Crazy weather.  It was 14 degrees, and then it was 50.  After freezing solidly, it rained for two days, and my boots sank ankle-deep in mud, trying to salvage a few more things from the garden, and to pick a salad.  Pick a salad??  After market exhaustion, other work, and some travel, I did a spectacularly poor job this fall with arranging low tunnels or cold frames to ensure our winter salads.  There is no lettuce.  The kale is damaged but hasn’t given up.  Unbelievably, I did not do my fall planting of spinach, or mache.

salad picked in December mud needs several washings.....

And yet, we continue to eat great salads.  This is the time of year when salad comes into one of its fullest degrees of appreciation, for me.  This is the season of mashed potatoes, soups, soft cooked vegetables, grains, and meat-eating.  I quickly begin to crave crisp cool crunchiness.

So what’s for salad if I failed to plant some of the staples and house them under cover for the winter?

I am a big scavenger when it comes to greens.  I guess I don’t know if I just find tasty things that most other people won’t eat, or if there is a huge untapped potential here, and you just have to know how to prepare and season it.   I like to think it’s the second one.  But there are so many people who are convinced they don’t like flavorful greens, or anything with any bitter undertones.

....a good salad spinner is essential.

cold brings out the reds in the greens

So tonight’s salad - collected at dusk, in the cold breeze, and with that mud bogging me into the ground:  There is some gorgeous tatsoi under a light covering - I gathered the outer leaves from some of the rosettes, leaving the rest.  It tolerates cold and freezing amazingly well, and its thick succulent dark green leaves stand in perfectly for spinach.  Then, I moved on to the remains of the kale plants - the young small leaves in their centers are tender and easy to eat raw.  The hearts of a few spent celery plants continue to send up pale soft leaves - these and a bit of the baby celery under them go into the salad.  A stray radicchio brings color and flavor. (I leave the base of the plant to grow more.) A few small center leaves from the fading chard plants (they overwinter and send up useable baby leaves if mulched heavily or covered.)  And baby curly endive that didn’t get far this fall, but may survive under the mulch, rounds out the bitter greens part of the salad.  If it was early spring, I’d be adding the first dandelion greens.  The mache has self-seeded for random rosettes popping up here and there throughout the garden.

A salad like this can be helped, or a bitter edge to it can be softened, by some of the veggies no longer in the garden, but in cool storage.  Thin slices of red cabbage, chunks of savoy cabbage, matchsticks of carrot, kholrabi, or jerusalem artichoke, or finely shaved fennel, all add more crunch, or a neutral element, or a subtle sweetness.  Sometimes I grate raw beets into salad.  We grow it all in the backyard - no petroleum miles on this salad, noone’s E.coli contamination. The brighter, stronger the colors, the more nutrition.  A pale grocery-store romaine with bland tomato wedges is not on our menu.

I would much rather have seeded beautiful beds of winter greens in a greenhouse, at just the right time, and be picking new plants under cover, and have lettuce and spinach in our mix.  Sadly, we’re not quite there yet, and we seemed to have missed the boat this fall in particular.  Maybe next year…maybe next year.   But it’s still remarkable what can be had for greens now, even without that greenhouse.

For those who are still skeptical about eating anything stronger than lettuce:  It can totally change your mind to try some of these greens, when the mix is good, you put some toppings on it, and a dressing is well-chosen.  I make a lot of my own salad dressings.  One favorite is a sweet-ish dressing made with our maple syrup, olive oil, sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, frozen raspberries, a dash of mustard, and a finely minced shallot.  This, over a bitter salad, with some raisins or dried cherries, chopped dates, or grapefruit wedges, or pumpkin seeds, can be fantastic.  A little grated asiago or parmesan cheese, or crumbled feta, or maybe a softly cooked egg, or a chopped hard-boiled one… there are so many ways to use a base of greens like this. Another great dressing for a salad on the bitter side is a classic Italian dressing traditionally served over puntarelle:  Tons of mashed raw garlic, mashed anchovies, salt, olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, red wine vinegar.   Something about this combination with a bitter green brings out a sweet aftertaste, and it can be totally addictive.

I think maybe it’s a good thing we don’t grow lettuce year-round, even being salad-lovers.  It makes me experiment…it helps us learn how to make other things taste good…and you can feel how nutritious these alternative greens are for your body, when you give them a chance!

