Forks in the Dirt

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Dig garden

Three Easy-Peasy Vegetable Plants to Grow

May 12, 2017 / / 0 Comments

It’s that time of year again/finally… Planting Time! I dream of it all winter, impatiently waiting for snow to melt and then bam, it sneaks up on me.

No matter where you are on the gardening continuum, there is always more to learn about the basics. And there is a way for you to grow some of your own food this summer. One potted tomato plant can bring pollinators, joy and flavor to your home. Let’s get started, shall we.

Cold crops, like radish, spinach and cabbage were seeded in weeks ago, but this weekend (OK, officially Monday May 15th) is when us Minnesota Zone 3b/4a gardeners get the green light for planting out our plots with the seeds and seedlings too touchy to handle frost. And Mother’s Day Lines up perfectly with this timing 🙂

Small garden space? You’d never believe how much food can come from a 4X4 foot space until you try!

No garden space? Many vegetables can be grown in pots too!

Here are the 3 most fool-proof plants, with their fabulously funky variations, to get you started eating from your yard, deck, patio or hanging basket all summer long. And the best news, these easy to grow vegetables are still some of my favorites!

Tomatoes

From sweet little cherry poppers to beefsteak whoppers there is a tomato for your every food mood. These fruits are always a garden favorite and for good reason; there’s something deeply satisfying about picking a sun warmed ripe tomato and popping it into your mouth. Home grown tomatoes are so much tastier than their store bought styrofoam copies that it is like eating a different veggie.

To be fair, I just found some Bushel Boy locally grown tomatoes (Southern MN) that were many steps closer to a real tomato.  Go local greenhouses! I agree with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, Inc. in his belief that the best use of petroleum products is polyethylene reinforced plastic to cover and make greenhouses to extend the growing season.

Back to the varieties. An online search for tomato seeds at my favorite go to seed company, Jung Seed,  came up with 71 seed varieties. I love how Mother Nature diversifies.

There are varieties best for eating, slicing, canning or salsa. Then there are the colors. With names like Chocolate sprinkles, Lemon Boy and Midnight Snack you can dream for days. But dream time is over people, time to get planting. And sadly, we are now too late for starting tomato seeds. So, if you’re looking to get tomatoes in and enjoy them before September, gotta go buy some plants.

But first, know your options! Continue reading

Grass Rooting for Good Food: Giving Gardens

May 8, 2017 / / 2 Comments

After seeing three different local businesses announcing a ‘Giving Garden flyer’ initiative in three days, 
I figured I better find out what all the excitement was about. If the White Bear Press, Sassafras Health Foods and Lake Country Booksellers all gave this idea space,  I knew it was worth checking out.
Chris Harms has social activism running through his veins. Reading the book ‘Confronting Suburban Poverty in America’ lit a fire that is, thankfully, still burning strong. After reading the book, an existing friendship was a safe harbor for conversations that grew a mutual drive for inspiring community cohesiveness that seeks to discover core community values.  Both he and Rolf Lowenberg-Deboer, he’s the friend who also has the green thumb, have worked in the nonprofit world for most of their careers. Working with the persistently mentally ill and homeless in the Minneapolis & St. Paul areas gave them a ‘street level’ understanding of the needs of our area. “The suburbs are different than the urban core,” says Harms, “ the same poverty is present, but is more camoflauged by societal perceptions of poverty and where it exists in suburban communities.”

And the needs of our neighbors are growing.

The Second Harvest Heartland website states,
“1 in 10 = The number of households in Minnesota affected by hunger. Hunger is an urban, suburban and rural problem.
There is no corner of the state where hunger does not exist.”

Chris was driven to make a social impact that went, “beyond politics, no matter who you voted for in the election; most everybody felt exhausted, beaten down by the campaign process.” This was a chance to empower himself and others.

Chris shared that he, “maintains the belief that people long for an experience in life and interpersonal connection that is genuine and authentic,” and he’s ready to help you dig in.

He researched other examples of giving gardens around the area, and after finding the Bemidji Community Food Shelf Farm, he was inspired to bring the garden to peoples’ homes in the form of raised garden beds. He also wanted to give people the recurring chance to physically touch and feel what they were doing to help others. He thinks it will serve as a good reminder of the issues, and a positive way to impact those issues.

