Rodale

http://www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com/

Me being the guest blogger for Maria Rodale. This is kind of a big deal!

I have my Gram to thank for this.

This book in particular was the one on her book self next to her holy bible and a dictionary and that was about it.

She had a great organic garden behind her house, she also kept a small chicken coop and canned more then any Brooklyn hipster could ever dream of.

This ones for you Gram.

Usonian

Frank Lloyd Wright used the word usonian to describe his sense of place, how his architecture was not separate from the landscape but was of the landscape.

As I start to turn the soil I revel in the truth of my materials. The smell of the land rises up to meet me and I am of the landscape.

Time for a change.

That is right folks, this blog is being moved to my new website, which shall launch sometime in the next week. www.happycatorganics.com I am so excited I can hardly stand it. The sign is going to be awesome, everything you need to grow and forage your own food.

Everyone knows that I love plants that make food, but I also just love plants, and let me fill you in, Horticulture in this country is shit. My alma mater Delaware Valley Collage had no new Hort. students this last semester. So I will be changing this blog into a Hort. blog and it will be called the horticultural ninja. Lots of pictures and cool stuff just to do with plants and the men and women who love them.

Later

Tim

Summer Wains

32 New tomatoes tasted cleaned and saved! You will have

to wait till next year to find out what they are.
Foraging in the fall is one of my favorite things, here I am in the tallest stand

of Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum L.) I have ever seen. Gathered some

leaves to experiment with some native plant teas I am working on.
The Tomato Tsunami is rolling on, if you missed the article in the

Philadelphia Inquirer check it out.

Pictures for Martha

I do not have much to write, but I wanted to share some photos of Amy and I on the farm.

Thanks David

We are going on tour

Thats right we are going on tour, not with the Grateful Dead or Motorhead, but with plants.So if you need some of the the coolest tomato, pepper, eggplant, swiss chard, or herbs. Well over 100 varieties. Come out to one of these great events and check us out!

Our plants look great this year, it is our first year using Organic Mechanics soil. It is so great to have a local source for such a great product.

Happy Cat Farm

Follow us on tour!

April, 24 Earth Day Festival Mechanicsburg, Pa.

April, 25 Malvern Blooms

Malvern, Pa.

May, 1 Donaldson Nursery

Hackettstown, NJ

May, 2 Chestnut Hill Garden Fair Chestnut Hill, Pa.

May, 7&8 Landis Valley Museum Herb & Garden Fair

Lancaster, Pa.

May,15 Spring Garden fund

Phila. Pa

May, 22nd B & H Organics Open House Morgantown, Pa.

Where can you find us every week!

Kennett Square Farmers Market Fridays 2-6

Winterthur Farmers Market Saturdays 10-2

Headhouse Market Sundays 10-2

Media Farmers Market Thursdays from May 13 to June 10,^, 3-7 pm.

Cause and effect

Our first seeds in open ground emerging
Seeds and Chaff.

“Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed”

Emerson

People are talking, lots of people and not just the foodie preachers and the choir. People like my mom and co-workers and people I meet out that usually just talk about things like Jersey Shore Show and really like it, not just people who watch it for its train wreck astonishments.

Jaime Oliver’s new Food Revolution, Food Inc. and The Future of Food.

Honestly I never cared for Oliver and his young jumping around Naked Chief days, but go old ma, she liked him and sometimes you just have to listen to your mom. For my birthday one year she gave me his ‘Jamie at Home’ I was hooked; he also did a show in England called 15. 15 was based around a restaurant of the same name, that took in 15 troubled kids and gave them mad skills and a real appreciation for food and where it comes from and how much work goes into it. Jaime then went on national English TV with his friend Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (my hero and host of The River Cottage) they went into chicken batteries (factories that chickens are raised in, oh yeah the English learned how to grow chickens by mass production from us.) People all over Europe where shocked and the shock wave even hit our shores. But by the time it got to us it was just a slow methodical ripple, like you would find in an Iraq oil field.

So Mr. Oliver came to the states to teach fat pizza eating yanks to eat real food. The show is really great and makes me so sad for the state of our food systems in this country. Getting chicken nugget addicted children in West Virginia to eat salads, may not be musket fire at Concord, but the trigger has been pulled and oddly enough a Brit has started a new revolution in America.

