Swing on by: FridayPosted July 23rd
Howdy. The farm gate will be open on Friday, from 3-6pm. Stop on by! I'm hoping to see some of the folks from the conference and make some new friends, and see some old pals. The farm is at 28th street and MLK in Oakland. Look for the bright mural on the abandoned building--the farm is behind the green fence on the corner. I'll be weeding in the garden. Tagged as visitors | No Comments » | Continue
Freaky vegetablesPosted July 21st
What do you do if someone invites you to Mondavi's Taste3 conference? You go. There's the food. The wine. The big ol' schwag bag. There's a mulberry tree at Copia that, right now, is raining down dark juicy berries. No one seems to be picking them! There's a great thrift store in Napa. But even better than the fine wine, the lobster dinner at Mumm where everyone got their nice clothes dirty with butter and lobster drippings; the complimentary coffee, tea, chocolate and shoes--there were some of the most eloquent, poetic, funny, slightly mad people who really care about what they're doing. Dan Barber gave a talk about why he won't use foie gras anymore (not for the usual reasons). A photographer named Laura Letinsky, who takes haunting photos of...leftovers, gave a presentation that got my slow-moving brain thumping. Jennifer 8 Lee confirmed my love of Chinese food as the all-American food. It was great. And then I returned hom, back to the vegetables in my garden.
Finally, the cabbage, which has been so slow growing, are starting to form heads. The first to be ready is this Melissa. Crinkly. Somewhat addled with slugs and a few earwigs. Delicious when grated with apples from the tree (the Anna apples are now ready), tossed with rice wine vinegar and walnuts.
The zucchini is out of control, as usual, but early this year on account of the pig manure. This is the vine of the Ronde de Nice zuchini, a round zucchini that volunteered out of the porcine poo
pile. I've harvested about a thousand of these small guys with their blossoms still attached. This vine looked weird, though. Thicker. There were flower buds ...
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Scattered acresPosted July 15th
Just flew in from Seattle yesterday. I abandoned the farm to spend six days with my family up north. It was my mom's un-65th birthday and un-retirement party (her real birthday is june 15; she's retiring at 66). My sister and I threw her a Bastille day party featuring Sally Jackson cheeses, Salumi salami, bbq-ed oysters, and grilled Toulouse-style sausages. Also, there was a Cajun band. Riana made some yummy quiche with morels and a mind-blowing sour cherry dessert. But the farm, right, how can I leave that for almost a week? In the end, it all worked out. My friend N came by every day and fed the goats and rabbits and chickens, I left Orla out with Bebe to keep her milked out, and I deeply watered the garden the night before I left. After six days of absence, I thought upon my return, the goats would come running, the rabbits would clap their hairy paws together, the chickens would cuddle up. Actually, they barely noticed me when I walked through the gate. The only critter on the farm that's ecstatic I'm back is Kousin the cat, who slept at my side all night. Having a break made me realize how much work GhostTown Farm actually is. So many animals to care for, weeds to pull, vegetables to water, turds to clean up. But these chores, this care-taking is what gets me up in the morning, sets the rhythm for my day, makes me feel necessary and useful. It's also nice to realize that I can leave for a few days and it's not a disaster. While in Seattle I picked up a copy of Common Grounds magazine, which has a very good article about the urban farming movement. The writer interviewed me, too, but the best idea came from an ... Tagged as travel | No Comments » | Continue
Sick hippiePosted June 28th
Been sick all week with a head cold which turned into fever with chills. I've had to stay in bed and the farm has been neglected. The goat shed needs mucking out, the garden watered, the rabbit cages are begging for a cleaning, the buffet of yummy greens that go to all the animals has been halted and boring processed feed will have to do. The worst thing is my sinuses are so plugged up, I can’t smell anything. Hence, I can't taste anything. Is this a life worth living? Amid these frustrating developments on a sweat-inducing break from the bed to check my email, I learned that I had been crowned Best Hippie 2008 by the East Bay’s locally owned free weekly. You guys!! A few years ago, maybe even a year ago, I would have scoffed at the word ‘hippie’ being used to describe me. Hippies! that’s my parents! I would say. I don’t listen to the Dead, I listen to the Dead Boys. But, if you think about it, I *have* been milking goats, making cheese and planting chard--all tell-tale signs of hippiedom. So I’ve learned to live with the moniker, and wonder why there isn’t a better word to describe my urban homesteading tendencies in a way that doesn’t reek of patcholi or come wrapped in tie-dye. Anyone got a better term? While we contemplate that, a sauerkraut instructional. Get some nice heads, tight ones. Half the cabbages, then chop into thin strips. Add the cabbage to a large bowl and sprinkle with kosher salt. A TB of salt per cup of cabbage is the rule of thumb. Once sprinkled with salt, pound the cabbage so that it starts to release some water. I use a pestle from a mortar and pestle that my roommate left behind. Add this ... Tagged as cooking, random thoughts, urban life | 11 Comments » | Continue
My ridesPosted June 18th
There's probably nothing more uncool than driving a car. It makes me sweaty, in a bad way. It turns me into a robot. I can't admire other drivers' footwear or fashion. I'm not enjoying the sun, the breeze, the hellos from other people on bikes or on foot. Nope, there I am, a big dumb-ass steering a big machine around the city.
