Fermenting

Buy this book! And don't take it to bed with you to read before you go to sleep. (I made that mistake a couple of times, and finally had to take melatonin to get to sleep.)

Fermented food is really, really good for you. I won't go into it here, but there's plenty on the web - and in this book. Suffice it to say it provides your body with lots of healthy bacteria.

Below are some of the recipes I've tried.

Dill Pickles

These are the real McCoy, deli dills, the kind Jewish delis give you with your corned beef sandwich. Couldn't be easier. Made with my own pickling cucumbers and garlic, and organic dill from the market. And I used my own grape leaves for tanin to help keep them crunchy.

Some of my kids like them. Most of them don't. I think they're the best pickles I've ever tasted, so I'll make them every year - just not as many! (I ended up with 30 litre jars.)

Sauerkraut

Martha gave me 5 beautiful, large heads of cabbage from her garden this summer, so I tried my hand at sauerkraut. Disastrous. The whole thing moulded. I discovered why at the farmer's market a few weeks ago: summer cabbage doesn't make good sauerkraut. What you need are winter cabbages that have been hit by a good frost a couple of times.

Restarted a batch a couple of weeks ago, and it smells and tastes glorious!

Kimchi

This was a bit trickier. Although one of my daughters loves kimchi, I've never had it, so I have nothing to compare it to and no way to gauge whether it's good or not. Undaunted, I made both the fruit kimchi and the "regular" kimchi from this book, and they seemed to turn out fine. But again, no way to tell.

Then I walked into the convenience store a few days ago and took a good look at the owner.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Are you Korean?"

"Yes." He looked curious and puzzled.

"Excellent!" I smiled. "Guess what I did this afternoon? I made kimchi!"

"What?! You did?!" He was quite taken aback - and clearly delighted. I explained that, since I'm not sure what I'm doing, I'd appreciate being able to bring some in and get some pointers.

"Of course! Bring it in and I'll have my mother try it. She makes kimchi all the time!"

With a bit of luck, I'll get not only feedback but maybe some tutoring!

Kefir

Kefir is easy. Mix about 1 tablespoon of kefir grains in a cup or so of milk and leave it on the counter for 12-24 hours.

Strain the kefir through a strainer, and use the grains in the strainer to start the next batch.

My favourite breakfast is kefir blended with either fresh peach or pear, a bit of fresh grated ginger, and half a teaspoon of raw honey. Yummy!

If you leave the kefir in the fridge in a sealed container for a day or two after you've strained, you can make kefir cream cheese. Put a coffee filter inside a strainer inside a deep bowl, and pour the kefir in. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge for 24 hours. Voila! I like it best with Hungarian paprika, finely chopped green onion, and a bit of salt on toast.

The clear liquid on the bottom is whey, and can be used to start other ferments. Just keep refrigerated in a sealed container.

The nice thing about kefir is that the grains multiply. So you can either start making larger batches or give some away to your friends.

Kombucha

Kombucha started off being quite simply, then suddenly got complicated. Michelle gave me my first SCOBY (symbotic colony of bacteria and yeast). This is the "mother" that ferments the tea. I've been using organic teas, but it may work with other teas as well.

First I did a black tea. Delicious! Then I did a Tazo chai. Even better! After a week, I had a refreshing fermented beverage. I know Michelle did a second ferment with hers: she removed the SCOBY and stores it in the fridge with a cup of kombucha, then added candied ginger to her jug of kombucha and left it on the counter. And it was quite delightful!

Then, when Michelle brought me some more SCOBY, I decided to try 3 at once: chai, organic cold-brewed coffee, and blueberry & ginseng herbal tea. I was on a roll!

One night about a week later, I was still awake at midnight, so I decided to go check on the kombucha and pour myself a glass. To my utter dismay, all three were covered in thick, powdery, green mould. I was up until after 1:00 researching what had gone wrong. Here's what I learned:

• Kombucha should be kept out of direct sunlight. Check. I had them in a cupboard.
• Kombucha should have plenty of airflow. Nope. I had them in a cupboard.
• Kombucha should be kept away from sources of humidity. Nope. I had them in the cupboard next to my stove during canning week!
• Different ferments should be kept away from each other to prevent cross-contamination. Nope. They were all nestled together in the same cupboard - albeit on different shelves.
• Kombucha should be kept warm. Hmm. Not sure about that one.

