Aww, Nuts!

If there is a more quintessentially Texan dessert than pecan pie, we at Myrtle’s place don’t know what it would be.  Oh, sure, other places have pies which resemble a good old fashioned Texas pecan pie, but, sorry, it just isn’t the same.

Preferably served straight out of the cast-iron skillet it was cooked in (and, again, you can cook it in a glass pie dish, but why would you?), possibly served with a heaping scoop of cinnamon ice-cream – vanilla is acceptable, too, but don’t go monkeying around with flavors much more exotic than that – and maybe laced with bourbon, rum or brandy as a flavor additive, the essence of the nut has to shine through, or it isn’t really a Texas pecan pie.

We used to live in Austin, where towering pecan trees (often between 60 and 70 feet tall) provide shade to virtually every major park in the city, and where you can bake a pie made entirely from nuts you have collected on your morning walk.  Sadly, while there are varieties which thrive in the eastern portions of the state, they are just not as prolific here. 

Pecan country starts in Austin and spans through points west – the example shown here is in a park in the middle of Abilene.  In fact, the mecca for this nut is any stream or tributary in the desert regions of our great state, and even (though many are loathe to admit it) up through the desert southwest – it may be sacrilige to say so, but one of our favorite pecan orchards is actually in New Mexico, along the banks of the Rio Grande.  It may be 105° while you are driving down the highway, but it is a cool and pleasant 85° under the protection of the pecan grove.

So, what does this have to do with Big Myrtle’s place?  Unfortunately, nothing.  Nothing at all.  We have chosen not to grow pecans.  We have enough space for two trees, if we were to commit to growing them, and that would be more than enough for us to make all the pies we could ever hope to eat, but we just can’t do it.  A mature pecan tree, you see, consumes roughly 100 gallons of water a day in the middle of a Texas summer.  We have been hoping to get by using roughly 10,000 gallons of water for the entire garden in the course of a year – two pecan trees would take twice that much just to get through the hot part of the year, from May through October.

So, no go on the pecans.  However, as part of a well-balanced diet, some sort of nut is essential; what on earth is a locavore to do when their favorite food is not practical?  Naturally, under such circumstances, Myrtle recommends a heavy dose of research.

The nut we would actually prefer to grow, all other things being equal, would be almonds.  Almonds are extremely high in monounsaturated fat, one of the prime movers-and-shakers in a diet to reduce LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol and raise HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, a win-win nutrition conscious consumers everywhere ought not to ignore.  A 2002 report from the American Heart Association (Jenkins, Kendall, Marchie et al.) described a controlled trial where 73g of almonds in the subjects’ daily diet reduced LDL cholesterol by as much as 9.4%, increased HDL cholesterol (remember, that’s the good cholesterol) by 4.6%, and reduced the LDL:HDL ratio by 12%.

So, almonds are a good thing.

Will they grow here? 

No. 

Or, rather, not as we currently know them.  Both the sweet and bitter almond varieties are available at many nurseries, but they do not produce very well in any part of Texas, frequently not producing at all.  Solid almond production in the United States is limited almost exclusively to California, where the orchard you see pictured here is a prime example of the kind of mild and temperate haven for this fruit-we-think-of-as-a-nut.

However… there is a native species in many parts of central Texas, currently spread out over relatively dry, sandy, calcareous soils sitting atop limestone bedrock, known as “smallflower peachbrush”.  Prunus minutiflora, or ‘Texas Almond’ does not really look like the traditional almonds you find in every grocery store, with nuts that resemble acorns more than they do almonds, but it has two chief advantages as far as Myrtle is concerned:  first, it is native to Texas, and so is more likely to thrive here than would any of the commercial varieties, and second, it is more of a shrub and less of a tree, making it more amenable to a backyard setting.

Is it edible?  Is it tasty?  Is it as healthy as its California cousins?  We don’t know.  Hardly any research along those lines has been done.  We will unquestionably do some more digging around for information on this plant, because if it proves to be viable, we will want to put it in the ground as soon as possible.  Every reputable nurseryman we have spoken with suggests that the commercially available almonds are probably a bad idea for southeast Texas, so prunus minutiflora is potentially our only alternative for almonds.