Wow I really wanted to write about seeds. (Hence the Emerson quote)

I touch seeds everyday, I clean them, I plant them, I eat them, I sell them, so I get the connection between putting seeds in the ground and the food that I put into my body, but watching those kids made me sick, I bet if I showed them seeds they would want pizza and chicken nugget seeds. Very few people get this connection, and that is why I was so happy with the response our seeds have gotten from the greater Philadelphia region.

Philly is a really a cool town and a great place to eat and now buy locally produced sustainable seeds.

So check out Milk and Honey Market out at 44^th and Baltimore, a great store for lots of locally grow produce and cheese. I really wise I lived around the corner. The owners are cool the staff is hip and the space is beautiful.

Fair Food Farm Stand at the Reading Terminal, after Central Market in Lancaster City it is the second best market in this country. Fair Food anchors the 12^th street side of the market; go get seeds a hotdog with a knish on it and a shoeshine.

Speaking of Lancaster’s Central Market Green Circle Organics just got our seeds for all my old peeps in the LC.

Also in the Northern Liberties Almanac Market also carries our seeds and sells such a great selection products it makes me want to move to the city.

The last shout out for the region has to go to Terry and Hannah at Kimberton Whole foods they have our seeds in multiple stores.

Lastly I have the best staff in the world. Holly and Elise cranked it out in my Kennett sweatshop. Holly is fresh off of her one women worldwide trip of peace and justice, she make me laugh, she makes me want to be a better person and she works really hard.

Elise just got back from sledging rubble in Haiti, and like the next day was wackin out the seed orders, she is awesome and inspiring.

Later

P.S. Veg Transplants are coming and this year we have over 100 varieties.

A long Time Coming!

Well if tomato fungus and snow where my 2 main crops this year I would be whipping a new Benz, but we did have a great year without tomatoes and with all the snow. Our potato crop and greens where killing it this season. But it is 58 degrees outside today and we have 20,000 veg transplants in the greenhouse getting ready to roll, so here is a nice tomato jam for the plants and all the hippies out there.

Our house in about 28" of new snow.
A plow truck here at Winterthur!
One of 2 lectures at this years Farming for the future conference at PASA this year. It was on saving seeds but I worked Yoda into it.

I will post the entire video of the lecture someday.

We also had a great article in the March Grid Magazine and our

farm grown seeds are selling like mad, more on that in the next post.

Later

Made me smile!

Photo by Mike Siegel, The Seattle Times. Jake Harris, left, with his Cascadian Edible Landscapes partner Michael Seliga, grows chives, basil, zucchini and other vegetables in a parking strip outside his home in the University District

The Seattle City Council is working to increase availability of affordable, locally grown food. One approach: allowing folks to grow vegetable gardens in parking strips — the no man’s land between sidewalk and curb

By Maureen O’Hagan
Seattle Times
July 25, 2009

We’ve all heard the foodie mantra: Eat Local.

It’s going gangbusters in grocery stores that increasingly tout local produce. Now, area government has gotten involved, too.

No, the City Council isn’t pushing expensive arugula. Instead, it’s trying to increase the availability of locally grown food, especially for those least able to afford it.

“I think there’s a real transformation happening,” said Branden Born, assistant professor of urban design and planning at the University of Washington.

Some of this shift involves research projects and nonbinding resolutions, which are essentially invisible to ordinary citizens. But for tangible evidence — actual growing evidence — you need look no further than the lowly curb in front of your home.

It used to be that planting anything but grass in the strip between the sidewalk and the curb required a permit, even if it was just a spray of flowers or a few carrots. For hardscaping, like steppingstones or raised beds, fees averaging $225 were attached, too. Would-be gardeners routinely called the city to complain.

This year, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) changed its rules. Now, no permit is required for parking-strip vegetable gardens. While hardscaping still requires a permit, it’s easy to get and free of charge, said Rick Sheridan, spokesman for SDOT.

Last year, the city issued 22 permits for parking-strip gardens. This year, they’ve issued 52, and that’s for hardscaping alone. There’s no telling how many people have taken advantage of the new no-permit rules for simple vegetation.

“We get the sense that people are really embracing it,” Sheridan said.

‘Eat your yard’

Gardener Jake Harris, for one, couldn’t wait, and immediately planted a veritable cornucopia in front of his University District home. In addition, Harris’ company, Cascadian Edible Landscapes, has installed raised beds for a half-dozen other Seattleites eager to capture the unobstructed sunlight that parking strips offer.

