Visit from Jaja

Jaja came to visit this weekend and we had a blast!  We went to an incredible workshop at the Center for Art in Wood, in Old City where we created a "cabinet of curiosities" out of a cigar box and with great instruction and inspiration from the staff at the center.  We created a portrait for the front, and of course I chose to draw my cats.  Yes, I'm a cat lady.  I really like how it turned out:

 

They had great supplies for us to use, and the boxes already had elaborately patterned paper around the edges that we could use as a jump off for inspiration.  Apparently cigar stores just smash these boxes and throw them in the trash, so it's easy to get them if you're there at the right time.  Which I will obviously be doing now that I know how beautiful these boxes are without any decoration at all.

 

We also went to a work day at Farm 51, which is run by my friends Andrew and Neal.  We destroyed some raised beds and harvested broccoli, then had a bonfire and ate delicious home made coffee cake and cookies.  Their house next door is gorgeous and another constant source of inspiration:

 

 

 

An amazing and inspirational weekend and a great way to start the new year!

The Other Side of the Coin

The growers from the Walnut Hill Community Farm are all off to bigger and better things. But those darn plants keep growing! So what to do? Start a mini fall-season CSA!

We decided to do a very short pilot of a CSA this year to see how it would go and how much work it would be for the whole growing season. We have six families that are getting a delivery once every two weeks from the beginning of October to Thanksgiving. We had our first delivery and it was a lot of work, as we expected, but also a lot of fun!



The families are getting the boxes of produce for free, and the only thing they have to do is fill out a survey at the end. Though one of our families promised to pay us in sweet potatoe pie in November. We didn't say no.



The first box consisted of: one half pint cherry tomatoes and small bell peppers, one pint blue potatoes, one bunch green onions, two pints green beans, one bunch swiss chard, and one bunch each dill, thyme, and oregano.

August Harvest

What a doozy!

I harvested the following from both the St. Bernard Community Garden and the Woodlands Community Garden this morning:

• 'Katahdin' and 'Yukon Gold' potatoes
• one tiny (and slightly tasteless) watermelon
• habanero peppers
  
• 'Sungold' and 'Tomaccio' cherry tomatoes
• 'Long Slim' cayenne peppers
• a 'Cherokee Purple' and two other tomatoes
• red onions
• an eggplant
• leeks
• deformed, end-of-season cucumbers

Then I made home fries for lunch.



I am loving this weekend. The weather is gorgeous (back in the mid-eighties) and my lovely friend and former CA room-mate Crystal is coming for a visit! Enjoy your own weekends and this fleeting end-of-summer feeling.

Saving my Spinach

Check out my latest entry on Farm to Philly, all about how to freeze your garden greens!

First Sale!

This week the Walnut Hill Grower's Co-op had its first sale! The guys sold 9 bushels of kale to Milk and Honey Market in West Philly. Here are some pics of Dontae and Keenan harvesting and washing the kale at The Enterprise Center, and humoring me while I take photos of them during their first sale as a Co-op.





Here they are with Annie Baum-Stein, of Milk and Honey, our first customer. Thanks Annie!

I want to go to there

I can't even handle the cuteness of this. It's a marzipan vegetable garden, which is outside the gingerbread White House, made by White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses. Check out the article on Obama Foodorama.



These pics are from City Farmer News, a great blog out of Vancouver, Canada.

I was in Washington, D.C. last spring and I tried to get a peek at the vegetable garden but it's not visible from the street. Poo. But I know that sooner or later I will be invited to see it . . .

A Plan is Growing in Camden

The little community garden we recently started in Camden (through my job with the Camden Children's Garden) is really flourishing right now. Here's a picture of it a few months ago, when we first started it:



And here it is now, full of vegetables, some ready to harvest:



In the last few months we've planted lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, rutabaga, swiss chard, mustard greens, spinach, cabbage and escarole. Over the last month we've harvested several pounds of lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, kale and swiss chard. Things are really looking good over there and we haven't watered once since we planted. Amazing.





