Winter Squash

2009 Butternut and Spaghetti winter squash

For many centuries one of the only fresh vegetables in the Americas at this time of year was the hard-shelled winter squash. Easily lasting through the winter and well beyond, (I have several Navajo hubbard squash that have lasted through a second winter- I'll harvest seeds and try to eat them soon; look for a post) these squash were a significant contribution to the world food-stocks when early explorers brought seeds back to the old-world. Along with corn and beans, squash forms the symbiotic triad called the "three sisters" of the new-world. Corn grows tall, shading and fed by the nitrogen-fixing beans, and squash vines spread and smother weeds around and between the mounds of corn and beans.

Two of the 'three sisters' during the summer

This year I planted summer and winter squash, separately in five large clumps. Each 3' mound was planted with three starts from the local nursery and vines spread 5-10' in diameter. The summer squashes did great and I enjoyed plenty of yellow and zucchini squash (fresh male squash flowers were the delicacy of that season), but the winter squash struggled; in October I brought in a couple dozen small-ish butternut and spaghetti squash. This harvest paled in comparison to the previous year's harvest of various Navajo winter squash, grown together with it's two sisters, and all from seed from Native Seeds/SEARCH. Next year I will definitely return to the traditional method of mixed plantings and local seed stock.

Winter Lunch

As my 'cold-cellared' (on a bed of Gallup bricks at 45 degrees) stock of winter squashes steadily disappears, I recently grabbed two butternut squash for a winter-themed lunch. I roasted the halved squash at 400 for 25 minutes, sautéed onion and garlic, and then blended the lot with chicken stock. The puree was then simmered with milk for a while. However savory, the delicious, creamy, and healthy squash soup --topped with a crunchy fried sage leaf-- was still out-shined by a good friend's grilled-cheese with sharp cheddar, brie, portabellas, and a touch of pesto. Yum! And more than enough calories for a great snow-day ski adventure.

Hope Community Garden Update

Looking East over the future raised-beds and cold-frames of the Hope Garden

Over the past couple months Blue Sky Builders of Espanola, NM have made steady progress on the community/demonstration garden project at the Community Pantry in Gallup. The perimeter fences have been built, the retaining walls of the garden beds built, and four rainwater harvesting tanks installed. The later coming just in time to capture the winter snowfall- all four tanks were filled to the brim (around 10,000 gallons) and over-flowing, yet no valves or plumbing had been installed (a hard thing to do when fighting so much water pressure).

On my 1500 gallon rainwater tank, I lost a full load of water the first winter it was installed when the 2" ball valve cracked during a week of sub-freezing weather. Insulation and an electric pipe warmer have since solved that problem. However, if I had chosen a more sun-exposed location for the plastic valve, I doubt I'd have any problem, as is the case at the Hope Garden's tanks. Three of the four cold-frames they've planned have been fitted together, still waiting their protective plastic covers and rich soil. I'll meet with the Community Pantry staff soon and post an interview on the specific status of this great project.

The Seasons Begin Again

So it feels like the sun is coming back north again.

Both the garden (over-eager garlic shoots have already made a fruitless/frozen appearance above ground) and I can anticipate coming out of our cold, rejuvenating dormancy. Yet, as most second-graders know, despite the occasional feeling to the contrary, it’s us who are on that elliptical route around the bright sun. Either way, it’s warming both our gardens, and hopefully my fingers to keep this we(b-log) going; so thanks for returning.

Just as is the Native American cuisine this time of year, through this winter I’ve mostly been eating stews of many varieties: Lamb and late potatoes, green chile/beef, red chile/anything (All with garlic, and seasonal veggies and canned at 14 lbs. for 1.5 hrs). Frozen Zuni Mtn. elk and El Morro Valley beef have also kept many of my friend's crock-pots full. Thanks for sharing guys, and thanks to all of you who are supporting local growers. (El Morro Valley Ranch is in the Gallup Journey!)

