Eighth of an Acre Bounty

Back in April I made some pretty significant life changes. I have had a job since I was 14 years old, which makes that a good 17 years now. Always at a job that necessitated getting up and dressed and going in to the city each day. Over the past two years or so I had found myself getting more and more panicked at the thought of doing this same thing for the next 30 years of my life, only to retire and die a few years later. As I mentioned in my about section, I am an atheist – a very convinced atheist. There is no great hereafter, no heavenly reward, no hundred virgins, no seat to the right hand of anybody waiting for this girl when she dies. This is it, this is what I’ve got.

So with this in mind I was going about my day to day work in an increasing state of unrest. I am sure everyone feels it to some extent. Honestly, if you didn’t have to work at the job that pays your bills – would you? I am sure there are a few people who have found that perfect occupation and would answer yes (and good for them), but for most of us I suspect the answer is a resounding NO.  What I found most, among all of my frustrations – was that I missed my home.  I kept thinking about how I spent all of my time working to pay for and maintain a home that I only spent time sleeping in 5 out of 7 days every week. Weekends would come and I would hole up – not wanting to go anywhere, do anything except cuddle with the boy or critters, play in the dirt or work on one of the multitudinous projects round here.

I spent a lot of time working for something I rarely got to experience. Back in April I decided to take a big leap and accepted a job working part time from home. I didn’t see a pay increase with the job switch and working part time effectively cut my salary in half. It was scary, but I didn’t want to continue on the same path I had been on. There was a bit of transition time. I was diligent about watching my money and expenses, and spent a lot more time planning purchases and looking for deals than I had before. And now, 6 months into my leap of faith (or exasperation?) I have learned a ton.

I cut my earnings in half, and yet I still make enough to pay the mortgage, bills and usually stash some money away in savings. The biggest surprise was perhaps the amount of money I spent working outside the home everyday. When you add up the fuel costs, lunches out, coffee breaks, semi-mandatory happy hour excursions after work (but never on the company’s buck), holiday gifts and the liquor therapy/self medication it takes to get over the work week – I realized I was paying a hell of a lot to earn a living.

I fill my gas tank up about once a month now. I have not spent any money on clothing (save for one pair of overalls) since I left my city job. Our highest expense outside of the mortgage is still our food bill, but that is in part due to the fact that we are willing to pay extra for local produce, dairy and humanely raised meat. We don’t eat out nearly as much as we used to, in good part due to the fact that I am not exhausted come dinnertime. It used to be that (if I wasn’t staying late at the office) I would get home around 6:30 or 7:00 and roll dinner out by around 7:30-8:00. The reality of overtime (a lot of the time) made a more normal day getting home closer to 8 or 8:30 and facing the decision of making dinner and eating by 9:30 or just picking something up.

Even on a high month in the summer when we are putting out a good deal of money in deposits on meat and stocking up on produce to preserve for winter our average grocery bill comes to just about $7 per person per day. The more accurate number would probably be closer to $5 per person per day over the whole year. Six months ago I would have blown through $5 on coffee and a scone on my way in to work, and now it feeds me for the day.

And the time! Oh the time! Realistically I am still working between 60% and 75% of a full time job, averaging between 24 and 30 hours a week. But I instantly reclaimed 3-4 hours of my day back by not commuting (we live 10 miles from city center and it takes almost 1.5 hours to get there by bus). I can get up in the morning, put some coffee on and get a load of laundry going – then go work while the washer does it’s thing. I can take a break from work around 3 to prep a meal for the evening that needs to braise for 3 hours, throw it in the oven and go back to work. I try to work around 6 hours a day, mostly in the morning so that by 2pm I can get outside and work in the yard if it is nice. No commute, no gas, no chaos (except that I have created for myself).

I have shifted my spending habits, and I definitely don’t spend as much as I used to (ugh – I just cringe inside to think of all the cash I wasted). I’d like to think we are on a very comfortable austerity plan. We eat well, we occasionally go out to a restaurant, we even go out to the movies every once in a while. We meet friends to play pool at the local bar but intersperse that with evenings at home, where the drinks are cheaper and the games are free. We live a good life – and perhaps for the first time as an adult I feel like I have a life outside of work. Or more accurately, my work life doesn’t overshadow and consume all the other aspects of my life. I have time to do the things that interest me and spend with the friends, family and critters I love.

