CULTIVATION AND MARRIAGE.

Communication is my strong suit only on opposite day. I know that. I know that I can be short sometimes, or just generally bad about communicating something that I'd like to say. This comes from having learned my work ethic in kitchens where mitigation is simply not efficient enough. As Dan Barber describes it in his book, The Third Plate, "[Kitchen] dialogue is curt. It skewers subtlety to get to the point... And it works. But out of the kitchen it is often difficult to regulate." And as you might imagine, this doesn't always translate well into a marriage.But communication is so incredibly important. It is awe-inspiring the havoc poor communication, or no communication can wreak on a relationship. So Hannah and I, despite how hard it is sometimes, try to talk about the things we need to talk about, even when we don't want to.Because indeed, even when it's something small, it's never easy. Especially not for me and my poor, if not downright bumbling, communication skills. But a relationship––to embrace a cliché––is very much like a garden, and the little things that don't get communicated well or go unresolved are the weeds of that garden. If you let the weeds go, the weeds take over, grow up tall, block out sunlight, drain nutrients, senesce and drop millions of other seeds you will have to deal with later on if you want to keep growing in that garden. And no garden is free of weeds. They blow in on wind, they come in on boots, and like little Johnny Appleseeds of Nature, critters like to spread them liberally. Weeds are just going to happen, even in a relationship as solid as ours.So in a garden, you would cultivate. You would preemptively nip the weeds in the bud by running a hoe through the soil after every rain. What is the relationship version of cultivation? That's a little harder to nail down. Talking often is part of it. Keeping an eye out for the moments when you can tell the other is upset by something you've done, or something you're doing. Recognizing when you're being a dummy and apologizing is important, though showing you're sorry is better cultivation technique than saying it. But––be it in a garden or relationship––it's very proactive and never-ending work. If you're going to start a garden, you're going to have weeds. Cultivation has to become part of the routine. Cultivation has to be something you do regularly, after every rain. It takes discipline. But if we've learned anything in our years farming together, it's that cultivating a garden is a heck of lot easier than weeding one.- Jesse.photo by URBAN EXODUS

BABY STEPS.

The other day I caught Further in a curious routine. He would pull himself up against our closet door, then stare longingly at the bookshelf a couple feet away. Next he would sit back down, crawl over to the bookshelf, stand up and stare back at the closet door. Then he would repeat this action––back and forth, bouncing off the walls in slow motion.But I could see it in Further's eyes, and in his posture, what he was trying to do. I could see how much he just wanted to walk from the bookshelf to the closet, closet to bookshelf, and do away with all this crawling business.We are, I suspect, only a couple days or weeks away from a first step. Maybe even hours. I am excited for Further to be able to experience the efficiency of walking. And I am terrified as a father of the new level of bonk-potential he will achieve by doing so. It's a bit like it was when I was skateboarding. The better I got, and the more tricks I learned, the more dangerous skateboarding became. It wasn't so bad when I was scooting around on my butt. It was when I was trying to kick-flip down stairs that it became real. To me, walking is Further's newest, more dangerous trick.But skateboarding also became more fun. The better I got at skating the more the world opened up to me. And I am excited for my son to experience that for himself––the freedom that better mobility allows. I think a lot about how many times I'm going to have to let my son go off into the world, learn things, get banged up and experience life. One day he's going to walk. One day he's going to shoot a gun. One day he's going to drive. One day, I fear, he's going to want a skateboard. And I will advise him––teach him where I can––but ultimately I have to let him go. I have to, I suppose––both metaphorically, and probably legally––let him walk.That being said, I think of what my friend Pavel reminded me recently about children aging, that it happens gradually. Because I need my slow motion "bouncing off the walls" to ready me for the real thing––the real wall bounces, the real kick-flips, the real growing up. I need my baby steps, too.- Jesse.

THE FARMER AND CHEF SERIES: COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS.

 We don't, and can't really, grow everything chefs may want. Even if we did, we may not grow as much as they need. Though its true for most any produce, as we'll get to presently, this is especially true as it pertains to foraged items. I've said it many times before, but I can sell all the chanterelles I can find. Unfortunately, I can only find so many on my own. I need to employ other farmers to be on the lookout for them. Not for any discount to me. Not for any finders fee. But for reasons far more rewarding, and far less tangible.With our friends Sugar Camp Farm and Pond Creek Gardens, we began doing this "collaborative order fulfillment"––or COF as none of us called it––to a small extent this year, and I think we all benefited. Lizzie from Sugar Camp said she had a chef looking for sassafras root, but didn't have any more herself to sell. So she called us and we were able to fulfill the order. Or in another case, I needed more lambs quarters for an order so I tapped Christian, who helped me flesh it out. This sort of collaborative foraging, which could work just as well for general farming, holds a lot of potential for working with chefs. Farmers have their own relationships to individual restaurants, retailers, or what have you, that all have specific produce needs. Fulfilling those needs, I believe, behooves us all.Because, for starters, isn't finding a market part of the challenge in wanting to grow new and different things? It's hard enough to want to grow or raise something interesting without knowing how it will perform. Add to that not knowing if you can sell it and suddenly, what's the incentive? Perhaps having other farmers in your corner, who have their own relationships with their own chefs, could be a great way to move items you may not normally be able to throw at your CSA or market customers. Maybe those farmers know you grow ginger, and a chef mentions they're looking for it. For lack of a better sound effect––blamo.There are also definitely areas where chefs lack for enough of something––larger crops like onions and garlic, for instance. Maybe fingerling potatoes. Maybe sweet potatoes. But even greens or tomatoes. Ask the chefs. Or if you're a chef, tell the farmer. They may only be able to supply half of what you need, but chances are they know someone else who could supply the other half.So why would it "behoove us all" to involve other farmers in my dealings with my chef? Relationships. This is a business of relationships. If you are satisfying that chef's produce needs, while bringing more business to other farmers, that chef and those farmers will begin to think of you first when they need something. In a recent, and poignant, episode of Chris Blanchard's excellent podcast, Farmer to Farmer , guest Steve Tomlinson, from Great Road Farm pointed out that "[Chefs] kind of want to order from one place or two places, and not have a whole entire list." And I've started to see this, too. If chefs can count on you to do a percentage of their sourcing, that saves them time and helps build that relationship. Sure, it may be a bit more work on your end, but you also may get a call one day from a farmer you helped who has an order for beans, or squash, or carrots, or sassafras––locally pronounced, "sass-fris"––root. That's paying it forward. And that's a sale you didn't have to work for.Perhaps finding a way to make the execution of this easier on the farmers and chefs in your area to see what's available and what needs to be fulfilled would be taking this a step further. Tomlinson in his interview recommended the app Slack. A website could be probably be set up for your area. Instagram also has a message option where groups of people can talk and share photos. Group emails? Facebook? Texting? I say see what works for your chefs and farmer friends and take the winter to set it in motion.- Jesse.