Coming up in this season I’ll post about my egg-less hens/gallup’s chicken prohibition, frozen leeks, perennial rosemary, The Hope Community Garden, local restaurants w/whole foods, NM-grown at the Co-op, cold frames and year-round crops, Native Seed/SEARCH, Julia and Julie, geo-thermal tiliapia aqua-culture, Kitchen Impossible/Food Network in Gallup, historic produce production of the Zuni Mountians, Gallup’s awesome CSA, Navajo a'chee sausage, the incredible local foods of the Gallup Flea Market….and then more.

Again, thanks for coming back to my blog. Kevin

Planting Garlic

California Late White Garlic

"It smells like stew." That was the best description of garlic I've ever heard, and it came from one of my 7-year old students. We were exploring the color, shape, and aroma of garlic as we prepared for planting a row of the pungent staple in our small school garden, and I was struggling to give context to this unfamiliar food. Unlike, other vegetables like carrots and potatoes that children often encounter whole, garlic is the seldom seen, but invaluable, stage-hand that makes almost every meal savory. It's also one of the few crops that can actively occupy a garden row over our cold, cold winter months.

The cloves rehydrate in rainwater before planting

Garlic cloves need a long cold -near freezing- period in order to trigger healthy growth in the spring, and so it's planted late in the fall. The roots quickly take hold after planting, and then wait patiently under the mulch and winter snow until the spring sun begins to warm the soil in April. Strong, frost-resistant leaves quickly emerge and take advantage of the winter moisture still held in the soil, requiring little to no additional watering--it's for this reason that garlic is one of the best suited crops for our dry climate. The young shoots are called green garlic and have a flavor similar to, but stronger than, scallions. However, the over-eager harvester will be disappointed that the clove at the base of the plant will look much like the ones planted before winter. It's not until late-May or June that the clove begins to swell and multiply into the stinky rose we all love.

The cloves are properly spaced before a quick push into the soil

There are two general categories of garlic; hard-neck and soft-neck. The latter being the common California White garlic we see in grocery stores and braided into ristras. In addition to the aesthetics of the beautiful braids, it's primary attribute is it's long storage life. The former, hard-neck garlic, is the true prince of the family. Growing larger cloves and having a wide variety of flavors and heat profiles, varieties like Spanish roja and German white command top prices at farmers markets' and in seed catalogs. Hard-necks also give the timely harvester the gourmand treat of spicy garlic scapes-- the beautiful swan like flower spikes that emerge when the cloves begin to swell. These are cut to encourage large clove growth. Unlike previous years, I procrastinated ordering my garlic, and with Thanksgiving break (and a trip to Pittsburgh) fast approaching, I resorted to only planting soft-necks this year, which I purchased at the La Montanita Co-op-- caution: regular

grocery stores often sell garlic treated with a growth inhibitor. Breaking apart each clump, I planted the large outer cloves and saved the smaller inner cloves for cooking. About 2 pounds of garlic yielded a 100 large cloves and were planted in 40' of row space, 4" apart.

Hope Community Garden

A cold-frame and rainwater tanks awaiting installation

The large tan and green building at the corner north of the Miuramira over-pass is a common sight to most Gallupian's, but few know that within that building, in addition to a professional USDA kitchen, meeting rooms (both available for a modest rental fee), and immaculately clean warehouse, the Community Food Pantry collects and distributes over 3 million pounds of food each year to two of our nation's hungriest counties. It's a fact; Mckinley County ranks as one of the hungriest (food insecurity index) counties in America.  All this on a budget of $300,000-- at a modest $1/pound of distributed food, thats a 10:1 return on contributions. 

Jim Harlin's Community Pantry

Starting next year, the harvest of the Hope Community Garden will be joining the massive poundage of NAPI potatoes (Navajo grown with the water of the San Juan, just south of Farmington), bartered Arizona lettuce and vegetables (traded for potatoes), and Wal-mart surplus that's given away each year. With a $250,000 grant, the Community Pantry is building a vegetable garden, complete with 4, 20'x30' cold-frames for year-round produce, and a large demonstration dry-land field of indigenous corn, beans, and squash. But, as Executive Director Jim Harlin starkly pointed out during the tour, serendipitously arranged by WNMU, while the garden will grow an impressive 14,000 lbs. of food each year, that dramatic number represents only a drop in the bucket of their annual distributions and less than half a semi-truck trailer of food (40,000 lbs); the real unit of food measurement in this hungry county.  Gardening space will be available for rent to the public, and much more could be developed on the 2+ acres of undeveloped land owned by the Community Pantry in the years to come.