Throughout this learning process, this six months of the most rewarding austerity I have ever experienced -the rest of the American economic system has been veering toward collapse. The past few weeks of emergency measures, corporate bailouts and implosion of credit markets has spurred me to think more and more about the fatal flaws of our system. The looming collapse of our markets, and the rationale for the bailout is all based on credit (or lack of). It is all based on the need for both ever expanding growth and ever expanding consumption. What ever happened to “enough”?

On a personal level this translates to recognizing excess. I have enough clothes, we have enough cars, our small house is enough for us. We don’t need to upgrade our closets, cars and homes every two years based on fads and what we will be allowed to borrow. I realize that systemically this acquisitive tendency is crucial to a capitalist economy. But at what point do we all stop being dupes feeding the system and say enough?

I have a hard time feeling pity for the couple that took on a 400k ARM mortgage for a 3,000 square foot house. I know that there were some people out there that were geniuinely misled, but I think that there were more people just chasing the dream. Trying to materially represent thier social class comeuppance when they couldn’t afford it.

Laura over at (Not so) Urban Hennery posted a pantry expose a few days ago that got me thinking. I dropped out of regularly posting for Independence days and have yet to do a full assessment of what we’ve managed to get from the garden this year. Now I don’t even have a pantry to expose – all of my canned goods are stuffed into corners, on top of dressers and shoved in among books on our bookshelves due to a complete lack of storage space. So these pictures should have been closeups in order to avoid exposing our chaos. But it is a good exercise to see where we are in terms of storing away food for winter.

What follows below is a list of what has been harvested and preserved in one form or another from the garden this year. We still have a bit of a harvest to do outside through the winter as well. Swiss Chard is still going strong and I am hoping for a mild enough winter so that it offers greens through the dark days. We also have a bunch of Leeks that I am leaving in the ground until needed. If a frost comes I will protect them with straw, but they should keep for a good part of the fall and winter. The Italian parsley is going gangbusters and I need to harvest it before it dies back (in my opinion, dried parsley is just silly and a waste). Beets are coming up, spinach and rutabaga seedlings are faltering a bit and I don’t know if we will see any produce from them.

Preserved for Winter (Items with an asterisk denote produce we either picked ourselves or got at the farmers market)

14 quarts green tomato enchilada sauce (good for soup bases and braising too)
11 quarts tomato sauce
7 pints green beans
4 quarts Wheat berry* and Kale soup
9 quarts black beans* (we’ve already eaten a few more)
7 half pints of Peach Habanero salsa*
2 quarts apple sauce
7 quarts green tomatoes
8 half pints tomatillo* salsa
2 quarts corn stock*
5 quarts chicken stock
4 pints Rhubarb juice concentrate
4 half pints roasted tomato paste
6 half pints Blueberry Habanero Chutney*
8.5 ilbs Rhubarb, frozen
4 gallon bags chinese broccoli (kai lan), frozen
1 quart bag yin yang beans, frozen
1 quart bag peas, frozen
1 gallon bag smoked eggplant* ravioli, frozen
3 gallons blackberries, frozen
2 gallon bags kale, frozen
Approx 35 lbs Sugar Hubbard Winter Squash (1 not yet harvested)

We’ve still got tomatoes ripening, the majority of which will be turned into more sauce as they come along. I plan on making another batch of green tomato relish as well. I also want to give a shot at making and freezing a few of my savory green tomato pies this year (recipe posted below) – to see if they hold up in the freezer alright. If they do those will be a great quick meal for nights I don’t want to cook.

In retrospect, not too bad for a tiny yard in the city. It won’t be enough to feed us through the winter – but it is a good step towards producing a good portion of our own food. Our meat orders from Prarie Springs and Whistling Train will come in November and January respectively, giving us a bit more protein to go along with the veg. Next year I have goals of being much more together when it comes to planning (and actually planting) a fall garden. I was super industrious this spring and faltered when it came time to get stuff in for a fall harvest. I still need to order garlic for planting now, and also want to get some favas for an early spring harvest. I also need to make my mind up on what type of fruit tree to put in. We have very limited space but I think I can get a semi-dwarf in along the fence. I’m thinking paw paw…anyone round these parts have a suggestion?

