SNOW! It’s SNOWING outside our windows here at Lehman’s (in northeast Ohio). Ok, ok, we realize many of you have already SEEN the white stuff this fall, but we were caught offguard this morning. Brrr…it’s chilly out, too. Time to fire up the wood stoves!
The scene outside our office window this morning - can you see the flakes?
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The crisp fall weather is an ideal time to start planning the addition
of a fruit garden. You do not need a large plot of land – a sunny area 100×100 feet is more than room enough.
Fruit trees can provide both flower power and fresh fruit. Berry plants and brambles produce sweet, juicy and delicious fruit from spring to early fall.
The hardest part can be to understand where to start.
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If you are a gardener and a cook, homegrown gar
lic is a must-do on your fall garden list. Nothing beats the taste of lovingly grown garlic and being a crop that grows well in many regions, there is no need to purchase imported garlic in the store (check labels!). Growing your own also opens up a whole new world of variety possibilities.
Pictured is the basket of labeled garlic I use for my Thursday demos at Lehman’s store and it’s interesting to hear folks who thought that “garlic was garlic” be amazed at the options. I am planting fifteen garlic varieties this fall, and one year a friend of ours (who is also a Lehman’s employee) planted fifty different kinds! Some are sturdy hard neck varieties like German Extra Hardy, the soft necks like Lorz Italian are great for braiding, others like Georgian Fire have a more pungent flavor, while some are great for roasting like Chesnok Red. Our family favorite is Music, which is a Porcelain hard neck variety with large cloves and an excellent medium garlic flavor.
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Monday, Oct. 26, 2009
United Feature Syndicate
MARYJANE’S EVERYDAY ORGANIC
There is nothing more comforting on a cold winter’s day than the lush, radiant heat of a woodstove. Its warmth soaks into your skin, and its flame enlivens a room with a presence all its own. I’ve always loved the way fire dances and illuminates, warming hearth and soul. And I continue to invite the spirit of flame into my home, even after suffering the very real nightmare of a fire that consumed my house 13 years ago. In a mid-winter cold snap, 10 below zero, a faulty new chimney spread fire up through my rafters. To this day, when I think about how close I came to losing my children, I find myself short of breath.
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Article by Tim Matson, author of The Book of Non-Electric Lighting,
Earth Ponds A to Z and the Earth Ponds Sourcebook
Here it comes: heavy fall rain, the lights are flickering, and there
’s a tree on the power line a mile up the road the utility company hasn’t fixed in over a month. Put ‘em together and what have you got? Firelight time. Check the lamp fuel supply, trim the wicks, clean the chimneys, restock the candles.
But aside from the practical value of having a reliable stash of emergency lamps and candles at hand, I like firelight whether the power works or not. Evenings, it’s a pleasant way to dial down the go-go pace of the workday and relax. Turning out the electric lights and lighting a few candles is like meditation. Or maybe it’s nostalgia. Walking into a room lit by lanterns or candles is a way to step into the past, perhaps a distant century you can use your imagination to conjur up, or a past you may have lived, in a cabin or a house off the grid.
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I grew up in the city, so coming to live and work on the World Hunger Relief farm in Waco, Texas is one great big learning experience for me. Since my arrival a few months ago, I have learned so much, from where eggs are ke
pt in the pantry, to where we keep the sawdust for our composting toilets, to how a community of 25 organizes itself for a day’s farm work, to how to milk a goat. Though the composting toilet certainly merits elaboration, the last is perhaps the most colorful story for a girl who grew up far removed from her food.
The WHR farm is a Grade-A raw goat milk producer. The pasteurization and homogenization process that milk from a supermarket goes through means that it loses a lot of valuable enzymes and proteins as well as a lot of its flavor. Raw milk, on the other hand, is incredibly fresh–I was astounded that it took only about an hour from milking to lining up the bottles in the fridge, ready for sale.
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The family farm has been a vital image in the American consciousness for
centuries. The thought of a rural barn raising creates a picture of community spirit. Many American farm families can look at their barns as links to the past. A barn raising shows the strength of a community in more than riches. These old barns are community landmarks and make the past, the present.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, barns were essential structures for the farm. They stored the hay and housed the horses and cattle, which were an inseparable part of farming. The barn was usually the first structure to be built when a family moved to a new area and it was also the largest and most expensive. The community would get together and help build the barn so that the family could start their farm and the community could prosper.
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Autumn is a busy season of squirreling away the garden’s bounty for winter nourishment. These days it seems that every waking m
oment is consumed by picking, preparing or preserving food. However, to be honest, standing over a hot stove is not my favorite place to be when the weather is gorgeous outdoors. So although we do have plenty of beans in the freezer and tomatoes on the canning shelves, I am also contributing to our winter food storage by doing more planting in the garden.
A number of years back I purchased Eliot Coleman’s book “Four Season Harvest” from Lehman’s, and it has transformed our winter food plan. Eliot is an innovative organic gardener from Maine who runs his gourmet salad business during the winter months using various cold frames and high tunnels. I decided that if he can do it in Maine, I can surely do it in Ohio and the past seven years our family has eaten fresh salad greens all winter long out of my cold frames.
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Well, college is as stressful for me as it’s ever been, but I’m still
finding time to keep ahead of my garden. Several days ago, I had my first of (hopefully) many tomatoes, and just yesterday I had my first three green beans – everything has been delicious!
I’ve learned some things, though, too. For instance, a) that tomatoes need pruned, and b) that there is such a thing as loving a cucumber plant to death. For the tomato pruning, it turns out that anything that is dead or dying should be removed. One of my friends advised me to simply lop off a particularly tall shoot. However, it is better to instead cut off any leaves that are near the bottom, and don’t have a chance of getting to the light. By removing these and also the dead leaves, the energy distribution of the tomato plant is more efficient – less energy is wasted on leaves that are dying.
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Curiosity Kitten and the Donkey, by Brigit, age 10
The annual cycle of transition from summer to fall is upon us and everything seems different. Many things change, but much remains the same. I used to tell people, “The only thing you can count on in life is that it changes.” But farm life is a good lesson in the cyclical nature of everything.
Here’s my list of the top three things that stay the same:
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