Hello, no I haven't vanished, life has been a crazy ride. On one hand, things have fallen completely apart. Seriously apart. Seriously and totally apart. On the other hand, things are now falling into place. The old structures are decimated, and some new one ones are being built. I hope that at least one of these new structures comes with a view. And perhaps a pool. 

The book is done
I ordered the final proof this morning. I've had some help with proofing, but not with editing. I've been giving myself a week or so between edits to give it a rest so to speak, and now I'm confident that it's good to go. I have to make sure though.

Also, I've been figuring out how the mechanics of selling the book myself in addition to having on Amazon.com. Finding the right package and materials for mailing, the postage needed etc. I know some have asked for autographed copies, and the only way for that happen is for the books to come directly from me to you with a personalized and loving sentiment. 

Teaching
I will be teaching a class in late winter/spring on heirloom gardening at a local adult continuing education program. It will start with an introduction heirloom plants, move along to seed starting and collecting, and then into organic gardening techniques and garden maintenance. Right now there is nothing like this offered by this program. I hope the response is so good that they'll add another class.

Next books
Yes plural. I have two more book ideas. My next book will be a almanac or handbook. I will focus on heirloom plants, and will incorporate folklore, animal/weather phenology, and some concepts like my family garden quilt, a vegetable dye garden, and I'm sure some other garden concepts will present themselves while I research and write. For those who are not familiar with phenology, it is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. 

An example of animal/weather phenology is you should plant corn when the oak leaves are the size of squirrel ears. Priceless. 

With climate change, a lot of the current research and writing is about how climate change will impact existing animal/weather phenology. I want to gather as much of the existing animal/weather phenology wisdom so it doesn't vanish for good. With folklore, this wisdom is a nice complement to the history and tradition associated with heirloom plants.

The second book idea is a cookbook. I'm tailoring my 2012 garden to provide the content. I'll leave it at that.

The 2012 Heirloom Expo
Originally, my first book was going to be my marketing tool at the 2011 expo. However, since my life needed to collapse completely instead, I'm hoping there will be a 2012 Heirloom Expo. If there is, and I'm planning there will be, I will be there with two books, photos, calendars, etc. and the tempting tease of the third book, the cookbook.

Grants
This is a new avenue for me to walk down. Since I don't speak state or federal government bureaucratic speak, I hope there is a Rosetta Stone out there to decipher this for me. Or, a really good grant writer.  

So that's the plan. I still want to do some video work, and in time I will. For now though this is the way forward. 

There's always a story lurking somewhere around me. Recently, I stopped by my garden plot at the community garden. It's the end of the season and I wanted to assess what had to be done to close it. I didn't plan to do any work, and was not dressed for any. I pulled up a few small plants, my neighbor saw me and hollered "You can dig as much potatoes as you can." 

I never grew potatoes which means I never dug them either. All around me though, my neighbors had potatoes. Evidently they grow well there. Always looking for knowledge and content to write about, I said "Great, thanks!"

He asked me if ever dug them before, I said no and he said it wasn't a big deal. He didn't have fork, just a shovel, he demonstrated what to do and handed me the shovel. It's an easy thing really. You just have to be careful. You dig a little dirt, find the potato and brush off the dirt. Considering I had sandals on, and a nice pair of short pants, it was going to be a short experience. 

I moved onto gnocchi. I just had to. Fresh potatoes, some King Arthur flour and in a short amount of time I had pillows of heaven. Shortly after, I cooked a butternut squash that another neighbor gave me, had the last of the tomatoes from my garden, and some of the frozen gnocchi. An impromptu dinner that was grown within 400 feet of each other. It doesn't get any better then that.

When I decided to write about this, naturally I had to research heirloom potatoes. In the course of digging for information, I came across the Andes-Potato Park-CIP Agreement. From the article that precedes the agreement;

LONDON, Jan 18 (IPS) - Peru gave the world the potato, and the potato now offers indigenous people around the world a new recipe for securing their rights.

