Sunstone Herb Farm

Perennializing Onions

sunstoneherbfarm — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:51:41 +0000

Read this post to see how these onions grew from spring-planted sets that went to seed.

I had an interesting experience growing storage onions this year. I grow perennial onions: walking or topsetting onions and potato/multiplier onions. I also always grow typical storage onions, biennial plants that you harvest the first year or the second (if you’re planting sets).

I usually plant sets or transplants for my storage onions. I didn’t start any of my own sets or transplants this year, but found myself browsing the plant section in our local giant box home improvement store while waiting for Tree to pick up some necessary part.

It was early spring, and of course, the aisles were filled with tubs of onion sets, shallots, bulbs, rhubarb -you get the idea. It’s like going to a grocery store hungry. Pretty soon, my arms were laden with sets of red, white and yellow storage onions.

The sets went into the ground with no problem. They sprouted, grew beautifully, and then several rows started flowering. This is a danger when planting sets, you are tricking the plant into producing a bulb in its second year instead of bolting and producing a flower stalk. Remember, when a biennial flowers, that’s it. The bulb puts all of its energy into producing a woody flower stalk and not an edible onion.

Since I had so many rows of onions from my armful of sets, I wasn’t concerned about losing part of the harvest. Plus, onion flowers are beautiful, and they attract beneficial insects, so I left them as a flower border. By the end of the summer, the flowers had turned to seed and started spilling onto the garden.

By early fall, new baby onions had sprouted. They continued to sprout, and now, in mid-November, we have a variety of tiny baby onion seedlings in addition to larger scallion sized seedlings. So, that’s a natural benefit of letting onions going to seed, but something even more interesting happened (and now I’m getting to the meat of my post).

Each onion set that produced a flower stalk, multiplied into two to four more onions often with the dried stalk still in the center of the new cluster (think of the way hardneck garlic grows). So instead of acting like biennials, where the plant sets seeds and dies, these morphed into a plant similar to garlic, shallots or multiplier onions.

This onion bulb grew from an onion that had gone to seed.

And the bulbs were a good size and flavorful. I made a delicious crustless quiche with carmelized onions, goat milk, goat cheese, eggs, swiss chard, fresh thyme and parmesan. Mmmm.

As for the onions, I have about a 10 foot row left. I’m pulling many, mulching some, and trying to see if I can get the seedlings to overwinter. Since these were certainly a hybrid onion, who knows what the seedlings will produce. I’ll let you know what happens in the spring. I’d love to have a multiplier onion that sets larger bulbs than potato onions. – Jen

Autumn at Sunstone

sunstoneherbfarm — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:52:33 +0000

The sun shines brilliant the golden autumn leaves of the Cottonwood tree. A storm hides the Sandia Mountains usually visible in the background.

Sunlight on cottonwood tree.

Though this photo doesn’t do the apricot tree justice (it’s a day or two before prime color), it has the most gorgeous fall color of all our fruit trees.

One of our fruit trees planted by the former owner of our place.

Favorite Rooster Recipes: Coq au Vin

sunstoneherbfarm — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:53:55 +0000

What follows is my latest incarnation of Coq au Vin (or Rooster Stewed in Wine). Coq au Vin is a simple and delicious chicken stew that can be as complicated as you like. It does take advance prep to marinate and (if you’re using a rooster) plenty of time to stew.

Except for the mushrooms, everything on this plate came from our homestead: rooster, onions, shallots, garlic, thyme, potatoes, goat milk (for the mashed potatoes) and chard. So good. So good.

Now I know most of you who are not raising your own chickens will not be able to obtain a rooster. I don’t think store bought chicken has enough “ooh la la” to handle Coq au Vin, but if you’ve never had rooster, then you won’t know what you’re missing. You just won’t need to stew it as long.

I came across a wonderful website detailing one man’s quest for an authentic Coq au Vin recipe. Unfortunately I couldn’t locate it again to post the link here. He wrote that “traditonally” a 2-3 year old rooster would be used. We almost never have a rooster that old. Usually we’re butchering at 5-8 months. However, I have to add that it’s easy to get caught up in the details of modern retellings of “peasant” type cuisine. My own peasant-style cooking dictates that whatever I have on hand is what goes in the recipe. That said, I love to include mushrooms in Coq au Vin if I have them or can coordinate my grocery shopping with butchering day. – Jen

Coq Au Vin

(This version is loosely adapted from looking at recipes from the Epicurious website and previous experience making Coq au Vin).

Ingredients:

For the marinade:

1 rooster, cut into 6-8 pieces (I usually keep the wings for making stock.)

1 bottle of wine (This permutation used a ho-hum Blackstone Merlot, but people can get really fussy about the wine they use. Ho hum.)