What about other nuts?  Surely something else would work, right?

Actually, there are a few other choices, some more viable, others less so, and each presents challenges. 

Hazelnuts are rich in nutrients (especially B vitamins), and numerous phytochemicals, in addition to being another source of unsaturated fats, but they are technically only viable as far south as the Ozark region of Missouri.  We could potentially get them to grow in the lee of our oak trees… but… this is not an ideal option.

Walnuts are perfectly at home in the Brazos Valley… but they have a chemical self-defense mechanism which kills off virtually any other fruiting plant within fifty feet of their drip-line.

Peanuts are a possible crop for us, and we may yet consider planting them, but they lack the primary advantage of nut trees, which is their character of perennial production.  Peanuts would be just another crop, like our vegetables, which we would have to tend on a regular rotation.  Added to that, as a ground crop, peanuts would take up considerable space.  We are hoping for a source of nuts which will take us vertical.

Bambara groundnuts are an exciting alternative crop for much of the developing world; these peanut-like plants come from central and western Africa, and have high nutritional content and low watering needs, but, like peanuts, they are space hogs when compared to nutting trees.  In fact, bambara would take up more space than peanuts, since the yield per plant is somewhat lower.  They are a great plant for subsistence farmers living in isolated areas, particularly since they are an extremely low maintenance crop, but for a half-acre in the middle of the city?  Not so good.

Besides which, we are looking for an alternative to our favorite dessert here.  Almonds and hazelnuts are known internationally for their ease of assimilation in desserts – peanuts are frequently found in fast-food desserts, but not so much in your finer confectioneries. 

Are we willing to go slumming when it comes to the most important course of the meal?

Clearly, some experimentation is in order.  We’ll keep you posted.

Happy farming!

Myrtle is Keen for Quinoa

We harvested our meager quinoa crop this week.  We say “meager” because we only had about fifteen plants total growing this winter, and we only got enough grain from them to justify saving as seed – we could have served one meal with what we threshed by hand, but we prefer to wait for next winter and a much bigger crop before we start consuming our own.

Still, we feel very encouraged by the results.  We planted one small packet of fifty seeds – without weatherizing the seeds first, which was a pretty substantial mistake, automatically reducing our yield by over fifty percent before anything had even sprouted – and yet we got enough seed out of that initially disappointing result to densely plant roughly an eighth of an acre of quinoa next fall.  We should get enough next winter to supply ourselves with enough of this wonder grain to last our family most of the year – particularly when coupled with our summer harvest of amaranth, which will serve us in roughly the same dietary capacity.

We were surprised after planting quinoa last fall to discover just exactly how popular it has become while we weren’t looking.  We didn’t mean to be trendy – it just sort of happened.  We knew we had hit something big when one of our favorite competitors on Bravo Network’s “Top Chef” (Carla, the vegetarian chef) cooked a stuffing dish with black quinoa which she referred to as “undone-te”, since it was woefully undercooked (manfully admitted, Carla!), and which the celebrity judge stated would make a good breakfast cereal, even if in its uncooked form it was an awful stuffing.

In fact, a quick search for quinoa recipes yields an almost limitless variety of possibilities for everything from aforementioned breakfast cereal, and Thanksgiving stuffing substitutes, to a substitute for rice, polenta or hummus, to soups, salads, breads, breading for meats, and gude kens what.

Preparing quinoa has become a more interesting process than we initially appreciated.  We probably harvested some of our crop a little too soon, since some of it was dry on the stalk, but other plants were still damp from recent rains.  It could hardly be expected that we would get it right our first time out, since this is the first grain crop we have ever planted, and it is not a native plant to Texas, and nobody we know has ever grown it before, so we didn’t really have anybody to ask about it.

Native Americans did frequently gather a similar plant, chenopodium berlandieri, otherwise known as lambsquarters, or pigweed.  However, even though this plant has a nearly 4,000 year culinary history, it is new to Myrtle.  We have had to reinvent the wheel, coming up with a means of drying the too-green seed heads we collected, and then threshing by hand to remove the actual seeds from the seed-heads, storing them in a paper bag with a steady breeze from a fan turned on low to dehydrate them, hopefully without destroying their ability to germinate next fall.


