Defeating the Williams Sonoma Christmas Catalogue

I don't hate you, Williams-Sonoma. In fact, I think the face of Williams-Sonoma is supposed to be about reclaiming our Maker spirit with elegance, and I'm all about that. Back to our roots but with a modern, pretty twist? Yes. Regain confidence in our own self-sufficiency by rebuilding basic skill sets, but in an elevated, artisan way? YAAASS.

We call it Prairie Chic, bitches. 

Except the face of Williams-Sonoma, which seems from a distance to be dotted with sun-kissed freckles and fresh-flushed cheeks, is actually closer to the girls from the MAC store whose faces are so caked with industrial thickness spackle and artfully air-brushed blush-substrate. 

No, I mean...it's fine. 

The problem with Williams-Sonoma is not that they purportedly give the everyday person access to the gourmet (if the everyday person is ready to pay $30 for their signature cupcake mix, which is full of the very best like, flour and, probably, gourmet baking soda, and definitely the same  mineral terroir salt that Jacques Torres uses at his chocolate shop in Brooklyn). It's not even that they charge preposterous prices for what are essentially basic pantry essentials and gourmet candy (I am ashamed to say, in order to qualify for a 50% coupon, I bought a $6 teeny box of gourmet "old-fashioned" jelly beans, the cheapest thing in the store. There were literally one of each flavor inside). The problem is that, like my friend Martha Stewart, they actually undermine the everyday person's path to self-sufficiency. You can brew beer and make cider, but only with our kit. You can raise chickens but really only with a coop made from reclaimed antique barnwood and copper siding. Keep bees, but you'd better be willing to pay $1000 just to get started, and that doesn't include the bees. Garden, but with our high-tech patented soil substitute and cedar boxes. You can have a gourmet meal, if you order it from us. 

This last one annoys me the most, particularly in the form of the Williams-Sonoma Christmas catalogue. The first one I ever saw was filled with things that were so impossibly expensive I couldn't even think about them, but looked and were described as so incredibly delicious I couldn't stop thinking about them. Crab cakes, homemade vanilla marshmallows, coconut creme sour cream cake, and peppermint bark in every shape, size and form. I pored over the catalogue fantasizing about the day I might be able to order a whole breakfast full of frozen pastries from some patisserie in Napa for Christmas brunch with some fantastic people who'd be stopping by with--what, artisan brew wassail? 

To these kick ass Napa Valley patisserie beggar's purses! YAAAAASSS!

At a certain point, though, the description on the Williams-Sonoma catalogue for their signature peppermint bark started pissing me off. It literally says "Often copied, never matched in quality or flavor", right before it talks about using Guittard chocolate. Uh, they sell Guittard chocolate in Vons. Never matched in quality? Stop. That's not even the best quality chocolate *I* can buy. You're supposed to be the holy grail of cooking, WS. WTH. 

This particular blurb "often copied, never matched in quality" to me is the antithesis of everything the urban farming movement stands for. I get that peppermint bark is the workhorse of the Williams-Sonoma winter retail season and we have to feel that what we're getting is much more than just the WS logo on a fancy tin. But for a company to say to their specific customer, who is, by their very nature, a budding chef or cook, at whatever level, that you have a product they will NEVER match in quality, when that product is, without hyperbole, two candy bars and a smashed candy cane? What kind of message is that? "You can do it yourself! Unless we sell it. Then please don't even try you stupid lump you will NEVER, NEVER get this right."

No, no, no. I may covet your tart cherry shea butter gardener's soap, WS, but I will never, NEVER buy something that scoffs at my attempt to do better.

I mean...I obviously had to buy one tin for taste comparison's sake so that I could fully exult in my victory once I had crushed the Original Peppermint Bark under my metaphorical heel. But I think we can all agree that said purchase would be purely for both science and pettiness and not at all a bending of said principle.

Game on, kids.

I started reading about what the real chocolatiers said about the best chocolates, and found out what they liked (Valrhona and Callebaut) and took a good hard look at the Holy Bark. It kind of looked like chocolate and white chocolate and candy canes. $40 for a candy bar sandwich and a smashed candy cane? Can't be that easy. I looked back at the catalogue to see if their famous descriptions could betray their ingredients and realized this was a recipe I could figure out myself. Oh, you infuse your chocolate with peppermint essence? Is that at all like peppermint extract? Yeah. I broke your code. I'll see your peppermint extract and raise you a tsp of pure vanilla. NOW WHO'S NEVER MATCHED IN FLAVOR. See my peppermint bark recipe here. 

New quest: dismantle the Williams-Sonoma catalogue one deconstructed recipe at a time.

I loved the description of their Coconut Creme Cake with marshmallow frosting and sour cream filling made my mouth water. It sounded a lot like a basic tiramisu I had made before--essentially a dense cake, soaked in flavoring, filled with cream in layers. I loved the mascarpone cream I used for tiramisu, and I thought mascarpone and sour cream might not be that different in density, so I tried substituting one for the other and adding a bit of coconut creme syrup from the liquor section. I found a coconut cake recipe (courtesy Paula Deen, pre-political suicide), sliced it, soaked it with coconut syrup like the catalogue said, and put on a basic marshmallow frosting (on the back of the light corn syrup bottle) and sprinkled it with coconut. Everyone in my family protested that they didn't like coconut and yet somehow the entire cake was gone by the time I had my second piece. See my kick-ass coconut sour creme marshmallow cake recipe here.

I love the William's-Sonoma catalogue--used responsibly. I think it's full of inspiration if we empower ourselves to do cool stuff in modern, interesting, elegant ways. There's nothing wrong with ordering a $90 pre-cooked turkey delivered to your door, or a beautifully decorated spice cake, or even a $40 stripey tin of the famous, Original WS Peppermint Bark with Guittard chocolate. But as my favorite food writer, Anthony Bourdain, says in his book "Medium Raw", no one else will ever put the care and quality of ingredients into your food that you would yourself. 

Tonight, I went to make my Christmas chocolate raspberry tiramisu and realized I was out of raspberries, and empowered by taking on the Evil Empire and their Christmas catalogue, I decided to try something else with what I had on hand. Find the link to my full recipe here. Chocolate cherry Baileys and some cherries in the freezer, a couple of fresh Meyer lemons from my tree--I modified my raspberry sauce to use cherries. When it didn't taste as fresh as I wanted it to, I adjusted for sugar and added more lemon for brightness and acidity, then I soaked my chocolate pound cake with coffee and chocolate cherry Baileys, layered it with fresh cherry sauce and mascarpone cream and stole a bite before it put it in the fridge to chill. 

Good god. Sometimes I want to call out my own name when I'm cooking. 

Now, to figure out how to make a pair of DIY candy cane stilettos...

Saturday Morning

I woke up this morning and it was cold, really nice and cold, for the first time in what passes for Southern California fall. Recent sprinkles of rain have turned my barren, drought-ridden front yard into an oasis of wild grass, and I stood out there for a minute in my bare feet, savoring the icy crisp dew on the cold, sharp little blades and enjoying the pale glitter the morning light casts over all that bright and brilliant green.

It's a Saturday. There's no rush. I let the chickens out into their pen, feed them, look for eggs, and then move their run to the front yard so they can enjoy the new grass too. As I'm hauling their heavy pen I realize there are huge patches of clover here and there. Have I seen these before? I can't remember. In our days of the immaculately tended weed-free lawn? certainly not. But with the lawn abandoned to its own devices, the October rains have brought up soft springy patches of the stuff everywhere. The chickens pounce on it greedily and delicately pluck each individual oval leaf off the stem. I pull in some loofah gourd vines, these crazy seeds that have taken over my winter garden with their sprawling vines and enormous yellow flowers, and let the chickens have an extra treat on this cool morning.

I'm so enchanted with the green this morning I stop waiting for the baby kale I planted to grow into something respectably sized and just pluck the biggest leaf from each plant. I end up with a tiny salad that fits in my hand, too small for a bowl, maybe big enough to throw into a smoothie, but decide on a whim to just eat it raw. It's delicious, still cold with morning dew, mild and almost sweet with a flavor that can only be described as "green". It's fresh, it's alive, it's pulsing with nutrients pulled out of the sun and the soil and utterly unlike the bumpy, bitter leaves I've had from the store. It's not sweet, exactly, but there's something so craveable about it that makes me think maybe I should start my morning this way more often. There's fall broccoli coming up in the kale bed and I notice one of the plants has a little lavender flower hiding under the huge spade-shaped leaves.

