Saturday

Most people look forward to the weekend as a time for a little flexibility.  Sure, they may have to run kids to soccer games or tae kwon do tournaments, but they can probably skip part of the usual “shit,shower, shave” routine they face Monday through Friday.

For me, on the other hand, most weekdays are very fluid.  I usually have a deadline on Wednesday, which is often pushed to Thursday.  But I make my own schedule, and if my 8 am walk happens more around 9:30, well, Rosie’s the only one who will notice.

But on Fridays things start revving up.  After getting that week’s blog story up, I suddenly realize (for the 17th time) that I need to figure out next week’s story.  So Friday can be a hectic day of brainstorming, a flurry of emails with my editor, maybe some text messages with Miss Chef to figure out who my best sources will be, and a first volley of communications with chefs or farmers I want to interview.

This past Friday I was working three stories at once.  I called a farmer to ask about growing sorghum and posted a message to Facebook to see if anybody’s using it in their restaurants, emailed a group organizing a farm tour for next weekend, and texted with a couple of chefs to arrange interviews for a late-October story.  Shortly after Miss Chef got back from an afternoon meeting, she received a request from another chef to pick up some pig tails for Saturday, so off we headed to the Hispanic stretch of South Boulevard.  Naturally we stopped for dinner at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant.

Trust me, my life sounds way more glamorous than it lives.  Not that I’m complaining.  We had a grand ol’ time wandering the aisles of a large Compare supermarket, looking at chicken feet and nance fruit, which neither of us had heard of.  Date night with a chef.

If Friday can sometimes be hectic, it’s because Saturday is by far the busiest day of my week.  The farmers markets are part of my workplace, where I have the best and easiest access to farmers, chefs and other food purveyors.  It’s also the one day I have to get up and get rolling.  While this past Saturday Miss Chef was off to school to gather equipment for a cooking demonstration at Atherton Market, I hit the road before 7:30 to head to our “regular” market in Matthews.

I had arranged to meet Chef Adam at 8:30 for an interview, but I had several other folks to talk to.  Foremost was Chef Charles, who’s interested in paying for some writing on a new web page he needs for yet another branch of business.  Besides selling at two local markets, this Frenchman with a most American taste for entrepreneurship has a catering business which includes bbq and burgers in the guest tents at Panthers’ home games, as well as elegant meals for executive jets flying out of our busy airport.  Now he wants to start a side/retirement business traveling to his home on Ile de Ré with groups of eight or ten clients, and squiring them through morning markets and evening cooking sessions.

If nothing else, I could learn a thing or two from him about hustling up business.

Besides checking in with Charles, I needed to pick up eggs from Daryl of Walnut Ridge Farm, and make sure he’d gotten a print copy of a recent article I’d written about him and another farmer.  Then I stopped to see Pauline, the market manager, and follow up on an interview and blog story I’d done earlier in the week.  Oh, and I had to deliver those pig tails to Chef Bonaparte, for the catering job Miss Chef was helping him out with that evening.

In the midst of all this, Adam sent me a text at 8:30 that he was just getting dressed, so I also chatted for a while with Michele Lamb, who raises goats, and Mindy at Tega Hills, for whom we’d tried to foster a kitten few weeks ago (sadly, the entire litter succumbed, probably to distemper—at least the mother cat seems to be recovering).  When Adam finally dragged in, I bought him a coffee and and we spent a good half hour talking about filthy grease traps.  Then we were both off to our next round of errands, he to pick up supplies for the restaurant, me to Atherton Market.

As you can tell, this is a very different market, much more urban and a bit more upscale—in the window you can see the reflection of one of the many shiny new apartment complexes going up in this Southend neighborhood to attract the newest generation of Yuppies (what are they called now?  Hipsters? Dinks? My friends and colleagues?).

Miss Chef and I sort of “joined” this market this year, after I got involved with Friendship Gardens.  This is the only place backyard gardeners like myself can drop off donations on the weekends, and somehow I found myself taking charge of the donation station.  I also made friends with a new baker at the market, after falling in love with his bread and featuring him in my very first (small) print article several months ago.  He actually had a few new customers walk up to his booth with my article in hand, so he’s a fan of mine now.

This is where Miss Chef had headed from school earlier that morning, for a 10:00 cooking demonstration.  When I got there, she’d already started serving up eggplant “pizzas” (small rounds of eggplant coated in breadcrumbs, fried, and topped with veggies) and an apple bread pudding.  Unlike the Matthews market, there is no separate area for these demos, but it seemed that plenty of shoppers found her and stopped to have a bite.

