Fresh From the Farm Round Up

I've certainly gotten behind on the gardening updates again, but this year I did have some pretty fun first time successes in the garden.  One was "the watermelon" (yes, I use "the" since only one survived due to the sporadic watering during an usually dry summer--an ongoing issue that I will attempt to ameliorate next year!) and also the Ronde de Nice French zucchinis that my friend Linda claimed were the best tasting zukes she's eaten.  (We had resurrected a garden plot that hadn't been planted in for over a year so the soil was quite fertile, making for some happy squashes, cucumbers, and deer since it wasn't fenced in.  However, given the abundance of production, we were ok with sharing a little this year.)  Not pictured: the many traditional zucchinis that tried to take over the world, whose appearances were preceded by exclamations of "Oh, shoot!  We missed another one!" and "Quick!  Pick it before it grows any bigger!"

An a-ha! moment came when I realized that the gorgeous poppies growing in the cutting garden were where the poppyseeds that I loved in my muffins and pastries came from.  These beauties did not do well as cut flowers but their pods--either still green or dried--were a favorite for bouquets, and the structure within was just amazing.  I spent some time laboriously harvesting the poppyseed and now I've got a little jar stored to make some muffins or cake with sometime soon.

Also new this year was braiding, garlic that is.  We planted two varieties this year as in years past, a soft neck version as well as a hard neck.  Last year during harvest time, we just threw them willy nilly into some crates, dried them, and I gave away some of the nicest ones, leaving us with some pretty scrawny guys to plant for this year.  Well, live and learn.  This time around, we separated and set aside the biggest ones first for seed for the coming year, and then I practiced braiding all the soft neck garlic into these big fishtails, which was quite fun.

Some new flowers came up in the cutting garden this year as well.  First was the echinacea that I had planted from seed the year before.  Out of the half dozen or so that I planted, only two actually matured to full plants and only one made it to this year, putting out some gorgeous pink blooms that make me think I might want to try planting from seed again.  I also planted some Bells of Ireland this year and though they came in sort of short, the colors and shape were still lovely and they should come back stronger and taller next year.  I was also happy to see that the scabiosa, which came from pods that I foraged in California, were establishing itself.  I'm pretty sure I weeded out a bunch of their starts in the spring when I was trying to get ahead of the weeds, not recognizing them as flowers that I wanted, but they are tough little guys and still several managed to survive.

Last year I had pretty good luck with larkspur and sweet peas but this year, perhaps due to the dry weather, almost none of them came up.  However, the rudbeckia and coreopsis went gangbusters and the zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds were also pretty happy as well as all the usual suspects from the Grandmother's Cutting Garden mix I planted three years ago--bachelor's buttons, love-in-a-mist, cosmos, Sweet William.

As late summer hit, it was finally tomato season.  This year I had started my tomatoes from seed around mid-April, trying some varieties that I'd never planted before: Japanese slicing Mandarin Cross, Red Oxhart, Cherokee Purple, and Black.  Of course neither my father nor I could resist getting at least a few more varieties each at the store.  I also got several volunteers of Sungolds and Sweet Millions from the plants I had planted the year before.  I'd say overall, the tomatoes fared okay but we didn't stake them well and I think the plot where I planted many of them was just tired and in need of a refresh in the soil.  Nonetheless, we managed to harvest quite a few still throughout the summer and come fall, tons of green tomatoes which I eventually made into a pretty decent salsa.

Like anything else, gardening seems to be about adjusting and following principles rather than rules.  On websites that give advice about growing tomatoes, it always seem to be about treating them very particularly but I find that most tomatoes seem pretty hearty.  In fact, the Roma tomato seeds that I put into my worm bin seem to always start germinating as soon as they get sun.  And even though I've finally trained my father to not start plunking tomatoes into the ground before the soil temperature starts getting above 50 degrees, most do survive without too much damage just as tomatoes planted somewhat later than usual also seem to do just fine in the end.  We try things out, see what works or doesn't, adjust and hope that the weather cooperates, and enjoy the fruit of our labor.

