Category — farming and gardening

Hooray for summer! Every day on the farm brings new, exciting, and delicious bounties. Lately, the summer squash has gone for broke, and we’re swimming in bright green zucchinis, stripy zucchinis, pattypans, and this curious fellow:

This year, one of our seed suppliers, Johnny’s, sent out the wrong seeds to everyone who ordered Costata Romanesca squash. In fact, the lovely round squash isn’t a Costata at all, but something else: still delicious and prolific, but rounder and slightly wetter than what we bargained for.

Turns out the mystery squash is perfect for zucchini bread. The seeds inside (even a larger one) aren’t too big, so I just chopped off the stem, cut the squash in wedges, and used a food processor to shred it all.

I tested three recipes, a traditional sweetish walnut-cinnamon-nutmeg loaf, a slightly zany nutty loaf with a secret ingredient, adapted from 101 cookbooks and a savory zucchini-basil muffin recipe, adapted from a message board post on a Chowhound message board.

The tasting panel generally agreed that the zucchini basil muffins won out, with the zany recipe not far behind. The more traditional recipe turned out too dry and slightly over-sweet. It could have done with some soaked raisins and extra zucchini.

Since I was making three recipes, I cut all the batches in half, and the resulting recipes are what came of those adjustments, plus my own small customizations. I added extra basil to the muffins, because it’s tough to overdo it with fresh basil; I changed the ingredients slightly on the “Special Zucchini Bread” to include sesame seeds and ground ginger, and reserved half of the mix’ns to sprinkle on the top for crunch. When I halved a recipe that called for 3 eggs, I used a peewee egg, plus a regular egg, but a yolk would do just fine.

And the winner is…

FIRST PLACE: Zucchini Basil Muffins
Adapted from the LA Times by way of Chowhound.

1 large egg
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup oil
1 c. all purpose flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup shredded mystery zucchini (or any other type should work fine)
3 tbsp sweet basil, finely minced
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese to top

Beat egg in bowl, stir in milk and oil, then mix in sugar.

Sprinkle baking powder and salt evenly on top.

Mix in flour until just moistened, then gently mix in zucchini and basil.

Fill a well-buttered muffin tin so that the cups are nearly full (slightly more than 3/4). Sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 450 degrees, 20-25 minutes.

Makes 6-9 muffins. You can easily double for a bigger batch.

RUNNER UP with special mention: Special Zucchini Bread with sesame crunch
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1 cup chopped walnuts
zest of one lemon
2 tbsp crystallized ginger, finely chopped
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 tbsp sesame seeds

1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup fine grain natural cane sugar or brown sugar, lightly packed
1 large egg + one yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup grated zucchini
1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or all-purpose flour)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tbsp curry powder

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Butter one 5×9 loaf pan, dust it with a bit of flour and set aside.

In a small bowl combine the walnuts, sesame seeds, lemon zest, and gingers. Set aside.

In a mixer, beat the butter until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat again until mixture comes together and is no longer. Add the eggs, mixing well and scraping down the sides of the bowl between each addition. Stir in the vanilla and then the zucchini (low speed if you are using a mixer).

Sprinkle the baking soda on top of the mixture. Then sprinkle on the salt and curry powder as evenly as possible. Add the flour in 1/2 cup at a time, stirring until just incorporated each time. After the last batch of flour, fold in half of the walnut, sesame, ginger mixture.

Put the batter in the greased pan, making sure it is level with a spatula or the back of a spoon. Then sprinkle on the other half of the walnut, ginger, lemon mixture.

Bake for about 40-45 minutes on a middle oven rack. Check the bread after 35 minutes and cover if it begins to brown too quickly. The loaf will be done when an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Take the loaf out from the oven and let cool for about ten minutes, then remove from the pan onto wire racks to finish cooling.

Makes one loaf. To double, use 3 eggs instead of 1 egg + one yolk.

Last Friday our newest cohort of laying hens laid their first peewee egg and it was perfectly shaped and adorable.

Young female chickens are called pullets. Our pullets are Rhode Island Reds, just like the rest of the flock, and they’re around 5 months old, just the age to begin popping out eggs. Apparently, many chickens lay misshapen, funky creations when they first start out, but all we’ve had so far is three perfectly proportioned, if mini, eggs.

Some farmers purport that peewee eggs are the best eggs. I haven’t yet cracked my peewee, and I guess by now it’s already past the peak of freshness, but I can see why people might jump on that bandwagon since things like mini carrots and mini zucchinis and other small foods seem to be quite popular (much to the dismay of Farmer Susan, who rightly thinks it’s a waste of the plant’s potential, of bed space and nutritious soil).

