I'm over here now

Hello, friends.

I decided to migrate this blog over to:

https://edibleperennials.wordpress.com/.

Come find me there if you'd like.

Cordially,
Jessica Louise

Inspiration

Here are some things that are inspiring me lately:

• Permaculture Voices. This podcast shares stories from people around the world who are producing food differently. My favorite episode so far was with Jean-Martin Fortier, who produces $140,000 worth of vegetables on 1.5 acres in Quebec. I love the idea of having a small, intensively productive piece of land with a focus on efficiency and a resistance to growing in scale. I have his book, The Market Gardener, on request at the library and look forward to learning more. 

• Urban farming. I just watched the above poorly filmed but info-rich video of a talk Curtis Stone gave about his methods in Kelowna, BC. I could really see this working in the Twin Cities, and I know there are already some folks making it happen (like Growing Lots). I'm leaning towards doing something like this next year, but I know that long-term I want to have a 5- to 10-acre homestead that includes animals.

• My own crazy garden. It has problems.

I planted the tomatoes in beds that weren't really ready, so they've been competing with some pretty hardy weeds. I tied them up late and poorly, and the system fell apart, so now the tomatoes are sprawling on the ground. But I have tomatoes, and they're delicious.

I have wonderful, productive cucumbers, trellised by Aaron with branches that fell off our maple tree during a storm.

I have a monster zucchini.

(And hopefully some normal-sized zucchini on the way.)

I have watermelon!!!

The Mexican sunflowers attract bees, butterflies (including monarchs), and even hummingbirds.

I have dill for pickling things.

I have beets!

And carrots!

And lima beans that may or may not mature before frost.

And lovely Swiss chard.

And raspberries that are taller than Aaron.

Hot peppers (some cayenne, some unknown variety) drying in the pantry.

My garden has taught me a lot about the benefits of thinking less and doing more. It's a constant inspiration to pursue a life that has a lot to do with good food. And a constant reminder that not-perfect can still be really awesome.

• Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Aaron, Karly, and I went on a week-long road trip to Yellowstone and Glacier, and we had a great time. I'm so grateful to have these wonderful people in my life. And I feel even more inspired to continue making the outdoors a huge part of my life and to ensure lots of time for travel. I'm working on getting photos organized, but here are a couple highlights:

Sheep in the Badlands.

Buffalo in the mist at Yellowstone.

Crazy bacterial mats at Yellowstone.

Artist's Paint Pots at Yellowstone.

At Ptarmigan Falls, a quarter of the way through our epic hike to Iceberg Lake at Glacier.

Finally made it to Iceberg Lake at Glacier. Felt like a fairy tale.

Aaron broke the rules and ran off the path to get some pretty amazing photos of the mountain goats at Logan Pass - including this very vocal baby.

I hope other folks are feeling inspired, too. It's nice.

Already August

I need to come to grips with some basic facts:

• It is already August.
• I only have two weeks of work left at Squash Blossom Farm. 
• We're leaving on Friday for a week-long road trip to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. 
• I'm not sure what I'm doing next [month, fall, winter, spring, summer, year - aaahhh!].

Some things I've already come to grips with:

• I love chickens.

My favorite chicken buddy.

• I love camping. Aaron and I spent two nights at Afton State Park in July. This was his first time backpacking and overall a success.

Camping!

Our cute tent.

• I love turkeys.

• I love my nieces. And they love yoga.

• I love Poet. She used to sleep on my bed during the day, but she recently spent one night outside, caught a rat in the barn, felt very proud of herself, and has decided to be an outdoor cat the last couple weeks.

Poet. Rodent exterminator extraordinaire.

• It's possible to get sick of having pizza.
• I actually enjoy making fruit tarts.

Raspberry and red plum tarts with pastry cream.

• Selling bread at the market is much more fun when there's excellent live music nearby.

Music at the Rochester Farmers Market.

• I probably don't want to have cows. LaFonda is currently giving Sue five gallons of milk a day. This leads to a brand of guilt I didn't know existed: milk guilt. Can one really make time to make cheese - and lots of it - every single day? No, one cannot. I've been taking home four gallons a week and having a tough time using all of it. I think I'll prefer the more modest production of a couple goats.

Time to get ready to drive down to the farm for my penultimate week. I've been so grateful to spend my summer outside, get to know some wonderfully hilarious animals, and just... be on a farm. Susan and Roger have such a beautiful place - I hope everyone will visit for the Cow Puja on Sunday, September 28.

Imaginary farm schedule

I enjoyed every hour I spent making this thing, which will probably turn out to have been time wasted. But it really was fun to imagine and plot out my schedule for next spring/summer/fall.