A new agreement between six indigenous communities and the International Potato Centre in Cusco, Peru, heart of the old Inca civilisation in the Andes mountains of Latin America, recognises the right of these communities over the unique potato strains that they have developed and grown. 

So what does this mean? More from the article;

The new agreement "means that Andean communities can unlock the potato gene bank and repatriate biological diversity to farming communities and the natural environment for local and global benefit," ANDES said in a statement Tuesday.

Though excluded and often oppressed, indigenous peoples are the traditional custodians of biodiversity, and this agreement recognises that "the conservation, sustainable use and development of maximum agro-biodiversity is of vital importance in order to improve the nutrition, health and other needs of the growing global population," ANDES says.

How GREAT is that? Except for the part about indigenous people being excluded and often oppressed, that's tragic. This agreement reclaims their rights to a food that they have cultivated and introduced to the world. They are the original stewards of potatoes. 

This agreement signed in 2005 doesn't give them the right to patent the genes, it's just the opposite. It protects their rights from interlopers who would try to do that. The agreement was sign by six Peruvian indigenous communities, and the International Potato Center, an agricultural research center based in Lima, Peru, which is the sponsor of the Potato Park;

Located in Pisaq in the Sacred Valley of Peru, the Potato Park is a one of the few conservation initiatives in the world where the local people are managing and protecting local genetic resources and traditional knowledge about their health, food, and agriculture.

The Park covers more than 12,000 ha between 3,150 and 5,000 masl. About 600 varieties of native potatoes grow in the Park, most of them unique to this habitat. Six Quechua communities live in the Park. Some had been struggling for land tenure for years until the Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Communities (ANDES in Spanish) brought them together in this in-situ conservation project. 

I'm amazed and inspired by this. I want to see this place. I have to. What better example of what I want to encourage people to do within their families? There will be more written about this I'm sure. For now though, a story that started out innocently enough with a brief visit to my garden plot and spontaneous potato dig will have to do.

I've written a lot about heirloom varieties of vegetables, but there are heirloom varieties of just about any plant. Take for example sunflowers. They have been around for a very long time. Some dates I have see put them back to 2600 b.c. While it's generally it's thought they originated in Central America, The Ancient Greeks have a myth about how the sunflower was created.

From Thomas Bullfinch;

The Hopi used it for dying yarn, baskets and face paint. The seeds will stain your fingers purple when harvesting them, and to extract the dye, boil the seeds. My fingers did get stained when I was harvesting the seed. I did extract they dye, the water in the pot turned black. I've read that you can extract dye from the stems and leaves which will be green. While researching this, I found out there's many plants and techniques that are used for creating dye. This presents another opportunity for those who wish to create a vegetable dye garden, and create a heirloom out that.

The plants are gorgeous. Sturdy, with deeper roots than the other sunflowers I grew this year. They are large plants but not overwhelming. There is one large central bloom, and multiple smaller blooms on the plants. The petals are nice rich yellow color, and the plants I grew, the center with the seeds were the dominant feature of the blooms. The seeds I planted were a rich, solid black with a sheen that looked they were varnished. The seeds I harvested did not have that full black color, but I also harvested them early since a hurricane was coming and I didn't want to lose the plants to the weather.

From reading some the information out there the Hopi Dye is a rare seed to come by. Sunflowers are so trendy now that there are more popular varieties that are more uniform and more appropriate as cut flowers. This trend is pushing the older varieties out. 

As I have written before and will continue to write, one value of these heirloom varieties is the history and tradition with them. Take a minute and consider that a nation of people grew this plant for centuries. That is is not a trend, it's a a sustainable tradition. 

Another value is you can't buy them at the market. You can only grow them. For those who don't garden that presents a challenge, to those folks I say this, think about the people in your life who do garden, ask them if they start their plants with seeds. If they do, consider these varities as gifts for them.

