Of Lambs And Lions

You know it by now. This week, the only thing holding back the temperature will be the relatively cool waters around us. Upstate, where the garlic is undoubtedly growing, it's going to be above 70 degrees F for several days. I'd like to go up to weed, feeling like the super warm temperatures will lead to lots of sprouting, but I've work all week. With luck, the dry weather will hold out till next weekend.

By all means, get out and about this week!

Dreams Of Nightmares

Last night I had dreams of riding a tractor, or trying to make whatever it was I was on behave like a tractor. Somehow, the dream shifted to the beach farm. The plots were mostly cleared, but mine was still in place. I walked away for a minute and by the time I got back all my garlic was piled and the soil all swept away. Underneath the soil were hardwood floors! Was this a dream about gentrification? There was a group of people, apparently connected to Ft. Tilden congregating around a woman. I cursed this woman loudly for not even having the courtesy to warn us before they swept away our soil. Then I woke.

Otherwise, I had a really nice birthday, yesterday.

Auspicious Times

Today I ordered my lunch salad as I tend to do. Healthy salad, for the newly minted 42 year old. When I got to the register they charged me more than the usual. They said I ordered six items, and the deal is for five. Whatever, sometimes I can't even name five, but on principle, I counted the items, and they relented.

When I got to work, I opened the salad and out crawled the sixth item. A ladybug! And probably upset with the balsamic pesticide they dumped on, too! I thought, oh, that is good luck, a ladybug in my salad -probably in there to eat all the aphids! Being the animal lover that I am, I had to concoct a scheme to put the red critter outside without leaving my open-windowless space. The best I could come up with was this:

I removed the pipe from the outgoing port, dropped the ladybug in, replaced the pipe to the port, and turned on the blower. It must've been quite a ride, and I do hope it was a success. If so, the critter would have ten stories to figure out it needs to open its wings. Maybe then it can find its way to all those young rose tips full of the aphid undead on Manhattan terraces. Good luck!

Comfort Food

Pork sauce, aka meat sauce. To some, ragu, but not us. Occasionally I buy pork at a large supermarket in the neighborhood with this meal in mind. They label it pork fat, but usually it has very little fat, and what it does have can be trimmed easily. And it is unusually cheap, always, as if it was a cast off that they couldn't sell (seriously, like 2.5 pounds here for about $3). It makes good pork sauce, and carnitas en salsa verde, too. Tomatoes added, later.

Incidentally, I do not need a recipe for sauce, but I do like to look at recipes for sauce. Last summer I was shopping around for fennel seed seeds (Foeniculum vulgare, Finocchio Sylvatico) and I found a source mentioned on a website devoted to Calabrian cooking. The author of that site, Rosetta Costantino, had a cookbook, My Calabria. Betsy got it for me for Christmas. This is her sauce, but I added the little portobellos. Her sauce is my sauce. Many of her Calabrian recipes are a stones throw from what my grandparents cooked, in fact it's the closest I've ever found to their cooking, including their demand for fennel seeds! I think I would be a better cook if I lived in Calabria.

Those fennel seeds have been planted in the start tray, outside, in the, ahem, cold frame. Let's just say that its going to be pretty toasty in there. I also seeded some Finocchio Romanesco, the "bulb-forming" fennel. And, lastly, for now, some Cima di Rapa Sessantina, or broccoli rabe. It's an Italian spring, I guess. I'm opting out of brassica this spring, waiting for the more ideal summer planting, for which I have broccoli Romanesco, purple cauliflower, and two types of typical broccoli.

I had little to do at the beach farm today, but I had to pay my year's rent. The garlic is growing quickly now, putting on a couple inches since my last visit. The plot looks good -weeded, wood chipped paths, things growing. There will, however, be no garlic here next year. The NPS will be tearing up the whole Tilden garden in October and it seems they will do what they can to keep us from planting over winter. They've shortened the season to April fifteen to October one. They've no idea.


