Emerisa Gardens/ Heirloom Expo

Yesterday I went on a field trip with my Nursery Management class. We drove up to Santa Rosa in Sonoma county. First, we went to visit a large production nursery called Emerisa Gardens. I have bought their plants at my local nurseries hundreds of times: perhaps you’ve seen this logo?

Emerisa has 15 acres of land in a beautiful spot in the county. It is family owned, having been started by the patriarch many years ago and now run by his children, who gave us a wonderful tour. They employ about 30 folks, both full and part time, and pride themselves on the family feel of the group.

In the first greenhouse. My teacher, Lawrence Lee, is on the right in the hat and glasses. He’s worked at many botanical gardens and large nurseries across the world, but is now a full-time teacher. Many of my classes have been with him and I love to learn from him. He knows so much about classic and production horticulture, and about plants from other countries. He seems to know everyone in the business and managed to get this tour for us with the owners.

Emerisa has most of their property laid out to greenhouses (only one heated), hoop houses, shade houses, and propagation greenhouses. We talked a lot about microclimates within a property, and how best to keep certain plants in the right zone. Emerisa does a lot of hand watering instead of sprinkling things on a schedule, to make sure the right irrigation is getting to the right plants. All in all, it seemed like a very hands-on kind of operation for such a large nursery.

The owners explained to us about how hard they are working to add hedgerows to the edges of the buildings. They very much want to reduce any kind of pesticide use, organic or otherwise, by increasing the amount of beneficials in these hedgerows. They also act as a demonstration garden of sorts, and unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the most beautiful gardens (guess I was too busy listening!) - they were incredible, and full of life.

It really struck me how much work it takes to keep thousands of plants looking good, for sale at any moment. If a smaller nursery calls up and says, “I need 100 lavender plants, stat,” Emerisa needs to be able to provide that the next day. So much is up to the whims of the customers, or what’s trendy, or what the latest gardening magazine has written about. Finding new varieties is crucial, and staying on top of the marketing side of things is very important.

In the propagation area, we learned that the owners are trying hard to move towards a model where they propagate all their own plants. At the moment, about 50% of their cuttings come from other places (one thing you learn quite quickly from any of these places is that there is always another level of growing - someone has to propagate from seed, someone propagates from cuttings, some sell directly to customers, some sell to larger nurseries like this one). It was fun to see all the experiments they had going on in this building. The amount of variety this nursery has is remarkable.

I was quite taken with all the different dahlias they had growing and ended up buying four of them. This is the ‘Mystic’ series that has become popular lately. I have one of them already and I love the dark foliage contrasted with the striking blooms. The bees also love them, because they are single blossoms.

The nursery allowed us all to buy plants on Lawrence’s account, and so I brought home 12 (natch) - the aforementioned dahlias, some Bidens, some Agastache, and some oddities that were growing in the demonstration beds that were covered with pollinators. It was such a wonderful visit and I learned so much about what it takes to own a nursery!

Next, we traveled across town to the fairgrounds and spent a few hours at the National Heirloom Expo, which is organized and run by Baker Creek Seed Company. The expo goes on for three days, and there are three stages with speakers from all over the world, speaking on things like food justice, no-till farming, livestock, and soils. There are vendors, too, with all kinds of goods ranging from fermenting supplies (our local FarmCurious was in the house) to sheep’s wool for knitting to chickens for sale to seed suppliers to tool makers. It was smaller than I expected, but I also really enjoyed it.

Contemplative paths, made of gourds

Interesting apps

plant vendors

lots of seed vendors. This one, Hudson Valley Seed Co, has artists create the art for their seed packs. They were incredibly beautiful.

Live music, mostly fiddling. Lots of food. I bought fresh limeade sweetened with agave, some organic fruity iced tea, and a coconut ice cream that was heavenly.

more dahlias

Lectures. I only got to see this one. I admire Singing Frogs Farm and wanted to hear more about it; they did not disappoint.

Poultry breeds, sheep breeds

The highlight, in my opinion: The Hall of Heirlooms, where every kind of fruit and vegetable heirloom was laid out and labeled, and could be properly admired

tomato art

the famous squash tower

This is Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms. He is one of the best tomato breeders we have right now. He makes amazing varieties. I’ve grown only one of his - the Pink Berkeley Tie Dye - and I ended up buying four more kinds to try next year.