I check on the fruit trees, the Gala apples we planted a month ago when it seemed the weather was turning and right before the record heat wave struck with its killing temperatures of over 100. The trees look fine, surprisingly, leaves are bright green and soft, and new leaves are sprouting. I dream about next year when we might be able to harvest enough for apple cider, apple pie, and unlimited snacks from the little trees. Then I glance over at my Meyer lemons, which finally produced this year, but are stubbornly refusing to ripen, branches weighed down with dozens of creamy green fruit that I scrutinize week after week, wondering if my eyes have played tricks on me or if they really have lightened to a more lime-green color? Today there's a truly yellow spot on one fruit and I'm encouraged. Maybe I'll actually get my fresh lemon curd before I die. Maybe.

I finish in the garden and go back in to make some almond milk. I haven't done this by myself before and I'm fascinated and delighted by the cloud of creamy white milk that pours out of the blender once I've put it through the unfortunate but aptly titled Nut Bag. I think about whether I've ever seen almond trees at the local nursery and wonder how long it takes from sapling to harvest. Could we really make milk from the nuts from our own trees? This week we collected our first eggs from our six month old hens and it simultaneously energized me to think about more sustainable living project (Beehives! Tilapia ponds! Hops!) and underlined how long-term these projects are. Blueberry bushes, bought in bloom and two weeks from fruiting, were easy. Nut trees? That might take a while. I decide to mentally table the trees and make myself a pumpkin chai almond milk latte like the Southern California white girl I am. Even though I don't own an infinity scarf, ugg boots or yoga pants, the fresh almond milk and the pumpkin taste amazing.

I've realized that Saturdays are insidious. When there's nothing to do except live in the moment you suddenly realize that living in the moment is pretty amazing. Every taste from my garden makes me want more, makes me think maybe I should make a double batch of the fresh bread that's so good we tear it in pieces and slather it with Kerry butter like we're living in 1952, that I should make sure we go to the Farmer's Market because maybe they'll have fresh arepas at the Venezuelan stand, these creamy, white corn, polenta-like thick tortillas filled with Spanish ham and coteja cheese and saffron. Could I spend the morning responding to the insane growth of weeds in my broccoli beds rather than the inane growth of my email inbox?

Three Myths About Living in California During the Drought

When I excitedly told my urban farming, super environmentalist, gray-water-reclamation-system-having friend that I was putting in a new gutter system with rain barrels I WAS SHOCKED. SHOCKED, I tell you. Because he said,

"I would put one in but it doesn't rain enough here."

I...what? What are you saying? What are you even talking about right now? We live in the same state. Do you really not know?

Oh god you really do not know. Oh, wow. Well, this is embarrassing, because listen:

Myth #1: California does not get enough rain for meaningful water reclamation. 

Okay, yes, GRANTED. This is a picture of California, and it looks bad. We are currently in one of the worst droughts in recorded history. We are in such a bad drought that ARIZONA is going to ship us some water. Arizona. That's the desert out east of Hollywood. I think the national plant might legit be a tumbleweed. You know what they have in Arizona? Signs that say "Turn off air conditioning for next 5 miles" because it's so hot there your car might explode. I'm extrapolating a little bit on that but I'm pretty sure spontaneous combustion is a recorded thing in Arizona. And they are giving us water. That's the kind of (dry) creek we're up right now. The brown areas on the map above bleed into reddish brown areas which are letting you know you may live in a place where trees are more likely to burst into flames that burn down your house than to shade you. It's dry here. Is what I'm saying.

So when the severe water restriction mandates went into effect this spring, I became hyper aware of all the places I might get water or recycle water or just use water more wisely--and then it rained, unexpectedly, a whole half inch. There were some spots along the side of my house where water was dripping, since, like most of the houses on my block, we don't have full roof gutters, just about ten feet protecting the entryway; so I threw some buckets and watering cans under the drips and then an empty trashcan under the biggest downspout. I thought I might collect a gallon or two altogether and get enough to water the tomatoes the next week.

I came back a few hours later and every bucket was overflowing along with my thirty gallon trashcan. 

I started getting excited and ran out to scramble up another empty trashcan. Since we'd let the lawn die and we'd started composting, the green waste trashcan was just sitting there empty. I stuck it under the downspout too. 

Filled to the top. 

WHAT THE HELL.

I watched sadly as the slow storm continued to pour off my roof, unchecked; I'd run out of containers to catch it with. Everything I owned that could hold water was holding water, down to the lids for the trash cans themselves, and still it was spilling out everywhere--all from a half inch of rain.

If I had big enough barrels, how much could I have actually caught?

The formula, says Arizona Waterwise, is the square footage of your roof x the amount of rain in inches x 0.623. So for example, for a 1000 square foot roof, a half inch of rain yields over 300 gallons of rainwater. In 2014-2015, the dry year that led us into this historic drought, San Diego still received around 9 inches of rain. That's over 5400 gallons of rain that could be collected just from one medium sized house even in the midst of a historic drought. To put it into perspective, you could water a 1000 square foot lawn for 9 weeks straight with that much water. If you include the 9 weeks of water your lawn got from being rained on, you end up with 4 and a half months that you don't need to water that lawn.

Now if you have a garden....

Myth #2 A Garden takes more water than a lawn

Are you serious right now? I can't tell if you're serious.

I've mentioned before that my neighbors are awkwardly involved in every thing I do in my garden (and chicken coop, and mini-coop construction shoppe) and one of them recently asked us "How are you managing to keep those vegetables watered when we we're not supposed to water more than once a week?"

You're worried about my garden when your yard looks like this?



While it's true that some parts of the garden have the same water requirements as the lawn (an inch a week) garden plants have some specific advantages over green lawns when it comes to reducing your water consumption.

• First of all, even with six raised beds and five fruit trees I don't even come CLOSE to filling up the entire space my lawn took up. While someday I hope to have expanded into the full lawn space I still won't use every bit of my square footage because of the extra space I have to give up to paths and the unused space between plants. For this year, even with all I have in the garden, I changed my water usage from over 10,000 gallons a week for my lawn to 175 gallons a week for my food garden.That means a single storm that drops even a half inch of water will cover my garden for two weeks, and with the rain itself and what I can collect in my barrels, a drought rainfall of 9" in a year will still cover me for 36 weeks out of the year--in other words, the entire growing season.
• Second, fruiting plants shade themselves. My squash vines grow super densely and they and my bean plants grow spade shaped umbrella leaves perfectly suited to shading their fruits. Tomato plants even when they're staked twine together and shade each other. They keep the ground from getting hot enough to let the water evaporate. 
• Mulching around garden plants retains water that can be released slowly into the ground over time, and reduces evaporation even more. I use cedar chips, pine needles, and dead leaves; anything that can protect the soil and will decompose and add nutrients back into the soil. While you *could* do this with a green lawn by letting the grass clippings fall back down into the lawn, it detracts from the bright green color and makes the lawn look dead--and since curb appeal is a huge reasons for having the lawn in the first place, using a mulch totally defeats the purpose. 

Myth #3 The upcoming El Nino Storm will end the drought

Even though scientists are calling this winter's coming storm a "Godzilla" El Nino, the biggest storm in about fifty years, it still will not be enough to end the drought. Warm waters off the coast may counteract some of the strength of the storms, lessening torrential rains to soaking showers. While that sounds good in terms of reducing the risk of floods, our groundwater reservoirs are so depleted they'd need several deep, heavy rains to even begin replacing the deficit. Because the waters in the Pacific are so warm, scientists also theorize that the storms may be too warm to deliver a good snowpack in the Sierra Mountains; and the warm weather system may push storms down into Southern California rather than the north.. Hooray for sunny San Diego, but most of the important water reservoirs that feed the state are in the north; and the Sierra snowpack is essential for a slow melting water supply that will eventually seep back into the groundwater reservoirs. 

If the warm temperature system doesn't diffuse the effect of El Nino, there's still the problem of getting all the water from the El Nino storms to stay on the ground long enough to soak back into the groundwater reservoirs, rather than flooding out to the sea. Our drought-stricken state hasn't planned for big enough man-made reservoirs and many will overflow in the first rains this winter, letting the water escape back to the sea before a slow release can let the water sink back into the groundwater caverns. This will be the case in the fields and neighborhoods as well if the storms are too strong; torrents will create floods that wash straight down our storm drains rather than seeping slowly back into the ground.

