Dropstone Farms

So, as previously mentioned, we are aiming to do the 3rd Annual Dark Days of Winter Eat Local Challenge (!) aka Dark Days. The challenge is to eat one meal per week that’s as Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical as possible — for the whole winter pretty much! November 15 to March 31.

One of the things I feel compelled to do to start with is to 1) rearrange the criteria and 2) define “local” and our exceptions.

Because we tried (and mostly failed) to grow commercially this year as well as for ourselves, my first stop on this project would be to have the meal be as homegrown as possible. This year was our first year raising poultry for meat so it’s exciting to be able to have a complete meal grown by hand (since I can’t grow enough soy to make tofu, yet if ever, so local vegetarianism is still out). But, on account of how we mostly failed, I also need to learn to be easy enough on myself to move on to my next criterion — Local. We are fortunate to have lots of farmers within a 20-mile radius at the Bainbridge Island Farmers’ Market and winter market, and even more within a 100-mile radius if we make it over to Seattle for the U-District or Ballard markets. And we are even more fortunate to know many of our favorite farmers personally, and even when we don’t, to have enough visibility into their methods to be completely confident in the ethics and the sustainability of their products, even if they aren’t certified Organic (now a USDA-owned term that doesn’t mean too much to me at all, really).

So — I’m going with Homegrown, Local, Ethical (re: animal welfare, labor practices, and land use) and Sustainable (re: labor practices, land use, and economic viability), Organic. (HLESO isn’t as nice as SOLE though.)

The other question is — what does local mean? What are our exceptions?

Laura says:

What does local mean?
Traditionally, local food challenges call for a 100 mile radius. Winter time is more difficult in many climates, especially if you’re new to eating locally, so my default definition is 150 miles. You can choose to make your radius smaller or slightly larger as you need. Typical exceptions are oils, coffee, chocolate and spices. If you’re making fewer or more exceptions, please note that on your first post.

Our 100-mile radius

We’re in a bit of a strange but sweet spot as we are in the middle of Puget Sound — our 100 miles includes a good deal of water (yay seafood) but also quite a lot of very good farmland, including our most excellent dairy, Fresh Breeze Organic from Lynden, WA. Of course we get all our local B.I. farms as well as Skagit River Ranch, Nash’s Organic Produce, and Bluebird Grains (yay farro!!). We don’t get quite to Wenatchee or to Okanagan, where a lot of good summer fruits come from, but that’s OK as it’s not summer. I wish we reached Alvarez Farms, where we could get beans and peanuts. I guess if we did 150 miles we could …

So — I’m aiming for 100 as ideal, 150 as a fantastic compromise … we’ll see.

Our regular exceptions shall be:

• olive oil; other oils (butter will be within 100 miles)
• salt & pepper — still looking for ways to make these
• wine will often be from close to home, but not always — assume it’s not; we’ll note when it is
• vinegar, until we learn to make our own
• citrus, as needed for taste that is not vinegar-y (I had lemon trees but they died, and the turkeys ate the lime tree)
• baking goods
  • our organic flour comes from Utah
  • our organic sugar comes from Hawaii
  • our various other ingredients and flavorings are organic, and their origins will be described as appropriate (but most come from Bob’s Red Mill)

I am sure there are more additions and refinements to come, but for now … to bed.

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… with the obvious exceptions of the wine, salt, pepper.

Chicken: grown by us.
Beets, potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, roasting under the chicken: grown by us.
Butter for basting: made by us from cream from organic, happy Washington pastured cows from Fresh Breeze.
Stock for helping veggies cook: made by us from another chicken we grew.

It wasn’t even on purpose!

PS Roasted chicken + root veggies = it must be fall. Also, it’s been raining ALL DAY.

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Diagonal dinner (halibut cheek with asparagus, garlic scapes, and fresh garden peas), originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

In a hot pan with bacon grease, started before the fish went on, went minced shallot and sliced asparagus and garlic scapes. We put the fat asparagus stalk segments in first, to get more cooking time than the skinnier ones, the flower buds, and the scapes. Partway through I decided it should have peas so I ran out to pick several pods, which I dumped straight into the pan as I shelled them.

Halibut cheeks went into another pan with melted butter. We worked from this recipe for the ‘but cheeks, lightly breading them with flour with salt, pepper, a bit of cayenne, and paprika. These cheeks were HUGE and took longer to cook than that recipe; I only bought three at the fishmonger today, and we only ate the two smaller ones, one each. The other will make fish tacos for both of us. HUGE. For reference, we often cook up 6+ normal-sized cheeks to make tacos — they are usually much, much smaller.

After frying and removing the cheeks, I deglazed their pan with some vermouth, lemon juice, and water mixed together, reduced a bit, combined that with the veggies in their pan, and plated (I’m like Iron Chef!).