But there’s a short window between peewees and the major leagues (USDA medium, large, and jumbo eggs): only 3-4 more weeks from first peewee to those eggs you find in grocery store cartons. In the meantime, perhaps I should be hoarding all the tiny eggs I can find and popping them like vitamins, kinda like this guy.

We have around 500 pounds of garlic in the barn, and I’m quite sure any Count Dracula roaming the island by night is going to give us wide berth.

This week on the farm, we’ve hit upwards of 90 degrees, but last week, it was dripping cold, wet rain. Oh, Pacific Northwest and your multiple meteorological personalities! In some climes, folks leave their garlic bulbs in the ground to dry out, but the wet weather meant that we had to get those puppies out ASAP or face the wrath of the gods of mold and mildew.

So over a couple of hours, broken up by spits and spurts of rain, Susan, Lucy, Colin and I harvested the garlic from 4 beds, about 600 square feet in all. The cloves had been planted on October 15th of last year into 4 inches of our own farm compost where it germinated and grew and then overwintered under a layer of straw mulch. Something magical happened between then and July because the plants were tall and strong and the white tops of the bulbs peeking up from the wet soil looked more like good-sized onions than garlic.

We carefully loosened the soil around the bulbs with a broadfork inserted 3-4 inches away, so as to keep from piercing the bulbs. Then we pulled. And pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Until all 1500 or so bulbs were free from the soil and safely carted off to racks in the barn to dry.

Me and Susan installing t-tape in the garlic back in April or May when the garlic was still pretty small and hadn’t even started to produce curly, crunchy scapes. Eventually, the plants grew to at least twice this height, and started to turn brown and crispy along the edges.

What didn’t fit on racks ended up stacked wherever there was a flat surface: on the floor on top of empty feed bags and at the potting stations.

Most of the garlic was “Music” hard-neck garlic, but some was another hard-neck variety with beautiful purple veins on the papery skins and climbing up through the stems.

The next day, I tied and hung those extra bulbs up in the back of the barn, 10 bulbs to a bunch, four bunches to a hook. The s-hooks were made of 9-gauge wire, skillfully looped over a lowish beam so that they could be shimmied left or right along the beam to make room for the rest.

Susan and I weighed some bulbs and found that they ended up somewhere around 3-to-a-pound. Big and bulging, with something like 5 or 6 kumquat-sized cloves to a bulb. We all took some back to our kitchens (Lucy held no punches, and went straight for double green garlic soup) and some got all clean and dolled up to sell in the farm store.

It’s hard to believe that its nearing the end of June. I’ve been on the farm nearly 3 months, or half of my tenure. It feels like no time has passed, and yet it also feels like so much has happened and I’ve taken in so much.

I’d like to do a better job documenting everything I’ve been learning in a more thorough way… I haven’t been keeping a daily journal, but a look around the farm makes it very clear just how much has happened since I’ve arrived.

That’s one thing really wonderful thing about gardening — you can really see the fruits of your labor. Seeding flats, digging, composting, watering, weeding, thinning: the tasks yield results that you can see and feel and taste; to me, that’s exciting and fulfilling.

On my recent road trip to Portland, I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. At one point, Gladwell discusses the three criteria for meaningful work: “autonomy, complexity [i.e., it occupies your mind], and a connection between effort and reward.” It seems to me that small-scale farming has all three in abundance, especially once you have your own piece of land.

Sweet basil starts transplanted for sale at the farmers’ market

Thai basil growing in deep flats in the greenhouse

Carrots with fallen tops disturbed by a late thinning. This 100 sq ft bed will yield at least 1600 big fat carrots. Remember when we planted these?

Red Ace beets have been part of the harvest the past 2 weeks — soon to come: Chioggas!

Lettuce successions…

We transplant 2 new 100 sq ft beds each week to ensure enough lettuce through the season

Tomatoes are just starting to ripen. We’re crossing our fingers for some early red ones for the Fourth of July.

Broccoli didn’t do well this year, perhaps because of the 5 days of extreme heat in the beginning of June

But the cabbages are looking beautiful — ready to go in a few weeks

Stuttgarter onions, planted in May, starting to flower

Winter leeks, just in the ground

In the outer garden, summer squash bloom prolifically. Baby zucchini get longer day-by-day.

We’ve been harvesting new potatoes for the past two weeks. The purple flowers are from fingerling potatoes which should be ready to harvest pretty soon.

