Root Cellar to Cob Oven - One Project Begets Another

We tend to do projects in fits and starts around here at the Funny Farm. We get an idea for something we want and it gestates for a while. Eventually something will trigger it's birth into the world. I started the base for an eventual cob oven several years ago. We wanted to build one for the fun of it. Cob-building with a group of people is a good way to build community. Cooking in it and sharing meals is also lots of fun. One of the main obstacles to building the cob oven was obtaining the clay soil we would need to make cob. I would have had to hunt it down somewhere. Load it on my truck. Then unload it. A lot of work. And, since the building industry is totally dead around here as a result of the collapse of the economy, finding it would have been hard. ( by the way, i can't say i am sad to see construction screech to a halt. Lots of raping and pillaging of the land has been avoided as a result)

Lately we have been more aggressive in our efforts to prepare ourselves for the time when the shit hits the fan. There are plenty of triggers out there that could set it off at any time now. To further our preparations i wanted to build a root cellar to store crops through the winter. Even though we keep our house at 60º degrees it a little too warm to store things like garlic and potatoes which tend to sprout in our pantry. So, guess what? One project begets another! I dug out a space for the root cellar which generated the clay subsoil i need to build the cob oven. Yiipppeeeee!

Back in August i met Brandy Hall for the first time at our farmers market. She had just moved here from Asheville, N.C. Turns out she is a permaculture designer and teacher who, along with her partner Keri Evjy, is currently teaching a PDC (permaculture design certificate) course. They and their students are coming to the Funny Farm this weekend to help build the cob oven as part of the alternative building segment of their course.

Next week i will finish up the root cellar. I plan to build a roof over the cob oven to protect it from the elements. I plan to grow food on it too. I will put straw bales on it that i will inoculate with oyster mushroom spawn. Then, in the spring, i will plant vegetables and flowers in the bales. I also plan to mount a photovoltaic solar panel on the roof to power lights, (and a blender, you know, for cocktail-making). You see we have all kinds of building materials lying around waiting for something to trigger a project that they can be used in.

That's how we roll here at The Funny Farm.
I will post updates as we move forward with these projects. Gotta go check on my cob bricks baking in the oven :) Later!

Here are links to Brandy's (Shades of Green, Inc.) and Keri's (Healing Roots Design) websites.

Propagating Herbs- Divide and Conquer

Most perennial herbs are easy to propagate. Today i propagated 3 varieties of thyme, and sweet marjoram. These are sprawling herbs whose long flexible stems root where ever they touch the ground. All one has to do is to find where the stems have rooted, dig them up, detach the rooted stems from the mother plant, trim them up and plant in a pot to grow out.

Here is a flat of divisions of sweet marjoram. I gently separated them into individual plants making sure each division had a good root system and some good growing branches.
Next i trimmed each division by cutting back the foliage and removing any damaged or long roots so that i would have a nice neat little plant with a good balance of roots to foliage.

I potted the divisions in recycled pint plastic pots using my standard potting mix. My mix is 75% worm castings our worms produce for us and 25% local granite sand. The worm castings are full of microorganisms and nutrients. The granite sand provides more nutrients and allows the mix to drain well. The fungi in the worm castings love to feed on the granite sand releasing nutrients to the plants. I want my plants to have the full benefits of the soil food web from the very beginning of their lives. It makes them happy.
Finally i put them in the unheated greenhouse and water them in. By spring they will have rooted in and developed nice full tops ready to be sold at our local farmers market.

Tomorrow i will be propagating 2 varieties of oregano, garlic chives, chocolate mint, welsh onions and rosemary.

