Category — farming and gardening

My boyfriend Jaime sent this to me. He is on his way to becoming a fancy scientist who studies the impacts of salmon farms on wild salmon populations. He is incredibly supportive and, if you can’t tell, he has a sense of humor.

from Toothpaste for Dinner

This poster was made by Veritable Vegetable for the Wild Farm Alliance.

It’s a spoof on food safety regulations that make it very difficult for growers to maintain ecologically sound growing practices (like buffers and vegetation that might provide habitat) and nudge them towards less desirable habits — like using fences, traps and poison to keep wildlife away — that undermine biodiversity and may not actually have the desired effect on food safety.

If you can’t read the tiny print. The top three read left to right: “Toxic Pesticides, Toxic Fertilizer, Fueled by Fossil Fuels” “Unknown Food Value” and “Unknown Pathogens”

The blue part says “Please grow only between the red and yellow flags. The food is patrolled for the safety of YOUR food system.”

To read a great article on alternative strategies to improve food safety while maintaining biodiversity and supporting small farms with good stewardship practices, check out this awesome report by Food and Water Watch.

If you care about the issue and want to act, consider calling your senator and asking s/he to support Senator Stabenow’s Food Safety Training bill that would help deliver training and technical assistance to small farms to help them provide safer food.

Funny how much the poster reminds me so much of these (real) signs in Singapore. But I’ll have to leave those thoughts for another post!

I’m not sure who to blame for my historic lack of interest in politics or public policy. I’m loathe to admit that until (very) recently I contributed to the dismal statistics of “young apathetics.” Like many, the 2008 election piqued my interest, but the effect was dampened by distance and humidity — watching events unfold from rural Cambodia just wasn’t the same as dancing in the streets in the Mission in SF.

But now, I’m starting to understand and really care. I’ve seen small policy take shape first-hand and it’s exciting. And I’m starting to see how much policy matters in the issues that move me.

While on the farm, Peter and Susan invited me to come along to a meeting of the Agricultural Resources Committee — a group which advised the County government on agricultural policy. The ARC was discussing farm intern policy in response to a situation in which the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) began to audit local farm’s internship practices. The state’s labor law does not currently recognize farm internships as a valid worker category unless interns are registered students at a recognized educational institution.

Thanks to work by local farmers and activists, that first conversation eventually developed into a bill sponsored by Senator Kevin Ranker, a major small farm advocate in the state. The bill will establish principles for small farm internships in the state, and will allow farms to offer internships at less than the minimum wage, given specific requirements including an internship agreement signed by the farmer and the intern which includes some sort of record of the educational/vocational component of the arrangement.

The law will make it possible for small farms to continue to hire and train a new generation of young farmers without undue financial burden. This is not meant as a way for farms to dodge the law or gain unfair advantage, but rather as a way for them to provide a much-demanded public service of educating young would-be farmers.

Now, the bill’s having its public hearing:

“Senator Ranker’s SB 6349, establishing a farm internship program, has been scheduled for public hearing before the Labor Commerce & Consumer Protection Committee on January 28th at 3:30 pm. The Senator hopes that he has several farmers and interns at the hearing. The latter will be critical in order for the bill to pass. Please pass this along to stakeholders and those who are willing to provide testimony during the public hearing.”

The tool stand in Synergy Farm’s barn

I can’t make it to Seattle, but I did write a letter of support:

Dear Senator Kohl-Welles,

I am writing in support of Washington State Senate Bill 6349, the proposed law on farm interns. As a farm intern in the San Juan Islands, I participated in the early stages of development of the bill within the San Juan County Agricultural Resources Committee and am very excited to see it move forward in the Washington state legislature.

From April to September of 2009, I apprenticed on Synergy Farm on San Juan Island with Peter and Susan Corning. During my six months at Synergy, I gained hands-on experience and knowledge about sustainable farming, plant cultivation, and the business of running a small farm.

I came to my interest in agriculture through work in Cambodia, and the experience at Synergy has been an invaluable step in my career and personal development. Now I plan to return to graduate school to study sustainable business, with an emphasis on developing local economies and food systems. I would eventually like to run my own farm and value-added food business, very likely in Washington State. The season I spent at Synergy laid a strong foundation to pursue these goals and strengthened my desire to farm in the region.

This bill would make it possible for small farms like Synergy to continue to offer hands-on technical training for a future generation of farmers and I hope you support it in the upcoming hearing.

