Eating Local Is Changing My Garden

I am a greedy gardener. When I plant a tomato I don't plant a tomato, I plant twenty of them. I couldn't ever possibly have enough tomatoes. Where some is good, more is always supreme. I suppose a part of me would like to think I could grow enough of everything to fill my pantry every year. Some people do that. Either my yields are disappointing, or we eat massive quantities of produce. (Both are somewhat true.) This year I canned approximately five hundred pounds of tomatoes that I bought from Bernard's farm.

Five hundred pounds of tomatoes. (Let that sink into your grey cells for a minute.)

Which isn't even enough to get me safely through to fresh tomato season again. The truth is, I couldn't possibly grow enough tomatoes to provide for my canning needs. I also canned about forty pounds of green beans. Plus at least thirty pounds of pickling cucumbers. (Although I really did get a good yield on the pickles from my garden and the quality was better than what we were able to find from elsewhere- this was not a good year for commercially grown pickling cukes.)

I am not going to be self sufficient in many ways, living on a city lot. I will always be depending on my local farmers to provide me with what they grow. And it works out well that way. I get all my canning produce from Bernard's farm because their prices allow for me to buy huge quantities to can with, and Oakhill Organics for supplementing my daily produce needs as well as my fall and winter produce needs. Needing to depend on local small organic farms is not a bad thing at all, I want to support them, we need them here- prospering. (Having more than one to meet my needs is even better, they do not grow all the same things and it's wonderful being able to buy from them both.)

The realization that I've been coming to in the last few days while I've been perusing seed and nursery catalogs is that my garden needs to shift focus a little bit. I need to see my garden as an opportunity to fill in the blanks that my local farms can't, or to grow things I typically can't afford to buy in quantity from them like potatoes and winter squash. Dried beans for storing are hard to come by with local sources and cost about three times as much as they do in the bulk bins. Can I grow enough dried beans to last me through the winter? It's an experiment worth trying.

Maybe. Maybe if I stopped using so much space for tomatoes. Tomatoes that don't produce as much as they could because they are so crammed in. Tomatoes are one of the most important things I grow in my garden because I love them the best of all summer vegetables (yes, I know it's a fruit) and I wouldn't dream of having a garden without them. I just think I might be able to use half the space I usually use for them for the same yield I'm accustomed to. It's worth trying.

Shelling peas are impossible to find anywhere. Shelling peas fresh from the garden are unbelievably worth the effort. They are tender, sweet, and a different creature from their frozen or canned counterparts. If you've never eaten fresh shelled peas...you really haven't begun to come alive culinarily speaking. I don't know what it's like to eat a heap of them off the plate because I never have enough of them to treat them like anything less than gold. My favorite way to eat them is on pasta with some meatier nuttier fresh shelled fava beans, asparagus, fresh herbs, feta, olive oil, red pepper flakes, and Parmesan.

I plan to dedicate a lot of space to fava beans and shelling peas.

Doing the eat local challenge has got me thinking quite a lot about winter gardens and early spring harvests. Getting through the leaner months has become much more important to me now. I can get a lot of great produce for reasonable prices at the farmer's market during the summer. What I need to focus on is saving more garden space for produce that can be harvested in the winter and early spring when it becomes so much harder to get things like lettuce, chard, leeks, and beets.

We had salad yesterday that consisted of lettuce from Oakhill Organics (not tough either) and pickled beets, two bean home canned marinated salad, some shredded cheddar, grated carrots (also from Oakhill), some of the last of our store of kalamata olives, and a fabulous dressing our friends gave us that they got in Pacific City (it's locally made!!!). Have I mentioned how much I've been craving salad? It's true that the salad had a very vinegary overtone due to all the pickled goods on it, but it really hit the spot.

So looking forward... January is going to be filled with some new and exciting activities: I am going to be doing the Master Gardener program through OSU which starts in January and ends in March (I just found out today that they still have a spot open in the program), and I'm going to make feta. If anyone has any great cheese making books to recommend or knows of any great on-line tutorials for making feta- please share!

