Independence Days: PusherWoman
Sharon October 13th, 2009
i’m your mamma, I’m your daddy
i’m that farma in the alley
i’m your doctor, when in need
want sweet taters, have some nettle weed
you know me, i’m your friend
gotcher parsnips, thick and thin
i’m your pusherwoman,
i’m your pusherwoman.
haha
ain’t i clean, veggie queen
super cool, super green
feelin’ good, for the man
onion chick, here i stand
carrot stash, heavy bread
baddest bitch in your garden bed!
i’m your pusherwoman
i’m your pusherwoman
i’m your pusherwoman
solid life, on the farm
gal of odd circumstance
a victim of agrarian dreams
feed you broccoli
and i’ll let you trip for a while
on my apple pie
how long can a good thing last?
keep ‘em in cold storage
got to be mellow, y’all
they’ll stay mellow-crisp
your pusherwoman fills you up. - With profuse apologies to Curtis Mayfield
The last few weeks we’ve had a *lot* of guests – visitors from our old haunts come to see us – family and friends. It has been delightful – and I’ve used the occasion to play pusherwoman. You see, out where I am, there are a number of family farmers of wonderful crops to fill root cellars, freeze, can and preserve. So when my loved ones come and visit, we take them out to the Carrot Barn, or to Bohringers, to the Dutch Barn or Barber’s Farm, and send them home with bushel baskets and buckets and 50lbs of this.
I want these farmers to profit, and I want my friends and family to understand why it is that I never buy supermarket potatoes. And while the food may not be perfectly local to them, as long as they are visiting anyway, and as long as there’s space in the vehicle, this is a win-win situation.
So I can be helpfully heard making gentle suggestions. “Do you want some sweet potatoes? Oh, don’t forget garlic – theirs is delicious. Cortland apples? Sure, how many bushels? You don’t see a price for bulk cauliflower? Let’s go ask – it wouldn’t do for you to run out. No, slipping a bushel of tomatoes into the dehydrator isn’t that big a deal. Sure you have room for 50lbs of onions – what about that space under the stairs?” Yup, that’s me, I’m your pusherwoman, pressing vegetables on those I love.
And vegetables are just a gateway drug – then there’s the poultry. Step-mom only has four chickens? Of course she needs two more baby chicks, and we just happen to have them. BIL lost his ducks…well, what’s a few more? And it doesn’t stop at poultry “Here, yes, just brush my angora bunny for a while…isn’t he soft? Don’t you want one?” or “I know you don’t want goats…here, just hold this newborn one for a while, and would you like to taste the milk?” That’s me, farm pusherwoman, baddest bitch in the garden.
Meanwhile, we’re finally through with all the guests and the holidays – it was wonderful, but starting to be exhausting. We had a great visit with my college friends this weekend and a lovely time at Simchat Torah services, and now the celebrations are over, and life goes back to being quiet for a short time (other than Asher’s birthday) until I head to Georgia for my next talk.
It is getting cold now, and time to fill the root cellar – we’ll finally dig the rest of the potatoes, plant the bulbs and garlic, and pull the turnips. We have now had a few hard frosts, so it is time to gather in the roots and also delight in the fact that the greens and roots are tastier now.
We’re still putting up the last of the warm weather things – eggplant and tomatoes, peppers and squash, but the shift is coming to roots and greens and autumnal pleasures. This afternoon we’ll harvest the grinding corn and see how many sunflower seeds the jays have left us.
We’re also getting ready for the departure of the sheep – they leave tomorrow, and that means we can take down the old, falling down fence posts, mow the whole field and prepare to cross fence it. I start building new garden beds as well, and the whole process of moving towards winter has really begun in earnest.
We’ll be buying apples to fill the root cellar, and supplementing our own crops with some from outside. It is also a good time to sort through the storage pantry and start looking at what’s missing – we’ve run out of a few things I like to keep on hand lately, which suggests (correctly 
) that we’re not paying enough attention to inside things as we focus on the final wrap up of outside. One of the things I like about colder weather is the way it directs me inwards, to a house that has had to be content with licks and promises for a long time.
Arava and Tekiah are bouncy and adorable, spending their time exploring and playing and grazing. Selene’s mastitis has cleared up and Maia is doing well with mothering – although she’s not quite as devoted a Mom as Selene is.
