Fleur-de-P-word

OK, so I’m in bed watching Suzy Bartels’ YouTube video on hay bale gardening during the wee hours of the morning.  She’s talking about adding high nitrogen fertilizer to the bales during the third week and I’m zoning off. Then she says: “Peeing on them is the best thing, or you can go to Agway and buy somebody else’s pee. They call it urea. It’s still just pee.”

I practically fall out of bed.

When I was a kid, I was taught to say,  “I have to tinkle.” As I got older, “I have to go to the bathroom.” I remember in high school, my cool friend Meggie called it “piddle” which is cute if you are talking about a puppy. But the word “pee”? Nice girls didn’t say that.

So, let’s just call it urine, for the sake of science, and figure this out. I start Googling again.

·      One site explains that urine is a natural source of agricultural fertilizer with negligible risks. In fact, urine treated and disposed of is more of an environmental problem than when it is used au naturel as a resource.

·      At the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, researchers have been studying urine recycling for 15 years. Our digestive system strips the “waste” down to basic mineral forms that plants just suck up.

·      An article in Scientific American magazine reports that in Finland researchers are growing beets, cucumbers, cabbages, and tomatoes using urine as a sustainable fertilizer.

·      Each year the average human produces 500 liters of urine, full of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, all craved by plants. Five hundred liters would fill three bathtubs.

·      Urine is practically sterile. Astronauts on the International Space Station drink the darned stuff after it has been purified.

This late-night research is boggling my mind. Memories flood in like high tide.

Flashback:We are in Avalon, NJ, for a summer vacation with several families. A friend is visiting. One of the moms thinks the girl is ill mannered because she “forgets to flush”. It turns out her family was conscious of our limited resources before ecology and recycling became household words. She taught us this little water conservation ditty: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”

Flashback: I’m studying at Penn State’s Marine Science Consortium at Wallops Island, VA. I’m chasing after my duck-footed professor as he dashes off into the dunes. I don’t want to miss the family of ghost crabs or a tasty patch of salicornia I think he is racing toward. He stops, spreads his legs apart, his hands busy in front of him. “The pose.” I turn and scamper in the opposite direction, laughing at my naiveté.

Flashback: Just the other day I’m giving my son “the lecture” after spotting him outside the house in “the pose”. He is aiming at the rhododendron, but tells me he is looking for groundhogs.

“We may be outside the borough, but this is a college town. The police call that open lewdness or indecent exposure or, at the very least, urinating in public. You’ll get in trouble. And what would your grandmother think?”

“Maaaahommm.”

Back to Reality: A new day is dawning. I’m enlightened. I still won’t say the P-word but I do have a plan.

“Hey Richard, are you doing anything the third week in May? I’ve got a job for you…”

Laurie Lynch

No. 2 Thought:“There is no doubt about it, the basic satisfaction in farming is manure, which always suggests that life can be cyclic and chemically perfect and aromatic and continuous.” –E.B. White

Fleur-de-HayBale

There is a certain danger in having a laptop when negotiating mid-life divorce insomnia.

The other night I woke abruptly with a solution—hay bale garden. I’m still not sure where it came from but it melded a series of unrelated items on my to-do list into one project.

1.    Need to get rid of the stack of two-year-old dusty hay bales taking up room in my mother’s barn.

2.    Decide what to do about two grassy patches inside my newly fenced-in vegetable garden. The grass would be a hassle to mow and could have been turned into garden space had I the foresight to smother the grass with cardboard last fall, readying it for spring tilling.

3.    Figure out what to write on my next blog.

If I were still relying on my old clunky computer, I would have gotten out of bed, put on thick socks and a robe, and headed down to the basement to the dank depths of the “office”.  Instead, I switched on the light, reached for my laptop, propped up my pillows, fluffed up the comforter, and Googled “hay bale garden”.

I clicked and tapped through a bunch of straw bale gardens then I hit pay dirt, so to speak. There was a video of Suzy Bartels speaking on Hay Bale Gardening to a group at the Plumsteadville (PA) Grange. And that’s where this story started taking twists and turns.

Future Fingerling Potato Patch

Bale gardening is an elevated form of raised-bed gardening. (A brief pause for an agricultural teachable moment. Straw is dry stalks of wheat or oats, often yellow in color, has no nutritional value. and is used for bedding; hay is dry grasses or legumes, such as alfalfa or clover, with a greenish color, nutritional value, and therefore used for feed.)  

With bale gardening, there is no weeding, no tilling, and not a whole lot of bending. If your soil is poor or poorly drained, bale gardening solves those problems too. For me, lining my two grassy areas with bales (on their sides, bristle-side up, so the twine is not touching the ground) and then filling the interior with loose hay would help smother the grass while providing planting room this season. And, it cleared a space in my mother’s barn.

