It's Easy Being Green

Before you toss all those 2010 holiday cards into your trash can, have you ever considered re-gifting them?  I’m not talking about pasting your own messages over those that were written to you and then mailing them back out next year, though that is an interesting recycling idea.  Just don’t tell anyone you’ve done it or make the mistake of mailing a card back to its original sender (insert a snicker here)!

One Tristate family is actually putting those used holiday cards to good use, turning them into custom wall-art they plan to sell in 2011.  The Bothast-Revalee Family here in Evansville is taking donations of new and used holiday cards to make the art.  Bothast says the proceeds from the planned sales will benefit two local child-advocacy organizations.  As soon as I got wind of their project, I knew it was one that needed to be shared with others.  Not only is it a great way to recycle it is also for an amazing and truly heartfelt cause.

“Our family has made a commitment to make art for these agencies,” said David Bothast, ” all the while reflecting on our own blessings.”

Both David Bothast and Brian Revalee have close ties with civic service in the Evansville community, working for much needed civic agencies.  Revalee is currently the Executive Director of the AIDS Resource Group, the only HIV/AIDS Service Organization in the Evansville area.  Bothast serves as the Director of a transitional housing programs that serves homeless parents with children.  In 2010, both also became foster parents for three siblings with the help of  Evansville’s The Villages.

” I hope this initiative raises both funds and awareness for area child-centered and family-strengthening organizations in our Tristate community,” Bothast said.  ” Mostly, I hope modeling voluntarism and advocacy to my new family will instill in them a sense of civic pride and community responsibility that will continue throughout their lives.”

Bothast says the initiative is a home-based endeavor and third-party fundraiser. “The proceeds will be directly donated to receiving agencies to use toward strengthening their programs and changing lives in our community. With this initiative, ‘charity begins at home.’”

“We see daily the need for services and the impact hard-working and under-appreciated social workers and activists make not only immediately, but generationally,” Bothast said.

Card donations will be accepted by the family all year long but now is a great time to help those cards find a new life before heading to the city dump.  If you would like to help out an undoubtedly great cause by re-gifting your holiday cards, please contact David by emailing him: Davidbothast@gmail.com

If you our somebody you know has another great way to not only be more eco-friendly but also to help out the local community, let us know about it by sending me an email.

Above photo Seasonal Still Life courtesy of Christmas Stock Images

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Headed into late-October, our tomato plants here at the half-acre homestead are still happily trucking along.  I’m proud to report that the more than two dozen that we started with are all still here.  Granted some of them not as excitedly as others but they are still here nonetheless.  That is despite what the local cooperative extension considered a terrible year for backyard tomatoes.

Here in southwestern Indiana a cool, very wet spring was followed by an extremely long and oppressive heatwave.  Temperatures and humidity collided to keep us in the triple digit temp index for much of the Summer and it certainly wasn’t pretty for us humans or the fauna we so desperately try to control.  There were also reports of widespread early blight mainly due to the soggy wet spring weather.  Luckily blight didn’t make it into our brand new square foot garden or the extra tomato patch planted out back.

Tomatoes of all shapes and sizes were affected by splitting this year. From top left Cherokee Purple, Amish Salad, Brandywine (pink with green shoulders), Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener, Thessaloniki (yellow)

We did have an insane amount of tomatoes that split for no apparent reason this year.  Tomatoes tend to crack when over-watered or after a heavy rainfall because the fruit goes through a rapid growth spurt afterward, causing the tomato’s skin to stretch and split.  Wide fluctuations in fruit temperature can also be a cause, especially if your tomato plant has lost a large amount of leaves.  The fruit will expand as it heats up during the day when the sun shines on it.  After sunset, the fruit rapidly cools and contracts.  That cycle over and over again stresses the tomatoes skin and can also cause splits or cracks.

Our Brandywine tomatoes (first year grown) would split even while green and we lost at least half of our potential harvest throughout the summer to the splitting.  Once they split, cucumber beetles would burrow into the tomato and create a home and eat until they rotted the entire fruit.  The cucumber beetles were one of the worst pests we encountered this year and they attacked just about everything they could get their little legs on.  Cherokee Purple tomatoes were also hit hard by splitting.  Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener and Amish Salad tomatoes proved to be very split resistant.