By doing so you can start a trend to sustain tradition. 

If you love sunflowers and are looking for calender for 2012, check out Sunflowers a Go Go. The proceeds will benefit Vanishing Feast.

I'll be the the first to admit it, I'm a sucker for the romantic notion of heirloom varities being pure as the driven snow. When I first strated exploring heirloom varities, I assumed, (and yes you can break it apart into THOSE three words), that these were pure lines of vegetables. The blue bloods pedigrees of the vegetable kindom. 

HA! What an amateur assumption that was. Let's face it, farmers, horticulturists, seedmen, etc. have always had a vested interest in making the better producing plant. I love heirloom varities, and for the scale that I grew, they are fine. For market crops though they can be a real challenge. If you need to make money to flourish, a Watermelon Pink Beefsteak with it low yields is not a good choice. Cherokee Purples, Cherokee Chocolates and Black Cherry Tomatoes are prolific enough to turn some profit. And then there's the legendary Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter.

So when I found this description from his 1890 catalogue I laughed at the crazy assumption I had made when I first started out. From page 53 in William Heny Maule's 1890 catalogue;

Essex Hybrid - A most valuable new variety gaining great popularity everywhere. It's very solid, of rich flavor, grows perfectly smooth, large in size, and is very productive. It ripens all over alike and flesh is very hard and solid. A vigourous grower, fruits evenly on the vines. Just the sort for shipping. All progressive growers should plant the Essex variety largely.

Just the sort for shipping? Perfectly smooth? Sounds like some of the complaints today lodged about the factory-farmed pale red wax ball tomatos that basically destroyed the tomato growing industry, and put a lot of heirloom varities at risk for extinction.

I think this is a good lesson to learn that hybrids are not a problem. In fact, a lot of heirloom varities are hybrids, they're just an older generation, and they don't have the word hybrid in their name. The word hybrid doesn't fit into the old romantic notion that Radiator Charilie's Mortgage Lifter has, which by the way is a hybrid, or the endearing quality of Aunt Ruby's German Green. Dear, sweet Aunt Ruby. 

The important thing is that we realize now that we are the stweards to keep these varities going no matter if they are a hybrid or not. The issue is one of extinction, not distinction between two words that begin with the letter h. There's room at the table for both. Just not for GMOs. 

As far as the Essex Hyrid, I couldn't find any trusted sources of information about them. I'll keep an eye out and if I do find anything about them I'll include it another post.

No, it's not the title of a new Christopher Guest film. It's another self-induced adventure that I get to write a story about. You know the saying you just can't make this up, well I sorta do by growing my own content. 

Hinklehatz peppers, aka Chicken Heart Peppers are a very old Pennsylvannia Dutch heirloom. (If you click the link scroll about halfway down to the description.) Or, you can keep reading this;

These hot peppers have been cultivated in this area for over 150 years! Its name perfectly describes the shape and size of these extremely hot peppers. These hot little beauties are used almost exclusively in pickled form by the PA Dutch, although they also cook and puree the peppers to make a "pepper vinegar" similar to Tabasco sauce, which is used on sauerkraut and other dishes. A recipe appears in 1848 in Die Geschickte Hausfrau. Prolific, long-season plants. Very ornamental, on compact 1-1/2 to 2 foot bushes. Very resistant to all bugs and disease. Also very cold hardy for a chile pepper.

What the above fails to mention is the name, Hinklehatz, translates into chicken heart because the peppers are very close to to size, shape and color, if it's the red variety, of a chicken heart. They rate 125,000 units on the Scoville scale. They are very serious hot peppers.

The description of the plant is accurate. A large, sturdy bush that withstood the following; a hail storm that killed the rest of my garden, then torrential rains, a hurricane that passed within 60 miles of it where it was growing, and finally the remnants of a tropical storm. The pepper itself has a very tough skin. The flavor is somewhat fruity until the caspian kicks in and reminds you of it's ranking on the Scoville scale.