Savory Green Tomato Pie

Pie Crust (makes 2 crusts)

• 2.5 cups flour
• 1 cup cold butter (diced into .5 inch cubes)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Ice water

Mix flour, salt and sugar together in a bowl or food processor. Cut butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Using a fork, slowly add just enough ice water to make the dough come together. Divide dough into two sections (one a bit larger than the other). Take the larger piece of dough and roll out to fit a 9 or 10 inch pie plate, form dough to pie plate, (don’t crimp)  and set in fridge. Roll out the smaller portion of dough to be the cover piece for the pie and place in fridge.

Green Tomato Filling

• 1 medium onion (diced)
• 2-3 cups diced green tomatoes
• 4-6 ounces Swiss cheese shredded (or cheddar, Gruyere, whatever you have in the fridge)
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• Salt and pepper
• .5 cup breadcrumbs (if you don’t have breadcrumbs around you can sub a couple eggs and ¼ cup milk).

Preheat oven to 425. Sauté onions until translucent in a pan with a bit of oil or butter. Add diced green tomatoes and continue to sauté until the tomatoes have softened a little and any water from the vegetables has mostly evaporated. Add thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Let mixture cool a bit and transfer to a bowl. Add in the shredded Swiss and breadcrumbs and mix together thoroughly. Dump the Green tomato mixture into the pie plate (with crust) smooth out and then place the top crust on, folding the top crust edges under the bottom crust edges along the rim, crimping as you go. Cut a few vents for steam in the top crust. Place pie in the preheated oven and bake for approximately 45-55 minutes, until the crust is an even golden color.

Let cool a bit and enjoy!

** Bacon is really really good with the green tomatoes if you are so inclined. Just dice bacon and cook then add it to the other ingredients before putting in the pie crust.

Ravioli stuffed with Ricotta, Leeks, Chard and Bacon. Heirloom Tomato salad with Cucumber, Parsely and Fresh Oregano. Skyway Sourdough Bread. Orange Chocolate Cake with Cocoa frosting and Chocolate Stout Ice Cream.

My mom’s birthday was this past week. Birthdays in my family are usually a pretty low-key affair. A good opportunity to get together and catch up over a meal and cake. I am very lucky to have my parents living only about a half hour away, so on Wednesday night we had them over for a birthday dinner. I managed to get a lot of the prep work for dinner done the previous weekend so that I could spend Wednesday afternoon sweeping and decluttering the living room.

My mom loves pasta and chocolate. I am pretty sure those would rank as her top two favorite foods – so the menu was already set to some extent. I decided to make ravioli stuffed with homemade ricotta, leeks, chard and a few sun dried tomatoes. On Sunday I started some tomatoes from the garden simmering on the stove for sauce and made the ricotta and set it to drain. In the meantime I made the pasta dough and set it aside to rest as I sauteed the leeks, chard and a couple slices of bacon. Once all the components were complete I rolled out the dough and made several trays of ravioli and threw them in the freezer for the coming week.

I already knew I was going to make her a chocolate cake (obvious choice) but was pondering an ice cream to serve with the cake. I am not a huge fan of chocolate. I like it fine, but I don’t do backflips for it like some people. In fact I like a background flavor of chocolate more than anything like in a good dark stout beer. Then I came up with the idea of making a chocolate stout ice cream to go with the cake. A little bit of googling to get a general idea of proportions and I was on my way.

Tuesday I made the birthday cake and did a bit of a twist on my standard recipe by grating the zest of a whole orange directly into the batter before baking. I let the cake cool overnight (since it didn’t get in the oven till about 9:30 due to the 3 loaves of bread I had rising in there). The next day I whipped up a batch of cocoa flavored whipped cream frosting and frosted then decorated the cake. I am a big fan of using edible flowers to decorate cakes. I have little to no skill when it comes to piping icing and my penmanship sucks. It is a much easier (and prettier) affair if I just focus on growing several varieties of flowers for the special events throughout the year. I am luck in that nobody in my immediate family has a birthday in the dead of winter.

