Locavore New Jersey

Wow, its been a while!

2008-04-27T16:33:00.002-04:00

I had no idea I abandoned my blog for nearly 2 months! I typically have a lot of irons in the fire, and they caught up to me I guess!

Things are in full swing...I have peas in the ground, er, container, as well as scallions, onions for the fall, and the garlic. I have a strawberry ripening and I hope I get it before the pigeons do. My mints and herbs are now outdoor 24/7. I need to split the mints up actually since they are a year old now.

Lots of seedlings:

Rutgers tomato
Jersey Giant tomato
Sungold cherry tomato
Sweet 100 cherry tomato

The Lemondrop cherry tomatoes refused to sprout :(

I have sweet bell peppers, Chinese 5 color hot peppers, cucumbers, beets, head lettuce and mesculun, and the zuchinni are sprouting. I think my watermelons are as well. I'm set to start my last major plants this week. The other goal for this week are to get the cukes hardened off and into their permanent planter.

It finally began to behave like spring here in the past week (though today is cold and damp, but the spring flowers are all out now, and the grass is green so it LOOKS like spring) and this has considerably lightened my mood. I've been moving my planters about on the roof to get them into their final configuration. I am eager to put up my tiki lights and get my roof looking like a sanctuary. I think I want to get some lantern type things to put into the big planters and have a cookout as soon as it warms up.

The local farmers markets are not quite ready to open up yet, an I am starting to compile my list of the local ones. I think I have a little more legwork to do this year since a lot of the information on LocalHarvest.org is out of date. Hopefully I'll get to this in the next week and I'll post my findings here.

And its started

2008-03-03T12:48:00.002-05:00

Today I finally flipped out a load of compost--I set up my last tomato box (not counting the ones I have to, um, build) and some plant is going to be VERY happy in that box.

I took some photos of my garlic, so later I'll post those.

Today I started lettuce...head lettuces and cutting mix. Bell peppers, cucmbers, and tomatoes. Three are cherries: sweet 100 (red) lemondrop (yellow) and sungold (orange) The sungold took over the earth last summer. I also started 2 large varieties...Rutgers and Jersey Giant. The latter is a good paste tomato and was picked because I plan on making my own sauce this year. I also use a lot of canned diced tomatoes, and I am am going to try and put some of my own up (probably frozen) I picked the two large varieties from Baker Creek as they were both developed here in Jersey...it seemed appropriate.

I also started some barley and cat grass for my kitty, and moved some of the overwintered plants to my bedroom, where it is easy to pop them outside when its nice out.

Now to stand back and wait...

Spring?

2008-03-02T16:11:00.003-05:00

The Plan Tomorrow is to start seeds:

Lettuces
Tomatoes (5 varieties!)
Peppers
Peas

I have good news in the overwintered portion of my garden....I can count 8 sets of garlic greens poking out of the two boxes. I am pretty sure I only planted 8, so if I get all of them that will be awesome.

I have been fighting aphids with my mints all winter. I think we're stalemated at the moment--I've been spritzing these little buggers with soap spray, but I can't say the results are great. What I did 2 weeks ago was really cut back my chocolate and pepper mints since these were the worse affected--they both had new growth in the pots, so I figured they would come back OK. As I did this, I found there was a second plant growing in the peppermint pot...and it looked an AWFUL lot like my late lamented Kentucky Colonel Mint (which makes a screaming awesome mojito) I picked a leaf and crumpled it...and its Kentucky Colonel Mint. Hooray. I was wondering if I'd need to order another one, but apparently not--this looks very healthy and will just want its own pot in the spring.

My strawberry plant has been chugging along aphid free all winter. This morning it has a FLOWER onit and it is trying to grow a berry. It seems to be spring in my sunroom at least.

Nearly time!

2008-02-26T21:35:00.003-05:00

Its been so cold and dreary, and I've been away...but this weekend the fun starts!

I'm starting seeds this weekend...baby tomatoes and peppers, watermelons, squashes, a few other things. I made a schedule weeks ago, I just need to go flip through it.