Finally, our historic water use has been robbing our groundwater and reservoirs at a far higher rate than any El Nino could realistically replenish. We are a desert state that inexplicably has bottled water companies robbing our crucial water sources (Nestle was recently found to be pumping water from the San Bernadino National Forest with little to no oversight from the National Forestry Service). The advent of green lawns in America in the 1800s, supplemented with the invention of the lawnmover, the rotary push lawnmover, the garden hose and the availability of grass seeds, finally trickled over to California with the construction of the suburbs in the 1940s; and the American Garden Club convinced new homeowners that it was not just their privilege but their duty to maintain a beautiful, healthy lawn--and no one took that to heart more than Southern California.We poured 10,000 gallons a week every week into those lawns, forgetting to turn off the the sprinklers during the rare rains, forgetting to fix broken sprinkler heads that spurted water or sent it flooding out into the street. We washed our cars every week and took long luxurious baths. Resource stricken countries like China who lack the soil to grow enough feed for their livestock...import it from California, stripping 100 billion gallons of water a year in the form of alfalfa from our own resource pool.

After even one century of flagrant water abuse like this, we'd need back to back to back years of El Nino storms to replenish the lakes and reservoirs and the groundwater. The historic El Nino in the 1950's that this year's storm system is being compared to only brought in about twice the average annual rainfall. (27" El Nino vs 12.5" average annual)

The days of acres of lush green lawns in Southern California are gone, but with properly installed gutters that can help you take advantage of every square foot of your roof and rain barrels that can help you contain as much of that water as possible, rainwater collection can make a food garden with no drought deficit a reality. Especially on El Nino years like this, don't we owe it to ourselves to take every advantage of a rare opportunity to stock up on our most precious resources?

...particularly when rainwater collection is so easy you can do it in heels.

Flavors of the Season

Eating seasonally is amazing! But once you come home from the farmer's market and the U-pick apple orchard...what do you do with all that squash? Here are some of my favorite seasonal recipes. The vegetable recipes are my own modifications from "Practical Paleo" by Diane Sanfilippo and the easy apple crisp comes courtesy of Robert Irvine.

Apple Crisp

Just about any grocery store including the big box carry a little red cardboard box in the fruit section by the apples with "Apple Crisp" on the package. I bought a pack of this a few weeks ago and made it, and although it was delicious, I realized I had essentially paid $2 for a paper packet of a few spoonfuls of sugar. Buy it if you don't have the staples on hand and you just want to slice apples and go. Here's how to make it from scratch:

6 apples, peeled and sliced (choose your sugar content wisely, as the crumb topping will add extra sweetness. Crisp Galas are my favorite and I didn't find them to be too sweet in this, but if you like a tart contrast, choose Granny Smiths. In any case, choose an apple that has a crisp bite, not a soft apple like a Red or Golden Delicious, as they won't stand up to the heat of the baking)

6 tbl white sugar

1/3 c brown sugar

3/4 c flour

1 tsp cinnamon

6 tbl butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 400. Arrange sliced apples in baking dish. Cut dry ingredients into butter slices with 2 knives or use a pastry blender until a fine crumb forms. Sprinkle topping over sliced apples and bake for 30 minutes. 

I haven't made this with pears but I imagine a sturdy pear like a Bosc or an Anjou would hold up to the heat well, especially mixed with the apples. 

Roasted Carrots

Don't be tempted to use "baby" carrots for this recipe; they're usually carrots from the reject pile that have been shaved down to a miniature size, and typically too woody for cooking. Cut your carrots into as equal of a dimension as possible so that they cook evenly. 

8 large carrots, peeled, cut into 3" matchsticks (split into halves or quarters lengthwise if necessary)

2 tbl melted butter, coconut oil or bacon fat

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Toss carrots with melted fat and season to taste. Roast for 20-30 minutes. 

Butternut Squash Soup

I hate peeling and chopping butternut squash and I especially hate going through all that work to find out that I haven't got enough squash to make a decent pot of soup. This is one of the few supermarket shortcuts I use--the pre-chopped butternut squash cubes, in clamshells in the produce department. Also, when a recipe calls for fresh herbs, I always buy a pot in the garden section at Whole Foods or Sprouts. Even at Home Depot 3" little herb pots run around $3 or less; in the grocery store clamshells a sprig of fresh herbs is $3.50. Even if I kill the plant in the pot I still spent less, and hopefully I managed to keep it alive at least til the next time I need that herb. 

1 Butternut squash OR 4 cups chopped butternut squash cubes (2 clamshells)

1 yellow onion (chopped)

2 granny smith apples,peeled, and made into matchsticks.

6 cloves garlic (crushed)

16 oz broth (I use vegetable but chicken and beef work just as well)

4 tbl coconut oil or bacon fat (melted, divided)

fresh sage

salt 

pepper

sriracha sauce (optional)

sour cream (optional)

bacon (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Toss squash with 2 tbl fat and season with salt and pepper. Place on baking dish and roast for 40 minutes or until caramelized. Meanwhile, use a large heavy bottomed pot to saute onions in the rest of the bacon fat until translucent; add the garlic, 1 apple, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of pepper and 6-8 fresh sage leaves. Cook for 2 minutes. Add broth. Once squash is cooked add squash to pot and stir. Allow to cool before putting through a blender in batches (do not fill to top as steam will cause to the top to fly off if the mixture expands too much). Garnish with the second granny smith apple matchsticks, and I like a couple dashes of sriracha, a dollop of sour cream, and a few crumbles of bacon on top. 

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

The only way I like bacon these days is baked in the oven (350 at 30 minutes on a rack over a roasting pan to catch the drippings). Baked bacon is so melt-in-your-mouth good you won't want anything else and it will ruin you for restaurant fried bacon. It's worth making up a batch to keep in the refrigerator and drain the drippings to use in cooking, but if you don't have a batch of baked bacon on hand, you can cut the slices into 1/2" sections and cook them quickly in a skillet. 

4 cups brussels sprouts, halved, ends trimmed and tough outer leaves removed 

2 granny smith apples, peeled and cubed

2 tbl melted bacon fat, butter or coconut oil

sea salt

pepper

balsamic vinegar

8 slices of bacon, cooked

Preheat oven to 375. Toss the brussels sprouts and cubed apples with fat and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes or until crispy and caramelized. Sprinkle with balsamic and crumbled bacon.

Fall Vegetable Garden Soup

Minestrone Alla Romagna (source: Essentials of Italian Cooking, Marcella Hagan)

1 lb fresh zucchini
1/2 c olive oil
3 tbl butter
1 cup thinly sliced onion
1 c diced carrots
1 c diced celery
2 cups peeled diced potatoes
1/4 lb fresh green beans
3 c. Shredded cabbage
1 and 1/2 c canned cannellini beans
6 cups meat broth
Optional: crust from 1-2 lb piece of parmigiano-reggiano cheese
2/3 c canned tomatoes with juice

1. Soak the zucchini in cold water for 20 minutes then rinse clean of grit. Trim on both ends and dice finely.
2. In a large stockpot add oil, butter, and onion and cook on medium low until onion is pale gold in color.
3. Add carrots and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add celery and cook for 2-3 minutes, then add potatoes and do the same.
4. Snap off both ends of green beans and dice. Add to pot and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add zucchini and do the same. Add cabbage. Cook for 5-6 minutes.
5. Add broth, optional cheese, tomatoes and a sprinkle of salt. Cover pot lower heat and adjust to a steady gentle simmer.
6. Cook for 2.5 hours then add the cannellini beans, stir well and cook for 30 minutes more.
7. Remove the cheese crust, add grated cheese if desired, then taste and correct for salt.

Autumn in Heels--Eating Seasonally, Eating Locally

In Southern California we don't get much of an autumn so we really, I mean REALLY celebrate seasonal flavors like, ON THE FREAKING DOT of September 1st. And by celebrate seasonal flavors I mean go to Starbucks as early as they open so it'll be sort of cool enough to enjoy a hot drink and get a pumpkin spice latte. If you happen to be in luck and it's a slightly overcast day you will definitely wear your brisk Arctic polar fleece Northface zip-up jacket, because really, when are you going to have another chance to wear it and pretend we have seasons. By October the infinity scarves and Ugg boots make their appearance, probably with leggings and the thinnest long sleeved shirt you own, because, again, it's usually in the 80s all the way through the start of November.

The relentless wild Californian Infinity Scarf develops a symbiotic
relationship with its prey before ultimately devouring her.

We hear about this "Autumn" you other states talk about and it sounds awesome. A whole new wardrobe that you only use for those three months! Dressing to match the foliage of trees that somehow change their colors?! That sounds magical. In So-Cal we have cypress trees, palm trees, and lawns. When we go to pumpkin patches they typically are big parking lots that have been covered with stacked bales of hay and a bunch of straw on the ground (which crunches satisfyingly under your Ugg boots and makes you feel all Autumnal-ly) and carnival rides to disguise the fact that you're getting the very same pumpkins you could pick up at the big box grocery stores. They even come in the self-same packing boxes. It's hard for us to find authentic Autumn experiences in the land of eternal summer--so we turn to comfort foods and things flavored with cinnamon and squash. Our myriad local farm-to-table gastropubs will reinvent the butternut squash ravioli and fried squash blossoms and pumpkin cheesecake all over their seasonal menus this month. 