It just so happens that the donation table is directly across from the cooking station, so we kind of got to hang out together for awhile.  I also managed to buy us both a hearty breakfast from the food truck outside (you can only eat so much bread pudding), buy some chicken and fresh pasta, and finalize another interview for that afternoon with another chef.

Around noon, Miss Chef wrapped up and headed off to her catering gig, while I continued to text, and chat with the market manager’s husband and dog.  I also discovered this interesting product being sold by a farmer I hadn’t met yet.

It’s called jelly melon, or African horned cucumber.  I snapped this picture because I might be able to use it for another of my weekly blog stories…it kind of depends on how long the sorghum harvest season is, and whether I can fit it all in before they all go out of season.

Which reminds me of another phone call I need to make…

I had to man the station until 2:00, when the market ends, because that’s when we get most of our farmer donations as they close up shop.  Sadly, I only got 1/4 pound of arugula for my troubles, but there’s always next week!  I left a few minutes early to grab a cup of coffee for Chef Nick, in exchange for an interview.  He mans the kitchen at a restaurant uptown, so I had to circle the block to find on-street parking, since I’d spent almost all my cash at the market.  I was lucky to find a spot not far away, and arrived with cappuccino in hand in time for our little chat.

It was after 3:00 when I finally turned the car toward home, and I have to confess that the rest of my day was spent mostly on the couch.  I’m in a mode of letting the garden fend mostly for itself, but it seems I need to do a little pest control patrol.

I picked a couple of worms off the five broccolis planted in the main bed, and checked that the two remaining brussels sprouts were still doing ok.  The third one just poof! disappeared a week or two ago.  Not a leaf or stem left.  Very odd.

The sixth broccoli plant is doing quite well in the raised bed, filling in the planter nicely.

The temperatures are starting to cool off, especially in the evenings, so it seems the garden isn’t suffering too much from my benign neglect.  Maybe it’s happy I’m finally leaving it alone, though I did bring this little basketful of goodness to Friendship Trays last week.

Yep, still bringing in tomatoes, but I’m looking forward to fall already.  As one of the market managers I recently interviewed said, there are two seasons colliding right now, and it’s a great time to eat.

Because I Want To

How do people keep up with blogging?  Not only writing, but responding to comments.  Some of my favorite bloggers post every day, and are always interesting, often pithy and generally likeable.

Anyway, I miss blogging more regularly.  I promise you, as I type this sentence, I have no idea what this post is about, but I feel like doing this, so I’m doing it.

I just glanced out the back window and heard a neighbor’s lawn mower and realized I’m supposed to be mowing this evening.  It seems like I can’t keep all my balls in the air, regardless of how many fewer I have than most people.  For once, I’m feeling good about having my writing deadlines under control.  My first big print article came out today, and I submitted my second one on deadline.  Last week I got a surprise payment for earlier writing; not enough to pay the mortgage, but enough to keep me afloat for the last couple weeks of the month, even with my car registration due.

I’m keeping busy at writing, but I’ve been in denial about the fact that I have yet to pitch anything to a larger publication than what I know here in Charlotte.  I need to do that.  I also need to mow the lawn, water the garden, fold the laundry and brush the dog.  Guess which one of those tasks will get done last?

I donated this to Friendship Trays yesterday.

I believe that will be the last cucumber of the season, but it’s now the peppers’ turn to shine.  I also finally picked that first big Mortgage Lifter tomato I’ve been watching for at least six weeks.

The earbuds are for scale.  I used them to listen to the interviews I recorded for the story I submitted today.  Do I look like a real writer?  Notice the Slow Foods coaster I regularly set my Coke bottles on.  I read a quote somewhere today that said something like “Soandso is an actor in the sense that he has appeared in films.”  I wondered humorously if I should define myself as a writer that way.  Just for now.  Until I send pitches to those other magazines…

I should also move my photos from Dropbox to my computer, and then back that up.  Yeah, add that to the list.

This also happened today:

It’s the little things.

Update: I did go out and mow, until I ran out of gas.  Then I started trimming…until I ran out of filament.  I was also running out of light, so the backyard is 7/8ths mowed and the front yard is 7/8ths trimmed.  At least they’re balanced.

