It's Finally Over

The 2013 garden is finally over. We finished storing the last of the produce today. I prepared the last Roma tomatoes for freezing. Dennis and I sorted the sweet potatoes, separating the damaged ones from the sound ones. I will prepare the damaged ones first because they won’t keep well. Dennis carried a bushel of the sound ones to the basement, where they will keep all winter. I put the few remaining turnips in the refrigerator vegetable drawer. I sorted the last of the peppers, giving some to the chickens, setting some aside to dry, 

and chopping the remaining ones to sauté with onions.

The only things remaining in the garden are a few kale and Swiss chard plants, surely destined to freeze to death this week, and six parsley plants. Parsley, a biennial, will live through the winter and grow tall seed stalks next summer. We always keep the second-year parsley because it is a favorite food of the black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar.

There’s nothing left for me to do except keep an eye on the cold frame seedlings, which will begin to produce in January or February. Dennis, on the other hand, still has to talk some farmers into letting him have truckloads of manure, which he will spread on the garden to decay under the winter snows.

My back hurts and I’m dog tired, but now I can relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor. Bring on the books. I’m going to read, sew, and cook until March, when the gardening season will begin again.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

Remembering Lard

Here’s a piece I wrote sometime in July, 2008. I have a special reason for posting it now, but more about that in a subsequent post.

Remembering Lard

Right out of the chute, let’s recognize the negative connotations of the word “lard.” These connotations can be summed up by citing the epithet “Lardass.”  It’s associated with ugly fat on human bodies.

But my memory of lard is quite different: a pleasant, nostalgic yearning for something I can’t have now. Lard came in a shiny tin can, creamy white and malleable. It was not hydrogenated and had to be stored in a cool place to deter rancidity.

Grandma Holden, standing at the kitchen cabinet with its roll-up door and 25-pound flour bin, would open the flour door and sift more flour into a big bowl that always sat below the sifter. She set the bowl on the enamel counter and made a cavity in the center of the flour using the back of her hand and fingers to push the flour aside. Here’s where the lard comes in: she opened the lard can and dug out a blob with her fingers. She dropped the blob into the flour cavity, added some baking soda and salt and began to break up the lard with her fingers, gradually incorporating flour until a ball of crumbled lard and flour formed. A lot of unused flour remained in the bottom and up the sides of the bowl. Finally she poured in some buttermilk, which she gradually folded into the lard ball, drawing in additional flour as needed. When the mixture reached a consistency that suited her (the standard was never clear to me), she began to pinch off pieces of the biscuit dough, shaping them into biscuits with her fingers, and setting them into the waiting pan. Finally, she put the pan in the oven, and returned the flour bowl to its place below the sifter. Not a crumb of dough remained in the flour, which was perfectly clean and ready for the next batch.

These biscuits were “shorter” than today’s biscuits; that is, they had a higher proportion of shortening to flour than biscuits made by careful measurement following a recipe. They were not as tall, but crisper and more golden. Slathered with butter and sorghum molasses, they were heaven.

With her lovely lard and the flour bowl Grandma also produced tender, flaky piecrusts, using a very similar method of hand-mixing in the flour bowl. No buttermilk, of course, or baking soda; just flour, salt, lard and a little water. When it was time to roll out the crust, she pulled open the flour bin to retrieve the rolling pin, and dusted the enamel counter with flour. She pinched off half the pie dough, quickly formed it into a circle, laid it on the floured counter, turned it over once so the rolling surface would be floury, and rolled a nearly perfect circle of dough.

After the pie was assembled, Grandma trimmed the crust edges with a table knife and fluted the edge with the fingers of her right hand, while her left hand kept the pie pan turning until the fluting was finished. Pie in the oven, Grandma gathered the dough trimmings into a loose ball, rolled it thinly, put it in a baking pan, and sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon. This confection, warm from the oven, was fair game for anyone who wandered through the kitchen and cared to break off a piece for immediate gratification.

Finally, lovely lard was the medium for fried chicken. When fried chicken was on the dinner menu, Grandma went to the back yard, caught a chicken, whirled it over her head until its head came off in her hand and its body flew through the air, landing somewhere nearby. Often the body would rise up and run about frantically before dropping in a heap. Grandma would have ready a kettle of boiling water, which she fetched from the kitchen. Holding the chicken by its legs, she poured the boiling water over the carcass to loosen the feathers. Then she began plucking the feathers by great handfuls until only goosebumpy skin remained.

Grandma tossed the carcass into a big enamel pan and proceeded to the kitchen to wash and gut the bird, pluck any remaining pinfeathers, and cut it into pieces with a butcher knife. Cutting produced two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, two back sections, one neck, a wishbone and one breast.

