Henny Penny Farmette

Sunflowers have inspired human expression for centuries. The Incas made the sunflower a symbol of their god. In Europe, sunflowers symbolized kingship and were cultivated in gardens, at least until the 18th Century when they fell out of favor. The artist Vincent Van Gogh immortalized these sun-facing flowers in his paintings that bear witness to the hot summers he spent in Arles.

Giant sunflowers add dramatic size and color against stone walls, garden sheds, and wooden fences

In fact, nothing symbolizes summer like the sunny faces of sunflowers. That image of beauty is a widely used motif in garden art and home goods. Freshly cut sunflowers in a jar, vase, or tin can brighten any room in which they are placed.

Native Americans ate the seeds or ground them for use in breads and cakes and used the dyes for body paint and clothing. Today the seeds are dried and roasted or sold as natural. The oil is pressed and used in cooking. Sunflower seeds are high in protein and are considered a healthy snack.

Even children can plant and tend sunflowers; they are easy to grow. The giant cultivars require ample garden space but planted in a circle or square, they can become a living fort that children enjoy playing under. Sunflowers are heavy feeders, so amending the soil with compost and manure will benefit their growth cycle. The plants are not particular about soil type but they do need regular watering.

Sunflowers come in a range of sizes

Sunflowers can bear a single head, containing petals and seeds, or several heads on a single stalk. They range in size from small to giant stalks of twenty feet or more. Giant heads grow as much as two feet across.

Giant sunflower head, newly harvested

Depending on the cultivar, the centers of these lovely flowers range from dark brown or black, or gray and white striped. The seeds are a favorite food of squirrels and birds and honeybees. Here on our farmette, we grow sunflowers near the apiary along with lavender. High-value food sources keep the bees around to pollinate the rest of our garden. And I can’t resist putting a few small heads in a jar to brighten my kitchen window.

My daughter dropped by for a girl’s day out at the county fair. Summer chores are endless so taking a day off riddled me with guilt–and guilty pleasure.

We strolled under ancient, white bark sycamore trees that towered 50 to 100 feet above us. The first thing we saw as we entered the arched fair-grounds gate were goat pens. The cute little milking goats drew us over, but the odor of mounds of fresh horse manure turned us away. We kept on walking.

We moseyed over to see the sheep with their docked tails (apparently sheep like to chew on the tails of other sheep, so docking the tails eliminates pain and suffering and is more hygienic). We thought the baby goats were adorable. We marveled at how the pigs appeared so pink, healthy and robust. We couldn’t help but stare at the massive bellies and large bags of the dairy cows.

Embarking on the path to the exhibit halls, we relished how cool it was inside, a veritable respite from the heat. We strolled down aisles of quilts, art by high school students, and displays of jewelry. Then it was time to check out the jams. The entries of strawberry dominated the competition, but some included jam made with fig, plum, or rhubarb.

During the dessert competition, pies, brownies, and cakes beckoned us to peer into the glass display shelves. My daughter lamented that she wished they were for sale, reminding us it was time to eat.

We passed on the roasted corn on the cob and cotton candy, choosing simple tacos and Pennsylvania Dutch-style funnel cakes. I washed my meal down with the hibiscus-flavored drink sitting next to a dispenser of white horchata while my daughter stuck with water.

Before we left the exhibit halls and animals, I wanted to see the chickens. That competition must have happened on a different day, so I wandered over to the peacock pens next to the pigeons, finches, and parakeets. The peacocks were lovely but there were no peahens.

We checked out the bunny cages (I didn’t know there were so many kinds of rabbits) and decided against even looking at the reptiles (I tend to dream about them once I see them–and snake dreams aren’t usually pleasant).

All that walking and sensory stimuli wore me out. By the time we arrived home in the late afternoon, I needed a nap. I thought a day off was supposed to rejuvenate you. Instead, mine had done me in, but the trip to the fair gave me gobs of ideas for my cozy mystery series.

Rhubarb takes up a lot of garden because of its big leaves but the canes pair well with strawberries

Rhubarb and strawberries just seem to go together. Their flavors blend nicely, whether in a compote, trifle, pie, or jam. The following is a simple recipe for strawberry-rhubarb jam and uses the boiling hot water bath to preserve the jars of jam.