We also had that (mostly) dead tree cut down and planted trees and shrubs along the edge of the garden. The shrubs were donated to us and the trees were planted with help from the New Jersey Tree Foundation (we got serviceberry and cherry trees, as per my request!).



This garden is very close to the Children's Garden and we're starting to think of it more as a mini-farm. We're expanding our ideas on how we can provide fresh produce to the citizens of Camden (a city of 80,000 with only one grocery store on the edge of town). That might mean starting a CSA! This garden is very large and there's not a whole lot of community involvement yet. We might reserve part of it to cultivate ourselves, like we're doing now, and sell at very low prices to the community as a subscription. I'm beyond excited about this!










Things are in the works, so wish us luck!

A Carrot Grows in Camden

Again and Again

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with it's sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Pickle Me

M and I currently have seven jars of pickled cucumbers, one jar of pickled beets and one jar of pickled jalapenos in the fridge. Whoa. The "Bush Pickler" cucumbers we planted are really living up to their name and we are constantly coming home from the garden with five or more small cucumbers.



So far we've used four different recipes: the Sour Pickle recipe from Wild Fermentation, a recipe for Asian-Inspired Quick Pickles from Food in Jars, and the Cucumber Pickles from Mrs. A. (Marguerite) Miltner at The Pickle Preservation Society. I really like the latter recipe, the turmeric is very prominent. But we wanted something that tastes just like the dill pickles we buy in the store so M came up with the following recipe that seems to hit the spot:

Ingredients:
4 medium cucumbers, cut into spears
2 grape or cherry leaves
1/2 head flowering dill, minced
4 large garlic cloves, sliced
1 T celery seed
1 T ground mustard seed
1.5 c white vinegar
6 c water
1/4 c salt

Stuff the first six ingredients into two 23 oz jars. Bring the vinegar and water to a boil, add salt. Pour the brine over the cucumbers, screw lids on and let sit until cool. Put in fridge and eat within 3 weeks.
**************

M wants to tweak the recipe by adding more salt and less vinegar, so that might be the next step. We've also found that adding the tannin-filled grape or cherry leaves keeps the pickles nice and crunchy, ala Sandorkraut's suggestion. We haven't made the leap to canning these and sterilizing them for long-term storage but the jars seal as they cool so they keep for a really long time in the fridge.

Yummerson

The box, 6/30/09:
Green onions, green leaf lettuce, snap peas, zucchini, kale, eggs!

CSA - Now in color!

More colors are starting to creep into the CSA box. I have to pick them up late in the day though, usually around 8pm, so it's hard to get a shot in before it gets too dark. This week we have one dozen eggs, snap peas, zucchini, baby pac choi, radish, and swiss chard. I added this one to my Flickr set along with the others.

On Monday M and I are going to California for a week for my friends' wedding and other visits, so we'll miss the next box. But I've been fiddling around with "scheduling" posts, so there will most likely be something to read here while we're away.

My fifteen seconds

Last Thursday I got a call from Sally McCabe who runs the Garden Tenders workshop series at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (have I mentioned how much I love this program?). A reporter from Reuters TV had contacted her about getting in touch with some local gardeners for a series he was doing on beating the recession. He wanted to talk to people who are growing their own food as a means to cut down on their food budget. Within an hour I had agreed to do a TV interview at my community garden (this one)!

It's horribly exciting and embarrassing (I feel abnormally sheepish about being on camera), but here it is. I have one little line and M got to be in some background footage too!



I also watched a movie called "The Garden" tonight, which I highly recommend. It's about a community of farmers in South Central L.A. at the country's largest urban community garden (14 acres!) and their fight to keep the land they have been cultivating for ten years. It addresses issues of food justice and racism and it's heartbreaking and beautiful.

