Blackberries - Yum!

The Bay Area blackberry season is on and the Blackberries in Dimond Park, (Oakland) along Sausal Creek are ripe.  I recently picked 3 lbs on a hike.  I like to make jam and wine from the berries I gather over the month of August.  They are fine to freeze until you can gather enough of them for your recipes.

If you go, here are some helpful hints.

1. Wear jeans or you'll be in a world of hurt, long sleeves help and gloves even better.
2.  Bring an extra bag to wrap around your first bag after the blackberry thorns tear it open.
3.  Bring a third bag to wrap around your second and first bag after the blackberries rip holes in them and juice starts running down your arm.
4.  Wear clothes you don't care about so that after your bag gets ripped open and the weight of your mother lode of blackberries squishes the bottom berries and juice flows out and down your arm, all over your shirt and down your pants, you won't mind.
5.  Watch out for Pit bulls and Rotweillers running ahead of their owners.  I know they're normally nice dogs but they don't know WTF you are doing in the bushes.
6.  The farther up the creek the better.
7.  And lucky number 7....stay out of my secret spot...I mean, admire rainbow trout swimming in Sausel Creek and consider how fortunate you are to be in a place so peaceful and beautiful in Oakland.

Next time, I'll bring a bucket ;-)

Month 2 Sunset Magazine's One Block Party contest with Team Found Fruit

Month Two:

Kitty, our bunny whisperer has been busy raising rabbits for the feast. On a 4000 square foot lot in Oakland she manages an efficient microfarm with rabbits, goats, ducks, chickens, quail, and bees. She raises the animals with love and produces nearly all of her own meat and most of her own vegetables. Her goats are trained therapy animals and she enjoys taking them for walks around the neighborhood and to visit children in hospitals. Go team livestock!

Photo by Lori Eanes

Nola, Jamie, and I took a stroll over to Kitty's the other day and had a blast playing with the kids.

The kids loved us as well!

With milk from her goats Kitty produces cheeses, yogurt, ice cream and more. She recently made a quick pressed cheese with honey raspberry flavored walnuts added. She's an expert at cheddar, gouda, queso blanco, swiss, havarti, feta, mozzarella, and several we've never even heard of!

Photos by Lori Eanes

Jonah, age two, is getting an early education in urban farming. He's becoming an expert at planting seeds in the garden, and also likes to water and to play with the baby chicks that Todd and Kate are raising. Starting with a dozen Rock Island fertile eggs from the supermarket and a heat lamp,Todd and Kate hatched one chick- Harry Potter (the chicken who lived). Harry, along with a few buff orpington chicks from the local feed store, is now housed in a beautiful coop built by Todd, with a living roof covered in greens. Although it looks like Harry Potter won't be laying eggs anytime soon because it is becoming more and more apparent that he is indeed a rooster. Their garden is thriving- lettuces, arugula, chard, strawberries are abundant. Yay team chicken and garden!

Photos by Lori Eanes

At our house the garden has grown enormously and we are enjoying harvests of chard, beets, carrots, edible flowers, herbs, berries, and salad greens. The peppers are plentiful and the cukes and tomato plants are the biggest ever thanks to Nola’s magical compost!

Photo by Lori Eanes

Our front yard is an edible oasis of peas, beans, artichoke, blueberries, tomatillos, young melon plants, and more. It doesn't look like we'll get a great crop from the nectarine tree this year but the pear tree is loaded with fruit. Across the street, Nola has a lot of fruit on the trees but we aren't saving much because we all eat it as fast as we can pick it!

Go team garden and team fruit!

Photos by Lori Eanes

Kim and I, the fisherwomen that we are, have been out catching Dungeness crab, poke poling for monkey-faced eel, and netting surf smelt. It’s a bit dangerous at times but totally exhilarating! For the crab we use our fishing poles with crab traps fitted with lassos that snag the crabs legs. Let’s just say we’ve been eating well! After taking Kirk Lombard’s fishing workshop in San Francisco we decided to try our hand at poke poling. When Kim caught that first one it was an outrageous scene. We were screaming and running around on the jetty while the eel slithered around on the line. And when I got to her with our bucket, already filled with hungry crabs, we realized that putting the eel in with them might not be the best idea afterall…we managed to get it home separately, and it was delicious filleted and batter-fried.

Earlier in the month we went out night smelting with an A frame net. This involves standing in the waves and dipping the net into a crashing wave. You can see the smelt glistening in the light of the moon! For day smelting we have been learning how to cast a Hawaiian throw net. Go team ocean!

