Will Urban Farms and Gardens Save Us - Again?

     That's a question a couple of young men dug into in their film, Growing Cities, as they traveled from their hometown of Omaha. Their adventure looks at community efforts at growing food around the country. The Corvallis Slow Foods chapter hosted the film and one of its producers at the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU recently. The panel discussion afterward barely scratched the surface of all that's going on in our region. It reminded me of how fortunate we are in the Willamette Valley: we're rich in physical resources, climate, knowledge and people who care and work hard to see things happen. Unfortunately, it appeared that all the students who were assigned the task of seeing the film, skipped out as soon as the ending credits appeared. They missed the real lessons of what's happening all around them.

      As the filmmakers said, gardening, especially community efforts at growing food, usually comes to a head during war or economic crises. It did in the first and second world wars and again after the economy slumped, just before Reagan “rescued” us. In recent years, as the economy tightened again, there was another resurgence. Given the industrial global food system and all the problems it has brought us (cheap, non-nutritious food and more people who can afford only that kind of it; myriad health problems, such as rampant obesity and diet-related chronic diseases), what gave me greatest encouragement while watching the film was seeing people wresting control over their diets again. It gives them (us) a sense of empowerment, as well as true physical power through better nutrition and the exercise required to grow the food. 

     Best of all, in my humble opinion, is the young people getting involved. Some of the most powerful segments of the film concerned programs for youth in dangerous neighborhoods where hope and opportunity for the future are rare. Especially impressive was a program in New Orleans. 

      Since the film was made, the producer at the screening told us, some of the featured gardens have folded, mainly for lack of funds, manpower or loss of their sites. Still, others are sprouting up across the country, usually in forms that best fit that community and its people and resources, as well they should. Like the local food movement, you can't franchise it from some corporate headquarters. That's the beauty of it. Ordinances are changing so people can raise small animals in towns and cities and can dig up lawns to grow food. Corvallis has some of those.

Local Inspiration

     The Linus Pauling Institute, where the film was shown, has one of several local programs geared towards youth, both growing and preparing food. I've written about them in the Corvallis Gazette-Times and Take Root Magazine.

      Al Shay, site manager for the Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture on the OSU campus has some great ideas for subtly incorporating food into our current landscapes without making a big fuss. It's refreshing to see what is happening at a site where the entomology department previously tested pesticides. Good change can happen. When it involves plants that often means slowly, but the results can be breathtaking, even life-changing.

      Toni Kessler, a former teacher who coordinates the Community Services Consortium's Youth Garden Project feels the work she's doing now is even more rewarding than teaching in a classroom. The program just keeps growing, literally and figuratively. And besides filling up a corner lot donated by the Beanery and 2^nd and Western, they partner with the Farm Home on Hwy 20 for more growing/learning space. Stop and talk with the young people you see selling their preserved foods at the farmers' markets – and buy some. The program relies completely on (sometimes unreliable) grants and what they earn from the plants and foods they sell.

      The third local panelist was Doug Eldon, coordinator of the Calvin Presbyterian Community Garden, which happens to be the one where I have a plot. As I said, this is a great community to learn self-sufficiency, such as gardening. At the moment it's hard to think of all this energy as a passing fad. It's not just war or the economy that is prompting interest in self-sufficiency; our world is changing and it's becoming more necessary. Who knows what catastrophe could come along to prove that. 

     I'll do separate posts on our community garden. For now, visit the Sustainability Coalition website to learn more about local gardening resources from the ground down – and up.

Documenting Spring in the Edible Garden

     We had spring in February and now April brings winterish cool, wet, windy weather  many days. Still, the garden is responding to the earlier longer-than-normal spring tease.
      The garden promises much for the table and pantry in coming months. We're still working through last year's bounty. Not a meal goes by all year round (yes, winter too) without something fresh from the garden or preserved from it in the freezer or pantry. It's all a constant reminder of our good fortune; not everyone is so blessed with nutritious food. Yes, we work for it, my husband especially, but there is a degree of opportunity not every one has, as well. Don is much better about working in cold, wet weather than I've ever been - and I'm truly grateful. Not only does he grow great salads year-round, he washes and prepares them too.
      This time of year we should have a milk goat; so many spring vegetables go so well with goat cheese - like the Asparagus Leek Gallette from one of my favorite online go-to recipe sources: culinate.com  I've made it three times in the last month; it's a true seasonal favorite.

Sorrel

  Today we had a Leek & Sorrel Custard (Local Flavors by Deborah Madison), using a handful of this sorrel and leeks from Springhill Organic Farm and, of course, goat cheese.
     Sorrel, if you've not tried it, is rather sour so a little goes a long way. It's great incorporated in soups, or a few leaves dropped into a salad make your taste buds positively giggle when they find it.