The biggest producers in our square foot garden this year proved to be the Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener, Amish Salad and Brandywine.  This plants had the most success with setting fruit and growing an abundant crop.  While we lost a lot of the Brandywine tomatoes to splitting, both the Chocolate Cherry and Ultimate Opener persevered through the long, hot and dry summer with little guff.  Our one Chocolate Cherry tomato plant produced at least a quart basket of tomatoes each week, more than enough to top our salads throughout the week.  We found the Chocolate Cherry to be more acidic than we like but would definitely grow them again based on how prolific it was.

Ultimate Opener put on a huge flush of growth after getting established in the square foot garden and at its height, reached about 8 feet tall.  This tomato flowered profusely and set fruit easily during the first half of the summer growing season.  The fruit is rather small, not good for slicing, but was really tasty.  Like the Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener produced a quart basket or two of fruit each week.  In the triple digit heat wave the plant had obvious problems getting tomatoes to ripen so most were picked while showing a slight hint of red.  They colored up on the kitchen counter just fine though.  As we headed deeper into the heatwave there was a noticeable drop in blossom production and there was even some leaf loss.  The Ultimate Opener is looking bare but still alive and ripening a few golf-ball sized tomatoes each week.

Amish Salad produces a large, oblong cherry tomato perfect for salads of course.  This tomato plant grew rapidly and produced a half to full quart of ripe red tomatoes each week.  The heat didn’t seem to impact fruit set or ripening at all.  Unfortunately I planted this tomato too close to two others, Cherokee Purple and Tloculula Ribbed.  They grew into each other and just crowded each other out with growth later in the season.  This created a remarkable decrease in fruit.

The Brandywine tomatoes that made it to harvest were huge, weighing in at close to a pound each.

Brandywine tomatoes with their big, potato-like leaves, grew rapidly and didn’t let the oppressive heat stunt them.  Fruit set was great and during the first half of the summer these plants produced tomatoes that I would gather weighed about a pound.  They were huge…at least the ones that didn’t split and get attacked by cucumber beetles.  Their pink, purple and green colors inside made a feast for the eyes.  The Brandywine flavor was also superb especially with a dash of Pink Himalayan Salt across the fresh slices.

For every success there were also some duds this year.  I wasn’t impressed with Oregon Spring, touted to be one of the first producers of ripe tomatoes.  This plant struggled most of the year and blossom set was slow at best.  It has produced less than five tomatoes the entire season, none of which did well trying to ripen in the heat.  Yesterday though, in the cool of fall, I noticed the most beautiful deep-red and ripe tomato awaiting our morning garden walk.  I guess Oregon Spring redeemed itself and left me with a good memory.  Last impressions count, right?

Thessaloniki was another heirloom variety I was excited to try but ended up disappointed by the results.   The tomatoes are said to get to baseball size but in triple digit heat, most of mine only reached the size of a golf ball.  Fruit set was also pretty poor.

Tlocolula Ribbed heirloom tomato was a dud for most of the season but now is turning into a winner.  The plant was slow to grow but later bushed out and blossomed frequently but was slow to set.  I think being planted too close to another tomato plant also caused some problems for this one.  It didn’t set fruit well in the heat and has just recently produced a flush of fruit.  Their texture is wild to look at in the garden with all sorts of different, deeply wrinkled shapes.  I’m inclined to try it again next year to see what happens.

I think this Cherokee Purple tomato was smiling that it never did split and was off to our table

Another dud that I plan to give another shot is Cherokee Purple.  This tomato was quickly crowded out by others growing next to it and that seemed to be a major detriment.  It produced a few fruit early in the season but proved to be very susceptible to splitting.  The extreme heat seemed to bring fruit production to an all out halt.  Now that it is cool, Cherokee Purple has produced another tomato or two as we sprint deep into fall.

