So having a baby around is making me realize I need to pare down my goat herd. Namely I need to find a new home for Ginger. Let me know if you’re interested in buying her–$100–she’d make a great grazer or pet. She’s two years old and had twins last year. She’s not a great milker but is beautiful. Email me with questions and to see photos. Serious inquiries only, from people with goat experience only.

Like everything on my farmlette, the tree is not pristine, it needs to be pruned way back, and a swarm of Argentinian ants have made it their favorite place to farm an insect called scale, so the branches are coated with hard-bodied parasites which suck from the lifeblood of the tree. Somehow, the tree keeps alive, and thriving. I must have harvested 50 pounds of fruit so far and it’s still flush with fruit.

Thanks to the power and stamina of this tree, it’s become a tradition for me to send the fruit to friends and family for the holidaze. This year some of the limes will be more special than others, because I ran across a new magazine called Lucky Peach. It’s a brainy food magazine with hipster appeal. The writing is hilarious and they often have fun things like this quarter’s Fruit Stickers.

The sticker on the lime reads, “The Fruit That Likes the Knife”.

The pomegranate, picked by moi, is headed to my mom. The sticker, if you can’t read it says, “Hand-picked by Poor People.” Other favorites include, “Actually Pretty Tasty” and “This Plum Is Not Gluten Free” (that one’ll have to wait til next summer.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is, thanks Lime Tree! Thanks Lucky Peach. Happy Holidaze to you all.

Lime Sherbet
It’s not sorbet, cuz it has milk. This is good to bring to follow a Hannakah brisket, Xmas Goose, or Solstice Nutria
(obviously, triple this)
1 1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 water
1 cup sugar
Rind finely sawed up from 1 lime
1 cup milk
1 TB vodka
Blend the lime juice, water and sugar together. Throw in the lime rind and vodka. Chill to 38 degrees. Mix chilled lime solution with milk and pour into your ice cream maker. You don’t have an ice cream maker? You’re screwed. No, no, you might be able to put it in the freezer and stir every few minutes and it might be ok. But I’ve never tried that. This is not a food blog.

Though I have always rolled my eyes at the term, I’m trying to be more mindful. Yep, I’m getting old and trying to get wise. But not by meditating on a mountain–I’m hoping to learn mindfulness while cooking, standing in front of the stove. I count myself lucky that I’m guided by the words of Tamar Adler, who has written a great book called An Everlasting Meal. Her message is how to make something last, how to carry meals over to the next meal, how to not waste when cooking. I love her writing style–careful, full, beautiful–which is so unlike my messy way. Take this passage about shopping: “And always (buy) a few bunches of dark, leafy greens. This will seem very pious. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though: hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil, they lose their moral urgency, and become one of the most likable ingredients in your kitchen.”

Adler is a professional cook with so much to teach the home chef, reading the book is like having a cooking teacher whispering suggestions in your ear. Things like how to roast vegetables, poetic methods for thinking about how to cook beans (“As they cook, beans should look like they’re bathing”), and recipes for using olives, anchovies, and capers–her favorite ingredients, and it turns out mine too. She is a fellow scrounger, who uses every scrap of animal or vegetable to make stock. There’s even an appendix that details how to salvage botched ingredients. Mindfulness, I’m discovering through this terrific book, can be delicious.

I’m looking forward to using some of her recipes tomorrow when I cook for Thanksgiving. To everyone: enjoy the day, the food, the company, the bounty–happy Thanksgiving!

Please join us for the benefit dinner and release party of First Person #5: Radical Foods!

Thursday, November 10th
7:00 pm
Church of Saint John the Evangelist
1661 15th Street, San Francisco

Legendary filmmaker Les Blank will be screening his 1980 film Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers.

I’m totally going. I’ve never seen that movie, which I hear is great, and the menu sounds really awesome, involving artichokes, sardines, Tartine bread, chicory salad, mashed up potato/sunchokes, and other vegetal delights. If you want to go to the event, buy tickets here; a bargain at $40.

The only problem is garlic has so disgusted me during my pregnancy that I banned the allium from our kitchen and “forgot” to order bulbs when I made my fall seed order. Maybe the baby is a vampire. Now, here it is, garlic planting season, and I found myself with no bulbs to plant (9 months from now, odds are I will be back on the garlic train).

Lucky for me, my dear friend Leilani had a stash in her bedroom. I went over to her house last night to eat dinner and see the Halloween Trick or Treaters in her neighborhood. Instead of candy, she gave me garlic. This garlic is pretty special, too: her dad is an agronomist in Oregon, and he has made some special crosses to make entire new breeds. One of them, which Leilani calls the Fire Twin, comes as a bulb with only two cloves. But the cloves are large, the size of a shallot. And they are incredibly spicy hot. Saving garlic from the Fire Twin will be a little frustrating–one for me, one for next year’s crop–but if it tastes good, it might be worth it. The other ones I selected are pink, purple, and big bulbed white. I’ll do a taste test next summer, with details about the crosses.

