The Bounty of Farmville

So far, the posts about the Farmville Reality Project have focused on different things being planted or taken care of. Last week, we were able to move in a different direction with the post about making pickles. This week, due to many circumstances, it just seemed the right time to start talking about the "bounty" that comes from working hard to plant and take care of the many vegetables we've talked about the past few months. As much as I enjoy the work out in the project, there is an equal amount of satisfaction in moving into the kitchen and using all of this to create meals. We have been doing this daily for the past couple of weeks. Before we dive into the many ingredients for our great meals this project has provided, indulge me on other aspects of the project that are as important. The Farmville Reality Project has many aspects to it, and the people involved with making these many "moving parts" work is truly an accomplishment. The crew here bring things together in a way that is both unique and very productive. This crew will serve as the foundation for this project for many years to come. We tie together the many experiences of our past with a future that is exciting. Doesn't get much better if you ask me. The ages of this crew range from mid-teens to those of us a bit older than that. We are all in agreement in our passion about this project.

The first and most important thing that comes to mind is how a productive garden captures people's attention. I'm not implying this project is any more well known than it is, but we have quite a few folks keeping track of its progress and asking questions about how things are coming along. Many of these questions come from people doing something similar and the opportunity to swap information that might help all of us successfully raise things from our gardens is priceless. We may be idealistic here, but the more we can engage people in what it takes to produce a good meal, the better we position our society to solve many health related issues that plague too many of us. It seems the more people think about their meals, the healthier aspects of the meal choice takes on greater importance. A productive garden fits into this in so many ways. The other really cool thing from this has been the interest from a younger crowd, way beyond what I had thought possible. Both of my kids were raised smack in the middle of vegetable production and because of this, they are very familiar with how to use the many vegetables that were always sitting on the counter. Since this project started, their friends have taken an interest in how things are progressing and even comment on how much certain crops have grown since the last time they stopped by. One of the crew (I have to bust you out RJ) has even planted his own garden and uses Farmville as a "school" of sorts to learn more about raising your own food. It's been good to demonstrate how a weed patch that was formerly a parking lot for construction equipment can be quickly transformed into a project that feeds an army.

This leads into another area I believe many people that operate large scale gardens should think about. No matter how many hungry kids and other relatives you have, most gardens begin to out produce their demand curve by about August of each year. Not sure why, but I suspect it's the convergence of plant biology, human physiology, and half-ass resource economics all thrown together in a way that sane people call "Uncle" and realize they can't eat everything the garden produces. In the old days (I won't even get controversial and throw time frames out there), people would get started canning or drying the production to carry them through the winter months. Now days, this doesn't happen as much as it needs to and the potential for things to simply go bad "on the vine" is very real. What we are going to do here in Farmville if this starts to happen is to pick the vegetables and take to the local food bank. I have read numerous articles about how food banks are always short on fresh fruits and vegetables. I have also heard many anecdotal accounts on home gardeners having more produce than they can use or give away to neighbors. Seems to me, this could work out perfectly. We'll post later on if we are able to do this and how the logistics work out. First glance cries out "win-win" though.

Now, lets move into quantifying the "bounty" known as Farmville. The picture with this post was taken tonight, so the methodology was simply to walk through and pick different things. Only the onions, garlic, and potatoes came from an earlier harvest, but that's what we do do with those. Keep them in a cool, dry place and use as the meal dictates. The following is a list of what was picked from a ten minute walk through Farmville this evening. I truly hope it inspires people to plant more next year so they can fully appreciate this "bounty".

• Yellow Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• White Onions
• Torpedo Onions
• Garlic
• Yellow Finnish Potatoes
• Dill
• Basil
• Garlic Chives
• Chives
• Chocolate Mint
• Spearmint
• Serrano Peppers
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Anaheim Peppers
• Thyme
• Roma Tomatoes
• Slicing Tomatoes
• Yellow Roma Tomatoes
• Sage
• Rosemary
• Sweet Corn
• Asian Melon

As you can see, we have a very large variety of ingredients to use when preparing meals here in Farmville. None of this required anything too complicated and we will likely have more than enough to share with those less fortunate. We at Farmville hope this helps those that might have come late to our community better understand what we're doing here. More importantly, the hope is to get even more on board with how we approach things. Our approach is to make sure to make improvements where ever possible and be open minded enough to know how to accomplish this. Not an easy task, but the Farmville crew is a very unique crew, so I think we will get there. Wish us luck.

Pickles

It was a fairly quiet weekend in Farmville. The heat is making things grow like crazy, but it also means I have to stay on top of the watering. Some of the cucumbers were ready yesterday, so I picked them and did not have anything specific in mind to do with them. I made a salad from one last night, along with tomato, onion and mint. It was very refreshing in this heat. After cleaning up the kitchen this morning, I took a count and decided there were more cucumbers than what would be used in salads the next couple of days. Part of the Farmville crew is out of town at the moment and other crew members eat more fast food than they should, so the big decision was made to throw together a batch of refrigerator pickles to use them up. Another factor in this decision is that RJ has big plans to make pickles from his own garden this summer. I figured this could be a test run to fine tune things so when he is ready to make pickles, I can give him some "true life" perspective.