For my next batch, I steeped the tea, added the SCOBY and 1 cup of kombucha, covered it with a tea towel to allow air in and keep light out, and placed it on a heating mat in the pantry. Bad idea. Too warm. When I checked it after a week, it was so acidic that it was undrinkable.

So here's how I do it now: I steep 5 teabags and 1/2 cup of sugar in 6 cups of boiled water for a while. (The longer, the stronger.) When it's cooled, I pour it into a 2-litre wide jug, add 1.5 cups of kombucha and the SCOBY, cover with a tea towel, and put it in the pantry. Lots of ventilation, no cross-contamination, no light, and sufficient temperature. After a week, voila! Perfect kombucha!

(I tried coffee again, but found it too sweet and too strong. Didn't like it much, so I gave it to Michelle, who said it tastes like her mother's iced coffee.)

Ginger beer

I've loved ginger beer since I was a small child, that lovely hot, sweet, cold, bubbly drink! So I was looking forward to making my own.

The first batch was a bust. I started the ginger "bug" (1 cup of water, 1 tablespoon of fresh grated ginger, and 1 tablespoon of sugar). By day 2, nothing had happened, so, as per the instructions, I added grated ginger and sugar. I did this again on day 3. By day 4, there was visible mould growing on top. Yuck.

So I dumped that out and started again with organic ginger. Worked like a charm! I had a nice bubbly ginger bug by day 2, and carried on with the rest of the recipe.

The first batch, I forgot to add the lemon, and thought, No big deal. And it wasn't. It was still good - very good. The second batch, I remembered the lemon, and what a difference! Within 2 weeks, it tasted very similar to how I remember ginger beer tasting.

Honey wine

And now for something completely different! I had several cups of raw honey that my son brought back from Russia. Very unusual taste, and it was already starting to ferment, so I thought this would be perfect for starting honey wine. Not sure what I did wrong, but it, too, went mouldy. I'll let you know if I try it again with any better success.

Preserved lemons

Not technically "fermented", but preserved with salt nonetheless. Cut the (washed) lemons - preferably organic - from top to bottom in an 'X', but not all the way through. Pack a teaspoon of coarse salt in the centre, and pack in a glass jar. You can push them in tight. Then, when you're done, press them down several times, seal, and enjoy them on your counter for two weeks. A bit of lemony sunshine! Very popular in Moroccan dishes.

Foraging

This year we expanded our search beyond our vegetable garden and started to forage. There's an abundance of wild fruits and vegetables if you know what you're looking for.

Apples

A few weeks ago, Mike got together with Martha and Isaac and their sons for a couple of hours of apple picking - all organic, all pretty much wild, and all free. We took the apples to an Amish fellow near here who pressed them into apple cider, and paid $16.50 for 15 gallons. By the time I'd canned it all, we had over 50 litres of apple cider. (If I'd filtered it, it would have been apple juice.) Nothing in the store compares, maybe because we used so many varieties.

Grape leaves

I started making fermented dills, and learned that the tanin in grape leaves helps keep the pickles crunchy. And guess who has wild grape vines growing up the side of the barn? Bingo!

Elderberries

I didn't get around to making elderberry wine or syrup this fall, but there are lots of elderberry bushes just walking distance from here. So that's a project for next fall.

Milkweed

Apparently tender young milkweed pods are wonderful fermented, much like capers, but better. Then I noticed that our lower pasture is full of milkweed, so I'll be trying that next fall, too.

Wild garlic

In the summer of 2014, we dug up some wild garlic from the ditch in front of our neighbour's farm and stuck it in the back garden, not expecting much. When I went out this spring, I was disappointed to see that they hadn't come back - until I noticed that they had, with a vengeance. Some of the bulbs were a good size, and they'll all be divided up this week and replanted.

Maple syrup

 Turns out most of the maples we have are hard maples - which means we can tap them for sap and make our own maple syrup! Martha and Isaac used to work in a sugar bush, and I'm sure they'll give us a hand until we figure out what we're doing. It'll mean a bit of equipment and a small sugaring shack, but once we're set up, we can do it every year.