I can see the beginning of the quiet season of planning – this morning a catalog arrived from FedCo Trees – it was the first of the 2010 seed and plant catalogs, and to me, a marker that said that gardening, while hardly done, is transitioning from “this year” to “next year.” I’m starting to plan next year’s garden – I have to figure out where things are mostly going to go when I plant garlic.
And I’m wracking my brains to think about who else doesn’t have a cellar full of potatoes or a porch crowded with apples. Pusherwoman gotta do her thing .
Plant something: Not a thing
Harvest something: Beets, kale, green tomatoes, sunflower heads, basil, mint, turnips, chard, broccoli, pumpkins, squash.
Preserve something: Made zucchini pickles, dried tomatoes, froze eggplant, froze sweet peppers, dried hot peppers, froze hot peppers, canned salsa, canned cider syrup for pancakes.
Waste Not: Nothing new this week
Want Not: Began the annual apple binge, picked up rolled oats.
Eat the food: Decadent raspberry pie with huge quantities of fall raspberries was the peak of things. Grilled eggplant and pepper sandwiches are awfully good too.
Build community food systems: Some promotional stuff for Independence Days, mostly.
How about you?
Sharon
- Independence Days Challenge
- Comments(23)
Dried carrots. Dried the scrapings from the carrots for soup stock. Prepared veggie bed that is going to be topped by cold frame, transplanted started spinach and lettuce into it. Trimmed bush by bed that cold frame will go over.
That was it. Husband had a BAD sinus infection, sick spouses take a lot of care.
Hope to get husband to trim the high parts of the bush today, hope to finish cold frame and planting cold weather crops, hope to dry apples and make applesauce, hope to can chili, etc for next week’s update.
Frondly, Fern
You know you’ve been sucessful planting the seed when your youngest son asks if you have any canned tomatoes as his soup doesn’t taste right with the store kind…and his new wife brings her jar hoping for some fresh milk….next youngest son has a patch of garden–even to planting one around the front porch of his college rental house. Yet none of these kids were big fans of gardening when at home. Does my heart good!
Best part of our garden/orchard/animals is having the ability to give to our family and friends. No one goes home without a dozen eggs or a bag of peppers or some fresh Arkansas Black apples…….DEE
A friend’s annual Eggplant Party (exactly what it sounds like) helped use up the crisper drawer full of eggplant, and we have blanched eggplant and eggplant soup in the freezer and fridge. Found a delicious recipe for baked squash filled with sweet corn custard. It appears to be a bumper year for winter squash
I made scrumptious bread pudding last night.
Last week I went to a harvest festival for The Food Project, which wasn’t at their farm because it was raining, but was instead in the barn of another farm a scant stone’s throw from the train station in Lincoln. And they have chicken for sale! Finally, my diet can include chicken again! The festival was an excellent opportunity to connect to people who are doing some serious good on the local-food front.
My update is on my blog, here:
http://inthepurplehouse.blogspot.com/2009/10/independence-days-challenge-week-24.html
This week I got the new beds built with cinder blocks. It added another 400 sq ft to my almost 1000 sq ft of beds. Its raining now, or I would have gotten the soil to fill the beds. Hopefully tomorrow that will happen. I’m already dreaming of next year’s garden.
Made lots of apple desserts this week We didn’t get any pumpkins this week, so I’ll be going to the farm to get some today.
I’ve started making the dog’s food on a full time basis. I’ve done it a few times before and he really loves it. This assures me that he is eating healthy food and costs me much less than the stuff at the mega mart. Between the dog and the chickens, there is no waste at my house.
It is funny that you posted this right after I finished trying to convince a friend that she could have chickens in her backyard in Florida. She actually seemed interested… although it could have been her way to shut me up
My summer independence days is posted at http://www.peakoildesign.com.
frost touched the cuke vines but not the tomatoes or zukes. Transplanted red chard, kale, and bok choi into the polytunnel.
Harvested tomatillos, mustard, lettuce, arugula, beans, potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, grapes, sweet corn, tomatoes, eggplant, kale, yellow zucchini, green zucchini, chard, chicken eggs, duck eggs.
