Pickin' Chickens

It’s good to have goals, right? It makes sense to begin each year with some objectives in mind for the coming growing season. As usual, 2012 left us with plenty of room for improvement but also lots of enthusiasm for the future. Here’s the short list for 2013:

Chickens! This is the big one, and we just placed our order for chicks this week. They’re scheduled to arrive at the end of February. Mark has already done a lot of prep in anticipation of these little dynamos’ arrival--they have a coop that we hope is secure, their own little nesting boxes. We’re hoping the birds will improve the health of our soil through tilling, manure, and composting. Chickens do a lot of scratching and rooting around, which happens to mimic exactly what we’d do to prepare a garden bed for growing. They’ll generate manure that will enrich that same soil, and they also process a lot of waste biomass into compost while they search for food. And then, you know: EGGS. Kate is already entertaining fantasies of the kids collecting dozens of eggs in old-fashioned wire baskets every morning and not breaking a single one. The key word here being fantasy.

One of the coolest parts of this process was using Mother Earth News’s Pickin’ Chicken app to choose the chickens based on their characteristics. That was pretty fun. We chose Dominique and Wyandotte breeds because they’re known for having decent foraging abilities, being well suited to our climate, laying well, and having a peaceable temperament that’s resistant to curious children. Unlike some people who choose their chickens because they look like they’re wearing pants--you know who you are. But big questions remain: Should we name all of them? And if so, what? Should we have a theme? Please weigh in on the comments.

Next up: perennial vegetables. Mark expanded the size of the hugelkultur mounds in autumn with the hopes of adding some more perennial vegetables this spring. Reading Eric Tonsmeier’s book Perennial Vegetables and attending one of his lectures has inspired him to rely more on perennial gardening for diversity and time savings. We’ll be adding exciting and obscure veggies like sea kale, turkish rocket, sorrel, and even some more rhubarb to the hugelkultur, filling in the gaps with a range of perennial flowers to keep the beneficial insects happy.

Finally, we’re going to focus more on keeping the plants content, which is code for MORE WEEDING. There are bound to be disappointments every year, of course, but I think we missed out on some of our favorites like beans, potatoes, and basil last year because we fell behind in keeping the weeds at bay as the end of summer came and got overwhelmed with harvesting and preserving.

Right now we're keeping warm by perusing seed catalog porn, and next up will be the big compendium of all the varieties of vegetables, flowers, and herbs we'll be planting this year. Planning the garden is like a slow IV drip sustaining us until we see some green again--besides last year's Asian mustard greens still alive under the snow. Kate is already asking how soon till we start the first seedlings. Answer: Not soon enough.

Last Hurrah

The garden's last hurrah before Friday night's killing frost. I can't believe we're here already--too soon for my taste.

Going to Seed

I've been hearing the same refrain several times a day: Where did the summer go? At Markate Estates we're knee-deep in tomatoes, making confit, sauce, ketchup, salsa, gazpacho, and canning like crazy. The Titan sunflowers, which grew to a towering eight feet this year, are already hanging their heavy heads. We're still waiting for the seeds to darken and dry, though, so we can harvest and eat them. A friend told us that the entire sunflower head can be roasted and eaten as a delicacy, but we haven't attempted that yet.

Three cheers for the ground cherries that are finally dropping off their bushes! But I'm still in denial about the pumpkins; a couple of them are already ripe! My brain is unable to make the transition from summer to fall just yet. And we have three more weeks to go till the autumnal equinox. I'm in no hurry for the bounty of summer to trail off, even if processing all these tomatoes is a full-time job.

I took these photos yesterday at dusk, in my favorite light with my favorite lens. Man, I love our garden, even when the overgrowth is trying to swallow me whole.

 

 

The Jungle

As you can see, this is the time of year when the garden starts to take on a life of its own. Eight-foot-tall sunflowers, watermelons as big as basketballs, and a bumper crop of tomatoes on the verge of ripeness. We're steeling ourselves for the weeks of desperate round-the-clock canning. Not that I'm complaining. We just have to keep telling ourselves that it's okay to feel out of control sometimes.

Fortunetelling

I see a number of feathered friends in your near future.