So yes, yes, a thousand times yes on the pumpkin spice latte (I like a nice pumpkin shot in a chai latte, myself). But truly eating seasonally, in a way that's a bit more meaningful than gingerbread cookies and butternut squash soup, is a little more time and thought consuming. 

I first read about the concept of only eating seasonal foods when I read the Barefoot Contessa's book Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients. In the preface, Ina Garten describes her impossibly glamorous foray to Paris and how difficult it was as an American, being completely used to having any ingredient under the sun eternally available, to come to terms with having to cook only with what was available. In particular, she relates her attempt to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, when she, Ina Garten of Martha's Vineyard, was used to having access to heirloom veg fed turkeys, seventeen different pumpkins of varying colors, and wild cranberries from what I imagine is her own William's-Sonoma-crafted cranberry bog--only to find out that those things are only sold frozen and in cans in France, if at all. (Because, apparently, not all Parisians enjoy eating the cuisine of English people who were making do with things they found in the woods.) Still, I appreciated her story of gradually giving in to the season and allowing her inspiration for dinner to come from what was fresh and available where she was,of learning to cook in a way that celebrated a vegetable or fruit that was at the height of its flavor. It made me think about the December bing cherries that appear in stores like a breath of summer, shiny and rosy-cheeked and whispering, "Now you can have it all, now you can really have it all..." I remember buying a big two and something pound bag for a whopping $24, trembling with anticipation and not even waiting to get to my car before popping one into my mouth, expecting to be met with a burst of sweet juice. Instead I was met by hard, joyless lies, which eventually gave way to the sour truth--there is nothing, NOTHING, worse than a December cherry. 

Why eat seasonally, when we have access to almost everything almost all the time? It's the pumpkin-spice-latte effect. Starbucks actually sells pumpkin syrup all year round. You can get pumpkin lattes literally. Any. Time. You could have a nice hot pumpkin latte and you could even get them to put a dash of cinnamon or toffee sprinkles on top in the middle of July. The fact that it's on the chalk-menu in burnt orange chalk-pen with curlicues of green like pumpkin vines around it reminds you that you haven't had one since last fall and now you NEED that pumpkin hit like an infinity scarf needs a white girl to go with it. 

If pumpkin syrup, containing zero real pumpkin and mostly made up of corn syrup, can be so good,  how amazing could fall fruits and vegetables, cooked well and at the height of their flavor, be? This table of local fall foods got me thinking about more than just pumpkin and butternut squashes. Broccoli and cauliflower are at their sweetest and least bitter in the fall; roasted carrots (cut into matchsticks, toss with melted butter, salt and pepper, cook at 375 for 30 minutes. Seriously. Stop boiling...); brussells sprouts (Salt & Cleaver in Hillcrest, San Diego has possibly THE most amazing caramelized Brussels Sprouts with bacon, balsamic vinegar, and granny smith apples); grapes (vineyards are one of the only spots for seasonal color for us in California), pears and of course apples. All these things have become mostly season-less in American grocery stores but their flavor is absolutely amazing right now. 

Eating locally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally, and here's the thing. It's very haute to eat locally and visit the farmer's markets (in San Diego, there's a farmer's market or three on every day of the week) during the summer. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can compete with the flavor of a farm stand summer strawberry. The grocery store strawberry has just had to sacrifice too much flavor in favor of the sturdiness that lets them be shipped all over the country; its a cheap truck stop cousin to the ultra sweet, delicate strawberry you can grow in your own backyard. The farm-stand strawberry is the next best thing, and at almost the same price per pound as the monstrous, tasteless version you get at the grocery store, it's ridiculous not to get the farmer's market version. Buying farm-stand strawberries keeps that strain of strawberry alive, because in case you haven't noticed, you literally cannot buy a strawberry that sweet in a plastic clamshell at a big box grocery store. They are selling (and their suppliers are growing) an entirely different product, something you almost can't, really, call a strawberry anymore because its resemblance to a real, hot from the summer sun, strawberry is so remote. Limp, tasteless, and sometimes moldy? (I'm looking at you Vons. I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) or sweet, acidic, and complex? Hurrah for biodiversity!

Except even in California the strawberry goes out of season. The guys at the farmer's market that were selling me corn and summer squash now have kohlrabi and artichokes and brussells sprouts. The orchard people don't have cherries anymore, they have figs and pluots and pears. And while figs may not be as sexy as cherries, they're still sweet and sultry and delicious--and buying that fig from a local farmer keeps them in business till cherry and strawberry season rolls around again. 

This morning I decided to drive out to Julian, the little orchard town in the mountains northeast of San Diego proper. My visit just happened to coincide with the start of the fall u-pick season (labor day weekend) and Apple-Starr Orchards had trees dripping with Bosc, Comice, and Anjou pears before you could even get out to the gala and granny smith apple orchards. I've been to several different "pumpkin patches" all over San Diego and the neighboring areas but most are not true working farms, just patches of land where someone parked a tractor for photo ops and pumpkins laid out in a row not far from the cardboard shipping crates. These orchards were true orchards, with, yes, imperfect fruit, weirdly shaped fruit, some worm and bird damage, some bruises--but these trees also held the sweetest, most bursting-with-flavor pears and crunchy apples I'd ever tasted. We munched as we picked, developing an eye for what colors each kind of apple and pear meant the ripest, sweetest fruit, using a long-handled claw-basket pole to reach the delectable fruits at the top of the tallest branches. Without a bit of cinnamon or sugar these fruits were perfectly, fantastically Autumn. 

Laden down with "peck" bags (12 pounds) we headed into town to Julian Hard Cider, a local brewery that makes cold-press cider with only local apples, champagne yeast from local grapes and seasonal ingredients. Since it was so early in the fall we were lucky enough to find their Black-and-Blue, a blueberry and blackberry hard apple cider, and my favorite, Cherry Bomb, an absolutely explosive cherry and apple hard cider; but they also had Apple Pie and Harvest Apple, rich with cinnamon and nutmeg and all the things we love about fall. The tasting room is small, with a bar made of wood and corrugated steel from local reclaimed barns and chandeliers made from cut-glass cider bottles, and for $1 a taste we sampled everything they had in stock, finishing our hot apple picking September afternoon in a haze of Apple Pie and Razzmatazz Hard Ciders while downing carnitas from the farm stand next door.

Celebrating seasonal flavors, check. I might even have room for some kohlrabi, depending on what that turns out to actually be--after a quick pumpkin chai latte. 

4 Reasons to Plant Sunflowers

Sunflowers for fall? I'm not sure if this is going to work. I mean, of course, there's the whole color palette. Sunflower yellow is really more of a summer color, more suited to gingham and strawberry cotton prints, whereas it's really becoming more of a leggings and Pumpkin Spice Latte moment right now. But in Southern California at least, where winters don't often dip below 50 degrees F (the bottoming out temp for frost tender sunflowers), I have a theory that sunflowers might be a fall option, and I'm planting some now to see if they survive. I've fallen in love with this hardworking flower this spring and summer, so I'll definitely be starting some seedlings in February indoors so they can go out into the garden as early as March, but if I can have a year round dose of these amazing multi-taskers, I'll take it. Here's why sunflowers are my new obsession.

1. Bird Seed. Now I personally like to have birds come swooping into my garden because I like to pretend they are drawn there by my beautiful singing voice and my inherent and visible kindness as a clearly misplaced Disney princess who's been cruelly relocated to the real world. You may enjoy them for the pastoral scene they set when you go out in the morning for your coffee moment and hear them chirping away, or you may just enjoy the sight of brightly colored songbirds with their impossibly brilliant plumage.

This guy, a California oriole, showed up on my fence this year.

For the urban farmer, though, the birds are essential, both as pollinators (especially for large flowers like sunflowers) and for the bugs they eat. Yes, birds can be a nuisance when it comes to tasty little sprouts and berry bushes, but it's worth the hassle of covering certain plants in bird netting to have them present in the garden to eat things like tomato hornworms and cabbage loopers and the general abundance of caterpillars that turn into moths and other pests. Though I don't allow birds to just free range my entire sunflower garden, I do leave one or two sunflowers to go to seed where the birds can easily access them, and I also scatter a handful of seeds on the ground. Particularly in winter food sources can be scarce for birds and protein-rich sunflower seeds and the perfect little pick me up to keep them pecking around in the garden long enough to earn their keep by gobbling up some pests. 

