the pasture gate

Time to Call It

2011-01-21T11:15:00.001-05:00

Many moons ago, I acquired a cute little African Violet. My violet and I moved from place to place together - Iowa to Delaware to Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti (both in Michigan) and most recently, to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Like most living things, my adorable violet has gone through stages of health and decline, but when it was happy, it was Oh So Happy.

Since coming to Charlotte, though, I just haven't found the right spot for it. It was doing okay and then lately...

...this.

I have attempted to nurse it along, but I finally realized it was hopeless.

But not quite. I have taken several leaf cuttings and provided some water for rooting. Hopefully in about a month, I'll see some little roots and can pot up the cuttings so my cute little African Violet can live on with me.

In the meantime, it's time to bit adieu to this old friend. Well done, good and faithful violet.

The Taste of Fall

2010-11-08T12:12:00.000-05:00

Butternut Squash Risotto. Nutty-creamy-rich-textural-tummy-warming goodness.

A fantastic, seasonally perfect recipe on which we feasted last night. (Full disclosure: the splash of white truffle oil aided the deliciousness factor as well.) I used the recommended 4oz of spinach, though I think it could use more. And maybe some pecans tossed it? Lots of room for improv with this risotto, I would think.

Definitely adding this one to my permanent cache of favorite, go-to recipes. (All hail America's Test Kitchen.)

Wedding Week: Togetherness

2010-10-07T09:19:00.000-04:00

This was the best part.

The minutes alone before the ceremony...

...before the reception...

...through the happy hours of our reception...

Those special little moments during this most special of days...

...when it was the two of us at the eye of the storm.

Calm, quiet, alone. Together.

Blissful and exhausted by the end of the night.

Wedding Week: The Flowers

2010-10-06T20:28:00.001-04:00

Okay, I know. My bouquet was huge.

But let me explain. This was my inspiration.

Anna and Louis Tank, my great-grandparents.

It was also my mom's inspiration, though she used Talisman roses, a lovely burnt orange color.

Note: I don't have my parents' wedding picture yet, but I'll add it when it arrives.

I loved my florist, Bernie. We made all kinds of exciting plans and decisions, and most things were amazing.

Bridesmaid bouquets

Boutonnieres for groomsmen and Nick's old-fashioned, up-side-down boutonniere. (Inspired by my great-grandpas - see above.)

Wreaths of dried flowers did double-duty- decorations + thank you gifts for Reception Hosts

I loved all that stuff. And when it came to my bridal bouquet, Bernie asked me, "How big?"

"I dunno...simple- just some roses and ferns - but you know, go for it."

She gave me a cautious look. "Okay. Just stop in Friday before the wedding to look it over."

And I agreed.

Except I didn't do it. People were coming in to town, the rehearsal was that night, and I just didn't take the time to stop in. Figured it would just be fine.

The morning of the wedding. Hair, make-up, running around. I only needed the dress and bouquet to me a full fledged bride.

The flowers arrived at the church. I saw the bouquet... and I just... stood there, mouth open, speechless. I looked over at Mom. Her reaction mirrored my own.

"It'll be fine," she said. "Here, let's just edit a little..."

And we started pulling it apart. Whatever could come off, came off. What you see here is the REDUCED version.

Honestly, the whole thing was great. I told Bernie to go for it, and boy howdy, she did. When I carried that Volkswagon-sized pile of flowers down the aisle, it looked beautiful.

Who cares about flowers when there's this much emotion? To this day, I can't even look at this moment without tearing up. But seriously? The flowers are huge.

And it made a great centerpiece for the head table at the reception.

To be clear, Bernie is an amazing florist. I love her work, and she did a great job for me me. Regarding my bridal bouquet, she even did exactly pretty much exactly what I told her to do.

Luckily, she also made me a small, hand-tied bouquet to toss at the reception. This thing would have knocked someone out.

Postscript: As much as I love Bernie's work, I must admit she was my second choice for a florist. My first choice was my Aunt Sue, an amazing florist and someone I love very much. I long dreamed of working with her on my wedding. Such fun it would have been! Sadly, Sue was terribly ill and was unable to do the job. I know she would have under any other circumstances, and it would have even more amazing than I dreamed.

