Eating Locally and Seasonally, Which Infrastructure of the Farm While He Continued to Impacts the Health of People and the Environment, Work at the UW
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Eatng Localy and Seasonaly A Communit Food Book For Lopez Island (and Al Tose Who Want t Eat Wel) Elizabet Simpson & Henning Sehmsdorf — Transiton Lopez Island Copyright by S&S Homestead Press 2021 Printed by Applied Digital Imaging Inc, Bellingham, WA ISBN 978-0-578-84887-7 Cover: Watercolor by Kelley Palmer-McCarty, 2009. All drawings in the book are by this artist. Photographs by Henning Sehmsdorf. Contnts: Preface 1 Why Eat Localy and Seasonaly 5 Seasonal Calendar 15 Recipe List 21 Vegetables 27 Herbs 75 Wildcraftng 91 Tree Fruits and Berries 99 Dairy 113 Egs 123 Poulty 127 Seafood 131 Meat 137 Bread and Grains 149 Keeping te Harvest 161 Local Resources 175 Recommended Reading 179 Preface Hood River Valley, Oregon, is bounded by the dusters” — spray planes that dipped into the valley, Columbia River to the north (with a splendid view dropping pesticides from their bellies onto of Mt. Adams in Washington), Mt. Hood to the orchards, and people, and into soil and water, south, the Cascade Range to the west, and dry before swooping out again. foothills to the east that are a geographic border to Eastern Oregon. It is a charming valley, filled with People were ignorant of the health effects of toxins fruits that grow easily in that part of the Northwest, then; Elizabeth and her brother used to pick an such as apples, pears, cherries, peaches, plums, apple, wipe the white residue on their sleeves, and grapes, and strawberries. eat. Elizabeth was born and grew up in that valley, Cooking in America from the 1950s through the where her parents owned a small farm with a 1970s was marked by the rise of “convenience Concord grape arbor, Bartlett and Anjou pear trees, foods” — boxed, canned, processed — that were Striped and Red Delicious apple trees, peach trees, supposed to ease the burden of the housewife. So plum trees, and two Bing cherry trees, 60 feet tall. Elizabeth was fed not only homemade foods from Elizabeth’s brother Bill used to climb to the tops of garden and orchard, raw milk from a neighbor’s those trees and saw off branches to drop down to cow, and fresh eggs from the farm, but also from her to harvest. What wealth! pudding and cake mixes and cans of soup and spaghetti. She calls her childhood eating experience Her parents planted strawberries and, during the “half homegrown, half Betty Crocker.” season, would harvest twelve flats early in the morning which they delivered to the Apple Elizabeth received her bachelor’s and master’s Blossom Cafe in the town of Hood River. The degrees from the University of Oregon and her garden they planted produced fresh vegetables, PhD from the University of Washington, where she fresh and canning tomatoes, and raspberries. and Henning met. They taught at the University, Blackberries and Oregon grape were abundant in and on weekends, vacations and during summers, the nearby woods. they grew food on the farm Henning had developed on Lopez Island. In 1994 they made the Canning tomatoes and fresh fruits, making jam, switch to full-time farming. Both left their teaching jelly, and juice, were summer projects. By winter, jobs at the University, and Elizabeth took a job shelves in the cellar were filled with canned foods teaching English, Spanish, and sustainable farming that would see the family through the winter. There at the local high school. were Bantam chickens that provided meat, eggs, and broth. Elizabeth’s parents purchased beef from Henning’s childhood experience was both similar a neighbor. and different. His lifelong dream to be a farmer began with growing up in a large family in And yet…there were poisons in Paradise. In the economically distressed post-war Germany. He and 1940s, 50s, and 60s, orchardists sprayed their trees his siblings survived by growing vegetables and fruit with Paris green, an arsenic-laced pigment that had in a sizable home garden and by gleaning been previously marketed as paint, and with copper surrounding fields in exchange for food. Later in solutions, lead arsenate, lime sulfur, and DDT. Since high school, he participated in “harvest vacations,” then, the number of pesticides, herbicides and where groups of schoolchildren worked the fields fungicides has risen. None of the news for human, and the farmer delivered produce to the school water, or environmental health is good. kitchen in return. At age nineteen he came to America to work his way through school, eventually During Elizabeth’s childhood, people in the valley earning a PhD at the University of Chicago. His saw speed sprayers spew white dust between rows first job, at a meat processing plant in Indiana, of fruit