Urban Dacha

When I was very young my family lived in Northern Indiana. We would go for walks through fields and woods near my house and would pick up acorns and leaves and milkweed pods along the way. I loved playing with the silky threads inside those pods, which I would use to make hair to go under the hats of the acorn people I created. Today I saw milkweed for the first time since those days- at the New Amsterdam Market of all places! The foragers at Wild Gourmet Food were there from Vermont, nestled in among the cheese mongers and bread bakeries and wineries under the FDR expressway near the South Street Seaport- right in front of the now defunct Fulton Fish Market. They were selling wild mushrooms, wild ginger and -yes!- milkweed. I had no idea it was even edible, and when I asked the purveyor about it she told me that it could be steamed, sautéed or roasted just like asparagus. Or, she suggested, a more adventurous cook could split the pods along their spine, remove the silky strands, and boil them to make a cheese-like sauce for vegetables or pasta. Then the empty husks could be steamed or blanched and then filled with cream cheese for a unique party food. I couldn't resist. We bought a baker's dozen for $3.50 and were off on a culinary adventure.

Among foragers who write on the internet there is some debate as to whether milkweed needs to be boiled in multiple pots of water in order to remove its bitterness. Since the woman who sold the pods to me didn't mention anything about such onerous undertakings, I just sautéed the things for a couple of minutes in olive oil, added a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper, took a deep breath, and sampled. So how does it taste? The pods have a very mild taste and salt, pepper and olive oil were lovely on them. They do have a slight bitterness, but nothing that made them outright yucky. It is not dissimilar to okra, but instead of the mucosal slime those pods produce, the inner fibers take on a cheesy texture (only slightly slimy) when cooked- so in a way it's like eating a cheese-stuffed okra pod. They were an interesting adventure, but something about the texture is definitely an acquired taste. The Brain Trust declared that if he were "stranded in the wilderness and needed sustenance, these would be ok." I pretty much agree.

This was a fabulous year for strawberries! Early June farmers markets were stocked to the gills with green quart cartons of small, sweet-tart darlings. We bought six quarts for $20 and I set about preserving a taste of early summer. In Kazakhstan I learned to make a traditional style jam from my Turkish host family: 1 part fresh fruit to 1 part sugar. It makes a jam that is thin--more like fruit preserved in thick, sweet, flavorful syrup. We would eat it spooned onto fresh bread or stirred into a strong cup of black tea.

My book on preserved foods, Putting Food By, seconds this method. I added rhubarb to cut the sweetness and lemon and ginger to capture that summer-fresh taste. The Brain Trust had an inspired suggestion for a few jars- jalapenos! I boiled the mixture on the stove until it seemed to be thickening. Meanwhile I prepared my jars, washing them in scalding hot soapy water and boiling the lids. I also prepared a water bath for the filled cans.

I ladled the cooked jam into the pint jars and processed them in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. The result--delicious! The non-jalapeno version is an excellent jam--perfect on a slice of bread with some cultured butter or cream cheese! And the jalapeno version... well it's just out of this world. About 5 years ago in Austin Raspberry-Chipotle sauce was all the rage poured over cream cheese and served with crackers. This Strawberry-jalapeno jam is perfect for that purpose but instead of the dark richness of chipotle it has a bright fresh zing of fresh jalapenos. Definitely a summer recipe we'll keep for years to come!

For the first time, insect invaders have disrupted our happy home! This afternoon I noticed some odd white dots on the leaves of the succulent I bought at the farmers' market a couple of weeks ago. I leaned closer and discovered the dots had six legs each, and were in fact light green and pear-shaped. In short- the dreaded aphid!! The internet tells me I have basically three options (short of chemical weaponry): I can bring in an army of hungry ladybugs, I can spray the plant liberally with a mixture of detergent, vegetable oil and warm water, or I can chuck it. Bringing even MORE insects into the house seems a bit like swallowing a spider to catch a fly-- in other words not a solution at all, just a different sort of problem. I'm not ready to throw the pretty thing out. So I have sprayed it and am crossing fingers. Any advice is welcome!

There was a season of lettuce on our windowsill in April but whether it was the small volume or my general disinterest in lettuce we just never got too excited about it. We had a few cherry tomatoes and a lone jalapeno as well but those plants were so low-producing it seemed wasteful to keep the aerogarden plugged in for their sake. Now the only food growing in our house is a pot of mint and two scraggly basil plants (not hydroponic this time). I have a pretty good colony of aloe plants going from a kit that we received as a gift. They've outgrown their starter pot and seem to have survived their transplants to individual pots pretty well. I also have really lovely flowering succulent that I bought at the greenmarket a couple of weeks ago that is flourishing on the windowsill. It's been producing a lot of delicate orange flowers and has been really fun to watch.

