'Burbstead Supper

As Spring gives way to Summer, the garden is beginning to produce more food, a little at a time. As I've said before, the more you get into the habit of eating out of your own backyard, the more routine it becomes. Let's take a tour of a recent supper we had, to see just how easy it can be (cue the upbeat, elevator music intro)

We begin in the garden, where the Fordhook chard and Winter Density lettuce are looking good. The Sugar Snap peas are almost done, but the Green Arrow shell peas are just coming in. *By the way, if you're looking for a good shell pea to grow, I can't recommend the Green Arrow highly enough. It's super sweet, and puts out tons of long pods that average 9-12 big peas each. Good stuff* The girls generally pump out 1 or 2 eggs a day, so we had the better part of a dozen.

Winter Density Lettuce

Detroit Red Beets and Fordhook Chard hiding in the back

The fixin's for supper

All of that was cleaned, chopped, mixed, cooked, and, with a little help from the grocery store (hey, we're not the Dervaes family or anything), became a delicious meal of beef and chard quiche, peas and carrots, and a salad. It was simple, nutritious, and 75-80% came from right outside our back door...not too shabby for a Sunday night.

It's a Madhouse!!!

Holy Crap! It's been over 3 weeks since I posted anything on here. Between the end of my school year, my boys finishing kindergarten, an out of town family get together, a painting commission...yeesh. The 'burbstead has taken as much of a backseat as the blog. The garden got weedy, the chicken run was about a week and a half behind schedule getting moved (and it began stinking worse than it should have), and the yard got so overgrown that we could have baled hay if we'd have had a tiny little baler.

So I've been trying to catch up this past week. The garden is close to where it almost should be, the grass got mowed, and the chickens got moved to a less fragrant area. With school being over (finally!), and my summer activities a little less involved than the past couple years, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get rolling on a lot of things that need attention. Let's go summer!

Also, now that I've posted a link to this site to my co-workers, I'd better be on top of my game lest I come off as an irresponsible slacker. Hi guys!

Dinner Movies

This past week I had the chance to go see a screening of the movie “Fresh” at a local brewery (Schlafly’s). It was presented by the St.Louis chapter of Slow Food International. It was described as the sequel to “Food Inc”, and I’d been wanting to see it for while. If you haven’t seen either film, I’d highly recommend both. They’re similar in the sense that they both hit the same major points: Interviews with Michael Pollan (author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food”) and Joel Salatin (owner of Polyface Farms and author), unsettling hidden camera footage of CAFO’s and meat packing plants, portraits of farmers trapped in the industrial agriculture system, and breakdowns of just how unhealthy and unsustainable the American diet is. There is, however, a noted difference in the focus of each movie as well.

“Food Inc” is primarily a scathing indictment of our modern food system. It spends the bulk of the film exploring the nutritional, environmental, and ethical shortcomings of how we get our daily sustenance. Monsanto’s role in promoting GMO’s and monopolizing of the seed industry is condemned (something that has provoked a rather vehement response from Monsanto). There’s a heart-breaking scene involving a woman who became a food safety advocate to congress after the death of her son due to tainted meat. Over all, it’s a pretty bleak picture. Salatin’s Polyface Farm and the corporate organic dairy Stonyfield Farms (which is owned by Dannon corporation) are held up as two examples of how things can be improved, but the thrust of the movie is more heavily on what’s wrong with the system.

“Fresh” starts off with a condensed version of much of the material that is covered in “Food Inc”, but it then shifts to highlighting examples of people who are working to change the system. Polyface Farm is again featured, and rightfully so. Salatin has positioned himself as one of the chief spokespeople for small-scale, diversified, ecologically sensitive agriculture. He’s developed a fantastic system, and his passion for what he does is clearly evident when he speaks about his farm. The Ozark Mountain Pork Cooperative, a collection of small-scale pork producers in Missouri and The Hen House Grocery Stores in Kansas City are also featured. The highlight, for me though, was Will Allen’s Growing Power organization in Milwaukee, WI.

Will Allen is a former professional basketball player who began Growing Power in the early 90’s on 3 acres in urban Milwaukee. Since then, it has grown into a network of city farms that cultivate something like 100 acres in Milwaukee, and they’re expanding into Chicago. Will is putting together an organization that grows food, teaches skills, and builds communities. While I don’t think that there is one, right solution to the problems that we are facing, Growing Power is certainly on the right track.

As I said, I enjoyed both films. Neither one really presented me with much new information. I had already read books by Pollan and Salatin. I was familiar with the local food movement. Mostly it was neat to see an issue I was interested in and passionate about presented in an engaging and entertaining format. However, if the only people who see these films are those who are already committed to changing the status quo, then not much is going to change. We need to use movies like these to introduce our friends and family members to this very important issue. In that respect, I think “Fresh” might be more effective at persuading otherwise uninterested people. “Food Inc” is full of good information, much of it likely shocking to folks who haven’t given their food much thought. However, I think “Fresh” does a better job of showing the problem, and then giving lots of inspiring examples of alternative systems (and without alternatives, you’re just bitching into the wind).

So go get some snacks that you grew yourself, invite some friends over, and watch something that will spark more thoughtful conversation than 90% of what comes out of Hollywood these days. It might just be the start of a meaningful change in your community.