Still need to build boxes,and I need to start researching when my farmer's markets open for the year...

Winter's here!

2008-02-10T18:29:00.000-05:00

Well, there has just not been much to comment on lately--its all just waiting for things to start. I see I have picked up a few more subscribers and I seem to be getting a lot of hits lately, so I thought I needed to find something to write about.

I plan on starting seeds in about 3 weeks, so there will be something to fuss about soon. And I need to build some more planters. The indoor plants are all OK and waiting for warm days. The days are getting longer too....

Today, I got out of the shower late in the afternoon and noticed the light outside was odd--I thought fog had come in (HOW?) but really it was snow and blowing winds turning everything misty and weird. Its the first blip of snow here this year. I have not peeped in on my garlic lately since its been kinda warm and I felt it was probably fine. I did not go out and flip up the leaves today either because when I looked out the window I could see long green spears poking up from the garlic boxes.

SQUEE!

Here is hoping that the real snow comes and covers and insulates and I don't lose that garlic to a hard freeze without any cover!

WHEE!

2008-01-19T13:56:00.000-05:00

I got my Baker Creek order yesterday! I'm excited to get started for the season, but I have a month or so to go before I can realistically start planting. But now I have nearly all the crops I want to grow! Everything else I want will be plants and they won't be showing up until May (hot peppers and eggplants)

My overwintered plants are generally doing OK. Aphids are doing a number on my mints though. My mojito mint is dead, and I fear the anise, chocolate and spearmint are suffering. I am unsure on the status of the pineapple mint. The cat nip is the only thing thriving right now. It is FULL of new leaves. If these all die, I will probably order more, but I might order more than one of each type this time. My mint last year got bugs and died too...I wonder what the heck is going on with aphids in my house. They don't become an issue (or even apparent) until the plants come inside.)

Finally, Project Garlic is doing ok! I still have shoots that look alive, and it seems nothing has frozen solid out on the roof. I've been fortunate with the weather--no snow to speak of and its only flirted with below freezing temps, really. We could still get a few weeks of nasty weather, but so far I am optimistic. Only 8 more weeks of winter, and so far so good!

My Local Story

2008-01-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned the other day, I think I am finally crystallizing my thoughts on the Eat Local movement.

I heard about it for the first time this summer on the now defunct Pocket Farm blog announcing the "One Local Summer" challenge. I did not find out about it in time to actually join the blog's activities, but they did encourage people who did not sign up in time to go ahead and once a week eat an entire meal made from locally grown products. The idea intrigued me since I was at the start of last year's garden, so I researched local farmer's markets (and I plan to do so again in the next few months, and I'll tell you what ones are good and what ones are not what they seem) and went to a few. I embarked on the project because it sounded fun, and while I don't think I had a 100% local meal every week, I did quite a few--I'll blog about them this summer.

Eating locally in the summer is easy since everything is growing, and as summer wore on, I wondered how people kept this up when things were not growing and there were no farm markets open. One of the things I found out quickly on my Local Summer was that what I was growing and buying beat the crap out of Stop and Shop. I had no idea. I started looking into preserving what I had, and ended up teaching myself how to freeze stuff properly. This was made easier when I found the exhaustive (and fun!) how to can everything website. I toyed with the idea of canning, and I have the Ball Blue Book, but so far I am not quite ready to Go There yet.

So now I have a freezer full of food from the summer, and meat from local producers that I've mentioned before (Abma's Farm and Bobolink) and I have to say I feel happier with my food choices. One of the benefits touted for a local diet is that you are using less oil and gas transporting your food. I like this idea. I commute 45 miles one way, and I am not happy with that--I like my job, and I can't afford to live close to it due to the insane housing market. I don't know that I would enjoy living where I work either. So, eating local is a tiny tiny step, but it is a tiny tiny step that I can take, and if more people took tiny tiny steps, maybe those steps would be bigger.