Tis the season for morels and Kitty has been foraging up a storm. Kim and I also go hunting regularly throughout the winter collecting chantrelles and black trumpet mushrooms. Through our friends at Far West Fungi in Moss Landing we decided to try our hand at growing mushrooms. We had a fun road trip down there and returned with garbage bags full of logs inoculated with oyster, king, and shitake mushrooms. We built mushroom towers, similar to our potato towers but with wood shavings and straw packed in with the logs. The mycelium spreads to the new growing medium and before you know it you’ve got mushrooms! After growing out of the small holes in the tower the oyster mushrooms even corrected themselves and have grown huge. They’re fresh and taste amazing! Go team mushroom!

Kim started making wine vinegar, using her two-year old homemade ginger wine. We also have plans to make a foraged blackberry and elderberry wine, which we've had luck with in the past. The foraged limoncello and arancello are done and delicious! We were recently gifted a 35year old sourdough starter from the Arizmendi bakery collective in Oakland.

Photo by Lori Eanes

That plus the kombucha, sauerkraut and kimchee we’ve been making has been great for our fermentation fun. Go team ferment!

We even tried making a fruit kimchee, but it is definitely an acquired taste...one I haven't acquired yet.

Earlier this season, we foraged olives from the trees on the Mills College campus up the road. They've been brining for some weeks now and they are delicious! Go team brine!

Build your own vegetable oil fueling station

With diesel gas prices skyrocketing these days more and more people are turning to alternative fuels like biodiesel and waste vegetable oil WVO. You can buy a vegetable oil conversion for diesel engines that will allow you to run in any proportion diesel, biodiesel, straight vegetable oil SVO, or WVO. Some conversions are single tank like Lovecraft conversions, while other use a dual tank system that you can switch between like Veg Rev conversions. The purpose of conversions are to heat the fuel and to filter it.

It can be competitive out there in terms of collecting used fryer oil, but building relationships with restaurants can get you a dedicated supply. Choosing the right restaurant is also important because one that changes oil on a schedule will have much cleaner oil than one that changes oil out of necessity. Restaurants used to pay to have the oil removed, then it became a free service, and now some companies pay to remove the used oil because of demand. Used oil can be made into biodiesel, soap, and straight up fuel. Some restaurants will pour the used oil back into the containers they came in called cubies for collection, while others will fill a 55 gallon drum which you then pump out into 5 gallons heavy duty containers called carboys.

Managing veggie oil is a dirty messy job but can be well worth it if you have the space and time. When building a fueling station there are many things to consider such as how much space you have, how many gallons of oil you will be managing, what your budget is, and how much time you have to dedicate to this. Managing oil is comprised of two things, removing sediment and water. Oil and water don't mix afterall and can be harmful if put into a gas tank. If oil is not filtered properly sediment can "coke up" or clog the injectors, and replacing the injector pump can be costly.

A good low budget system can be comprised of a barrel, filters, and a pump. I get my polyester sock filters from dudadiesel, a biodiesel supply store with everything you need for veggie oil and biodiesel. The smaller the micron the finer the filter. Generally, one can start with coarse filtering at about 100 microns.

With the sock filters I hang a few over a broom stick over a drum.

I use 2 drums for filtering. One is for coarse filtering at 100 microns. The other is for fine filtering down to 1 micron. Most people filter down to 5 microns. Another type of filter is a drum filter. I have also used this type of filter for coarse filtering. Some are also washable.

Pumping from barrel to barrel can be done with a manual pump or electric. I am using a hand crank transfer pump. It pumps 10 gallons per minute.

You can also use an electric pump, either 110volt or 12volt. I have used a tuthill1604 7gpm (gallon per minute) 12 volt pump with a car battery. It comes with a plastic gas nozzle and hose. Expect long back orders.

Some people use an inline fuel filter and water separator , while others use gravity and time to allow the natural separation in the container. Time also helps the sediment to settle at the bottom of a container. The rule of thumb is- never use the bottom of the barrel! Water appears white and milky while sediment can be silty or with larger particles. In a 55 gallon drum it's best not to use the oil on the bottom 8 inches just in case of settling (even after filtering.)

A centrifuge spins all of the particles and water out of filter vegetable oil before it is used as fuel. At around $1000. it is the most expensive and the most effective.

I use a four barrel system with sock filters and a hand crank pump. A coarse filter and settling barrel, a fine filtering barrel, and two holding tanks. I have used inline fuel filters as well as the gravity method. When I used the 12 volt pump, I trickled charged the battery with a solar panel. At home I filter 2 times, and then my conversion filters it another 3 times, 1 of them being an inline filter for water separation as well as sediment. Plus there's the strainer in the gas tank. My 1979 Mercedes wagon has run off 100% WVO for over 60,000 miles now! There are classes held around the Bay Area on how to make biodiesel. However, if you want to go "all in" and run 100% veggie oil then this blog's for you.