This weekend we had blow out party for my friend Willow. She's going on a sabbatical. I roasted three pigger loins all day long in an low oven after marinating them with various rubs and brines. Then we hung up some decorations, and wheeled out the juice making shopping cart. That's right. A shopping cart that makes juice (sorry, no photo). In Caracas, Venezuela I first encountered this miracle machine. It involves filling a shopping cart with oranges, then mounting a juicer where the toddler would normally sit while you shopped for lentils. And a place to cut the oranges (and grapefruits). When you want juice, you reach into the cart, cut an orange, then squeeze. It's totally mobile, and if these hit on, will provide the greater Oakland area with plenty of Vitamin C. Can't you imagine a fleet of shopping carts filled with citrus, not aluminum cans? But first I had to get the oranges. Which meant driving (I thought) to the Friday farmer's market. I circled a five block radius for 20 minutes. I got sweaty. I even wanted to yell. I felt competitive and I think I even cut someone off. Just for some oranges! In the time it took me to find a parking space I could have ridden there and back on my bike at least two times, which would have been enough ...
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Farm Tour FridayPosted June 12th
Howdy! Remember, tomorrow from 10-2 is the Ghosttown Farm and Garden Tour. Pet a goat! Help me move "stuff " in the garden! Cuddle with baby bunnies! Trim an echium! Gaze at baby geese.
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Goat smellsPosted June 10th
At the edge of the room in our apartment that I call the mudroom, the room where we milk Bebe, store tools, keep seeds, make vinegar, house crusty jars of canned goods, right where the door opens onto the backyard, lingers an odor of Farm. Bill's even noticed it. I've wondered where exactly it emanates because I harvest the goat turds and sawdusty clods of urine every morning before milking. Then I saw Bilbo pee on the back porch. Ah-a! Goat pee plus wooden deck plus sunlight. It's an unbearably delicious smell as far as I'm concerned. It means good things, to me. Maybe I'm remembering my parent's farm in Idaho or an old goat barn visited in the 1970s. The odor to my mind speaks of good things--goat cheese, dirt dappled potatoes, thick slices of multi-grain bread. Promises of coffee ground with a handmill in the morning, and marijuana smoked in the evening. Of course those days are gone, and we've all gotten over those silly pleasures, right? I guess some of us have not.
This past weekend I took Orla and three rabbits to Berkeley Fun Fair. The Berkeley Farmer's Market manager asked me to bring some baby animals for the kids to pet, to be a one woman band of urban farming.
When I arrived, I unfurled my ghetto fence made of chicken wire and wooden stakes, put Orla on a leash, and sat under a tree. So many kids and their parents came up and told me stories about having farm animals, some of them in the city! Of wanting their kids to grow up knowing animals. One little girl cradled a baby bunny, and I told her it ...