Just this afternoon we picked another basket full of green tomatoes, trying to beat a heavy rainfall expected for our region tonight.  Some of the tomatoes were showing signs of splitting (probably due to the cool overnight temps) and we wanted to stop them before they went bad in the rain.  Even though there is less than a week before we hit the month of November, our still producing tomato plants would make you think it’s still summer.

What is your favorite tomato variety to grow and why?  Share your experience below and maybe we’ll discover a new tomato variety together!

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Is the price we pay for food really worth the impacts it will have on our life in the future?  I think it’s a question more Americans should be asking themselves as they cue in line for a meal at the drive-thru or pull in to the local convenience store as they nab 44-ounces of carbonated diabetic bliss iced in a Styrofoam cup.

If more Americans took the time to learn about how their food is made they would inevitably make smarter choices.  King Corn, a documentary highlighting the amazing influence corn has on our daily lives, is just another wake up call for people to change the way they think about the means in which they fuel their body.  I’m left wondering why a product that is nutritionally void for humans, deadly to the animals that eat it and is worth next to nothing on the open market is so beloved by our federal government.

As the harvest ramps up here in southwestern Indiana, more and more fields of Number 2 corn are meeting the combine this week.  I’m glad I watched the film King Corn, the brainchild of two college buddies, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis.  It has given me a new perspective on a harvest process that I used to think was quaint and steeped in tradition but now I know is anything but.  According to the Environmental Working Group, more than $50 Billion has been paid to subsidize corn farmers in the past decade. Between 2003 and 2005, 66% of those subsidies only went to 10% of our farmers.

The Global Development and Environmental Institute in a report titled Industrial Livestock Companies’ Gains from Low Feed Prices showed just how far those grain subsidies stretch in our food system.  Between 1997 and 2005, the industrial broiler chicken industry saved $11.25 Billion and the industrial hog industry saved $8.5 Billion from the very farm bill policies that keep corn and soybean prices below the price of production.

King Corn goes on to show the dramatic rise in human consumption of high-fructose corn syrup over the past three decades and the severe health consequences we as Americans now face because of it.  I highly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in learning the impacts brought about by what you might think is just a quaint field of corn.

If you’re interested in purchasing a copy of the DVD:

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This past week we had a brief taste of Autumn here in southwest Indiana.  We fell out of our 90 degree temperatures and sticky humidity to land in a string of a few days that left us topping off right around 80 degree during the day and dipped us well into the 50’s at night.  It summoned the first opening of the doors and windows of the season, bringing a halt to the endless whine of the air conditioner for the first time in about three months.

Admittedly the delightfully cool temperatures were a bit of a shock to the system.  My Homestead Hottie bundled up in her fuzzy housecoat and flip-flop slippers morning and night, only breaking free during the afternoon warmth.  I, attentively watching marinated chicken grilling over red hot coals out on the deck, found myself standing as close to the grill as I could get without climbing right in and singeing myself to a crisp.  Darling Daughter has taken to pulling pairs of sweat pants from her dresser and waving them about until we get the message and put them on.

While we were grateful for the change in temperatures and the flirt with Autumn, we’ve found ourselves back in the upper 80’s this week.  The air conditioner has come back on and the windows and doors have found themselves sealed tight, waiting for the next opportunity to let the outdoors in.  The Indian Summer is a good reminder of what is to come and a spur to kick us into gear and hopefully get a good fall crop of vegetables sown before our first frost of the season.

For the past week we’ve been pulling plants ravaged by the long Summer season and sending them to the composter, the beginning of  a re-birth that will find them once again turned back into the soil but in a completely different form than the started.  The open space feels weird.  Sure the garden beds are beginning to look much more clean and tidy but I begin to feel  like I lost a good friend.  I’m missing a plant that produced so much and yet it feels like I just didn’t have enough time together.  The counter tops here at the Half-Acre Homestead tell me otherwise though, filled to the brim with fresh produce and at least two-dozen red, yellow and green hued canning jars preserving the Summer’s bounty.