4 cloves garlic, smashed

4 shallots, smashed (Optional. I don’t always have shallots on hand, but we had a great crop this year.)

3 bay leaves

For the stew:

6 slices bacon (I used up an end of salt pork from our home-butchered pig.)

3 medium onions, chopped into 1/2 to 1 inch pieces

4 cloves garlic, chopped

Handful shallots, chopped (Our shallots from the garden were smallish.)

1 pound mushrooms, sliced (I used cremini.)

Bacon grease or olive oil

6 stems fresh thyme

2-3 cups reduced or regular stock or more wine to cover (I use homemade unsalted condensed stock. Adjust salt accordingly if you’re using store bought stock.)

sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

For those of you butchering your own rooster: After butchering, I separate the rooster into drumsticks, thighs, four breast pieces and put them in water in a glass tupperware dish and then keep covered in the fridge for at least two days. I put the back, neck and wings into the stock pot and cover generously with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer off and on for two days. (this is my lazy stock: simmer until I have to go out, then turn off and leave on the stove, then turn back on when I get back inside. At night I just put it outside to keep cool, then start er back up in the am. After a few days, I strain out the meat and bones, and then reduce by half.) For this particular gastronomic event, the rooster was soaking in water for four days before I got around to making the stew.

1 day ahead: Marinate the Rooster:

Soak the rooster pieces, garlic, bay leaves and shallots in wine to cover, overnight, up to two days. Usually I add thyme leaves here, but this particular time I prepped the dish late at night and didn’t feel like going out in the garden. Plus it was raining. Also, many recipes will call for chopped onions and carrots to go in the marinade. I like doing this too, but was too lazy this time.

To Make the Stew:

1. In a 3 quart minimum heavy pot (I use a Le Creuset, but you could use any stainless steel), cook bacon until browned. Remove to a plate. If there is not enough fat from the bacon, add bacon grease or olive oil, heat and brown the rooster pieces. Sometimes I just leave the bacon in. Remove to a plate when browned.

2. Add bacon grease or olive oil as needed in order to saute onions. Saute onions with sea salt till tender, add garlic and shallots and saute for a minute or so. Add thyme. If the pot gets dry I just throw in some wine. Add the mushrooms and saute for several minutes. Add rooster pieces, marinade and additional liquid to cover to the rooster pieces. I add wine if I have a bottle open. This time I used two cups of condensed home-made stock, salt free. Add freshly cracked black pepper to taste. I used probably just over a half-teaspoon.

3. Cover the pot, bring contents to a simmer, reduce heat and simmer, cover ajar, until the rooster is tender, 2-5 hours, depending on your stove and the rooster. I only had to simmer a few hours till he was falling off the bone. At this point, I take off the lid and simmer more vigorously to reduce liquid. This step will depend on how much gravy you want with your stew. We like a lot to pour over mashed potatoes, so I don’t reduce too much. I also don’t add flour at any stage, because I like the natural gravy that long stewing creates.

4. Serve with mashed potatoes (I keep them lumpy and simple -not too much butter or milk to compete with the rich gravy. Definitely no cheese!) and steam-sauteed greens. A favorite is kale or collards, but we served chard last night since we expected a frost, and the chickens have been getting out and having their way with it. Red wine accompanied the meal. And for dessert, of course, homemade apple pie with the last apples from our trees. Bon appetit!

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Herbalism 101 Workshop

sunstoneherbfarm — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:52:59 +0000

On Saturday, Jen held the first of a 6-part series of Herbalism 101, a workshop that introduces participants to the art and science of using herbs as medicine. The first class focused on using herbs to support the digestion system and included making catnip tincture (Nepeta cataria).

More information on our upcoming Herbalism 101 workshops is available on our website.

Jen shows workshop participants how to harvest catnip for making tincture.

Harvesting catnip.

Making catnip tincture.

Leaf Peeping in the Manzano Mountains

sunstoneherbfarm — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:34:38 +0000

We took a break from sheet-mulching new garden beds and headed up to the Manzano Mountains to see Fall in action. We hiked about 2 hours on the 4th of July Campground Trail which led us along the edge of a canyon that provided wonderful acoustics for making echoes. (At 44, I still love doing this).

From left to right: Maggie, Tree and Tessie

Wow, Jen let me take her photo.

Looks like where we used to live in the Catskills, NY.

