Mendolonium

Anybody else remember that song?  We are still rather fond of it at our house and it gets regular play on my iPod, even more so this week when we harvested our first peaches!  We don’t have millions of them, but it looks like we might get a couple dozen this year.  This is vast improvement over last year when the urban wildlife (a combination of rats, raccoons, and squirrels methinks) stole every last one of our nearly ripe peaches.  I might be a vegetarian pacifist, but after they stole my food I had some decidedly un-PETA like thoughts.  Happily this year, the rat population has been culled and while about half of our peaches have gone missing, the other half is now ready or nearly ready to be picked.  I plucked off six this evening and we devoured two of them mere steps away from the peach tree, fuzzy skin and all.  Besides the peaches we’ve:

Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):

• Green Beans (from seed)
• Sugar Pie Pumpkins (from seed)
• Waltham Butternut Squash (from seed)  I already have some ripening, but I decided that one can never have too many butternut squash.
• Cucumbers (Marketmore 76, from seed)  Sow bugs ate all my seedlings so I am trying again for a late crop.

Harvest something:

• Bell Peppers
• Anaheim Peppers  (We had a week of very hot weather which seemed to act as a catalyst for dozens of peppers to ripen.)
• Carrots
• Tomatoes (There are so many green tomatoes on the plants – very exciting – like the food equivalent of a stack of unread books.)
• Eggplant (Such a pretty plant with purple and white flowers and purple and white striped fruit.)
• Shallots (Grown from a few bulbs saved from last year’s crop.)
• Cannelloni Beans
• Burgess Buttercup Squash
• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Peaches

Seriously, all the above from our backyard!  How awesome is that?

Preserve something:

• 11 cups carrots (shredded, frozen)
• 2 cups cannelloni beans (dried)

Waste Not:

• Reusing plastic seedling pots as protective covers for newly sprouted seeds.  This year we have had a problem with sow bugs eating the leaves of newly sprouted seeds – especially squash and beans.  I cut the bottom off of a pot, place it a centimeter or so down into the dirt, and then plant a seed in the middle of it.  The plant emerges and grows up through the bottomless pot.  Once the plant clears the sides of the pot the leaves are out of sow bug territory and I remove the pot.

Want Not:

• Lately I have been feeling very fortunate and not wanting much of anything save perhaps an afternoon nap every day.

Eat the food:

• Cooked eggplant for the first time by making homemade Baba Ghanoush.  When I first looked up recipes for Baba Ghanoush I was disappointed to find that they all contained tahini – sesame paste.  Thomas is severely allergic to sesame so it is forbidden in our house.  I then found a recipe online for sunflower seed tahini and blended some up.  The sunflower seed Baba Ghanoush was delicious and we ate it all in one sitting with fresh homemade bread.  Even Thomas tried some and proclaimed in a somewhat surprised tone, “I like it.”
• Cooked Burgess Buttercup squash for the first time.
• Back in a really good groove of making bread approximately every other day – that’s about our rate of consumption.  I can only imagine how much bread I’ll have to bake when the boys are teenagers.  (I am not complaining, I love making massive amounts of food.)

Build community food systems:

• Does “sharing” half of my peaches this year with the squirrel and raccoon communities count?

How’s your summer going?

A couple of months ago we (read:  Thomas) finished off the cherries we canned two years ago.  So this past weekend we trekked out to a wonderful local cherry orchard:  Big John’s to pick organic heirloom cherries.  With two kids to wrangle and us not quite all feeling well (we were all felled by a nasty bacteria the past few weeks) we picked only thirty pounds of cherries, but what wonderful cherries they are.  So since my last update we’ve:

Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):

• Tomato Seedling (Furry Yellow Hog, from seed)
• Basil Seedlings x4 (from seed)
• Round French Zucchini (from seed)

Harvest something:

• Bell Peppers!!!
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Blackberries (I am pretty sure the squirrels are helping me with these.)
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Sage
• Cherries (from Big John’s)

Preserve something:

• 22 pints cherries (canned, in extra light syrup)
• 7 half-pints of “Black Forest Preserves” – a cherry chocolate concoction (canned)
• 1 cup sage (dried)

Waste Not:

• Jeff has been gathering all the broken, ripped, and mangled toys, books, and puzzle pieces from the house and is slowing repairing them one-by-one.  We are diligent about buying sturdy items, but after two boys some things are starting to look a bit worse for wear.
• Broke a jar of canned blueberries so I just had to make lemon-blueberry muffins.  Couldn’t let those beautiful berries go to waste.

Want Not:

• Been using our memberships to Kidspace and The Huntington to entertain the kids rather than toys.  Who needs stuff when you have outdoor fun?

Eat the food:

• Baked a cherry pie.
• Baking (and eating) lots of bread.
• Tried a new recipe; a quinoa-butternut squash casserole from Sharon’s book.  It was excellent.  Theodore, in particular, gobbled it up.

Build community food systems:

• I am planning to start a very local urban farming group focusing on our neighborhood (or folks who live outside our neigbhorhood, but could walk/bike/public transport nearby).  I am envisioning that the group would exchange home grown produce/herbs/eggs/milk/seeds (example:  I’ll trade you one pound of carrots for one pound of tangerines) as well as share farming wisdom.  I would also like to ensure that there is a social and community aspect to the group through get together – perhaps a potluck every other month?  If you are local and have an interest send me a message.  Regardless of whether you are local or not I would love ideas and input.