Peas are in their heyday…

We expect maybe two more weeks of heavy harvest before the vines are spent.

Beans are still small, but coming along.

Summer heat sends spinach bolting. The last harvest was last week. Now the leaves are all too too bitter.

Winter crops push their way up in the warm flathouse. There’s no rest for the year-round farmer…

Our farm plants mostly follows the biointensive method, which was largely popularized by an amazing man named John Jeavons. More on him later, but the basic idea of biointensive growing is to grow a lot more food on a lot less land while maintaining and improving the soil and considering other aspects of sustainability like water use.

Jeavons’ biointensive model is mostly directed at small, subsistence type gardens and it has been wildly successful helping growers in developing countries like Kenya. Biointensive requires labor and don’t necessarily scale easily — for example, planting in extremely close-set hexagonal patterns rather than rows makes drip irrigation difficult to install and makes weeding with a hoe mostly impossible. So here at Synergy, the farmers have done all they can to adopt the aspects of biointensive that make the most sense and tweak other pieces to fit the requirements of a market garden.

One of the parts of biointensive that we do use, that’s different from some other types of farming is the process of “flatting and pricking out.” Many farmers sow seeds directly into the ground, sometimes by hand, often with a tractor with a seeder attachment or another type of tool.

Instead, we plant our seeds into 3” by 14” by 23” flats. Once the seedlings have reached a good size (their cotelydon leaves — or “seed leaves” — are up, and their roots are well developed, but not too long, we transplant or “prick out” these seedlings into a deeper flat 6” by 14” by 11.5.”

Seeding bush and pole beans into a flat with 1” spacing.

This process of seeding, pricking out, and then transplanting into a bed accomplishes a few different things. The first four are things Jeavons notes in his most famous gardening book, the last one is something we’ve taken advantage of here on the farm.

• Even spacing means better growing conditions for plants: seeding into flats, pricking out, and then transplanting ensures that each plant has equal space and equal access to sunlight, nutrients, and water
• Double selection means healthier plants in the garden: By selecting for the healthiest seedlings during pricking out, and then again during transplanting, you ensure that you’re picking the best squash or peas or cucumber plants for your garden. This way, you won’t end up with wasted garden space;
• Saving water: Starting seeds in flats uses less water than direct seeding.
• Transplanting stimulates plant growth: Moving seedlings into a new environment with fresh, loose soil means they have a chance to snack on fresh nutrients in new dirt that hasn’t yet been compacted.
• Many flats can live in flathouses or coldframes, which is an easy and economical way to lengthen the growing season: Flatting seeds and keeping them warm in our flathouse allows us to get a headstart on some plants weeks before the outdoor soil temperatures (and even greenhouse temperatures) are high enough.

With all that explanation, here’s a little demonstration of what pricking out looks like:

1 shallow flat of squash seedlings will fit into 3 1/2 deep flats. I pricked these out back in may; first, I prepped the soil in the deeper flats, a mix of half old stuff and half new potting mix from Gardner and Bloome.

Then I water in the flats with a can and check the dampness with a water meter — around 7 will be perfect for planting. Be careful of too much water — seeds can drown!

The dibber (best name ever?!) pokes holes big enough to accomodate the plants’ roots. They’re spaced 2” apart with the help of the fencing frame I put over the top.

The past two Thursday mornings, I’ve woken up at 4:30 a.m. to take Lucy to her early shift at the bakery. We’ve had some hot afternoons, and despite growing up in California, I don’t always cherish the sweat that comes with composting and digging in the heat; plus, I tend to really like mornings, so getting to work early is actually something of a treat.

So on these early mornings, I’ve started off double digging beds. The lovely Lucy says more about that here, but basically it involves clearing a bed of old plants and weeds, moving around the topsoil and forking the subsoil to aerate things and make them nice and fluffy to accommodate new plants.

Anyway, this past Thursday, my bed just happened to be full of bunches of volunteer potato plants, which I had to pull up as weeds. Happy surprise, when I forked up the roots and pulled up the poisonous green leaves, I was rewarded with bunches of new potatoes!

New potatoes are just as they sound: the little new potatoes that form first on potato plants. They don’t store too well because their skins haven’t yet hardened, so you don’t always find them in supermarkets, but their thin skins and buttery soft texture makes them absolutely delicious and perfect for potato salads and all kinds of yummy dishes that call for minimal prep and potatoes at their most potatoey.

