The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

I got a free pair of tickets to Sasquatch for doing a poster, so Jared and I decided to combine our music festival-ing with some morel mushroom foraging. We’ve got the hang of hunting for chantrelles out by Mt. Rainier, but had never found a morel before. They pop up on the east side of the Cascades in the spring, and apparently Highway 97 between Cle Elum and Leavenworth has just the right conditions.

We did some research with the Forest Service and found out about places where there had been logging and burning happening in the last year, which supposedly yield good mushroom conditions the following season. Morels proved to be a fickle mistress, blending into the ground and demanding lots of time before rewarding us with a few impressive patches. The bulk of our haul (if you can call it that) came in groups, with a few random ones interspersed throughout the day.

The results of our initial trip: clearcuts were good, the burn zone didn’t give us anything (but might have been too high), and even higher up there was a lighter-colored morel that we only found a few of (but that were superior specimens.)

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A couple things happen to be alive on our counter these days:

- Carrie bought us these cacti from IKEA (I think as a housewarming gift) and surprise of surprises, they’re not dead. In fact, one is blooming a flower.

- Alicia found a sweet ’70s seed sprouting kit, and so we’re getting our health on and making sprouts. It works a lot better than the mason jar with a screen on the bottom that we tried last year.

- Trader Joe’s sells the most stunning basil plants for $3. So there is one sitting on the counter… it’s getting a little wilty and I’ve been watering it really well, so I don’t know what’s going on. But it’s looking a lot better than the waterlogged yellow basil we have going outside.

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Our chickens are back in production mode after a short period of setting (sitting on the eggs to incubate them).  Additionally our asparagus patch continues to emerge little by little.  This morning we had enough of both of these farm treasures to make a delicious breakfast.  When we get our pig we can add some bacon and make it a true farmer’s breakfast.

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We recently arranged to purchase half a pig from a local farm.  We’ve been wanting to buy meat like this for awhile and finally pulled the trigger (although not literally – we’re paying someone else to do that part).  This has necessitated clearing out the basement freezer to make room for a large quantity of meat that will be coming our way next month,  We had a couple of bags of rhubarb from last year’s crop that I just chopped and froze.  When the rhubarb was ready for harvest we had  a lot of jam (grape, strawberry, plum and blueberry), chutney (plum) and pie filling (apple) already processed and in our stockpile of canned goods.  Because of this I was at a loss for ideas for the rhubarb, which just ended up being frozen for later use.  “Later use” had arrived and I was still at a loss for ideas.  I ended up making a simple cobbler.  It tasted great, but had a little more green then I would have liked.  (Note the similarities between my dessert and slime).  I guess that is why strawberries are usually used with rhubarb. It did the trick though and  now we are one bag closer to an empty freezer for our coming pig.

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These days it’s not hard to run into someone extolling the virtues of eating local, or growing your own food, or getting in touch with your inner omnivorous dilemma. It can get a little old, even for someone who is all for it the ideas at hand. One reason is that it seems like a lot of extra expense or effort just to prove you’re “aware” and achieving your proper balance in the food system. Sometimes, a bag of Doritos just sounds delicious and kale is the last thing I want.

Then yesterday we ate our first salad of the year, thinning out the thick rows of lettuce. And despite the obvious cliché, it was different enough from our typical winter fare of crock pot meals to make us look up and say, “This salad is actually pretty amazing.” It was probably 15 minutes out of the garden, with a lemon-honey-mustard vinaigrette and some pepper, so light and tender that it just about melted in your mouth (in a way that wasn’t weird for a vegetable to do.)

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