Tossing pumpkins

Summer is indeed ending, and with it goes the last of the summer vegetables—the tomatoes, the cucumbers, the zucchini. As those plants yield the last of their bounty, vegetable farmers throughout Columbia County are turning toward the fall harvest.

At Katchkie, the winter squash—pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, and a host of others I’d never seen before—are all in a patch at the end of one of the fields, all planted together and mixed in with each other.

Since winter squash is usually very heavy and very bulky, our normal method of dragging bins around and filling them with whatever we’re harvesting wasn’t going to work so well. (Just picture an attempt to fit pumpkins into a plastic bin that is usually used to collect cucumbers and beets—we’d fit maybe two of them in each. Not very efficient.)

So we spent the day playing “toss the squash”: while Nancy (one of the farm’s Mexican workers) clipped the squash off the vine and then tossed it to me, I stood there catching squash and dropping it in the back of the farm’s motorized golf cart. A little nerve-racking for this ex-geek who could never catch a dodge ball, but I had to admit that it was easier (and infinitely more fun) than the alternative scenario of bending over, picking up pumpkins, and hauling each to the car by our own leg power.

Periodically I also had the distinct pleasure of moving the cart among the squash rows, every once in awhile driving over a rotten specimen that no-one had bothered to move with a sickening, but rather satisfying, splat. This portion of the day further extended the joy of my new opportunity to indulge in childish pursuits.

When the cart was full, we hauled the entire load over to a large wooden bin (probably about four feet square), and transferred the squash into the bin. Then it was back to the squash patch to start the process all over again.

We spent the entire day this way, filling four big wooden bins and then, for good measure, about two dozen vegetable bins with tiny pumpkins. The pictures below do not show those little guys.

Chicken run!

As anyone who has read a farming memoir will tell you, there is no limit to the range of activities that can be accomplished with the aid of a tractor. Various attachments allow farmers to plow, cut grass for hay, haul things, or cut vegetables (such as onions) at the root so they’re easier to harvest. But I arrived at the farm the other day to witness a use that I’m not sure anyone ever thought of before: herding chickens.

Since a laying hen’s life consists of eating, sleeping, making eggs, and, well, eliminating chicken waste, the mobile chicken house is periodically moved to an, um, cleaner place. If Katchkie were a biodynamic farm the nitrogen-rich chicken poop would absorbed back into the farm as fertilizer, a process beautifully described by Michael Pollan in his discussion of Polyface Farm) in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. But it’s not, and the chickens can’t really be allowed to run free because they’d get picked off by predators. So instead they have their own little chicken condominium, complete with a little run under a trap door in the floor that allows them to get down to the ground whenever they want. The entire condo building gets moved after the ground has endured a few weeks of chicken use.

The trouble is that chickens can get out of the enclosure when the fences are taken away in preparation for the move. When I arrived, Karen, her fiancé Matt, and Bob had already finished moving the chicken house, and four errant chickens were running around free, thoroughly enjoying themselves as they pecked at the bugs in the dirt around the children’s garden.

And, so, reluctant to chase the chickens on foot, Bob decided to employ the tractor. Picture it, if you can: a big, green farming machine—tires with a diameter of approximately four feet, by my very imprecise estimation—coming up behind four running, clucking, occasionally fluttering birds, who definitely have the advantage, as they simply run behind the flowers planted at the edge of the children’s garden and stymie the behemoth in its oversized tracks.

Karen finally managed to corral one of the chickens the old fashioned way—she dove for it. She then carried it, clucking imperiously, back to the enclosure. At that point Bob gave up and drove off to tend to vegetable harvesting. Karen, Matt, and I spent the next half hour or so replacing the fence, during which time two of three remaining runaways wandered back toward the chicken coop to be with their friends, which was really all they wanted in the first place. (Chickens like to form cliques, which anyone who graduated from an American high school will find a little traumatic to witness.)

We caught the other one later in the day, when it was tired, hungry, probably dehydrated, and definitely thinking that the wide world is a little too big.

And the point of all this running around, corralling chickens, feeding them organic feed and oyster shells so that they’ll get enough calcium? They’ve been laying eggs like crazy.

