End of the Year Look Back: 2010

Posted on December 8, 2010 | 22 comments

I just read my goals for 2010 and I’m pretty psyched that I managed to get two things done: the cob oven built and the property purchased. I had actually forgotten about my pledge to buy some property for my high density orchard dream in 2010–who could have guessed it would have been our squat lot?

I noticed, too, that I didn’t do a lot of the things on my list of things to do. Like tan all those rabbit hides in the freezer. Like to not grow vegetables during the hot summer months. I also didn’t go foraging much, even though people were nice and offered to show me their secret spots, etc. And I also didn’t get serious about my finances (again).

That’s life, though, you do what you can. In that spirit, here’s my look back on 2010, and plans for 2011.

Animals

I ended up increasing my rabbit flock, what with the San Lorenzo farm and all. Now they’re at my place, in really nice Bass cages, and I’m so happy how they are thriving and reproducing.

The dairy goats were a disappointment on one hand because they kidded all males. On the up side, Ginger has a really nice udder for a first freshener. I’m hoping it’ll get huge after her second kidding. My goal is more milk production, and I’ve realized that I just have to grow my own champs. Bebe is giving up six cups of milk per milking, a new record for her, and a tripling of her intial production when I first bought her almost three years ago. Yay Bebe!! Photo by Morgen Van Vorst.

The bees gave quite a few gallons of honey this year, enough that I could sell some of it at my pop up farmstand. My split didn’t work, I realize now because I didn’t put the new hive far enough away from the old one. Duh. Good to make dumb mistakes, in order to learn.

Next year with the animals, I’m looking forward to my Muscovy ducks successfully hatching out babies (they sat on a clutch of eggs for two months, nothing hatched though there were embryos in there). I’d like to add one more milker to the farm, most likely by birth. And one more beehive at the farm.

Garden

My triamble squash were small this year. The clear winner in terms of production was the trombocino/rampicante zucchini. Not only did I get million little zukes, I also let a few of them go and they made gorgeous, sort of phallic winter squash. Great color, and delicious eating. I’ll def grow this squash again (but only one).

I learned to love rapini, which is a great weed, and turned others onto it at my farmstand. I also learned how to cook borage leaves. The garden definitely thrived with the new French Intensive Bed layout. I also learned how to use floating row cover and shade cloth–two essential tools for the new stupid weather conditions caused by global climate change. I got a little better about starting enough seedlings on prop tables so I can do on-going plantings throughout the year.

Next year’s garden goals are to do more continuous production, higher sales, better staking and garden infrastructure, espaliered fruit tree fence, build a greenhouse, get the compost under control, and wack back all that ugly stuff that I don’t like.  Oh–and slowly pick axe the concrete, one bed at a time. I guess I can use the urbanite to build the walls for the outdoor kitchen?

Writing

Really happy to finish, with Willow Rosenthal, the Essential Urban Farmer. It’s due out in 2012. Also glad to be working on my next book, Gone Feral, for the next year.

Teaching

My mom’s a teacher, I never thought I would be. But there I was, teaching animal husbandry classes at the BFO. I’ll be teaching more in 2011, including cheesemaking, goat, rabbit, and chicken raising. See http://www.biofueloasis.com for a list. As I get the outdoor kitchen built, I’m looking forward to teaching hands-on classes at my place. I’m also hoping to have more kids come to the farm to learn about urban farming.

Those are my highlights. What are your plans for the upcoming year? What was a success/lesson that you learned at your place?

22 Comments

Posted in bees, Biofuel Oasis, fruit trees, goats

Miracle on 28th Street

Posted on December 2, 2010 | 81 comments

Sorry I’ve been so out of touch. I’m sick with a head cold (snot, anyone?) and something so big has happened, I’ve been sitting with it and trying to figure out if it really happened or if I just imagined it.

I’ll just come out with it: Billy and I bought the lot. We’ve been squatting on the 4500 square feet parcel next to our apartment for the past 8 years, growing vegetables and fruit trees. I’ve imagined the bulldozers coming multiple times as various owners of the lot have threatened us with development. First they would uproot all the trees, then they’d drive over all the carefully tended beds, then they would build shoddy condos. I would watch, horrified, and make plans to move to East Oakland.

