Me: Spring, take me away….

Spring: No, you must deal w/ it.

Me: Why? I’ve paid my dues.

Spring: Whining doesn’t help

Me: But I want to feel alive and warm again. Plus, it’s not right that it’s April 30 and I still have to wear heated toe warmers and wind-proof gloves to ride my bike.

Spring: Cry me a river.

Me: Stop hurling cliches at me.

And so the conversation flows…through my over-saturated mind. Every year I complain. Every year I annoy myself more than the year before. Buck up buttercup. People with real problems involving Mother Nature are suffering right now. Be thankful for your health, home and happiness.

As Farmer Potter pops open his van and loads his gear into the back, I’m reminded summer is her way. Tomatoes and peppers will grow again. Chicks will squeak in their little pen. Happy and Penny will frolic in the yard without breaking a leg tromping through icy snow. Farmer Potter will mow his beloved yard. And I, the Harvest Monkey, will monitor it all from the deck – cold Corona (with lime wedge) in hand.

In the meantime, I hope I don’t kill anything in the greenhouse (wp.me/pGu8t-6J’) while Potter is on his annual road trip to drier lands.

I’m also reminded that we did travel to Mexico in March so I’m NOT allowed to complain….too much.

Most of my time is spent, except in winter, tending to, harvesting, canning and eating plants.  Not only do I eke out a living caring for plants in yards all over Missoula, Montana, but I also love spending evenings in my garden pulling weeds, watering or just admiring the beauty.  I consider this my greatest passion.

This fall I took advantage, while being very mindful, of the plants mother nature grows, all by herself, in the forests surrounding the Missoula valley.  I went on the hunt for plants suitable for  tincture making.  A tincture is made by simply taking plant parts, sometimes roots, sometimes above ground parts, sometimes both and soaking them in alcohol to extract the medicinal properties the plant has to offer.

I chose Oregon grape (Mahonia repens) and red root (Ceanothus velutinus) as my lucky tincturing victims.  Oregon grape is a liver cleanser, and red root acts to improve lymphatic drainage, amongst other benefits.

So, I packed my boyfriend and myself a yummy picnic lunch, and we set off on the mission.  Both of these plants are pretty common in the part of Montana I live in and throughout most of the Rocky Mountain region.  It didn’t take too long to find what I was after.

Here’s what you do then:

1.  Choose to harvest plant roots in an area where the chosen plant is abundant.  Never harvest a plant that is endangered, or grows only in small pockets.

2.  Take a sharp shovel and dig out a chunk of root.  This is not always easy!  It is possible; persistence pays off.  And please, only take what you will use.  You should only need a cup, or so, of each root.

3.  Get home and clean the roots off thoroughly.  Scrub the dirt off with a brush.   Now the roots start to look pretty.  The Oregon grape root is a beautiful, surprisingly bright, yellow.  Red root is, well, very slightly pink.

4.  Chop these roots up into little pieces.  I used a pair of pruners.  I don’t think a knife would work.  You want them in little chunks so the alcohol can soak into the root better.

5.  Put your chopped chunks is some canning jars and cover with a menstruum.  I use alcohol.  Since you want your menstruum to contain about fifty percent water, if using grain alcohol, use an equal part water.  You can use a less potent alcohol, such as vodka, and no water is necessary.   Your menstruum should cover the roots; then add a few extra inches of liquid.

Get your supplies ready

6.  Label and date each jar, store in a cool, dark location, and shake them daily.   I let mine sit for a month or so.  The liquid in the jars takes on the root properties.

7.  After enough time has passed and the alcohol has taken on the color, beauty and benefits of the roots the time has come to strain the liquid.  Line a funnel, or strainer with cheese cloth, and pour into a dark colored jar.  Do the best you can to wring out the root chunks in the cheese cloth to get every drop of the herbal medicine you have just created.

Compost the spent roots

The only thing left to do now is to fill the dropper bottle and begin using the lovely, wild-crafted medicine!

That’s it!  It’s really simple, inexpensive, beneficial and gives you an excuse to get out and enjoy the wild.

