Farm Stand Marfa

HOW TO BE INDEPENDENT

This weekend celebrate your independence by keeping it local.  Saturday morning begins with a trip to the farmer’s markets.  Take your own bags so you don’t have to ask your farmer for a plastic one.  Enjoy eating breakfast at the market while you stroll through the tables, stopping to visit with your friends and the growers and the makers.

Here in Marfa breakfast at the market means a burrito made by Alicia stuffed with eggs or chile verdes. Ganka makes chocolate croissants and breads using all organic ingredients. Romi brings sweet fritters that she learned to make in her birth country of Argentina. 12-year old Samantha serves the best limeade.  Horchata, a drink made from rice, cinnamon, sugar and lime zest, is a market staple. Served cold it is a perfect refresher for the lactose intolerant.

Take home Socorro’s pies, Bridget’s tiny chocolate cakes and a dozen of Magda’s tamales. Add a carton of farm eggs and a basket of vegetables and you will almost be a locavore.

Being independent means having your own backyard garden.  You can grow a lot of greens and carrots in a 6×6 foot plot.  In just a few weeks after planting you will need to thin the crowded seedlings. These young sprouts can be turned into a delicious salad

New gardeners, Erika and Dahr, are completely smitten with their 3 week-old garden.  They just ate their first salad assembled from the thinnings of the radish, arugula and golden frilly mustard seedlings. Add some chopped mint and basil to these delicate greens.  Grow lots of borage and harvest as a micro green to give a taste of cucumber to the salad.  Finish with a squeeze of lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and some sea salt. This baby salad will convince you to grow your own.

There’s still enough summer left to plant fast growing crookneck squash and zucchini.  Dig a shallow hole, mix in a shovelful of compost or aged manure, plant 3 seeds and water.  Mulch the planting with a big circle of alfalfa hay.  Harvest the squash blossoms first, stuff them with cheese and fry them like chile rellenos.

Now is the time to plant winter squashes.  These include pumpkins. Winter squashes are called keepers- you harvest them in the fall and they keep you in food through the winter.

There is nothing independent about cooking over a hot stove on a holiday. This weekend at our house we are making a solar oven out of aluminum foil and cardboard.  I’ll experiment with several designs over the next few weeks and report on the nuances of homemade solar ovens later this month.
However, you don’t have to wait, here are two cookers I am trying:
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Reflective_Open_Box

http://solarcooking.org/plans/windshield-cooker.htm
These are great projects to do with children.  Teach them what it means to be independent from a sustainable point of view.

Farm Stand vendor, ecologist and artist, Alyce Santoro, introduced me to the Windshield Solar Cooker.  Her friend Kathy Dahl-Bredine, another ecological activist, living in Oaxaca, came up with the Windshield Cooker.  You can make it in 20 minutes with a car sun-reflector and some Velcro. I’ve expanded the design to include a cover of clear plastic sheeting taped to the windshield sun catcher.  The plastic traps more heat.  The disadvantage is that you have to untape the plastic to check your pot of food.  Still it worked great with a cast iron Dutch oven.

To take advantage of the rain we have been enjoying, set up rain barrels under the eaves of the roof. Here’s a site to get you started:
http://home.comcast.net/~leavesdance/rainbarrels/construction.html
Mike Green, an architect, also a Farm Stand Marfa vendor who grows his own food, showed me how to harvest rainwater in a barrel.

This July 4th don’t drive anywhere.  Invite your friends to bike over for a pot- luck of local goodness.  Linger into the night to enjoy the waxing gibbous moon, 88% full and growing.

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Home.html

(The Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter is published by Sandra Harper.  If you’d like to receive the newsletter contact farmstandmarfa@gmail.com)