A Couple of Friends (Part 1)

They've been staying with us for a few years now, and we couldn't be happier. I'm talking about Mr. Sourdough and Ms. Kombucha, our two fantastic fermenting friends. Seriously, once you commit to them, it is hard to leave them behind when you go on trips of more than a week. You care about them, and don't believe anyone will treat them as good as you can.

But let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Many people blog about their kombuchas, and you can get the history on Wikipedia, so I will give you personal experience, failure, success, mediocrity and glory. Don't worry, it's pretty short.
My brother gave us our Kombucha completely unsolicited as a Christmas present, ignoring the classic wisdom that you ought not surprise people with live gifts. Added to the possibility that the receiver might not like it is the potential accidental death of the gift, and the commensurate guilt of that outcome. So we tried brewing it once and, two weeks later, had our first taste. That first taste convinced us it was worth continuing, and the experiences have (mostly) only gotten better. In the interest of trying to figure out why some batches taste bad, some great, some fizzy, I started keeping track of them on a chart. We've had many friends visit who have told us ours was the best Kombucha they've ever had, so that's encouraging. In the summer, when it's hot and dry, I started brewing two batches at once. This Fall, when I was thinking about going back to one, I had a disaster that helped me out. There is a reason they tell you to cover fermenting things: the paper towel I had been using had gotten some small holes, and a fly got in an laid eggs on my Kombucha, which then hatched into maggots. So now I'm down to one again...
So here's the simple version of the recipe my brother gave me:
Brew 3 liters of tea and dissolve one cup of sugar in it. When it has cooled, add 1 tablespoon of white, pasteurized vinegar and your Kombucha thing. Cover the container with cloth or a paper towel and leave it for about 10 days. Taste it every once in a while, and when it has stopped tasting sweet, put the liquid in 10-to-12 oz bottles and cap them. (At this point you can move the Kombucha thing to the next brew of tea). Put the bottles somewhere they won't get kicked or knocked over, and leave them there for about 10 days. Then refrigerate and enjoy at your leisure!
A few miscellaneous notes:
Make sure all utensils and hands are clean. Rinse the Kombucha off between brews, and store it (if you need to) in water. Lately I have been using 2/3 cups sugar and 1/3 cup honey, which seems to make it a little fizzier. Keep the whole process warmish. It will go much slower under 70° F. Most people say caffeinated tea is best, but I have not universally used it. The Kombucha will start forming layers, which can then be separated and given, unsolicited, to others. But then you already know that if you have one. Sometimes a little baby Kombucha will form in the bottles. This is fine, and can be consumed.
I've heard many claims about how extremely healthy Kombucha is for you, but the bottom line for me is that I wouldn't consume it if it didn't taste good.

A Couple of Friends (Part 2)

Our relationship with sourdough has been going on a bit longer. While at our first agricultural experience, an internship with the eminent Steve Moore, his wife Carol passed on the wisdom of fermentation in many ways. By far the most regularly used by us is sourdough starter, which leavens our bread nowadays. Some of you may be aware that sourdough is a popular style of bread, especially just south of here in San Francisco. What you may not know is that often commercial sourdough bread uses a starter for flavor plus yeast for leavening. That's because you have to wait 6 hours or more for your bread to rise with the starter, compared with less than two hours for the yeast.