And the best thing I saw all day. I asked this kind person if I could take a picture of her shirt. I absolutely adored it.

And that says everything about Sonoma that you need to know!

However, if you can make it to next year’s expo, I’d highly recommend it. I don’t think you need to come all three days - just pick the day with the most speakers you want to hear, and come on out.

Homemade Cider Vinegar

Tom here today...

Two years ago for Christmas I got Elizabeth a vinegar crock, and we've successfully made a couple of different batches of vinegar using it -- both red wine and white wine vinegar.

We've also attempted to make apple cider vinegar using apple cores and peels, with absolutely no success – the process we used involved submerging the peels and cores in a manner similar to fermenting pickles, and all we wound up with was some moldy liquid.

Then, about a month or two ago, Elizabeth read Acid Trip: Travels in the World of Vinegar, by Michael Harlan Turkell, and it gave us insight into what's really going on with the creation of vinegar. Armed with this insight and a little more internet research, I set out to try making apple cider vinegar.

Vinegar is sometimes referred to as a twice-fermented liquid. First, a sugary liquid is fermented with yeast to produce alcohol. Next, the alcohol is consumed by acetobacter (acetic acid-forming bacteria) to form vinegar. This was the fatal flaw in our earlier apple cider vinegar attempt – you've got to start with an alcoholic beverage.

Fortunately, I have some experience fermenting sugary liquids into alcohol. I got a gallon of unpasteurized, no-additive apple cider from the store, added some yeast, popped on an airlock, and started it fermenting. I used some dry wine making yeast from the homebrew store, and did a little bit of measurement using a hydrometer, which measures the specific gravity, or sugar content of the cider. Measuring the change in the specific gravity tells you how much sugar has been converted to alcohol.

Science!

After about a week the yeast had done the trick – the gravity had fallen from about 1.052 to just over 1.0, so the alcohol percentage was right around 6.8% abv, perfect for making vinegar. Now it was time to introduce the acetobacter and think about the next process. I put some of the cider into the vinegar crock, along with some unpasteurized cider vinegar, and that's happily sitting on top of the fridge – in about 3-6 months we'll give that a try and see how it goes.

I was also inspired by this vinegar-making series by Nordic Food Lab, in which they explored the science of making vinegars. They noted that the acetobacter fermentation is different than lactic acid fermentation (the one for pickles and sauerkraut). Lactic acid fermentation is an anaerobic process, where you want to keep oxygen out – this is why you use a weight and make sure the food you're fermenting is completely submerged. In contrast, acetobacter fermentation is aerobic – so not only do you need air, you can speed up the process by introducing a supply of air. Commercial operations have a variety of different ways of introducing air. We're not a commercial operation, but we did have the fish tank pump that Elizabeth got for last spring's compost tea. After a thorough cleaning and some new hose lines, I used that.

The fish tank pump worked like a charm. Again, I added some unpasteurized cider vinegar to introduce the acetobacter. The cider foamed up quite a bit during the process, and I set it outside in the garage so that we didn't have to hear the hum. I put a little cheesecloth around the top of the jug to keep the fruit flies out, and let it sit out there for about a week. 

As you can see, the vinegar is fairly opaque, a result of the opaque cider I started with. In a side-by-side comparison with cider vinegar from the store, it's not quite as sweet – likely a result of the initial alcohol fermentation. Next time, I might try stopping that fermentation before the specific gravity gets all the way down, so that there's some residual sugar. The other next thing to try is to make vinegar out of other alcoholic liquids. In addition to wine vinegar, starting with beer would make malt vinegar.

One final note – we'll use this vinegar for salads and cooking, but not for canning. While the vinegar is quite tart, and it seems comparable to the tartness we've got from store vinegar, we don't have the equipment to test the acidity, and so there's no way to be sure it's got the 5% acidity needs to ensure safe canning.

Tables and Benches

Guest post by Tom today...

