Anyone have spare canning jars (especially pints) that they no longer need? I’ve got my sights set on salsa!

So if you read other Ann Arbor food bloggers, you’ve probably read that a dozen of us met - completely unaided by technology - and had a lovely evening of food and chatting. And so, at risk of being redundant, and also having no pictures to share, I simply say: me, too. I had a lovely time, with people I hope to see more often for chatting, noshing, and changing the world.

I have a hard time meeting new people. I’ve been in town five years, and I think I’ve met maybe five people that I didn’t know before I moved here who I ever actually see outside of work or other people’s parties. Where do you meet folks? And my worst issue, what do you talk about? Happily, Patti figured that all out and announced the topic of discussion right in the invitations. And we all share this passion, so all that awkwardness evaporated before the party even started.

In just a few hours, I got a picture of this web of connections weaving together people and farms and kitchens and caring in this area. And as I poke my nose out of my own garden into other people’s kitchens, I’m finding that what started out as a desire to feed my own family has given me access to something even more valuable than a full pantry: a full community. And maybe that’s what I needed to find in the first place.

Ok, you can blame Patti and Derrick - they asked for it! And I had to do something to keep up with Rob’s amazing garden bed rotation spreadsheet. So, here’s Emily’s Totally Insane Spreadsheet for Planning What to Plant to Live Out Of Your Garden. Also known as “can I feed my family on one acre?” (Answer: Yes. But you might not want to.) And yes, I realize I have waaaaaaay too much time on my hands.

It’s in GoogleDocs spreadsheet format. Click the little orange triangles for comments. Be sure to look at both sheets (tabs along the bottom) and scroll down - calorie crops are at the top and vegetables at the bottom. You should be able to click the GoogleDocs File menu and export it to your own GoogleDocs account, or to Excel or .csv format. Then you’ll be able to play with the numbers, add foods, etc. If you’re as big a geek as I am, this is the fun part.

The basic idea is it takes just short of a million calories to feed a person 2500 calories per day for a year. I’ve looked up the number of calories per pound of food, and the number of pounds of food that can grow in a square foot (using John Jeavons’s Biointensive raised-bed methods). Put in the number of people you’ll be feeding, and the spreadsheet keeps a running tally of how many calories you’ve planted and how many more you’ll need to grow to feed everyone for a year. As you’re planning, be realistic about what you like to eat, what you can store, what’s a pain in the butt to raise or process, and get a good variety so you don’t get scurvy or really, really sick of parsnips.

Even if you don’t intend to live off your 1/4 acre lot, this is eye opening. Think your 1000 sf tomato garden is great shakes? Calorie-wise, that’ll feed one person for two months. I’m growing wheat on a very, very small scale right now, and had been thinking of expanding. But looking at the scale needed, and the work involved in harvesting wheat by hand, makes me think what communities need is a central wheat farm with big machines and individual gardens full of potatoes and rutabagas (swedes).

Have fun kids!

Back in January, I set out a list of things I planned to do this year. Six months in, I’m well on my way:

I’m also adding all my Carbon Reduction goals to this list and have learned that I can, in fact, ride my bike to the nearest store (11 miles round trip) without dying or injuring myself.

By now, even the mainstream press is starting to talk about “peak oil” and what we are going to do when petroleum is no longer cheap…or, perhaps, not available at all. I don’t know when this is going to happen, but I’m betting that it happens within my lifetime. I expect energy shortages and $10/gallon gas probably before my husband’s student loans are paid off. The ripples we’re seeing of higher gas prices, higher food prices, and more energy worries might calm down a bit, but then they’ll be back with a vengeance. And then they’ll never go away. So we’re going to have to adapt.

There are lots of sites out there talking about what needs to happen to prevent environmental collapse, to prepare for the end of an oil-based economy, and to become self-sufficient for times when there won’t be anyone else to rely on. They are inspiring, and not far off base, but they can be terrifying, frankly, and I have to quit reading them periodically to prevent myself from getting panicky and depressed.

I will say, though, that every single day I do something to move myself and my household toward a more sustainable future. Some of the things are small, and some are large.