For those who are all about fermentation, adding yeast to do the job faster cuts out the most important step. Since starter is a symbiosis of yeast and bacteria it does not only consume sugars to create bubbles, it also breaks down proteins. The most obvious results are a sour taste (from the acids released) and a denser loaf (because some of the gluten is broken down). Less overt is the combined effect of the disintegration of proteins, which is that the resulting bread is easier to digest. I make no claims, but I have been told by folks who have wheat allergies that the sourdough I have made didn't cause them reactions. At any rate, I make the same statement on sourdough that I make for Kombucha: it may be very healthy, but I like it because it tastes good (and because I made it myself).
The latter of which under-girds many of the skills I have cultivated. I am a little uncomfortable relying on products and processes that I don't know how to repair or replicate, from food to tools to structures. Since I don't know how to culture and maintain pure yeasts, and don't know how to make baking soda, the bread style I have adopted is sourdough. If I could only figure out how to make glazed donuts with it...
The process is very simple, and very natural. You create your own starter by fermenting a mixture of rye flour and water, which harnesses local yeast and bacteria populations. Then you keep using this same starter over and over again by feeding it before every breadmaking. I have had my current one for about three years, and have talked to folks who've had theirs for fifteen.
Here's the recipe for the starter: in a bowl, mix two cups of rye flour with two cups of water. Keep it covered with something breathable. The next day move it to a clean bowl and add one cup of rye flour and one cup of water, mixing well. Continue in this way for five more days, and you end with a big batch of healthy starter. Advice: don't use metal bowls. You will have a big batch of dead starter. I learned the hard way, though I understand it is common knowledge that fermentation and metal don't mix.
Use as much of that initial batch as you want, but make sure you have at least a cup of starter left after any baking adventure. That will go in the fridge for next time.
The bread recipe is just as simple. Start by taking the starter out of the fridge and feeding it. Two loaves of bread require a combined 3 cups of starter, and I want at least one cup left over. So if I have 2 cups in the fridge from last time, I'll feed it an additional 2 cups of rye flour and 2 cups of water (and stir it well) for a total of a little more than 4 cups.
Each loaf of bread calls for 1½ cups of starter, 1 cup of water, 1 tablespoon salt and about 6 cups of flour. Mix the first three well, then add flour till the whole mass gets too tough to stir. Turn it onto a surface and knead for about 10 minutes. It should feel like any other bread. Put it in a bowl, coat lightly with oil and cover, putting it somewhere it can rise for six or more hours. When convenient, punch it down, form loaves, and let them sit 1 more hour. Bake at 450°F for 15 minutes, then turn down to 400°F for 30 minutes. I butter my bread pans first, then brush butter on the tops of the loaves when they come out. Yum!
An upcoming post will discuss the flour we use, and whence it cometh.

3DW 11/09

That's our shorthand for the November 2009 Three Day Workshop. We hold two every year, one in early March and one in early November. They are frequent enough and the number of characters is cumbersome enough that it's easier simply to abbreviate excessively. Each one is unique, though, and each one is important to us. The months, weeks, and days preceding each are filled with thoughts of preparation, ideas of possible changes to format, and anticipation of the great people we will be exposed to. Despite the work that goes into each, you cannot imagine the injection of inspiration such a workshop creates for us: twice a year we gather with 30 to 40 new faces, each of which come full of ideas from past experience and future hopes. There are school teachers, farmers, homesteaders, college students, retirees looking at new directions, community garden organizers, rocket scientists, folks from inside the DC beltway wanting out, Americorp volunteers, activists and agronomists from other countries, musicians, and many others. This workshop we had participants from Washington (state of) to Maryland. While they come for knowledge from John Jeavons and other Ecology Action staff, they also give us a great deal. We spend the whole time in awareness of the energy and ideas percolating throughout the group, and the potential the participants have for change in their own areas (not to mention the possibilities in networking).
While we were at a new venue this workshop (hosted by Christ's Church of the Golden Rule) the biggest difference between this and past 3-Day Workshops was the absence of Carol Cox, former Garden Manager at the Ecology Action research garden. While Margo and I picked up the classes she taught (and did so nicely, I must say) her presence was missed. Great thanks go to her for giving us some teaching tips right before the weekend.
There are some great activities going on that some of the participants are involved in, and as I crunch the bio's for websites I will put them in this post or another.
Also, I made a promise that I would post the recipe I use for sourdough bread, so that will come in the following post.
All this is to say, it was a great workshop and we look forward to hearing what participants go on to do in the world of healthy, sustainably-grown food!

We Can't Get No Dehydration...