For my birthday last month I asked Elizabeth's dad Tim if we could work together on a new table and chairs for our back patio. We've had a round metal table and chair since our Pittsburg, CA days, but it's gotten pretty wobbly with age, and it's okay if there's just four of us, but that's about it. We've got some folks coming over later in September for a farm-to-table lunch (an auction item we offered for City College's Culinary Arts program's Wok on the Wild Side fundraiser), so that was also a good impetus for getting something new. Finally, it was a great opportunity to learn a bunch from Tim, working on a project from start to finish.

As per usual, Tim started by sending over a complete set of drawings that he'd worked up with the Google SketchUp 3D modeling system. Tim works up the entire design, works up details of each component of the finished product, and also produces full-size templates to guide construction.

Overall design

Table and bench legs

We got started two Saturdays ago. Tim had sourced some 10'+ long sections of redwood lumber, which we used for the tops of the tables and benches. We also recycled some old growth redwood that had once been a hot tub for the posts, feet, and spreaders. It was a noisy and dusty start, but very interesting taking rough sections of redwood, cutting them to length, running them through the thickness planer to get a flat surface, then through the jointer and table saw to get the desired width. The recycled hot tub wood was already at the desired thickness, but we had to cut items to length, and we used the full-size templates to mark off the various notches. The table is bolted together, so I wound up spending some quality time with the drill press. It was a long first day, but we would up with all of the parts cut and drilled, ready for assembly.

Table and bench tops

Artistically blurry image of many many parts

Last Saturday we got back together to start assembly, bolting together the legs and feet, then screwing the support structure to the table and bench tops. We got mostly done on Saturday, and were able to wrap up construction on Sunday and bring everything over to our house.

Complete!

There was still work to be done -- we had to put some wood sealer on all of the surfaces. Tim did the benches during the week, and I finished up the tables on the weekend.

Elizabeth likes the flexible nature of the tables -- we can put them side-by-side (as pictured above), or end-to-end, or just as two separate tables. We can seat eight very comfortably, and can probably seat twelve, so that's a big jump up.

As always, when doing a project, there's particular thoughts that come to mind:

• Boy, it's nice having the proper tools when trying to create a project like this. For example, we needed to have a pretty extraordinary amount of precision drilling bolt holes in the wood, so that everything would fit together and the tables and benches would be level. Having precise measuring tools and technique and a drill press really helped. It's more than an ease factor -- by having good tools, you don't get frustrated, and it makes you want to do more.
• There's really no replacement for working with someone who has expertise in a field. Sure, with the set of plans and free time I could probably figure things out (mostly), but there's a hundred little details that only come out when you're working with someone.
• I know it's cliched, but don't stop learning. Tim's able to build everything from an 18th century Pembroke table with inlay to a Maloof-style standing desk, but he's finding new areas to explore. His most recent focus has been on hand-carving details, like this chip carved trinket box. For our project, he made a sign for one of the table stretchers.

The Whole Cow

Guest post from Tom today. Fair warning - if butchery isn't your thing, then perhaps I can interest you in one of Elizabeth's posts on tomatoes.

I got a chance on Friday night to continue my butchery studies with the Institute of Urban Homesteading. Last time it was the pig class. This time -- the Whole Cow.

We gathered once again at the home of Seth Peterson in Berkeley. Seth is a chef and fan of all things meat. There were eight of us in class, and Seth had procured a quarter of a cow (and by that I mean two of the major parts of one side of a cow).

Seth got the cow from True Grass Farm, a family farm in Marin County that raises organic grass-fed beef. The land has been in the family since the 1860's, and they're working hard with rotational grazing to be good stewards of the land.

Before we get to the pictures, a quick anatomy lesson. A side of beef is broken out into four major regions:

As I mentioned, we had two of these to work with -- specifically, the round and the loin. We got started with the round, which the folks at True Grass Farm had further broken down into sections, or primals. Here's what we started with:

You can see the shank over on the left (the part of the leg below the kneecap), the femur bone on top, and the meat from the front of the leg (with the kneecap) under that, and the rest of the round on the right.

