Using Veggies

My vegetarian daughter is home, and I have some veggies to use up.  I was thinking about making veggie balls.  I am kind of mashing together (pun intended) a few different ideas to make these; I am hoping they will come out well. 

My idea is to cook various root vegetables until they are soft, mash them to get the right consistency, add peas and a little flour, egg and garam masala (which I have to make),  form the mixture into balls and roll them in panko and fry them in a few tablespoons of olive oil - or put them in mini-muffin pans with a small amount of olive oil which is my short cut way to make meatballs.  I am hoping they taste a little like the samosas I ate in London, only without the pastry.  Probably, I will serve them with the very last of the lettuce and some home made hummos.  It doesn't seem like a lot of food, but it does seem a little fiddly.  Maybe I will feel full just from all the handling of the food, but my family will be hungry...I should think of something else to serve with it.  Eggs, probably, because we are still in that awkward between harvests time and there aren't many other choices.  And rice, because this is, after all, Hawaii. 

Moulting Chickens....

That's what I assume from the dearth of eggs and the gobs of feathers blowing around on the ground, anyway.  We're only getting 4 or 5 eggs a day from our 14 hens - mostly from the 5 Buff Orpington's. It looks like the Araucana chickens are the ones most off their production. 

It has been rainy and it is getting a bit darker earlier, so that probably has something to do with it.  About half the chickens just hit their first birthday, and the other half are 18 months, so that might have something to do with it.  I will have to start chicks again this Spring. 

Minnie the ewe is looming large and laying around looking like she is approaching imminent labor, but she's got at least 4-5 weeks left.  I think she is just a whiner.  I was pretty much a whiner at the end of each of my pregnancies - especially the one where the baby was 10 lbs 10 oz....boy, was I cranky when that one went over a week overdue!   I sympathize with Minnie.  She was a terrible mother the first time around; she left one of her twins behind several times and my husband had to carry the lamb out to the back of the pasture several times.  She was only a yearling, so we'll have to see how it goes this year before making any decisions.  She looks to be carrying twins again. 

The alternate pouring rain and rather gloomy skies mean the garden is growing slowly - except for the turnips; they are growing gang busters.  I haven't been able to do much out there because of time issues and now this stupid back thing.  I was feeling a lot better last night, but I must of overdone it, because today, I am aching again.  This is getting annoying. 

Hurting

Yet another day I am thinking about mutton.  Specifically, ram burgers.

Remember this past summer when that darned Elvis rammed me twice?  Well, he must have damaged my coccyx pretty good, because every once in awhile I step in a hole or carry a feed bag wrong and there I am again - in pain. 

Sunday and yesterday were the worst it has ever been.  I even missed work.  I never take aspirin or acetaminophen, but yesterday, I took both - and sat with a heat pad and hobbled around like an old lady and tried every stretch I could stand without screaming.  Believe me, I hobbled out to the sheep barn and gave Elvis the evil eye, too.  I didn't expect that to help anything, but it sure improve my mood. 

My son even had to drive today because I am too sore to even attempt the clutch, although I am at work today.  For someone who prides herself on her strength and stoicism when in pain, I sure have been acting like a baby.  I couldn't sit at home and look at all the stuff that needed to be done - too frustrating.  I can't sit (or lay down) anywhere without pain, so I might as well sit at work in pain and grade papers and give the kids a laugh as I move around like a 100 year old with osteoporosis.  

Here We Go!

My older's son's last race - well, last race I will see, because I am, of course, planning on him going to the State Finals!  I am far more nervous than he is, because I am also hoping for the whole team to be able to go.  He's hoping for that, too, but he cultivates this "I don't care," attitude about anything to do with school these days.  I remember everything counting too much at his age, but I guess we deal with growing up in the best way we can.  Senior year can be so stressful:  so many decisions to make and so many changes coming up that you both long for and are just that nervous about. 

My younger two have races, too, which I won't be able to go to because they are quite far away and I promised to help with the course this weekend.  I feel really bad about not being able to support ALL the kids this weekend.

I visited the garden by flashlight last night, and the hole the dog dug was in a place that didn't disturb any particular bed - she dug up the walk way and maybe edged a little into the herbs on one side and the lettuce on the other. 

