Kevin displays the "one that DIDN'T get away"

Elly, Jacq and Kathyrn attest to their support

There was latent garlic already sprouting, so I pulled it apart and gave each little plant room. I’ve started leeks and Walla Walla onions at home in little baby greenhouses. And, on Sunday, I started our Roma tomatoes. Oh, so exciting. According to the package, we will have our crop on July 11. Let’s see how that turns out!

Casey, Kevin and Libby. We're grinning because we don't know how stiff we'll be in 24 hours!

There are four pillars to sustainability. Organic food clearly meets the first: environmental. It is pesticide free and is grown without the use of chemicals and Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs. That’s good on a number of levels. The food is neither sprayed — nor is it managed — with anything that is not organic. No non-organic fertilizers, no animal byproduct feeds, etc. If none of that goes into the food, none of it gets into us.

Since the middle of the 20th century, our food has been “scientifically managed”. We get “perfect” vegetables and fruits, fat chickens and nice red beef. The vegetables and fruits may be grown in shorter times, having less time to absorb nutrients, the fruits sprayed to appear beautiful. The chickens are fed hormones to grow more quickly (and push our children into puberty before their tenth birthdays), and the beef is fattened in packed feedlots where animals live in their own waste. So, organic is good. But there are some other sides to the argument.

Do we buy organic at the price of the other three pillars of sustainability? What if our organic fruit comes from Chile? It meets all the organic criteria, but…it is shipped over thousands of miles. That’s a big carbon footprint (environmental). It also supports Chileans, God love ‘em, but not our own economy (economic). It numbs us to our own ability to grow and manage our food sources (social and cultural). That loss of tax base erodes our elected governments’ abilities to fund: social services, schools, the arts, infrastructure, etc.

Enter the local food argument. Growing food locally limits the fossil fuel issue. It supports our own farmers and our own tax base. Lake Country Harvest (full disclosure: it’s my little sister, Paula’s company), dries cherries and produce from the Okanagan. It is often the “cull” produce that would otherwise simply be composted. It makes fabulous food that withstands time and bursts with flavour. Paula’s nascent little company increases the yield for Okanagan farmers, preserves seasonal food and is local food.

She’ll source organic when she can, but the bigger issue for her is limiting waste in our own back yard and preserving the best of our provinces harvest. It’s something to think about. And I’m doing that.

Little garlic plants already making a huge effort.

Our garden last year was a washout — a combination of less than perfect weather and a string of family crises that made working it very difficult. I’m sure our fellow gardeners were mumbling about our pathetic effort. But I will not be cowed! Libby and I will be joined by my brother Kevin in making this a real family affair this year. We’re talking about what we’ll plant and excited about the spring. Today being somewhat “spring-like” it seemed a good time to get going. I know this will piss off my family and friends elsewhere in the country, but I have to say that surviving the constant rain is psychologically debilitating , so we need earn our warm winters.

I dug up about a third of the garden today. The soil was heavy with wet, but it was easy to get deep, which was a blessing. I ripped out a lot of the aggressive mint and horsetail and turned in some organic stuff to help. I found that our garlic had seeded and I had countless little babies starting! That was SO cool to find! I also found some new plants that had formed from last year’s planting, so I rearranged everything as well as I could and congratulated myself on my January gardening effort.

The claim staked today

My daughter laments the fact that I fiddle with tradition, but as my husband explains to her, good cooks always want to push to be better, and that would certainly describe my intent.

I brined the turkey this year in a juniper-infused brine. My younger sister, Libby, had done the Thanksgiving turkey in a dry brine a couple of months ago and it had been exceptional, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and try a liquid brine. The results were fantastic. The bird browned beautifully and evenly and the meat was extremely moist and tender. I did cook it breast-side down for about an hour and then righted it for the remainder of the time. I used a specialty turkey (no hormones, free-range) of about 12 lbs.

The stuffing is one I have been doing for about a year and it came from La Cucina Italiana. Basically, it goes as follows:

Clean and slice the white part of 12 leeks, very thinly. Sautee these in two frying pans (it’s a whack of leeks!) in olive oil. I cook them until they are truly carmelized…it takes 40 minutes to an hour they way I do it, but I would highly recommend the slow method as it brings out so much flavour.