For those who wish to prepare quinoa without actually going through the trouble of growing it and harvesting it themselves, the steps are usually a little simpler.  Quinoa sold in bulk at your local grocer probably needs to be soaked before cooking, because the seeds are coated fairly heavily with saponins, which are the plant’s natural defense against predation by birds.  Saponins give foods a fairly intense bitter taste, so most commercially available quinoa in this country – that is, the kind you can buy in a box – has been presoaked to remove the saponins.

In South America, the removal of the mildly toxic glycoside saponin actually serves multiple purposes.  In addition to making the quinoa more palatable, the bitter quinoa residue makes an excellent detergent for clothing or handwashing, and also a good antiseptic for skin injuries.  The chemical content is similar to that of the root of the soapwart plant, historically used an alternative to lye-based soaps.

Once you have a quantity of well-rinsed and clean quinoa to cook with, you have almost limitless possibilities.  It would be difficult to imagine a more nutritious grain with which to form the basis for a meal; as one might expect from any whole-grain food source, quinoa is, of course, high in fiber, and is also a starchy energy source.  However, it is also high enough in protein to rival many legumes and even some meats; additionally, quinoa provides a host of B-vitamins, vitamin E, iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorous and zinc.  A list of the phytochemical components of quinoa would take far more space than Myrtle is willing to devote, and more studies are being done every day.

All told, quinoa gets two thumbs up (or would, if chickens had thumbs).  Here is just a handful of some of the better recipes we have found for this wonder grain:

Quinoa, Shiitake Mushrooms and Adzuki Beans

Ingredients:
½ cup sliced carrots
3 thinly sliced scallions
¼ cup shiitake mushrooms sliced (can substitute slightly crushed oyster mushrooms)
2 cups cooked adzuki beans, drained
1 cup washed quinoa
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chicken broth (vegetable broth works just fine for a vegan alternative)
salt, pepper

Directions:
1. Sauté vegetables until tender.
2. Add broth, beans and quinoa. Bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes, until liquid evaporates.
4. Add salt and pepper and mix with a fork or wooden spoon.

Quinoa Sunshine Salad with Asian Dressing

Ingredients:
Salad Ingredients
4 cups baby spinach
1 cup quinoa

1 cup red bell pepper, diced
1 cup yellow bell pepper, diced
1 cup mango, diced
½ cup green onion, chopped
Asian Dressing Ingredients
1/3 cup rice vinegar
¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon orange juice, freshly squeezed
2 teaspoons fresh garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon orange zest

Directions:
1. Rinse quinoa thoroughly, place one cup quinoa in a sauce pan with two cups of cold water. Bring the mixture to a boil, cover and turn down the heat to a low simmer.
2. Let cook for about 15 minutes, or until all water is absorbed. Remove from heat. Fluff quinoa with a fork and set aside to cool.
3. In a small bowl combine all dressing ingredients and mix thoroughly.
4. In a large bowl combine quinoa, red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper and mango.
5. Pour dressing over salad and mix.
6. Let the salad sit for 15 minutes to allow the flavors to combine.
7. Serve salad on top of a bed of baby spinach and garnish with green onions.

Roasted Poblanos Stuffed with Cranberries, Pecans, and Quinoa

Ingredients:
8 poblano peppers
3 cups cooked quinoa
1/2 cup chopped pecans, toasted
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 red onion, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1 pound butternut or kabocha squash
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
1/4 cup nonfat sour cream
1-2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:
1. Preheat boiler. Broil poblanos, turning once, until charred, about 10 minutes. Place them in a paper shopping bag or a bowl covered with plastic wrap to let them steam for about 10 minutes. Remove the charred skin when cool enough to handle. Slit lengthwise on one side, and remove the seeds.
2. Reduce the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Cut squash in half. Remove seeds. Brush the cut side with the olive oil. Roast it cut side down until tender, about 30 – 40 minutes.
3. Scoop the squash out of the skin. Puree in blender with maple syrup, sour cream, and vegetable stock. Add additional stock as necessary to reach a sauce-like consistency.
4. In a mixing bowl, combine quinoa, cranberries, pecans, onion, cilantro, and 1/2 cup of the sauce. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.
5. Stuff each pepper with a generous half cup of the mixture. Place in a baking dish, seam side down. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes.
6. Serve with the warm sauce.