Jamie’s Bio:

Jamie Smidt has lived in Missoula, Montana for nearly a decade. She received a B.A.  in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana in 2006, and decided to make Missoula her permanent home.

Growing up in a landscape and nursery family, plants have always been a big part of her life.  After working in the Montana nursery industry since 1999, she recently started her own gardening business in the Missoula area.

During the growing season, and when not working in a client’s yard, she can often be found tending to her own vegetable and herb garden.  She also enjoys Montana’s various wilderness areas where she practices her native plant identification skills.

Jamie’s other hobbies include cooking and canning her harvest and studying herbal medicine.

Spreading cheer through infused vodka. Merry Christmas everyone!

To soak it up with…

Veggie stir fry (peanut butter & coconut milk) à la Farmer Potter - the chopsticks and chopped ginger in the center there are a nice touch. It's the details that make food fun!

Veggie stir fry by candlelight

After a few cocktails, things get a little blurry.

Potter loves it when I force him to take photos of us before going out. The result is pretty hazy.

Earlier this fall, I scored a bunch of beautiful locally-grown apples. So what do I do with them? Turn them into a ghastly sight.

Apple bars made with a shit-ton of apples from my good friend Michelle's mom. They tasted better than they look Really!

This summer we constructed raised beds and grew carrots, beets, fingerlings, broccoli and other stuff outside. Can’t wait to see what we grow next year.

Carrot harvester by day....

We made time to go camping….

Camping in Park City with blueberry bread à la Shells

Camping is FUN! (when you don't have to sleep on the ground

And we even got out for some racing (Farmer Potter, too)!

Farmer Potter at the completion of his first -ever 10k Trail Run

I made my rounds in the triathlon circuit and had a blast, as usual.

I even added a half IronMan to the schedule this year….

Probably my proudest moment of the year - finishing my first half IronMan in 5:58. Bring on next year....

The dogs got out and about as well. Penny is an ANIMAL on the trails and could probably run all of us into the ground. Happy loves every minute of it too, but his arthritis doesn’t.

Penny licking her best friend.

Happy "guarding" the chickens. We raised and slaughtered 23 chicken this year. Potter hasn't decided if he'll do it again in 2011.....

Penny at her happiest - out on a trail

The Fallen…..

RIP Bon - March 8, 2010 - You gave me so much happiness and joy for 15 years. We miss you.

On the sunny side….

Potter's Garden

Squash Blossom shining its light from inside the greenhouse

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year - Love the Potters

Oh and it’s easy! Inspired by chef Travis Brittingham – owner and chef of Spoons Bistro spoonsbistro.com or facebook.com/pages/Spoons-Bistro… where Farmer Potter sells his greens, we re-created our own version of Spaghetti of Zucchini:

- Saute some garlic, at least 3 huge cloves, in a couple tablespoons of EVOO. I also used some leek I had in the fridge.

- Add a couple handfuls of fresh tomato.

- Splash with some white wine. Add a handful of basil. Cook down for 10 minutes.

- Add your mandolined zucchini into the pan. Cook for 5 minutes – don’t overcook the zucchini strands.

- Finish with a pat of patter for some extra richness.

- Serve with some fresh grated parmesan in nice, big deep bowls.

Enjoy!

Plus, we scored a special ingredient from another local grower. Can you guess the nice addition to our Stuffed Pepper dish? None other than a big oyster mushroom from Mountain Valley Mushrooms in Driggs (couldn’t find a website for them).

An oyster mushroom is a nice meaty, tender, tasty fungi with a mellow, mild flavor. It’s wavy, scalloped edges are pretty cool too. It certainly doesn’t taste like an oyster. ew.

A lovely specimen - an Oyster mushroom from Mountain Valley Mushrooms in Driggs

Yellow and red bell peppers from Potter's Garden are prime for stuffin'. Here we also have spinach, basil, shallots, oregano, oyster mushrooms, corn and red onion.

Step 1: Ready for the saute pan - onion, corn, shallot, mushroom and butter. Farmer Potter also added some italian sausage for an extra meaty experience.

