Prepping dinner in late February. Note “green onions”, carefully harvested from some storage onions that decided it was time to start sprouting.
Note: This post the product of a farmer itching for the snow to melt, of Lisa Richardson’s gentle encouragement to not be ashamed by my lack of posts since last May, and also a plug for a new page on our farm website that talks about VEGETABLES.
It tries to answer questions like “What’s this?” or “How can I cook that?” or “Can I freeze these?” that I get asked from time to time as a CSA farmer. I also admit to eating cabbage for breakfast on a regular basis. Feel free to have a look if you’d like. http://fourbeatfarm.ca/news/
A breakfast option for the Pemberton loca-vore. Includes an average portion of cabbage, pickled garlic scapes from last summer, and some additions from friends at Spray Creek Ranch.
Now, to ramble…
Last week, the spare room where I store my personal supply of winter produce had its annual conversion into a spring “grow room” for this year’s seedlings. Anyone else have ~8000 allium roommates right now? No? Oh well, just me then. We will be co-habitating for a few weeks until the seedling greenhouse gets set-up and temperatures climb a bit.
Because of this new roommate situation that I have come to believe is normal, I spent a few hours picking through the bins of winter storage vegetables. Since I haven’t been to the produce section of the grocery store all winter, there wasn’t much left. I salvaged the best to cram into the fridge and imminent meals, and that about took care of it. Let me begin by saying that, despite my attention to detail when it comes to processing and storing vegetables in the main farming season (destined for CSA and farmers market shoppers), my winter set-up for personal use is…well…simple. Or lacking. Depends how you look at it. Let’s call it “rustic” to be nice.
It’s a small room in the house. It’s separated off and slightly insulated by a blanket over the doorway to avoid wasting woodstove heat from the hallway. The window stays cracked open to let in cold air and keep the bins of veggies comfy. When we get a cold snap, I make the crack smaller. When we get a mid-winter thaw, I open the window a bit more. If I remember.
This has successfully kept beets, carrots, turnips, watermelon radishes, cabbages, rutabaga, celery root, kohlrabi potatoes and onions in fine shape until at least early March. There are some sprouty bits. Occasionally one will turn to mush and cause a small amount of slime to touch those around it. These now-slimey neighbours get rinsed off and put in soup or fed to the draft horses (onions exempt, they go direct to compost and bypass the horse trough).
Winter storage veggies at their prime for fall CSA members. Mine do not look like this now.
By March, things kept in such un-fancy conditions tend to look a little tired. Rutabagas are starting to sprout wild hairstyles. Celery roots are looking a bit shrivelled. But the cabbages? Oh, the cabbages. They’re like a breath of fresh air. Dozens of them have been sitting in a Rubbermaid bin in the house for nearly four months and they are still crunchy, juicy, sweet, and willing to join in to up the freshness factor of just about any meal.
If you’re looking for ideas about vegetables, recipes, or curious about how this particular farmer likes to eat her veggies year-round, I’d welcome you to check out a resource we are growing to help our friends and CSA members with the age-old question “What is this?” (holds up a cabbage shaped like a cone, an alien-resembling kohlrabi, or a yellow beet).
Seriously though, those cabbages. They’re just what a farmer needs this time of year.
A friend of mine called this a “Winter Glory Bowl”. Not sure if she was joking or not, but we’ll take it. Canned salsa from our summer tomatoes, refried beans from some shelling beans we grew and froze, sweet curry zucchini pickles, and roasted rutabaga. I don’t know if they’ll be serving it at any restaurants anytime soon, but it was a perfect sweet & sour, hearty & crunchy combination of food from the farm for a post-snowshoe lunch.
It was a year ago to the day while consuming a couple tasty Steam Works IPAs in a Richmond Irish Pub en route to a family vacation in Mexico that I took the plunge and joined the Traced Elements family. Maybe it was liquid courage that egged me on because at the time I was scared to dive into a world I knew nothing about: writing. The only constant I had to offer was my deep love for gardening. As luck would have it I learned I also loved to write – or maybe this whole endeavor came into my life when I needed a new outlet more then I realized at the time.
Regardless: it’s one of my favourite decisions to date.
The winter’s sun, as of late, has been flooding my living space with a warming heat reminiscent of sandy beaches and margaritas while the arctic air swirls around outside. My cheeks are constantly blushed in colour having been kissed by the cold. Overall, I welcome this false warmth; it’s a perfect excuse to devour a bowl of spicy miso ramen, everyday.
