All the Christmas I Need

Christmas on the farm is not a time of lights and joyous singing.  The house is not decorated nor is there mythology surrounding an upcoming gift exchange.  It is cold and the lights are off to save every sliver of energy and money we can.  The chance of our one Bing Crosby Christmas album making it on to the record player at anytime other than our family gathering is very slim.  I received a handful of phone calls from family members encouraging me to go to one place or another to get a tree.  Tradition is a big shackle to shake especially when the intent isn’t to reject tradition but establish new values.

The backyard smells like wet shit.  There really isn’t a better description, and if the word is offensive to you then you probably haven’t heard me talk much because I use it all the time.  Mostly when I stub my toe or watch the Dodgers play.  Wet weather and waterfowl has rendered parts of the backyard into marsh.  It is seasonal, but still a little gross.  A covering of straw mitigates the mud and cuts the smell.  It is there nonetheless.  Heat lamps for the animals have been exchanged for Christmas lights and the yard has an eerie red glow.  The animals are happy and covered in the cold.  We are pleased to be their stewards.

A sucker has been growing in the yard since I can remember.  It is a fir tree that is next to our garden fence.  The fence prevented branches from growing on one side and the tree had never been pruned.  Ethan and I went out in the dark and cut it down.  When we drug it into the house and placed it in the tree stand my grinchish heart cracked slightly.  Ethan took charge of the task of hanging lights and decorating the tree.  Carly and I watched him as we listened to 90’s pop and didn’t utter a single fa la la la la.

Christmas is defined so many ways.  The holiday season with all of the influence of spirituality, tradition, and materialism has rendered the season nearly meaningless to me.  I see our dead garden and our animals huddled together for warmth and I feel the hopelessness of winter and the unrelenting sting of nature.  And then I think of humans and what we have made Christmas.  Society flips a big middle finger to nature with all of our decadence and consumption.  We declare our mastery over the earth in this deep dark winter.  Maybe it is our distraction to make us feel different than nature. 

Maybe we are supposed to go through this dark season along with the rest of Nature.  Perhaps it is a good to take time to not indulge in all that is put in front of us and instead think about what God really is.  If there are no weeds to pull, no soil to prepare, no garden to harvest, then now is the perfect time to reflect.  Now is the time we can think about what God gives us from Creation.  Moreover, now is the time we can think of what God has given us in a supernatural way.

Think of it like this, when Ethan cut down the tree in our yard he changed it.  He took something that Carly and I considered an annoyance; something that kept light from the fruit bearing plants, something that compared to everything else was ugly and he removed it.  He removed it from the cold and the wet shit.  When he saw it he said, this is good enough and then he put lights on it and decorated it and called it his.  Maybe that is all Christmas should be.  Recognizing that a Son selected us, something that is otherwise worthless and told us that we are good enough, taking us into His house and making us His.  That is all the Christmas I need.

On Smell

Carly once said that my breath smelled like cold garbage.  After diverting my mouth I had to take a moment to think about how that smelled.  It smells pretty bad.  Lately it is clear that cold has a smell.  The air smells cold, and the rain brings up the smell of plants fighting to stay alive in the lateness of the year.  Essentially, everything is dying.  The same rain that brings life in the spring is washing away and breaking apart the plants in the garden.  Overlooked fruit rots.  Leaves wither or fall off altogether.  The rabbit hutches that were once pristine and clean are now soiled with dirt that has been left from the run off from the rain.  The bale of straw that was spread in the aviary to keep the mud under control has decomposed under the feet of the ducks and now has an off-putting rotten smell.

Inside the house the frantic salvage of tomatoes has created the smell of salsa a handful of times.  Tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers have the clean smell of being freshly cut and then the combined complexity of being placed together.  Once jarred they go into the pot where they seal off until the fateful moment the smells are reintroduced before an upcoming taco night.

Without the garden duties we also have undertaken a home brewing project.  For a minimal investment we have started a few gallons of mead, honey wine.  At first, the combination of honey and water gave a subtle sweet fragrance that seemed to be a perfect pairing with the citrus fruit we were going to mix with it.  Brewing is really quite easy, and after we combined those two ingredients along with the activated yeast we were in the mead process.  After a few hours the pressure from gasses released by the yeast was too much for the small airlock.  Sweet water burst all over the kitchen table.  The room filled with the smell of chemical change.  We rushed to recover the bottle but not without first taking a taste of the concoction that’s in its infancy.  In subsequent days the brew continued to bubble aggressively and I couldn’t help but notice the yeasty smell in the kitchen.

Things have changed on the farm.  New projects and new weather will bring every fragrance out of nature and our industry.  It is a good exercise to sniff in the uniqueness of this season.