Wedding Week: The Stationery

2010-10-06T18:48:00.001-04:00

Nick is a designer, and he created all the printed materials for our wedding: invitations, programs, thank you notes, all of it. I gave input on colors, fonts, layouts, but he did all the work. The text came from a combo of sources, primarily Emily Post's Etiquette by Peggy Post and my parents' wedding invitation from 1975.

We used local small businesses for everything we could (my dress, the booze, the food, the florist, etc.), including the printer. We printed the pattern and text on a nice oatmeal-colored stock in brown ink. (In keeping with the color scheme, we also used brown pens to write the thank you notes.)

The envelopes were one exception to our "use local" guideline. The pearlescent brown envelopes I found online were too fabulous to surpass. The made the invitations stand out in the mail and added a bit of glitz and sophistication.

Our stationery was simple, classy, personal. Not as fancy as some, but perfect for us.

Postscript- We ordered an abundance of Thank You notes, and five years later, I'm still using them. Do something nice for me, and you might get one in the mail.

Wedding Week: Gushing After Five

2010-10-04T18:20:00.003-04:00

Nick and I celebrated our 5th Anniversary on October 1.

Newlywed glow

When Nick and I talk about our wedding, we both take on a dreamy, satisfied look.

"It was great, wasn't it?"

"Baby, it was perfect."

We had big ideas about what we wanted, though it didn't exactly match our initial vision. He proposed at the start of a big road trip- driving from Delaware to Iowa when I finished grad school. Basking in the happiness of our engagement, we had two days of driving to dream about the big event. Something modern, not-too-big, and, especially, meaningful.

Our actual wedding was quite different than our early vision. More traditional and bigger, but definitely meaningful. Traditions played a larger part than we anticipated. We could have done anything we wanted- super contemporary, unconventional, tiny, whatever- and I know our parents would have complied. In the end, though, I found myself wanting to embrace the traditions. I value on my home a great deal - a rural area where towns are small, traditions are significant, and family means everything. In moving away from home, I feared losing connections to my origins. Adhering to tradition felt like honoring my home and my heritage.

This week, for our 5th Anniversary, I'm remembering traditions and details we loved about our wedding. Excuse me while I gush.

The Detroit of the Future

2009-11-25T08:51:00.005-05:00

I love Iowa...I mean, I really love Iowa. It's my home, and I hope to return there someday.

But there's also Detroit...

Aaron Renn, an urban strategist and writer out of Chicago, wrote an excellent piece about Detroit as the new center of urban agriculture and opportunity.

"'Detroit has become ground zero for North America's local food movement. Last year there were roughly 550 gardens in the city's urban farming network. This year there are more than 850. Driving around the city, you can see everything that will make up your dinner—chickens, goats, mushrooms, plum trees, honeybee hives.... Here, a locavore doesn't eat food that's travelled 100 kilometres. She eats food that's travelled 10.'"

and

"Today, for those seeking out an alternative vision of urban success, with new and innovative ideas about what the city of tomorrow should be, it's Detroit, not New York, that offers the ultimate arena in which to prove yourself."

I've been to some of the community gardens in Detroit, and I've seen their impact on the burned out, nearly abandoned neighborhoods in which the reside. I've talked to the gardeners and community organizers and heard the pride and hope in their voices. And it's amazing. It's inspiring.

In the future, I hope to return to my homeland of Iowa, where I want to seek out an alternative vision of rural success, but damn... reading about stuff like this - and seeing the things happening in Detroit - almost makes me want to stay.

Green Thumb Graffiti

2009-09-09T15:42:00.004-04:00

Candadian blogger Gayla of You Grow Girl, one of my favorite horty, gardeny blogs, just posted some photos of a recent trip to Montreal. While perusing the city, she came across some pretty sweet graffiti.

Just think what Banksy would do if he were a gardener.

Better Living Through Meat

2009-09-01T08:00:00.010-04:00

Hillshire Farm has a series of television advertisements featuring people going about daily activities before encountering some sort of meat emergency or scenario. The ads always end with the enthusiastic crowd chanting in unison "GO MEAT!"

I love these ads. Like spotting a wiener dog across the street, seeing one makes me smile and giggle with delight every time. The old-school, domestic environment is charming, and the upbeat jingles and cheerleader-like enthusiasm are catchy.

Has meat propaganda always been so enthralling? Let's take a look.

He looks science-y, and that seems reassuring. And the chart depicts a clear line of logic, the only possible conclusion of which is that MEAT = SUCCESS. Hey...I want success...

