Looking to Learn More?

Thinking about raising your own flock of chickens for eggs?

Wondering if a goat would make a great lawnmower?

Next month, we'll be teaming up with the people at Brick City Gardens to lead a workshop on raising livestock in an urban setting.  You can learn the in's and out's of caring for and maintaining a variety of animals like chickens, ducks, goats, rabbit and quail.  We'll teach you a myriad of things including what legalities to be aware of, proper ways of slaughter, and tips on how to succeed.

The event will be held at Schlafly Bottleworks, Maplewood on Saturday, April 30th from 9:00am-12:00pm.  Cost is $40.  To pre-register email Sue at brickcitygardens@yahoo.com or call (314) 630-5910.  Learn more here.

Tomato Spotlight: Matt's Wild Cherry

Out of all the tomato varieties we're growing this year, Matt's Wild Cherry stands out. It's an heirloom tomato, originating from Mexico. Diminutive in size, it's packed with totally-perfect-umami-tomato flavor. They're perfect for snacking, and we've been popping them into our mouths like candy for weeks. The best part? The plant seems to be yielding a ton, so it seems as though we'll enjoy hundreds and hundreds of these little gems.

Not Certified? Not Bad!

While providing 10 tips for shopping at farmers markets, the folks over at Serious Eats make an excellent point about why small-scale farmers may not be certified organic:

"The fact that produce is not labeled organic doesn't necessarily mean it's swimming in pesticides or is a qualified member of the Dirty Dozen. Sometimes it's quite the opposite. Some of the best farms, where a single farmer can lovingly attend to every seedling, are hardly bigger than a postage stamp. A farm that size can't afford a refrigerated truck, never mind a costly (and questionably bullet-proof) certification by the USDA. Many farms use organic practices, often much more stringent than those required by the government, but simply don't get certified."

That pretty much explains why we're not certified organic here at YellowTree Farm - but please rest assured that we use organic practices and we never, ever use pesticides.

DIY Gardening Tip

Late last month, the folks at GOOD magazine provided a lovely tutorial on the basics of creating a verticle garden chock full of edible plants. Edible gardens are terrific space-savers. Check out the tips from GOOD, and also our friend Fiona's lovely indoor verticle garden, below:

A Year of Urban Farming

Now that 2010's in full swing, here's a look back at our first year...

Fall's Bounty

As the nights grow longer and the weather turns colder, there's still work to do on the homestead. This is how our kitchen cabinets look these days. We've been canning a lot: turning crabapples into mustards, making jams and butters, and finding various ways to preserve our green tomatoes.

We're still waiting on our fall crops of broccoli, beets, and kohlrabi to grow bigger. Meanwhile, our daikon radishes have gotten huge! It's surprising to look around the garden and discover what's still growing: leeks, onions, peas, beans, and chard. Some vegetables seem to thrive better in cold weather, like our lettuces which are finally coming in, and it's interesting to note the differences in taste through the various seasons.

All the unseasonably pleasant weather lately has been a blessing for our chickens. After the raccoon attack last summer, the egg supply in our fridge looked dismal. However, now our younger hens have matured before the cold weather sets in, and we're collecting more eggs daily!

Summer update

The end of July was a busy time for us. Most notably, we no longer have goats - for several reasons. But we do, however, have about 45 pounds of goat meat in the freezer. We also participated in a couple benefits for Slow Food St. Louis: Earlier in July at a special dinner held at The Crossing where some of our produce was featured on the menu, and also at Slow Food's annual Art of Food benefit toward the end of the month where we donated a basket of produce and a tour of the homestead to a lucky bidder.

Sadly, we lost about 15 of our chickens last week - some we've had for over a year and had grown very attached to, and others that would have just begun to start laying eggs any day. A raccoon had eaten a hole through the wood of our chicken coop, and we awoke one morning to find the hens dead. We are thankful that 5 survived, and we're contemplating what to do about acquiring more birds for our flock.

These days there's always work to do: Various plants are done growing and we're taking them out of the ground, and it's also the time of year when we need to get our fall crop ready to be planted. The popcorn in the front yard has recently come down, and we've been enjoying the delicious sweet corn from our side yard. Our fall corn crop is about 2 inches tall so far, the cucuzza squash is starting to get huge, and we're picking peppers as fast as we can. Gleaning has also become a favorite activity of ours, as we scour St. Louis for unclaimed plums, apples, and pears. In addition to all this, we're expecting the two new litters of bunnies to be born this week.