My mom’s birthday is the latest and there are always some flowers left in the garden. This year I decorated with Nasturtiums, Calendula and Marigolds. It was all very brown and red and orange – befitting a fall birthday. I sprinkled a few remaining white Alyssum blooms over the top and called it good. Notice the torpedo like calendula on the side of the cake. I had no idea they would close up like that when refrigerated.

My mother’s cakes almost always have marigolds on them. Again fitting, as Gary informed me that apparently every child except for me went through the kindergarten ritual of planting marigold seeds in milk cartons so that they were ready by mothers day. Last year’s cake had marigolds but also included lemon peel and pomegranate seeds.

I am bad about buying presents. I can never come up with the right thing and never remember the good ideas I may have had throughout the year when it comes time to actually get a present. I hate buying token gifts that I know will never be used. But food – food gets used. I know what to make and get true enjoyment out of figuring out a meal plan for a special person in my life. I love the process, the prep, the contemplation time I get when methodically making ravioli or kneading bread. It is the ultimate gift that you see a return on right away, if it sucks – plates come back full. If it was good – people smile and eat and laugh and talk story and the night can go on forever. It is basic, fundamental and nourishing not just to our bodies but our hearts.

The past week has been pretty busy round here. Cold weather and rain rolled in and I believe it is here to stay. Gary is still stuck on the pipe dream of summer through October and we have a daily battle over whether or not to pull the volunteer tomatillo plant. He gets very attached and is loathe to pull anything out before it is obviously dead. This is how he got a radish tree at his old house. I did pull several of the tomato plants that were planted in the main bed and not given the hoop house protection. The bean trellis took a header after 40 mph winds over the weekend, so we cleared those out too. I got pretty used to the big screen of greenery at the back of the yard over the summer. It is disconcerting to walk out there now and not see it. I think we will make that a permanent fixture of sorts next year.

I’ve canned 7 quarts of tomato sauce this past week. The San Marzanos are ripening slower than any of the others. So even when I fill my stockpot to the brim with cut up tomatoes, it really amounts to only 3 or 4 quarts of sauce once I have simmered all the extra juice/water off. Black Russians and Aunt Ruby’s German Greens are making up the bulk of it, with a few Tiffen Mennonites and Marzano’s thrown in as they see fit to ripen. We have boxes upon boxes of green tomatoes wrapped in newspaper strategically placed on every horizontal surface as I speak. It seems to be working well, I just don’t get the mother lode of ripe tomatoes all at once which made putting them up a bit easier last year. This year it will be a much more punctuated process.

I also put up 14 half pints of Dill green tomato pickles. I used up all of the green cherry tomatoes left from when I pulled the Sungold plant yesterday. I made green tomato pickles last year but tried a different recipe this time. Last years were a big hit with a friend of ours, and a good thing since they didn’t thrill me too much. I still need to get out there today and pull the remaining tomatoes from the hoophouse, as it has done all it can do. I will try to box ripen all of the Marzanos and also the larger Tiffens and Black Russians. The others I hope to make up a big batch of Green Enchilada sauce with and perhaps some more of Susans Green Tomato Relish. I need to get to the produce market or the Farmers market to get chilies and cilantro first though.

Other activities this week included alternately belly crawling and back crawling under the house for a few days. We needed to replace all of the furnace ducting and figured as winter approached, we should just start the job. Despite a seeming complete inability to find the proper supplies and days worth of hold-ups and other engagements – we actually managed to finish this past Friday. Hopefully the new insulated ducting will show its presence in a decreased heating bill this winter and warm warm toes. Both Gary and I have mostly recovered, save for the bellyaching about parts of our body we didn’t even know were there before, and the remnant coughing up of fine Skyway clay and fiberglass. I suspect Gary will go much more into detail on this project and I will leave that to him.

Also on the list for today is Duck Confit. In our weekend errand running we stopped at the local asian market and picked up a whole duck plus two legs. Yesterday I broke the duck down and rendered all of the skin for fat. I think I am still a little short, but will give it a whack anyway. I can’t go buy another duck right now and refuse to pay the highway robbery prices for mail ordered duck fat. Well, I could go buy another duck but that would result in another rendering event and I don’t know if my arteries could take it. You know what the byproduct of rendering duck fat is? Duck Cracklins, oh god – the pure, salty, crunchy bliss. Things like that can only happen once a year lest we give up all passion for everything else, sell the house and buy a million ducks in a freezer storage locker and spend the rest of our short days munching on duck cracklins while sitting on the truck tailgate over a portable propane stove.