The list of things I do every single day:

• Ask myself if I really need to make this car trip now, or if it could wait until I have to be out next (e.g., could I stop at the store on the way home from work tomorrow)
• Eat local foods from sources I’ve identified
• Eat seasonally, even if the seasonal produce is from California. I’m training our tastes to get used to six months a year of squash and potatoes, which is no trivial thing.
• Choose vegan food when the meat/egg/dairy options come from factory farms (unless there isn’t a viable vegan choice)
• Keep the thermostat at 65 in the winter (55 when we’re gone for more than 3 hours; 60 at night). This winter, now that the fireplace is working, we’ll drop that much lower and try to heat only the rooms we’re using. In the summer, keep the thermostat at 79. (So far, we’ve just kept the a/c off this year; it’s never been too hot and humid to sleep well.)
• Light only one lamp and one nightlight at a time in the house - except for the few moments I might be in the bathroom or the kitchen while my sweetie is still in the living room
• “Save-a-flush” - especially for those “I guess I didn’t really hafta go as much as I thought” times
• Keep my showers under 5 minutes
• Exercise - my goal is to be able to ride my bike to work by the end of the summer

There’s a balance, though. It’s hard to tell when to sweat the small stuff and when not to. I try to spend more energy on the big stuff - decisions and expenditures I can make once and forget about them. Things on this list include:

• Turning the water heater down to 125 degrees (free!)
• Insulating the attic
• Fixing the fireplace with a fuel-efficient, less-polluting insert
• Installing rain barrels
• Installing a pergola to shade the big front windows in the summer
• Soon: Insulating the house walls

Other things we might do, but probably not really soon:

• Divert graywater from the shower to the garden
• Replace windows with less-drafty models (for the moment, thermal plastic is working fine)
• I also intend to do more to develop the local food economy. It’s going slowly, but I’m making contacts and helping spread the word as I learn about local businesses, especially those that help get food from the farm to the table.

There are a few big, obvious things I could change to use less oil or otherwise “tread lightly on the earth,” but am choosing not to do them, for a host of reasons. Selling our house and car and moving into the city is chief among these. It’s a squishy-soft housing market, housing in town is really expensive and…I love my house. And my garden. And the quiet. So we reduce car trips and grow food and learn to ride bikes longer distances.

This sounds like a lot, I know. But it’s really not - this effort has been spread over many years. You just do a little at a time and one day you look back and say, “Yeah, this is looking pretty good.” It isn’t that onerous, either. I don’t feel like a parsimonious shrew running around turning off lights. We don’t feel deprived if we don’t run to the store to pick up one ingredient for dinner. It feels like a really good accomplishment to trim wasted energy - the same kind of glow you get when you clean out a drawer full of junk or weed an overgrown garden bed. Except then your bills go down and you have more money when you’re done.

Lest anyone out there think my cooking and preserving and such is one long string of rosy victories, I present to you today’s Fail Blog: Do Not Try This At Home. Hey, even Babe Ruth struck out a lot, right? If you have suggestions, bring ‘em on!

Entry #1: Whole wheat crackers

This was actually a couple weeks ago, and I forget the recipe (probably out of a sense of self-preservation). It was basically flour, oil, water, and salt, and it tasted baaaaaaaaaad. Like, “throw it under the birdfeeder and even THEY won’t eat it” bad. Way too heavy, way too oily, way too hard and crunchy. I’m thinking some kind of leavening is necessary. An actual rolling pin might also be useful; these were kinda thick because I used a water glass to smoosh them flat.

Entry #2: Pickled ginger carrots

These actually taste fantastic…I just can’t keep the kahm yeast from colonizing the top of the jar after a couple weeks in the fridge. I’m going to try one more variation, where I pickle them right in the jar with the lid on instead of in a crock, but if this doesn’t work, I might not plan to keep these as a storage vegetable. Pickle and eat, quick-like, before they go bad. Carrots are too expensive and the process is too bit labor-intensive to waste.

Entry #3:Rice milk custard

The no-sugar regimen is actually going quite well, but I find myself craving things like custard and ice cream. I think it’s not so much the sugar as the concentrated calories and fat. I’ve lost about 4 pounds in the last 2 weeks. Some of that was “bloat” but I don’t exactly have a lot more to lose. So custard seemed like just the thing*.  I’m also off dairy for the time being, and I have a case of rice milk, so…sure! Why not!

Well, “why not” is because rice milk custard is icky. It did eventually set after 90 minutes or so, but not very firmly. It also tastes “thin” and is the most unattractive color because I threw some blueberries in it. I haven’t made anything that particular shade of sludge-gray since the Purple Cabbage Paella Incident of ‘89. I’ve done a decent custard with soy milk; I’m also thinking almond or hazelnut milk might work, having more protein and fat than the rice milk. *sigh*

* And also a rather obscene amount of pork rinds**.

** Don’t worry, Mom, my cholesterol is under 120 and my BP is 110/65 ! And it’s temporary!

Deirdra Stockmann just alerted me to the Food System Economic Partnership’s Community Food Profile of Southeast Michigan, which she co-wrote. It’s a really nice overview of farming, CSAs, farmers’ markets, and also food processing facilities in Jackson, Lenawee, Washtenaw, Wayne, and Monroe counties. I highly recommend you check out this report, and the work the FSEP is doing to develop a local food economy in this part of Michigan!