Harvest Days

Frantic.

Frantic is the word that describes the way we met the first rain of fall.  Leaves wither and we pull the last tomatoes and peppers from their vines.  The angular light that comes from the fall changes the way the farm looks, giving an ominous feeling that sunny days are few and the work of the year is almost over.

This artichoke is now fully in bloom, although it's leaves are yellow from the dry weather and onset of autumn.  The rain keeps the kale, swiss chard, and collards green and vibrant but most everything else is dead for the year.

And yet there is still new life.  Our kits are big, and should be ready for harvest around the first of next year.  There once open cages have been replaced with hutches that have heat lamps installed.  This is what we did to get ready for the rain.

Our ducks have also finally started to lay.  Our first eggs were massive double yolkers.  Now they are closer to the size of a regular chicken egg.  Just as the season comes to a close we find that there are a million other things to manage.

Because now that it is harvested we have to do something with it!  Everything that was eaten fresh during the season now needs to be canned, preserved, frozen, and otherwise distributed before it spoils.  Frantic?  To say the least.  There are many things to do before we put this season to a close, but oh the joy that comes from seeing all of our hard work put to use.

Farm Life: Maintaining, Harvesting, and Kits!

Farm life has been busy to the point that is has been difficult to do anything accept manage the farm.  We are all back to school and Carly is in full force managing the house to ensure that every living thing on the farm is cared for and loved.  Instead of sitting around waiting for plants to grow we are harvesting some of our labor and making certain that the fruit on our vines is well maintained so we don’t lose our investment.  There are many things that have happened in the last month, and there are lots of pictures to share.  We’ll start with the volunteer garden, then harvesting, and finally our rabbits.

Our volunteer garden is out of control.  This picture is about three weeks old, and the growth has been overwhelming since then.  Artichokes that were planted on purpose are blooming, tomatoes are weighing down vines, and cucumbers are crawling along the ground growing out into the street.

This roma volunteered and now has fruit that is waiting to turn.

We have put up metal grating to discourage our cucumbers and melons from growing out into the street.  Today this grating is completely saturated with leaves, flowers, and fruit.

Tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, and cucumbers all sit on the edge of the street.  It is difficult to contain but fun to drive up our driveway extra slow to see if we can see any new fruit.  We have had people bring up concerns that our crops in the front yard will get plundered by passersby, but we almost welcome it.  If we can share just a little of what God and Nature gave us for free then they can have it!

When we have potatoes bursting out of the ground and all we do is pour "duck tea" on the ground and water regularly then sharing our wealth is the least we can do.  Although the harvest has been good, it hasn't been as abundant as planned.

Ethan harvested some of our cherry tomatoes with Carly last week.  As a matter of fact, Ethan has really embraced the farm now that he sees the changing of the plants and their tasty benefits.  Our cherry and pear tomatoes are still the only ones that have fruit that is consistently turning.

If you look in this harvest of red and black cherries along with yellow pears it is really hard to be disappointed.  We have had fresh tomatoes almost every day.  When we can't take it anymore, we will make sauces and stew the extra.

Through the chain link we use as a tomato cage.  Tabouli, diced tomatoes on fried bread, salads, eggs, and pasta with pesto are just the beginning of what we have yielded from one delicious plant.

We also dug up potatoes.  Oh my, delicious potatoes!  We planted two small purple potatoes that we bought for $1 in the spring and dug up over five pounds of these beauties.  The night we first ate them we mashed them with this huge volunteer Yukon which was probably a pound all by itself.

When we finished the mash it was the faintest lavender.  We ate it alongside some wilted kale that the kids all ate with expectations of seconds.  When we planted our garden we didn't plant with expectations of yield but of uniqueness.  The kids ate blue potatoes!  They eat fruit and vegetables that are different than the grocery store.  They don't only eat fresh vegetables, they eat vegetables that are difficult to find in a Winco or Safeway.  It is fun.  And we love seeing variety and color on our plates.

We let Sebastian, our buck out with our two does about a month ago.  We built a rabbit run out of hay bales and saw them scrape, feed, and play.  We also watched Sebastian mate; which meant that we would have some kits soon.  When we saw Bigwig start to nest and pull her hairs we knew it was time to nest ourselves.  We purchased lumber and wire to make a hutch.  Ethan helped eagerly.  I had a decent design that I communicated poorly to Carly.  When she found flaws in it I was still unwilling to make amends.  To add insult to injury I slammed the screwdriver into my thumb.  The scab is still healing.  Alas, we still got the hutch built.  Just as we built a nest for her, she completed her nest and had four kits overnight.