I do pick and choose things that I still want but can't get locally...like chocolate and coffee. I have stopped buying bananas and pineapple constantly (but I did accept the two pineapples that arrived at work in holiday fruit baskets!) and I am really trying to adjust my diet to the seasons this year...which means apples and pears all winter, and no strawberries until spring and summer. It also means I keep onions and carrots and celery around since these seem to be the case of everything you can make. I've learned how to store squashes and apples without using my fridge since I have a cold but not freezing porch. I cook more, and use pre packed and processed things a lot less...and eventually I'll use none of those...and I feel better because my diet is better. I also think I am spending less overall on my food budget, but that is also a project I've set out for this year. I can go weeks without going to the supermarket, at least.

I doubt I'll ever be 100% locavore. For one thing, I can't guarentee my dairy comes from within 100 miles, but liquid milk tends to end up a local economy anyway. I also can't find anyone milling flour in NJ, so I bend that rule by using my bread machine more. And I still like to get unusual things from time to time (like I found a nice recipe for plantains the other day, and I want to try those out) but they are treats now, and not an every day thing.

So that is my ongoing story. I really don't want to make this a big political thing, and I am not going to go force people around me to join in--I have had enough unpleasant interactions with nearly militant vegetarians (I am an enthusiastic omnivore) that I don't want to become That Chick. But I am happy to share what I have learned and know with anyone else getting started on this road.

A Nice Surprise

2008-01-01T18:27:00.000-05:00

I went and laid out my calendar for starting seeds for next year--its all plotted out for succession planting through the spring and fall, so I should be able to maximize mmy garden this year. I also made a schedule for placing my seed orders...and then one of them showed up yesterday. I have my Red Robin tomatoes (to be grown indoors next winter for year round tomatoes!) and mini head lettuce seeds from Containerseeds.com. So one less order to place.

I also got talking to a friend last night who has his own garden and has done a fair amount of canning (he brought amazing home made salsa and hummus to the party we were at) and he offered me the use of his canning equipment so I can try it out next season. I just have to buy the jars and lids. Pretty exciting.

The Baker Creek order goes out this week, and since I am splitting a Cook's Garden and Chile Woman order with co-workers, those will go out later in the month. I still need to decide on mint plants since my mojito mint is dead dead dead from these stupid aphids that came in the house on them (and the spearmint and chocolate mint...those are doing OK though) I lost the mints I had last winter to aphids too, and I am using a home made soap spray on them this time, but I can't seem to beat them into submission. fortunately they have not spread to anything else, and I doubt they will if they have not done so by now.

I added a list to the blog of plants I want to grow at some point. Looking at these seed catalogs makes me crazy as there are SO MANY things I want to try. Some I know will have to wait until I have my own place--my landlord was pretty cool with the small farm I installed on his roof last year, but I doubt corn will ever go over well, and asparagus might be a tough sell in a container. I'll research more and add in for next year. I definitely want to do potatoes next year, at least.

I've done some thinking on the local diet the past few days and I think I may be crystalized to the point of actually writing about it soon.

Welcome, New Year!

2007-12-30T13:28:00.000-05:00

I did some garden chores today...mixed my latest batch of bokashi into 3 of the self watering containers. I was set to do this Christmas Eve, but it rained, so I had to wait for a reasonably nice day and today was it. I'm down to having one large SWC to put compost in, and I think that will be ready to go in a month or so. Before I need them, definitely.

Project Garlic apears to be doing FINE. I peeked under the mulch and there are still happy looking garlic leaves poking up! I was pretty hopeful when I went and found the SWCs nota giant frozen solid mass. The boxes of mesculun I have outside the bedroom window also look reasonably well, and they are at a bigger risk for freezing, I think. yet they are still growing (very slowly) and look pretty good. If we get and nasty storms, I'll pull them inside, but they may be ready for greens in March.

Today's plan is to plot out when I need to start seeds. And finish out my seed orders. I've gotten catalogs from Burpee, Cook's Garden (a gorgeous one this year!) and Seeds of Change. I am likely NOT going to order from Burpee, but I will order from Cook's and I need to flip through Seeds of Change (the garlic came from there) The plan is to get my orders out by mid January so I am ready to roll in March. I'm not ordering much this time, since I have a lot left over from last year that I can use again.