Hope to see you at the movie!

Buy tickets here.

It’s also my way of kicking off the Community Food Security Collation’s 15th annual conference which is being held in…Oakland! If you want to attend the conference, go here. It’s running November 5-8, but you can sign up for individual days. Please, conference attendees, feel free to come by the farm and hang out. I’ll build a fire in the cob oven and we can circle the wagons. But don’t expect a rager: I go to bed early these days, what with the growing baby and all…

Rain cancels!
When: November 4, 4pm-dark
Where: GT Farm, SW corner of 28th and MLK Way
What: Dino kale, salad greens, braising mix, last of the tomatoes, herbs, GT tshirts–all for sale
What else: Duck viewing

Hope to see you there, this will probably be the last one of the year….

It was August 1, and Bebe started acting kind funny one night. My friend Trista was staying at our house, and I told her to brace herself–she had come just in time to see a goat give birth. By midnight, Bebe had bedded down on some fresh straw and the birth blanket I keep around for such occasions. Nothing. I woke up at 3am and on a hunch ran down to the goat area. Bebe had already squeezed out a tiny–tiny!–little brown and black goatling who was in a heap, not moving. I’ve never had a dead goat baby on the farm so I was extremely upset. Especially because I’m pregnant myself and often have superstitious thoughts. Bebe didn’t seem to even see it, she was just delivering her second–a big healthy white doeling with red splotches. I grabbed a towel and wiped off the little guy’s face (I checked, he was a boy). Once he got warm from the blanket, he started moving around and making pitiful bleating noises. I tried to get him to suckle on Bebe’s teat, where the little girl had already latched on and was thriving. He couldn’t even stand. Bebe didn’t even acknowledge him–he was a dead kid to her.
I carried him upstairs. “Trista,” I knocked on her door. “Want to see a baby goat?” I brought him into her room. “Don’t get attached,” I said. “He’s not going to make it.” I felt a pang in my belly where my own growing child was gestating.
We looked at him–he was really cute with speckled ears. He got very quiet.
“Can’t you save him?” Trista asked.
“Probably not, plus he’s a boy–worthless in the dairy business.”
Then I carried him into the kitchen and did everything I could to save his ass.
Trista had drank a bottle of one of those Smirnoff Ice things, so I washed it out and filled it with colostrum powder mixed with warm water. I slapped a nipple for bottle feeding onto the Smirnoff bottle and offered it to the little guy. I figured he was too weak to suck. But he took to it. He gulped it down. I could feel his energy bounding back. He was alive.
I took him down to Bebe and his sister. I gave Bebe a snack of warm beet pulp and molasses water. She and her daughter were bonding, Bebe made little nickering sounds at her and licked her butt while she nursed. She would not do the same for him. I stayed down there, in the goat birthing cave swearing at Bebe, latching him on until he could get the real stuff. He couldn’t stand on his own and kept collapsing. After an hour of sneaking him onto Bebe’s teat, he finally could stand. I went back to bed thinking he was 50/50.
After a few hours of sleep I went down to check on everyone. Bebe and Gretel were snuggled up together, Lazarus was in another corner. One of his eyes looked glazed, like it had gone blind. I carried him around, warmed him up, stuck him back on Bebe.
Called my friend Kitty who also keeps goats in Oakland. I felt terrible. I’ve never had something bad like this happen with birth before. I didn’t have any medication to give him. Kitty did and rushed it over–anti-biotics for his eye and nutra-drench and a pro-biotic to give to weak kids. I was so grateful for the help and advice. I also gave him a dose of selenium just in case. After a few days Laz started to thrive. Bebe finally recognized him as her own and let him nurse without my intervention.
Now almost two months old, Lazarus is still small but he’s healthy and adorable–kind of like a pocket goat. A friend is going to take him and raise him with his other goats. Viva Laz! And thanks Kitty!

Had such a nice summer off, but since it’s September 1, I figured I should decide: to blog or not to blog?

After a lot of discussion with friends and advisers, and bathtub sessions where I weighed the evil internet on one hand and the brilliance of connectivity on the other, I’ve decided to return. I think I’ll stop mentioning illegal things that I’ve been up to (so many) what with the man watching and all. So expect a bit tamer blog, ok?

I’ll catch up on what’s been going on at the farm this summer, slowly trickling it out over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I wanted to give a heads up for a couple of things:
-Classes have resumed at the Biofuel Oasis, my place of work. Because I wanted a break, I’m not teaching any classes, but we’ve replaced me with some all-stars (and probably better teachers than me) like Alexis from Soul Food Farms teaching a chicken class, Esperanza teaching rabbits, and Kitty teaching goats. Sign up now at the Biofuel Oasis website.

