Fig Bars

A homemade spin on a delicious snack! These rustic fig newtons are perfect for packing in lunches or adding a fancy touch to a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

For this recipe and tips on preserving figs, CLICK HERE!

Fresh Pasta

New post in RECIPES: FRESH PASTA

The beauty of making your own pasta is that you can flavor it with all sorts of additions. Throw in whatever you have around, whatever will compliment your meal or whatever you want to sneak into your kids' diets.

Here's a pasta tale from a rainy day in Arkansas.

Our First Farm Workday!

Never underestimate the value of volunteers. With the seasonal clock ticking and no-till methods at the forefront, we had to get a move on prepping our row crop area.  For two people, this would have been a daunting task. For sixteen, no problem.

I love planning events, so a farm workday was a treat to brainstorm. There was plenty of work to do and coordinating two meals with no electricity or running water was a delightful challenge. In many ways, planning for Saturday was like a mini remix of our wedding weekend (minus the white dress), so it was a piece of cake. Two weeks out, menus were planned, supplies were ordered and invites were sent.

RSVP's rolled in immediately and soon we had twice the response we anticipated. Food prep was going smoothly and packages were arriving at the house daily.  What could possibly go wrong?

Two days out, the rains came. Then the ice. Temperatures plummeted. Cancellations started trickling in from those who had RSVP'd. The fabric mulch - a critical part of the rows we were to create - was delayed and wouldn't arrive on time. We readjusted our expectations for the day and took comfort in the sunny 55 degree forecast for Saturday.

Saturday arrived after a rather pleasant Friday, and our hopes were refreshed. With the truck and the car loaded, we left Little Rock with one extra passenger. In Conway we met up with another car - a girl from my roller derby team and two of her friends. Once on the farm, we unloaded the truck in a hurry so that Mike could make it to the feed store before it closed at noon. Another friend arrived and lunch was served - curry chicken salad with grapes, local egg salad with cilantro, creamy potato salad, hot baked beans, bread, lettuce from the cold frame, homemade fig newtons, peanut butter balls and a dozen mason jars with an assortment of jams and pickled things. Everything made from scratch with as many local ingredients as possible.  Even if the day was miserable, we were going to eat well.

Just as I was feeling frustrated that I had forgotten the pies and mentally calculating what seven of us could accomplish, Mike returned with a load of straw bales and three cars in tow full of volunteers from the Heifer Ranch in Perryville. In an instant, our numbers more than doubled. Everyone cheered and the workday began.

We removed the manure from the front porch slab and transported it to the garden areas in truck loads.  Here it was mixed with compost and soil from home and then spread out to mark seven 150 ft beds. We added a layer of newspaper under the compost since we didn't have the mulch fabric to place on top just yet. Instead, we covered the rows with a thick layer of straw. On the next workday we'll lay the drip tape, put down the biodegradable mulch with fabric staples and move the straw on top of it all. A slight glitch in plans, but we feel confident that it will work out alright.

A crew of people cleaned up around the farmhouse: chainsawing trees, picking up branches and making piles of scrap metal and stones for future use. A couple people tended to the pork shoulder which spent the day in the smoker in prep for supper and many cameras circulated the property capturing proof of the day. Progress was made digging down to the water main in prep for an outdoor water spigot to be installed and we were happy to discover 70 ft of water in the property's main well. Mike's grandfather was a well-driller, so there are several wells on the property to explore.

Other successes of the day included spraying the land with a worm tea mixture in an attempt to decrease the acidity levels in the soil, broadcasting a variety of seeds and seed balls, moving an enormous cast iron bathtub full of worms over to the covered porch area (it took all of us to lift it), and forging some very flooded areas in the truck in order to retrieve a load of sandy clay for a future cobbing project.

 A good time was had by all - even those who didn't participate in manure flinging fights or rolling down the hill in a rain barrel. As the sun set, we gathered around a campfire which provided warmth, a place to burn ample amounts of wood, a surface to heat apple cider, and coals for cooking foil packets of seasoned vegetables to compliment our pulled pork sandwiches.

My heart was glowing as I relaxed in my camp chair looking around the circle at all these amazing, like-minded people. They are more than volunteers, more than just friends...we are partners in creating a more hopeful, healthy, sustainable future. We are the ideas, the hands, the energy and the support system. We can make great things happen.

After the last car pulled out of the driveway, Mike and I sat by the fire as the embers burned low. I took a stroll down to the garden area and lingered between the rows of golden straw glimmering in the moonlight. The transformation was like magic. Though the vision in my head may be 20 years in the making, this land already feels like home.


For photos of the workday, CLICK HERE!