Step 2: In a bowl mix cooked quinoa, spinach, basil, parmesan and diced roasted serranos.

Step 3: After 5-10 minutes in the saute pan, mix your bowl ingredients with the sauteed ingredients and you're ready to stuff these babies like a Thanksgiving turkey. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until the skin of the peppers look blistery and brown.

A Stuffed Pepper is a fun, healthy meal. Come up with your own interpretation and let us know how it goes. Unfortunately the final dish photo isn't in focus - but the plate behind it sure is. Ugh. Maybe the photographer had one too many glasses of wine while helping prepare this dish. Bad, Harvest Money, bad.

Brand new, these doors are a couple hundred bucks apiece. And to no one’s surprise, these doors are nicer than the doors in our house.

But instead of adorning our house with such foolishness as new doors, Potter decided to take his free stash and build something useful with them. “I was ready to make the beds out of regular old 2×12′s when it hit me,” he explained.

Just so happens Potter found himself in one of our local door and window shops seeking some old wooden doors for a shelving project he was working on. Instead he spotted a pile of beautiful hard wood doors ready for the burn pile – leftover and unsellable. He snatched up 10 free doors and decided their best use would be to house vegetables.

“They’re FREE,” he exclaimed proudly. “FREE.”

To which I immediately reply, “Nothing in life is free.” You see, as he was loading his doors into the back of his truck, one of the 8-foot tall doors he was lifting into the truck slipped and his index finger smashed between it and one of the doors already laying in the truck.

So I guess it was worth it to crush a finger, watch blood spurt from a wound that warranted stitches, witness it swell to the size of a small football and lose a fingernail.

Would he do it again?

“Well yah, it would have cost a lot of money to build those beds otherwise. My finger’s almost back to normal again but it will probably never really be normal.

What’s normal anyway?

Potter's Garden's raised beds are built using hardwood doors and 2x12s treated with linseed oil, then attached to 4 pressure treated 4x4s with decking screws.

The inside of the beds are lined with pond liner from scraps at our local nursery. The sides are fastened with all-thread to prevent bowing as the bed ages.

The hardest part of the job right there. Jud slave shovels 2-3 inch drain rock into the bottom of the bed. Farmer Potter slave drives Jud hard when he visits.... He might not come back next summer.

Broccoli and brussel sprouts love their new home.

 

Beet bounty - ain't they purdy?

 

 

A head of broccoli starts to form.

 

Harvest Monkey acts like she's "working" with carrots. Stirring up dirt, man-handling baby carrots, etc...

Ready for the dinner table.

cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-2001…

Farmer Potter slaughtered all of his chickens on Monday, but next time around we plan on getting some egg-laying birds. We currently buy our eggs from a local couple who delivers them to my office once a week. We know tons of people in Teton Valley raising chickens for eggs. It’s really cool to see the homegrown movement spreading. Keep it up!

happy gardening, happy growing,

Melissa & Jordan

In the past, every time I ever handled and prepared raw chicken there was an overall feeling of squeamishness.  A feeling that invokes images of contamination and sickness.  But last night while cooking my freshly killed meat those feelings dissipated as wonderful smells wafted through the house, a prelude to a tasty meal.

Earlier in the day and with my old convictions firmly in tact, I imagined the slaughtering and butchering of chickens would not only be  gross but down right nasty.

Not really. The only time they flap around wildly and squawk at you is when you capture them from the safety of their pen. Otherwise the chickens become quite calm as soon as you flip them upside down by holding their legs while lowering them into the metal killing cones. They settle down in that position. Their heads poke out of the cone’s opening. That’s when you make the slit.

It is a bit macabre cutting the throat and bleeding them out as their dead bodies flutter in a few final throes.  In reality it takes only 5-10 seconds for them to die. A heck of a lot better death than being torn apart by some predator.