I am afraid to put the words down in print yet, but there are signs; very positive signs that we may be staying put.  I shall say no more as things are not certain yet, but I really do hope so…

Since my last update we’ve:

Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):

• Started basil, parsley, and cilantro indoors in pots.  My attempts to direct sow them in the garden this spring have not been successful.  Perhaps the cool, wet weather we have had is responsible?
• Started some additional “Furry Yellow Hog” tomato seeds.  I let Thomas pick out a tomato seed variety this year and he choose an yellow, slightly fuzzy tomato, “Furry Yellow Hog”.  We had several promising seedlings that we transplanted into the garden, but they all keeled over and died, much to Thomas’ distress.  So we are trying again…for a late season transplant.
• Planted some additional beans (Cannelloni) in some bare spots in the garden.

Harvest something:

• Carrots!  First of the season.
• Strawberries
• Raspberries

Preserve something:

• Nothing.

Waste Not:

• Gave away unwanted items for free on craigslist rather than throwing them away to be sent to the landfill.

Want Not:

• Just enjoying the start of a bountiful season of fruit…from our garden, the farmer’s markets, local farms…I love summer.

Eat the food:

• Finished off the last of our preserved bell peppers (frozen) from last year’s crop.  We’ve got lots of flowers on our peppers out back now so in a couple months we will back in peppers.
• After lots of traveling and nights spent agonizing over where to move, I am truly back in the habit of baking all of our bread and buns again.  Even though it is routine, almost nothing is so satisfying as pulling a warm, homemade loaf out of the oven.

Build community food systems:

• Found a neighbor just down the street that keeps chickens.  She told me that she would be happy to give me some Araucana chicks (green eggs!) when I am ready to start with chickens.  I kept Jeff up until 2:00 am the other night reading out loud to him about taking care of backyard chickens.   I might be obsessed.  Thomas is my partner in chicken advocacy and when asked whether he wants a play structure or a chicken coop in a bare area of the backyard will enthusiastically shout out, “chickens”!

I have no idea where we will be living this fall.  The Bay Area is a distinct possibility.  Washington D.C. area has emerged as a contender.  New York City is in the running.  South Carolina is the dark horse.  Then again, we might just stay right were we are.  Why all the possibilities and what are we thinking…moving with two young children?  Primarily, it is the lack of full-time job possibilities for Jeff in Southern California.  Jeff wants to teach at a two year or small four year school and in California, secondary education budgets have been slashed.  He cannot get a job in Southern California when most schools are laying off rather than hiring.   A secondary consideration is that despite our love of Pasadena, our home, and the life we have built here we have concerns about the sustainability of Southern California:  the expense of living somewhere where a “starter” home runs $500K* is huge and we are entirely dependent on imported water for our livelihood.  I have literally spent dozens of hours over the past month constructing elaborate spreadsheets; budgets, scenarios of raises and furloughs,  and commuting vs. rental costs.  I agonize over the spreadsheets hoping that technology will “save” me; will make our decision clear.  But, just like problems facing the larger world, technology will not give us the answer.  We have some hard decisions to make.

Living sustainability means living with a focus on the long term.  Lately, it has been hard to think about our life in the long term, when we don’t even know where we will be living in a few months.   I look out at my strong tomato plants and wonder, “Will I be standing over a pot of boiling water come August, sweltering in my little kitchen, preserving the bounty of the harvest?” or “Will I be  finding my way in a new city, without a job or childcare, but with the excitement of possibility?”  I can think about moving until I think about how that means leaving our home here and all we have built.  It is my hope that if we do leave, another family take what we have made here and use it to build a more sustainable life for themselves.  While I can’t take the dirt with us, I have learned a great deal and that knowledge will come with us to our new home.  Life is uncertain, but it is certain that people need to eat.  So I  weed my beans, plant another crop of melons, carefully guide the blackberry bushes through a trellis.  I am not sure who will be eating all this good food but all the effort shall not be for naught.

So, since my last update we’ve:

Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):

• Peppers (“Ace Bell”, “Purple Beauty Bell”, “New Mexico Joe E. Parker”, from seedlings)
• Thyme (from seedlings)
• Mint (from seedlings)
• Marigold (from seedlings)
• Watermelon (“Sugar Baby”, from seed)
• Cantaloupe (“Hale’s Best Muskmelon, from seed)
• Pruned and trellised grapes and blackberries.

Harvest something:

• Leeks
• Strawberries (just a few)

Preserve something:

• 4 half-pints of strawberry sauce (canned)
• 7.5 pints of blueberries (canned)

Waste Not:

• Gave away unwanted items for free on craigslist rather than throwing them away to be sent to the landfill.

Want Not:

• Raiding my treasure cabinet for things to keep the boys occupied during Jeff’s absences and our trips to check out possible new locations.  The treasure cabinet is filled with stickers, books from the library sale, toys from Goodwill, and new crayons and activity books bought on sale.  It has saved my sanity on many occasions.

Eat the food:

• Tried a new recipe for poppy seed cake with lemon frosting.  Two thumbs up!
• Eating heavily from our food storage so that we will have less food to move if we decide to do so.

Build community food systems:

• I am now a certified California “food protection manager”.  This means I took a class on food safety and passed an exam (with a score of 95%, I might add).  This certification was the first step in my teaching food preservation and sustainable cooking classes to the public.  I will be teaching the classes at a local “kitchen incubator”, a commercial kitchen for rent to those starting food based small businesses.

*So it is of course with great irony that the two official job offers Jeff has received have been in the Bay Area and in Manhattan – the two places in the country more expensive than Southern California.  At least it rains there.