-My new book is coming out December 27 (hmm, right around the baby coming)! Willow Rosenthal and I have been slaving on this giant how-to book for the past three years or something. It’s called The Essential Urban Farmer. It’s got everything a budding or experienced urban farmer might want to know about growing veggies and fruit, securing land, and raising livestock in the city.

-Farm Stand Open in October…Maybe. We’ll see. But I’m hoping to finally get my use permit and get back to the once a month farm stand featuring greens and honey, carrots and apples. I’m also excited that my dear dear friend L is back in town after a long hiatus in dusty Texas, and we are scheming to sell cut flowers as well as all the glorious veg.

Finally, big news. Are you sitting down? I’m pregnant! Yup, that’s what happens when I take a break. Baby is due on Christmas. Billy and I are so excited. Human livestock. Wait, is that illegal?

That’s it for now, more soon–I gotta re-enter slowly….

Sorry I’ve been gone so long from the blog. To be honest, the blog isn’t a fun thing for me anymore. Not only do I know that the City of Oakland employees regularly read it, there are the haters so I get upset even reading the comments. For these reasons, I think I’ll retire the blog or just post events once I get my CUP. Just to clarify for the last time: I didn’t get busted for having a business, I got in trouble for growing food and raising livestock in a commercially zoned lot. By the rules now, you can grow and keep livestock at your place of residence, but you can’t keep livestock on a lot without a house on it. That’s why I applied for a CUP. Oakland changed the rules so you can grow vegetables legally on a lot now (when I got in trouble it was illegal).

But that’s not why I’m writing (and that’s why I loathe keeping this blog now–having to constantly defend myself; I’m a lover, not a fighter). I’m writing to say something good has come out of this whole thing with the City.

I figured out that I really shouldn’t grow vegetables during the summer.

Because I’ll had to wait for my CUP for a couple months, I didn’t plant any summer crops save for a few tomatoes, beans, and carrots. Bill looked outside and said, “there’s not much growing out there,” and I said, “I need a break.” I realized that I’m exhausted. Plus, the water bill is huge in the summer. Then I suddenly realized the logic: we can grow year-round here in the Bay Area, which is great, but then you don’t ever get a break. How jealous I am of those East Coasters who get to sit on their asses all winter long and read seed catalogs. So here’s the new plan: Summers Off! I’ll get to travel and take camping trips. I’ll just keep the trees alive by periodic deep watering, and cover crop the rest of the beds. But what about the tomatoes? The summer cucumbers? I will gladly support my local farmers at the farmer’s market. I love it when a plan comes together.

Have a great summer, see you in the fall. For those of you hoping to visit, sorry, no tours until I get my CUP.

Frankly, I was just relieved to stop filling out paperwork. Thanks so much to my lawyer, Janelle Orsi who made everything make sense.

Today I was out watering the garden and I actually felt really angry again, not just exhausted, as I have been for the past few weeks. I have a lot more to add, but I think I’m going to keep very very quiet until the process is over and I have my CUP in hand. Look for a call to action around July 4, eh?

Thanks to my new friend Maurice, I got my bees back.

Amidst the tribulations I’ve been having this year–the city crack down on me being the most obvious–I lost my bee hive. I noticed fewer and fewer bees going in and out, and then I had to admit it: they were gone. I did a CSI-type investigation, and it looked like the queen was laying too many drones, or had died. Almost formed queen cells were all over the hive. Trouble was, it probably got too cold for them to hatch out a new queen and have her fly out for her nuptials. There was honey in the hive, but not much. There was also mold–such a wet year!

Sad, it had been a great hive for three solid years, providing better pollination and tons of delish honey, but the least of my worries.

Still, when Maurice called and said he had a huge swarm from one of his beehives, I was psyched to come over and collect it. What was funny was, I could barely remember how to catch a swarm. It had been too many years. How did I hold the bottom box together with the bottom board? Luckily, M is a pro, and we extracted the swarm out of the chain link fence/branch combo. A big, basketball size swarm. M wrapped the box up with his surfboard strap for easy carrying. I got to put them in a better place–further to the south, so I can have more space for my urban farmer’s market (when will that happen again? next year?).

They seem to be adjusting nicely to the new surroundings. As soon as the rains stop, I’ll go in and add another super. I pulled out all my old dead hive’s frames to air them out on a table. I noticed the new bees buzzed over to the frames and started collecting all the old honey and wax to build the new hive. It’s nature’s way of recycling. I’m just glad to help.

Sort of related, I’ll be reading in Seattle, where I first started beekeeping! April 28! It’s a fundraiser for AlleyCat Acres, a Seattle-based urban farming organization. Here are the details…
.
Where: Washington Hall, 153 – 14th Avenue (at Fir), Seattle, WA

When: April 28, 7pm-10pm

TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW AT BROWN PAPER TICKETS:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/165834

Also, I’ll be at the following places next week doing my dog and pony show:

April 26: UC Berkeley, 12:30, 390 Hearst Mining

April 27: Laney Community College, Noon, 4th floor, T-450.

See ya around….