Early Summer Preserves

One of the best parts of growing your own veggies is preserving them so they can be enjoyed all year round. In the past I've primarily focussed on vinegar based preserves. This year we'll be doing many different preservation methods using sugar, alcohol, drying, and lactic fermentation. With so many fruits and vegetables ripening early this year, I've already begun preserving many foods whose seasons have come to an end.

My first preserve of this year was one of the first vegetables to appear in spring, Rhubarb. The rhubarb came from Leland's farm whose mothers garden produced far more rhubarb than any one family could consume. I joined the queue of people waiting to receive a box full of fantastically fresh rhubarb. First I attempted to make a jam which resulted in a far to tart and gooey mush that I didn't want to put anywhere near my toast. After this failure my second attempt at rhubarb preserves was a jelly. The jelly turned out nicely, with a more appropriate balance of sweet and tart and a beautiful peach colour.

Toronto's fruit tree picking project, Not Far From the Tree, has provided us with a bounty of sweet and sour cherries. Going on picks with Not Far From the Tree is a great way to get free tree fruit. Not Far From the Tree visits a household that has fruit trees the homeowner wishes to be picked and the fruit is then divided between the homeowner, the Stop Community Food Centre, and the gleaners. With a cherry tree producing as much as 80 pounds of fruit, a gleaner who attends several picks can end up with loads of free produce. We did attempt to eat as much fresh cherries by cooking and baking it in to every dish imaginable, but were still unable to make much of a dent in the 40 pounds of cherries that overburdened our fridge. So we pitted and jarred the cherries doing the sweet ones in a simple sugar syrup and the sour in a rum and sugar mixture.

After having great success with cucumbers last year we decided to devote a large portion of the garden to filling our pickle jars. Last year we did all vinegar pickles. While vinegar pickles are nice, being lifelong fans of Strubs has convinced us to try our hands at fermented pickles. This involves sitting cucumbers in a salt brine with pickling spice and leaving at room temperature for a week or more. After the pickles have been in the brine for long enough to develop a salty-sour taste the pickles are jarred with the brine and refrigerated. If we can master this preserving method I'll be very happy as I've been known to put down a jar of Strubs in one sitting.

Dinner is Served

After the departure of our roommate Chris Battaglia on June the 1st, we decided that instead of finding a new person to rent the room, we would create a dining room. We set a long solid wood harvest table down the centre of the room with matching benches. The decor in the room is a simple presentation of the items that are created at the farm. The charcuterie fridge with its glass door displays beautiful sausages and cured meats, jars of preserves lined the window sill, and an antique painting ladder was used to present planters of herbs.

This past tuesday the inaugural dinner was served in Chris' Room. Using produce from the garden, homemade cheese, house-smoked and cured meats, and of course the ladies eggs we constructed a five course menu for eight very lucky diners.



The Ladies Deviled Egg with House-Smoked White Fish and Garden Chive.



First Harvest Salad with Fresh Lemon Ricotta, Crisp House-Cured Boar, Various Radishes and Basil Vinaigrette.



Fricasee of Backyard Shiitake Mushrooms with Wild Foraged Morels, House made Gorgonzola, Garden Arugula and Flowering Thyme.



Pan-Roast Rainbow Trout with Fingerling Potato, Wilted Mizuna and Sorrel Beurre Blanc.



Celebration of Toronto Cherries: Angel Food Cake with Candied Cherry Ice Cream, Fresh Cherries and Almond Praline.



We want to thank everybody who has dined with us up to date, and encourage anybody interested in having a dinner party in the future to inquire.

Introducing Samantha

Getting two eggs a day from one's backyard is nice, but three is even better. On a recent trip to my friend Leland's farm in Cambelford we made sure to stop in at their weekly livestock auction. This place was a real scene. Inside a large barn, off the side of the highway, an auctioneer was gathering bids as calves were pushed in and out of small doors. My three vegetarian accomplices didn't much care for this part of the livestock auction so we went outside where the smaller livestock were being sold. This is where chickens, turkeys, pigeons, and rabbits were sold. The man I wanted to see was Chicken Charlie, who is known around Cambelford for having the best selection of heritage breed birds. Chicken Charlie had more than just chickens, he had cats, dogs, bantams, and turkey's. He also had meat bunnies and pet bunnies, which Kayla quickly learned the difference between, meat bunnies are five dollars and pet bunnies are ten. While Kayla ran around trying to get enough money to buy all the meat bunnies and set them free, I started to look at all of Chicken Charlie's heritage breeds.