Extra virgin olive oil
Three cloves garlic
Sea salt
Tomatoes
Pork meat, your choice
Basil

Pan fry the meat first, drain fat, cut off extra fat. Olive oil in a sauce pan. Add sliced cloves, but don't burn the garlic. Add meat, add tomatoes, add basil and salt. Low heat for as long as you need. Sauce should be thick enough to stick to pasta.

Garden Gate

I will fix this garden's gate. No more will we climb over the fence to enter the side yard. Last autumn the lord of this land removed the last of his utility poles from this spot. And he said I should plant. Just don't tell the lady, he said. I wouldn't, her glance withers flowers.




The soil is pretty nasty, full of cat turds and semi-degraded garbage from the last 50 years. But then, so was the other side when I started in 2004. Was it that long ago?I will head to Greenwood for some free wood chip and leaf compost. I'm thinking something low growing for the new area, path-side. I miss that mass of spring bulbs from that first garden spring, 2005.

Rice Dumpers

Fresh Young Lean

Chicken.

A roast chicken was in order. In my neighborhood, if you want a chicken there are only two choices worth considering -Murray's or Halal. Tonight, I went with Murray's from one of the local big stores. I didn't notice until I got home how much the packing dedicated itself to promoting current trends in food awesomeness.

The cutest thing, the thing I believe was humorously parodied on the show Portlandia (couple in a restaurant want to know about their chicken), is the Farm Verification label. With it, it says, you can find out where your evening's chicken came from and learn about the family that raised it (I sure hope little Billy is doing well in school). I entered the code at the prompt on Murrayschicken.com, and the code returned the words code not found. Hmm. I hope my chicken's family is okay.

Winter In The Shade

This is winter in progress, only begun. It is not this winter, but that winter, winter of winters. Then, I complained, 'oh spring, don't come to soon, I'm not ready for you.' This winter I demand its return, not this phantom!

Even though I am constructing business plans to shift my garlic operation from upstate NY to the North Fork of Long Island, I still cannot say that it is true. Garlic has not been seen since early December, except at the beach farm, which has yet to have spring seeds started. I cannot say that I can do it and cannot say that I cannot, and that is how winter dressed as young April is worn.

In two months time I will most probably lose yet another studio. The program is over, or it never existed. Either way, the rent shall rocket to market rate, leaving us workaday artists in its wake. I've decided not to worry, if that's possible.

Daffodils, Yeah, But How Early Are These..

The greens of daylilies have been up for weeks, but now they are growing fast.

Doing Today

What I probably won't have time for tomorrow. And the weather, you know, gets you looking for garden projects. I wanted to lay new wood chips down the paths before the season begins in earnest, so I headed to Greenwood to grab six full garbage bags worth. I shoveled to the music of bagpipes, the chatter of parrots, and the dull clanging of Greenwood's bell.

I cannot tell you how odd it is to find bright green feathers on the ground after 40 years of never seeing anything near that color in a bird feather. Occasionally, I hear the parrots chastising birds in the trees on my street, at least a mile from their cemetery perch. Their chatter is not particularly pleasant, I even think I prefer crows' caw to it.

Although I was close to the tower gate where many of the parrots live, the sound was louder than it should have been. I located new nests on this substation across the street. Take a close look -their brown, twig nests are near the platform.

At the beach farm, I worked alone, except for the helicopter in the distance and a constant parade of trucks. There was a large tent near the abandoned building, so clearly something was going on, but I left it alone.

I had weeding to do, and chips to spread. I spread pelletized lime and raked it in (recent soil test indicated a lower than ought-to-be pH), realizing how well garlic at this stage takes to the rake. I turned the tomato beds, raking them smooth, then planted a large handful of mesclun mix and other spring greens in one and snap peas in another. Cold still on the way? Who could care at this point? Although I did hold off on the head lettuce and fennel.