As the days get longer I look forward to my garden springing to life, even if they are currently blanketed in more snow then I can recall in the valley in years, my thoughts are hopeful, green and full of blooms. Many days I get lost and overwhelmed by the potential of things to grow as I browse numerous websites. Basically, my urge to propagate as many cool things as possible usually wins. You already know if you’ve read my other blogs that I’m a firm believer in the, “there is no harm in trying” experimental method.
Seeds; they fuel everything. (A little bit of love doesn’t hurt either.)
Plant anything and something good is bound to come from it. Sometimes there is growth and sometimes there are failures; either way you’ll learn something.
I have been carrying the following quote with me for years but it is only now that I finally feel like I am acting on it (after all spring ushers in rebirth). So, in the words of Byron Pulsifer I leave you with this,
“Passion creates the desire for more and action fuelled by passion creates a future.”
…get ready to see some really cool things from me.
On my desk right now is a gorgeous little collection of essays called Wonder and Other Survival Skills, put together by the editors of Orion magazine. On its cover, a young girl presses her hand against the surface of a lake: skin of girl meeting skin of lake. From this meeting, a ripple moves.
“Is wonder a survival skill?” H. Emerson Blake asks in the foreword. “The din of modern life pulls our attention away from anything that is slight, or subtle, or ephemeral. We might look briefly at a slant of light in the sky while walking through a parking lot, but then we’re on to the next thing: the next appointment, the next flickering headline, the next task…Maybe it’s just for that reason—how busy we are and distracted and disconnected we are—that wonder really is a survival skill. It might be the thing that reminds us of what really matters, and of the greater systems that our lives are completely dependant on. It might be the thing that helps us build an emotional connection—an intimacy—with our surroundings that, in turn, would make us want to do anything we can to protect them.”
By my own definition, wonder is the ability to travel beyond attention, beyond mindfulness–to truly make an encounter with the world in a way that, for the slenderest of moments, lifts us out of ourselves and returns us back with something more. Something of the ‘other’ we’ve encountered travels with us. A little of the world comes into the interiority of us and lodges there. Permeates.
Winter is a season of rest for most of us land-based folks. A season of living in a place of dreams and visioning (literally, as we get caught up on sleep, and plan for the year ahead.) This is the first season I’ve stopped teaching completely. I felt the need to let the work do a deep dive into silence, and (beyond the day-to-day chores of keeping animals, which never go away), to truly let myself drop out of time. I sleep when I’m tired. I wake up when I wake up. I have breakfast and a cup of coffee, before I go out to do chores. Which sometimes makes me feel like a slacker, but it also feels… luxurious. Luxurious in a simple way I haven’t allowed into my life before. A spaciousness that holds its own kind of wonder.
The other reason I decided to stop teaching completely once the snow hit in December, was I wanted my horses to feel like they belonged to me again. 2018 was our busiest year teaching together (THANK YOU, PEMBERTON!) but I wanted a chance to ride when I wanted to again, instead of working a horse so they would be ready to say ‘yes’ to a student. I wanted to WANT to ride again. To wander about aimlessly bareback with nothing but a lead rope joining me to my horse’s mind. I wanted the horses to be able to choose who came out to play with me, whenever I showed up at the gate with a halter or a bridle.
What’s emerged out of this unravelling is that I was finally able to back Besa, my big paint/Friesian mare. When she came to me 18 months ago, she was an untrained 6-year-old, freshly weaned from being a mamma to a feisty filly. She made it very clear to me- in her lack of desire to be caught and her extreme reactivity, power and athleticism- that I’d have to take my time with her. Given space and the permission to approach me (instead of me expecting to approach her and do what I wanted), she decided that humans were worth being curious about. Her curiosity flowered into full-blown affection. She’s the first horse to come to anyone out of the field now, and she sometimes chooses to pull me (or whoever I’m accompanying into the field) in against her chest with her muzzle, the closest a horse can come to giving a hug.
Besa’s been asking me to do things with her for months (Proper things! With a bridle and tack like all the other horses!) and all summer and fall I just didn’t have the capacity. But these last few weeks I’ve slipped onto her back and let her carry me around our little maze of snow paths in a mutual exchange of trust: I will trust you with my body, if you will trust me with your body. The ‘training’ part of it can come later. For now, all I want is her to turn her head to me, so she can look at me fully out of her huge dark eye: Oh. So now you’re up there now. So that she can yawn and snort and let all the tension go out of her nervous system, and get used to this strange new way that horses and humans can be together.