I also have the two breasts from the whole bird which will most likely make itself known in some form for dinner. Or perhaps we will eat the garlic sausage we picked up from the butcher. We will see how I feel about it all after several more hours of canning and mucking about in the rain picking green tomatoes.

Yesterday was a steamy affair in the kitchen. I have finally acknowledged to myself that October is just around the corner and our traditional tomato glut is going to take a lot more coaxing this year. We got the plastic up on the hoop house the other weekend, but a combination of cold days and less than clear plastic (try white when advertised as clear) have thwarted my hopes of instant tomato ripening. I canned 7 quarts of green tomatoes the night before last. Half were larger tomatoes, sliced for breading and frying during the winter. The other half were whole or just halved for use in enchilada sauces and other creations as I see fit.

Today I made a batch of chicken stock(from the numerous cutoffs and saved carcasses I throw in the freezer every time I roast a chicken) with a healthy dose of fennel fronds, onion and carrot. I pressure canned these as I need to save room in the freezer for the beef and pork that will be coming shortly. I also made up a batch of corn broth. We ate quite a bit of fresh corn this summer and a few cooking gigs left me with an abundance of corn cobs whose kernels had been cut off for one recipe or another. I toss these into the freezer as well until I have enough for stock/broth. The corn stock is incredibly sticky and sweet when done. It makes a great base for a corn chowder using frozen kernels in the winter, really really corny – heh.

And last but not least, I roasted up 3 pans of tomatoes with oregano for sauce. Except we decided to go run errands right in the middle of my flurry of activity and by the time we got back and I ran everything through the food mill it was more like roasted tomato paste. So be it! 4 half-pints of roasted tomato paste won’t go to waste around here.

Do you remember the heat? We didn’t have a lot of it this year, but we had some pretty hot days. I mentioned a while ago that we headed down to my friends land towards the end of August. It turned out to be one of the hottest days this year. That morning right before we headed out was when I discovered that someone had crashed into my parked car and royally screwed it up. I was in a pretty foul mood that day but we packed up anyway for the 2 hour drive south. We arrived around 2 pm (after much traffic and back tracking, I’ll save that story for another day), and the sun was in full force. Wisely I asked Gary to stop at the general store in town and picked up some beer before heading out to the farm.

What resulted was one of the most pleasant days I had this summer. Did anything get done? Absolutely not. As soon as we got there we all found our respective spots, I parked my butt and cracked a beer. My guess is it got into the upper 90’s with plenty of humidity, mosquitoes and sweat. But it was wonderful, just sitting, catching up and talking, occasionally taking a stroll around the gardens and visiting the critters. The leading picture above is of the newest addition to the farm, Liam. He was pretty hot too and every once in a while he would return to our outside seating area to cool off his two front feet in a bucket of water, then he would run off to rigorously monitor the other animals, he is the epitome of a border collie.

This is Red, by far the oldest rooster I have ever known. Red is one of the first additions to the farm, I think he is 7 or 8 years old now. Somehow it is fitting that the only real pictures I took while we were down there are of the newest and oldest. I had intended to take many more, but it was hot and the beer was cold and my motivation for the day seemed to have been torn off along with my sideview mirror. Red is the bonafide yard bird of my friends place. The chicken, geese and ducks all have their own fenced enclosures but Red has free range over the entirety of her land. He hangs with the dogs and monitors the hens most of the time.

More and more I dream about having my own little bit of land. I am so impressed by what my friend has done with her land. Over the years I have had the opportunity to see it go from a raw bit of pasture and woods to well developed perennial beds, a small orchard and plenty of other critters. With all that is happening in this country at the moment I feel an increasing sense of urgency to check out. We do a lot on this little city lot, trying to grow a good portion of our own food and responsibly tend to our little patch of earth, but the size limits our independence. I dream about finally getting the mortgage paid off and getting down to the bare minimum of external work for money to keep us fed and watered. It still seems a long way off, and I am a bit short on patience lately.