This blog is not abandoned.  :)

It didn’t even go off my radar, get forgotten, nor did I take a deliberate break from it. I am a diarist at heart, and most days this fall when I’ve been in the garden, bringing in the harvest, or walking in nature, I have composed a blog post in my head.  The trouble is with the time it takes to transfer from thought to paper or computer.

I thought of a blog post as we wrapped up the final market day, and switched our focus from feeding other people, to preparing our own winter food supply.

Our table last day at the Westside Farmers Market - incredible celery, leeks, and celeriac this fall.

I thought of a blog post as the first frosts hit and we started to say goodbye to the garden, and began to light a fire in the woodstove daily.

I thought of a blog post as we dug potatoes, and more potatoes ….and more potatoes.

Tiredly, I thought often about posting about the sanctuary I felt in the garden, even if for only half an hour of twilight at the end of a frantically busy work day.

Last big harvest before frost.

I thought of a blog post as I walked through a wooded patch, hearing the birds, noticing how green the moss looks after a rain, when everything else has turned into winter browns.

I thought of a reactionary blog post every time I listened to news about Occupy Wall Street, “consumer confidence”, anti-consumerism, and the Plastic Ocean.

I composed words in my head about our harvest as it filled every bin, bucket, and tray we had, as we worked in the rain and by flashlight to bring the last of the perishables in by the first hard frost.

But with all this doing, our hands have been a bit busy for blog posting.  I am continually thankful and amazed by the enormous amount of food two people working two other jobs can produce from a tiny little plot of land.  We grow so much of what we eat now.  Eggs, chicken, greens of all sorts, beans, potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, celery, celeriac, rutabega, squash, popcorn, apples, berries, herbs, onions, garlic, leeks, radishes, carrots.  Our own pickles, krauts, jams, sauces, cider.  So much to write about, and so little time to write!

Remains of the market garden

Some people call us a farm.  Some are amused that we call ourselves a farm.  Some get grand ideas in their head of how we must live and what the garden looks like, imagining an orderly organic utopia.  Sometimes their silence when they come to visit seems to tell of their disappointment.  We are small.  The “market field” is just a big messy garden.   The shutters are falling off the house because most days, we’re too darn busy or exhausted to fix them.  Our furniture is mismatched, and our kitchen needs remodeling.  This is what it looks like to live as much as we can right now from a patch of land, trying to reduce the need to buy, to turn less garbage loose into the world than we might. This is what it looks like to make do, purchase less, grow more, work hard.

Digging potatoes, and immediately replanting the bed with endive seedlings - just barely visible at the top of the photo.

And yet, somehow, we manage to grow enough beautiful produce to sell to others while feeding ourselves.    Somehow, we had an enormous Thanksgiving supper where the only store-bought ingredients I used in the cooking were milk, butter, cream cheese, salt, pepper, flour, arrowroot powder, olive oil, vinegar, anchovies, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, sugar, and wine.  There was so much joy and pride in roasting the 10 lb 3 oz “turkey” chicken who grew running around in our back yard, and so much peace and fulfillment in carrying baskets of greens and roots in from the garden, rather than braving the crowd at the grocery store.

The promoters of monoculture farming retaliate against the rise of interest in local food.  They try to win support by saying we can’t feed the world with small farmers, local produce, and organic techniques.  Yet I don’t see how 7 billion+ people will eat sustainably without digging up our lawns to grow chemical-free food.  I’m thankful for those who grow their own, or support others who do.   I’m thankful for the shoppers I know who are trying to buy less, buy locally, and use less plastic (in all senses of the word).  For me, Thanksgiving is about celebrating what bounty we can produce, rather than what bounty we can buy.  It’s about celebrating the wonder of being able to grow our food.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The garden’s a mess.  Torrential rains, followed by extreme heat, kept us back from some of the work we might have done to keep it tidy at crucial times.  Plants are sprawling all over each other, “rows” have run together, and some of the weeds are sky-high.

It doesn’t seem to be interfering with our harvests, for the most part.  Okay, I lost half a row of leeks under some overgrown arugula that fell over on them in a windstorm, because I hadn’t taken the time to pull it out when it was essentially past its prime.  And then I didn’t find the time to pull it off the leeks until it was too late and they were collapsed and rotting beneath it.