I took a couple home over the weekend and Jeff cooked them into an omelet with fresh parsley I’d picked from Katchkie’s herb garden and—the crowning glory—oyster mushrooms I’d picked up at the farmer’s market. Much to my surprise, I’d learned that oyster mushrooms actually can be cultivated—I’d thought they had to be gathered. But these babies were so far beyond the pathetic button mushrooms that pass for the real thing for most people that they should be assigned another food group all together.

Oysters come in big bunches (see picture), and one full bunch was enough for a good-sized omelet that fed both of us. They were slightly more elastic than most mushrooms I’ve had, and I was surprised at how little water they gave off when I sautéed them. The eggs themselves were, as expected, a darker yellow than you’d expect from store-bought eggs, as most organic eggs have more beta-carotene and other vitamins than eggs laid by feedlot chickens. Just as important, they actually had flavor. (Michael Pollan writes several pages about eggs’ “elasticity”, a quality that I don’t really feel qualified to comment on.)

Combined with the faintly earthy flavor of the mushrooms, this omelet provided the kind of pleasure we just don’t get from food very often anymore—sort of like sex on a plate.

Humming the day away

The tomatoes continue to ripen, and we continue to pick them for processing into ketchup at a plant in Poughkeepsie. Sitting in front of the plum tomato plants the other day, concentrating on finding red ones and avoiding the rotting ones that would explode in my hand as I picked them, I remained vaguely aware of the low humming of bees happily flitting from flower to flower. I’ve gotten used to the bees now and have stopped jerking my hand away every time one comes near. Drunk on nectar (or something), they seem to have judged us neither dangerous nor interesting and generally leave us to ourselves to pull fruit.

Vaguely aware of the distant roar of Bob’s tractor, the hot sun on my back, and the fact that lunchtime was quickly approaching, I suddenly realized that the “hummm” I was now hearing was much louder than the bees’ understated buzzing. It sounded more like an engine. Looking up, I half expected to see a small plane flying across the morning sky. Instead, I found myself staring straight into the black eyes of a tiny hummingbird.












Tomatoes, tractor, sun, and lunch all forgotten, I could only stare as the bird remained suspended above me, beating her tiny wings into a blur of motion that it’s hard to believe exists in nature. It only took a second; I had just enough time to take in her tiny, gray, perfect little body, the curved beak—and then she was gone.

Such fleeting, up-close glimpses are an integral part of the organic farm experience. One of the more disturbing aspects of industrial agriculture is that pesticides, herbicides, and other inputs have left the environment of most factory farms unable to sustain any life aside from the crops that are growing there—no bugs in the soil, and no birds flying overhead, all victims of the chemicals that are considered essential for our food to grow. (For an example of recent stories about pesticide-related songbird die-offs, see here.) Ironic that much of the food that sustains us is actually grown in a dead zone.

But organic farms, with their healthy soils and plants, provide food and shelter for a number of animals (including bugs) that then return the favor by preying on pests, pollinating the flowers on some vegetable plants (including tomatoes), providing other useful services, and sometimes ignoring us and the farm completely. I frequently look up from work to see turkey vultures soaring overhead, or the comical site of large crows being chased by small killdeer birds. (Why they would do this is unclear to me, but they seem to enjoy it and I’ve never seen a crow turn on them and take advantage of its superior size to silence the yippers once and for all. Maybe crows are more patient that I am.)

Hummingbirds often buzz around flowers that contain nectar for them to drink, and tomato plants certainly don’t provide that. But I found some information on another gardening site that suggested that they’re attracted to the color red. There was also some speculation that hummingbirds will hang around tomato plants in order to eat fruit flies and other insects feeding on any damaged fruit. (Thanks to the tomato hornworms, we’ve still got lots of that.)

After some research, I figured that the one I saw must have been a ruby-throated hummingbird, since that’s the only North American species that regularly nests east of the Mississippi. Since it didn’t have a ruby throat, though, it must have been a female, which, like females in most species other than humans, is the less ostentatiously adorned member of the couple. Here's a picture of one, courtesy of wikipedia:

Worms as lab experiments

And, once again, back to the hornworms.

The whole “hornworms eaten by wasps” thing was really interesting to all of us, but the idea of leaving the worms on the plants, even as they themselves were being slowly digested by wasp larvae, was, um, problematic. How long did it take the worms to die and how much of the plant would they consume in the meantime?

