Vermont pt 1

SO after Montreal there was Burlington, Vermont, a college town way nicer looking than the Ontario franchise. We didn't know where we were staying that night but we wandered around the pedestrian mall and surrounding area asking where's good to lodge. We were browsing a camping equipment shop  and asking the staff questions about good secret camping sites when the girlfriend of an employee suddenly invited us to stay with them. The look on her face said she was as surprised as we were. Luckily her boyfriend just smiled, shrugged, and rolled with it.

They were Bianca and Lee, and they took us to their house on a mountain that they share with a few other young Vermonters. Not in the habit of taking in strays, Bianca just had a good feeling about us and couldn't think of a reason not to have us over, which is some crazy luck on our part. She cooked us an amazing dinner involving some home-raised chickens, and we showed them how to play the "Picture Game", a cross between Telephone and Pictionary very popular with my bros and broettes.

We drank and ate and watched a blue graph bar race a red graph bar. The size of each bar, especially relative to each other, was the source of great anxiety for everyone. We all knew that these bars would determine many things about the world. As we all know, the blue bar won, and everyone on that mountain was happy.

The next morning, Bianca and Lee took us for a hike around their property, and we caught a view of the valleys and the mountains capped with snow that make Vermont THE place for winter sport enthusiasts. My enthusiasm for winter sport ended when my face met a fence at the bottom of a black diamond hill in grade 7, so I appreciated the snow from a distance.

We exchanged facebook info and said goodbye to our amazing hosts, and drove further south to WWOOF on a farm. WWOOFing is an acronym, and it boils down to working temporarily for room and board at an organic farm. As happy as we were to hang up our farming hats at the end of October, it turns out I missed the ridiculous food enough to get dirty again. Pictures and more to come!

A Long Overdue Update

Much like the opening chapters of a certain classic literature trilogy concerning a troupe of unwashed males of varying height trying to get a refund for a piece of jewelry, Emily and I found it almost impossible to leave the Shire that is Ontario. The delays were many, but enjoyable for the company of friends and family we'd been missing terribly during our summer of farm. 

Blackie stares us a "Goodbye". 

A day and a half later than we'd intended, we had a packed SUV, its back seats occupied by a pair of Queen's engineering students catching a ride-share from Kingston to Montreal, where they're starting a small tech company. We dropped them off in la Belle Cite and grabbed some happy-hour beers at Foufones with Em's likewise-dreadlocked ladyfriend Zoe. After burgers, beer and some tromping around, we left Zoe and her eternally-guitar-weilding husband Julien at their open mic joint to go meet our Couch Surfing host, Max. 

Max is a bike riding, photo taking, freelance web designer who built his own media shelf out of plumbing using a plan he found online. In the morning he produced a tray of chocolate croissants and cooked us porridge with fixings. Feeling indebted, Emily granted him a pumpkin soup recipe from her repertoire as thanks. Before we left, he gave us one of his photos - one of a dog he met in Costa Rica who looks adorable professionally. Apparently our "borderline creepy obsession with dogs" and their business is obvious after knowing us less than a day.

Uplifting, though mildly ominous coming from a bathroom wall.

(Click to enbiggen)

Max biked off to work while we strolled through the park in search of chiens. We didn't find many dogs, but there were some curious squirrels, including a white-furred monsieur who was happy to pose for us.

Even the squirrels have more style in Montreal.

We checked out the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Art history is a subject I've been wanting to learn more about so it was great to have Emily, a classy educated woman, give me a personal tour while we walked around. We had to get going before I saw everything, which is fine by me as I definitely intend to come back.

From there, we navigated Montreal's labyrinthine highway system and made for the border to 'merica. It was election day, and we weren't sure what kind of country we were going to wake up to in the morning. 

A photoshoot on Lake Champlain

Next time: Vermont, and More Farming

Improvised Toothpaste

Toothpaste is one of those things that hasn't actually improved since it was invented. That's why marketers try to convince you that, don't worry guys, THIS toothpaste is the real deal. That last one was shit, full of asbestos. But this new one, god damn, it's got these computer generated blue spheres that like, clip through your molar and attach to that green foliage that's sticking out of it like shrapnel. Then they both phase out of existence. We're 25 year old models wearing lab coats, so I think we know what we're talking about.

Half of keeping your mouth clean (yes, yours specifically) is just the act of brushing, but you don't need to buy $7 tubes of bubblegum-icecream-vomit coloured paste to make up the last half. You just need:

6 parts Baking Soda

2 parts Water

1 part Hydrogen Peroxide (3-5%)

Dash of Flavor

Add more or less water to get the consistency of paste you like.

I made my first batch with cinnamon. It doesn't taste sweet and minty like commercial brands, but the mixture dilutes when you rinse with water so you're just left with a clean feeling on your teeth and no aftertaste.