Summer Doldrums

Last night when Miss Chef came home from work, I confessed that I have been feeling uninspired and unproductive for the past three weeks.  I’ve felt a slide into (mild) depression, with a side of disinterest in all things writing, local food or gardening.  I wondered if this whole “writing thing” was a ridiculously short-lived phase that had petered out already.

Miss Chef responded “I know exactly what you mean.  I’ve been feeling the same way.”

Misery loves company.  This revelation didn’t make my mojo jump up and come flowing out my fingertips, but it was comforting.  Maybe it’s the disinterest that’s a phase, and not the “writing thing.”  Depressions often do that to me, robbing me of a larger perspective while I get lost in the panic of the moment.  I did manage to finish up my weekly paid blog post last night, which felt like a minor victory.

All of which is to say, I’m going to wander in an uninspired way through this post, because I need to get my writing muscles back into shape. 

So, I’ve been mooching around feeling sad, and spending most of my time at home with these two mooks.

Yes, that is the bathroom door.  I posted this photo to Facebook with the caption “…and she never peed alone again.”  Still, I am grateful to have them around, as spending most of my time alone with the radio or tv for company would be much less entertaining.  Every day around 1:00, Mckenna wakes up and trills her way into the office, to see if she wants my attention.  This naturally wakes up the dog, who has to follow her to make sure I’m not about to go outside or eat something without her. This inevitably results in a tiny parade of two upright tails and four curious eyes, and who can ignore a parade?

In between pretending to work on various articles and keeping the menagerie assuaged, I’ve managed to keep the garden looking nice, if oddly unproductive.  Only one bean plant has grown to its full potential, and they’ve all provided a desultory harvest.  Cucumber production has been averaging 1.5 a week; one of my three plants gave up entirely a week or two ago, and the others aren’t far behind.  I’m looking at only my second squash ready to harvest this season.  My plans had been to have all of these plants overwhelm me with food by now.  But thus goes the gardening life.

Still, there is hope.  My previously barren Mortgage Lifter tomato has put on two additional fruits (only $1 each at this rate!), and the first two are looking more attractive every day.

Since I took this photo, the one in front has finally turned pink, and may be only a day or two from harvest (God and the rabbits willing).  Miss Chef’s Cherokee Purple plant has also set quite a bit of fruit, so while we may be late to the party, we may eventually get enough ‘maters to make it worthwhile.

Of course, the cherry tomatoes are producing constantly, to the point that I ignore them until I’m ready to make a trip to Friendship Trays with my little basket of donations.

(Oh, yes, my pepper plants have been doing pretty well.)  Things have changed a bit with Friendship Gardens.  The short story is that they aren’t interested in expanding the Backyard Gardener program the way my co-coordinator and I had been planning on, so he’s stepped back quite a bit in his leadership role.  We’ll keep up with the communications we already had in place, but aren’t going to make much effort to recruit new gardeners.  It’s been kind of odd trying to figure out how much I want to take on myself during this period of general disinterest, but I trust that my passion will rekindle sometime, at least by the time this summer heat abates a bit.

In anticipation of that time, I took the time to put in a little bit of a fall garden.  This is a new concept to me, having grown up in the snow belt.  But here, fall is so long and winter often so mild that it’s like a second spring.  One farmer told me fall is the easiest time to grow a garden, because the early heat gives young plants a jump start, but the pests and diseases have mostly run their course.  The trick is all in the timing.

Well, that, and remembering how dang hot it is!  After planting all kinds of onion and broccoli seeds three weeks ago, I watched in amazement as not one seed germinated.  They were brand-new seed packs—which I blithely gave away the extras of—so I knew the fault was mine.  After chatting with a helpful fellow at our local old-timey hardware store, I realized that I hadn’t bothered to make sure the seeds stayed moist long enough to germinate.  Duh.  When I plant in the spring, a good watering can last several days.  When it’s 95 degrees, that top inch or two of soil dries out fast.

So I’m trying again.  I brought home another pack of onion seeds, but it’s too late for seeding broccoli, so I bought six plants instead and stuck them where the lettuce and peas used to be.

I’d rather have not planted them all together, but with most of the bed still full, I had to disregard my companion planting principals.  Sort of.  I did seed onions in among them, as well as in patches along the central pathway.  Like garlic, they will sprout, winter over, and finish up next summer.  I left the outer periphery for the garlic, which will go in a couple of months down the road.

