I AM an Urban Homesteader

I don't usually count and weigh my produce. I eat it.
But, now that we are keeping score, here's some of what I am up to:

1 blackberry vine
2 grape vines
3 berry bushes
4 fruit trees
5 plots golden sunchokes
6 varieties of winter squash (red kuri, butternut, buttercup, baby pam pumpkin, Cinderella pumpkin, acorn)
7 varieties of summer squash (zucchini, yellow, pattypan, caserta, cocozelle, tatumi, round)
8 fava bean plants
9 colors of chard (white, cream, pink, green, lemon yellow, gold, orange, red, magenta)
10 sources of rescued spinning fiber (2 Ragamuffins, 2 Siberian Huskies, 1 German Shepard mix, 3 Spaniel mixes, 1 samoyed, 1 angora rabbit)
11 kinds of hot pepper (Bhut jolokia, serrano, jalapeno, giant cayenne, cayenne, poblano, NewMex Joe E. Parker, Espanola, Anaheim, bird, black pearl)
12 months of veggies!
No partridge. No pear tree. (yet)

End of this year's Locavore Challenge

Today is the last day of the 2010 Locavore challenge, and we have already eaten the last meal. I feel it is going out with a whimper. I wasn't able to convince all that many of my friends to join me in the locavore way. Sure, there are plenty of gardeners at the community garden who are local-friendly, but not as much as the folks closer to Ojai. This has been a tough year for many of my friends and others in my community, and I think that has alot to do with why more people didn't sign up.
I'll continue to be a locavore, at least where fruits and veggies are concerned. Every season, my own fruit crops and trading network grow. I am still having trouble getting local meat.
Tonight's plans were cancelled last-minute, and I didn't have much else besides the wonderful veggies from the garden. I stopped in at the garden earlier in the day and enjoyed the sunny weather and the company of other hardy friends, and harvested a huge basket of greens and sunchokes. We decided to stop by Fresh and Easy for some fish. There, we ran into the evening sale, and picked up some non-local salmon. I baked the salmon and served it topped with sauteed leeks, celery, fennel and serrano peppers I had harvested earlier. I served it with Osaka purple mustard cooked in kumquat marmalade with mandarin oranges. We enjoyed a huge sweet potato from the garden, and chunks of Belgian dark chocolate for dessert.
So it was mostly local.
What's for next year? I'll continue with my veggie gardening and increase the variety of fruits. Our two Manzanita olive trees are growing well and the Mission olive tree is producing nicely. This may be the year I figure out how to cure the olives, or at least press them. This year, I have nurtured two grape vines, a Eureka lemon tree, a blackberry vine and two blueberry bushes. I would like to propagate more this year. I would also like to acquire a banana tree and transplant the fig tree into a more desirable location.
It will be a good year I am sure.

Brain food

A week ago I harvested my first Jerusalem artichoke. I thought I would get a few small roots, since the plant had been attacked several times and had blown over during the Santa Ana winds. I was surprised to dig up a very large root, about the size and appearance of a brain.
The next day, the burrowing animals made a dash towards the remaining tubers and created a very large hole necessary to cart off the goods. So I harvested the other plant, and got another really large brain.
I really like the smoky flavor and texture of these chokes, and have let it be known that my temperamental potatoes are in danger of being replaced by a new BFF (best food forever). I think they got the message. After tearing out some old tomato plants, I found some really great potato plants, and they are trying their best to grab my attention.
I am now in the process of preparing soil for an additional choke bed. Thanks to Donna for introducing this new food to the locavores and for giving me the cuttings. Many folks at the community garden are also getting cuttings this year. They appreciate the perennial and drought-tolerant qualities, and it is just so cool to have pretty flowers all summer and then get all this great brain food at the end of the season.

Local potato chips

No, not THOSE potato chips, mine! Every year I try a few potato plants, mostly because they seem to come up on their own. I had never had much success with them, due to my soil conditions, hot weather, and my lack of knowledge. This year I planted some potatoes in a bed filled mostly with trucked-in soil and protected with hardware cloth on the bottom. They had been growing pretty well, so I hilled the soil up a couple of times. A few days ago, one of the plants wasn’t doing too well, so I decided to dig out anything that might be there before it rotted away. I was surprised to find 5 large, very high quality potatoes and one smaller one.

I had had instructions to bring home a leek or two, to cook a favorite chicken dish for my husband. When I arrived home and proudly displayed the potatoes, he said,

“Oh, potato leek soup!”

Now, that wasn’t what I had in mind at all. While doing other gardening chores, all I could think of was samosa filling. I didn’t have all the spices, or the pastry covering, but with a few substitutions, the re-engineered samosas could hopefully feed my Indian food craving. While I have eaten potatoes at my exception meals and out of town, the last time I cooked and ate a real potato was on Thanksgiving. Someone brought some Jerusalem artichokes to a locavore potluck, and they were wonderful, and surely something I will grow from now on, but there’s nothing like the real thing.

After much discussion about potato allocation, I realized I was too tired to make either dish, so I just whipped up a quick stir-fry and saved MY potatoes for later.

Last night we had potato leek soup. I still have four more opportunities, plus a bit for a pot of vegetable soup. Will one of the dishes be home-made potato chips? If so, they will have to be fried in home-churned butter or in what’s left of my gallon of local olive oil.