Baked Torta with Spring Greens

Right now our garden is exploding with good things to eat, and after waiting so long for spring to arrive, I can’t bear to waste a single lettuce leaf. Our bi-weekly share of amazing produce from Genesis Farm has also begun, so on occasion I’ll find myself with a fridge full of greens as well as bags full of them littering the kitchen floor. Like today, for example. When this situation arises, I do not panic. Our family can only eat so many salads, so I turn to this trusty recipe for a warm, flavorful torta that uses up to three pounds of spring greens and garlic. Served with a big communal bowl of snap peas that the kids gobbled in minutes flat, it was perfect for today’s cool, rainy weather.

This is a significantly adapted version of Marcella Hazan’s Baked Escarole Torta from her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I don’t often use recipes to cook Italian food, but when I do, Hazan is my guru.

Baked Torta with Escarole and Chard

• 2 2/3 cups unbleached flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 scant teaspoon active dry yeast, dissolved in 1 cup lukewarm water
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 to 3 pounds fresh escarole, chard, kale, or spinach
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons chopped garlic (or 4 stalks garlic greens, or 2 heads young garlic, or even 1 cup chopped garlic scapes)
• 3 tablespoons capers
• 10 oil-cured olives, pitted and quartered
• 7 flat anchovy fillets, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
• 3 tablespoons pine nuts or chopped walnuts

1. Mound the flour in a bowl (or on a work surface, if you’re feeling confident) and make a hollow in its peak. Put the salt, a few grindings of pepper, the dissolved yeast, and the olive oil into its peak. Pull together and knead for about 8 minutes by hand or in a standing mixer.

2. Shape the kneaded dough into a ball and put it into a lightly floured bowl. Cover the bowl with a damp, doubled-up cloth towel and put it in a warm, protected corner until the dough has doubled in bulk, 1 to 1½ hours.

3. Preheat the oven to 375°F and prepare a rack in the uppermost position.

4. While the dough is rising, prepare the filling. Wash the greens and slice thinly into 1-inch pieces. Put the olive oil and garlic in a large sauté pan, turn the heat to medium, and cook the garlic, stirring, until it becomes colored a pale gold. Add the greens, turning once or twice to coat it well. Reduce heat to medium low and cook for 10 minutes, turning from time to time. If the pan juices are watery, turn the heat up and reduce them quickly. Stir the capers, and then the olives, into the escarole. Remove from heat. Stir in the anchovies and nuts. Taste for salt, pour the contents of the pan into a bowl, and set aside to cool.

5. When the dough has doubled in bulk, divide it into 2 unequal parts, one twice the size of the other. Roll out the larger piece of dough into a circular sheet large enough to line the bottom and sides of a 10-inch springform pan. To simplify transferring this to the pan, roll the dough out on a piece of lightly floured wax or parchment paper.

6. Smear the inside of the springform pan with butter. Transfer the large circular sheet of dough to the pan, covering the bottom and letting it come up the sides. Smooth the dough, flattening and evening off any particularly bulky creases with your fingers.

7. Pour all the filling from the bowl into the pan and level it off with a spatula.

8. Roll out the remaining piece of dough until it is large enough to cover the top of the pan. Lay it over the filling, covering it completely. Press the edge of the top sheet of dough against the edge of the sheet lining the pan. Make a tight seal all around, folding any excess dough toward the center.

9. Place on the uppermost rack of the preheated oven and bake until the torta swells slightly and the top becomes colored a pale gold, about 45 minutes. When you take it out of the oven, unlatch the pan’s spring, and remove the hoop. Allow the torta to settle a few minutes before loosening it from the bottom and transferring it to a serving platter. Serve either lukewarm or at room temperature.

Two Hearts That Beet As One

Leaf beets, where have you been all my life?

Mark and I recently had a revelation similar to the one a couple of years ago when we discovered ground cherries. Intrigued by a rave review in the Fedco catalog, we ordered some leaf beet seeds to supplement our spinach crop, which always seems to peter out too early in the season.

Leaf beets are basically beets that don't have an edible root. But the leaves are completely delicious, and I actually like them more than spinach. They don't squeak between your teeth, they're a little more succulent than spinach, and the flavor is unexpectedly savory, almost salty. The whole family chowed down on a big bunch at dinner tonight, and I didn't hear a single complaint from the kids.

Internet wisdom tells me that leaf beets are an ancient vegetable that lost popularity once spinach came on the scene, but I don't get it. Why eat spinach when you can have these tasty, crunchy leaves instead? They're even more heat tolerant than spinach and can grow right through the summer, like chard. And they're prolific as all get-out, not spindly like spinach plants can be.

I'm already brainstorming recipes.