Activism is for Everyone

Once the decision was made, many of the pieces for the Giving Garden dream came together naturally, from long-time friends to chance meetings. He started by garnering the support of a few local companies. Harms has gratefully received lumber commitments from Universal Forestry Products and Structural Wood Corporation, both in White Bear Lake and J.L. Schwieters Building Supply in Hugo.  “In addition to the lumber commitments, Rehbein’s Black Dirt in Hugo will be providing high quality screened topsoil at a greatly reduced cost and no delivery charges,” Harms happily added. Kind of proud of that awesome support from our local companies. He is starting with 50 raised beds this summer.

With a solid agency like the White Bear Lake Emergency Food Shelf in the community, Chris knew where to find that partner. He’s been working with Lee Bailey-Seiler, the White Bear Area Food Shelf coordinator, on learning how to weigh and log the produce grown in the giving gardens.

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Finding Treasure in Foraged Food

May 6, 2017 / / 5 Comments

Finally! Fingers crossed, we are done with the snow. After a MN winter that decided to move back in, we deserve to have our senses overwhelmed with Spring in all its glory.  At the same time, people are getting more into local food. Sounds like a recipe for an explosion in foraging for food.

In case you’re not quite there, hang with me for a minute. Ramps, mushrooms, fiddleheads (the still unfurled fern) and the elusive wild asparagus are all Spring favorites of the Minnesota forager. Berry season is another bountiful blessing. If you want to look at some beautiful ‘found’ eats check out this Pinterest page! Now, that’s the kind of page I could get lost on.

Ground Rules of foraging: respect private land, find out if the public land you’re on allows foraging, sustainable harvesting and to find out what if any chemicals have been sprayed.

For our cozy little time together let’s tackle the savory, short lived ramp; AKA ramsons or wild leek. You know you’re cool when you have three names.

I’ve known about the patch of ramps in my parent’s woods for years, I remember I dug one up decades ago and was utterly confused because they looked like an onion but smelled like garlic and were not so great raw. Turns out they’re the trendy hipster cousin to the onion now in high demand. I usually steer clear of trends (I’ve finally learned my lesson, thank you 1980’s) but these potent little pearls have me jumping on the spring foraging bandwagon. These alliums are taking over the foodie world again this Spring and my kitchen will smell like ramps for the foreseeable future.

What exactly are we talking about here? They are in the allium family, meaning onion. And what they lack in size, they make up for in smell. You can sometimes locate them by smell just as well as sight, but they are some of the earliest greenery popping up from forest floors each Spring. Continue reading

Mhonpaj’s Organic Garden Farm

May 4, 2017 / / 1 Comment

 

These women just had to be my first ‘full on’ farmer interview. They have helped my kids fall deeper in love with many veggies, they’re the only certified organic farmer at our local White Bear Lake Farmer’s Market and they are a great example of giving back and educating their own community.

Let’s back up, shall we so you too can fall head over heels with Mhonpaj’s Garden (pronounced mon-pahs).

May is the head farmer, and Mhonpaj, her daughter is the farm manager; their care and love for each other is mirrored in the farm. “She’s my shining star,” Mhonpaj says of her mother.

When I walked into their greenhouse up in Marine on the St. Croix I was hit by two things; May’s smile and the amazing smell.

May at her greenhouse

May’s smile is positively contagious, and the smell of warm earth was heaven after the cold snap mother nature had thrown at us. ( fingers crossed for no more frost!). If you’ve ever taken a stroll through a commercial vegetable greenhouse, or even a floral greenhouse, you’ll remember the smell of chemical fertilizers clinging to you.

In May’s greenhouse, only rich, pleasant organic soil smells wafted by…

May came to Minnesota in 1981, a refugee from Laos. She spent many years picking produce in the summers and assisting farms. Then she watched her mother, who had picked in fields while pesticides were being sprayed the next row over, lose her battle with cancer. At one point the doctors asked if May’s mother had eaten pesticides the cancer in her intestines was so bad.  Deeply affected by the loss, both May and Mhonpaj were determined to do things differently moving forward.

Mhonpaj’s experiences around food lead her to a degree in Health Education/Health Fitness. It was during a college trip to Thailand where she saw their practices of sustainable agriculture that she became hooked.