Lovage

   

     About a foot away from the sorrel is lovage, which looks a bit like celery and, in fact, tastes a lot like it too. I should make a point of using it more. In the same cookbook by Deborah Madison is a recipe combining sorrel and lovage in a soup, which I made 4 years ago. (I always note the date of the first time I make something on the recipe and whether we like or how to adjust ingredients next time. This one says "Good!")

Just-about-to-flower chives

     Just inches from the sorrel and lovage is a clump of chives with buds, soon to blossom into beautiful little edible flowers. Not surprisingly, the flowers are very "oniony," just like chives themselves. Like most flowers, they're way too short-lived and sometimes get missed during busy spring chores. They're a great addition to any kind of salad (potato, pasta, green, egg)  or a soup garnish. Hmmmm...probably even that sorrel lovage soup. I'll try it.

Wild Strawberries

     Wild strawberries are everywhere and are just this side of nuisance weeds in the blueberries. They even outnumber the dandelions! They're delicious, but teeny. It would take an hour to fill a tea cup. Fortunately, we have bigger strawberries that are just as tasty and fill a cup much, much faster (but disappear just as quickly!). These are left for the wild critters.

"Tame" Strawberries (well, not really...)

    I have no idea what kind these are, but they're the absolute best berries I've ever had. But, they're rather delicate and wouldn't survive long trips to markets or sitting about waiting for the right customer for very long. Hence, you'll never find the delicate but most flavorful ones in a grocery store, nor likely in a farmers' market either. You gotta' pick 'em yourself at a U-pick field or in your own back yard. I got the starts from a fellow community garden gardener who was moving and clearing out her plot. I was reluctant to take them because I know what work strawberries can be (they spread, thus need to be trimmed regularly and can be susceptible to blights). I'm so glad I took them, though. They're all the work I remembered but, for now, worth it. I may change my tune shortly. It's a constant battle keeping rabbits and birds away so, like the blueberries, they'll soon be covered with cages of bird-netting which makes harvest an additional squatting/crawling task.

Spartan Blues

   My earliest, biggest and sweetest blueberries, Spartans, are flowering already! It does seem early. Last year was a banner year so we'll be enjoying smoothies and blues on cereal from the freezer probably 'til these ripen. Life is good! I doubt this year's crop will be so prolific.

    Looks like we might get some pears this year. These little guys are actually called Shipovas and are fairly firm, not real sweet. They're from a tree that is more decorative than fruit-productive most years. It's a Mountain Ash/Pear hybrid from One Green World Nursery.
     The chokecherry next to it doesn't look so promising. It was amply endowed last year though while the pear bore nothing.

Stanley Prune Plum

   This is the graceful elder of our garden, cloaked in a jacket of delicate moss to keep her aging limbs warm. Each year we fear it's her last, but she comes back every spring, flowering beautifully and offering abundant deep-purple plums that are chin-dripping excellent fresh and even better dried as prunes. She's a testament to the beauty of aging.

Recovering Gooseberry

     This poor gooseberry is one of a pair that I whacked back severely last summer after harvest. Not many people grow them. They're a bit of work once they're harvested (you have to remove the stem and a little "tail" at the opposite end on each berry) but make excellent  jam and sauce for those with a palate that favors the tart end of the scale. They're really pretty in a bowl: little green striped marbles.

Hop Shoots

  The hops are stretching towards the sun in graceful abundance. The shoots are often used in soups, something we should try when thinning, but it just never seems to happen. Soon lush vines will shade the carport as they fill the lattice and grasp the roof's shingles, gathering a good crowd up there by mid-summer, sunning themselves lazily all summer long. Don will harvest buckets of fragrant cones for brewing in the fall. I have a fence of them in the garden as well which are used for decorations. Often, though, they slip past their peak before I get many cut since they peak at the busiest harvest/preserving time. Maybe this year...

First hop slithers up the lattice

Chard

   
This eye-grabbing chard is like bright flags flaunting the hardiness of winter veggies to all ye doubters. The leaves are gorgeous in salads and elevate the nutrients in smoothies, though combining them with kale and blueberries or peaches from the freezer with a dash of pickled beet juice results in a rather odd color.

Pickled Beets

  Speaking of pickled beets - our crisper is bulging with beets and carrots Don harvested to make room for new spring starts in the raised beds. Our favorite beet dish is pickled (with cider vinegar, orange juice and bay leaves from the garden). It's one time the resulting mess on the counter and sink is actually pretty. I would love to dye wool, fabric or baskets this rich magenta color.