Cube two Italian loaves (I use long ciabatta-style baguettes). Spread these in one layer on cookie sheets and bake at 300 for about 30-40 minutes until they are golden and dry.

Combine the cooled leeks and cooled bread cubes. Add a large handful of chopped sage and some fresh thyme. Add about 1/4 c of extra virgin olive oil. Add 5 cups of brudo, a (a complex and expensive-to-make but oh-so-amazing stock, also from La Cucina Italiana). Combine well.

Bake in baking dishes at 350 for 40 minutes. I used a bit for the bird, but didn't stuff it heavily. I just wanted the herbs to flavour the meat a bit.

The only thing I’ll temper this with is that our parents have been (and sometimes still are) tack sharp sentient beings. So when do we “know” that this is gone? Or is it? How do we know when we should shift from “are you kidding?” to “oh, dear, it’s OK.”? How do we know it isn’t a cry for attention when friends their age are either sick or no longer interested.

Septuagenarians are people with 70+ years of experience, knowledge and the wiles to manipulate their adult children. How do we know when they are manipulating rather than asking for our help? Will they ever, really, ask for help? Or are they too proud? And will they instead punish us for our mobility, our presence of mind and our youth?

It is worth thinking about as we are compressed between the guilt of how we raised our children and how we comfort and protect our aging parents.

I planted a row of tiny French garlic and three rows of the much larger and more robust looking Russian red garlic. As per Mansur’s admonitions, I built up furrows and planted these about 2 or 3 inches apart along each furrow. I didn’t water anything as I’m now quite blight fearful and it will rain of its own volition soon enough.

I met Mansur’s wife for the second time today. We introduced ourselves this time and I learned that her name is Gaylene. She is calm and measured and she plants a TIDY GARDEN! Her green onions are like little soldiers waiting for review. She and her lovely little daughter harvested potatoes today. Mansur had planted them and then, above, had inverted 1 gallon black buckets with the bottoms cut off. Into these, they had poured nice soil. The potatoes shot up into the buckets, filling them with lovely, unblemished potatoes. What a great idea.  I offered Gaylene some of our kale, as we have been blessed with a bumper crop. She offered my rosemary, but I’ve been lucky in my home herb garden this year and have lots.

Final score on the garden trip today, I feel like I beat the coming weather. I’m very sore and tired, but the sick tomatoes are gone and the garlic is in. Bring it on, fall. I’m ready.

I ran into Ann at the SunOpta West organic market around noon. Ann is my “neighbour” at the garden. She eats predominantly raw food and tends her garden with great care. She’s been doing this longer than I have and is generous with her knowledge. I told her that a big bunch of tomatoes I had harvested last week had gone off. I must have thrown out about 10 lbs. of them. With the few remaining good ones, I made 2 lovely pizzas Margherita last night. The problem, Ann said, is blight. It hits your plants unless you cover them. Neil Bromhall’s blog here on WordPress explains blight well.

So, I went to the garden this afternoon to see what the state of affairs was on the plants and was very disappointed to see that every piece of fruit had blight, even the green tomatoes. Bucking my usual tendency to simply walk away and hope it all goes away somehow, I pulled up all the plants. I gathered and stacked the 18 cages and then took all of the rotting tomatoes and added them to the compost. Post script here, after reading Neil’s blog, I realize I’ll have to go pick up everything out of the compost and bag it tomorrow otherwise, next year, the blight will just pick up where it left off. Tomorrow I’ll go and dig up everything well, get rid of the horsetail (yeah, right….) clean things up and plant garlic. That will soothe the sting of losing my beautiful plants, grown from seed this spring and lovingly tended all summer. They served us well, though. I would guess we’ve harvested about 70 lbs. of tomatoes in all. I’ve given them to friends and neighbours, made sauce and tomato paste and about 6 pizzas. There were salads and sandwiches. They were all yummy and sweet and tasted of summer.

