Crackers

A New Dress

2012-02-06T08:30:00.000-05:00

A while ago Jesse wrote a post about trying to start sharing some of the other, non-food related things we're up to. Most of those other things are still under the idea of making things at home, and other DIY projects, so they seem at home on Crackers.

One of the projects I'm involved in is a group of Hamilton ladies who call ourselves the Beehive Craft Collective. The group was formed around a love for the handmade, DIY, and sustainable.

Last week I wrote a post for the Beehive Blog sharing a dress that I made.

Just like getting out of the supermarket for food, we feel so good when we can create something for ourselves, kids or our home without having to buy much other than the raw materials to make it.

Check it out!

Successful Sourdough

2012-01-31T11:11:00.001-05:00

We've tried to make a sourdough starter in the past, but couldn't quite keep it going. I'm not sure what got in the way, maybe it was three kids or an overambitious garden, but we weren't too successful.

A couple months ago, our friend Volker from Brant Flour Mills introduced us to Bread Matters, a new book dedicated to the issues surrounding modern wheat and how you can make healthier bread at home. With the onset of winter and a few short minutes to spare, we were inspired to finally dive back into sourdough.

Sourdough is simply bread that is leavened without adding commercial yeast. In fact, the only thing added to the flour to get it moving is water. There is wild yeast all around us, and making sourdough is simply a matter of creating an environment that allows it to thrive.

When you look at a grape, it's usually covered in a dusty coating. This "bloom" contains a lot of wild yeast, which would hitch a ride into any juice made from that grape. The yeast would give it what it needs to ferment into into a "wild" wine.

Our last starter involved putting an organic or wild grape into the flour to kickstart the fermentation. This makes some sense, but Bread Matters argues that just like a wine yeast has naturally found and coated each grape, the best yeast for sourdough has already found and coated each grain.

So we started this sourdough successfully and easily without a grape, and without leaving it on an open windowsill to go shopping for yeast in the air.

Our production starter bubbling away after being topped up.

We mixed some whole rye flour and water to begin a four day process to make what is called the "sour". Each day we added a bit more rye flour and warm water to feed the yeasts that were quickly multiplying. The strong-smelling, bubbling mixture was kept on a plant propagation mat during this process to keep it at a constant 30 degrees.

The sour itself isn't added to a dough to make bread, it's simply used to get the culture thriving. It's very strong smelling and only a small scoop of it is added to new flour of your choice and water to make the "production starter". Once you make your first production starter you can discard the sour or put it in the fridge as a backup.

The production starter becomes the soul of your sourdough. It's allowed to ferment and then most is removed, mixed with flour, water and salt to make dough for a loaf of bread. What's left of the production starter is topped up again, and allowed to re-ferment and the next day it's ready to be divided again to make another loaf.

It's a lot like making yogurt. Once made, you don't eat it all, you save a little bit to add to milk to make some more.

The main ingredient that commercial bread producers can't afford, and the one that makes bread healthy and delicious is simply time. Think of anything "instant", it usually comes at the expense of flavour. Fermenting the bread allows yeasts and beneficial bacteria time to break down a lot of the flour, making it easier to digest and helping make more of the nutrients available to your body.

It takes a few days to get everything humming, but after that, maintenance is simple. Yes it takes many hours to ferment the production starter, and then many hours again to let a loaf rise, but they overlap, and only take a minute to prep.

Sourdough turned out to be not as daunting as I once thought, and it's not at all like an extra child as some people suggest. If we are going away and unsure of when we're coming back, I'll just stick the starter in the fridge and forget about it.

We feel lucky to have fresh homemade bread every few days, and we're saving money while we do it. And we look forward to each loaf's unique flavour every morning.

Field Trip: Buying a Pig

2012-01-18T11:44:00.001-05:00

One of the most memorable Field Trips we've taken was to Karl and Anita Schibli's dairy farm. As we walked down the lane to see the cows, we were introduced to a pig that their son Harry was raising for meat. During a more recent visit to their neighbours, Sosnicki Organics, Jessie Sosnicki told us that she had recently received their own butchered pig from Harry and couldn't brag enough about it. After learning that Harry had ramped up production and now has, at my quick count, just over twenty at various states of maturity, I was quick to put our name on one.

But these aren't the standard pink breed you assume your pork chops come from. They're a heritage breed known as Berkshires. The breed originated in England over two hundred years ago, and because of their exceptional flavour, came to be the pork of choice for the royals. As the twentieth century came along with industrial agriculture and promises of a new and better way of food, the Berkshire's slower growth and fattiness pushed them into the background. They have barely survived as meat marketing boards push fast maturing breeds to bland, ultra-lean extremes. It sometimes seems they're trying to turn a pig into something it is not.

While the most daylight some industrially-raised pigs see in their lives is on the way to the slaughterhouse, Harry's Berkshires spent the summer roaming 10 acres of pasture. They are now in a "smaller" one-acre field that was full of turnips, which they have slowly dug up. They are now topping up on hay silage and a small ration of grain for the winter. The only indoors these guys will ever see in their lives are the small huts Harry built to protect the sows as they feed their piglets, which they are never separated from.

Meat is a huge part of most Canadians' diets, usually the main feature on the dinner plate, yet it's the part with the least understood origins. Try seeing any indication of a cow or any other animal imagery at a fast food chain. The average person is subtly pushed to forget that the meat from their hamburger had any origin in something living. I've seen beautiful, pastoral images on tray-liner paper, and I would put money on the fact that nothing in that $1.69 hamburger ever saw anything that scenic. And if any customer became actively curious, they'd probably be in for a very scary surprise.

I'm not sure how you feel about looking into the face of something you are going to eat while it's still alive. I've written about it before when we visited the cows on the farm next to my parents'. But we're very comfortable with it. In fact we're beginning to feel like it's the best way to rebuild that respect for the animal that you're going to sustain yourself with.

Which is why we try to put a lot of thought into what we eat, especially meat. In the past few years we've made a conscious effort to avoid bringing any untraceable supermarket meat into our house. I'll admit, we've been in a bind and picked something up on the odd occasion, but we can count those times on one hand, and by buying a whole pig for our freezer, we hope to make desperate food days history.

When we leave the butcher in a couple months, we're going to have everything–hams, pork chops, belly for bacon, and even the fat to render into lard for our pie crusts and use as a basic cooking oil. It all sounds very decadent, and I'm sure you're imagining giant pork roasts for dinner each night, but that's not the case. This pig is going to last a very long time.

It's simple. When you have to buy a massive piece of meat to feed a family of five, it's hard to not focus on price. But when meat becomes a smaller player on the plate, you suddenly have room for another nice criteria–quality.

Our Cellar

2012-01-10T10:49:00.000-05:00

Top shelf: heirloom tomato sauce, apple butter, strawberry jam, and a hint of peaches. Bottom shelf: Pickled beets, dill beans, pickled heirloom red peppers, and good old classic dill pickles.

Last summer was a busy time growing nearly everything we ate, and canning everything else. At times we felt like we were going overboard, but now, seeing our modest wire shelving unit lined with jars full of fruit and vegetables is an amazing feeling. We had hopes and plans for building an authentic root cellar, but the summer, a new baby, and a change of career made for some priority shuffling.

Some things we simply canned, like the peaches, pears, grapes and strawberries, but other jars have a deeper connection. We not only canned the pickles, but grew the cucumbers, dill and garlic. The tomato sauce isn't just tomato sauce. Each jar tastes of the different varieties inside, and I can almost tell you the square foot of land that any given jar was canned from.

The deep freezer is very important to preserving. At first, the romantic image of a mason jar sitting on a pantry shelf is the ultimate symbol of preservation, but we're capturing food's freshness better by immediately putting more and more into the freezer.

The thought of a freezer sucking electricity to preserve food initially seemed a little unsustainable, but then I thought of all the up-front energy consumed canning. Hours of boiling over gas and propane doesn't seem too sustainable either. Our freezer is very energy efficient and sits in our cool basement, so it's a small concern.

Which brings me to my new favourite way to preserve–fermentation. By making nature take care of the preservation, we can save all that gas and electricity. The three-gallon crock is aging jalapeño mash that has by now fermented. The smell coming out of it is incredible. Strong, yet sweet, I can't wait to give it a try. The hard cider is beginning to age and desperately needs to be racked, or put in a new jug to get it off of the sediment that has settled, as you can see, to the bottom.

The final way we're preserving things is by not preserving at all. Some of our potatoes are modestly hidden at the bottom in cardboard boxes to keep as much light out as possible, while still letting them breath. Beside the potatoes sit the garlic, organized by variety and covered with a loose cardboard lid. I black out the nearby window to make sure the light doesn't hurt anything. The rest of the potatoes and carrots are in a cool barn at the farm.

We've already gone through quite a few jars of tomatoes. Each jar is infused with our own basil, which has an otherworldly flavour when it's picked fresh, minutes before it's canned with the tomatoes. After we use a jar, it's run through the dishwasher and put right back on the shelf, upside down, in the box the jar came in, giving us a nice, clean start to next year's canning.

Our hickory nuts are stored in a small bag made recycled from a coffee bag we picked up at Detour. It feels good to use old pop bottles for something much more wholesome–our grape juice.

Trips to the basement are so much better than trips to the supermarket. And to know that it's mostly food that we grew ourselves is even more amazing. Knowledge of the soil, complete confidence in how the food was grown, no BPA lined cans, and control over added sugar and salt are variables we're happy to get rid of.

Spoiled by Christmas

2012-01-06T13:55:00.000-05:00

Things have been super busy over the holidays, and we're just getting things back to normal. We planned to post during the holiday break, but had a house full of sick babies so we took the time to just get better and spend time with family.

In my family we do a yearly Christmas gift exchange and this year, with growing families and saving money in mind we declared it a "homemade" Christmas. Everyone became very busy making interesting gifts for each other.

One of my favourite Christmas traditions is the Christmas stocking. The stocking itself was first handmade thanks to my mom, and then we were always so excited to wake up each Christmas morning to see what treasures could be found in them. Magazines, hair elastics, scratch tickets, clementines... mom always found the best stuff.

I wanted to continue this tradition to my family by making our own Christmas stockings. Last year I made one each for me, Jesse, Elisha and Edith. They were all made with unique materials and finished with a hand embroidered names. The kids love them.

This year's new addition called for another stocking, and I think it is the nicest stocking yet.

On top of lots of homemade gifts, we were still spoiled and blessed enough to get some kitchen additions that will help us to become a little more self sufficient. We have a KitchenAid mixer, and were so happy to get the pasta set that fits on it. We have a hand-crank pasta roller, but it's definitely a two-person operation needing a dedicated crank operator. These new rollers and cutters will make it much less of a task, and a more common addition to dinnertime.

But that's not the only KitchenAid attachment we received. Mom also got us the ice cream maker attachment. It's a double-walled container kept in the freezer to pull out any time you want to make a treat.

It's nice to get things you use often that work with a preexisting appliance. We love having lots of options in the kitchen, but to have a standalone appliance for every task would quickly fill our tiny house. Even though the KitchenAid attachments are usually more expensive, the consolidation alone is worth it.

Another thing we're getting over is the fear of "used" things. This year is the first year we bought each other presents that were vintage. We had one of those three-handled rabbit wine opener things, and after it broke, we were happy to consolidate it, along with our gross, plastic-handled bottle opener into one nice, old, Italian opener. We're slowly replacing ugly, over designed tools in the kitchen with simple, timeless, all-metal tools that will last forever.

The final thing we got is the Lee Valley steam juicer that we talked about in our grape juice post. We had to leave it behind for a few days for lack of room in the car, so it didn't get its picture taken, but we can't wait to juice lots of fruit with it this summer.

We were definitely spoiled this year, but the part I love about it is that none of the things we got were novelties or over-packaged gadgets. They're all creative tools. To be able to easily make our own organic spelt pasta, or a year's worth of grape juice is a great feeling.

Although, now that I think about it, homemade ice cream will be a welcome novelty.

Pure Green Magazine

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

Whenever I take the time to pick out some paper, tune up my printer, go through all the image adjustments, test prints, and finally make a print of one of my photographs, it's eye opening. It's almost like the photo never fully existed until it was printed. It's as if that digital file is only a blueprint.

So it's great to see a publication that we've contributed to make that same leap. We've been featured in Pure Green Magazine a few times, but this one is special. It's volume one of the new print edition.

Our feature in this issue is all about our adventures in cider pressing. The research, picking up equipment, sourcing apples, and pressing took up a lot of time in the fall, but it made for a great story we wanted to share in the magazine's first print edition.

Celine, the editor, had mailed me a copy, but it was taking a while. So I decided to drive downtown Hamilton to visit a friend, Dave, who owns Mixed Media, a great little art supply, stationery, and creative book shop on James St. North in Hamilton. He had a fresh stack of the magazines out and I nervously took a first glance. I was quite impressed.

Great paper, great design, and great company was found inside. In fact, another friend, Paul Riss and his wife Rachel have their enviable Orono, Ontario home featured in the article before ours.

Pure Green Magazine is definitely worth a read, and, in fact, if you still haven't finished your Christmas shopping, what's better than a subscription to a good, local, well designed magazine?

Books - Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

One of the books we've been referencing a lot this year is Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century. It's a perfect companion, and inspired by The Self-Sufficient Life, a book we looked at in August. While the Self-Sufficient Life is an amazing guide to living a simpler life, we live in a time where we can make use of technology to help as well. And that's where Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century picks up.

I find that a lot of our modern technology tends to be more of a distraction than a true necessity. It makes me sometimes dream of living a hundred years ago, on a homestead in the British countryside, milking a cow each morning. But then I quickly realize that for every annoying piece of technology, there's a very helpful piece as well.

Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century has lots of basic plans, like the ones we used to build our smoker, but it also has many of other projects that incorporate modern tools and techniques to keep you off the grid. The heat sink for a greenhouse with a solar-powered circulation system is something we're going to to integrate into the next, more permanent greenhouse we build.

Plans for next year, ones we hoped to make this year but were a little too busy, include the root cellar and the solar dryer. The charcoal clamp is another use for an old steel drum to make charcoal for the barbecue, our exclusive outdoor cooking fuel.

There is a bit of overlap in some of the other homesteading books we have, but there are lots of unique projects that make it a valuable resource, in fact, our copy of the book is all wrinkled from spending time outside.

Take a look at the videos below that I found via the publisher's site. Dick and James, a father and son team, seem to be doing everything right.

Digging Potatoes in December

2011-12-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

When we started planning our garden at the beginning of the year, we had no idea we'd still be at it in December. Planting garlic in October seemed really late last year. But here we are, digging our potatoes in December.

I read lots of differing opinions on when to dig potatoes. Most sources said to dig them up before they sprout again and try to start another cycle. But I decided to listen to my dad who said "I've never seen them sprout."

My dad had already dug up most of the red potatoes, but the rest of the Yukon Golds, the Banana Fingers and Purple Peruvian potatoes all needed to be dug up. We got them all out except for the Purples.

We're leaving them in the field for a reason. They're horrible. They're a perfect case of the illusion that everything that's an heirloom is better. Although beautiful and thoroughly purple, they were always left untouched when we cooked up a selection of potatoes. I don't know what was wrong with them, but their texture reminded me of leftover fries reheated in a microwave.

It feels awful to leave them out there, as if we're wasting food or something, but I know I'm not going to pick them when I go to the basement looking for food. The hours that would go into digging, picking, drying and storing is better spent elsewhere.

While digging potatoes is a whole lot of fun, my help for the afternoon was quickly distracted with dirt clods, or weeds that have been pulled up and are hurled across a field like giant lawn darts.

But really, whatever distracts the kids from lying around inside is fine with me.

I did some reading on how to cure and prepare the potatoes for winter. So right now they're drying in the basement before I move them to a more humid area for storage. Since we didn't build a humid root cellar, I think I'm going to build a shelving unit, drape it in plastic, and put some shallow pans of water underneath. If you have any methods you've used to store taters over winter, let us know.

From Jesse

Our Carrots

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

A mild fall gave us lots of time to work with before we had to pull our root vegetables. In fact, most of our potatoes are still in the ground. We never thought we'd still be gardening in December.

We planted our carrots too early this year. I had worried they would get too big and "woody", and while yes, there were some as big as my forearm, the majority of them were pretty nice. We didn't even have nearly as many wacky-shaped oddities as I had expected (and a little bit hoped for).

I've heard that supermarket carrots grow pin-straight based on the soil. Choosing the least-resistant option gives the straightest result, so some growers put them in sandy soils. I don't know much about soil, but I know that sand itself has no real nutritional value. And any nutrition that hits it is probably artificial and runs down through it quite easily.

These carrots, on the other hand, are the most delicious carrots I've ever eaten. Maybe they just taste better because we grew them, but I'm pretty sure they'd beat any supermarket competition in a taste test. And they look better too.

If you follow our blog, you may have heard us talk about wanting to build a real, hillside root cellar. Well, you may have noticed we didn't build one, so we're going to have to store these another way.

Carrots like being stored at temperatures just above freezing with lots of humidity. And that perfect environment is found just under the earth's surface. I might find myself digging a hole in the yard in the next few days, filling it with carrots and sand and topping it off with a wooden lid and straw.

If you've stored carrots successfully in a creative way, let me know. I'll keep you posted on what we end up doing.

Garlic - Take Two

2011-11-22T20:55:00.001-05:00

Last fall was the official start to our gardening adventures. We planted our first garlic, and nervously waited until spring to see the first sprouts push through. They did, and we sure love our garlic.

It was the star of the garden so we knew we had to plant again. Our lives seem to be quite a bit busier this fall, and there was a bout of chicken pox at the farm that was keeping us from going with the kids, so we finally got our garlic in last week. We're so lucky with the weather this fall. Everything could be snow-covered by now, but we got everything in like it was a warm October day.

This year we decided to make a bit of a raised bed for the garlic. A bed that we'll be able to access from both sides and not compact down into the soil. This will hopefully help with getting larger bulbs that don't have to grow against hard packed soil.

We did run into a bit of a problem last year. The music variety we planted seemed to lose bulbs throughout the growing season. And when we harvested what was left, some of the bulbs had yellow around them. Just after we posted about our "success" and showed off some pictures, we got an email from a garlic farmer who said he thinks we have a nematode problem.

Nematodes are becoming a big issue for garlic growers in Ontario. It's a microscopic worm-like bug that splashes onto the leaves of the plant while it's raining, and then makes its way down to the bulb, where it feasts. The other problem with nematodes is that if they don't eat too much of the bulb, at the end of the season they go dormant, and come alive the next spring. So even healthy-looking garlic can hold them.

The quick spread of nematodes is a product of propagating plants asexually. When you're not starting fresh with seed, and just using a piece of a parent plant, you're bringing all of its issues along with it, especially with farmers who share bulbs. True seed on the other hand produces a new generation, hopefully with improved traits and leaves behind all of the baggage like nematodes.

In recent years, the sharing and, in essence, globalization of garlic has suddenly globalized its issues. True seed projects seem to be the best hope for finding new resistance and building stock of nematode-seed.

Whether or not we have nematodes, we're not going to worry too much right now. The garlic is still fine to eat, and as that same farmer pointed out, we're not using mechanical planting machines and other industrial means to plant it, so our problems are compounded less. Maybe we'll start growing for seed using the varieties of garlic we now have and not bring any more outside bulbs in.

Hot Sauce Part One

2011-11-15T19:58:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago we picked the last of our jalapeños. You might remember our last Garden Status Report where I just chopped down all the jalapeño plants and Melanie stripped off the peppers. Well, we ended up with two bushels and had no idea what to do with them. We thought about stuffing them with ricotta, herbs, and bacon to freeze and save for winter. But we didn't do that. In fact, we did a lot this year, most likely a little too much, so I decided to keep it simple.

I've been slowly learning more and more about crock pots and what real pickling is. Honestly, I didn't know what sauerkraut really was until this year. I found out my parents used to make it in crocks, but that was way before I was born. In my mind Sauerkraut was simply something that surprised me as a kid and was spit out when I picked up the wrong pierogy at baba's house.