But there is an up-side to the disorder - we are seeing record numbers of beneficial creatures and insects.  For several weeks now, it’s been rare to harvest something without finding a praying mantis patrolling the veggies, or frogs jumping out of my path.  And recently, while examining for tomato hornworm damage, we found this:

Interrupted right in the middle of breakfast! A hornworm, covered with pupating wasps, right above the bite-marks it left in the tomato leaf...

Under the cottony white packages, there is a green caterpillar with a red spike on its butt - a tomato hornworm, a fantastically destructive creature.  They blend in perfectly with tomato stems, and are difficult to see until you notice the damage.  By the time you notice the damage, there’s a lot of damage to notice. One worm will have defoliated half a tomato plant, bitten into the developing fruit, and lopped off the replacement buds.  But - they have a predator that stops them in their tracks.  This hornworm is hosting a nice clutch of parasitic braconid wasp cocoons.

The wasps are small, and their cocoons are the tiny white wooly packages dotting the top of the hornworm.  Those aren’t part of the hornworm.  The description of what the wasps do to the hornworm reads like poetry to the organic farmer who has picked her share of hornworms off by hand, and endured their rampages.  In short, the wasps lay eggs in the caterpillar, the larvae feed off the caterpillar’s innards, and hatch out through to its surface to form their cocoons and finish pupating.  Here’s a more descriptive page about it.

Nearby, there was a second parasitized hornworm. The hornworms were literally stopped in their tracks, beside the chewed up leaf they’d been feasting upon.  I watched them for a few days - they were always in the same location, not dead yet, but obviously sick and not moving, and most importantly - not eating!

Last summer, we had record numbers of hornworms, but I found only one of these parasitized hornworms, with just a few cocoons.  I carefully watched that one, and left it in its place.  If you find one of these, don’t remove it!!  The hornworm  is a goner, even while still alive, and you can leave it alone without fearing it will continue to do damage.  It’s important to leave it so the wasp larvae can complete their hatching and become more wasps  that can kill more tomato hornworms.  This year we have had radically less hornworm problems, and at least double the sighted evidence of braconid wasps.

The wasps are tiny, cute even, and harmless to humans.  They are part of why I won’t put anything harmful on my garden.  Not anything.  Not even the organically-sanctioned treatments.  I may have garden chaos, I may lose some things to pests, and I may have holes in some produce.  But we also have an environment.  We have a mini-ecosystem keeping its own checks and balances.  What I use in the garden to kill the caterpillars will also kill or affect the wasps.   And the bees, and the mantises, and the other pollinators and predators.  Not cool, not what we want, not why we are doing this.    The frogs, the mantises, the parasitic wasps, the spiders, and the assassin bugs that find a home in our jungle garden have taken several years to make their way there, and they are integral to the way our garden works.

So the besieged caterpillars stayed on the tomato plants for a few days, until one day they were gone, probably dropped to the ground dead.  I noticed only when I could zoom into the photo while editing, that the little wasps had already hatched from one of the clutches when I photographed it:

Their cocoons have their hatch doors popped up, and the cocoons are empty.  Another tiny army of protectors is out there already, patrolling for us, finding the hornworms we won’t see.

Almost there tomatoes!

We don’t buy much at grocery stores.  In fact, I always feel a bit embarrassed by our cart, or actually, by our basket, since we rarely buy enough to need to roll the cart through the store.  It looks like a terrible diet - often some combination of baking supply, flour, sugar, chocolate, pasta, coffee, butter, raisins, rice and grain products, olive oil, corn chips, cheese.  Maybe, more rarely, some kind of packaged treat or cracker.  And condiments, like vinegars, anchovies, capers, soy sauce, etc.