'Burbstead Breakfast

Eating fresh, local food can seem like a hassle if you're not used to doing it. Convenience is the primary focus of most Americans' eating habits. We're not used to thinking about where our food comes from, and most people don't really care so long as it's easy to fix. If your cooking routine is typically placing a frozen meal in either the oven or microwave and walking off, fixing food from scratch can look like a real pain in the ass. "Wait you want me to grow the food myself? Forget about it! "

The funny thing about eating locally is, once you get started, it keeps getting easier. Or rather, you adopt new habits; so that what was once going out of your way is now the new normal. You think about your food choices more than you used to, but you begin doing it unconsciously. It's a process that you're never finished with, but it's enjoyable and worthwhile...and each step makes the next one easier to take. My breakfast this morning is a good example. Without trying, I made a meal that (excluding the ingredients for the bread) came entirely from the 'Burbstead: fresh eggs, homemade bread, and tomato preserve from last year's garden. Fresh, local, and as Mr.Food used to say, "Oooh it's so good!"

'Burbstead Breakfast

Harvesting..finally

I thought that I had gotten an early start on planting this year, but it doesn't seem like it's translated into much by way of early eating. I finally harvested some radishes this past week, Cherry Belle's and French Breakfast. I had a bed of Winter Density Lettuce that looked pretty nice, and a nasty thunder storm with spotty hail tore it up pretty good.

A pretty bunch of French Breakfast radishes

My Sugar Snap Peas are climbing their trellises nicely. If they're played out by time the Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans are up and running, I might repurpose them there. Tomatoes and Eggplants are in the ground underneath cold frames or low tunnels. That's a solid 2 1/2 weeks earlier than last year. If I can get those two working together ala Eliot Coleman, I'm going to shoot for a full month early next year. The weather has been pretty soggy for the past weekend, and the rest of the week looks like more of the same. I might try starting Cukes and Squash indoors this year, as opposed to direct seeding them. We'll see how that goes.

Home made Peas Trellis. I think it looks nicer than the chicken wire I've used in the past.

Mending Fence pt.2

The new fence from our front yard. All of the white slats were salvaged from the original fence.

Way back in March, I undertook what I anticipated to be a weekend-sized job: replacing the worn out and collapsing fence on the South side of our back yard. The actual demolition only took a couple of hours. The rebuilding, on the other hand, took a bit longer. As per usual, conflicting schedules caused the process to stop and start multiple times. It proceeded very slowly. I finally finished building it within the past week or so. It still needs to be painted white, and I'll have to play with the grade at the gate so that it opens smoothly; but other than that I'm pretty happy with it. Pushing it forward to the front edge of our house has added about 30'x23' of space to our back yard.

Right now it's a great space for the kids and chickens to rummage, and will hopefully have raised beds going around the edges in the near future. Down the line, I'd like to put a trellis or arbor over the gate and some fruiting bushes on the front side of it. For now, though, I need to dig up some exterior paint and let the twins get their inner Tom Sawyer on. At the current rate of progress, that'll happen sometime at the end of summer. We'll see...

Inside the fence, I've got eight 2'x3' pop-up raised beds that are going to be filled and planted .

Flashback: Hog Butchering 2009

The Crew: Buster, Jon, Uncle Rick, Me, Tater Tot, Dad, Uncle Dean, Wingnut, Alex, Jackson, Erik, Rob *DT is missing

Last Fall, on the day after Thanksgiving, while most Americans were participating in the vulgar ritual of conspicuous consumption known as "Black Friday", I had the pleasure of helping my family to butcher 3 hogs that my dad had been fattening up since the previous Spring. It was a lot of work, but it didn't seem hard working with brothers and cousins and uncles. I vaguely remembered butchering from when I was little, but that was almost 25 years ago. It was fun and gratifying to be involved in the process as an adult.

By the end of the second day, we had 6 hams, slabs of bacon, ribs, shoulders, a tub of chops, mountains of sausage, gritswurst, sackwurst, and a bucket of rendered lard. Everyone got to take some home, and there was a ton in my parents chest freezer. My uncle Dean smoked one of the shoulders for our Christmas get together. It was phenomenal. We've have the bacon a few times. It was good, fattier than most store bacon, but good none-the-less. My mom baked one of the hams for Easter. It was awesome. The sausage has made its way into breakfast and pizzas on multiple occasions. The lard makes the most amazing (if dietarily incorrect) fried chicken and pie crust. Theribs are going to be barbequed when school is over. As for Gritswurst, if you don't know what it is, then you haven't lived a full life.

All of the delicious food pales in comparison, though, to the great memories and sense of accomplishment that came from doing honest, meaningful work with friends and relatives. My children, who witnessed the entire process from start to finish, now have an understanding and appreciation for where their food comes from that virtually none of their peers do. Our culture's disconnect from the source of our sustenance is one of a handful of issues that form the root of most of the problems we face as a society. Giving my kids the chance to experience this sort of thing connects them to our family's history, and gives them the grounding they will need to thrive in a future where we will have a much more visceral connection to our food. I sincerely hope that butcher day (and things like it) be come a more regular feature of our family's life.

One last treat before the excitement begins...

The kettles were cooking early in the morning

The hogs were hung from a tree for skinning

Rob is trimming out a slab of ribs

The cuts of meat awaiting packaging

DT prepping a ham for wrapping

Yours truly sewing up a ham so it can hang and cure

Some of the fruits of our labor