Urban Organica

strauss creamery

A rainy day & several hours in the car led us to the legendary Strauss Creamery, & that dashing man up top.  Along with being incredibly charming & handsome, he & his wife have been raising, loving & milking over 200 cows a day, twice a day, for 34 years.  34 years.  I am 33.  So.  A baby in the world of right livelihood & spiritual practice.  And I've so much to learn from folks like these.  I have never seen someone having so much fun, so in love with his day-to-day life.  He toured our group around with a spring in his step, a giggle on his chest.  You should have seen his delight at getting the kids to pop their fingers in the milking machines.  So much fun was he having, that he went around the group, 3 or four times so they really got the nature of the sucking action.  A man who gets breast feeding!!  I mean, he really gets it & is a true admirer of the sport, the miracle of the process.  Not to mention he has been midwifing these gracious animals in every possible way.  I think when he began talking about the birthing process & asking the kids to demonstrate how they look when taking a dump, a couple of kids peed their pants.  And when he began talking about the insemination process!  Well, I think one of the moms pooped her pants.  I don't mean to be crass.  But that was a really, really fun tour.  Rain & all.  And he does it for free, a commitment to sharing the wonderful world of organic dairy farming.  Angels on earth, organic dairy farmers.  When flies take over the farm, they bottle feed each & every cow to prevent salmonella.  When a cow goes sick, it's all about the homeopathics & natural care.  If the lady might be lost, they give her some antibiotics & pop a big X on her ear, never to be milked again.  A loss for the farm, a boon for the rest of us.  These are the kind I wish to learn from, I wish the children of the world to know & gaze upon.  But that's the last thing he wants.  After popping some bottles in their hands, he wrestled down some giddy young bulls & got our kids feeding.  What else can I say but thank you?  For the tour, the things they do that we'll never know about, the heart break of animal husbandry, the magical ivory milk...  And for the rest of us, for buying organic dairy, & supporting men & women such as this.  We are blessed.

'round here

Fall things be goin' on.  It only just started for us, you know.  It's been high Summer right up to the first of November.  But just look at all the seasonal stuff you can do when it's hot & dusty!  Harvest season is officially closed & outside the world has turned crimson, damp & fresh.  The sky is still a brilliant blue & our fireplace is an overjoyed cave of glowing, shimmering, simmering embers.  Dinner means good friends, a potluck of soup, bread & sausage.  And the leaves have only begun to sail across our paths.  Like I said, things be goin' on round here...

succulents for d

Recently a caravan of family headed down to Southern California for the wedding of my lovely cousin Sherelle & her beau, Justin.  It was during the same weekend as our beloved Hoes Down organic farms harvest festival, the most-looked-forward-to &, dare I say, stabilizing annual event in our family.  So we missed the wedding (a big deal given how much I love that girl), and Lola brought up a centerpiece to share.  Because D loves succulents.   It was a bit tossed about, having dropped on the floor, so we had the chance to create our garden just how we liked it.  Well, loved it.  There's nothing so fun as getting a little "kit" with really good ingredients in it.  It makes some small creature inside me run happy circles in the grass before gathering the littles for the project.  D does love his succulents, so.  I love having a sweet reminder of our larger tribe & the promise of partnership on the table.  And the boys just love.

walnut loaf

Last night I filled a large tub full of walnuts that have been hiding in the corners of our home for years & years.  Some of them are tiny:  almond-sized, & I smiled thinking of the no-longer tiny hands that found them.  There's always a rush when we find a "baby," because other baby walnuts are surely nearby.  

October finds us in the walnut orchards of Full Belly Farm, walking with our eyes to the ground, sharing our treasures & cracking two walnuts against each other in our bare hands.  It also has us pulling over along random walnut farms, filling our baskets with the overflow along the roadside.  It's just that we love them so, these wrinkled-wooden spinning tops. Each one holds something no one has ever seen before, & if we pop it into our mouths, no one will ever see again!  

D likes to tell the boys how his mom would set him up with a bowl of walnuts & a spoon so she could prepare dinner in the evenings.  Likewise, these nuts are right up with pine cones as the most-used play item in our home.  If we aren't stopping on our bikes to collect them, we are pounding them out with rubber mallets, "cooking" up a little sumthin'-sumthin,' or selling them to our brothers.  They are fun to play catch with, lovely to display, interesting to smoosh when soft & they are undeniably seasonal, coming only when the pomegranates are beginning to crack.

This is our very favorite nut loaf, from one of my most-used cookbooks.  Bonnie Mandoe ran Maui's first veg catering company, so her dishes run with just the flavors we love.  We sometimes add a wedge of jack cheese & an additional egg.  Once you know the recipe, it's very easy to throw everything into the food processor, then into an oiled casserole.  Usually we make a double batch, for "sausage links" & patties that we pop into the freezer between sheets of parchment.  Or we put them into smaller Pyrex dishes to freeze.  These we defrost & slice before frying.   When my vegetarian children stopped eating veggies & refused to eat meat, we just processed these ingredients very finely & they got everything they needed in their favorite meal.