Canned tomato puree. Cooked up and froze beans. Blanching won’t do, as they are a bit mature and when we need them, we’ll want them faster than the blanched. We can alternate with blanched-and-frozen when we have the time. If I can find those in the freezer!
Scored some windows and a large plywood cabinet on Craigslist’s free box. Tearing down bean poles and corn stalks. Converting garden waste and grape-wine must into in-bed compost and chicken, duck, and goose smiles. Reorganized canning jars. It appears I’ve used about a third of them this year. I’d run out of wide lids and was searching for small-mouth quarts — they were in the back of the cabinet, of course. About half are Mason, half Kerr — and two are three are an off size labeled Atlas. I like those the best. Very homey looking.
Sold chicken eggs and gave away the last of the giveaway summer veggies.
100 foot diet: from frozen: chicken broth and blackberries and plum sauce. From home canned: tomato soup, plum sauce and blackberry jam. From the land: apples, duck and chicken eggs, turnip greens, zucchini, elephant garlic, onions, basil, chives, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatillos, tomatoes, corn. 100 mile diet: Tillamook cheddar, local wines. 1000+ mile diet: Whole wheat noodles — who knows where they are from — it’s clear they have neared the end of their shelf life and so it’s spaghetti all week. I make the sauce — but I feel I have to add tomato paste from cans (never enough Romas ripening and haven’t found a convenient local source). Oh, and party goodies. More than fifty people came to my retirement send-off!
Sharon, when and exactly where in Georgia will you be?
Harvested: tomatoes, peppers, bok choy, turkey-tail mushrooms for tea
Community: started checking germination rates of seeds that I’ve saved in preparation for an upcoming seed-swap
Eating: the last of the garlic (when I plant more, in a week or so, it will be a LOT more than was planted last year); the last of the okra, harvested almost a week ago, was a little dry when sliced, so we added a little milk to the usual cornmeal/salt/pepper mix that we roll them in. The pan-fried slices (we just barely coat the bottom of the pan with oil) came out crispier than usual. We liked the change.
Dealing with the results of flooding still, so no planting. The ground is like pudding.
Plant: No
Harvest: Green beans, oregano, tomatoes (almost all of which, many many pounds went to trash as spoiled due to late blight and maybe hail – I get through the whole blighted year clean only to lose my major harvest on the one weekend we go away).
Preserve: Dried oregano, dehydrated okra
Waste Not: Continued year end clean up/re-organize the house project; protected sensitive plants nightly (the rolling bakers cart is a godsend).
Want Not: Town yardsale yielded pyrex, a large tin, canning jars, and another cooler for root “cellaring”. And I got a copy of Coleman’s Winter Harvest as a present.
Community: Nothing aside from a little garden talking with friends
Eat: Another variation on chile rellenos, pizza, ginger smoked pork loin, my partner’s “famous” smoked eggplant and tomatoes, green beans and andouille sausage
Plant—Pansies and garlic
Harvest—Green Beans, Beets and beet greens, bell peppers, onion, cherry tomatoes, Brandywine tomatoes, and butternut squash.
Preserve—Mozzarella and yogurt for the class tonight. Froze bell peppers. The butternut squash were added to dry storage. I made some elderberry syrup.
Reduce Waste—We continue our energy reduction, recycling, and composting efforts. I passed a few more egg cartons to a church member who has chickens since I won’t be seeing our egg farmer until late November.
Prep/Storage—I added some drastically reduced dried beans to the storage this week. We also added a few candy bars (for smores), dental floss, natural dish soap, yeast, pasta sauce, peanut butter, and cough drops to storage. We will be donating some of these items. Hubby fixed a few things on the work truck and pruned the shrubs. I updated my garden journal and began mapping out the gardens for next year. Planning right after the crops have finished allows me to make notes of what needs to be rotated and to where next year.
Building Community Food Systems—This Saturday will be the last of the CSA baskets we are scheduled to receive. The end of the season always leaves me wondering how much more I could have preserved. I have a mozzarella class planned for tonight, October 13th. I made up a few more boxes for the food pantry. I shared some extra seeds with a friend.
A friend who is a therapist and I are working together to plan a staff training. I’ll be teaching the therapists how to teach their clients to use coupons to save money on food.