Make extra to tuck into holiday gift baskets or for gift-giving throughout the year.

Luscious strawberries are easily made into  jam

 Ingredients:

2 cups strawberries (washed, hulled, and crushed)

2 cups rhubarb (roughly four stalks, chopped)

1/4 cup lemon juice

6 Tablespoons Classic Pectin

5 1/2 cups sugar

Directions:

Combine the first four ingredients (strawberries, rhubarb, lemon juice, pectin) in a large pot.

Bring to a boil.

Add the sugar, stirring to blend completely.

Return the mixture to a roiling boil.

Time for one minute, stirring constantly.

Remove the pot from heat.

Skim away the foam.

Ladle the jam into hot, clean jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space.

Apply and tighten the two-piece ring/lid caps.

Place jars into the boiling water bath canner.

Process for 10 minutes.

The heirloom blue tomato vines have to be staked, especially since we grow them in raised beds

I couldn’t breathe in yesterday’s heat. But with so much work to be done around the farmette, I soldiered on, staking heirloom blue tomatoes. I hadn’t finished canning my organic apricots and now the plums and peaches were ready. I felt overwhelmed and longing for cool spot to sip tea, rest, and read.

We had already removed the apricots from our “torture tree” since we’ve been unable to surmount its many problems after planting it five years ago. Carlos wasted little time chain-sawing it down. I deadheaded the roses, while he dug out the stump.

The bees have to work really hard on hot days to keep the queen and brood cool

Then with a clear view to our hives, we quickly realized that the we needed to suit up and install extenders or the bees would swarm. Even as we felt the urgency, we realized there were also dozens of other chores screaming for our attention.

I told myself that breezes would soon blow inland from the Carquinez Strait, a channel of the San Francisco Bay where the San Joaquin and the Sacramento Rivers flow to the ocean, but by mid-afternoon, nary a leaf moved on the apricot, plum, and pomegranate trees. By four o’clock when the wind finally did kick in–the air wasn’t cool as it usually was. The winds blew strong and stifling hot and threatened to suffocate anyone still working outside.

Freshly picked Elberta peaches are easily turned into a scrumptious pie or cobbler

Abandoning the outside chores, I retreated indoors and turned on the air conditioner. Seeing the lug of apricots and crock of peaches resting on the kitchen counter, I groaned. The jam had to be made, but I couldn’t face stirring boiling fruit on a hot stove.

Deciding to use up some of the fruit for a simple after-dinner dessert, I flipped through the pages of a few cookbooks. Maybe a cobbler would do or a peach pie. I really didn’t need a recipe for those, but in  Country Cooking by Dori Sanders, I found an intriguing raisin-cinnamon crust that sounded tasty. I bet it would go with peaches but I  probably could have baked it on the patio floor.

With a glass of sweet tea and an armload of paperbacks and hardcovers, I curled up on the couch and finished reading Murder is Binding, Lorna Barrett’s debut book in her cozy Booktown Mystery series. I love this author and her writing, but soon figured out who done it. Still, I read to the end; you never know when a clever twist might show up.

Next, I read the last few pages of  A Tuscan Childhood by Kinta Beevor. At bedtime, I’d been savoring the chapters of that book like pieces of rich, dark chocolate. Beevor’s evocative descriptions of her bohemian childhood in Tuscany captured my imagination, drawing me in so completely I could almost smell the wild thyme, pine needles, and rocky Tuscan terrain in the searing, summer heat. Like Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun), who wrote a quote for the cover, I felt sad when Beevor’s lovely memoir ended.

Returning to the stack, I selected another memoir, The Orchard, by Theresa Weir. I’d bought the book on impulse during a trip to the farmers’ market at Todos Santos Plaza, our downtown green space surrounded by bars and banks and, of course, a second-hand bookstore. Drastically marked down, the book had been summarily deposited on a set of moveable shelves, and rolled outside the storefront for a quick sale.

The artist and writer in me understood immediately why I had picked it up and purchased it: the cover art pictured a young couple in a loving embrace, standing in lush green grass surrounded by apple trees. But there was something in that image that evoked sadness, like a bittersweet dream of a time past, viewed through a long lens.