But most of the rest of what we eat, we grow, or get from someone else who grows it locally. If it’s not in season, we don’t eat it in its fresh form.  So for a big chunk of time now, we’ve dreamed of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, okra…the things that we just don’t eat fresh for the parts of the year they aren’t in production or lasting in storage.  All spring, new fresh foods trickled in slowly here.  We’ve had lots of greens since March, but adding to that was a challenge - asparagus, green onions, and herbs were mainstays through May and June, but didn’t feel like much variety after a couple weeks.  We’d had no potatoes since last year’s ran out  about the beginning of March.  Radishes and peas and new celery stems in June brought in more variation, and the wild black raspberries were our first fresh fruit.  But even though it is so much anticipated, the suddenness of the classic summer produce is always a surprise.  When it starts to come in, it just really is suddenly….in.

Impossibly skinny haricots verts

The garlic gets harvested in July, and suddenly after months without fresh garlic, we have garlic in everything.  Zucchini, other summer squashes, cucumbers, green beans, the first cherry tomatoes followed by the first magnificent slicing tomatoes, and then, just last night, the first okra.  The first few days of a newly ripening vegetable are treasured and savored as they only can be when, by eating seasonally, your palate knows how special they are.  We had the first tiny potatoes for the 4th of July, then tried to leave them alone, only harvesting enough to have a taste a couple times a week.  I thought nothing could be as delicious as a plate of herbed new potatoes and sugar snap peas. But then after watching eagerly for the first green beans, nothing compared to the first lightly steamed tiny green beans with butter and a fine grating of parmesan. And the first handfuls of cherry tomatoes never made it out of the garden, of course, savored right on the spot. First eggplant arrived last week, and the rain came just in time to plump up a great harvest of wild blackberries this week.

Produce that was only two weeks ago longed for, for months, is suddenly in such full force that it is our daily staple. Last month’s fried eggs over a bed of greens, radicchio, or side of peas, has given way to a huge frittata full of new potatoes, summer squash, corn, shallots and onions, green peppers, basil, and topped with sliced rounds of tomato.

We’ve been eating this salad daily for about a week now:

Dragonwood variation on Caprese salad, with Asian Cucumber and Cherry tomatoes:

Dice up a “Suhyo Long” cucumber.  Halve some cherry tomatoes.  Dice desired amount of mozzarella into half-inch squares.  Finely slice a small onion or a shallot.   Finely slice or tear basil leaves, according to your preference (I don’t like large chunks of rough basil leaf in a mouthful, but rather prefer it delicately through the whole dish, so I finely slice it.  I’ve been adequately informed that this is improper, and basil must always be torn, thanks.)  Toss all vegetables together.   Combine olive oil and a little red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and shake dressing in a jar until emulsified.  Pour over the salad, toss again.

This is what summer tastes like.  And we are celebrating it at every meal.  Soon, tomatoes will become commonplace, and then they will even perhaps become burdensome, something to be laboriously canned and dried for the winter months.  The green beans are already commonplace, eliciting a “well, we have to eat the green beans twice a day to get rid of them” reaction now, compared to the eagerness a couple weeks ago.  Soon, they will go into pickles and krauts as we truly tire of them.  Such is the life of a seasonal eater.

Young radicchio starting to head

Last week’s bounty we took to the market included what were - to us - exciting additions of puntarelle, endive, and radicchio.  People bought the puntarelle, to some extent, often because it sounded unique and they were looking for something new to try.  But the beautiful heads of radicchio and frisée endive with its pretty blanched center, stayed on the table with the exception of one sale each.  So we have been eating a lot of both of them, and loving it so much that I’m not sorry they didn’t sell at market.  Except, I’m sad for how much people don’t know about greens and what they are missing in flavor, variety, and nutrition.

So I thought I’d do a series of posts about my experiences with these more unusual greens, and what delicious things to do with them.  The bitter greens I am talking about are just that - the bitter ones, from the chicory family.  These are different from the mustards - arugula, mustard greens, etc.  Mustards are all degrees of peppery, hot, and spicy, but not really bitter, while chicories are all degrees of bitter, but really not spicy.   I am not as much of a fan of the mustards as I am of the chicories.  This first post is devoted to Chicorium intybus, the radicchio.

Radicchio beside young leeks

This one isn't forming a head - just loose leaves

I have a lot of radicchio this year.  Two kinds - Palla Rossa, and Palla di Fuoco Rossa. I have finally learned that to have a lot of heads of radicchio, you have to grow a lot of it.  About every third plant is forming a really good head.  Some of the others have gone straight to a bolt - sending up a flower stalk, and some have turned into a ridiculous loose fluffy clump of leaves that should be in a head, but didn’t quite manage it.  Fortunately, the chickens love them, and can eat their fill of the unusable plants.