Some have told us we’re about four weeks away from our first frost.  The long, warm Summer would tell me otherwise and thanks to a quick glance at the Farmer’s Almanac Frost Predictions this week, the good people there predict we’re about 60 days away from our first brush with Old Man Winter.  That means there is plenty of time to reap more goodness from the garden beds before we have to put it away.  Homestead Hottie and I have been busily sowing lettuce, spinach, peas, snow peas, carrots, potatoes, green onions, swiss chard, turnips, beets and radishes.  All are cool-season crops that, in theory, should grant our dinner plates with some more wholesome goodness before we begin dipping into storage.  I’m also experimenting, planting some Butternut squash to see if by chance we can eek out a supply of sweet winter treats.

It is also time for me to dig out a large stack of old, wood-framed windows I picked up thanks to Freecycle.  They will form at least one new cold frame in the square foot garden, hopefully keeping one of the beds warm enough to extend the season for some produce into Winter.  My to-do list once again begins to grow making me feel a bit like the local squirrels beginning their seasonal acrobatics, hop-scotching around to build their nest and food cache before a long Winter’s rest.

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Do you have a ton of extra veggies in your garden right now?  Why not trade them?  We stumbled across a great  website the other idea called Veggie Trader.  You can sign up, post what you have a lot of and what you’d like to trade for and then wait for the matchmaking to happen.

Unfortunately there isn’t anybody currently signed up for our area so if you do live in the Tri-State, join now so we can start swapping our extra produce for other things we might be able to use.

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The whole reason you have a farmers market is to support local agriculture. Apparently the City of Evansville and GAGE have a different idea.

I think the title of this post says it all.  It was another attack on a family farm.  Within the past 24 hours here in Evansville I’ve seen a local farmer and his products accepted, shunned and then welcomed once again at the downtown farmer’s market.  The weekly farmers market is put on by an organization called GAGE or the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville.

There have always been problems with GAGE’s attempt at trying to create a farmers market for the city.  When the market was first created it was the city’s creative reuse of an old brick warehouse type building that had sat empty.  Before we moved to the area I’m told the inside portion contained a deli and other fun food merchants like that along with the weekly spread of produce and other goods.  The City of Evansville and GAGE have always run the market for only three months out of the year.  It’s an idea which makes little to no sense, especially in our area that sports a growing season at least 6 months long.  The indoor market essentially failed.  The city couldn’t keep up with the cost of keeping the building empty for most of the year.

Now the market has been brought back around again, this time as a way to attract people to the downtown area.  The market is held in an open field in the center of a city block every Friday morning and every other Saturday.  To most of us who go, that schedule has never really made sense either.  Most are working on Friday mornings and to only have it every other Saturday just gives more time for people to forget the opportunity to shop at the farmers market even exists.

On Friday, the farmer we buy our locally grown, grass-fed organic meats from as part of a CSA, was banned from selling his frozen meats.  Keith Canon who owns Stonewall Farm was inspected by the Vanderburgh County Health Department at opening day of the farmers market and passed inspection.  He was told he was following all code.   But GAGE, in talks with the Vanderburgh County Health Department, decided that it wasn’t a good idea to allow the sale of frozen meat at the farmers market for fear of mishandling.

Stonewall Farm already has a decent customer base and uses the downtown farmers market as a stop for customers to pick up their monthly take of meat, eggs and other goods bought as part of their CSA.  By shutting out Stonewall Farm, GAGE was essentially turning away a huge base of potential customers for the other vendors.  Stonewall Farm is also offering a locally grown product.  Many of the fruits and vegetables currently sold at the market aren’t even grown nearby and the people selling them aren’t even farmers, they’re distributors.

Many of us who support eating locally and organically were outraged by GAGE’s decision and let them know it by inundating their telephones and emailing.  An impressive social networking campaign also kicked up just a couple hours after the initial decision to ban the meat sales.  People who were angry contacted them via Facebook and Twitter and let them know it.  My favorite local coffee shop, Penny Lane, also reacted.  They’ve announced they want to start a farmers market with all locally grown products.