For those of you planning your own gardens right now who might be interested in what I'm going to add to mine this year, here is a list:

Evergreen huckleberries (2) (to replace two dead rhododendrons)
gooseberries (1 "Poorman" and 1 "Captivator")
Jersey Knight asparagus (25 crowns)
Fuzzy male kiwi (1)
Saanichton fuzzy female kiwi (1)

Green beans (pole): Blue Lake, Ura, and Violet podded

Runner beans: Scarlett Emperor

Dry beans: Yin Yang, Etna, and Tiger's Eye

Beets: Early Wonder Tall Top (because it did really well last year)

Cucumbers: Wautoma pickling

Summer Squash: Eight Ball, Black Beauty (both zucchini)

Winter Squash: Gold Nugget, Buttercup, Hokkaido Stella Blue

Basil: Mammoth Sweet

Kale: Red Russian

This list reflects only what I'm buying, not everything I'm planting. I still have lots of lettuce, spinach, carrot, some winter squash, and slicing cucumber seeds from last year. I also won't be starting any tomatoes or eggplants from seed myself. I will also be planting seed potatoes that I already ordered from Garden City Seeds.

For my perennial fruits I am really trying to show restraint, not only because of the cost, but also because in my haste to get things established it would be easy to waste money on mistakes. I need to let my garden develop at a comfortable pace. I need plenty of time to track down samples of fruits I'm less sure of to taste and find out what I really think of them. I'm proud of how whittled down my list has become. (It started off at least three times as large as it is now.)

If I get my way, by the end of 2008 I will be a master gardener and a master canner. I would be more proud of that accomplishment than if I actually got myself a bachelor's degree.

Planning The Homestead Garden

Right now is the time to start planning what new fruits and vegetables you will be adding to this coming year's garden. The goal of any urban homesteader is to produce as much food as possible from whatever space is available. If you have room for it, at least one or two fruit trees should be on the list. Here at the Williamson Ranch we have already planted: two sweet cherries, two sour cherries, three apples, one pear, two plums, and a nectarine which will probably get shovel pruned this year if it continues to look so poorly. Fruit trees represent an investment in time, but will give you a whole lot of bang for your buck and for the garden space. If you want to can and preserve food, having your own fruit trees will make it almost free.

I love this part of gardening. The part where you look through catalogs and imagine what you want to be able to go out in your own yard to pick. I love reading about the different varieties that are available and whittling my choices down to the best ones for my region.

The challenge is to not over-buy and choosing what you will actually use. This is more difficult than you would imagine. For example, I am really intrigued by black currants. I would like to plant some. I have had a black and red currant jam that was really good, so I know I could do something with them...plus they are apparently packed with vitamin C. However, black currants are not particularly good for eating fresh. What I cannot find out is if the vitamin C content is still impressive if you preserve the currants. If drying them removes all the vitamin C benefit then are they really that useful to me? Does jam retain some of the fresh fruit's nutritional profile?

I actually have a bag of dried black currants in my pantry. I whipped it out yesterday to read about it's nutritional make up. No vitamin C is listed on the package. None? Drying it loses every last bit of scurvy fighting goodness?

To help me choose wisely this year I am going to outline a few questions I should be asking myself about every plant I wish to add to my collection:

Do I actually like it? You'd be amazed at how easy it is to convince one's self that a medlar is a must-have because it's so ancient and mysterious...surely it will be a gem? Yeah, be careful there cowgirl- medlars have to rot before they become edible.

Can it be preserved satisfactorily if I get a bumper crop of it? Apples are a great fruit to grow, but listen, if you don't like apple juice or apple butter or dried apple rings or apple sauce...if you only like apples fresh, then don't cover your limited space with apples just because you like them. Some day your apple trees will grow up and really start cranking out the fruit- more than you can possibly eat fresh or store in your root cellar.

Do I already have a spot ready for it? This is a super trap. It is so easy to look ahead at spring which is still many months away and imagine that there will be plenty of time to chop down that giant fir tree, dig up it's roots, and amend the soil in that spot to prepare it for your mini-blueberry farm. But be realistic. Do you know where you will put the things you want to order? If they come tomorrow will you be able to put them in the ground?

Is it hard to find? One of the biggest benefits of growing your own fruits and vegetables is that you can grow things that are very hard (or impossible) to find commercially. If Fuji apples are your favorite in the whole world and you can't get enough of them and don't want to pay for them anymore...go ahead and plant yourself a Fuji. But Fujis are everywhere. There are apple varieties you will never find in the store that are excellent. Go to apple tastings in the fall to find some more rare varieties to plant. Currants are difficult to find here in the PNW so growing them (provided I like them enough) is a really good idea. Tart cherries are also quite hard to find and I now wish I hadn't planted any sweet ones since this region is just covered in sweet cherries that I can buy for cheap when they're in season. Sweet cherries don't preserve well either so a bumper crop means the only thing on the menu for two weeks will be cherries.

Will it grow well where I live? Sometimes the reason it's hard to find certain fruits locally is because they don't grow well in your region. Believe it or not, bananas do not grow well in the Pacific Northwest. Even kiwis may be stretching the boundaries of what will do well here, and in this case I'm going to take a chance. Because I love kiwis and some people do grow them here, whereas NO ONE grows citrus here.


The main goal of my garden is to have something good to eat from it all year round. Kiwis ripen in the fall and can be stored for quite a while giving you some good winter fruit eating which is important if you are dedicated to eating seasonally. Asparagus is a must for me because planting it in my own garden means I can get it before it hits the stores. Asparagus is one of the earliest vegetables to pop up in the spring. It takes time to establish and as it is one of the only perrenial vegetables you must have a dedicated spot for it. It can produce food for you for up to twenty years. It's also often quite expensive to buy so planting enough for us to eat means I can have it for much less money.

Philip is not a huge fan of asparagus but I think he may find himself warming to it as we continue on our local eating path. If he doesn't eat it I can eat it all myself.

I look at the foods I like to buy and ask myself if they are things I can produce well myself. I don't cook a with a ton of raisins but now that I can't buy them I am wishing I had already been growing grapes last year and making some raisins for the pantry. So I'm looking at grapes for my yard as well.

Here's a list of the things I am thinking about adding to my garden: red currants, gooseberries, huckleberries (to put where a couple of my rhododendrons have perished), asparagus crowns, strawberries, grapes, black currants, rugosa roses (for the rose hips), kiwis, hops (this is just a dream perhaps), silvan berries, and quince.

The Hood River "Fruit Loop" Reprised
(In search of gorgeous pears)

I always have the urge to lie down in the middle of tall grasses or corn mazes and just look up at the sky through the canopy of green. Then I remember that I'm 37 years old and the world is populated by other people. What I want is to make everything more simple. I want time to stop. Right here in this moment. I want to look up and watch the clouds and be able to forget everything else. Can you see how cold and bright the air was near Mt. Hood? Can you smell the winter coming? Wouldn't this be a great spot to curl up in to hibernate?

Exactly 364 days previously I stood in this precise spot wearing different socks and shoes.

Never were we happier to see this very old (but working) gasoline pump. As you shall hear.

Finding this pub only one block from the gas station made a great finish to a dubious adventure.

I really don't know what it is about the Hood River "Fruit Loop", but I can't apparently visit it without having a very long unexpected day of it. My mom called me this week and told me about a "Pear Party" the Oregonian mentioned that was taking place at Rasmussen Farms and she thought it sounded like fun and would I like to go? It just so happens that I've been wondering where I am going to find some really good pears to preserve to finish off my canning season. It also just so happens that I had been wishing to somehow find my way back to Rasmussen Farms where there are huge bins of gorgeous pears and apples. So we decided to go, dragging my friend Lisa K. who is visiting us from North Carolina.

Last year's adventure to Rasmussen Farms with Lisa E. and three children was extremely stressful but I figured that was just because all the children hadn't been sedated properly with narcotics. I didn't realize that there is a nefarious hex spread over the Hood River region.