Chicken family happily feasting on outer leaves of radicchio

The delicate way the Fedco seed catalogue describes this unpredictable unreliability of radiccio amuses me:  “These radicchios are easy to raise from transplants although they have not yet been refined to absolute uniformity…”

That’s okay.  I like it.  I like the imperfection, and the wildness of it.  Our heads of radicchio are often a little bigger, softer, and looser than the rock-hard, small, dry grocery store radicchio heads.  If you are buying radicchio from me at the market, I’ve left some of the larger outer leaves on to keep them fresher - you can strip these off and find more of a head inside.

Beautifully headed and ready for picking

These things are as gorgeous as a rose, to me.

Two of our favorite ways to eat radicchio are cooked lightly with bacon, vinegar, and maple syrup, or mixed with frisée endive and tossed with a garlic-anchovy dressing and parmesan cheese.  Ohhhh, deliciousness.  I think that people often don’t know how to work with the bitter element in bitter greens and cooking, and therefore avoid it.  If you don’t think you like bitter greens, the key is to either cook it, which softens the bitterness, or to mix it with other greens or other foods to dilute the bitterness, or to dress it with flavors that compliment and change the bitterness.  (Or all three!)

Vinegar and acid flavors work magic on bitter chicories.  It seems like the bite of the acidity covers, or cuts, or changes the bitter flavor, and somehow, leaves it tasting sweet in the aftertaste.  All kinds of vinegar, and lemon can be used.  I also like a sour-sweet combination, like the vinegar-maple syrup dressings we often make.  Strong flavors - parmesan cheese, anchovies, garlic, good olive oil, and salty meats all also complement the bitters and work to the improvement of both tastes.

Dragonwood Radicchio with Bacon, Maple, and Vinegar:

pink and white hearts of radicchio, being shredded for sautée

Slice up a head of radicchio, or two (it cooks down to a fraction of its raw size) into fettuccini-like ribbons. While you’re slicing, start a skillet heating, and fry some diced bacon.  Slice up an onion or some shallots.  When the bacon is done, toss in the shallots, then the cut-up radicchio, into the pan with the bacon, and toss and turn it to coat it with the oil.  Add a tablespoon or so of red wine, or apple cider, or balsamic vinegar, and a splash of maple syrup, and salt and pepper as desired.  The heat should be high enough to cook away most of the juices as they form.  Keep tossing and stirring while the radicchio wilts down and cooks - just a few minutes is all it takes, and then it is done.  We like this topped with a fried egg and toast on the side, for breakfast.

If you like to grill, there are all kinds of grilling recipes for radicchio - here is a delicious-sounding example.

June is just a really busy month on a farm.  I don’t think we realized how busy until a little break time in July and raising our heads above water let us think about it.  Lots of days we went out to work early in the morning, did our other jobs through the day, and worked in the gardens again from 6 til the light faded finally at 10 pm.  I think most days in June I planted something, somewhere.  Now it’s July, and the fruits (and vegetables!) of those labors are showing how worth it it all was:

Going to market on Thursdays has been lots of fun.  Also lots of work, but lots of fun.   Here’s the market stand highlights over the past few weeks at the Westside Farmer’s Market:

Yes, we have been busy.   A busy month since the last post.  With the long day length, we are often outdoors until 9:30 or 10 pm.  Two people, working a little farm, with two other jobs.  I try to grab the camera and document whenever I can, and imagine blog posts in my head as I’m working that don’t seem to materialize at the end of the long day. We about doubled the size of the “market field” this year, plus added on some other plots in other locations.  This is still so small compared to the farmer friends I know, but it’s just the two of us, no other workers.  We’ve got celery, celeriac, radicchio, arugula, potatoes, radishes, leeks, popcorn, tomatoes, basil, squash and eggplant, and a few watermelon, growing here in this patch.  And a few flowers. We’ve planted so many plants, so many rows.  After the big rains and the sudden heat, there was a lot of fast growth.  So rewarding! Part of our system is to mulch heavily when we can, shown in the photo above.  Saves time on weed control later, improves the soil, and holds in the moisture!  I do a lot of interplanting too.  Slower-growing vegetables like celery, leeks, onions, broccoli, are interplanted with fast growing ones - lettuce, radishes, arugula, spinach.  We get two or three times the crops from the same space of ground, and reduce the areas where weeds can grow too.