I picked greens for stir fry last night:  turnip, chinese mustard cabbage, collards, the outer leaves of the brussels sprouts and, of course, my favorite sweet potato leaves.  They were very good with the eggs and rice and portuguese sausage - a change from the usual pre-race pasta. 

Oh, and I taught two math classes yesterday - of course, I taught note-taking and not actual math, because I am good at daily math, but Algebra kicks my butt.  I heard a sophomore say to a neighbor, "Why is the English teacher here? That's weird."  I was very nervous, not because it was a math class, but because it's always nerve-wracking to get up in front of a new bunch of kids and in front of another teacher.  You'd think I'd be more used to it, because I have had EAs in my class for years and because I share a room with a teacher who enjoys being able to work at her own desk and who am I to kick her out of her own room? But I am not, apparently.  All was well, though.  Once the activity was started, the kids were engaged and interested. 

The math teachers' rooms face the mala/garden area.  I kept looking out the window and wishing I could start a garden out there to grow food for the Food Bank.  I mentioned it to the kumu in charge of the mala and to the math teacher, and they are both pretty enthusiastic, so it's time to figure out who the heck you are supposed to ask about these things.  The school is quite a bit lower in elevation than my house, so it's sunnier, but there will probably be more pests.  The ground is pretty much lava rock covered with a thing layer of dirt, so raised beds are the only possibility.  Lots to think about: which kids will participate (probably 9th graders and volunteers), where I will get materials (donations), seeds/seedlings (me and hopefully, volunteers), how will we get the results on Thursdays to the Food Bank....pretty exciting.  The seniors have to do a legacy project - that would be another source for student leadership. 

I don't know why I have this urge to plant gardens everywhere to feed people. 

Big Weekend

I have been coming home after dark, so the garden is a bit of a mystery, right now.  My husband reports that a dog, or possibly a couple of determined chickens, have dug a hole in the middle of the garden.  I really need to get a permanent place for a garden, surround it by a dog and chicken proof fence and go from there.  It has to be the little dog, because the big dogs spend their days on a long run line.  When the sheep are locked up, the dogs are allowed off for a bit to run around and do their thing.  We notice that they pretty much lay around where they can reach with the run line, after running around the yard for about ten minutes, so I guess the run line is long enough for them. 

This weekend is the regional final race for the Cross Country season.  It's also the last race I will see my son run in, ever, since even if he gets to states (probable), the State meet is on Maui, and I won't be going.  It's feeling a bit bittersweet, because I don't know if my other two will choose XC in their high school career, so it might be my last race, ever. 

I am the "team mom" so I am getting a bit of flack from my counterpoint on the girls' team for not getting "enough" course marshalls.  I honestly don't know what I can do beside ask - I can't fine them, or coerce them to volunteer.  Sigh. 

At work, I am braving the wild world of Math.  I am delighted that the Math teacher asked me to come in and present a lesson on Note-taking in Math class.  I will have crazy busy days tomorrow and Monday, but it's progress...people are asking me for help!  I like to work. 

My daughter is coming next week for a visit.  I can't wait.  I hope that she comes home some and doesn't spend the whole week at her best friend's house.....I miss her ridiculously and tear up everytime I think of her being at home.  I am such a weenie that way.  Hopefully, when all four are out, I am not some sad sack missing my babies.  See - I always thought, with four kids, I would completely be over the moon when they all left. 

My ten minute little break is done here - off to the rest of the day.  I even eat at my computer, trying to work out the online lessons I am making.  If only the software would do what I wanted it to.....without all the little faking-it-out tricks I need to do.

Butternut Squash Soup

It wasn't pumpkin, but it was good!

Unfortunately, I had a crop failure on the butternuts this summer, so it was a store bought squash.  I cubed it and cooked it in chicken broth with a chopped onion (also store bought, as I have not yet been able to grow an onion this year - I have no idea why).  I added some paprika and cayenne at the end and mashed it up with a masher - I was too lazy to pull out the blender. 

It was quite good, and I had some of it for lunch today - it was even better today than it was last night. 

I am still craving pumpkin everything, so I was happy to see that all the kabocha seeds I planted almost two weeks ago popped right up and looked strong - the plants in the greenhouse just aren't making it, so hopefully these outside versions will do well, even this late into Fall. 