As the descendant of five generations of farmers, I suspected Weir’s book would resonate with my own experiences of farm life in America’s heartland with bone-chilling winters of snow and ice and sweltering summers when you prayed for rain. What I didn’t expect was exquisite writing and the juxtaposition of love against the deadly realities of widespread pesticide use on the farms that ushered me into her story and swept me along. I finished that book in one sitting and will long be haunted by it.

I felt guilty for having only paid pennies for Weir’s book. A pittance for a tale that evolved out of all she had lived through. Less than the price of bus fare to journey with her as she pieced together scenes from her life in the Heartland. In every page, I was with her as she struggled, never abandoning her dreams. She learned as I had how to tuck them away while you dealt with the realities of a hard life with heart-breaking lows and highs that reached euphoria. But there were scenes she left out, only hinting at experiences she said she would “never talk about.” The truth is, I wept after putting down her book.

When a reader identifies so closely with a character in a story (and this was Weir’s personal narrative of her life), he or she rides the emotional ups and downs with that character. Good writers understand how to tug at their readers’ emotions and milk the drama. Theresa Weir had skillfully threaded a leitmotif of darkness and light, joy and sorrow, pain and healing through her story, but never once did I feel manipulated. Every sentence of The Orchard rang true.

I couldn’t read anymore after putting that book down. As I made dinner, I thought of how many scenes in her life resonated with mine. Even the widespread pesticide use on farms and the stubbornness of farmers to change.

I thought about Rachel Carson’s famous book, Silent Spring, that sounded the wake-up call to farmers everywhere about the dangers of chemicals in fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.  So many small farms have been overtaken by agribusinesses these days and still the chemicals are used. I decided to forgo making the peach pie.

With the heat of the day gone, I opened the windows and stretched out between freshly washed sheets. I listened to the rustle of oak and eucalyptus leaves. To crickets and the unseen critters that make noises in the night. I listened to the soft voices of my Lebanese neighbors chatting in their orchard with relatives.

As dreams beckoned, I could almost smell the fresh lilacs that Theresa Weir had written about in her memoir. Their cloying scent had filled her grandmother’s kitchen just as they had filled my grandmother’s, my mother’s, and mine. I wondered if the lilacs would ever disappear or if the world would one day wake up to find the honeybees gone, the fruit trees without fruit, and the berries and other sweet produce in our gardens and orchards reduced to a memory.

Apricots from the local farmer’s markets arrive in late May in N. California

It happens in jam-making. You do everything right and the jam has a lovely color, flavor, and texture but remains runny long after the jars have cooled following the boiling water process. What to do?

Apricot jam tastes great on almost any type of toast

Reprocess  the jam in small batches (a quart at a time). A quart of jam fills four (8-ounce jars) or eight (4-ounce jars). Jam needs sugar, pectin, and lemon (acid) to properly jell. A batch I recently made turned out runny and I figured the fruit probably didn’t have enough pectin.

Overripe fruit has lower amounts of naturally occurring pectin whereas unripened fruit has higher amounts of pectin. Go figure!

If the fruit is super ripe (like the lug of apricots I used), the jam will need more pectin to properly jell. It should be reprocessed within 24 to 48 hours. Beyond that time frame, consider other options like using the runny jam as ice cream topping.

Emptying jam back into a cooking pot is the first step in repairing a batch that hasn’t jelled

The initial step in the reprocessing is to remove the rubber-seal lids and pour all the jam into a pot. Rewash the jars (they will need to be hot when you put jam back into them. You’ll want use new lids, but you can reuse the rings. Heat the rings and new lids with rubber seals in a pot of simmering water.

Rings can be reused when remaking the jam but its recommended to use new lids to ensure good seals

When the jars are ready to come out of the dishwasher) and the lids are simmering under water in a shallow pan, then prepare the sugar/lemon juice/pectin mixture. Also, place a metal spoon into a glass with water and ice cubes to test the jam after repairing it.

