Quarter-acre farm : how I kept the patio, lost the lawn, and fed my family for a year

292 Pages·2011·5.59 MB·English

by  Warren

Table of Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Preface
CHAPTER ONE - MAKING SPACE
Green Food
CHAPTER TWO - DOLLAR FOR DIRT
Recipe - Beet and Chevre Sandwiches
CHAPTER THREE - TOFU OF THE WEST
Recipe - Grilled Zucchini
CHAPTER FOUR - SADISM IN THE GARDEN
Recipe - Roasted Tomato Sauce
CHAPTER FIVE - SUGAR GROWS ON TREES
Recipe - Candied Orange Peel Dipped in Chocolate
CHAPTER SIX - CIRCUS HENS
Recipe - Walnut French Toast
CHAPTER SEVEN - FREE STUFF
Recipe - Rough French Tart
CHAPTER EIGHT - MUD
Recipe - Mud Truffles
CHAPTER NINE - THE MYSTERIOUS UNDERGROUND
Recipe - Potatoes and Eggs
Recipe - Alotta Frittata
CHAPTER TEN - MAGICAL FRUIT
Recipe - Green-Chile Chili
CHAPTER ELEVEN - WEEDS
Recipe - Purslane Salad
CHAPTER TWELVE - WHEN GOOD BUGS GO BAD
Recipe - Figs and Goat Cheese
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - POLE DANCING
Recipe - Pasta con Zucca
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - WATER
Recipe - Iced Tea with Lavender, Lemon Verbena, and Mint
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - WHAT WEIGHS MORE, A POUND OF DIAMONDS
OR A POUND OF MUSHROOMS?
Recipe - Mushroom Soup
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - HUNTING SMALL GAME
Recipe - Escargot in Two Colors
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - MUMMIFICATION: THE ART OF CURING
OLIVES
Recipe - Olive Focaccia
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE HISTORY OF FOOD PRESERVATION,
INCLUDING MY OWN
Recipe - Smoothies
CHAPTER NINETEEN - YOU CAN EAT THAT?
Recipe - Sam’s Preserved Lemons
CHAPTER TWENTY - A FARMER CRITIQUES THE QUARTER ACRE
FARM
Recipe - Onion Potato Puff Pastry Pie
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - VICTORY IN THE GARDEN
GARDEN NOTES
MY GARDEN PLAN
Acknowledgements
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INDEX
SELECTED TITLES FROM SEAL PRESS
Copyright Page
FOR LOUIS
PREFACE