The turnips, radish, mustard cabbage, and sweet potatoes are going gangbusters, and I can see quite a few carrots popping up - still no green nor red onions, which is just confusing.  Green onions, at least, usually do well up at my house, so I just don't know.

Always something to learn. 

I bought a 5 cu ft chest freezer on craigslist last week, so I am looking forward to finding someone butchering a cow.  I figure I can fit a 1/8 cow in there and still have room for the turkeys that go on sale at the grocery store this time of year.  I am a bit leery about the chest construction, but I was thinking I would just divide everything up into week size portions and then pull it out one by one and put it in the inside fridge - so one week I might end up with a steak, a pound of hamburger, and a chicken and I would have to figure out what to do with them on whichever day.  It shouldn't be too hard - to make things easier, I have a weekly rotation of basic ingredients: Monday is chicken, Tuesday is beans, Wednesday pasta, etc.  If something gets out of whack, I just switch it around.  We had chicken last night, so it's something different today.  If I can buy meat in bulk, we can eat a little more of it - right now, we eat beef about once a week, chicken once a week, and the rest is beans, pasta, or eggs. 

I helped proctor the PSAT on Saturday morning, but in the afternoon, we drove out to Ahualoa to look at a "tractor".  That's what the ad said on craigslist - "tractor".  It looked fairly big and it was very cheap because it wasn't running.  Well, when we got there it was more than fairly big - it was enormous!  It wasn't really a tractor, like a farm tractor, either - it was a one of three machines brought in to build the H-1 freeway on Oahu.  It was a monster. 

Sometimes you get that craigslist fever, like here is this deal and you want to get it because you drove hours to see it.  Somehow sanity prevailed and we said we needed to think about it.  After a few hours of thinking, it became just funny - it was so big my husband would be crashing into things, and I would probably come home and find five new ponds (it had the hugest backhoe) and no trees on the property!  It gave us the giggles thinking about it! 

Beyond that, I didn't accomplish much this weekend - desultorily pulled a few weeds and took the longest nap in the afternoon on Sunday.  I must have needed it, because I feel a lot better today than I did last week, but now I am regretting all those seeds that didn't get planted and the bread that didn't get baked....

Food Hubs

I am really fascinated by the idea of food hubs.  There a couple of different ideas about what that means - for the USDA, it means small farmers banding together to create on brand to be more attractive to larger scale buyers.  On this island, that might mean several small farms with sheep working together to be able to provide a steady supply of lamb to the resorts on the Leeward side or restaurants all over the island. 

Another definition is a central place to either garden or distribute food to the community.  I suppose you could consider a Farmer's Market (of which this island is lucky to have so many) a food hub, but I was thinking more about a program I saw advertised at church where farmer's/gardener's donate extra produce which is distributed to low-income seniors one day a week.  A similar idea is the arrangement someone on a sustainability group (internet based) I belong to made with the Hilo Food Bank.  They've agreed to accept produce dontations from gardener's/farmer's on Thursdays for distribution on Fridays to needy families.  The group has been asked to "grow an extra row" for the community. 

I would sure like to get that even more organized.  There is a church near where I live which hosts a charter school during the week, and there is a community center nearby.  The land is pretty rocky, not much soil, but there is some, and there is always the possibility of ripping the lava, and building raised beds on top of it.  I bet that charter school would really like to have a gardening program which could work with the senior center....  and there is another charter school up the road where my friend is the principal....this could be a good idea whose time has come. 

I am not the person to organize it - I am just getting my feet under me as a gardener myself, but I find the idea of the community coming together to make sure the vulnerable have food really attractive.  At least I can start talking about it and asking people who know more than I do for help. 

Stir Fried Greens Picked by the Light of the Moon

Sounds a little like a recipe appropriate for October, doesn't it?  Actually, it was pretty dark - I don't believe the moon was completely available as a light source. 

Somehow during the week and a bit off, it got dark - now when I come home after kids' practices, it is getting dark.  The gloaming, as it were.  Since we had Monday off, yesterday became my shopping day.  I try to do everything - feed, food, gas - all on one long, after work errand.  That means, when I get home, late, it is getting dark and there are bags and bags of feed to unload, and groceries to put away, plants to water in the greenhouse, sometimes animals to feed depending on my husband's schedule. 