Quinoa with Currants

Ingredients:
1/4 cup rinsed quinoa
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup water
dash tumeric (optional)
Dash of salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/3 red onion, finely diced
2 Tbs chopped fresh cilantro (or parsley)
1/8 tsp ground cumin
2 Tbs currants (or chopped raisins)
Dash ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp grated orange or lemon zest
Dash ground coriander

Directions:
1. Rinse quinoa with warm water and drain through a fine strainer.
2. Bring water and salt to a boil. Add the quinoa. Cover and reduce heat. Simmer for 10-15 min.
3. Meanwhile, heat a nonstick skillet. Add the onion, spices, and black pepper. Cook gently (low temp) until softened, about 5-10 minutes. Add a bit of water if needed to prevent burning.
4. Drain the quinoa when it's done and toss with the onion mixture along with the cilantro, currants, and orange or lemon zest. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Hitting Gray Matter.... Hard...

There is no known “safe” level of exposure to lead.  Obviously, a child sucking down lead-based paint chips like they were Oreos will suffer greater health impacts than would someone whose exposure is limited to occasional inhalation of industrially polluted air from a plant three hundred miles away; still, the point is, we have been poisoning ourselves for the three-thousand plus known years of lead mining, and there does not appear to be any sign of stopping any time soon.

The littany of dread associated with lead poisoning has always included symptoms usually associated with higher-dose exposures, although chronic lead exposure has also gained notoriety lately.  Those suffering headache, abdominal pain, memory loss, kidney failure, erectile dysfunction, pain or tingling in extremeties, loss of apetite, vomiting, weight loss, constipation, anemia, irritability, or learning disabilities are likely to be more obvious sufferers from lead toxicity than those with lower-key symptoms from chronic exposure.

Added to the above maladies is a newly discovered result of lead exposure, which may have farther-reaching consequences for our society – even for our species as a whole.

Recent research suggests that the development of the anterior cingulate is adversely affected by exposure to lead. 

The anterior cingluate cortex is the front portion of the cingulate cortex; it forms a ‘U’ shaped covering of the corpus callosum, the “middle” part of the brain, which connects the left and right hemispheres.  In addition to playing a significant role in a wide variety of autonomic functions such as regulating blood pressure and heart rate, the anterior cingulate also appears to have an important part to play in complex rational cognitive functions, such as reward anticipation, decision-making, empathy and emotion.

A smaller anterior cingulate cortex, as occurs in persons with more exposure to chronic sources of lead, such as air pollution (especially historically, prior to the removal of lead from petroleum), places more emphasis on stimulus processing in the amygdalla, frequently referred to as the “reptilian brain” because it is the portion of our brain responsible for more primitive responses, particularly fearful responses.

Fight or flight responses come from the amygdalla; subtle, nuanced responses come only from the cingulate.  This makes a lot of sense, because a subtle, nuanced response typically involves cross-chatter between the logos and mythos – between what “is”, determined rationally and mathmatically (ie, “left brain”) and what “ought to be”, determined emotionally, aesthetically, and morally (ie, “right brain”).  Knee-jerk reactions are reptillian; thoughtful responses which take some time to formulate, and also some time to explain, are more complicated.

Obviously, by reducing the size of the anterior cingulate, and emphasizing the amygdalla, we have created a problem which goes far beyond the scope of the individual patient.  We have collectively increased the likelihood of paranoid responses on the part of large segments of our population, and virtually no one is immune.

Lead is everywhere.  The best-known culprit for lead poisoning is paint, found particularly in homes built prior to 1978; lead-based paint is not isolated to any particular region – it may be found in the city, country, or suburbs, in apartments, single-family homes, and both private and public housing, both on the interior and the exterior.

Soil may be contaminated in neighborhoods where lead based paint was once used; it may stay in the soil indefinitely, and may actually be made worse by the removal of lead-based paint from homes, depending on the removal method.  Tracking of soil into and out of contaminated spaces make it likely that dust in many places also contains lead.