All in all, a very successful meal. We are happy to have more than one way to cook ‘but cheeks now — previously we have exclusively grilled and served as fresh soft tacos.

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Shelling peas on the couch, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

The shelling peas are coming on strong so we picked a big bowlful to shell while watching Buffy. I use the shells to make stock in case we need to feed any vegetarians, and I blanched and then quick-cooled the peas right in the colander we shelled them into.

3 cups shelling peas, June 22 2009, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Does what it says on the tin.

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Don’t ever let anyone tell you* that it’s too hard to eat local and organic in the winter! Look at this variety! Each of these photos is of a different vendor (except the turnips and the squash immediately following; those are from the same one).

I didn’t take a picture of my haul but I got: plums; Asian pears; tomatillos (admittedly late-season — they are usually a summer-ish crop as far as I know); parsnips; shallots; cauliflower. I also stocked up on sausage, and got a goat shoulder roast, and a package of lamb chops as a present for G.

* Where “you” are a Pacific coast resident. I know we are super lucky to have the growing season we do, but that’s why we stay here … woo, privilege.

Beets, leeks, chanterelles, etc. (Day 16), originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Beets, leeks, chanterelles, cilantro. Carrots? Potatoes, onions.

Squashes, carrots, beets, tomatillos, green tomatoes, broccoli, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Delicata, acorn, and other squash; tomatillos, green tomatoes, purple potatoes. Carrots, beets, broccoli, and a smidge of kale in the frame.

Awesome turnips, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Does anyone have advice on cooking and eating turnips? They are so pretty; I would love to learn what to do with them.

So many squash!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

The variety in the foreground is called Long Island Cheese Pumpkin! Apparently it is quite tasty.

Olsen Farms potatoes!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

We love Olsen Farms potatoes! We got all our seed potatoes from them one year; it was great. They have a huge variety and they are so knowledgeable about all of the flavors.

Cabbage “flowers” for bouquets, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

(Cross-posted from my silly blog, where I am doing a silly photo-a-day-for-the-month-of-November thing.)

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Harvest moon dinner, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Corn: garden.
Artichokes: garden.
Cabbage for coleslaw: garden.
Bread: homemade.
Burger: from our cow.
Ripe Green Zebra tomato on the burger: garden.

The Harvest Moon is full tonight.

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I was sure it was just going to rain all through August (which it did) and into September and then for the rest of the winter, with no breaks. But it has warmed up and cleared up, and we have some tomatoes coming in after all. In fact, we harvested enough on Thursday to make two delicious pizzas.

We had a tomato taste test, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Unfortunately, I don’t know all their names, but, left to right, #2 is Black Prince — VERY delicious!; yellow (#4, let’s say) is Limmony, also tasty; #6, a favorite for 3 years now, is Green Zebra. One of the red bumpy ones (either #1 or #3) is a Brandywine and delicious as always. #7 is, I think, an Ananas Noire (”black pineapple”).

Delicious awesome pizza, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Background pizza: Red Tomato Pizza, cooked.
Foreground pizza: Funny-Colored Tomato Pizza, yet uncooked. Yellow, green, and black/purple/brown tomatoes.

Both have fresh mozzarella from the grocery store, and for sauce they have chopped basil and garlic, mixed with olive oil and some grated parmigiano — a sort of loose pesto.

There has been much more preserving around here. But most of it was today and I am too tired to post more, so, further updates … in the future!

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And it wasn’t even that bad!

I picked a gallon of blackberries on Saturday and on Sunday we turned it into … well … it was supposed to be jam. I didn’t put as much sugar as it called for because I tasted it and it was sweet enough partway through the sugar addition process. But then it didn’t turn into jam, it just stayed syrupy. My mom the Jam Queen said, add the rest of the sugar, and bring it back to a boil, and don’t think too hard, just can it. So I was very careful following the rest of the directions, keeping about a million things on my stove right at 180°, and ladling jam into hot jars fresh out of the dishwasher, wiping rims, placing lids and screwing down rings, then gently placing into the (180°) stockpot. Eight half-pint jars went in and then we turned it up to boil for 15 minutes. On being removed, almost all of the lids popped immediately — yay! seals! — and the last few popped a few minutes later. So I was happy with my eight half-pints of blackberry syrup. We can have yogurt, and ice cream, and waffles and pancakes and crepes … but this morning, it looked as though the jars have cooled into jam after all! So that’s exciting. But I am sure it will be delicious regardless of the consistency.

And just now we have put 5 pounds of peaches into jars, and put it on to boil. Five pounds of peaches makes 3 quarts of canned peach halves in light syrup. I hope they turn out. I want peach scones in February.