So my colleague, Karen, educator and farm assistant extraordinaire, decided to do a little scientific experiment. (Karen comes by her scientific credentials honestly, having earned a Master’s Degree in Geology along with one in Education. So she combines an educator’s curiosity with the scientific know-how to back it up.) She caught a bunch of wasp-infected hornworms and stuck them in a plastic container with a couple tomato leaves and green tomatoes. She then left the containers in a corner of the greenhouse and we all sat back to see what would happen.

As it turned out, not much. After about a week, the wasps did, indeed, hatch, but they flew away and left the worms severely weakened but alive. I subsequently found some evidence on the Internet (http://www.gardengrapevine.com/TomatoWorm.html) that the horn worm needs to keep munching for the wasp to complete its life cycle correctly. Sort of a devil’s dilemma—kill the worm and the wasps won’t live to protect your plants; let the worm live and it devours your plant while in its own death throes.

The stock advice seems to be to move the infected worm to another part of your garden so that it won’t destroy your tomatoes as it dies.

Food and Community

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. As it often does, my life got in the way of my life. Various family members came to visit, we had to do two quick days in New York, etc. etc. The following post was actually begun before all this activity. I'm not exactly happy with it, but I'll improve it later.

Up here in Farm Country, it becomes really obvious how food can encourage community. I’d been having trouble articulating this until I saw a wonderful post on the online magazine Grist, celebrating Iowa farm markets. In the middle of a dissertation on how people socialize at the Farmers’ Market while they move as quickly as they can through the aisles of the nearest Wal-Mart, heads down, the author concludes, “It is another way that real food brings us together, while mass-produced food-like substances further divide and isolate us.”

But wait, you’re protesting, I’ve had fun times at McDonalds. I’m not saying you haven’t. But most of the time, McDonald’s—and most other processed food meccas, including the frozen food aisle of your grocery store—exist to indulge people’s need to eat fast and on the run.

Consider Michael Pollan’s description in The Omnivore’s Dilemma of a typical modern American family meal: “Over the course of half an hour or so, each family member roams into the kitchen, removes a single-portion entrée from the freezer, and zaps it in the microwave. . . After the sound of the beep each diner brings his microwaveable dish to the dining room table, where he or she may or may not cross paths with another family member at the table for a few minutes.”

OK, so we’re not all that bad. But lots of processed food is designed to be eaten conveniently in front of the computer or the television, or in the car, and is not conducive to conversation. According to Pollan, in fact, the new holy grail of the processed food industry is a meal you can eat with one hand, presumably with the other on the steering wheel.

Increasingly, we eat alone—as fast as we can. There is little room for dinnertime conversation, or even for savoring the food we eat. In this context, I can better understand the lure of the masses of starch that now masquerade as food. After all, it’s just fuel.

Looming heirlooms-- and why sometimes it's best to leave the pests alone

Reason that real food costs so much, #489: real vegetables are not bred to last.





I am talking here about heirloom tomatoes, which everyone has heard about while very few people actually know what they are. I went to the Wikipedia site on heirloom tomatoes for a straightforward definition-- and was thwarted by the "some people say this; some people argue that" tone of the article. Apparently the construction of simple declarative statements is a lost art. (Check out the Wikipedia site anyway-- it's got some good information on specific varieties.)





But I digress. Heirlooms are varieties of tomatoes (or whatever other "heirloom" plant you're investigating-- this wikipedia site is much more helpful) is essentially a cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier times in history, (i.e., pre-industrial agriculture) and is not used in modern agriculture. Of course, the cardboard-tasting red balls you can buy in the supermarket are not the only alternative to heirlooms-- there are many varieties grown by organic and small farmers that are also modern-day hybrids, which are easier to grow and store. The big point to remember is that heirlooms are quite a diverse lot-- they're all sorts of colors, shapes, sizes-- and eye-popping flavors.





So why do they cost so much? First off, the seeds are more expensive. More importantly, however, you can put tons of effort into growing heirlooms and get very little yield. There's a very small window between ripening and spoilage. Out picking heirlooms yesterday, I was initially excited to see all the splashes of red peaking out of the green stems. But going through an entire 100 feet or so of heirloom plants, I probably had to junk about half the ripe ones I found. Many had split, and many more displayed a black spot on the bottom that belied the beginnings of "blossom end rot". (In that case, you can often cut off the black spot and eat the tomato yourself. But forget about displaying it at a farmers' market or getting any actual profit from it.)



