redfern yardfarm

today's harvest

2010-09-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

Today's harvest: nearly 4 pounds of tomatoes,
1.5 pounds of pole beans, and a perfect cucumber.

Oh, tomatoes! We were hoping for a bumper crop this year. For the past two summers, Luella stole the show and our attentiveness to our favorite garden produce suffered greatly. In 2010, we pulled out all the stops and had high hopes for tomato salads every other night, thickly sliced Brandywines on cheese sandwiches for daily lunches, and plenty left over for ketchup and sauces for the cold winter nights ahead. It's September 10th... and I just harvested enough tomatoes for our FIRST tomato salad of the season for tonight's meal. Many tomatoes still on the vine are blushing. An improvement from the entirely green fruits I was frowning at just yesterday. The optimist in me is hoping we'll put up more than the 5 pints of ketchup that we made last year. Crossing fingers!

part two: pancake making

2010-04-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

No from scratch pancake batter is complete without a fresh egg. Gavin's two main chores are taking out the compost and gathering the eggs. Perhaps he is feeling a little territorial? Or maybe it's just more showing off for the camera? Anyway, enjoy this moment for the happy chaos.

Step two: gathering the egg for the batter

part one: pancake making

2010-04-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

When was the last time a loaf of bread was on my shopping list? Or a bag of flour? Or a box of cereal? Or Eggos? Okay, Eggos haven't made their way into one of my baskets for a while, but still.

Since this January when our new Nutrimill Grain Mill arrived via UPS, we have ground our own grain daily for sandwich bread, dough to form our own hot dog buns or pizza crust, cookies, and last but not least our morning pancakes.

More and more, conversations around me center around local food. "I just bought a bread machine, and I'm making my own bread!" "Have you guys seen Food, INC.? I'm thinking about going in on a pasture fed cow!" "I made jam this summer, and I brought some over for you to try." On these occasions, I shyly admit that we are grinding our own grain. Conversation stops, I get blank stares, and before anyone can get a word in edge wise (I can only imagine they must be thinking "how does THAT work?") I exclaim, "It's not that hard! It only takes a few minutes! It's a small counter-top appliance! It's only a little loud! We use a bread machine!" Doth she protest too much? The truth is, this little appliance, this little "extra" step is so outside mainstream family life, that very rarely do I encounter someone who has any idea what I'm talking about. I feel like I have three seconds to educate an acquaintance before their eyes glaze over. And I think I'm failing at explaining. Maybe it would be better to SHOW. Enter part one of making pancakes at our house. Before we begin, I have one huge disclaimer. It's not always this chaotic. We wanted to film the process with the kids, they are not always so involved. Gavin knew he was on camera, and acted accordingly.

Step One: mill the wheat, oats, buckwheat....
whatever grain suits your fancy. One or all.

heirloom lessons

2009-10-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

We've grown tomatoes every year for over a decade. Over that time, we've devised the best trellis system, a tried and true method of caring for our starts in the vulnerable early weeks of the season, and a list of the most successful varieties (Sungold Cherry Tomatoes top the list!). What we've often ignored are the late comers. Those green tomatoes that just don't have time to make the color change. After the yearly experiment of making Fried Green Tomatoes was completed, the majority found themselves tossed into the compost pile. Not this year. There is a world of great green tomato recipes and we have enough green tomatoes to try several.

Green tomatoes are so beautiful, they must be edible!

Unprompted, Josh's Grandmother Ruth sent us a recipe for Green Tomato Preserves. Accompanying the recipe was a nice letter talking about her nostalgia for the preserves. It got me thinking about how our food habits have changed over time. Decades ago, no one would throw unripe tomatoes away! They were a food source! How thoughtlessly I've discounted this fruit in the past in regarding it as a mere novelty. It should take a proper place at the table as part of the late season harvest.

Here's our great great grandmother's recipe. We made a couple of modifications to bring the recipe up to date which are noted in brackets. The result is near candy. We're excited to seek out the perfect meal to accompany the preserves.

Green Tomato Preserves
1. Peel and cut green tomatoes into chunks.
2. Weigh them, and stir in equal weight of sugar. No water.
3. Cook slowly and stir until tomatoes are transparent.
4. Skim off tomatoes and drain off syrup.
5. Cook syrup until thick as molasses.
[until syrup spins a thread when dropped from spoon]
6. Add tomatoes [and lemon juice] and boil, put in [sterilized] jars.
7. Seal or cover with paraffin.
[we canned in a hot water bath for 10 minutes]

Grandma Ruth, we'll put a pint of Preserves in the mail for you!
We hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane!

Urban Foraging

2009-09-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, that street tree is not only beautiful for its springtime blossoms or its brilliant fall foliage... it's a commodity. I'm looking at our urban landscape in a whole new light. Fruit abounds, and you don't have to look further than the next street over to find it.