A friend mentioned that one day she wanted to ferment some hot peppers into a sauce. That got me thinking about trying that with the hinkelhatz. Since the Pennsylvania Dutch use these peppers for hot sauce and pickling vinegars, it seemed like a good fit for these peppers.

The Pennsylvania Dutch are stewards of heirloom varieties. Their contribution to the preservation of heirloom varieties is a standard that I hope a lot of people follow. It's essentially what the focus of this project is all about. That is growing varieties of plants with a history and tradition, and passing them along to future generations. I'll write more about the Pennsylvania Dutch and their varieties in the future. For now though, let's get back to fermenting hinklehatz.

I started out inspired. I wanted to work with the fruity notes in the flavor of the pepper, so I decided to use a locally grown canary melon. I would've used one that I grew, however the previously mentioned hail storm took them out. If you never had a canary melon, you are missing out on a very sweet melon, with a robust and deep melon flavor. Some bay leaf, black pepper, garlic, shallots, and some black cherry tomatoes would round out the sauce.

I would attempt to do some food styling for the photographs. I was going to ferment for 30 days. A complete month of fermenting, and document the process with weekly photos. It was going to be the best hot sauce ever. 

As would be the case in any story, an antagonist would arrive on the scene muck up the works. In this story, it arrived in the form of yeast. The yeast formed from not having a sealed jar, and brine that lacked enough salt. There wasn't much information out there about fermenting hot peppers for sauce, and me being impatient and impulsive when it comes to being creative, I forged ahead with what little information I found.

Not that the yeast that grew was a bad thing, but it wasn't good either. So I did some more digging for information, or excavating is more like it, and found this site. It was here that I found the information that identified the yeast. After reading through this page I saw the errors of my way. If you want to try this, it seems like this page is a solid source of information. I haven't gone back to try this yet, perhaps I will since the plant I have still has a lot of hot peppers on it.

I thought the story was done, however as it will be, innocently enough at a pot luck dinner at a friend's house, another friend was talking about the hot peppers she grew. She mentioned how she would put them in a jar with some sherry and making a spicy cooking wine. BINGO!, I had a solution to this story, so that's what I did. While not a hot sauce or a pickling vinegar in the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch vein, a delightful end to this self-induced hinkelhatz adventure.

I kicked around the idea of pre-selliing the book, but I have no control over the print quality. The print on demand nature of self-publishing lends itself to manuscript type of books where it's all type, or perhaps a lot of type with some illustrations through out the book.

Digital printing of photographs has gotten better over the years, and since this book does have superb photos in it, I thought it would be best to get a proof before selling it.

Another factor is the paper stock. I would think the people who run this business would have a good idea of what paper works the best for both type and photos. That's why we get proofs.

The files are uploaded. I'm waiting for them to be reviewed to see if they meet the submission guidelines required by createspace.com, the publishing studio by amazon.com. I have confidence that the final product will be good. 

With the gardening off-season coming up, I want to start shooting some video of what people are doing to preserve the heirloom varieties. I do believe it's a good niche to fill. I have the camera to shoot it. I need a good mic such as a Zoom H4 , and good tripod to start. 

I now have a calendar store at lulu.com which features my photography, with a wide range of subject matter. Any calendar ordered will support Vanishing Feast. The choices right now include the Sunflowers a Go Go mentioned in the previous post, The Sonoma County Coast, and Window Shopping, a series of photos of store windows that capture the surreal dioramas that the reflections in them create. I have a blog set up, and will be posting at the blog and tweeting daily to see what kind of traffic and attention I can get. Perhaps some Google Ad Words too. 

I also woke up from a very lucid dream with the idea of three tomatoes and how to grow them. What better way to preserve the future tomatoes and vegetables than to teach children about them. I have a concept developed that's been soundly rejected by publishing companies so there has to be merit in the idea. I will adapt that concept to this. 