Perhaps it’s me she’s been waiting for all along. Perhaps I needed to drop into this spaciousness for us to find this way to trust each other.
There’s one essay that stands out for me in this slim little collection that sits on my desk. It’s Chris Dombrowski’s Kana: a father grasps at the nature of wonder. In it, he defines Kana as “a word or figure the Japanese haiku poets used as a kind of wonder-inducing syllable (it translates loosely into English as an exclamation point.)… that heart-stutter we receive when an image of the world takes root in us…”
His essay shares the spell of a day spent morel hunting with his twenty month old son. The way the boy wanders across the face of the burn, trailing a whitetail’s antler behind him, carelessly decapitating the very mushrooms he’s hunting for:
…he is either in a daze of boredom or he is walking kana, penetrated each step by the world, not penetrating it. It’s tempting to call this spirit naïveté, but it’s not: it’s wisdom we lose along the way.”
Perhaps that’s what I’ve been courting this winter: wisdom I’ve lost along the way as I’ve been coerced into ascribing to linear time, to capitalism, to the many demands the constructs of being human impose upon us. There is gentleness here, in this wonder, that doesn’t feel rushed or imposed. A hand resting against the surface of a lake.
I’ve wanted to broaden the scope of my horse and nature based teaching practice to include workshops for adults since I started Mountain Horse School in 2012, but I’ve shied away for a long time. I’ve always felt comfortable with kids because they’re so immediate, so open still to this touch of the world upon them. Grown-ups’ responses are layered. More conditioned. We need more language to access understanding, and experiences that can operate like keys opening the locks of ways of perceiving we’ve long put away. Grown-ups want reasons to pacify our rational, linear ways of thinking, and we want to know if playing with opening the doors to wonder, if walking Kana is ‘worth the investment’ of our time. We’ve become used to being sold meditation through a list of its benefits. A walk in the woods has become a thing we could pay for. Forest bathing, it’s called in the brochures.
What if wonder is the gateway to possibility? What if it’s the only skill that will give us the tools, insight, and power we need to move into (here I am, throwing another book title at you!) The More Beautiful World That our Hearts Know is Possible? What if the benefits of wonder—similar to its more lauded cousin, gratitude—might be the resurrection of a life woven into belonging with the wider world that sustains us?
Small watercolour of a whale’s ear bone from the intergalactic spaceship that is my desk. Because of the complexity of their hearing, whales’ inner ear bones are contained within a separate chamber, not encased inside the skull as ours are. It amazes me how much this bone looks like a shell. If I held it to my ear, would I hear the sound of the sea?
It’s not up to me to answer these questions. I can only speak from the lens of my own experience, my own perceptions. In lieu of that, I can say with certainty that this winter’s dreaming I’ve been luxuriating in, this kana I’ve been walking in my own life, feels absolutely essential to the future that comes next. I can say—if I may speak with authority based on the way things feel from the intergalactic spaceship that is my writing desk this afternoon—that it HAS been absolutely necessary. That nothing is currently more important. Oh, the great irony that ‘doing the work’ this winter has actually meant ‘doing less work—!’ (Is that an exclamation mark or is it kana? You decide.)
So, in the spirit of wonder being the gateway to possibility, I’m issuing a little dare to myself. Actually, it’s not little at all. On Feb 17, I’m offering a one day workshop called Lightning Seeds: Opening the Gateway of what’s Possible, in collaboration with my dear friend, animal listener and translator Guliz Unlu. Come play with us as we walk kana in the company of the horses and other animals at Mountain Horse School, and court wonder through a combination of equine guided learning, animal communication, intuitive herbalism, earth wisdom, and soul craft. Curious to know more? Please visit our website or facebook page for all the juicy details!
It’s a beautiful and productive thread, and prompted me to this place: SPROUT!