Raise your freak flagPosted June 4th
Saw a fella out in my garden today. He’s tall and blond, riding one of those fixed gear 10-speeds that are all the rage with the kids today. I walked my bike from out back and started my 12 block commute to my office. “Excuse me, who owns this lot?” he said. “I do,” I lied. But you know, I feel like it’s mine. If you garden it, don’t you own it? A guy from Maine told me that if you plant a garden, the owner can’t uproot it. State law. Anyway, so I’m lying and he’s wondering. “Do you need help?” he said. Where was this man five years ago when I was building the beds? Hauling the manure? Feeling a little like the Little Red Hen, I told him I mostly have it under control. “There’s a lot of bare soil,” he said, and leaned back on his bike. I’m a journalist, so I enjoy lots of criticism (from editors, and later, readers) but I do get defensive when a stranger makes comments about my gardening technique. And I started to wonder: Why am I getting defensive about my garden with this random jack-ass who I don’t even know? In the last year or so I’ve had so many more visitors to the garden. I can’t tell if it’s my neighborhood getting gentrified or an upsurge of interest in urban gardening or the blog. I recently had two wonderful sisters come by the garden and offer their help. But they never mentioned my bare soil (which is being watered every day in anticipation of the beet, corn, and carrot seeds I buried there a few days ago). Eventually I invited them to build their own raised beds. One of the sisters even followed a hastily drawn map to the stables where I get my treasure trove of ... Tagged as greywater | 2 Comments » | Continue
Let the cheesemaking beginPosted May 26th
In my squalid kitchen, cheesemaking has officially begun! More than two years ago I ordered chevre culture from New England Cheesemaking Company, promptly stuck it in my freezer, and forgot all about it. I had just befriended a guy in Berkeley who had goats and I had delusions of getting milk from him. It didn’t happen. But now, oh now, I can finally make my own.
But it’s not like I have an excess of milk. I’ve resorted to milking Bebe only once a day (Fiasco Farm said she does this, with healthy results, for over 10 years). Just as I get less milk from my Nigerian Dwarf goats, who work great in small backyards, I don’t mind getting less milk if it means I don’t have to milk twice a day. It’s not like I’m in the cheese business! I let Orla, Bebe’s daughter have access to her mom during the day (she’s milking for me!) and pen her up at night so I get the morning milk.
So, it took me four days to stockpile half a gallon of Bebe’s sweet, creamy milk. The directions on the chevre package said to add one packet to a gallon of milk, so I just heated up the milk to 86 degrees, and sprinkled in what looked like half the package. It was hard to see four days worth of milk used in an experiment like this. What if it didn’t work?
For 12 hours, the cheese set up in an undisturbed area. I heard that the culture can be finicky, so I didn’t peek at all. That night, when I finally looked into the bowl, the milk had pulled away from the sides and had two distinct layers: there was just this ...
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Making plansPosted May 19th
Spring's the season for scheming. I often wake up in the middle of the night thinking about root vegetables. Why didn't I plant more beets? Then Bill's been planning various summer-time trips--a bike ride to Bolinas, a trip up to Seattle for my mom's 65 (!) birthday.
It's also time to plant a victory garden on the lawn of San Francisco's City Hall! I'm doing research for a story about heirloom seeds and got myself invited this weekend to a seed-sowing party in West Oakland. We planted and transplanted veggies to be featured in a victory garden in the front lawn of San Francisco's City Hall. I don't want to give away all the secrets of the project, but I'll tell you that I planted several types of amaranth, peppers, and tomatoes.
The idea for community-focused vegetable production has been a fairly long-standing tradition in America. In the 1890's, the mayor of Detroit first advocated growing community gardens. Growing your own veggies made a lot of sense during the Depression, too. When WWI hit, war gardens sprouted up all over America. The idea being the troops needed the food from the farms, so ordinary citizens should grow their own for their tables. During the Second World War, victory gardens were popular. During the 1940s, all over the country, including urban areas like SF, NYC, Boston, Philly, cities played host to demonstration victory gardens to inspire citizens to grow their own food. For the whole story, check out an article from Tea and Cookies in Edible SF about the project.
City Slicker is donating the know-how and their greenhouse; Seeds of Change the seeds (all heirlooms); the City is hosting the ...
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