Keepers

Growing food is enough of a learning curve.  Storing it takes the game to another level, especially when built environment is low tech and low square footage and natural environment is getting increasingly warm and erratic. 

Last year the apples kept in the root cellar through April.  6 whole months.  Some were softening but they were still pretty good through March.  I put the last 10 in the refrigerator and had one that still tasted alright raw on June 1. 

This year way more of them spoiled in the first month and the majority had started getting soft and mealy by mid-December, 2 months in.  Fall of ’21 was not cold enough to keep the root cellar below 40 degrees most of the time.  I had fewer apples this year by half but also had to compost a much higher percentage of them.  3 weeks into January (when I started writing this) I am down to my last 3 apples. 

I still have several quarts of last year’s apple sauce in the freezer.  I will use that up this year because I am not sick of apples.  Last year I had plenty of apples to hold me over for fresh fruit from the end of orange season until the strawberries started coming in.  I was a little relieved when the apples were gone.  (At the rate we’re going with the temperatures I might be growing oranges and avocados here 10 years from now.)


For natural keepers, squash are where it’s at.  Filling and nutritious.  Prime comfort food.  Can be served sweet or savory.  If ripened on the vine and handled carefully so as not to bruise them, most winter squash will keep 6 months if stored at medium humidity and 40-60 degrees.  I’ve had homegrown butternut last a year in a basement apartment. 

Even zucchini (picked baking size) can keep on the shelf for up to 3 months.  I have one patty pan squash that I saved as an experiment from July 25.  Late January it was a little soft but still not moldy.  March 1 I cut out the one small mold spot and cut it up to use in soup for my Homegrown lunch.  7 months on that guy.  Not bad.  My pump house is perfect storage for squash.  I’ll just have to rearrange and install some shelving over the work bench for lighter things to make room under the bench for heavy bins.  I hope to have enough squash next year that I’m not rationing them primarily for Foodshed Challenge days.

As is, I’m not struggling for calories on Homegrown days, which is really important when it’s cold.  This year I have enough dried tomatoes and frozen red bell pepper that I’m enjoying them for other meals too.  I have fruit leather made of apple mash (byproduct of the cider making process) mixed with various other fruits.  Mostly though it is thanks to the squash and their seeds. 


Besides augmenting squash yields by increasing plant population and improving soil, I’m working on production of nuts, seeds, and grains, all 12-month+ keepers.  Last year’s bare root pecan trees didn’t make it.  The three potted pecan saplings I planted last fall still look alive.  I put three baby hazelnut trees in the ground this week, twigs 12”-24” tall.  With any luck I’m looking at 3 years until my first harvest of hazelnuts and 5 years to pecans. 

I direct-seeded two 8-foot rows of amaranth in June of ‘21.  Total yield: ¼ tsp.  Eight plants survived triple-digit days as tiny seedlings.  (For proper spacing, I would have kept sixteen.)  Two of those survived an early hard frost mid-September.  Before the rains started in earnest I dug them up moved those into 1-gallon pots in the greenhouse for the seeds to mature.  The drooping pink seed heads were gorgeous and an impressive percentage of the plant’s runty size. 

A quarter teaspoon of amaranth wouldn’t make a meal for a parakeet.  However—this is the miraculous thing about seed. 

I planted half the packet, 100 seeds or so.  Amaranth seed is so tiny that the quarter teaspoon contains about 400 seeds.  Input quadrupled in just five months. The parent plants showed extraordinary resilience through heat, drought, and frost.  What amounted to crop failure from a sustenance standpoint last season is the beginnings of a ‘land race’ of amaranth, selected for optimal production in local conditions.  I am going to start this year’s amaranth in the greenhouse in late April.  Half the plants will be from the seed packet purchased in 2021, and half will be from that precious quarter-teaspoon. 

If I can get sixteen plants to the 6’ potential of amaranth, with 4 oz of seed apiece (above average yield but not extraordinary), that would be four pounds.  Over half a gallon of grain.  Even at 1 oz per plant, the low end of the theoretical yield range, I would have 2 ¼ c of amaranth.  That is 9 servings of delicious hot cereal for a medium-sized human. Topped with berries and someday with honey? Breakfast on Homegrown food days would get a major upgrade.