2. Bees. Scientists haven't come up with a definitive answer yet on what is causing the catastrophic Colony Collapse Disorder that has devastated American beehives since 1997. Over ten million beehives have been lost due to CCD, worker bees disappearing from the hive despite an abundance of food and leaving the queen with just a few nurse bees to care for the young. The effects are potentially devastating to us humans as well since most food crops need to be pollinated in some way before they can fruit. It's serious enough that the federal government has enacted a White House Task Force on Pollinator Health to reduce the amount of beehives being lost to CCD and restore and enhance millions of acres of land for pollinators like the honey bee and monarch butterfly. The President has asked all citizens to help by planting pollinator gardens or setting aside land to go wild. Organizations like The Great Sunflower Project are trying to help educate and promote the use of sunflowers for pollinator gardens since sunflowers, by virtue of their bright yellow color, are especially attractive to bees and particularly rich in abundant pollen. Additionally, by letting some of the stems remain standing after the flowers are spent, you can provide hollow tubes for wild bees to lay their eggs. 

Sunflower "Lemon Queen"--particularly attractive to bees (notice pollen all over the leaves) and recommended by the Great Sunflower Project

Any sunflower seed will do as long you check to see that it is not a pollen free varietal (developed for florist arrangements) but The Great Sunflower Project particularly promotes the "Lemon Queen", a relatively small 4"-5" head, 5'-6' feet in height, with more than average pollen production. You can find the seeds right at the checkout counter at Whole Foods or in most nursery seed racks, or find them at Burpee Seeds or my personal favorite, Renee's Garden Seeds.

3. Attracting pollinators. The flowers are gorgeous, of course, and so cheerful, but the petals aren't just decorative and nor is the yellow color coincidental. Not only are sunflowers benefiting the pollinators themselves but the fact that they draw these beneficial insects and birds to the garden helps the entire garden ecosystem. Bees that come for the sunflower pollen will also pause to pollinate your squash blossoms and blueberry flowers. The huge yellow sunflower heads are like a big neon truck-stop beacon shouting "Food, Next Exit!" Not only do bees love the bright yellow color but all kinds of butterflies, including the struggling populations of migratory Monarchs, are attracted as well. I wish I'd put some sunflowers in next to my Butternut squashes this spring; the gourds flowered with some brilliant yellow blossoms but never fruited from lack of pollinating. Blah.

4. The Seeds!

A handful of sunflower seeds thrown into the ground under 1/2" of cover soil yielded about six heads and this bowl of seeds, enough that I have plenty for replanting even after I scattered some to the wild birds, fed handfuls to my chickens, and roasted a batch with salt. Click here for the recipe. Sunflower seeds are delicious but more than that, they just might be the perfect snack for keeping yourself beautiful. Don't believe me? A comparison of sunflower kernels to some other beauty-magazine-lauded nuts and berries (here) lists sunflower seeds as extraordinarily rich in selenium, iron, zinc (all of which combat thyroid problems that lead to lowered metabolisms and hair loss) and vitamin E (keeps your skin healthy and plumped). Did I already mention delicious? They're delicious.

Sunflowers take almost no care except a sunny spot and a bit of water to thrive (nothing like what your lawn full of emotionally manipulative grass, with its empty promises of softly caressing green abundance but in actuality scratchy, itchy blades of lies that would only save you from starvation if they could also give you crippling belly cramps and would just as soon burn your house to the ground as look at you). Each seed that flowers yields hundreds. HUNDREDS. Of seeds. I am kicking myself for not throwing down pounds of the stuff during prime time sunflower planting season in March. Once my sunflowers' petals had started fading and the seeds had formed, I went ahead and snipped off the top 12" of stem and flower head, bagging the heads in brown paper lunch bags and hanging them upside down. They dried in about six weeks and the seeds were easy to just brush off with a fingertip. 

Hopefully my fall sunflower experiment will yield some blossoms for me; but if not, I can't think of a better plant for an early spring container garden and some experiments in succession planting, where you plant a crop of the same seeds every two weeks to end up with flowers throughout the spring and summer. A flower that feeds everything in the garden, as statuesque and slender as a Roman goddess, turning her face to the sun to follow the passage of Helios' flaming chariot across the sky, definitely deserves to be the focus of Farming in Heels.

A Bug's Life (In Heels): One Girlie-Girl's Shuddering Road to Acceptance

Bugs are so gross. You know what's gross? Bugs. You know what's grosser than gross? Probably a bigger bug. You know what's the worst? I don't know, probably a huge freaking insect that just feels entitled to come out and like, check items off its gross little bucket list by dive-bombing a human's face (mine) or crawling up a human's glove (also mine) or just sit there being obscenely huge and gross and scuttling tiny gross legs within reach of a human's patent leather stiletto (also, alas, mine).

I'm sorry, I'm going to need a moment to go and wash out the inside of my brain so I can never remember this shoe. 

I am at odds with bugs.

I was excited to put out cauliflower this year since I'd never tried such an ambitious vegetable. (I'd like to take credit for success with my tomatoes but last year one literally grew in the dirt next to the pot without every having been planted. And produced. So.) I wondered how long it would take for the florets to form from the big healthy green cabbage-looking leaves, and I kept inspecting them, looking for those first telltale signs of white clusters. One morning when I went out there was a pale green cluster; in fact, there were pale green clusters all over all of the sets of leaves. Like nice fat little clusters. I was delighted. How had they grown so fast? I never expected them to come out green but now I was a FARMER and I knew that cauliflower comes out green. How exciting. If they grew that fast overnight they would probably double in size by tomorrow and I'd have ginormous, Whole Foods sized cauliflower heads in a few weeks. Ah, rapture! We'd be knee deep in cauli-rice (cauliflower grated on a cheese grater and cooked with cilantro and salt and pepper). I mentally set up the photo ops of myself in a lovely fitted dress holding a cauliflower head as my bouquet.

I looked closer and realized the little green clusters were looser than I'd originally realized and got really excited. Maybe each one of these little heads were going to grow into a separate floret. And with multiple clusters on each plant maybe there would be multiple heads! I was a cauliflower farmer! Maybe I could start a roadside stand like the end of the Dixie Chicks video "Goodbye Earl" and sell strawberry jam and cauliflower heads in a gingham off the shoulder top with a flattering neckline. I went inside to pull my sleepy husband out to the garden to show him my budding new business.

He peered inside the leaves. "Babe, those are aphids."

I was furious and shocked and suddenly terrified that he was right.

"No they're not," I said bravely.

He bent closer and picked at the green cluster. It came apart in his fingers, with effort, though it was still sticking to the leaf with malicious adhesion. With a cry of dismay I fell on my knees and dug through the cauliflower leaves and picked the center clusters apart. Aphids. I wailed to the heavens and tried stubbornly to pick off the aphids in hope there was something buried inside the clusters of bug bodies. Aphids. Nothing but aphids all the way through to the center. No cauliflower buds. No emerging leaves. Just a crawling, writhing, filthy pile of APHIDS living in sin with no other purpose than to devour my dreams.

Why. Why would you do that. 

I need a moment.

Bottom line, it's not been easy for me to recognize things like beneficial bugs. The very concept of that seems oxymoronic. Following the aphid-pocalypse I bought expensive boxes of ladybugs which I delicately refrigerated and carefully, lovingly, trustingly bedded amid my cauliflower plants. They blackened my plants in impossible numbers with so many many legs, for the first  time in my life I realized a ladybug was not an adorable pet but a foul swarming beetle; and then in the morning they took off, leaving the aphids all but untouched, presumably in search of the next champagne and aphid caviar bender they could hustle their little polka-dotted behinds into. Oh, aren't we SO cute. Betrayal, most foul, ladybugs. You are no lady.

Lady, my ass. 

However...

About a month later, after the sullen and resentful aphid-stunted cauliflower leaves finally withered in on themselves at last and died, I dug up their beds and went to plant peas, and noticed all the nice fat red wiggler earthworms squirming around in the half-compost soil mix I'd made. I definitely didn't want to touch them but I went and got my little poppy-print garden gloves (aha! This is what those are for!) so I could finish turning the soil without having to worry about getting worm on me and finished the job without disturbing them. The peas and bush beans I planted came up like gang busters. When I finally got ready to renovate the bed again this time I fitted the chicken run over the top and let them feast on the spent pea shoots, bean leaves, and all the worms they could dig up. When I went to turn the soil the next day, there were even more red wigglers, even after the chick-pocalypse, than I'd seen before the peas. Hmm.