The economic and political state of affairs has done little to redeem my faith in this country and its citizens. I know there are thoughtful folks out there, it just appears they are completely in the minority. After 8 years of a idiotic Texas frat boy in the office we are now facing the very real possibility that an aspiring Miss America will be a heartbeat away from the presidency. This terrifies me, and if it happens – if they win the popular vote, I believe this country will get exactly what it deserves. I just feel bad for the rest of the world that has to survive our blunders. I’m no fan of politics or politicians in general, democrat or republican. At base I believe the system is corrupt. But this is big stuff, and if over 500 billion dollars in costs for 6 years of war, a failing economic system and rising unemployment doesn’t stir the people of this country to demand a change from the status quo from both parties – once again, we deserve everything we get.

I originally sat down to write a long overdue post of what I have been doing (since I certainly haven’t been posting). It quickly became apparent that I had to get something off my chest and my original post needed to be split into two, since I just couldn’t stop typing. The original post was put up yesterday and I promise is less vitriolic than this one – so for those not on my own political lean – you may just want to skip this.

I checked out Joel Salatin’s recent book Everything I Want to do is Illegal. And up until yesterday I was enjoying it. Salatin is an intelligent man and a good writer. His discussions of the industrial food system and the bureaucracy that prevents small farms and local food systems from succeeding is both stimulating and insightful. I have the utmost respect for what he and his family are doing on their acreage in Virginia and have learned many things from him in other essays and his occasional articles in The Stockman.

But he jumped the shark. Big time.

This book is full of his personal libertarian analysis of the ills of modern society, and while some of his reasoning’s I tend to concur with – suffice it to say I am not signing up for the Libertarian party anytime soon (or any party for that matter*). But I could get over that, I could read past our political differences and still involve myself in the context of his arguments and the base rationale behind them. I even glossed over the frequent bible references he uses as his reasoned guidepost for public policy (ugh). We each have our own gods and opinions and still have a lot to learn from each other, right? (Note that this is a big step for a Catholic School survivor and avowed atheist to take).

And then, last night, I came to his chapter on Labor. It all started simply enough with a discussion of his difficulties in getting help on the farm and having to turn away kids who desired to apprentice because he did not have the infrastructure, cash and certifications for such a program. And then he started sliding into the precursors for an argument against minimum wage and child labor laws (I squirmed a bit, but knew he was a Libertarian when I started so I pushed on through).  I moved on to the chapter on taxes. And then, how do I introduce it? Well – lets let him speak for himself:

“Of course, if our civilization hadn’t killed 50 million babies that would have been paying into the system right now the shortfall would not be as acute. That is why we allow continued inflows of illegal aliens. We can’t afford to stop the flow because these are the folks propping up Social Security. And they are now doing the work that aborted babies would have been doing right now. We’ve executed our work force and must now accept whatever we can get.”

What the fuck? Is he serious? Really? Where do I begin….

So to restate his point. Social Security is failing because we aborted too many babies and the aborted babies are also the cause of all illegal immigration. Had all those babies been born, they would be paying social security taxes enough to cover our current deficit all based on low wage salaries (below minimum wage at Sataltin’s choice) for picking our produce, cleaning up our factory farmed chicken shit, cleaning our houses, mowing our lawns and tucking our kids in at night?

I don’t even know if I have it in me to compose a rebuttal to that sort of idiocy – but I’ll give it a shot.

Social Class – You know, Joel has a point. I don’t know anyone who would disagree with a 50 million strong uber-underclass caste we could use to do all of the jobs that the existing born and bred Americans don’t want to do at the going federal minimum wage rate of a whopping $6.55 per hour or $13,624 dollars a year before taxes and the much owed social security and medicare taxes are deducted from their paychecks. But wait, all of those aborted babies would actually be eligible for social security and medicare (unlike the illegal immigrants who (according to Salatin’s assertion) are supporting the system now without any access to its benefits. And I would put good money on the fact that someone making under 14k a year would have to avail themselves of Medicare or Medicaid services when a health issue threatens them instead of trotting down to the nearest for-profit hospital to get charges $100 per stitch (This comes from experience, I needed 7 stitches while in school and without health insurance – the bill came to just over $700).

Unemployment Rates – What about the unemployed we have now? Are they not figured into this rationale, or are they just good for nothings who don’t want to work? Do we have a guarantee that those 50 million (now un-aborted) babies will come into this world with a family eagerly anticipating their arrival and prepared to care for them properly and raise them with the good ole American work ethic that will be demanded for their lifetime of manual labor at a pittance?

