Spring Warren's Blog, page 8
March 9, 2011
Do the worm test when digging for potatoes!
First of all, today's super "The Quarter Acre Farm" illustration by Jesse "Nemo" Pruet.
Second – It is time to plant your potatoes, people if you haven't done so yet!
Okay, maybe you haven't thought about planting potatoes and now that you have you feel like you are too late to order them. No, no, no, you won't get out of it that easily. Go to your favorite granola type, Co-op, organic grocery store, or even better, farmer's market and pick up some ORGANIC potatoes (pictured are fingerlings – little Russian Banana potatoes). The conventional potatoes are likely sprayed with a chemical to inhibit sprouting, so don't even try it. Put them in the sun a while to sprout, they will likely at this point do so immediately. Don't eat them after they've been in the sun. That story about green potatoes being poisonous is no joke…though it is likely not to kill you unless you eat a wildly huge amount, a stomach ache of some degree will be in order.
The potatoes I got were SOOOO ready to sprout, they did so before I unpacked them (which is likely why I got them for a dollar a bag).
Then comes the work. Dig a trench. Put the potatoes in. I cover mine with some old goose straw (composted-y). When the shoots poke through in a week or so, I'll sift dirt over the top, add more straw, more dirt as the potatoes grow. I want the soil loose so the potatoes can expand easily. (All this digging and layering, then the potatoes growing and breaking up the soil is going to further prepare my bed for the sweet potatoes I'll stick in after the reg. potatoes are harvested)
While you are doing all that digging, give your garden the worm test. Dig a square foot of dirt from your garden (a foot by a foot and a foot down) and count how many earthworms are in that dirt. What's an A+? Hit 25 earthworms and give yourself a purple ribbon. Substantially less than that? You would benefit from improving your soil.
More on that later. Happy digging!
March 7, 2011
Libraries, Whiskey, and Tulips
I just love libraries. Time spent in libraries are among my earliest and best memories. A bookmobile is the most magical of places. And so I was pleased, no thrilled, to be part of Authors on the Move, a benefit for the Sacramento Public Library. It was also the inaugural book event for The Quarter Acre Farm. Above, my good friend Antoinette, me, and the book. It was a great event, meeting all the readers and the writers, spending time with friends (John Lescroart's new book, "Damage" you must read, and if you haven't read his work, you're in luck, there are a slew of fantastic thrillers in store for you – Angie Chau's "Quiet as they Come" is a must read as well), and compiling a long list of books that I will happily lose myself in this year.
No matter how much I love libraries, book events can be slightly anxiety provoking…at least until the event is underway. Because of that, and because I do enjoy a good whiskey, I very much appreciated the gift of a wee dram o' single malt right before the dinner. Thanks Antoinette and John! (You know me so well)
Not all "Happy publication!" gifts were alcoholic, I really should be clear on that (though what says I love you like Maker's Mark? Marky Mark with Makers Mark, perhaps). My agent sent me this drop dead gorgeous bouquet of tulips. So gorgeous. Makes me want to write another book just for the flowers and whiskey.
My First Customer Review!
By
(VINE VOICE) (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
This review is from: The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year (Paperback)
I picked this memoir up on a whim, even though, as a very city-loving New Yorker, I have no intention of growing my own food. I was surprised and delighted by Warren's humorous voice, the way she walks readers through her adventures (and misadventures) in gardening, and the random, fascinating asides (such as the one about Santa's reindeer and psychotropic mushrooms). Her voice is engaging and she'll throw at you something that will certainly make you want to run out and eat your veggies, even if you haven't quite gotten around to growing them yourself. This is part cookbook, part primer on gardening, and part family memoir about why she decided to start the Quarter-Acre Farm and the lessons about gardening, nutrition, pesticides and more that she learned.