trees. Even more exciting were the “crop taught him, as he puts it, “everything I didn’t want 1 1 to know about how animals were treated in a wrote, and met in weekly discussion groups. Some massive slaughter facility and how poor the quality went on to run their own farms; others went into of the food was that came out of such factories.” environmental studies, social service, or ecological When he got his first teaching position, at the sciences. All of them, we hope, continue to eat University of Washington, a trip to Lopez Island locally and seasonally. brought him back to his dream of farming. Starting with 10 acres in 1970, Henning began to build the The practice of eating locally and seasonally, which infrastructure of the farm while he continued to impacts the health of people and the environment, work at the UW. In 1994, when their youngest child is one that Henning and Elizabeth embrace and was 18 and ready to stand on his own feet, Henning wish to pass on to others. That practice is reflected became a full-time farmer. He joined Washington in this book. We deeply believe that everyone State University as an adjunct professor at the should be able to eat healthy foods produced on Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural local farms; that our environment will be Resources in 1999. Over the years he served on strengthened by sound agricultural practices that do numerous boards and committees related to not change the climate for the worse; that people sustainable agriculture, farming, land stewardship, should be aware of how the food they put in and education. From the start, he and Elizabeth their bodies is raised; and, especially, that young planned to transition the farm to community people should learn how to produce food and how ownership. Since 2012, Henning has been a Mentor to live sustainably. Farmer under the apprenticeship program offered by the Biodynamic Farming Association. All the recipes in this book are sized for a family, and all are ones we prepare at home. We have Until the early 1990s, all the food the farm provided sourced them over many years: some we created was grown in an orchard, and Henning had built a ourselves, some came from our families, some from shelter in the woods for the family and a storage friends and neighbors, some from cookbooks of shed nearby. Now the farm boasts a family home, many backgrounds, some from online. All of the two orchards, three gardens, four large pastures, a recipes we adapted to what we grow on the farm chicken house and run, a barn, a pole barn used as a and how we prepare foods. In this sense, the food milking parlor, a processing kitchen, a greenhouse, book represents terroir: it reflects the soil and two hoop houses, a wood shop, a 750,000 gallon climate of Lopez Island. When asked how to plan pond that supplies water for the gardens and the meals, we say, “Look in the garden; look on the animals, and solar installations on the roofs of the shelves; look in the freezer. Make a meal plan for barn, the wood shop, and the pump house by the the week, and purchase only what you can’t pond. Beef and dairy cows, sheep, pigs, chickens produce.” and turkeys provide food for the family and fertility for the gardens and pastures. Farm surplus is sold Eating locally and seasonally does not mean being to the community through a CSA, local stores, and deprived of coffee, olive oil and lemons, or doing direct sales. without staples such as rice and flour. It does mean that in the non-growing season strawberries can be The farm has been a teaching site for all the years taken out of the freezer, tomatoes pulled off the Henning and Elizabeth have lived here full time: shelf, or bread baked with grain from nearby farms. annual workshops, farm classes for local high school and middle school students, and interns Visitors to the farm often shake their heads and say, (staying for 3-12 months) and apprentices (staying “I could never do this!” We remind them that our for two years). Here they learned how to garden, farm was fifty years in the making, and we harvest, process and cook the food, milk the cow, developed it at a reasonable pace. Everyone can produce a variety of dairy products from her milk, start with a garden, such as containers on a deck, and bake bread from grain grown on the farm. and grow from there. Everyone can procure food They learned animal husbandry, pasture from local producers, and thereby eat well, support management, water cycling, and sound business their neighbors, and sustain the environment. practices by selling produce at the Farmers Market and through the CSA. They learned how to think How to use this book: As farmers and gardeners, biodynamically, and to husband and care for we recommend that you start by reading the first resources, machines, and tools.