Today we drove out to Stonewall Farm to pickup our monthly take of meat and eggs.  Keith told us the good news that the upswell of support for Stonewall apparently made GAGE reconsider their decision.  They will once again allow Stonewall Farm to sell their frozen meats!  This just goes to show how bureaucratic decision making can sometimes be changed by simply speaking our minds.  I think that’s great.

I hope the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville has learned an important lesson.  They have a golden opportunity to create a worthwhile farmers market.  A farmers market that actually supports and cultivates the idea that local farmers do actually have a place they can sell their goods and that people looking for local produce can find it.

Other suggestions for GAGE’s Evansville Farmers Market:

1)  Make it every Saturday instead of every other

2)  Consider extending the season beyond just 3 months of Summer.  I know several farmers in the Evansville area with greenhouses that would be willing to heat them and grow if they had a place to sell.

3)  Find a permanent and covered location for the market so it can go on even if there is inclement weather.  There are awnings along the back of the old Greyhound Station, what about using that space?

4)  Force vendors to label where produce is coming from and if it’s organic or not.  I think too many people believe they’re buying food from a local farmer who may not use pesticides and other harsh chemicals when in fact they may not be.

5)  Grow the market.  Make it a true event with food and entertainment.

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Welcome to our SFG

My square foot garden (I’m going to resort to calling it an SFG from here on out to save space) has reached an important milestone in it’s development this week. It’s 6 weeks old *tear, sniffle, sniffle* and my how it’s grown!

At this point every square is filled in with the exception of several dud strawberry plants that did not grow. I ended up purchasing these boxes of plant crowns grown by Van Zyverden at Sam’s Club this spring. I ended up with 80 strawberry crowns and not a one of them sprouted. While being disappointed, I’m not surprised. This green thumb hasn’t had a very good track record with Van Zyverden products and have had to write to them on several occasions to get replacement plants. A simple internet search shows the web awash with similar experiences. I have a letter off to them even as we speak and have resorted to giving up after 6 weeks of no life and have started planting over the top of the dud strawberries.

Peering over the gate at the SFG. Notice the rain water barrel against the house. It usually is full with only one storm.

Looking to the west in our SFG. The tepee in the center used for the snap peas and snow peas is made from the giant sunflower stalks I saved from last years garden. They're strong and light!

In the meantime, everything else is off to the races. We’ve been unseasonably cooler than normal around here in southwestern Indiana the past few weeks with a plethora of rain. Snow peas and snap peas are still doing wonderfully, climbing their sunflower stalk tepee and producing a handful of new pods every few days. It’s enough to whip together shrimp and snow pea stir-fry which is currently on the menu.

Snow peas and snap peas climb the sunflower stalk tepee, reaching toward the sky. The tepee would work great for any type of light, climbing plant like a flower, peas or beans. I saved and dried the stalks from my giant sunflowers last year and tied them together to form a tepee.

A half dozen mustard greens have produced non-stop this Spring and are still going as we race toward Memorial Day

Mustard greens will also find their way into this stir-fry having put on a new flush of growth every couple of days. It’s enough to fill up a colander and they’re delicious any way we’ve prepared them.

The broccoli plants are beginning to form their heads this week and the brussel sprouts look like they’re about ready to grow their hardy stalks too. Our summer veggies are beginning to take hold as our temps edged into the 80’s the past couple of days. The tomatoes are getting a good flush of first flowers while also putting on good top growth. The peppers, while still small, are flowering too. Sweet corn is about 3-4 inches already. Squash plants and melons are beginning to stretch out and ramble around. Potatoes look like bushes already. We got to pick our first two strawberries of the summer on our homegrown plants and they were delicious.

Little E and I picked up these great strawberry plants from the Southwest Indiana Master Gardeners plant sale. There are three different varieties growing. We're going to see who does the best!

Weeding the SFG is an amazing experience. The soil mix makes it so easy to pull out the weeds and grass. In fact, T and I can blitz the weeding chore every few days and it only takes about 15 minutes to get the whole garden done. I’ve never met an easier garden to weed other than the one that doesn’t exist! I can’t wait for the bounty to come and am so pleased with how well the SFG is growing. So how does your garden grow?

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