yearofplenty

Garden Vegetables Worth Trying: Asparagus Beans and Armenian Cucumbers

Every garden cycle we try some new vegetables in the garden and either add them to the annual rotation or abandon them because they weren’t what we hoped. For example, instead of filling the garden full of Yukon Gold potatoes that you can buy in the store really cheap, we plant fingerlings and purple potatoes. Instead of traditional dark green zucchini, we plant the yellow and light green/Armenian varieties because they have a much sweeter taste.

This year we tried Asparagus Beans and Armenian Cucumbers (pictured above) and they will both have a place in the garden next year. The cucumbers are huge but sweet and tender without huge seeds. The pole variety beans are a foot long and mild with small seeds. They are sweeter than regular green beans and slightly chalky when raw. We’ll cook them up tonight in a Thai stir fry. After stuffing ourselves with Kentucky Wonders and Royal Burgunys they offer a nice change of pace. If you haven’t tried Royal Burgundy beans, they are another winning experiment from last year. They are dark purple and turn green when you cook them. They taste just like regular green beans.

Manure Hits the Fan as Big National Ag and Little Local Ag Struggle With Recession

Bloomberg reports that farm profits are way down. It's a perfect storm of plummeting prices and a tight lending markets that make it tough to borrow money and keep the big farms running. This national story hits close to home when you read about the Courchaine family of Spokane Valley shutting down their small dairy operation that started in the 1940's. Steve Courchaine speaks for many farmers when in response to questions about the viability of future farming options he says, "Who the hell knows anything anymore."

I've been trying to get a read among our Farmer's Market farmers to see how the economy is impacting them. The word on the street is that sales are down on the East Side of the state at all of the markets, although I don't sense an air of desperation about it. West side farmers' markets are apparently going gangbusters. The Millwood Farmers' Market has been able to sustain more farmers' this year but with construction on Argonne it's really hard to get a read on it. UPDATE: Sometimes the word on the street isn't so reliable. For some hard data on Farmers' Market sales in Washington and a little perspective on what's going on in Spokane County here for Angela Pizelo's helpful comment. Angela is on the board of the Washington State Farmers' Market association and runs the Liberty Lake Market. Thanks Angela.

I'm not sure if there is a connection with the economy but the Spokane Valley Fresh Abundance store has shuttered operations.

Lovitt Restaurant Officially a Favorite

We made our 2nd annual trek to Lovitt Restaurant in Colville, Washington. We first heard of Lovitt from a Sunset magazine article from a few years ago. We were shocked to see anything from the Inland Northwest in Sunset (have you ever tried to search for Spokane on the Sunset mag website?) and were surprised that it was all the way up in Colville. We figured it must be something special and sure enough, it is.

I ordered the smoked salmon lasagna with a local microbrew. They use a pit smoker with apple wood and the flavors they coax out of the salmon are amazing. Nancy had the bratwurst and the Mary Hill Pinot Grigio. Very nice. The purple cabbage was like guilt free julienned gourmet french fries. We topped it off with apricot upside down cake with a dolop of homemade ice cream. Queue the Homer Simpson drooling sounds.

After the meal we talked to Norman Six, who does most of the heavy lifting in the kitchen, and he explained that they source 90-95% of the their food from local sources.From the farmhouse on a ridge setting, to the seasonal savory eats, to the gourmet meal for less than $50, you’ve got to love Lovitt. I know we’ll be making at least an annual trip.

Also:

How did Colville come to have the best food community in the Inland Northwest? It’s home to Quillisascut Farm (the book “Chefs on the Farm” which we bought at Lovitt, is informative and beautiful), Lovitt Restaurant and huge Wednesday and Saturday farmers’ markets.

Blog link love to www.spokanefoodblog.com and their locavore challenge. They’ve got some local bloggers taking the 100 mile diet challenge for the first week in September.

Harvest Time On the Prairie - Thin Brown Line is Getting Thinner

I ventured up to Peone Prarie last week to take some pictures and they just happened to be harvesting the wheat. The dust was flying and I couldn’t help but think about the book I’m reading titled, “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” by David Montgomery. In the book he looks at history through the lens of soil fertility, erosion and depletion concluding that the rise and fall of civilizations can often be traced to the exploitation and depletion of soils.

It is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. Soil, or the thin brown line as Montgomery calls it, is much more complex than I thought. One example from the book describes a WSU study done in the mid ‘80’s comparing two dry land wheat farms near Spokane. Both farms were first plowed in 1908, one never using commercial fertilizers and the other using commercial fertilizers since 1948. Both farms boasted the same income, one leaving the field fallow every third year for a cover crop and the other harvesting continuously but paying big bucks for fertilizers and pesticides. They harvested more wheat but had much higher expenses that canceled out any economic advantage. Most importantly the researchers found that the organic farm was building soil while the conventional farm had shed 6 inches of topsoil between 1948 and 1985.

Montgomery sums up the study by saying, “With fifty more years of conventional farming, the region’s topsoil will be gone. Harvests from the region are projected to drop by half once topsoil erosion leaves conventional farmers plowing the clayey subsoil.” I’m assuming that the whitish soil I see peaking through at the top of the rolling ridges of freshly plowed palouse is the clayey subsoil peaking through.

Yikes! More on this later.

Grand Coulee Field Trip - Mixed Legacy of Federal Stimulus From the Last Great Collapse

Vacation plans have been a little haphazard this summer. A major camping trip to Banff became a short venture to Moses Lake. What can I say, they have a great water park. Our experience at one of the finest resorts in the world while in Thailand over the new year showed us that no matter where you are, the kids are going to want to swim in the pool.

