Garden Volunteers

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Volunteers. Given time and space, they move in and take over. Weeded out too vigorously, and the garden is barren, orderly, and empty of surprises.  In an established patch, they are in balance. In June, the choices we have made all spring become clear.

There are a wide variety of volunteers… first, the free seeders. I bought one packet of borage 18 years ago and we have never lacked for the herb since, which is fine because we love the flowers and the chickens love the leaves and seeds. Love in a Mist has taken over the dry shade under the apple tree and creates a bank of blooms and funky seedheads in May and June. One lemon balm plant has become hundreds. Lovage, while less prolific, is huge when it does appear. Feverfew creates a nice filler in a bouquet, as does the Lady’s Mantle that has moved into the paths between garden beds. Wild seeded cosmos and nasturtiums bloom before the May planted every year.

Once you have  potato crop, you always have a potato crop, a friend observed one spring. It’s true. Every one of my beds has at least one potato, every year, despite constant rotations and careful harvest. They appear in early March, telling me that the soil is warm enough to plant the crop. I can pull a few plants for the Fourth of July and have new potato salad for dinner. There is usually at least one very vigorous plant  sprawling out of the compost bins until the chickens eat the leaves. When I weigh the harvest, I calculate in the volunteers.

Three years ago, I tossed the insides of our carving pumpkins into the garden. The next spring, before I realized it, a vine was sprawling across the beans, so I rigged up a trellis and rope and lifted it above my head. Four huge, round pumpkins grew off of the vines, slowing turning orange in late August. They became the Halloween pumpkins. Last October, when I tossed those seeds, I was thoughtful about their placement and settled them at the base of my new cattle panel hoop. In April, they seeds sprouted and the vines are well on their way up and out. There is another vine crawling out of the potato bed…

The structure of the vegetable garden is orderly and linear—all of the beds are ten feet long, four feet across, raised boxes, with three foot paths between. They are sized to hold the chicken coop—four feet by five—during the winter months.  The main paths end in blue gates that lead to the chicken run and the compost bins. Each bed has its own soaker hose, which can be turned on and off at will. This imposed order is essential. However, the cheerful chaos of a volunteer pumpkin vine making a run for freedom and flowers blooming where they were not planted break the patterns every day.

 

Sunday Night Suppers-- March

Sauteed Shitake Mushrooms,  polenta

Edemane, salad, whole wheat bread, cider

Potato Leek Soup, salad, Irish soda bread

 

Greens, barley and mushrooms

Bold type indicates local food-- within one hundred miles of Corvallis

Local Beans and other food

            If you are serious about eating locally and reducing the number of miles your food travels, Corvallis Oregon is an excellent place to live. Not only do we have several large organic farms and a variety of smaller operations which run a Winter Market from January until April, a farm which wild crafts and grows an amazing variety of mushrooms, and a young man who apprenticed with Joel Salatin and now raises meat animals using his principles, but we also have the Bean and Grain project, which has been looking at returning grass seed acreage in the Willamette Valley to growing staple crops—oats, wheat, and beans. For the last three years, they have organized a Fill Your Pantry event, where people can stock up, direct from farmers, for the winter. We buy oatmeal, wheat, and beans every year. Add that to the potatoes, onions, winter squash, canned tomatoes and dried fruit we stash away in September, and you have the basis for our winter meals.

            Oatmeal is the backbone of winter breakfast. I rotate hot oatmeal with dried fruits and walnuts or hazelnuts with home made yogurt, compote, and granola made from local oats. Even with some exotic brown sugar and barley flakes thrown in, we have drastically reduced our breakfast mileage, especially compared to cold cereal, which is coming from Canada. And it lasts longer in our tummies. On the weekends, we’ll eat oatmeal waffles or our own chicken eggs with toast, made with home ground wheat—although, right now, we’re eating duck eggs from Sunbow. Why do chickens molt in the coldest times of the year?

            Local beans are the most remarkable food we have. Black, Pinto, Indian Woman, garbanzo beans AND lentils—they are beautiful, poured into old fashioned canning jars and sitting on the pantry shelf. The first year I had locally grown beans, we never did eat them; they were too lovely to look at. Beans are not easy to grow in the valley. The season is tricky; spring rains keep the ground cool into late May some years and an early fall rain may mess with the drying in the field. Harry at Sunbow has been experimenting both with varieties and planting times for years, trying to push open the spring window. Garbanzos can be planted in March—but they don’t grow well for the first month. One year, the pintos were harvested in the rain, and they take three washings to come clean; our soil is clearly gray clay. But, every year, there are more varieties. I pour them into the crockpot every Sunday morning, add garlic, onions, and whatever vegetables are around and slow cook our weekday lunches. Before dinner, we ladle the soup into pint sized canning jars.  With a slice or two of fresh bread, we’re styling. Fast food.

            We’ve been eating like this for several years now. It is normal to make bread dough and yogurt while cooking dinner, to plan around what is available in the fields and pantry rather than what we can buy in the grocery store, even at our local co-op, which really focuses on purchasing and promoting food from the five counties that touch ours. I don’t think it costs anymore than my old way of doing things. I am, after all, a Master Forager all summer long. And we support people we know when we buy their food, rather than some faceless corporation. But, most importantly, it tastes better.

Curried Lentils and Winter  Squash— altered from Recipes from the Root Cellar

The original recipe calls for stuffing the squash with the lentils, but that takes longer and we were hungry.

Cook 1 cup of lentils until nice and soft

While the lentils cook, back a winter squash, cut in half, face down, in the oven

While the lentils and squash cook, sauté a chopped onion and 2 garlic cloves in olive oil until lovely and soft.  About half way through, add 1 T of cumin, 1 T of curry powder, some salt and pepper. When they are done, slowly pour in ½ cup of buttermilk. It may break down and look ugly, but it’s ok. Just stir it in. If you can, add the lentils to the pan and cook together slowly until the squash is done.

Serve on a purple plate with some pickled beets on the side.