I'm experimenting with the self-publishing opportunities that are out there. I see myself as a media company that creates media that will support heirloom varieties and offer some products to others to use as fund raising tools. It would a variation of the social business model that Muhammad Yunus presents in Creating a World Without Poverty. With your support, this will happen. Please feel free to pass this post along to anyone who you know that can help me achieve this goal. 

I have a lot of talent and creativity and the corporate world has made it clear to me that I'm not worthy of them. No matter what happens over the course of the next six months with my situation, I will find a way to continue on with this. 

Ok enough of the shameless self-promotion, now back to the stuff I grow and write about. On the horizon we have a failed experiment with fermenting hot peppers to create hot pepper sauce. I will demonstrate what not to do. It's a good metaphor at my attempt at my previous career.

I also tried to make dye from Hopi Dye Sunflowers that I grew this year. It didn't work either. It's a beautiful plant that the Hopi Nation has used for hundreds of years so I'm sure it works quite well when you know what to do with it.  

That's it for now, and thank you for your support. 

Sunflowers, who doesn't love them? I'm sure there are are folks out there who don't, but for the most part, they are adored by many, inspiration to others, and an important food and oil source for birds and humans. Van Gogh painted, Martha Steward gave them brand approval, and Greek mythology tells a very interesting tale of how the sunflower was created;

Clytie was a water-nymph and in love with Apollo, who made her no
return. So she pined away, sitting all day long
upon the cold ground, with her unbound tresses streaming over her shoulders.
Nine days she sat and tasted neither food nor drink, her own
tears and the chilly dew her only food. She gazed on the sun
when he rose, and as he passed through his daily course to his
setting; she saw no other object, her face turned constantly on
him. At last, they say, her limbs rooted in the ground, her face
became a sunflower, which turns on its stem so as always to face
the sun throughout its daily course; for it retains to that
extent the feeling of the nymph from whom it sprang.

I was so inspired by this myth that on one Halloween

It was only natural that I grew them. Since a good number of them survied the vicious hail storm a couple of weeks ago, I knew I had to do something with them. And that's where Sunflowers a Go Go came from. It will be a calender of photos that are manipulated in photoshop with a dayglow/go go treatment to them. 

I need to raise money so I can grow Vanishingfeast into a web series, and by producing a range of prodcuts to sell, I can grow this concept. If someone wants to underwrite this BELIEVE me I would welcome it however until that happens, I have to keep moving this along.

Since I will use my book as fund raiser for librairies that will host book signings, and make the book avilable to other groups who support heirloom vegetables in some way, along with sustainable organic agriculture, it gt me thinking about this calender. It can available for any organization with a holisitc and progressive mission as fundraiser for them. Details of this will be worked out since this calender idea just came up this week.

So that's it for now. More to come. 

Evidently in colonial times in America, this Philadelphia heirlom variety did exactly that. It seemed odd and intriguing to me when I first read about the Red Fig tomato being used as fig susbsitute in early America. When I read about that use, of course I had to experience this piece of hertigae and history for myself. I was born in Philadelphia, and my family has lived in the city for 100 years. I'm also a history buff and sucker for a good story like this. I love fresh figs, and fresh tomatoes, but I never thought about substituting a tomato for a fig. As far as the dried versions of either, I can do without them.

So I ordered the seeds, and got a new perspective on the use of a tomato. The seeds came from tomatofest.com. On the Red Fig description page I found instructions on how to prepare tomato figs. Basically, you boil some water, place the tomatoes in the hot water so you can peel them. Once peeled, you place them in a jar with an equal amount of sugar and let them sit for a couple days. Everyday you pour off the syrup and add more sugar. Once that is complete, the colonial folks dried them in the sun for a few days on screens. I used my dehydrator. Once they are dried, in colonial times they covered them with powdered sugar and packed them away. I didn't coat my version in powdered sugar. It's too sweet and too processed for me. I also used light brown sugar to cure the tomatoes. 