Well, I was nudged as much by Molly’s question as by the $5 price tag on a head of wilted lettuce, and the price tag on a bunch of kale, which my garden no longer yields (most of it was nibbled down to stem by the deer, and anything that remained is now buried under a foot of snow) and which inevitably cooks down to a single mouthful, although any dirt I didn’t wash from it manages to expand in size in some perverse inverse leaf-to-dirt amplification equation). Plus, I was motivated by this instinct that when I make something from scratch, or see something grow, I feel stupidly happy; my kid engages more deeply in the real world, and we’re already in that constant tussle of real world versus seductive screen; also, a desire to have some greenery in the diet in the depths of winter. I already had a sprouting jar, so I pulled it out of the cupboard and carefully measured out my tablespoon of alfalfa seeds, rinsed them, soaked them in water overnight, and then begin the daily ritual of rinse, swirl, drain, sit back upside in the jar on the plate on the corner of the counter.
Then, thanks to a combination of internet-smarts, sunflower seeds and encouragement from Stay Wild (apparently, Leah’s countertop at home is covered in sprouts and micro greens), and a great book from the library, I became a micro green grower.
“Winter in Minnesota is notorious for wearing optimists down to a brittle nub, but the more experimentation we did with micro greens, pea shoots, radishes and other tasty vegetables, the more we felt like we were extending summer into our house… There’s a certain thrill that comes with seeing seeds begin to pop into three first leaves, and if you’re wearing your pyjamas at the time, that excitement can feel doubled.”
Microgreen guru Elizabeth Millard (left) and her partner Karla Pankrow of Bossy Acres farm in Minnesota
As a person who works from home, being able to do things in one’s pyjamas is Mission Critical for me. It’s a flashing neon sign that says, “Lisa, this might even work for you.”
And so, following the various bits of advice I’d gleaned from above-mentioned resources, I began, with one plastic salad box rescued from the recycling bin, some potting mix excavated from underneath the cobwebs in the garage, and my little packet of sunflower seeds acquired from Stay Wild.
A few days later, my 5 year old put himself in charge of the harvest, and Mr Just-Ichiban-Noodles-for-Me, snipped and plucked and made merry with the nutrient-dense cotyledons (the initial two leaves of a seedling, that give way to the plant’s “true leaves”). He made cracker-sandwiches for us, from the micro greens, and ate his way through much of the first harvest. Hooray!
Some wins just feel too easy… I spent $3, used garbage, and my kid fed himself greens (and also introduced his meat-eating dragon to the joy of omnivorism.)
Look, Sparky! Micro greens. Feel free to toast them, if you like. Bu they’re just as good raw, for those who don’t have the ability to breathe fire.
Raw food chef-in-training preps the basic ingredients for a nutrient-dense snack for all the family.
Added bonus, the micro greens made my dinner look more like the picture in the recipe book, which never happens! Wizardry. And joy.
Millard said, in her book: “Sometime around the middle of February, it always seems to hit: the weariness of filling my shopping basket with fresh vegetables from California, Chile, Mexico, and even Peru or New Zealand. No offence to the hardworking farmers, because I truly appreciate the opportunity to eat oranges during a snowstorm. But these products require, by necessity, lengthy shipping times that sap them of flavour and nutrition to some degree. Still, it’s not easy to eat local when you live in a place that requires budgeting 20 minutes every morning for scraping the ice off your windshield.”
How do you find joy in winter is a wonderful prompt, as I discovered when I read through the responses to Molly Costello’s post: cross-country skiing, running, sleepovers and dinners with friends, landscape planning and reading seed catalogues, being okay with not being totally okay, soup-making, sauna, drinking warm juice, extra gratitude practice, crafting, making art and cooking for friends, burning candles, forest walks, cold water swimming, making broth, hot baths, taking a cup of coffee outside cloaked in a huge coat, writing letters to long-distance friends and taking extra good care of the houseplants.
If you want to get more specific, you could ask: where do you find joy in winter? And happily, I can now answer: on my kitchen counter.
Bittersweet times are upon me these days as my personal stock levels of fresh garden produce dwindle down to the last survivors. Luckily seed ordering is in full effect to keep the dream alive! Yet, even though the light at the end of the winter tunnel grows brighter every day, you can still guarantee there will be times when we feel the need to: bundle up, get adventurous, come home and devour a hot bowl of soup.
But I’ll reiterate before continuing that… #summeriscoming.
Feeling inspired from an Instagram post by my “neighbor” Anna for a mega hearty vegetable broth and a recipe from My New Roots, I set forth to honor my last butternut squash with a soup so full of nutritional goodness that would make the new Canadian Food Guide salivate.