Allium sativum ophioscorodon var. Turban 'Thai Purple'

Local Color

Wine Libel

Last weekend I was out on the North Fork of Long Island with my brother. After doing what we needed to do, we stopped at five or six wineries. I had a long drive back, so wasn't up for much tasting, but just wanted to pick up some wine. I was a bit taken aback by the cost. Most were 18 to 25 dollars or more. At first I thought that these must be exceptional wines, until I tasted one producer's 26 dollar pinot noir that had me looking for water. Okay, okay, I was told that pinot noir grapes don't do well on the North Fork. So I tried the 38 dollar pinot noir -only slightly better, but sour still comes to mind. Let's go in a different direction, how about a merlot? Ack! Even at 18 dollars, it was far worse than anything I'd buy for $10 at a wine shop in NYC. The taste host (is that the name?) then told me they just got a new winemaker this year. Oh, so you know these wines suck. I honestly don't know much at all about wine, but I know when I want to keep drinking one. I suppose I discovered why this winery was offering its tasting for free.

We went to Pindar, probably Long Island's best known winemaker. A few years ago I saw a Pindar sign on some upstate vineyards, but the woman behind the counter insisted, at first, that when it says L.I. estate wines on the label, it's from the North Fork. I was asking because I wanted to know why we would be paying such high local wine prices if the grapes are being trucked in from who knows where. She later told me it could be 10% from somewhere else. I relented.

Here is where I show an amateur's connoisseurship. I couldn't stand the labels on the Pindar wines and I simply couldn't buy any that had those graphics (a good example). Probably stupid, but since all of their lower priced wines had these labels, I simply passed. I bought their most understated label Merlot at considerable markup, and have yet to drink it.

There has been research on how the suggestion of high quality affects people's positive reaction to the product. Label graphics are as powerful as someone's suggestion. Is that what is going on here? I have no idea how these wines taste, but my graphic taste simply refuses cheesy graphics. I find those above acceptable, if not absolutely favorable. I have yet to taste three of the four wines I purchased that day. Betsy and I did twist our tongues around the Pellegrini Cabernet which we thought was all tannin, needed to breathe heavily, and couldn't have been worth $25 a bottle but for the local price mark up.

Local doesn't always make better. Full disclosure: When I was in grad school I painted cheesy graphics on bottles of over-priced wine sold in a tourist town in New Mexico. I received two dollars a bottle and they went like hotcakes. The wine wasn't memorable.

Trouble At The Ranch

When I arrived at the beach farm the other day, the sun was shining, the wind not too blustery, and the garlic growing, ever so slightly. Not long after another gardener arrived, Wolf, and he was upset because of a letter he had received from the NPS. He said they were finally going to till the whole thing under. I had heard these words before from NPS staff, but they had always been more a registration of dissatisfaction than a real threat. He said that we would have to remove everything or see it put into a dumpster. We could hardly argue with some of the points about the nature of Ft. Tilden's community garden, but to till everything in March shows how little they know about the garden, including the thousand or so slowly growing bulbs of garlic between me and Wolf.

Coffee Grounds

After a large apple and a tear of fresh bread from Wolf's trunk, we got on with the work at hand. I was at the garden to dispose of 6 months worth of studio coffee grounds. I also needed to do some winter chick-weeding, the most pervasive at the beach farm mid-winter.

The next day I received my letter from the NPS. I understand their complaint -Ft. Tilden is a mess, the people have no idea how to compost as a group, several plots are completely weed-filled, the boundaries are sloppy, the water system is galvanized and rusting, the fence falling over, and I could go on. But, on the other hand, my plot looks good, and so does Wolf's, and a number of others. If they till, they are going to till in all those weed seeds that Betsy and I worked so hard to eliminate from our plot. Don't even mention the little pieces of mugwort that will make their way to us. They plan on putting in PVC irrigation pipes, and that is smart, because the old galvanized system is rotting and leaking and generally wasteful of water. That said, I have an irrigation system in place and I would hate to see them set things up in a way that limits my ability to water automatically.


