Moving Away from Chemicals–It's not All or Nothing

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Have you heard of the Marsden Farm Study? No? Me neither, until just a couple of days ago. Yet the results of this study are so important, I think they should be published, advertised, spread like wildfire. It represents a successful guideline for changes we so desperately need in our chemically-driven agricultural model. Marsden Farm is a model that’s in between ‘strictly organic’ and ‘strictly conventional’. Since I’ve long struggled with the fact that changing agriculture overnight, or even in one or two generations, seems like an impossible task, I read these kinds of studies with a practical eye and new hope in my heart. Experimental farms like Marsden are crucial for showing farmers what can be done now. These methods will not require re-hauling the entire system in one day, but will greatly reduce the severe ecological damage we wreak, year after year, with conventional farming.

Here is a link to the basics behind the study. Or read on, and I can paraphrase for you.

Marsden Farm (located in Iowa) began in 2003 to try reintroducing the concept of ‘integrated pest management’ on a large scale. Integrated Pest Management involves the use of prevention, monitoring, physical removal of pests, biological controls, and even the limited use of pesticides. It’s a range of responses to pests. It’s nothing new. But through the years, chemicals have trumped all other techniques. Spread over the fields on a regular schedule, chemicals are used now to repeatedly douse crops, a sort of preventative cure-all. As we know by now, a ‘cure-all’ is the last thing massive amounts of chemicals represent, and the costs to the environment are long lasting, complex, and often irreversible.

Integrated Pest Management is more time intensive, certainly. However, labor hired to ‘watch the crops’–assessing the types and quantities of pests, manually removing pests or applying biological controls, and yes, using chemicals as an absolute last resort and in small quantities–money spent in this way seems to make more sense than pouring money into the chemical companies for year after year of poisons to be saturated into the ground ‘on schedule’.

Pest management is not the only factor in Marsden’s study, but also ear-round crop rotation and the use of animal inputs (reintroducing animals to the farm–what an idea, right?). The Marsden study is aimed at larger-scale operations, which I think is important. Even though my personal opinion is that we will eventually turn to many small-scale, diverse operations in the future, it’s going to be a gradual process. We need as many great models and ideas for drastically reducing the chemicals we use, on larger farms, now.

Mark Bittman (whom I primarily know as the author of a really incredible vegetarian cookbook called, aptly, “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian”–even though he himself is not fully vegetarian) wrote this article about the study, which I find insightful. Hopefully the ideas presented by farms like Marsden will catch on, and changes will start happening. .

Sustainable Farming: A Simple Fix, Zero Cost

By Mark Bittman (original article here)

t’s becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals. And I’m not talking about imposing some utopian vision of small organic farms on the world. Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical use – if it wants to.

This was hammered home once again in what may be the most important agricultural study this year, although it has been largely ignored by the media, two of the leading science journals and even one of the study’s sponsors, the often hapless Department of Agriculture.

The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year cycle that included oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and alfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the raising of livestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer.

The results were stunning: The longer rotations produced better yields of both corn and soy, reduced the need for nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides by up to 88 percent, reduced the amounts of toxins in groundwater 200-fold and didn’t reduce profits by a single cent.

In short, there was only upside – and no downside at all – associated with the longer rotations. There was an increase in labor costs, but remember that profits were stable. So this is a matter of paying people for their knowledge and smart work instead of paying chemical companies for poisons. And it’s a high-stakes game; according to the Environmental Protection Agency, about five billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the United States.

No one expects Iowacorn and soybean farmers to turn this thing around tomorrow, but one might at least hope that the U.S.D.A.would trumpet the outcome. The agency declined to comment when I asked about it. One can guess that perhaps no one at the higher levels even knows about it, or that they’re afraid to tell Monsantoabout agency-supported research that demonstrates a decreased need for chemicals. (A conspiracy theorist might note that the journals Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences both turned down the study. It was finally published in PLOS One; I first read about it on the Union of Concerned Scientists Web site.)

Debates about how we grow food are usually presented in a simplistic, black-and-white way, conventional versus organic. (The spectrum that includes conventional on one end and organic on the other is not unlike the one that opposes the standard American diet with veganism.) In farming, you have loads of chemicals and disastrous environmental impact against an orthodox, even dogmatic method that is difficult to carry out on a large scale.