• Once you’ve got all the goods simmering away go out and adventure for a few hours then come home to the most AMAZING smell, ladle up yourself a cup and savor the goods! Freeze what you don’t use in different sized containers for later. (I added in some carrot and celery because I had it on hand and well, I’ve never made a stock with out either!)
Step Two: Start making the soup.
Butternut squash, peeled & diced into ½“ pieces (approx. 3 cups), roasted at 375°F with some coconut oil, salt and pepper – one medium sized onion, diced – 3-4 cloves garlic, minced – 2-3 Tbsp fresh grated ginger (I keep mine in the freezer for easy grating and its keeps longer) – miso paste (Fuji Market in Whistler has a great selection, I used AWASE Miso)
Add some coconut oil into a Dutch oven over medium heat, then add the onion and cook until translucent then add in the garlic and ginger; allow everyone to mingle until fragrant. Then add in the butternut squash and cook for 5 minutes to absorb the flavors. Top the lot with the veggie stock and allow to simmer for 10-15minutes. Use one cup of water and combine with ¼ cup miso paste, whisking to combine then add to the pot. Remove from the heat and use an immersion blender to smooth out the soup. Add more stock or water to obtain your desired consistency and season with salt & pepper.
Step 3: Wasabi cream.
1 Tbsp wasabi powder – 1 Tbsp water – 2 Tbsp mayo – squeeze lemon or lime juice – dash of tamari
Whisk everything together and get ready to be addicted, and willing to putting this sauce on everything.
Step Quatro: Eat the soup.
Serve the soup drizzled with the wasabi cream, sprinkled with black sesame seeds and topped with some pea shoots, micro greens or whatever is on hand. That is all.
Simple. Delicious. Nutritious. Most importantly: made and grown with love.
Shepherd’s Pie is another great dish for experimenting with. It is also great comfort food on a winter evening! Lately I have been omitting tomatoes and garlic from my recipes. I don’t love garlic in particular and I am cutting back on acidic tomatoes. Eliminating these two ingredients is a challenge, as they pack a lot of flavour.
With a lot of time in a good cast iron Dutch oven, you can bring out the flavour in SO many veggies. For shepherd’s pie you can experiment, but this time I used: 1 cup diced green cabbage, ½ an eggplant, a large yellow onion, 2 cups parsley, and several healthy dashes of Worcestershire sauce – as well as S&P.
If you sauté those veggies at a low-medium heat for a good ½ hour – or more, you will have the flavour you want. And not have to resort to tomatoes for zing, or the usual garlic! The other veggie-friendly thing I did was steam a whole cauliflower and then mash it along with 8 fingerling potatoes, with plenty of butter and salt and the cauliflower steam water. All in all, this shepherd’s pie was a hit, and had tons of servings of nutritious veggies in it to boot. This is my re-boot of the usual “carrots, peas and corn” shepherd’s pie – which by my palate has had its day!
8 small yellow potatoes (Pemberton Sieglindes are a treat)
Salt to taste
Method:
Sauté all veggies (except cauliflower and potatoes) until well cooked and caramelised in cast iron Dutch oven.
Brown deer meat/ground beef in a separate cast iron fry pan, then and add to veggie mixture.
Add ½ cup chicken broth and 2 tbs cornstarch. Mix well. Mixture should thicken nicely.
Boil potatoes until very fork-tender.
Steam cauliflower.
Puree steamed cauliflower in food processor fitted with steel blade until very smooth.
Blend cauliflower and potatoes together in stand mixer with butter, salt and cauliflower steam water until you have a smooth consistency.
Pour veggie mix into 9×13” casserole dish and spoon mashed potatoes/cauliflower over top. Spread well.
Bake 350C for ½ hour.
Enjoy!
** Leftovers: next day add a good splash of chicken broth to a serving of shepherd’s pie and it forms a stew that is very satisfying in a Thermos for lunch on the go.
I’ve been involved with the Fruit Tree Project the past two years. This awesome endeavour connects local fruit tree owners, volunteer pickers and community groups, such as the Food Bank, who share the bounty and reduce conflict with bears. I have enjoyed learning how to make crabapple juice and jelly, as well as eating delicious apples, pears, grapes and plums, so when the email came in looking for volunteers to pick black walnuts, I was in!
My dear old Mom’s version of swearing is “gosh dangit” or “darg narbit” or “aw nuts”. With the first two, one can imagine the true meaning, but I never understood how a delicious nut could be used as a cuss word. Until now.
