Spring Warren's Blog, page 6

Events, Please come!

It is going to be a busy week at the Quarter Acre Farm.   On Wednesday (yes, today!) I'll be visiting with Andy Jones on KDVS at 5 o'clock.

On Thursday I'll be talking on Insight (Capital Public Radio) at 10 a.m.

Friday Morning the Quarter Acre Farm will have visitors- a crew from Good Day Sacramento…we'll see how the geese like that.  Also on Friday at 7:30 p.m. I will be reading, and Jesse will be printing at the Avid Reader in Davis.

Following up, Sunday at 4 p.m. Jesse and I will be reading and printing at the Avid Reader in Sacramento.  You won't want to miss getting one of Jesse's prints, even if you've heard enough of me for a lifetime.  So- we hope to see you, love to chat and hear your gardening stories, too!

Chocolate Covered Matzoh…(I wish I had grown the ingredients, but sometimes you just gotta splurge!)

I hope it isn't too late. It could be that every single box of matzoh has been taken…but I'll bet not. You still have time to pick some up – and while you're at it, grab some semi-sweet chocolate, some white chocolate, some dried fruit (make sure to include ginger) and some salty nuts. Do not get unsalted nuts. Trust me – this is all about the sweet-salty, the crunchy-creamy, the crisp-chewy interplay of the ingredients. You go for the unsalted nuts and you've messed the whole thing up.

Now, melt the chocolate. Do it in the microwave in a ceramic dish. No need to bother with tempering. You're going to cover the chocolate up anyway. Spread the melted chocolate on a crisp matzoh with a spatula, then add chopped nuts on top of the chocolate, then add the chopped dried fruit as well, pressing it all into the soft chocolate.

Melt the white chocolate, stirring to make sure it is very, very homogeneously melty. Spoon the melted chocolate into a plastic bag, snip a tiny corner off the bag and squish squiggles of white chocolate over the nuts and fruit. Stick the matzoh in the freezer until the chocolate is set – break the matzoh into pieces- and share.

We should know where our food comes from before we put it in our mouths…

We should know where our food comes from before we put it in our mouths.  The events of the last five years, be it the salmonella scare, the videos of sick cattle at the slaughterhouse, e. coli in peanut butter, and melamine tainting can only serve to drive this edict home time and time again.

Further, we can all agree that the best food to put in our mouths is food that is grown – not aggregated, amended, or extruded.

These two truths would seemingly make it imperative for cities across the US to do what they can to help their residents to find such food, especially as doing so for many people in urban centers is difficult, to put it lightly.

Fortunately, there are changes brewing in the shape of a home-grown revolution: the rise of the citizen farmer.  People are increasingly utilizing their yards as farms to grow their own food, and lemonade-style farm stands are popping up in neighborhoods where citizen farmers sell their excess to the community.



To be able to buy such food, produced by someone you know, whom you can ask about how the plants were treated, fertilized, or stored, or how long the jelly was heat- bathed, or what went into the pot pie, is a boon and we should support such endeavors.

Unfortunately, many cities have slipped a stick into the spokes of this revolution by requiring urban farmers such as Novella Carpenter in Oakland to purchase costly permits to do business, or to face stiff fines for mild infractions.

In most cities the permit fees are ostensibly used to fund inspection costs to keep their citizens safe from food-borne illnesses.  I am all in favor of food safety.  My concerns over food safety are, after all, what compelled me to start growing my family's food in my own yard.

But the best protection against such illness is not a drop-in inspection agent, it is a relationship with the place the food is grown and the person who grew it.

Instead of making their citizens safer, a city's insistence on high cost permit fees (a permit to sell a few dollars worth of chard can cost upwards of $2,000), neatly puts urban farmers out of business.

This not only harms the people who have difficulty finding fresh, local produce, but ultimately it harms society as well, reinforcing the idea that food comes from anonymous factories, and causing untold costs and misery in the shape of health problems that arise when people see fast and processed food as the only viable way to eat.



In cities across the United States, from New York to Oakland, steps are being made to curtail the fees for urban farmers.  Such a legislative victory would be a triumph for not only good eating, but ultimately for the well-being of our citizens, and for our country as well.

 

 

And now from SFGATE…

It's no longer illegal to grow Swiss chard in your backyard and sell it to the corner restaurant.

Mayor Ed Lee on Wednesday signed legislation that allows for "urban agriculture" throughout the city, including the sale of garden produce.

"We're going to make this legal!" Lee declared as he stood surrounded by sprouting vegetables and urban farmers at Little City Gardens in the Mission Terrace neighborhood.

The legislation rewrites old zoning laws that prohibited selling homegrown produce without a costly permit and a hearing in front of the City Planning Commission. It's an issue that's been controversial in cities like Oakland, which recently told a local grower she must pay possibly thousands of dollars for permits to sell any leftover food grown on her urban corner lot.

The new ordinance allows for the sale, pick up, and donation of fresh food and horticultural products grown throughout the city. It also allows for the sale of "value-added products" like jams, pickles or pies from any area, except those zoned exclusively for residential uses. Growing food or horticultural products for personal use remains unregulated.

- John Coté

YAY, OAKLAND…anyone else?

View of the Quarter Acre Farm

People have asked just what the farm looks like – they see it in dribs and drabs, and can't tell if it is huge, teensy, sprawling, congested…so here's a look. I climbed a ladder and took a few pictures trying to get most of the place in viewing range.  To the left is the critter area with pens and ramps and yards for the geese, the duck and the rabbits.  An eggplant bed is in the foreground right, herbs and artichokes foreground left- and beyond…beets, garlic, tomatoes, strawberries, cukes, brocc, blackberries fruit trees, strawberries and fish pond.  What you can't see is the giant fava bed, the potato beds, winter squash and melon beds, and most of the fruit trees including the mammoth olive tree.