I also had my first encounter with the dreaded tomato horn worm. These caterpillars are not only the ugliest thing you're likely to see on the farm (compared to them, earthworms are positively gorgeous), but are some of the most destructive. In addition to actual tomatoes, they munch on new growth at the tops of the plants, leaving naked stems in their wake. I'm also told that their--ahem-- excrement is about the size and shape of goat droppings, but thankfully I have yet to encounter this particular sight.



My mother, who always grew a few tomato plants in her backyard garden, used to get these things, too. At the time (this was 30 years ago), she simply hit the whole plant with some kind of pesticide. This is, of course, a no-no now, particularly on an organic farm. Instead, we get to pluck the thing off the plant with our (preferably-gloved) hands, drop it on the ground and step on it. At least that's the simplest way. If you have a lot, you can apparently also drop them all in a bucket and then burn them.

Probably not the preferred method for the animal-rights community, who would have been gleefully laughing at me later anyway, when I looked up tomato horn worms on the Internet and made an interesting discovery. The particular horn worm I saw had a bunch of white fuzzy things sticking to its back, which made it look even more like something I really didn't want on my plants. Another farm worker (who will remain anonymous to protect his/her identity) told me that they were eggs. (See this web site for pictures of the normal horn worm and scroll down a little for a picture of the white egg-like things.) Turns out that they're actually cocoons of a small braconid wasp called contesia congregatus, which is a natural parasite of the horn worm. Apparently, once the cocoons hatch, the wasps will actually kill the horn worm-- and then go off and seek more to parasitize.

I realize that none of this is very appetizing. But the point is that the standard advice is to leave parasitized horn worms as they are-- they'll die soon enough anyway and the wasps will live to chew on another of its kind.

On the other hand, I'm still not sure I could have left the thing there to munch, even knowing its days were numbered.

Oniony entities and how to feel rather silly

"It's shallot day!" exclaimed Bob the Farm Manager, as I arrived to the first bright blue sky in days.





Evidently all the rain we'd gotten over the last week took a toll on Katchkie's shallots, which were soaked and in danger of rotting under their healthy-looking green stems. They needed to come out of the ground, even if they weren't ready yet. When I asked Bob how much longer they should have been in the ground, he replied, "I don't know; I've never grown these before." Huh.





I spent the next few hours pulling stems out of the ground, most of the time taking the shallots with them. Every few plants, the stems came up but most of the shallot stayed put-- it was rotted through and just broke. Or an entire shallot would come up, wet and mushy and hosting some very well-fed worms. The presence of worms does, indeed, prove that the soil is healthy, so the farm's ecosystem is working just fine-- the only losers are the humans who need shallots in their recipes.





Not to worry. The good shallots still filled three crates, which I promptly took back to the greenhouse and spread out on two tables to dry further in the heat.





But I wasn't finished in the "spicy herbs that people peel" department. There were three rows of garlic that also had to be pulled up. I had been out in the field a few days before, snipping garlic scapes, and just for fun I had tried pulling one out of the ground. No go-- it was embedded in there.



(In case anyone is lost, both shallots and garlic-- and all oniony entities-- are roots. The stalks that grow out of them are often edible-- as in the case of garlic scapes.)



This, I learned, is why farms have tractors. Or one of the reasons anyway. Bob went over all three rows with the tractor, cutting low enough that the earth was disturbed and the garlic came up easily. We then pulled up great bulbs of the stuff, often with lots of mud and the occasional earthworm. (Happy happy earthworms.) Getting all that healthy mud off the garlic bulbs turned out to be a chore-- we shook the bulbs, knocked them together, and sometimes just raked cakes of mud off with our fingers. Finally we piled all this garlic on the truck bed (also attached to the tractor) and drove it back to the greenhouse, where it was spread out on tables next to the shallots.

One of the garlic bulbs did go home with me, and Jeff spent the next two days trying to figure out why it was dry enough to cook with. Until, that is, Bob said something two days later about hanging the garlic in the greenhouse to cure.

Yet another tidbit from vegetable processing land: one must cure garlic before using it. It can't be pulled out of the ground and cooked the same day like an onion, no matter that it vaguely resembles one. Am I the only person who didn't know this?