Population Density – The current US population estimate is 305 million, give or take a couple hundred thousand. 50 million additional people represents a sixteen percent increase over our current population. Where are these people going to live? Salatin bemoans the conversion of prime farmland over to housing developments and big box stores (don’t get me wrong, so do I). But if these 50 million are intended to rescue us from our farm labor crisis where does he propose they live? In the nearest city so that they can commute to the farm everyday in the car that they bought on their 13k salary? Oh, wait..farm workers don’t even get minimum wage, do they? Not to mention the cost of gas. Or are they intended to live in ramshackle converted chicken huts and weathered lean-to’s like many of our immigrant farm workers do? This is an improvement? The living conditions of this country’s farm workers is already horrendous – and we are to assume that they will improve out of the beneficent farm owners desire to care for a largely migratory population that travels where the work is?

Settling for “what we can get” – Are you freaking kidding me? This country was built on the backs of immigrant laborers, legal and illegal. Our wealth and rise to the top of the dung pile is at the expense of millions of working class immigrants who wore out their bodies and souls just trying to feed their families and make a go of it “in the land of the plenty”. Settling? We have been coddled for so long and used the third world as our bargain Labor-Ready pool since we forcefully acquired this country – how can he possibly believe that we are settling for “what we can get”. Immigrants are the chosen caste in this country to do our dirty work. The born and bred American is too aware of his rights and abuses of power, employment law etc to be of any use to those who want the maximum work for the minimum expense. Or is there some inherently racist and nationalist undertone here? Does the value of a persons work increase or decrease depending on their citizenship.  Or does a US citizen make a better compost heap than an illegal immigrant?

It is absolutely amazing to me that a man who has spent so much time considering the intricacies and dependent relationships of earth, plants and animals could flip and expose such a sophomoric view of human social intricacies and dependent relationships. You’d think that maybe he viewed humans as a completely separate system. You will note that I am not even taking up the abortion argument here. He is free to not abort any children that may find their way into his womb, I promise. I tried to read past it, and got into the next chapter but couldn’t stop spinning.

I’ve been sitting on this post for a couple of days now, because there is so much more I want to add (and rant on about). But I figured I should just post it and let it go. I haven’t picked up the book again – don’t know if I will. Such a shame…

So I have been seriously remiss in posting lately. And I don’t really have a valid excuse short of life gets away from you sometimes. That and I have found myself not wanting to be in front of a computer for the remaining free time I have while the sun is still shining. I have been reading quite a bit lately courtesy of our local library. I checked out two cookbooks, David Lebovits’ Perfect Scoop and Edna Lewis’ The Taste of Country Cooking. The Lebovits book was good, I made peach ice cream and noted several others that I will try eventually. We are only two people here so I couldn’t run the course of recipes without filling the freezer and throwing us both into adult onset diabetes.

The Edna Lewis book was an absolute gem! It follows the seasons and is part cookbook part memoir of her youth growing up in a small farming community. Even if you are not into cooking that much I highly recommend this. It includes recipes for Blackberry wine and is a beautiful piece of writing, what more could you want?

Aside from food books, I have been reading several homesteading books. I checked out the River Cottage Cookbook and am convinced that I will actually need to purchase this. Far from just a cookbook this is a reference manual for almost anything having to do with producing, preserving and/or raising your own food. I also read Extreme Simplicity: Homesteading in the City. While I had high hopes for this book, I don’t really feel like I walked away with anything I didn’t know already. It has some good tips for someone just starting to consider the idea of small scale self sufficiency in urban settings, but it is a little too new-agey for my tastes. I read John Seymour’s The Fat of the Land: Family Farming on Five Acres, which is a classic at this point. I would recommend this, and have Gary reading it now before it is due back.