This is not a manifesto about why self-gardening is best and it doesn't wrap up uber-neatly, the way a lot of "I tried this for a year" memoirs do. Warren offers up practical tips and lessons on which vegetables thrived, which didn't, and why, and what she did with both the food and how she composted and tried various ways to increase her yield. The chapter where a "real" farmer comes and inspects her farm is especially interesting. I recommend this even if, like me, you have pretty much no thumb at all when it comes to gardening. Of course, if you do have an inclination toward growing even a small amount of your own food, you'll appreciate Warren's tips and especially her voice, but you don't have to have ever though about gardening or farming before to get a lot out of this book. The sheer respect Warren shows for the animals in her yard (geese!) and the plants and land she is using made me take a look at how easily I consume and dispose often prepackaged foods. Though, again, this is not a manifesto and Warren isn't condemning how others eat, her critical look at the true impact of our modern consumption should certainly prompt more than a little introspection when it comes time to grocery shop or choose what to eat next.
March 5, 2011
Quarter Acre Farm Art
For the chapter on Dirt. Making dirt this week – Recipe? Rabbit manure, leaf mold, compost, goose straw…
March 3, 2011
Rabbits as Garden Helpers
Kwantu Grown up and keeping house.
Rabbits do not seem to be garden helpers – in fact rabbits most often seem to drive gardeners to distraction creeping under fences and helping themselves to the best, most tender, and most vulnerable produce in the garden plot. Even charming rabbits like Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter turned the genial Mr. McGregor into a raving, hoe wielding lunatic.
But at the Quarter Acre Farm, rabbits are our friends. They are our composters, our fertilizers.
We first got rabbits years and years ago as pets that fell in the category, "small caged animals" which were allowed in our apartment, but could run around, be cuddled, petted, and fed like a cat or a dog. Our first rabbit, Tato (short for potato because, six year old Jesse said, he was brown and lived underground) was with us for a long time, galumping around apartments from New Haven Connecticut to Albuquerque to California. It wasn't until we had a house of our own that we found that rabbits could not only fulfill cuddling requirements, but they could pull their own weight as well.
Rabbit manure is magic manure. The number one quality of rabbit manure is that, unlike other kinds of manure, rabbit berries are so mild (I know this is sounding uncomfortably as though I was describing a good cup of coffee) that I have raised earthworms directly under the cage. (I used to package the worms up and sell them to fisherman. Another life.) It can be top dressed right on your beds straight from the rabbit, and builds soil as well as provides nutrients. It is high in nitrogen and phosphorous, is delivered in dry, round pellets we call "bunny berries", it is odorless, and exceedingly good for your plants. Further, a rabbit produces prodigious amounts of the fantastic stuff. In dry weight 2 rabbits produce as much manure as one steer. One STEER. That's a lot of poop, but even so, you can never have enough of the stuff.
On top of all that, aren't they lovely? We treat our rabbits very well. They are in a protected pen outside, (hawks, skunks, raccoons, possums all appreciate rabbit for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the odd snack) and the pen has an upstairs so they can exercise by running up the ramp to sit and eat their dinners with a penthouse view. They have shade all day, VERY important, as is constantly available water.
One might want to line an outside pen with chicken wire, as rabbits love to dig. We don't do that as our rabbits have dug nice cool burrows and I think it makes them happier. (Whenever the burrow threatens to extend to freedom, I can usually spot the first breakthrough, or the first break out with a wild rabbit on the loose) I put a stone over the hole. There is seldom a break out, interestingly enough. Hopefully that means they love their home.
The other thing to make sure of is that you have the right sex of rabbits. We have always liked the two girls option. Females tend to get along very well. (duh). Two males tend to fight. (double duh) And a male and a female tend to multiply. (triple duh-oh) Getting your females fixed will not only ensure they don't provide you with way too many bunnies, but will also extend their lives. The same goes for males. Apparently those over-active reproductive organs have a tendency to go wrong later in life and curtail rabbit years.
And get your rabbits from a respectable source.
A cautionary tale – years ago we got two rabbits from an iffy breeder we found in the want ads. We went to his yard and found the rabbits crammed into cages. It was so sad, but we were glad to give two of them a better life. We took the pair that the breeder swore were both females. Weeks later one of the rabbits had kits. Eleven of them. We thought the breeder had sold us a male and female after all until a few days later the other rabbit had thirteen kits of her own.
We eventually sold our extra rabbits. Sold them, for though we were willing to give them to people who would provide them with good homes the woman at the feed store in San Diego cautioned us that some (horrible rotten evil) fisherman will take free young rabbits and use them for deep sea fishing. Ug. Humans.