In this ad, the man looks more science-ish than science-y.

The message is clear, though. I don't want things that are dangerous, and besides, 97% of...something.

Wow. Give me some oxtail and an apron right now. Seriously.

Finally, if science and ingenuity don't move you, surely this impeccable Frenchman with his salamis, headcheese, and maniacal pig will do the trick.

Indeed, go meat.

Lard Art

2009-08-31T08:00:00.016-04:00

Every year, The Butter Cow is one of the most popular attractions at the Iowa State Fair. Little did I know, however, that Iowa State Fair fat sculptures used to extend beyond the world of butter. For example, lard provided a ubiquitous and economical medium.

Piglets dance in celebration for the 1939 Iowa State Fair.

Frank and Betty Dutt committed 15 hours and 325 pounds of lard to this sculpture for

the 1948 Iowa State Fair.

Scary little pig nymphs made of lard at the 1956 Iowa State Fair.

Pickling Pig's Feet: Part 2

2009-08-28T08:00:00.003-04:00

The acquisition of quality La Quercia pig's feet led me to the noble pursuit of pickling them. Several internet searches, numerous conversations with my grandma, four hours of simmering, and an overnight chilling led, at last, to the moment of truth....

...the taste.

Hmm...firm texture...highly spiced...holy brine! I recognized the flavor of German pickling. Not unpleasant, but pretty strong. And too much vinegar. The real pork flavor came in the third bite, when I got a more significant piece of flesh. A taste reminiscent of the scent of the cooking feet - rich, funky, porky. Closer to the true porky flavor I was hoping to achieve.

In the end, this recipe - or at least my virgin execution of it - resulted in a concoction too strongly spiced to draw out the full, meaty flavor of the feet, as I imagine it is supposed to. Placing the intact feet in the brine, according to my grandmother's method, rather than picking them clean, would probably yield a greater amount of porkier pork, rather than a mass of congealed brine that also contained meat. That's how I will do it next time.

Or maybe I'll look for other things to do with pig's feet.

A Lesson in Learning

At any rate, this project also got me thinking about traditions and passing them on. Specifically, about learning skills. I really think this project - and the product - would have been better had I learned about it in a different way. I think the process required apprenticeship, someone to teach me in person from their experience - or at least pictures of what I was really trying to accomplish. I sort of worked toward creating something like the traditional processed meats we saw in the markets of Paris (At right, processed meat in Paris' Rue Cler market; below, my pickled pig's feet), but I think I was really going for something a little different (though I did follow the recipe).

Hmm.

More research - and practice - and apprenticeship - required.

Pickling Pig's Feet: Part 1

2009-08-27T17:14:00.010-04:00

A while back, I bought some pigs' feet that came from La Quercia. They lived in my freezer for several months, and last week, I made up my mind to finally use them. Since pig's feet are not a part of our regular diet, I am somewhat unfamiliar with their preparation. The project required some planning.

Research

A quick internet search showed that many pig's feet recipes involve pickling. I talked to my grandmother, and it turns out that she prepared pig's feet on the farm by pickling them as well. (Of course, she not only pickled pig's feet but in fact butchered whole hogs and used every part in some way, but that is a project a beyond my current capabilities. I'll start with just the feet and see how it goes.) Grandma mailed me a small cookbook called Schmeckt Gut: Traditional German Cookery, which is full of collected recipes from farm wives and traditional German families. Among the recipes is indeed one from Pickled Pig's Feet.

Pickled Pig's Feet
4 pigs feet
Salted water
2 cups vinegar
2 Tbsp. salt
1 Tbsp. whole cloves
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1 small stick cinnamon
1 cup chopped dill pickles

Scrape and clean pig's feet well. Put in a kettle to boil with enough salt water to cover. Simmer for four hours or until meat will separate easily from the bones. Remove feet and add vinegar, salt, pepper and spices to stock in which meat was cooked. Boil for 30 minutes. Strain liquid and remove spices. Pick meat off the bones. Place pieces of meat and chopped pickles in a class loaf pan and pour stock over it. Chill until cold. Slice and serve. May be made ahead of time. Keeps well in refrigerator.

I carefully reviewed the recipe from the cookbook and also talked with my grandmother about her process, asking questions along the way. So how much salt should I add? Do I need to shave the feet first? How much pickling spice? How did you eat the pig's feet?