Instead, the latest owner of the property, S, came by a few weeks ago. She told me she needed to sell the lot. When she said that, I imagined the bulldozers. Then she said that she wanted to sell it to me. For cheap. I felt like I was in a Disney movie. All the birds in the fig trees came down and landed on our shoulders, and started singing a song; and then the lot rats scurried out to do little jazzy dance moves, and a big sunny rainbow appeared. “No way!” I said to S and laughed and punched her arm. She looked at me like I was a true nutball that she had expected (last time I saw her, I picked her a bouquet of orange tiger lilies as a bribe).

I’ve never owned property before, so I didn’t know how to proceed. Luckily, I had heard about this nice realtor lady, Bobbi Vogel, so I called her. She was at the lot within 15 minutes of my call. I told her the price and she couldn’t believe it. Within a week, I owned the lot. I just got the Grant Deed in the mail, which says S “hereby grants to Novella Carpenter, a single woman the following described property in the City of Oakland: Lots 29 and 30 in block 2024”. This seems so olde English.

Holy Shittt!!

So now, the question is: what to do? Build a greenhouse? An outdoor kitchen for classes? A tree house for the goats? I want to finally crack through the concrete and plant espaliered fruit trees along the property line. Luckily we have 100 fruit tree rootstock from an overambitious Rain Tree order last year. I can finally start hosting field trips from the local schools without worry! Those are the fun ideas. In reality I need to:  hook up the water meter, get insurance, and have the property surveyed. I might even go legit and register Ghosttown Farm as a real farm business as soon as the City Council makes urban ag legal (supposedly happening next spring).

I’d love to hear what ideas you all have!

In case you were wondering, of course we’re not going to start locking the fricking gate, even though someone keeps harvesting my cabbages.

 

 

 

81 Comments

Posted in urban life

Tagged

Winner: naming contest

Posted on November 19, 2010 | 3 comments

OK everyone–i love everyone who submitted! Thank you for taking the time to do the brainstorm. It seemed like quite a few of you like the Farm Garage, and that’s probably what we’ll go with when we officially launch in the spring (we are open and selling chicken feed, founts, feeders, and beekeeping supplies Monday-Saturday, 11-7pm).

However, I need to get that poster to one lucky namer. I loved so many like Urbane Grain, The New Reliance Supply Co, and Metropolitan Feed and Fuel. However, there can only be one winner (only one poster) and that person is: B, with her hilarious, unPC name:  ‘Hos With Hoes. You’d be like, “honey, will you stop off at Hos and pick up some kelp meal?”

Let’s do that again soon, as soon as I have some more schwag to share!

Congrats B!

 

3 Comments

Posted in Biofuel Oasis

Wednesday Pop-Up

Posted on November 15, 2010 | 1 comment

Hey there, this Wednesday is the last GT Farm Urban Farmer’s Market of 2010. There will be a handful of vendors selling goodies like honey, eggs, jams and produce. I’ll have bunchs of the famous black curly mustard, rapini, chard; jars of fig jam, and guava goo; and t-shirts for sale. We’re starting early–3pm and only going until 6pm because of the horrid darkness. Hope to see you there.

When: Wednesday, Nov 17. Starts at 3pm-goes to 6pm. I’m going to close the gate at 6 o’clock exactly (it’s pitch black by then) so plan to arrive before 6pm.

Where: Lot next to 665 28th street, at MLK

What: Urban Farmers Market/holiday gift buying/food hoarding for T-day

If you’re an urban farmer and you want to bring stuff to sell, please email me first! novellacarpenter at gmail

 

1 Comment

Posted in random thoughts

Poster Give Away

Posted on November 11, 2010 | 56 comments

When I was a wee girl, I had two posters on my bedroom wall: Michael Jackson in the Billy Jean video, and Rob Lowe in linen pants and a wife-beater tank top, oh so subtly showing off his 6-pack. These days I still find myself drawn to posters of rock shows and swine auctions and old victory garden propaganda. Imagine my joy when I went to the Urban Farm Store in Portland, Oregon and saw these new posters put out by Victory Garden of Tomorrow!

Because some friends and I run an urban feed store in Berkeley at the Biofuel Oasis, we ordered a bunch to sell along with the Nikki McClure and Miriam Stahl posters we currently sell.