Harris says his mantra is “eat your yard.” And the demand in Seattle, he said, is “pretty huge.”

“We’re looking for every way possible for people who want to plant food to be able to do so,” said Rob Gala, an aide to City Council President Richard Conlin, who is leading the charge. “And the closer it is to their house, the better.”

Parking strips, however visible, are just a small part of larger changes, Born said. He sees hope in the research projects, grants and policy decisions that are aimed at broadening the local food movement.

I can read

No really I have time to read books, not just the New Times and Blogs, but real books.

The Jungle Effect by Daphne Miller M.D, this book started out like about 8 others I have read about the topic of food, but it is so well written and looks at such interesting cultures. Like the Tarahumara Indians of the the Copper Canyon. These native people of Mexico are so cool, as also in Born to Run by local runner Christopher McDougall. The book that lit a fire under my ass and got me running again. I did not read it by played it in the car, I am one of those people that does not count that as reading.

I also finished The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, by Steven Rinella. I am also looking forward to his new book on American Bison. I told my Buddy Steve that I want to come out west and a Kill a bison with a spear on horse back. He said that sounds great and he can't wait to come to my funeral.

The last book I just finished was Fat of the Land by Langdon Cook. Just a awesome book about finding your own food in the woods. This was my favorite of the lot, A wonderful read about eating his way thru the coast of Oregon. I really have to do more fishing.

Later

Ramp it up.

Great crop this year over 1.7 pounds of seed.

You may think that I am only a farmer here at happy cat, but you may have also noticed that I have a tendency to always be out foraging for edible plants. I am not much of a killer, so you won’t find me out there clubbing chipmunks over their little heads. But if someone where to wrap one of those little suckers in bacon and stuff it like a squash blossom? Maybe.

I grow up in the woods and I was always eating things that I found. My parents got me Euell Gibbons books when I was like ten.

So when I found my secret ramp stand I almost fell over, it is the size of 3-football field.

If I harvested all the ramps at once I would be taking Arugula to market in an Enzo Ferrari, for real.

Ramps Allium tricoccum are a native edible plant that is foraged for it’s wonderful spring bulb and leaves. Ramps grown from seed germinate in 6 to 18 months. 6 if the fall is warm and 18 if not. This year I am putting the ones I potted up into cold frames to get them some fall heat, hope I can get the 6 month window, but if not, cool gardening is all about patience.

What’s that? Patience, it is not being an over entitled self-centered prick, and boy the patience team could use some serious help.

Check out my Local Harvest Store it if you would like to buy some, or just ask me at the Kennett Square Farmers Market, I probably have some in the bottom of my pocket. You will not find them on our website, but be on the look out for a new web page in the near future, that will blow you mind.

Just be patient.

p.s. I got Lyme Disease out crawling around collecting these seeds and felt like something from a Hieronymus Bosch Painting for days and could not drink beer for a month.

where have all the tomatoes gone?

Me stealing Amy Goldman's thunder at the Terrain Heirloom Tomato Fest, Just kidding we had a great day and it was wonderful meeting Amy and talking to her about her books. I lectured about seed saving.
Chef Dave Berg of the Styer's Cafe @ Terrain is an amazing chef, he used 30 #'s of black krims and Tim's Black Ruffles (gay name and all) to make tomato water to poach this fish in. BOOM.

Above all things I am a tomato farmer.

That is a big statement; I am a lot of things (some good, some bad) we just don’t grow tomatoes we live tomatoes. This year we started with 174 varieties of love apples from seed. Seeds that we saved from the year before, seed that we sell and also turn into tomato plants, 20,000 of them this year, and we sold almost everyone of them. We also planted somewhere north of 1000 plants. So with some quick math, I figure I am responsible for close to 100,000 plants hitting the ground this year. Most years that makes me feel great, but this year, OUCH!

Have you ever heard of the Irish Potato Famine? The Irish feel in love with the easy to grow tuber, but the problem was that they only grow one type of potato, The Lumper, I still grow this one today, and it is a great potato. But an entire country growing on type of anything is a bad thing. (Think Kansas, 99% of all corn in this country comes from 3 kernels of corn) Biodiversity anyone.

Maybe it is my own fault, when I had my planting party we put 660 plants in my one field. I told my bubby Jacob, I think I am going back out and plant 6 more, you know just to keep farming evil.

