Posts from the “Sustainable Life” Category

Damn Fine Spaghetti Sauce

Posted on September 19, 2014

When Seth and I were first dating, we ate spaghetti nearly every meal.  We were young, poor college students.  That was the main reason.  But we also had an 8 lb. jar of homemade spaghetti sauce sitting in Seth’s refrigerator.  That was the other reason.  It was Seth’s dad’s recipe and Seth was not very adventurous with foods at the time, so Seth’s dad made him a massive jar of sauce, promising to refill the jar any time Seth brought it back.  We ate a lot of spaghetti.  I’m sorry to say it took about a month to go through a jar.  How is it possible that the sauce never went bad?  I still think about that now, ten years later. Seth’s dad has…

Categories: Food

Tagged: , , , ,

Food and No Food

Posted on September 5, 2014

I love this time of year.  The garden outperforms itself with tomatoes and green beans.  I’ve been getting a couple of eggplants, dozens of cucumbers, and several handfuls of jalapenos.  Even the endive has held on.  Enough food, in short, to make me love summer. In related food matters, I went to the allergist for some help with my recurring stomach troubles and consequent migraines.  I tested as allergic to tree, grass, and weed pollen, and the allergist says I have oral allergy syndrome.  Eating certain foods triggers an allergic reaction because the food protein is so similar to the pollen protein that my immune system thinks it IS pollen and reacts accordingly.  In my case, GI trouble. I’m pretty sure it’s a huge cosmic joke.  The…

Categories: Garden News, Harvest Time

Tagged: ,

Rustic summer jam tart

Posted on August 4, 2014

I’m not a dessert person.  With all things sweet or starchy off the menu, dessert becomes repetitive (another tomato, anyone?), so I don’t bother.  If Seth is craving something sweet, he’ll eat a bowl of ice cream, or snag a handful of blueberries, or a slice of gluten-free bread with jam on it. But every so often, we decide to go all out and make a treat for our friends and neighbors. The first time I made this easy tart, I cooked up a strawberry-mulberry jam and spread it straight from the pan onto the tart crust.  It was a farm lunch hit.  Our friends bombarded me with praise as they pulled on their hats and headed back out into the field.  “I was…

Categories: Food

Tagged: , ,

I tied up those darn tomatoes

Posted on July 25, 2014

It took me forever.  Not because it was hard, or needed special equipment that I didn’t have.  It’s because I formed a mental block against the task.  I think we all have those tasks, the ones where it feels like you’re not making any progress because you’re mired down in it.  You know — in the weeds.  And then you put it off because you feel horrible, and the task grows to monstrous proportions in your head, and then you put it off some more. I girded my loins and tied them up, trimmed the extraneous stems, and pulled the particularly egregious weeds (I left the rest where they were until another time.  I call it casual weeding).  The tomato plants look good now, like they…

Categories: Garden News

Sick sick sick

Posted on July 7, 2014

I was hoping to have a new post for you about how I strung my tomatoes up on a tomato trellis — a new idea for us here.  And I would have talked about trimming the stems back, and all the things you talk about when you talk tomatoes.  I know how to talk tomatoes, my friend. But instead, I’m here to tell you that I’ve been sick for the past two weekends — migraines and a bad cold, thrown in with a friend’s wedding that I had to attend and that left me tired.  This is what happens sometimes.  The work-life balance gets thrown out of whack, and I’m left with un-trellised tomatoes and a serious craving for garden work.   On the…

Categories: Food

This Week on the Farm: Summer Solstice

Posted on June 22, 2014

Five years ago, Seth and I got married.  We picked the first day of summer so we could use the longest day every year to celebrate ourselves and the outdoors.  (Bee tee dubs, it was one of the few really great decisions we made over the wedding season.  Why are US weddings so bloated and expensive?  I digress.) When I tell my coworkers we celebrated this year’s anniversary by working on the farm, they give me a funny look.  Don’t judge my people too harshly — they all live and work in Boston and the surrounding area.  They are not rugged farmers and volunteers.  Very few have pulled fresh vegetables from the ground, let alone recognized that farm food is far superior to restaurant food. It was a standard…

Categories: Milestones, The Work Farm

Good luck at the garden, or maybe that’s just spring

Posted on June 17, 2014

I haven’t been able to make it to the garden as much as I’d like.  This is iffy when it comes to gardening — I can’t be on the ground to monitor things.  Things like chasing off chipmunks, or pulling the weeds as they poke their heads out of the ground.  When I arrived at the garden this weekend, though, I was pleasantly surprised.  It looks as though the rainy week helped me out a ton. My broccoli thought maybe it would like to spring back.  The spinach took off, despite the leaf miner.  The tomatoes seem to be holding their own.  The curly endive is delicious, and WE HAVE PEAS. I can’t figure out what’s going on with the eggplant.  Maybe flea beetles? …

Categories: Garden News

This week in the garden: pests

Posted on June 2, 2014

You know the rhyme that goes, “Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” If her garden is growing, what does she have to be contrary about?  I’ll tell you.  Pests. Something has been feasting on our vegetable seedlings.  The carrots and radishes are nonexistent, despite the steady rain we’ve had.  And take a look at the endive. These endives should be about 12″ in diameter now.  They are a measly 3″ across, with browned, chewed ends.  Most likely chipmunks. Our spinach is coming up and it looks all right, except for the leaf miner spots. And I’m guessing our broccoli currently resides in the bellies of some happy woodland rodents.   It’s enough to make anyone contrary. In some good news, we got…

Categories: Garden News, Pests

How does your garden grow?

Posted on May 18, 2014

It’s early yet, but my garden is on its way.  Seth and I planted spinach, endive, dandelion, peas, radishes, and carrots in the last month or so.  The peas are reaching for the sky.  We’re harvesting chives and spring garlic already.  And thank goodness for that.  A person can only take so many supermarket vegetables before her body revolts. This weekend, I recruited my brother to help put up the pea trellis.  We’re using a pole stretched between two stakes, with string hanging down for the peas to climb.  Will it work?  It’s anybody’s guess.  But I can tell you that our next door gardener often watches us working with confusion in his face.  I get that a lot. This garden experiment is all…

Categories: Garden News

Printable recipe cards, just because

Posted on April 6, 2014

I guess the winter got me down more than I thought, because I had a two week fervor where all I did was sketch vegetables and then try to turn them into something pretty.  It was during the miserable cold stretch between the snow melting and the weather warming up enough for the soil to reach that magical stage, “workable.” Now that it’s warm(ish), I work my plot of dirt instead of my sketchbook.  But there’s still time for cooking.  And if you like functional, pretty things in your kitchen, I hope you’ll enjoy these.  Just download, print on cardstock — I used Staples — and cut out on the light gray lines.  I made them in two sizes:  3″x5″ cards if you’re old-school like me, or 4″x6″ recipe cards.…

Categories: Garden News