A Visit to Summer of Solutions LR = Kale Soup for Supper

Our day was perfectly balanced with a trip to help weed at a local garden project and then warm soup to compliment a cozy night in during the storms.

Check out Summer of Solutions Little Rock in FARMER FRIENDS and Kale Soup with Beans & Bacon in RECIPES.

Making Stock

Anyone with a garden has to know how to make stock. What else do you do with all those bits of veggies that are about to go bad, and you just don't have time to do something with? And if you're cooking from scratch a lot, you'll be generating plenty leftover bits of vegetables. Sure you can toss them in the compost. But you can make stock from them first.

I own a copy of Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook which devotes a whole separate chapter to stock. I used to follow Bourdain's guidelines for his rustic "workmanlike stock" fit for country french cooking. Now I feel that maybe his a basic stock, if you compare it with the very posh stocks of chefs like Thomas Keller. But Bourdain has nothing on my regular down and dirty stock process. He does things like peel onions and carrots. And wash them. And removes celery leaves. And roasts his bones in a tomato paste and flour coating. And sticks to just the big classics: celery, carrot, onion and bouquet garni. And he strains and removes unsightly bits. Not me. I don't roast the bones because I'm reusing the bones from previous meals. I don't remove celery leaves...I save them and freeze them just so I can use them in stock. I love all the little bits and scraps. And I believe they make the best stock, better than the purist versions. Here's an incomplete list of what I save:

• carrot peels and ends
• celery stems and leaves
• onion skins and ends
• garlic paper
• the interior and tops of bell peppers
• corn cobs
• leftover bones of any sort

I save all of my bits and pieces in jars and bags and put them in the freezer. When I have enough it's time to make stock. I'm not picky. I don't do separate veggie stock and chicken and beef stock. It all goes in together.

Here it is in all its gloriousness in a big stock pot. You can also see sections of old turnips. I added some newer bits of onion, carrot, celery, and garlic because I had plenty of all of them laying around. In this one were bones from roasted chicken legs, bones from chicken wings, and some oxtail from a previous stock making that I judged still had more goodness to give. To all this I added 2 tablespoons of salt, a couple bay leaves, and a generous helping of "Italian herbs". (And a squirt of kechup. We didn't have a tomato paste open. The robustness of the tomato is nice in a stock. And the additional vinegar and sugar in kechup acts as an additional flavor enhancer.) Next it all gets covered with cold water. Then heat, low and for a long time. This one, because I didn't want to bother with it, sat on low for almost a full day. Finally you strain.

Nothing fancy. Just a colander set into a big bowl. You'll have to let it drain for awhile. You're left with tasty stock. It keeps for about 6 weeks in the fridge I'm told. Or you could pressure can it. Or freeze it. Since I don't like to have too many jars of stock taking up space in the fridge, I like to condense it. So I put the strained stock back on the stove and heat it on high to boil it down. I'm left with very useful concentrated stock.

You can use stock in just about every recipe that calls for water. You can use it for rice pilaf, for chili, for brining. Use it to make the best soups of course, or sauces or gravies. Having good stock is the #1 secret for making your home cooking more like restaurant cooking. Just be wary that there are a few things to don't go in stock. Cauliflower and broccoli are too strong. Cabbage can be OK if you don't cook it too long. Apple cores and the like are good, but I've never tried strawberry tops or banana peels. I've never done potatoes, but would think they soak up more flavor than they donate. 

Potting Mix & Paradoxes

The other day, I made my first potting mix. There’s a certain irony to potting mixes. Normal soil is made up almost entirely of clay, sand, and silt. Yet those ingredients are absent in most potting mix recipes. The popular mix ingredients are perlite, vermiculite, peat moss and compost. Up until now, we have been planting in straight compost with fair results. But I'd like to try the conventional wisdom. For this first mix, I went with something close to a standard recipe: 2 parts peat, 1 part perlite, 2.5 parts compost, and a bit of sand. I was fairly amazed at how much water the peat moss held! Each "part" of the mix was measured out using a 5 gallon bucket, so there was quite a bit of mix there, but the compost was already soaked and I had sprayed down the perlite before adding it (to keep it from throwing up so much dust). Still, to wet down the peat (again, to keep it from throwing up dust) I added gallon after gallon until it was all wet. I would guess that those 10 gallons of peat soaked up 5 gallons of water! I see what growers like it, germinating seeds and seedlings really don't like drying out! Still, peat moss is a non-renewable resource from Canada, and there’s something odd about growing "local food" with soil from that far away. As I said, I wanted to test it this once, but I hope I can find a substitute in the future. For our next mix I'd like to create something close to what the books describe as "perfect soil": a perfectly balanced loam of clay, silt, sand, and compost. I hope such a mix works near enough as well as the conventional mix we've just created, as it would be more sustainable.

