No Impact Man Southwest

Wow! I am watching No Impact Man. They just switched off the lights. Good for them. They are doing what I learned to do while living in Panama with the Peace Corps. And what my entire village is still doing. And what most of the world is doing right now while I sit here with two computers on - one playing the movie and one for late night work projects (or blogging in this case) - and a lamp and wood burning in the woodstove, refrigerator running, music playing in Clayton's room, little glowing lights everywhere charging mobile electronics and sucking phantom power, wireless internet blinking in the back room, mini-hot tub keeping itself warm on the porch, irrigation timers running on their batteries to water the garden, solar powered lights lighting the pathway from car to door. So all that energy is coming from the solar tracker in our yard, but still. American ways of living lightly are still on a whole other level than the rest of the world. I have grown soft since my return to the U.S.

I also watched a movie called End of Poverty? earlier tonight. (Getting my documentary fix). It's like Open Veins of Latin America on screen. If everyone in the world lived like Americans it would take 5 planets to support us. Okay, so I have heard that one before. But on the other end of the spectrum - if everyone lived like they do in Burkina Faso, we would need 1/10th of our planet. I hadn't heard that before. Measured by mass, there are more ants on the planet than humans.

I like that they did their No Impact project in phases. We're still eating up the non-local fare leftover in our cupboards and freezer. I have one can of pickled beets, half can of peaches, and a few jars of homemade jelly left in my cupboard from last year's garden harvest. Luckily the farmer's market is picking up and the co-op too. The co-op is trying with the 300 mile radius, but they aren't quite there yet. They're still selling stuff from Mexico. I guess that's better than New Zeland kiwi at WF. The co-op selection is improving with the season - more options in the produce section I should say. My peas actually came up! My tomatoes on the growing rack are looking much better than they did last year. I gave them a boost of fish emulsion recommended by farmer Romero for flats.

I'm having fun with this project. I'm very much looking foward to the summer adundance in the farmer's market. And I find myself still wanting to do more and have more time to do more. Who knows, if they economy keeps plummeting in NM I might have a lot of time on my hands. But learning to do this while working full-time is a great challenge too.

Sunday Dinner

Tonight for our locavore dinner we are eating lion's mane mushrooms ($24 for two large bags), asparagus ($4/bunch), fresh salad greens ($8 big bag), radish sprouts (holy cow they are spicy!) ($3) with overwintered carrots ($4) and goat cheese ($5) - all purchased at the Saturday Santa Fe Farmer's Market. Since we are still cleaning out of fridge and freezer the non-locavore fare included:  puerco adobado made by my friend and neighbor Tanya for a Community College Culinary Arts event last fall. It has been in my freezer since - yikes! Thanks T! Shitake Seseame salad dressing (CA), lemons, and olive oil (CA), balsamic vinegar (CT). The butter came from our raw milk butter supplier from Texas. We'll have the popcorn for desert. So dinner is about 90% local. Hmm...the condiments might be a challenge to find locally.

The lion's mane mushrooms is a gourmet treat grown by Desert Fungi. My husband thinks it taste like crab. I think they taste like gourmet mushrooms. We tried them a number of ways (all sauteed):
1) with olive oil only
2) with olive oil and balsimic vinegar
3) with butter and salt
4) with butter and balsamic
5) sauteed with olive oil then sprinkled with fresh lemon juice after out of the pan
6) with butter only

My favorite was butter and balsamic. My husband liked them with the lemon juice. Whatever you do remember Julia Child's advice when you cook them "don't crowd the mushrooms!"

Buen Provecho!

And So It Begins

And so the desert locavore adventure begins. Today we ate our first asaparagus dish of the season. Straight out of the ground, sauteed lightly in the pan with water only and then straight to the plate. No butter or garlic necessary. Delicious. I've never tasted something so fresh. (Especially after a long winter of wanna-be vegetables). I love spring!

Transplant

This locavore blog seems to be turning into a lot of gardening entries. But bare with me, it is that time of season. Spring! The weather outside is lovely, affording me full days of working outside. Getting my own garden plots going and helping neighbors with their ambitious efforts putting up greenhouses and such have kept me away from the Farmer's Markets and other locavore consumer havens. I'm still waiting for the asparagus to poke its little spikes up so I have an official marker to my locavore endeavor.

My next research project is to decide which local CSA to join. There is also this guy Sam who has a backyard garden operation over by the community college and my neighbor has organized a modified CSA with him as well. Last year we got a few bags of produce from him, it was pretty good. Stay tuned for more on local CSAs.

Both me and my plants are not from here. We are growing slowly accustomed to the desert landscape. But transplants take special care and special measures to make sure they survive and succeed.

A couple weeks ago my husband and I built a seedling growing shelf. They cost anywhere from $500 - $800 new. We built ours for about $120 - lights included - in about three hours. A bunch of 2x2s and screws are all it took really. It is great when you want to increase the amount of seedlings you are growing and don't have a greenhouse, sunroom, or otherwise. We found the design online and added a foot of width to support the size flats we are using. Two weeks later the plants are doing great.

This weekend (5 weeks before last frost date) I transplanted tomato, eggplant, and broccolli seedlings from the flats to small individual plots. The survived and are recovering from the move back on their shelves.

I also planted peas, a strawberry patch, and four bushes including Western Sandcherry, Currant, and a third edible bush I can't remember at the moment. (Too much sun I guess). I'm a little behind as last year I was successful in starting peas the first week of March. These were seeds saved from my 2008 garden. I hope they come up.

Back to the work week...onward.