The Quarter-Acre Farm Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  CHAPTER ONE - MAKING SPACE

  Green Food

  CHAPTER TWO - DOLLAR FOR DIRT

  Recipe - Beet and Chevre Sandwiches

  CHAPTER THREE - TOFU OF THE WEST

  Recipe - Grilled Zucchini

  CHAPTER FOUR - SADISM IN THE GARDEN

  Recipe - Roasted Tomato Sauce

  CHAPTER FIVE - SUGAR GROWS ON TREES

  Recipe - Candied Orange Peel Dipped in Chocolate

  CHAPTER SIX - CIRCUS HENS

  Recipe - Walnut French Toast

  CHAPTER SEVEN - FREE STUFF

  Recipe - Rough French Tart

  CHAPTER EIGHT - MUD

  Recipe - Mud Truffles

  CHAPTER NINE - THE MYSTERIOUS UNDERGROUND

  Recipe - Potatoes and Eggs

  Recipe - Alotta Frittata

  CHAPTER TEN - MAGICAL FRUIT

  Recipe - Green-Chile Chili

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - WEEDS

  Recipe - Purslane Salad

  CHAPTER TWELVE - WHEN GOOD BUGS GO BAD

  Recipe - Figs and Goat Cheese

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - POLE DANCING

  Recipe - Pasta con Zucca

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - WATER

  Recipe - Iced Tea with Lavender, Lemon Verbena, and Mint

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - WHAT WEIGHS MORE, A POUND OF DIAMONDS OR A POUND OF MUSHROOMS?

  Recipe - Mushroom Soup

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - HUNTING SMALL GAME

  Recipe - Escargot in Two Colors

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - MUMMIFICATION: THE ART OF CURING OLIVES

  Recipe - Olive Focaccia

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE HISTORY OF FOOD PRESERVATION, INCLUDING MY OWN

  Recipe - Smoothies

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - YOU CAN EAT THAT?

  Recipe - Sam’s Preserved Lemons

  CHAPTER TWENTY - A FARMER CRITIQUES THE QUARTER ACRE FARM

  Recipe - Onion Potato Puff Pastry Pie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - VICTORY IN THE GARDEN

  GARDEN NOTES

  MY GARDEN PLAN

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  INDEX

  SELECTED TITLES FROM SEAL PRESS

  Copyright Page

  FOR LOUIS

  PREFACE

  When my husband, Louis, and I were first married more than twenty years ago, we lived in a tiny student apartment in Connecticut. When the weather permitted, we hauled pots of dirt onto the concrete steps outside the back door and grew spindly beans up the pipe railings. When our sons, Jesse and Sam, were eleven and one, we bought our first house in San Diego. On the day we moved in, we planted two beds of tomatoes and basil before we even put our own beds together. Five years later we moved to Northern California and the whole family helped dig up the two dozen heirloom roses from our new yard so that I might plant fruit trees in their stead.

  Gardening was a hobby, like making furniture or pottery. I enjoyed taking something that might seem worthless, old wood and clay (or a seed), and making it into cabinets and bowls (or eventually lunch). Gardening was especially good because the plant itself did most of the work of growing into a plant and then producing food. If I didn’t forget to water it, that is.

  It was great seeing the kids standing under a tree grazing on fruit, picking cherry tomatoes for lunch, or munching snap peas—especially because I knew that in our garden they wouldn’t be ingesting chemical residues as they ate. When Sam toddled out of the garden scented by basil, I knew the worst he could have eaten was an organic caterpillar.

  I dreamed of enlarging our garden into a place that we could live off of; a place resembling something between the Big Rock Candy Mountain and Eden. I thought about it enough over the years that it began to seem possible, albeit without lemonade springs or, hopefully, snakes. Years later while researching a book I was writing on World War I, I became intrigued with victory gardens, which the American government encouraged citizens to grow fruits and vegetables in whatever space they could find (yards, roofs, vacant lots) to help supplement family diets and feed overseas troops. I dreamed about how much my own small plot might produce.