(I mention couponing workshop so often here and thought I should explain that. While I do teach people how to shop with coupons, I also teach them the basics–budgeting, living within their means, planning, stockpiling etc. During these talks I always encourage folks to buy produce at farmers markets and directly from farmers to support the local economy AND save money. I encourage them to start a garden or share a garden space with friends, etc).
Eat the Food—I’ve been roasting green beans lately as a way of livening up the same dish. I clean and string the beans, place them in a small roasting pan (one that fits in our toaster oven), drizzle with olive oil and freshly milled salt and pepper. Then I roast them in the toaster oven for about 10 minutes. I turn it off and leave them in there for another 5-10 minutes. I’m calling them green fries, and they taste far superior to any fast food potato fry I have ever eaten. I found a few of the beets that had matured in the garden, and they were delicious in a salad with some fresh goat cheese from a friend.
I heard from a friend that the lamb we ordered from a farmer friend will be coming in next week, and I’m so excited!
Planted: nothing. Pulled the odd weed here and there.
.
Harvested: eggplant, peppers, oregano, sage, mint, tarragon, basil, tomatoes, apples, eggs, grapes, spinach, CSA vegetables, Oregon grapes (native berry). Actually, DH found and harvested those, and brought them to me, greatly excited, because he loves Oregon grape jam. So I spent the the weekend learning to make it.
Preserved: grape jelly, Oregon grape jam and jelly, Oregon grape liqueur, dried oregano and sage.
Managed: cleaned out linen closet, sorted out items to take to thrift shop, rags for DH to use in garage. Just discovered the absolute wonderfulness of the granite mortar and pestle DH gave me for my birthday a few weeks back; it makes making pesto so fast and easy!
Community food systems: not much. Fresh herbs and grapes to a friend, tips to another friend who’s learning to cook, bi-monthly cooking column to newspaper.
Eat the food: Spaghetti, roasted tomato soup, broccoli-stuffed potatoes, pesto, pizza, apple pie, whole-wheat pesto rolls, late strawberries, stir-fried vegetables and noodles with a rich peanut sauce, small glasses of homemade quince liqueur and locally made apple brandy.
Bought lots of stuff because of farm-pusherwoman
Now I have to go and deal with it all so that it’s in storable, usable form.
I think I’m going to go roast a bunch of eggplant.
I am put in mind of that young couple in BC who wrote the 100 mile diet book; my kitchen is full of food. It is some effort to keep from tripping over the plastic buckets full of potatoes that I still haven’t washed; the green tomatoes piled in whatever was handy; the wire worm eaten turnips, greatly in need of trimming and being cooked into frozen turnip pulp, that are hogging the kitchen counter; the beer still in its primary fermentation bucket after weeks; the ripest of the tomatoes and peppers are the jam pot cooking into salsa; and the large number of winter squash sitting on the floor.
There are still a few squash to harvest, and potatoes to dig, but the last peppers and cucumbers are in. I got most of the tomatoes in before the cold hit. The sun was going down, the barometer was dropping, dinner was not even started, and I was out there using empty flowerpots because I had run out of buckets. My next trick is to come up with some shallow cardboard boxes to pack the green tomatoes into so that they can be stored in the basement. I cover the boxes with several layers of newspaper. Far less work than individually wrapping the fruit. They keep pretty well. I check them often and pull out any starting to turn so that they can ripen up on the kitchen counter.
Susan, I’m so sorry to hear about your lost tomato harvest. I thought I got off lightly despite all, but sorting through the green tomatoes, I can see that there’s a lot of loss.
Shira in Bellingham, WA
Over the last fortnight…
Plant: hm, nothing I think (pretty sure the winter salads & veg went in 3 wks ago).
Harvest: still getting handfuls of raspberries; a few small ears of corn; salad from the balcony (and a couple of the late tomatoes have actually ripened!); volunteer chard & leeks from the allotment.
Preserve: rhubarb & ginger jam.
Waste not: hm, I’ve just cast on for fingerless mittens from some leftover yarn in the scrap drawer; built another cold frame for the balcony (this one was a bit bigger, for the herbs) out of rescued planks & plastic. I’ve also given away a few more things on Freecycle that I don’t need or want.
Want not: guess the cold frame counts here as well! I’m really keen to extend the growing season a bit this year.
