Category Archives: random thoughts

When it gets dark at 5 it’s easy to get bored. You read books, you read blogs, you make a pie. Then what? Sometimes we’ll go to a movie because it’s so cold in our apartment, or we’ll go dumpster diving for the animals (exercise=warmth). The other night I baked a squash and processed my dried fennel pollen.
In July I picked bunches of fennel in the yellow pollen stage. There were so many bees in the fennel field across the street from our house, I felt a little bad taking my share. We filled two giant shopping bags of the stuff, and hung it in our laundry room. Five months later I finally have time to process it! For about two hours I plucked the dried yellow pollen off the fennel umbels. The dust made me sneeze, but it’s well worth it. Fennel pollen makes meat taste really really good. I put it in rabbit dishes–and when we made salami, that was an important ingredient in the finnochio salami. I think it would make a good dry rub for beef and a secret ingredient in roast vegetables.
I was left with a bucket of spent dried fennel branches and a small pint jar of pollen. The spent fennel went to the rabbits, who are always eager for an herby snack–they loved it!

No, it’s not a goat.
It’s Cousin. He looks like our dearly departed cat Sparkles, like he could be her cousin. Hence the name. He’s a stray who has lived in this neighborhood for a long time, we just weren’t ready to adopt him. Now we are. He’s a great addition to the farm because he hunts mice. He’ll catch one, bring it to our bedroom, meow, and then consume the whole mouse-y package. Welcome Cousin!
Speaking of goats, I should mention that the goat collective is searching for a goat host. Our original hostess had some medical issues to deal with. So if anyone has a back 40 in oakland or berkeley, let me know. I’m also contemplating getting pygmy dairy goats. They’re more expensive and yield less milk, but they would be fine in our backyard (with some periodic walks).

My sister’s food blog–garlic breath–got nominated for an award! It’s a great source for recipes and fun stories about cooking in France. Go vote for her.

Around 3:30, 4 am the rooster would begin to crow. Over and over again. He’s a teenage rooster so he’s just excited to be alive. Or, maybe he crows to soothe an existential crisis. In either case, it’s extremely annoying. And dangerous. If my neighbors complain–who knows, maybe animal control will come and take my prized turkeys. The rabbits. The duck! I called a few friends over for a rooster butcher, or harvest if you will. Then I rode my bike past Brother’s Market.
“Hey–hey,” Moses the shopkeeper yelled.
I slowed down and peeked in.
“Where’s my honey?” he asked. I showed him the beehives in the spring and gave him some fava beans.
“There isn’t much left,” I answered. “Want a rooster?”
He came outside. Moses has dyed red hair. I’m not sure what’s up with that. He nodded. Tomorrow, I told him I’d bring him the rooster and some honey.
The rooster sleeps outside so I nabbed him in the morning. He had already put in a few crows before 8am. I put him in this cage and walked half a block to Moses’s market.
Inside the store–think malt liquor and chips–a woman sat on a chair peeling an orange. When she saw me, she let out a torrent of words. The customer in line did a double take at the rooster, then gathered his black plastic bag of beer and left.
I set the cage on the ground. Moses came around to look at him. I handed him the jar of honey. He smiled. “How much?” he asked.
“Ten dollars for the rooster, the honey’s a gift.”
Moses went back around to the cash register and opened the till. His wife shouted a few words, ate a slice of orange.
“She thinks that’s too much, huh?” I said. A woman’s displeasure is apparant in any language.
“Yes, but don’t worry about it,” he said. To make her feel better, Moses gave her the honey. He waved the jar in front of her until she took it out of his hands.
I looked down at the rooster. I’m sure Moses will do a better job than I would.
Then I was walking home, the sun out, the cold December air, a well-worn GhostTown $10 in my pants pocket.

Can’t…stop…picking…olives.
The bumper olive crop (in the city and rural areas like Davis, CA) forces me to go back again and again. We’ve gone two weekends in a row now. Everytime we drive away from the picking spot (the best in Davis so far is on Russell Road, near the bike path) I look longingly at the olives still on the dang trees. Last weekend Willow, Traci, Gordie, Bill, and I went up together with buckets and rose wine, ate at RedRum Burgers and then picked olives for hours in the icy wind. Back at the farm, I hoisted more pillow cases into the rafters with their heavy load of olives and salt. Another batch of small ones I decided to brine cure. I added 1000 grams of Kosher Diamond brand salt to 10L of water (enough to make an egg float). Every day I stir them, and every week I’ll change the brine water. Essentially, I realized we’re working out the tannins and fermenting the little babies. Speaking of fermentation, Wild Fermentation author Sandor Katz was in the Bay Area this past weekend, hosting a workshop at SOL in East Oakland. He’s such a fount of cultural knowledge. If he’s visiting your area, do go see him.

So anyway, we made it back to California, had a hot dog for Thanksgiving, drove through the Central Valley, and spotted these bulldozed up grape vines. Bill pulled over and we gathered as many as we could to stuff into our trunk. Happy days being back in California, reunited with my farm animals, and the garden–and now the dream of eating grape vine smoked pork!
A lot of people ask–what did you learn on your roadtrip? I had hoped to see lots of inspiring urban farms and gardens, but what I saw were really great people starting urban farming projects. I feel like we’re on the cusp of a new way of living. That soon it will be entirely unextraordinary to have backyard chickens and bees. That more collectives will come together and raise meat animals together. That this will all be done under the radar and by backyard tinkers and dreamers.
I also figured out (duh) that every region in the U.S. has a unique food culture. Coming from California, I always assume everyone wants to eat a just picked salad. But that’s just our way of eating, and trying to put that food culture somewhere like Texas or New Orleans just doesn’t make any sense. I’m convinced that every region in the States has a food culture, it might just be buried, and someone will eventually dig it up and celebrate their regional food stuffs.
In June, Bill and I are headed up the west coast to check out the scene there. I’m hoping to see Jim Fullmer’s biodynamic farm, Heather Flores urban garden in Eugene, the egg collective in Portland, Nat’s digs–if you have any other ideas, let me know!
P.S. I wrote an article that appeared in SFGate yesterday, about a yoga couple and their money issues. It’s light and sweet–like holiday candy!