Very sincerely,

Jess Daniel

I’m in DC! Until May!

And it’s wonderful so far.

After a brief work-jaunt to Santa Fe, I’ve settled into a lovely house with awesome housemates, gotten down into work at the office, hung out with old friends and made a few new ones.

New Friends

Introducing, Marcie, a friend of a friend from the islands. We met for first time at the farmer’s market (where else) last weekend for squash and coffee; it was, needless to say, an encounter of kindred spirits.

This Wednesday we inaugurated what I think’ll be an especially fruitful cooking partnership.

I didn’t feel like trekking to the market and the pickings were slim. Since I just arrived a week ago, I was lacking some of my usual stockpile of goodies, but I figured a little bit of creativity and some love could yield something good. On hand: rapini on sale at Whole Paycheck, a jar of white beans, yukon golds, chicken broth, and some hot Italian sausage from Cibola Farms out in Virginia. It had been a grey day, so I was thinking soup. Marcie was in agreement.

Sausages in soup

The sausage made the meal.

Cibola Farms raises free-range heritage Tamworth pigs and grassfed bison. Buffalo-pork cranberry sausage? Buffalo summer sausage? Yum! I’m curious how they process their buffalo because a source in New Mexico mentioned that the USDA inspector charges some ridiculous hourly rate to inspect “exotic animals” like bison at their mobile slaughter facility. A question for the next market.

The sausage is made by Simply Sausage, a company out in Landover, MD that packages sausages for a number of different farmers. They’ve featured recently on Smithsonian.com in this sausage-making video

Plus their website has a friendly page on storing extra sausage.

So the soup was a success: sauteing the onions and garlic until the smell wafted upstairs into my bedroom where I could smell it 3 hours later, throwing in the harder stem ends of the rapini and the potatoes, then the broth, then the sausage as an afterthought (may have been even better if we had thought to brown it with the onions). Last the leafy bits of the veg, the beans (canned and already cooked), and a healthy dose of chili powder — not an entirely intentional pour, but an entirely welcomed one.

Accompaniments

And to go along, I made a batch of the buttermilk crackers that’ve been a table staple recently. So so simple, and so so delicious, although in this case they were slightly more difficult to make since our kitchen lacks a proper baking tray. I flipped over a smallish roasting pan and used the bottom. The crackers got mostly crispy, but I definitely need to invest in a proper pan.

I’ve been stressing about my graduate school applications and Christmas and my impending move to DC. All actually very happy things, but I’m finding it all overwhelming.

Thankfully, I have these little guys to put things in perspective.

We picked up a new batch of chicks at Kruse’s Feed this weekend. They were the first chicks they’ve had in in a long time because the hatchery has been running out. My dad talked to the manager who explained that backyard chicken raising has become so popular that they just don’t have enough (girl) chickens to keep up.

Last month we processed 10 of our chickens who had stopped laying so that we could get started with another group. It seems somewhat morbid to consider the death that these adorable little creatures might someday end up in the pot too, but I eat meat and I know that whatever meat I eat was once, at some point, a cute animal, so I try to take good care of them and be properly thankful for what they provide for me.

I’m going to go out to the garage right now to say hi to them, and then it’s back to personal statements. What matters most to me and why — in 750 words or less. Oh. My. Lord.

I miss working on the farm. I miss being outside and working and getting really dirty and tired doing things. I miss looking scrubby and frumpy and not minding because I was watching things grow. I’ve only done a little bit of gardening since getting home. My dad and I made some flatting boxes so I could start some seeds, and I had some healthy chard, little broccoli and random Asian greens going.

Sadly, my lettuce never germinated… I think it was too hot even though I kept them in a shady spot. I’m going to try again now that it’s cooled down.

But anyway, I prepped a bed to take the baby brassicas. Not quite double-digging, but loosening up the dirt to about 12 inches with a spading fork and adding in some sifted compost from a batch I started last time I was home in December.

I transplanted forty or so seedlings — chard and a bunch of brassicas — late in the afternoon, optimal time, and gave them a good sprinkle. I came back the next couple of days to check on them and they seemed to be adjusting very nicely to their new surroundings.

Then just before Thanksgiving, I went out to the garden to behold carnage…

Something nasty had gotten to my little plants.