Notes on Cooking Feet

I followed the recipe for the most part, with a few adjustments according to advice, capabilities, and taste. For example, I added sugar, at my grandma's suggestion, but I left out pickles. Along the way, I took notes and photos. Here are a few excerpts of my adventures in pig cookery.

Day 1
8:30 am
I opened the packaging and cautiously poke at the feet. After a minute, the smell hit me from the feet, and it wasn't altogether pleasant...

So the feet went into the pot with water to cover and I dumped in some kosher salt...around 1-2 tablespoons (and added another tablespoon or two later). Then onto the stove with the burner on medium-high to bring the water to a boil. Then I turned the water down to a simmer and let it cook with the timer set for 4 hours. The scent of the cooking feet grew stronger and stronger...to be expected when processing meat at home, but also motivation to consider cooking things like this outside or in a sort of summer kitchen.

10:00 am
The feet have been cooking for just over an hour. Pretty swollen and firm, and I wonder if I should have split them in half lengthwise to get at the marrow. (One of the recipes I reviewed recommended this.)

11:45 am
Meat really starting to separate from the bones. The joints are relaxing and popping.

12:40 pm
Bones popping our and skin loose. Broth very fatty and rich looking. Smells porky and a little rank.

12:55 pm
The feet seem ready - meat is falling off the bone. Grandma said she threw out the water in which the feet cooked and used fresh water for the pickling brine, but the recipe says to use it. Plus, my gut says its good stuff, with all that fat and bits in there, so I'm using it.

1:33 pm
Feet are picked clean now, so I have a pile of bones and cartilage and another of soft, meaty tissue. I wasn't sure about the skin, so I called Grandma. She said they not only ate the skin, but they put the whole foot - intact - into the brine, rather than picking off the tissue. Also, at her suggestion, I added sugar to the brine.

So in the end, I picked off the meat and tossed it in with the brine after I fished out the spices. Then I ladled the brine and meat into a bread pan lined with plastic wrap. There was a bit more than fit into my big loaf pan, so I also made a baby loaf.

2:00 pm
I placed both loaf pans full of the pickled meat on a small cookie sheet and placed them on the top shelf of my refrigerator.

Day 2
7:30 pm
I got home from work and was greeted by two nicely gelled-up loaves of pickled pig's feet. I inverted the pans and jiggled and tugged the plastic until the meat slid out.

And then the moment of truth...the taste. To read how it turned out, check out Pickling Pig's Feet: Part 2.

X-rated Bounty

2009-08-26T13:45:00.010-04:00

This is the pinnacle of the garden season.

I've harvested bowls full of other produce - greens, squash, beans, peas, beets - but nothing compares to this. Heirloom varieties of tomatoes like Cherokee Chocolate , Hogheart, Pineapple, the Italian Consoluto Genovese, the French Cuostralee. (All shown here. Plus, a pepper got in there, too.)

Utter pornography.

Post-Groundhog , Pre-St. Patty's Resolutions

2009-02-21T23:06:00.017-05:00

Time to resolve. Yes, I know - it's been the "New Year" for some time now. Even Groundhog Day - a holiday I revere for its silliness, its timeliness during an otherwise-uneventful non-season, and its connection to Bill Murray - has slipped away. Before St. Patrick's Day is upon us, however, let me state my resolutions for the gardening year ahead.

I previously outlined some lessons learned, of sorts, and intended to promptly follow up with a posted list of my garden plans for the year. But me being me, and time being its slippery self, "promptly" has happened to be a month later.

First, an overview of things to come:
I'm psyched. Gardens are going to totally be my life this summer, and they're going to be so great. Besides tending my own garden in a Project Grow plot, I will also be leading school gardening at Mitchell Elementary and installing an edible garden at Zingerman's Deli. Thrilling projects, all.

In my own garden, I'm going to make more careful, strategic choices. I love growing my own food, but in the past I have tended to plant things I wanted to grow and then found ways to work them into my diet. And really, that's backwards when I can actually grow things I already eat and have to otherwise buy. So this year, I'm going to look at the way I eat (as well as how I want to eat) and adjust my garden plan accordingly. More tomato varieties. More peas (to feed my freakish lust for them). More greens. More herbs. More better. Er, much better.