Sunflower seed is easy to grow.  It is not easy to clean or to shell.  I still have a paper grocery bag half-full of sunflower heads.  I will probably end up feeding them to the birds.  I would have to be very hungry or very bored to spend more time on them than I already have, and I processed the ones with the biggest seed first. 

Squash seeds that you can eat whole, right out of the fruit, while you are waiting for the fleshy part to roast or boil—winning.  You can also rinse and dry them and keep them in glass jars for over a year.  Keepers.


Foodshed Challenge Rundown: All food grown/raised/foraged/hunted in stated geographical area excepting imports allowed on Homegrown days (coffee, olive oil, salt, and yeast) + County and State days (chocolate, butter, maple syrup, and spices that do not grow in WA).

Homegrown Foodshed Day – October 1

Breakfast: Roasted Delicata and Apple, Delicata Seeds, Coffee

Snack #1: Apple Plum Leather, Sunflower Seeds

Lunch: Veggie Salad

Behold the Winter Giant spinach. Or Giant Winter, depending on who is selling the seed packet. Either way, it is impressive. Those are gallon pots. I have large hands for a person my size. This is when it was just staring to get going. The leaves got even larger for a few weeks before the weather turned really dark and cold. For most of October it was replacing itself quickly enough to provide two or three portions a week. The ones in the ground stopped producing sooner (I was able to bring these into the greenhouse on bitterly cold nights) but after enduring a week with lows in the teens and a recent night down to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit, they are still alive.

Behold the Salad Bowl. After several rounds of futility planting in the ground (it doesn’t like my soil, the critters get it all) I tried in my long-time favorite potting soil, Edna’s Best by EB Stone. Big struggle. Slow to start, really runty, bolted before it put on leaves of any size. I have never had trouble growing arugula before. It was the same seed I had saved from a bumper crop in 2017, that had thrived in two different Seattle gardens with succession plantings nearly year-round.

Then came MJR. A local farmer friend had tried a new potting mix and ordered a pallet of it based on the results. I did a test planting with one planter bowl of Edna’s and one of MJR. In less than two weeks (arugula is quick when it is happy) there was a clear winner. I tossed the ailing Edna’s arugula in the compost and planted a new bowl of lettuce in the MJR. Lettuce had done alright in the Edna’s, but MJR turned out to be the sauce for that too.

Spinach and arugula topped with tomatoes, olive oil, and salt.

Snack #2: Watermelon

Dinner: Tromboncino with Pesto, Tomatoes, and Sauteed Kale with Red Pepper and Shallot

That is a belly full as well as an eye full. Tromboncino steamed, as there was enough oil in the pesto. Pesto made with homegrown basil and garlic, along with olive oil and salt. Frozen in glass and thawed the day I was using it, it tasted as fresh as the hour it was made in July. It tasted, in fact, like July. Tomatoes lightly salted. Kale sauteed in olive oil with red bell peppers and shallots, runty enough to look like pearl onions but no less delicious for that.


County Foodshed Day – October 9

Breakfast: Scrambled Egg, Coffee

Yup, just one egg. Oops. Forgot to check supply level the day before. My primary source of eggs is my neighbors to the north. So easy that I don’t have to stock up the way I do with 45-minute-one-way-drive errand things.

Snack #1: Hot Cocoa, Mozzarella Cheese, Apple

Milk from Glenoma, cocoa, maple syrup, pinch of salt. Homemade mozzarella from Glenoma milk as well. Homegrown apple! Windfall, a few days before the official big harvest. Ideal harvest time for flavor and shelf life is when apples have full color and let go easily but before a night goes below 26 degrees.

Lunch: Carrot Sticks, Baba Ghanouj, Tabbouleh

I had not eaten or even heard of baba ghanouj and tabbouleh until my mid-20’s. While in grad school in Chicago, I worked for a canoe & kayak outfitters that had a Saturday evening outing entitled Moonlight Dinner Paddle. These were catered by a family Lebanese restaurant a few blocks from our riverside park destination. The paper-topped foil trays contained feast enough to overfill someone who had been schlepping boats all day and paddling for the past hour and a half. I’d had dolma and hummus before, and of course pita. Baba ganouj and tabbouleh I had to ask what they were. Not until several years later did I attempt making my own, inspired by the contents of a CSA box from Local Roots farm out of Duvall, WA.