But seeing organic as the only alternative to industrial agriculture, or veganism as the only alternative to supersize me, is a bit like saying that the only alternative to the ravages of capitalism is Stalinism; there are other ways. And positioning organic as the only alternative allows its opponents to point to its flaws and say, “See? We have to remain with conventional.”

The Marsden Farm study points to a third path. And though critics of this path can be predictably counted on to say it’s moving backward, the increased yields, markedly decreased input of chemicals, reduced energy costs and stable profits tell another story, one of serious progress.

Nor was this a rinky-dink study: the background and scientific rigor of the authors – who represent the U.S.D.A.’s Agricultural Research Service as well as two of the country’s leading agricultural universities – are unimpeachable. When I asked Adam Davis, an author of the study who works for the U.S.D.A., to summarize the findings, he said, “These were simple changes patterned after those used by North American farmers for generations. What we found was that if you don’t hold the natural forces back they are going to work for you.”

This means that not only is weed suppression a direct result of systematic and increased crop rotation along with mulching, cultivation and other nonchemical techniques, but that by not poisoning the fields, we make it possible for insects, rodents and other critters to do their part and eat weeds and their seeds. In addition, by growing forage crops for cattle or other ruminants you can raise healthy animals that not only contribute to the health of the fields but provide fertilizer. (The same manure that’s a benefit in a system like this is a pollutant in large-scale, confined animal-rearing operations, where thousands of animals make manure disposal an extreme challenge.)

Perhaps most difficult to quantify is that this kind of farming – more thoughtful and less reflexive – requires more walking of the fields, more observations, more applications of fertilizer and chemicals if, when and where they’re needed, rather than on an all-inclusive schedule. “You substitute producer knowledge for blindly using inputs,” Davis says.

So: combine crop rotation, the re-integration of animals into crop production and intelligent farming, and you can use chemicals (to paraphrase the report’s abstract) to fine-tune rather than drive the system, with no loss in performance and in fact the gain of animal products.

Why wouldn’t a farmer go this route? One answer is that first he or she has to hear about it. Another, says Matt Liebman, one of the authors of the study and an agronomy professor at Iowa State, is that, “There’s no cost assigned to environmental externalities” – the environmental damage done by industrial farming, analogous to the health damage done by the “cheap” standard American diet – “and the profitability of doing things with lots of chemical input isn’t questioned.”

This study not only questions those assumptions, it demonstrates that the chemicals contributing to “environmental externalities” can be drastically reduced at no sacrifice, except to that of the bottom line of chemical companies. That direction is in the interest of most of us – or at least those whose well-being doesn’t rely on that bottom line.

Sadly, it seems there isn’t a government agency up to the task of encouraging things to move that way, even in the face of convincing evidence.

Using your Harvest Vegetarian Recipes

3 Sisters Soup

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I’m paying homage to the 3 Sisters Garden with some FABULOUS soup!

Not too long ago I posted about my visit to the beautiful homestead of FutureFarming. While I was there, I immediately recognized one of the gardens as being a ‘3 Sisters Garden‘. I found this great link that explains the legend, and includes some nice diagrams showing how you can implement a 3 sisters garden in your own space:

Please CLICK HERE! Learn about the 3 Sisters Legend!

A 3 sisters garden lends itself perfectly to a pot of warm soup. This recipe is incredibly simple, yet delicious! I kept thinking that I’d have to add something to it, because it was so insanely easy, but it tasted perfect. My family could not get enough of it. I had tried a couple other versions of 3 Sisters Soup before this one; one included zucchini, white beans, and corn–another included acorn squash, corn, and pinto beans.

This particular recipe stood out from the rest to me because it has green beans and potatoes in it–two of the plants that were growing in the 3 sisters garden at the Future Farming homestead. I also like that this recipe includes hominy. Native Americans would soak corn kernels in a lye solution, creating hominy, which stored better than raw corn because it would not sprout. In addition to improved storage, hominy is also said to have an edge over plain corn nutritionally, as the soaking process converts some the vitamins into a form that is more readily accessible to our bodies. Though most of us don’t know how to make hominy, it’s currently readily available, canned, in just about any grocery store. I have found white and golden hominy in cans–I personally think the golden hominy is much more flavorful (white hominy is made from white corn, golden from yellow corn). As a side note, I think learning to make hominy would be a great sustainability project! Click here to see a very simple way to make your own hominy.