Harvesting the nuts was quick and easy; you just pick up the nuts from the ground under the tree – who knew? In no time, the 5 of us had collected 90 lbs! I was very excited with my share, a large bucketful, and imagined impressing my family at Christmas with something not tomato-based. (I grow too many tomatoes!)
Hulling the walnuts was also easy. I had been warned to wear gloves as walnuts stain but because the fruit was soft, removing the outer husks was quick work. Inside, a black glistening prune-like thing remained, hence the name “black” walnut. The black slime wasn’t easy to remove, so I went looking on YouTube and found a delightful video hosted by Farmer Drawl and his Long-Sufferin’ Wife from the Heartland (not really, but you get the idea). Drawl’s technique of husking the walnuts was a sledge hammer so I wasn’t convinced of his methods, but I kept watching. Once hulled, he “power-warshed” the walnuts in a large bin, “but that ain’t the end of the story”. He then put them into a smaller bucket, used a shovel to agitate them, changed the water, repeated this 4 times, and then and only then did they turn up looking like walnuts. Ha, I thought. I have a power-washer and a much smaller amount, so no problem.
The darg narbit power-washer did a bit but Drawl was right; it didn’t finish the job. For the next two hours I tried methods like individual hand-scrubbing (that didn’t last very long), the shovel/bucket/agitate trick (didn’t work) and finally, the hand-pluck/fingernail scrape/rinse and rinse again/put in a large plastic mesh potato bag and roll it around on the grass on your hands and knees trick. I ended up soaking wet with black fingernails, but the result was a basket of things that finally resembled walnuts. Next week’s carrot cake will be worth it, I thought. Then Drawl says, “store ‘em for at least 6-7 weeks, then use a hammer to open ‘em up to git at the fruit”. Aw nuts.
Fast forward to the week before Christmas and the big bag of walnuts sat ready to be divided amongst my siblings. Of course I kept a share for myself, and pulled out the nutcracker. I tried and tried and ended up with a broken nutcracker and a strained wrist, but no open walnuts. If I had this much trouble, I figured I would have to shell the nuts before I gifted them. Back to YouTube. Turns out black walnuts are notoriously difficult to open. Many different ideas were presented: microwave ‘em, roast ‘em, soak ‘em. Nope. Lightly tap the pointy end with a hammer. Nope. Nothing and I mean nothing opened the gosh-derned things. Then I remembered Farmer Drawl and pulled out the sledgehammer. I put half the nuts into the same mesh potato bag I’d used to clean them and smashed away on the concrete floor of the cold garage. I then spent the next hour picking pieces of fruit (the ones that weren’t dust) from the walnut shell shards, until I lost patience.
End result: one lousy cup of small walnut pieces.
Yes, they were sweet and tasty, but after all those hours of effort?! I threw the rest of the unshelled nuts into the woods for the squirrels and birds. Family got tomato sauce for Christmas. Aw nuts!!
Oh hello, 2019! I’m not someone who’s all about the “new year, new me” mantra but I do like to use the new year as a time to remind myself about the things that I love. I also use this time to set achievable intentions. To be honest, I celebrate my actual new year on my birthday (August 8th) and that is when I set bigger BHAG-ish goals. For 2019, I’ve set some intentions that will help inspire my happiness and that may require guidance from the community. I don’t have a very green thumb, I’m a creature of habit and I love being outside.
If you have any suggestions or tips on any of the below intentions, please comment below this post or email. #help
Intention one: Try something other than Pad Thai at Barn Nork
I’m a frequent diner at Barn Nork (and also a frequent eater of their take out). I always switch up the starters but I can’t seem to deviate from their delicious Pad Thai. HELP! My goal for 2019 is to provide my taste buds a new experience via the Barn Nork train.
Intention two: Always have local farm fresh eggs
My name is Blair and I’m an egg-aholic. I start off every single day with a delicious breakfast that 99.9% of the time includes eggs. Since moving to Pemberton in 2012, I discovered how delicious farm fresh eggs are. Sometimes they are easy to buy and sometimes I feel like Sherlock Holmes trying to hunt down someone who will sell me at least a dozen. Over the years I’ve collected a few different resources for farm fresh eggs and I’ve learned to buy two dozen at a time. When I can’t find the eggs I desire, I buy them from the store and they just don’t have the same taste (in my opinion). Why should I let my eggs dip below my taste bud’s standards? I shouldn’t and I won’t! So, 2019, bring on the farm freshies!