Random other: we adopted a rescue dog
& have just started switching him off regular commercial food onto a UK-based organic dry food which I’m happier about, ethically speaking. Making his bed out of old battered blankets and worn-out coats that were headed for the fabric recycling. He seems happy enough with this!
My update is on my blog. Hightlight: I did a LOT of canning this weekend! I discovered that canning is more fun as a group activity.
Hightlight? LOL I knew that looked wrong …
Had a very light frost only near the veggie garden, which is the most open part of the yard. It affected only one variety of sweet potato. No damage to any of the other warm weather crops. It’s been *cold*, like 15-20F under the average high, and rainy.
In suburban St. Louis, MO last week:
Plant something: nope. Instead I brought potted plants inside. Wasn’t going to let them freeze.
Harvest something: Squash, pumpkins, leeks, collards, beets, carrots, sorrel, popcorn, nasturtium flowers, persimmons
Preserve something: my DH dug the 2 month old sauerkraut, made from local cabbage, out of the crock which had sat on the basement floor. He put the kraut in jars in the fridge. It’s crisp and delicious; apparently the basement floor stayed cool enough even in summer to keep it crisp. I started shelling the black beans I grew this summer. I’m drying popcorn in the basement, using the dehumidifier only until we get the beans and popcorn shelled out.
Waste Not: Only turned on the furnace long enough to ensure that it worked, and once more during bath time. It’s 57F in the house otherwise. So far it’s tolerable, although turning the heat up to 62F during bath time sure felt good! Using only people heaters (electric heating pads) and only in the evening, when we are staying seated.
Want Not: Ordered a year’s supply of olive and canola oils, another 25 lb bag of brown rice, and some Fair Trade teas while we still belong to the food co-op. Soon I’ll begin to source the bulk items we buy from other, hopefully local, places.
Eat the food: beans and potatoes; squash with persimmon filling the seed cavity; the season’s first chili (bean with TVP since we are mostly vegetarian, and using my hot peppers, herbs, and garlic).
Build community food systems: nothing this week.
Plant something: started sprouts, planted new basil, rosemary, oregano & lemon thyme seedlings,
Harvest something: endive, basil, coriander, mint, lettuces, tuscan kale, broccoli leaves, collards.
Preserve Something: cooked & froze 4 meals’ worth of chickpeas
Prep & Storage: ordered a ‘tasting’ case of Rosnay organic wine, stocked up on tinned toms & beans & bulk falafel mix.
Reduce Waste: Mr B scrounged a dumped deckchair which should be just what he needs to repair the bench we rescued from the neighbours’ de-clutter – plus usual composting & recycling.
Eat the Food: roast veggie/tofu salad with home-grown greens & herbs; nachos with kale & broccoli leaves; chickpea curry with homemade chutney; ‘pizza scrolls’ with leftover grilled capsicum (bell pepper) storage olives, macadamia nut cheese; soup with homegrown greens.
Build community food systems: nothing for me this week.
I have 150 lbs of apples, 3 bushels of parsnips and 2 bushels of potatoes to clean and put up for the season. Oh, and carrots and squash and pumkins to find a place for.
We’ve had flurries and a very hard frost–the season is over for the most part.
Now is the time the spinning wheel comes out and the knitting needles and sewing machine are busy. Patching jeans and summer clothes before they go away for the season is top priority. Thankfully, in my house, no one is changing size every 6 months anymore.
Deb in WI
I’ve fallen off the wagon for the last few weeks – though in my defense, most of the garden space is full up and the plans for terracing the backyard to make it more useable are finally moving forward (but not condusive to more planting).
Plant and plant tending – repotted lovage, lemon thyme, rosemary. Still waiting on tomato and other seeds to germinate – my first year of trying this, and I may be doing it wrong. Weeding and mulching. Protection from snails.
Harvest – rocket (now going to seed), herbs.
Preserve – nope, and going backwards by eating preserved food (still, that is the point).
Waste not/Want not – only usual recycling and composting, attempts to keep bare minimum of stores in the pantry.
Eat the food – must have been doing this – with one or two meals out with visitors, but nothing stands out as memorable.
Community food – BB’s workplace vege blackmarket is currently producing limes.