Something to keep in mind when making this simple and soul-warming 3 Sister Soup–make sure you use a good, quality vegetable broth–since there are no spices except pepper, you’ll need that good broth to carry the flavor. Of course, you can always add spices and herbs if needed, but I find that the wonderful flavor of this soup in its barest form calls for nothing extra! I have made it three times for the family (I had a monster butternut squash to use up)…and it will be a staple around here during the cold months. Enjoy!

Three Sisters Soup

(adapted from allrecipes.com)

2 c. golden hominy (can use corn instead if desired)

2 c. fresh or frozen green beans (trimmed and snapped if fresh)

2 c. winter squash (i.e. butternut or acorn), peeled and cubed

1 1/2 c. peeled and cubed potatoes

5 c. vegetable broth

2 T. butter

2 T. flour

1/4 t. pepper

Place the hominy, green beans, squash, and potatoes into a pot, and pour in the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer until the vegetable are soft. Melt the butter in a bowl and blend the flour into it with a fork, then stir into the soup (I dip the bowl into the soup a few times to get all the buttery goodness out). Increase heat to medium, and cook until the soup thickens. Season with pepper and serve.

Peeling and chopping a squash can be challenging. I find it easiest to cut the squash into small sections that are more easily peeled, then dicing up the flesh of the peeled sections.

Urban Gardening

Growing the Garden Season–Practical Model of a Suburban Garden

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I read this article over a week ago when it was published in my local Sunday paper, and I keep thinking about it, for a few reasons:

1). This guy has come up with some really nice raised garden beds. I love his idea of lining the inside with insulation to keep the beds at a nice temperature–not too hot in summer, not too cold in winter. I would like to try building a couple of beds like his.

2). He has tips for extending the growing season all winter long.

3). Though it’s not stated specifically in the article, the photo of the spacing of his plants demonstrates the biointensive method of planting, which I am very interested in.

4). This is a little more abstract, but I really love the pictures in the article because it shows the gardener’s property pretty well, and it’s obvious he lives in a typical suburban neighborhood. Not a sprawling country acre, but a standard-sized suburban lot. I find this very encouraging. As we face food shortages and the probability that people will have to start growing food, it’s nice to have good models of how it can be done, in every situation and property size.

Photos by Swikar Patel | The Journal Gazette

Seed templates made from old truck tire flaps help Arthur Stahlhut make the most of the planting space at his Fort Wayne home.

Published: October 14, 2012 3:00 a.m.

Growing the garden season

Raised beds, covers help enthusiasts harvest all year

Rosa Salter Rodriguez | The Journal Gazette

Raised beds outfitted with hoop frames can be covered with agricultural cloth and function as mini-greenhouses in Stahlhut’s backyard.

Holes drilled in a diagonal pattern allow the master gardener to space plants four inches or six inches apart.