Real pickling, and any type of fermentation is blowing my mind right now. When we have freezers and fridges running 24/7, burning coal to keep our food fresh, my hot pepper mash is simply bubbling in the basement. There's no hot water bath, no simmering for hours. It's by far the most energy efficient way to preserve.

I took a close look at our crock and discovered a long crack from the top halfway down the side. I decided to pass on it and look for another one. Doing some research online I discovered that some old crocks were made with lead, so I actually bought a new one. My dad teased me and asked if it's made in China (which it isn't), but I wanted to be safe. If you know anything about lead in crocks, please let me know.

I thought how Tabasco sauce is made was a secret, but their site is quite open about the process. Their secret ingredients, in my opinion, must simply be quality and time. The peppers are picked when they're at the perfect ripeness as measured by the petit bâton rouge or little red stick that each worker carries in the field. The ripe peppers are then mashed and mixed with a local salt. I followed this recipe and used their 30:1 mash to salt ratio.

Tabasco sauce is simply named after the pepper variety they use. We only grew jalapeños, so they had to do. For my mash, I used up all the ripe ones first and then filled the rest of the crock with greens. You could immediately see the salt pulling liquid out of the ripe peppers, but the green ones were less juicy, so I added a salty brine on top (10:1 water to salt).

I covered my mash with a towel and bungee (really classy, so no picture). It sat for a couple weeks and when I checked back I saw a nice blanket of mould on top. I immediately googled it and found out that it's ok, and just needs to be removed. It rolled up like a carpet and had great-smelling peppers underneath.

Then I made a mistake. Some of the recipes I had been looking at called for vinegar, so I added a bit to the top, but quickly realized I should have just added more brine to keep the liquid level higher than the mash. The lactic acid bacteria, which ferments the peppers ~~don't~~ like the acid [edit: some advice in the comments], so hopefully the quarter cup or so I added won't affect too much.

Tabasco ferments and ages their peppers in white oak barrels for up to three years, so I've been tossing around the idea of adding a piece of oak right into my mash. I lost track of a recipe online where someone baked the oak to get rid of the "freshness" and then added it to their mash.

I don't think we'll be waiting three years to try this mash. Probably three months. And we're still relatively lightweights when it comes to heat, so if you see someone with their head buried in the February snow, it's probably me.

A Change in Direction

2011-11-14T09:27:00.000-05:00

We rarely do posts without photos, so if you read one, we hope it's at least this one. Well, maybe there's something to look at. If you make it to the end...

Over the past year and a half, every post on Crackers has been about food. It's not how we planned it, but it's how it turned out. The idea of making more things at home was supposed to be broader, however food was the first thing we needed to change.

It's been amazing, but with your blessing, we'd love to broaden it. We're not going to alienate food, in fact, we'd like to put it in the context of the rest of our life.

Not that we're doing AMAZING things, it's just that Melanie would love to share some of her sewing projects with you which help clothe our kids, and I might want to show off some of the stuff I'm working on, like the posters I'm designing and hoping to screen print around the holidays.

We tossed around the idea of starting another blog for these projects but it would divide our attention, and since it philosophically compliments the stuff already on Crackers, we're deciding to give it a go.

The supermarket is just a big box store that sells food. So it's no surprise we're also trying to get out of all forms of big box stores. We don't visit malls during the holidays and are hoping to get all of our Christmas shopping done at independent stores, or better yet, make it ourselves.

In fact, Melanie's family has a homemade-only rule for our holiday gift exchange. And you know what? If I get a crappy present, that's ok, because it's not what it's about anyways.

Do we have your blessing? I hope so.

I'll leave you with a piece I shot at my friend Nicholas' letterpress studio, where he prints at a human pace, and doesn't have a single piece of equipment that would make you think it's the 21st century. Right down to his smock. Nicholas, whether he knows it or not, has inspired me to shun cheap, modern, disposable tools. I bought my first table saw last week, and guess what, it wasn't made in China. It's local. Made in the same city I was born in. But that's a story for later…

2012 Foodland Ontario Calendar

2011-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

If you live in Ontario, you might recognize or even look forward to the Foodland Ontario calendar that shows up in every grocery store across Ontario each fall. Every month in the calendar has a great recipe for what's in season or available from local Ontario sources.

Foodland Ontario is the government of Ontario's organization to support locally-grown, Ontario produce, so I was pretty excited when their ad agency, Leo Burnett, asked me to shoot the front and back covers, inside and out.

Photo courtesy of Lissy Elle

The inside front cover is a selection of photos that you might recognize if you've followed our blog for the past year. All these images are mine except for that holstein cow in the tiny picture. There are a couple shots I took in a greenhouse, which I, of course, had to do on the hottest day of the summer. I don't think I've sweat so much in my life.

The orchard shots were all taken at a great orchard in Waterdown which we've visited on a few occasions called Frootogo. Foodland is quite strict about only using real Ontario producers, so the Hekman family were our models for the day.

My main source of income is commercial photography. I've worked with some great clients and brands, and I've worked with others I wouldn't give a dollar to. In fact, this blog was started as a photography exercise to help balance myself out and give a bit of spotlight to small, local producers. It's very rare and special when you're hired to work with an organization that has a similar objective.

Our Pretty Little Dry Beans

2011-11-09T11:36:00.002-05:00

Fall Speckled

The past few weeks have felt like we've been hosting a tenant in our front room. The culprit has been the hundreds of bean pods laying all over the burlap-covered floor to dry. We planted pole beans that added architectural flair to the garden as they spiralled up the stick teepees we built, and they were delicious green, but we were most excited about the modest drying beans.

When it comes to preserving, sure you can pickle and freeze green beans, but we always look for the simplest way to preserve, usually one that takes care of itself. Pickled beans are nice to nibble on in January, but we want to replace whole meals. I can already imagine adding these dry beans to some of our canned tomatoes and beef from Jesse's mom's cow to make an amazing chili.

Canadian Wonder

But it hasn't been the most successful year for the beans. It also hasn't been the most successful year for most things here in southern Ontario. We planted the beans in barely-dry land this spring, and had no idea the amount of rain that was coming, which destroyed all but a couple plants.

Then we tried again. Linda, from Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm sent us a great selection of heirloom and rare beans. We planted, and this time it worked.

Dry beans are usually a bush variety, growing a foot or two tall, and are harvested once the plant has dried out and the beans rattle in the dry pods. But of course, after the too-wet spring, a too-dry summer slowed their growth, and then, wait for it, a too-wet fall kept them from drying out. Finally we just pulled all of the plants out, picked off the beans, and decided to take the drying into our own hands.

Jacob's Cattle

Now we spend time with our two oldest children shelling the pods. They love to discover the beautiful coloured beans inside, and we spark their imagination telling them they must be the same magic beans Jack used.

It's easy to compare these beans with a 99 cent can of beans at the supermarket. The time investment is not even close to the price. Imagining a field full of them and a thirty-foot combine devouring an acre every few seconds and spitting out shelled beans can be disheartening. But growing your own food is a totally different world than the world of monocultures. To know the soil that these beans grew in and avoiding the BPA-lined cans makes us feel a little better.

Black Calypso, or Orca

We've been studying up on ensuring that our beans are free from insects and eggs. We've read of treating them in the deep freeze (0 degrees Fahrenheit) for 48 hours, or in a 160 degree Fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes. We're not sure what to do. The freezer sounds best. Any advice is welcome.

We're humbled by the work that goes into small-scale bean growing and harvesting, and continually remind ourself that it's not about saving money or becoming competitive with the grocery store. It's about raising a healthy family. And maybe there's a little extra health involved when the whole family takes part in planting, picking, and shelling their dinner.

Home Grown Pumpkin Pie

2011-11-02T10:18:00.000-04:00

We planted a big pumpkin patch this year. It was for the kids, but also for us. Pumpkins have slowly evolved from being a food staple to something you buy once a year, carve a face in, and discard. But this year, we wanted to bring them back onto our plates.

We decided to grow our own pumpkins and probably ended up with around fifty in our little patch. We grew a few varieties. By far the prettiest was the Rouge Vif D'Etampes, also known as the Cinderella Pumpkin. We grew lots of regular small pie pumpkins, giant pumpkins for the kids to sit on, and one called Connecticut Field, the classic jack-o-lantern pumpkin. All of the pumpkins are edible, however, we're just going to keep the giant pumpkins for show.

We carved a few for halloween but the rest we've been cooking with. We've made pumpkin soup, pumpkin loaf and the most delicious pumpkin pie we have ever eaten.

This year at Thanksgiving I was assigned the task of pie baking. I knew right away that I would feature one of the main attractions of our garden, the pumpkin.

Homemade pumpkin pie is actually pretty easy. I've made it before, but always relying on that little tin of pumpkin puree. This year it felt (and tasted) great to use a fresh pumpkin we grew ourselves.

Simply cut your pumpkin in half and clean out the guts and seeds like you do when you carve a jack-o-lantern. Place the two halves cut side down on a rimmed cookie sheet (not like shown above) and bake until the flesh is soft when you stick a knife in it. Once it's done, scoop the flesh out of the skin and blend it up. At this point you can either use the pumpkin puree for a pie or two, or better yet, freeze it for a future pie, loaf, or soup.

The recipe for the filling was found in one of Jane's (Jesse's mom's) old cookbooks. It also contained a recipe for "squirrel pot pie", which we didn't try. For our pie's pastry I made a delicious butter crust from a recipe we found here. The pie was delectable, and I can't wait for an excuse to make another one.

Just because Thanksgiving is over in Canada, don't let that put pumpkins out of your mind for another year. In fact, chances are you'll be able to find them quite cheap or as I noticed last night at our local grocery store, for free. Cook 'em, freeze the flesh and enjoy them all winter long.

Home Grown Paprika

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

We've got a lot of peppers. A LOT. So we've been trying to figure out how to preserve them. A little internet reading on what exactly chipotle is led me to finding out what exactly paprika is. It lived in that special source-less world of spices (Do you really know where the pepper in your pepper grinder comes from, or what the plant even looks like? We didn't until we picked up this book). Spices are always excluded from locavore demands, but why? Yes, they're much less intensive to import in their generally small quantities, but if you can produce them here, and better yet, yourself, why not?

Peppercorn vines are a tropical plant, so importing is necessary, but paprika is simply dried sweet peppers. We picked a few bushels of mixed sweet pepper varieties, cut them up and smoked them in our smoker for a few hours (optional) before finishing them off in our dehydrator.

We destroyed the grinder above when some of the peppers wedged themselves between the wall and a blade, sending a puff of smoke out of the bottom of the grinder. We bought a new one and were a bit more careful with the rest, shaking it constantly to keep it moving. The result was a beautiful, sweet, smoky spice we look forward to adding to all sorts of soups and rubs.

Garden Status Report 7

2011-10-26T10:32:00.000-04:00

Wow. Status report number seven. It's amazing what has happened in the garden over the past few months. From tiny seeds in our front porch to nearly a half acre of food in just a few months. It was often more than we could eat, and still more than we could have preserved. People ask us all the time how we have time to do all this, especially with three kids. I'm not really sure, but we did it.

The past few weeks have been great. The mad production of august and september have slowed down and left us with some simple tasks here and there. We've spent the time collecting seed, smoking and drying peppers, and rounding out our preserves with things we didn't grow.

Growing your own food is as exciting as it is unpredictable. In our culture where we've tried as hard as possible to remove all risk, surprise, and danger, a garden can be one of the most exciting and humbling projects to take on.

The pumpkin patch has been the star of the past few weeks. It laid low at the back of the garden all summer, but now they're all picked, still dirty from the field, and waiting to be carved for halloween or better yet, turned into pie or soup. Although the two "giant" pumpkins are to only be used as seats by decree of our son.

The drying beans have had it rough. After planting them late because of the wet spring, the summer drought slowed their growth, and now, with such a wet fall, they're having a terrible time drying out. Many of the pods are mouldy and possibly a half will be discarded. We've picked them all, and they're spread out in our window-filled front room in hopes they'll finish drying before any other mould takes hold.

The onions, the few that we ended up with, will be eaten within a couple weeks. The spring rains washed away most of our seedlings, so we've only had enough to eat this summer.

There are still some things left to do out there. Potatoes need to be dug. The last of the herbs need to be picked and dried, peppers need to be gleaned by the end of the week if there is no killer frost, and all the carrots need to be pulled.

It was a lot of labour mixed with time. But in the end, very worth it. Every time we would compare the price of potatoes in the grocery store to, say, picking potato beetles by the hundred by hand for our own crop of potatoes, we'd have to catch ourselves. Because that time investment isn't just producing potatoes, it's producing knowledge, full-disclosure, and most of all, respect for food.

Mom Bottling Some Tasty Grape Juice

2011-10-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a quick video from some footage I took when we were picking up the steam juicer Melanie talked about in yesterday's post.

It's of my mom's crown capper we were talking about. This is what I watched her do year after year as far back as I can remember.

Field Trip: Homemade Grape Juice

2011-10-19T10:37:00.002-04:00

We love preserving, but it's not just jams, jellies, and pickles that we can, it's juice too. Our son is addicted to the stuff. At just three-years-old, it's a favourite that's already showing hints of nostalgia. He drinks his (heavily watered down) juice on the couch in the morning while he watches his shows, and sits on the couch with his juice at grandma's house not taking a sip until the previews are over and the main feature begins on whichever movie he has picked out. Yes, he loves us first, but juice is a really close second.

So to fulfill his need for the stuff we headed to the Niagara region in search of some grapes. We were on our way to a farm in St. Catharines, Ontario that wasn't answering its phone when we saw a trailer with a few bushels of grapes on it at the side of the road just east of Beamsville. We pulled in the driveway and were greeted by the kindest couple. They took Jesse out into the vineyard and started throwing grape varieties at him. Once he tried the green Niagara variety, we couldn't turn them down. Jesse picked a bushel, and we took one of the roadside blue grape bushels for Jane, Jesse's mom.

The couple we bought the grapes from were happy to see us, a young family, come in. They commented on how most people our age don't know how to go to a farm and blindly ask for things anymore... they just know how to go to stores. We bought our grapes and they sent us on our way with free apples and a squash from their garden. All we had to do was drop in on a farm.

We let Jane juice her grapes, and when she was done, we borrowed her steam juicer. Pressing grapes is the traditional way of extracting juice–it's fast and simple–but Jane's juicer does a beautiful job and heats the juice while it's working. We're buying our own soon, this one. It's stainless, which is "non-reactive" and doesn't stain like the aluminum one.

Steam juicing is a very easy process. The lowest part of the steamer's three sections is filled with water. The juice collector sits on top with a volcano-like hole that allows the steam to reach the grapes that are in the top tier where it softens the cells of the fruit, making it lose all of its juice. We've tried the juicer with pears and apples, but their cell structures are too strong, so we just use it for grape. And it does a beautiful job.

But there's a warning involved here. Preserving anything at home presents risks, and we break three major rules canning our juice this way. The first, is that the juice isn't technically at a full boil in the juicer. It's very close for an hour, but it's never at a full boil. The next thing is that we sterilize our bottles in the oven as opposed to boiling them, and the third is that we hot-pack the juice into vintage pop bottles with beer-style crown caps that don't indicate a seal. Whether you're using a steamer, pressing grapes, or even just using a counter-top juicer, the juice should be jarred hot and then the jars should be put into a hot water bath to make sure they're sterile.

These "errors" scare some, but Jesse has been drinking this stuff his whole life (famous last words), and he's never run into a single bad bottle. We're also comfortable with the temperature because it's in a good range for a long period of time. And as far as the old bottles and caps, they're a great use of Jesse's old bottle collection and give off a comforting hiss of air when you pop one open. Regardless, if you're canning into mason jars, a hot water bath is a simple and recommended bit of insurance.

If you drive down to Niagara or your local wine region this weekend, which around here will probably be the end of the season, you're sure to pick up a cheap bushel of grapes. Then pick up a steamer juicer. If you're in Ontario, you can get the Lee Valley one or one at Home Hardware.

But most of all, make an informed decision on how you're going to process your juice. The USDA's National Center for Home Food Preservation grape juice page is a good starting point.

Homemade Chipotle

2011-10-16T09:30:00.000-04:00

The stress lines aren't a defect, but are supposed to indicate a higher level of heat.

One of the reasons I made our smoker was because I had been studying smoked foods. I only recently learned what chipotle really is and even what paprika is. They lived in an ignorant place in my mind, more as just flavours than any physical thing. It's a bit like when Jerry Seinfeld is wondering if mesquite has anything to do with mosquitoes.

Here I am, "neutering" some of the peppers. Gloves are a necessity if you're handling any of their guts.

We've added chipotle powder to dips and chills without question, but making my own gave me a new respect for the flavour which is made from smoked, red jalapeño peppers.

The ripest red jalapeños are picked and then cold smoked for days on end as they slowly lose moisture and soak up smoke. It's quite a long process as they can take up to a week to fully dehydrate in the smoke. However i'm sure not all chipotle is smoked right to the end, wikipedia tells me that there are usually big gas dryers involved.

So, we picked a few baskets of our own jalapeños and put them in the smoker for two days before moving them to the dehydrator to finish. I decided to de-seed my first batch to lose some of the heat, which I later learned aren't actually called chipotles, but "capones", which literally means "castrated". Feeling less of a man myself, I kept the second batch intact, removing only the stem to let the smoke inside faster, while retaining all of their heat.

The sweet smokiness is incredible when you smell them, and we're still looking for the first opportunity to use them. We can't wait to start adding them to dishes this fall and winter. I like to think of the heat as a little bit of the summer sun captured for winter.

Field Trip: A Growers' Market

2011-10-12T11:42:00.002-04:00

It was exciting when the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation got a hold of us and offered to take us shopping last saturday. The only catch was that we had to visit a new market. They armed us with $50 worth of their "Market Bucks" and we headed down to the Ottawa St. Farmers Market in the east end of Hamilton, Ontario.

It's one of the markets listed on the Greenbelt's Market Finder. The Greenbelt, the band of green that surrounds the Golden Horseshoe in Ontario is vital to preserving green spaces, watersheds, and farmland that, in turn, are the main source of local food for Canada's most populous region.

The Ottawa Street market has been operating for over 50 years, year-round. It was formerly at a mall just down the road that was recently demolished. When the land was redeveloped with big-box stores, there were no considerations for the market, and it was immediately homeless. The Ottawa Street BIA took them in and the year round, 100km, outdoor market now has a home just off of Ottawa Street.

We were amazed as we walked through the vendors. The first thing that struck us was, on top of the usual small baskets of produce, there were also full bushels of romas, beans, apples and pears. Quantities that a home-preserver love.

We learned that the market is a growers' market. We've had criticisms of local markets in the past, full of vendors who simply buy produce as a grocery store would and resell. But at this market, you need to be a grower to sell. This takes out a profit-seeking middleman, and often gives you a lower price at the market, and a higher profit to the farmer.

But the more important thing with a growers' market is that there is no broken link in the story of the food. Chances are the person handing you that food knows exactly how it was grown and when it was picked. Right down to the hour.

So what did we buy with our Greenbelt Market Bucks? Plums, peaches, a bushel of pears for canning, a huge bag of onions, maple syrup, honey, orange cauliflower, popcorn on the cob, and root parsley.

A little sign mix-up on the celery root, but my favourite picture from our visit.

The Market Bucks initiative is coming to a close for this season, but we'll be sure to let you know when they're on for next year. They're a great gift to push someone into a farmers market, or for someone who does a lot of preserving. If you still want to do some preserving, but didn't get to it, the late summer this year has lots of things still in season. Find your closest Greenbelt market, call a vendor ahead to bring you a bushel of whatever you're looking for, and preserve a taste of the Greenbelt to enjoy when it's covered in snow.

Shagbark Hickory Tree Nut Harvest

2011-10-05T09:30:00.000-04:00

We live in town, and there's this massive tree on the corner hanging right over the stop sign. It's almost like clockwork that a car stops and a giant black walnut drops onto it. When you're in the car, the first thing that comes to mind is a gunshot, but, once you look around at all the "misses" on the road, you realize what happened and start cursing.

