Cabbie Gardens

Big, yellow blossoms drew my attention to a plant at the Beacon train station recently. It's sort of miraculous for me to notice anything at the train station, since I'm there not-yet-awake in the very early morning, and dog tired after dark. So let's just say they were bright, miraculous blooms.

I kept watching this particular plant, and grew more interested when it became clear that it was a) a cantaloupe; and b) thriving. I had designs on one of the huge fruits I saw growing there, but realized it must belong to someone: someone must be tending it. That was confirmed when the biggest of the fruits was one day intentionally "hidden" by a clump of dead grass.

I had a chat with Raphael of Raphael Taxi this morning. You see, this particular plant is right by where all the cabbies line up to vie for fares when travelers get off the train. Yup, this plant (and the several others Raphael pointed out to me) are planted and nurtured by the cab drivers. They're particularly proud of that watermelon sized fruit that caught my eye.

It's exciting to see that people all over Beacon are claiming unused space to grow food!

"Responsible" Meat Eating

I went to a kitchen store in Brooklyn over Memorial Day weekend. They started up in the last couple of years, gave interesting classes in their tight space, and sold vintage cookware alongside the new. I loved this store. Not only did they have nice tools, they had good aesthetics, and were a small player who gave helpful individual advice. They seemingly had good politics: people rode their bikes there, they taught customers about preservation and reuse, and talked about locally produced food. They sold old school tools like pickling crocks. It seemed like they were a part of the movement to take things back into our own hands, and do them better than big business would.

They still exist, yet I write about them like it's over. That's because they've moved into a big space with a proper kitchen classroom and joined up with another business, a butcher. There's a full deli counter, barbeques big enough to roast whole pigs, and a room that I never fully looked at, because I was convinced it is where they butcher animals, and teach other people to kill animals themselves. I had no evidence, just a vibe. A strong, awful feeling, that came from more than just the smell of the place.
If I think about Brooklyn Kitchen's move from a purely business perspective, I get why they did it. The new space is huge, they can now sell all kinds of foods and conduct proper classes, and the meat will be a draw for a lot of hipsters, who think local bacon is the new black.

Seeing this, acknowledging this, really set me off in a spin.

I meet ex-vegetarians every day who now eat meat because they can get it from a local farmer at the farmer's market or specialized shop. Coffees are being made with bacon, my popsicle guy put bacon in one of his new flavors, Beacon's most popular buying club (traditionally for bulk grains and beans) is centered around local meat. I went into a shop for a vegan cookie the other day, and boar soup was on the menu.

Twenty years ago I went to brunch at a Seattle vegetarian restaurant on April Fool's Day. Their menu for the day included "easter" rabbit, spotted owl, sea turtle soup, all in fancy preparations. Gullible, I got upset before getting the joke. It didn't seem farfetched enough to me, I guess, and seems even less so now. These days, it seems practically everyone thinks it's okay to eat animals.

Except that we know better. We've read the China Study and the new U.N. report. We know how animals raised for food affect the environment, hunger, and our drinking water. We know that free range doesn't equal being outside, that humane is used all over the place for all kind of practices.
Because I live in a small town and know the farmers who sell meat and the people who buy meat, I know that most often people buy a small fraction of the meat they eat from local farmers. The grossest cheap meat on a styrofoam tray has risen to new heights in hearts and minds: people want to believe it's right and good to eat animals, and that their palettes are king. They get the expensive farmer's market stuff for the cred.

Food is important to me, too, very important. When I took St. John's wort for a stint and lost my appetite, I thought I'd be glad to have lost so much weight. Instead, I missed food, missed eating and tasting and all the pleasure and socializing that came with it.

I'm the worst person to talk about meat-eating because as a long-time vegan and animal rights activist, I won't be seen as level-headed, or looking at all sides. But I swear, if I had an intern, I'd have them research this:
- How much food is produced in the Mid-Hudson Valley that is consumed locally?
- How does that food break down in categories? What percentage are vegetables, fruit, grains, animals?
- How do the resources to produce those foods break down?

It seems to me that there are a lot of farmers who grow tons of veggies, a little bit of fruit, and have enough animals for a few eggs, some goat's milk, and send the occasional animals to slaughter. (Right, send them to a slaughterhouse. It's illegal for them to do it themselves.) My guess is that it would be something like a 90%, 5%, 3%, 2% breakdown. Shouldn't this mean, then, that people concerned about eating local foods eat an (at least) 90% vegetable diet?