Hi PusherWoman,
It’s an excellent read and I’m excited about what I’m learning. Thanks for putting a separate index in the back for the recipes. I’ve marked several to try. The Golden Coconut Rice sounds wonderful! By the way, good to know about the kimchi…I’ll make sure I don’t tighten the lid too much.
Give Curtis Mayfield a copy of Independence Days and I feel confident he’ll let you “borrow” his stuff.
Plant something: Nothing this week. Raining again.
Harvest something: Green Beans, last of the red peppers. Still no eggs, but the girls finished molting and seem to be eating better.
Preserve something: Too busy reading Independence Days.
Waste Not: The usual recycling and composting
Want Not: Restocked sugar used in jelly making. Rearranged the freezer in preparation for the beef we ordered from a local farmer. It has been sent to the packinghouse and should be ready in 10 days.
Eat the Food: Vegetable soup and cornbread, baked chicken, stewed potatoes and fried okra, pintos and squash relish, and strawberries.
Build Community Food Systems: Shared jelly and honey with several neighbors.
It’s getting cold in VA. The tomatoes stopped producing so I harvested the last of them and plan to ferment them tomorrow.
Plant something: Not yet. I still want to get those cover crops in, but need to clean up some of the garden. I removed tomato vines and may plant these beds tomorrow. I am new at this and I need to think ahead to which beds will be early spring crops and which will be planted later. I know it makes a difference in which cover crop to plant. I am thinking oats might be good for the earliest crops (they will probably winter kill) and rye for the very latest crops. also thinking of comping grains with vetch. I might plant mangel beets in heavy soil (hope its not too late). and white clover in the paths. I want to do some planting in February (lettuce, peas, spinach) so maybe I should just mulch that bed and not put cover crop in?
Harvest something: sweet potatoes all dug , potatoes, green tomatoes, basil, last of green beans (just a handful), okra is at its end – it still has flowers, though. Nasturtian flowers and pods, more tomatoes for seeds (the yellow pear), scarlet runner bean seed, arugula, beet greens, turnip greens, chinese cabbage, broccolini, kale, peppers
Preserve something: curing sweet potatoes upstairs and stored a bunch under the stairs. Put a bushel of potatoes in the root cellar.
Waste Not: more brewery grains for the compost
Want Not: stocked up on sugar and another 5 pounds of rolled oats.
Eat the food: sweet potatoes, winter squash, mashed potatoes, eating lots of fermented pickles, tomatoes, and peppers. I cooked a big hubbard squash in my thermal pot – I cut it into large pieces and put it in the pot with 2 inches of water and brought it to a boil. I placed it in the thermal sleeve and checked an hour or two later and all was cooked. Can anyone suggest good recipes for winter squash? – I have a bumper crop this year.
Build community food systems: sending neighbors home with winter squash. food preservation and gardening talk with friends and neighbors.
Shelling out time winterising your static caravan on the end with the couple of years will assure which is thoroughly clean and in very good functioning buy for the return inside spring. Beneath are some factors that’ll aid you get ready your caravan for winter lowering possible injury triggered because of the cold and damp. 1. Crystal clear Straight down – It’s advised that if it is possible to consider residence things to decrease the threat of injury as well as theft. Things which you possibly can consider residence contain; soft furnishings, bedding, towels, curtains and electric Things for instance DVD players and TV’s a couple of. Condensation – Condensation and dampness can trigger harm for the caravan. Leave dehumidifying crystals or bowls of salt inside the static caravan to absorb dampness. three. Drinking water Technique – As together with your house the expansion of frozen drinking water in pipes can trigger quite a few issues inside a static caravan. Prior to leaving your van for that winter turn off the drinking water program and drain lower by opening all of the taps. Adding antifreeze to toilet bowl stops freezing and cracking. four. Rodents – Get rid of all foods to prevent tempting rodents. Also examine that there’s no admittance for rodents as these might be a genuine problem. five. Gas and Electric – Make certain that all gas and electric techniques ought to be isolated for that winter couple of years. 6. Protection – Make certain your caravan is locked and protected previous to leaving. Examine that your get in touch with particulars are accurate using the park seller such as your mobile cell phone variety, in situation of unpredicted challenges. Adhere to these factors in addition other people which you really feel are suitable to maintain your static caravan in great functioning purchase.