I've been steadily using up what I out up last summer too. Today it was Jersey blueberries in the pancakes. YUM. I've been amazed by how good the produce I froze last summer tastes....as much of a pain as it was blanching and bagging, I think it was definitely worth the effort to do it. I may go and invest in a Food Saver for next summer since that is supposed to help save freezer space--I don't have much! I will probably venture into canning this summer too...I definitely want to put up some tomatoes, maybe make sauce and salsa for winter...

Bokashi

2007-12-20T22:56:00.000-05:00

I think in fall of 2006--it was shortly after I joined the Yahoo Edible Container List, at any rate, that I started to feel a little funny about the amount of stuff I was putting into the trash, and I quietly wished I had room to compost. I live on the second floor of a house--I rent, so setting up some big project in the yard was out of the question. It didn't occur to me that I COULD pull this off until the Bokashi system was mentioned on the Yahoo list.

This things works PERFECTLY in an apartment enviroment. It is meant for scraps and stuff, but I do put some of my garden waste in to it too. It uses a 5 gallon bucket that you dump your scraps in (and you can even put meat scraps into it, and paper towels, tea bags, all that sort of stuff) and then add a handful of wheat bran that is impregnanted with microbes. Once your bucket is full, you sprinkle in some more wheat bran and keep the bucket closed for 2 weeks (or longer.)

After 2 weeks you have scraps that are pickled. They don't smell GREAT--very vinegary--but its not horrible either. What you are supposed to do at this point is go dig a hole and bury the contents of the bucket, and then wait another 2 weeks and plant away. What I do is dump the bucket into a 55 gallon trash bin, and cover it with dirt from old pots, or bury some directly into the bigger containers I use or tomatoes. I can testify that in 2 weeks, stuff you bury in a trash bin will turn into nice compost. You do want to cut up stuff, because bigger chunks (corn cobs, avacado pits...ask me how I know) don't break down so quickly. Sometimes you get white fluffy mold in the bucket...that's OK.

While the bucket is initially composting, it makes a liquid you can use as plant food, or just dump down the drain. You're supposed to drain the liquid off every 48 hours...I don't do that so often.

You can probably make your own Bokashi buckets--or you can buy them. You can also buy the bran or if you're really hardcore and have space, you can make your own. Arbico Organics has the buckets and bran, but I will warn you, the bran can take WEEKS to arrive so don't wait until you're nearly out to order it. I have 2 buckets which works well for me--it takes me about a month to fill one. I'm emptying one this weekend, actually.

This is a really excellent explanation of how the system works My bucket lives under my kitchen sink, and you'd never know it was there. I use the liquid that come soff the bucket as plant food, as I mentioned--its about 240 ml (4 ounces) to 2 gallons of water. That stuff does smell a little, but it dissipates quickly.

So, the upshot-if you live in an apartment, you can still recycle your organic stuff pretty easily and in a way your landlord won't even know you're doing!

This week's bread

2007-12-19T06:19:00.000-05:00

Last night/this morning I made wheat bread. I love love love waking up to the smells of baking bread at 5 am! This recipe also comes form the Bread Machine Cookbook. I also recommend NOT using the whole wheat setting if your machine has one, as this gives a longer rise time, and if you're me, you end up with a giant loaf that almost escapes the bread maker!

1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 egg (optional--I used it)
2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cup bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp yeast

This is nice and light and really good. I ended with a loaf with a giant muffin top that I had to cut off to store the bread. I'll probably cut this up and use it at dinners.

Plotting and Planning

2007-12-17T14:41:00.000-05:00

This weekend brought the season's first nor'easter. It was pretty much over by noon on Sunday here, and was mostly wind and rain. I dealt with it by making my final garden plans for 2008--heck, soon it will be time to start seeds, right?