One of the best forms of food preservation has remained elusive to us for the past week. Just as we were preparing to introduce an exciting and new form of food-drying, our tried and true method bit the dust. These would be the solar food dryer and the electric one, respectively.

Our electric dryer, which can be identified only by its manufacturer, "B & J Industries", and vague "Model # 7010", remains somewhat of an enigma to me. What has more miscellaneous information about everything than the internet? And yet the only two leads I could find on this dryer are an ad in a 1980 issue of Backpacker Magazine and a thread on an online forum called "Rapture Ready" in which the writer talks about hers suddenly ceasing to work. That's just what happened to ours, and in the absence of any information on the omnipotent and omniscient internet I was forced to take matters into my own hands.At this point I'd like to harp on the benefits of a well-rounded childhood. Last week our intern Tracy said her son asked "how does Dan know how to do so much stuff?" (keep in mind, this is through the eyes of a 5-year old). My answer: I took lots of stuff apart when I was a child. My family can attest to this. Apparently it is only much later that one learns how to put stuff back together again.
But back to the point. I'm not very electrically savvy, but I could figure the dehydrator out after taking the back off. It runs more or less in series from the power supply through motor, heating element, thermostat, and thermal cutoff, which is the safety fuse in case the whole thing overheats. Bypassing the thermal cutoff (which breaks at 98° C) I found the whole thing worked. To make a long story short, I found 98° C thermal cutoffs online and got one for a little under a dollar. Which is really a ripoff, because if I ordered 1,000 of them they would only cost 34 cents each...
I haven't installed it yet, because I have been too busy dancing with excitement around our new solar food dehydrator! For my birthday I received a book, The Solar Food Dryer, which discusses the concept of using solar energy and contains recipes for dehydrating. Which I skipped right over to get to the plans it gives for building your own "high-performance, low-cost solar food dryer". It took me much longer than it had to to build, because I'm not great at assembling all the materials before beginning. As far as I can tell at this point, it is certainly capable of high performance and was relatively low-cost, depending on what one has lying around.
For materials the plywood, pine and redwood were free, and the big pane of glass was donated from friends' renovation project. (I actually got two of those panes, so I am building one for us down here and one for the folks up at Ecology Action). For the first unit I also scrounged much of the hardware (or fabricated it) from found items. For the second I am using "nice" things that I bought. It is sort of hard to nail down a final cost for the hardware (screws, handles, hinges, screen kits, thermometer, misc. other) because I wasn't keeping great track, but my estimate is about $75 per unit. Maybe less.
Those with more discerning tastes for the final look might spend more, and those who have a keener eye for scrounging parts would spend much less. Probably the only somewhat mandatory costs are the thermometer (~$7), screen kits (~$30), weatherstrip ($5), and the high-temperature stove paint (~$12). The gathered ingredients look something like this.
I put it all together, and ended up with a very nice, very effective piece of equipment. How effective? I was hoping to get it finished when we would have full summer sun to use it, but only just got it all finished this past week. We put it out Wednesday afternoon when the temperature was about 70° F and the interior temperature hit around 140° F. One afternoon wasn't enough to finish the large screen of apples, so we put it out again Thursday morning and they were dry before noon, again hitting about 135° F on a day with a few drifting clouds. So with mid-October sun angle and cool temperatures it still did the trick wonderfully. I'm sold. Well, I was sold before, but now I would recommend it to others.What we have now is a contraption that, with no further cost, will dry two 42" x 30" screens at a time full of yummy fruits and veggies whenever the sun is out. Yay!

Let's go to the County Fair!

This year we were hoping to attend the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show and the California Wool and Fiber Festival, three big events bundled together. It is a great time because, besides the usual rides and fried foods, it has lots of free samples of apples, wonderful art and craft displays, tons of cute animals, a whole building of fiber stuff, and best of all, the Sheepdog Trials. If you want an impression of how cool these dogs are, check out this youtube video of the 2008 Champion at the Mendocino County Fair. Picture 1,500 or so people behind the camera hanging on every motion of the dog. Previously that has been the highlight for us.