For each quart-size batch of jam, you will need 1/4 cup of sugar, 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice, 4 teaspoons of powdered pectin and about 1/4 cup of water to dissolve everything. Stir well.

Add the sugar/acid/pectin mixture to the runny jam and cook until it reaches a roiling boil, stirring with a long wooden spoon. Boil for one minute. Remove the jam from the heat.

Jam is the right consistency when it coagulates rather than runs off the spoon

Test the jam for right consistency by placing some onto the stainless steel cold spoon. If it clumps and hangs, not running off, it will jell correctly.

Pour the jam into the hot jars. Wipe the mouths, if necessary to ensure a good seal. Cap each jar with a lid and ring. Process the jars submerged in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes, or according to your recipe.

I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment letting me know if you’ve tried this process and how it worked for you. Don’t forget to tell me what kind of jam you repaired.

Doctors tell us we should eat fruits and vegetables for our health. Fresh is best. For more reasons to grow your own food, read on.

1. Enjoy Superior Flavor and Higher Nutritional Value

The flavor of produce that travels from your edible garden to your plate is far superior to that of store-bought varieties. Even before fresh produce reaches the bins of your local store, the fruits and vegetables must be picked, sorted, crated, and transported from suppliers t0 supermarkets and grocery stores. Time spent in transporting and storage can diminish food flavors and nutrient values.

2. Keep It Pesticide-Free

Go organic. Choose alternative methods (companion planting and organic sprays, for example) to treat garden pests and plant diseases. Organic farming starts with nourishing the soil, which in turn, nourishes the plants that nourishes a healthy body. Organically grown fruits and vegetables picked fresh, immediately prepared, and served are nutritionally superior than their commercially grown and stored counterparts.

3. Safeguard Your Health

Avoid the cancer-causing agents and toxic chemicals in pesticides that are commonly used on many commercially grown food products.

Don’t have space for a garden? Herbs can be grown in a pot for use in the kitchen

4. Cultivate Plant Diversity; Preserve History

Grow varieties of the vegetables and fruits you love. Or, choose cultivars that might have grown in your grandmother’s garden–a nod to preserving history. Or, plant varieties that have fallen out of favor, are unusual, or are even rare.

5. Lower Your Food Bill

Grow your own edibles and preserve them for later consumption (like freezing spring peas for a fall or winter meal). Preserving the bounty by drying or freezing or canning can reduce your grocery bills. Another cost and time saver is to grow hard-to-find varieties of heirloom herbs, vegetables, or fruits instead of tracking down sources for those items.

6. Expand Your Knowledge of Plants

Understanding the seed-to-harvest cycle in nature fosters deep appreciation for ecology and the environment and contributes to your knowledge about various plants’ needs for nutrients, water, light, and temperature. You also learn about treatment options for garden-variety pests and plant diseases. This wealth of information can be shared with younger generations who will inherit the responsibility of caring for the planet.

7. Get Exercise

You can still work out, albeit in the garden in the fresh air rather than in an indoors gym. Think about all the exercise you’ll get digging, planting, shoveling, watering, weeding, and composting. Gardening provides plenty of solid exercise and rejuvenates a weary spirit.

A healthy garden, such as this one interplanted with roses,  visually delights its visitors

8. Reduce Your Stress

Time spent in a garden is restorative: it nourishes your spirit and reduces stress levels. In fact, just a few moments of deep breathing and thinking about birdsong, sunshine, fresh air, and healthy plants all around you–nature in all its splendor–can generate a positive mental attitude.

9. Alleviate Concerns about Food Safety and Quality

You know the quality of the food you bring from your edible garden to the table.  You want the superior freshness, flavor, and food quality for your loved ones. The chances for food-borne illnesses of the kind that strike Americans every year and are often investigated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are vastly diminished when you grow organic edibles and eat them as fresh as possible.

10. Preserve Our Planet’s Diversity

Choose seeds that are open-pollinated, non-GMO (genetically modified organism; the result of scientists engineering or modifying the genetic material of food plants). It may come as no surprise that the health of our nation has declined with the demise of small family farms even as there’s been a rise in the number of supermarkets and expansion of modern agribusiness. It’s no wonder people everywhere are getting behind buy-local, keep-it-local movements; participating in farmers’ markets, and engaging in urban homesteading where self-reliance is paramount.