Now I want to can everything! What else can I make? Stories, advice, recipes?

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Burrito fixins, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Stew meat (from our quarter cow) was braising in the oven. Garden potatoes boiled like normal. Garden zucchini and garden tomatoes grilled briefly. All combined in a delicious tortilla with a sauce of sour cream + goat yogurt (island grown!) plus garden basil. Garden cabbage on top. Yum.

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Unfortunately, our zucchini and other summer squash plants are neither as prolific nor as numerous as those of Barbara Kingsolver, whose chapter on squash in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I just finished. We appear to be further hampered by the wet spring and summer we’ve had here, unless I am doing something else wrong that would lead to what appears to be blossom-end rot on a significant portion of the little (and even the big!) fruits.

Zucchini with blossom-end rot? (That’s my six-inch santoku knife for comparison), originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

In any case, though it’s somewhat disappointing, of course, it might be OK, given Kingsolver’s struggles to eat it all, and the fact that last night I harvested a 2+ pound zucchini as well as a monster pattypan. If all the blossoms and fruits that rotted had survived and were this big, I think I would lose my mind. But these two monsters made a delicious dinner and two lunches’ worth of baked squash with breadcrumbs (I added garlic, of course).

Zucchini, pattypans, delicious malbec., originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Wine for comparison and also for deliciousness.

Zucchini: 2 lbs, 4.6 oz.
Big pattypan: 12.1 oz.
Small pattypan: 3.3 oz.
Malbec: 2006 Alberti 154, Mendoza, Argentina.

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Here are some things we have harvested, and some meals we have made from them!

• Peas: omelettes. frittata. In a bag in the freezer. Also attempting to dry some, and some pods became stock.
• Chard: Grilled chard salad (which we modified when I couldn’t find edamame I thought I had in the freezer — used white beans instead). Chard and orzo soup for new parents. Black rice with chard and an egg on top (this was awesome).
  
  Many different varieties of stir fry or hash, which is what we call it when you cut up a pile of veggies and fry them in a pan — its ancestor was corned beef hash. More things I can’t think of — we have gotten a lot of mileage out of the chard.
• Kale: mostly stir fry and hash.
• Onions, green: topping on everything.
• Onions, spring: grilled!
• Potatoes: hash. Boiled potatoes with butter and rosemary. Potato and fava bean salad (twice). Tiny baby potatoes made a frittata.
• Fava beans: 100% of them went to potato-fava salad.
• Carrots: mostly we have just pulled a few to check on how they are growing, and eaten them as soon as we get them inside. I did make a quick lunch salad in a jar.
  
• Cucumber: lunch salad in a jar (as above).
• Green beans: Grilled! drizzled with a little bit of garlicky olive oil when done
• Broccoli, Cauliflower: Hash. Steamed with garlic. Wrapped in foil pouches with olive oil, garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, cumin, and grilled.
• OMG SO MUCH LETTUCE: Lots of salads.
• Mustard greens: sauteed with garlic. A weird sort of calzone thing with ground beef. Fed to the neighbors’ goats when we became overwhelmed.

Coming up soon is … more of the above, plus summer squashes (zucchini, pattypan); more beans, both green and drying-style; a 2nd round of peas; cabbages.

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I had some chicken stories to tell, but there really are other things going on in our lives, which isn’t evident from the past few posts, so I will discuss those other things instead. So here is a list of things I meant to write about when they were current, and didn’t.

• We built 3 raised beds. Spent the hottest weekend of the summer so far hauling dirt across the yard to fill them up. Planted one immediately, with kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, chard. Planted the 2nd one a few weeks later, with a second succession of winter squash, peas, beans, and carrots, as well as new parsnips (which we overlooked before). The third we started planting just this week, with 2 more rows of carrots, some lettuce, and 2 rows of beans. We’ll put more in this weekend.
• We made friends with folks who run the stable down the street and our compost area has grown from one pile to three. One (Ruby’s old haunt) is half-rotted leaves and kitchen scraps. One is horse poo and sawdust from the stable, and grass, and leaf litter from our woods. And the last one is the bad evil weeds I pulled up, mixed in with horse poo, so that it will rot hotly and the weeds will all die and not propagate. Thanks, horse poo!
• We have been haphazardly measuring our garden foods and photographing the meals thereof. I always mean to, but yesterday, for example, I forgot to weigh and photograph dinner with E&K that included a second round of potato and fava bean salad. At some point we’ll get a spreadsheet up and running with harvest dates, weights, etc., so we can figure out what produces best. An initial observation is that the Swedish Peanut potatoes don’t produce nearly as well as the Red Clouds, which are crazy prolific.

All my posts always have lists in them. I like lists, I guess. I’m going to try to have more frequent, shorter, non-listified posts.

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