But sometimes nature is just trying to hit you over the head with something you've been ignoring. We suddenly learned to love what that shocking impact indicates when we visited Grimo Nut Nursery last year, and learned a whole lot about nuts, especially local nuts. Now, with that knowledge, it's hard to ignore that loud sound and wonder what it tastes like on the inside.

On one of my first visits to Jesse's parents' farm, Jesse's mom, Jane, was very excited to take me for a long walk to show me her favourite tree on the property–the Shagbark Hickory. Jane first noticed the tree, with it's long and loose strips of bark, during a walk on the farm in the late eighties. Ever since, it's been a farm landmark.

But it gained new attention this past winter when Jesse was doing some reading on Slow Food USA's website. Slow Food, the forerunner of the locavore movement, has a section on their site called the Ark of Taste. It's where they list regionally important foods, with an emphasis on taste, that could be at risk of being lost. Think of it as an endangered species list for food.

There, under a section labeled "Nuts", was Shagbark Hickory along with lots of motivating descriptions. We've been impatiently visiting the tree since, and now, finally is its time.

Shagbark Hickory is related to the pecan, but many say it has better flavour and can be used in the place of walnuts and pecans. So why don't we all have a jar of hickory nuts in our cupboards? The main issue with hickory nuts is the difficulty in cracking them industrially while keeping the meat intact. Of course this is an issue in our industrially-minded world.

It's funny that in our personal attempt to get away from the industrial supermarket, we finally noticed something incredible, something new to us, that was growing right under our noses for over twenty years.

Keep an eye out for some shaggy bark this fall, and if you see a Shagbark, pull the car over and husk a few dozen nuts. Let them dry out for a few weeks and then see if you can hit the bullseye to get them opened cleanly. The flavour is addictive, and cracking them while keeping the meat intact is, quite possibly, even more addictive.

The Finished Smoker

2011-09-30T12:45:00.002-04:00

The smoker is finally done after a paint job and a new lid finished it off. When most people think about smokers, they think of a little box that sits over a burner in their gas grill that adds a smokey flavour as you cook. But our smoker is the real deal–no propane involved (except for the torch that gets it moving).

It's a cold smoker, meaning that no heat is produced, just smoke. The smouldering oak sawdust at the bottom slowly combusts without flames and produces a sweet, blue smoke that flavours whatever you put above it. Cold smoking separates the cooking and smoking processes and allows for much more flexibility. And since you're not cooking and drying the outer layer of the food, it soaks up the smoke a lot more easily.

The beautiful part, is that the oak we're using to smoke is from the farm–grown on the same land as all the food we're smoking. My dad harvested some white oak trees from the forest a few years ago, and our sawdust is from him planing the boards down. I've got my eye on a big hickory bough that the wind brought down during a big spring storm this year. I bet it will make some tasty smoke.

I had a hard time getting the sawdust going at first when I simply put a pile of it around the bottom like the book that I got the smoker plans from suggested. What I ended up doing was pulling out some pliers and bending some wire mesh to make a crude sawdust maze. Still having trouble getting it going, I put it on a grate to get it off the drum's floor and now light a small piece of charcoal under the start of the maze to get it going. Now it smokes for 10 hours uninterrupted.

We're just getting started with our smoker, we've made a few batches of genuine chipotle after we learned what it was as well as some smoked paprika. But we would love advice on what else to smoke. I see some meat hanging in there in the near future.

The First Annual Ketchup Tasting

2011-09-28T10:00:00.001-04:00

Last year we canned our first tomatoes and tried a batch of ketchup. We loved the ketchup so much that this year we decided to do it again with one not-so-subtle difference–we only used tomatoes we grew ourselves.

Jesse spent days outside skinning, boiling down, fighting off the wasps, spicing, and boiling down some more to get three very large batches of ketchup. We figured the best way to celebrate all the labour was to trudge back out to the garden, dig up some of our potatoes, pull out the deep fryer, and have a little party.

We don't have any russet burbank potatoes, the classic frying potatoes, but we have lots of Yukon Gold, which do fine. We also dug up some purple potatoes and the first of my mom's sweet potatoes which she sprouted in an interesting way this spring.

We loaded everything and everyone into the car and headed to our good friend Tanya's house for some expert palates. Jesse set up the deep fryer outside (it's never allowed in the house) and worked away at double-frying them.

We sampled the three recipes we made. A standard ketchup from the National Center for Home Food Preservation's website, another recipe based on the Joy Of Cooking's ketchup recipe, and a Jamie Oliver recipe.

The Jamie Oliver ketchup was the winner with its bold flavours. Personally, I liked the Joy of cooking recipe, possibly because it was made from our favorite black plum tomatoes. It might be a bit strange to have a party over a condiment, but the time put into these condiments earned them a bit of time in the spotlight.

Home Grown Ketchup

2011-09-21T11:48:00.001-04:00

Last year, we tried making ketchup for the first time. We were impatient. We thought a couple of hours of boiling should be good enough. What we were left with was the most delicious, and watery ketchup we'd ever eaten.

This year, we were excited by the fact that we grew most of the ingredients ourselves and sourced the cider vinegar at an orchard around the corner. We also decided to reduce it to the point where it actually resembled ketchup and to try a few new recipes to see which one we liked best.

The pictures in today's post are of our Black Plum Ketchup, from a recipe adapted from the Joy of Cooking cook book. The black plums were our favourite heirloom tomato this year. Not only are they delicious right off the vine, they're also quite pasty with, in my opinion, less water than a roma, the classic paste tomato. Black plums were made for ketchup.

I was feeling lazy, so I didn't de-skin the tomatoes. Black plum are a small tomato, so I wasn't looking forward to the task. But I should have known better, since the minute heat hits them, the skins roll up and look (and feel) like tiny pieces of straw all throughout your sauce.

I ended up picking them out with tongs as it reduced which quickly taught me to remove the skins properly in the remaining two batches. I ended up with a very efficient de-skinning system, which was far less stressful.

The hardest thing to do is to let it boil down. 90% of the time in any ketchup recipe is in the reduction. Every minute you're hoping for it to start thickening up. But then, eons later, it finally does. You awake from your stirring daze and look down as the ketchup leaves a deep canyon right to the bottom of the pot in the wake of your moving spoon.

It's almost not worth it. All I can think about as I'm stirring the thick, red, time-suck, is how cheap ketchup is at the supermarket. And then I force myself to ignore that thought, because this ketchup is ours. We didn't just make it, we made the tomatoes, onion, and garlic that made the ketchup.

And then, when it's finally jarred and processed, you get to hear the best sound in the world.

Brussels Sprouts

2011-09-20T10:26:00.000-04:00

Neither Jesse or I have ever really eaten brussels sprouts. A few tastes as kids, but nothing memorable. One thing we knew was that we were supposed to hate them. So we took that as a challenge and grew them.

They are such an interesting plant, a lot of people don't know how they grow or what to do with them.

Perhaps they are just afraid of them, the smell, the supposed gas that comes along with them. But perhaps people just don't know how to cook them.

Our good friend Hollie is a long time lover and big promoter of brussels sprouts, she gave me some suggestions on how I should cook them and assured me to not be afraid. So last week we whipped up a batch and didn't regret it one bit! The whole family (minus Margaret) ate a pile. And the kids have been begging me to make them ever since.

Simply prepared brussels sprouts:

• In a frying pan put butter, onions and garlic.

• Cut the sprouts in half length-wise; place in frying pan cut side down.

• When the brussels sprouts brown in the bottom edge flip them over for a few more minutes (allow them to soften a bit).

• Put a bit of water in the bottom of the pan to steam-fry.

• Salt to taste

Eat up and enjoy.

Garden Status Report #6

2011-09-14T10:01:00.000-04:00

As the end of summer nears, it feels we're over the hill in the garden. We've had a pretty successful year, our first as "farmers". There have been successes, failures, but most of all, a lot of learning, with a growing list of improvements for next year.

Every time we go to the farm we spend a couple hours picking tomatoes. Our favourite this year, by a large margin, has been our black plums. They are technically a paste tomato, but they're so sweet we can't stop eating them fresh. Jesse even did a batch of "black plum ketchup".

The tomato plants that were ridiculously over-producing just a few weeks ago have slowed production considerably over the past weeke They are beginning to show signs of blight–a strong signal that the end is near.

When we planted Brussels Sprouts we wondered if anyone would actually eat them. Oddly enough they have become a favourite for us and the kids. Our three year old asks when we're going to have them on a daily basis.

I think the bad reputation that brussels sprouts have earned is not because of the vegetable at all, it's because of the horrible boil-and-serve way they've been presented to unassuming young children throughout history.

One of the recent surprises in the garden was one of our carrots going to flower. This isn't normal, since carrots are usually biennial. They put energy into building a big root the first year, and then focus on making a flower and seeds the next. Since we're trying to save as many seeds as possible this year, we considered saving the seeds, however the only thing relative around to pollinate them would be a common weed Queen Anne's Lace. Chances are, the cross between the two would make a new plant with a spindly root. Not worth the attempt.

Our pumpkin patch is beautiful with its different shapes, colours, and sizes. From Rouge Vif d'Etampes "cinderella" pumpkins, to giants, to carving and to small pie pumpkins. All but the giant pumpkins are edible, and we'll be preserving as much as possible. Seeds for next year, snacks, and the meat for pies, soups, and other undiscovered uses.

The bounty we have in the pumpkin patch doesn't extend to the melon patch. After having their feet too wet in the spring, all but one watermelon plant survived. And on that one plant, two out of three melons have rotted. We've got lots of hopes pinned on one melon.

The next major thing we need to do is to collect seeds. We planned to save seeds from all of our favorite tomatoes, but with the business of the garden and life in general, many varieties passed us by. Luckily there are a few that we can save seed from, but others will have to be started from leftover seed from this spring or new seed.

Even though summer seems to be near its end, our work carries on in harvesting and preserving so that we will have our little bit of summer all year long.

Field Trip: Tree & Twig's Annual Tomato Bash

2011-09-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

Sunday afternoon was Linda Crago's annual Tomato Bash at her Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in Niagara. It's her annual party to celebrate the ripening of her tomatoes and show off the crazy diversity of her farm. The Tomato Bash centred around Linda's tasting table packed full with over a hundred different varieties of tomatoes. Everyone was encouraged to taste each variety and vote for their favourite.

Linda's farm is based around the notion of open pollination. Modern farming practices are generally based on hybridized seeds that are the results of forced breeding. This isn't a terrible thing, sometimes you can get some wonderful results, but generally saving and growing the seeds of the resulting fruit are unreliable, and sometimes even illegal if patented.

Open-pollinated seeds can be saved year after year. They're able to, over generations, get used to a climate and be selected based on positive attributes. Our own garden this year features a row of delicious peppers planted from the seeds of one pepper we ate last summer.

Linda's farm is a staunch opponent of the idea of industrial agriculture. There is likely more genetic diversity in her few small acres than there were in the sum of all of the monoculture fields on the trip to farm.

Szechuan Buttons

One of the unique things we tried were Szechuan Buttons, a grassy flavoured herb that has a built-in painkiller. When eaten, it numbs your mouth and causes you to salivate. I guess that's why it's been traditionally known as the "toothache herb".

The best part of the day was her garden tour. Showing off, yard-long beans, chinese pickling cucumbers and the most interesting thing to me, an "angora" tomato plant. The leaves of this variety didn't have the typical green, they were lighter and duller because they were covered in hair. And the fruit was hairy as well. It felt more like a peach than a tomato.

We planted about twelve different varieties of tomatoes this year, which felt like a lot, but to have 101 varieties to taste, and probably many more out in the garden just shows us how diverse nature is.

In a world where we're used to going to the supermarket to buy a "tomato" that is picked green in Florida, ripened in a truck, and shined up to look like the perfect image of a red tomato, Linda's farm stands out. She's proof that there's really no such thing as just "a tomato".

Make sure you get a piece of Tree and Twig's diversity. We have. We're growing a lot of vegetables from Linda's own seed. If starting from seed is a bit daunting, she has a seedling sale every spring, where you can find a whole garden's worth of plants. She also has a CSA you can sign up for if you're in the area.

Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetables
74038 Regional Road
45 Wellandport, Ontario
(905) 386-7388
www.treeandtwig.ca
Twitter: @treeandtwig

Smoker Project - In Progress

2011-09-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

What is labour day without a little labour? Since we have a ton of peppers coming on, I decided to make a smoker to give us another preserving option.

I started with an old oil drum. Yes, an oil drum that had oil in it. I've read advice to use a barrel that only had food in it, and others simply saying to burn off whatever was in there and that'll be more than enough. So, after making the little door and cutting the top off, I started a fire. A big fire. My little barrel billowed black smoke, the bright green paint on the outside lit on fire, the bars inside began to warp. And when it was over, the inside was cleaner than when it was made. And you know what? I might burn it again, just because. And then have my dad sandblast the inside. And then burn it again.

The door is a hatch to the fuel chamber where charcoal and wood chips will burn. Directly above it is a baffle made from the original lid. The baffle diffuses the smoke as it rises in the barrel. Above that is a makeshift grate for the food. I need to source, or just cut a proper fitting grate from some sort of metal mesh.

We have a lot of jalapeños coming on and as soon as I have any sort of quantity we'll be throwing them in here to make chipotle. I'll also try smoking some of our sweet peppers to make a sort of smoked paprika.

Any suggestions on what to smoke? I'm a total newbie and would love to hear some stories/recipes/advice.

Next up is a coat of bbq paint, a thermometer, a grate and a lid.

Canning Time

2011-08-31T09:59:00.001-04:00

Strawberry jam and dill beans.

Little jars, big jars, lots of variety, and most importantly, lots of quantity. We've been working hard to preserve everything as it ripens from our garden. Eating fresh picked vegetables grown from seed in your own garden is the ultimate reward for the labour, stress, and time invested in growing them. But saving bits of this joy for the dark days of winter is a joy we discovered last year. We're looking forward to those moments in winter when we open up a jar of our own tomatoes that we grew and preserved.

Pickled beets and salsa

When we went to our first pickling party last year, and later had our own big tomato preserving day, we realized how important canning is. The simple act of spending more time with our food has opened our eyes, and deepened our respect for one the most basic human needs–nourishment. It may be scary to take your food accountability into your own hands, sometimes "ignorance is bliss" seems to do fine for people, but not for us.

Zucchini relish and Ketchup

The mention of canning conjures up images of long days slaving over boiling pots, but growing your own food for preserving brings with it a nice pace. We don't have three bushels of ripe Roma tomatoes at one time, so we might do a small batch of sauce, and then some ketchup a few days later. It's actually made it simpler. We also do all of our canning outside to keep the steam out of the house, and when we're done, we keep the equipment handy and ready for when something else ripens.

Peaches and, you guessed it, dill pickles.

If you're interested in canning, it's easy to get started. Chances are you have some pots, and one might be deep enough to cover some quart jars to process them. If you're looking for a great book, Ashley English's Canning and Preserving has been indespensible when it comes to canning. It has the theory to give you confidence and great recipes and tips.

Another great resource is the National Center for Home Food Preservation, a U.S. site that has tons of free information and recipes. We first learned of it from Well Preserved, run by a Toronto couple that have been helpful in a bind. We'll tweet a question on twitter and they're back at us in a few minutes with loads of info. It's nice to be a part of a community that just wants others to can.

Tomato Picking

2011-08-29T08:00:00.005-04:00

We all (minus Margaret) spent a few hours in the garden yesterday evening. It was a great time since Eli and Edith got caught up playing house in the pepper patch. The pepper plants are as tall as the kids, so they had a blast in them for almost two hours. Eli had to be dragged out.

Meanwhile, Melanie picked an overflowing bushel of Roma paste tomatoes, and a few baskets of others, including small black plums and a bushel of massive and heavy heirloom slicing tomatoes.

The kids usually wander around the garden barefoot for a few minutes before running back to the house asking for a movie or something. But this was the first time they really played in the garden while we worked. It really reminded me of growing up on the farm and having to find things to do. TV was never an option while the sun was up. There was always lots to do once you started, just, doing stuff.

The best part is that the kids are really eating a lot straight from the garden. It's now a tradition to dig up a carrot for Eli, and Edith will help herself to peppers and tomatoes non-stop. Although sometimes I have to do some surgery to remove a scrunched up herb leaf from a nose from time to time.

Field Trip: Manorun Farm

2011-08-24T08:00:00.001-04:00

I first learned of ManoRun Farm last summer at the Ancaster Farmers Market. After trying to make a date a few times since then, we were finally able to drive over to Copetown, Ontario. When we pulled in the driveway we saw a beautiful farmhouse and barn, some people working in the field, pigs lazing around under the shade of a tree and chickens wandering free all over the property.

Chris Krucker and Denise Trigatti have been farming organic for 18 years, and running their CSA for 13. Chris said that they moved out of downtown Hamilton looking for more land. They got a few animals, started growing some crops and before they knew it they were full-time organic farmers.

It was interesting to visit their farm and see a lot of things that we would like to be doing as well. Not only are they growing organic vegetables, herbs, and fruit, they grow their own hay and grain, milk their beautiful guernsey, as well as raise cows, chickens, and pigs for meat.

We loved the outdoor kitchen, where we found their beautiful clay oven. Chris said they mainly use it to bake bread, but just for themselves. They grow all the wheat they use in their bread and Chris had to buy his own small combine because farmers wouldn't run their massive machines through such a small field of wheat, especially an organic one with weeds.

ManoRun Farm also runs an internship program through Craft, an organization which links people interested in farming to a network of organic farmers who are willing to provide room, board, food, and education in return for labour.

Check out this video we found on their site that I believe was filmed last fall. It's a lot of fun and Chris shares some great words at the end, just before sticking his hand into a pile of steaming manure.

Stop by the farm, or visit them at one of the farmers markets they sell at. You might just see them at a market Chris himself helped establish.

Markets:

Ancaster Farmers Market - Wednesday 3:00-7:00 pm
Dundas Farmers Market - Thursday 3:00-7:00 pm
Locke St. Farmers Market - Thursday 3:00-7:00 pm

Oh no!

2011-08-23T08:00:00.001-04:00

Look at what we're faced with every few days. At least we know a lot of people who are happy to take them off of our hands, it's a reminder of the bounty of summer that is so important to capture and store to spread throughout the year.

We over-planted slicing tomatoes, but underplanted a lot of other vegetables. Maybe we should have staggered them as well. We tended to put everything in at once. But we're not complaining, especially since it's our first year of growing on this scale. We just learn for next year.

Books: The Self-Sufficient Life and How To Live It

2011-08-22T08:00:00.007-04:00

When we first got the itch to start growing food for ourselves and become a little more self sufficient, this was the book that got us going. I signed it out from the local library and couldn't put it down. After maxing out the times I could renew the book, I had to return it and couldn't take it out again because someone else had requested it. So I requested it for Christmas.

Well before this current back-to-the-land movement, John Seymour wrote The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency in 1976, which over the years evolved into the current edition of The Self-Sufficient Life.

The book is a glimpse into living off of the land. A labour-intensive, low-consumption life, where money and consumerism take a back seat to simply taking care of yourself and your family.

The book doesn't just show you how to milk a cow (your cow of course), it gives you an ideal layout of a home dairy, and all the basic recipes for what to do with the milk. Directions are there for how to grow your own grain for either bread, or even brewing, including the steps of how to malt and brew with barley.

Though not the biggest in the book, I find the one-acre farm inspiring. It shows how much you can do with a relatively small piece of land.

The book starts with a bird's eye view of an urban garden, and on the following pages gets up to the ultimate 5-acre self-sustaining farm.

It's essentially a how-to book for living like John Seymour. And the reader has the benefit of his years of wisdom. It's a great head-start.

Whether you're moving out to the wilderness, or just want to take small steps toward being able to take care of yourself, The Self Sufficient Life will give you the advice you need to make the most of what you have.

You can even learn how to get rid of bungees. They only exist because people don't know how to use rope anymore. And we also fantasize about when we'll have a cow.

Add the The Self Sufficient Life and How To Live It to your bookshelf by visiting the publisher's site here. Or find it through your local bookstore.