Lead pipes and lead solder mean that frequently concentrations of lead may be found in drinking water.  On occasion, municipal water supplies will be contaminated without notice because in between tests for lead, chlorine or chlordate concentrations will be changed, and the new chemical combinations will not be first tested for impact on lead pipes or lead solder – by the time changes in lead concentrations are noticed, it is too late to stop the exposure.

Lead-based batteries are slowly being replaced by other technologies, but they are still the cheapest and most efficient sources of battery power for most applications; lead pollution comes from each phase of their lives – production, use, and disposal of lead batteries all give ample opportunity for exposure to lead.

Foods and liquids may be contaminated by storage in lead crystal or lead-glazed pottery or porcelin.  Lead smelters and other industries release lead into the air.  Hobbyists using lead may not even be aware that pottery, stained glass, or furniture refinishing may contribute to lead poisoning.

Lead is, quite literally, everywhere.  Nor is it likely to go away any time soon – it is simply too important economically for us to practically advocate its eradication.

However, there are several steps we can take to minimize the collective damage we are doing to ourselves.

• Check for lead-based paints in and around your home; a specialized inspector can tell you whether you have lead accumulations in your house.  The National Lead Information Center (NLIC) can provide a list of contacts where you live.
• Distill your drinking water.  Filtering is good, but distilling is even better.
• Keep as many plants in your home as you are capable of keeping alive; several varieties are especially good at filtering the air of heavy metals, but make sure you emphasize keeping varieties which will survive your environment and skill level – we recommend pothos ivy as a hardy and hard-to-kill indoor favorite.
• Clean floors, window frames, window sills and other surfaces weekly.  Use a mop, sponge or paper towel with warm water and a general all-purpose cleaner.
• Thoroughly rinse sponges and mop heads after cleaning dirty or dusty areas.
• Wash children’s hands often, especially before they eat and before they go to sleep.
• Keep play areas clean.
• Eat right and exercise; a good diet, particularly one high in fiber, prevents the absorption of lead.  A healthy liver can expunge more lead, as well, so eating right is critical, especially for those who cannot limit exposure.
• Look for alternatives to lead-based products.  If you can choose batteries, for example, which do not use lead-acid technology, do so.  If you can avoid using lead-based solder, do so.  If you can avoid using lead pipes, do so.

There is a political subtext to all of this, with irony which does not escape Myrtle’s notice.  Conservatives notoriously oppose virtually all government initiatives designed to protect the environment at the expense of business, and lead abatement would certainly fill the bill.  Recently, studies have suggested that the smaller one’s anterior cingulate, the more conservative one is likely to be in one’s voting behavior.  A vicious circle, no doubt – lead poisoning causes a person to be less concerned about lead poisoning.

In any event, Myrtle is less concerned with whether or not her state is red or blue, just so long as it avoids a dull pewter color.

Happy farming!

When less is more, do more with less

Versatility is king for small operators.  “It slices, it dices, it juliennes!”  Every tool on a half-acre homestead has to do more than one thing, including the plants.  Our grape vines, for example, produce grapes, but they also provide shade in summer, cutting our cooling costs by soaking up the sun before it has a chance to hit our western exposures.  Our blackberry vines provide copious quantities of fruit, and also provide a thorny border demarcating our property line – an important consideration in a neighborhood which used to treat our property as a pedestrian highway.

There are all sorts of other multi-functional plants, many of which we have in our garden.  Legumes (beans and peas) provided tasty meals, but also bind nitrogen to the soil for following crops in future seasons; amaranth provides grain, but it also chokes out the grass which is the natural enemy of our anti-turf family.  Sunflowers provide seeds, and they also feed our native bee population; we are putting in bees this year, which will provide us with honey, and will also pollinate many of our plants.

January means seed-catalog time, and we have spent our fair share of time going over heirloom seed catalogs with a fine-toothed comb, looking for just the right combination of productivity, versatility, health and vitality on the part of those things we are going to add to our garden this year.