Around the same time Mhonpaj’s fiancé (now husband) took a position as the SE Asian coordinator at the Minnesota Food Association (MFA). He suggested her parents look at MFA because of their love of farming. May enrolled and took the 4-year organic farming program. The program included everything you need to know to become a certified organic farmer in Minnesota. They teach hands-on techniques, technical support, record keeping and marketing.

starting a second planting of green onions

10 years later they are organically farming 6 acres and *almost* making their livings from farming. They rent 4 acres at MFA, and feel lucky to have access to that certified organic land with irrigation, deer fencing and available tillage – all the costly infrastructure pieces that constrain many other farmers from getting started. They also rent and farm a 2-acre parcel in Stillwater.

I got a chance to speak with Laura Hedeen, programs manager at MFA about May. “Everyone values her expertise so much, her knowledge is evident when she teaches,” Laura said. May has been mentoring farmers informally for years, and now is in her third season as an official staff member of MFA, teaching organic farming to immigrant farmers.   “She teaches visually, and her techniques are really efficient, we’re lucky to have her help,” Laura added. Then Laura filled me in on a long and impressive list of speaking and teaching engagements ( MOSES Organic Farming Conference speaker, Keynote Speaker at the Immigrant and Minority Farmers Conference, children’s groups, farmers groups etc) that, of course, May didn’t see the need to share.

“Organic farming and gardening, it’s not just a technique, it’s a lifestyle,” was Mhonpaj’s immediate response to my asking if the organic piece was really ‘that’ important to her. Next she said, “what you’re putting into your body matters; what the vegetable comes with, I mean what they put on them, is just as important as the nutrition inside the veggies.”  So yes, people- this family is ‘all in’ on growing organic.

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Farming for a Food Shelf

May 1, 2017 / / 0 Comments

What happens when your real job gets in the way of farming your summers away? You find a way to farm where you are. And that’s just what Anna and Jesse, a young local couple in the Twin Cities are doing with a new venture this summer.

Look at those smiles!

The couple caught my attention because they are farming with the sole purpose of giving all the food to a local food shelf! So, I decided to tag along and lend my mini-muscles to the ‘groundbreaking’ of their newly acquired plot off Marshall and Snelling, nestled up to a parking lot.

My Experience

It was fun, hard work. And I couldn’t stop smiling afterwards. With 5 of us digging in, we prepped about 250 feet row of beds for an early crop of green onions to be followed by collard greens. The other plot will grow radishes, turnips, carrots, baby bok choy and tomatoes with some lettuce stuck into any available holes.

Getting Started

These two have a passion for growing food, and have been figuring out h ow to lend that passion to serve the community. In the spring of 2016, when a call was put out to the Woodland Hills Church community for help planting a garden, the couple answered. During its first season, these two helped build six raised bed gardens outside of the church with the purpose of adding fresh produce to the Merrick Services food shelf housed within the church’s walls.

The gardens produced a small but impactful amount of food that was donated last growing season. “Since we enjoy growing food at a scale that far exceeds what we can consume ourselves, we ended up donating produce from our personal gardens as well. In continued response to what we feel is a calling, we decided to challenge ourselves to dedicate all this year’s growing power and space to produce food for Merrick”, says Anna. Turns out, that’s a lot of growing power!

Digging in, by hand, with big hearts.

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Get your Fork in the Dirt!

April 29, 2017 / / 0 Comments

I believe simple is good, yet our food has gotten quite complicated.

We’ve added chemicals, herbi/pesti-cides, shipping, packaging and waste in general. Which has taken away: flavor, nutrition, freshness, humane animal care and connection to where it came from or who grew it.

As I see it, our food system is broken.

I’m on a mission to get back to simple local food that’s delicious and doable. I’ll be interviewing local farmers, talking about the food they grow, sharing simple, healthy recipes, and showing how to preserve local flavors for the winter. And since real hunger exists even with all this amazing food around us, I’ll be sharing ways to connect local food with people who need it.

I’ve always loved digging in the dirt. To be able to coax flavorful food from the dirt, harvest then prepare and eat it with family and friends; there is something simple yet stunning in that process. And while I can’t find a soul who has extra time on their hands, we’re still drawn to slow food.