The aerogarden is temporarily out of commission with a busted motor and our windowsill space is pretty well full but I'm not too worried about our lack of home-grown produce because the CSA season starts next week!! We've switched CSAs this year to one that has pickup right around the corner from our house. Sooo nice. Now instead of stressing out the entire dayabout whether I'll get out of work in time to make it out to the wilds of central Brooklyn by 8PM, the Brain Trust can meander over any time in the afternoon and grab our box of treats for the week. We're clearing out the veggie drawers and getting our kale recipes ready!

Today was my sixth Saturday working on the farm at the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn. I've mentioned the farm here before- it's a project of a small Brooklyn company called BK Farmyards which started up a little over a year ago to farm the backyards of brownstones and create a totally Brooklyn-based CSA. The Stacy Murphy and Bee Ayers, the two women who founded BK Farmyards, are cool cats and you can learn more about them and the company here. Every time I go to the farm I get a taste of what an apprenticeship will be like in the future- strenuous, dirty and a bit monotonous but instantly rewarding as I see a lawn transformed into a local food source--not just before my eyes but by my hands!

Today our project was digging out the last four beds, breaking up the clods of dirt, raking in compost, covering with landscaping fabric to ensure the demise of the sod and keep down weeds, and, finally, planting! We planted Swallow Eggplant today. Going down the rows on my knees, reaching my hands into the soil to make room for the seedlings, and easing the loose soil in around the young plants makes for an incredibly satisfying couple of hours! I will admit that I prefer the planting to the digging, and Bee and Stacey are kind enough to offer my many opportunities to indulge that preference. So far I've planted turnips, dill, collards and callaloo in addition to today's eggplant.

The community is increasingly engaged in and curious about the farm. The number of students coming to work with us has steadily increased since work days started in March. That's students coming to school on SATURDAY to dig in the dirt!! And every time we work some pedestrians will stop and ask about the project. It feels good to be contributing to such a dynamic community improvement project.

One final note- the biggest lesson I've learned over the last weeks is that grass sod is inedible, resource intensive, and incredibly difficult to get rid of. Why bother?! I'm not lucky enough to have a yard just yet, but I will take this opportunity to encourage you to kill your lawn- or at least a bit of it. For just a couple of hours a week you can grow food or herbs or flowers or put in some bioregion-appropriate plants that will require basically zero maintenance. The bees, birds, bugs and maybe even your neighbors will thank you! (and I will admire you even more than I already do!)

Do not be alarmed. We are still here, holding down the fort here with the yuppies of park slope. Life has been busy since our trip to Austin! The sun is out, the tomato plants are fruiting, I'm dancing and gardening my booty off every weekend, the Brain Trust and I are busily plotting the Dacha of the Future, and everything is generally swimming along.

This past weekend my dear friend J. and I drove up the Hudson Valley to the Culinary Institute of America to attend a class on Artisan Bread Baking. It was a fabulous way to spend a Saturday. We watched and helped to mix the doughs for 6 different breads. We manipulated the doughs as they rose, shaped 6 different types of loaves, put them in the huge industrial ovens and removed them with wooden peels. Then we took our loaves home to feed our friends!

We made Sourdough, Ciabata, Baguettes, Cinnamon Raisin, Pizza dough, Onion-Cheddar Rolls. A couple of universal lessons about all these breads: use INSTANT yeast rather than active dry yeast; make a starter or sponge the day before you mix up your bread dough to improve flavor; the time available to make your bread is inversely proportional to the amount of muscle you need to prepare it; resist the urge to add more flour--if the dough is sticky you need to work with it more. I'm going to try out my new skills over the next couple of months using the shiny new recipe book that I also got as a part of the class.

Saturday night J. and I invited our friends over for a Breads and Spreads extravaganza. We asked everyone to bring a favorite bread topper and we provided the bread we'd baked that day. The spreads and cheeses were AMAZING. The stars of the evening were an artichoke-lemon spread that my neighbors made and a horseradish ale cheese spread that my dear friends Jason and Jacy brought. MMMMMMMM horseradish!! My favorite bread was probably the Ciabata because it was delicious, had amazing texture, and I know how easy it was to make. The Cinnamon-Raisin bread was a close second with a smooth soft texture and a really lovely cinnamon flavor.

This adventure has inspired me to think about bread as a potential part of my future cottage industry. Has anybody out there used or built a mud or brick outdoor bread oven? How did it go?

Greetings from the Austin, Texas outpost of the Urban Dacha! It's been a whirlwind couple of days reconnecting with friends and family, eating piles of delicious tex-mex and remembering the great things about this city. Speaking of great things about Austin, yesterday we went on the 2nd annual Funky Chicken Coop Tour http://fccooptour.blogspot.com/ with our friends Len and Trenn (these pseudonyms may or may not rhyme with the actual names of said friends).

17 chicken keepers from all around the city volunteered to open their backyards and farmyards to the public for the day so that we could see the incredibly variety of coops and chickens that already exist around town.

Some participants are in suburban neighborhoods and keep a few chickens for home egg use and for the joy of keeping chickens.

Others, like Green Gate Farms, keep chickens as well as pigs and goats as livestock and use their eggs as well as their meat as a source of farm income.