At Mitchell Elementary, the garden is going into the classroom.
Work has already started with this, and all indicators point toward fabulousness. We're looking for all kinds of ways to add the garden to things that are already happening, integrating into existing curricula in science, to start, and eventually reading, math, art, writing, and anything else. The garden is going to be bigger, there will be more volunteers, and more kids will be engaged. This will all lead into an better summer program, a more successful garden, and awesome fall activities. We're going to change the world.

At Zingerman's Deli, we're growing food. By replacing of limp, uninspired grasses and yews with lush greens, heirloom tomatoes, fragrant herbs, and tasty flowers, we can demonstrate a more responsible, productive, and beautiful use of our (and any) growing space. This project is in the early stages, but by the end of the summer, we'll be harvesting vegetables and educating our staff as well as our guests about growing food.

So it's going to be a great year. Success hinges more than a little on the effectiveness of my planning now and my use of time and energy both now and later, not to mention some creative resource leverage and the efforts of volunteers who do not yet know they are on board. But they will be. The timing is right, the weather is warming, and I'm determined.

German, line-drawn Me

2009-02-21T22:42:00.008-05:00

My husband, Nick, initially found these images about a year ago, and I kind of forgot about them until this weekend. These line drawings by German graphic artist Julia Guther are simple, beautiful mixed-media images, and well, they look like me.

How to Grow: A Review of Two Years in a Community Garden

2009-01-18T01:41:00.006-05:00

Two years ago, when I had my first community garden plot, I worked at it. Hard. The site where I had my plot was challenging – packed, clayey soil, intense weed pressure, vandalism from local punks - but I persevered and ended up with a pretty productive little plot. And I was exhausted.

Last year, I adopted a different approach. To offset the toil of the previous year as well as accommodate a more complicated work schedule, I opted for some lower-maintenance raised planting beds. This seemed ideal. Hip-high boxes filled with lush compost and best of all, no weeds. What a dream! In reality, it backfired. True, these beds were less demanding, but I paid so little attention to my garden that by the time I attempted staking or otherwise training my lovely heirloom tomatoes, the plants were unmanageable. My planned replantings of crops like radishes and lettuces didn't happen, and I became so impatient in my weeding that I inadvertently pulled my adorable little fish pepper plant, which I bought purely to fulfill my curiosity at such a delightful name. Alas, I still haven't a clue what exactly a fish pepper is.

The low-maintenance beds turned out far less satisfying than the opposed-from-every-angle garden from the year before. So what did I learn?

Good question.

As with most things, the ideal probably lies somewhere in the middle. If high maintenance is exhausting and low maintenance is disappointing, and neither of those options is best for sustaining enthusiasm, I guess I want something that is just...maintenance. Not high. Not low. Just a standard amount. I'm not sure exactly how much time and effort I want that to be, but I know how much is too much and how much is too little. That's a start.

And speaking of starting, that's another thing I learned. Don't wait to start. Don't treat starting of my community garden plot like shopping the Friday after Thanksgiving. I traditionally avoid that notoriously crazed frenzy, preferring to wait until things have calmed and crowds have thinned. In this case, though, I think I would do well to follow the example of the early-rising shopper who waits outside Target, shopping list and sale flyers in hand, caffeine already circulating her system when the doors open at 6:00 am on Black Friday. I should be prepared and chomping at the bit. I should prepare my soil and have my tools, seeds, garden plan, and thermos of coffee ready to go when the plots open to gardeners the second-to-last Saturday in May. The sooner I start and the better prepared I am, the more it will pay off later.

Other community gardeners will be there early on that first garden day, too. In the past, I haven’t seen much of my fellow gardeners. Maybe our schedules just never coincided, or maybe I just didn’t take advantage of opportunities to say hello. But this year, I really want to rub elbows with all of those experienced gardeners out there to see what knowledge and what relationships I can gain. I want to build a community. With that addition, community gardening will take on a whole new meaning for me.

So there are a few lessons I picked up. There are more – ideas about a really nifty way to build a bean trellis, a different planting arrangement for my sweet corn, and so forth – but these give me a good place to begin working toward my bigger garden aspirations. Read about those next time.

Iowa Dinner at Zingerman's Roadhouse

2008-06-04T08:53:00.014-04:00

The Iowa Dinner at the Roadhouse last night was great! It all started with some casual conversations with Ari Weinzweig, one of the founding Zingerman's partners, a couple of years ago. "Hey Ari, my family raises beef." "Cool. We should do a dinner."