In closing then, a poem about learning, from books, from experience, and the realization that so much remains a mystery that defies categorization.

Learning the Trees by Howard Nemerov

Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn   

The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,   

Out of a book, which now you think of it   

Is one of the transformations of a tree.

The words themselves are a delight to learn,   

You might be in a foreign land of terms

Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and pome,   

Where bark is papery, plated, warty or smooth.

But best of all are the words that shape the leaves—

Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform—

And their venation—palmate and parallel—

And tips—acute, truncate, auriculate.

Sufficiently provided, you may now

Go forth to the forests and the shady streets   

To see how the chaos of experience

Answers to catalogue and category.

Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree

May differ among themselves more than they do   

From other species, so you have to find,

All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.”

Example, the catalpa in the book

Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three   

Around the stem; the one in front of you   

But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;

Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.   

It may be weeks before you see an elm   

Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,   

A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretius says,

Little by little, you do start to learn;

And learn as well, maybe, what language does   

And how it does it, cutting across the world

Not always at the joints, competing with   

Experience while cooperating with   

Experience, and keeping an obstinate   

Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.

Think finally about the secret will   

Pretending obedience to Nature, but   

Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,   

Dividing up the world to conquer it,

And think also how funny knowledge is:   

You may succeed in learning many trees   

And calling off their names as you go by,

But their comprehensive silence stays the same.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness by Mary Oliver

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Bucket List

President Obama, during his stand-up routine at the 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner, said that after the mid-term elections, he was asked by his advisers if he had a bucket list for the things that he wanted to accomplish during his second term.  Obama replied that he had something that rhymed with "bucket list."

I'm taking a page out of Obama's playbook right now as I wait and wait and wait and then wait some more for my paperwork to leave the country.  When I first started the process, I was mostly worried about what my work over in Turkey would entail: would I be able to competently teach the classes I was given since they weren't my usual bread and butter comp courses, what was the academic calendar like, how proficient would my students' English levels be, what materials would they have access to, what was the access to technology going to be like, etc.  I got some of the questions answered by my contact person there at the university and the embassy but not all and not to the degree of detail that I was used to here.  It was stressful and confusing.

Then I went to Washington DC for a pre-departure orientation and met people who worked and lived in Turkey.  I met some American teachers who had taught there, and accepted that I would just have to relinquish control over how I thought things were supposed to run or what I thought I should know by this time before moving to a foreign country.  Some of them told me that they got there and negotiated their classes so that they ended up teaching something more aligned with their interests.  That sounded good, I thought.  Someone else told me that schedules were negotiated with instructors and teachers during the first week of class or so.  I didn't understand how this happens but I also recognized that there's a different system going on there and it worked for them so just accept it and move on.  I put a bunch of things on my bucket list: understand what I'm doing/teaching beforehand? Bucket.  Know when school starts and understand how the system worked?  Bucket.  Have a departure date?  Bucket!  And for the most part, I think I was able to do it pretty well.  Rather than feeling frustrated and stressed, I was easing into acceptance and I wasn't even in-country yet!  I felt better mentally about my preparation for life abroad.  This was back at the end of August.

Now that it's November and a good 5 months since I started the paperwork for my position and almost two months since my contracted date of employment began, I'm edging towards stressed and frustrated again.  Since I really have no idea what is holding up my paperwork, I won't conjecture on what is possibly going on but let's just say that it seemed unimaginable to me 5 months ago that I'd still be waiting right now to leave and yet here I am.  Will I ever leave?  Should I start unpacking?  What will I do when I get there since school started back in September?  Should I start making a Plan B?  My friend KN is also in the same boat as I am; she's waiting for a visa as well and joked around that we should start a blog for people who were supposed to be in country already and aren't.  I told her I had several posts in mind already:

Post 1: “What do you do all day?”
Post 2: “Are you still here?” and other unanswerable questions
Post 3: Moonlighting while waiting to move on
Post 4: “Why won’t they let me leave the country?!”