Nonna: “What’s she doing now?”

With my trusty wheelbarrow and 15 trips from the barn to the garden, I created two pocket gardens between my dad’s original raised-beds with 30 bales of hay. In the larger garden, about 12’x14’, I’ll plant pumpkins, squash, and cucumbers to tumble down into the inner hay-covered courtyard. In the second narrower bed, 6’x14’, I’ll plant peppers and eggplant up above in the hay bales and in the lower section, I’ll line the bottom with soil and plant my fingerling potatoes, covering them with more soil, and adding soil as they grow.

With May Day approaching, you too can design a bale garden and plant by Memorial Day. After arranging your bales, you soak them daily with water for two weeks. The third week you apply a cup of high nitrogen fertilizer on each bale to get composing action going, repeat two days later, and two days after that. Each time, you water the fertilizer in, but you don’t water it through.  By the end of the third week, if you put your finger in the bale, it should feel hot, which means it is composting. On the fourth week, keep bales moist and let them cool. By then, your bales are prepped and ready for planting. Use your hands to make two holes in each bale and fill with a little compost or soil, and insert your seedling. Water in.

If we don’t get enough help with rain from Mother Nature, you will have to water plants occasionally, as you would for any garden plant, but hay helps retain moisture better than straw does.

That’s it for today’s simple bale garden lesson. Tomorrow’s blog, the twists and turns of frank farming. Laurie Lynch

May Day Special: Robyn Jasko, Kuztown resident and co-founder (with husband Paul David) of websites Dine Indie and Grow Indie, has written Homesweet Homegrown: How to Grow, Make and Store Food, No Matter Where You Live. The book is available at bookstores and on Amazon.com May 1 for $9.95.

An Apology: Yesterday I attended another writing conference and learned that as a blogger I’m supposed to respond to all blog comments. I promise to do so in the future.

Fleur-de-TaitTaters

The class, Preserving the Herb Garden with Cindy Tait Law, was a homecoming of sorts.

From 1969 until the mid-1990s my mother was the proprietor of The Country Sampler in Boalsburg, PA, the quaint “birthplace of Memorial Day” on the outskirts of State College. She and two friends opened the shop in a former Clover Farm Store because they were avid cooks and entertainers—and there wasn’t a shop around that sold wooden stirring spoons or any of the kitchen gadgets they yearned for.  In no time, “The Sampler” was the place to find Romertopf clay pot cookers, Sabatier knives, Bodum coffee presses, and Cuisinart food processors.

In the rear of the store they installed a mini-kitchen island where my mother or a guest chef would present cooking classes in the evening to spark culinary adventures for Centre Countians.

While I was finishing up high school and then enrolled at Penn State, I spent term breaks and holidays helping out at The Country Sampler. And that is where I met Cindy Tait. She was a little bit older than I and much wiser. We spent countless hours solving the world’s problems while trying to stay warm in the shop where cold air seemed to gush through the worn floorboards. We greeted customers offering steaming mugs of Russian Tea (an instant tea-Tang concoction spiced up with cinnamon, allspice and cloves) on cold December nights before the holidays. I remember Cindy’s specialty was dusting merchandise on the display shelves and mine was wrapping gifts in the even-colder storage room. But, oh, we loved it when there was a cooking class. Imagine getting paid to be entertained with a class and then to sample the goodies!

Cindy has come a long way from those early Sampler days, and she is now in charge of product development at Tait Farm Foods, creating chutneys and sauces and preserves and vinaigrettes at Tait Farm just outside of Boalsburg.

My mother and I went to Cindy’s class and learned about rolling basil “cigars” and freezing them in snack baggies, steeping Thai basil in white wine vinegar, and freezing pesto in quart-size baggies, pressed flat and thin, so it’s easy, fast, and safe to thaw in the refrigerator before adding it to pasta. She tempted our food imaginations with herbal salts and herbal honeys and herbal butters.

But my personal favorite was what she calls Sage-Roasted Potatoes. After making them for a pre-Easter dinner, and again later for a photo shoot, I’m inclined to call them Stained-Glass Potatoes. They are delicious hot out of the oven, warmed up for leftovers, and, truth be told, even cold as a midnight snack. The stained-glass part of the title flashed in my mind because they are miniature works of art, herbs pressed in an arrangement and roasted until golden.

Stained-Glass Potatoes

Russet baking potatoes

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Fresh sage leaves and/or rosemary sprigs

Preheat oven to 350°. Brush a film of olive oil on baking sheet. Sprinkle the sheen of oil with coarse salt. Arrange sage leaves in an attractive pattern on top of oil, making sure the “right” side is down.

Cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Place potato halves on top of sage leaf patterns, keeping each “arrangement” contained under each potato half.

Place baking sheet in oven and roast for an hour. When the timer goes off, you can lift one potato half up and take a peek…the sage should be stuck to the potato, and the potato should be a crusty, golden brown. If it isn’t, return potatoes to oven until they turn golden.

This is such a simple and delicious variation on ordinary baked potatoes that I’m sure you will want to give it a try. Or, as they say at Tait Farm, “Bon AppeTait!” Laurie Lynch

Another Tait Farm Story: Late last fall I visited Tait Farm to send a few Central PA gift boxes to Marina’s adopted Belgian families, my adopted Aunt France, and yes, I treated myself to an old favorite, Harrison’s Fig and Olive Relish (that I eat with a “relish” on sandwiches, cream cheese and crackers, even stirred into my homemade yogurt), and a new favorite, Lavender Scone Mix.

In late January or February I got a call from Aunt France. She finally tasted the strawberry-rhubarb conserve I mailed to her. “I’ve been salivating for this since Christmas,” she told me. I asked why she waited so long. “Well Laurie, that’s a long story.”

It turns out that France couldn’t open the jar. She twisted and strained and twisted some more, but the lid wouldn’t budge. Weeks went by and the jar just sat there, staring at her. Then it was time to take her strawberry-red vintage Mustang convertible to the service station. France put the jar of conserve on the bucket seat next to her. When she dropped off the car, she told the woman at the desk her plight. The woman disappeared with the jar, and came back minutes later. The mechanic had loosened the lid. “He told me he washed his hands and used a clean towel and everything,” France recalled. Then she went home and had toast topped with Tait Farm Strawberry-Rhubarb Conserve.

Check It Out: www.taitfarmfoods.com

Written On Slate: “Talk of joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home-made bread—there may be.”—David Grayson

The Last Word: “Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism are all very good words for the lips.” –Charles Dickens

Fleur-de-Words

My favorite morning greeting comes when I walk through the sheet metal shop on my way to the lunchroom refrigerator where I store my 1 p.m. meal.

Kutzown Ken greets me in Pennsylvania twang: “Morning Laurie” but what my garden-starved ears hear is “Mornin’ Glory”. And don’t we all wish our mornings were filled with morning glories—Grandpa Ott’s on the kitchen garden arbor and Heavenly Blue on the chicken fence.

Mystery Plant

Running through my brain are Paul Simon’s words:  “All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” That sums up my workday.

Spring fever came early, and there are moments when I’m not sure I can make this adjustment to an office environment. Sure, it was ok in November, December, and January—but heavens, it’s spring! And I’m in a cave.

Sharon the receptionist not only faces the front glass door and a wall of windows, she has a skylight overhead. Not so in my portion of the building. When the sun breaks through the Central Pennsylvania clouds, the only way I know is when she sends me an email. Sharon also keeps watch on a computerized weather monitor and alerts the roofers to rainstorms or nasty winds heading toward their job sites. She’s a regular Mother Nature sitting up there with a big welcoming smile. Who? Me? Jealous?

My workplace buddy John, who has a windowless office near my windowless cave, teases me about my office light dimmer. There is a light switch near my computer that I flip on in the morning and off when I leave in the afternoon. But it took me several weeks to realize that there is also a little tab that can brighten or dim the light—well, actually, John told me about it when I was sitting in the semi-dark with the light switch on. So, when he found out about the sunshine emails from Sharon, he decided that was my cue to play Mother Nature. When Sharon emails a sun alert, I turn the dimmer switch up to full brightness; if I get notice that a thunderstorm is approaching, down goes the dimmer.

John is also my roofing terminology translator. It started when I heard him discussing crickets with one of the crews. 

“I know you’re not talking about Jiminy Cricket,” I said one morning, “but what’s a roof cricket? Certainly crickets can’t hop up on roofs.”

Close-Up

He patiently described a roof cricket (and there are actually “chimney crickets”—did Disney know that?), and how it is used to divert water. A few days later, the lesson was on “scuppers”. Scuppers are small openings in a roof railing that prevent water from pooling on the roof, channeling the rainwater through the railing and off the roof. Scupper. Don’t you just love the way the word tickles the roof of your mouth when you say it? I’d like to name a dog Scupper.

My farming ears really perked up one day when I heard the guys talking about a cow tongue drain. I had to see one of these. Well, a cow tongue drain outlet looks like a cow yawning after a big sip of water, big fleshy tongue hanging off its lower lip.

That’s not all. My Fleur-de-Lys French-ness got all excited when one of the estimators was writing a proposal for a “porte-cochere”—a carriage entrance leading through a building or wall to an inner courtyard.  Or, in this case, a drive-through entrance at a hotel.