But fall is coming. I’m determined to see it not as an end, as I always have, but as a beginning. I’m breaking the meme I’ve grown accustomed to serving. Fall will be about warmth and light and family and food. The beginning of the together times. So, blow all you like, wind. I’m ready for fall.

Ray and I went to Winfield (just a few ticks north of Kelowna in the Okanagan) to stay with her this weekend. I brought about 15 pounds of our little plum tomatoes and an armload of fresh sage. I always knew that Paula canned peaches and made jam and pickled beets. She’s dried enough cherries to feed a small town, but she’s run up a few new tricks. She had dried sliced leeks and chopped peppers — of every colour. Fabulous! The smell of these little treasures was amazing and they will bring happiness to soups, stews and fried potatoes all winter. She set me up with one of her five driers (all purchased for a song at garage sales) and I broke all of the sage off the branches and set those up to dry.

We went to the Kelowna public market on Saturday morning and bought massive Walla Walla onions and perfect little carrots from Zelaney’s Farm. The Zelaney’s handle and sell vegetables like they’re hand-raised puppies. It’s like they know and love everything they grow and it shows in the exceptional produce and the beautiful faces of everyone who works there. Then we discovered smoked garlic at another little stand that sold Italian, French, Russian Red and several other fresh garlics as well as this exotic smoked stuff. Stick your nose in THAT brown bag and tell me you don’t have an out-of-body experience! Paula put some of that with carmelized onions on pizza that night. What a treat.

Some of the peppers before they were chopped and dried. Paula Diakiw 2009.

Paula also bought about 10 lbs. of leeks and more peppers. So I spent Saturday afternoon cleaning and chopping these and into the drier they went. Within 10 hours we had oodles more of both to add to her bounty and we parsed some out for ourselves and a few lucky family members. It’s amazing how much flavour and aroma gets trapped in the dried food. I crunched some of the leeks onto fried potatoes on Sunday morning and they added so much!

Spectacular Mount Robson, near Tête Jaune Cache in B.C. http://www.ourbc.com/travel_bc/bc_cities/yellowhead_hwy/ t%EAte%20jaune%20cache.htm

On Monday (Labour Day) more friends arrived with their harvest from Tête Jaune Cache (pronounced by the locals as “Teejon”). JP and Alisha live “off the grid” on 9 acres of undeveloped land — no running water, no electricity, no roads. They had picked up JP’s mom, Josée from big-city Montréal at the airport and, after canning and drying at Paula’s, were headed up to show her how the other 1/99th live.

Paula (left) and Alisha in Churchill, Manitoba to see the Polar Bears. Jim Baldwin, 2008.

They brought beets the size of turnips, huge cucumbers and various other harvested treasures, all awaiting Paula’s expert advice on how best to process them for a winter that will make them a necessary staple along with the deer that JP can kill by the time the snow gets serious. They live in the wilderness with a moose of a dog named Hilo. He earns his keep intimidating nosey bears and thus protecting his people. He appears to be an Akita in the front and a St. Bernard in the back. He’s all muscle and brute force, but he is a real pussycat for affection. However, we were required to sequester Paula’s kitty,  as Hilo is in the habit of eating cats in a bite or two…literally. They also have a new puppy named Leon with the cutest ears. He looks like a husky cross and is as smart as a whip. Both dogs eat only raw food. In the summer, that’s whole raw chicken backs, bone and all. In the winter, it’s the waste from the deer that JP butchers himself. Hilo’s massive jaws make the bones look like marshmallows. I asked JP how he learned to butcher the deer. He says a Métis friend of his taught him the ropes, and now he butchers with so much more care than someone you might hire. He’s careful with how close he cuts to the bone to make the most out of a cut. He sounds passionate about the craft.

It was an interesting education, meeting these seemingly normal people who choose to live with only the barest essentials and make their way as a lifelong learning process unfolds. It was serendipity that they happened by this weekend, when I was really starting to understand how Paula’s harvesting instincts can tighten the 100-mile diet circle.

The end product of Paula, Josées and Alisha's canning on Labour Day. Paula Diakiw. 2009.