Two and a half years later, they made it happen at Zingerman's Roadhouse.

My friend, Leo Landis, was there and gave some great Iowa history, and Duff, Zingerman's Chocolate Lady, read from her great-grandmother's journal about growing up on a farm in Iowa. Paul Willis from Niman Ranch's Pork Division talked about their operation, and I said a few words about our farm and our cattle. There was some information about our farm available for the guests, too.

I also recommended some Iowa stuff to anyone who wants to visit, suggesting three great ways to experience Iowa...
1. Living History Farms, a living history museum dedicated to the history of agriculture and society in Iowa,
2. RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, which takes place every July and lets people experience the best of small town Iowa by biking from town to town across the state, and
3. the Iowa State Fair, the biggest and best state fair in the country, where the best of the state's culture and agriculture are on display. Also lots of good food there.

And of course, there was Iowa food at the dinner as well. Maytag blue cheese, Niman Ranch pork, Venner Limousin beef, Dutch letters, lamb's quarters (though in Iowa, this is a weed, not a food), peas, German potato salad, apple pie milkshakes, and rhubarb pie. I was stuffed at the end, and the next morning, I still feel stuffed. Beautifully prepared and served and nicely interpreted by Chef Alex Young, Ari, and the others I mentioned above.

Below are some photos of the event. I took most of them without a flash because the light would have been annoying to the other 60 people in room, so the images are pretty dark.

Menus and info about our beef farm on the table.

The Appetizer: Niman Ranch pork burgers, pancetta and country ham from the acorn-fed hogs at La Quercia. Those are pickled green tomatoes up on the right.

The Salad: Maytag blue cheese & Niman Ranch Applewood Smoke Bacon with Lamb Quarters
I forgot the photograph mine before I devoured it , so here's my neighbor's.

The Maytag blue cheese-bacon combo with the flavorful greens was incredible.

Leo Landis, a historian, serious foodie, and my friend, tells 'em how it is in Iowa. He used to live in Ann Arbor and said one of his friends described Iowans as "people looking for ways to get back home." Indeed.

Emily Anderson, aka Duff, reading from her great-grandmother's journal.

I said a bit about our farm and about Iowa. I was excited, so there was some hand waving.
The Entree: The beef arrived at last! Broiled Beef Steak (left side of the plate), Wood-Fire Grilled Hamburger (top of the plate in the middle), and Braised Short Ribs (right side of the plate). Also see the image below.

The Sides: I forgot to take a separate picture, but you can kind of see the German Potato Salad in the Style of the Amana Community on the right of this plate. There were also Creamed Spring Peas, which tasted amazing.

The Dessert: I also forgot the photograph the little dessert plate, but everyone got a little Apple Pie Milkshake in a shot glass, a Dutch letter, and a little slice of Rhubarb Pie.

A Growing Concern

2008-04-22T20:31:00.007-04:00

Spring has been here for just a week or two now, but I am already overwhelmed by this year's growing season. The colder months of the year lulled me into a comfy complacency of coming straight home from my 9-5 and not having too many other obligations.

Yeah, that's gonna end soon.

My summer is packed. So much so that I am concerned about how I'll manage it all, but I am still super excited. Plans are shaping up for the Go! Gardening programming I will run this summer at Mitchell Elementary through Project Grow. Two action-packed hours in the garden with elementary students each week for six weeks.

I'll also be Project Grow's Community Garden Supervisor again this year, and there are three new gardens (but one garden closed too, so there are a total of 11). The gardens are all around town, so unfortunately, checking out the community gardens will also mean a fair amount of driving.

Also, Nick and I will have out own veggie garden again this year. Probably not as big as last year's, but hopefully it will be more manageable.

I'll still do the 9-5 at Old House Gardens - Trial Garden and a move to a new farm, all things willing. Throw in a few hours at Zingerman's Deli each week, and my summer is booked.

Right now, though, I am having tons of fun monitoring the Trial Gardens at Old House Gardens - more rare, weird antique bulbs blooming all the time. (I get ridiculously excited about this and talk to the flowers for about an hour each day.) So I'll just let me garden ecstasy build and ride that wave up the daffodils and tulips, over the greens and beets, all the way through to cannas, sweet corn, dahlias, tomatoes, and into the fall. By which time, order will be shipping from OHG for next year's gardens...