I also got a little bit excited when I saw the nursery had Brussels sprouts.  I grew them several springs ago, and they were a lot of fun to watch develop.

That picture was taken in July, and I’m very happy to say that the weed situation is much better this year!  With my current plants, I did find spots in the bed to scatter them in among the peppers and tomatoes, where they look a little lost among their looming brethren.

At least they’ll have some shady protection from the blazing August sun.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll get to harvest some by Thanksgiving, as sautéed sprouts with brown butter sauce is one of our traditional side dishes.

One benefit of this whole Writing Thing is that I’ve gotten to expand my friendships with a lot more of the folks who do this Food Thing for a living.  Last weekend I had an appointment with one of them at the end of market hours, to interview him for an upcoming article.  I’m working on a story about what it takes to get local produce out of the field and into customers’ hands, so I got to learn about the nuts and bolts of Daryl Simpson’s day at Walnut Ridge Farm. I also got to hang out at his booth for awhile.  (You know what I love about this particular market?  I just realized I know four of the five people in the background of this photo.)

Like many local farmers, Daryl has a part-time job (in his case, for the benefits), so he doesn’t get to start harvesting for Saturday’s market until about 10:30 Friday morning.  His wife works off-farm that day, so he’s on his own in the fields until about 6:30, at which point he can head home to wash and package everything.  It’s exactly this kind of detail I’ve been wondering about every since I got to know some farmers.

And the biggest question I was curious about?  He gets up at 4 am on Saturday mornings.  His wife Tonya gets up an hour earlier, to pack the CSA baskets.  And yet, he was willing to hang out an extra hour with me after the market to share his story.  I have so much respect for the people who grow my food.

Tomorrow I have another interview set up with Lee at Wild Turkey Farms, and then I’ll have three days to whack together a 1,000-word story to intrigue, amuse and hopefully inspire local readership.  I have faith that my mojo will show up by then.

Farms For Fun and Profit

Last week I spent two different days helping out in very different ways at two different farms.  In order to go in chronological order, I’ll have to defy my title and start with the “for profit” one, first.

At the market a couple of months ago, Mindy at Tega Hills Farm mentioned to Miss Chef that they were going to be looking for a new delivery driver soon.  Long story short, last week I helped out a couple of days, riding along and doing the running…and jumping, hopping, lifting, shifting, stepping, stumbling and fumbling.  Of course, none of this was conducive to taking any photos—I needed both hands to manage invoice, box or bag, pen and doors. 

However, on the morning of the second day, I did have a couple of minutes while we were packing to document a bit. Tega Hills specializes in lettuces, microgreens and edible flowers, and most of their crops are grown hydroponically, in greenhouses.

In the front, you can see the dark square area that is uncovered water.  The white squares are foam boards with holes which receive small cups where seedlings are placed.  These boards float in a nutrient-rich solution which is circulated through a system that is undoubtedly confusing and simple all at the same time.  Me, I just enjoy seeing the pretty colors floating around in the water.

Here’s another shot, where you can see some of the younger plants near the back.

I’m going to guess that these varieties are red oak and green oak lettuces, with a section of dark green kale on the right.

The microgreens, which are grown in soil in a separate greenhouse, are even more colorful.

In case you’re wondering, microgreens are simply the seedlings of familiar edible plants, such as these tiny beets above.  Not only do they serve as colorful garnishes, but they impart a surprising amount of flavor, which is sometimes more subtle or less bitter than their full-grown counterparts.  Some of the more unusual microgreens they sell are celery, purple radish leaves, pea sprouts and my personal favorite, popcorn shoots.  Yes, they taste like corn!

I interviewed Mindy for my article on squash blossoms, and was excited to see the very vertical growing method they use for the zucchini and cucumbers—yes, they sell those vegetables, too.

On the right, you can see the nylon netting used to support the cucumbers; to the left you can see just how long these rows are.  Can you imagine trying to get your kids to eat all that zucchini at home?

And in case you were wondering just how you would package up all those colorful heads of lettuce, here’s a picture from inside the cold room.

For each order, the appropriate number of heads are put into giant plastic bags, which are tied shut and put in the open-top waxed cardboard boxes.  Each box costs about $2 and can hold about 25 heads (so that’s about $30 worth of boxes you see there).  The microgreens are put into small zip-top bags or small plastic tubs like take-out containers, then orders are put together in plastic “t-shirt” shopping bags.  Most deliveries involved one box or a small bag of microgreens, but some restaurants ordered two boxes plus microgreens.