When most area gardeners are readying their vegetable beds for a long winter’s nap, long-time master gardener Art Stahlhut was out in his garden pointing out his newly sprouting lettuce.
If things go according to plan, say Stahlhut and his gardening partner, Karen Fecher, both of Fort Wayne, the garden will have the same outcome as last year.
“I had the most beautiful fresh lettuce mix for my Thanksgiving table,” Fecher says.
Stahlhut believes in extending the season for vegetable growing – which usually means he harvests something in virtually every month of the year except January.
This year he’ll have tomatoes on the vine well into October and lettuce, spinach, onions and carrots well into November. Last year, with the mild temperatures, he pulled plump red radishes and harvested romaine lettuce the first week in December.
Stahlhut says he doesn’t fight Mother Nature – he just plays to her gentler side so plants get what they need, whatever the calendar says.
His secret, he says, is growing veggies in eight raised beds, which he designed and built himself, and covering them when appropriate with hoop frames to create mini-greenhouses.
He’s refined his techniques over the years, with his most recent beds consisting of a frame made with sturdy two-by-fours to stand about 20 inches tall. There’s no real reason for the exact height, he says, “except I have bad knees.” Twenty inches gives enough room for root development while alleviating the need to have to kneel to cultivate, weed or harvest, he says.
The bottom of each bed is lined with wire mesh with landscape fabric on top of it, “to keep critters out,” Stahlhut says. The sides are filled in with 16-inch-square patio tiles two inches thick.
The sides are then lined with thin foam insulation sheets and then even thinner sheets of metal flashing to keep in warmth. The metal also makes tilling with a small roto-tiller possible without tearing up the insulation, he says.
Beginning in early fall, he adds to some of the beds what gardeners call “hoops” – curved arches made of metal wire or conduit pipe that are covered with translucent agricultural cloth.
Stahlhut, who helped create raised beds for vegetables at the demonstration garden outside the office of the Purdue Extension Service at IPFW, says the raised beds allow him to control the soil composition and temperature.
He uses layers of grass clippings and shredded paper and horse manure for the bottom half, and swears by a mixture of one-third peat, one-third compost and one-third sphagnum for the top. He calls it the “lasagna method” because of the layers.
“Art makes the most wonderful soil mix,” Fecher says. “It’s fluffy and light, and you don’t have to deal with the (northeast Indiana) clay.”
He makes his own compost in one of the raised beds. “We don’t use synthetic fertilizer,” he says, adding that he doesn’t pull out tomato plants at the end of the season, only cuts them down to encourage worm action in the soil.
Another of Stahlhut’s secrets is intensive planting. To get more out of his small spaces, he has made seed templates from, believe it or not, old truck tire flaps into which he’s drilled two sizes of holes for even seed placement. He also occasionally intercrops.
“The rule of thumb is you can feed a family of four from a garden the size of a two-car garage. Well, we only use half that size, but we use every square inch of it,” he says.
As for tools, Stahlhut says a thermometer that reads both high and low temperatures is essential, especially at each end of the growing season.
So is keeping a close eye on the coverings, because the soil can quickly get too warm even in cool weather and “fry the plants,” he says. They’re held to the hoops with giant clothespins, so they’re easily removable.
Fecher says covering crops keep them warmer in the spring and fall and shades them in the summer. She says they saved a lot of lettuce from bolting when the weather turned quickly hot this year. Last week, after temperatures dipped to freezing, the cover raised the ambient temperature to 65 degrees with a couple of hours of sunlight.
Stahlhut doesn’t use plastic to cover his plants but does use a conventional cold frame with plastic sides and top.
The pair has been selling lettuce and other veggies at the Historic Main Street and South Side Farmers Market.
“We want to get more into production. Right now we can’t grow it fast enough. We’d sell out every time,” Fecher says.
Stahlhut says he travels to regional gardening meetings and festivals, reads a lot and watches gardening videos to get ideas and learn new approaches. Two favorites videos are “Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan” by Homeplace Earth and “Growing Greens for Love and Money” by Susan Moser.
But mostly he likes to experiment – whether it’s growing different varieties of garlic or planting peanuts in a bed under the lamp post in his front yard.
“It’s always a work in progress,” he says.

rsalter@jg.net

Urban Gardening

It's Pumpkin Time!

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If you caught my blog post from just about a year ago, you might remember that we had a pumpkin patch. It grew from the seeds of a jack-o-lantern, and we ended up with only two pumpkins (I cheated and staged some more pumpkins from the grocery store so that every child could take one home–they never knew!).

Well, this year was a wild success in comparison!

First of all, I have to tell you where the pumpkin seeds came from. Early in the spring, I got a beautiful surprise from one of my former daycare kids, Maggie. Maggie was one of the biggest enthusiasts of the Little Hands Garden as it started to take root. She had a garden at home, and was part of the Garden Club at her preschool, so she had all kinds of tips. I enjoyed her curiosity, her excitement, her quiet observation of the tiny miracles that took place with our projects. Here she is, working with our seedlings last year:

I make a lot of special memories with all the kids in my care. However, the nature of my job as a daycare teacher requires that I say goodbye when the early years pass. I often watch a child from babyhood, through toddlerhood, and then preschool age–and those years are absolutely precious to me. I’ve been lucky that most of my daycare children stay for the ‘long haul’ through all those years…turnover is low. I treasure the time spent with all my little ones, watching them change and grow. It was time for sweet Maggie to enter Kindergarten, and her days spent here would now be spent at school. I’ve been through the goodbyes many times before in the 9 years I’ve been doing this job, and it never gets any easier! Luckily, Maggie’s mom has made the transition so wonderful for us all by bringing her for visits when she has days off school. Her daycare friends and I LOVE her visits! After one such visit, Maggie and her mom decided to bring me a gift. I was so completely touched by the surprise. It was a beautiful collection of seeds, handmade seed markers, seed starter mix, a mini-greenhouse, and adorable little planting pots.

Needless to say, I was speechless at the thoughtfulness of this gift. Of the various wonderful seeds Maggie brought for me and our garden, a packet of pumpkin seeds immediately caught my eye. I knew we were going to have a great little pumpkin patch using them.

We planted the seeds the the late spring (only 6 seeds total–2 small hills got 3 seeds), and watched the pumpkins develop from tiny green bulbs to perfect little orange cuties, just like we did last summer. It is an excitement that never gets old.

This year I definitely did not have to cheat and add in a few store bought pumpkins; our tiny humble patch produced THIRTEEN perfect tiny pumpkins!

The best part about the pumpkin patch is that harvest time occurs when the rest of the summer crops in the garden are gone. It brings us back to the now brown-and-scraggly garden so that we can see the results of the summer’s pumpkin babies. It keeps the garden in our minds–and for me, it gets me thinking of what fall crops we can put in, because I just don’t want the growing to end!

There is just something magical about kids and pumpkins: they adore them, and get more excited to harvest them than any of our other crops. Here we are on our journey our little pumpkin patch this week. We are officially ready for fall!

Originally Posted At Little*Big*Harvest

Vegetarian Recipes

Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers

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A group of stragglers lay in the crisper of the fridge: those last minute green peppers that kept calling out to be used in something, anything. I know many of you out there also have that final group of peppers, right at this moment, calling out to you. Are you going to slice them up and freeze them? Put them on a pizza, in some chili, or in a batch of spaghetti sauce? There are so many great things to be done with green peppers, but one of my personal favorites has to be…STUFFED!

I’ve made many a stuffed pepper in my life, and there are a ton of delicious stuffed pepper recipes out there. I like this one because it’s so very simple. I usually have all these ingredients on hand. The recipe makes a lot of stuffing, more than I needed for the peppers, but that’s ok. I ate the stuffing on its own for a couple of lunches; it’s a tasty meal on its own. Enjoy!

Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers

4-6 medium peppers

2 T. olive oil

1 c. brown rice (I used 3/4 c. brown rice, 1/4 c. pearl barley)

2 c. vegetable broth

1 small red onion

1 clove garlic

7 oz canned chopped tomatoes

pinch each of dried thyme, parsley and rosemary

1/2 c. peas (can thaw from frozen)

salt and pepper

1. First cook the rice in the vegetable broth and 1/2 c. of water. Either cook in a pot using instructions on rice package or use a rice cooker. Assemble all your other recipe ingredients while the rice cooks. Brown rice can take a bit to cook. So find a good book and put up your feet. 🙂

2. Turn oven on to 400 degrees F. Wash and dry peppers, put them on a baking sheet and brush lightly with olive oil (I misted them with olive oil using a mister, click here to see). Bake peppers for 12 minutes.

3. Let peppers cool on the pan enough so that you can slice them in half, remove stems and seeds. Lay them, open side up, on the baking sheet.

4. Peel and dice the onion. Pour 1 T. olive oil in pan, bring it to medium heat, and throw the diced onions in. After 3 or 4 minutes, mince the garlic and add it to the onion. Cook for another minute, then add the tomatoes, herbs and a little salt and pepper. Let the mixture bubble and simmer on med/low heat for about 5 minutes. Add the rice and peas to this mixture, then spoon into the halves of pepper.

5. Put the stuffed peppers into the preheated oven for 10 minutes. For extra flavor, sprinkle shredded cheese of your choice on top of each pepper after the 10 minutes are up, switch the oven to broil, and broil for 3-4 minutes or until cheese is beautiful and bubbly.