So, here is what I grew last season, that I plan on repeating:

Leaf lettuce/mesculun
Carrots
Beets
Radishes
Snap peas
Blue/yellow peas
Green/yellow/purple beans
Bell peppers
Cucumbers
Sungold cherry tomato
Sweet 100 cherry tomato
Lemondrop cherry tomato
Watermelon(Sugar Baby)
India Paint Eggplant
Nasturtiums

Plants that are still in pots inside include catnip, anise mint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, peppermint, and Kentucky Colonel mint (that I may be losing to aphids), chives, parsley, summerlong basil and strawberries. They will go back outside when it warms up again.

What I want to try this year:

Garlic (planted already, and hopefully still ok)
Hot peppers
Spaghetti Squash
Zuchinni
Soy Beans (I like edemame)
Head Lettuce
Large tomato variety--Rutgers
Paste/sauce tomato--New Jersey Giant
Swiss Chard- Rainbow/Bright lights (I have no idea if I like to eat chard or not...I probably will like it, but it is GORGEOUS to look at!)

I am planning on ordering the eggplant as plants from Cook's Garden, and I will order my hot peppers as plants from The Chile Woman. I have not dealt with Chile Woman yet, but she has a zillion kinds of peppers and she was recommended on the edible container group.

I am ordering seed for the spaghetti squash, zuchinni (Black Beauty), soy, and tomatoes from Baker Creek Seeds. A friend introduced me to this catalog and I find their prices really good for seed, and I like their philosophy. The catalog is a stunner, too. They have ALL KINDS of heirloom plants. If this batch of stuff works out, I may try some other things from them in 2009.

I'll need to build some more self watering boxes for the tomatoes, since I only have 4 for tomatoes bow, and it looks like I want to grow 5 tomato plants.

This week's bread

2007-12-13T18:36:00.000-05:00

Since it is winter, there is not much to talk about, but I also feel I need to keep posting to keep the ball rolling on this blog. I have a few things I DO want to discuss in greater detail, but I need time to really write those up. So, instead what I though I would do is share a bread recipe each week.

I make bread every week, usually on Monday. I have a bread machine and I love it, so these are all bread machine recipes. I try to make a different bread each week because I like variety. Most of my recipes come from a 1991 cook book called The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna Rathmell German. That is where this one comes from. It is for Rye Bread:

Medium Loaf--put ingredients in order into your bread machine, or use order specified by manufacturer.

1 cup 2 Tbs water
1 Tbs Vegetable oil
1 1/2 Tbs Honey
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
1 cup Rye flour
1 3/4 cup bread flour
3 Tbs nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp yeast

This is supposed to be a New York style rye. Its close but not really quite there. I think it might be different if I rolled this out at the end of the dough cycle and made a real loaf out of it, but I'm not sure--the texture is not quite right for "real" rye bread to me.

Anyway. Enjoy.

Good Timing

2007-12-02T17:04:00.000-05:00

...I guess...we got our first real snow today. i did not bring my greens boxes in (I got distracted before leaving for the night) and they are pretty pissed off looking salad greens on my window sill. I also think that my garlic boxes froze--at least the top of the soil is hard. Maybe the roots are OK. Its out of my hands right now!

One of tomorrow's projects will be to put all my seeds away in the freezer until March when I get planting again. Next up will be inventorying what I have and ordering what I need based on my garden plans. Then I need to build more boxes and start the cycle again.

I think next year I am going to try to keep things rolling indoors (greens at least) but I need to research that....

Welcome to December

2007-12-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

I finally put my garden to bed today. Well, mostly....I plan on putting some compost into the big boxes once its ready, and that is likey to be around Christmas. I compost household stuff with a couple of Bokashi buckets. It works pretty well. I'll have to write about it later this winter.

The garlic still appears to be doing well! I really hope it doesn't freeze. I packed more leaves around them today since it is going to freezing tonight AND we may have snow. I should probably bring my salad greens in too, though they have toughed out a frost we had already.

Even though it is winter, I have started to plan next year's garden. I started my tomatoes in March last year. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have started some tomatoes inside for the winter--I am lucky in that I have a sunroom that gets decent light year round. That experiment will need to wait until next fall!