Field Trip: Peaches

2011-08-17T10:57:00.003-04:00

One of the most anticipated and savoured of Ontario's fruits is the peach. It's a sure sign of the depths of summer. We always look forward to peaches and polishing off a whole basket on a hot day. But this summer is a bit different. Not only are we enjoying them fresh, we're also canning them for the first time. It's always rewarding to eat locally in the middle of february, and we can't wait to pop open a jar of our own canned peaches on some snowy night.

As each different fruit and vegetable ripen in our garden, or in the case of peaches, in our region, we've been thinking of different ways to make them last. So far we've tackled freezing and canning, and we're planning to do some dehydrating and juicing as well.

I've learned a lot about peaches this past week, as it's my first time canning them. I've learned there are two types, freestone and clingstone. A clingstone is a peach that clings to the pit. They're fine for eating, but if you're trying to slice them beautifully and simply for canning they'll tend to break up as you try to cut the tender fruit away from the pit. A freestone, as the name implies, is a peach that separates easily from the pit. This makes it a much easier task to separate the fruit and slice it easily.

We were in the Niagara region this weekend and took a drive down a country road to find a local fruit stand to buy some peaches. When you're canning, the best price is important, but this usually comes at the expense of aesthetic beauty. We asked around and eventually found a stand where they were selling seconds ("firsts" are visually perfect fruit) for fifteen dollars.

They were either wormy or bruised and definitely not pretty when you're used to the perfect fruit of the supermarket. However, once cleaned up and canned you would never know they were once home to some tiny little critters. Also, the promise of these being freestones was a little early. About half of them were, the other half were a bit tricky to prepare.

We always tell our kids that it's a good sign to see a worm hole. If the bugs will eat it, it must be tasty. It's misleading to see perfect, unblemished produce that even the bugs won't touch. If you visit a supermarket, we're being lead to believe that humans are the only thing on the planet that are eating fruit and vegetables.

Click here for a printable pdf of the recipe.

My peaches don't look the prettiest, they are a bit stringy and definitely not in perfect quarters. But I know that when I pull our peaches out in the middle of winter, no one will be complaining!

If you plan to can peaches, now is definitely the time. Scope out your local farmers market for some freestone peaches, and if you want a bargain be sure to ask if they can sell you their "seconds". If they don't have seconds on hand, request a bushel and they just might bring one for you to the following week's market.

The Senko Mack

2011-08-15T09:59:00.000-04:00

Something was missing last time we visited the farm. It was my dad's (via his dad) old Mack truck. I'm not too sentimental. It was sitting and rotting for years, and the guy who bought it will most likely restore it or use it's parts to restore another beautiful vintage Mack.

I'm more sentimental for the door with the hand-painted letters that stood up to years of weather and thousands of miles of deliveries to Walter Bick's farm in Scarborough full of pickling cucumbers or cabbage to turn into sauerkraut.

My dad has a lot of stories including losing the brakes on the 401 (Canada's busiest highway) and not stopping (pun intended) until the delivery was made. That's some fancy gearbox driving. The brakes failed twice again on the way home, but he fixed them twice again to make it back to Norfolk County.

He's also has a fond memory of a big bump on the QEW highway, and taking the daily glance in his rear-view mirror to watch a few cabbages explode like grenades when they hit the highway behind him.

Field Trip: Sosnicki Organics

2011-08-10T11:29:00.001-04:00

Ben on his way out to cultivate.

After miles of corn, soybeans, and more corn, at the end of a long gravel driveway in the middle of Norfolk County you can find Ben and Jessie Sosnicki's organic mixed vegetable farm. The diversity that suddenly greets you is a welcome sight.

There's an old quip farmers used to spit out when they were talking to someone interested in farming. It goes: "Well, at least you won't be hungry." It tends not to be true these days based on what a lot of farmers choose to grow, but after seeing the diversity of the Sosnicki farm, it'd be the type of farm you'd never feel hungry on. Rich or poor.

Their garlic was about twice the size of ours. A testament to the care they put into growing it.

Ben took over the family farm in 1996 to continue the family business of conventionally grown food. Jessie joined the next year and they quickly realized they weren't making enough money to sustain themselves while competing with the handful of large growers in the area. Trying to figure out what to do, and even considering packing it in, they talked to Karl Schibli, their neighbour and organic dairy farmer. When we visited Karl's farm last year, he told us of how he faced the same decision. He suggested that the Sosnickis try organic farming.

Beautiful indeterminate (vining) tomatoes growing in their greenhouse. The red one is Costoluto Genovese.

Ben and Jessie specialize in organic heirloom tomatoes, sweet corn, and cabbage, but in total grow about 30 different crops with well over a hundred varieties. Jessie says that Ben refers to them as "market gardeners" and I can see why. Their farm, with the exception of the cabbage and corn tends to be alternating rows of different crops. Which look less like a traditional farm and more like an oversized kitchen vegetable garden.

Good, old, all-yellow sweet corn. Fresh from the grill.

One of their specialties is organic sweet corn. Their corn season starts in August, which is fairly late, but that is because they grow untreated, organic seeds which don't deal well with the cold, wet soil of the spring like treated seed can. They also refuse to grow "peaches and cream" corn, or bi-colour corn. For some reason people got in their heads that bi-colour corn is sweeter than all-yellow corn, maybe because one farmer years ago sold a customer starchy field corn meant for cattle to make an extra buck. But believe us (the Senko family has been growing sweet corn for decades) yellow corn is usually much tastier.

Sure, there are a lot of good bi-colour corn varieties available, but it's sad that growers were cornered into having to work with it because of purely aesthetic reasons.

Some of the diversity on display at the farm. Beets, tomatoes, herbs, cabbages and more. At right are their beautiful leeks.

One of the things that they also grow are a few weeds. Like the damning sight of a tiny blemish on a tomato, the sight of a weed will cause a conventional grower to go mad. But at the Sosnicki farm you'll find them here and there, and they'll get to them. They're not hurting much.

Ben and Jessie dig all of their potatoes with an antique potato digger that they say works like a charm.

Jessie keeps chickens for eggs. They planned on going into organic egg production, but decided to keep their focus on the produce. If you're looking for a backyard chicken, and we highly recommend them, a few of Jessie's chickens are up for grabs, and they're at the perfect stage where they are just starting to lay.

Everything on the farm is free-range, including Lady Bug, their horse.
She wanders around with no fence in sight. I bet she thinks she's one of the dogs.

If you're interested in buying some of Ben and Jessie's produce, and we suggest you ask them about organic canning tomatoes, you can find them at the following Toronto farmers markets.

Riverdale Farmers Market, Tuesdays 3-7pm, May through October
Dufferin Grove Organic Farmer's Market, Thursdays 2:30-7pm, Year Round
Evergreen Brickworks Farmers Market, Saturdays 8am - 1pm, Year Round
Withrow Park, Saturdays 9am - 12pm, May through October.

The Danforth's The Big Carrot also carries their roma tomatoes and sweet corn in season. Their cabbages and other root vegetables are stocked all winter.

sosnickiorganicproduce.blogspot.com

Garden Status Report #5

2011-08-03T11:01:00.000-04:00

A pretty big mix of tomatoes. Purple Cherokee, Green Zebra, Purple Plum, Black Krim, Stupice (pronounced stew-peach-ka), Roma, Juliet and a couple peppers we picked since they had a bit of end rot.

Things are getting a little crazy in the garden. First we had too many zucchini, and now it's on to the cucumbers and tomatoes. I think I've thrown out more cucumbers than we've saved. It feels like if we leave the farm for three days, they go from little pinky-sized things to monsters that look better suited for hitting baseballs.

This year is a major learning year for getting quantities right and as overboard as we went with zucchini and cucumbers, I think in the coming weeks we're going to face the biggest glut yet - tomatoes.

A lot of our tomatoes have end rot, which I would normally be over-stressed about, but with the quantity we're growing, it's not a big deal. End rot is when, you guessed it, the end of the fruit begins to rot. I've been reading that it's caused by a calcium deficiency in the soil, however, after talking with Linda from Tree & Twig, we're pretty sure it's simply irregular watering. With the wet spring, and the long stretch of dry weather we had, it's no wonder. We'll be filling any upcoming dry spells with some well-timed waterings.

I was also a little worried about figuring out when the green zebra tomatoes would be ripe. But we found a few, huge, soft to the touch, and yellowing a bit, and there's no question. They're being saved for lunch tomorrow.

The green (and purple) beans are delicious and we tend to eat them all out in the field. We love beans, and our three-year-old gets a kick out of undoing their "zippers". It's a pretty good way to get him to eat them in their best form. Fresh.

The cabbage is doing well, especially the savoy cabbage we planted. The more traditional cabbage is coming along but seems to have lots of bugs in them. We're starting to see brussels sprouts forming and I have a feeling I'm the only one who's going to be eating them. I have to do some research into how to harvest them.

The Jimmy Nardello peppers we planted are going to be interesting. We planted seed we saved from a friend's pepper, and after reading that they're quite a bit easier to cross-pollinate than tomatoes, we're not sure what we're going to get. Maybe they'll be perfect and true-to-type, or maybe they'll be... something else.

Aren't the Chiogga Beets beautiful? We're lightweights when it comes to eating beets, but these ones are sure inspiring.

We've already pickled about a dozen jars of cucumbers and it was great to make them with our own garlic and dill. We pulled up most of our beets, and are preparing to pickle some of them this week. If you have any pickled beets recipes, please send them our way. We're looking around for ideas.

Oh, and if you want any tomatoes, let us know.

Our Own Ontario Garlic

2011-07-27T11:53:00.000-04:00

The garlic is laid out on a mesh screen for a couple weeks to allow it to cure, or dry out so it can be better stored.

Nine months ago we planted our garlic. It was fun, although we were pretty skeptical of it lasting the winter and sprouting in the spring. But it did. Every single clove we planted has now grown a full bulb of garlic. Some are smaller than others, but it's a beautiful relief to pull bulb after bulb out of the ground if only to know we're not going to ever have to buy garlic again.

The garlic turned out to be a great anchor in our garden. It was up early and endured many frosts while we impatiently waited for the soil to dry and be ready for all of our seeds and seedlings.

Our garlic was harvested a week or two before it should have, only because it dried out a bit early with this summer's heat. Next year, if it's as dry, we'll give the plants a few well-timed waterings, and keep the soil looser around the bulbs. This will hopefully let them swell up a bit more and give nice plump bulbs. But really, I'm not sure what we're going to do with 200 bulbs anyways. Plump or not.

A beautiful bulb of Italian garlic. I initially bundled the garlic up, but then figured out I should lay it out to dry.

I'm not completely sure why Ontario garlic is such a rare commodity. There is no reason for there to be Chinese garlic in the grocery store, but there it is, day after day. It's a perfect example of the lunacy of importing food. First, it comes from China, about as far away on the globe as you can get. Then, in order to keep it from sprouting on it's epic voyage, it's often treated with chemicals or rumoured to be sometimes irradiated to kill any form of life in it.

All this for a plant that grows beautifully in our province.

But I do know why Chinese garlic is so popular at the grocery store. It's 99 cents for three bulbs compared with a few dollars for one bulb of local, fresh garlic. But what you get for the 99 cents is 1/3 the flavour and a complete lack of disclosure as to how it was grown and what it was soaked in for it to survive price speculation and shipping.

The Russian garlic grew the most beautiful bulbs. We'll do a taste test and them most likely re-plant it for next year.

So what can you do? Ontario garlic is a notoriously fast seller at farmers markets, so make sure you pick up a few bulbs soon. And if you have a garden, plant the singular cloves from one of those bulbs so you can grow your own for next summer. Just don't try to plant the stuff at the supermarket. There's a good chance there's no life in them.

Zucchini Zucchini Zucchini

2011-07-20T11:27:00.000-04:00

We've been learning that zucchini is a bit of a running gag in the gardening world. It's the one vegetable naive young growers like ourselves will plant lots of, only to realize they can't keep up with the production of even just one plant.

So, from our four plants, we've had a few bushels of zucchinis already. We've grilled some, gave lots away and are now starting to bake and preserve them.

A few weeks ago we were worried about the cucumber beetles that had moved in and were hoping they wouldn't spread bacterial wilt to our zucchinis, cucumbers, and pumpkins. But they've run their course and we're harvesting 6-8 zucchini every few days.

Zucchini is a type of summer squash, as opposed to a winter squash that stores well. They're best eaten fresh when they're 6-8 inches long or else they tend to get bitter, stringy, and seedy if you let them grow bigger (which they quickly will). I've met a few people bragging about the size of zucchini they've grown, but this is always before they try to eat it.

The thought of eating blossoms before they fruit has always made me a bit sad, but when you're fighting an uphill battle against a zucchini glut, stuffed and fried blossoms are pretty tempting.

We had a half bushel of zucchini and needed a plan. I decided to grate and freeze the majority of the zucchini so I can make zucchini bread during the winter or throw some into soups, sauces and lasagnas. I ran them through the grater on our food processor (a huge timesaver) and filled Ziploc freezer bags.

I emailed Josie and Nickey from Cake & Loaf, who we visited this past winter, to see if they would be willing to share their favorite zucchini bread recipe with us. They sent us one and despite the heat, I baked it with no regrets. It is absolutely delicious.

Here is Cake & Loaf's original recipe, I made a few changes to my batch (I used a dark spelt and whole wheat flour combination, butter instead of canola oil, and a bit less sugar than called for, and this time I didn't add nuts or chocolate).

Click here for a printable pdf of this recipe.

Field Trip: A New Beekeeper

2011-07-13T10:50:00.002-04:00

Russell Gibbs is what you might expect a beekeeper to look like. A quiet demeanour, ginger-tinged hair and an impressive beard. But there's one exception. He's about thirty years younger than you'd imagine.

I have known Russ for a while. We both graduated from the same graphic design program, and have a similar music collection. But I was recently surprised to hear of his interest in beekeeping, which I guess lines up nicely with my interest in farming.

I spent a morning with Russ as he checked on his first two hives on a farm near Binbrook, Ontario and asked him a few questions.

Russell wears his dad's old veil from the '70s. It looks a lot better than the modern hazmat-like veils.

Crackers. What got you into beekeeping?

Russell. For as long as I can remember I have been around beekeeping. Whether it's through stories my father would tell me, visiting my uncle Peter and seeing a commercial extractor in his basement, the smell of their honey house, or simply the constant supply of (amazing) honey. It's just always been there.

About two years ago I just got this urge to give it a try and started speaking to my Dad about it. A lot of it had to do with family tradition from a historical perspective.

I turned to books, and once I started reading and researching what a beekeeper does and how a hive works it really spoke to me. (I'm trying desperately to avoid a getting "stung" pun.) I began attending local beekeeping meetings and conferences to speak with local beekeepers. One such local beekeeper became somewhat of a mentor, sharing experiences and insights into the world of beekeeping.

Crackers. What's your family's beekeeping history?

Russell. My grandfather started keeping bees as a hobby and slowly added more as the years went on. Then my uncles Peter and Tim decided to take it over and ramp up production, and they have been doing it ever since. My cousin Jason (Tim's son) studies bees and discovered 19 new species of sweat bees last year.

Crackers. Why bother? Honey's pretty easy to come by.

Russell. Trying not to sound like a hippy, its an amazing thing to be a part of and a humbling thing to do. The bees don't really need us. After all, we're the cause of a lot of their issues. But to feel like I am helping or contributing to something that is much greater in the grand scheme of things is amazing. Also from a family history standpoint I felt compelled.

Beekeeping can be risky business (bees can contract many diseases, there are new pests and predators and they could also just up and decide they don't like the location and swarm), but, the reward is higher than that, and I am not even talking about honey.

Also, it is just absolutely fascinating.

Distracted

2011-07-06T08:53:00.001-04:00

We're sorry there's no Field Trip today. As you may have guessed, we've got a new addition to the family. Margaret was born early this morning, and right now she's kind of the most important thing in the world.

We'll be back at it soon, but until then, we'll be a little distracted.

Garden Status Report #4

2011-06-29T09:30:00.009-04:00

After a rough start to the growing season and its endless rain, the pessimism is slowly fading away as the landscape turns more and more green with each visit.

We lost a lot of seedlings in rainstorms that, in some cases, dropped two inches of rain in one night. Our garden had washout damage that took most of our onion seedlings with it. The beans from our early seeding had a hard time breaking through the hard ground created by the rain. But some did, and our second seeding, for our drying beans, are pushing through the ground right now. It's a beautiful sight.

Beets are forming under delicious greens and the savoy cabbages are beginning to take shape.

Our tomatoes were looking pretty sick a few weeks ago. Sitting in the damp soil gave them all early blight. We were pretty heartbroken, but ruthless picking of sick leaves and branches and recent dry weather has turned them into pictures of health. Some plants are already bigger than any plants we've ever grown on our lot in town.

The pepper plants are beginning to blossom and take off. They seem to be a lot slower than the tomatoes, but they're coming along.

Our herbs are beautiful. I'm continually impressed by basil that is grown in my parents' soil. We're going to have about a dozen waist-high plants in a couple months.

I also picked up some Red Fife wheat seed. I planted it late, but was curious to get some in. We've now got access to a small flour mill, so I thought I'd try growing some. What we grow this year will probably just become next year's seed.

Our hops are happily climbing and so are our beans. I'm not sure if we'll get actual hop cones this year, but it's a start. The bean trellis we built blew down in a storm a few weeks back, but nothing was damaged, so we put it back up with some reinforcement. I can't wait until it's a solid green mass of beans.

Zucchinis are beginning to grow as well as pumpkins. We planted some giant pumpkins, the only non-practical thing in the garden, but the kids will love seeing them grow into massive boulders. They'll also serve as a bit of a distraction while we're weeding.

Some of the pests are ugly, others are beautiful. The first thing we do on every visit is sweep for Colorado Potato Beetles. First stop is the potatoes, second the eggplants and a third sweep through tomatoes. We've heard mulching with cedar works to keep them away, but so far, it's not a huge task to just walk through and flick any we see into the affectionately named Death Jar.

The other "pests" are the Swallowtail Caterpillars. They're the most beautiful creatures and are slowly munching away at our dill. But knowing they'll turn into swallowtail butterflies and be off soon, is helping us tolerate them.

The garden is definitely looking up, and I can't believe we're going to have ripe tomatoes soon. Just looking at all of this stuff, and thinking back to starting it all with tiny seeds in our tiny porch blows my mind. To think that, on this small quarter-acre, is enough life that we can eat year-round and give us free seed for next year is an incredible feeling.

Garlic Scapes

2011-06-24T10:00:00.003-04:00

Every time we go to the farm I have been thoroughly examining the garlic, wondering when the delicious scapes might appear. I'd feel the leaves coming out of the middle, and they were always flat, not the round stalk I was looking forward to. However, this past weekend gave us a big surprise.

We hadn't been to the farm for almost a week and when we arrived we were greeted with LOTS of scapes. We picked all of the ones that had fully curled, and there are still many more on their way.

The scape is the stalk that grows from the centre of the stem, and is the beginning of the flower and eventually, seeds. However, common practice in growing garlic is to snap the scape off to focus all of its energy into developing the bulb and cloves.

Scapes are delicious grilled up with other vegetables, cut up into a salad, or made into a pesto. We use a mortar and pestle to grind them up and add to some olive oil and balsamic vinegar to make a delicious bread dipper or salad dressing.

If you haven't tried scapes before I definitely recommend picking some up at your local farmers market and giving them a try. You certainly won't regret it.

Field Trip: Preserving Strawberry Fields

2011-06-22T11:43:00.003-04:00

Every year, my mom would brave the fields with 4 kids, and set out to the pick-your-own strawberry patch. We were always in awe of how quickly she could fill her baskets, and how perpetually empty ours were. Although, I know why ours were never filled.

We'd bring them home and clean them, eat our share of berries fresh, or sliced and covered with milk. Then, when the sight of another strawberry sickened us, mom would make jam.

It feels great to continue the tradition with my own family. Our three year old was the most ambitious, snatching the biggest basket to fill. Regardless of whether or not he actually filled it (he didn't), whatever strawberries ended up in it were definitely his.