I think I need to start putting things back onto that Bucket List and get into a different mental space.  It's hard because to unpack and to think about rsvp'ing for things implies that I don't think I'll be going anymore, which I neither think is true nor want to believe; however, to be in a continued state of neither here nor there is really grueling.  I know I should be grateful for the time to really do pretty much nothing (and I'm quite good at it starting with sleeping something like 9 hours a day) and I am.  I wanted a break where I didn't have to teach composition and now I'm getting a true sabbatical where I can learn new things related to my field of study, review my past scholarly interests, and not have to teach at all.  All while living at home and getting free room and board so I don't even have to worry about meals.  This sort of thing just normally doesn't happen in adult life so I appreciate this time with my parents and them putting up with me as I continue to wait.  However, with the days getting wetter, colder, and darker and so much unstructured time, I'm experiencing some existential angst.

Side note: When I told a friend of mine that I was going to work in Turkey for a year, she said that I was going through a mid-life crisis.  I asked my co-worker if he thought that was true, and he said that although some people could construe renting out one's condo and moving to Turkey as a mid-life crisis, crisis implies an acute condition and I had more of a lingering ennui.  I think that's pretty much spot-on.

So in an effort to curb that existential angst, here goes my new bucket list:

Knowing what tomorrow and the future holds: bucket
Basing my value and identity off my work: bucket
Being productive and useful in the "usual" ways: bucket
Being independent and doing my own thing in my own space: bucket
Being able to plan my time: bucket
Making plans for the holidays: bucket

Whew!  I can see more clearly now why all the angst!  All of those things are pretty big areas of my life to cede control over.  When all of those things are removed, what is left?  That is the question that seems left to be answered....

I recently found this poem by Wendell Berry that I had bookmarked back in May that seems appropriate:

Teach me work that honors Thy work

the true economies of goods and words

to make my arts compatible

with the songs of the local birds

Teach me patience beyond work

and, beyond patience, the blest

Sabbath of Thy unresting love

which lights all things and gives rest.

Enough deep thoughts for one days.  In the meanwhile, at least I've been able to run regularly and enjoy the fall here in the beautiful PNW.  I'll conclude with some of the beauty that I would've missed had I left already:

Larch Madness at Heather Pass

Lake Ann in her fall splendor

Fall color at Maple Pass

Stuart Lake and more larch madness

Snoqualmie Falls

Granite Mountain

The perfect spot for my Compartes S'mores bar!

Matsutaki hunting

Chateau St. Michelle

Juanita Bay Park

Juanita Bay Park

Let There Be Flowers

I don't have too much to say in this post, but just wanted to share some of the beauty that's been in the garden.  A friend of mine asked if I could plant something that I haven't before, what would it be?  And I said, more flowers.  Big flowers like dahlias, peonies, and roses.  But that's for another season.

The roses are from my dad's yard, but everything else has been coming up gloriously at the farm.  Perennials from Grandmother's cutting garden are still going strong and this year, I've tried some rudbeckia as well as Bells of Ireland.  I continue to adore zinnias for their natural ombre.

Put "flower farmer" on the list of things I want to be when I grow up.


Saint Francis and the Sow
By Galway Kinnell

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   

began remembering all down her thick length,   

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

In a Jam

Having access to to a garden as well as fruit trees means a sometimes overwhelming amount of abundance.  Waste not, want not, as the old saying goes, and as a true believer, I've learned about how to eat all sorts of things that I never saw in grocery stores before, from garlic scapes to radish seed pods to fennel flowers.

The gorgeous hot summer weather this year meant another bumper crop of blueberries and Rainier cherries at the farm.  My dad's yard was also producing lots of Italian plums and I had also found nearby the farm a bunch of wild Damson plum trees loaded with fruit that I also *had* to pick.  Having way too much fruit seems like a silly problem to have, but since I hate to waste food and there's only so much I can stuff my face with or foist upon friends, family, and strangers, I decided to learn how to can.