Last year I grew:

Eggplant
Bell pepper
carrots
Basil
Chives
Mint (several varieties)
Salad greens
Beets
Striped tomatoes (did not work out well)
Cherry tomatoes (lemondrop, sungold, and sweet 100...all fabulous)
Nasturtiums
Watermelon
Peas
Cucumbers
beans in three colors!

A lot of this is in my freezer at the moment.

What I want to add in/change:

A large tomato variety
Soybeans (I found seeds and I want to make edemame)
Hot peppers
Spaghetti squash
zuchinni
head lettuce
garlic (in progress)

I think this means Iw ill need to build a few more large self watering boxes. I made a bunch last spring for my tomatoes, and they were a definite improvement over what I had been doing before--I could get away with watering tomatoes oevery other day in the hottest part of summer as opposed to 3 times a day. I used (and modified) instructions found here to create my self watering containers. They were pretty easy once I got rolling. I did not use PCV pipes, but a black flexible pipe that I got at Home Depot for like $4 for 10 feet. That made a lot of boxes. I use segments of hose for my fill tubes. I may change that.

I hang out on a great Yahoo list about growing veggies in containers, called ediblecontainergardens so I will share that now. It is really nice--lots of VERY helpful and fun folks, and it is one of the better organized Internet lists I have been on--the files section is a great index to the discussions!

More later as I decide what I need to order as seed....

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-21T19:58:00.000-05:00

I wanted to wish anyone reading a Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you celebrate in whatever way makes you happy. I will be sharing dinner with my SO's family, and I am bringing homemade bread. Nothing in it is locally sourced (yet, no one seems to mill flour here) but it is made by ME!

Well, this is exciting

2007-11-18T14:21:00.000-05:00

I've been despairing a bit of late over The Garlic Experiment. We had frost one night about 10 days after I got the garlic in, and I wasn't sure if my protective fort for the garlic worked or not. I haven't found sprouts yet and I know it should sprout and grow a little before the cold really sets in. Of course, my work schedule also doesn't give me a lot of daylight to check, either.

Well, there are TWO sprouted right now! And my little bunker has proven to be a spot where leaves get hung up as they blow off trees, so no the garlic planters are mulched with leaves as has been recommended. I think I planted 8 cloves, and while 2 out of 8 isn't a great yield, it will likely be plenty for me and maybe more will pop up before we get a hard frost.

High Praise to Bobolink Farms!

2007-11-15T18:47:00.000-05:00

Sorry to have been away--not much has been going on, so I haven't had much to say. I originally planned to wait and post about this product until I actually had it, but I just had the best customer service experience in some time!

I stumbled across Vernon NJ's Bobolink Farm several weeks ago and signed up for their mailing list. They are a small farm that makes cheese and occasionally has pork, beef and veal available. I got an email advising that beef and pork were available about a week ago...and just listen to this email, doesn't it sound awesome:

"100% Grass-fed Beef Details:

Most feedlot beef is harvested at 18 months, when the animal's growth curve begins to flatten out. Regrettably, much of the grass-fed beef on the market is also "baby beef", lacking the depth of flavor and marbling that a mature animal attains.

This steer, a Jersey-Brown Swiss cross, was 42 months old, and never took anything except his mother's milk, fresh grass, dry hay and salt. The meat is well marbled, with sunny, grassy-yellow fat that informs of a true 100% grass diet and a well-lived life.

The two filets were donated to the Autism Speaks benefit dinner in NYC last month, so there are no porterhouse or t-bone steaks. but we do have rib, loin shell, and loin sirloin steaks, as well as rib roast, cross-rib roast, chuck roast, bottom round, top sirloin and eye round roasts, as well as ground beef, stew beef, etc.