We like the idea of a pick your own farm. When you are doing your own preserving it becomes a fun task and isn't overwhelming. It's cheaper when you pick your own and picking isn't that hard. Thirty minutes of picking can give you more berries than you need to preserve.

We pick our berries at Lindley's Farm in Ancaster. They don't use any chemical sprays on their fruit or vegetables, so we're a lot more comfortable letting the kids eat a few in the field. In fact, our son was happily informed upon arrival that the only rule was to try one.

We, quite quickly, picked 15 quarts of berries, took them home and immediately ate our fair share. Then I moved on to the jam making. I followed a recipe found in Canning & Preserving with Ashley English. It is a very simple and delicious recipe.

The 15 quarts of strawberries quickly disappeared as I made a huge strawberry rhubarb crisp and a batch of strawberry-rhubarb muffins. We more than paid for the berries in the jam alone and we won't have to buy any for a year. And the best part is that we know exactly the source and ingredients of our jam.

If you haven't been berry picking you still have time. Find a pick-your-own farm near you and get picking, you certainly won't regret it. Whether it is for freezing and preserving to last you through the year, or for simply eating local fresh produce while it is in season, it's great experience.

Mom's Sweet Potato Hack

2011-06-15T11:49:00.001-04:00

We've been working away on our quarter-acre plot, which we hope will feed all of our vegetable needs from July on, but in planning an extensive garden, sometimes you miss a chance, forget, or simply don't have the time to start something. One of those things was sweet potatoes. We wanted to grow them, but planning out the garden was a lot busier than we thought and we totally forgot about them.

When my mom started asking about how to grow them, we were happy to have someone on the job. I immediately directed her to Google to do some research.

Sweet potatoes aren't related to the ordinary potato. They're in a totally different family that just happens to have a similar, tuberous root. Sweet potatoes are actually related to the Morning Glory, the vining, decorative flower. So to force them to sprout is a bit of a different story than simply leaving a potato out to chit.

Here's how my mom did it:
1. Find a nice, local sweet-potato, and a jar it can fit into
2. Stick three toothpicks into its equator
3. Put the sweet potato in the jar, pointy end down, so it sits on the toothpicks
4. Fill the jar with water and let it sit on a sunny windowsill for a few weeks
5. As the sprouts, also called slips, begin to grow, break them off once they're a few inches tall, and sit them in a shallow dish of water to root
6. Tranfer to soil once they're 4-6 inches long

Most likely it's a bit late to be starting them now, but we're slowly building a chart to help us schedule what starts best when, and sweet potatoes are going on the calendar for March 1. It's a nice early job to do while we're tempted to start our vegetable seeds too early. Keep an eye on our blog for the calendar. We'll share it once it's done. And keep an eye out for updates on how they're coming along throughout this growing season.

Pure Green Magazine

2011-06-13T10:00:00.003-04:00

Look how official we look! In layout! We're happy to be included in the Pure Green Magazine summer issue. In fact, we're happy to be included in all of the upcoming issues, since we're official columnists.

The magazine will be issued 4 times a year, and our column focuses on growing and preserving food. Our first article focuses on the importance of planting a garden, no matter how big or small, early or late.

Here are some screen shots, but why don't you just read the whole issue online here. We will keep you posted when new issues come out.

Field Trip: House's Asparagus

2011-06-08T12:16:00.002-04:00

When you eat seasonally, things begin to reveal their value again. I'm not talking about monetary value, it's a value that feels a bit more natural and a bit more true. We hadn't eaten asparagus for a while before my parents brought over some of House's first asparagus of the season. When foods are eaten seasonally, they become a special treat. It's hard to not get excited about the first asparagus when it's been almost a year. There's a saying about absence...

House's Farm Market has been my family's source for fresh asparagus for years. Right on highway 24, heading south into Norfolk County, sits the market stand. And right next to it is the field full of asparagus. It doesn't get much more local than that.

Ernie and Susan House invited us into the field to take a look at how the asparagus grows. We walked to a patch of brown ground where we assumed nothing was growing. It looked like a field with leftover mulch from last year. But upon closer inspection, all over the field, little green spears were poking through.

We talked about how asparagus grows in our first Garden Status Report. We learned that it takes four years for it to reach the age where it can tolerate cutting. Harvesting asparagus must be stressful for the crown, or root system. It sends up a spear, which is cut, and then keeps trying again and again. You have to be careful to not overdo it, and eventually need to let a spear grow into the the mature fern, which in turn will harness solar energy to store and grow again next year.

As for the smell when you pee, it comes from various sulfurous compounds found especially in young asparagus. And the debate isn't around whose urine smells after eating asparagus, it's all about who has the genes to actually smell it. Some doctors would say that since you can smell it in your urine, it must be hard on the kidneys, but we think it must be fine, especially when you're eating it seasonally.

Asparagus, although their main local crop right now, isn't the only thing grown on House's farm. Their sweet corn is exceptional, especially when it's picked so close, and they also grow their own potatoes, green peas in the pod, green and yellow beans, squash, and pumpkins. If you're driving through Norfolk County any time soon, make sure you stop and pick up the freshest asparagus you'll probably ever buy.

House's Farm & Market

1903 Windham Road 3 (at Hwy. 24)

R.R.# 3 Scotland, Ontario

519-446-0028

Garden Status Report #3

2011-06-01T10:27:00.002-04:00

Heading out to plant the hops. They're doing well. They seem to have a weed-like vigour. Maybe because they're in the hemp family.

When you are new to gardening and farming, the learning curve is steep. For starters, you learn pretty quickly that you have no control over the weather, and to be specific, you have no control over the rain.

For our region, the general rule of thumb is that you can safely plant your whole vegetable garden on or after the Victoria Day (May 24th) weekend. You can start hardier seeds and plants before that, as soon as the ground is workable. However, because of this year’s wetness, everything had been delayed waiting for the ground to dry out.

Peppers on their way out to the field. Roma's are the classic paste/canning tomatoes.

We did manage to get some stuff in the weekend before - our onions, brassicas (cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli), beets, carrots, asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries. They’re all pretty hardy and can go in as soon as possible. We also planted four variety of potatoes that will, hopefully, feed our family for the year (banana fingers, purple peruvian, chieftain, and yukon gold). We planted a few too many, so we’re discussing opening a chip stand.

As for the warmer season vegetables, they were taking over the greenhouse. We were really anxious to get them out into the field, and we had a small window for planting in our schedule so we planted our tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and pumpkins during the long weekend. We put up some supports and planted pole and bush beans, and hops went in next to makeshift poles while they wait for their trellis. It was a lot of hard work, sometimes even planting in the unstoppable rain, but so worth it.

We made the bean supports out of Sumach, which is a weed-like tree that grows out of control. No imported bamboo necessary.

Our push to get everything into the garden was probably a little premature. The cold days that followed hurt a lot of our cucumber plants. We lost over half of them to what we believe is a mixture of cold and rain on top of transplanting shock. We were also worried about how the single-digit temperatures would affect our bean seeds as they tried to germinate, however, they’re doing fine and are starting to break through the soil. We’re going to seed over where we lost cucumbers and we have more watermelon plants in the greenhouse to replace those failures.

One of the cucumber survivors. They didn't transplant well and we lost about half.

But this year is all about learning. Lesson one was the weather, and lesson two, I have a feeling, is going to be all about weeds. We’re banking all of this experience, and we’ll be that much further along next year.

More Morels

2011-05-30T10:57:00.001-04:00

We keep finding morels, and we're in love with them. Last weekend we filled another basked with the beautiful fungus. There's something about nature providing you with a small window of a specific food. A window that is easy to miss, or worse, you might never have heard of.

When you begin to learn the rhythms of nature, food becomes a lot more special. It's this sense of special that the supermarket tries to kill with button mushrooms available all year round. It's also sad that when you hear "mushroom" you imagine that simple button, and disregard the thousands of other unique varieties hidden in its shadow. But those button mushrooms are safe. No thought goes into whether they're poisonous or not, someone else has done that thinking for you.

The morels we ate this year were the first foraged mushrooms we found without an experienced forager. They're hard to get wrong, however there's still this sense of comfort that is rattled a bit when you eat something you've found in the woods. But we're still alive, and after bringing the basket to a party (and eating them first), everyone tried them and for most, it was their first taste of a morel.

Field Trip: Tomato Days

2011-05-25T11:53:00.002-04:00

Over the long weekend, Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm held their annual Tomato Days. We visited Linda Crago, the heart of the operation in April to get advice before we started our own tomatoes from seed. She's was incredibly helpful and continues to give us lots of advice as we start our own vegetable garden. She said we had to come back for her big sale, so we did.

When we arrived on Saturday, her driveway and a section of lawn were covered with thousands of plants. Every other square foot was covered by people picking through the hundreds of varieties looking for something new to try this year. It's incredible to think that Linda started, nurtured and transplanted each of these plants by hand.

Cake & Loaf, the bakery that we visited a few months ago, were there with a refreshment stand. They were brewing some Detour coffee and brought along a lot of baked goods. I know Cake & Loaf bakes with ingredients they grow in their back yard, so it was a good fit.

We picked up some herbs, tomatoes and interesting eggplants. Gone are the days of visiting a garden centre to buy a "tomato plant". This year we planted around 20 different varieties in our garden and Linda was definitely an inspiration.

If you want to pick up some seedlings, and can get down to the Niagara region, go for it. I know Linda will be more than happy to guide you through her jungle of plants, and you can be happy growing something nobody else on your street is. On top of tomatoes, she has many different varieties of heirloom peppers, eggplants, melons, squash and more.

UPDATE: For all our Toronto friends, Culinarium, in Mt. Pleasant Village has a fresh stock of Linda's seedlings, so you don't have to trek to Niagara (Even though it's worth the trip!).

Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetables
74038 Regional Road
45 Wellandport, Ontario
(905) 386-7388
www.treeandtwig.ca
Twitter: @treeandtwig

Field Trip: Spring Foraging

2011-05-18T11:25:00.000-04:00

This year, in our move to use the supermarket less, we've been trying out the most primal form of harvesting food—foraging. And because we're so new to it, we totally missed the rockstar of spring foraging, fiddleheads. Just a few hours north of us, the season is still on, but for us, we missed it.

But it's ok, we're not into rockstars anyways. Fiddleheads dot the forests in the spring, they're more or less simply a matter of timing.

But something more elusive was on our minds. We wanted to find the beautiful morel mushroom. I had seen them on my parent's farm growing up, but never tried them. I homeschooled for most of elementary school and can remember tripping over them during long days spent more in the woods than behind a desk.

I never tried them as a kid. I was a terribly picky eater, but I'm happy to have grown out of that, and this year Melanie and I tried our first morel. I was skeptical, since it's a pretty hyped mushroom.

So I shook all of the dirt out, cut the one in the photo above in half, removed the unwanted, many-legged protein that was lurking in the hollow stem, and threw it in a pan with butter.

I have to say I'm 100% converted. It was delicious, mild, and gone in seconds!

So now we need more ideas. Or maybe frying in butter is best. Let us know if you've tried morels and how you use them.

Kefir from the Home Dairy

2011-05-11T09:04:00.003-04:00

Once the milk is up to room temperature, a few tablespoons of grain-filled starter are added.

We're lucky to have a go-to person with a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to natural foods. My mother in law Jane had an awakening similar to ours when she had my husband's oldest sister. She began to see the importance of nutrition and how she could set her kids up for a healthy life. Her journey was probably not as easy as ours. "Health food" was a hippie notion, as the general population was still in awe of the convenience of the T.V. dinner.

Jane bought a goat and started milking it to feed her children. She also made yogurt, has been baking her own bread, gardening, sprouting grains and more for years. If we ever need advice, we know where to turn.

It's stirred, covered with a few layers of cheesecloth, and then allowed to ferment. Is it a coincidence it looks like a shepherd to me?

A few years ago she discovered kefir and its many benefits. Kefir is an ancient fermented milk that is said to be discovered by shepherds who kept their milk in leather pouches. Although similar to yogurt, Kefir has a different blend of bacteria, as well as some yeast. These cultures work on the milk at room temperature and create an effervescent and lightly alcoholic drink that has the consistency of runny yogurt. After you drink it, the cultures work together in your gut to help your body fight off pathogens like intestinal parasites and E. coli.

The grains are strained out and it's ready!

Instead of continuing to purchase a tiny, overpriced container of kefir at the grocery store, Jane decided to make it herself. She started by trying dried starter culture, adding it to room temperature milk and letting it ferment overnight. After some research she purchased live kefir grains, which look like a chunk of sea salt, and can now make kefir by simply adding them to her milk. The grains grow with use and are strained out after each batch. They have been said to have been passed down from generation to generation, so she is pretty much all set, she just needs to keep buying milk.

If you want to make your own dairy products, a great starting point is Ashley English's Home Dairy. We're huge fans of her Homemade Living series, so we were pretty excited when she sent us Home Dairy. Since she includes a section on kefir, we passed the book on to Jane and she asked to hold onto it since it had some details that were left out of other guides. She's planning on trying out some of the cheese recipes, and I know my father-in-law has a DIY project on his hands with the homemade cheese press plans.

Jane ordered the grains online and was fermenting right away. Kefir couldn't be simpler to make, and it probably couldn't be any healthier for you. It's safe for lactose-intolerant people and it's got an exciting and bubbly flavour. Pick up some starter or grains and get fermenting. Or simply make your own grains with that goat leather you've been wondering what to do with.

Garden Status Report #2

2011-05-04T09:46:00.001-04:00

This weekend, it was finally time to bring our tomatoes, peppers, herbs, melons, and pumpkins to the greenhouse we built back in March. This spring's weather has been pretty lousy, so the big move was much later than we expected.

We start most of our seeds indoors where they have the best chance to germinate, and then we slowly introduce the seedlings to the elements. A wintery April gave us few chances to harden them off outside on the porch. And by the end of April, after transplanting all of our tomato seedlings into 4-inch pots, and moving them in and out of the house every day, we were ready to start charging rent.

We've learned our lesson about starting too many things too early. We gave a tray of 72 tomato seedlings away because we simply didn't have the room. We started a new tray, and since they're canning tomatoes, we won't need them right away.

A lot of the push to start things as early as possible comes from commercial growers, to whom having the earliest crop at the market means a premium. We're happy to have home-grown produce as soon as possible, but we're excited to still have tomatoes at the end of summer. We're growing for sustenance, not profit.

Our greenhouse is eight feet square, and we thought it would have more than enough room. However, it immediately filled up. We've got quite a few plants we've started for friends and family, so we might have to start giving them away a little early to make room for all the things we're starting this weekend.

The more tender vegetables will spend most of May in the greenhouse waiting for spring frosts to pass until they can safely be planted in the field, traditionally on the Victoria Day/May 24 weekend. Others, like asparagus crowns, hop rhizomes, onions, peas, and early potatoes can tolerate light frosts and go into the ground as soon as it can be worked. However with this eternal rain we seem to be getting and very little sun, the ground hasn't had a chance to dry out.

The garlic we planted last fall gives us the best hint of what is to come this year. Long rows of tall, green leaves seem to be tolerating this spring a lot better than we are. They're lonely out there, and we can't wait to introduce them to the rest of the garden.

Field Trip: Oak Manor Farms

2011-04-27T11:48:00.000-04:00

In the countryside nestled in a cluster of clay-red silos just north-east of Tavistock, Ontario, Dave Reibling, and his son Perry operate Oak Manor Farms, a stone flour mill.

Dave's father, Delton a grain farmer, was a sort of pioneer. In the 1950s, he was one of the first farmers in the area to embrace chemical farming. People told him he was crazy, and that these chemicals couldn't grow anything. But without knowing of the long-term consequences, he proved them wrong.

After their initial successes, Delton and his son Dave began to notice that the soil was dying. All of the natural life, organic matter and earthworms began to disappear. In fact, it wasn’t soil anymore. It was just dirt. Essentially a medium to hold roots and chemicals. Delton felt they had to do something and he pushed Dave to look into organic growing methods. Again, people called them crazy. Going organic in 1970 seemed a complete step backwards as chemical farming was just beginning to hit its stride.

In 1975, tired of seeing their beautiful organic grain end up in the same place as all of the conventionally grown grain, the Reiblings purchased their first stone mill and began to take control of their grain’s future. Over the next thirty years they slowly phased out growing to focus solely on milling locally sourced grains. They mill hard wheat (high gluten bread flour) and soft wheat (low gluten cake and pastry flour), light and dark spelt flour, as well as process organic oats.

With stone milling, you’re stuck with whole grain flour, or partially sifted flour, which means it’s on its way to white. But we believe that’s a good thing. In fact, we usually opt for whole wheat whenever possible. White flour leaves out a lot of the grain’s nutritional value. By taking the endosperm, essentially the starch, out of context of the bran and germ, you’re ripping apart a healthy balance that nature has put together for you.

And whole grains are harder to work with. The bran tends to cut the gluten that makes white bread rise so beautifully. That’s why most “whole wheat” bread is mostly white flour. In addition to this, after grinding the grain, the oils that occur naturally in the grain are released and start to go rancid and bitter. This goes against one of the main pillars of the processed food industry – shelf life.

Oak Manor sells sourced unbleached (white) organic flour, so you're by no means limited to whole wheat. Regardless, we’re excited to learn how to work with more and more whole wheat. It’s easy to make a nice, fluffy loaf of white bread, but its definitely an art form to work with whole grains. So instead of picking up a warehouse-aged “all purpose” flour, why not get stone ground bread or cake flour from a place you know.

Oak Manor Farms

756907 Oxford County Road #5,
Rural Route #1,
Tavistock, Ontario
www.oakmanorfarms.com

Recipe: Apple & Cream Cheese Turnovers

2011-04-25T22:24:00.002-04:00

Cleaning out the freezer, I found a pack of frozen puff pastry and was inspired to take my homemade yogurt cream-cheese to the next level. I know what you are thinking, a pack of frozen puff pastry? Shouldn't she be making this herself since they are trying to get out of the supermarket? Well, wouldn't it be better to use it up than throw it out? And since I canned the apple sauce, made the yogurt cheese, know the chickens who laid the egg and could take a quick drive to see the bees who collected the honey, I wasn't overly concerned. I've never made puff pastry before and I've heard it's pretty labour intensive. Perhaps it will be another project all in itself.

Here is my recipe for quick and easy Apple Cream-Cheese Turnovers.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (roughly) of Apple Sauce
1 Apple, chopped (to add some crunch the turnovers)
1/3 cup (estimated) of Cream Cheese or yogurt cheese
1 Spoon full of Local Honey
1 Farm Fresh Free Range Egg, divided
Puff Pastry
Sugar

1. Mix homemade apple sauce and chopped apple in a bowl.
2. In a separate bowl mix cream cheese with a spoon full of honey and a free range egg yolk.
3. Roll out pastry and cut into squares.
4. Put a small dollop of apple and cheese mixture onto each puff pastry square.
5. Rub edge with egg white and fold over, lightly pressing the edges.
6. Place turnovers in fridge for 15 minutes.
7. Top with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
8. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, rotating pan once.
9. Enjoy!

Garden Status Report

2011-04-20T10:01:00.001-04:00

1. Banana Fingers, Purple Peruvian, and Chieftain seed potatoes 2. Sugar Baby watermelon seedlings
3. Giant pumpkin seedling 4. Basil, Tomato, Pepper and Brussels Sprouts seedlings.

Our self-sufficient garden is slowly, but very surely beginning to take shape. Nothing is in the ground yet (except for our garlic) but there's going to be a lot of digging very soon. Before planting, we have a lot of infrastructure to install. Teepees for the beans, 15-foot trellises for the hopyard, and raised beds for the asparagus all need to be constructed over the next few weeks.

The idea of a self-sufficient garden is not just to have a tasty tomato for a sandwich in August, but to also have a delicious tomato sauce for pasta in December. And to make this happen, we're going to need to build the biggest piece of infrastructure yet. A genuine, in-the-side-of-a-hill, root cellar. Something along the lines of this.