Carrots from Root Cellar Farm in Onalaska. Eggplant from Jesse and Terry’s garden in Centralia. Probably a lot of homegrown garlic in there too. Parsley, mint, and tomatoes homegrown. If I wrote down the other ingredients and their origins I have long since lost track of the note. I am 5 months behind on my blog.

I intend to continue practicing Homegrown, County, and State Foodshed days indefinitely. After I get through the first year documenting them, I will only write about meals if there is a new ingredient or food preservation technique or exciting recipe on the table. That will make way for doing and blogging about other things.

It’s a rather summery meal for October. Like many spring and fall days in Mossyrock, it was wintery overnight and mild, low 60’s, in the afternoon. Those must have been Cherokee Purple tomatoes from the greenhouse, because I brought in the last of the Chocolate Cherry September 15th-ish in advance of a very early hard frost. Chocolate Cherry are good keepers as cherry tomatoes go but I don’t think they were that good.

Snack #2: Warm Fruit Salad, Theo Chocolate, Aronia Tea

I put fresh apple, frozen rhubarb (homegrown), and frozen blueberries (Aldrich Farm, Mossyrock) in a steamer basket and then drizzled a little maple syrup on top. The tea is made with Aronia syrup (mashed berries boiled with water and honey) and the juice from the sauce pan under the steamer basket.

Dinner: Elk Steak Fajitas

I’m not sure it’s really fajitas if there is no tortilla involved, but there’s a plate full of fixings. Tomatillo sauce made with tomatillos from Jesse and Terry’s garden in Centralia (take-home pay from home improvement gig) and homegrown shallots and garlic.

Elk steak from my mechanic. Traded apples for that. Steak previously pan fried and warmed with some lightly sauteed red peppers and shallots, both homegrown. Topped with mozzarella cheese (homemade with milk from Glenoma and potions from Italy) and homegrown cilantro.

State Foodshed Day – October 21

The light here sometimes! The light and the textures and colors. The road to my house was looking especially splendid decked out for fall one late October day.

Breakfast: Apple Muffin, Chocolate, Coffee

I used apple mash (byproduct of cider making process) instead of banana in a banana muffin recipe.

Snack #1: Hazelnuts, Apple, Herbal Tea

Apple homegrown, hazelnuts from Waldron Island (see Cornucopia = September). The tea is home-foraged rose hips and cleavers with honey from Four Cedars in Glenoma.

Lunch: Carrot Ginger Soup, Raw Kale Salad

I don’t remember now where I got last fall’s carrots. Either Root Cellar in Onalaska or the Chehalis farmer’s market. Probably some WA potatoes and homegrown shallots in there too. The kale is homegrown, as is the plum apple fruit leather. The ‘naked’ pumpkin seeds (you don’t have to shell them! they grow that way!) are from Anore’s garden on Waldron. This reminds me to try to order seeds for a variety like that. (Squash cross-pollinate readily and are notoriously varied in form so you won’t get the same thing as the parent by planting a seed unless breeding is carefully controlled, which is more work than most home gardeners are up for, especially when you want to grow only 1-3 vines of lots of kinds.)

Snack #2: Limpa with Butter, Apple Juice

Dinner: Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

Dough made with Bluebird flour using the recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook. Pork sausage previously browned and frozen in recipe-sized jars, raised by Gary the Pigman and butchered by Zack, the guy who sells me my firewood. Both neighbors. Dry mozzarella homemade with milk from Glenoma. Sauce homemade with veggies from my neighbor Val, Jesse and Terry’s garden in Centralia, and homegrown. Spinach homegrown.

Kraut from Waldron Island on the side, also featured in Cornucopia. From-scratch Chicago pizza on a wood stove ranks up there for both proudest and most delicious deep DIY meals.

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