Something's Peeking

My first crop! I got these silly little grow-your-own-chives kits as an impulse buy at the counter of the CVS for 50 cents each. Each one comes with a small terracotta pot, a peat pellet, and a packet of chives seeds. Peat begins to dry out almost immediately after you water it so I secluded the whole thing in this makeshift tupperware greenhouse.



I put it on the windowsill by the kitchen sink, next to my coffee plant. Do you like the view we have of the alley and apartment building behind us? It makes me think of these lines from the e. e. cummings poem I posted a little while back:

dead's fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots in windows but/ they live higher in their house than you so that's all you see but you/ don't want to



Lo and behold! Something green this way comes. I have since learned that chives are very difficult to start from seed, which might be why the seedlings (after almost a month and a half now) are weak little things that are still too small to harvest.



But they will have to do for now. I will get my seed order in soon and then I will spend hours dreaming up my garden design for the fast-approaching spring. I've come to the realization that I don't have enough sun exposure to grow food in my "front yard," boo. But the community garden project is a GO!!! (More on that later). So hopefully I will be growing food in my own little plot in the neighborhood soon, ack!

Our new CSA!

We just joined a CSA for the 2009 season! Our new farm is called Red Earth Farm in Orwigsburg, PA and they have a drop off site in West Philly. We will be getting a partial share (6 items a week) which should be plenty for the three of us (me, M and Jonathan).


(picture by 427 from the CSA Flickr pool)

The difference between joining a CSA on the east versus the west coast is that the season here in Philly goes from June through November instead of all year long. So we made our investment for the whole growing season and we are now a partner in the process, having put our faith in the farmers and Mother Nature to give us a season full of yummy veggies.

Until June I am keeping my spirits up by looking at the pictures in this CSA Flickr pool.

Brilliant beets and broth

The time has come for Wigilia, and for me that means making borscht. Though I'm not bringing the soup to the family dinner this year I decided to make some at home for myself and M. It's a Moosewood recipe that I got from my friend Sarah (I'm not sure which book it's from) and I thought I'd share it with you since borscht is so pink and delicious and hard to spell. I also love that it is an incredibly seasonal dish, all root veggies and potatoes and cabbage.

**Disclaimer: this will feed about 8 people, so maybe cut it in half for a weekday meal, unless you want to be eating it for a week like I will be.

3-4 large fresh beets

vegetable oil

12-15 small red skinned new potatoes, scrubbed and boiled until tender.

3-4 Tbs. butter

2 large onions, chopped

4-5 cloves garlic

2 medium carrots, chopped

1 16oz. can diced tomatoes, with juice

5 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 tsp dried dill (or 1/2 cup fresh dill)

2 bay leaves

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp salt

1/2 head cabbage

Sour cream

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Scrub beets. Slice off the leaves but leave a stub. Rub with vegetable oil and wrap individually in foil. Bake 1 hour until barely tender.
• In a big soup pot, melt butter. Add onions and sautee until tender, 4 min. Add garlic and carrots. Lower heat. When vegetables are mostly cooked, 6 min more, add tomatoes with their juice, stock, herbs, and salt. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer gently, covered, about 40 minutes.
• Remove beets from oven and poke with a fork to check if they are getting soft. Let them cool until you can handle them; rinse quickly in cold water, and then rub off the outer skins with your hands. It will dye your hands red (be careful with the countertops). Dice beets and add to soup. Slice cabbage and add it too. Simmer, covered, 15-20 minutes until they are tender.
• Adjust seasonings. Serve very hot with 1 or 2 new potatoes in each bowl. If you use diced regular potatoes instead, just add them at the same time as the beets. Dollop each bowl with a little sour cream.

Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

The carved masterpeices, from left: Hege made a silouette of her three cats (Fred, Henry, and Alf), Paula made a "bullcat," I made a grinning face (scroll down, it looks better in the day time), and Crystal made a headless horseman.









Here's my grinner. She's happy because she turned in her thesis that morning. Crys (the newest housemate) made a running girl.



And check out these amazing embroidered felt nature buttons. Jaja found them on the internets and shared, thanks Jaja!