Month 1 Sunset Magazine's One Block Party contest with Team Found Fruit

We are busy as bees getting our gardens planted and food projects underway. It's exciting to have 4 gardens with all heirloom varieties of veggies growing. Though the snails are continually eating our seedlings, we have planted some exciting varieties like Tigger melons which are small melons with brilliant red and yellow stripes that we're training up a trellis, Black Sea Man tomatoes that are black on the outside and green white and red on the inside, Parisian carrots which are tiny and round, and even peanuts! Kitty has started raising rabbits for our feast, and I have frozen some harvested prickly pears and nopales as well. Our bees swarmed recently but we were still able to harvest some delicious honey. It's all part of learning and perfecting the art of living sustainably.

Pic 1 is of Kitty's vegetable garden. Intensive gardening in a 72 sq feet bed!

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 2 is taken in Nola's yard, an oasis of fruit trees.

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 3 Kate and Jonah Voyageur in the garden. Just look at those tomatoes!

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 4 Oletta enjoying the fruits of her labor. Literally!

photo credit Lori Eanes

Pic 5 Jamie in the hive. We harvested 2 pints of honey recently from our Kenyan Top Bar hive.

Pic 6 Perfectly ripe Prickly pear fruits. We harvested fruits and young paddles or nopales to freeze away for our One Block Feast.

Pic 7 Jonah Voyageur helps water the newly planted peppers and eggplants.

photo credit Lori Eanes

Prickly Pear Cactus and You

In my yard is a fantastic huge prickly pear cactus. If I didn't cut it back it would overtake the house! This spring has been plentiful with fruits and new growth. Spectacular yellow flowers are also in bloom. I decided to take advantage of the harvest and freeze some fruit and paddles away for our upcoming One Block Feast contest with Sunset Magazine.

First I harvested some young paddles to make nopales. When they are about 8 inches is the best time to harvest.

The paddles have less spines than the fruit. Nopales are a commonly used in Mexican cooking. They are often likened to okra because they can be slimy. Proper prepa
ration helps that though. Cutting away the spines is kind of like scaling a fish. Start at the base of the pad and scrape along. It's actually quite easy.

After the spines have been removed slice and dice.

For cooking bring a pot of water to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes. Drain the water then boil more and cook for another 5 minutes. This helps to draw out the sap so they are less slimy. Nopalitos keep well in the fridge and are great with eggs, in salsa, salad, or anything really.

Prickly pear cactus provides delicious fruits called tuna in Spanish as well as the nopale vegetables. It almost needs its own blog post! Said to be a magical elixer there are hundreds of varieties of prickly pears. Made into juice, jam, candy, and ice cream prickly pear is high in vitamins a & c, calcium, magnesium, potassium, taurine, antioxidents, flavenoids, and fiber. It helps lower glucose in diabetics. It's good for brain health with taurine, and heart health by managing cholesterol. Poultices help in healing faster and fighting off infections.

Working with these juicy fruits however can be a challenge. They have hundreds of tiny spines. Some people burn them off on the stove or over a campfire. I carefully cut off the bottom and top and slice them open. The skin then peels away leaving the flesh. I usually juice it because it is quite seedy. The flavor is mellow and slightly sweet, vaguely melon like. Prickly pear cactus provides us with a meal, a dessert, and a flowery bouquet!

"Before" pics Sunset Magazine's One Block Party contest with Team Found Fruit

The first round of pics we sent in were our baselines, to establish the "before" look at our gardens and projects. Meet the team and take a look!

The first group of pictures come from Michele and Jamie's yard. Michele plays in a "green" rock band for kids and is one of the founders of Foundfruit.com, and Jamie is a full time artist who paints with glitter. We're broke bohemians who live in a working class multicultural neighborhood in Oakland and grow the majority of our food so that we can eat the organic local produce we love. There are no grocery stores in our neighborhood, only corner stores with the occasional onion or potatoes. We barter fruits and veggies, jam, and eggs with neighbors, which inspired Kim and Michele to start Found Fruit as a community outreach forum for food sharing and local sustainable living practices. Our backyard is filled with raised beds built with reclaimed wood, a kenyan top bar beehive, rain catchment barrels and citrus trees, and we are in the process of transforming our front yard into an edible oasis. The side yard houses our chicken coop and the girls free range under a massive prickly pear cactus. We drive an old Mercedes that runs on 100% used vegetable oil donated from local restaurants.

