NOISE: Dig In

B-Rad's Sun Pickles (Recipe Included)

These refrigerator pickles are an easy weekend or evening project.  Start by filling clean jars with uniformly sized (or sliced) cucumbers, then toss in a few dill tops and garlic cloves.  You can also add peppercorns, chile peppers or other spices according to your taste.

Next, just mix up a bowl or pitcher with the following ingredients (makes enough to cover 4 quarts or 1 gallon of pickling cukes):

        Sunshine Brine

• 5.5 cups water
• 2.5 cups white vinegar
• 1/4 cup pickling salt
• 1/8 teaspoon Alum (in the spice aisle)

Stir until salt is dissolved.  Pour into jars to cover cucumbers.

Here comes the fun part: set the jars outside in the sun for a few days.

What?

Yep.  This is my first go at it, but B-Rad swears by the method and has had success over the years.

 According to the maestro, check the developing flavor of the pickles as they relax in the sun, and when they taste how you want just stash the jars in your fridge.  Estimated keeping time?  About a month.

I'll keep you posted on how these sun pickles come along.  You can 'pickle' just about anything, not just cucumbers.  Let me know if you've got a favorite pickling procedure.

 

Makin' it Rain, For Real.

As a fellow gardener menitoned the other day, the old saw is that it takes 10 inches of 'pipe water' to provide plants the energy to grow they get from just an inch or rainwater.  Any gardener who has hosed for weeks to find their plants suddenly thriving after a summer shower knows.  But this year has been a war of extremes--the old farmers were right about another thing:  we sure were missing all that spring rain come July.  Besides the benefits of ionization and  nutrients rainwater provides, finding ways to divert and store rainwater in spring is not just a garden perk.  Creative graywater systems can be integrated with standard home plumbing.  The book Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground gives great advice on several ideas, including simple ways to let the water draining from your bathroom sink fill your toilet tank. 

The Southside Miracle

Despite pumping over a thousand gallons of chlorine into the wrong tank at their Wise Rd. plant yesterday, BWL and local public health figures determined the area is safe.  So, bring on today's Community Garden Tour which swings through the hood starting at 5:30 pm.

BWL, WILX, The Garden Project of the Greater Lansing Food Bank and South Lansing Community Development Association (SLCDA) are all involved in community development through helping people grow their own food, with two key examples in the area affected--or, I guess, not affected--by Tuesday's impromptu plume.

At 2:38 pm yesterday WILX reported the evacuation of the area had been cancelled and that BWL considered all chemical reactions contained to the plant.  That's good, because today at 5:30 pm you'll be joining other Lansing-area locals in an air-conditioned cruise around south Lansing, discovering the people and progress highlighted by these collaborative community garden efforts.

WILX has a special stake in "Andy's Garden," located in the affected water plant's backyard, the Consumer's Energy utility easement.  Local weather guy Andy P. broadcasts from the garden in season, and both BWL and WILX have supported local volunteers in growing food there for donation.  Westside resident LIbby Rice coordinates the garden as a volunteer, but would love to hear from anyone interested in helping to lead this dynamic food production/outdoor t.v. studio hybrid (leave a comment below).

Andy's garden is a stone's throw from the South Side Community Center (Harry Hill), putting it squarely in SLCDA's baliwick.  Led by dynamo Kathie Dunbar, SLCDA has vision and grant support for several acres of...something in the utility easement there.  With the plant slated to close for a long while, it will be interesting to see how things develop.  

Meanwhile, at the corner of Jolly Rd. and Pleasant Grove, another garden supported by SLCDA and The Garden Project is gearing up and excited to host today's tour.  Enthusiastic volunteer and "Jolly Grove" gardener Sarah Surline will give you some of the skinny in air-conditioned luxury (courtesy of Dean Transportation) as the bus approaches the garden as part of tonight's Community Garden Tour presented by The Garden Project.  If the bus ain't your style, ride your bike down to Foster Park on Lansing's Eastside at 5:30pm for an al fresco tour route including a scenic River Trail detour.

And remember, don't mix bleach with other chemicals.  Right, BWL?