Gardening in 3-D: Delight in Disorder

One of the most important strategies we employ is to encourage biodiversity. By doing so we can partner with a wide variety of organisms who will help us with pest control. Our farm looks like a mess to most people (including some of our neighbors). We have lots of wild looking "overgrown" areas. What appears to be chaos has an invisible order to it. These areas are home to birds, snakes, possums, toads, tree frogs, squirrels, rabbits, rats and chipmunks ( i believe my totem animal is a chipmunk). Yes, we have to share some of our bounty with them but we feel that overall we gain much more than we lose from their presence. In the past few years I have observed that birds in particular play an important role in keeping pest insects at bay. I see eastern towhees cruising close to the ground, scratching in the litter and mulch hunting for insects. I watched goldfinches eat the sunflower petals and then perch on the long beans and eat the aphids feeding on the beans. I have seen mockingbirds snatch tomato worms right out of the fruit.
We purposefully plant a wide variety of flowering plants that attract beneficial organisms including both pollinators and predators of pest insects. One of the first things we did when we got to the Funny Farm was to establish our bugscaping (aka farmscaping) beds. This spring we were able to divide the plants from that bed and spread them into other parts of the garden. Each year we have found more and different species of predatory insects working side by side with us. We help them by providing food and habitat and they help us by controlling pests on our crops.
This year I made a concerted effort to move away from the typical agricultural model of planting crops in rows. I wanted to mix things up to maximize diversity within my garden beds. Mother nature does not plant in rows. The goal was to make it harder for insect and disease pest to find their targets increasing the chances of our obtaining a yield. Here in the south squashes and zucchinis are difficult to grow organically. There is a large variety of insect and diseases that prey on them, the most devastating of which is the squash vine borer. When I planted my squash in a row the momma moth would cruise down the row happily laying her eggs on each plant. Soon one by one the plants would wilt and die leaving me squashless. We decided to try and outsmart her by confusing her. We planted our squash plants all over the place, between the tomatoes, among the zinnias, beside the pole beans, among the basil. This strategy worked pretty well. She found a few plants but through constant diligence I was able to find and destroy the larvae before they did serious damage and we had a decent yield of squash.
We also also made better use of 3 dimensional space in the garden by utilizing stakes, teepees and trellisses. We plant our tomatoes 4' apart and tie 2 vines to metal tee post that has a 8-10' tall bamboo pole attached to it. Our tomatoes grow up to the top of the poles and then cascade back down. The wide spacing allows us to plant lower growing plants between them. We mixed a lot of different things between them besides the squash; bush beans which fix nitrogen, basil, zinnias, sunflowers which attract pollinators and predatory insects. We wanted to emulate a natural system as much as possible. All the different plants give off different chemical signals making it harder for pest insects to find their favorite foods. We created a similar 3-d space to a forest edge with a canopy, understory and dense layer near the ground. I saw the towhees moving from the wild woodsy spaces into the garden spaces scratching in the mulch and eating insects.
We made teepees out of bamboo poles our friend Henry brought us and grew our cucumbers and melons on them (don't be fooled by Baker Creek Seed's description of a Tigger melon. They may smell good but the taste like crap) . Between the widely spaced teepees we planted okra to fill the void. the teepees were shaped like this ^ and the okra grows like this \/. Someone said the bamboo structures reminded her of Gilligan's Island. Seem like a good model of sustainability to me.
This summer was hot and dry. We had our share of insects and diseases. Some crops failed but most did quite well. All in all we are very satisfied with our new 3 dimensional strategy and will be refining it next summer.






Over 1800 lbs. harvested from June until now on 1/8th acre ain't too shabby.

Funny Farm Stuffed Broccoli Leaves - a new Southern Tradition

Last spring was the first time i heard of people eating broccoli leaves. It makes sense though, for a couple of reasons. The first is that they are tender and delicious, tasting like a cross between kale and collards. Also, it provides an additional crop for farmers to sell thus using more of the broccoli plant than just the flower bud. The flooding rains this September washed away or caused root rot on much of our first planting of broccoli. We re-planted but it was really too late to get large crowns. We hope the winter will be mild enough that we can get them through til spring when the crowns will finish filling out. In the mean time we are thankful that we can get some food from the crop this fall and early winter.

We offered the leaves for sale last week and sold some and we brought the rest home for us to eat. We found that some of our customers did not know what to do with them so I decided to create a recipe or two to share hoping to boost sales.

We've had stuffed cabbage leaves a time or 2 when I was in grad school in Massachusetts where there is a large population of people of Polish decent. I figured why not make some stuffed broccoli leaves. Typically cabbage is stuffed with some type of meat, rice and egg mixture and topped with a tomato sauce.

I started with some steamed medium grain brown rice i got for Massa Organics whom i met on twitter. They are awesome! They live in a house they built out of their own rice straw bales. We love ground buffalo because it has great flavor and buffaloes eat grass so i browned it with some garlic and some Indian spices to give it some punch (depth of flavor in foodie-speak). I mixed the rice and the buffalo together in a bowl with an egg from our friends at Carlton Farms up in Rockmart Georgia. The sauce i made from some organic ketchup, balsamic vinegar, a little ground chipotle pepper (kicking it up a notch ala Emeril) and a couple of splashes of carrot hooch into which i had added some sliced lemons and pickled some carrots. You probably don't have that handy in you fridge so you can substitute fresh squeezed lemon juice.