Nut-Meat Loaf from Vegetarian Nights

"This is the dish to serve friends or relatives who believe they can't make it through the day without their ration of meat.  It's also the dish for anyone who loves a hearty, old-fashioned meal.  When I serve Nut-Meat Loaf with mashed potatoes, a green salad, & an ear or corn, it takes me right back to the 50's."

1 cup cooked brown rice

2 cups grated cheddar cheese

1 cup fresh bread crumbs (optional)

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup chopped mushrooms

1 cup chopped onions

1 cup grated carrot

1/2 cup minced green pepper

5 beaten eggs

2 T soy sauce or gf tamari

2 T Dijon mustard

1/2 t each black pepper, thyme, marjoram & sage

Mix all ingredients thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter a 9-inch square baking pan & press mixture in evenly.  Bake 50-60 minutes, until firm.  Serve hot from the pan.  (We top with mushroom gravy! m)

 

farm math :: the best part

Before the lil' heads can conduct business behind the table...

they gotta learn their product line,

learn standards & distinguish which of their commodities...

are sold by the bunch

the basket

& the pound.

They have to practice greeting, adding fractions & bits.  Give totals.

Pick their favorite produce.  Be patient.

Compost is both a loss & a treasure.  A chance to re-invest.

There is marketing to do, products to display.  It must be beautiful & true, easy-to-see.

 

Then they tell their mamas what to make for dinner.  

At our house?  I was told very clearly to make a "sweet pepper-basil torta with feta & one dozen eggs.  A side of green beans.  With lots of butter.  Lots."  And so it was.

***

Every day at 3 my downstairs turns into a small emporium with chalkboard menus, baskets of walnuts, play produce & football helmets for sale.  The local kids charge siblings between $1-1000 for any given item, but they've learned in their play that giving change is easier when dealing with whole, small bills.  Yesterday they were all wearing Fez hats from Egypt & running a cafe that sold fish tacos.  There are still no limits apparently.  I so treasure this age, the final glimpse at the dreamscapes of their toddler-selves before they begin asking for allowances & creating websites of their own.   

good humus farm :: 1/2

set up by farmer annie, jammaker jen + the kids

 

 molly

culling apples for juice + cider

organic farming = layered ecosystems, building habitats for pest predators

snack time :: dried apricots, cherry tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, melon

field workers getting to know heirloom berries by taste, size

apples, once-pressed by the children

zach, firefighter, farm-boy picking his lunch

midwives for our entire country's produce (muchas gracias, sweet madre!!)

 a chair, a shingled porch after an honest day.  what more do we really need?

I have a 3-inch binder packed with eloquent, heart-melting letters & delicious recipes from Jeff & Annie Main, purveyors of Good Humus Produce.  We just met on their property for the first time: those letters are 2-page bits they deliver to all of their farm members, & came in our weekly CSA-treasure boxes for several years.  I adore the farmer's market & co-op, so we stopped getting the boxes, but I have missed the perspective on those sheets.  Yellowed & broth-stained, they have been a constant source of grounding & consciousness for our family for about 9 years.  

Annie is the original authentic blogger in my mind.  I have memorized quotes from her inquiries regarding true community/individual sustainability & been jaw-dropped at an organic farmer's actual wages.  (Yes, we need to pay our teachers more.  But farmers.  They are the invisible heroes in this world.)  She taught me how to gratin kohlrabi, how to prep dark greens & passed me a favorite soup of thin onions, coconut milk, peas & cilantro.  She doesn't know any of this.  But I can actually feel my heart swelling with gratitude.   Once Jeff gave a nail-biting account of the morning's delivery when the area had been flooded.  As he recounted the condition of their van & his calculations of what was needing to be delivered & the impact of if he didn't make it, or even make it home at all (!) brought to mind the mailman's creed.  Not Wind Nor Rain Nor Sleet or Snow...

We had a chance to spend a couple of days with them, their jam maker Jen & their son Zachary.  It was nothing less than epic.  The kids ran scavenger hunts looking for treasures - like water, compost/soil, habitat & insects before doing skits right there in the orchards.  They made connections about the systems of the farm while weeding,trimming, making ice cream, compost piles, pressed apple juice, garden stones & dinner from produce they picked themselves.   My son, who hates peppers came out of the field chewing a long, neon-red chili pepper that turned out to be bright & sweet.  Before leaving, they found their new "class pet:" Tiger Eye, the biggest, prettiest caterpillar I have ever seen.  Big, like, oh, 3/4" thick & 7 inches long with a red horn on it's acid-green bum.  Apparently they eat tomato crops, so they must go.  And so must I go to sleep.  But the best part of trip was just...Oh, the best...