Gardening

Habitat Gym

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

hammerarmmodI want to open a gym. I’ll call it the Habitat gym. But instead of rowing machines, treadmills and weights, my gym will have shovels, hammers and hoes. Members will get fit by growing food for the local food bank, or by building low-cost housing or community amenities.

Trainers will match the job to the member—Want to work on your cardiovascular fitness? You’ll fetch tools and materials for the work crews, running back and forth from shed to building site or garden. Keen on weight training? You’ll be mixing cement or turning soil. Just want some gentle stretching and strengthening? You can weed or paint.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could capture all the human energy wasted every year at the gym and funnel it into meaningful projects that help others? Not only would people stay fit, they might be more likely to stick with their exercise regime if they know that what they are doing is meaningful and not just drudgery, if at the end of a year long gym membership, they count their success not just in pounds shed or muscle mass gained, but also in people fed and housed. If all that energy expended at the gym were harnessed for good, think what we could accomplish!

Organising the Tools

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DSC_0008 smAs my husband’s new shop takes shape, I am gradually moving my gardening things into their new home in the old shop. Yesterday, my daughter and I arranged the large hand tools, each with its own spot on the wall of the shed. She even drew each tool on the wall in its designated spot, so that they would always be put away in the right places. It is the first time I have ever had my tools neatly arranged, so they aren’t snarled in a hopeless tangle of rake tines whenever I need something. Of course, it only works if the tools are put away. Now, where did that sword go?…

Salad Junkie

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salad greens2 smLots of parents fret about their teenagers’ eating habits. Given the freedom and a little pocket money, most teens make bad food choices. I can’t judge—I was one of those teens once, splurging on chocolate and Coca-Cola every chance I got. My son is no different, though his vices tend toward the salty side—chips and cheesy breads.

But I don’t worry. He thinks I’ll reprimand him for the empty chip bag that comes home in his lunchbox (he didn’t get them from home…), but I know that his real weakness is salad.

Yep, salad. With a homemade vinaigrette, and plenty of dark, nutty lettuces and spinach. Maybe some nasturtium flowers for colour and a little zing…

He eyes the salad bowl after everyone has had seconds, waiting to see if his sister will fight him for what’s left. She often does, and I would, too, except that my parental instinct is to let them gorge on salad. Rarely is there anything left when the table is cleared.

How did it happen, this salad craving? I have no idea, except that our salads aren’t iceberg lettuce and an anaemic slice of greenhouse tomato. They have flavour and colour. The kids know the names of all the varieties of lettuce I plant, and they enjoy the range of “extras” we add, like nasturtium, salad burnet, and parsley.

“I like that drunk lady,” my son said one day after polishing off the salad greens, “It’s so…succulent.” He was referring to Drunken Woman Fringed Head—one of our reliable year-round lettuces (but that won’t stop me from using the quote as blackmail someday). How can a kid not like lettuce with a name like that?

So, let them have a few chips and some chocolate. I know that they’ll come home and stuff themselves with salad. That’s serious junk food!

Migratory Chickens

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
The chickens migrated to the vegetable garden today.

The chickens migrated to the vegetable garden today.

My chickens are migratory; they have a summer home and a winter home. In summer they have a dedicated paddock—an otherwise useless little corner of the yard under some birch trees. Their winter home is the vegetable garden. I fence off a quarter of the space for my winter crops, and let the chooks take care of the rest.

I used to struggle with waist-high weeds in the garden each spring, injuring my back or my arms almost every year just trying to prepare the garden for planting. But since I started employing the chickens in the garden over winter, spring planting has become a breeze.

Well, OK, not a breeze. It’s still a ton of work, but I can do it without injury.

The chickens eat weeds and pests alike, keeping both under control all winter. There are weeds they won’t eat, of course, but as long as I swing through the garden once or twice over the winter to root out the biggest ones, I arrive at spring with minimal weeds or pests to get rid of.

And the icing on the cake is that the chooks love the garden. Egg production often slows down in the autumn, but it shoots right up again when the birds are let loose among the leftover vegetables. Everybody wins!

Autumn

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DSC_0009 copyAutumn

Is a yearning

Wreathed in smoke,

Struck through

With the amber rays

Of a westering sun.

 

Autumn

Is a farewell,

The caress

Of soft wind,

A sigh

Of leaves.