Whey-fed Pork Details

These piggies were born in March, and spent the spring, summer and fall grazing weeds, digging up grubs, drinking Bobolink's cheese whey, eating stale Bobolink bread, bulk levain starter, tablescraps, etc. This year's pigs are cross-bred Old Spot,Tamworth, Large Black and Berkshires, all old British breeds. Tamworth is actually a Bronze Age breed, the same pigs that Julius Caesar discovered in his conquest of Britian. The meat is well marbled, moist, tender, sweet, and delicious!"

I did click the link to look at what was available when I got the mail, and decided that I would order some hamburger, steaks and pork chops later. That was a mistake since when I went back less than 24 hours later there was almost nothing left! So, I did order 5 pounds of burger, and a cheese sample, and next time something is ready I will order immediately.

They only ship on Monday and Tuesday so I was expecting my order this week with the idea that I would make some Sussex County based chili with my tomatoes from the summer...however the order hasn't arrived yet. I checked the tracking today and saw that the cheese has shipped (cheese and meat ship seperately) and I figured I'd call today to find out what happened to my cow.

Well, I didn't have to because this afternoon I got a call from Bobolink Farm! I think I spoke to John, I'm not 100% sure...but they ended up selling that steer in 36 hours and pretty much got overwhelmed, so he was apologetic and made sure it was OK to ship it out this coming Monday to arrive Tuesday. I assured him this was OK...but REALLY, how often do you get this sort of service? Right--you don't! Another reason to go local!

Bobolink Farm also sells cheeses at Farmer's Markets or their Farm Store, and they offer Farm Tours as well...I think once the spring arrives I'll go for a visit and see how they run.

The cheese did arrive today-the sampler I got has 4 varieties. I did snitch a little of the cheddar, and it is creamy and good, and not super sharp. I bet it will be awesome with some bread. And I'll let you know how that chili turns out next week!

Garlic and Winter whining

2007-10-29T22:32:00.000-04:00

The garlic was planted on Sunday--I photos, but they are not very interesting, so I will spare you. I also took down most of my garden since fall is apparently here. I garden on the rooftop outside my window (I live in a second story apartment) so everything I do is in containers. You need to mulch garlic to convince it to survive the winter. I am hoping that by tucking my garlic boxes within the protective confines of a fort built by my big tomato boxes this will help insulate them. We'll see. If I had a porch that got sun but no heat, I'd try that, but I don't have such a thing.

I didn't have time to truck out to Abma's today so I had to hit the Stop N Shop. I think I have successfully weaned myself off the prepackaged vegetation, but it is frustrating not knowing where stuff comes from...so I spent time looking at labels on the milk and whatnot and picking out things that were at least distributed close by. I suspect this doesn't mean much.

I am beginning to think that winter was not such a great time to get more serious about local feeding. I had all summer, and while I did do some, I didn't do enough. I started to hit my freezer today to help solve the issue, and once my chicken stock thaws (I make stock whenever I make a whole chicken, and this one was definitely a Purdue) I'll be making a soup of roasted garlic and eggplant....the garlic was locally grown, and the eggplant is from my own garden, so that will be better.

I think I will aim for one meal a week that is mostly local for the winter, and try not to stress out over it in the meanwhile. I can get off the supermarket habit when the alternatives are available again...and next summer I will get boatloads of strawberries to enjoy now!

Garlic's here!

2007-10-24T19:46:00.000-04:00

My garlic bulbs arrived yesterday! They are lovely. My plan is to plant these on Sunday since it is dark AND rainy right now, and I will be busy after work the next two nights, as well as AWOL on Saturday. So Sunday is garlic planting day! I'll make a photo essay out of it.

In the meantime, enjoy these garlic growing links I found while researching this project:

The Garlic Store on How To Grow Garlic

Gardenwebs Contianer Gardening Forum

Enjoy!

Grocery frustrations

2007-10-22T18:14:00.000-04:00

Today, in between various other errands, I had to go buy food. I am sort of fortunate that there are a lot of farmer's markets in the area (though they are winding down now) but I also have a nutso work schedule that doesn't allow me to get to them. Like, weekends are a huge problem for me. But my fridge was mostly bare, and although I have a bunch of things from the garden, I did not have leaf lettuce that was quite ready yet. I ended up driving out to Abma's Farm in Bergan county. Its probably a 12 mile trip or so, and yeah, I wrestled with the whole do I drive 12 miles or go to the Stop N Shop, and I decided that it was better for me to drive 12 miles.

