeding/planting schedule. The process leaves me covered in tomato plant “dust.” As I looked down at my sun-bleached arm hairs they were a beautiful light green. It made an interesting trail of green in the shower when I washed up later. No Hulk references, please!
tomato rows, trellis system hidden by leaves. peppers and eggplants on the left.
On this last day of August I’m still waiting for my own field-grown, vine-ripened tomatoes. The cold spring has pushed back my harvest date, which could be another three weeks. I’m waiting to see how my 28+ varieties turn out. Yeah, I went a little overboard with the seed catalogues this spring. I’m hoping my enthusiasm is worth it.
Free-range cats in a basket
At least they’re not underfoot.
I’ve been busy in the garden and had little time for blogging. Or, for that matter, to give enough attention to the barn cats. Well, they managed to get me to take a break from harvesting (and weeding) to grab my camera.
There are no guarantees in farming. I can watch all the signs of nature or read all the Farmer’s Almanacs I want, I still don’t know what I’m in for when I get up in the morning.
Lately I’ve been in a lot of rain. Tuesday afternoon’s slow and steady rain fell while I was trying to harvest veggies for my 25 weekly CSA boxes. It fell so heavily that I found out that my raincoat was more water resistant than waterproof. I also found about an inch of water in my muck boots. But the cool, wet weather did provide my CSA subscribers with some fresh looking radishes and mustard greens that might’ve looked a bit wilty if we were in the season-appropriate upper 70s and sunshine.
Flooded summer squash, tomatoes, and eggplants.
The good news is that the plants are still alive. The rains have been steady instead of deluges, which means they’ve been draining in time for the next rainfall. The summer squash has doubled in size in a week instead of just sitting there like it has been for the last month. It would be nice to have some to sell at market soon, I’m wondering how much longer the Logan Square Farmers’ Market customers will be buying the radishes and green garlic that fill my stand before they get bored.
One example of my frustration with the slow growing veggies this year are the okra plants. Here’s how slowly they grew in about a month’s time.
Okra 5/25/2009
Okra 6/17/2009
The current weather forecasts predict some hot and humid days. Alas, with more rain, but the warmer temps will be a great boost for the veggies in the garden. The weeds, too, will be taking off and I’m hoping to find time between delivering 25 CSA (”Community Supported Agriculture”) boxes and two weekly markets to get some weeding done. I’m still trying to plant a few extra seeds and some of the eggplants and tomatoes waiting in the greenhouse. Yes, you can plant late in the season. My (ever evolving) garden schedule includes beet seed plantings through the end of July. We’ve also noticed that some of the peppers my brother was planting grew faster the later they were set out. A lot has to do with the cold Michigan nights of the past month, where folks are still turning on their furnaces at night to stay warm. And most of my sheep are waiting for their spring shearing without fear of catching pneumonia (and for some repairs to the hand clippers).
Give me a few good days with low humidity and I can get a lot done.
That describes the Memorial Day weekend. I set a few planting deadlines and met them all before the rains (and chill) came back.
My brother grows several acres of peppers. I think he counted 60,000 plants in his greenhouse. He set aside six rows of plastic weed-barrier mounds inserted with drip tape for me. I prefer to plant directly in the ground but after several years of drought and a September flood last year I’ve got 1/3 of my garden in the mounds. Normally the rows are planted with two workers sitting on a planter inserting plant plugs while a third worker drives the tractor. . . at about 2 miles per hour. I was impatient so I grabbed the bottom half of an umbrella stand (with a pointed tip) and poked holes in the plastic, inserted plants, squeezed a little dirt around the root structure, and moved on. This I did late in the afternoon so the plants wouldn’t be stressed by all that strong daylight or wilt onto the plastic and die. It happens. Overnight the plants perked up with the cool air and had a healthy start. The overcast sky on Monday was also a help.
Tomatoes, May 26, 2009
A few days earlier I planted cucumbers, summer squash, and okra. The black plastic absorbed the day’s heat and the irrigated water helped the seeds sprout quickly.
Baba Petra's cucumbers
I finished rototilling the rest of the garden, which I started over a month ago. I planted a few more rows of snap beans to add to the beats, radishes, kale, Swiss chard, collards, peas, rapini, kohlrabe, cardoon, onions, garlic, leeks, herbs, and dye flowers.
market garden, May 26, 2009
There’s still a small patch of ground that needs to be tilled. It’s a low spot and a bit too mucky to work. I’m afraid by the time I get to it the weeds will be out of control and the ground will be like cement. I’m thinking of throwing a few inches of compost to help work the soil but with the recent rains I’ll have to start paying attention to the weeds. I don’t use any chemicals, instead I go through each row by hand and break up the soil a bit with my hand cultivator (like a hoe but with prongs) and carefully pull out all the weeds with their roots intact. I throw them into the wheelbarrow and feed the sheep with them. I don’t dare put them back in the rows in case they grow again!