My husband suddenly got all excited about something he'd read about called black soldier flies, which could supposedly chow through six inches of green compost a day (human food waste, basically) without needing any leaf or wood amendments. He started sending me links with bizarre composting contraptions and videos of what the soldier fly grubs looked like; and then with all the pride he'd had in introducing his first born to people, he announced that we. HAD. SOLDIER FLIES! YES! In our very own backyard, flies. Who could have known that this momentous occasion would strike our simple farm. It's far more than I ever dared to dream.

And they were gross. When I got home from work that day he took me out to show me his exciting discovery and shyly lifted the compost bin lid to expose the writhing heaps of soldier fly larva. Like thick, serrated, fat and stubby worms, they lay wriggling all over each other, cupped inside an orange peel.

"You're disgusting," I told him primly, and turned on my heel to head back inside.

He took a video of his precious grubs and posted it on Facebook.

Then came in sadly to tell me he hadn't gotten even one "like".

I have to admit, over the next few days I became sort of fascinated with the grubs when I realized they really were going through a half foot of waste a day and turning it into beautiful black castings for our garden beds. They were gross. They writhed and crawled over everything in the compost bin. I waited to see the adult flies, but realized I never did. The females just laid their eggs inside the compost bin and settled in to a life cycle near the renewable food source, our trash. Huh. I realized they were eating our peels and pulp and coffee grounds, and decided to stop the tedious but necessary practice of cutting up our organic trash into 1" pieces for the compost bin. Disposing of a pineapple had been hell, but now the little guys in the compost bin cleaned the rind for me completely and turned it into soil. Huh.

I started watching them. There they were, unattractive, unsightly, unassuming, but patiently taking what we would have sent to a landfill and turning into super nutrients for our garden. We'd use the dark soil they made in a bed for carrots and then give them the carrot peels to start the process again. It was...elegant. Once a week, my husband took a handful of the grubs and threw them to the chickens to scratch for, keeping the numbers from getting overwhelming, giving the chickens some extra protein, and saving us on having to buy the chicks supplements.

Yesterday I saw one that had escaped when my husband turned the compost piles and realized when I saw it sitting there that it wasn't gross at all. While it certainly wasn't cute or the kind of bug you'd hold out your hand to hold, it was compact, utilitarian, and functional. Soldier fly was a great name for these guys--they had one job and the did it ad infinitum, impossibly, genetically well. This simple black grub had earned my respect.

I scooped him up and deposited him back into the compost bin where he happily wriggled over to a carrot piece to grimly start his work.

I was surprised to find I didn't shudder at all.

Barnyard Vet in Heels

After an unseasonably cool San Diego August, with temperatures in the high 70s and some sprinkles of rain, we had a hot day today. A very hot day. My first day back teaching school and I alternated between shivering in the blasting air conditioning and dehydrating with the preposterous heat when I stepped outside. When I finally got into the car to head home at 3:30 p.m. the outside temp was 104. I had moved the chicken run this morning to a shadier spot beside the house with more grass for them to nibble, and supplied them with some nice cold pineapple and carrot pulp from my morning juice to help keep them cool during the day.

It wasn't enough.

I pulled up to my house to find three little feathered heaps lying under their angled shelter inside the run. They looked lifeless. I jumped out of my car and ran over to them, clucking to them. The black and white Maran perked up her head and looked at me without getting up; the auburn Rhode Island Red and the brown Welsummer with her pretty gold quail-patterned feathers didn't move at all. When I opened their run the Maran got to her feet but didn't run away (a first for her) and let me pick her up docilely. I put her under one arm and scooped up the Welsummer and the Red into the crook of my other arm. I could feel them panting (they cool themselves like dogs do) and their hearts beating, fast as horses, but they didn't struggle or even do more than lay quietly together in my arm.

Before we even thought about buying chicks I had been like a pregnant mother, reading every single scrap of literature on chicken rearing I could get my hands on. The Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, A Chicken in Every Yard, the chapters in Little House in the Suburbs and The Backyard Homestead's Guide to Raising Farm Animals. So as I was hurrying the chickens back to the backyard to care for them I didn't think, I just reacted.

• Cool their feet. I set down all three chickens and sprayed down their feet with cool water from the hose to help them lower their body temperatures. The black and white Maran perked up immediately and struggled and flapped to get down. My redhead, the Rhode Island Red,  pepped up a bit and lifted her head so she could sit up in my arms instead of dangling loose. I sprayed her feet for another minute and she clucked indignantly at me. Then I turned to the brown Welsummer. Her feet just dangled lifelessly underneath her, and her mouth was gaping wide and outstretched. I sprayed her feet but they didn't seem to feel any cooler. 
• Get them into the shade. I brought them back to their coop where it was not just shady but completely dark and put them inside. The Maran, already feeling the peppiest of the three, started walking around and fluffing her wings to cool herself. The Rhode Island Red and the Welsummer laid down immediately in the doorway of the coop. 
• Water. Normally the chicks have a nipple waterer (a big five gallon bucket with a metal nipple system underneath that they can click for a drop at a time without getting soaked themselves) but they seemed uninterested in drinking, and I knew they were dehydrated. I brought them a small tub of ice water and dipped my fingers in to coat the tops of the Red and the Welsummer's beaks. The Red almost immediately gulped down the drops, then the next ones I dripped onto her beak, then when I dunked her beak in the tub she got it and started drinking greedily. The Maran, not the brightest of birds under the best of circumstances, came over to investigate, but of course instead of drinking like an intelligent thirsty creature, tilted her head at me curiously. I sighed and dunked her beak, too, and she was like, OMIGOD you did not tell me that this was WATER why have I been drinking from a spigot like some kind of ANIMAL. She went to town on that tub like water was going out of style. 
• Cold fruit. I grabbed some cold peaches from the fridge and cut them up so their cool juicy flesh was exposed and threw them into the coop. Red and Maran immediately went for the fruit and tore open the fleshy center piece peck by peck down to the pit. 

By now Red and Maran were feeling good, clucking and drinking and eating freely and jumping down from the coop to peck for bugs under the coop. But beautiful Welsummer was still not moving. She lay there in a fat pile of pretty feathers, her little sides trembling with her panting, drinking the drops that I tapped onto her beak but otherwise not moving. I watched her with a critical eye, and noticed her golden eyes were dilating and contracting and dilating and contracting. This couldn't be good.

I pulled her out of the coop gently and put her on my lap with a bottle of ice for her feet. I laid her talons over the curve of the frozen water bottle with my bare thighs freezing under the painfully icy cold bottle but her feet still feverishly hot. With one of the peach pieces in hand, I was able to squeeze juice into her open beak. She nibbled the first ten or fifteen drops down but then lost interest, turning her head when I tried to tempt her with the sweet juice. I checked her feet. Still insanely hot, burning to the touch, but after a few minutes her golden eyes had stopped dilating. I switched to an ice water dish, dripping cold water into her beak with the ice bottle on her feet. After another few minutes she struggled to sit up and flapped to get down, so I set her on her feet. She made it a few unsteady steps before staggering like a drunk and falling over. 

Shit. 

Okay. I tried again. I filled a six inch deep tub with water and dunked and held her feet in the cool water, then dripped cool water over the top of her head. I dunked her beak into the water and she came up sputtering but slurped down the drops; I dunked her again and then two more times until she was slurping steadily. She was still unsteady on her feet so I picked her up and flipped her onto her back like I had when she was a baby chick, just two weeks old, and let her feet naturally curl around the ice water bottle as I held her in my lap. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her breathing stilled and she almost immediately fell asleep in my lap. When I touched her feet several minutes later they had finally started to move from oven-hot to her normal humming warmth. She opened her eyes and sat up, then struggled to flip over and sat on my knee. 

She looked up at me. I dripped some water onto her beak. She slurped it greedily then pecked my thumb. Hard. And turned a baleful eye on me. 

I felt a sudden warmth. 

The warmth spread over me like a font. 

It was not my heart, in an outpouring of tenderness, but the Welsummer releasing the last of her feverish heat with a truly alarming quantity of hot, watery chicken poo all over my leg. She shook herself and clucked at me, indignantly. 

Sigh. 

I'll just go inside and change my shoes then. 

Seed Savers

I always get carried away buying seed packets. It's hard to think about something that will literally grow at a slightly-faster-than-snail's-pace as being exciting--still, the bright colors of the beautiful mix of flowers on the cover, the interesting tomatoes you've never tasted or even seen in a store, the gourmet herbs from Italy and France carry little grains of hope inside their envelopes. Packet of sunflower seeds and you can automatically envision fields of the bright yellow blooms, emptying their bowing heads into your waiting hands at the end of the season to just pour out their seeds for you to roast and stuff into your mouth. Packet of corn and I suddenly realize I'll never need to buy corn again, not ears of roasting corn or popcorn or corn for corn flour because I will now have a cornfield in the corner of my backyard. Lettuce? Eggplants? Hops? Lemon basil? Purple sage? Holy lord. With seeds you can have anything you want in your garden without being at the whim of what seedlings the nursery keeps in stock.

