May UFH Foraging Challenge Round 3: Forage for Dinner

Posted on May 16, 2012 by | 1 Comment


image credit Langdon Cook, Fat of the Land

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Hank and Langdon have joined in for the foraging challenge because the collective knowledge of these two foraging gurus is extensive. I’ve been following both of them for three years now. If ever there is a local ingredient you can tap into on your own, it’s certain to be on one of their sites.

Langdon forages in my neck of the woods (literally), and like Hank, has gorgeously photographed meals prepared to the exacting standards of the highest foodie. His book, Fat of the Land, is an entertaining read that will get you excited to start your own foraging journey. At the end of this month it will be one of the prizes you can win for linking up with your foraging comments or blog posts. If you can’t wait until the end of the month to win it, you can support him by purchasing it through the link on his website. And if you are really lucky you may be able to attend one of his upcoming events and classes. See his site for a list of them.

Now head to his blog and then come back here at the end of the month to enter yourself in to the drawing for a copy of Langdon’s book and some other great foraging prizes. Go forth and forage!

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Foraging, Urban Farm Challenge

May UFH Foraging Challenge Round 2: Morel Mushrooms.

Posted on May 10, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Have you seen Hank’s website, Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook yet? It’s fantastic, and has been a source of inspiration and personal challenge to me in the three years since I first found it one night in someone’s blog reader list. I knew when I read about curing olives that I had to try my own hand at it. And while I had to buy my olives whereas Hank, who lives in California, managed to forage for his, the thrill of preparing something as mysterious as a cured olive hooked me.

Hank’s site is populated with fantastic recipes from small game like rabbit and squirrel to venison, seafood and pheasant. He’s got vegetarian recipes, acorn recipes, fern recipes and camas bulb recipes. Hank is a creative chef with an eclectic pallet and the photographs are gorgeous. Expect to get lost on his site for days. And while you are there lost on his site, be sure to check out his book, Hunt, Gather, Cook – Finding the Forgotten Feast which is equally fantastic.

Right now Hank has the next foraging challenge for you – and if you find that one doesn’t work, feel free to peruse his site and come up with your own foraging challenge. So trek on over to Hank’s site and get hunting!

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Foraging, Urban Farm Challenge

Tagged ,

May UFH Challenge Round 1: Humble Superfood

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 20 Comments

I can’t believe it’s May already. When I first hatched this year-long challenge way back in January, May seemed so far away. I was still all snow and out of dry wood and three layers of long johns and numb fingers from cleaning and filling the bazillion animal waterers daily, and happy if there actually was running water to accomplish that chore.

May was a full five pages ahead on the calendar and gin and tonic season and sprinklers and popsicles and nearly the end of school. May was the garden popping and frogs croaking and baby goats being born and I had so much time to get the garden and orchard in still. Only now it’s May and the goat babies and frogs are here and the garden is popping and the orchard is in.

That means it’s time to let the garden do its business for a few short weeks and enjoy yourself before you become a slave to winter gardening and the crush of harvest and {gasp} food preservation. Are you with me?

I’ve got prizes…I’ve got Hank Shaw’s new book, Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast and Langdon Cook’s book Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager and Jennifer Hahn’s book Pacific Feast: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine. And for those of you who can’t get away ever I’ve even got mushroom plugs for you to innoculate in your own yard. So let’s get started.

This first challenge is a simple one and probably embarrassingly predictable.

I want you to explore the humble dandelion. Surely you know the one.

It was the first flower you appreciated for one of it’s most amazing qualities – the ability to spread its seeds far and wide. While your mother set you down on a blanket in the grass you crawled to the edge and grabbed its white globe with your chubby fingers and plucked it right off its stem. Later you learned to chant “Mama had a baby and it’s head popped off” as you ripped the seed head off the slender neck. And later still you learned to close your eyes and blow while wishing, as all those hundreds of seed heads floated away on the breeze and suddenly you were left with nothing but a naked stem. So you repeated the act on another and another.

Years later, after you purchased your first home and tried to grow a perfect lawn you might even have learned to hate the humble dandelion. And if you didn’t, your neighbors surely did as the dandelions in your lawn took over theirs.

