life in the slow lane

Early morning weed session – pigweed, quack grass, and bindweed strategically place themselves amidst the vegetables.  We sift through the rows as the sun warms the day – the beach becons.  A bike ride through town towards our favorite swim spot – christmas cove.  The water has warmed or maybe the wind has brought warm currents today.  We swim out to a large rock warn smooth from the gentle waves, two seats seem to be perfectly carved away.  We jump from the rock time and time again.  A bald eagle flies past, and then again.  The handful of people on the beach don’t seem to notice.  We sprawl on the white sand and send Spot the kite into the breeze.  It dances around, we share a beer and think that maybe this is vacation.  A bike ride back through town and an ice cream at the local filling station.    

Garlic leaves are turning brown and it’s time to harvest.  Because we weren’t here last fall to plant a crop, we are helping with the harvest of others in exchange for garlic.  A mixture of soft-neck and hard-neck varieties are harvested.  The stiff neck have a much fuller taste, are easier to work with and have larger cloves.  The soft-neck, on the other hand, are milder and smaller, but tend to store longer.  It’s a relatively low maintenance crop - the garlic was planted last October, mulched heavily with straw and now harvested.  No irrigation and no weeding.  We’ll be saving the largest and best looking cloves from what we were given to plant this fall.  For the time being, we have bundles of garlic hanging around the house to dry and are cooking with fresh scapes and bulbils that were cut.  

A few friends came over for dinner last night.  We made a small fire outside and grilled fresh chicken and fish fillets.  Being that most in attendance are selling homemade goods of some sort – veggies, meat birds, bread, etc. – the latest change to the Michigan cottage food law for the selling of these goods was of interest.  The recent amendment allows individuals to legally sell most homemade goods without being processed in a certified kitchen.  The label needs to state an ingredient list and that the good was made in home kitchen.  It’s a small bit of legislation but it definitely benefits a few of us.  

The weeks move quickly and we find ourselves preparing for market almost as soon as we finish the last.  This weeks harvest – another round of D’avgnon radishes (they sell well), kale, collards, chard, basil, lots of lettuce and salad mix, spinach, pac choi, and broccoli.  We harvested a couple summer squash in the last two days but will wait ‘till next week to take to market.  Tomtaoes are on the vine and we’re hoping that the Sungold cherry tomatoes will be ripe in another week or so.  Corn is thigh high, winter squash is sprawling and sunflowers are getting huge.  Beans and beets are on the way too.   

We’ve been brewing compost tea and using as a foliar feed for most of our crops.  It’s a very basic process and has, for us, been a great way to add nutrients on the cheap.  The basic recipe – add about a shovel full of finshed compost to a five gallon bucket.  Add an ounce of mollasses and fill the bucket with water.  Note: chlorinated water will be counter productive to the process – it kills the beneficial bacteria and fungi in the compost.  So, if your water is chlorinated, let it sit out over night before introducing compost.  This should be enough time for the chlorine to evaporate.  The compost needs to be aerated for a day or two.  We use an aquarium aerator ($10 at the local big box store).  Stirring many times per day should do the job too, but may take a few extra days.  Strain the tea through cheesecloth into your watering can or small sprayer and, as our friend Red Beard puts it, “say hello to the plants” with a good watering.

The cherry harvest began last week.  The greater Traverse City area is known (by some) to be the cherry capitol of the country.  And, no doubt, there are quite a few acres dedicated to cherry production.  The neighboring vineyard also serves as a staging location for freshly harvested organic sweet cherries. They are sorted, packed and stored in walk-in coolers.  They will then make the journey down-state to coops, health food stores, Whole Foods, etc.  Some of these wholesale accounts demand a picture perfect cherry.  With recent rains, many of the cherries split on the tree, others are slightly blemished or have a stem.  Granted, some of the cherries do need to be culled, but the minor imperfections are tossed aside as well – some 40% of the total harvest.  That’s where we come in.  With over 100lbs of culls  from a local organic grower we’ve made wine, jam, preserves, frozen cherries, and cherry pie.  The wine is inspired by wild fermentation - 32 pounds of cherries added to 12 pounds of sugar dissolved in 4 gallons of water.  The croc has a towel over it, but wild yeast will find its way to the sugars and start the process of making alcohol.  We hand squeeze/stir the hooch daily for two weeks at which time we’ll transfer to carboys with airlocks and let clarify for a month.  The wine will then be racked into bottles and aged for 6 months.  Maybe ready for the winter holidays?

The Northport Market boasted the largest attendance of any Leelanau County Market in history.  All 450 people turned out on the holiday weekend to stroll the waterside market.  And for us, that translated to selling everything we brought.  The pac choi and endive sat by themselves for a bit – and it crossed our mind that we would be taking them home – but, in the end, it all sold.  We did a little jig to celebrate – to which neighboring vendors snapped photos.  Coffee sales are picking up and we’ll sampling raosted beans in a local CSA.  

We really don’t make much money at this small farming thing.  On most income indexes we would land somewhere at the very bottom.  But as we sat down to diner last night, we dined as if our pocket books were bulging with wealth.  We were able to trade a couple six packs of homebrewed beer for a chicken that had met its fate earlier in the day from a local farmer raising meat birds.  We sauted the chicken with garlic scapes and bok choi stems from the garden, red peppers that were being thrown out at the coop, and napa cabbage from a friends garden.  A wilted arugula, collard, bok choi and radish salad to accompany – all from the garden.  As dinner cooked, we snacked on freshly smoked whitefish that we got from a neighbor – a native Ottawa tribesperson who has been fishing Lake Michigan for more years than we have in age.  We thanked the fish, the chicken, all the fine veggies, and ate well.  

Yesterdays blog post neglected the more important part of the dinner – what we ate.  The centerpiece of the meal was an 11lb salmon that was caught by a fellow fisherman off the Lake Michigan shore.  He has a unique style of fishing – he paddles out in his kayak and, with a single long line/rod set-up, paddles/trolls through the water.  This was his first salmon of the year.  The fillets were lightly grilled and eaten with fresh bread, mustard pesto, salad and a few libations.  Yum.