This year was no exception. I walked into the nursery in April and absolutely lost my mind. I bought seed packets for butter lettuce, alpine strawberries, cilantro, green beans, nasturtiums, runner beans, loofah gourds, swiss chard, torpedo onions, baby kale, and basil, on top of the six packs of seedlings I bought of cauliflower, broccoli, butternut squash and roma tomatoes.
I had ten times as many things as I needed, especially since I had three packets of different pumpkin seeds, corn, green beans, and all kinds of flower seeds from last year. I mean, seeds are literally a little packet of potential, and $3 a packet seems a small price to pay to hold a little potential hope in your hand...except of course those packets add up...

That'll be $947.

So one of my goals this season was to find out exactly how to save seeds from as many things as possible, and decrease my overall costs for the endless question people always seem to have, "How much are you saving on your food now?" What I was most surprised to learn was that you can't always just dump the seeds right into your hand and put them into the ground; and that not all plants that should have seeds do have seeds. A hybrid plant (most often something like a tomato) doesn't create seeds or if it does they won't be true to the parent plant. That's one of the reasons people make the choice to use heirloom seeds: they're always open pollinated (meaning, they can spread their seeds on their own by wind or by pollinators). And a lot of plants, heirloom or not, have specific recipes for success for collecting their seeds. For example:

Lettuce: It's so damn cool. Basically as soon as the weather warms up too much or the lettuce is done growing, it goes to seed with these little obelisks. To protect itself while its putting its energy into seeding, the plant emits a bitter chemical into the leaves making them taste, you guessed it, super bitter. The lettuce that was a normal looking head will sprout up two or three feet into these tall towers and at the very top are some little yellow flowers. 

Seeds: the yellow flowers on any kind of lettuce need to be pollinated and the seeds inside need to dry; so although there are seeds inside the flower heads almost as soon as they emerge, they are ready to be harvested when the yellow flowers turn into a fluffy white chaff like a dandelion that's gone to seed. It's the perfect little package, so super elegant--yellow flowers particularly attract bees; then, left to its own devices, the flower pod would dry and float on the wind using the white chaff, spreading the seeds in all directions so as not to compete with each other. Once the white fluff has appeared you can pop off the heads carefully and roll them between your fingers to find 15-20 seeds. 

  

That's right. A packet of lettuce seeds--in this case an Heirloom type that I paid $3.25 for--has maybe 100 seeds. Just one of those seeds can turn into a tower like you see below, with hundreds of flower heads on it once it goes to seed, and come out with thousands of individual seeds. 

Tomatoes:You'd think, since tomatoes are a fruit with very visible seeds, harvesting them would be a piece of cake, but most sources say that fermenting tomato seeds is the best way to separate out highest quality and most viable seeds from an individual fruit. It also makes a lot of sense. Hopefully you've chosen the reddest and most juicy fruit, or maybe the biggest fruit; in any case, the one you want to eat--so presumably you want more fruits just like that one. 

Seeds: the nice thing is that you can save tomato seeds right from a fruit that you're eating. Heirloom tomatoes or Romas (technically not considered an heirloom, but an open pollinated variety) can be cut in half and the seeds and the gel they're suspended in squeezed out into a shallow dish or cup. This worked really well for me when I was drying the roma tomatoes for sun dried tomatoes. Add 1/4 cup of water to cover and leave the mixture for a few days. A scummy layer will form (perfectly okay) as the seeds separate from the goo; the good seeds will sink to the bottom, the unripe or unviable seeds will stay in the scum at the top. This also helps separate out seeds that might carry disease or fungus. After the seeds are completely separated you can take a spoon to lift out the scum and add more fresh water if more gel remains. After a week the good seeds are easy to see. Drain and dry on a paper towel, then store in a dry place. 

Green Beans: Seems easy since you open up a green bean and there is literally a pod of bean seeds just sitting there. Except if you've ever tried to plant a green bean while its still green? You know there's a little more to it. 

Seeds: At the end of the harvest season, leave the biggest healthiest plant with all its beans. It'll take between a month and six weeks for the beans to wither and shrivel into pale tan seed pods that you can easily snap open and shell. Inside, the once green bean seeds have hardened and turned a deep purple brown much easier to store. 

Sunflowers: Another plant that seems obvious but which actually takes much longer to get to harvest than I expected. The heads have to completely fade; then the pollen dries and turns into a brown fluff that you can brush aside with your finger. The seeds will turn from white to striped black and white to completely black. 

Seeds: Once the seeds are totally black, just take a bowl to catch the seeds and run your thumb over the seed heads. The seeds should just fall easily from the head (if not, leave the flower to dry longer). A good rule of thumb is if the back of the head is brown and dry the seeds are loose enough to harvest. If you don't like the look of dead sunflowers hanging around, you can cut off the top 12" of the stem with the head attached and hang the stems to dry upside down with paper bags tied around the heads to catch any seeds that fall prematurely. 

Of course you can always roast these seeds with salt and eat them instead of replanting!

Over the course of my season of seed saving this year, from each planting that I started from a seed packet, I got an exponential return. I'd estimate that from this season alone I saved enough of everything I planted to seed three or four whole beds of the same with plenty left over to give away packets of the same seeds to everyone in the neighborhood. Not only am I going to save at least $100 in seed for next year, I can actually expand my garden by two or three times with no extra cost at all. 

Awkward Bombshell tries to Neighborhood

My neighbors keep, like, stopping to talk and I don't really know what to do with that.

Hi! This is totally not awkward. Welcome to my yard.

Ironically, before the water restrictions from the drought encouraged me to go apocalypto on my lawn, I never really spent any time out on the front yard. The perfectly green lawn was watered automatically and mowed and edged by manlier hands than mine so no need for me to do any gardening; and despite its cool green carpeted visual appeal, it seemed a little odd to pull up a lawn chair in the grass and just like...what...sit there or something? There is exactly zero percent of that going on on my street, except of course for the crazy/wise? person who last summer came and spread a blanket under my trees to have a picnic with her baby on my lawn.

Can you not?
I mean, actually what are you doing right now, just...having a picnic on my lawn? This is not a public park! There is actually, ACTUALLY, a public park like two blocks from here. THIS? Is my lawn omigodpleasedon'tstabmeinthehead....

Honestly I go out into my front yard so little that I recently went a block party two doors down from my house. My neighbor looked at me strangely before handing over my paper plate ticket to the potluck-buffet pasta-salad extravaganza and asked me if he could help me. I smiled awkwardly and said oh, I live in the white house on the corner. (subtext: I am not a crazy baby-picnic people's lawn-sitter, I didn't just stop in here for the questionable food and the company of strangers who I have nothing in common with and who will ask me for the one millionth time whether teaching music is like being on Glee because NO; I  can go get my astro-bright neon invitation you put in my mailbox so I can prove that I came here to build community. With you strangers.) He laughed even more awkwardly and handed me my plate. "Oh," he told me. "I always thought that guy lived alone."

Hmm. Note to self. Sit in grass on lawn more often.

But of course this year we made some major changes, one of which was to actually save water by putting in a handful of raised beds and dwarf citrus trees in the front yard and letting the lawn die; and saving rainwater to water by hand--so I'm out in front a lot hauling water cans. And of course there was one major change to our landscaping this spring.

"Are they talking about us right now?"
"Gurrrrl, how could they not. Shake a tail feather."

God.

When I spent about a month doing some hard digging and hand tilling to move all my rosebushes to the front yard, a smiling, coiffed middle-aged lady walking her pug said "Starting to look better!" I looked up at her with barely concealed fury. Is it? Is it "starting" to look better? Is the fact that I am covered in clay loam from head to foot and have eight broken nails beginning to meet your expectations of my yard? I mean thank you for letting me know it's not looking good yet but that it's starting to look better. Yay! Neighborhood! 

When we let the lawn die one of our older neighbors across the street came over to watch us, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the wasteland with an emotionless expression. "Huh. Think I liked it better the way it was." Oh did you? Did you?!

A lady stopped by to demand to know what was going on with my neighbor's car, a junked out jeep he's got in his driveway. "That is an EYESORE! What are you doing about it? Where is our homeowners association? We need to complain to the civic association. I didn't spend my whole life saving so that I could have a house in a neighborhood like THIS! We can't continue this way with our neighborhood being turned into a JUNKYARD and a DISGRACE!" I looked back at my dead lawn and thought about the bale of chicken wire I had in the garage. 