Harvesting potatoes

Our heirloom Carola potatoes are ready to be eaten, and we've been digging some up throughout the week for dinner. They're absolutely delicious! ...delicate skin, buttery, mild, and soft. It's so nice to be our own source of fresh, chemical-free, local potatoes.

May recap

We've lagged behind on the blog posts lately, as the wonderful springtime weather has allowed us to get plenty of work done around the homestead. May was eventful: We've had two litters of rabbits born, tasted honey from our bees and collected some bee pollen, and eaten salads nearly every day made from our own greens. The bok choy grew in quite nicely and we've enjoyed eating that a few times as well. Neighbors and family members have been dropping off various canning jars that they have collected for us - and we've managed to put a few to use by making strawberry jams, canning Swiss chard, and finding novel uses for lemon rinds. On Mother's Day we treated our family to a dinner consisting of a couple of our own chickens. Most exciting is that our garden's thriving and growing more with each passing day.

Progression

Accidental Harvest

We inadvertently grew white asparagus! Our compost got dumped over the asparagus bed allowing no light in. The result, enough white asparagus for a meal. The crop should be this year. They have been in the ground for 4 years.

Homestead news: Compost

So THIS is what our driveway looks like these days! We had a truckload of compost delivered earlier in the week.

...moving all this compost up the hill and into our backyard is certainly going to be a challenge.

Homestead news: Sod

The grass is coming up! We're finishing the removal of the sod in our yard and our neighbor Mike's yard. Time to grow food instead of a lawn!

Worms!

Our composting worms arrived in the mail the other day. Their new home is the compost bin situated beneath the rabbit hutch - worms love rabbit poo, they break it down fast. We took this idea from some of our old farming books. If things go alright, we should have millions of worms by mid-summer that will be used in our other compost piles. This system of vermicomposting eliminates our dependence on fertilizers and adds micronutrients to the soil.

Our seeds have finally arrived!

It may seem like a ton of seeds for only 2300 square feet of garden, but with our new biodynamic farming practices, all of these seed varieties will be fully utilized:

asparagus
beans
yard long
green
Linda Sisco's bird egg
fava
Kentucky wonder snap
beets
Detroit red
Burpee's golden
blackberries
broccoli
cabbage
premium late flat Dutch
Napa
carrots
Amarillo yellow
Chaterney
Hercules
lunar white
oxheart
purple haze
St. Valery
cauliflower, giant of Naples
celery, tango
corn, country gentleman
cover crop, crimson clover
cucumber,
Japanese climbing
Thai golden round
egg plant
Thai yellow
udmalbet
herbs
anise
basil
black cumin
broad leaf sage
caraway
chamomile
chocolate mint
chrysanthemum
dill
dotted mint
Greek oregano
lavender
lavender thyme
mint
Oxaca cilantro
purple basil
rosemary
rue
Russian taragon
shiso
St. John's wort
sweet marjoram
thyme
titan parsley
wormwood
grape, Concord
greens
America Spinach
Amish deer tongue
arugula
Asian mix
bibb lettuce
Black seeded Simpson lettuce
de morges braun lettuce
escarole
extra dwarf pak choy
glory endive
Limestone lettuce
Mustard
old mix
Olympia spinach
pan-Pacific stirfry mix
red orach
ridicchio
Romaine lettuce
Shanghai green choy
spectrum mix
winter greens
fennel, Florence
kohlrabi, purple
melon
Banana
Green Machine
Evan's sweet
Misc. (non-edible)
dishcloth luffa
nipple fruit
Plum Granny or Queen Anne's Pocket
onion
bleu de solaise leek
cipollini-bianca di maggio
ishikura bunching
purple bunching
Tokyo long white bunching
tropeana lunga
yellow of parma
parsley root, hamburg rooted
pea
Oregon sugar
sugar ann
peppers
ancho
alma paprika
candlelight
cayenne
sweet yellow mini stuffing
shishito (mild)
yellow bell
potato, carola
pumkin, Galeux d'Eysines
shallots, Dutch red
squash
cucuzza
Kamo Kamo
lemon
Mongogo Du Guetemala
romanesco zucchini squash
Taturne
white scallop
strawberries
tomatoes
carbon (purple)
cream sausage
Illinois beauty
Jo Thienemann's Australian heart
orange fleshed purple smudge
roma
sausage roma
thessaloniki red
white tomesol
yellow
Misc. cherry
watermelon
black watermelon
Wilson's sweet

This list includes new seeds we purchased, and older seeds we saved ourselves from vegetables we grew in the past. Fortunately if we save our seeds properly, we won't have to buy seeds for subsequent years.

A History of Gastronomy