In this challenge, I want you to get to know the dandelion a little bit better. I even want you to try embracing the dandelion. And you just may after you read about it on my friend Melany’s blog, www.WeedCuisine.Co. There is more to this simple flower than meets the eye. Next week we’ll move into more challenging territory and stretch your limits a bit further but for this week go for a walk. Find a dandelion. Make a wish.

→ 20 Comments

Posted in Urban Farm Challenge

April UFH Gardening Challenge Roundup – Show us Your Stuff

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 32 Comments

Wow did the end of April ever sneak up on me! We began April with frost and freezing temperatures and now the gardening is experiencing explosive growth. I can’t wait to read about the challenges you took on – and we’ve got some great prizes to reward your efforts!

A V Garden, a vegetable start subscription from Cascadian Edible Landscapes, a copy of The Urban Farm Handbook, a copy of Free Range Chicken Gardens, a copy of Food Grown Right, in Your Own Back Yard, a copy of Growing at the Speed of Life, a children’s chocolate garden from Chocolate Flower Farm, an original garden broom, and a copy of Grow, Cook, Eat.

Now is the time for you to tell us what you did for your April challenge.

 

HOW CAN YOU WIN?

If you have a blog, please use the Mr. Linky tool to link to your blog entry showing us what you did this month. If you don’t have a blog, that’s ok. Simply leave a comment on this blog entry by midnight on Monday, May 7 and tell us what you did. Doing either thing will put you in the running for these fabulous prizes but despite that the linky tells you to also leave a comment, please only do one or the other. In order to keep the prize drawings truly random I have to look at the time stamps on both comments and linkups which is simplified if you only enter once. After linking or commenting, come back to THIS post on Tuesday, May 8 and check the comments to see if you won.

I hope you’ll visit the other sites and meet other like-minded urban farmers – I’m looking forward to checking out everything you’ve done myself!

→ 32 Comments

Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips, Urban Farm Challenge

April Gardening Challenge Round 6: Share the Bounty

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 1 Comment

I pinky swear to you that Graham Kerr himself was going to do this blog post but I just realized today that it’s the last day of April and didn’t manage to catch him in time to write it, so I am posting this on his behalf.

I met Graham at the Seattle Flower and Garden Show, where he was speaking about his latest book, Growing at the Speed of Life, a Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden. In it, he chronicled his first garden with the same sense of humor and energy that he’s brought to every cooking project he’s done. In case you were wondering if that sincere sense of caring and compassion he displays on screen is real – it absolutely is. In fact, it led him to create his EGGS Carton Club Challenge, which is the final April gardening challenge for you.

EGGS stands for Eat, Grow, Gather, Share.

  • Eat more plant foods, especially those grown locally using best practices.
  • Grow more edible plant foods in our yards or some other convenient, shared space.
  • Gather together to prepare and enjoy the vegetables and fruits in creative ways.
  • Share the potential abundance of our gardens with those left out of the normal distribution of goods and services in these rapidly changing times.

    • In short, the embodiment of both the urban farming and food justice movements. Eating more plants helps reduce our carbon footprint. Growing more plant foods ourselves helps us regain control over our food supply. Gathering together allows us to share the bounty that we are able to create, as well as the knowledge and inspiration to encourage others to do the same. Sharing the abundance of our gardens with those who otherwise don’t have access to nutritious food is a necessary action to change the food system.

    You can share the abundance by forming a buying club to get prices down, planting a row for the hungry, or donating your excess produce to a local food bank. One other way to share is to help sponsor or create a school garden. Access to nutritious and healthy food habits should not belong to the upper middle class and until we nourish and inspire others, we cannot effect real change.

    Here is a glimpse of Graham in his garden in 2010.

    And Joshua’s post on how we run our produce buys.

    I hope Graham’s challenge inspires you. Don’t be a bad egg – share the change!

    Related Posts with Thumbnails

    → 1 Comment

    Posted in Growing Groceries - Plants, Seeds and Growing Tips, Urban Farm Challenge