But the perfect irony of workplace words hit me in a fit of scanning boredom.  In the quiet moments between my more arduous tasks of typing invoices or scribbling work orders for roof leaks, I scan the contents of the job folders for 2010 and 2011. If you’ve ever tried to slide staple-pried and dog-eared papers into a scanner that feeds the text, photos, and drawings magically into the computer, you know these are temperamental creatures. I sit there, sometimes hours on end, shoving documents into the feeder tray, anticipating the inevitable “Paper Jam” alert. Irritating at best…until I realized I used to spend my afternoons making strawberry preserves or elderblossom cordial. Now, I’ve graduated to paper jam. Yummy! Words do put a smile on my face. Laurie Lynch

A Little Help, Please: As I work in my Dad’s old gardens, I’m discovering brickwork I forgot about and an occasional plant I am not familiar with. Such is the case with the bold beauty pictured above. Can anyone help me out with an identification? It’s a daisy-like flower, blooming as I type, and 2.5- to 3-feet tall. Leaves are soft and fuzzy, and kind of arrow shaped.

Written on Slate: The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.”  –Mark Twain

Fleur-de-Vintage

I love vintage clothes, vintage fabrics, vintage toys, and even vintage vintages. I once used the description “vintage vegetables” (as an alliterative substitute for heirloom vegetables) in a piece I wrote and a PASA fellow complimented me on my unusual word choice.  But when the computer geek at the Apple store said I had a “vintage iMac”, I knew this was not a good thing.

Yes, there are expiration dates on jars of mayo, peanut butter, and olives, and sadly most marriages don’t last a lifetime, but when a computer is going on its sixth birthday, is it time to call it quits?

In my case, it was. My iMac was stuck in perpetual sleep mode and resuscitation was doubtful.

Fritillaria imperialis (Crown Imperial)

I wasn’t ready for one of those flip-floppy tablet things, but I did want to go semi-mobile so I chose a laptop. The iTechies insisted they could transfer everything from my old computer onto the new, which they did. But, when I got home, I couldn’t open any documents. Long story short, after many sleepless nights, fruitless searching of boxes, and finally a software purchase, I now can get back to writing my 500 words a day—even if I have to bump everything up to 14-point just to read it on the screen. I didn’t anticipate that my fingertips would overhang the tiny keys, nor did I know how to massage the touchpad. Not expecting miracles from dear old Mom, my son Richard saved my mouse from its previous life and showed me that I can still use it when my laptop is sitting on a desktop, thus easing the transition.

Enough of all that. It’s time for catching up. Laurie Lynch

In Bloom: This handsome gent is a native of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and produces a musky odor that repels mice, moles, and squirrels. As an extra bonus, even deer don’t like to nibble on Fritillaria imperialis.

YoYo Yogurt: I got several emails and links about yogurt making and it looks as though there are probably a dozen different techniques and many of you are much more skilled at it than I. I’m going to stick with my heating pad method because it works for me. There’s a good solution out there for you.

One reader mentioned the book Wild Fermentation, which says to use no more than one tablespoon of starter per quart of milk. This keeps the yogurt culture from being crowded. I’m embarrassed to say that I own that book—and didn’t even think to use it as a guide—because a certain son of mine is interested in other fermentation processes and had hijacked the book to his dorm room!  Wild Fermentation also suggests making yogurt in an insulated cooler and references The Joy of Cooking.

Karen makes her yogurt directly in the crockpot, so my too-hot hypothesis was not cool at all. She sent along two links with methods she has tried and found successful:

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/10/you-can-make-yogurt-in-your-crockpot.html

http://girlsguidetobutter.com/2010/02/crock-pot-yogurt/

HARING HEART:  I got another email from Al Haring about his son Keith’s heart art on the cover of Architectural Digest; “We had not been aware of the heart that Brooke (Shields) has hanging above the mantle (nor the wrapping paper) and were surprised to see it.”

He sent along the following link that has a slide show listing all of the places in New York where Keith Harings can be found, for all of us armchair art gallery goers!

galleristny.com/2012/03/haring…

Beds just waiting to be planting with F-d-L seedlings.

Fleur-de-Central: The mild winter blending into an early spring means we’ve got lots of new gardening projects going on. Seeds I saved from my favorite F-d-L vintage tomatoes germinated (will I ever stop planting triple what I need just in case there is major seedling failure?)

I’m renovating my Dad’s old raised-bed gardens and wrapping them in fencing to keep the groundhogs and rabbits out. I’ve decided to turn a planter on my Mom’s deck into an herb garden. Fresh herbs will be an arm’s length away when we dine outside. And, the garlic I harvested last summer at Fleur-de-Lys and planted in State College in the fall looks fabulous!