When my husband, Louis, and I were first married more than twenty years ago,
we lived in a tiny student apartment in Connecticut. When the weather
permitted, we hauled pots of dirt onto the concrete steps outside the back door
and grew spindly beans up the pipe railings. When our sons, Jesse and Sam,
were eleven and one, we bought our first house in San Diego. On the day we
moved in, we planted two beds of tomatoes and basil before we even put our
own beds together. Five years later we moved to Northern California and the
whole family helped dig up the two dozen heirloom roses from our new yard so
that I might plant fruit trees in their stead.
Gardening was a hobby, like making furniture or pottery. I enjoyed taking
something that might seem worthless, old wood and clay (or a seed), and making
it into cabinets and bowls (or eventually lunch). Gardening was especially good
because the plant itself did most of the work of growing into a plant and then
producing food. If I didn’t forget to water it, that is.
It was great seeing the kids standing under a tree grazing on fruit, picking
cherry tomatoes for lunch, or munching snap peas—especially because I knew
that in our garden they wouldn’t be ingesting chemical residues as they ate.
When Sam toddled out of the garden scented by basil, I knew the worst he could
have eaten was an organic caterpillar.
I dreamed of enlarging our garden into a place that we could live off of; a
place resembling something between the Big Rock Candy Mountain and Eden. I
thought about it enough over the years that it began to seem possible, albeit
without lemonade springs or, hopefully, snakes. Years later while researching a
book I was writing on World War I, I became intrigued with victory gardens,
which the American government encouraged citizens to grow fruits and
vegetables in whatever space they could find (yards, roofs, vacant lots) to help
supplement family diets and feed overseas troops. I dreamed about how much
my own small plot might produce.
I might have been content with mere dreaming, if not for the road trip we took
in the summer of 2008. Louis and I had a conference to go to, research to do, and
family to visit, which would take us on a meandering voyage from Davis to Los
Angeles to Arizona, through Wyoming and North Dakota, and back home again.
It was a bad time to travel. Fuel prices were at an all-time high and when I
gassed up at the pump, I felt like I was calling down environmental ruin.
Furthermore, the fuel shortage coincided with a salmonella outbreak. Over 1,400
people were sickened by food-borne illness. The authorities thought the source
was tomatoes. Suddenly there wasn’t a tomato to be found on dinner salads,
burgers, or as a garnish on the side of plates. BLT’s became BL’s, and summer
lost its rosy culinary icon.
Then, just as you thought you were safe if you managed to skirt tomatoes,
those same authorities announced that the source might be onions instead . . . or
peppers. As the investigation went on, it became ever more clear that we might
never know what food caused the outbreak.
Hence, food was constantly on our minds as we traveled. At roadside cafés we
not only wondered what was on the menu but also how the vegetables had been
grown, stored, and washed. And for that matter, how far the food had been
shipped using our dwindling petroleum reserves.
On our way south we drove through California’s Central Valley, passing the
town of Coalinga, where the enormous Harris Ranch is located. We dubbed the
town “Cow-a-linga” and steeled ourselves against the brick wall of stench we
had to drive through to get to the other side of the immense feedlots there. The
hellish crowding of animals was terribly sad and enough to make me swear off
commercial beef. Knowing that the animals were often fed byproducts of other
animals didn’t help, especially since Louis and I had been in England eating
meat pies the year that mad cow disease started killing people. The idea of eating
prions from the tissue of sick cattle, then having those prions eat my brain, was a
little off-putting. And where I once may have thought sick cattle wouldn’t end up
in my grocer’s case, I now knew better. Activists had just aired film footage of
dying cattle splayed out on the floor being prodded with shock rods, jabbed with
forklift tines, and shot by sprays of water until they stood up and took their last
tottering steps toward our kitchen tables. Large-scale meat and egg production
was not pretty.
And still other issues with food were making headlines that year: genetically
altered wheat, perchlorate in dairy products, transfats in baked goods. Hormones
in our food were making some children grow breasts and body hair by the age of
five; fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides laved produce we ate; and to top it all
off, lead-tainted candy had been sold in stores. In short, what nourished us might
also kill us.
Sitting in the passenger’s seat of our rental car, with nothing but time to sit
and think, I ruminated over these issues. It was time to do more than talk. I
wanted to do what was right for the planet, my family, and me. As soon as we
returned to Davis, I announced that I would start to grow most of our food in our
own yard.
As I outlined my plans, Louis and Sam caught on that I was no longer
woolgathering about a few raised beds; I was seriously plotting the
transformation of our yard, our eating habits, and maybe the fabric of our entire
universe. Louis and Sam paid sudden and nervous attention.
Louis said, “You’re not serious. You can’t grow your food in the yard. You’d
starve.”
As I noted the “you” rather than the “we” in Louis’s comments, Sam pointed
out that he ate responsibly while at home. Certainly—by the age of eight Sam
shopped for vegetables at the local farmers’ market. Further, he researched
companies for their environmental and humanitarian records and we made many
of our food purchases at the food co-op in town where the checkers wear hemp
clothing and the meat department is filled with organic free-range pork, chicken,
and beef. I was the one in the family who was most likely to be caught eating a
machine-extruded yummy pie laced with petrochemicals and wrapped by
toddlers in a Malaysian sweatshop.
It was true that I likely had the most to atone for. (The road trip was even my
idea.) However, I pointed out, we could all do more. The free-range chickens
that we envisioned contentedly pecking in an open field are more likely living in
a steel Quonset hut and seldom, if ever, going out into the concrete yard that
constitutes their “range.” Even health food—which might have been packaged in
Pawnee, Nebraska, or Des Moines, Iowa—was likely to be aggregates of
ingredients from anonymous factories in China, Mexico, and other far-flung
places. Less than 1 percent of food coming into the country is inspected and the
cost of shipping in fossil fuels is staggering. Even the food at the farmers’
market, though local, has to be trucked into Davis from the fields.
Sam then said that perhaps I should wait another year to start since we were
already well into summer. Louis pointed out that I was a self-described slacker
gardener, after all, and I might do better with my plan after a bit more practice
first.
I do hate weeding. I forget to water. My garden is a testing ground for plants
able to withstand abuse. But while I seemed to have been a slacker gardener in
the past, I explained that I was merely in my larval stage. The time had come to
kick off my chrysalis and extend my farmer’s wings.
When we got back to Davis I convened the family and told them what I
planned to do. Starting on July 1, I pledged that 75 percent of all the food I ate
(by weight) would come from our garden, hereafter known as the Quarter Acre
Farm. The other 25 percent would be used as I wished on grains, dairy, meat,
chocolate, or Boston cream pie. If I wanted to go out to dinner I could save up,
banking the consumption of extra home produce to make up for it.
Gleaning would be allowed. If my neighbor didn’t want the peaches on her
tree, I could pick and use them. Finally, I decided that beverages would be
exempt. Otherwise I knew I would not drink a glass of water, a cup of juice, or a
swig of milk for the entire year. Also, I might be tempted to trade my 25 percent
ration of chicken or cheddar for a good cold gin and tonic instead.
Lastly, I would be most happy if my family would join me in this venture.
Jesse was working as a line chef at the time, and he was gratifyingly
enthusiastic about my plan. He said some of the best restaurants had their own
gardens, not only because the taste of really fresh produce was amazing, but also
because it was better for your health. On top of it all, growing your own food
saved money as well. In sum, he thought it was a great idea. Of course, he didn’t
live at home anymore, so he could afford his enthusiasm.
Louis and Sam, on the other hand, looked crestfallen. I knew they feared