Eat Close To Home

It’s been a mixed year in the greenhouse. I wouldn’t call it an unqualified success, though it had its good points. Here goes:

The Good

• I got to start gardening March 1. Not a whole lot *happened*, but it made me feel good.
• The peas in the greenhouse bore fruit 6 weeks earlier than the peas outside.
• The green beans planted in late August bore about 2-3 weeks earlier than the beans outside.
• The yellow pear tomatoes in the greenhouse were the only tomatoes that produced anything at all this year.
• Topless sunbathing in late February!

The Perplexing

• The greenhouse peas took 11 weeks to bear. The ones planted outside took nine weeks.
• The hot-loving vegetables didn’t love the greenhouse. They looked pale and sickly. The okra was under a foot tall and produced five pods between two plants.
• The greenhouse only held 5-10 degrees over the outside temp during the cold months, and even less than that in the summer.

The Downright Annoying

• Aphids. Everywhere.
• More tomato hornworms than I’ve ever had in all my gardens combined. Ok, that’s still only 5, but…
• Occasional rabbits and chipmunks inside the greenhouse, snacking, buliding nests, having late-night poker parties, and generally carrying on.
• The gutters broke off in a late-season snowstorm. Even when I got them back up, they didn’t collect enough water to make water barrels worth the trouble.

So here are my theories about what’s going on.

• The soil in the greenhouse is the worst soil in my garden. I put down 4″ of composted horse manure last October and planted in that. In my regular raised beds, I don’t need to dig at all; by the end of the season, the roots and worms have done all the work. However, the clay under the greenhouse was smoothed off with a bucket loader before we built, and that clay layer remained impermeable. When I stuck a digging fork in last week, I was shocked (as in, jolted up the arms and into my bones) to discover the “soil” was 2″ deep over a rock-hard layer of hardpan clay.
• I need to water the greenhouse every day. Maybe that’ll improve when I improve the soil, though.
• An 8×12 greenhouse does not have the thermal mass to hold temperature. It heats up too fast and cools down quickly, as well.
• This greenhouse model – a Rion kit – is probably also just leakier than your standard polyfilm hoop house. I bought it because it’s pretty, but I don’t think it’s as functional as a plastic quonset hut.

What I’m going to do:

• Build raised beds inside the greenhouse – 8″ deep. Fill with composted horse manure and dig it in to break up the clay layer. This will improve the soil drastically and let the soil heat up faster in the spring. Better soil will retain water better and help the plants be stronger, both for growing and for staving off insects.
• Install a brick path down the middle to retain some heat. Even if it doesn’t work, it’ll be neat; my folks are going to loan me some bricks from the brick walk around the train station I grew up in (scroll to the bottom…), so there’ll be a little of my growing-up homestead in my adult home.
• Be better about watering next summer.
• Place bales of straw around the perimeter to stave off the freezing of the soil to extend the fall harvest.

I’m heading out for the woods and rivers and won’t be online for several days.

But when I get back…get ready for details of the Em and Laura Project!

And update on the Simple Pump installation: yes, you can use it to fill the pressure tank. It was actually quite easy to fill the tank up to 40psi. This gives decent water pressure in the house for one or two toilet flushes or quite a bit of handwashing, drinking water, and dish-rinsing. The system of putting a 1-1/4″ PVC pipe though the wall of the basement as a “hose conduit” works really well. The hose threads through very easily, and when I pull the hose out, I just pop a PVC cap on each end, and it keeps air and critters out.

Caveats:

• The fittings on both ends are male, so I had to modify the (special drinking-water-certified) hose to have female adapters at both end.
• I wasn’t able to get it to fill over 40psi, no matter how long I pumped. It’s possible they didn’t install the correct check valve, but I think this is just the limitation of the pump.
• 40psi gives good water pressure for about 4 gallons of water, then you have to pump it up again. It may or may not be very useful, ultimately – though I do find that it’s much easier to rinse with the sink sprayer than with a pitcher, and cleaner than using a tub of water (especially for one-off washes of hands or single dishes).
• You can’t unhook the hose from the pump to the tank when the system is pressurized, so it’s not terribly convenient to switch between tank-pressurization and pumping-into-a-bucket. Hmm, maybe if I used one of those Y adapters that let you attach two hoses to one spigot?
• The hose would freeze pretty quickly in the winter if it were just lying on the ground.

Final verdict: Yes, it is possible to charge the pressure tank using the Simple Pump, but it may or may not be worth the effort. A longer test is in order, I think; if we get around to doing a non-electric weekend this summer, that will be a much more realistic test.

Dear sweet merciful gods. This was so good:

• Sauteed onion
• Shredded chicken stew meat
• Homemade chicken broth
• Huge handfuls of fresh spinach, mizuna, lamb’s quarters, and baby kale leaves
• Dashes of smoked paprika and smoked sea salt

Served with a little brown rice and a cabbage salad (like slaw, but with a vinaigrette instead of gloppy sauce)

Note: I made the chicken from an actual stewing hen – a “retired” layer that was no longer pulling her weight on the Amish farm where she’d put in her working years. She was a tiny, tough, stringy little bird, and it took about 5 hours in the crock pot to get her tender. About 3/4 of the way through, I stripped the carcass to try to get more goodness out of the bones, but still didn’t end up with a very gelatinous stock. Still, it was very good: rich, flavorful, and deep yellow. If you can’t find a stewing hen, roast the chicken, pull the meat off the carcass, and stew just the bones. Otherwise, the meat will be dry and flavorless.