Root Cellar Quits, Outside Roots Blossom

One week ago, people were planting poppy seeds on top of some of the remaining snow, and now it's sixty-four degrees, on its way to the seventies. Getting off the train from the city last night I smelled the river for the first time this year. This morning, when I was dragging broken branches from the storm to the curb for city pick up, the whole yard smelled like wild onions, and other smells I can't yet identify. Crocuses are blooming, daffodils and tulips are coming up, and many of these cracked branches have buds, not knowing yet that they're dying. And I was sweating.

I adore warm weather, so all of this is very nice. I love having all the doors flung open, and the cats are in bliss about it, too. But it is early. Three weeks ago we had no power, and carved little passageways for ourselves to move around in the canyons of ice and snow. Last week, flooding threatened to wash the market out. At least all the rain took all the snow with it. (Don't the streets and sidewalks seem so wide now?)

This typical-for-May weather is the end of root cellar storage, for sure, with everything either rotting or sprouting or both. I worry after the sunchokes in the garden, and whether they'll last three more weeks without sprouting. I'm juicing last carrots like a maniac, and relocating potatoes to the coolest, darkest spots I can find. And pulling up my sleeves so that my shoulders can get some sun.

Storm Rations: Distribution - February 28, 2010

Hi snowed-in members, if you're mobile and hungry, we've got food. The market will be closed tomorrow, so give us a call. This week's distribution will be like an underground club, with the location only released to those hip enough. If you're not mobile, call anyway, and maybe your share can come to you.

Food Art

A word about your tea towels from last distribution, and the artist who made them:

Tea towels have everything to do with a functional kitchen. They are reusable for practically forever and let you forego paper towels and napkins, and they make every kitchen chore easier. I use mine to move hot things because I never seem to have potholders close by. I use them, with a piece of string, to keep bugs and dust out of crocks of fermenting food. I wash my hands twelve hundred times a day and need them to dry off. I air dry stacks of clean dishes on them. I use them as a fine strainer.

Putting a calendar on a tea towel ups their functionality one more notch. People in England and Ireland have been making calendar tea towels for a long time—you often bump into them in vintage shops.

Claudia Pearson, the creator of your 2010 calendar tea towel, is a Brooklyn illustrator and children's book author who hails from England. She loves the farmers market and is very interested in local and seasonal food. You can check out her lovely portfolio here. For the food obsessed, she's collaborating with chef Sung Uni Lee to create a series of illustrated recipes that are simple and vegetarian. You received the recipe card for tipsy leeks, and Claudia's just posted one for fuschia mash.

Art and food seem like a funny combination to some, but without aesthetics and creative experimentation, we'd never enjoy eating (or cooking) as much as we do!

Homeward Bound

One week from today I'll be sniffing desert air. Yep, I'm going to be a tourist in my own hometown, because I've been away too long. I'll be checking out the sites (bat caves!), eating Mexican food that tastes like Mexican food, taking long walks in the desert (secretly looking for jackrabbits and javelinas), and seeking out all of Tucson's local food. I've been reading Tucson bloggers and bloggers headed for Tucson in preparation. Tucson farmer's markets, here I come!

What's in season foodwise in the Sonoran Desert right now? Olives. Citrus. (Oranges and grapefruits and lemons and tangelos and kumquats, oh my!) Pecan, oh, pecans.

I've missed some things, too, like chiles, nopales, prickly pear tuna, and pomegranates, but maybe just maybe I'll find preserves. I've also missed the season of organized mesquite millings, but know I can still get my hands on some mesquite flour to give it a try. It's a little silly to think I have to taste my way through my visit, but fresh orange juice and green chile tamales won't make terrible guides.

Last time in Tucson I attended an animal rights demo, and ended up at Earth First! HQ having dinner and stuffing envelopes with my eighties activist hero, Rod Coronado. Who knows what this visit will hold? Except, of course, plenty of gorgeous food, gorgeous scenery, and gorgeous weather. And that smell...