Intention three: Grow my own flowers (to cut)
I’ve always been a sucker for fresh cut flowers. They are pretty and smell divine. I realized that during 2018 I spent a lot of money on purchasing flowers. Because I enjoy flowers so much, and I have the space to grow them, why try growing them? My husband has a greener thumb than I do and he’s agreed to help me out with this intention. I’m looking to grow flowers that are cat-friendly AND that are low maintenance. What do you think I should grow?
One thing to note is that this past summer was the first summer (ever) that I managed to keep my lavender plant alive. GO ME!
Intention four: Pick my raspberries, every day
When I moved to town I shared with Shayne my love for raspberries and that I’ve always wanted my own raspberry bush. So, we planted a raspberry bush and we seemed to plant them in the right spot because they love to grow! Usually, halfway through the season, I seem to slip away from picking them daily and eventually forget about them. I usually have a moment where I remember (when I’m no where near Pemberton) and call a neighbour to send their kids to pick the berries. I have NO REASON to not pick the raspberries on a daily basis (unless I’m out of town, which, I guess, is a reason). I should also freeze them if I have too many. So, backyard bush, bring it on!
Because it’s now January 10, 2019, and I’ve shared my intentions publicly with you, please hold me accountable. Also, if you have any words of encouragement or advice, please send them my way. Cheers to an awesome 2019 full of new menu choices, fresh cut flowers, raspberries galore and eggies from my neighbours.
P.S. Want to drop me a line? My email is blair@blairkaplan.ca.
Heres a shocker , especially for prudes — PLANTS HAVE SEX!
That’s right, just like all animals, a plant’s main purpose is to reproduce and they have a complex reproductive system to achieve that goal. If you admire flowers in full bloom (and who doesn’t), you are a voyeur checking out their genitalia, (botanically called gametes.) Nothing conveys love, lust and romance more than a bouquet of flowers with their voluptuous gametes for our viewing pleasure.
Males have stamens, complete with anthers and filaments. These produce pollen, the basis for fertilization. Females have a carpel with stigmas, styles and ovaries. These organs will eventually produce a fruit and seed to make more babies.
This is the birds-and-the-bees of plant sex, but there are more juicy details that involve said birds and bees. It often takes a threesome to fully get it on. Unlike animals, plants are immobile and have evolved to allow insects and other creatures (as well as wind) to transport pollen. These pollinators are also turned on and attracted to these beautiful colourful blooms, their scent and nectars. They will go from plant to plant doing the (not so) dirty work, and therefore conceiving more offspring in the process. Many animals are inadvertently involved in dispersing those seeds and their inherent genetic diversity.
Oddities are just as common as in the human world. Issues with sexual orientation and gender identity exist. Some plants are monoecious, meaning that both male and female systems appear on the plant. Stressed plants can have a sex change and become hermaphoditic – a last ditch effort to reproduce itself. Females that turn into males and fertilize themselves will produce all female seeds (- inspiration for women who want to do away with men and take over the world.) Pseudogamy is a term in which plants require pollination but does not involve male inheritance – kind of like female same-sex couples choosing to have children.
Stressed plants will often produce an abundance of blooms and fruit as a survival mechanism. This knowledge is used by orchardists to increase yields by heavy pruning, trimming roots and starving them of moisture and nitrogen at certain times. Some seeds need to be ingested and excreted by animals before they will viably sprout. Some plants are sadistic carnivores that eat insects, such as the venus fly trap.
Just as with pubescent teenagers and menopausal women, hormones are involved. There are 5 different hormones that affect plants growth. A particular hormone gibberellins, necessary for seed germination, can also, in high doses, force plants into changing sex. Also, if plant fertilization is suppressed by removing the male specimens, the horny females will desperately excrete more resins and nectars to get the pollen to stick. This technique is used in cannabis cultivation to produce the potent sinsemilla, translated from spanish to plant without seeds.
Light intensity and cycles also play a major role. Plants intuitively know when to flower by the photoperiod and spectrum of light. Horticulturists can trick plants into flowering by adjusting these cycles as well as their nutrient regimes. Too much nitrogen and the plant may not flower at all. Adding phosphorous will encourage it it bloom. Potassium will help the seeds to ripen. Once an annual plant is fertilized and goes to seed, its job is done and it will die. The cycle continues through its seeds.