 

Autumn

Is anticipation:

Wood shed full

Of logs

Awaiting the fire,

Windows

Waiting to be closed,

Tomatoes

Awaiting their first

And final

Trimming of frost.

Surprises

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

DSC_0003 copyWe have been eating jalapeños from the garden for months now. I’ve pickled tons of them, we’ve had them on burgers, in pasta sauce, in burritos…so the other day, as I was slicing one for on pizza, I popped a generous slice in my mouth, expecting the mild heat of all the others we’ve eaten.

Boy, was I in for a surprise! I may as well have eaten a Thai hot pepper! For some reason, this jalapeño was screaming hot. My eyes began to water, I started to hiccup from the heat, all the while laughing at myself. It was half an hour before my mouth settled down to a mild tingle from the fiery pain of that pepper.

The remainder of the pepper went straight into the compost—I didn’t want any spice at all on my pizza that night! I have treated the jalapeños with more respect since then.

It’s not the first time I’ve been surprised by spice. In Peace Corps, we regularly had training events at a nearby Girl Scout camp. The camp cook always set a huge jar of homemade hot sauce on the table. The size of the jar was deceptive—served in that quantity, it couldn’t be very spicy, right? The first time, I took a large spoonful and stirred it into my beans. I wondered if I’d ever recover! A tiny bit of that hot sauce was enough to bring tears to my eyes—it was nothing but ground up habañeros. I have to wonder if the cook didn’t do it on purpose in order to laugh at all of us with smoke coming out of our ears! It was a good joke, but not a surprise I want frequently.

Saffron

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DSC_0005 cropSaffron is the dried stigma of the saffron crocus, a beautiful little autumn-flowering crocus. Harvested since 500 BCE, saffron has always been a luxury spice. No surprise, when it takes about 150,000 flowers to produce a kilo of saffron! We can get New Zealand grown saffron for $12.50/g (that’s about $350/oz), but we rarely buy it.

DSC_0010 copyA few years ago, we were given half a dozen saffron crocus bulbs, and these provide most of the saffron we use—enough for a couple of meals each year. The flowers bloom in April, and last only a day or two, so it’s easy to miss. The threads need to dry before storage, and then we’ll begin to plan the sunny yellow meals we will make with it.

 

Quince

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quincepaste1smQuince was a fruit I never knew before we moved to New Zealand. Looking like a fuzzy pear, and inedible raw, they’re not the most inviting fruits at first glance. But cooked into quince paste, they are one of the most delicious and versatile fruits around.

Our little quince tree (not much more than a stick) produced three fruits this year, so I made a very small batch of quince paste—about three cups. I’m afraid that it’s almost gone already. It is delicious on crackers with a thin slice of goat cheese. It’s also lovely on toast in the morning, or on bread as a late-night snack. It goes well with yogurt and granola, and…well, it never had a chance of lasting long.

The end of summer

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Tomatoes in the greenhouse, still going strong...for now.

Tomatoes in the greenhouse, still going strong…for now.

And here it comes…the Metservice forecast for tomorrow…

A few spots of early rain, followed by fine spells and scattered showers with hail, and possible squally thunderstorms. Snow lowering to 400 metres from afternoon. Cold southwesterlies, becoming strong about the coast in the afternoon.

It’s time to batten down the hatches, rescue the last tomatoes and zucchini, and bring firewood to the porch. I gave the goats some extra bedding (and will do the same for us, too!), and I’ve tucked down the edges of the small tunnel house in the garden, in the hopes of eking out a few more peppers and eggplants.

I’m ready, as I usually am by mid-April, for the summer to be well and truly over. I’m ready to let the chickens loose in most of the vegetable garden, to control the weeds for me over winter. I’m ready to stop frantically preserving the summer’s bounty and start eating what I’ve saved.

Not that there isn’t gardening to do in the winter. My “winter” vegetable garden is bigger than many people’s summer garden, but it is still less than a quarter the size of the summer garden, and feels like a holiday. I’m looking forward to starting that holiday soon.

Pumpkin seeds

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DSC_0013Pumpkin seeds are another of those foods (like onions) that I never really appreciated before I grew them myself. It’s not that I didn’t like them, but they weren’t something I paid much attention to.

I still don’t go out of my way to buy them, but I very much enjoy our harvest of pepitas, roasted with salt and a bit of curry powder. They’re almost as hard to stop eating as peanuts (and just as good with a beer)!