My first thought was DEER. Then I remembered where I was… in the middle of suburban Orange County. We barely see squirrels. I wondered if opossums ate broccoli? My mom guessed it was a bug, but I wasn’t convinced. I hadn’t seen any snails or slugs or really anything much other than pill bugs and earthworms and the damage was so fast and so total. Plus, whatever it was was discerning. They ate all the tender baby mustards and left the chard. Picky pests.

On Thanksgiving, I brought my grandma out to see the carnage. She didn’t have a clue, so I asked her to do some sleuthing next time she was on a volunteer shift at our local arboretum. By Saturday I had my answer.

RABBITS

WASCALY WABBITS

The plant expert said that a snail or bug would eat the plant down to the roots, not just the leaves. And immediately, I remembered riding my bike down the street early in the day a while back and noticing a cute little bunny. Now, not so cute.

So today, I made a fence.

Makeshift, but I think it’ll do the trick. If not, I can always go collect some cat pee to sprinkle around the perimeter.

I wonder if rabbits like spinach or arugula?

Or little pea shoots? They are pretty gourmet. I guess I have to go on a little scavenger hunt for materials for a second fence!

Some family friends invited me and my parents out for a wine picnic last weekend. Napa and Sonoma are known as wine kings today, but in the past, the Southland (and San Bernadino in particular) boasted acres of vineyards and a number of well known vintners.

As you can see by the bottle sagging with the weight of its medals, some products like Rancho de Philo’s Triple Cream Sherry can still hold their own.

Our first stop was at Rancho de Philo in Alta Loma. Each year, the winery opens up for just one week for sales to the public. We munched on snacks and tasted the different vintages, while other from our party stood in line to pick up their year’s supply.  The wine’s made from mission grapes brought over way-back-when by the Spanish missionaries. The founder, Philo Blaine learned his sherry-making techniques back in Spain and then passed them on to his daughter Janine who runs the place now with her husband, Alan.

Janine was standing outside and handed me this sample as she talked about her childhood, growing up and learning the grapes.

Later, we headed over to Galleano winery in Mira Loma, not too far away. We drove down the freeway, through some suburbs and a couple of car dealerships and ended up at a driveway turn-in that looked a little like the entrance to a corporate park.

Instead of manicured lawns and tortured palms, we were greeted by a beautiful oasis of rural calm. We pulled out our picnic gear, and went to coo over the donkeys and guinea pigs before settling down to our meal.

I brought buttermilk lavash crackers and rosemary-meyer lemon bean dip.

And arugula and cherry tomato pasta salad with fresh herb sauce (everything from the garden!)

It was a seriously impressive spread — just the kind of thing to fill your stomach before wine tasting!

Mini pickles, quiche, black beans, corn & red pepper salad, wild rice salad, crudites, and fresh mozzarella & tomatoes on lettuce.

Another wonderful place to add to the Good Food Map:

Other articles about Rancho de Philo, Galleano, and San Bernadino Wine Country

• Rancho de Philo in Inland Living Magazine
• Rancho de Philo in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
• Wine history in the Inland Empire’s Sun
• Galleano’s website

October’s come and gone, but I had to post this picture of me in the pumpkin patch at Tanaka Farms in Irvine. This is a two-part post, so if you have no patience and just came from the food, then click here to skip ahead to the recipe for pumpkin gnocchi.

I dragged Christina down to South County to get my farm fix. It was a wonderland of tiny adorable children and rows and rows and rows of perfect organic glowing orange pumpkins. Tanaka opens up a you-pick pumpkin patch every year and families flock from miles around (they’ve also got Strawberry tours in late spring and watermelon tours in the summertime).

Many kids already know the farm because it hosts field trips during the week and also sponsors an awesome CSA program that doubles as a fundraiser for local schools, business, and churches. It’s brilliant. Tanaka packs and delivers the boxes to the schools, but the schools handle all the subscriptions and collections. Subscribers pay $25 per week. The farm pockets $20 per box, and the PTA gets to keep $5. They’ve got a great list of participating schools and examples of what goes into their boxes on their website.

We were a little late in the game, just a week or so before Halloween, but there were still plenty of gems to be had. The pumpkins were already cut and the vines had died back, so there was minimal pricking and poking as we selected our prizes.

Yes, that is an LA Fitness tent you see in that third picture. Not so good for the ambiance. Would you like a spin class with that kabocha squash? Oh, the subtle joys of Orange County!