So what would have ordinarily been a fun time turned in to much more this year, as one of the Willits Spinning Guild members was organizing the Fiber Festival part. She came to the August meeting and announced that she wanted it to be a good show, so everyone should submit at least something for judging. It was a reach for me, but I decided to submit four samples of yarn I am spinning for Margo to crochet into an afghan. Just to fill the ranks out, you know.
We went to pick up the booklet that tells you guidelines, divisions, categories, and classes, and it was thick. Margo couldn't resist looking through it, and as she did she got ideas, marking pages that she thought were fun possibilities. She became more and more ambitious, and in the end decided to submit two pies, a plate of cookies, and solar-canned peaches and pears.
In this way we brought extra excitement about the fair. Sunday held the Sheepdog Trials and the spinning contest, so that was our day. We got there in time to see the last two dogs, then wandered straight over to the fiber building to greet friends and check out my submissions. I ended up with a first, second, and third place ribbon among four samples, which felt great. There were some fantastic projects in the mix, all woven, knitted, crocheted, tatted, felted, etc. We got to see our friends Steven and Tamara, who go about in fashionable buckskins and are the most hardcore primitive-skills people we know. At their booth they had home-made examples of everything from arrowheads to nets, plus some further down the alphabet. They have a company called Paleotechnics through which they sell some kits, have a number of books, and do an incredible amount of education.
Then came the spinning contest. I spun in it, and Margo helped the judges get everything organized and processed. As you see in the photos, there are a few styles of spinning represented: drop-spindle (my choice), Navajo spindle, and spinning wheel. The contest has three parts. The first is the warm-up spin. In this one they give you some fiber and a blindfold. The pictures tell the rest. These ladies are using the Navajo spindle and, as they have probably been spinning twice as long as I have been alive, are not much hindered by the blindfold. I was another matter...The second part involved spinning for quality. This was broken down into many classes, dividing by age, experience, and method. I am experienced enough to not be a beginner, but not so much that I can compete in quality with the average "experienced" spinner. The only other experienced drop-spindlist had 20 or 30 years' practice on me. But we had fun. And I got to show off my andean-plying skills. For a great description of the technique check out this blog post by an intrepid spinner. I've created my own way to avoid the necessity on my drop spindle, but the contest involved extenuating circumstances. And, as I said, I got to show off.
The third part was as hopeless as the second in terms of winning, but was a real hoot to try. It was the speed contest, and was only divided into beginner and experienced, all else considered equal. There is no match for a spinning wheel in all-out speed. There was a great clacking and clattering, and I was reminded why I prefer simplicity to mechanization. If anything had gone wrong with one of those wheels it wouldn't have been pretty. The one next to me sounded ready to throw a rod. So no prizes for Dan there. Below, Margo helps to make sense out of a tangle of niddy-noddys.After winding our way through buildings and displays, sheep, hogs, cows, bunnies and fowl we finally made it to the Arts and Crafts building to see what kind of success Margo had found in the canning and baked goods. They were spread all over the place, whether to make better decoration or because of some strange sort of logic, we weren't sure, but it took a while to find all her submissions. First we stumbled across the Shoofly pie, which had a second-place ribbon on it. It's always nice to see that someone else thinks your family recipe is [almost] as tasty as you do. Wandering, we found the solar-oven-canned peaches and pears, which won first and second places in their classes. After more searching we found the mint-chocolate-chip cookies in a glass case, with a second place ribbon on them. Great victory for the Royer-Miller kitchen!
It took us a long while to find the final submission, her "All- Pumpkin Pie", but when we did we were quite pleasantly surprised. It won first place in the Pumpkin Pie class and Best of Division for pies and pastries! A little blue ribbon and a big purple one. How about that?
The downside of submitting baked stuff to this fair is that they do the judging the Wednesday before the fair opens. Then it sits there all Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before you can pick it up. At the least it means stale cookies. At the worst, in the case of moist stuff (like pumpkin pie), it means a healthy layer of mold. Nothing says "Yum!" like a big purple ribbon on a moldy pie. Below is the pre-penicillin version.So if you want the secret to amazing cookies and pies, you know who to ask. And remember: if it molds, it is natural.
Out of nine submissions, then, eight won awards. What's more, the cash involved paid for the submission fee and gas to the fair! But not the garlic fries and the funnel cake...