But all that, all that, is nothing compared to this: they want us to organize. Yep, but I think they will get the most push back on this because its our lack of organization that makes Ft. Tilden the place it is -at least for this crowd. Its casual. Yeah, you have to deal with weedmeiser next door, and the people with four plots to themselves, and the trash, and the plant in May and never return, but on the other hand, if you have some initiative you can pop open the pipes, install your own automated drip system, grow outside of their coordinated "garden season," and generally come and go as you please. But the NPS wants to put the community back into the community garden - they want us to do whole garden time, they want organized composting, they want signs on every plot, they want a leader (I'm hiding in the tomatoes), they want meetings.

I am happy to say that they are not planning on tilling now, which is a great relief and shows some insight into gardening. They are planning for October one, a month I am still growing, but I can plan around it. As for the rest of the changes, we can only wait and see. Organization means more rules, or at least, more following them. No organization means suffering the lameness of others but also increasing your awesomeness as you see fit.

Beautiful Warm Weather

...has me thinking of all the bugs.

Like these future Katydids.

And those February aphids! Alive and well.

Here Comes Goliath

Doing some research on rooftop farming and I came across this Times article about rooftop greenhouses. Given how capital-intensive growing on rooftops is, is it too hard to imagine a future where we are complaining about corporate rooftop farms? One venture capitalist involved projects a billion dollars of sales by 2020. Imagine feeding the entirety of NYC with hydroponic rooftop greenhouses. Will it remain the urban dweller's farm utopia? If the profits are as some are expecting, its hard to imagine the family farm on a rooftop. Local, land-based farming remains possible by lowered shipping costs and raising the price per pound along with some subsidies via agricultural conservation easements. Corporate mega-rooftop greenhouses may drive the price too low for local land farmers and those early sky-farmers to survive. So, must we keep our romance with the rural dirt farmer, or do we not care as long as the tomato tastes good?

Brightfarms is the major capital behind this idea.

The North Fork

I was raised in Suffolk county, mostly, in the nowhere city of Centereach. As soon as I could drive I began heading out to the North Fork to photograph (my Minolta x-370 and black and white film) the old barns, decaying farmhouses, rusting implements, and the sea. There was, then, hardly a place to eat and no one on the roads. Sometimes I would go with a couple of friends, at night, to hang out at Orient Point. I could drive the car to very near the island's tip, where we caroused while the light house rotations metered our movements. Those were romantic times.

I went out there this weekend with a different kind of eye and another twenty years of life behind me. The weather was spectacular and the wineries were omnipresent. Limos cruising the two laners, Mercedes passing into oncoming traffic. Finally, the Hamptons overflowed to the North Fork. It was inevitable -growing is cool, land prices are high, and the tasting room is the hippest product of the two.

Grapevines at Pellegrini

My brother, who came with me on this scout, suggested that I grow grapes, but I feel there is no money in grapes -only wine. I'm certain there isn't enough land on the fork to be a serious wine producing region, although I believe there are serious wines being produced there. What remains is a showcase and social scene of drinking suburbanites and city slickers. Yet I suppose that is what it takes to conserve agricultural lands in a market consumed by housing development, and we'll take it.

I wasn't sure that I found the actual farm site, although the address was right and the sign for the trust was on the door. Farmers are listed as growing there, but I could hardly see the evidence of a season's work. There was a handful of cows and a lone man worked the roof of a new barn. With my shoe, I scraped the sod of winter weeds and grass, then knelt to dig my finger into the roadside soil. The gritty sand and iron-yellow clay mixture was damp, cool and smelled earthy. A gentle slope descended toward the Peconic Bay, which was just over the southern boundary road and close enough for me to call this another beach farm. This was not the place, as seemed all too obvious at the time. I later found the address of the place I meant to visit, a few more miles to the east, on Google. Another trip is needed.

Not the farm

I am reminded that I am not a farmer. Yet, somewhere in my lineage there are German farmers. When they came to America around the turn of the century, most headed to the Midwest where many Germans congregated and farm land was available. A small group decided to stay in New York City and I am descended from them. My grandfather had a small vegetable plot in his suburban, Long Island yard. Around the age of 75 he bought a neighbor's excess land to grow even more vegetables. He did this until his death at 91. It is from him that I got the taste for fresh green beans and probably the knack for growing them. He never grew flowers -that was my grandmother's work.