Picture 1 The front yard with pear, nectarine, and orange tree. The centerpiece of the yard is an herb spiral which we built using recycled soil and found rock. It's home to 22 different herbs. There are pea and bean towers made of bamboo, blackberry vines growing along the fence and blueberry and huckleberry bushes tucked in among the roses. We're planning to build mounds here for squash and melons.






Picture 2 We spent Sunday clearing the winter garden from our middle raised bed and amending the soil. Jamie planted seeds for cucumbers, beets, carrots, and eggplant.












Picture 3 The chickens enjoying the outer leaves and buggy parts leftover from our harvest.











Picture 4 We gathered up the snails we found while managing the garden. We're feeding them cornmeal for an escargot trial run. Our chihuahua Mini Wolf was perplexed.

Picture 5 The Kenyan Top Bar beehive in full swing of Spring. Taken during our last hive inspection in April.

------------------------------------------------------------

Nola Martin, 75years old, retired from the City of Oakland Office of Parks and Recreation, where she worked as Recreation Center Director for 49 years. She implemented fitness programs, gardening, and arts and crafts to underserved areas of Oakland. For the past 50 years Nola has been planting fruit trees at her home in East Oakland.

This jungle of a yard is home to 9 fruit trees! Plum, cherry, grapefruit, loquat, persimmon etc. and blackberries too.

----------------------------------------

Kim and Oletta are excited to participate with the One Block Feast as part of Team Found Fruit. They are renting the perfect home in Oakland to grow year round fruit and vegetables. They chose this home for its sizeable blank slate back yard and its potential to be transformed into an urban oasis. Over the past 6 months, they added raised beds, fruit trees, flowers and a half wine barrel pond with a solar powered fountain, aquatic plants and home to 4 goldfish. Even though Kim and Oletta will not occupy their home forever, the fruit trees were planted with a pay it forward philosophy so that the next renters may benefit from the bounty of the trees they added.

Kim is Program Officer for a national nonprofit. She provides grants to preschool facilities for renovation and construction. Her grants include greening children's play yards with gardens and natural materials. She is also a gardener, forager and fisherwoman who grew up on farm in Eastern Pennsylvania where she has fond memories of bartering for food from neighbors. Back then, each neighbor had something to contribute. One produced honey, another apple cider and Kim and her brother sold eggs around the block. Kim believes these same barter networks can happen in urban areas. That is what inspired her to co-create www.foundfruit.com with Michele Senitzer and to enter the One Block Feast contest.

Oletta is an Account Director for a San Francisco advertising agency. She was raised in Charleston, SC and is a self-proclaimed “City Girl” but had the benefit of a grandmother who loved to garden and kept flowers and vegetables in any section of her yard where she could find viable soil. She believes there’s not a more satisfying meal than the one from food you grow in your own yard.

Photo 1 is of the garden before the transformation. This photo was taken in September 2010

Photo 2 and 3 is how the garden looks 5/6/11.

Photo 3 is a before photo of the upper bed as it was getting sheet mulched.

Photo 4 is an after photo of the upper bed with squash, beans and a Donut Peach Tree planted.

-----------------------------------------------

My name is Kitty Sharkey, and I am an urban homesteader. In three years, I’ve transformed a dilapidated foreclosed house into a garden oasis and working farm named Havenscourt Homestead. Although I have a small vegetable garden, as an urban homesteader I chose to focus on meat and dairy production. Goats, chickens, ducks, quail, rabbits, and honeybees all earn their keep producing milk, eggs, meat, and honey while enjoying the freedom to free range and express their true nature. My goal is to produce 75% of my own food year around. Right now, I’m at about 50%. But in the summer when my garden is in full production, that figure is closer to 90%.

The first picture is of my vegetable garden. It’s only 72 sq feet. I practice intensive gardening, so I use every square inch as well as growing vertically. As the summer progresses, vines will make their way up the trellises to produce a wide variety of items that would take up far too much space grown in a traditional manner. My garden is definitely 3-D!

The second picture is of me and some of my critters out in the barnyard. My goats not only provide me with milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, but they also serve as therapy animals. We enjoy going to schools, fairs, and other community events together, spreading the word about urban homesteading and how wonderful goats are. The kids in the neighborhood come over to play with them quite often. I think people around here have finally gotten used to seeing me walk my goats rather than a dog.

photo credit Lori Eanes

---------------------------------------------

Todd and Kate Voyageur, a carpenter and freelance bookkeeper, live in Oakland with their son Jonah.

Jonah Voyageur holding their chick Harry Potter.

A shot from the garden.