Excavations for the retaining wall supporting the above-ground beds and cold frames

Please, support The Community Pantry with your labor and/or checkbook! Also, buy 2 turkeys at T&R Market in Yah-ta-Hey, (my school's business partner!) for $0.49/lb, and donate the second to the food pantry to feed local families this Thanksgiving. Also watch for The Food Network's Dinner Impossible host Nigel filming his show at the Community Pantry's demonstration kitchen during this December's Red Rock Balloon Rally.  

Beef stock

At 6500 feet, 13 1/2 lbs. of pressure = 240+ degrees

With the high-pressure canner I bought this summer and 30 lbs. of beef bones from El Morro Valley Ranch in the freezer, I had to make my own version of all natural organic beef stock this past weekend. I started with a bike ride to the coop for organic celery and carrots. They had both.  The next stop with the BOB trailer was The Water Store for 4 gallons of purified water, and then back home, slowly. 

5 pounds of thawed beef bones

I browned batches of the bones in olive oil, and then, with about 15 lbs of the bones and gravy, I filled the stainless steel brewing kettle with nearly all the water. After bringing it all to rolling boil, I skimmed foam from the top for about 10 minutes.  I simmered the bones alone for about 3 hours before adding a pound each of the celery, carrots, and onions, a handful of bay leaves, whole peppercorns, sea salt. Then everything simmered overnight. In the morning I carefully skimmed and set aside about an inch of fat from the surface of the broth, and used a slotted ladle to remove all the solids. After heating the cans and lids to 180, I filled 6 quarts with the rich smelling broth. Using a fine steel mesh sifter I was able to filter out all of the particles of meat and vegetables, and was left with a uniform dark tan broth. 

Removing the jars after waiting the hour or more it takes the canner to depressurize

The Ball Blue Book calls for 20 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure for stocks (a considerable difference from any meat stew recipe which is processed for 120 minutes or more). In Gallup at 6500', to achieve the safe temperature of 240 inside the jars, I try to keep at 13.5 lbs of pressure. The pressure weight on the Presto canner I bought is set for 15 lbs, so I adjust the big burner on the stove to around med-low to low to keep that pressure, and adjust frequently to keep it above the minimum of 13 lbs. and the over processing (higher temperature) of 14 lbs. and above.

Red Chile Sauce from 'scratch'

The first snow on the last red chile

My one true goal for the the garden this year has been achieved; I grew everything needed for a batch of New Mexico red chile sauce. A favorite recipe for this NM staple comes not from the Red Chile Bible cookbook, but former Santa Fe chef Mark Miller and his Coyote Cafe cookbook (the current menu at the Coyote Cafe- different owner/chef now-, and the plethora of bad reviews on-line, give little justice to the seasonal and regional recipes in this great book).

Ready for roasting

You start by seeding the red chile pods and dry roasting them at 250 for a couple minutes.  The pods are then simmered in water for 30 minutes.  Roma tomatoes and garlic cloves are blacked over a gas flame, and an onion is sautéed in a little oil.  The now softened chiles are pureed with the tomato, garlic, and onion.  Oregano is always added, but I left out the cumin this time. Up to a cup of liquid is added to the puree-- chile water if it's not too bitter. Finally a ladle full of sauce at a time is pored into a sizzling hot cast-iron pan with beef tallow and stirred constantly for a minute or two.  Using about half of my red chile harvest-mostly sandia and espanola varieties- I happily canned 4 pints of my from-the-ground-up red sauce.  The charred tomato skins and garlic add a savory smokiness to this comfortable winter staple of NM.

El Morro Valley Ranch- 2009 Beef Quarters

Eating high on the 'hog'

Charley Mallery and Rebecca Allina rolled up to Jack’s place in Gallup, just as the sun set last Wednesday, with a gooseneck livestock trailer that still smelled of their grass-fed, organic Black Angus cattle. Animals that now filled the coolers partially-covering the long ribbed floor.