I admit that I have a romantic vision of days outside, digging, plowing, and weeding. But there is a lot more to farming than that. Sales and marketing, accounting and record-keeping, business plans and competition. A month to go before my deadline, I am now putting together my plans, researching the competition, building the low-cost, blogger-based website, writing the copy, calculating the costs, guessing the sales forecast (I'm better at weather!), figuring the earning potential, tossing around marketing, and desperately waiting for something to do for my upstate garlic which really needs no help from me at this hour.

Have any of you sought seed garlic on the internet? What was your experience? Was price not an object? Retail on line sales of seed quality garlic are quite high (but, of course, that's the only way to make a living). I am now looking into what the retail market for kitchen garden garlic can bear. Most on line sources sell out by September. Hmm, only time will tell.

College Try

I receive a number of hits for soil testing services and I think that's great. It's an important part of growing in urban areas. I would like to include more information on soil testing, and link to the Cornell's labs, but I find their website absolutely cryptic -I cannot figure it out! I would also use their services, but I cannot find my way to a simple description of garden soil testing with analyses for pH, N-P-K, micro-nutrients, and heavy metals.

This is the main reason I have continued to use Brooklyn College's ESAC, even though I've had to wait a very long time for the results. Has anyone had the experience of using Cornell's services? Can you provide a link that goes right to what a typical gardener would be looking for?

Grocer Garlic

I shopped at a grocer on Long Island this weekend after going out to the North Fork. When I was a kid, this same store was oriented toward working class Italians, and today it is still that, but also reorienting toward Asian and Central and South American food products. It is where I saw my first sheep head in cellophane for sale, complete with eyeballs and brains.

In the produce aisles they had plenty of net socked Chinese garlic for very little. But they also had this very novel specimen for the usual $3 per pound. It didn't state where it originated, but it appears to be an Asiatic or Turban variety, not unlike the cultivar 'Tuscan' that I am growing now. Nice purple mottle, large size, and a ring of large, tawny rose-colored cloves around the central stem. Very unusual for an ordinary grocer.

Smooth Operator

Recently I began using a mobile device and that has made me much more conscious of the look of my blog via mobile. Today's stats show that 48% of my page views have been on an iphone or ipad. That's high, it's usually closer to 5%, but even that has grown in the last few months from only 1%.

I've been communicating with Marie of 66squarefeet about the seamlessness of her blog's mobile appearance. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. This morning, I thought I figured it out.

Because my desktop mac computer has a 20 inch screen, I designed my blog around it. Mobile has taught me that this was a mistake. I like the look and worked hard on hacks that allowed my blog's appearance long before blogger allowed three column templates, etc. etc. And when blogger allowed extra large images I decided that was a good thing too.

But, now, I need to revert back to their default large image size if I want the mobile appearance to be seamless. When the original size or extra large size is selected, the mobile processor cannot handle it and the pictures are super large compared to the mobile screen. Basically, it's a mess. Now, Marie has extra large images on her blog, so what's the difference? I think it may be the three column hack in my design template html that is keeping the images from shrinking to fit in the mobile template, but that's just my guess. Using only the large image size seems to fix my blog's mobile appearance.

Any new pictures on my blog will be the smaller large size, where old ones will remain their original sizes. But, as always, if you want to see them in their original size, just click on them to open. I am turning off the lightbox slideshow thing because it doesn't agree with me and because it is often useful in a garden blog to see the image in its original, super large size.

update: I see that none of this is true when I use the mobile blogger app on the device. In other words, when I mobile blog, it does not matter if I even use the medium size image setting, the picture is still too big. I now blame blogger.

Hay Wain

Is it auspicious if one finds themselves behind a pickup carrying hay on the BQE on one's way to look at farm property?