Urban Gardening

Carbon Sources for Compost

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I thought this was a nice chart showing some easily obtained ‘brown’ (carbon) material for your compost pile. I always seem to have plenty of ‘green’ materials (vegetable scraps, mostly), and I’m trying to focus on adding more carbon to make our compost as balanced as it can be. Though this chart is certainly not exhaustive, it’s a nice start!

Green Energy Solar Uncategorized

Solar Flower

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I’ve become very interested in projects that normal, everyday people can do that will harness the free power of the sun. This ‘solar flower’ is intriguing, and it can be built very cheaply, or even for no cost if you visit a scrap heap and rummage through your own ‘junk’. What is it used for? “Basically, generating heat. With that heat you can then run external applications such as generating electricity, smokeless cooking, heating and purifying water, making charcoal, anything that heat can be used for.”

Visit www.solarflower.org for more information.

What is it?

A solar energy collector you can make easily using scrap materials.

What’s it for?

Basically, generating heat. With that heat you can then run external applications such as generating electricity, smokeless cooking, heating and purifying water, making charcoal, anything that heat can be used for.

How much does it cost?

Depends. All the materials are things you can find in a corner store or scrap heap, so it could potentially cost anywhere between nothing and, let’s say about €$£50 per device.

How much power does it produce, and how efficient is it?

One square meter of full sunlight is about one thousand Watts of power, which is the collector size for which the SolarFlower is designed (although it can probably drive something twice as large). Depending on the materials used, you can assume at least 50% thermal efficiency overall (probably higher), so that would give you 500 Watts in full sunlight. This is enough to heat 50 litres of water to 100 C in a little over 8.5 hours.

What principle do you use to track the sun non-electrically?

It’s a little complicated to express in text, I’m working on some animations at the moment which will make it clearer.

Basically there are two collector mirrors, one big one that concentrates all the energy you’re going to use to power your applications, and a smaller one attached to it which drives the tracker. When the main collector is pointing directly at the sun the focus point of the secondary collector is sitting just off the edge of a little boiler filled with a small amount of ethanol. As the sun moves off by about a degree that hot spot shifts onto the boiler, which in a minute or two starts the ethanol boiling, the vapor exits into a chamber (metal tin) attached to the boiler, and forces out some of the liquid ethanol in it. That liquid goes through a pipe and pours into the waterwheel assembly, turning it, which turns the gearing, which turns the two collectors into the sun, the hot spot shifts off the boiler, the boiling stops, the vapor in the tin starts to collapse and the resulting vacuum sucks ethanol from a reservoir below the waterwheel and refills the whole system.
It all sits there until the sun moves off again.
The small collector has about a two hour range, so if the sun goes behind a cloud or something the system can catch up to it.

What license / patent / protection is on the design?

None. This is an open source hardware project, and as such is not owned, or able to be owned by any one person or company.
Since the designs have now been published they are unable to be patented by anyone, including the original designer.
At some point the project may take on a Creative Commons or similar license, but it will be one which allows any form of use, including commercial. (In fact you are encouraged to make and sell these things, royalty free).
The only thing you are not permitted to do is stop anyone else making and using them in any way.

Uncategorized

Would You Like To Live in a Mushroom?

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This is a very cool idea!

Fast Fungi Bricks: Mushroom Blocks Better than Concrete?!

Most people pay attention to the part of the mushroom we see (and sometimes even eat) that grows above the ground – but what about the latticework of tendrils that intertwine inside the dirt from which they grow?

As it turns out, this malleable network can, per Philip Ross, “be used to form a super-strong, water-, mold- and fire-resistant building material. The dried mycelium can be grown and formed into just about any shape, and it has a remarkable consistency that makes it stronger, pound for pound, than concrete.” (via Inhabitat)

Stools and chairs are just the start – stone-like arches and eventually whole buildings may be yet to come. Like bamboo, the speed of growth and workability of the material make it a great candidate for locally-grown architecture, particularly in fungi-friendly climates. The strength of concrete, but easier to create and lightweight to boot – we have not seen the last of mushroom-based building technologies.