Rio, Charley, and Jack inspect the cargo

They had just driven down from picking up the load of meat, USDA packaged and flash frozen, at Sunnyside Meats in Durango, CO --dry-aged for 3 weeks! A 120-quart cooler, a decent river-trip size cooler (36x21x18”), just barely held the 120 lbs. of frozen beef.  Jack and I, each buying a quarter ($120 lbs. x $4.50/lbs), opted for a couple extra pounds of optional beef liver, and I graciously accepted 25 lbs. of bones to boil into beef stock.

The final resting place for this Black Angus

The quarter was an equal proportion of every cut on the cow and I marveled at the beauty and diversity of the meat, half wrapped in paper, and half in clear plastic shrink-wrap as I filled most of a mid-size upright freezer. The cuts ranged from filet mignon and brisket, to stew meat and ground beef, and everything in between, literally, but no tongue, perhaps that’s in the ground beef. )

Eating lower on the animal

As if their ranch’s growing reputation needed bolstering, be sure to check out the cover photo on the Sept/Oct issue of the Ramah Farmers’ Beet to see Rebecca and Charley’s first-place winning harvest display at the Ramah Farmers’ Market 2009 Harvest Festival. Wow and thanks!

Beckett Roasters: Gallup roasted coffee beans

You’ll soon see his coffee beans for sale around Gallup at places like the La Montanita Co-op and Camille’s Side-walk Café, but the freshest coffee around, roasted daily from green beans, is already available from Travis Smith of Beckett Roasters. Custom roasting on Gallup’s south side, Beckett Roasters sells their broad and growing selection of coffee beans in ¼, ½, and full pound ($4, $7, $12 plus tax) increments. Match your purchase size to your weekly consumption and maximize the recently roasted flavor of your coffee. You can even choose your own level of roasted-ness—Regular City for me. 

Contact Beckett Roasters through their website: http://beckettroasters.webs.com and support the newest addition to Gallup’s local food sources.  Oh ya, the beans, when ground and brewed, make the whole house smell like you’ve been roasting coffee in your own home. 

Gallup-grown Pear and Poblano Chutney

The peppers and pears

The lack of a late spring freeze on the Colorado Plateau this year has led to bountiful fruit harvests all over the region and here in our frosty morning town. And so when a friend dropped off a bushel basket of bosch pears, grown in the Hill/Green region of Gallup, the first preserving recipe that came to mind was a gingery sweet pear and poblano chutney. 

The Gallup Trails 2010 annual party in McGaffey gave us the perfect opportunity to try the recipe on a grand scale. We peeled and peeled and peeled the pears, without a peeler, and then seeded and charred the poblanos over the grill, finally we diced it all with fresh ginger, garlic, red onion, and a few hot peppers from the garden (jalapeno, bird's eye, and thai).  Simmering in white vinegar and brown sugar for 4 hours, delivered a tasty sweet sauce to accompany the banana leaf-wrapped pork shoulders beautifully pit-roasted (fired by oak from 4-7am) for 11 hours by Mike S, Jake G and the GT2010 kitchen crew. Bill's tamed, yet still kicking, habanero salsa puree was said to give the chutney some zing, and in return, the chutney gave some cooling relief from the fiery hot orange peppers. In the end, all the sauces where gone mid-service, and 6 picnic-cut pork shoulders (whole bone and skin), a huge brisket, and two turkey breasts disappeared into the crowd of cyclists and Gallup Trails 2010 member/supporters within an hour. The local home-brewing competition, won by Brian Culligan's #4, washed it all down, and greased the dance floor for the southwest's best bluegrass: The Back Porch Band!

Rhubarb

Rhubarb hugging the rainwater tank

The second Rhubarb harvest of the season is drawing near, the first of which was cutting half of the first vigorous stems in the early spring.  This harvest looks to be the largest yet--a half bushel of 1/2 to 1" stems, some turning red. This is the second year of growing five plants from root stock ($3.95 a plant at Holiday Nursery), all of which are in 3 to 5 gallon pots. The pots bought me time in deciding their eventual placement in the garden, and learned a little more about the water and soil needs of this hardy perennial; they'll go into the corner plots of the waffle garden of perennials where the asparagus roots failed to take.