So, this is a poster give away, you’re thinking: what do I have to do to “win” the above poster? Simply come up with the best name for our urban feed store at the Biofuel Oasis. We sell chicken, rabbit, and goat feed in a vintage gas station in South Berkeley. In addition to feed, we sell chicken feeders, founts, canning supplies, cheesemaking kits, supplements like kelp meal, oyster shells, grit, and Diatamaceous Earth.

We have a couple ideas for a feed store name, but nothing that we love:

City Farm Supplies at the Biofuel Oasis

The Farm Garage

Urban Feed and Supply

What are your ideas? Best one wins the poster, sent to your house.

56 Comments

Posted in random thoughts

Cooking with Italian Grandmothers and My Calabria

Posted on November 4, 2010 | 9 comments

There are two books that I’ve been using in heavy rotation in the kitchen. Both are about Italian food, and old ways of doing things–two of my favorite topics.

The first is called Cooking with Italian Grandmothers by Jessica Theroux. I heard about Jessica’s project through a DVD called Rabbits and Wrinkles, short documentary films of Italian grandmamas wandering around in funny socks and picking weeds, then showing us how they cook them. The grandma I watched cook was from Calabria, the extreme southern part of Italy. She pulled up bean plants in a foggy field, shelled and then simmered them in a wood-fired oven. She got out a basket and foraged for wild greens. I felt deprived that I wasn’t there to eat this amazing feast she prepared from the earth. The DVDs morphed into CwIG, and chronicles Jessica’s journey around Italy, and her lessons in cooking. For Thanksgiving I’ve decided to ditch the turkey and make a series of dumpling/dumpling related foods instead. Stuff like rabbit raviolis and Polish plum dumplings. CwIG is going to help that dumpling dinner: I loved the gnocchi recipe, which yielded these light and chewy friends.

I also have plans to make the baked semolina gnocchi. Oh! And the Polpette di Bietola (chard-sesame balls) –an amazing sounding/looking concoction of steamed chard rolled into a ball with ricotta, bread crumbs which are then rolled in seasame seeds and baked.

The second Italian grandma book involves a grandpa. It’s My Calabria, a cookbook about Calabrian food by Rosetta Costantino. I met Rosetta through a friend and have taken a cooking class from her before (see Hamish Bowles hilarious account of our antics in the November issue of Vogue). And I recently met her father and mother, who are old-school Italians, and are bad-asses in the garden and kitchen respectively. The book is really a love song to the old ways Rosetta’s parents do things: they reuse everything, they preserve and save things for winter, and they seem to grow or make most things they need. Rosetta’s dad, for example, grows and dries his own peppers and his wife grinds them up to make Peperoncino. The tomato trellis in their garden is truly amazing. Don’t worry that you’ll have to use hard-to find ingredients–the Calabrians are all about tomatoes, onions, and zucchini, seen here in the Parmigiana di Zucchine that I made the other night.

But there’s also some weird stuff too! Like the Pitta con Verdura, which is like a calzone but stuffed with borage leaves (if you don’t have borage, you can use chard instead). I had never eaten borage leaves before, but now will never go back, they are so buttery. One of my favorite sections was about the Calabrian pantry–how to make salt-cured anchovies, sun-dried zucchini (wtf? i never thought of that!), candied orange peel. Rosetta tells us that Calabrians never waste anything, so when I found myself with a bunch of figs, I made the Marmellata di Fichi with lovely results.

For dessert on Thanksgiving, I might attempt the Chinulille, sweet ravioli filled with ricotta and candied orange and then (gulp) deep fried. I’m also looking lovingly at the photo on page 153, which is of a pair of goat stomachs which are hanging on some smoky beams. The stomachs aren’t to eat, but are used to make rennet, something Rosetta’s dad did when he was a goatherder and cheesemaker in Italy. This page is especially enticing to me as I have three bucklings on my hands this year, and am faced with the fact that they will not be able to stay–so why not make some rennet and then cheese from that rennet? To use every part, to transform something sad into something delightful.

Both of these books made me have hope that old ways can be rediscovered, as long as we are interested in them. Happy Thanksgiving-planning.

 

9 Comments

Posted in book reviews, books