First Frost!

No soft about it: the weather has shifted, and last night it went right down to 28° F. That means the end of our beautiful solanaceae element. Peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, they all have a sad look about them. And any amaranth still in the beds took a very ugly turn when they thawed out. Similarly the buckwheat.
Luckily we saw it coming, and got the sorghum out last week. Our favorite variety is Dale, which produces both seed and syrup. The seed can go through any freeze, but the sap goes through a chemical shift after frosts and becomes much less palatable. So we always want to make sure we harvest the sorghum and run it through the press with time to spare.
The millet seems to have passed through alright this once, and the corn is as happy and dying as ever it is this time of year. Our little baby rye and wheat plants love this kind of thing, so if they make it past the birds and rodents they will get big and strong despite the winter.
And the heater turned on in the house last night... Looks like Fall!

Happy Fall Equinox!

Well, here we are on the other side of the main growing season... I took the photos two weeks ago, when the amaranth and beautiful colors were still present. The amaranth has been harvested now, and some of the green is starting to fade into yellow. Nothing like the yellow of the hills around us, which are parched from the typical summer of no rain, but the yellow of things that aren't going to grow any more no matter how much water they get. Corn, for instance.

Our second earliest sweet corn, Brocade, has only remained in the bed this long for one reason: the supposedly "bush" style beans have climbed up it and show no sign of slacking. As you see in the photo the crispy corn stalks are peppered with the lush green of beans. Though loathe to cut a productive plant off, we'll have to do it in the next month to get in our cover crops.
This is the turning point of the annual cycle, when the garden begins to take on a different look. Step by step, week by week, as each main season crop is harvested the observer can see farther and farther. Six weeks from now, where once stood many visually impenetrable layers of plant matter, there will be nothing but 1" to 8" tall cover crops, and one will be able to make eye contact with a fellow agrarian across the garden. It's pretty exciting. And most of that plant matter will be stored away against the rain for compost material next spring.
Like the straw from the grains we harvested in June and July. Last week apprentices Ed and Natasha finished threshing the last of it, which is another happy moment. Once the rains start everything takes on moisture whether they are covered or not, and moisture makes threshing much more difficult. We have all started working on threshing main season stuff like amaranth, quinoa, and teff.
Speaking a little earlier of compost, we have noticed that clearing beds of immature stuff from weeds to "catch crops" (which I'll talk about in a future post) brings with it a dire need to build more piles. Margo has been diligent at this, starting the second pile in as many weeks. Pictured here is the first, resplendent in its amaranth and bean layers. Usually spring is the most intense composting season, and piles are built and added to gradually until winter comes.
Late summer brought with it the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show and the California Wool and Fiber Festival, which are all held together in late September. We participated in it through attendance as well as submissions, the process and results of which are intriguing enough to be documented in their own post. Suffice it to say, we had a good time. Here I am participating in the "Quality" portion of the spinning contest, a drop spindle knee-deep in a circle of spinning wheels.
Makaiah's sunflower circle, referred to in the summer solstice post, is past its prime, but still present in full force. Planted a little closer together than optimally, they did not reach the towering height that other beds did. Still, they were over his head, and that was good.
One would think that the fall would bring milder, autumnal temperatures. This has not been the case, as we suddenly find ourselves needing to cope with 103°+ F days, which are supposed to continue through the week. Next week it is to revert back to the predictable mid to high 80' s.
With waning daylight and hopefully lowering temperatures, we are also faced with the last three weeks of the summer course, when the interns we have worked with and gotten to know so well head off into their next stages. Fall is a good time for contemplating change...