Some of the rows I will mulch with year-old straw (over layers of newsprint). It depends on the crop and how much time I have for this task. I still have a few thousand tomatoes to stake and tie up. Every once in a while I’ll run the rototiller through the rows to help keep weeds down. I have two tillers for this task, one large and one small for when the plants get larger and block out most of the weeds on their own. By late August or September I get to a point where I spend so much time harvesting that don’t care about weeds anymore and just let them go.
Frost advisories to 80 degrees in one week?
Last week I was wearing a scarf, jacket, and boots while planting snap beans. This week I was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, t-shirt, and sandals to plant okra and cucumbers. And sun-block. Even our greenhouse seedlings are waiting for some sun exposure before being transplanted in the fields.
Greenhouse
The frost advisories kept the seedling flats in the greenhouse. A few days of “hardening off” is needed before planting them in the fields. It’s sort of like getting a little tan before going to the beach. Even plants can get sunburned without a little sun-prepping.
In addition to the cold, the wet ground made prepping the fields difficult. There was a lot of moisture still in the ground from a snow-heavy winter and some intense spring rains kept us out of the fields. I missed a window of (dry) opportunity in early April with a broken rototiller. After that even my tiller, lighter than the Farmall tractor, couldn’t get through the bottom of my water-logged fields. The tines dug in and splattered muddy clay all over me before I could get the machine to dry(er) land. I still haven’t worked the low spots and am watching the spring flowers bloom in them. There are also bunches of wheat growing, remnants from from last year’s straw mulch.
Planting deadlines were met, just barely, last month. Each week I have a “deadline” schedule of what needs to be planted in the garden to meet CSA and farmers’ market schedules. Those 23-day radishes? I don’t think so. It’s been more like 30 days and they’re still tiny shoots. Rare for a radish as they love cold, wet weather. I’m feeling some panic trying to figure out what to do for my second CSA delivery on Wednesday, hoping for a miracle and all the radishes and the Swiss Chard magically transform into enough produce for 25 boxes!
Today I’m watching the weather forecasts and waiting for it to cool a bit to transplant my tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings. I’m hoping for some cloud cover, too. An overcast sky (or late afternoon sun) are kinder to new transplants. The less stress they experience the faster they’ll grow and the faster I can bring them to market!
I’ve been farming since I was a toddler and I can tell you that not one year is like another. I get asked for gardening advice, a lot, and can recite what the books and research say. I’m thinking of charging consulting fees to supplement my income, especially on market days where I spend up to a half-hour answering questions and then making a $3 sale.
In reality, though, it depends on your soil, which way your garden faces, how you water, how much you water, how little you water, or any number of conditions. I really should just folks to simply pay attention. My decades-worth of farming tells me Mother Nature dances to her own tune and it’s free jazz.
Even the grumpiest of farmers, also known as my brothers, took a step back this week to look at the leaves emerging from the trees. It’s been a long winter and the green landscape is breathtaking. Yes, the ground is muddy and the corn was never harvested last fall because of the flooded grounds, but it’s good to take a few minutes to look around and listen to the birds sing before getting back to work.
In my case getting back to work is trying to break up the soil with my tiller. I’ve partitioned my garden off into sections. The soil changes from clay to sand and I’ve only been able to work on the sandy loam spots. The clay is utter muck and even my tiller won’t get through it. Forget about getting tractor in there.
I’ve been trying to get some of the early weeds out of the garden, too. I don’t use herbicides so I do a LOT of hand-weeding. Last year the weeds in the garlic patch got away from me and I’m trying to get a head start.