I did this for two days. The result is I have some tasty little nuggets that to me taste more bbq than a fig. I have some tomato simple syrup that will be used in a cocktail or a drizzle on some buttermilk ice cream the next time I make it. I only did a small batch since I wasn't quite sure how these would turn out. I would like to try them in some baking. Perhaps biscuits or breads with herbs and cheese. Thanks to a wicked hail storm the bulk of my harvest got knocked off the vine or else I would make more.

The plants produce an abundant amount of pear shaped tomatoes. The foliage is delicate, and on the dainty side. The plants remind me of botanical drawings. The fruit grows in clusters, and it falls ont he vine real easy. You have to be careful while picking the ripe ones.

They also dry in the oven well. I still don't get the fig substitution but it doesn't really matter since the odd and intriguing concept inspired me to try this tomato. I can take it from here. As I learned in my art history courses, in order to create new art you have to study and understand the past. So while I won't be substituting these tasty morsels for figs anytime soon, I have a new ingredient and flavor in my culinary and gardening pallet. And in the end, that's just fine by me. 

Lime Green Salad Tomatoes, aka Green Elf tomatoes, are a unique tomato bred by Tom Wagner, a well-known breeder of heritage type potatoes and tomatoes. When I first read the name Lime Green Salad Tomatoes, the concept of a compact tomato plant that offered up small green tomatoes captured my imagination. It boggled my mind that a tomato plant less the 3 ft. tall could produce an abundant amount of tasty tomatoes. And the fact of the matter is, they do it very well.

The tomatoes themselves are 1 oz.– 3 oz. in size, and have the sweet and slightly spicy taste that the green tomatoes have. The tend to get a nice hue of yellow as they get very ripe, and they contrast nicely is a gazpacho or salsa with the black cherry tomatoes, and some northern lights bicolor. The flavor is not as deep as a Aunt Ruby's German Green, however it is satisfying enough that you'll go back for more. 

And because the plants are so compact, it's easy for some beetles or cutworms to hide in the very center of these plants. The foliage is lush dark green, darker then most of the foliage I have seen on other plants. Another unique element of these plants are the canopy of branches that rise up from the top of the plants, like a crown that is filled with hundreds of tiny yellow flowers. Once the fruit forms, the plants I grew got top heavy, and the toppled over.

It seems like cages are more appropriate for these plants then stakes. The way the canopy rises up, it's like a network of small, thin branches. It was hard for me to find a good center point for a stake, and even if I could, the branches seemed a little fragile to tie up securely to a stake. So a container and a cage would work well for these plants. 

Well the kickstrater thing didn't happen, and some family of mine are betraying their commitment and my trust in them, so I will not be at the Heirloom Expo as I had hoped. A hail storm decimated my garden, and I now longer have anything but rotten and scared tomatoes, and plants that ar so damaged that I'm debating pulling them up to end their misery. I was able to to salvage some tomatoes, but my melons are gone approximately two weeks before they would be ripe. I had some really nice Canary melons and some equally nice Jenny Linds. I have sunflowers that are decapitated. It looks like a scene of a horror film. Oh well.

The book, Future Tomatoes, has a very rough draft completed though. That's the diamond. So as would be expected in any any epic, disaster has to strike. It just does. Just read Greek mythology. And while I'm a big fan of reading Greek mythology, not so much though of living a slight version of one of their myths. It's a good thing I focused on the buds, or else this book might not have happened.

The fund raising aspect of this book will not be limited to libraries. I will make the book available to any organization that supports the mission of preserving heirloom plants, sustainable and local support of farms, farm preservation etc. Farm market associations are one example, CSAs are another, and so are garden clubs. 

So that's the spin for now. I'm quite dizzy from spinning the events of the past two weeks. I will be catching up with some stories about the tomatoes I harvested before the storm now that the book is an draft format.