Walnuts

Mark has a walnut tree - and doesn't like walnuts. So we got them all last year, and they all went mouldy because I didn't know what to do with them. The tree didn't produce anything this year, so I'll try again next year.

Dandelions

Dandelion jelly. Wow! We'd gone to visit Michelle, and she gave us a taste of some dandelion jelly that someone had given her. Sweet and suble and delicious - like honey, but better. I will never again be dismayed by their sunny appearance all over the property!

Wild edibles and herbs

Next spring we're going with Michelle on field trip to learn about wild edible plants and healing herbs. Really looking forward to that!

Adventures in Gardening - 2013 - 2015

2013 - the year of winging it

In the spring of 2013, we started seeds indoors, rototilled and planted. We'd ordered probably $500 worth of seeds, and got as many of them in the ground as we could. We had no idea what/how much we'd like/use and what we wouldn't, so the more, the merrier.

We were pretty clueless. (Remember, we weren't gardeners of any sort, and never had been.) We got 3 rows of potatoes in the ground, and as we were leaving the garden, feeling quite satisfied, I turned to Mike and said, "Uh - how will we know when they're done?!" Clueless.

The potatoes did well, and the tomatoes produced more than we'd expected. Sadly, we had no root cellar for storage, and had no plan in place for harvesting and storing, so there was a lot of waste.

We spent 100-150 hours that winter figuring out what went wrong and what we could do differently the next year.

I made charts and lists of everything, including what we bought to can and how many jars we got, what seed packets we still had left, and what we'd have to order for spring planting.

2014 - the year of doing marginally better

In the spring of 2014, we'd sifted some of the rocks out of soil, but it was in serious need of amending. Again, we planted and watered and weeded and tended and nurtured. The tomatoes were abysmal - except for the cherry tomatoes which seem to thrive in adversity.

We also did marginally better with harvesting, but storage was an issue. Mike had built a root cellar, but it wasn't yet vented. We put the squash in there with the potatoes - and they all moulded. Turns out squash don't like root cellars. They much prefer a drier, warmer home.

We spent 100-150 hours that winter figuring out what went wrong and what we could do differently the next year. But we were starting to get a handle on how much of each we needed to plant. Really not much point planting things neither of us liked - unless we were going to do a market garden, and that wasn't happening any time soon.

2015 - the year of starting to have a clue - and seed saving, foraging, and fermenting

In February of 2015, we moved a large shelving unit in front of our south-facing bedroom window and started loading it up with seed trays on heating mats. (We start everything except potatoes and sweet potatoes from seeds.) Much better! Tons of tomatoes and peppers, onions, celery - you name it, we had it.

I also started herbs. Those went into trays on mats in every south-facing window through the house.

Less success with sweet potato slips. I followed all the instructions for starting your own slips, but the sweet potatoes just didn't root and eventually rotted.

By April, a lot of seedlings had been transplanted to peat pots. I still hadn't figured out which plants are happy to be transplanted and which aren't, so it was still pretty much hit and miss.

Now the garden was starting to look more like a garden. Weeding was still a challenge, despite the landscape fabric that we'd put between the rows the previous year. The sun and weather deteriorated it, and the weeds came right through. But it was still a vast improvement from 2 years ago. In fact, a friend of mine who has glorious flower gardens referred to me as an "illustrious gardener." What?! Clearly she hadn't seen Martha's garden!

Cabbages were a disaster. Out of a couple of dozen red and green cabbages, only 1 of each survived. Bugs ate them all. The nappa cabbage did well, but you couldn't really tell that's what it was. (More research needed.) The bok coy however thrived. And if you don't cut it too far back when you harvest, it keeps growing.

The peas were a big success, but next time I would plant different kinds in different rows. Snap peas and shelling peas look remarkably alike! And they were planted a bit too close together, which made finding and harvesting them a challenge.

The strawberry patch thrived and gave us enough strawberries this year for jam. As of this writing, some of them are still in bloom!

The asparagus astonished me. What had gone is as tiny little plants in the spring of 2014 are now tall, strong, vigorous plants. We'll be able to start enjoying them next spring. I can hardly wait! Fresh asparagus roasted with olive oil, salt, and fresh garlic. Yummy!

Tomatoes and potatoes were a bit of a sad story. Blight. (More on that in another post.)