Ethan reviews his handiwork and looks in on the kits that are brand new in the hutch.  By building this hutch we were able to separate our two does.  This was great because the next night our other doe, Hippo, had four kits of her own.

You can see the kits in here at just a day or so old.  Each mother had four.  We lost Hippo's runt.  A few days later we found one of Bigwig's babies strangled in the material that we gave her to make her nest.

Farm life is fertile life.  Animals are born and animals die.  It is not sad, but it still affects us to see a baby only a few days old lose it's life.  Bigwig was distressed when we checked her nest and found the strangled kit.  The kit in the above picture is the twin of the one we lost.

Today, the kits are all getting bigger.  The above picture is one of Bigwig's kits (left) and one of Hippo's (right)  It is amazing the difference a day makes in the size of these baby bunnies.  Six total! Unless they are homed by friends the ultimate destination of these rabbits is our plate.  This isn't happy nor sad.  It isn't cruel.  It is a contract.  We have allowed our animals to reproduce and the lives that our kits will experience is greater than that of a factory farmed chicken or cow.  We will watch our kits grow and love them.  Ultimately, they will repay us on our table.  Farm life.  It is a good way to live.

Family Farm time

Things are different at the farm.  We have the kids on a different schedule which changes the dynamics of everything.  It affects our kids, our friends, and our food.  We used to spend the end of every week with our kids and send them to their mother's for the early part of the week.  Now we have them for a full seven days and they are gone for seven days.  Quite different.  We realized how much we will have to be prepared to cook when the busy weeks of school come.  The propensity to be lazy, use fast food, and rely on freezer meals made us shudder.  We have decided to precook meals to offer the best of our kitchen every day they are here.

Yeah, maybe we are a little food obsessed.  How great is it to find contentment by growing, cooking, and eating?  What a simple pleasure!  The joy that is found in the kitchen is the ultimate realization of what we are doing here on the farm.  And recently a baking bug has hit and Carly and Michael.  Now the kitchen isn't only the final place for our harvested crops, but it is a place of chemistry and experimentation.  They have decided that fresh baked bread is a necessary component in our kitchen.

So on the weekend preceding kids for a week they baked bread.  Carly made zucchini bread with fruit that came from our garden.  Michael used kalamata olives from the fridge to make an olive bread.  Both were waiting for the children when they arrived Monday night.  The product was very tasty and it became contagious to want to bake more.

So when the kids came we baked again.  Michael came over and got the girls to help bake some French bread.  In the above picture Melody is getting warm water to proof dough.  Later, Josie kneaded dough while Michael made certain that the dough was properly kneaded before going into the oven.  The end product was a plain loaf, an oregano loaf, and a rosemary & thyme loaf.

The kitchen is the canvas upon which we place the paint of our farm.

Perhaps that metaphor doesn't hold exactly.

But I think it is noteworthy to say that farming is all about getting to the plate.  There is joy in food.  There is stewardship in food.  There is even worship in food.  Nothing silly, but we can give gratuity to God when we eat.  Isn't that why we pray before meals in the first place?  When I was very young I received the cookbook More With Less from my Aunt Kathryn.  Although I have hardly used the recipes, reading about the Mennonite ideals of food as a resource from God and something to share with the world has influenced me deeply.

I want it to influence our kids too.  So when Melody is happy to bake with our friends I feel that the farm is a success.  When Josie harvests kale to make chips the farm is a success.

When Ethan asks about what plant is what and says, "I'd rather eat healthy food and then only sometimes eat unhealthy food" it seems that we are succeeding.  Yes, food is important.  But family is more important, friends are more important, and humanity is important.  We aren't trying to save the world.  But if we can make the world a little better, if we can influence three children, if we can receive love from our friends to the point that we are family, then we are succeeding.  And maybe Rosefield is a little patch of the world that has been saved.

Economy

A loaf of bread.
Four hamburger buns.
Pasta.
An apple.  Two pints of tomatoes.

Less than $15

That will feed Carly and me this week.

This is our first week of a new schedule that will leave us with kids every other week.  This week it is just the two of us.  Now that we have a yard full of produce we find ourselves not only wanting to eat the product of our labors but needing to.  We have made the following dinner meal plan for the next six days

Tonight: Diced tomatoes on toasted bread.  50/50 mixed salad with feta and granny smith apple.
Tomorrow:  Poached egg and wilted kale on toasted bread
Thursday: Garlic herb pasta with fresh tomatoes
Friday: Red potato hash with onion and bell pepper
Saturday: Home made beet burgers and salad
Sunday: probably something with zucchini.