So now lets think about what it takes to get that crunchy lettuce or tasty microgreen from the farm to your table.  First it has to be plucked from its watery bed, packed as above, and the box labeled with the name of the restaurant and the contents, so it can be matched against the invoice.  Then the boxes are stacked in the bed and cab of the pickup truck in order of delivery, so the first deliveries are on top, and the last deliveries are in the air-conditioned cab.  This takes some excellent knowledge of the route, which involves 30 to 40 stops.  There are also a couple of coolers in the bed, for the myriad bags of microgreens.

Once the truck is loaded up, off we head with a stack of invoices as our guide.  Most of the stops are simple.  As we drive, I check the next invoice and figure out if I need a box, a bag from the cooler, or both.  Once we arrive, I hop out of the cab, hustle to the back of the truck, pull the order, carry it inside, barge my way into the kitchen (“Hey there, I need someone to sign for a delivery!”), quickly verify with the chef/manager that the order is all there (“One purple radish, two mix, one popcorn, plus the lettuce”), have them sign their copy of the invoice, thank them and go.  Sometimes I’d forget the box, and have to go back in, but for the most part it was in, hello, sign, thanks, bye.

Many of the Uptown restaurants are vastly more complicated.  Many require finding on-street parking, which is particularly challenging when streets are blocked off as they were on Friday for Taste of Charlotte.  Also, those “Parking for Delivery Only” signs are really important.  Sometimes I had to haul boxes down a block, or through a parking garage because the usual parking spots weren’t available.

Then there are the deliveries to restaurants located in 30-story skyscrapers housing corporate headquarters for banks and other security-conscious companies. 

source

Here we have to stop before even entering the delivery dock, so security can check our IDs, and do a sweep of the truck, including having us pop the hood and using mirrors to check underneath the chassis.  Fortunately, the driver is Mindy’s husband Mark, who has been doing this for a decade, and knows many of the security personnel, as well as the routine.

Now, once we get back into the truck and park where we’re told, I have to go through another security checkpoint.  At the “dockmaster” window, I have to surrender my ID for a “Contractor” ID and sometimes keys or an electronic key card to operate the elevator.  My favorite is the delivery to a restaurant on the 27th floor of a building that has a single freight elevator for to serve all those floors.  There’s often a bit of “hurry up and wait” involved in this job.  I have to move as quickly as possible to try to get to all 40 stops before 5:00 dinner service starts, so standing in front of a slow-moving elevator can be a bit irritating.

And that is where I often I find myself thinking “All this for a few ounces of microgreens?”  Once all the harvesting, packing and delivery rigamarole is completed, the kitchens still have to rinse and prep the lettuce, and store and portion the microgreens before they finally hit the plate, where diners may say, “Oh, how lovely,” before stuffing it in their mouths and continuing their conversation about stock futures or The Voice.

Fortunately for my sanity, this is not going to be a long-term job, more of a fill-in and backup position for when they find themselves shorthanded.  Even if it would drive me nuts long-term, it is an interesting insight into a hidden part of the food-supply system, not to mention a cool way to get to see some of the city’s best restaurants and meet more chefs.

Now, let’s change gears a bit, as we move into the second half of today’s post: Farms for Fun.  Saturday was another work day at Friendship Garden’s urban farm project at a local high school, which I’ve posted about already here.  This weekend’s event was a huge effort of Wells Fargo, where over 50 volunteers came out to help rake, weed, mulch, dig, haul and put their hands to any other job the garden could offer.

I was assigned a team to mulch under the few orchard trees next to the raised-bed area.  Sadly, I didn’t think to take a “before” shot, but here are a couple of this incredibly hard-working group when they were nearly finished with this task.

There was a huge stack of cardboard boxes, which had to be stripped of any tape or stickers that wouldn’t break down, then flattened and placed on the ground as weed stop before the mulch was barrowed over and spread.  Fortunately, although the high temperatures were forecast near 90, the sun was hidden most of the morning by a thin layer of clouds.

After this mulch job was done, the volunteers took their wheelbarrows down to the main field, which has been divided into three large beds.  One is already planted, but needed plenty of hands to help pull weeds.  The second one in back needed paths mulched before the planting rows were mounded up and compost dug in.

Here’s a shot to my left, which gives you some idea of the scale of this project.