Canning is something that I'd been interested in learning more about since starting a garden, but my only real exposure was when Thom showed me how to can green beans a few years back.  It just seemed like it took a lot of effort, what with all the jars and the lids and the pots and other various canning supplies one needed.  With a kitchen already stuffed full, I was hesitant to start up another project that required buying stuff only used for this one activity.  Also, there were lots of warnings about food poisoning, botulism, and other not-so-pleasant cootie action that can get you if you don't properly can the food and investigating all the various means not to kill yourself (or others) wasn't all that exciting too me.  However, "how hard can it be?" is not my maxim for nothing, so with a little creativity in the equipment department and a lot of googling to make sure I was on the right track and wouldn't kill anyone, I got started.

The first investment I decided to make was a cherry pitter.  Now I had been told by the ever-resourceful Linda that one could make a pitter out of a paper clip, but seeing that I had pounds upon pounds of cherries, I decided to take the easy route.  Good thing too, as it worked like a dream and also made quick work of the Damson plums, and when Linda gave it a try herself, she promptly went out and bought one, too.

Beyond that, for canning, one needs jars, lids, a pot that's tall enough to cover one's jars with at least an inch of water, a rack or something to put the jars on in the pot so it doesn't rest directly on the pot, a jar lifter, and a funnel to get started.  There are lots of "canning kits" out there that include the pot, rack, and all the equipment, or just the equipment minus the pot; however, not being one who likes to invest in things upfront that I might never use again, I improvised.  I used a pasta pot that I had, which was tall enough to can half-pint jars although not the quart sized ones.  (I originally had bought pint jars, but then realized that a pint of jam was quite a lot and switched it out for the half-pint size instead.) So that limited my canning to smaller amounts, which was probably a good thing at this early stage.  Instead of a jar lifter, I borrowed my friend's "plate retriever tongs" (a tool that Chinese people use for lifting hot plates out of steamers or rice cookers).  She also had a little round cake rack that fit into my pot, and instead of a funnel, I decided to just use a measuring cup, figuring that would help me to pour precisely enough into the jars.  Since it was my first time canning, I didn't have any jars or lids, so I went to the store and got a dozen for about ten dollars.  If you are reusing old jars, all you need are new lids since old lids will not seal properly.  With that, I had the basics covered.

Besides what equipment one actually needs, I would say one of the most confusing things about canning is the whole debate about whether or not to use commercial pectin in your jams.  Pectin is found naturally in fruit with some fruit having higher concentrations and others having lower ones.  When heated long enough with sugar and lemon juice, the naturally occurring pectin in fruit causes it to gel, thus creating the spreadable goodness we associate with jam.  (This article titled "Jam Making 101" has a pretty good explanation of how it all works).  However, some of the lower pectin fruits like strawberries or blueberries take longer to gel, and the longer fruit is cooked, the less fresh it tastes and the longer one has to spend stirring and stirring at a hot stove.  So, one can buy powdered or liquid pectin at the store to cut down on cook time and still have a firm to quite firm jam or jelly.  Many of the recipes that I read though, especially more contemporary ones, seemed to avoid using commercial pectin for various reasons like cost, taste, or texture, thus leaving one to more of a trial and error in terms of knowing how long to cook the jam for.  The other difficulty I had with most recipes was that a lot of them called for a lot of sugar.  Many of the recipes were almost 2/3 sugar, which seemed pointless to me because the flavor of the fruit was just masked with it.  However, because sugar is a preservative, there were many warnings of how not adding enough sugar might result in jam that goes bad quickly.

In my first attempt, I decided to forgo the effort it would take to pit several pounds of cherries and go with the blueberries that I already had in the fridge.  After reading what seemed like an endless number of variations of the same, I went with  a recipe from Food in Jars for blueberry jam that had me add in only 3 Tablespoons of commercial pectin rather than the whole box as some of the other recipes called for.  I eliminated the spices because I wanted just pure blueberry this first time.