Urban Gardening

Tomato Truck

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We got out to the garden a couple of days ago, and on a whim, wheeled one of our yellow dump trucks with us. It made a great container for us to fill up with all the last-minute yellow pear tomatoes we could find. It was like a treasure hunt, peering into the jungle of tomato vines, trying to spot those beautiful golden gems. A few tiny red tomatoes were hiding in there too…which promptly ended up in Noah’s mouth as a juicy snack!

After loading up the tomatoes, we made a big production of driving the dump truck into the house, where we ate most of the harvest with our lunch. Some ended up in a pile on the counter, next to the last of our green peppers and one lone cucumber.

Each day we have been filling up our pockets with any green tomatoes we can find. The kids have found this hilarious: scandalous, even–for all summer long I have emphasized to ONLY pick the yellow or red tomatoes, NOT the green. They think they are getting away with something, plucking the green ones! But alas, all those green tomatoes are coming inside with us, for the warm ripening days are over. Of course tomatoes taste best when ripened on the vine, but we will try to get some more out of our last harvest by placing all the underripe ones into a paper bag with a banana. The ethylene gas released by the banana as it ripens will also help the tomatoes reach their potential. Last year we tried the same technique with an apple, and got pretty good results. I read that bananas release much larger amounts of ethylene than any other fruit (like apples), so we are curious to see if we get better results than we did with the apple.

(Note: Bananas, for all their wonderful qualities, are not a sustainable food source as sold conventionally. Many people who seek sustainable lifestyles and want to lessen harm to earth and their fellow earthlings have given up bananas completely. I have cut back, but have found it very difficult to give these amazing and versatile fruits. Keep an eye out for a discussion here on the blog about bananas and their place in a sustainable diet and world.)

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Pickled Crabapples

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A taste of fall: homemade pickled crabapples

by Stark Bro’s on 10/04/2012

There are several crabapple trees in our neighborhood that go unharvested. Every year the apples fall to the ground to rot, when they could be utilized in several ways, even if not for eating fresh. Most people do not realize that these little fruits can make delicious food! Here is an interesting way to prepare them: we will be trying it soon. -Andi

When most people think of crabapples, they think of small, inedible* fruit. The trees they grow on are often beautiful (even ornamental), and they are excellent pollinators, but traditionally, crabapples aren’t eaten fresh. They are more likely to be used to make jellies and jams, or, in the focus on today’s blog post, pickled crabapples. Some of you might remember pickled crabapples as a side at Thanksgiving along with, or as an alternative to, cranberry sauce. Try the recipe below to enjoy your own delicious, homemade pickled crabapples!

Canned (Pickled) Crabapples

Preparation Time: 2¼ hours
Yield: Approximately 6 pints

You need:

3 pounds crabapples
3 cups extra fine granulated sugar or 2½ cups honey
2½ cups cider vinegar
2½ cups water
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon whole cardamom seeds
3 sticks cinnamon, each broken in 2 or 3 pieces

Directions:

Wash the crabapples (discard those that are blemished), wipe clean the blossom ends, and leave the stem intact but trimmed short.
Prick the crabapples in 2 or 3 places with a fine skewer and place half in a large kettle. Cover with the sugar (or honey), vinegar, and water. Stir all together.
Tie the spices in cheesecloth and add to the crabapples in the kettle.
Cover the kettle and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the apples are tender but not falling apart.
Remove the crab apples from the hot syrup and put aside. Repeat with the remaining half of the crabapples.
When all the crabapples have been cooked, remove the kettle from the heat and return the first batch to the hot syrup.
Allow the apples to cool in the syrup.
Drain the crabapples, discard the spices, return the syrup to the pan, and bring to the boil.
Pack the crab apples into pint or quart jars, cover with the boiling syrup to within ¼ inch of the tops, and screw on the lids.
Process for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath.

The recipe above was excerpted from Granny Smith’s Apple Cookbook © Olwen Woodier used with permission from Storey Publishing.

*Note: There are also edible varieties of crabapple that are slightly larger and much sweeter. If you are using sweet, edible crabapples in this recipe — like Chestnut Crabapple or Whitney Crabapple — consider adjusting the amount of sweetener used (sugar or honey), since such a large quantity will not be necessary.

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