The first time i tried to make stuffed cabbage leaves i didn't know that you needed to blanch them first to soften them up enough to be able to roll them up. This time i put the broccoli leaves into the rice steamer after the rice was done and steamed them for about 5 minutes. They came out beautifully bright green and pliant. I spooned some of the filling and started to roll the first one up. Those fu..(um sorry Joyce. (my mother-in-law)) guys are not the easiest things to roll. Kinda like when you are first learning to roll a joint, practice makes perfect. The key is to not put too much filling on the leaf and put it in the center so you can fold the sides over the filling first, then press the filling back tight against the end of the leaf and roll it up so that the filling stays inside. This will allow you to create a beautiful presentation when you go to plate the dish (foodie-speak for spooning it on the plate).

About a year ago Robin went to an estate sale at the neighbor's house after the old lady who lived there passed (Southern for died). She came home with a pile of aprons (she loves aprons) and a box full of casserole dishes. As she was unpacking the dishes i saw one that was exactly like the one my mother used to make macaroni and cheese in. That was about the only thing my mom cooked that i liked (or anybody else in the family liked for that matter). You see my mom got a degree in home economics but she was a terrible cook. She could turn a beautiful beef roast into shoe leather. I asked her one time why she cooked it so long. She said she could not stand to eat pink beef. She had to compete with her mother-in-law who was a great country cook. Grandmama Marcus could make the best pies and yeast rolls, and apple sauce and head cheese and all kinds of stuff. She never made it past the 4th grade in school but man could she cook.

So anyway, i used that red dish to cook the broccoli in. Green broccoli leaves, red casserole dish; how very festive.

Here's the recipe: Funny Farm Stuffed Broccoli Leaves

INGREDIENTS - pre-heat oven to 350º

3/4 lb. broccoli leaves ( about 24 leaves)

Stuffing
1 cup dry brown rice
1 cup chicken stock

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 garlic cloves
1 lb. ground buffalo (or grass fed beef)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon tumeric
1 large egg
Tomato Sauce
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper
juice of 1 lemon

Preparation
Steam the rice in the chicken stock until done. In a cast iron skillet saute´ the garlic in the olive oil until tender. Add the ground buffalo and brown.

Cut off the stems of the broccoli leaves and save for stock or juice or compost. When the rice is finished steam the leaves for 5 minutes to make them pliable and bright green. Run cold water over them to stop the cooking and make them safe to handle.

Combine the tomato sauce ingredients in a sauce pan and simmer gently while you stuff the broccoli leaves.

In a large bowl combine the rice and buffalo and taste to see if you need to add salt. Add the egg and mix everything well.

Lay a leaf face up on a cutting board with the stem end pointing toward you. Spoon about 1-1/2 tablespoons of filling onto the leaf just above where the stem met the leaf. Fold the sides over the filling, press the filling tightly back into the leaf and roll it up as tight as possible. Place in an oiled casserole dish. Continue until all the leaves are filled.

Spoon the sauce over all the stuffed leaves. Place the cover over the casserole dish and bake for 45 minutes at 350º.


Deelliiisssshhhuuussss!!

Funny Farm Update

We're in full swing now. The flower field is busting loose with a riot of color. The sunflowers must have tapped into the moisture and nutrients in the septic drain field. They're huge. 

The front garden is starting to produce. We had some problems earlier with a magnesium deficiency. I was able to correct it with a foliar spray of epsom salts and soil applications as well. The leaves of the peppers were all curled up but they are fine now and starting to bloom.

 The neighbors have come around to our side now as they watch the garden grow. People who walk by are always complimenting us . A woman driving a school bus stopped one day and said she will be back to buy tomatoes.

Damn squash vine borers are taking out the squash now. I'm on guard to protect the zucchini. I started the squash in the green house to get a head start on the borers and it worked well. We harvested lots of squash before the infestation. I'm cutting them out of the vines and destroying them to reduce future populations.

Now that Kitty is gone the chipmunks are eating the strawberries before they even ripen. Penny needs to come out of retirement and get to work on that situation. Fat chance of that happening.

Wild fermentation is in full swing with kraut and more hooch, sunflower this time. I tasted some of the young hooch yesterday and it is pretty tasty and strong. 

MY landscape crew is building a deck down by the pond in anticipation of my 55th birthday celebration coming up on July 19. 

Promises to be a fun time for sure.