The major addition, of course, will be several varieties of amaranth, which we have spoken about at length for many months now.  A couple of other interesting new crops, however, we have only mentioned in passing, and we did not find either in our catalogs.  We have had to special order mucuna pruriens, better known as velvet beans, or cow itch.  We are also planting cyclanthera pedata, better known as caigua in Peru, or lady’s slipper in Britain.

Neither of these delectable veggies is a mainstream crop in this country yet, but we hope to change that one seed at a time.

Velvet beans will serve several important functions in our garden.  First and foremost, this plant has historically been a significant ground-cover in the Florida tomato industry, only having lost favor in the last several decades as a caterpillar specifically attracted to the mucuna vine gained prominence, and then began attacking several other cash crops in Florida.  Having reviewed the literature, we believe the risk of pests was overstated, exaggerated by the tendency to monocrop, rely on pesticides, and just generally mess with Mother Nature.

On the other hand, using a vigorous leguminous vine like mucuna not only adds nitrogen to the soil, it chokes out unwanted weeds, provides groundcover to hold topsoil in place, regulates soil temperature, nourishes beneficial soil microbes, chokes out harmful soil microbes, and gives shade to tender leafy vegetables during the harshest times of day during the hottest parts of the growing season.

In addition to all of these agricultural benefits, mucuna has the advantage of being a tasty source of protein and several essential nutrients, in addition to being useful as a medicinal herb.  Mucuna seeds contain from 20-35% crude protein.  The ‘itch’ from ‘cow itch’ comes from the hairy seedpods (which are also where the ‘velvet’ in ‘velvet bean’ comes from).  These hairy seedpods are high in serotonin and mucanain, which, in addition to being neurologically significant, also cause a mild allergic reaction – in fact, itching powder used to be manufactured with velvet bean seed pods.

The beans themselves also contain high concentrations of levodopa (L-DOPA), a direct precursor of the neurotransmitter dopamine.  This makes velvet beans a potentially important part of the diet for anyone battling depression, parkinson’s disease, erectile dysfunction, low libido, or anxiety disorders.  Lucid dreamers have also recently taken a fancy to mucuna, which complicated our search for seeds greatly – most of the mucuna for sale on the market is not in seed form, it is in herbal supplement form, which does a gardener no good whatsoever.

Caigua is another vine we will be growing this year, and it has a lot to offer, as well.  Curcurbits do very well in southeast Texas, and Caigua is essentially just another cucumber, so we expect it to flourish.  What makes caigua special, however, is its potent blend of phytochemicals – peptin, galacturonic acid, dihydroxitriptamine, pierine, resins, phosphorous, thiamine, ascorbic acid, lipoproteins, systosterol and 3 beta D glucoside, low density lipoproteins, and God only knows what all else.

Inca-period pottery and artwork often depicts caigua; it has been an important vegetable for a long, long time.  Taken in conjunction with the herbal supplement Hercampuri, caigua reduces blood cholesterol levels, rejuvenates skin, and reduces cellulite.

What makes caigua less popular outside of Latin America is uncertain, although it is a little unusual as a cucumber – the closer it gets to being ripe, the more “hollowed-out” the fruit becomes.  The seeds end up clinging to an internal membrane that looks suspiciously like that of a bell pepper.  And by a remarkable coincidence, that is basically what caigua tastes like.  In fact, one of the more popular ways of serving this vegetable is in the form of a caigua rellena – similar to the tex-mex dish chili rellenos.

We think there will probably be a lot of other things we can do with it, however, limited only by our imaginations.  After all, vegetable gardeners in England have recently fallen all over themselves acquiring cyclanthera pedata seeds, and if an English cook can think of something to do with it, surely anyone can do so.  Finding seed, in fact, was fairly easy because even though caigua has not yet hit the market in the U.S. in any major way, enough growers worldwide are interested in this vegetable that we found a variety of sources to order from.

We will be curious how it grows, though, because scouring the web for samples, we encountered several distinct varieties.  Some look benign enough, like small squash leaves on a trellised vine.  Some, however, have sharp multi-folate leaves that look… um…. well… a little ‘irie’, if Jah know what we mean…

Which brings us to the plant we will not be growing in our garden any time soon, though it has many multifunctional qualities which leave every other plant we have ever heard about completely in the dust.  In our collective shortsightedness, our society has demonized this plant, which has the potential to singlehandedly resolve our national debt crisis, close the trade deficit, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sequester many tons of carbon, improve nutrition, save forests by providing a cheap new source of paper, give new life to the domestic textile industry, and a whole host of other beneficial things.