The hydrogen peroxide kills most any bacteria or fungus in your mouth. It's the most active ingredient in a lot of mouth washes, and you can get it at any drug store. The baking soda works as an abrasive to help remove cavity creeps, and is also alkaline, which helps reduce the acid that can hurt your tooth fortress.

I've seen some recipes that call for glycerine as a sweetener, but that stuff leaves film on your teeth and I think it does more harm than good. But I'm no toothpaste scientist.

The Drought Has Affected Our Post Crop

We're now deep into the last half of our time at the farm, time that has given us authority on the bigger picture. 

So, just what the hell are we doing here?

On paper, we're working on a small scale (unofficially) organic farm, 5.5 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, for 6 months solid. In exchange we get room and board, a stipend of $200 a month, and a ground-up education in the farming business.

However, it's taken a bit longer to figure out what we are actually trying to do here.

We're here to learn how to do things ourselves. We're here to purge accumulated guilts through hard physical work. To watch that hard physical work turn into a quantifiable product that you hold in your hand and bite into. To feel what it's like to fuck up when you can't talk your way out of it. To see if we can find a way of living that isn't hostile to someone else's.

So I can learn enough handiman-ship to at least build a goddamn spice rack. I once hammered a wood screw into someone's wall (using my "Tools for Dummies" hammer no less), so this is a big deal.

If I look closer I can see some hippie pamphlet slogans too: "getting in touch with food", and "reconnecting with life and death".

I don't know about Em, but I think I've succeeded on some points, failed only two, and simply thickened the plot of most. Bubbles have been burst, perspectives shifted, and The Good is found where I did not expect it to be.

And it's not over.

I'll be updating at least once a week from here on, now that the weeds are clear.

I promise it won't boil down to "my job is so interesting because ______". The food is excellent, the recipes even better, but 75% of the time we just hack at the earth with clubs and knives, so the act of farming is especially uninteresting to hear or read about. 

It's the bigger picture stuff that counts. The context.

It's actually about taking pictures of animals though.

vegan zucchini lasagna

it's been a month or more since we've had rain, but the way the zucchinis have been giving, you wouldn't know it. we've been harvesting them for almost two weeks now, running through the rows daily to ensure we get them while they're small and sweet, not big and watery.

zukes for our CSA members

the other day I found a whopper hiding under some leaves, way too big for our members but good enough for us and especially useful for grilling. that same day, my mom emailed me this recipe. it would have been a perfect use of the rejected zucchini, but I'm short three very key ingredients: tomatoes, large quantities of basil, and a food processor. well, whatever. we went to Todd's, the shitty Hastings grocery store, to get the last block of tofu in the county, a couple of tomatoes, and an eggplant, then spent the evening making lunch while we waited for Brophy to arrive from Burlington.

I subbed the pesto for a tomato sauce I made using canned diced tomatoes and our own herbs, garlic, and onions, but followed everything else pretty exactly. if I were to make it again, I'd use more tofu than the recipe wants; there was barely enough for one layer. also I'd grill the vegetables and tofu using the lemon zest marinade; using plain oil to grill, and then the oil and lemon marinade to drizzle on top of that, makes for an extremely oily dish, even when you consider it's supposed to be served chilled, like a salad.

personally, I do not eat of the wheat, but I know others like a more substantial lunch after six hours of weeding, so I toasted up some garlic bread to have with the lasagna, which I finished off with a liberal sprinkling of nice salty nutritional yeast "parmesan". it seemed to go over pretty well, although it turns out our guest of honor has a citrus allergy. well damn. since he absconded with Chris to Algonquin for the weekend, I guess I'll just have to eat the leftovers myself.

avec du pain, and some of our broccoli seconds steamed with olive oil and fresh pepper

beets: they're what's for lunch

today and tomorrow the Chickabiddy crew - including farm mistress Sherry and her adorable handywoman Gisele - is building two new greenhouses from the ground up. in other news, beets are in season. and what else to feed all those hot and hungry workers? beets are hearty, versatile, and beautiful. last night, I headed out to the garden to see what I could find.

golden beets

I didn't have to change a thing about Isa Chandra's Chilled Golden Beet and Ginger Soup recipe for it to be simple, delicious, and vegan.

what a lot of people don't know about beets is that their greens are some of the nicest out there. I vastly prefer them to chard; they have an earthiness to them that's not found in other leafy greens.

while the beets were roasting, I steamed their greens in a bit of soy sauce, whipped up a quick peanut sauce, and juliened some of our own zucchini, scallions, and the last of the snow peas, then stuck it all in the fridge to chill overnight.

this morning before we got to our construction project, we spent a little while in the garden picking the very first tender, sweet green beans of the season.