Left to right, Jacob's Cattle beans, Jimmy Nardello sweet peppers, Dakota Black popcorn and Chioggia Beet seeds

Since we're planning for winter storage, we're trying to be careful and resist the temptation to start too many plants too early. It only makes sense that a cabbage picked as late as possible is going to taste the best in the middle of winter. To help me (and eventually you) do this, I'm designing a planting chart to help me get things into the ground in the proper order and keep track of what should be seeded directly into the garden. We're also planning on doing later plantings of the same varieties to ripen at different times.

From the seeds that we started just a couple of weeks ago, we've already got a jungle of tomato and pepper plants. We're most excited about our Jimmy Nardello sweet pepper seedlings. They are not only the most delicious peppers ever, but our plants are growing from seeds we saved last summer. Whenever I look at the hundreds of seeds we saved from that one pepper, enough to plant a whole field, it amazes and reminds me of the generosity of nature, and annoys me to think that we're modifying our vegetables simply so we can grow them in the way we find most convenient and thought-reducing, not in the balanced way nature prefers.

A one-year-old Mary Washington asparagus crown and Chinook hop rhizome.

Asparagus is one of those plants that is at odds with our modern world. It's not until you start growing it for yourself that you realize how cheap it really is at the grocery store. If you were to start asparagus seed this spring in your home garden, your first harvest would be in May of 2015. It takes four years for the plant to establish before you can start harvesting the shoots. And will you even be in the same house in 2015?

So we have ordered a few 1-year-old asparagus crowns to give us a head start. 2014 can't come fast enough. They'll be going into raised beds to live for the next twenty years and provide us with more than enough seasonal spears.

The other thing I sourced in root form is the hops. They arrived as a "rhizome" which is essentially a root cutting, that once planted, will send up a shoot and form a new plant. I had some suggestions from Neil, a homebrewer I visited back in December and now I'll be set for whenever I'm ready to brew.

A self-sufficient garden is more complicated than planting a casual summer vegetable garden where you don't need a plan and can easily fill in the gaps with a visit to a farmer's market or supermarket. I know we're going to miss something, and that other things are going to fail, but rather than getting too worried about it, I know we'll just do our best and get it right next year.

Field Trip: Morden's Organic Farm Store

2011-04-13T10:30:00.003-04:00

The moment you drive up to Morden's farm, you can feel the history. The classic farm house and barns are nearly original and a beautiful symbol of a simpler time. Sandy Morden, the 7th generation Morden on the property, took over the farm in 1997 and converted one of the original barns into Morden's Organic Farm Store. A store filled with foods that match the barn's simplicity.

Inside, there is a great selection of local, organic and naturally raised meats, wild caught fish, and produce. You can pick up eggs, butter, yogurt and cheese, and the shelves are stocked with items from jams, pickles, honey and maple syrup, to granola, gluten free flours, ice cream, emu oil products and more.

The floors are crooked, the beams are rough. It's a very rustic and warm experience. It's also very kid-friendly. The old silo has been converted into a small playroom, where you can peer through windows in the ceiling and see right up to the top. And there's a cornmeal-filled play barn with miniature tractors for kids to practice their tilling.

Outside, there is a small barn with a horse, sheep, goats, miniature horse, donkey, llama, chickens, rabbits and more. And I'm a little envious of the horse's view of the seemingly infinite fields.

Some of the produce they sell in the store is grown on the property, but most of it is sourced locally, and quite fresh. Some of the pea sprouts they were sampling the day we visited were absolutely delicious. The meat selection is spectacular. From wild fish to bison, you can spend a lot of time in their walk-in freezer.

Not everything in the store is local, typical exemptions are things like coffee, chocolate and bananas, but everything is organic. If you're ever in the Dundas area, make sure you visit Morden's. It's a great little experience and you can get your groceries at the same time.

Morden's Organic Farm Store
801 Collinson Rd. Dundas, Ontario
905-627-4774
www.mordensorganicfarmstore.com

Yogurt Cheese

2011-04-12T14:00:00.002-04:00

This weekend I decided to take our homemade yogurt to the next level and make a sort of "cream cheese" or strained yogurt. It's tangy but none-the-less delicious.

It was the simplest thing. All you need to do is place a colander over a bowl and line it with couple layers of cheese cloth. Pour in your yogurt and let sit overnight in the fridge.

You will immediately start to see the whey dripping into the bowl and in the morning you'll have a thick yogurt cheese. You can use it instead of cream cheese, or add some garlic and cucumbers to create a tzatziki sauce.

Field Trip: The Potting Shed

2011-04-06T09:05:00.000-04:00

Cell packs filled with seeding mix.

This is going to be a big gardening year for us. The plan is for a big, quarter-acre garden on some land we've been allotted at the Senko Farm. It's exciting to plan and decide on all the vegetables that will hopefully, after lots of preserving and proper storage, see us through to next spring.

There is much planning involved in a large garden in order to take into account all of its variables, including soil, seed, pests, seeding times, and transplanting times. There's also companion planting and even succession planting, which is staggering plants from a specific variety so they don't all ripen at once. It can get overwhelming, so we sometimes stop for a moment and think about all the stuff we won't have to pick up at the supermarket anymore.

Most of the seeds we're starting are open-pollinated, as opposed to hybrid. Hybrid seeds are produced by cross pollinating two plants with different traits you want to see in the next generation. These traits are sometimes for flavour, but others often only serve the industrial food system and its need for shipping rigour and uniformity. The other thing about hybrids is their seeds, if usable at all, usually revert back to only one of its parents' traits.

Open pollinated seeds on the other hand can be gathered at the end of each season and saved to plant the next year's crop. Not only do you have free seeds, but you also have the benefit of plants that are comfortable with your field or backyard.

Another part of our plan is variety. Instead of going to the seed rack at a department store and picking out, for example, "cucumber" seeds, we ordered six different varieties - three slicing varieties and three pickling varieties - We'll be taking notes on all the vegetables we plant and which ones worked best.

Most of the herbs we started last week are up now.

So how did we start our seeds this year? We bought trays (to catch any drips), cell-packs that have the individual cells to plant your seeds, and clear humidity domes to cover them and keep it warm and wet in order for the seeds to germinate. We filled an old pail with fine seed-starting mix (not the much heavier potting soil) and added hot water, making a thick mud. We filled our cell packs with soil and added two or three seeds to each cell.

We also borrowed an old grow-light rack that helps speed up germination and also keeps the seedlings short and tough, rather than spindly and reaching for light out a nearby window. Once the plants sprout and get established, we'll transplant them into individual pots in our greenhouse where they'll wait it out until the magical, frost-free date of May 24th.

Bread Failure

2011-04-04T20:48:00.006-04:00

I was organizing my photos the other day and came across these. I had quite possibly been a little too inspired by the Bread Baker's Apprentice - a book I first heard about on our visit to Spirit Tree Estate Cidery. A few people we've talked to consider it the bible of artisanal bread-baking.

So I tried two kinds, first a couple of classic Italian loaves, and then a Challah, since we had just recieved the first batch of eggs from my mom's chickens.

The photos are deceptive. The Italian loaves were supposed to be the same size as the challah, but they gave up on their final rise. So instead, they're simply Italian door-stops. And the annoying part is that the Italian loaves were started the day before, and the challah was relatively simple. The book is full of breads that are fermented overnight, so it's a little bit of a time management exercise.

But hey, we'll keep trying. Next up, no-knead bread!

Field Trip: Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm

2011-03-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

Linda starts all of her seeds indoors under grow lights. Here are some new pepper sprouts.

We're getting very excited for spring. If we're going to stay out of the grocery store this summer, this coming weekend will make it or break it, since it's when we're going to be starting all of our vegetable seeds. So to inspire us and to look for a bit of advice we decided to visit someone who has some experience in the field.

Actually, Linda Crago has more than just some experience. This year she's already started more than 10,000 tomato plants, and will be transplanting them all in the next few weeks. By hand. And that's not even including all the other vegetables she grows. Where most farms are hundreds of acres of one variety, her nine acres is home to more than a thousand varieties of vegetables.

Linda's farm is not just vegetables. Mama Duck and Joey, a Vietnamese pot belly pig are inseparable.

Linda has been specializing in tomatoes and more specifically, heirlooms for the past 14 years. She's a part of the movement to save seeds from vegetables that are close to being lost. She plays an important role in keeping our food system interesting, diverse, and open-sourced. I know first hand what makes some of these tomatoes special. Last year was the first year that we successfully grew some heirloom varieties (the two previous years were notoriously bad for tomatoes) and the taste from the Black Krim that we grew was certainly eye-opening.

Some of the vegetable varieties that Linda grows can't be found anywhere else in the world. She has searched for some of them in seed catalogues, but can't find them anywhere but in her field. That must be an incredible and inspiring feeling.

Linda's seedlings are mostly in her basement at the moment. Those ten thousand tomato plants are ten thousand seedlings slowly growing under racks filled with grow-lights, waiting to be transplanted and moved out into the greenhouse as the weather improves. Every year on the Victoria Day weekend she holds her annual Tomato Days where she sells a lot of her plants. She then plants about 1,500 in her field and sells a few thousand to nurseries. The rest are donated to the community for gardens and any other projects that could use them.

Linda grows greens right through the winter in her greenhouse for local restaurants.
They freeze nightly but spring to life the moment the sun comes out.

The tomatoes and other vegetables that she grows are sold at the farm gate on Saturday mornings, or any other day if you call ahead. It's a short walk to the field if what you're looking for is not out front. She also sells a lot of vegetables to local restaurants including some winter greens that are still growing in her greenhouse.

Linda's farm is a testament to how productive a relatively small farm can be, using no chemicals and little more than our great-grandparents had to work with.

If you're anxious to start a garden from seed, you can buy seed directly from Linda. It's usually either seed she's sourced, or saved from her own produce. You could also visit her during her Tomato Days. Visit her site for more info and keep up-to-date with her blog. For those interested in starting tomatoes and other veg from seed, she's just written an amazing post which is all you'll ever need to know. I can't wait to visit her in the summer and photograph all the amazing varieties of tomatoes. Until then I'll just have to keep looking at her blog.

Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetables
74038 Regional Road
45Wellandport, Ontario
(905) 386-7388
www.treeandtwig.ca
Twitter: @treeandtwig

Sugar Bush: The Motion Picture

2011-03-29T10:11:00.003-04:00

I finally got around to editing and fixing up the video from our visit to the sugar bush last week. It's pretty uneventful, but I hope you enjoy a little moment in the woods regardless.

This was supposed to complement this post, but I ran out of time. I'm only one man.

Enjoy.

Field Trip: Sugar Bush

2011-03-23T10:17:00.000-04:00

Since our very first Field Trip, I've been looking forward to this excursion. I have fond childhood memories of the trip out to the sugar bush. The best part was always the maple syrup taffy. Pouring it on the snow and rolling it up onto a popsicle stick. It was always the first sign of spring and the main event that brought everyone out of their winter hibernation.

Maple syrup is a staple in our household. It is one of our natural and local sweeteners and replaces the sugar in many of my recipes. But once you see the work that goes into making maple syrup you are more likely to savour every drop of this liquid gold.

The Austin family are friends of ours, and they started tapping the maples in their neighbour's forest last year. Starting out with 30 trees and a very resourceful, back-to-basics set-up, they got their feet wet in maple syrup. Figuratively. Even though last year wasn't the best for syrup, it couldn't have been that bad because they are back at it again, and at a much larger scale.

The sugar shack was built by their neighbour's late husband. She graciously allows the Austins to continue an amazing tradition and tap the maples. This year they have around 75 trees tapped, and even though the sap wasn't running fast this weekend, Wayne said there have been days when the pails are filled and overflowing in just a few hours.

Jesse's dad gave Wayne a salvaged stainless-steel drip pan from an old canning factory that closed down years ago in Simcoe, Ontario. Wayne uses it as a big boiler that really distributes the evaporation. It's held in place by a mixture of some old steel posts and scrap metal from a nearby abandoned railroad spur.

Wayne, Charlene and their son Josh head out to their sugar bush around 8 in the morning and spend the day back there stoking the fire and boiling down the sap until about 5. It's incredible to see the amount of sap that Wayne seems to be continually adding. In a given day they will boil around 100 gallons of sap. Once it's about 90% done, they finish it on a more controlled propane burner and boil it down to the final 2 gallons.

Maple syrup's 40:1 boiling ratio is pretty incredible and labour-intensive. I used to feel that maple syrup was a bit expensive, but next time I pick some up, I'm going to feel like I'm greatly underpaying.

Check out this site to find farm gate maple syrup, a pancake house or a maple syrup festival near you before the season ends.

Fieldnotes: Garlic Sightings

2011-03-21T12:00:00.006-04:00

As unpredictable as the weather's been, it's been hard to fully commit to the feeling that spring is coming. Waking up to snow saturday morning was a bit of setback, even if it didn't stick around. But then there are the sure signs of spring. The fact that you're hard pressed to find a patch of leftover snow, the sound of robins, and daylight lasting until well after seven.

The other sign is our garlic sprouting. We've never grown it before, and some would say we planted an overly ambitious amount, but regardless, we're happy to see that most of it is up.

We're growing about 8 different varieties (variety is a common theme in this year's garden as we figure out what works best for us). We planted Music, which is a standard variety and it's all up. We also planted a global selection we sourced from Daniel Hoffman at The Cutting Veg. We have Ukrainian, Sicilian, Russian, (former) Yugoslavian, among others and the only variety left to show itself is the Tibetian, which I imagined would have sprouted first.

I can't wait to see what works best, and look forward to finding ways to use our first official crop. We'll be setting a good portion of it aside for next year's seed, but we're also looking for plenty of different preservation techniques to try so we don't have to eat it all right away.

Take a look back at the process. Here's a link to all the garlic we planted and another to our afternoon of planting.

DIY Greenhouse

2011-03-16T10:18:00.001-04:00

We finally did it. We built a greenhouse. Goodbye front porch jungle and hello big garden. I'm sure I'll miss the greenery in the porch a little bit, but knowing that we'll have a much larger quantity will feel good. We're still going to germinate our vegetable seeds in the house, but once they're on their way, they'll have a dedicated home until they go in the field my parents have set aside for us.

I still remember the wall of heat, humidity and smell when I would open the door of the greenhouse at my grandparents'. I'd run up and down the narrow aisle between thousands of tomato and pepper plants. Baba would spend her days there prepping, seeding and transplanting each plant by hand. She did this year after year with seed saved from the last year's crop. I wish I had paid more attention, and I really wish she was still around for advice.

When my grandparents sold the farm, my dad kept the cedar from that greenhouse and leftover UV resistant plastic from another. Cedar is amazing. Even though it had been left outside for years, its rot-resistance made it more than adequate for our project. The only new material we used was four sheets of eight-dollar OSB (chipboard) to give the structure a bit of rigidity.

Now I know that we're incredibly blessed to have access to the land, tools, salvaged wood, plastic and especially a lift truck to move it into place, but it doesn't have to be as involved as what we've done here. Your greenhouse might be as simple as a cold-frame made from a salvaged window pane that adds a couple weeks onto the growing season of a small section of garden. Or it could be as elaborate as a full-size hoophouse that a tractor can pass through.

Our favourite gardening reference book, the Canadian Encyclopedia of Gardening, has an entire section dedicated to greenhouses and cold frames. I've been studying it quite a bit to figure out exactly what I have to do to make sure that my seedlings don't freeze. I've picked up a min/max thermometer so I can see what the temperature range is and I'm also doing some research into "heat banks". I'm thinking of putting some dark, water-filled barrels under the counter to warm up during the heat of the day and slowly release their heat at night to soften the sudden swings in temperature.

What first turned me on to the idea of building my own greenhouse is this site. He built his "$50 greenhouse" for a little under $150 when all was accounted for, with supplies you can get at any hardware store, and he has since provided plenty of updates and advice on what he would have done differently. There are plenty of online greenhouse resources. A quick Google or YouTube search of "DIY greenhouse" will give you more ideas than you need.

We still need to figure out how exactly to use this new thing we've created, but we're doing a lot of studying, and we're going to be visiting a few people for advice. If you have stories or advice, we'd love to hear from you.

Yogurt

2011-03-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

It's amazing how making more at home really opens your eyes to the wonders of nature. The western world has a huge obsession with cleanliness, refrigeration, and getting rid of bacteria, so when you start playing with recipes that tell you to leave milk on the counter overnight to let bacteria flourish, it feels a little odd.

We had been buying lots of plain yogurt, Jesse has always loved its tartness and it's something I'm getting used to with the help of some added berries. The kids haven't really had anything but plain yogurt, and if they've had the sugar-filled kind, I'm sure they think it's some kind of ice cream.

It wasn't until a twitter friend showed off her homemade yogurt did we jump in and buy a yogurt maker.

We make our yogurt with whole milk. We're big believers in our food being as close to natural as possible, and aren't sold on the idea that a fat-free, aspartame-sweetened snack laced with thickening and "mouthfeel" agents is really doing anything for our health.

So it's nice to take some whole, organic milk, add a bit of culture and make a nice, naturally thick yogurt. It tastes fresh, the bacteria is still very much alive and can work wonders in your gut, and that little extra bit of fat makes you actually feel full, so you don't need seconds.

If you pick up a yogurt maker, it'll include directions, but all you really need is a good thermos to hold the milk at the cozy temperature the bacteria loves. Just search Google or YouTube and you'll find people making it in all (some sketchy) sorts of ways.

Homemade Yogurt Recipe:

42 oz Organic Whole Milk
6 oz Plain Yogurt with live, active culture (or Yogurt Starter)

1. Heat your milk to 82°C/180°F (This supposedly helps it set thicker in the end).

2. Let your milk cool to luke warm (43°C/110°F)

3. Add some warm milk to the plain yogurt to thin it. Then add this mixture back into your milk.

4. Pour your mixture into your yogurt maker or a thermos wrapped in towels (you can rinse your thermos in hot water to pre-warm it).
5. Turn yogurt maker on or let the thermos sit in a warm place overnight (8 or so hours).
6. Put it in a jar or other container and let it set in the fridge.

So while getting out of the supermarket is pretty impossible when it comes to dairy, at least we have one less thing on our list.

Field Trip: Nickel Brook Brewery

2011-03-02T10:57:00.002-05:00

I vaguely recall seeing Nickel Brook's rooftop grain bin as my morning train headed to the city, but it wasn't until our visit to Feast of Fields that I learned that the brewery, just fifteen minutes away from my house, was producing organic beer. Peter Romano was giving out samples of his organic lager, and after tasting it, I thought it'd be worth a visit.

We make a point of sourcing locally as much as we can, and that includes beer. And it's especially nice when you can purchase a beer right from the brewery, keeping as much money as possible in the brewery and out of the distribution chain.

When I arrived, John, Peter's brother, gave me a bit of a history lesson starting with their u-brew roots (they still run a u-brew and winemaking facility attached to the brewery). John showed me around and took me downstairs to show me their first vessels that they converted from dairy tanks.

All of the equipment they buy for the brewery is sourced as locally as possible. If things aren't available in the province, John looks elsewhere in Canada, and and is even willing to pay a premium to keep his suppliers close.

John packed up a couple six-pack cases with beers for me to take home and sample, and I was surprised to see that they were all different varieties. I asked if he was going to focus on a beer or even three beers in the future and he, said yes. They don't really have a signature beer, and John seemed to know that they need a bit of a cornerstone to justify the other brews.

I love beer, and love tasting interesting beer, but my critiques are usually one of the following nuanced utterances: Mmmm, It's OK, or Ewww. So I decided to invite some friends over to help judge.

Their lineup is up and down, and our little group of friends were generally at a consensus. The Draft was a good, standard, drinkable choice. The Organic Lager which I had already sampled is tasty. And a flavourful private-label brew they do for the Pepperwood Café is really nice. None of us would normally choose a flavoured beer, so they were less popular choices, and the gluten-free was definitely interesting, however I would love to hear an opinion from someone who has some experience with other gluten-free brews.

With a little condensing, they could have a good, reliable base. I suggest starting with their organic lager. It's definitely a refreshing drink, and a good local choice.