The concept for refrigerator pickles is pretty simple. You soak them in an acidic brine that preserves them. Since they are not canned in the proper sense, they have to be kept in the refrigerator and will only keep a few months. My research shows you can use this method with many other garden vegetables as well. If we get real ambitous around here, we might try this with squash, peppers, onions, and green tomatoes too. Every dinner table should have a nice assortment of pickles to go with the meal. These pickles will have all Farmville produced stuff in them. The only store bought ingredients are the vinegar and salt.

The picture of the ingredients on the white tray shows how simple the recipe is. There are cucumbers, garlic, onion, and dill. I cut the cucumbers into spears since that's how I prefer to eat pickles. The garlic was coarsely chopped and the onion was quartered. Dill, garlic, and onion are put into the bottom of the jars and then the cucumbers spears go in. Then you put the same amount of garlic, onion, and dill on top of the cucumbers, fill each jar with a solution of water, vinegar and kosher salt; cover and put in the refrigerator for a few days; then start eating them. Pretty easy, if you ask me. As the Farmville harvest picks up momentum, the plan is to post about the way the produce is utilized. Hopefully this gets people thinking about how best to make use of all the stuff we will no doubt be awash in very shortly. If there are suggestions, please let me know. One of the fun things about this is the possibility to expand my horizons and learn new ways to make great things from this project.

Harvest Time, Finally

It's been over a couple of weeks since the last post, but that doesn't mean things have been slow. Farmville has required watering twice a week lately because the warm weather finally arrived. That coupled with the almost nonstop wind out our way has made for some thirsty plants. While I water, I've been harvesting the earlier planted stuff like onions, garlic and potatoes. The top picture is garlic and it's not Elephant garlic, though the bulb size would make you think it is. I have no issue with Elephant garlic other than it's too mild for my taste buds. Also, as someone who has historically had issues with vampires and werewolves, weak garlic could let those two groups of evil-doers get the upper hand and then Farmville chores would really fall behind this summer. I put a quarter in the picture for reference. The white onions in the next picture are also much larger than I expected. I usually plant onions and garlic in November and harvest around this time of year. These were planted his past February, so I was expecting very few large sizes since they missed a couple months of growing time. I think the long, cool spring weather helped with the large bulb sizes. I put an older picture in here so you can see the progress.




The next set of pictures are the tomatoes, including the planting picture. Some of the varieties are almost five feet tall now and have double rebar stakes to keep them from falling over. The first ones picked were an heirloom yellow roma. The fruit (and the plant) are very small but still loaded with tomatoes. Some of the red varieties are beginning to ripen too and I will be fortunate to have vine-ripened tomatoes every day. Believe it or not, I never get tired of having them daily and have had quite a few others tell me they are on the same page too. Since the lateness of the tomatoes has more than likely contributed to me not being able to think of any good stories to write about on this blog update, I'll just ramble about a few random things that come to mind about tomatoes and call it good for now.

• One of the best treats after working in the hot sun all day is to eat a fully ripe tomato washed down with an ice cold beer. Makes all the hard work worth it.
• Speaking of treats, the first BLTs I make with these tomatoes will have home cured bacon I made from a whole pork belly last December. The producer is right here in Yolo county and sells at local farmers' markets. Should be a great combination.
• My brother and I used to make BLTs with cherry tomatoes. It was a lot of work cutting 20 or so in half and arranging on the sandwich, but well worth it. Plus, cherry tomatoes were what we had and as kids, you don't look at that as a reason to have something else for lunch, especially if the other thing you have is bacon.
• In medieval times, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous. Some say this is because the lead from the pewter plates in use at that time was leached out by the acidic tomatoes and poisoned people. Others say it's because tomatoes are in the nightshade family, which includes plants with poisonous fruit.
• The first tomatoes to ripen in Farmville were actually consumed over four hundred miles away. We'll have to work on keeping our "customer base" closer to the project (for many reasons) but there were special circumstances this time.
• This year, I might get around to an experiment I've been meaning to do for a few decades now. That is to use tomato hornworms for fishing bait. They are big and colorful, so the fish would have no problem seeing them. Also, not many fish are able to freely wander around tomato plants, so they have probably always wondered what these big, ugly worms taste like. I might just discover the next big thing in sport fishing.

OK, that's about all I can think of to torture the readers with for this post. There are a few other things starting to ripen as well. We have picked yellow zucchini, cucumbers, and basil too. The sweet corn is probably less than two weeks away and maybe a couple of melons will be ready right after the corn starts. Before we know it, there will be enough produce around here to feed an army. Since I have a small army of kids that seem to like my cooking, it's getting close to the "Meal of Epic Proportion" time. Might even have to do a few of them to use all these things up. Stay tuned...