You can see one quadrant of the first field, and the 100-foot long greenhouse in back.  The shipping container to the right serves as a storage shed for tools, seeds and equipment, and has had a solar panel installed to provide power for the aquaponics pumps in the greenhouse.  Amazing system, isn’t it?

Shortly after I took this picture, the sun came out, and I started flagging.  Those amazing volunteers, however, kept right on going, completing an enormous amount of work before leaving around 12:30.  There was even one woman who was still recovering from mono, but still came out and did what she could.

Last time I came out in April, the first field looked like this.

Notice the other two fields hadn’t even been plowed under yet.  This past weekend, I took this parting shot, from a little farther away.

You can see the scarecrow in both photos, which should help give some idea of how much progress has been made.

All in all, this weekend has made me realize one thing—growing food for mass consumption is hard work!  My little garden doesn’t seem like such a chore after all this.

Morning in the Garden

I took these pictures almost a week ago, on a cool, dewy morning.  I’ve been so busy that I’m only now getting around to sharing them.

Chilly looking chives…

 

…dramatic garlic…

 

…wispy fennel fronds…

 

…sturdy little pea plants…

 

…elegant broccoli…

 

…and colorful lettuce.

I don’t know what variety of lettuce this is.  Miss Chef was the one who bought it, in a mixed pack of seedlings labeled something like “Lettuce Mixed Variety.”  I stopped growing lettuce a couple of years ago, because it gets bitter when the temperature rises, unless you water it constantly.  This year, however, I’m not fighting Miss Chef’s urges to put stuff in the ground that she’ll ignore after planting time, because I know it won’t go to waste.

For example, just as this was getting big enough to harvest from, Miss Chef went a bit crazy at the farmers’ market, buying way more lettuce than two people can eat.  So, after watching our own crop trying to bolt (sending up flower stalks, which also makes the leaves bitter), I followed through on my threats to Miss Chef.  This morning I picked as much lettuce as I could, then dropped off my first donation at Friendship Gardens.

Just inside the door of the center, there is a soft drink-style cooler and a table with a computer and a scale on it.  You weigh your produce, enter the type, weight and garden it came from, then stash it in the cooler.  My lettuce weighed a half pound, which was more than I expected.  The little bag is some curly kale still hanging on in a pot by the back door.  I thought I might as well bring that in too, even though it didn’t even register on the scale.

As long as I was out in the garden (who am I kidding, I’m out there every day!), I thought I’d snap some pictures to show off how it’s doing.  These was the last picture I posted, from the beginning of April.

Every time I look at it, it looks the same as the day before, so it’s always a surprise when I finally compare two pictures taken three weeks apart!

You can barely see little blotches of green in the first picture, but here you can clearly see some of my broccoli plants, and the peas starting to climb the trellises in the back.  It will probably be another month or two before the garlic along the edge is ready for harvest, but I’m planning on donating some of that to Friendship Gardens, too.  In the nearest corner, the fennel plant that was just peeping over the border before is now standing quite tall.

Here are some close-ups, starting with a little radish that’s about ready to eat.

Those little maple seeds are everywhere in the backyard right now.  They’re kind of a pain, but they do offer a bit of scale here, at least.

In this picture, that’s broccoli to the right, with onions and carrot seedlings in the background.

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember that I was all jazzed up after attending a workshop on companion planting at the library.  Here you can see how I’ve rearranged my garden plan by interplanting those two root crops.  The short plant next to the broccoli is another radish; I’ve planted them all over the garden as pest chasers.  Later, their flowers will attract pollinators.

Here are the lettuces, pre-harvest, and the peas.  I wish the peas would get a move-on, as the temperatures are already climbing into the 80s, and they will not produce very well in hot, humid North Carolina summer weather.

 

Hard to believe it’s barely a week since we had our last freeze!  In my brief experience gardening in Charlotte, I’ve noticed that our last freeze tends to be right around Easter.  So, in spite of all kinds of cautions about waiting until the first of May, I went ahead and put in my first tomato plant.

This is a popular heirloom variety called a mortgage lifter.  It’s got an interesting history, harking back to a mechanic in the Great Depression called Radiator Charlie, who developed his own way of hybridizing four different varieties until he found one he liked.  You can read the story here, and listen to a radio story with a clip of an interview with that mechanic here. 

I also started some summer seeds, including green beans and squash. 