Brand Spankin’ New Potatoes with Dill

1 pound new Yukon Gold potatoes, washed well
1 tbsp dill
2 tbsp butter
salt to taste

Cut bigger potatoes into manageable chunks (or not, if you don’t mind cooking a little longer). Steam potatoes in a steaming basket for 15-20 minutes, or until done (you can check by poking one gently with a fork).

Throw into a bowl, and toss with butter and dill while still hot. Add salt to taste (more if you’re using unsalted butter)

The simple bowl of potatoes goes quickly in a crowd.

The potatoes are the perfect topping on a bed of greens. We also added some blackened pink salmon chunks, roasted pumpkin seeds, and black olives for our own Northwest version of salad nicoise.

If I ever have my own farm, I think I want to focus on some kind of value added product. This article has me gunning for dry-cured meats.

I can still remember with joy the Palacio de Jamon and Museo de Jamon in Madrid, and the thin flavorful slices of pink goodness. And wouldn’t it be awesome to produce my own amazing version of this Jamon Iberico Bellota selling for 105 euros per kilo? Apparently Bellota hams command such a high price because the pigs forage for acorns and producers must provide at least one hectare of land per pig.

Jamon Iberico
thanks mtoz

According to this article, the first whole Iberian Jamon de Bellota hams were imported to the US only in 2008. Just this January, less than a year after their arrival, they’ve come up against US import restrictions which will required that the hams signature black hooves be removed for “food safety” reasons. Boo.

A quick Google search doesn’t help me figure out whether I could procure Iberian piglets somehow in the states. I did find three postings on ag-search sites from folks looking for their own acorn-eating porkies.

On the other hand, maybe I’ll try to go into cheesemaking (passe!) or fermentation of my own fresh produce (too trendy!) or hard wheat to sell into a local market.

Ah, the joys of dreaming.

Museo de Jamon in Plaza del Sol, Madrid
thanks shoey

The babies arrived today.

Peter was at the post office when it opened to pick up our 123 new chicks.

Lucy and I were on “mom” duty for the day, checking on our broods every hour to monitor the temperature in the hoop houses out on the pasture. Baby chicks need to be kept at 90 degrees for the first week or so of their lives, which means a lot of raising and lowering of heat lamps and opening and shutting of the vent flaps on the side of our hoop house.

The very first thing we had to do, though, was teach the little ones how to drink. Each chirpy fluff had to be carefully lifted out of the cardboard mailing crate, dipped beak-first, carefully in a water tray, and then placed in the enclosure with its mates. The little guys and gals haven’t had a drop to drink since their hatching the day before and this little baptism ensures that they get the idea of H20 and don’t get dehydrated.

Our birdies got the idea all right, and were soon hopping over one another to splash into tiny water trough like hot little kids in a fountain in summer. Once in, they dip their little beaks down, scoop out a few drops, then throw their heads back to gulp gulp gulp. This week we have temperatures in the 80s, which is good, because in our last batch, 3 little birdies who got too wet in the trough ended up with fatal cases of hypothermia.

They really are adorable, but it’s easy not to get too attached since we’re now all-too-intimate with where they’ll eventually end up.

Sunday was the day of reckoning for our brood of 105 broilers and 26 too-old-for-laying hens.

Ten of us worked from 8 am to 3 pm, killing, scalding, plucking, eviscerating, and cleaning the chickens.

I’ve posted a photo essay of the experience here (sorry for the slow loading), out of respect for folks who read this, but don’t necessarily want to see the photos.

I had never killed a chicken before (the only thing similar in size was a salmon, and that was a much less technical, hands-on operation). I don’t tend to be squeamish, so I expected it would be fine, and for the most part, it was. I tried my hand at cutting and bleeding the chickens — sobering, and bloody, but not gross. I plucked feathers — stinky, and sometimes unpleasant, but not unbearable.

Evisceration, even more than slitting the bird’s throat, seemed like the most intimate and powerful part of the process. Picking up a cold chicken and sticking your hand into its warm guts, pulling out bits of grass, separating the organs, finding half-formed eggs: this is where it seemed like we were really transforming the bird from chicken to meat.

Despite the headiness, nothing about the sight or feel of the chicken disgusted me or made me feel queasy. It was only the smell that managed to turn my stomach a few times, and by three-o-clock, my sleeves drenched in chicken juices, I was definitely ready to be done.

before

after

Lucy spotted them while we were putting up trellises this morning. The plants were transplanted into the beds about 3 weeks ago and have been battling with the schizophrenic elements — frosty nights, warm, warm days.

Despite the hardship (or maybe because of it? I suppose plants can get going early due to stress) here’s are our first Stupice tomatoes: