Victoria’s homegrown garlic

Most of us have noticed that the arena of locally grown food has been developing rapidly and attracting more and more people. These days, a straightforward vegetable garden is the tip of the iceberg. There are all different types of gardens; backyard, raised bed, rooftop, window boxes, community garden plots, urban farms, and school gardens.

There are the how local can you go types of challenges, like the ultra serious Dervaes 100 foot food challenge.  Even president-elect Barack Obama will have the opportunity to build an organic farm on the White House lawn through the WHO Farm project. I can’t wait for that day to happen!

The potential of seriously growing food crops in urban and suburban settings represents the next shift in food production. Gardens are excellent learning tools for children, bring people together, and feed people healthy food. Food miles are decreased, built landscapes are enlivened, and wildlife, especially insect species, are offered new habitats. We can create a new community of life by reinventing the land surrounding preexisting homes and infrastructure. 

Gardens are easy to neglect because gardeners usually do it as a hobby rather than as if their lives depended on it. What would it be like to take a household garden seriously, like you mean business instead of something to fall back on in the summer between supermarket or even farmers market trips? What if more of us spent a larger chunk of our time growing our own food by utilizing the assorted tools, methods and know-how that has developed over the last 30 or so years from the organic farming, urban gardening and permaculture movements? 

Homegrown lettuce

This summer, my goal was to grow a constant supply of lettuce and keep up consistently with garden maintenance. I have usually started with high hopes, then after planting, have assumed that I can sit back and relax. The bulk of the effort in gardening, as in most things, is at the beginning when everything has to be planted as soon as the earth warms.

Now, it’s November and I wonder: Is it wiser to start with a small garden and increase from there each year, or to set your sights very high and get inspired by the sheer abundance that the garden produces figuring out how to use the produce as you go? Setting high expectations with a willingness to be flexible seems the way to go. Maybe the only way to glimpse gardening as a viable way to produce more of our food in our future is to jump right in and find out.

I’ve seen and heard of farmers and gardeners who did not prepare for how they would handle and process their harvests. Tomatoes are a prime example. Tomatoes ripening on a vine branch will not wait for when we are ready to pick them. They have their own clock. The consequences may be that a lot of them rot, time was wasted in planting at all, or somebody had to step up and make some sauce.

Being challenged drives us to come up with new solutions, whereas if we choose to be negatively affected by the enormity of something, we will probably collapse. This positive tension brings us closer to others; often the only way for us to develop new solutions is by asking others to contribute their energy and expertise. This amazes me with hopefulness. Isn’t it funny that most of us have no clue as to the enormous potential that is waiting to explode if we tap into it? It’s similar to our own human capacity; we don’t know the strength of our bodies or the capacity of our minds to devise solutions till we test them out.

Homemade sauce from homegrown tomatoes

So this summer, I did set my garden sights high and I grew some new varieties of veges. But I also did fall short in consistently maintaining my garden. That was my biggest challenge; planting on time, weeding, harvesting and pruning. This shows me the gap between my highest ideals and my actual level of commitment. It also shows me the staggering potential of a small plot of land. And this potential is exciting to me as it is to many other Americans.

Planting a garden is only part of the responsibility. Harvesting vegetables when they are at peak ripeness and storing them correctly is just as important. In the last two months I have been busy preserving garden produce: pears, tomatoes, figs and lettuce. I harvested every day and preserved in small batches.

I referred to Putting Food By for advice. Through this process, I inspired a couple of novice gardeners to expand their own gardens and was able to feed friends, family and strangers too. Below are some examples of how I creatively wove various threads of my life together by preserving the harvest.

• First, I combined time spent repetitively peeling and slicing our hard neck garlic harvest (that started to rot in September) with listening to Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness talks. Hard neck varieties of garlic are not good keepers, but are big on flavor. Years ago, I learned from farmer Elizabeth Henderson that a simple way to adjust to this characteristic is to chop up the heads, pack them in small jars covered with olive oil, and freeze. Then move the jars to the fridge as you need. Although an initial investment of time, it makes for quicker cooking later on. Stepping back, I saw that all this chopping while listening to Ken Wilber’s integral theory could be understood from his AQAL model. This was a cross quadrant use of time, where I drew upon the upper right, exterior-individual (culinary intelligence), lower left, exterior-collective (agrarian), and upper left, interior-individual (intentions, spirituality).
• We could not eat all the lettuce I grew, so I gave it to a neighbor who delivers garden produce to a nearby soup kitchen called the INN- Interfaith Nutrition Network.
• Tossing out these purist ideals: only store in glass, never plastic, buy from small businesses, and pressure can.  Well, I visited my local, family owned hardware store, but they were not selling any large glass jars or earthen vessels. A few weeks later, I found the perfect sized glass jar at a Wal-Mart upstate. I bought it with reservations, but then decided that while it is good to have ideals, they shouldn’t cause me to waste time or be rigid about minutiae.  I started lacto fermented sauerkraut in it today. Some books to guide you in making your own lacto-fermented delights are Wild Fermentation, or if you’re making it with children, Bottle Biology clearly explains the fermentation process.
• Use what I have: Use all the jars and containers I already have:  glass jars, and plastic takeout containers, all good for freezing the harvest.
• Involved my family in the pre-processing preparation. My father was a big help trimming string beans, sorting beet greens and peeling garlic while he watched TV.
• Time Management: Breaking down big tasks of picking, sorting, cutting and blanching into size-able chunks, doing a little bit each day.
• Tailoring preserving to my time and space requirements. I decided not to pressure can, because I had small quantities of a variety of fruits and vegetables. I opted for freezing instead; tomato sauce, fig and nut conserve, frozen chard, frozen green and purple beans, peach jam, and basil pesto.  I poached the Bartlett pears; once in vanilla syrup and the second batch in red wine.  I gave these away as presents.
• Of course there is more to do: rotate my compost piles, dry calendula blossoms, and make parsley pesto for freezing.

Did you have an abundant harvest this past summer or enjoy preserving your harvest?  Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.