Some have just come up…and some I’ve had to re-plant.  Having my varieties spread out, instead of grouped together in rows or sections, has highlighted some interesting micro-climates in my garden.  Two beans on one side of the path popped right up, the other two I dug up after another week to find rotted.  I have no idea what difference there is between the two spots, other than about three or four feet.

So I’m still watching things grow, and keeping my fingers crossed for good weather (we’re scheduled to receive some heavy storms this week, with potential for hail, so I’m a bit nervous).  In the meantime, Miss Chef and I have started a Very Exciting Project.  We ran out of daylight to finish it, so I’m going to wait for a big reveal when it’s all done.  I’ll just tease you with this:

I’ll bet you can figure out what it is already, can’t you?

Garden & Gather

Oh, what a busy, busy Saturday I had!  I expect this post is going to be a long one.  Never fear, there are plenty of pictures and you are sure to finish up hungry.  That’s my specialty!

Miss Chef was up and out of the house early, to a couple of farmers’ markets to gather ingredients for the second dinner for her underground series.  I stayed home to gather a few ingredients of my own….some call it “thinning carrot seedlings”…

         

(before and after)

…I called it “harvesting microgreens!”

Between greediness and the trauma of ripping out plants that I seeded myself, I normally hate thinning.  But being able to tell myself that these were being harvested made it vastly easier.

It was a lovely, clear day to potter about in the garden.  The peas had jumped up after a good soaking rain last weekend, and the lettuces are filling in to make a pretty corner in the garden. 

 

This weekend I’m also planting beans and squash, though I’m a bit pessimistic about my chances with the squash.  I’ve only got one bed available for it now, since the main bed is “contaminated” by squash vine borers.  But I’m hoping for an overflow of beans this year, because I’ve finally found an outlet to donate extra harvest!

click photo for website

Friendship Gardens is a program started about five years ago by Charlotte’s version of Meals on Wheels, which is called Friendship Trays.  The idea is to raise sustainable produce locally with a goal of supplying Friendship Trays with ingredients for over 700 delivered meals a day.  Obviously, that amount of produce is going to require more than just one garden!  One segment of the program installs gardens with groups such as schools and churches, and establishes a garden leader to oversee each one.  In return, the groups donate a percentage of their  harvest back to Friendship Trays.

I’ve signed on as a Backyard Friendship Gardener, which simply means I will bring in and donate any extra harvest from my own backyard garden.  So I’ve planted twice the number of bean plants, sowed a generous amount of carrot seeds, and am trying to find places to plant extra tomatoes.  I enjoy harvesting from my bed at least as much as I enjoy eating it, so being able to share my harvest should only increase my pleasure.

Now, the program does have a couple of gardens of its own.  The original one is tucked behind the Friendship Trays building, in an older neighborhood of small warehouses.  A new, much larger space was recently made available at a local high school, in an area previously designated for a now-defunct agricultural science program.  Both of these gardens host regular work days where volunteers can just show up with workgloves and do whatever needs done.

All of which is to say, I only had a limited bit of pottering time in my own garden, as I was headed out for the bi-monthly workday at the new, large garden.

As I drove in, signs for Hands On Charlotte pointed the way…turns out this was coincidentally a collaborative work day between that volunteer organization and Friendship Gardens.  So there were already over 50 people hard at work when I strolled in half an hour late!

I had already met Henry, the program’s director, at an orientation meeting a few weeks before, and so I hunted him down to see what I could put my hands to work on.  He was still busy delegating tasks to some of the other volunteers, so while I waited for him, I snapped a few pictures…in the enormous, 100-foot long greenhouse!

 

Yes, the potential here is mind-boggling.  Those white-covered tables are a hyrodponic setup, already seeded with lettuce and tomatoes.  I didn’t get a picture of the enormous fish tanks which are intended to become a part of the whole system.  I don’t know all the details, but I think the fish waste may be incorporated into feeding the plants, and vice versa.

Eventually Henry gave me a rapid-fire list of tasks, from dismantling a simple shelf to planting some marigolds at the entrance.  I suppose between being late and waiting for my assignment, I only worked an hour, but the time really flew by.  I was glad we hadn’t hit the mid-90s of summer yet, because I’d forgotten how hot it gets inside a greenhouse!

All the volunteers were called together for a group photo before they dispersed.  I stayed back to talk to Henry about the Backyard Gardening project, and it was only as I was leaving that I remembered to get some photos of the rest of the site—so you miss the impressive view of dozens of volunteers planting and mulching this huge field.

