[From Feb. 1, 2012] This isn’t really winter. No-one around here has seen anything like this weather before. February around here means knee-deep in snow drifts. Deep freeze. Instead, it’s been…raining. The strange, roughly weekly cycle continues: a few days of cold and snow, then up goes the temperature again. Can’t say it is having a huge effect on me, though, because I’ve been mostly holed up for the last month. Soul searching, re-examining my life in tiny farming. Trying to put things in perspective… Well, not exactly. :) I’d love to do all that stuff (although it also sounds a little depressing), but I’m not really wired that way. How do you search your soul, I mean…where IS IT? Been reading a lot, and…online. Splitting wood and building fires when it does get cold enough. Gearing up for the new growing season by chilling out a bit now. Watching the weather…
This harvested parsnip root only hints at the massive root systems that plants have down there. Mature parsnips can root down to 9 feet (2.7m), and spread up to 3′ (0.9m) in the top 10″ (25cm) of soil. Other garden veggies are generally as impressive in the root department. When we harvest, most of the delicate root network is torn off, and we only get to see the bigger, tougher parts, the taproot or the root ball. This pic is from an old post I ran into, a flashback to Oct. 2008: there’s more words and another long-rooted-parsnip pic at Root love! (The arm-and-hand model is Lynn.)
During the growing season, tiny farming can be kinda all-consuming—lots to do!—and it’s easy to wind up in a rather pleasant local bubble, especially if you’ve turned the daily news OFF: watching this documentary last night, RIP: A Remix Manifesto (2008), popped that bubble for me, for a while. Although this doc is on the surface mainly about music, remixing and mashups, copyrights and intellectual property law, it’s REALLY about…EVERYTHING, and independent, small-scale farming fits front and center. I could go on (rapidly vanishing control of SEED comes to mind), but it’s more of a watch-it-and-see-what-YOU-make-of-it deal—at least catch the last 30-40 minutes. It can be a little scary, that feeling of larger human forces and events surrounding you just a little beyond your ability to focus clearly on what’s going on or how it’s affecting you on the day-to-day. Still, you don’t have to be an activist or on a mission from God to save the food system or the entire planet, I think we all need to feel our place in the larger scheme of things. On that basis, this film can definitely be energizing and…inspiring. (Yikes, it’s that word. :) So there you have it: you can also download the doc DVD, for $0.00 or more, you choose, at RIP: A Remix Manifesto (click “you name the price”), or link to the online version at Canada’s National Film Board. Now, I’ve gotta pick up a new front tractor tire for the little Kubota and till up this year’s garlic patch. Back to the local… :)
Red and orange peppers! It’d be nice if this was a normal sight, but with our short season and often as not inconsistent heat and sun—peppers love decent heat—peppers that fully turn color are fairly unusual in this market garden. Because they’re more uncertain, I’ve tended to give them lower priority, often transplanting them at the end of the queue, which doesn’t improve their chances. I also usually don’t mulch—peppers appreciate decent mulch of any sort (plastic especially, it’s so…efficient), the heated earth seems to really help them grow.
This year, we lucked out with the weather—unfortunately, we also planted the smallest amount of peppers ever. Oh, well, that’s how the garden gambling goes! Here we have Gypsy, a tapered hybrid that has a rather quick 65-day maturity, but takes longer to go from its pretty yellow-lime green starting color to…sweet red. I’ve grown this for a while, it always comes through, a tasty, prolific, all-purpose pepper that’s nice even when it’s not red. And then there’s the open-pollinated, heirloom Orange Sun, from seed I’ve had for years, a blocky bell pepper that needs a full 80 to 90 days, that I’ve seldom seen beyond its dark green initial color, now in a satisfyingly deep, rich orange. Taste changes with color, smoothing and sweetening—these guys are delicious!
Almost missed this time around, last seen here four years back: a few of the Yukon Gold potatoes have fruit this year. These are poisonous little, green tomato-like fruit with seeds that you can grow into…potatoes. You can find out more about ‘em in this POTATO FRUIT blog post from 2008, when I first ran into then (it’s the most commented post on Tiny Farm Blog!).
There are thousands of the tomatoes in the field now, and this Black Seaman is just one of ‘em, but a big, gnarly one that caught my eye. Didn’t weigh it, but was probably close to 2 lbs (900 g), and grew in a complete circle. Interesting! Most of the fruit are regular beefsteak shape. Anyhow, I gave this one away, and tasted another one at the same time: not bad, the usual complex “black” tomato taste, a little tart, not the best ever, but still…reasonably fantastic! By the book, Black Seaman is a mid-size (12-16 oz/340-454 g), mid-season, determinate, purple-black, potato-leaf, Russian heirloom—that’s what they say. It’s my first season growing them, waiting for more to ripen before PASSING JUDGEMENT. There you have it.
This is the local portion of what I'm currently eating. Produce is grown on the farm, except as noted. Prepared foods contain mainly local ingredients, not necessarily organic. Fall 2011:
