"Eating is an agricultural act"

That's Wendell Berry. For those of you who have never read any Wendell Berry, you should. I have mostly read his agricultural essays. He wrote about what I now consider to be mainstream foodie topics (Thanks to Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters) 30 years ago. He is also a farmer who doesn't own a tractor. He has a team of draft horses and a collection of "archaic" non-motorized iron tools. Wendell Berry is my hero. if I could invite 5 "famous" people to my dinner table he would be one of them.

About a month ago I was privileged to travel to Monterey, CA for the Hazon Food Conference. Hazon is the largest environmental organization within the Jewish Community. I had never heard of them until I applied to receive a grant to attend the food conference. They are a worthy organization and worth checking out and getting involved with. I had never heard of them because most of their activity is based on the coasts, NY and LA, because their is an infinitely larger Jewish population there than in Chicago. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to connect with some wonderful like-minded people including my new friend Aaron Lerman, whose review of the conference you can read at the Jew and the Carrot, here. Other notable people worth checking out and supporting are:
Julie Negrin, a cooking teacher with a cookbook coming out in the spring. She lead the first of the sessions I attended and I am super excited about her book.
Abbe Turner, dairy goat farmer and cheesemaker extrodinaire. Her farm, Lucky Penny Farm, is located in Ohio. read LOCAL. A truly amazing person and I want to help her find a Chicago market and go visit her and the goats when it is a bit warmer out.
Anna Hanau, Farm manager at Adamah farm. This girl is intense when it comes to farming. in a really awesome way. She told us the best tractor story ever. I wish I could tell it but it will definitely lose something. I would like to be able to apply and work at Adamah this summer. We will see about that though there is lots going on at the moment.
Jonathan Silverman, farmer in the Bay area with lots of creative projects going on. My birthday fell during the conference and he sang happy birthday to me and presented me with a fancy chocolate bar for my cake/present.
Pesach Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer, husband and wife founders of the Eden Village Camp near NYC, Pesach taught a session on permaculture and incorporating it into your everyday life and was a wonderful teacher. Vivian moderated a Vegetable monologues panel of female farmers that included Anna Hanau and Abbe Turner. Eden Village Camp is in its inaugural year this coming summer and seems like a truly unique and dynamic opportunity for children. There are some discounts and scholarships available so if you know of some children who like to play in the dirt check them out!

I am still weeding through all the materials that I brought home and will probably say more as I do that. There is a group of us here in Chicago trying to get some projects off the ground for the community here and I also have a person project that I am going to use this blog as a platform for in the coming months as I start researching. i will tell you more about that in another post as this one has lots of info already!

I owe you lots of updates....

Since starting my Wardrobe Refashion Project i have been trying really hard to post once a week over at Dart and Hem and while i have still been sure to take lots of pictures for you for this blog I still haven't gotten around to posting them. i have also had some issues with my computer and external hard drive which just adds to the problem. So this is my attempt to catch you up a bit before I leave the country for 3 weeks and have even more for you.

First off, about our roof garden! haven't talked plants in awhile.



We also have Thyme, Oregano and Basil doing really well in the house and on the back porch. There are about a dozen tomatoes coming in, several sweet peppers and some beans. We have already made a decent sized harvest of our kale.

and in case you are wondering how it all got up there:


we lovingly call it the Mizzen top.

I have also been taking a botany class and have learned much about identifying plants and how they are classified. it makes me feel like Maturin. The class is at the Botanic Garden here in Chicago and our teacher is really great. He is really relaxed but he really knows his stuff and loves it too. The group of people in the class are really great too. I hope to be able to stay in touch with some of them.

next up, the road trip. Since that will consist of many many pictures I think it will be a separate post.

More things that go sprout in the night

Remember this? well this is what it looked like 2 weeks ago:

and this is what it looks like now:

living happily next to the bamboo.

And this is what is inside our grow closet:

that is sweet pepper on you left (they look like propellers) and kale on your right.

thyme

the mysterious "lettuce" plant. we think it is actually more like a bean but it came with the lettuce seeds that i ruined.

Here is a current view of our grow closet:

We hung black garbage bags inside the doors so it doesn't look so ominous when the doors are closed. Our worm bin is in here too all the way at the bottom.

We now have a grow closet!

we have decided that in the current economy to keep our ends met to grow pot in our closet and go into the pot brownie business. We grow only the finest black rooster weed, our own specially raised variety that you can only get from us. Please place your orders early as we already have a long waiting list.

Um...or we are starting the seeds for our roof garden indoors since the official frost free date in Chi-town isn't until mid to late May (depending on who you ask) and the growing season is relatively short.

We planted kale, peppers, thyme, rosemary, oregano and chamomile last week and already have little seedlings. We will be planting tomatoes, basil and mint sometime this week. We also have a mystery plant from a 6pack of lettuce that I planted at a workshop. i left the seedlings in the dark too long and had to scrap them but this mystery survived and seems to be doing well. We think it is a bean. i will post pictures soon

We also have a livestock addition to our little urban homestead: WORMS!

This is me wetting out their bedding in the sink.
We were able to trade some plants for some worms from a friend. We were just going to pay her for them but when she heard about what were growing in the closet for the roof we decided that a trade would be more appropriate. A good deal on both sides I think!

Things that go sprout in the night...

you can plant that....


thats what this was, except it was garlic.

Green Garlic is what you get when you plant garlic but instead of letting it mature over a long period of time so it can form a bulb you grow it for the green stuff above the soil line. You can use it like an herb. It tastes like garlic except more delicate and less intense. And you can't buy it at the grocery store. So plant it yourself whenever that garlic bulb that has been sitting for a while begins to sprout. Plant it with the pointy or sprouting end up and cover with about and inch of dirt. you can plant the cloves fairly close together since they won't be forming bulbs.

SEEDS!

I ordered seeds today for my very first garden! I ordered from Seed Savers Exchange. I like what they do and they are probably the closest seed company to me. Double bonus. The girl on the phone was super nice. We chatted for a minute or two while her computer was loading.

This is what B and I put on the docket:

Tomatoes- Nyagous
Peppers- Wisconsin Lakes
Beans-Pencil Pod Golden Wax
Carrots- Purple Dragon
Cucumber- Snows Fancy ( I can attempt to make pickles with them too!)
Kale-Red Russian
Peas-Green Arrow ( I was also really bad and ordered some Tom Thumb too. They are real small plants and I thought they might make nice gifts and look pretty on a table or something.)
Basil-Genovese
Cilantro
Spearmint
Chamomile
Rosemary
Oregano-Greek
Lavender

and for September delivery Garlic-Siberian (I am most excited about this one. I don't know what it is but Garlic just does it for me.)

I will be able to make my own Chamomile Mint tea. This excites me to no end, even more than fresh pesto and lazy days reading pulling the basil leaves off the plant and chewing as i read.

I don't even really know where all these plants are gonna go, maybe on the roof. I know that most of them won't make it on the porch, not enough sun and we have a crack squirrel problem.