The corn didn't do so well. It developed late in the season and was dry, mealy, tasteless, and not at all sweet. And many of the cobs never fully developed. (Apparently they weren't properly pollinated. More research required.) I managed to get about 4 dozen cobs which I blanched, cut off the cobs, and dried for making dried corn pudding. We'll see how that turns out.

We also planted climbing green beans amongst the corn - maybe not the best idea because they took over and caused some of the corn stalks to buckle under the weight.

Garlic did well, but we need to find better storage techniques because some of them dried out and some moulded. We should have plenty for planting (100 the first year, 200 the second year, and 300 this year), but we won't have much left for our own use.

The squash grew alarmingly well, and threatened to take over 6 rows in the garden. Yikes! They're getting their own garden next year, well away from everything else.

We planted 32 pickling cucumber plants, complete with trellises. Some of the first planting died off or were eaten, so I just stuck seeds in the ground where I pulled out the dead ones, and they did just fine. We got enough pickling cucumbers for 2 dozen jars of dills.

And I finally have an herb garden, planted between the spokes of old wagon wheels. Very aesthetically pleasing, but not terribly productive. Maybe not enough sun, maybe poor soil, or maybe they just need another year to get properly established. I'd like to start a larger one in a sunnier spot with better soil in the spring.

Luke dropped off a load of horse manure in the summer which will be worked into the garden shortly. And Isaac and his grandson came over this past week and ploughed the garden with a pair of horses. That was something to see! - both the process itself and the finished result.

Our knowledge expanded this year to include seed saving, foraging, fermenting - and vacuum sealing dry goods, which I'd never heard of before. And these were all so exciting that I'll dedicate a post to each of them!

Adventures in gardening - Part 1

Our first spring, we rototilled the garden and planted everything - well, not quite everything. Actually, it seemed like a lot, but I don't think it was. But it was a lot for me.

I'm not a gardener. I've never been a gardener. When I lived in Brampton and my sister would visit from Connecticut, she'd plant flower gardens in front of my house, and friends would come over to weed when the gardens became overgrown from neglect.

I once had a small vegetable garden - repeat, once - 3' x 12'. A friend dug 3 feet down in clay and filled up the bed with all good things: compost, organic fertilizer, peat moss, sand, and bone meal. It was rich and loamy, and my plants loved it. I grew herbs and a few tomato plants and a zucchini that climbed the wall up to the second-storey windows. It was spectacular.

From then on, I grew herbs. Herbs are lovely. Most (except basil) are perennial and are perfect for non-gardeners like me: I like to cook with fresh herbs, and I don't want something growing that I have to fuss over.

So here I am now with a vegetable garden that's larger than my entire property in the city: approximately 3,500 square feet. This is what it looked like this year (add on 1.5' between rows):

Longer days, shorter days

I was almost 60 before I discovered why long days are long and short days are short.

 Here's what I noticed after I moved to the country:

In the summer, the sun rises in the direction of 2:00 and sets in the direction of 10:00.

In the winter, the sun rises in the direction of 4:00 and sets in the direction of 8:00.

It has to travel a whole lot further during the summer to get from sunrise to sunset - hence, the longer days.

Okay, seriously, I never noticed this before? Nope, I never noticed this before - likely because all the buildings got in the way!

Something in the air

On our second visit to what was to become our new home, Jane warned us that the farmer who owns the land around us would be spreading manure from time to time. I smiled. Although I'm from the city, we used to drive through the country, and the smell of cow manure reminds me of wide, open fields and my childhood. It's strong, but not objectionable. No problem.

In mid-February, six weeks after moving in, snow ploughs started clearing snow about 300 yards to the east and west of us. I was curious but unconcerned.

Shortly thereafter, massive tractor trailers started dumping manure, and the sight of them heading into the fields filled me with quiet dread. I watched in morbid fascination as they dumped load after load, sometimes late into the night, a stone's throw away from us. And it didn't bode well.

At some point, I went outside - and the smell made my eyes water, made me gag, and nearly brought me to my knees. I had nothing to compare it to, and nothing could have prepared me for the putridness of it. I dashed back inside. For the first time, I wondered if moving here had been a mistake.