  I might have been content with mere dreaming, if not for the road trip we took in the summer of 2008. Louis and I had a conference to go to, research to do, and family to visit, which would take us on a meandering voyage from Davis to Los Angeles to Arizona, through Wyoming and North Dakota, and back home again.

  It was a bad time to travel. Fuel prices were at an all-time high and when I gassed up at the pump, I felt like I was calling down environmental ruin. Furthermore, the fuel shortage coincided with a salmonella outbreak. Over 1,400 people were sickened by food-borne illness. The authorities thought the source was tomatoes. Suddenly there wasn’t a tomato to be found on dinner salads, burgers, or as a garnish on the side of plates. BLT’s became BL’s, and summer lost its rosy culinary icon.

  Then, just as you thought you were safe if you managed to skirt tomatoes, those same authorities announced that the source might be onions instead . . . or peppers. As the investigation went on, it became ever more clear that we might never know what food caused the outbreak.

  Hence, food was constantly on our minds as we traveled. At roadside cafés we not only wondered what was on the menu but also how the vegetables had been grown, stored, and washed. And for that matter, how far the food had been shipped using our dwindling petroleum reserves.

  On our way south we drove through California’s Central Valley, passing the town of Coalinga, where the enormous Harris Ranch is located. We dubbed the town “Cow-a-linga” and steeled ourselves against the brick wall of stench we had to drive through to get to the other side of the immense feedlots there. The hellish crowding of animals was terribly sad and enough to make me swear off commercial beef. Knowing that the animals were often fed byproducts of other animals didn’t help, especially since Louis and I had been in England eating meat pies the year that mad cow disease started killing people. The idea of eating prions from the tissue of sick cattle, then having those prions eat my brain, was a little off-putting. And where I once may have thought sick cattle wouldn’t end up in my grocer’s case, I now knew better. Activists had just aired film footage of dying cattle splayed out on the floor being prodded with shock rods, jabbed with forklift tines, and shot by sprays of water until they stood up and took their last tottering steps toward our kitchen tables. Large-scale meat and egg production was not pretty.

  And still other issues with food were making headlines that year: genetically altered wheat, perchlorate in dairy products, transfats in baked goods. Hormones in our food were making some children grow breasts and body hair by the age of five; fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides laved produce we ate; and to top it all off, lead-tainted candy had been sold in stores. In short, what nourished us might also kill us.

  Sitting in the passenger’s seat of our rental car, with nothing but time to sit and think, I ruminated over these issues. It was time to do more than talk. I wanted to do what was right for the planet, my family, and me. As soon as we returned to Davis, I announced that I would start to grow most of our food in our own yard.

  As I outlined my plans, Louis and Sam caught on that I was no longer woolgathering about a few raised beds; I was seriously plotting the transformation of our yard, our eating habits, and maybe the fabric of our entire universe. Louis and Sam paid sudden and nervous attention.

  Louis said, “You’re not serious. You can’t grow your food in the yard. You’d starve.”

  As I noted the “you” rather than the “we” in Louis’s comments, Sam pointed out that he ate responsibly while at home. Certainly—by th
e age of eight Sam shopped for vegetables at the local farmers’ market. Further, he researched companies for their environmental and humanitarian records and we made many of our food purchases at the food co-op in town where the checkers wear hemp clothing and the meat department is filled with organic free-range pork, chicken, and beef. I was the one in the family who was most likely to be caught eating a machine-extruded yummy pie laced with petrochemicals and wrapped by toddlers in a Malaysian sweatshop.

  It was true that I likely had the most to atone for. (The road trip was even my idea.) However, I pointed out, we could all do more. The free-range chickens that we envisioned contentedly pecking in an open field are more likely living in a steel Quonset hut and seldom, if ever, going out into the concrete yard that constitutes their “range.” Even health food—which might have been packaged in Pawnee, Nebraska, or Des Moines, Iowa—was likely to be aggregates of ingredients from anonymous factories in China, Mexico, and other far-flung places. Less than 1 percent of food coming into the country is inspected and the cost of shipping in fossil fuels is staggering. Even the food at the farmers’ market, though local, has to be trucked into Davis from the fields.

  Sam then said that perhaps I should wait another year to start since we were already well into summer. Louis pointed out that I was a self-described slacker gardener, after all, and I might do better with my plan after a bit more practice first.

  I do hate weeding. I forget to water. My garden is a testing ground for plants able to withstand abuse. But while I seemed to have been a slacker gardener in the past, I explained that I was merely in my larval stage. The time had come to kick off my chrysalis and extend my farmer’s wings.

  When we got back to Davis I convened the family and told them what I planned to do. Starting on July 1, I pledged that 75 percent of all the food I ate (by weight) would come from our garden, hereafter known as the Quarter Acre Farm. The other 25 percent would be used as I wished on grains, dairy, meat, chocolate, or Boston cream pie. If I wanted to go out to dinner I could save up, banking the consumption of extra home produce to make up for it.

  Gleaning would be allowed. If my neighbor didn’t want the peaches on her tree, I could pick and use them. Finally, I decided that beverages would be exempt. Otherwise I knew I would not drink a glass of water, a cup of juice, or a swig of milk for the entire year. Also, I might be tempted to trade my 25 percent ration of chicken or cheddar for a good cold gin and tonic instead.

  Lastly, I would be most happy if my family would join me in this venture.

  Jesse was working as a line chef at the time, and he was gratifyingly enthusiastic about my plan. He said some of the best restaurants had their own gardens, not only because the taste of really fresh produce was amazing, but also because it was better for your health. On top of it all, growing your own food saved money as well. In sum, he thought it was a great idea. Of course, he didn’t live at home anymore, so he could afford his enthusiasm.

  Louis and Sam, on the other hand, looked crestfallen. I knew they feared being forced to take part in my experiment, to eat zucchini and chard three meals a day, day in and day out, until the moment, perhaps only weeks away, when they would simply keel over and (by that time, thankfully) die of malnutrition. They had a point. For while worries over pesticides, food-borne illness, and wasted resources were an uncomfortable sidebar to our century-long experiment with industrial global agriculture, and less of what we eat can be trusted than ever before, at least there was enough to eat. Louis and Sam wanted to remain assured of that.

  For human beings, as for any organism that relies on food to live, famine is ever on the horizon and all societies are geared toward preventing that. The specter of starvation is what helped birth industrial agriculture and is what got us into this mess to begin with. Facing the reality of exhausted soils and diminished crops in the late nineteenth century, farmers turned to chemical fertilizers and synthetic pest controls. Mechanization became the way of things, and here we are.

  “Enough” is the ultimate consideration of agriculture, and I could not expect my family to turn their back on that idea. They would come around, I was certain, once I showed them it could be done.

  It was mid June. I got out the mattock, bought seeds and starter plants, and got to work on the Quarter Acre Farm, which—I hoped in the months to come—would be providing me with 75 percent of my food. I said I would go it alone; that Louis and Sam need not experiment with me. They could buy their food from the store. For now.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MAKING SPACE

  “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are”

  —ALFRED AUSTIN

  With my limited yard space, every decision I made about what to grow on the Quarter Acre Farm loomed large. For guidance, I dug up a chart from the National Garden Bureau that ranked vegetables for their efficiency. The chart took into consideration everything from the plant’s space requirements and productivity, to the resulting vegetable’s nutritional value and store-bought price. The top-ranking vegetables were tomatoes, turnips, onions, lettuce, peas, beans, and beets. The lowest-ranked vegetables were melons, winter squash, and pumpkins.