It took me forever to decipher the tongue-in-cheek mid-western saying of, "think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?"  See, in the arid regions of the world, rain comes sometimes in flooding torrents of rain or hail, damaging many of the large leaves of rhubarb and squash type leaves; Or, I thought, as I had bought these plants as rather dried roots, more slender, but similar to a preserved tulip bulbs, maybe they needed to have a dry dormant period to return vigorously each year? In the end, jokes on NPR's Prairie Home Companion and an old miners account of life high above Telluride, CO gave me more context, and then, growing these beautiful plants for two years now has showed me they love as much water as you can give them. 

The rainwater tank is half-full at 600 gallons, but I'd still love to wink to Racheal during a steady downpour and ask if she thought the rain would hurt the rhubarb.

late season vegetables

Brussel sprouts

The rows of corn, chile, and tomatoes have now been reduced to the rusty orange, tan, and red hues common to our sandstone and coal formations around here, and common to both I guess, they speak to a prior era of lush green growth. Each day now, the more recent palate of those colors sheds a few more rattling dry leaves and reveals the scaly dark stems to the fall winds. A few chile that had matured enough--ripened and red or nearing red--still hang like a NM postcard come to life. Though, many of the fruit, poblano and chile, that were still growing and green by the time of the first freeze, seem to have been irreversibly damaged by the abundant and swelling ice-crystals within their watery cells.  Those chiles are now a pale soggy semblance of their ripened brethren. 

I've digressed long enough in remembering the native vegetable garden behind the house, the aim of this post was the cold favoring vegetables of my front gardens: green onion, radish, chard, collard greens, mixed greens, cabbage (green and purple varieties), broccoli, and brussel sprouts.  Plus a few hardy herbs like mint, rosemary, and sage. 

 

Northern lights chard

These plants benefit from the physical protection and thermal mass of the neighboring houses when the cold dry air begins to snake down Black Diamond Canyon from the mesas to the north; I've found a 2-4 degree temperature differential between the exposed rear gardens and the front gardens.  Though, more than the location of their garden beds, the season-extending benefit of these plants comes from their genetics. The brassica family (e.g. cabbage) seems to be filled with some type of natures anti-freeze.  I'm especially thankful for the longest possible growing season due to the hour or so less of direct sunlight that hits my gardens during the growing season due to the depth and high walls of the narrow canyon, and the under-fertilized clay soil I forced all the under-sized brassicas to grow in this year.

  

Sage and rosemary

Using the biological control NOLO Bait for grasshoppers this year has really improved the appearance of my cabbage and brussel sprouts.  The latter being a favorite of my local grasshoppers; I lost my entire crop of brussels sprouts- three stout plants- to the little creatures last year.

Storage and purple cabbage

Poblano Farewell

Mid-season indication of the bountiful harvest to come

Planted on June 9th as 6" starts I nursed for over a month before planting, sadly, tonight the poblanos are dying as ice crystals swell inside of each watery cell of those beautiful peppers of Mexico--a result of the thermometer plunging into the low 20's. Alas, as they proved to be the most fecund pepper in the garden for a second year in a row; 12 plants yielded 3/4 of a bushel of juicy, broad 3-6" peppers.  

A bee covered in zucchini pollen methodically explores the Poblano flowers

Here in northern New Mexico, perennial Poblanos are doomed to live for only a single year of what could be many in a warmer locale--I had to apologize to the peppers this afternoon as I removed their protective plastic cover and heating lights that had extended their season for an additional week and a half. More than gaining additional growth in the fruit, the cheap cold-frames spread the harvest out over a couple of weeks and made the processes of drying (ancho the name becomes), pickling, and freezing a little more manageable for one.

First Freeze; end of the season

Fall of 2009

Tonight the growing season will come to an end. A fast moving cold front has been preceded by the predictably strong winds gusting to 50 mph today ahead of the frigid air, and the low is expected to be 30 tonight and 19 degrees tomorrow. The chiles, unprotected tomatoes, and squash met their destiny last Tuesday (September 22) when the temp dipped to 31.5 in my canyon, but tomorrow will be the curtain call for all but the hardiest cabbage, brussel sprouts, and fall greens i'll cover through the brief freeze in hopes of a few more weeks of temperate daytime temps.