I didn't know what it was, but I knew it wasn't cow manure. Turns out it was chicken manure - chicken manure slurry. And I can assure you that it may be the most vile smelling stuff on earth.

None of us wanted to leave to go anywhere - not for groceries, not for mail, not for anything. And if I did have to go out, I held my breath until I was in the car with the windows up and the doors closed.

And it wasn't just the smell. As Emily put it, you couldn't even opt to breathe through your mouth because it felt like it got into your mouth as well. I've gone through the thesaurus looking for a word strong enough to describe that fetid smell, and nothing does it justice. It smells - evil.

I wondered if it was just us, being city folk and all, but, no, the neighbours were as horrified as we were. Mark said it was "just ignorant" to dump all that so close to our house. And Grace was upset that she couldn't hang laundry on the line or leave her house. Even Chimney Man Dan commented on it when he was here installing our wood stove. "Whew! I grew up on a farm, and I never smelled anything like that!"

We kept candles and aromatherapy diffusers lit in the house for a week, which is about how long it took for the smell to subside - or for us to get used to it. Actually, by the end of a week it had dissipated considerably. At least it was bearable. But the smell wasn't entirely gone until later that spring, after they'd worked it into the soil and done the planting and we'd had the first good rain.

The good news is they only do this every few years. There now, that's not so bad, is it?!

And so here's a list of manures in order of nasty, from worst to best (according to some):

• chicken
• rabbit
• pig / sheep
• cow
• horse (which has almost no smell and isn't at all disgusting)

Happy farming!

"Snow Squall Warning in Effect"

Living in the country and having a vegetable garden, Environment Canada weather has become my favourite website.

We knew there was going to be frost last night, likely the first hard frost of the season (below 0⁰C), so we spread plastic over the peppers, sweet potatoes, and melons and weighted it down with rocks. (When Dennis ran a new line from the well to the house a couple of years ago, he broke his backhoe on the boulders, so we have no shortage of rocks.)

The red banner across the top of the Environment Canada webpage said, "Snow Squall Warning in Effect" - red for warning, not yellow for watch - with possible accumulations of 10 cm.

Sometimes I'm like a small child. When I woke this morning, it was still dark. I was about to roll over and go back to sleep when I remembered. There could be snow! It could be a winter scene outside, the ground carpeted in white, the trees laden with snow. I jumped out of bed and pulled on my slippers.

Even in the dark, it was evident out the kitchen window that the ground was bare and the sky was cloudless. Jupiter was clearly visible to the east.

Fortunately, the plastic held despite the wind, and I'm fairly certain the remaining crops survived last night's cold. A few more days, just a few more days, and everything will be harvested and stored for the winter. How satisfying!

P.S. - The Environment Canada snow squall warning is still prominent on their site, and the forecast for today reads as follows:

Flurries and local snow squalls ending early this afternoon then a mix of sun and cloud with 40 percent chance of flurries or rain showers. Local snowfall amount 2 to 4 cm. Wind northwest 20 km/h. High plus 4.

The sky has been a blinding blue all day, and the sun is shining to beat the band. Happy gardening!

"Where there's livestock..."

It was a Wednesday in mid-September and I'd just dropped Mike off at the airport. Off to California to help look after his aging mom for 6 weeks. She has Alzheimer's, so it wouldn't be much fun for him. As for me, I had the house all to myself - well, if you didn't count Boots, Miss Marple, Sherlock, Sasha, and Charlotte.

Friday morning I wandered into the kitchen to plug in the kettle. As I headed to the bathroom, I noticed something out of place on the laundry room floor and went to inspect. It was a new-born kitten. And there was Boots, the mom, on the other side of the room giving herself a bath.

I scooped up Boots and the kitten and settled them in a spacious bedroom closet upstairs with an old quilt and food and water. Great. More kittens. That's all I needed. Still...

I checked on them throughout the day, and by early afternoon Boots had delivered 5 healthy, thriving kittens.

That evening I headed out at 6:00 to feed Charlotte, but she didn't butt in like she usually did. She just lay in the straw making strange noises. Puzzled, I turned on the light and went to check on her. Piglets. I'm not sure how many, but those were definitely piglets, and they were squealing. Well, that would explain her size. Maybe she shouldn't have been on a diet after all.