I hate people.

But when we put in our raised beds and recognizable squash vines started to sprout, people started stopping to talk. Not to do this awkward "I make a comment in the hopes of starting a conversation and that way we can pretend we have a neighborhood community" small talk, but actual TALK. "You've got some squash growing in there!" a couple called to us from the sidewalk. "What else is in there?" They stepped onto the lawn and came over to see. "Ooh, pumpkins too? That's just great! What kind, Big Macs? They just grow like crazy don't they?" And then the man told us how they'd had fifteen raised beds in their back yard at the end of the street for the past twenty years, quietly growing squash and pumpkins and cucumbers. The wife smiled uncomfortably and tugged at him to come along with an expression that told me she was worried about boring us young people, but I was more taken aback with how nice they were. That was, like, a real conversation. 

And when we started work on the chicken coop, the neighbors really came out of the woodwork, so to speak. There must be a silent alarm bell on the street when a girl uses power tools that rings at a frequency only suburban men can hear. They all came over to see "Whatcha got going on over there?" Meaning, of course, "Do you want me to do that for you?" and "Sorry, I just came over here to see whether it really was you running that power saw. You ARE! Lookit that." They wanted to know what I was building and how it was going to get put together and what it was for, and then gaped in delight at the box of chicks. "Look at that. LOOK AT THAT. I've always wanted chickens. How much work are they? They don't smell. That's so strange! I always thought they smelled. And do they make any noise? Not really, huh?" Again, I was startled. No judgement. 

Three gleaming ladies in their Coldstone Creek casuals stopped by yesterday, walking their purebred golden retrievers and immaculately groomed akitas. They paused at the sidewalk while I was feeding the chicks some watermelon and stopped as one hive mind. 

"Look how big they're getting!" the leader exclaimed. "I think they've put on another pound, haven't they?"

Awkward face. Why do you know about my life and my chicks? Why?! Who sent you?! What have you heard?! Brace for impact. Here comes the burn.

"I was so excited when I found out we could have chickens in our neighborhood!" the next one said with a  brilliant smile. "We all were!" 

"Oh yes. We were so disappointed when you moved the chicks into the backyard. We look forward to seeing them every time we take our walk! Are they easy to care for?"

Inexplicably I found myself talking about the chicks. Yes they were easy to care for, like a parakeet. Just feed. No they didn't make any noise, or have any smell, and yes they ate just about everything including caterpillars and snails from the garden and the new grass from the unexpected summer rain. 

"Well, I for one can't wait to see them just keep getting bigger. I'm bringing my grandchildren over here tomorrow to come and look--if that's okay." The leader smiled at me warmly, like we were neighbors having a normal conversation. Ay. Like, more, just...talking to people? And we're all going to pretend this is normal and we're, like in some Minnesota small town where we...like, know each other? 

I heard myself say yes, and laugh, and make a joke about starting an egg stand once the chicks were laying. Delighted, they made me promise to do just that and walked off in a cloud of cheerful goodbyes and Michael Kors perfume. 

What is life right now. Urban farming grows community? I'm not sure if I'm ready. 

A Garden that Feeds Itself

Dan Barber is one of the mentally sexiest people I can imagine. I could just listen to him talk all day. His Ted Talks "How I Fell In Love With a Fish" and "A Foie Gras Parable" are word porn, pure and simple, all seduction and sensuality. He talks about a lagoon in Spain that is so pure that the water from the sea floods in and washes out cleaner than it entered; a lagoon so rich in fresh, fat, succulent fish that flamingos fly 100 miles each day to feast on the banks before returning home to their nesting grounds; a system so flourishing, so healthy, that the fish taste like the ocean itself. He talks about a goose farm that is so abundant with figs and olives, with tasty herbs and peppery berries, that the goose flesh doesn't need to be seasoned even with salt or pepper; that the geese don't need to be force fed to produce foie gras because they are already waddling fat and sassy; and delighted with themselves and the garden of Eden the farmer has created, the geese actually call to the wild geese that fly overhead and the wild geese fly down to stay. 

The face of pure joy.

It's emotional, to think that those things exist. It leaves me on the verge of tears and makes me want to know where I can buy that fish that tastes like the ocean; that goose crackling with the fat of olives and figs and a happy healthy life. It stirs something in me, deeply, and the common thread is this: a closed ecological system.

We industrial age Americans are so far removed from this idea that we only vaguely remember it in the most forgotten and buried parts of our subconscious--the struggle to be caretakers of the land. We knew it once, or someone did--we all learned about how the pilgrims were taught to plant fish with their seed corn to feed the land (although history disagrees about whether Squanto himself learned this from the Spanish or whether this was ever common practice for Native Americans). It's centuries gone, that practice of hunting only what you can eat; harvesting  but leaving some for seed; leaving the dead plants to grow wild so their leaves fall and fertilize the soil, so their hollowed stems collect water for butterflies and make egg chambers for wild bees. It's centuries gone, but when we remember, when we rediscover, when we stumble upon it, there's something in our ancestral memories that stirs, that makes the feeling of contributing to a closed system so healthy it can feed itself...satisfying.

I'm a long way from permaculture (the practice of fully sustainable farming) in my backyard. I take baby steps. This spring we started composting and I was startled how quickly those bins filled up, and then compacted down again, and filled up again. Apple cores, carrot peels, pulp from the juicer, paper towels, cardboard all disappeared into the bins and when left alone produced pounds and pounds of deep, rich, velvet black stuff, soft as crumbled cake, richer than the best compost you can buy in the nursery. Compost went into the tomato bed and the tomato plants exploded into red rubies, Romas as big as small pears, bursting with flavor, dripping from the vines by the bowlful, far more than we could eat. The plants spent, the vines and the leaves got chopped and mixed back into the soil where they withered and decayed and turned the soil darker, richer.

We started collecting rainwater and watering our plants with that. Rich with compost, the green beans flourished and bloomed with their tiny violet and white flowers shaded by spade-shaped leaves; the beans fed us, their snapped off ends feeding the compost bins; we ate what we could and left the rest on the bushes to go to seed. The green beans shriveled and browned and burst open, filling our hands with shiny aubergine seed beans, ready to be saved in envelopes for next season. Sunflowers bloomed and shed endless fat grains of pollen all over their enormous leaves, drawing bees by the dozen; they slowly drooped and dried, their seeds slowly turning from creamy white to striped to glossy black and tumbling from their heads when you ran a fingertip across them. The decapitated stalks, hollow, stand waiting for wild bees to lay their eggs inside for spring. Heirloom lettuce, growing unchecked and abundant in a compost-soil mix, gives us far more salad than we can eat, and the unpicked stalks grow into tall, thick obelisks; they darken and grow bitter as they set flower and set seeds for the next crop. I let the mushrooms that insisted on coming up in one of my vegetable beds flourish and they broke up the soil and fell back into it, leaving the ground crumbly and rich; we added earthworm castings and found hundreds of them (and their babies!) in the soil after only one season.

We plant for pollinators, nasturtiums and geraniums, expecting bees but finding butterflies and birds. White butterflies sleep under the cream and green striped nasturtium leaves and flutter up drunkenly in the morning when I sprinkle the beds with rainwater; the birds peck the hill behind our house clean of the crumbs from the heels of stale bread I leave for them and clean up the beetles and caterpillars that would nibble at the lettuce and broccoli leaves, left unchecked. Hummingbirds feast on the fruit flies that gather at the compost pile, darting around merrily until nothing remains. The chickens gobble down crab grass and spurge and carrot pulp from the juicer; scratching up pincer bugs and grubs and caterpillars and laying down rich manure that dries into a golden dust and decays back into the soil. Their eggs when they lay them will feed us, and the shells go back into the compost to add much needed calcium for the vegetables. Dried and crushed the shells will keep slugs out of my strawberry beds.

It took the Spanish goose farmer generations to create his beautiful fig and olive orchard, a food forest with an understory of saline plants and pepper berries and rosemary, to sustain his flock of half-wild geese not only ecologically but exceptionally. I know it'll take a long time to return my lawn to the kind of soil that can sustain and produce food, and it won't be a single application of fertilizer, it'll require continuous care and hard work. But as I look out into my garden, grown wild with geraniums and sunflowers, alive with butterflies and bees, I see patches of soil rich and loamy with years of crumbling leaves left to mulch, lettuce and beans setting seed in the hope of next season. It is deeply satisfying. I will never have a fish farm alive with pink-breasted flamingos but I'm inspired, like Dan Barber, by the taste of what we can grow when we care for the land--the sweetest and most explosive strawberries, the most delicious and potent blueberries, and a garden that can feed itself.