Chicken Charlie had Silkies, Barred Plymouth Rocks, crazy looking Polands, and your standard Rhode Island Reds. The one that I decided would be best suited for us was a beautifully feathered and docile Speckled Sussex. The standard manner of purchasing heritage breed birds is to get both a rooster and a hen in a package deal. This makes sense for anybody in the country as you'll want your eggs to be incubated so you can replenish your flock with chicks rather than buying new birds. But in the city roosters are not the greatest idea. Roosters make loud cocka-doodle-doo's all day long and, while I might find it charming, I am sure would eventually irritate the neighbors resulting in a call to Toronto's bylaw enforcement offices. In fact the neighbor who borders the west side of our backyard had his chickens taken away several years ago after he had bought and begun to house a boisterous rooster.

Chicken Charlie wasn't entirely on board with selling me just a hen, and couldn't quite comprehend why my neighbors would have a problem. He even pondered what this country is coming too if the government can tell you not to have chickens. After a little haggling and five dollars added on to the price of the hen he agreed to sell me Samantha for a wopping 25$. This is a fancy chicken when you consider Baylik and Hepzebah were only 7 bucks a pop. As Chicken Charlie handed Samantha over to me he didn't treat her as the fancy expensive chicken she is as he pulled her out of her cage by a wing and shoved her into my chest. With wings flapping and a few loud squawks I placed her into a box for the ride home, which always seems to instantly calm a hen.

I have always heard that introducing a new hen to a flock can be difficult. It can result in pecking, defeathering, and even death. All sources that I have read, and even Chicken Charlie, suggest that new hens should be introduced at night while the original hens are asleep. In the early hours of their first morning together this seemed to have worked. The three of them all peacefully pecked at the grass together, and so with a big smile on my face I went back to bed. When I returned to the yard a couple of hours later Franka, who had been watching from her backyard into ours, warned me that "they are going to kill that poor chicken". I suppose Baylik and Hepzebah hadn't realized that a new hen was pecking along side them until after I had gone back to bed. Once they did realize, they did not appreciate her presence.

We decided to wait it out for a few days and see if the pecking would subside. After three days of pecking, several warnings from Franka, and a growing pile of Samantha's removed feathers I decided to build a separate coop for Sam. I decided to go with a triangular coop design. The triangular design allows for a coop with a smaller foot print because the roost area is built above the run. This was important as I didn't want to clutter the backyard with another structure. I also wanted the coop to stay small and light so that it can be moved around the yard, and maybe to the front yard so that the hens can mow the lawn.

Now that Samantha has her own coop she is getting along much better with the other two ladies. They even peck along side each other with out much incident. Samantha has also put on a little weight and become a little more bold, and with her sharp beak and flying capabilities may even become top hen someday. From this experience I also realized that I am pretty good at building coops and so, If anyone is interested in raising their own backyard hens they may want to check out this craigslist ad http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/grd/1766576663.html .

Experimenting with Watering Techniques

Despite the first week of Junes rainy weather, this summer is supposed to be a particularly long and dry one. According to the Stop Community Food Centre's gardening tip of the month this means you want to do sporadic deep waterings. This encourages the roots to grow deep to find moisture, allowing the plant to survive during periods of drought. It also means you don't have to wake up to do your early morning waterings many days of the week. While I think that this method of long deep watering will be sufficient to keep our plants healthy, I still want to experiment with some different watering techniques.

One of these is to dig a figure eight pattern around the base of your plants with an elevation at one end. This allows for the water that is poured at one end of the pattern to work its way throughout the garden arriving at the bottom of each plant. It also forces the roots to go deep because the plants are placed up on mounds, which prevents the roots from going outwards. Water is also confined to the root zones making sure that it is not wasted by soaking into areas without plants.

The watering technique that I am finding most interesting uses recycled tomato cans. I punched holes into the cans using a hammer and nail and then dug them into the ground beside the root systems of the desired plants. These cans are then filled with water which will slowly trickle out and into the root system of the plants. I figure that this is going to be a good technique for potted plants because they have limited depth for the root system to dive and the soil is more susceptible to drying out. I also like this watering technique because it gives me an excuse to go gleaning through peoples garbage bins for old tin cans.

Family Dinner

"Family dinner" has become a bit of an early week tradition 'round these parts.  We all have nights off from our respective restaurants - and what better way to celebrate, than to enjoy the fruits of your labour with good company, good food, and a healthy dose of home-brew.

Pan-roast rainbow trout, with fingerling potato, sea-asparagus, beurre blanc, and various radishes.