I found myself in the very backend of the gloaming - in the dark, as it were, finding vegetables for stir fry by feel - a few different kinds of sweet potato leaves, a few collards, some baby turnip greens, and a couple very young green peppers (one had a slug on it, yuck, yuck, yuck).  I even spied out some brown eggs from my Orpingtons (but only because I know where two of them like to hide their stash). 

I added what I picked (in what felt like some Halloween preparation) to green beans and eggplant harvested previously, some shoyu beans and broccoli from the freezer, and the young one cut up some tofu we bought at the store.  It was quite tasty.  I really love sweet potato leaves and collards stir fried in olive oil with teriyaki sauce!  It is tasty, and I feel so virtuous eating my greens. 

The trick to stir frying eggplant is to get the oil hot and to cook it into submission before adding the teriyaki or shoyu - otherwise it either stays bitter or absorbs far too much of the sauce.  Sweet potato leaves can be added at the end, but collards need a good long time to cook or they stay kind of tough.  I am looking forward to the turnips and their greens in a couple of weeks and the kale a couple weeks after that! 

However, I am feeling anxious about my kabocha - I have indifferent luck with squash - something always seems to happen - the tractor accidentally (I ask you!) runs over the heart of the patch - or my lovely volunteer acron squash on the compost pile gets weed whacked.  Lawn and garden machinery has it in for any winter squash I plant....so this year, I planted them next to a bright hot pink trellis.  Maybe that will indicate to the machinery operators that they are not weeds. 

As for the summer squash - I think my dog has a secret love for immature crookneck - because I will find her little paw prints next to the plant - and the lovely little baby squash gone.  Circumstantial evidence, but convincing to me! 

For some reason, I am absolutely craving pumpking - maybe it is that harvesting by the light of the October moon thing again - and it just seems extra important that those kabocha fluorish - even if it means I need to wait another 113 days for my first pumpkin. 

I find myself obsessing over my garden in a way formerly reserved for horses, sheep, and classroom - especially the darned squash.

Wishing and Hoping

I planted kabocha pumpkins (small pumpkins that do well here) in the greenhouse and outside, and I am just so hoping one version or the other will take off.  I am getting blossoms on the greenhouse version, but although the ends of the greenhouse are open, I am not sure any bees are buzzing around, so not sure if fruit will set.  I do hope so - I love pumpkin with quinoa and glazed tofu, pumpkin curry soup, and pumpkin dinner rolls made with kabocha.  It would be safe to say I am craving pumpkin right now.  Of course, considering that I just put in the seeds in the outside garden, I am still a good four months away from enjoying any....unless I can find a good deal at a farmer's market. 

Even though the winds have been off-and-on south winds, and it has been fairly sticky at lower elevations, up here it is still nice and cool and pumpkins and other fall ingredients, soups and stews are sounding good. 

I think I will go make some baked bean soup right now.  That sounds good with some cornbread for dinner tonight. 

Very Articulate Kid

I am reposting this link from TED.  An articulate argument for local food production and small farms.

What’s wrong with our food system: Birke Baehr on TED.com

 

It's worth the time to view this little clip! 

Never Fails

It never fails that when I think I have a handle on things, something unexpected happens.  Today, it was a flat tire. 

It was going to be a busy day - I had my two younger kids and two friends in the car on the way to their middle school cross country meet.  There was an ice cream social fundraiser to get them to after the meet, and the high school meet later in the day.  All three cars were going to have to be out and about. 

I hit a rock in the road - I swerved to miss it and ended up hitting it and tearing a hole in the sidewall of the tire.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I was on the the busy two laned highway, so I thought it best to drive the extra mile or so to the school and pull off there.  I thought about changing the tire myself but decided to wait for my husband - probably to the disgust of the very capable looking security guard - she could have changed it in not time flat.  I probably could have done it, but I didn't have blocks for the tires, and if I messed up, it would be so much worse.  The kids had to walk in to the race - a mile walk at least - this is one BIG campus (K-12), but I didn't feel sorry for them - their coach texted me back she thought it was a pretty good warm up! 

We spent the morning driving around trying to find a tire replacement - Sears, Lex Brodies (local tire place), and finally Firestone.  We figured we better replace two tires - the front two were looking worn - that was $300 I didn't really have.  I remember when it was $300 for all four tires for an SUV - wow, prices have really gone up!  Fortunately, they allowed us to take our old tires - just the thing for growing potatoes and containing things like mint.  Ugly, but effective.  Old tires are pretty good at keeping horses from knocking over their water or salt lick bowls, too.  The silver lining - the guy at Firestone said come on in once a month and pick up tires when we need if we want more.  Nice. 