Afterwards, Mr. Pumpkin sat on my counter for a couple of weeks. I meant to carve him, but he was on the small side and I was on the lazy side so it just never got done. Afterwards, though, I was grateful because I got to turn Mr. Pumpkin into not one, but two delicious dishes for the Good Food Potluck: Pumpkin & White Bean Chili (a la April McGreger of Grist) and pumpkin gnocchi, inspired by the beautiful and talented Jaden of Steamy Kitchen.

The gnocchi was a huge hit. Soon after the party, my mum got an email from a family friend asking for the recipe for “those yummy little nugget things.” Score!

That’s me, serving up the gnocchi. Funny faces behind belong to my “Uncle” Chuck (left) and Dad (right).

That’s what it looks like when it’s in the frying pan — aren’t they a pretty golden color? For some really gorgeous photos of this recipe, check out Steamy Kitchen.

Pumpkin Patch Gnocchi

Adapted from Pan-fried Pumpkin Gnocchi from Steamy Kitchen
Serves 6-8

I made a couple of changes to the recipe, in particular, adding the steps to cook down the fresh pumpkin. Ideally, you’d use a sweet pumpkin or squash, but ornamental Mr. Pumpkin actually did just fine. You’ll only need part of the pumpkin, so you can save the rest of the raw pumpkin for a curry or chili, or cook it all down in the next step so you’ll have pumpkin puree for pie or ravioli. Be sure to keep a light hand when mixing, or your yummy little nuggets will turn into yucky little chewies. This means in the mixing step, just turn over the dough a few times until combined, then stop!

1 cup skim milk ricotta
1/4 medium sized pumpkin, about 1 1/2 pounds, or 1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup freshly grated parmegiano reggiano, plus more for serving
2 eggs
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, sifted and more for dusting
5 tablespoons butter, and possibly more for frying
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
10 fresh sage leaves

Preheat oven to 300F

1. If you’re dealing with a whole pumpkin, carefully cut it in half, then in quarters. Scrape out the insides with a spoon, saving the seeds for roasting later! You’ll use about 1/4 of a medium pumpkin or 1 1/2 lbs. Cut this piece into 4 chunks, leaving the skin on.

2. Put the chunks in a steaming basket in a pot and add 2 inches of water. Steam for about 20 minutes on medium heat until the pumpkin is tender and begins to be transluscent. Drain the water and let cool for 5-10 minutes. Peel the skin from the pumpkin and chop into 1-inch cubes.

3. At this point, if you have a ricer, you can rice the pumpkin for an even more fluffy gnocchi. I only had a blender, so I put the cubes in my blender until the lumps were gone.

4. Add two tablespoons of butter to a large saucepan on medium-low heat. Add pumpkin puree to the pan and cook for about 10 minutes, until the pumpkin has reduced by about half and the color has deepened to a golden brown.

5. Combine ricotta, pumpkin, parmagiano, yolk, zest and salt in large bowl. Mix well. Sprinkle half of the flour on the mixture, gently turn with spatula a few times to incorporate. Dump mixture on clean, lightly floured countertop or you can still do this in the bowl. Sprinkle remaining flour on top of the mixture. Gently knead with your fingertips, just bringing together the mixture until flour is incorporated through. This only should take a minute or two. Any longer and you will be over-kneading.

6. Dust a clean, dry surface with a generous sprinkling of flour. Divide dough into 2 parts. Working with one part, press into a rectangle 1/2-inch thick. With a pastry cutter, or sharp knife, cut the rectangle into strips 1/2-inch wide, then cut each strip into “nuggets” about 3/4” long. At this point, you can do fancy things to the gnocchi like rolling them on a gnocchi board, but I think they’re pretty cute as is.

7. Heat a large frying pan or saute pan with 1 tablespoon of the butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. When hot, add a few gnocchi – enough to cover surface but not touch each other. Fry on medium heat for 1-2 minutes, turn and fry for another 1-2 minutes. Remove gnocchi, place on large baking sheet to put into oven to keep warm. Repeat with rest of gnocchi, add butter and oil to the pan as necessary.

8. When all gnocchi is finished, discard butter/oil in pan and clean pan with paper towel. Heat pan on medium heat and when hot, add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter and the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. When hot, add the fresh sage. Let the sage brown and sizzle (but not burn) for a couple of minutes until very fragrant. Remove the sage and discard. To the pan, add the balsamic vinegar and whisk. Let simmer on low for 1 minute and pour over the gnocchi.