Last of the winter carrots

     The carrots are rapidly dwindling and oh-so-sweet thanks to winter frosts. Carrots, beets, chard - such gorgeous colors from winter vegetables. Summer glory has nothin' on them!

Potato sprouts

 


 These potatoes are destined for my community garden plot in town. Don already has some planted out here in our country garden. Many heavy baskets full of flavor should result from just these few starts. Truly miraculous.





  

    A few tomatoes are left on the sill, the rest have already moved to the greenhouse peering above the skylight roof in this photo. On the left are eggplant, which will soak up the sun in the community garden in town, then fill the freezer for Baba Ganouj and Eggplant Parmesan, etc. all next winter. In fact, we've enjoyed both from last year's harvest just this week.





Not shown (besides the non-edible flowering spring bulbs): raspberries, fava beans, apple trees, chokecherry, garlic and many, many more greens on the way. Plus, Don has the greenhouse up and tomatoes settling in. The pros (Tom Denison, John Eveland of Gathering Together Farm, Jamie Kitzrow of Springhill Organic Farm and others) have nothing on him. We enjoyed our first tomato last May - on the 15th!
                                       Mother Nature permitting, it will be another bountiful year...

and in the non-edible garden too.

The Rhubarb Indicator

     In the waning days of March, I harvested an armful of rhubarb from our garden. Soon the house was enveloped in that must-be-spring fragrance of a rhubarb and nutmeg crisp baking. Just as the smell of apples and cinnamon mean fall, or the fragrance of basil means summer, rhubarb in the oven means spring.

What's Wrong with This Picture?

 

Early rhubarb 2015

In my early years of gardening some 35 seasons ago,  considered myself lucky if I could harvest enough rhubarb around Mothers Day for a pie for my husband's birthday (he's not a fan of cake). Year by year, that's become less of a challenge. This year, rhubarb may well have peaked by then. It's a hint that our climate truly has changed over time, and continues to do so. At least in our micro-climate. I often wonder how much time deniers of climate change spend outdoors, truly observing. We often couldn't rototill the garden until June. This year it's been tilled already.

     So, what is our normal climate? What is “normal” anyway? Are we just in a temporary change? We've had those before. And surely will again. Still, the numbers rolled out each month and year for driest, hottest, coldest and stormiest  hint at bigger changes. Definitions come from looking back at the solid numbers that have occurred. How much do our lifestyles, mainly energy-use affect it all?

     When we first moved onto our rural acreage about a quarter of it was forested. Back then, I thought the trees that did exist were as tall as they'd get. The fact they weren't was just one of many lessons this property and over three and a half decades of living on it have taught me. We've planted several acres in trees, as have birds, squirrels and just thinning other spots. If you have the luxury of time, you could watch a forest slowly expand from cones dropped along its edges.

     Growing up on the Great Plains where trees were fewer and mostly deciduous, I adored being surrounded by forests when we first moved here. I loved every single one, from those sprouting conks (indicating the were dead, even if not immediately obvious) to the tiniest saplings. They were all somehow a comfort, a crowd of silent, reassuring new friends.

     Now, I see them differently. They're more ominous, less comforting. Rather than just appreciating their shade in summer (though I still most certainly do), now I worry about fire danger in our current drought. The cigarette butts we find on our roads, even hiking paths in the woods, leave me fearful and angry. The piles of slash from thinnings look more like kindling. Our entire neighborhood could lose everything from one carelessly tossed cigarette.

     Still, we're in far less dire straights than California. That's been fairly well known for a few years, but an article I read by Tom Philpott recently really brings it home. He talks mainly about the water used by almond groves. Another consideration he doesn't mention in this particular piece is the number of beekeepers from around the country who must haul their hives to the Golden State just to pollinate the orchards. What is the environmental effect of that?
Local a Necessity?

     I keep wondering what effect the increasingly-evident environmental changes will have on how we source our food. And even our diets. We have no clue about the effects our choices have on the areas they come from and the people involved. If we had a clearer picture of that would we change our habits? Like most of us, I try to “do the right thing,” but so often I feel profoundly ignorant. And am.

     It's not just the environment and the climate we affect, but people. Generations of people. The farmers, farm workers and the people who live in areas where our food is grown. If we eat more that is grown nearby, will we choose more wisely?What would it do to our health? That of our region? Our economy? No one knows for sure.

     Just like the creeping availability of rhubarb in my own (increasingly shady, thanks to trees getting still taller) garden, we (more the 20-somethings of today) will look back someday and see how much things have changed.

     Just the sight of camas blooming every spring reminds me that native peoples saw a much different food scene than I've seen in my lifetime. My “always” has not be the always. There is no such thing as always, thanks in large part to human nature and its effects on nature itself.