Abma's Farm is a big place, and they have a little farm store where they sell their own produce, as well as stuff from other places. They can tell you immediately WHERE everything comes from, so its OK to ask. They do put "Freshly picked" signs over everything they actually grow. They also have chickens so the eggs and poultry are from the farm. They had a freaking ton of tomatoes, but I am out of freezer space for sauces and have not gone adventuring into canning just yet (maybe next year) I ended up with lettuce, eggs, broccoli, radishes (my radishes this fall are a miserable failure for some reason) and I got NY state apples because I absolutely needed some fruit.

I then got home and harvested what was left of my carrots. Dinner tonight will be some of those with roasted beets and greens (also from the garden) and chicken breast with basil. The chicken breast I got earlier this year at a farmer's market from Hoboken Farms...unfortunately, Hoboken Farms gets their meat from a "USDA facility" meaning that the chicken could be from anywhere. Well, I can't waste it, and its still a dinner mostly from the garden.

I'll blather on about this later, after I've thought more on it (yes, I should have been more organized in starting this project!) but one of the things about the 100 mile diet idea is that it is very flexible, and you can make your own exceptions for things that you can't find locally and can't live without. Spices usually fall in this area. For me, I am looking for locally farmed meat (beef, pork, etc...I am a fairly enthusiastic carnivore even if I don't eat meat every day) and milk and I would LOVE to find a mill for flour (I do bake my own bread) but these seem hard/elusive so far....

The current experiment

2007-10-19T21:42:00.001-04:00

This year I am going to try and keep my garden rollng as close to year round as possible. I've got salad greens outside the bedroom window, and the last of the main garden is still kicking out tomatoes.

Its also the right time to plant garlic, so I am giving that a whirl. I bought some hardneck garlic cloves from Seeds of Change. Supposedly this type does better in a cooler climate. Hopefully I won't end up with rotten cloves in the dirt, and there will be nice garlic greens this spring.

The First Post

2007-10-19T11:08:00.000-04:00

Greetings to anyone who has stumbled across this blog. I really hope it will become a useful resource for me and anyone else participating.

I've been an on and off gardener for years, and in the summer of 2006 I decided that since I had a new home with decent sunlight, I would give some container gardening a whirl again. Simple stuff. I had moderate success, and then discovered a really nice Yahoo group on container vegetable gardening and got all fired up. The result was not so much a garden as it was a small farm.

I live in the NYC/NJ metro area. I can see the haze of Newark's sodium lights from where I live, and the NYC skyline is not far a way. My second floor apartmenthas a lot of roofspace outside my windows, and this is where my garden is. Happily, my landlord was more amused than furious.

The Yahoo group does tend to be a bit more oriented to social issues than I expected, so from there I was exposed the concepts of the 100 mile diet, reasons to eat locally grown food, and how to preserve what was coming out of the garden. The combination of the recent food safety scares, an apparent yearning to be a farmchick, and a familial tendency to minor levels of revolt and anarchy made me look into this more closely, and while I found a LOT to be had at the many local farmer's markets, I still find myself more reliant on supermarkets than I think I want to be. So I went back to the web, as surely there must be a community of locavores in this area who share secrets on where to get things like locally raised milk or other dairy products...and there doesn't seem to be one. I finally decided I would take it upon myself to start such a resource. Later this weekend I'll publish a list of links I have found useful, and I would like to encourage anyone reading to share what I have missed.

I don't think I am going to get into a lot of politics here, but I do want to talk about gardening and food, share what is working for me on the rooftop, discuss the best ways to keep the garden's bounty over the winter (I am freaking psyched by the sheer number of cherry tomatoes in my freezer) and all that. I dip around in ultra amateur photography too, so be prepared to put up with pictures of eggplant and the like.

So please share out the URL and come be chatty.