Deirdra, do you know how local meat producers will be affected by the new Food Bill regulation that says meat for commercial uses can be processed at state-inspected facilities?

Anyone know if quail eggs can be had near Ann Arbor?

Is it just my imagination, or is the garden coming along slowly this year? I’m literally armpit-deep in green leaves, but there doesn’t seem to be that much to eat out of the garden just yet. Maybe it’s all the rain, and the relatively cool temps. Or maybe I am just imagining it. Every February, I dust off the spreadsheets to record my crop harvests, but come summer, I often forget to record how much is coming in when. I just wander out into the garden for a handful of snap peas, wander back in, and throw them directly into the pan.

For the Growing Challenge, I decided to grow quinoa and wheat, which I’ve never grown before, and to do a second generation of my “frost-resistant” Contender beans. The beans are working splendidly - they survived the hard frost we had (I did cover them, but that didn’t save everything in the garden) and are now starting to produce wonderful, tasty beans. I only did nine plants, though, so I don’t have a lot of genetic diversity there for saving seeds for next year. I’ll have to remember that. I have some left from last year, though, and I’ll save some of these, too. So I count that as a success.

The quinoa is not happening. This is the second year I’ve tried to grow it, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it to sprout. There’s a ton of goosefoot (lamb’s quarters) in the garden, and I know they’re similar…but they’re not identical, right? So I think I just have goosefoot and no quinoa. This isn’t really its habitat, though; it’s a mountain plant and used to more temperature variations and probably less water. I think this is a strong hint that I should just learn to love my goosefoot.

The wheat is still in progress, though the winter wheat should be ready soon. It’s certainly looking better than my volunteer rye, which is covered in ergot. I never, ever thought one of the things I’d grow at home would be LSD! Guess I’ll be burning that cover crop before it gets me burned at the stake…

So what am I harvesting these days? See after the cut…

• Onions (we’re at the “knob onion” stage now) -lots and lots
• Sugar snap peas - a couple pounds so far, and going strong
• Kale - enough that there’s always a big bunch ready to harvest
• Chard - 3 bunches so far
• Green beans (just starting)
• Broccoli (just starting)
• I also had about a quart of strawberries in June.

The tomato and potato plants are large and robust and flowering. The earliest green beans are just starting to come in (Contender bush beans) and the winter wheat should be ready in a week or two. I’ve just seen the first squash blossoms.

View from inside

Originally uploaded by espring4224

It’s been a beautiful July 4th weekend. The pergola was finished this week, and it’s a joy to have the shades up and not be panting from the heat in the living room. It extends the living space outdoors and dapples the room with shade reminiscent of my favorite forests. My parents and grandma came for pergola viewing and dinner - grilled local sausages - and it was  a really pleasant evening.

I’ve been pretty busy this weekend; I planted some impatiens, black-eyed Susans, and peppers in the rock-walled bed underneath. I transplanted seven gray dogwood shrubs to our berm from the yard of someone who is trying to keep them out of her prairie (Thanks, D!). My handy-with-all-yard-things neighbor mowed and plowed under 1200 square feet in the back yard, creating my wheat field. (See more pics.) For now, I’ve planted most of it in a mix of rye, alfalfa, and radishes, and one section is done in field peas. Probably won’t harvest anything from this area - the crops are to add organic matter, crowd out weeds, break up the hardpan, and bring nutrients up from the subsoil. It’ll get winter wheat in October

Or maybe not; turns out he and his dad grow wheat and oats, and I can buy chem-free grains directly from them. Some things really are more efficiently grown at scale like that. But I think I will still put in some wheat, if only to see what it’s like to do all that harvesting by hand with a sickle and thresh it by hand (or foot, as the case may be). They also have nine horses, and therefore an abundant supply of manure, to which I am welcome. They’ll even use the tractor to load my truck. Perfect, because I’m planning on trying sheet mulching for another big garden area, and I need a bunch of manure for that. Maybe next weekend…

Talking with my neighbor really made me shift my thinking. We will never be self-sufficient on an acre and a half; even if we could grow food for 2, we’d never be able to grow heating and cooking fuel. They have 160 acres, parts in a well-managed woodlot, parts tilled, and parts swamp and wild - they are set up for self-sufficiency. But they are also well set-up to be one node of a self-sufficient neighborhood, and really, that’s the goal. As gas becomes more expensive, you’re going to want to meet all your needs within walking or biking distance. So, step 1, reduce your needs, and step 2, divvy up the work and resource production so everyone has something to contribute and barter.

Hmm, maybe instead of wheat, I should try sunflowers…DIY biodiesel, anyone?