EASY HOMEMADE ACORN FLOUR.

Acorn flour is one of the most nutritious (and delicious) of forgeable foods out there––high protein, high mineral content. It is admittedly a fair amount of work, depending on your help and your equipment, but think of it this way: you didn't have to weed, cultivate or plant anything to get them. You are literally just harvesting and processing. So in terms of work, it is probably equally time intensive, or perhaps less time intensive, than your average cultivated grain.HARVESTING ACORNS Acorns are the seeds of oak trees. They can be found in parks, rest areas, cities and farms––by the boatload in masting years. Depending on region and tree species, acorns come in many different shapes and sizes. For us, we have several large white oak trees around that often give fat, healthy acorns. They start to drop sometime in the October, though I recommend waiting until after the first frost to harvest, because the first acorns that drop are often the less viable nuts. To make it easy, harvest acorns without holes in the side. The holes are from a tiny grub that eats, and ruins, the acorn. Once you have harvested all you would like, do a float test to check the rest of your acorns by pouring water over the group, and removing the floating nuts. Then stir and repeat. You will still find bad ones, but markedly less than without the float test.DRYINGSpread the acorns out on a baking sheet (or ten), then place them somewhere warm and well-ventilated to dry. We dry our either above our stove or in the greenhouse. Leave them for at least two to four weeks depending on heat and air flow.SHELLINGI hesitate to recommend our first shelling method, but you can find what works for you. Or maybe you have a method you'd like to recommend. Some people run it over with their cars, but without cement that wouldn't work for us as our driveway is dirt (or mud). Before we got a nutcracker through the KSU small farmers' grant, we cracked each acorn individually with a garlic press. This goes surprisingly quick, though it's a lot of work when dealing with five gallons of nuts. After we have cracked them all, we go back through and remove the nut. I enjoy this part of the process as it's another chance to remove bad nuts. It will take a couple days per bucket of acorns this way, but, you know, it's winter so what else do we have going on?LEACHINGLeaching is the process by which you use water to remove a mineral, nutrient or chemical. In the acorn's case, it's tannins you want to remove. Acorns are practically inedible before leaching, like eating underripe persimmons (voice of experience here). And there are many different ways to do it. I'll give you the two we know. First, there is the creek method––the lazy method. Stuff all the nuts into a permeable sack (pillow cases work), tie it to a tree in a clean creek or spring and let it sit there submerged for a month, checking on it regularly for holes. There is also cold-leaching which is essentially letting the nuts (or ground flour, which we do after leaching, but some do before) soak in cold water that is changed every few days, or percolated if you're fancy. Taste the nuts periodically to test for tannins––when you can tolerate it, you're good to go. As for hot leaching, I hear it's fast, but like most fast things in food, sacrifices flavor and texture so we don't bother. You can also neutralize the tannins with lime or lye, but we don't have any experience with that. If you do, please feel free to share!WASHING THEN DRYING AGAINAfter leaching we remove the acorns and, if done in a creek, wash them. While washing them we try to remove as much skin as possible, as the skin tends to maintain some of the tannin. Don't go nuts here––pun not necessarily intended. As far as I can tell, a little skin doesn't seem to make a big difference, plus it adds a little darkness to the color. You do still want to wash off any silt or dirt that has collected on your acorns, though, if you used the creek method. Dirt definitely makes a flavor, and textural, difference. Next, spread them out and, for creek leaching, dry them again for a week or so. This will help kill any bacteria, and also, make them easier to grind.GRINDING INTO FLOURPeople may use the leached acorns whole but typically they are ground for flour. Which means the job's not done yet. We didn't have a nice grinder when we first started doing acorns, but we are proof you don't need one. We had a meat grinder, which we ran them through first to break up the large chunks, then we finished the nuts in a coffee grinder. Et voila! Acorn flour!COOKING WITH ACORN FLOURAcorn flour is not wheat flour. You can use it for grits, for certain pie crusts, and mixed in with cookies or pancakes (our personal favorite) but it will not rise like wheat. Be creative. Try thickening a soup with it. Try the "grits". It doesn't make a great gravy (it separated when we tried it), but it does make a good thickener for sauces, or a nice addition to fry batter. You can use it all at once or think of it as a flavoring––go nuts! (Pun kind of intended that time.)General Notes:Ratio: One gallon of nuts makes roughly one quart of flourHarvest time: Around ten minutes per gallonActive time: Around one hour per gallonOverall Time: 15 to 60 days, depending on equipment and leaching methods-Jesse.