We are talking, of course, about cannabis.  There are actually three different species of plants which could be called ‘marijuana’ – cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, and cannabis ruderalis.  All three contain some amount of the psychoactive substance tetrahydrocannabinol, or “THC”.  However, while this has become the focal point for how this plant is utilized by humans, it is really the tip of the iceberg.

By attempting to legislate the plant out of existence, though, most nations of the world have instead merely incentivized the breeding of plants with higher and higher concentrations of the very substance which they were attempting to outlaw.  Even so, as the graph you see here shows, there are plenty of substances both more addictive and more dangerous than marijuana – many of them are legal.  Can you say “hypocrisy”?

In colonial America, virtually every significant farming operation involved the production of massive quantities of cannabis, typically just called “hemp”, for industrial use.  Highly adaptable as a material to make rope, cloth, and even bricks, pressboard, and other construction materials, cannabis was in part quite literally responsible for the making of our nation.  Thomas Jefferson’s plantation owed much of its profitability to this plant, as did the farms of many of our other founding fathers.

We wonder, in addition to the many industrial and pharmacological uses of this plant, what might be done with it in the kitchen, if only it weren’t illegal and therefore too expensive to use.

Cannabis sativa has both sweet and savory overtones which, we think, would make it great in salads, in addition to being a pretty good seasoning.  It would unquestionably provide good silage for livestock.  It grows densely, but without being too demanding on the soil.  It is not a water hog; it provides plenty of shade, and is an excellent groundcover.

And legalizing it would turn a lot of criminals into gardeners.  We can’t think of any single measure that would be more beneficial to our society than removing pot from the category of ‘gateway to violent criminal school’ into ‘introduction to the wonderful world of backyard farming’.

Ah, well.

We’ll stick to the weird plants you don’t get in trouble for growing.

Happy farming!

Two Washtubs, a Hand-cranked Wringer, and the Truth...

"Fortunately for those doing the laundry, during the 1930s people didn't have as many changes of clothing as they do now. The boys had one pair of 'good' overalls or 'Levis' which they wore to school every day. When washday came, usually on Saturday, they put on the 'old' pair used for work and chores while the new ones were washed. Nor did they wear a different shirt every day...And you used fewer changes of underwear when you bathed only on Saturday night.
Although the girls undoubtedly had more variety, and may have changed oftener, still they had limited wardrobes. As the thirties began, chances are that most of their dresses were home-sewn. They usually had a new dress for Christmas...and perhaps for their birthday. The point is that nobody required the large volume of clothes that each person feeds to the washer [today]. If that were not so, no one could have stayed even with the laundry.”

Miriam B. Murphy, History Blazer May 1996

There are any number of reasons why laundry is an important consideration when it comes to conservation.  First and foremost, it can get expensive.  Depending on where you live, the water alone can get pricey; the electricity involved, however, is a whole other order of magnitude costly.

We discovered with pleasure that we can do without an electric dryer; line drying our clothes has proven to be far more efficient than we originally feared when we started doing it six months ago.  Necessity, we admit, drove us:  our dryer broke down just when we had no money with which to replace it.

So, we began hanging our wet laundry on the grape trellis just outside our back door.  The grapes, being only a year old, had not yet reached the top of the trellis, so we had all this empty space not being used; laundry seemed like a perfect fit.

Unlike Ms. Murphy’s 1930’s Utah pioneers, however, our family has considerably more in the way of daily changes of clothes.  This means that laundry has become a daily routine, involving plenty of heavy lifting on the part of Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance, though not excluding a lot of input on the part of everyone else in the family, folding and putting things in their respective closets, drawers, etc.

Still, with a little organization and teamwork, we have discovered that we can make this process run like clockwork, and, more to the point, we have cut into our electric bill to the tune of double-digit percentages.