As a mom of two young boys I was searching for easy, balanced, realistic ways to use the best of all the competing food ideals; local, sustainable, organic, clean eating, fast, nutritious, tasty. But I couldn’t find any one place that collected local common sense food information so we can improve our own food situation. Feeding our families should not be guilt or fear inducing. Remember when food was fun? (…and you didn’t know about High Fructose Corn Syrup, Monosodium Glutamate and Trans Fat?)

And really, what’s more fun than visiting a farm!? Just getting in the car to drive there sets me smiling; no matter if we’re heading to a produce farm, dairy farm, vineyard, historic farm, apiary or pizza farm (pure genius there). These are my happy places and farmers are my people- except SO much harder working than me.

In truth, this blog is partly an excuse to fill my days (and my kids’ childhoods) visiting with and learning from farmers, petting some goats, chasing some chickens, walking beautiful land and making meals with this local food when we’re back in the burbs.

Our family also raises a few hens, grows fruits and veggies, boils maple syrup and ‘puts up’ some local flavors, but I know I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ll pass along my mistakes so you can skip over some of the mess and frustration.

*Disclaimer* I still buy packaged food off the shelves of big box stores. I am on this food journey lugging along two kids, a meat and potatoes husband and my own sweet tooth. And (gasp) I’m quite sure I’ll never eat only local food, I crave that crisp grape crunch in the middle of winter- but those grapes are a rare treat, not bought weekly in the container almost too big for my middle fridge shelf. And if I ever home make pasta from locally grown grains, it will likely be a first and last *fun-filled* experiment. But if you find a local company that does that, please let me know!

That leads to a bit about the blog name, Forks in the Dirt. ‘A fork in the road’, the common phrase, speaks to my belief that there are many paths to food integrity- and each of our paths will look different. My goal is to show you some of the paths to eating better so can choose one and start walking the walk. We don’t have to take every path, just A path!

More than anything I am striving for balance here. Growing what I can, buying locally what I can, preserving what I can, thinking about where my meat and produce comes from, and giving my food waste back to nature to decompose (or let the chickens recycle it). Carbon footprints, methane gasses and packaging aside, all these things need to be easy enough to do that I’ll keep doing them, and the food my family eats needs to taste as good if not better than what we were eating before- oh and it shouldn’t cost us (much) more. Sounds like a tall order right?

Well, I’m not letting perfect get in the way of better anymore. I decided to get my fork in the dirt and to post what I learn right here.

And food is a whole different kind of struggle for those without enough. Real hunger is happening right in our neighborhoods, in the middle of all this overproduction of food (and 40% food waste from farm to table). But, there are inspiring initiatives linking gardeners and farmers with people and food shelves who are ready to receive the food and put it to good use. I’ll let you know how you can join in any efforts that call to you.

I hope the stories inspire you to meet a farmer or two, eat more local, organic foods and trust in our abundant and solid Minnesota food system.

It all starts with the dirt, so…

Let’s Dig In!

Michelle

Composting basics, three different compost piles.

Composting Basics

April 24, 2017 / / 9 Comments
chicken on top of a compost pile

Here goes my first official Forks in the Dirt blog post; all about COMPOST! Here we cover all the composting basics you need to get started.

(Hope it doesn’t stink…ha)

*Updated 4/1/24 with some new photos and stats*

Some people make their own, some buy it in bags, some take advantage of county-run sites and pick it up by the bucket or truck load. Whichever way you get compost into your soil, it will boost your plants without adding synthetic chemicals. Equally important is keeping your food and yard waste out of landfills! The Natural Resources Defense Council has great articles and ways to get involved in reducing food waste!

the EPA estimates that, “in 2019, 66 million tons of wasted food was generated in the food retail, food service, and residential sectors“

EPA article

Those are numbers that need changing.

So let’s get composting!

Here are some different ways to let decomposition do its thing and create the fuel to grow our plants and not make extra methane in landfills.

Collection bucket filled with kitchen scraps heading o the compost pile.

Home Brew

Having your own compost bin is hands down the most efficient way to deal with food and yard waste. No transportation, (except a wheelbarrow) and you can manage your own supply based on your demand.


Composting Basics

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