Most of what we did with the round was seam butchery - cutting along the natural seams between the major muscles so that you wind up disassembling into whole muscles. Once you have a whole muscle, it can be broken down into further parts. We also spent quite a bit of time removing silver skin - thin layers of connective tissue that would be tough to eat. After some hesitation, pretty soon the whole class was in on the act:

Nothing went to waste - the bits we trimmed off went into a bowl of stock parts later. Oh, and that big femur bone? Time for the bone saw!

I got to take one of the big knobs home (for stock), and a section of marrow bone, too.

Through it all, we discussed different ways of cooking up the bits we were taking home. We even cooked up a little tail bit of filet mignon and sampled it - delish! All of us went home with about 10lbs of assorted cuts.

This class reinforced a number of ideas we discussed in the pig class:

• Butchery is about choices. The same part of the cow can get transformed into a number of different cuts, depending on how you decide to cut it up.
• Just like there's more to chicken than chicken breasts, and more to pig than pork tenderloin, there's more to a cow than steaks and ground beef. One of the parts I brought home is a section of shank, suitable for osso buco. We're never had osso buco, much less cooked it, but it'll be interesting to try.

All in all, another good class from the Institute.

Tonks in Time-Out

I'm so tired of chicken drama. 

As you know, a couple of months ago, Ginny the chicken somehow got injured. Chickens can be very cruel, and our chicken Tonks is especially not nice. Once she sensed that Ginny was crippled, she went in for the kill. Tonks would hold Ginny down and peck repeatedly at her neck and comb, and poor Ginny was bloodied, weak, and getting stuck under things trying to hide from Tonks. So I made the decision to remove Ginny from the flock and let her heal in peace. She has been free-ranging now for several weeks, and she has gotten much better, still with a tiny limp but ok (though not laying eggs at all, so frankly, I need to think further about that). The last week or so, Ginny has been sneakily scooting into the coop every time I open the door. She just wants to be with her mates!

Meanwhile, we have the two new chickens in a big dog cage inside the coop, so that everyone can get used to them without beating them up. It's been a bit of a stressful time. Tonks has been trying to peck them through the cage, and of course she can't get to them, which is good, but makes me worried for this weekend, when I'm hoping to integrate the new chickens into the flock. {By the way, the new chickens (Golden Sexlinks) don't have names yet. Our original six chickens all had "Order of the Phoenix" names, from Harry Potter. Hermione, Minerva (both Plymouth Barred Rocks), Ginny, Molly (both Rhode Island Reds), Tonks, and Luna (both Easter Eggers). Minerva died the summer after we got her.) There are only so many Order of the Phoenix girl characters. So we either start using boy names or we go on to a different group of names. Or we don't name them at all.}

This morning, I decided to try to integrate Ginny back into the flock before we let the new chickens out, since she clearly wanted to be a part of the group again. So I carried her down from the hen house, but instead of putting her outside, I put her down inside. And she loved it! She was scratching and talking and enjoying herself! For a bit Tonks ignored her and I thought all was going to be well. But soon, the abuse began again and poor Ginny had stuffed herself under the feeding shelf and was trembling. So I grabbed Tonks by the tail (a major achievement! I can rarely catch her) and threw her outside the coop. A reader, Laura, suggested this a long time ago, and I decided it was a great idea and acted impulsively on it today. Tonks is now on time out in the yard. Let's see how she likes being the outsider for a change.

As for the new chickens, I want to be around when they are integrated, so I can watch them and see how it goes. So the plan is this: Friday night, I'll take them out of the big dog cage and put them up on the roosts with the other chickens. I'll remove the cage from the coop. And Saturday morning, they'll all come down and hopefully be friends. The smaller of the two is very, very shy, and I worry about her in particular. I'm thinking of putting a bunch of boxes in the coop so that she can get away from the other chickens if she needs to. We already have several big branches as daytime roosts all around the coop, so that's another place a chicken can go for relief. Doesn't work for Ginny, though, since I think she is having trouble hopping/flying.

Chicken drama! Argh. 

If any of you have successfully integrated new chickens into an existing flock, I'd love to hear about it. And if you've had a bully like Tonks, I'd like to hear about that, too. I know that the pecking order exists for a reason, and that it is better for them in the long run to know where everyone stands, but holding one down and repeatedly beating up on her is not something I want in my flock.