I am supposed to be down there getting ready to course marshall, but I am feeling pretty darn worn out, so I am up here in my office, typing up the plans I have in my head for the second quarter.... and getting some peace and quiet.  Between the tire guys, my husband, and my own voice in my head, I am pretty tired of hearing how stupid I was for runnng over that rock; that $300 for tires really wasn't in the budget and is very discouraging. 

On a brighter note, I am trying to visualize the future - where I want our farm to be in one year, two years, etc.  This year has been a year of setbacks, but that just means we have to work harder.  The challenge is to articulate what I want - do I want enough food for us, plus some to give away to the Food Bank, or do I want to have enough to sell?  Does selling mean a modified CSA format or participating in one of the several Farmer's Markets around here?  Lots of decisions to be made....

New Garden Planted

Yesterday, I cooked and baked all day.  I hadn't made bread when my son called to ask if he could bring some friends home with him from Cross Country practice, so I had to make lunch.  I made pasta and doctored up the store bought sauce with some tomatoes from the greenhouse.  I have a lot of eggplant, so I sliced it thin, dipped it in beaten egg and corn meal and fried it.  There was a good amount of cornmeal and egg left, so I added baking powder, mixed it together and fried that, too.  For something so simple, it was extraordinarily good. 

I made hamburger buns so we could have burgers last night.  This was because I had heard through the grapevine (17 year olds are too busy to say anything directly) that my son wanted hamburgers.  Turned out, he wasn't even home for dinner.  The burgers were accompanied by baked cottage fries. 

I made cookies (already gone - the whole batch - along with both pies and the three big pans of banana bread I made earlier this week - hungry teenagers!), and finally got around to making juice out of the big bag of lilikoi in the fridge. 

Anyway, you get the idea - so today I decided to spend the morning outside.  There is always the laundry hanging and bringing in, and there was the new garden.  My husband has been dumping forest loam and compost on the clay soil that is normally there for a couple of weeks, so it was time to rake it over and start figuring out trellises.  Fortunately for grumpy me, having my youngest run in to look for string got my husband out to engineer the trellises.  Good thing, because he is really much better at that sort of thing.  We still had some bamboo left from our massive foraging trip a few months ago, so we used that, some old waiawi sticks my daughter made a feedsack teepee out of a while back, and some old fence - waste not, want not.  This save most of the precious string (we had a mild disagreement about that string; I swore up and down I bought it for just this purpose, and my husband swore he bought it, and I should not use it....anyway, we only used a little bit of it and were able to build trellises with old plastic clothesline, the aforementioned fence bits, and bamboo). 

The young one got involved and we planted a gardenful:  broccoli, carrots, turnips, red onion, green onion, beets, dill, basil, spinach, marigolds, kabocha pumpkin, cucumbers (not sure about those at this time of the year), snap beans, and swiss chard.  I predict a lot of stir fry in a couple of months. 

In the greenhouse, I also started some banana peppers, English peas, and parsley. It's about time to plant some more green peppers (I think I may have inadvertently planted some with the beets, because the seed had fallen out of the packets when the young one was carrying the gallon sized freezer bag full of seed packets.  I did my best to separate them out, but I think at least 2-3 seeds got mixed in there - well, we'll see, won't we.  It will be too wet for the peppers out there, but I suppose it is an experiment. 

I have no accomplished most of what I hoped to do during this break from teaching.  Now I have to spend the last few days planning for next quarter and getting my head out of the garden/farm game and back into the teacher game.  Wish me luck! 

The Cost of Food

Now, I really could make this a rant about how much my grocery bill has gone up in the last year, but it is really about my awareness of the true cost of food.  Last night, I actually watched tv (!) and a commercial for some fast food restaurant or other came on with a big juicy picture of a sandwich. 

I started thinking about what it would take for me to make or grow everything that made up that sandwich - to raise cattle, process it, cook it.  To make the bread, the cheese, to grow the vegetables (including the tomatoes to make the ketchup).  Although, unfortunately, I couldn't grow the wheat to make the bread here in the rainforest, all of the rest of it is theoretically possible (WHEN I get a dairy animal and if we clear more of the waiawi for pasture for beef cattle). 