Can you see the scarecrow in the middle?  A cute touch.  I think that’s a harvesting table on the left, where produce can be rinsed and sorted. 

On a little rise behind where I stood to take this picture, there are some nice raised beds that I wouldn’t mind having in my own backyard.

Aside from volunteering my time and donating produce, I’m hoping that networking with other gardeners will help me learn even more about how to raise food more effectively.  Also, it would just be nice to be able to talk to other people about how the weather is affecting their beans, or commiserate about those damn squash vine borers!

As rewarding as this work was, I had to hop in my car and zoom home, to get ready for that night’s big dinner.  We were very excited about this second one, because we’d just about doubled the number of paying guests, including some folks who knew Miss Chef from her previous restaurant, and some friends from the Matthews Farmers’ Market.

While Miss Chef and her helpers finished packing up to head to the site, I prepared the printed menus, then cleaned up, fed the animals and headed out the door.  Only to turn the car around a mile down the road when I realized I’d forgotten my wine!  (It’s a BYOB event.)

For the second time that day I showed up late, but it was really fun to walk into a house full of friends, acquaintances I hadn’t seen in months, and a few people I knew mostly by sight and name.  One of the other culinary instructors had offered her home as the venue—as part of the “underground” aspect, Miss Chef had sent out an email only 24 hours beforehand to announce where the location was.  Remember, though, the menu is kept a secret until after all the dishes have hit the table.

The hostess had set up two separate tables, since our group was so large (13, I think).

As the guests arrived, the hostess handed everyone a glass of rosé champagne, and we had a few minutes to mingle and chat.

Just this past week Miss Chef officially “hired” me as Marketing Director…or maybe Director of Communications…or Media Director…or something.  Basically, in addition to writing up the menus, I’m now in charge of invitations, emails, social media and the like.  Which meant I felt a responsibility to document as much as I could with my crappy little camera phone!

Some action shots of the team at work in the kitchen…below, that’s Chef Dry straining something, while Chef Bevins works on the meat course.

 

Soon enough, Miss Chef was tapping a spoon on a glass to announce that they were ready to start service, and we eagerly moved to the tables.  I passed through the kitchen on my way and caught a sneak peek.

 

We started with a crispy fried wonton filled with duck and ramps (a garlicky green that was foraged in the NC mountains).  The sauce is a sesame orange curd.  I don’t know about you, but those are some of my favorite flavors all mixed up together.

 

Next up was the salad course, which Miss Chef labels Beet Carpaccio—slices of roasted beets topped with Bosky Acres goat cheese and dressed with arugula and bites of golden beets.

 

The soup course that followed received a lot of praise from the guests—a spring pea soup with a seared scallop.  Remember all those edible flowers we had at McCrady’s a couple of weeks ago?  Uh huh…

That’s radish slaw and grilled spring onion decorating the soup.  I have to say, these scallops may have been the equal of the mind-blowing ones we had three years ago at the Artichoke, during our London trip.  Yeah, they were that good.

Next up was an intermezzo course, a really inspired and fun dish that Miss Chef labeled “A Study in Carrots.”

The pecan-raisin crouton in front is the only element not made of carrots.  The shot glass holds a carrot consommé, on the left is a salad of raw carrots, on the right is a fan of sweet pickled carrots, and hiding in the back are some glazed carrots.  Oh, but we’re not done!  The orange sauce is a carrot reduction, the dust is carrot powder, and do you see those tiny little leaves on the pickled carrots?? 

Yeah, those are my micro carrots I thinned harvested that morning.  So proud…

Anyway, we now were primed for the main course.

That’s a roulade of rabbit, sitting on asparagus and spring vegetable risotto and topped with a leek confit.  This was a very rich dish, and I was glad I had remembered to go home and get the pinot noir I’d bought to share.

The last course was, of course, a dessert.  Miss Chef has little patience for the intricacies of pastry, so she lets Chef Dry in charge of desserts.  This is a chocolate and strawberry mousse cake with strawberry gelée on top, and a strawberry and cream parfait on the side.

Now that I think of it, maybe we should have called this “A Study in Strawberries!”

Aside from the effusive compliments heaped on the chefs, another sign that the evening was a success was that the guests lingered for an hour or two afterwards.  Some bourbon came out, cheeks were kissed, jokes were shared, and I think it’s safe to say, a good time was had by all.