The front is planted with peas, favas, celery, tomatoes, summer squash, lettuce, spinach, beans (green and several varieties dried) more eggplant and melons, cherry and two kinds of apple trees, grape vines, and more artichokes.  Lots of flowers, of course.  Good for the eye, good for the garden (heeeeeere, beneficial insects)!

In another month all the new summer plants will be growing riotously, and I'll try to take a picture of that as the farm transforms once again – (all of those california poppies will be spent and gone by then as well, but aren't they gorgeous now?)

Hypsipyle sets she-shells by the sis-shore

Hypsipyle on the nest was bad enough.  She's cantankerous and makes stealing her eggs pretty difficult…but it was still do-able.  All I had to do was keep an eye out for when she took some time out for a bath, a drink, or a bit of birdseed.  Now all that has changed…

…because now the two geese are sister – setting.  Both of them on the nest, jostling and honking and keeping their eggs safe.  Now there is never a moment when I can liberate the eggs, the two feathered watchfowl are not to be tampered with, will not be turned from their warm-belly duties.

I'm not taking all the hissing and honking personally, because the two, once loving geese, are casting a jaded eye on the whole universe – not just me.

They really hate when the chickens venture into the little cage beside their nest.  They hiss and peck at Calliope and the shades who keep just out of  range of the serrated beaks.

The only good thing about all this is that the eggs aren't fertilized and so we don't have that panicked, "Ohgodwehavetogetthoseeggsouttathere!" feeling when we had poor Goosteau about – fearing we'd end up with a yard filled with little Goosteaus, who would get big, and take over the neighborhood.

Still, I miss nice Hypsipyle. Guess it will be about a month before she gives up on the dud eggs.  Wonder if they'll explode by then?

Cheeeesey Chard Grilled Sandwich

The next time you're making a grilled cheese sandwich – fill 'er up with chard first!  I've been experimenting with using the tons of chard growing on the farm right now and one of my favorite ways is to pile it inside two pieces of whole wheat bread with a slice or two of pepper jack (or other) cheese inside (- a smear of spicy Thai mayo is a wonderful accompaniment, if you like heat).

The toasting sandwich cooks the mountain of chard inside to perfection, shrinking it almost to the point of disbelief.  What you're left with is crunchy bread, tender greens and creamy cheese to sink your teeth into  (and that's not even counting all the vitamins, anti-oxidants, and fiber you don't even think about because the sandwich is so darn good).

 

 

 

Readings update

Seven events down,  lots to go –   and right off the bat, let me say THANK YOU!   So many nice people and so many great conversations about growing food, and cooking food, and writing.  What a great time.

Then, THEN, even after all the good conversations, people were willing to plonk down their hard-earned cash to BUY the book!  Wow.   I hope everyone got their print from Jesse ( who was at the readings inking and signing with me).

Plus – gifts!  Those lovely bookstore people gave me presents even after they allowed me through the door to talk and hawk and sign.  PRESENTS.   Can it get any better?

Thanks everyone – and thanks Channel Ten, the Sacramento Library, Book Passage, Sacramento Magazine, Books Inc., UCDavis,  and Borders.

More to come – more prints, more talk, more fun – stay tuned!

 

Another Rat post, this time while visiting another amazing writer's (Leslie Larson's) Blog

http://leslielarson-bedlam.blogspot.com/

Our Little girl's grown up!

Yes, Hypsipyle is on the nest.  A nest that she was instrumental in building.  An animal architect in the making.

And not only is she on the nest, but laying eggs as well.  She's also quite the maternal goose – taking more than her fair share of time sitting on the eggs that she and Jeannette both laid.  The eggs shown above are from the hens, from Jeannette, and from Hypsipyle.  Can you guess whose are whose?

Books – Food. What's not to like? Bookclub Cookbook Rocks!

The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for A Year

by Spring Warren Nonfiction / 336 pages / Paperback

Seal Press / March 2011

 

Dear Reader,

 

When I told my husband and two boys that I was going to grow our own food (not some, but 75 percent of all the food we consumed in a year) – and that I was going to grow that food in our yard – they said no way.

 

They said I'd eat zucchini day in and day out.  They said I'd starve.  They said I was crazy. 

 

But I did it anyway.

 

The Quarter Acre Farm tells the story of what I learned in the year of living off my small urban lot; about dirt, bugs, how to grow tomatoes, about a thousand ways to cook zucchini, even how to eat the snails that were decimating my lettuces.  I also learned a huge amount about failure.  In spite of that and along the way, I learned just how much food a person in a city can grow in their yards, where a mere lawn used to be.

 

Best,

 

Spring Warren

 

About The Quarter-Acre Farm

The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren's witty account of deciding – despite all resistance – to take control of her family's food choices, get herhands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It's a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating. The road is long and riddled with mistakes, but by the end of her yearlong experiment, Warren's sons and husband have become her biggest fans.  In fact, they're even eager to help harvest (and eat) the beautiful bounty she brings in.

Reviews of The Quarter-Acre Farm

 

"Spring Warren is one of those authors who is just such good company.  I'd go anywhere with her.  So I'm thrilled to find myself at The Quarter-Acre Farm, a book miraculously balanced at that exact point halfway between practical and whimsical, inclusive and intimate."

-Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

 

"Reading Spring Warren's book is like chatting with a good friend over coffee as she relates her garden adventures (some hilarious) and muses on the meaning of almost everything."

-Georgeanne Brennan, author of Potager: Fresh Garden Cooking in the French Style and A Pig in Provence

 

For more information, visit Spring's website and follow her on

Facebook.

 

Spring Warren is available to speak with your book club.  ContactSpring to arrange a discussion.

 

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