Sun, Feb 24, 2013 · Filed under Cooking & Eating, Local food, Winter
Not much to look at, right? Wrong! I spent a good FIVE MINUTES staring at the kombucha tea mother, gently swirling and undulating right after being placed in its tea-and-sugar bath, the watching-chickens effect. I like the look of the mother, although some people find the whole thing kinda…icky. If you’re not familiar, this is a sparkling drink, tartly acidic and slightly sweet, made by floating the mother—it’s also called a SCOBY, symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast—in a solution of tea (black or green or both) and sugar. Let it ferment for around a week and a fizzy beverage is the result. It’s quite impressive. Not surprising, there are all sorts of magical health benefits ascribed to kombucha tea, and from the bit of reading I’ve done, none of it is really “evidence-based,” to use the popular medical description for stuff that’s scientifically proven, whatever exactly that means. In any case, nobody really says it’s BAD for you, maybe it is magical, and I find it…refreshing.
Making it is easy: 4-5 tea bags in some water for a few minutes, top up the hot tea with cold water to about 3/4 gallon (around 3 liters) so it’s all cooled down, then plunk in your SCOBY—any size will do, it grows!—along with a cup or two of kombucha tea (you store the mother in the tea), and you’re done. Cover with a clean cloth to let in air but not dust, stash in a warm, dark place, and taste test in five days or so: if it’s too sweet, leave longer, if it’s too tart (the main bacterium makes acetic acid, which is basically vinegar), well, test earlier next time. It’s all pretty loose and easy, and each batch you get a new, extra mother that you can pass on. Do a search and you’ll find lots of details.
My first mother I was given in a jam jar at a raw food talk, and I made kombucha steadily for a couple of years, for no reason other than that I like it (many people refuse to even taste it?!)—after a couple years off, I’m back in production. Yet another thing to grow!
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Fri, Feb 22, 2013 · Filed under Farm lab (research!), Winter
No matter how digital things get, books arriving by mail is always…a treat! I did download the ebook version of The Intelligent Gardener over a week ago, it’s now on laptop and smartphone, but still wanted the hardcopy…and now it’s in my hands. Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture was an impulse buy, browsing Amazon is pretty much like being in a bookshop: lots of temptation. Anyhow, print matters! :)
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Thu, Feb 21, 2013 · Filed under Winter
Still snow. Been trudging rather than shoveling because I keep expecting it to be gone by the end of the day, but no. Instead, it’s been topped up a few times since the fairly major snowstorm two weeks ago. One sure thing, the days are getting longer!
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Tue, Feb 19, 2013 · Filed under Cooking & Eating, Veggies, Winter
This is about as simple as it gets this with a stove and a pot: turnips, simmering in water with a little salt. There’s a quite a bit, and I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with it afterwards, besides eating it—maybe freeze some. Possibilities, possibilities. They’re from Shannon‘s farm, harvested last fall—ironically, for local food, it made a 1500 km (930 mi) journey from field to table, but that was with me along for the ride. Anyhow, stretching the stored food while waiting for a new season’s fresh harvest!
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Mon, Feb 18, 2013 · Filed under Fieldwork, Summer, Tools
[From 5-Jul-2012] No luck with the dug well—at this point, the standing level has dropped around 10 ft. since spring, and the replenish rate is barely a foot in 24 hours—so it’s on to other water sources and delivery methods. As with most things on this tiny farm, the ultimate fallback tends to be something really labor-intensive. (Hahahahaha. I have to laugh.) In this case: WATER BARRELS. In a thankfully typical seek-and-ye-shall-find situation, there is a supplier of used barrels just down the road. Who’d have thought! These are standard 55 gallon, available in steel or plastic, and only about $10 a pop, with optional lids for a couple bucks more. Of course, they’re food-grade, which means, coated on the inside and used only for food, with those weathered white labels telling the story: pickles, perhaps. Strategically located around newly seeded beds, the barrels are filled from the house well (via the former dead well pipe) and then, 2-gallon watering cans do the final job. We still need rain as things grow, but this will work for germination and seedlings. Whatever it takes!
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Sat, Feb 16, 2013 · Filed under Harvest, People, Summer, Tools, Veggies
[From 31-Aug-2012] Brassica greens in perfect, flea beetle hole-free shape, thanks to good weather and…floating row cover. Rochelle is cutting mizuna—in the pic, there’s green and purple mustards, mizuna and tatsoi. Our extra focus on salad mixes this season continues to go over well, with a Mild Mix, Zesty Mix, and Mix of the Week, plus everything bagged individually. To fill the line-up, we have our own lettuce blend, the brassicas just mentioned plus arugula, all grown separately and as a mustards-mizuna-tatsoi mix (the tatsoi tends to be too small to easily cut in, so that’ll be out next round), spinach, and chard and beet greens (both grown tightly spaced). The greens harvest bin of choice this season is bushel baskets lined with a new clear bag each time (easy to toss into, hold a lot, the bags stay put even in wind and can be easily lifted out). Will be fun to expand the greens line-up and tweak the planting and harvest next year!
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