I’ve been wanting to learn to make sprouted grain bread for a while. It seems to agree with me really well; easy to digest, and doesn’t spike my blood sugar like even whole wheat bread can. I used this recipe, which my Aunt sent to me a couple weeks ago.

It was an interesting process. First of all, I don’t know if I got some weirdo mutant wheat, but my 3 cups of wheat and rye and lentils made about 10 tightly packed cups of sprouts instead of the expected 4.5. I do think I let them “over-sprout” – they were supposed to have just the tips of sprouts starting to show, and mine had legs and arms and even small leaves. And possibly drivers’ licenses. But this took only 2-3 days, which is what the recipe said…

The over-sproutyness might also explain why step 2, blending the wheat berries in a food processor, smelled like I’d stuffed a salad into a blender. Fresh and green, but…are you sure this is going to turn into bread? I was dubious, but pressed on.

I had so many sprouts, I did two loaves. One as per the recipe (over 1/2 a cup of gluten? Seriously? And is it true that 99% of our gluten comes from China? Should I be worried about melamine?) and the other I used spelt flour and molasses instead. The spelt one did eventuall turn into something like “dough,” but the other one really looked more like batter even after raising.

So I did the kneading, raising, loaf-forming, and second rise, then baked. I was still dubious; while one loaf looked like a loaf, the other looked like zucchini bread. And they still had that distinctly vegetable smell.

I baked them for an hour and did, in fact, check that their internal temps  were 200 degrees. Pulled them out, let them cool, and sliced them. The wetter loaf was…wet. Sticky. Like, Boston Brown Bread, steamed toffee pudding sticky. Erm. On to the loafy loaf. Same thing.

Ok, so I’m out a couple bucks’ worth of ingredients and some electricity for the oven. Big deal. But hey, might as well nibble a corner and see if it tastes like sprouts.

And no. It didn’t taste like sprouts. It tasted like Grape Nuts.

Whuhhhh?

And…I kinda couldn’t stop eating it. My husband and I agreed: this was the most oddly compelling bread either of us had ever eaten. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say it was *good*, but … it really invited nibbling.

I’m definitely going to try again, and I’ll blend the sprouts up before they turn from “grain” into “grasslette.” But hey, if you want to experience something that can turn from salad to Grape Nuts, give it a try…

Hey, folks! I’m deciding which of these events to do in April for Preserving Traditions. The one that doesn’t get picked probably won’t happen this year at all, as the rest of the year’s events are tied to what foods are in season. Which would you rather do? (Please vote only once  and note – it’s the same poll listed here and at the PT web site.)

Tom Vilsack “broke pavement” today to turn some paved areas around the USDA offices into the first “People’s Garden” for the department Lincoln called the “People’s Department.” Read the full article, then tell me…

Did I miss something, or is there no mention of food gardening anywhere in here? Is this really going to work like a community garden, where you get your plot and grow your veggies? Or is it more about green landscaping than growing food? I’m all for green landscaping and reducing concrete, but it seems a bit odd to me that the USDA wouldn’t have something more … agricultural … in their garden(s).

Oh. Wait. This is the USDA. They don’t want any competition for those 10,000 acre monoculturists who are teetering on the edge of solvency…

Have you seen this? It’s Obama’s agenda for rural America. Some excerpts (italics mine; some items reworded for brevity and clarity):

• Funnel subsidies to small farms, not agribusinesses
• Ban meat packers from owning livestock
• Strictly regulate CAFOs
• Establish Country of Origin Labeling
• Encourage Organic and Local Agriculture
• Encourage Young People to Become Farmers
• Partner with Landowners to Conserve Private Land
• Support Small Business Development: Provide capital for farmers to create value-added enterprises, like cooperative marketing initiatives and farmer-owned processing plants. Establish a small business and micro-enterprise initiative for rural America.
• Connect Rural America with broadband
• Combat Methamphetamine
• Improve Healthcare
• Improve Rural Education: Provide incentives for talented individuals to enter the teaching profession, including increased pay for teachers who work in rural areas. Create a Rural Revitalization Program to attract young people to rural America and retain them. Increase research and educational funding for Land Grant colleges

I’m speechless. In a good way.

The town I grew up in has about 2000 people. The goal of most of the college-bound students (perhaps 20-25% of the class) is “get the hell out of here ASAP and only come back for Thanksgiving.” Small towns and rural areas have huge problems with alcohol, drugs, unemployment, crumbling schools…and they get less attention than inner cities because the overall population is smaller.

So I’m thrilled to see these goals, which touch not only food and environmental issues that are close to my heart, but also infrastructure and quality of life issues, too.

I’m going to buy some Beauregard sweet potato slips (plants) from Johnny’s. Twelve plants are $13 but 25 plants are only $15.50. Does anyone want to try a dozen plants and split the cost?

Is anyone ordering seeds from Fedco this year? I’d like a $1 packet of Sweet Meat squash seeds, but Fedco adds a $5 surcharge to any order under $30. But if I could piggy back on someone’s existing order…