Bad karma.

So maybe it was a large grower how sold sick plants to a national chain on a year with a wet and cold spring, that’s sounds pretty evil, right?

We started cut plants out of the fields in mid July, when I should of started to harvest the first cherry tomatoes, to date we have lost about 100 plants of the 1200+ we have put in, the others, well they look like shit. Some of the varieties don’t even look like them selves this year, shape and colors are off, it kills me.

So what happens now, well you pay more for tomatoes. You eat fewer tomatoes. We could be in a 5 years cycle of this weather. (I will move)

So please go the your local farmers market or road side stand and hug your farmer, they could use it.

This is where it all begins.

We slept in late, I am on vacation, then we went to Blue Hill to a great place for lunch. It is the sister restaurant of Cleonice called Table a Farmhouse Bistro. O my God. I had the Ploughman's Lunch (thought that was fitting for a busman's holiday) The Mackerel pate was out of this world.

This is where is all began.

After lunch we head to the 'Good Life Center' Helen and Scott Nearing place on the Maine Coast on cape Rosier. For me this is a true pilgrimage I read the Good Life when I was just 17 and was hell bent moving back to the land.

Hand built walled organic veg garden.
Helen and Scott's home that they made by hand.

Then we went to see uncle Elliot. Elliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, have changed my life more than any other persons I can think of. From there TV show 'Gardening Naturally' to the many books and lectures. We visited Four Season Farm

Elliot's wonderful 10 acres of organic greatness.  Sheer Mecca.


This is hard to see, but it is a wooden fist raised in defiance. What else can I say.

VIVA!

Later

Eating local in Maine

Wow, the bounty of the Maine coast in summertime is amazing. The season is so short that everything seems to come to life at the same time. Peas and new potatoes grow next to the first cherry tomatoes. We toured a great farm yesterday, darthia farm was really great and I saw a porcupine in the tomato patch, I never saw that before. But Maine in the summer is really about foraging for me, and man the hunting has been good.

                                               Clams are everywhere, just make sure your cove or bay is not over raked and claming is banned. I had to walk along the coast until I got to the next township (about a mile) to rake them.
                                             Oysters are everywhere, wait for the tide to go out and walk out to the kelp covered rocks and boom.
Snails, they are on every rock and just cover the beach. They are called wrinkles here and if you get a chance you should eat at. Cleonice

I ate there last night and it was really really good, that and Elliot Coleman of Four Season Farm produce in on the menu. Maybe because I Elliot has been God like to me for decades (just look at his hair.)

The Chanterelle's are insane, they are just covering the ground. Slice and fried with some browned butter, then in go the local eggs and it makes a great side dish for our fresh foraged blueberry buckwheat pancakes
If you feel down up here (or down east ?) chances are you would end up with a blueberry in your mouth.
The last cool thing I found where these coastal cranberries, just about as sour as sour gets, but I wish they where growing outside my house.
Word from Pa. is that the farm is doing well and Late blight is not spreading. I miss the work and the landscape, but I did see a 65 acre farm with 4 greenhouses for 220,000 thats dollars, WHAT?

Later

Yo what's up haulms?

Today, man what a day, it has stopped raining every ten minutes, and the temp is in the high 70's and the Springfield like sky that would have made Homer happy. I have been digging new potatoes all day today. Making food is lots of hard work, so come and hang out at Kennett Squares Farm Market this Friday with me or Big D and Amy on Sunday at Headhouse. 

I love digging potatoes,  not grabbling them, but really digging them. I love potatoes because they have there own lexicon. Grabbling is the act of digging 'new potatoes' while not digging up the entire plant. so you dig in rob some new spuds and let the plant keep on keeping on. Haulms is the English term for the green above ground part of the potato and new potatoes, does not mean that I genetically modified them, it means (with most varieties) that when the Haulms flower you can dig the spuds and eat the best thing that comes out of the ground.

Also potatoes make me feel like a Hobbit, maybe because my feet are filthy, or my brain is sun baked. I love the hard work and smell of the soil and how every time you turn the soil and there is this mass of tubers and my 4 year old niece standing next to me yells every time, like she is opening a birthday present. 