Not wanting to intrude, I left her food for her, turned off the light, and tiptoed out.

I stopped by Martha and Isaac's to share the glad tidings. I was feeling quite buoyant. Not that we needed more animals to care for, but there's still something uplifting about new life. I was wondering if I should open a fertility retreat. So many baby animals!

Martha and Isaac said they'd stop by the next morning to check on Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Boots wasn't taking much interest in her kittens.

After coffee on Saturday morning, I took Martha and Isaac out to the barn.

"Oh, you've got her in the grainery," Isaac said. He lowered his head, but I could see the grin. "This is just fine. Protected from the wind, lots of straw."

He picked up a long stick and walked up behind Charlotte, nudging her in the rump. "Come on, piggy piggy. Let's have a look at those babies."

With some coaxing, she left her straw bed, and Isaac stood looking long and hard at ... nothing. Martha, too.

"Oh, dear," said Martha, "she's eaten them."

"She's what?"

"She's eaten them. They do that sometimes."

Isaac shrugged. "Where there's livestock, there's dead stock."

Martha shook her head, tut-tutted, and looked over at Charlotte. "She looks tight."

"She looks what?" I was struggling to keep up.

Martha went over and patted Charlotte's underside. "Tight. She's full of milk."

"Oh." What else was there to say?

When Martha and Isaac left, I went to check on the litter. Not good. Boots seemed pretty indifferent to her new offspring. While they mewed in the closet, she sat on the window sill looking out over the front yard. I moved her back into the closet and got a couple of the kittens latched on, but Boots had no intention of staying there.

I went online to research pigs eating their young. Yup, it's a real thing. It's called "savaging". Turns out domesticated pigs do best with a human midwife and an experienced sow to show them the ropes.

One of the kittens died that evening. Later that night, I warmed some milk and tried feeding the weakest kittens with an eye dropper. Hopeless. I clearly had no idea what I was doing.

I studiously avoided the kitten nursery the next morning. I'd cried most of the evening over the piglets and the state of the kittens, and I wasn't up to dealing with more bad news until I'd had my coffee. Only one was still alive. Three more had died during the night. The last kitten breathed its last mid-afternoon.

I spent the rest of the day wandering through the house and crying. So many dead baby animals.

I called Luke the next morning.

"Can you come and get Charlotte?"

"Sure. I'll be by later."

He and Gary came and picked her up that evening to sell at auction the next morning.

She sold for $1.

Charlotte

"$5 each or $10 for all three."

Luke had pulled up in front of the house with three pot-bellied pigs in the back of his truck, two females and one male. They were cute in an ugly kind of way, and larger than I'd expected.

We had a barn, so technically we could have a pig. But the only part of the barn fit for anything was the grainery. And I knew nothing about raising pigs. Not to mention you can't use them for food. I hear the meat is quite pungent.

"No, thanks," says I, and headed into the house.

When I returned to the porch a few minutes later, I learned that Emily had bought me a 200-lb. black female pig.

I looked at Luke and he looked at me.

"What if this doesn't work out?" I asked.

"No problem. Give me a call and I'll come and get her."

I wanted to name her Wilbur, but she was a she, so I named her Charlotte instead. We set her up in the grainery with food and water bowls and a huge pile of straw for bedding, and she seemed to settle right in.

She wasn't the world's friendliest pig. In fact, she was quite wary and suspicious. But if I could creep up behind her and scratch her back vigorously, she would stand still and seemed to like it. At least she never complained.

And she certainly didn't disappoint when it came to rooting. She dug up all the grass and weeds outside the barn door. That whole area turned into a vast muddy mess when it rained. And she was nothing if not thorough. Where she'd been digging, there wasn't a root to be found.

Charlotte's belly nearly touched the ground, so we had her on sparse rations. Feeding time was 6:00 p.m., and she was always eager to get in our way while we filled her bowl with chop, added water, and mixed. Technically, she was Emily's pig, but we all took turns feeding her.

I stood looking out the pantry window towards the barn one evening at twilight. Emily and Travis had gone out to feed Charlotte and the light was on in the barn - for the first time since we'd moved here. There was life in the old barn again, a living, breathing animal: livestock. I rolled the word around in my mouth. And in that moment, I was perfectly content.