Some plants are asexual and reproduce via cuttings, grafting or root division. This is often done by horticulturists to make clones of its parent. Since the beginning of agriculture, humans have cross-bred plants to produce better and better hybrids to suit our needs. Mutations have been selected and propagated to give us the millions of specimens we enjoy today. We created the sexual revolution of plants through millennia.
This is the time of year when gardeners are busy searching catalogs and surfing online for plants and seeds. I call that plant porn — magnificent specimens in seductive and photoshopped poses; erotic descriptions of their habits, wants and needs. They make it easy to pull out the credit card. After all, it’s the golden rule of marketing — sex sells.
As Christmas neared, I thought about ways to make the season a little more special for my dad, who is in residential care in Squamish.Home baking is always a treat for him but I knew one item in particular would be most welcome: lefse.A Norwegian flatbread made with several variations, lefse was something Mom used to make for Christmas using Grandma’s recipe, which called for mashed potatoes, flour, milk, butter and a little salt.In the old cabin, she baked it on top of the wood stove after rolling it into tortilla sized rounds.Once one side cooked she flipped the lefse using an old yard stick, then made a stack of ten to twelve which were rolled up inside a tea towel.It was a sticky, floury, messy procedure but worth it when the butter and Roger’s Golden syrup came out; Dad would spread the syrup and butter over the lefse then roll it jelly roll style, holding both ends up to eat it so the syrup didn’t run out.
Well, my attempts at recreating lefse have not been very successful – my potatoes were too wet or I didn’t add enough flour or I was too reluctant to commit to the messiness of it all.Dad ate it but I suspect he was being kind – thank goodness for the syrup.So this year, after a cousin reminded me that one could actually purchase lefse in the Lower Mainland, I phoned around to try to buy some; alas, the sources were too far away or just not feasible.Then I had a brainwave – I would post an ad on the local Buy and Sell sites: ISO someone willing to sell some lefse.Help make an old Norwegian’s Christmas a little brighter.
It took an hour till my inbox pinged and there was a message from a man in Squamish who was willing to trade me some lefse for Pemberton carrots and potatoes.We arranged a time and date and then I started fretting about finding the Roger’s golden syrup which has some substitutes but none that are quite as tasty, apparently.Before I could take my post down, another person responded, saying, “this is the best post, ever!” We chatted and she assured me that if I couldn’t find the Roger’s Golden Syrup, her folks had lots and she would meet me somewhere in Squamish and give me some.People were committed to a successful completion of my mission.
Tuesday rolled around and I texted my supplier that we were on the way and plugged the address into the GPS.They were in full production mode when I arrived; here was a couple who did not hesitate to embrace the lefse mess.He had made a round metal plate to place on top of the electric burner of the stove and they had ordered a proper ridged rolling pin and a thin flipping stick for easier manipulation of the rounds.It was his job to flip and tend the lefse while his wife prepared the dough and rolled it into the proper shape.
Here, have a seat and taste it, they encouraged me, spreading one piece generously with butter.Now, I have never really been a fan of this treat (some people say lefse tastes and feels like burnt newspaper with flour on it) but theirs was spectacular – soft and not too floury – perfectly cooked.We talked about how often they made the flatbread and what traditions they associated with it, discovering mutual friends and sharing Christmas stories.I left with twelve pieces wrapped in a napkin.Don’t worry about the napkin, she said, I buy them at the thrift stores for nickels and dimes, then send them off full of baking.
When I got to Hilltop House, Dad was participating in a word game wherein the participants had to offer words beginning with particular letters of the alphabet for a variety of prompts in under a minute.They were already at S – Somewhere hot–Sedona–Something yummy–Smoothies–Something you eat at Christmas-Stollen. I was not surprised to hear that Dad had said lefse earlier in the game for that particular prompt and the other residents were pleased to get a first hand glimpse of this item they had not heard of.
Dad and I went back to his room and I set up our little feast of lefse, butter and Roger’s Golden Syrup (which I found at Save-on.) While Dad rolled up his first piece, I relayed the story of how I’d procured it and he got a good chuckle in between bites. Christmas season did indeed get a lot brighter because of that home baked treat.
As Christmas neared, I thought about ways to make the season a little more special for my dad, who is in residential care in Squamish.
Traced Elements 