Other delicious sweet and savory things to do with pumpkin:

My first article in the Fullerton Observer was about gleaning: gathering leftover crops (or forlorn backyard fruit) to reduce waste and feed ourselves. After my granddad Tom read the article, he sent me a short note of grandpa praise and mentioned that gleaning was a biblical term and the act of gleaning was something that came up more than once in that Good Book. I was raised a Catholic, and Catholics don’t read the bible, so this was news to me. Upon further investigation, I found this passage:

Leviticus 23:22:

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger.

Pretty straightforward, eh? If you’ve got a lot, you can spare a little for those who have less.

I separate gleaning into a couple of categories: the large-ish organized operation that rescues otherwise wasted food and distributes it to those who need it (more biblical), and the self-serving, recreational kind (more hedonistic). Thus far, I’ve mostly participated in the latter.

I gathered some fruit on the island — figs and plums and blackberries and such. I love the treasure-hunt-ish-ness of it all. Seeking out the perfect berry patch or serendipitously falling on a pear tree and coming back week-to-week to check on its progress. One might think that Orange County isn’t the place for such things, but in fact, there’s a surprising bounty of delicious fruits just crying out to be picked. Just here in my neighborhood, there are avocados, grapes, all kinds of citrus, plums, apricots, apples, figs, guavas, pomegranates, and persimmons.

A friend, Rory, passed on a map he started of some good picking sites in Fullerton. You can visit his version here. Or, I’ve added his entries to some of my own on the Good Food OC map.

Yesterday was my first time foraging in the suburban jungle. A family friend, Lynne, who’s well-apprised of my crazy food tendencies, invited me and my mum to go pick a friend’s Meyer Lemon tree. We got more than 50 lbs and left plenty of ripe and ripening fruit. It was fun.

My pretty mom picking lemons.

Lynne putting a few into the basket, and the haul, back at home.

Later, mum squeezed a bunch for lemonade. Then we made a batch of ridiculously delicious lemon marmalade. The entire house smelled like lemon drops for the rest of the day.

It’s a wonderful recipe from Elise at Simply Recipes. You can get her step-by-step instructions here. All it takes is lemons, water, and sugar in a 1:1:1 ratio.

It’s a two-step cooking process, and then there’s the canning… in all, it took us about 2.5 hours to make 10 jars 8oz jars of jam.

First you prep the lemons…

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum!

Sites to check out about gleaning:

• Neighborhood Fruit — A site to help find and share fruit locally on public and private land — over 10,000 trees registered.
• Fallen Fruit — An activist art project dedicated to public fruit gleaning and sharing. They do exhibits, public action and mapping public fruit in the LA area.
• Second Harvest Food Bank Gleaning Volunteers — Orange County Food Bank that grows food on donated land and uses volunteers to help harvest; also does gleaning of commercial operations, though it’s more rare since there aren’t so many local farms anymore.
• How-to Guide to Setting up a Gleaning Project from Relocalize.net
• Society of St. Andrew – Huge church-based gleaning network that distributed over 12 million pounds of fresh produce in 2008.

*sniff* I’ve said goodbye to Jess’s Many Mini Adventures in order to fully embrace the new, lovely oh-so-complex wordpress world of goodfoodhappyplanet.

I’ll flatter myself and pretend you noticed that I haven’t written much lately. I could explain it by saying that I’ve been hard at work on my graduate school applications, but in part, it’s because I got this crazy idea that I NEEDED Wordpress and that I NEEDED to teach myself a bunch of CSS to customize templates and put sidebars where I want them.

Plus, the name — good food happy planet. It got in my brain and it stuck. It’s the essence of everything I’m about these days. I couldn’t shake it. So here I am. And I’ve made a pledge to certain folks that I’m going to start writing for real again instead of fiddling with php and installing plugins that I’ll probably never use.

Things to look forward to in the coming weeks:

• A long overdue post on the Island Growers Coop & mobile slaughter unit on the islands
• Another long-overdue on the amazing wonderland that is the Bullocks Permaculture Homestead.
• Updates on the grad program landscape in sustainable ag
• Escapades in the local newspaper
• Panegyric on a 70-year-old olive can labeling machine (yes, I just took the GRE)

But first, for the sake of closure, here’s the goodbye letter I posted at my old home. Don’t forget to update your bookmarks!