A handful of guts

Then into a scalder where a good dunking in 150-degree water for almost a minute will loosen their feathers.  Then onto the Wiz Bang Plucker and half a minute later this rubber fingered washing machine has plucked the entire bird clean – saving a ton of time. We built the plucker with our neighbors using the Wiz Bang Plucker plans we purchased. This machine is an amazing and modern invention that makes the whole process a lot easier and faster.

Then to the table for some head and feet removal followed by a good clean handful of innards.  There are a few steps here that help all those guts come out cleanly and as the day went on we all got better at this. Our neighbor Hans and his wife, Suzanne, helped from beginning to end. By the end, we were a well-oiled machine of chicken butchers. (Melissa was nowhere to be found, in fact, using “I gotta go to work” as an excuse.)

After a short layover in an ice bath the chicken is ready for a shrink bag and then the chest freezer.

Holding the fresh raw chickens did not stir up that usual queasiness.  It’s hard to explain but they just exuded a fresh and clean essence.  Real food baby.

It’s an amazing arrangement that a few species have made with us humans.  I’ll give you a great life, feed you and care  about you and give you a proper death and in return you will give me nourishment on your way out.  What is so hard about that?

Instead we’ve left corporate farms in charge of our sacred pact.  Raising these birds and beasts on a feed lot and treating them like commodities will only bring contamination and sickness.  When we honor the arrangement it brings  happiness and contentment as well as a great meal.  Can’t wait to do it again.

Thanks for tuning in. I wish I could share my Papa Fred’s BBQ smothered chicken with you all. (Papa Fred’s BBQ Sauce is lovingly made by another neighbor, Fred Frank, who sells his sauce to the world at large.) Also a huge Thank You to my awesome neighbors for helping out. (without them I’d still be elbow deep in chicken guts).

A few pressing questions:

Is Farmer Potter a complete maniac?

Can I just say how funny is Happy?

Did Jud use a big word and string together some sweet prose?

Should we keep these chickens as pets instead of slaughtering them?

Have a great weekend everyone! You know the chickens will.

I went back to sleep. Hopeful they would live to cluck another day.

The next morning I went to work but before I did I asked Farmer Potter to go check for corpses.

Are you all alive in there?

None were to be found.

We have 23 chickens. Only 1 died. And it was on the first night. My special dog Happy in his complete elation over the chickens’ presence grabbed one through the fence with his lips. The poor bird flapped around and got away from the evil jaws of the Happy dog. As a result, Potter built an extra layer of fencing.

But unfortunately, the next day one was dead. Maybe Happy’s victim?

Happy "babysitting" the chickens

Meanwhile, Farmer Potter is plotting the deaths of the entire flock. He’s convinced himself that he can do it and more importantly he must do it.

Here’s what he has to say:

So far so good.  Got some “boilers” from a friend who had a few too many.  By the time we got them they were big chicks.  Supposedly a cornish cross, which is a chicken breed designed to put on weight fast 12 – 15 weeks!  If they are fed too much they’ll outgrow their bones and they can’t hold themselves up.  That’s no good though, I want my chickens to cruise around without dragging themselves around.  You see those one-pound breasts in the store and they look like they came from a mutant.

I guess I got to a point where I feel it was my moral obligation to care for and butcher my own food and what better way to start than chickens!  They really are fun in a weird way. Watching them is hypnotic as they race around like little raptors enthusiastically attacking anything that might be food.  A worm thrown in will result in a mad dash around the coop as the birds vie for possession of the tasty morsel often being stolen several times before the lucky bird chokes it down.

The butchering is often the subject which brings a twisted face to anyone.  Seriously though every kid past the age of 6 could probably butcher a chicken back in the day.  what a bunch of sissys we’ve all become.  So I intend to hold my nose and dive in with all the modern tools and conveniences I can wield – from a killing cone to a whizbang chicken plucker.  In another three weeks or so I can present you with a step-by-step butchering with photos and all.  If you think this is too gross then just think of what the life of a chicken raised on a factory farm is like.

Inside the coop (upon arrival in early June), our birds eat 18 percent protein boiler feed to fatten their asses. Two brooder lights keep them warm when the temp drops below 60 degrees.

Doggie TV aka The Chicken House and Run