As for the frying, Grandma melted lard in a big cast iron skillet to a depth of an inch. She rolled each chicken piece in flour seasoned with salt and pepper and dropped it into the hot lard. A few minutes later the aroma of frying chicken filled the house, luring children into the kitchen. Stealing a piece of chicken would not have been tolerated, but nibbling the crispy bits of coating that fell off when the chicken was transferred to a platter was overlooked.

After a lifetime of preparing meals, I have yet to make anything as tasty as Grandma’s biscuits, pies, or fried chicken. If only I could get my hands on some creamy white, non-hydrogenated lard!

*A wishbone is a piece cut from the breast nearest the neck, and it was my favorite piece, principally because of the after-dinner ritual of pulling the wishbone apart. The ritual required two people, each holding one side of the wishbone, making a silent wish, and pulling. When the bone broke, the person left holding the  piece with the top of the bone still attached would have her wish come true.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

Back to Chickens

Maybe I write too much about chickens, but they are an essential part of our daily lives and it’s hard to ignore them. We visit the chicken yard and house at least three times a day. They have to be let out of their house every morning. Their feed trays have to be filled, their water checked and replenished if needed, their eggs gathered. Then their house has to be locked up after they go to roost, not to prevent them from escaping, but to deter nighttime raiders such as raccoons, weasels, and foxes.

This afternoon, the golden elm leaves lured me outside. Elm leaves usually just turn brown and fall off, but this year they have surprised and delighted us with leaves of pure gold.

After admiring the foliage, I checked on the cold frame seedlings, and naturally gravitated to the chicken estate. I thought the girls might enjoy a couple of scoops of scratch*.

Indeed, a welcoming committee was eagerly awaiting me at the gate to their yard.

Dipping the scoop into the can of scratch reminded me of the days when we kept the food in the big paper bags it comes in. Mice always got into it, ate holes in the bags, and generally made a mess. Finally we had enough sense to put the chickens’ food in covered metal containers. We also keep a bag of crushed oyster shell to supplement the hens' diet. It takes a lot of calcium to make egg shells.

Just two weeks ago Dennis and Laurie, our chicken co-owner, thoroughly cleaned the chicken house. They removed all the straw from nests and floor, scraped chicken droppings off the roost and nest tops, and washed the floor with vinegar. Already fresh manure is building up on the nest box covers, where a few of the hens prefer to roost. Apparently they poop frequently during the night. The concrete blocks make it easy for the hens to hop into the nests.

Chickens are curious birds. This barred rock came into the house to see what I was up to. Seeing the camera, she struck a pose, possibly hoping to be included in a chicken house feature in House Beautiful.

*“Chicken scratch” has a number of meanings, all derived from the mixture of grain and cracked corn that chickens enjoy eating and scratching around in with their clawed feet. “Chicken scratch” also refers to bad handwriting, a style of embroidery, a style of guitar playing, and even dance music developed by  the Tohono O’odham people in southern Arizona.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

Reconstruction

When the weather turned chilly Dennis and I were discussing the need for a warmer cover for his bed. I remembered a comforter we bought when we were maintaining a house in Lexington, Kentucky, as well as our house in Paradise. It has been stored in a plastic bag in the basement, and used only when overnight visitors came.

Dennis brought it upstairs, opened the bag, and exclaimed, “There’s a big hole in it!” Sure enough, there it was, an odd oval cut out of the top layer of fabric.

How or when this happened is anybody’s guess, but I suspect a small child with a pair of scissors. Not that I’m naming any names. Maybe it was a poltergeist.

This morning I spent four hours repairing the destruction. This involved finding an appropriate fabric, cutting two patches (one hidden under the other) and sewing the patches over the hole by hand.

I figure it took not more than two minutes for someone to cut the hole. So, let’s see, since I spent four hours repairing it, that’s a ratio of one to one hundred twenty comparing destruction to reconstruction.

Hand sewing leaves a lot of time for thought. I thought about baking a pumpkin pie. I thought about when the rain might hit. I thought about the destruction of our global environment that has occurred in the past sixty or so years, since the conclusion of World War II.

If it takes one hundred twenty times longer to repair destruction than the destruction took, then we are looking at 7,200 years to repair our environment if we get started right away.

Holy moly, I’m not going to talk about that.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

I'm Not Going To Talk about That

I’m not going to talk about global climate change any more. When I do, people look at me strangely and change the subject. They would rather talk about their most recent vacation or where they will fly next time. They couldn’t care less about global climate change, which is staring us in the face, while we watch football games on TV or read a really good historical novel.