Interested in joining us?

Natural Remedies for Garden Pests

In urban vegetable gardening, as with in large scale farming, insect infestations can wipe out your entire crop. In most of the conventional large scale farming operations pesticides are used to address these infestations. In more recent years even large agribusiness has moved towards using organic pesticides in order to tap into the profitable organic produce market. While many of these organic pesticides have now become available to home gardeners, I thought it would be more interesting to use old fashioned techniques and household remedies for any pest problems that arise. These are remedies that I have learned from the older generation Italians in the neighborhood, as well as from my Mum and Grandma.

The first important thing to figure out is which bugs are pests and which are beneficial to your garden. Worms are beneficial, that is obvious, we all know that worms help to aerate the soil and provide waste to keep the soil healthy. Ants are a trickier insect to determine as beneficial or harmful to the garden. They worry me with their scurrying up and down the stocks of my tomato, sunchoke, squash, and cucumber plants. But apparently, they are merely helping to open the buds, and performing general investigation of their landscape and doing no harm to the plant. Ants are also helpful in destroying aphid and fly larvae, as well as aerating the soil. Although if your garden is overrun with ants it can become an issue. One insect that gave me a fright was the alarming amount of earwigs that were on a recently harvested crop of spinach. To be fair the "alarming amount" was only 5 or 6 earwigs, but they creep me out, and so I was alarmed. Earwigs are of no concern, except for the occasional sting that a gardeners hand may receive, and are actually helpful in similar ways to ants.

The major pests that I have been told to look out for are slugs and aphids. One way to address these pests is through using the preventative measure of planting protective botanicals. I incorporated this into the planning of the garden and planted marigolds and cilantro along the boarders.

Despite the use of these protective botanicals I found some slugs creeping through the garden while weeding the other day. Instantly I called in the big guns, asking Franka, our next door Nona, what should be done to eradicate this problem. Her first bit of advice was to use the egg shells from our three lovely hens. She advised me to crush the shells into smaller pieces and spread them throughout the garden. Apparently the egg shells will cut the soft flesh of the slugs which will dehydrate them to death. Franka's other weapon of choice is spent coffee grinds. Caffeine is a deterrent for slugs and if scattered around the base of your plants will keep slugs from destroying them. My Mum and Grandma's arsenal for warding of slugs has always been using a small container of beer placed strategically in the garden. The slugs, attracted by yeast, will venture into beer for a drink and be killed by the alcohol.

I do find it amusing that the three items in my armoury against slugs are three of my favourite things, coffee, beer and our backyard eggs. If I were a slug I would be in heaven. What I don't find amusing is that the biggest threat to our garden has been our three hens, who we had originally hoped would eat the pests. One of whom, Baylik, ate an entire F@#%$* cabbage the other day.

Home-grown eggcitement

The concept of the “3000-mile Caesar salad” has always perplexed me some. Between shipping costs, seasonal differences and a general lack of support for local farmers, the entire construct seems both irresponsible and completely unnecessary. It’s with this in mind that I can very proudly (and gratefully) say that there is a grand total of 20 feet between our eggs and my frying pan.

Paul was the first to discover our very first egg. I wasn’t there, but he insists that the noise he made was far louder than anything that has come from the chickens thus far. Somewhere between a gasp and guttural moan, I imagine.

The eggs, at least at this stage, are still quite small. A size you would never see in your grocery store, if I’m honest, but there’s really something so special feeling about plucking a still-warm egg from your backyard coop – regardless of how hungry you may still be afterwards. A little wash-up and a lot of excitement later, and we were ready for our first taste. We gathered around a very buttery pan, cracked Baylik’s spherical bounty, and all waited with wide eyes for the white to go opaque.

Initial impressions are that you really can’t match this level of freshness. The yolk clings very tightly to the white (normally after a few days, the yolk becomes easier and easier to separate), the color is a bright yellow, you almost want to swig it down raw, Rocky-style. The yolk is rich and coats your mouth with a mineral-ish taste, the whites basically taste like butter, but the general consensus is that they have a “warm” texture, very viscous and molten.

For the first while, Baylik was the only one to lay anything for us, because she is the older hen. More recently, however, a trip to the coop yields contributions from Hebsebah as well. Equally delicious, equally exciting. Jacob and Paul have even started stamping the eggs with our blog address.

Frequently asked questions:

How are you getting eggs without a rooster? We don’t need one. We’re getting one a day from each hen, roughly, they’re just not fertilized.