Visiting the farm itself was really nice. It was a gorgeous day and without the clamor of bickering children it was quite peaceful. We tasted some really awful Oregon wines and ports which repeated on me later...(how is that possible, anyway?)...and I bought 85 pounds of red Bartlet pears and a smallish box of apples. When we'd gotten our fill of fruit bins and farm dust, we headed down highway 35 and decided to take it all the way around the mountain as Lisa and I did last year. You really get to see some spectacular scenery.

It was portentous I think that earlier in the day we were discussing all the stupid decisions people make when visiting wild unfamiliar territory that leads them to die, or leads their friends to die and have to be eaten, or to them just being lost forever and ever. Mountains and snow have a tendency to swallow up unprepared people. I boldly stated that that's why I am not a wilderness babe. I also, somewhat unwisely, declared myself to be one of those people that tend to provision myself against calamity.

My mom, apparently, is not one of those people, and forgot to fill up her gas tank before embarking on this rather long day trip out of the known urban territory of Portland. I think that it's easy for Prius owners to get a little cocky about filling up their tanks because of the great gas mileage their cars get. So far, however, no one's been able to build a car that runs on air. Such a pity, don't you think?

We didn't discover this minor problem until we had left all humanity behind and were on the ribbony road that travels between the great steep densely treed hills in the Mt. Hood National Forrest. Right after we passed civilization. When the gas light went on and beeped itself against the happy chatter in the warm car, my mom pulled over in a panic. Realizing that she hadn't filled the tank was a bad moment. Lisa and I both thought we could travel a little distance after the gas light goes on since it's usually a warning to get yourself to a gas station. My mom wasn't convinced.

So we tried to think whether it would be better to go forward or to head back in the direction we had come from. I think I wasn't really scared, but when we stepped out of the warmth of the car into the early evening air I did think how ironic it was that we had no provisions against a cold night, even though I supposedly am a prepared person. It was flipping FRIGID outside!!

I don't personally own a cell phone, something many people find annoying, and I did think how fortunate it was that I was traveling with two cell phone users. I was thinking how there really are situations when a person is truly glad to have a cell phone. This was obviously a great time to have one.

Except that when you leave civilization behind you also often leave behind all cell phone signal power. That is when I felt a real frisson of fear. We flagged down vehicles and one lady promised to call the police or roadside assistance just as soon as she could get a signal on her phone. Her Great Dane was not fond of us.

We finally flagged down a guy in a dubious looking van who (luckily) didn't turn out to be a mass murderer and suggested that we head back in the direction from which we came because it was all down hill which would use less gas, and furthermore, he was sure we could travel a certain number of miles before the tank was completely empty. Smart guy, as it turns out.

My mom managed to drive the car on neutral most of the way back to civilization. After stopping someone else to ask about the nearest gas station we found we'd just passed the turn off to one. So we headed ourselves and our evaporating tank towards Parkdale. This is a charming tiny town that will have a spectacular view of Mt. Hood erupting should it ever blow. The most beautiful thing about Parkdale is that it has a very old gas station that pumps very fresh gasoline.

When we all sat for a moment and let out the tension, now replaced by some pretty satisfying relief, we were all able to notice how hungry we had become. Danger is a hungry business, in case you didn't know it. How lucky is a town that has, not only a gas station, but also a pub that brews it's own beer? The "Elliot Glacier Public House" has a great pale ale called "Parkdale Pale Ale" that they brew on site, really good simple food, and a really happy cozy atmosphere. It was so good that I know I'm going to have to come back with Philip and Max.

But the next time I come to the Hood River region I'm bringing the following provisions:

1. A gas can full of gas.

2. Water jugs full of water.

3. Food provisions.

4. Matches.

5. Blankets.

6. Flashlight.

7. Ham radio.

8. My most recent will.

9. A six pack of beer.

10. A bear trap.

11. A rifle.

12. A nail file.

13. A spare car battery.

14. Toilet paper.

15. Snowshoes.

16. A knife.

17. Roller skates. (you never know.)

18. Gum.

19. My Vespa.

20. Paper and a pen and a pin so I can pin a farewell note to my body before I die.