When making jam, the fruit goes through various stages as the water from the fruit is boiled off.  It oftentimes starts with a vigorous boil and foam before settling down to more small bubbles as it thickens.  Then you test it by putting a dab on a cold plate in the freezer to see if it has thickened enough.  However, since it was my first time trying out making the jam, I didn't know at all what I was supposed to be looking for so I just kept the jam boiling until it seemed pretty firm on the cold plate.  I poured them into the jars, wiped the mouth, put on the lids, and then popped them back into the water to can.  When I took them out, one by one, the little popping sound that signals a success in terms of sealing the jam occurred, so I considered that a success.

The next day, after the jam had cooled, I of course had to try one to see how it all turned out and it was okay.  Yes, just okay because first, I had clearly overcooked the jam.  It was not quite like cranberry jelly sliding out of the can, but it definitely had a crisp quality to it that was not what I liked in my jam.  The second thing was that it was just too sweet and a little too lemony.  In my anxiety not to poison anyone, I had included more sugar than I liked and also added extra lemon juice, both preservatives.  I like my fruit jam to taste like fruit, and so I was determined to experiment a little more in the next batch.

Having one jamming experience under my belt, I decided to get a little more ambitious and try a Rainier Cherry recipe.  There aren't a lot of recipes online for this sort of sweet cherry as Bings are usually less expensive and not everyone has access to a Rainier cherry tree.  I decided to use David Leibowitz's "No-recipe Cherry Jam" recipe, which, as it says, wasn't really a recipe but more about proportions of fruit and sugar.  Even though he said to use 3/4 the amount of sugar to cherries, I dialed it back to more about half and it was still quite sweet.  But it set up nicely and without the pectin, I didn't have to worry about the jam jelling too firmly.  Instead, I used up a lot of plates trying to tell if the jam was ready.  Ultimately, it turned out decently.

This experiment was followed by this plum jam, and then this one, peach jam, as well as apricot jam and finally apple butter.  After the third recipe, I broke down and went and bought a kit from the store that included the jar lifter and the funnel.  Those were definitely worth the investment as hot boiling water and hot boiling fruit are both not nice against the skin.

At the end of all this, I think I can now say that I can can.  At least I can can fruit jam; vegetables and other things are another level I have yet to attain.  Seeing all the jewel-like jars lined up on the kitchen counter and knowing that all year I'll be able to taste the abundance of summer is definitely satisfying.  Also, being able to share the bounty of summer in a form that's not so ephemeral as "eat this now before it rots!" has also been fun.  Homegrown and homemade is not that easy to come by these days, at least in my circles, but it's so appreciated and I think generally speaking, there is a revival of sorts going on in this area as well.

As for the whole pectin, no pectin debate, whether it's the supermarket version or the low-sugar Pomona's version, I enter my preference as no pectin.  I like being able to control the viscosity of the jam by cooking time rather than how much commercial pectin I add and I generally like a looser jam, so it fits my preference.  I also usually end up with pectin blobs in the jam when I use it or overly "crunchy" jam although it may just be that I don't understand how to follow directions in regards to using commercial pectin (definitely nothing new here!).  As for adding too little sugar to my jams, I have yet to poison anyone; perhaps I need to add a "eat at your own risk" label to my jars that I give away. :)  Ultimately, I realize that jam making is about proportions and rules of thumb rather than preciseness; one must be able to adapt according to how ripe the fruit is and how sweet it is rather than being tied down to exact measurements in a recipe.  I'm done putting up for the year, but look forward to the next season of abundance now that I can can.

More Than Enough
By Marge Piercy

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.

All over the sand road where we walk

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense

the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy

clumps of flower and the blackberries

are blooming in the thickets. Season of

joy for the bee. The green will never

again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads

into the wind. Rich fresh wine

of June, we stagger into you smeared

with pollen, overcome as the turtle

laying her eggs in roadside sand.