Baby Chicks Video Update

Baby Chicks

Baby chicks! A few more photos coming soon :)

Purchase Bulk Food & Support Boone Street!

Now announcing the Boone Street Garden February fundraiser! Full ordering instructions can be found on the Order Bulk Food link at the top of the page.

This month, you can place an order through us for foods delivered from Frankferd Farms, an organic foods distributor. You will pre-pay us and we will place a group order to be delivered at the end of February. We would love it if you want to add an extra amount on to your order total as a donation to the Boone Street Garden.

The instructions for placing an order are described in detail below. The food will be delivered to my house in Remington, and we will have a pickup day in early March.

Frankferd Farms offers organic beverages, snacks, bulk grains, canned foods, dry beans, dried fruit, and more. I am planning on stocking up on lots of flour for bread baking, oats for oatmeal and my newfound oatmeal muffin addiction, jugs of Dr. Braggs live culture apple cider vinegar, and beans.


Wednesday, February 22nd is the deadline to place your order. I will then send out a final spreadsheet with everyone's order, and you will have until Monday the 27th to confirm that your order is correct. The order will be placed on Tuesday, February 28th and should arrive in early March. It will be delivered to my house in Remington. I will email everyone with the pickup information when I send the final confirmation spreadsheet.

Please email me at baltimorediy@gmail.com if you have any questions!

Milling Sorghum

Photo is from a past foodmaking experiment with "bouza" an ancient form of beer making.


This Thursday, 2/9, I hope to mill the sorghum we grew at the Boone Street Garden this year as a fun experiment. My friend Nick will be taking video which I plan on posting to the blog, so stay tuned!

My friend Steve was kind enough to lend me the use of his flour mill (pictured above). Before the grains are ground they need to be threshed and winnowed. In addition to showing the process of harvesting and grinding the grain, I will also be talking a little bit about sorghum as a crop and why we decided to grow it.

The video posted below shows a pretty simple DIY thresher, which separates the wheat grains from the stalk. I was going to build the thresher in the video, but to be honest, we only grew about twenty sorghum plants and I can probably just separate the grains by hand and save myself the trouble of building the thresher.

 

After the grains are separated from the stalk, the next step is to separate the dry outer husk from the seeds. This process is called winnowing. The simplest way is to use the wind to whisk away the light husks from the heavy seeds. Modern methods use a fan, although you can also toss the seeds up and down in the air to get the wind to carry away the husks.

This video has a basic overview of the threshing and winnowing process. I can't wait until I have time to sit down and look at all of the related videos. There are many different methods for the threshing and winnowing process.


 

I was originally going to do the sorghum milling as a workshop, but we are organizing a bulk food sale as our February urban homesteading workshop/fundraiser and I am not sure I have the energy to organize a workshop for this Thursday. We will see... I am currently deciding on the location, which is going to either be the kitchen at 2640 or a food maker friend's kitchen. If you would be interested in attending the workshop, feel free to email me at baltimorediy@gmail.com.

I have some reading up/video watching to do to learn about the process myself!

Memories of Last Summer & Getting Ready to Grow!

Hi everyone, it's been somewhat quiet here on BaltimoreDIY, but there's been a lot of planning going on behind the scenes.

I've posted a photo of last summer's block party to remind me of all the work we got done last year to boost my spirits and get ready for this year. See below for some more memories of last summer! And of course, you can always click on the "Boone Street" link at the top of the page for a full chronological review of the farm and lessons we learned.

Cheryl, our farm assistant Baba, and neighborhood friend Big Willie getting things done while the sorghum grew tall...

Big Willie always asks us if we have tomatoes (even in December) and calls me Tinkerbelle.... we recently found out that he started a drama troupe at his church so we hope to have some public theater at the garden this summer!

Cheryl and I hoped to cut all this tall grass to use as straw for mulch or hay for animal feed, but we couldn't find a good scythe so we had to mow it eventually. We did cut some of it by hand with scissors but that wasn't really sustainable.

Ferb taking a photo while his brother Brian is apparently sneaking up on me as I'm getting my caffeine on! See the photo below to see Ferb among the squash...

 Ferb and the squash..

This year we plan on keeping track of the hours the neighborhood kids help us out at the farm so they can earn their "service learning hours" which will help them as they are applying to get in to Baltimore City's various high schools.

Here's all the urban homesteading fun going on this weekend!

By the way, I seriously recommend checking out the CGRN calendar if you are looking for exciting events in Baltimore related to sustainability.

Saturday

"Greening University": a medley of awesome community organizations are coming together to host workshops about starting community gardens, soil, landscaping for a healthy Chesapeake Bay, working with community associations, and more. I'll keep you all posted on the great information I learn.

After the Greening University, Cheryl and I have to sit down and purchase our seeds for the year! We also plan to set up our seedling station, since we better get rolling on planting those lettuce, cabbage, bok choy seedlings and more. We'll also buy some peas, radishes, carrots, beets, and perennial herbs.. and this is just for spring/fall planting! Summer plants are a whole other deal.

The Baltimore Foodmakers are hosting a potluck with the theme of "root vegetables" on Saturday evening.

Sunday

I already posted about the Urban Food Access talk taking place at 10:30 at the Baltimore Ethical Society.

I hope to attend, although Chicken Man and I have to stretch the rabbit skins that have been soaking in a solution of aluminum sulfate, sea salt, and water over the last two weeks, so maybe I should do that instead... I've also got some personal stuff to attend to and plan to do house chores and the like.

Coming Up

Stay tuned for more blog updates and new links across the top of the page, and our February urban homestead workshop will be announced soon!

Here is a PDF link to an upcoming farmer training class I will be taking this spring along with some fellow Baltimore City urban growers. I actually already attended this class in 2010 but feel like I could use a refresher, especially now that I am specifically working on Boone Street.

And now I will leave you all with a final photo memory of the farmer training class that I took in the past, seeing all these sprouts makes me excited and a little nervous for the growing season to come:

Urban Food Access Talk: This Sunday 1/29

Produce Contest, originally uploaded by baltimoreDIY.

Re-posted from the Baltimore Ethical Society website:

In Baltimore, the food system comes up short for many city residents – corner stores are common; supermarkets are scarce; diet-related diseases are on the rise; and healthy, affordable foods can be hard to find. We will discuss some of the factors that have led to this situation and share examples of how local faith communities are working to bring about a more just, healthy food system for those most in need.

Sun, Jan 29, 2012, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St, Baltimore, MD 21201-4517

 

“Urban Food Access in Baltimore” 

by Angela Smith Project Director, Baltimore Food & Faith 

 

Speaker bio: Angela Smith directs the Baltimore Food & Faith Project with the Center for a Livable Future’s Eating for the Future at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has an MA in environmental studies from Brown University, where she studied religious-environmental organizations and their efforts to promote an environmental ethic among “people in the pews.” She worked on an organic community-supported agriculture farm in Baltimore County and continues to grow food at the Druid Hill Park garden of the City Farms Program, operated by the Horticulture Division of the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks. Smith is a trained master gardener/composter in Baltimore City and enjoys volunteering at community gardens, school gardens, and for other greening projects in her neighborhood. 

 

Seeds (Part 2: Sprouts)

Yesterday I posted about seeds in the most literal sense of the word, as gardeners all across the region begin purchasing seeds and setting up next year's planting schedule. 

But seeds aren't just for planting! Winter is a great time for making all sorts of delicious foods with seeds.

Today we will talk about sprouting.

Special thanks to the Kitchn for this gorgeous photo and instructions for making your own alfalfa sprouts.

Click on the link to view their article and learn how to sprout away! The instructions work for making any sort of sprouts, from tiny alfalfa sprouts to spicy radish sprouts to big fat mung bean sprouts.

When produce is low in seasonal availability, sprouts are the absolute easiest and freshest way to garden indoors. All you need are seeds, a little water, and a jar! It couldn't be easier. Pop the sprouts onto a hummus or cream cheese sandwich, serve as a healthy side dish with a bit of dressing, or even drop some in soup.

I just started a batch of mung bean sprouts this morning and hope to make this soup recipe as posted in "Quick and Easy Korean Cooking" by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, which is one of my favorite go-to cooking books for light and relatively simple meals. Here's a link to the Amazon page if you want more information:



The soup drew my attention because it's light and healthy, and it makes use exclusively of pantry items like dried fish, seeds, and flavorings that store well over the winter. Even the green onions are seasonal, since any organic onions stored in your cold cellar or pantry have started sprouting green tops by now, which you can cut and add to the soup!

If the idea of anchovy stock turns you off, you could always substitute any other kind of broth. UPDATE: made some anchovy stock last night and it was really bitter tasting. Found out that many Koreans cut the head and intestines out of the anchovy to get rid of that off taste. 

Great info on making anchovy stock here: http://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/dried-anchovies-myulchi

Bean Sprout Soup

1/2 cup dried anchovies
3 quarts water
8 ounces sprouts*
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp Korean chile powder**
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp salt, plus more to taste
2 green onions chopped

*The recipe lists soybean sprouts, but I plan to substitute with mung bean
** I also don't have time to get Korean chile powder, so I plan on tossing in a dried chile or two from the peppers we grew at Boone Street garden this year. It's not traditional, but I use what I got!

Put the anchovies and water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5-7 minutes. Strain and discard the anchovies. You now have anchovy stock. This step can be done ahead of time.

Rinse and drain the sprouts. Traditionally, the root ends are trimmed from the sprouts. You can leave off this step if you prefer, although the texture will be improved.

Bring the anchovy stock to a boil, if it's not hot already. Add the sprouts, garlic, chile powder, and sesame oil and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the salt and green onions and let cook for about a minute more. Add salt if needed.

Serve in individual bowls with any rice dish. (I might use noodles instead of rice!) You could also drop in a beaten egg, chopped tofu or meat, and anything else you please to make this soup a little bit heartier.

Enjoy!