The Westside Farmers Market is in full swing now.  Yesterday was the third week, and we were lucky with the weather, dodging rainstorms, and having a great day.  We love this little market!  Come and find us there on Thursdays from 3-7pm.

This week for market we harvested lots of wonderful french breakfast radishes…….and greens………

and rhubarb……..

and garlic scapes!

Much as I’d like to see some sunshine, this gentle rain is so beautiful.  Pretty enough to just snap some quick photos in the rain…..

Perhaps after a couple of greens-toastingly hot springs, this can be the year for cabbage, lettuce, peas, and and the cooler crops.  Here are some shallots that have naturally become interplanted with volunteer chervil which seems to be working out well for them.  I can’t get enough of the spring colors…..

Peas and lettuce are thriving.  The heirloom deer’s tongue lettuce is one of my favorites - reliable, crisp, delicious, early, and gorgeous, with its funny tendency to spiral…….

The old Welsummer Rooster and a few of his hens go for a stroll in the light misty rain….

Lilacs bend to the ground under the weight of their water-laden blossoms…. …happy beautiful Spring!

It’s a great irony of being a blogging farmer, that when there is the most going on to write about, there is simply no time to write.  The days are growing long enough that I’m frequently working outside until 9pm.  Work is intense enough that it’s hard to carry a camera to document it.  It is such a race to get the little plants and seeds into the ground at good times - at the right time for their planting, before a good rain, before the days get too long…so much to think about and plan for.

And it changes so quickly; in the other job as a midwife, I went to three births last week and at the end of the busy time spent away, I realized the trees had leaves!  When did that happen?  So much has changed in three weeks…

Kitchen garden less than a month ago...

Kitchen garden yesterday.

Yesterday was a perfect planting day.  Cool but comfortable temperature, cloudy threatening to rain but holding off.  It was fabulous, and we really worked.  44 celeriac, 48 celery, 200 leeks, 80-ish spinach, 40 radicchio, onions I didn’t count, 2 kinds of potatoes, and long rows of radish, beet, chard, arugula, and other greens - all joined the hundreds already in the ground.  Weeded everything, moved tomatoes and peppers through hardening off rotations, mowed, rototilled, mulched, helped family with other planting projects.  It’s odd to mention numbers, as I know this is nothing compared to big farms and seriously rocking CSAs.   It’s new to me to even count - I don’t usually, but yesterday I was getting curious about the numbers.  We have just the two of us working this farm, around two other jobs, and we’ll take to market whatever we end up having.

We are harvesting enormous amounts of gorgeous salad greens. Two meals out of the day are usually a European-bistro-style greens mix with egg and good dressing to top it.  After a long winter, there is nothing so satisfying as a strong salad mix of dandelion, spinach, baby kale, and young lettuce leaves, with a green-garlic and anchovy vinaigrette and an egg on top.  We celebrated the first few spears of asparagus on this salad, sprinkled with chives!

A lot of things are halfway done.  We could always do more, and we did more than some.  I’m on break to post this, and here’s my halfway photo to prove it.

If you click on the photo you can see a bit more detail, but among the projects visible are (far left) the garage (which is halfway cleaned up for the spring), and the newest chicks in their fenced coop (30 of them, about half the total chicks we should have housed there by the end of May), the kitchen garden (distant background fenced in, which is about halfway planted), the “big field” with a rowcover tent (foreground, with tiller marking the halfway mark of the tilling), our two biggest apple trees in full bloom hiding our neighbor’s house, and behind the big field on the right are a bunch of our spindly new apple trees, just starting to bloom.

I just finished (no halfway job) some coding that needed it.  So I’m going to take a break and head out to push the big field tilling job to a little beyond halfway.  I expect M will have the field halfway planted within another half day.  And when I get the big field done, I should be halfway through the tilling I intend to do.  And the green green grass here will be half again past where it should be when I should mow it.  I can’t wait to get the new hoop house halfway finished.  Now that’ll be progress.