It's almost odd putting so much thought and effort into potting mixes. And we put even more effort into the soil that our garden and grass will grow in. Most people probably think this makes sense because they think of soil as plant food. Once upon a time, everyone thought it was. But it's not. No plant has ever digested a speck of clay, or silt, or sand (or peat moss). Plants are made of air. The carbon of carbon dioxide is the raw material for their stems, leafs, and flowers. A process of conversion fired by sunlight and lubricated by water. So why do they even need soil? A question often asked rhetorically by the fathers of chemical agriculture.  But, you CAN see the soil change over time if plants are repeatedly grown and harvested. The soil changes from a rich black or brown to a light tan. From light and fluffy to hard and condensed. Plants, as a matter of fact, do eat from the soil. But the soil is their plate, not the food. They absorb the  minerals and chemicals that are available to them. And they are quite particular. You can't just put nitrogen into the ground. The nitrogen has to be in a certain chemical form. And it's the flora and fauna of the soil that puts the necessary amendments into the necessary form to grow healthy plants. These amendments are more catalyst than food, and the plant needs just a tiny amount of them. But they are absolutely necessary for growth. And so we obsess over soil. Healthy soil = healthy plants. Coincidentally, these same soil-living flora and fauna are also what keeps soil soft and friable, water-absorbing and root-friendly. Nature designs well.

Seed Germination

Over at Living Web Farms, I was introduced to the concept of a seed germination box through Patrick Battle's video workshop on Seed Starting. The concept is simple: a box that holds seed trays in a warm, moist environment to get the seeds to sprout, after which they can be moved outside or to a greenhouse. According to Mr. Battle, a germination chamber significantly increases the % of seeds which will germinate. That and the fact that we need someplace to start seeds that stays warmer than outside was good enough for me! I decided to make one. So here's me putting the frame together:

And here's the frame supporting a seed tray:

Each shelf should support 3 trays, so with 3 shelves, that's a possibility of 9 seed trays germinating at once. Aim high. For a little more support, I added some leftover window screen on the top shelves. The bottom shelf I kept open so I could drop a water tray in.

 I decided not to build any more of a wooden shell around it. The 3 shelves with the 4 upright supports was pretty stable, any more hard structure would simply be unnecessary weight. What was needed was insulation, so I went with 1" thick rigid foam insulation. 

 The front door just fits in via friction/compression. A couple screws sticking out provide the means of removing it.

To keep the chamber warm and humid, I have an aluminum tray that fits in the bottom, to be filled with water. The heat is supplied by a 100 watt aquarium heater with a built-in thermostat. I plan to set it at 76 degrees. We'll see how it works!

EDIT: I had a conversation with Patrick Battle, and he's doubtful that the aquarium heater will work. In his model, he uses a remote bulb thermostat which hangs in the air in the middle of the box and that's what triggers the heating element. So the heating element gets very hot and promotes evaporation as it the water becomes much warmer than the box. My heating element won't warm the water as much, and won't provide as moist an environment. Still, it's much easier to set up, and I'm going to give it a go.

A Day at the Farm

My face is wind-burnt and my brain feels exhausted, but we had a very productive visit to the farm today.  Our to-do list wasn't unmanageable, so we left with a sense of accomplishment (and another to-do list).

The highest pond. Needs restoration from cattle damage.
The farm house is straight ahead in the distance.

A large portion of the day was spent walking the property. We've walked through the middle of it many times, but today we explored the fence line - the outer bounds, looking in. I feel as though we were really seeing it in it's entirety for the first time.  This is exciting and overwhelming - making us rethink our plans and explore new possibilities. I am reminded of my days as an art major, staring at a huge blank canvas with no idea where to start or what it may become.

We discovered another pond near the back near a spot that would be perfect for a future house. We found a dried up creek bed and several active streams weaving through the contours of the old hills.  We also came upon heaps and heaps of sandy-clay which will be perfect for building cob structures. We took a hundred pictures in order to capture the land in its state today with hopes that they will be the "before'' shots of our farm story.

Front of the house. Not livable.

Back of house. Lots of clean-up to do.

The makings of a worn tub. We hope they like their new home.

Successes of the day included finding the water meter, stopping by the water department to initiate service, meeting with electricians to discuss installation options, identifying the forages already growing on the property and converting an old bathtub into a worm farm. The woman at the water department connected us to the 911 location service, so we are one step closer to actually knowing the address of the old farmhouse.  We also narrowed down our potential garden sites, greenhouse location and planned activities for a farm workday we are hosting on the 23rd. 

The first brush stroke is always the hardest. It's time to finalize some big purchases, send the workday invites and get moving.  After that we can fill the canvas with ease, adding to and painting over the composition as we go.