Nickel Brook
864 Drury Lane
Burlington, Ontario
(905) 681-2739 (BREW)
www.nickelbrook.com

Field Trip: Cake & Loaf

2011-02-23T10:00:00.006-05:00

Josie and Nickey of Hamilton, Ontario's Cake and Loaf are the people that introduced us to the idea of a CSB. CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, where you subscribe and receive weekly fruit and vegetable boxes is fairly well known, but take that same concept and apply it to a weekly box filled with loaves of fresh bread, muffins, buns, treats and whatever else you sign up for, and you have a Community Supported Bakery.

These girls are the real deal, they bake everything from scratch and have a focus on local, organic and fair trade ingredients. They're proud of what goes into their creations–whole grains, organic flours, real butter, organic free range eggs and only fresh fruits and vegetables. Their eggs come from La Primavery Farms in Dundas, their flour from Oak Manor Farms in Tavistock and their milk is delivered from Hewitt's Dairy.

They have options beyond just baked good for their shares. They make preserves and sauces from market fruits and vegetables, and foraged or backyard-grown berries and fruit. None of their preserves contain added sugar or pectin and their roasted tomato ketchup sounds pretty amazing. They also stock very delicious Detour coffee.

We sampled delicious goodies all morning, and left with a huge paper bag filled with delicious, buns, bread, muffins, cupcakes, truffles, brownies, and even biscotti. You should definitely check out their site and see if one of their packages works for you. They cater to different diets as well, whether it's gluten-free or vegan. The cost isn't the same as if you were to pick up some Wonder bread and a few muffins at the grocery store, but just think of the ingredients that go into their baking, and you're not only supporting Cake and Loaf, you're supporting a beautifully local supply chain.

Josie and Nickey have been hitting some bumps on their way to open their storefront bakery so they're throwing what they call a Cake and Dough. It's essentially a bake sale to introduce people to their services and food as well as support a great cause. It'll be held on March 19th at Fenian Films on Locke Street in Hamilton, Ontario. Half of the funds will be put towards opening their storefront, while the other half will be donated to the Juravinski Centre. If you are interested, contact them for more details.

If you need a sample, Hero Mobile Cafe carries their vegan products at the Hamilton Farmers' Market, and they'll be sharing a stall with them at the Ottawa Street Farmers Market this summer. Or drop them a note about their Cake and Dough, and help them open a responsible and locally focused business.

California Colour

2011-02-21T11:10:00.003-05:00

I'm in Los Angeles right now for work, (hard life, I know) and I managed to have a few hours free yesterday morning so I made a point of visiting the Santa Monica Farmers' Market. It was a short walk from my hotel along main street, in a parking lot behind a massive line of valet-parked bicycles.

I've been dying for fresh citrus after seeing tree after tree loaded with oranges or lemons. It's been giving me pretty bad climate envy, as I know there's weather that would instantly kill these trees back in Canada.

I'm not sure what it is about the colour that brightens your day, but even the root vegetables–carrots, potatoes–were colourful. When we plant our garden this year, we're going to plant a variety of colours to, if anything, brighten the cold winter day we pull a few out of storage to eat.

Today I'm driving up the coast in a rental car. I have the morning free, so it'll be nice to see some agriculture. I hope the fact that it's a holiday and most roadside markets will be closed doesn't push me to theft. I know it's going to be tempting to pull the car over on a quiet road and help myself.

I might just have a fruit overload this week, but I think it's ok since we don't eat very much during the winter. I just wish I could bring some home with me.

I didn't bring my camera with me on the trip, so I took all the photographs with my phone. Not up to the usual level, but the colours came through nicely.

Field Trip: Seedy Saturday

2011-02-16T10:21:00.001-05:00

We made it out to our very first Seedy Saturday this past weekend. It was in Niagara and hosted by Linda Crago of Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm. We've been looking for interesting seeds as we plan our garden, and this was a great event to find lots of rare and endangered vegetables.

Seedy Saturdays (and Sundays) were first started in the late 1980s as a protest against the commercialization of seeds. The events were held as a way for people to share and therefore protect thousands of plant and vegetable varieties that were beginning to disappear.

While large seed corporations are working tirelessly in a lab somewhere to build The Tomato, small seed organizations and individuals are working tirelessly to keep all other tomatoes alive. These small seed savers champion genetic diversity and open pollination. They are against the idea that a seed can be patented and relish the differences that diversity brings.

I wrote about the differences between hybrid and open-pollinated seeds in a post before we went to the event. And since then I've come across a wonderful video on YouTube profiling Baker Creek Seeds, an heirloom seed distributor in the U.S.

Seeds of Diversity, a pioneer in heirloom and open-pollinated seed saving maintains an extensive list of Seedy Saturdays happening across Canada on their event listing page. They also have a simple and handy guide to saving your own seeds, although I find YouTube one of my most used resources.

We're looking forward to growing a lot of open-pollinated vegetables this year, and we're very excited that we can and will save seeds for next year's crop.

We're Winners!

2011-02-14T13:44:00.007-05:00

I just realized that we never officially announced this on the blog. We are the happy winners of a Canadian Food Blog Award! The news made the rounds on Twitter and our Facebook group, but ironically, never made here.

We were finalists in three categories, and ended up winning the photography award. It's nice to see that people are connecting to the photography, and that our philosophy of providing more than just 'food porn' is paying off.

A big thank-you to everyone who reads us, and to the Canadian Food Bloggers Association for putting the awards together. We hope that we're inspiring people to go beyond the pretty pictures and visit and try some of the things we write about!

In the spirit of photography, and seeing that it's St. Valentine's Day, I leave you with an ~~old~~ photo of my valentine under our cherry tree.

Posted by Jesse, accidentally logged in as Melanie.

Seedy Saturday

2011-02-11T00:11:00.000-05:00

We're going to Seedy Saturday. I know it sounds a little, well, seedy, but it's not. It's a seed exchange being held at Balls Falls this Saturday. I know that sounds especially seedy, but again, it's not. It's actually a conservation area with a huge waterfall, and a name that distracts you (or maybe just me) from its beautiful setting.

Seedy Saturdays (and/or Sundays) are events where people get together and share heirloom and open-pollinated seeds. Most seeds you see at garden centres today are hybrids, which means that their parent plants are carefully crossbred to produce a specific plant with specific traits. These traits are usually good, like, higher yield or sweeter taste, but there's one big drawback. The next generation seeds produced by that hybrid plant are usually duds and if they do work, they often don't continue the good traits of their hybrid parents.

Heirlooms, on the other hand, are open-pollinated. If you plant an heirloom pepper seed, the peppers that grow on that plant will have the same seeds as its parent, and you can save however many you need for next year's crop. It's beautifully open-sourced. In today's world, where corporations are patenting seeds, and hybrids force you to buy new seeds every spring, a seed swap is a refreshing event. It reminds us of how nature works. That it doesn't belong to one person or corporation. We're all entitled to it.

The Niagara Seedy Saturday is being hosted by Linda Crago, who runs an heirloom vegetable farm called Tree & Twig. We heard about it on Twitter and we're excited to attend. Visit Seeds of Diversity's event listing to see how many events are happening across Canada over the next few weekends. You don't need to bring seeds to swap, just show up and pick up some seeds to try. And if all goes well, you'll never have to buy those seeds again.

Field Trip: Devon Acres Farm

2011-02-09T09:30:00.006-05:00

Jesse's mom, Jane has been out dairy cow shopping lately. She's considered Holstien (too much milk) checked out Brown Swiss (too big) and more recently Canadienne, an endangered heritage breed native to Canada. Last weekend she mentioned that she had connected with a local farmer who has a Canadienne as well as some Milking Shorthorns. She made a date to kick their tires, and invited us to come along.

We drove the snow-covered, winding driveway to Devon Acres Farm and met Robin Kirby, who walked us over the crest of a beautiful hill, past two working horses to the barn. The farm is surprisingly ancient. Most jobs are done by hand and others requiring fuel guzzling tractors are done with the horses.

Aerron milking one of their Milking Shorthorns.

We learned that they milk the cows for their own consumption and that their main farm operation is a CSA, which offers mainly vegetables as well as organically raised grass-fed beef and lamb. In the summer you can find them at the Brantford Farmers Market, and they've been known to show up with a vegetable-filled democrat buggy, drawn by one of their horses.

The shorthorns were beautiful and munching on their hay as Aerron, Robin's son, began milking. He let Jesse give it a try and he managed to squeeze out a bit of milk. It wasn't too bad for a first attempt, but when Aerron took over again, it was easy to see his years of experience as he squeezed a few litres out in a matter of seconds.

Robin Kirby leaning on their Canadienne & Their Border-Cheviot sheep.

Robin and Aerron's families use the milk to drink raw and make their own yogurt, kefir and butter. I bet it's delicious. That's why we're doing all this cow shopping, so that one day, we can shake off the last mercy-hold of the grocery store - dairy.

Devon Acres Farm
101 Robinson Road
RR#4 Brantford, Ontario
(519) 752-3980

Decadent Delights Chocolate Brunch

2011-02-07T15:30:00.001-05:00

Jesse and I have been invited to be guest judges at the Decadent Delights Chocolate Brunch, a fundraiser for Aberdeen Health & Community Services Foundation and Norfolk Cardiac Club. We get to share a table with the mayor of Brantford as well as some local media personalities, which feels a bit odd for us, but should be fun!

The not-so-secret ingredient for the event is chocolate, which is not exactly the most local food, but, since you can't find it locally, we're happy to indulge. The events of the day include a Silent Auction, prizes, chocolate competition, brunch, decadent desserts and lots of chocolate.

Competitors in the competition include:
Flyer's Cafe & Bakery - Dunnville, ON
Leigh Ann's Cupcakery - Brantford, ON
The Belworth House - Waterford, ON
The Brantford Golf & Country Club - Brantford, ON
The Rustic Mug - St. George, ON
Vida Doce Chocolates - Caledonia, ON

The fundraiser will take place at Brantford Golf and Country Club on February 13th. Tickets are $60 each, and can be purchased by calling 519-756-5300. It feels funny that a couple of spare-time food bloggers get to share a table with the mayor, but hey, we'll take it!

Field Trip: William Dam Seeds

2011-02-02T10:08:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago we visited our allotment at my parents' place. It's a quarter-acre that will hopefully grow enough vegetables to see us through, not only the summer, but with a little storage and preservation, right through to next spring. The spreadsheet of seeds, root-stock, rhizomes and plants that we're going to need to make it a reality seems to be growing on a daily basis, as we plan to grow for self-sufficiency.

William Dam Seeds is where we've been getting the majority of our seeds for the past few years. They're located in Flamborough, just west of Dundas, Ontario and their retail outlet is rarity with its aisles of seeds. It's quite overwhelming when you first arrive, and we were told of how common it is for someone to arrive wanting to buy "carrot seeds" when, with a quick look at their catalogue, you discover that they offer a couple pages worth of carrot varieties.

William Dam's seeds are untreated, which means they're untouched as far as pesticides are concerned. They made this transition way back in the 60s when William Dam himself had a bad reaction to pesticide treated seeds. Many seed suppliers chemically treat their seeds as they might be susceptible to certain pests or diseases, but sometimes those pesticides can still be detected in the fully mature plant. Their seeds are also GMO-free, and in many cases, certified organic.

They don't have all varieties available as organic seed, but they're slowly working on it. Stocking too much organic seed too fast compromises their ultimate goal, which happens to be their motto: 'seeds of highest quality.' And unproductive seed that happens to be organic isn't helping anyone.

They're all stocked up for spring at the store, but if you can't make the trip, visit their website and order a catalogue. Dreaming of the garden is always a beautiful escape during the coldest days of winter.

William Dam Seeds
279 Hwy # 8, West Flamborough, Ontario
905-628-6641
www.damseeds.ca

Field Trip: Detour Roasters Cafe

2011-01-26T12:05:00.003-05:00

It wasn't hard for us to become instant fans of Detour Coffee when we first noticed their sandwich board a few summers ago. It took us up an alley to the back of a building in downtown Dundas, Ontario. Kaelin McCowan's hidden coffee roasting operation was something decidedly cool in the almost too quaint town, and it was inspiring to meet someone not only discovering their passion, but acting upon it. We followed up with a Field Trip back in August.

Since then, Kaelin and his wife Crystal have opened Detour Roasters Cafe in the front of the building. It's the perfect collision of Kaelin's coffee zeal and Crystal's culinary inclinations. We were lucky enough to go to their official launch on Saturday and sample a lot of what the new cafe has to offer.

Kaelin and Crystal.

Drawing on her New Zealand heritage, where there are few formalities when it comes to entertaining, Crystal ultimately wants people to be relaxed. She envisions a space where you hold a business meeting one day, and bring the kids the next.

Smoked tomato & sweet pepper soup and beef and barley with wild mushroom soup. Their pastrami is smoked in-house.

They make what they can in-house and source the rest as local as possible. Their meat, smoked on the premises, comes from Hundred Mile Market, and their bread is sourced from De La Terre Bakery in Niagara. Crystal spent time this past summer preserving. She made jams, pickles, and ketchup and they make all of their own mayo and dressings. Tim, one of the chefs, has a pretty strong philosophy of whole animal consumption, which he'll get to exercise often once he starts bringing in whole pigs from his parents' farm.

Yogurt & berries topped with homemade granola and their fresh muffins and scones.

They keep the menu simple, so they can focus on quality. We tasted delicious soups, sandwiches, cookies, and brownies, and the homemade granola is something we would be tempted to have every morning if we were just a bit closer.

Right now they are open 8 to 6, Monday to Friday, and 8 to 5 on Saturdays. Sundays are in the works and they might even be open 7 days starting next week.

If you ever find yourself in the Hamilton area, make the trip to the beautiful village of Dundas. It's nestled in a unique little nook in the Niagara Escarpment that feels miles away from where it really is. And then just relax with one of the best coffees and sandwiches you'll have in a while.

Detour Roasters Cafe
41 King St. West
Dundas, Ontario

www.detourcoffee.com

Field Trip: Fenwood Farm

2011-01-19T09:30:00.006-05:00

A few years ago when we first moved to the Hamilton area, we heard of a chicken farm that supposedly had the best chicken ever. It took us a while, but we finally made it to to Fenwood Farm via a series of country roads and a long tree-lined laneway.

Since that day, it's been our family's exclusive source for good, healthy chicken. We've tried to make it a bi-weekly stop in our effort to stay out of the grocery store. Our basic plan is this: Dearsley's Meats for fresh beef, bacon, two dozen eggs, cheese, and then two weeks later, Fenwood Farm for fresh and frozen whole chickens, and another batch of eggs.

The store is located behind Carol and John Fennema's home and is lined with freezers filled with not only chicken, but a great selection of pork, wild-caught seafood, venison, Mapletons organic ice cream, and their own beef and turkey. They also stock emu oil, lip balm, a variety of soaps, honey, fair-trade organic coffee and even organic pet food.

John and Carol Fennema have been on their 100 acre farm for 20 years, 18 of which has been organic. John grows all the grain to feed the organic chickens, they raise their own beef which roam free, and have free range egg laying hens in the gorgeous old red barn.

The surprising fact is how many chickens they process each month. Beyond the laying hens, there are no other chickens on the premises. Their meat chickens are on their son's farm close to Cambridge and they process around 2,000 organic chickens and 1,000 natural chickens from it each week. It's a big number, but given the list of restaurants and stores they supply, it makes sense.

I asked about the living conditions for the birds and Carol smiled as she said that the birds have plenty of room to run around, have nice shavings for beds, and lots of outdoor access when weather permits. The plan was for us to follow Carol over to see the chickens, but we ran out of time. It's still on our to-do list.

We're pretty familiar with what organic means, but Fenwood also sells "natural" chicken, and that word is often in a grey area. So we asked. Their natural chicken is a close second to their organic chicken, with the exception of non-organic, but still vegetarian feed, and outdoor access isn't mandatory. Visit this site to clear up some of the language.

If you're looking for a source of responsibly raised chicken, drop by and meet the Fennemas or find out where you can find their chicken on their website. They're committed to great chicken and good health. And with each purchase you are encouraged to take a free bag of chicken soup bones. They not only make a delicious stock, but they ensure the whole chicken gets used.

Visit the second post ever on our blog for our favourite roasting recipe and why buying a whole chicken is important.

Fenwood Farm
774 Sawmill Road
Ancaster, Ontario

(905) 765-1479
1-800-373-7686

www.fenwoodfarm.com

Bloggers on the Radio

2011-01-17T22:42:00.002-05:00

If you missed it, I was on McMaster University radio, CFMU 93.3 recently talking about our blog on a show called The Grapevine. Hosted by two young ladies, Grace and Alex, it highlights local food initiatives in the Hamilton area. Grace also has her own blog to complement it.

My show was recorded on December 7, and just made it on air this past Friday. I was terribly worried, since I had a nasty cold and was totally overdosed on decongestant. A few of my facts were pulled out of a pseudoephedrine fog, but other than that it turned out all right.

If you want to listen to the show, I hacked the matrix and you can download the mp3 of the show here and listen to it anytime.

Or you can stream it from their website. First, hit the stop button at the top of the window to stop the live feed. Then, click on "programming," and look for "The Grapevine" in tiny letters under "Friday." I'm on the 14.01.2011 show.

Canadian Food Blog Awards

2011-01-13T09:00:00.019-05:00

We were nominated for the Canadian Food Blog Awards this year and were surprised to hear that we were finalists in three, count 'em, three, categories - Best New Blog (under 12 months), Best Seasonal/Local Blog, and Best Photography. The funny part is, we might not have ever known if someone didn't congratulate us on Twitter.

The judges list is pretty impressive and it's a bit scary thinking of all these amazing food professionals judging our amateur work. Nevertheless, we're quite excited as voting closes this Saturday.

So in the spirit of photography, and because we couldn't find the time to do a proper "year in review" post during the holidays, here are a few favourites that we were lucky enough to capture last year.

And no, these aren't for the judges' benefit, they're probably all done voting by now. But if not...

Adolf Neumann, Beekeeper

Planting our first real crop of garlic

Grimo Nut Nursery

Rick, from Wilsonville Organics

And finally the video from our trip to the Schibli Organic Dairy Farm.

Field Trip: Our Allotment

2011-01-12T09:30:00.014-05:00

This week's Field trip might seem a bit light, but to us, it isn't. We didn't visit an exciting wood-fired bakery or get treated to a local meal at a fancy restaurant. In fact, we visited my parents' house to check out a vacant piece of land that we hope will feed us for a year.

We live on a 70'x70' lot in town, and most of it is shaded by black walnut trees, which poison the soil for most vegetables. The front yard isn't much better - the gravelly strip gets a fair amount of sun, but we had to bring in a lot of dirt so anything other than grass would grow. We built a few 4'x4' garden boxes and did relatively well for what we had to work with. But what they gave us, a few tomato plants, some cucumbers, were more of a novelty than anything practical.

So that's how we find ourselves in this cold, snowy field. My parents, who have some land in Norfolk County, Ontario, have offered up this little, quarter-acre plot for us. After assuring them that the full maintenance and all failures and successes fall on our shoulders, we’ve started planning. We’ve picked out most of what we want to grow, and are planning a small greenhouse to get everything started. The greenhouse itself will be built from salvaged pieces of my grandfather’s greenhouse which started year after year of tomatoes, cabbages, peppers and more.

This year we hope to tip that scale away from novelty and actually produce a sufficient amount of food on our own. Our goal is to be as self-sufficient as possible – especially next winter. Come february 2012, we want only one thing in our shopping cart – milk.

Stuff we got for Christmas- Scissors

2011-01-10T20:45:00.001-05:00

Welcome to a new little segment on our blog. We don't want to share everything with you (new long-johns), we just want to share a few interesting things we found in our Christmas stash.

We have always used scissors in the kitchen for cutting everyting from pizza to meat but we've just used the ordinary old plastic-handled kind until Jesse got me these new ones from Lee Valley.

I am pretty excited to have some official, sanitary kitchen shears. What makes them so sanitary? With a quick twist, they come apart for super easy cleaning. No surprises between blades and no meat-juice hiding plastic seams.