Mrs. Myrtle Maintenance announced recently, as a consequence of this success, that she believes our enterprise ought to consider eliminating the washing machine in similar fashion, so that we may recoup even more energy savings by eliminating that expense as well.

Now, ordinarily, when embarking on a crazy venture, we find ourselves in the company of a legion of others who have considered our alternative solutions long before we, ourselves, take lunatic measures.

Not so this time.

There are, it turns out, only a handful of brave souls who hand-agitate their laundry and then run it through a wringer prior to hanging it on a line to dry.

There are several reasons why this obviously much greener alternative is viewed less favorably than motorized washing machines by all but the hardiest of green-adventurers:

• Handling wet laundry can be cumbersome.  Wet laundry weighs considerably more than does dry laundry; even when it has been run through a washing machine, and wrung out through the spin cycle, anyone who has ever simply moved laundry from the washing machine to the dryer can attest to the fact that any water at all causes cloth to become much, much heavier.
• Trust in cleanliness is lacking.  The same paranoia (fed by companies selling us power, water, washing machines, detergents, and speciality fabric treatments) which causes us irrationally to use hot water when cleaning laundry also causes us to distrust the ability of our own hands to get cloth clean.  People view the washing machine as a sort of ‘magic box’ where dirty things go in, and clean things come out.
• Wringing out wet laundry takes skill.  If you’ve ever toured an old mansion, if the scullery is properly equipped you will see an old wringer sitting against one wall – it is a specialty piece of equipment, and running through a load of laundry is not something any old fool can do; it takes a fool who has practiced many times, and gotten stuck on many buttons, hooks, lapels, etc. before acquiring the talent of running things through quickly and efficiently.
• Architecture is against the old ways – modern laundry rooms and bathrooms are simply not designed with anything in mind other than the modern washer and dryer arrangement.

All of these objections, of course, have the weight of inertia on their side.

We hate inertia.

We already had a pretty long list of things to do this year, not the least of which is our intention to finally get some bee hives, as well as to start making blackberry port this summer, not to mention growing our own grain… well, you get the idea.  Our “to do” list is no small affair.

Still, we have just about decided ourselves on a new course altogether when it comes to laundry.  And we think we have the answers to each objection:

• Handling wet laundry can be cumbersome, but less so if you handle less of it at a time.  This means wearing the same pair of pants more often.  We may still need to do a lot more unmentionables than did the rural folk of the 1930’s, but unmentionables don’t actually weigh all that much.  And our day jobs (software support for money, childcare and homemaking for moral value) are not really all that dirty – we are fairly sure we can tolerate getting an extra day or two out of our daily wear.
• Trust in cleanliness is not a problem for us.  Myrtle Maintenance personell have plenty of elbow grease we are willing to apply as solvent.  And if there’s a stain we can’t get out, well, we’ll just shred the garment and add it to the attic as insulation.  As for whether this process really works or not, hey, think about all those period-piece romances you’ve ever watched like a vicarious lord or lady of the era… all those frilly laces and frocks spent some time in the basement being scourged by a scullery maid prior to being worn by the high and mighty.
• Wringing out wet laundry takes skill; we like learning new skills.  The list of things we’ve never done before is getting shorter all the time.
• Architecture is against the old ways, but we’ve proven ourselves willing to knock down walls no one else would have knocked down plenty of times before.  Heck, we may be able to work around the city’s graywater reuse rules without even having to get a permit – research will be required, of course, but the point is, just because no one else does it has nothing to do with whether or not we will do it.

There are plenty of details to be worked out, of course.   Lehman’s, for example, sells a couple of different varieties of hand-wringing washers, but we aren’t willing to shell out the kind of money they charge.  We’ll probably be rigging up a chassis to hold a couple of old-fashioned wash tubs waist high or so, and buying a hand-cranked wringer, and devising some kind of agitating post to manually crunch and grind all the clothes in the hopper.

Of all our crazy schemes, this one actually sounds far crazier, but in some ways is more practical than others.  There will be some initial investment in equipment, and a fairly significant learning curve.  There will need to be some procedural adjustments to our daily routines.  But overall, there looks to be nothing but upside, at least for us.  The utility company will probably lose out in a big way.  Boo-hoo.

Happy farming!