Not everyone is uncaring, though. Twenty-five percent of Americans favor civil disobedience to protest our government’s lack of action on climate change. A Google search for “climate change civil disobedience” yields 313,000 hits. Some are duplicates, of course, but clearly there’s a powerful movement afoot. I’m not going to talk about that either.

I’m not going to talk about NOAA’s chief scientist, who urges civil disobedience against the burning of coal. I’m not going to mention that the Sierra Club has called for civil disobedience against climate change.  I’m not going to acknowledge that scientists, priests, geologists and many others have been arrested and done jail time for protesting against climate change. Nope, you won’t hear it from me.

Instead I’m going to post pretty pictures of food and pretend that climate change is not serious or even real.

Parsley Salad with Pickled Egg Garnish

 Leek Slices

If you're concerned about climate change, if you hope to preserve the world as we know it for posterity, if you are looking for someone to inspire you to join the protest, don't look to me because I'm not going to talk about that. 

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

The Endless Garden

My concept of gardening has changed dramatically over the years. When I was a girl, my dad planted in the spring, harvested in the summer, and that was that until the next spring. He never dreamed of planting a fall garden. Dennis’s dad did the same. Consequently, For several years Dennis and I gardened the way our fathers did.

Although I experimented one year using a hot bed for starting broccoli seedlings, our first real break with tradition occurred when I traded my neighbor a printer for a cold frame she built at an Extension Service workshop. Having the luxury of home-grown lettuce in winter made us true believers and we have continued planting cold frames in the fall ever since.

It’s plain to see that the cold frame works like a miniature greenhouse. Look at all the moisture trapped under the lids this morning, some of it running in rivulets down the plastic covers.

Dennis planted kale, baby bok choy, spinach, and lettuce in mid-October, and here are lettuce and baby bok choy seedlings, up and getting their first true leaves.

Still, we needed to replant kale, which didn’t germinate very well, and spinach, which didn’t germinate at all. We accomplished that in half an hour this afternoon. Now all we need is four fresh bales of straw to set around the back and sides of the frame for insulation.

When I ventured into having a fall garden, planting escarole, radicchio, turnips, Swiss chard, and other cool-weather vegetables in early August, we became year-round gardeners. Fall greens are better than spring-planted ones because there’s no hot-weather bitterness to them. They go on and on, even after a frost.

I had been thinking that the big garden was finished for this year, but when I visited it this afternoon, I realized that the big garden is never finished. Something is always growing there, whatever the season. The parsley is going strong, cilantro volunteers are thriving, and dill volunteers are ready to harvest for salad additions.

What’s more, the garlic and shallots planted last month are taking off and will continue to grow any time the winter weather warms. Here the young garlic fronts four remaining leeks that we planted in May. Swiss chard, on the left, is still growing, too.

Gardening is no longer a seasonal affair. It goes on all year, cycling over and over. I wish my dad were here to enjoy it with us. To be truthful, I’d like to show off for him.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer

Another Obsession

I’ve become stubborn in my old age. For one thing, I am stubbornly dedicated to purchasing things made in the good old U.S.A.

Believe me, this obsession doesn't make life easy, but when so many in our county are unemployed, how can a citizen in good conscience buy new goods without knowing where they were made? Luckily, the Internet is a great help.

A few days ago Dennis and I were finishing our usual breakfast of toast and eggs and trying to add honey to the last bites of our toast. The honey, which I had transferred from its original glass bottle into a plastic squeeze bottle, was almost gone, and one couldn’t squeeze that bottle hard enough to get the honey out.

Right then and there I vowed to buy a honey pot, one with a lid that accommodates a dipper. We eat a lot of honey and I could keep a pretty honey pot on the table all the time instead of hiding an ugly plastic bottle in the cabinet.

Here’s where the Internet enters the picture. There was no need to drive from store to store looking for an American-made honey pot; I could shop on line. I searched for "honey pot" and found a jillion of ‘em and, thanks to similarly-obsessed-reader’s comments, I was able to identify those made in other countries. Even France’s famous Le Creuset has its honey pots made in China!

What a waste of energy it would be to transport my new honey pot halfway around the world! I wanted a beautiful honey pot made in the U.S.A., and by persistence I found one. It arrived today, one of a kind made by Rising Sky Artworks in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

I am a relatively happy woman, but don’t think I’ve gotten off my high horse about single-use plastic. Shopping for groceries today I glanced down an aisle I never use and was struck by one side of the entire aisle filled with single-use plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

What a contrast, huh? One lovely, useful thing that will last beyond my lifetime compared to a whole lot of ugly that will never go away.

Copyright 2013 by Shirley Domer