Rabbits are so charming. Complex, not wholly sweet, but so much fun to watch. Ours stand up on their hind legs to be scratched (and to take treats from our hands) They cuddle up together, do fantastic happy rabbit leaps into the air when happy, and, of course, poop like crazy. What's not to love?
Kwantu as a youngster.
March 2, 2011
Late Frost – protecting early blooming trees.
We've been facing successive nights of hard frost here in Northern California. I know my mother must be laughing bitterly (she's in Wyoming and the look of hard February March weather in Wyoming does NOT look anything like the above) but Northern California can be heartbreaking because of its see-saw between balmy days then the crush of icy weather. The balmy days wheedle the tender fruit blossoms out, and then once the nascent fruit begins its journey toward luscious apricots, peaches, or plums, Whammmo!
Frost.
So we do a panicked dance with lightweight covers on our trees, wafting them up and around as if we were matadors and the trees many horned bulls. It is incredibly hard to get fabric around the branches, the trees do not want to cooperate, for some reason, shrugging off the fabric one minute, clawing it closer the next.
Once up it looks rather pretty. Like the clouds have settled in the branches of the little orchard. There are other means of protecting the fruit – christmas lights in the branches generate enough heat to stymie frost (and then you can leave them up for your next garden party!) and some people turn sprinklers on which seems like it wouldn't be really useful, but there is science backing it up. We decided to use the fabric, for one reason I needed the light row cover fabric to actually cover a few rows of plants when I plant the next stage of garden. Beyond that, we use sheets, or…whatever else we've got available
The new, tender navel orange we planted actually looks like a sunbather facing a beachfront squall, all wrapped up in a pool towel. Will our efforts pay off? We won't know for weeks yet, when the blossoms are all off and we can peer into the cup they left and see if there are the tiny infants of fruit growing inside.
March 1, 2011
Making Space – QAF Art
This is the chapter in which I describe my attempts to build beds and cut back my towering trees to let more light into my yard. It was great to have Jesse do the artwork. He drew illustrations that were not only lovely, but specific to the Quarter Acre Farm.
February 28, 2011
Art Preview – QAF
The illustration for the snail chapter by the uber talented Jesse "Nemo" Pruet. Yes, I did eat my garden snails….and they were delish!
February 25, 2011
Spiced Roasted Vegetables
On a miserably cold, rainy day it is great to have the stove going for a bit of auxilary heat. (It's hard to get it warm enough for me. I'm waiting for summertime and 95 degrees when I am perfectly happy) One's family frowns on turning the oven on for mere hand warming, so I masquerade the event by roasting up some vegetables.
I used some winter squash, an eggplant, several sweet potatoes, and a big red onion in the dish. All but the eggplant out of the garden. The eggplant came from the co-op, a gift. It reminds me of days to come. sigh. (The rainy days do go on and on) Cut the vegetables into bite sized pieces. I cut those vegetables that tend to take a bit longer to cook, such as sweet potatoes, a bit smaller than the very fast cooking vegetables such as the delicate squash.
Drizzle with oil and salt, stir. Add any other spices you wish. I added a teaspoon of a spice mixture my friend Sacha gave me – a mysterious blend she got from her mother in law who got it from India. Delicious. Not sure what was in it, but certainly some kind of hot pepper, such as cayenne.
Spread the vegetables on a cookie sheet with a good lip (jelly roll pan!) and roast at 450, stirring every so often, until the vegetables are browning on the outside and soft on the inside.
Serve on wild rice…or rice of your preference in a kitchen that is (finally) nice and warm.
February 24, 2011
Hypsipyle gets down and dirty…
Hypsipyle discovered something very, very nice – in goose terms, anyway. She discovered that earthworms enjoy the space between the muddy, muddy ground and the layer of straw in her pen, and if she burrows deeply under that straw she gets to enjoy a whizbang meal of goose spaghetti.
Of course, she also gets mud all over her feathers, making me think of toddlers digging into chocolate birthday cake (look at that face). But having muddy feathers is a very small price to pay…and once paid, easily rectified. With a clean basin of water, she will once again look as though, as a friend of mine says, she's wearing the most beautiful of wedding dresses.