At the beginning of this fruit season, I saw my mother-in-law's plum tree as a great big purple gift. Beautiful and plentiful and free and OURS (or really HERS, but we felt like we had the inside skinny.) We diligently reaped the harvest, spending multiple evenings putting up jam, chutneys, and preparing fruit to be frozen.

And just a few short weeks later, I am left with a sense of selfishness. I saw access to free fruit and it was like a drug... more mine more! I looked to my own fruit tress and willed them to produce. I pined (once again) for acreage and an orchard full of fruit for ME! Slowly, I've come to a new understanding. And I owe it to our friend Sal. One day, she comes bearing a local address of a plum tree. The owners are gone, and the plums free for picking. The next, she comes bearing a bag of grapes. And again with 40 pounds of pears from a local tree which we help her dehydrate for pear chips. She leaves us with quips like "Yeah, I'm off to go on a fruit tree hunt."

Apparently, I don't NEED an orchard. What I need to do is look beyond the boundaries of my yard, or my parent's yards. There is fruit in our neighborhood and there are neighbors who are willing to share. Thank you Sally Anne, the Urban Forager, for the lesson of generosity and industriousness. I look forward to the day when our trees produce enough to give away buckets of ripe fruit. Meanwhile... next summer, I'm going on a tree hunt.

Neighborhood grapes - They made a great snack all day long for the family. We made raisins with those we couldn't eat, but they were a failure. Next time, we'll pick just enough for fresh eating.

established in 2005

2009-09-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

Before I look forward, I want to take a peek at where we've been.

In four years, we've managed to:

Take-up 400 square feet of concrete.
Create a 10' by 23' vegetable garden.
Espalier 6 fruit trees, and plant an additional 3 to grow free form.
Establish a blueberry patch, native plant garden, and hummingbird flowerbed.
Build compost bins, install rain barrels and worm bins.
Build a chicken coop.

Purple Bliss.

Henny Penny (RIP), Lottie, and Fanny. Mom got to name these ladies.
Gavin had the honors this spring to name our
newest inmate. Her name is Bear.

Fox Glove in the native plant garden last summer.
Mom and Baby Lu on the front porch.

I'm beginning to think of what we've accomplished as phase one. Phase two is being planned. In the future, we would like to:

Remove all of the remaining concrete except for the front parking area.
Establish raspberry and asparagus beds.
Increase our vegetable growing space.
Create a private garden area in our side yard (now concrete).
Build a trellis for our established Kiwi.
Become members in a goat ownership co-op.

what's in a name

2009-09-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

home sweet home before it was home

We like to brag about our home being owned by a Old School Ballard Bachelor for 30 years before it fell into our hands. Our house was built in 1906, so I'm sure it has many stories to tell about all its caretakers. But Mr. Redfern, the bachelor, left an undeniable mark. The story goes that he bought the home from an old woman. When the old woman drove by after he'd moved in, apparently she burst into tears. You see, Mr. Redfern cut down every tree and pulled up every plant on the property. From day one of thirty long years, this plot of land grew only grass and concrete.

an endless sea of concrete... enough for six cars (or RV, or boat....)

When we bought our home, we didn't fall in love with the yard. We fell in love with the possibilities. Just our luck! A clean slate! An opportunity to mold our postage stamp of soil to match our fauna and flora fantasies! Jack-hammer the driveway! Dispose of the Round-Up! Dig up lawn!

So thank you Mr.Redfern, for leaving us a little piece of Old Ballard. A place where thrift won out over style (anything he installed in the home was salvaged) and where practicality of trade ruled (he was a part-time fisherman and part-time welder, explaining the concrete and huge garage). We delight in looking forward, to turn this piece of Ballard into a sustainable oasis. But perhaps we can move forward while still remembering the values of thrift and practicality. What are the basics of necessity? And how can we achieve those by being fair to our pocketbook, our health, and our planet?

Welcome to our Redfern Yardfarm adventure. I like to imagine the little old lady Mr.Redfern disappointed is smiling down us.

the inspiration

2009-08-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

The public library is my new best friend. Now that my daughter has a regular evening bedtime, the evening hours are mine again. I choose, among other things, to read. I'm slowly making my way through a built-up reading list. World Without End, check. Twilight, check. And then comes a book that makes me want to run into the county with a pitchfork and a packet of seeds. I'm not sure I'd EVER say I've been inspired in such a fundamental way. I want to change what we grow in our yard, where we buy our food, and how we use our kitchen. And my dirty little secret? I'm only one quarter of the way through this book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

We are tired of reading labels and counting unpronounceable ingredients. We are tired of making a difficult choice between an expensive organic product which busts the budget and its cheap corn syrup laden counterpart. We are tired of being unprepared at family mealtime and relying on pasta and red sauce every other night.

We want to be part of a solution. We want to feed ourselves and our children in the healthiest way possible. We want to put food on the table that came from the corners of the earth the closest to us. We want to do it within our budget.

And we want to do it right here in our kitchen and in our yard.