Can they fly? No, but they will give a flappy jump if you hold a worm in front of them.

Do they have personalities? Oh yeah. Baylik is a total rebel, usually the first to explore things, and will be the most fervent out of the gate when you open it. Hebsebah is a little more tame, but a bit louder. This might be due to younger age.

Long story short, the eggs are delicious, and they come from very happy chickens.

Grandma's Sorrel Soup

The best part of vegetable gardening has to be eating the fruits of your labour. Produce from ones own garden is more fresh and satisfying than anything that can be found at grocery stores or farmers markets. For me, enjoying veg from the garden doesn't get any better than using my Grandma's sorrel plant to make her fantastic sorrel soup. If you remember one of my past posts on the blog, I transplanted my Grandma's sorrel plant to our garden from her backyard in Scarborough.

Last week the sorrel plant yielded enough sorrel leaves to make a big pot of soup and go to her new assisted living residence to enjoy it with her. I got the sorrel soup recipe from my Grandma along with about a thousand other recipes she has accumulated in a black book throughout her lifetime. The sorrel lends a delicious citrus flavour to the soup, and once combined with the cream has a smooth velvety texture. My Grandma enjoyed it a great deal, but I must admit that I still have some work to do before It's as good as hers. I also didn't have any of the beautiful edible flowers that used to be her signature garnish.

Gambling With Cold-Frames

Using cold-frames is a good way to get a jump on the season and have your hot weather loving plants in the ground well before Victoria Day weekend, the traditional day to transplant these vegetables. My introduction to cold frame gardening came as I was wandering the streets of Little Italy and noticed all sorts of plastic coverings placed over planters and some directly on the ground. The "cold-frames" that made me most curious appeared in gardens all over the neighborhood. These were 2 liter pop bottles with the bottoms cut out and placed over top of plants. Thinking that all the vegetable gardeners in Little Italy had gone completely insane, I asked a lady who was working on her pop bottle covered plants what she was doing. She explained that the pop bottle creates a miniature green-house that traps in the heat from the day and prevents frost from landing on the plant at night.

Realizing the brilliance of these simple green-houses I went home to do some research so that I could construct my own cold-frames. After a little research in a readers digest book called Back to Basics, I learned that cold-frames can be as simple or as complex as you want, ranging from a simple pop bottle to a walk-in green-house. I decided to construct something in the middle.

The Back to Basics article that I read suggested the best material for cold-frames to be old windows. This gave me an opportunity to perform one of my favourite activities, riding my bike around and rummaging through peoples garbage to find thrown out treasures. Eventually I did find a set of great old windows which I attached together so that it could run overtop of the tomato plants. For the cucumbers I made a simpler cold-frame, constructed out of clear plastic sheeting and wires bent to shape.

I put both of these cold-frames in place just before the last couple of frosts and have been worried about whether the plants are going to make it. I raised the tomato's and cucumbers from seed and don't have a back up set of plants if they die, so there is a bit of a gamble here. But if it is successful we could get an extra two weeks of production out of the plants.

Holy Shiitake, Thats A Lot of Mushrooms... And Other Garden Updates

Mushroom logs are something that I think are really cool to have in a garden, and are perfect for small lots, as it doesn't take up much space. They also take very little care to grow, since you don't really need to water the logs, a single soaking at the beginning of the growing period will suffice. To grow mushrooms all you need is a recently cut log of Oak, spores of the mushrooms of your desire, and an inoculation kit to inject those spores into said log. Or you can do as I did and purchase already inoculated logs from FunGuy Farms, which is the more practical and cheaper way to do it if you are looking to cultivate only a couple of logs.

Growing your own mushrooms does provide a significant amount of savings, especially if you grow high end mushrooms like Shiitake's that will often fetch between 10 and 15 dollars a pound. The inoculated logs cost 25 dollars each and will produce about 8 pounds of mushrooms. After this most recent rainfall I noticed a ton of mushroom caps poking through the bark of the logs, and two mushrooms that were already big enough to pick, though we have yet to eat them.

The rest of the garden is looking great. The early crop of radishes, spinach and lettuces that were sown a couple of weeks ago, have sprouted nicely and are near ready to eat. The Hops plant has come back to life and is providing some beautiful green shoots of leaves. I'll have to build a trellis to train it to soon, or else it will take over the entire garden. The Sunchoke sprouts have also started to poke through the soil, and I've heard that once this happens it's very little time before they are 8 foot tall flowers. The Cabbages are also coming along great, as long as we can keep our two hens from eating them.