Field Trip in a Can

2011-01-05T09:31:00.001-05:00

Meet Sunday night dinner. It's one of those meals that feels just as nice as it tastes. Knowing that most of the ingredients came from local farmers and our garden is great, but the fact that we're making it in January is pretty exciting. We can recall the intimate history of each major ingredient, with only the exception of the flour in the pasta, which was grown out west.

The herbs in our sauce were from our garden and dried at the end of the season. The tomatoes (that we canned) and peppers (that we roasted and froze) were grown at Wilsonville Organics. The mushrooms were grown on our shiitake log and then dried. The beef in the meatballs is from the Meloun's farm, next to my in-laws. And the onion and garlic comes from our CSA food box.

The only downside is that these local winter meals are a special occasion for us. Last summer, we only dipped our toes in preserving (figuratively), but this summer, we're going to jump right in. As we spend evenings picking out seeds for our garden, not only are we picking things we would love to eat in the summer, but we're planting for the winter as well. We've got big plans, and are adopting a quarter acre for next year.

I am already imagining shelves filled with strawberry jam, dill pickles, and perhaps pickled asparagus. We're going to freeze more corn and roasted peppers, and at least triple the amount of tomatoes. I'd like to freeze a variety of vegetables to use in soups, stews, and pasta dishes, dehydrate many more herbs, make some fruit juices, and even try making some different pie fillings. It seems like a lot, but if we check each one off when it's in season, it should spread itself out nicely over the summer.

It's sort of like planning for a baby. Jesse's been building some beautiful boxes to store our preserves in and his dad is excited to build a big root cellar in the side of a hill for our vegetables that will store.

If you are new to canning, or looking for a helpful and up-to-date reference, a great book to get you going is "Canning & Preserving with Ashley English." We're totally crushing on Ashley's Homemade Living series - they're pretty perfect. As in her other books, everything is laid out logically. Charts provide a checklist so all of your tools are in order, interspersed with stories featuring real people, and their experiences and advice, while ideas for each season are organized so you don't miss anything.

It's helpful to read up early. We were learning as we went last year, which was frantic at times and didn't leave time to make the best decisions. We ended up with a few jars of watery tomato sauce and a few others that pour out like molasses. But it's ok. By this time next year we'll be pros, and well-fed. And the best part about it is that we'll be able to enjoy a meal that is uniquely ours. With unique, nuanced flavours that are only in one of our jars.

Field Trip: Hockley Valley Resort

2010-12-29T09:57:00.015-05:00

I wasn't quite sure of what to expect when we were invited to visit Hockley Valley Resort. We're not big resort people, in fact, that word scares me a bit. It conjures up images of badly named cocktails and hours-old buffets, so we were hoping for the best. If anything, the drive up to Hockley Valley Resort is worth the trip. We try to avoid highways, and take back roads as much a possible, and this was the perfect trip for that as it wound us along the Niagara Escarpment, through Caledon, to just east of Orangeville.

Hockley Valley is located at the highest point in southern Ontario, where the Niagara Escarpment meets the Oak Ridges Moraine. It's a very hilly landscape and the source of three major rivers, the Humber, Grand, and Nottawasaga, each flowing in different directions.

Nestled deep in a valley, the resort feels remote, and it's hard to believe you're just an hour from Toronto. As we pulled in, we noticed the ski hills past the main building and on the other side, a fence around the garden and its snow covered furrows.

John Paul Adamo, President and General Manager, is trying to make the resort more locally-focussed, and the garden was his first step in that direction. He told us that expectations were low when it was first planted this past spring, but throughout the summer it provided nearly 90% of the fresh produce for the kitchen.

This year's focus was to see how much they could grow fresh for the kitchen, next year's test, says John Paul, is to see how far they can stretch that into the winter, with greenhouses and preserving.

The two-acre garden (just under the size of 2 football fields or the size of Ikea) is their main experiment in seeing how locally they can source their food, but for what they don't grow within a few hundred feet of the resort they rely on local farmers. They support local farmers so much that they're now host to a seasonal farmer's market, and their commitment shows in the fact that they don't charge a fee to farmers who set up a booth.

As part of the effort do do more in-house, John Paul recently installed a "salumi cellar" where they cure their own traditional Italian-style meats. They source boar from just down the road and other meats as well as cheeses from Niagara.

The resort has a total of 3 restaurants, all of which are well-appointed and comfortable, but it's Tavola that appeals to us. Simply meaning Table in English, the idea is that, (season-permitting) you visit the garden with the chef and essentially pick out your meal. John Paul realizes that a lot of people just want to be served, and that's what the other restaurants are for. But for others, like us who are interested in where their food literally comes from and love watching it as it's prepared by the chef, Tavola is a remarkable experience.

We sat at the chef's table, a butcher-block bar right inside the kitchen, and sampled meats and cheeses and house-made bread as our chef, Daniel Mezzolo made some fresh gnocchi out of Reid's Potatoes, from just around the corner. John Paul showed off some garlic and preserves from the garden and talked about how they serve their water. Instead of importing it, they bottle their own in-house, still, or sparkling from their carbonation system.

The gnocchi was soft and tender and topped with oxtail that had been braised for over six hours. Dessert was tasty and consisted of three small bite size treats, first was a pineapple ravioli stuffed with local ricotta, peanuts, and orange zest, topped with a mandarin sauce. There was also a piece of Torrone, a classic Italian candy, and a delicious castagnon, a doughnut-like dessert made with flour, honey, eggs, lemon and rum, topped with caramelized condensed milk.

If you want to have an upscale dinner, then choose one with wholesome roots. You'll enjoy bread, pasta, capicollo and sparkling water all made in-house. You'll also get the company and conversation of chef Daniel. And if you have any comments after your meal, feel free to grab a sharpie and leave them on the kitchen wall alongside the others.

Hockley Valley Resort
793522 Mono 3rd Line, R.R. #1
Orangeville, Ontario, Canada
L9W 2Y8

1-866-HOCKLEY (462-5539)
www.hockley.com

Homemade Kettle Corn

2010-12-26T15:56:00.001-05:00

Kettle corn is my popcorn of choice, barely beating out day-old theatre popcorn. It's something we pick up a lot at farmer's markets and festivals, and it's great because it's not as sickeningly sweet as caramel corn, with a hit of salt.

We bought a hand-crank Whirly Pop a while ago, and it's all we use to make our popcorn. I think we got it from Lee Valley, which is one of our favourite places to shop. Check it out here. The Whirly Pop is aluminum and they now carry a stainless steel one which we'd prefer over aluminum, even though it's not as rusticly sexy as the original Whirly. I know Crate and Barrel carries a version too. Chances are, if we went to your wedding recently, you got one from us.

We're trying to get back to simpler ways of doing things, and popcorn is one of those things that a lot of people now assume comes from a plastic-wrapped, pre-garnished, microwaveable pouch. So we decided to change it for our kids. I don't think they've ever seen popcorn come out of the microwave.

Popcorn can be prepared in so many better ways. Let's look at a few.

1. In a Whirly Pop!
2. Screw spending your money on a Whirly Pop and just do it in a big pot (with a lid) that you already have. We're all for having less things fill up the kitchen.
3. But you love your microwave, so just put 1/4 cup of kernels in an uncoated brown paper bag and nuke it like you would standard microwavable popcorn.
4. Buy one of the 300 air poppers from the eighties at Value Village.

If you want to make delicious kettle corn, you'll have to cook it on the stove top, since you need to add the sugar while it's heating up. Here's how I did my first few batches.

Click here for a printable PDF of this recipe card.

Since our first try, we've melted our leftover halloween chocolates in a double-boiler and drizzled it over the popcorn. We packed it in mason jars and handed it out at Christmas. I think it was a hit.

Field Trip: Chickens in the Yard

2010-12-22T09:58:00.002-05:00

Keeping backyard chickens is a pretty hot topic these days. It's now legal in most U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, however, according to this list, it's legal in only five minor Canadian cities. Stories and debates pop up in Canadian media all of the time, but they seem pretty pathetic, especially when you look back over that list and see some surprising U.S. cities on it.

Jane, Jesse's mom has been keeping chickens for around 10 years. She has a great set-up in an old tobacco kiln with a dirt floor, plenty of sunlight, nesting boxes filled with beautiful straw, and a large fenced-in area outside. She keeps chickens for eggs and they easily supply all of her needs as well as those of her four kids, their spouses, and five grand-kids. The cost of keeping her flock of 10 is low, and she looks forward to visiting them every morning and evening.

Once the birds learn to nest and lay their eggs in the chicken coop, she lets them run free, scavenging for grubs and fertilizing the yard. This really reduces their need for feed and gives them a much more natural and balanced diet. Just take a look at their eggs. The yolks from their summer eggs are a deep orange and more flavourful than any factory-farmed egg you'll eat.

One thing Jesse and I are constantly educating people on are the basics of egg production. In most cases you will get an egg a day from a productive hen. There's also the fact that no, a chick won't form from an egg if you left it there in the chicken coop. Hens lay eggs regardless of the presence of a rooster. But if you had a rooster, which Jane has, those eggs would technically be fertilized. But then the hen would actually have to brood, or sit on those eggs to provide the conditions for the chick to develop. That brooding instinct has mostly been lost, and modern farms almost always use incubators to allow chicks to develop. In fact, you actually have to search out breeds that still have a brooding instinct.

So why a rooster then? Well, when Jane first picked up the pullets, or immature hens, you couldn't tell the gender, and a rooster slipped through. But he's not a bad thing to have around, since he'll establish a pecking order that without him would have seen a hen assume his position, and she'd probably stop laying eggs while she took care of business. So, if you're going to have one unproductive chicken, it's nice to have such a handsome one.

If you are interested in keeping chickens or want to study up on some theory (in the case that it's illegal where you are), a definite must-read is Keeping Chickens with Ashley English. It's the only chicken book you'll ever need and covers everything from preparing for chickens, to selecting breeds, to recipes. Everything is presented in a beautiful and logical manner. Charts organize important information into easy to read sections such as one that tells what you need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, annual and biannual basis.

One section is dedicated to building coops and above, you can see her plans for a chicken tractor, which is a movable, floorless coop which allows the chickens to have contact with the ground and all of the nutrition it provides. Ashley keeps a beautiful blog called Small Measure and you can get the daily scoop on her flock and other enviable aspects of her life there.

Jesse is a bit of nerd when it comes to coop designs. He wanted to share a few and his absolute favourite is this vintage camper inspired coop. But there are others like the Scandinavian-inspired Kippen House, the overly-molded Eglu and the suitably-shaped Nogg. There are even some beautiful, truly architectural coops.

People generalize about the messiness of keeping backyard chickens, but like anything, it's relative. Would you keep 20 dogs in a small urban backyard? Probably not. Maybe three chickens would be perfect, and you could keep them in a modern, easy-to-clean coop. It's also exciting to see what the eggs look like. They almost never look like anything you'd pick up in the supermarket. We were particularly excited the first time we saw the deep red of Jane's Welsummer eggs. And what the hens lack in overtly warm affection, they'll make up for in toasty warm omelettes.

Field Trip: Brew Man Group

2010-12-15T09:00:00.010-05:00

Driving through suburban Waterloo felt unusual when you consider some of the other subjects of our blog. We're used to country roads and rolling hills, but it's this innocuous neighbourhood that hosted one of the best Field Trips we've had to date. The main idea behind our blog is to get out of the grocery store and its comfortable grip. One way to do that is to find alternative sources, but the other is to grow, preserve, or in this case, brew it yourself.

Ages ago, on the homestead, summers and especially autumn were very busy times. Harvesting, preserving and getting everything ready for winter was more than enough to keep everyone busy. But when the cold days of winter came, there was less to do and this was the perfect time for brewing. The barley, harvested in autumn, was malted and brewed into large batches of beer to last right through to the next harvest.

I knew I had found the right house. It looked identical to the next one, except for one feature. It had what looked like a drug lab out front. Neil Partridge came out to greet me and introduced me to his makeshift boiler and mash tun. I first met Neil at Spirit Tree Estate Cidery a few weekends ago when we were visiting them for the blog. He worked there for the summer and just happened to drop in. He was telling Tom, one of Spirit Tree's owners about winning a home brewing award when I asked if I could come by next time he was brewing.

Neil first tried brewing at home a couple years ago which turned out to be "a disaster." He didn't try it again until this year when he actually had the room as well as some reliable, albeit still make-shift, equipment. He calls himself a "partner brewer" with his roommate Dan, and this day they were working on batches 15 and 16 - a burnt orange scotch ale for Neil and a strong dunkelweissen (dark wheat beer) for Dan. By partnering up, they can help each other with their batches and fast track trying different brews.

A quick lesson in brewing: Beer is generally made with four ingredients. Malted barley, hops, yeast, and water. Barley is malted by allowing it to germinate, or actually start growing which releases enzymes. The germination is then halted by roasting the grains, and the more they're roasted, the darker they, and the resulting beer become.

The barley is then run through a mill and cracked open. The now exposed starches are released when soaked in hot water and the enzymes from the malting process digest it into sugar. This sweet liquid, known as wort is strained off and is the base of the beer. The wort is then boiled to stop the enzymes while hops are added to balance out the sweetness and also act as a natural preservative. It's then transferred into a fermenting vessel to which yeast is added. The yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Once the yeast has digested most of the sugar, it becomes dormant and settles while the liquid on top is transferred to another container to age.

After aging, commercial brewers will then take the beer and carbonate it, however Neil uses a more traditional method called bottle conditioning. He adds a tiny bit more sugar at bottling so that the remaining yeast reactivates to produce a little more carbon dioxide in the sealed bottle.

Neil's other roommates, Ilya and Stuart, and a new helper Jon, round out the group that calls themselves the Brew Man Group, although they have been recently considering a change to the Yeasty Boys. The rest of the guys help out at every step of the way and earn their share of the beer.

Watching Neil, it was clear he had not only a passion, but also a skill at brewing. He's still young, but at every stage he tasted and knew exactly what flavour he was looking for. At one point, he spent a surprising amount of time with a blowtorch finding the right amount of burn flavour in some melted sugar and orange zest to add to his brew.

Neil's stout, which he calls (ahem) NightingAle was very good. The head took a little while to settle, but it was delicious. It won him a best stout, and second best overall in a recent Canadian Amateur Brewers Association (CABA) contest, which isn't too bad considering there were entries from all across the country.

One day soon, I hope to brew my own beer and I'll be sure to have Neil weigh in so it's not only drinkable to me. It was really inspiring to see a group of young guys all pitch in on a project like this. I wouldn't expect home brewing to cross their minds, but it did, and I was very impressed with what they could craft out of some old kegs and a Gatorade cooler.

Field Trip: Dearsley's Meats

2010-12-08T09:00:00.022-05:00

Instead of being a dreaded task, grocery shopping has become something we love to do every Saturday morning. Especially when, as far as the kids are concerned, it involves a free pepperette. Every second week we make an effort to get to Dearsley's Meats just outside Ancaster, Ontario, near the old hamlet of Copetown. We take the scenic route, which is a series of gravel and "closed" roads along the edge of the escarpment. It's a spectacular little drive that helps you forget those days of looking for a parking spot at the supermarket on a Saturday morning.

Dearsley's Meats is a local, family owned and operated butcher shop that first opened in 1914. Gary and Darlene Dearsley are the 4th generation to run the business that was originally known for their sausages and head cheese, but Gary has since switched the farm over to beef.

Although not certified organic, their cows are naturally raised, hormone and chemical free, and happy. The Dearsley's grow their own feed and hay and the cattle get plenty of oats, corn, molasses, and grass in the pasture.

Because of government regulations, their cows are slaughtered at Millgrove packers in Waterdown before being brought back to hang in the cooler at Dearsley's for 14 days. They butcher their meat and sell individual cuts, but are also happy to take custom orders. You can even order a full or half cow for your freezer.

The other meat in the shop is all natural and locally-sourced. They get mennonite pork from Arthur delivered 2-3 times a week and chicken from St. George. Their eggs come from Carlise, but on Saturday, if you arrive early enough, you can get some free range eggs from around the corner. We always grab two dozen.

They have a selection of cheese that they get from the Kitchener/Elmira area. I thought it was pretty neat how they sell their meat to Weils bakery in Westdale, who makes meat pies and other prepared dishes, and then sells them back to Dearsley's to sell in the store.

This past weekend, we picked up a partially cooked, bone-in ham. Darlene convinced us that it would be delicious, and she sure was right! Normally you have to place an order for a bone-in ham, as they are usually butchered to order. However, because of the time of they year, they have a couple available in the store every week.

Life moves a bit more slowly when you start looking for better ways to source your food. You can't go 120 km/h down the road to Dearsley's Meats, and you can't storm in and think that everything you want will be in stock. We now know to call ahead to put our name on some free-range eggs before we come, and to order a turkey a good two weeks before christmas. They operate in a different world than the timeless 24-hour supermarket. If you don't think about your food before you come, you might just miss it.

Turkey Note: If you would like to place an order for a Christmas turkey this year, be sure to have your order in by this Saturday!

Dearsley's Meats
1154 Power Line Rd E
Ancaster, Ontario
(905) 648-3560

Starting with Seeds

2010-12-01T09:00:00.021-05:00

What was it that made me grow a plant in our yard, and from nothing more than a seed? Is it a primal need to be a provider? I'm not sure, but it's a spectacular feeling when you pick the fruit of a plant that you started from a speck on your windowsill. Even if it's a tomato the size of a grape, and is one of only a handful on the only plant that matured in your barely fertile, mostly shaded soil.

That first year was a totally pathetic attempt like most pathetic first attempts at anything, but we're going into our fifth year of a steep learning curve and look, we've already planted a couple hundred bulbs of garlic. It feels pretty good.

After buying random generic packets of seeds at the grocery store or Home Depot, I did some digging and found out that William Dam Seeds is a beautiful 15 minute drive from our house. I visited after reading an article about heirloom vegetables and picked up some tomato seed. They have a huge variety of untreated seeds, including an organically-grown selection - it's worth the drive.

When I was young we ordered big bags of sweet corn seed, and each little kernel was a bright candy pink. This "treated seed" is coated in a pink dust that is usually a mix of anti-fungals and other anti-microbials. I wasn't allowed to touch them without gloves on or breath the dust that came out of the hopper as my dad poured a bag into the seeder. I don't know how necessary treating seed is in all cases, but I'm happy I can let my son help out when we're starting seeds without worrying.

To fill in the gaps that a larger seed supplier can't fill are people like Laura Watt, who sells organic, heirloom seed under her company's name, Cubit's Organics. She started sourcing and saving rare varieties of heirloom seeds and then started selling them to friends and eventually everyone through her online Etsy store. Laura is among many who fill a great niche with organic, heirloom seeds–varieties that your great-grandparents would recognize before industrialization's massive cull of "inferior" varieties. All you need to do is take a look at her store and be blown away by the shapes, colours and varieties.

This summer I met a gentleman named Garrett Pittenger who works with Seeds of Diversity. It's a Canadian organization that connects growers and seed producers across Canada and works to maintain diversity in our plants. Garrett explained that part of the importance of this is our climate. If you wanted to grow chili peppers in Canada, it'd be smart to pick a variety with a shorter growing season, or one that can tolerate cooler temperatures. But if you grab a packet of chili pepper seeds off of the wire seed rack at Home Depot, chances are they've been shipped from Mexico or the southern U.S. and have never felt our climate in their genetic history.

This isn't a horrible thing. William Dam's seeds are sourced from all over the globe and they select their product to work well with our climate. It's also an amazing thing to be able to find something online you've never heard of before and give it a try. But sometimes a variety exists that has worked with our seasons and become frost or short-season tolerant and Seeds of Diversity's mandate is to make those varieties more accessible.

So am I a wierdo to think that seed catalogues are the best holiday reading? I do feel a little out of place reading them on the GO train while I commute to work, but the promise of growing something you've never tasted before makes the catalogue a bit of a treasure hunt.

Visit William Dam Seeds, and Richter's Herbs, and order a catalogue. Visit Cubit's Organics and support a small, local producer or find a variety and see who grows it from Seeds of Diversity. Or let us know if you have a favourite seed supplier or a favourite heirloom.