I do have a gripe about these homesteading/self-suffiency books though. Each one advertises how you too can make the move to a (at least partial) self sufficient lifestyle and support yourself with next to nothing. The extreme simplicity book originally intrigued me because in our current location I am constantly preoccupied with seeing exactly how much we can get/how much we can do with our teeny tiny eighth of an acre (including the footprint of the house). The reality of the Extreme Simplicity book is that although the authors do indeed live in Los Angeles, they have the luck of bordering their backyard on an abandoned orchard in the middle of the city. An orchard who’s owner is open to them keeping their bees and several wild chickens on his property as well as gathering wild foodstuffs for the market and burying their pet dogs there, collecting firewood, etc. The subtitle should be Extreme Simplicity: Provided you have a beneficent neighbor who will let you use his property for free. The Seymour book actually acknowledges his good fortune, and is a bit more dated but is a similar situation. He and his wife had the luck to sign a lease for a 5 acre parcel of land with two homes and outbuildings on a 25 year lease for $25 dollars a month. Show me anywhere in the States now that that is even remotely possible (that isn’t arid desert) and I will live on 5k a year with no problems.

I read another book as well, but that is saved for the next post – I have a bit of venting to do on that one. And the tomatoes are slowly coming in! (see, I had to come around to the leading picture eventually). The beaver lodge have been steadily dribbling out, I harvested the first two San Marzanos yesterday, several Russian Blacks in our bellies and today brought our first ripe Aunt Ruby’s German Green. We constructed a hoop house over the tomato bed the other weekend as a last ditch attempt to lenghten the season. But the snap clamps I ordered have still not arrived. I ordered them on the 7th and they didn’t see fit to tell me they were out of stock until I called in a week later wondering where my order was. SO as soon as those arrive we will put up the plastic and hopefully jack up the temp inside by 5-10 degrees. I have not canned a single batch of tomato anything yet and am beginning to get concerned that we will need to purchase our winter supply from the farmers market instead of the back yard. But maybe the hoop house will perform miracles.

I tried to include links to all the books mentioned above, but Amazon was not cooperating. So it goes…

This entry is late, the weekend got away from me. Yesterday was pretty nice but it is cold and cloudy again today. Right now the temperature outside is a balmy 54 degrees F. I am not ready for fall.

Plant -Ok, so I didn’t plant anything this week. I’m a bit demoralized, it appears summer is over.

Harvest – Kai Lan, green beans, bunching onions, 8.5 lbs rhubarb, butter crunch lettuce, 2 tomatoes (is it really just going to end like this, one or two tomatoes a week? ugh).

Preserve – 1 quart blackberries frozen, 1 gallon Kai Lan blanched and frozen, 7 pints green beans canned, 5 pounds Rhubarb frozen, 4 pints rhubarb juice concentrate canned. Stemmed and bagged another round of dried organo and another bag of dried spearmint. Husked arugula seeds.

Prep – Trimmed back the dogwood tree that was rapidly overtaking the path round the tomato bed. I am considering putting in a hoop house over the entire bed (this September if the weather doesn’t start cooperating with Tomato season). Cobbled together (again) the pole bean trellis which is suffering terribly from the rain and winds we have had. I just need it to last until the beans are done producing, is that too much to ask?

Cook– Corn pudding with Farmers market corn, roasted poblanos, okra and onions. Garden veggie mac n cheese. Sumac and cumin spiced chicken thighs roasted with summer squash and zucchini. Chocolate pistachio zucchini bread.  Red wine braised lamb shanks with red potatoes, carrots, fennel and onion. The ever present garden salad.

Manage Reserves – With the consumption of the lamb shanks this week we now have one leg of lamb left in the freezer from last years lamb. Our quarter beef won’t arrive until October and the pig arrives January/February so we will be eating a lot of veg til the meat comes in.

Work on Local Food Systems – No shopping at the markets this week.

This guy was huge! I don’t know what variety he (she?) is, but apparently he decided that the recent weather was not at all summerlike and escaped indoors. I found him in my makeshift proofing box over the weekend when I was about  to proof bread. I should have put something recognizable in there for the picture for perspectives sake. I’d say he was about 2-3 inches from front legs to back.

Saved from drowning and spending a few minutes regaining his composure while drying out on his rescue stick. We have seen more of these black wasps (?) this year than ever before. I am curious about them. Need to seriously consider getting a good insect identification book. Reccomendations?

Nin can’t help but insert herself into every possible picture I take out in the yard. Screaming and whining at me the whole time because I am paying more attention to my camera and the bugs than her.

Do you think she knows it is her shadow?