A Lesson on the Obvious

2007-10-23T01:09:00.000-04:00

Today I learned that Sweet Potato Vines produce sweet potatoes. Maybe I should have expected that...

This morning I showed up at the Sensory Garden I designed and helped to plant and maintain since May. The plan was to remove the annuals and put the perennials to bed for the year. After pulling the sweet potato vines, which were previously ginormous but now are shriveled by cold, I leaned over to retrieve something I noticed in the soil. I puzzled over the coppery root for a split second before exclaiming my epiphany.

"Holy cow! It's a sweet potato!" I practically shouted this, while standing in the precise spot where my beloved sweet potato vines flourished all summer.

The embarrassing part is that I was truly surprised.

Ornamental plants are chosen for characteristics that are attractive. In this process, they often lose the qualities that enticed humans to cultivate them in the first place. My favorite example is the sweet pea. Old-fashioned types of sweet peas are known for a dramatic fragrance emanating from smallish, pale flowers. Sweet and strong, this scent wafted through dooryards and gardens for years before the focus shifted to visual impact. Gardeners today often pursue brighter, showier plants, so sweet peas adjusted - or were adjusted - accordingly. Modern varieties display much larger, frillier blooms in bright shades. The price was the scent. You would probably get a better sense of that notable odor from Bath and Body Works than from a modern variety of sweet pea.

I somehow assumed it was the same with the ornamental sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas 'Blackie" and 'Marguerite,' of course) and its sweet potatoes.

Evidently, I was wrong. Sometimes lessons on the obvious are the most surprising.

The Taste of Pig

2007-09-12T22:17:00.002-04:00

Nick and I went to a Tasting tonight at Zingerman's. These events take place several times each month, and it's a great chance for Zingerman's guests and staff to explore and learn about products. Tastings typically have themes - Italian cheeses, Spanish olive oils, honeys, and others. Tonight's was unique, however, as it focused on a particular animal - the pig.

Winston Churchill said, "Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal." (Or something close to that - websites disagree on the wording) Quite true. I always have enjoyed pigs, from the time I begged my dad to let me raise the runts of the litters in a little shed on our farm through each and every pig I showed in 4H. They are animals with personality- resourceful, intelligent, playful.

Also, pigs love Oreos. I used to feed them to my show pigs.

Also, pigs taste good. In each of their many, glorious forms, they are delicious.

The Meaning of Canning

2007-09-09T13:17:00.000-04:00

*TINK*

My head jerked up in the direction of the sound, then turned quickly toward my husband, Nick. We exchanged a wide-eyed look of surprise.

*TINK*

"Another one! Yeah!" We both let go with a primal yell and nailed a high-five. Hours of careful preparation, reference checking, and boiling vinegar resulted at last in safely-sealed jars of pickled peppers, stewed tomatoes, and delicious homemade salsa.

This, my first solo attempt at home canning, appropriately followed my first solo attempt at vegetable gardening. I tended my parents' vegetable gardening for years, but this year, I'm entirely on my own. My garden met with moderate success, having faced intense weed pressure and hard clay soil at a somewhat newly established community garden site. It did yield peppers and tomatoes in spades, however, giving me to opportunity to carry on a deeply ingrained family tradition.

My parents have canned garden produce as long as I can remember. Salsa, green beans, sauerkraut, and applesauce, sometimes. Jam, spaghetti sauce, and tomato juice, always. Canned goods from home were always lauded above comparable purchased products in our house, and rightly so. They were just better somehow.

Gardening and canning take work. Planning, planting, maintenance, harvest, planning again, preparation, and careful execution. There's also pride, though - growing food for yourself and your family, taking responsibility for a piece of land, shaping a a little piece of the world that is Your Place. Produce from the garden - fresh, frozen, or canned - becomes part of the daily diet, offers a daily reminder of hard work, a daily reminder of pride and accomplishment, of our connection to the soil and commitment to the task. Those are the values of my family. These are my values. I see them lived and hear them preached and work towards them in my own life. All of this is attached to my concept of the meaning of canning, giving weight to the action drags at my confidence and works me into a tizzy about the whole endeavor. But surely, if I can succeed at raising a garden and canning some salsa, surely I will have achieved success!

Or at least some good salsa.

Despite my personal melodrama, the whole canning thing was a piece of cake, and I'm already planning my next attempt. I'm pretty proud of myself and have proven, once again, that hard work tastes good.