11. Earn Extra Money

Selling your home-grown produce to others in your community means you can make possible the goodness of organic produce to others while earning a little money (hint: buy more seeds or otherwise reinvest in your garden).

12. Feel Good about Donating Excess Produce to a Food Bank

Your local food bank or (sometimes churches, too) will distribute donated produce to needy families. Let it be a source of joy for you that your gardening efforts have literally put food in the mouths of those in less fortune life circumstances.

Our world-class neighborhood beekeeper checked my hives on Sunday and told me that potentially, I could have 100 pounds of honey to harvest during the flow this year. Each frame will produce roughly 40 pounds of honey and each hive holds 10 frames.

If the hive is robust and extenders (additional boxes of frames) have been added, they may also hold honey, although a good beekeeper never takes all the honey. The bees have to eat, too.

Massive swarm captured in a hive box with ten frames

It was pretty clear that I need to get some jars. Lucky for me, he and his wife already have found a good supplier. The company they use is located in the Bay Area.

Today, she and I traveled headed toward Oakland, a drive of about 45 minutes, to where Saxco International operates its corporate offices and huge warehouse at 155 98th Avenue in Oakland.  See, http://www.saxco.com.

Jars aren’t the only type of packaging the company offers. From wine, spirits, beer, and vinegar bottles and stoppers; pharmaceutical containers; bar glassware that can be monogrammed or labeled; and food jars and lids, this company’s offerings are impressive.

Spring honey for our family has been drained from a frame, strained, and bottled

We waited close to an hour for the warehouse worker to load the plastic-wrapped cases onto a pallet, drive the forklift over to her truck, and load the whole shebang onto the bed. Although the boxes towered above the cab, we made it home with no problems.

And just when I was feeling optimistic about being better prepared to deal with all that honey, it occurred to me that I’m going to need a lot of cheesecloth to strain it, buckets to drain it, and labels for all those jars!

Could a honey separator be in my future? I’m beginning to think that beekeeping could become an expensive hobby. Ah, but a sweet one: honey never goes bad and the honeybees pollinate my fruit trees, which are loaded with fruit. Next on my list–jam jars.

What country breakfast would be complete without a citrus marmalade that you preserved yourself?

California urban farmers and backyard gardeners often find themselves with an abundance of leftover fruits and vegetables since California’s harvest season spans the whole year. What to do with all that produce?

Leftover produce can be donated to a food bank or preserved through various means, including boiling water canning, pressure cooker canning, freezing, or drying.

Canning supplies (and often, dehydrators) for preserving the bounty of fruits and vegetables are available year-round at local DIY stores, Walmart, K-Mart, Sears, kitchen and cooking supply outlets, hardware stores, and natural food markets as well as specialized container stores.

Strawberry jam, pictured here in a typical canning jar, tastes great on peanut butter sandwiches and toast

Boiling water canning (in which sealed jars are submerged in boiling water for a specific period of time) preserves high acid foods, including fruits, jams, jellies, tomatoes with added acid, pickles, applesauce, relishes, condiments, chutneys, sauces, fruit butters, sauerkraut, and vinegars.

Apricots are easily turned into great-tasting jams and jellies in a boiling water bath canner or dried into leathers

The 212 degrees Fahrenheit of heat in boiling water coupled with the high acid content of the food prevents the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the organism that can cause botulism.

For preserving fresh garden vegetables, meat, seafood, and poultry (low acid foods), you’ll need to process these in a steam-pressure canner at a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit for the established time (times are listed in many canning books and university websites for food preservation) to safeguard against Clostridium botulinum and other microbes. See, http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/foods/fn173.pdf.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has produced a nifty home food preservation guide that is free and downloadable from http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html.

Succulent and juicy Hachiya persimmons ripen from September to November in N. California

The National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) is a veritable treasure trove of information about how to safely preserve fruits, vegetables, seafood, and meat. The site also offers a self-study course and publications as well as many other resources. See http://nchfp.uga.edu/.