We will alter our menu if anyone wants to have us over for dinner.  That being said, the plan is simple, healthy, and home grown.  It may sound simple but this is how tonight's meal came out:

It tasted outstanding with a mixture of texture.  Sweet, tart, acidic, and mild.  Soft and crunchy.  All contrasting to compliment.  Delicious.  And cheap

Some people say that if you open up your checkbook you can see what a person values.  I say, if you look at
our family you will see what we value.  If you look at our animals, our yard, and our refrigerator, you will see what we value.  We do not need money to be happy.  We need each other.

Our economy is not measured in salary or tax brackets.  It can't be quantified in our IRA or retirement plans, although that is certainly important.  But how important is measuring life by the season?  What is the worth of living in the moment of today and being thankful for all that is in front of us now?  How much do we become subject to God and Nature when we live by the season?  Isn't there something unique by living in each season's unique time?  It is a feeling that transcends a paycheck.  This is our economy.

Our economy is time together.  We are wealthy when we spend time together chasing rabbits that escape the run.  We are wealthy when Carly scratches the dirt to expose the progress of her favorite carrot or when she praises our Berkley Tie Dye tomato, the last of our heirlooms to fruit.  We are wealthy when I pet the down belly of Mavis as she grows from duckling to full sized duck.  Our value is time.  Our currency is each other, kids, animals, plants, and when we mix it all together our economy is more secure than any fed chairman could guarantee.  Farm life is good.  We are rich.

Tons of tomatoes: A photoblog of our fruit so far

As we spent our regular evening time in the yard.  Carly took some pictures of our several varieties of tomatoes that have all grown, flowered, and are bearing fruit.  It is so exciting to watch them mature. 

Black Cherry - This tomato is pushing six feet tall and has vines all over the garden.  The clusters of fruit are too numerous to count.  The fruit is supposed to be a deep red, almost mahogany, with a smoky flavor.  This is what they will look ripe: http://rareseeds.com/black-cherry-tomato.html

Yellow Stripey - is an heirloom that will be orange with veins of yellow to bring unique color to the tomato.  It is nearly as tall as our black cherry and in the same area of the garden.  Here is what we'd like to see on our table: http://store.tomatofest.com/Early_Yellow_Stripe_Tomato_Seeds_p/tf-0158.htm

Winter Squash - This volunteered next to our largest tomato vines and has thrived.  We haven't been able to identify what kind of squash it is, although it appears to be a winter type.  If anyone knows what exactly this is we would be happy to know.  The flowers keep coming and the fruit is getting bigger!

Pineapple - The Pineapple tomato was put in a spot in the garden that didn't get light like our biggest plants.  It hasn't kept it from producing over a dozen fruits with flowers all over.  This tomato is supposed to get BIG.  Like as big as a slice of bread big.  We have some lucky sandwiches in our future.  Hopefully we will see several of these weighing in over a pound!: http://rareseeds.com/pineapple-tomato.html

Yellow Pear - is our other cherry variety of tomato we planted.  We placed it right next to the black cherry which has brought a huge wall of fruit filled tomato vines.  The color and size is something we are excited about.  How exciting to offset the color of our other tomatoes with these beautiful, yellow, ovals.  Check them out:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pear_tomato

Our yellow pear & black cherry have interwoven into each other.  It is only fruit shape that helps us figure out which vine is which.

Yellow pears on the top left with black cherries front and center.  Dozens of fruits on each vine with more coming every day.  Snacks, salsa, and sauces in our future!

Spaghetti Squash - We think this might be a spaghetti squash but we aren't certain

 Because we also think this could be spaghetti squash.  All we know is that our compost pile has filled in every mistake that our "green" green thumbs were not able to grow.  We have volunteers, especially squash in many varieties, fruiting all over the yard.  We are excited about them all.

 

Yellow Summer Squash - This is something that was planted on purpose.  The small plant is producing some pretty fruit that should be on our table quite soon.  This came from Kenny for mother's day.  What a great gift.

 Kale - Our Kale was planted early and all over the yard.  Our most successful plants are yielding leaves the size of your head.  The leaves are a greenish red that is unique and beautiful in our landscape.  Why not plant kale instead of flowers?  What a beautiful, crinkly, edible plant.

Cucumber - The last time we weeded the garden we found a corner that wasn't planted so we threw in a few cucumber seeds left over from last year.  It is great to watch plants that were sown on purpose start to come up in the garden.

Roma - More tomatoes!  We chose a roma tomato because of the traditional size and shape.  We figured it would be a reliable producer.  Then we forgot about it.  The poor tomato was looking meager and stuck in the shade of a fern.  Carly trimmed the fern and weeded thoroughly and now we have fruit on our small little plant.