We did take the scenic route back to Spokane via the Grand Coulee, through Soap Lake and Ephrata and Coulee City and Grand Coulee City itself. We stayed long enough at the massive conrete dam to watch a short movie describing the vision for diverting water onto the fertile but barren lands of Eastern Washington. I was surprised that the energy production came across as almost an afterthought, with agricultural production being the driving force.

I was struck by a couple of thoughts as we drove back through Wilbur and Republic and Reardon. I realized that almost every town we drove through on our trip owed it’s existence to this massive federally funded works project. When you’re driving down I-90 toward Seattle and read, “largest potato producing county in the country”, it would be appropriate to add, “made possible by federal government stimulus money.” One would hope any current stimulus might have such a lasting impact.

But here’s the shadow side, lest you think I’m going all in on massive federal spending projects. Every town we drove through was obviously economically depressed, featuring boarded up store fronts and decaying Moose Lodges. Even Moses Lake was a mixed bag of economic development and empty big box stores with outdated “for lease” signs. While the economic impact of the Grand Coulee dam is undisputable, the benefit to the people and communities down river is somewhat debatable. I suspect a very small group of individual land owners and agri-businesses are making a bunch of money while most of the people scattered throughout the region are barely making it.

In a culture that loves false dichotomies; government spending bad, government spending good; engineering the environment bad, engineering the environment good; the reality is always much more complex.

Chicken Eggs Come in More than Two Colors

We were greeted with this beautiful display of eggs a couple of days ago in the coop nest.

Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Random Garden Observations

Jane Black of Wa-po gives a run-down of her disappointing experience with heirloom tomatoes.

I have eaten terrific heirloom varieties; indeed, I'm quite partial to the Black Prince, which hails from Siberia, a place one doesn't normally associate with tomatoes. But a week ago, I paid $4.99 a pound for a locally grown heirloom that was slightly mealy, tasted overwhelmingly bland and paled in comparison with a perfectly round, perfectly red commercial hybrid, dubbed Early Girl, that I ate last year and am still dreaming about at the height of this year's tomato season.

Call me persnickety, but someone needs to take a stand here: "Heirloom" is not synonymous with "good."

I remember local organic farmers saying that they discovered that one of the reason many "heirloom" varieties have been left behind by the food system is that they aren't very good to eat. I had a similar experience last year when I planted half my tomatoes as heirlooms. The yields and quality was dissappointing for the most part. There was one that was passed down the family line of my neighbor that was very good.

Basic rule of thumb - don't get the generic pack of heirloom tomato seeds. You'll likely be disappointed. Pick and choose. I think I've got a black Siberian variety in the garden this year. Look forward to seeing how it does.

My top tomato choices are 1. Sun Gold Cherry, 2. Yellow Boy, 3. Roma

In other random garden news, we harvested 14lbs of green beans yesterday and my genetic freak giant pumpkins are splitting open for some reason. So much for the $12 pumpkin seed.

We Be Jammin' - Master Food Preserver Style

So far this week we've canned 52 cups of jam and 12 quarts of pickles. We didn't exactly plan it this way but our vacation has become a stay-can-cation. It's that time of year to suck it up and steam up the kitchen for a bounty that will last all year. Go here for my rundown from last year's Master Food Preserver Course. Lots of recipes and food preservation tips.

View From Our Garden

Must Read Seattle Times Article: Saving the Planet One Neighborhood at a Time

Sunday's Seattle Times has a delightful article titled, Saving the Planet, One Block, One Small Project At a Time. It tells the story of people experimenting with micro-environmentalism, sailing vegetables to market from Sequim instead of burning fossil fuels in a truck, matching up land owners and gardeners in Queen Anne ( urbangardenshare.org), mobilizing bike riders to deliver veggies, and more.

Here's the money quote:

The challenge... is to fundamentally change attitudes toward economics, consumption and the environment before the world bumps up against the limits of oil and other natural resources.

There's also a hunger for community, says Tuttle. "People desperately want local meaning and local solutions to problems, and that translates to local food, local transportation, more reliance on your neighbors."...

The article concludes with these wise words.

"These things are concrete and hopeful," says Pelish, of Wallingford, "and that is what makes them powerful."

This article reminds me of an encounter I had at the P.E.A.C.H. farm in the Valley. I stopped by to get some plant starts at permaculture experiment. They have groups of volunteers that come and participate, mostly young adults. On my way out to the car with my flat of plants, a young woman volunteer who had been weeding in the hot sun, stood up, looked at my arms full of junior veggies, thrust her fist in the air and with the zeal of a revolutionary cried out, "Plant Food! Yeaah!" I went from just wanting to grow some tamatillos to being part of conspiracy to subvert the empire in one fell swoop. If I weren't a Presbyterian I probably would have yelled back with my own fist pump.

What is it about planting food that is capturing the imagination of a whole generation of young people? What is it about simple acts of conservation that are energizing communities?

These actions are concrete and hopeful. They take complex world risking issues and place them in the small space of our lives. You might argue, "What difference is a vegetable garden going to make in the whole scope of things?" "Who cares if some dude sails his vegetables to market when a fleet of thousands of trucks are hard at work?" It may not stand up against the global math of carbon emissions but it does transform our imaginations. We are not powerless after all, we can learn new rhythms of consumption in our small corner of the community. And when we figure that out we discover that our neighborhoods can work together and coordinate and before you know it a whole city is tranformed. That's the story of what's going on in Seattle. How about Spokane? How about your neighborhood?

(Purple Coneflowers from our garden just for the fun of it.)