If you like dried fruit and fruit leathers, check out the NCHFP’s section on homemade fruit rolls (also known as leathers). See,  http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/dry/fruit_leathers.html.

When you take the time to preserve the organic fruits and vegetables you grow and harvest, you can be sure of the quality and nutrient value of the food you and your family consume.

Eating fresh means growing it yourself or purchasing the food for your table direct from its source. California farmers’ markets offer a dazzling variety of fruits, vegetables, and nuts directly from local area farmettes, orchards, small and commercial farms, specialty growers, and ranchers.

Red pomegranates are available September through November

Many fruits and vegetables are certified organic. That means the farmers and growers are registered and in compliance with state and local regulations designed to protect consumers and ensure food quality and safety.

Fuji apple tree

Annually, California produces nearly half of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and vegetables, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. See http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/ 

The San Joaquin Valley of central California has earned the moniker of the World’s Food Basket since its crops account for 12.8 percent of all agricultural products from California.

California produces 88% of the nation’s strawberries

In fact, California leads the nation in production of figs, dates, plums, melons, nectarines, peaches (Clingstone and Freestone), pears (Bartlett), persimmons, raspberries, and apricots.

California apricots are available May through July

In the Golden State, you can find dozens of types of fruits offered at 350 farmers’ markets (some open all year long). For a list by county, see http://www.pcfma.com/markets.php.

From the Pacific Coast Farmer’s Market Association, the following list (recapped below) reveals when these fruits are in season in California.

Apples: January-February; August-December

Apricots: May-July

Blackberries: June-September

Blueberries: May-August

Boysenberries: June-August

Cantaloupe: May-September

Cherries: April-June

Citrus: January-March; November-December

Dates: September-December

Figs: September-November

Grapes: August-November

Kiwi: January-April; October-December

Melons: June-September

Nectarines:May-September

Peaches: May-September

Pears: September-December

Persimmons: September-November

Plums: May-October

Pluots: May-September

Pomegranates: September-November

Prunes: May-September

Raspberries: May-October

Strawberries: February-November

Watermelon: July-September

These locally grown chilies turn red when ripe

California is especially blessed with rich soil and that lovely Mediterranean climate with the near-perfect amount of heat and chilling that our agricultural products require.

Just picked from the tree, fresh Elberta peaches

You might not know that Northern California leads the nation in production of nearly three dozen different commodities, including artichokes, strawberries, peaches, and walnuts. Many products can be found at local farmers’ markets. See http://www.pcfma.com/

Our state offers more than 350 farmers’ markets and many are year-round. With growing interest in healthy eating as advocated by First Lady Michelle Obama, whose position about the importance of healthier food for kids and their families has been highly publicized, community participation in local farmers’ markets is growing.

Ripe cherries can be eaten fresh, made into preserves, or mixed with oranges for a marmalade

Buy fresh and buy local. I love that adage because in practice your dollars spent at farmers’ markets or in direct purchases from farms preserves our  farmlands, local growers, and small businesses selling locally grown fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts, and citrus.

Bowls of citrus and persimmons

The Pacific Coast Farmers’ Market Association has produced a comprehensive listing of agricultural products available in our area for each month of the year. I’ve recapped the list of vegetables here. The fruit and berries will be the subject of a future blog.

Asian Vegetables: January-December

Asparagus: March-June

Beans:  January-December

Broccoli: January-December

Brussels sprouts: January-March; September-December

Carrots: January-December

Cauliflower: January-June; October-December

Celery: January-December

Corn: July-September

Cucumber: May-November

Eggplant: May-October

Garlic: January-December

Lettuce: January-December

Mushrooms: January-December

Onions: January-December

Parsnips: January-May; October-December

Peas: April-October

Peppers: May-November

Potatoes: January-December

Spinach: January-December

Squash (summer): May-September

Squash (winter): January-February; October-December

Sweet Potatoes: January; September-December

Tomatoes: May-October

Red onions grown from sets laid onto the dirt and barely covered with soil produce bountiful crops

Help preserve California’s rich heritage of plant diversity. Support your local farmers’ market by buying fresh, often just-picked vegetables and fruits, the result of our long growing season and rich soil. You’ll be supporting our state’s farmers and growers.