Winejug- This plant is currently sporting one of our biggest fruits.  The spiraling vine is about four feet tall and will yield oblong shaped burgundy fruit with copper spots.  We can not wait to see these mature.  Here is what we hope to see: http://loghouseplants.com/plants/?product=tomato-wild-boar-farms-hybrid-wine-jug

Carrot - We have never really had luck with carrots but this year we have a handful of our carnival blend of carrots that have come up.  It is hard to get excited about a carrot top but we will certainly share when the root is out of the ground.

Black Krim - this heirloom was the inspiration for growing heirloom tomatoes.  It was what we were seeking the most when we went shopping for starts and bought the only one we could find which looked anemic but we gave it a shot.  It looked that it wasn't going to survive because it was planted next to our roma and really lacked light.  A transplant has rejuvenated it.  Now it is about two feet tall with a few fruit on it.  The large, blackish red tomato is something that seems destined to a plate with a dash of salt and pepper.  Here is what we are hoping to see: http://store.tomatofest.com/Black_Krim_p/tf-0063.htm

Big Beef - who doesn't like a big, red beefsteak tomato?  With all the heirloom varieties we planted we figured having a regular beef steak tomato would be a good idea.  It has a handful of fruit and is showing signs of starting to change color.  Here is what it will look like: http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?ProductID=5306

Imperial Star Artichoke -Lastly our artichoke garden is doing well in spite of a pretty obvious aphid infestation.  We didn't expect any fruit this year because everything we read said that we shouldn't expect fruit the first year you plant.  However, buried in the thistle leaves and bugs are the evidence of a little choke.

We are truly excited to see our garden come this far.  There are plants all over the yard with flowers.  There are fruits that are maturing.  We want to share our experience with you all, from seed, to plant, to plate.

Potatoes are weeds that we eat.

It was the perfect day to garden.  Most farmers would talk about the benefits of rising at dawn to beat the sun and make certain that all was right.  In our suburban farm we find that the evening is the most comfortable time to be in the garden.  In the afternoon we built a pen for the rabbits to be outside their cage.  We read Watership Down and watched the bunnies jump around and waited for the sun to move.

We started by looking over our tomatoes that have reached jungle status.  It became clear that something had to be done.

After surveying dozens of tomatoes we took some branches that we trimmed earlier this season and lashed them together to make "tomato tripods" to allow the vines to spread and the fruit to develop.  Then we moved to the actual task at hand.

We went to the south side of the yard where we had potatoes and herbs that had gone too long mismanaged.  First off, we are terrible at taking "before and after" pictures so trust that it was full on chaos.  We hacked back our oregano and now have enough drying that we could season a million tacos and enhance a dozen pots of marinara.  It was truly out of hand.

With some careful weeding we sacrificed some carrots and beets that had been taken over in the weeds, herbs and potatoes.  Fortunately, we were able to salvage some beets and chard.

When we cleared the underbrush and harvested the potatoes we salvaged and moved some of our beets.  It is our hope that the beets end up like the one that ended up in dinner tonight.  But on to the potatoes.

We have only planted a handful of potatoes on purpose.  Those were blue potatoes that have yet to be harvested.  All our others are volunteers from either our compost or generations of potatoes that were planted by grandparents ahead of us.  Because of the abundance we made room.  We harvested over ten pounds of potatoes this evening.  Most of them were "new" potatoes which are roughly the size of a golf ball.  Many of them were destined for dinner.

Many of the new potatoes were cut in half or quarters.  We also chopped and onion that was found in the garden.  There were supposed to be carrots in the fridge but there was only one wimpy one.  Carly went and harvested a beet to add to the meal.  It was the biggest one we had ever grown, about the size of a tennis ball.

When we cut the beet open at the top it was completely white inside.  We looked at each other and Carly asked if it was a radish.  We could tell by the top that it was a beet but needed to make sure.  I took a bite and tasted the distinctness of beet.  We realized that it was a candy cane beet that was planted from an organic variety pack.  It's color and flavor was absolutely fantastic.

We poured some olive oil into our skillet and blessed it with some mild elephant garlic while we chopped our harvest.  The mixture of new potatoes, candy cane beet, onion, and even beet top made an excellent hash.  The garlic cloves were taken out when we turned up the heat and then we added it back toward the end of cooking.  A little Yves' turkey to add gave a little extra flavor.  Rosemary, thyme, kosher salt, and pepper was all that was necessary for the fresh from the ground food from our garden.

The simple finished product is satisfying after a busy evening.  We had a busy day and a portion of our yard that had become nearly useless not only provided dinner, but was replanted for meals in the future.