Beets, the New Eco Graffiti Tool

I'm a fan of some of the illegal arts. I get, grudgingly, that gorgeous, bright colors of spray paint and mop markers are toxic. That's what makes moss graffiti, botanigrams, clean tagging (literally erasing grime), and other, newer forms of graffiti interesting.
As if beets aren't delightful enough, their gorgeous color calls out for brine reuse. And there are uses. If you're not drinking it as a tonic, or dyeing paper, clothes, or food with it, consider beet tagging.
Note that it does take some practice to get both your method and message right. Consider this grossness:
While you're practicing, why not be digesting this lovely Mediterranean Beet and Yogurt Salad? Here's how to make soy yogurt so that you can get the tang without the dairy.

Baggage

Hey members, we're giving out bags as part of the first distribution! We've hand-stenciled wintergreens tote bags for you to carry your treasures home. They're very cute (and reminiscent of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood era), so we'd understand if you wanted to put your food in a different bag, and use this one to show off when you're about town.Whether you're carrying your wintergreens bag or another one, you'll need to bring something to put your food in to all other pickups. We won't be giving out plastic bags—the world doesn't need any more plastic. You actually may want to consider bringing more than one reusable bag, since some veggies from the cellar will be dirty (dirt helps them last longer in storage, believe it or not), and you might not want the dirty stuff touching the clean stuff. Or the frozen stuff touching the fresh stuff. Or the peas touching the carrots.

If you don't have a stash of cloth bags, take inspiration from Bags for the People, and make a couple quickies out of whatever fabric scraps you have available. What's cooler than a tote bag made from your old t-shirt?

Of Rodents and Roots

Just as some leaves are beginning to turn, and wildflowers are getting leggy and shedding their petals, sunchoke flowers are just opening. They are bright and shiny, face south to get sun on their faces, and cheer me up as the days get short.

They seem extra special this year because of the takeover.

I've never minded groundhogs and deer sharing in my crops. They seem to prefer mostly weeds to eat, with some green bean and squash vines thrown in, and there always been enough for them to get their fill, and me to get mine. This year, a small groundhog took up residence under the garage, and chewed on my elderberries and sunchoke plants with particular focus and rigor. I'd see her in the compost bin sometimes, enjoying scraps of melon and rotten tomatoes, but more often, I'd see her on her hind legs, bending tall plants down to where she could reach them, and ridding them of leaves up to their ten foot high tops. The leafless plants would have been no more concern than usual, except that these are perennials, and I plan to have producing plants for years to come. A wipeout of this crop would mean a wipeout for years.

A lot of farmers and homeowners go to battle with groundhogs, deer, rabbits and other animals. I refuse. They were here first after all, they don't have anyplace better to go, and everybody's got to eat. Instead, I pile tree trimmings in stacks for burrowing and chewing, respect the holes that lead to their burrows, and leave them alone when they're eating out of my garden.

I get flack for this from neighbors and friends, who think I'm a bit nutty. This year, for the first time, I had a moment of wondering if they're right.

But the sunchoke leaves always grew back, and now there's a mess of flowers to prove that sharing is a fine and sane way to garden. The groundhog, now grown up and rotund, will be going into hibernation soon. I realized that even if there had been a complete wipeout, I still wouldn't displace the groundhog—I'd just replant in another spot.

What these sunchokes blooms mean to me is that when it comes to "our" garden (the groundhog and I), it can get eaten, and we can have it, too. There will be chokes for us both again next year.

Change

Three days ago I was gloating about the warmth and sunshine, and today I built autumn's first fire in the woodstove and am getting serious about prepping the root cellar.

"Our children...should enter adulthood with a basic knowledge of how to store food over winter without the cooperation of a nuclear power plant a hundred miles away. Every animal in the forest is taught this skill; we owe our children no less."
—Jerry Minnich, "Energy-Free Food Storage," Countryside (found in the book Root Cellaring)

In our case, the nuclear power plant is only twenty miles away, but you get the point.

Healthy Farm Management

A friend of mine just learned about the horror that is GMOs, and the government subsidies of this environmental and health disaster. It stands in dramatic contrast to what I just experienced at Huguenot Street Farm.

How do you know that your veganic farm is using healthful farming practices? When you're squatting picking peas, and a big black turtle strolls by and says "hello." Say no to GMO, say yes to local farms (and turtles and frogs and birds!).