Garlic can stay green all winter. It’s a nice hardy plant and I’m trying to thin them out. The end of the 2008 season got away from me last year and I didn’t divide and transplant the garlic before the ground froze. Garlic likes a long, cold winter and space to develop larger bulbs. My garlic is a wonderful, hot, red variety from the old country and my CSA customers have been using the spring green garlic in soups and stir fries. The greens are so tender at this point that the whole, flat stem can be eaten. Later they get tougher but still work well in a soup stock. By that time the pre-flowering scapes emerge from the plants and those make an excellent pesto and allow the plant to continue developing a larger bulb. Actually, these garlic don’t develop a “flower” but instead have tiny “bulbs” at the tips that can be planted for more garlic greens.
garlic scapes
Garlic is one of the crops my dad spent a lot of time teaching me about as a child. In Serbo-Croatian it’s called “beli luk” (white onion), not to be confused with the regular onion: “crni luk” (trans. “black onion”) or leeks: “praziluk.” I could combine all three in the spring into a pilaf dish, a sort of a Balkan casserole. It’s one of those dishes where you “just know” how much of each ingredient to add. Simply sauté the garlic greens, add rice to the frying pan, cook until the rice starts to turn brown (gives it a nutty flavor later), then pour into a baking dish. Add water (or stock) and salt and pepper to taste. Bake until the rice absorbs the water. Generally the rice to water ratio is 1.5 cup water to 1 cup rice, but I prefer 2 C. water to 1 C. rice. You can add carrots, celery, chicken, or any number of ingredients but generally this was a dish that we threw together after working on the farm all day. Add a roast, green salad, and good bread. . .
“Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” —Jean Paul Getty
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Last year I was working in ground so dry that my tiller wouldn’t go past the sparse green growth. I was basically tilling green mulch with no soil getting disturbed. Nothing that a good rainfall won’t cure.
This year the ground is too wet.If you tinker in the garden you know working with wet soil can create cement when it dries. It’s even worse if you have a clay-based Chicago plot. Try making a ball with it. . . it should hold its shape without falling apart or turning into a Dali-esque sculpture. Solutions? Add water. Or wait. Add compost either way. When I was a renter on Addison my next door neighbor, Nan, lent me her front and back yards. I dug small trenches and added kitchen scraps and covered them with dirt. It didn’t take long to break down and I didn’t have to look at it or smell it. Kept the rats away, too. Oh, and for Pete’s sake, don’t plant too early! The average last frost date is May 15 so wait to plant those tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Also some seeds don’t like cold soil so they’ll just sit in the ground and rot (white-seeded green beans, anyone?). I work on a larger scale on the farm, of course. If I were to plant too early I lose hundreds of dollars worth of seeds (and greenhouse propane, water, potting soil. . .).
On the topic of composting, I still throw everything into giant piles. . . leaves, sticks, paper, kitchen scraps (eggshells!) and add generous amounts of sheep manure. Last week I turned a few piles and was amazed that all of last years twigs had broken down to a light brown powder. I stood on the pile with a pitchfork and turned and loosened the pile. I’m planning on using this “black gold” as side dressing in my garden once the plants get going. One year, when my garden was smaller, I dug trenches along the plant rows and added well-rotted sheep manure then covered them back up. In theory, as the plants grow their roots reach into the natural fertilizer. I had the best beans that year. . . and the “salad” garden behind the house had the largest spinach I had ever seen. With my garden growing in size every year I’m reconsidering adding even more labor-intensive activities.
In addition to the compost piles I also have a manure pile. This week I was digging into last year’s with a shovel and filling a rusted wheelbarrow with it to spread into the larger garden. What I wouldn’t give this time of year to have a mechanized manure spreader and an ATV. . . . It’s been a little wet and the pile is at the bottom of my field, a low area that’s a bit swampy and my boots and the wheelbarrow made slurpy sounds in the muck. I was not happy.
If anyone’s thinking of farming with animals this is something you should think about before investing. . . you have to do something with their waste and there are safety precautions and regulations to think about. Manure has to be “incorporated” within 48 hours of application, that means tilling it under. Manure can’t be stored near common water sources (ponds, wells, creeks, etc) because of run-off concerns. Remember the big stink about the government stimulus package earmarking $1.7M for hog odor research? If you lived near a large pig operation in Iowa (pigs outnumber people in that state by 8:1) you’d want somebody working on that issue. Most of that cheap bacon in the grocery store comes from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and their waste has to go somewhere and there are limits to how much can go into a nearby field. Not to go too far into the politics of farming, but if the six million plus people that live in Chicago want to eat three meals a day, cheaply, it has to come from somewhere.
Of course I’d like to feed as many people as possible with my small garden. The work I do is labor-intensive but I was brought up to think taking care of my animals and working the farm without taking short-cuts. There is no shame in work. At this point it’s also keeping expenses low in hard economic times so I can keep my CSA shares at last year’s prices. You can also buy from me, a la carte, at the new Andersonville Farmers’ Market. I’ve been accepted as a vendor at their Wednesday market which runs 4-8pm, June 24-September 9, 2009 and am looking forward to being a part of this great neighborhood.