At the moment (I reserve every right to change my mind), here's what I feel like I would like to do next year:

• Find a place to grow lots and lots of things, ideally less than 20 minutes away from my house, something like half an acre, and free (or nearly so) to rent.
• Work there intensively on Mondays and Wednesdays. 
• Work intensively on my home garden on Tuesdays. 
• Watch my nieces on Thursdays.
• Harvest and prep everything for market on Fridays. 
• Bake Friday evenings, using as much stuff I've grown as possible.
• Sell on Saturday mornings, preferably at the Saint Paul Farmer's Market.
• Enlist family and friends and anyone who's willing to help with special projects at the tiny-farm on Sunday mornings (in exchange for a good lunch).

Here are some other things I'd like to do next year:

• Take care of six layer hens in my back yard.
• Can things!!! I would love to sell jam and pickles at the market. 
• Help my aunt and uncle start a garden at their new lake home. 
• Make a very small scale tree nursery in my backyard. The idea is to have a good number of fruit and nut trees established and then plant them wherever we end up buying land.
• Start working on a tiny house!!! This was Aaron's suggestion, and I absolutely love it. We'll build it on a trailer that can sit in the parking spot next to our garage. When it's done, we can bring it wherever we end up buying land.
• Do yoga every day. This was the intention I set for 2014, and I have not done well at making it a priority. I need to make more time for this because farming is hard on my body. I won't wait until 2015.

I milked goats!

This isn’t me milking the goat. It’s Nancy, a lovely woman who welcomed me to her farm; introduced me to her sheep, milk goats, chickens, chicks, roosters, enormous turkey, cute cats, and sweet billy goat; and taught me how to milk goats.

It took me a couple of tries to get anything to come out of the teats. I was surprised by how hard I needed to squeeze. One of her milk goats is pure saanen, and she was the easiest to milk. The others are saanens bred with pygmies, and their teats are teeny tiny. Even my small hands seemed too big to do the job until I got the hang of it.

Nancy let me take some goat milk with me. The book I had just read about raising dairy goats insisted that goat milk tastes no different than cow milk, but I was skeptical about this. I've had chevre and goat milk yogurt that both had a distinctly musty taste (which is good in the cheese and totally gross in the yogurt), and I was expecting to be able to detect at least a hint of this in the milk as well. But no! It’s delightfully mild and creamy and wonderful.

I’m looking forward to visiting again in the near future. Nancy lent me a bunch of books about goats and gardening, so I have some reading to do first. At this point, my initial impression of raising dairy goats is extremely favorable. I see lots of these lovely animals in my future.

Cute chicks and death on a farm

Why, hello!

When I got to the farm last week, a batch of 60 newly hatched chicks greeted me (greet: to scurry away from a human hand). Leg cramps and other forms of mild discomfort were ignored in favor of lengthy observation. They eat, drink, poop, and climb all over each other trying to get the most comfortable spot with the most perfect temperature. This last activity is violent. Sue found a dead chick on Thursday morning, squished by his fellows.

These chicks arrived via USPS, which strikes me as a very strange practice. My aunt and uncle work for the post office and once snatched up a chick from a very large shipment - who would notice? - and raised her in Fred's back yard. She was a beauty named Little Barbara, named in loving honor of my aunt, her rescuer. She's in chicken heaven now, and I regret that I never really got to know her.

I wonder how many chick casualties can be attributed to their shipment? In the case of these new chicks, 63 were shipped and 60 remain (two died the first day, one was the poor squished guy). I guess in terms of percentage this is pretty good - better than 95% survival rate. But it's still so sad that any of them die.

Death is a constant presence on a farm, though, something I'm not used to and feel weird about acclimating to. I grew up in a suburb, with family dogs, and now live in a city with four indoor cats and a history of fostering litters of kittens. I value the individual lives of the animals I take care of so very much.

When I started caring about food towards the end of college, I changed my eating habits (I only lasted eight months as a vegan, but I ate a vegetarian diet for about five years) entirely because of a desire to restrict my participation in the abhorrent treatment of animals. Why should we kill them and exploit them when it's possible for us to survive and thrive on an entirely plant-based diet? My thinking has shifted now. I guess I would summarize it as something like: if I have a reasonably good idea that the animals were treated well (especially given access to the outdoors and appropriate food), I'll buy and eat their eggs, milk, or meat. My ideal is to raise these things myself to change the "reasonably good idea" part to "absolute assurance."

Death on a farm is just part of the process, whether it's because of injuries sustained by a day-old chick during shipment, roosters fighting and killing each other, chickens dying from unknown causes (we found one in the loafing shed last week, too far gone to tell how it died), or just humans killing animals because we like to eat them. While I can't say I want to, I do hope I get experience in processing chickens so I can take part in this last bit - the bit I find most troubling - in a very direct way. I don't necessarily think I need to be capable of killing a chicken to feel morally or otherwise justified in eating it. That used to be my stance, but it's not reasonable to think that every person needs to be capable of doing every task. But I feel like I should try it. If I'm able to do it, it would certainly make things easier on my future farm.