Also on our tour, though not on the official route, was Boggy Creek Farm - an gorgeous urban farm that I had never visited before, despite having grown up in Austin.

It was a beautiful, if hot(!) April day in central Texas and it was a joy to be outside, driving around town, soaking in the sun, and talking about agriculture with dear, like-minded friends. It was motivating to see how much can be grown and raised on just a few acres of land inside the city limits of one of my very favorite cities on the planet!

It's hard to feel the seasons in the city. Sure, the temperature and the light changes. Summer means long evenings on bar back patios at night and brunch outside on the weekends; winter means grey slush and getting home from work hours after dark. But in terms of growing things and seasonal eating, without a yard to guide me I rely on the farmers' markets to teach me what foods are in season. Now that the thaw has come and there will soon be more than root-cellared onions and nitrogen-preserved apples at the markets, I'm going to start a semi-monthly feature highlighting a seasonal fruit or vegetable or product and the farm that grew/made it.

This week is a bit of a cheat--I did not actually take note of the name of the farm where I bought my veggies this week. In fact, my realization that I hadn't noticed was part of the reason that I decided to start this new feature. Also, the featured veggie this week is the parsnip, which is not actually in season right now. (Though in my defense, here in the Hudson Valley NOTHING is really in season right now so for the time being I'll celebrate the miracles of effective cold storage. The Union Square Saturday Market this week was still featuring apples, potatoes, onions, and not much else in the way of produce.)
So we'll call this a preview- The Parsnip!

A parsnip is a root vegetable and looks like an ivory-colored carrot. The ones you find at the grocery store can be quite large and woody and what drew me to these was their diminutive stature. I easily selected about a pound of small spears no more than 6 inches long. They can be eaten raw or cooked, and were once used as sweeteners in Europe before sugar was widely available. In the New York area they are in season in April and May and then again from October through December. With my haul I made a carrot-parsnip gratin with a cotija cheese-breadcrumb topping.

After months of chomping at the bit I finally got my hands in the dirt today. I volunteered for the afternoon at BK Farmyards' Youth Farm at the High School for Public Service here in Brooklyn. We literally broke ground today and it was both fun and inspiring. The idea is that over the next five years the growing space will expand from ¼ of an acre (this year) to a full acre that stretches in front of the school. The students are an integral part of the farm plan and the teachers are full of ideas for class integration. The two most interesting I heard today were that a history teacher wants to use part of the farm to grow plants from Mesopotamia so that students can have hands-on experience with ancient grains, and a health teacher who wants to grow medicinal herbs. For creative teachers, the tie-ins are really endless so there will be lots of opportunities for the school community to get involved. There is also a high public service hours requirement for the students at the school, which they can fulfill in part by working in the garden in their free time. The plan for this year is that school families (students and staff) will have an opportunity to buy CSA shares in the farm, so that they can enjoy the bounty of this new project as well.

Today we started building the farm's compost system and marked out the first appx. 1200 square foot planting area. We wrapped shipping pallets in chicken wire for the compost and dug out the walkways between the planting beds so that they can be filled in with wood chips. Within the first hour, with the beds marked out, it was already possible to envision what it will look like with plants growing in the black earth. There were about 20 people there altogether. Some were students and teachers at the high school, some work for BK Farmyards, and others, like me, just interested volunteers eager to lend a hand and learn more about growing things in the process. It was a nice community feeling and Bee Ayers, one of the founders of BK Farmyards, lead warm up/icebreaker that helped set the tone of community and collegiality. Happily no one was expected to know how to do anything and we all felt comfortable to ask questions- I think it's going to be a great learning experience and I'm planning to become a regular at their Saturday workdays. You can check out what else is happening with BK Farmyards here including a really yummy looking fundraiser dinner on April 11!

I'm really feeling the transition from winter into spring this year. I'm on the verge of a pile of new and interesting stuff but most of it hasn't quite started yet. Ever since the Young Farmers Conference in December I've been itching to get out and play in the dirt but it's been cold and snowy and just not a time when the urban farms of Brooklyn need my enthusiastic volunteerism. But now the sun is out and it's in the 70s(!) and I have both short term and long term irons in the fire; schemes that are designed to hone skills, educate myself about my interests, build community, and establish cottage industries here at the Dacha. Among the projects that may be starting up in the next couple of months (in order of the likelihood that they'll actually happen):

-Farming at a school farm with BK Farmyards (this one's definite- starts next Saturday!)

-Making and selling wooden art on Etsy and at craft fairs (already in the works- visit my fledgling Etsy store here)

-Dancing in a Brooklyn-based super-fabulous parade troupe

-Baking 6 different loaves at an artisan bread class at the Culinary Institute

-Visiting small farms and farmers markets in some of the cities on the Future Farm Short-list

-Attending an evening dinner church that a college friend started

-Coordinating a CSA with a farm in Pennsylvania

-Participating in the proposal process for a nationwide school gardens initiative

-Identifying agriculture and food related 9-5 jobs that I might want in the future

-Farming in Red Hook,Governor's Island or Greenpoint