Michael Pollan does it again.

Michael Pollan is quickly becoming the spokesman for the whole of the local, small, slow anti-industrial food movement. I just finished reading his latest article from the NY times. It is a long article written as an open letter to the next president. Mr Pollan lays out the case for making less industrial food a centerpiece of solving the climate, energy and health issues facing the nation today. Among his suggestions are selecting the next white house chef with an eye to promoting small food. I think this might be an excelent position for Alice Waters to preach the gospel from though Mr Pollan stops short of directly advocating her.
In related news I have recently encountered a petition to have the new president turn all or some of the white house lawn back into productive land. I think this is a good idea but it needs to be explained to the public properly so it isn't seen as posturing like Carter wearing a sweater. Again that wasn't a bad idea just too easily mocked.

All quiet on the southern front.

Hey,

Still not a great deal going on here at the farm. I picked up some supplies from the depot on the way home from work and plan to spend the weekend working on the house. Right now my focus is on energy improvements around the house. I have knocked off alot of the low hanging fruit. We have a programmable thermostat with fairly aggressive settings. I have tightened the duct work up a bit with foil tape and insulated the exposed ductwork. I am planning on adding some mastic to the ducts as well. We also have a water heater blanket and last year added a bunch of attic insulation. So now we have to look at more structural and expensive work like removing the siding and adding sheathing and house wrap or upgrading the furnace. I think the winter will be focused on improving our energy effeciency.

Rick

New update

Well it has been an abysmal long time since I posted anything here. We have now entered the long quiet season and it is getting more difficult to find interesting things to post about. We have had a few blasts of winter and things have definitely gotten colder.
I went deer hunting last weekend and got a smallish doe. We spent Monday processing deer at a friends house and now there is lots of meat in the freezer.

Happy Halloween

Well Happy Halloween. Nothing really to add just figured I should say happy Halloween.

Rick

Snow

We have our first snow of the year. We still have chard and kale but otherwise we are now almost completely finished with the garden. We did manage to put up quite a bit of squash soup yesterday. I also dug up a rosemary and will attempt to keep it alive inside this winter.

Fall is for cooking.

Jess and I made a great dinner tonight. The first course was the squash soup pictured above. The recipe is from the latest Jamie Oliver book. It is flavored with sage and rosemary from the garden. It also has a little spice from our last jalapeno. It was served with some crusty bread and Parmesan cheese. Jess also made a pot roast from the Alton Brown recipe which we had as our main course. An excellent dinner.

Rick

Earthen Ovens

Not a lot to report in way of the farm, winter is closing in. We had our first frost two nights ago and most of the leaves have fallen. Like any good mammal my thoughts have turned to food and sleep.
In the food direction I have been thinking about building and earthen oven. I am told they are great for baking breads and pizzas. We have dabbling a bit in pizza as of late summer so this might be a nice addition to the farm stead. Appropedia has 2 examples, here and here. I also love the picture and metal hat on this one. This part of the state has lots of clay so I will really have to look into this some more next spring.

Drinking New Belgium's Mothership Wit with dinner, nice belgian funk with good spice flavor.

Ferndale Market

Jess and I stopped by the grand opening of the Ferndale Market in Cannon Falls this evening on the way home from of work. The have a nice selection of local and organic foods including many that are produced locally. We picked up a few items including a Lorentz potato sausage we had with dinner along with some roast home grown potatoes and pan fried volunteer tomato. Not a bad dinner.

Rick

Garlic

Last year was the first year that I planted garlic. I had good success with it. I planted a few different varieties that I purchased from SSE. I originally planted them all in separate rows. However I decided that keeping them all separate during drying and then planting them seprately again was more work thatn it was worth. So instead I mearly planted those that did the best and I figure that over time my garlic will trend twords the species that does best here. So far it looks like mostly purple varieties. All in all I planted 90 cloves so I am hoping to have plenty of garlic next year. Will have to get a garlic roaster I guess.

Rick

I have been watching the happenings of the financial world lately with the detached fascination usually reserved for horrible bus crashes. Unfortunately I am currently seated on the bus, Seated too far from the drivers to truly prevent the disaster if I was even capable of such a thing. Instead I find I have no choice but to watch it all unfold and hope chance and preparation will save me. I feel like I should be telling everyone I know what little I know about growing tomatoes and beans. I know that is fairly ridiculous. I know it is a combination of fear and a certain desire I have to test my own limits that makes me think about disaster as much as I do. I hope.

Good luck
Rick

PS lost 20 % of my retirement money in the last 2 weeks, how about you guys??