So if I can shift from vegan to vegetarian to conscientious omnivore, can I also shift from thinking about and valuing the animals in my life as individuals to thinking about them as parts of a whole, where connections to individuals are much lighter and deaths are noticed and perhaps analyzed but not really mourned? The excruciating sadness I felt when my first foster kittens were adopted led me to purposely connect less deeply to my next foster kittens. By the time I had done it for a year or so, I didn't even really feel sad after adoptions - it was just part of the process.

Fourth week on the farm

Calf campground at the conventional dairy farm across the street.

Cows being milked there.

The poo lagoon.

This is the ornery goose and his duck buddies.

Pizzas are a Friday night staple.

My mini farm.

Didn't get a chance to write much this week because when I got home, I was busy doing the above to my yard. But highlights from week four include weeding and mulching raspberries; planting tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, and potatoes; visiting the dairy farm across the street; shoveling out and power-washing the chicken coop; and working with three young folks from Philadelphia who helped Roger man the market booth (which meant I could stay back and garden). 

My bedroom on the farm, for now.

Also, I now have a bed set up in the barn, and it's lovely to wake up to birds chirping in the rafters.

Third week on the farm

Orange and Weasel

I made a new cat friend this week. Weasel used to dart down the basement stairs whenever she saw me, but now she hangs around and even lets me pet her (so soft). I caught her doing a bunch of weird flopping around and then wrestling with Orange:

Another highlight this week was getting to work with Nicole, a WWOOFer who wanted to spend her vacation on the farm. I'm always worried I'm not going to get along with new people, but she was great. It helps to share 1) introversion, 2) love of baking, and 3) a remarkably similar list of favorite movies. She might be back some Sunday, as her husband is a musician and might want to do an open mic on the farm.

Not coming close to selling out at the market was unpleasant. It's just so much work to get all that stuff ready! I guess the lesson learned - one that I'll take with me in the likely event that I sell at a market myself next year - is to resist the urge to make more after selling out the previous week. The cupcakes, tarts, and cardamom braids all sold out, but we had a fair amount of leftovers of everything else. And a lot of bread. I'm grateful that I'm getting this experience with market forces, even if it feels pretty disheartening. I think it's fair to say it was due to reduced attendance at the market, rather than to any problems with what we're offering. I mean, look at this lovely stuff!

Market goodies

We made:

• 18 loaves of white, whole wheat (two of which looked like aliens), and rye bread and 6 huge/9 normal loaves of multigrain
• 6 cardamom braids
• 6 carrot poppyseed loaves
• chocolate sea salt shortbread
• oatmeal raisin cookies
• fruit tarts
• cherry cream cheese turnovers
• greens, walnuts, feta, mushroom turnovers
• chocolate malt cupcakes
• rhubarb bars
• scones

Another sad happening was a hen getting attacked - probably by the roosters - and Sue having to take her inside in hopes of rehabilitating her. She's one of the sweet cochin hens with the fluffy feet, and now her comb is all torn up. I hope she pulls through.

My goals for next week:

• Do a lot more gardening.
• Keep reading the dairy goats book. Another surprising tidbit is that goat milk actually tastes exactly the same as cow milk.
• Relax a little bit about the baking (I don't mean I won't work hard, but I don't need to stress about it).
• Finish the little sweater I'm knitting for my niece, Sophie.
• Spend a ton of time with the new baby chicks! I can't wait to meet them.

Garden tour May 2014

Here's a little photo tour of the things growing in my yard this spring:

Blossoms on our Northstar cherry tree, just planted on Saturday

Some of the tulips that haven't blossomed yet

Seedum and salvia (I think)

Not sure. Might be black-eyed Susan.

Can't remember what this is called, but I got it from my realtor, Michele, our first spring at the house.

Lemon balm

New raspberries! Susan at Squash Blossom Farm dug out a bunch of raspberry canes that were encroaching on some of her other fruit bushes, and Aaron and I planted them on Saturday.

Another shot of our new cherry tree. This is a special variety that doesn't need a friend for pollination.

Raspberries! These are from my friend, Kathleen. We got a ton of fruit from them last year, even though we just planted them that spring. I pruned and tied them about a month ago and am hoping for another great harvest.

Lovage. I didn't realize this was going to come back up. Might move it somewhere else.

Mint. Transplanted into this pot because I don't want it to overrun my yard.

Garlic! Planted last fall. This was the first thing I noticed growing in my yard this spring.

Parsley. I started these inside.

Tarragon, also from Kathleen.

Don't remember what this is.

Seedum from Dorothy.

Don't remember what this is, but I think it's the plant that grows really tall and flowers in the fall with pretty purple blossoms that the bees love.

Walking onions from Kathleen.

Don't remember what this is.

Chives from Nanny Kathy

Sorrel from Kathleen

A lovely tulip

Seedum from Dianne

Tall tulip and mini tulip

More tulips

Rhubarb from Nanny Kathy

Back/side yard

Another shot of the new cherry tree and new raspberry canes

Seedlings await