haricots verts

way too beautiful to spoil with cooking, right? onto the veggie pile they went. next I scrambled a couple of farm eggs, then rolled it all up to make a perfect side for the chilled soup.

my cold rolls didn't look that pretty but they tasted great

lunchtime!

for dessert, more beets! very un-vegan Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I used this recipe but cut the sugar quantities in half, and no one seemed to mind.

eat me

tomorrow we're building all day after harvest in the morning. hello, eight o'clock bedtime! good night.

on CSA, local food, and Margaret Wente's dumbassery

my dear friend Adeleine posted a Globe & Mail opinion article to my Facebook this weekend which lambastes the local food movement as "the most wasteful, inefficient way to feed the human race you can possibly imagine" adding that it's also bad for the environment and a rip-off, all in the most condescending manner possible. she asked for my thoughts, and what else are blogs for?

I've noticed this growing trend towards petty controversy-creation in Canadian media - Jian Gomeshi, I'm looking at you - but it's still surprising to me that the once-mighty Globe would publish a piece so utterly unfounded, dishonest, and downright slanderous towards the new farmers' movement. to my pleasant surprise, the comments on the article were largely on the side of Good, but that didn't keep me from composing a few choice words for Ms Wente while I harvested beet greens this morning.

bitch, please. you think cheap food is really cheap? you come by your Californian tomatoes and Mexican avocados and out of season Chinese such and such by way of slave labor, catastrophic environmental degradation, and the condemnation of millions of local people to starvation in the name of cash-crop production for foreign consumption. consider yourself lucky to be choosing local food, Wente, because with people like you and your ridiculous global food system, it's not going to be a choice for much longer.

you know what? food should be expensive. it should be so fucking expensive that people don't waste it, don't buy it and let it rot in their fridge, don't leave half of it on their plates and then demurely decline a doggy bag. all-you-can-eat endless salad and breadsticks? extra value meals, ninety-nine cent hamburgers? fucking Tim Hortons anything? screw you and the privileged white aging Boomer horse you rode in on.

I do not consider myself an "eager young idealist" but we all damn well "work like dogs" to produce nutritious food for people in our community. we charge a fair price for our produce at our local market, and we sell out every week, and I highly doubt that the people we're feeding are buying and eating to humor us.

what Wente seems to be missing about her quaint experience at the local market, looking down her nose at people like us as she buys carrots for a dollar a piece, is that it's not the local food movement ripping her off, it's herself and her painfully narrow view of what local food means. sure it's nice to shop at a market: you can tour around, compare prices, see all the pretty displays, feel good about yourself. but the truth is, markets make tons of money for farmers because people expect to pay more there; and people pay more at markets because they're buying an experience and an image. it's win-win, but it's not the whole picture.

basically, it all boils down to three little letters: CSA. depending on who you ask, they can stand for "community shared agriculture" or "community supported agriculture" but either way they tidily sum up everything I've just said and totally waste Wente and her bullshit.

the concept is as follows: at the beginning of the year, or in a couple of installments, you buy all your veggies for the whole season directly from the farmer of your choice. then, from June til October, you get a weekly haul of whatever's in season. at most places, it works out to be about twenty bucks a week for more veggies than most people know what to do with. some CSA programs include more than veggies, and a lot of CSA farms offer locally-sourced extras like eggs or meat or flour as add-ons. you eat what's in season, and if you really have to you can go to the market or the grocery store to round things out.

our members have been getting their shares for  exactly a month now. over the past four weeks, we've fed seventy something households and two Toronto restaurants: mixed salad greens; several varieties of head lettuce including Romaine, iceberg, and buttercrunch; snow peas, snap peas, and shelling peas; two kinds of radish; three colors of beets and their delicious greens; rainbow chard and black, red, and green curly kale; arugula; beautiful buttery potatoes; five kinds of cabbage; scallions, leeks, fresh garlic, and garlic scapes to cook with; broccoli; a full range of herbs for cooking and drying, from dill and cilantro and parsley to thyme, sage, oregano, sweet marjoram and Russian tarragon; early spring perennials like asparagus and rhubarb; and starting this week, the sweetest zucchini you'll ever taste. over the next week or two we'll start seeing green, yellow, and purple stringbeans, cucumbers, onions - and it's only the first week of July. by the end of the month we'll be into tomatoes, early squash varieties, more potatoes, carrots... and by the final delivery, just after Thanksgiving, our members will need a second person to haul home their bags full of hearty fall vegetables.

it's time to stop looking at food as items on a restaurant menu, ingredients in a recipe. there is a time and season for everything. learn to cook it all, treasure it while it's here, and look forward to it when it's gone. treat yourself to an imported whatever if you want; lord knows I keep myself in tomatoes all year round. but, Wente, do not write down to me from a national newspaper about this shit because when it comes to making food, you and your little back yard of tomatoes know jack shit.