Here are some of the prizes of the day. Starting in the upper left hand corner is a new one for me, it is called Inca's Gold. BOOM! this is a long season storing spud, but I lifted them now. The plants where about 4 feet tall and the root system is massive. The flesh is bright yellow and the skin is yellow with stripes of purple. The ones on the bottom is purple viking, this wonderful looking spud is pure white on the inside and purple and pink on the outside. This potato really needs a new marketing rep. it should be called purple haze or at least techno viking. 

The one in the upper right hand corner is Ozette. OK, so Spanish explores picked up this potato in Peru and took it with them as they traveled up the coast, they gave it to the Makah Indians in Washington State and some how it ends up in my dirty little hands.

Later

so long Mr. Jackson

I am not sure I want to farm in a world without

Michael. 

Odd little fellow, but just watch the video and enjoy.

Man that is a great song.

Mache pit

So my buddy was in from Colorado this week and besides all the drinking and fishing, I gave them a farm tour,  My friend said he reads my blog and wanted to know why the punk rock farmer.

So here is the story.

It all started on a summer day while on summer break, and shopping with my mom I bought a cassette tape for my brand new Miami vice inspired tape deck, it was teal green with gray and orange buttons, Very cool.

When we got home I took my new Suicidal Tendencies tape to my bedroom and pugged it into my player. The tape started playing and I was never so scared in my life, so I turned it right off. It was pure evil and I needed to take it to the basement.

So life goes on and skate boards and punk rock filled days, then in 88 Youth of Today released Your not in this alone. The band was really in  Vegetarianism and Hare Krishnaism. In the liner notes they had info about PETA and books by Peter Singer. I read Animal Liberation and became a Vegetarian, we all go thru weak points in our lives. 

Back then Health Food stores were the only places that you could find Veg. food. Then I started running into organic veg.  

I started my own garden and tried every thing I read Elliot Coleman and then started working for Tim Stark of Echerton Farm. ( I think I was a hippie then, but I never stopped playing the Misfits and Minor Threat. )

I still skate, I still play punk rock and I still farm, some just more than others.

Later 

Tomato Tim

p.s. I just could not bring myself to post a picture of my devil lock hair cut.

BIG OUT TO MY CREW

660 tomatoes in one hour and 45 minutes. Jacob wanted use to plant six more, just to keep farming evil. Big thank you to Claire, Cintra, Lyla, Jacob, Tim, Holly, Rob, Meg, Raph, Kara And Amy.  What great friends to come out and help us get our tomatoes in the ground, Finally. After we planted we retired to our place for some of Walt's fried chicken (banging) and some local beers and some chimney swifts. 

Later

I touched the BOSS.

WOW what a week, Tomatoes have really opened up a big world for me. 

Or southeastern Pa is becoming the next LA. I mean Sarah Reese is our gossip girl right? 

But last week I saw Danny Bonaduce at our plant sale in Chestnut Hill. 

Just watch that clip, I mean was the entire country on drugs? maybe I missed something.

Then I run into to Carson Kressley from Queer Eye, no real tomato connection, but what the F@#$.

I was going to add a link but the intro to Queer almost made me vomit.

So I am at the 110th Devon Horse show, or some horse shit like that, and I start talking to this redhead named Patty about organic heirlooms and the farm she has in Dirty Jers, Then I tell her about my 172 varieties of heirloom tomatoes I am growing, she ask me for a card, and one for her husband. so I get out 2 cards, and she is like, "you have to meet my husband" 

Yeah fucking Bruce Spingsteen. No shit, I gave him a card and shook his hand and talked to him.

He looked just like he does in this video, white 80's shirt thing goin on, not so much with bee bopping, but who has time for bee bopping any more.

Big out to Gayla

Thank You so much Allison and all my new Friends for a great day of selling plants and hanging out in such a great garden. The Spring Gardens.
I love Philly and all of its great spaces for people to grow. I able to trade some pepper plants for some really cool beans, but my spanish is shit, so I do not know much about them. But I will let you know.

   Next, if you have not been to the Chestnut Hill Garden Fest. You are missing out, not just great green vendors like the cat, but the Organic Mechanic . No he does not work on cars, he works on your soil, and as things are going, investing in your soil will have better returns then the stock market. It was a cool day, but the beers keep Mark and I warm. p.s thanks Amy and David for helping out.

The last shout out goes to Gayla of You Grow Girl, for her glowing post. The Happy Cat was very HAPPY. We went on a tour of Winterthur, had some good food at Sovana and then had Mexican ice cream. Thank you everyone. 

Well back to the dirt.

Later