Herbs For Dogs

sunstoneherbfarm — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:26:11 +0000

Big girl Tessie on the left with Maggie at Coyote Creek Park near Guadalupita

I want to share an extremely effective herbal combination I used recently with Tessie. We use herbs with all our animals (goats, chickens, cats), with the dogs seeming to have the least need for medical attention. But the other day, after a long hike in the Jemez Mountains, Tessie hurt her leg jumping out of the truck onto an uneven paver. Usually the dogs recover quickly from slight sprains or muscle pulls, so after making sure (as best I could) that it wasn’t broken, I let her go rest under the bed (we did have a long walk!).

In the morning, however, she wasn’t any better, and her “ankle” joint was swollen, hot and tender to the touch. Poor Tessie. Time to get out the yerbas. Because she didn’t like having her leg handled, I didn’t use a comfrey compress, which might be my first choice of remedies. I also chose not to give her comfrey infusion internally, because I put together a blend of tinctures that would pack a big punch, and I knew I might trouble getting her to take too many different things.

I mixed equal parts of St. John’s Wort, White Willow Bark, Nettle and Yarrow tinctures. To start with I probably used about three tablespoons each. I put the tinctures in a small saucepan and heated it slightly with some honey to sweeten the taste and evaporate some of the alcohol off a bit. Once the honey was melted and blended in with the tinctures, I poured the mixture into a small glass jar to store in the fridge.

I gave her a generous tablespoon for her first dose. Note that Tessie is a big dog, about 80 pounds of labrador and Heinz 57, and this is a large dose, but I felt that Tessie needed a large amount of these herbs to really jumpstart her healing. For comparison, for a 150 pound person, I might recommend taking a teaspoon two or three times a day, but Tessie had a tablespoon three times a day. I mixed the tincture with whatever I had in the fridge which for Tessie’s recovery consisted of homemade ricotta and tahini. This made quite the yummy paste. Tessie scarfed it up from her post under the bed, and even Tree commented that it smelled good.

I gave her 4 doses that first day, reducing it down to 3 doses a day for the following 3 days or so, after which she received her medicine twice a day. In total she had tincture for about eight days. After her first day of tincture, the swelling was down considerably. After two days, the swelling was completely gone, but she was still holding her foot up. After three days, she was limping but walking on her foot again, and after four days she was starting to become sporadically active again (against our wishes!). After a week, she wasn’t limping, but she was still taking it easy with running and jumping.

I used this combination of herbs because of their strong anti-inflammatory, tissue and nerve healing effects. I did not ice her leg (I don’t really believe in icing sprains anyway -I tend to use heat or a combination of cold/heat) or give her anything else. I just encouraged her to rest as much as I could. Interestingly enough, Tessie looked forward to her medicine, but Maggie wouldn’t touch the stuff. I guess Tessie knew how much it was helping her. – Jen

Calendula Tincture and Urban Gardens

sunstoneherbfarm — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:32:51 +0000

All of the calendula seeds that Jen planted in June are in full flower. The bright orange blossoms which we use to make Calendula Tincture (Calendula Officinalis) are so pretty that I hate to pick them, but doing so keeps the plant in bloom.

Calendula (Calendula Officinalis) in our garden.

A calendula-on-the-brain google search led me to this interesting New York Times article about a woman who levered up concrete in Brooklyn and transformed ugly space beneath her fire escape into a thriving beautiful garden. – Tree

From the article:

She started planting without knowing a thing about gardening. She just wanted to create a space, literally, among the crack needles and excrement left each evening beneath her fire escape.

So she began with easy, fast-growing annuals that wouldn’t tempt light-fingered passers-by the way a rose or a lily might. She followed no how-to guide, no step-by-step manual. This kind of gardening springs more from an attitude, and shows what city people can do just by taking on an ugly, scary space and seeing the beauty beneath. It’s the first lesson of gardening: Let go of preconceived notions and simply interact with the space.

Read the rest of the article here.

Our Food Forest In Progress

sunstoneherbfarm — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:47:03 +0000

Here are before and after shots of our backyard and casita.

Backyard and Casita - July 2009

Backyard and Casita - April 2008

Blackened String Beans

sunstoneherbfarm — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:26:10 +0000

This year I planted a bunch of pole and bush beans throughout our gardens. So far we’ve harvested about 5 pounds of beautiful crisp green beans. A few nights ago we made blackened string beans with a mustard remoulade dipping sauce using Ric Orlando’s recipe. Ric owns New World Home Cooking, a restaurant that we visited often when we lived in New York’s Hudson Valley. If you like hot and spicy, you’ll love these. They go great with crab cakes. -Tree

Blackened String Beans with Mustard Remoulade dipping sauce

Crab cakes made with scallions from our gardens.

Jen featured in Albuquerque Journal

sunstoneherbfarm — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:52:07 +0000

Jen was featured in yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal in an article called Healing Essentials. You may need to click on the link for a trial pass to read it. -Tree