 

 

Coop Scoop for Hot Chicks

My neighbor has a well-deserved reputation for quality construction projects.  So when he said he and his son were "throwing together" a chicken coop a few months ago, I already knew that his thrown together shelter would end up looking better than any I might build, no matter how carefully.  I was right.

The south-facing window on most chicken coops which lets in that precious winter sun also turns the coop into a greenhouse if you're not careful.  Make sure to vent as necessary, but there's no substitute for a patch of ground for the birds to roam.  Pecking out grain and bugs from the ground give the animals a workout while keeping their food supply diverse.  Chickens will eat most anything from the compost bucket (or most anything, period).  A healthy diet will result in healthier chickens, which means better eggs and/or meat according to your tastes.

Another friendly household with chickens I know used some nice found branches for accents like door handles for their coop.  With local laws lenient on fowl, many city-dwellers in Lansing are finding that with a simple shelter and a little consistent care, keeping chickens is a productive delight.

Don't forget that a little shade goes a long way to make animals comfortable on a hot day.  No need for AC in the coop.

 

Yummy hot fun (some mess required).

Berries and garlic were the order of the day Sunday morning, snacking and harvesting.

The berries this time of year are on swagger mode.  Red and black raspberries, blackberries, mulberries and more are ripe now.  All of these are widely found in Michigan, in both dense cities and sparse countryside.  If you've furtively snatched all you can from neighboring patches, consider planting some!

The garlic came up today.  Once the moist soil dries on the root, I'll gently brush them clean, then cure them in the (warm, dry) attic for a week or so before storing.

My garlic is  a little smaller this year than last it seems (please, no rain dance jokes).  If your intuition is that climate change, food and energy use have some overlapping areas of urgent importance, be sure to check back this week for a special feature on the local-global continuum.

 

What's popping: mid-July photojournal

I call this onion island, a fairly dense planting of about two dozen onions in a 2x4 foot space.

This parsnip is joust starting to develop down from the shoulders (I covered it back up after taking the picture).

Strawberries have fruited and are sending out their runners to create more plants.  This long reacher has escaped the chicken-wire bird protection, but that's okay.  The new plants can get established and then be ready for transplanting.  Also, when I put up the little chicken wire fence, I left the fence attached to the roll of wire for expanding as necessary.

When nobody picked these bed pieces up off the curb after several attempts to give them away, I decided to use them for a decorative bit of safety rail on the bridge leading to the garden.  (The bridge goes over the drainage ditch which keeps the driveway from flooding.  The flow forks around onion island.)

Thrift on.

 
 (Left to right) Silk and cashmere sweater-set (St. Vincent de Paul, $8).  Hand-sewn baby bonnet with blue flower-sprig motif and leopard-print sun-dress with orange trim (Volunteers of America, $1 each). Embellished green t-shirt ('mom-to-mom' sale, $2) and cut-offs (give-and-take center, free).

Michigan Good Food

A bright future for Michigan...

The Michigan Good Food Charter is an attractive report that lays out best practices for a healthy Michigan. Based on local research and actual people, the document is produced by the C.S. Mott Group at MSU, the Michigan Food Policy Council and the Food Bank Council of Michigan in partnership with others. 

Read the whole document, or peruse the executive summary.

 

These three organizations, together as Michigan Good Food, also operate the informative listserv FOODSPEAK.

For more info, check out michiganfood.org

Mike Hamm breaks it down.

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Happy (Myth of) Independence Day

What is the myth of independence?  A quick internet  search of the phrase turns up everything from a book on Pakistani sovereignty to tales of domestic commiseration--not the point.  Broadly speaking, any true independence a human might gain from the insidious influence of corporations'  recognition as human agents by US policy and tax code is wrought not from a lone stand but through organized community action.

Just as one man does not a food system make, we must stand firm behind the importance of interconnections in any system as we vie to permit a true right to life (no abortion histrionics here) for all people (not just 'mericans, or just some 'mericans.)

Together, as people, we can set a new model that fights exploitation of life.  Happy 4th.