The thought produced an odd mixture of feelings in me.  The thought of all that work for one sandwich was astonishing, but of course, you wouldn't grow and can tomatoes for one squirt of ketchup - you'd have a shelf full.  One sandwich worth of beef would just be a tiny part of a freezer full of beef.  And of course, one sandwich is just a tiny portion of the volume that one chain of fast food produces across the country. 

My techie son would use this illustration to point out why I shouldn't aim to produce a majority of our food myself - we are a part of an economic chain and if everyone opts out, the chain would break.  I argue in vain that the economic chain is doing a good enough job of breaking itself and that locally produced food is an important resource (although I am not about to give up my wheat flour, which has to be imported, no getting around it, as far as I know.  Any trials on Hawaii grown grain in the early part of the 20th century were not successful). 

Sometimes I do feel overwhelmed by the size of the endeavor of producing food on a very tiny farm.  7.5 acres tends to awe my Oahu friends, but it's small if you are thinking in terms of animals.  I am working full time and I am primarily responsible for the gardens and the animals.  I get help with maintenance, but starting, planning, and anything beyond feeding and watering is my job. 

When I consider the cost of my food in terms of labor from growing/raising, to processing and preparing, it is an awesome responsibility.  I can't walk into a grocery store anymore without an awareness of the costs beyond what's on that price sticker - and apparently, I can't watch a fast food commericial without that same awareness. Even going into the cafeteria at school - pans and pans of chicken thighs - a thousand chickens died for this meal...

I was wondering why there has been a rise in young adult novels which deal with disasters and disruptions in food supplies - I think, perhaps, other people are trying to get that idea of the true cost of food into the next generation, flying in the face of what appears to be true - that hamburgers can cost less than a dollar and that thousands of chicken thighs show up roughly twice a week in large pans covered in shoyu or gravy. 

Pie Monday: Baking with the Daughter

I made an apple pie with my youngest (she cored and chopped the apples with a little hand crank machine and I made crust) and then I made a pumpkin pie for those (odd) family members who don't like apple pie.

I am sort of on an old-world kick:  I made split pea soup, which always reminds me of MomMom, my great grand-mother for some reason, and today I am making Chicken Paprikash.  I am not Hungarian, but my German side does hale from Austria-Hungary, so I guess that is close enough.  I have to cook it ahead of time, since one son has practice tonight and we get home quite late. 

The women on that side of the family  (paternal) were great bakers; I still dream of some of the things my Grandma made.  It seems to have skipped my oldest daughter, but my youngest and I love to bake.  She was watching tv when I asked her if she wanted to "learn to make a pie crust."  She yelled up the stairs, "I already know how!"  I'd totally forgotten that she made the most wonderful crust when my mom was here!  She likes to use that apple machine, so she was lured away from the tv to help with the apple pie filling. 

Her specialty is brownies.  She can whip up a pan in no time.  In fact, her cakes turn out better than mine.  I am definitely more of a bread and pie lady.  When her dad's birthday rolled around a few weeks ago, she was the one who made the cake, thank the Lord. 

I do need to teach her to cook more than mac and cheese, saimin, and spaghetti, though....maybe she can learn paprikash. 

New Garden Shaping Up

This week my husband busted out the tractor and tiller and grubbed out some grass and tilled a bit on a new 25 ft x 10-ish ft garden area.  The clay we have here definitely makes a till pan, so we went over it with a garden fork and shovel, and then I broke it up with a metal rake. 

The next step is to let whatever kikuyu pop up in the losened soil so we can find it and turf it out.  That grass could definitely moonlight as steel cable.  I plan to put in some brassicas and beans, basically.  I wish I had some potato to put in first, but cabbages are one thing I know will grow all the time here in great abundance. 

I have a little more clean up and replanting to do in the greenhouse, and all housing (animal and people) needs the deep cleaning that teachers often do during school breaks. 

I also have this strangely Fall urge to bake and make soups and stews.  Hopefully, I will make enough to freeze or can, so there are quick meals to have as the days get shorter (even in Hawaii).  I never quite got around to do as much of that as I'd planned during the summer. 

Happy Sunday, everyone!