  I also looked at other charts, ones that ranked veggies on healthiness but did not necessarily agree on which dietary aspect was the most important. Vitamins? Antioxidants? Fiber? All the charts, however, concurred on one point: fruits and vegetables saturated with the most color were also the most nutritious.

  I found this a little counterintuitive because I had spent most of my life associating the brightest colors in the grocery store with foods that were disastrously unhealthy, if rather tempting—bright pink Hostess Sno Balls, fuchsia Crunch Berries cereal, lime green Kool-Aid, and violet bubblegum, for example.

  Ultimately, I created a ranking of potential vegetables that was a complex equation of my personal tastes combined with what I had any hope of growing. Luckily, there is not much I don’t like to eat (including pink Sno Balls). Unluckily, I wasn’t really sure of what I could actually grow.

  I gamely listed tomatoes, zucchini, basil, beans, eggplant, spinach, chard, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, tomatillos, and squash and then went to the yard to figure out where in the world I was going to fit all those vegetables.

  There is a family feeling in our neighborhood, and as I wandered around my front yard, neighbors who walked by said hello and others waved from their cars as they drove off to pick up children from school or returned home from work. Even the circa-1953 ranch-style houses look enough alike to be siblings. In fact, if someone were to accidentally walk up the wrong path some evening (perhaps after a particularly discombobulating day at the office), it would be understandable if their first thought upon opening the front door was to wonder who had redecorated their front hall and put up another family’s photos, not that they were in the wrong house.

  Just as the houses are alike, so are the lots. And beyond a few tomato and eggplants, no one was growing much else in the way of vegetables. My own tomatoes and zucchini were cozied up beside the shrubbery and tucked like afterthoughts into the flowerbeds.

  To live off my yard, however, I needed more vegetables than could fit with the cozying and tucking scheme. This meant making more space, which meant making big changes.

  Looking out his office window, Louis must have spied the dirt-hungry look in my eye (and the shovel in my hand) as I scoped out the yard. With some haste, he shut down his computer and quickly met me outside. Hoping he could yet derail my plan, he made it clear that he liked the garden as it was. More, he said, people needed gardens for soul-replenishing activities like barbecues and sitting in the cool of the evening with drink in hand.

  Looking around my neighborhood, I had to admit that my view of a garden as a place to eat from was far less common than the idea of a garden as a place to eat in. Most gardens are facsimiles of rooms with walkways, furnished with trees to provide cool, shady spaces in which to relax. A garden projects longevity. The brick and stone hardscape hints
at having been there for eons, and a garden’s crowning glory is the maturity of its plants, the visible care lavished on each one.

  A farm, on the other hand, is comparatively hot and treeless. Vegetables, the most solar hungry of all plants, require eight to ten hours of sunlight each day; otherwise, fruit fails to ripen, leaves thin out, and plants become even more susceptible to pests and disease. Furthermore, farms tend to specialize in plants that are the mayflies of the botanical world; they complete their life cycle in a matter of months. As the seasons change, the plants die and are uprooted. The farm looks barren until the new seeds sprout and grow into verdancy.

  In a relatively smaller residential yard, such turnaround can be shocking. A friend coming to visit just after I had pulled my frost-blighted tomatoes from their beds was horrified. “What happened to your garden?” she said, perhaps imagining garden-hating juvenile delinquents razing my greenery. I had to wonder, if this were her reaction, what would the neighbors think about my farming plans?

  Farms, of course, have few people per acre, which means fewer people to mind if your yard brings down property values. In some part, that’s why residential gardens have a history of restrictions.

  The first neighborhood covenants, grimly racist, were put into place in the early 1900s, purportedly to increase real estate values by barring sales or rentals of homes to nonwhites. Today, in my town of Davis, the covenants prohibit things as varied as the color you may paint your house to the types of vehicles you can park on the street. I searched through the city ordinances and found a clause stating that “landscaping shall be provided to enhance the residential character of the zone . . . to include the preservation of all trees and landscaping including lawns where appropriate to maintain residential character.”