Urban Land Scout Camp

Katie teaches young Urban Land Scouts how to use a compass to earn the mapping badge.

Today was the final day of the first ever Urban Land Scout camp. I have been supporting the Urban Land Scout program in small, personal ways for over a year, and was definitely glad to have the opportunity to be a counselor and propagate Urban Land Scouting to our group of young people. Over the course of the week, Katie, I, and eight young scouts spent time at Beardsley Farm; in addition to working on earning the first five ULS badges, we learned about the workings of the farm and helped with farm chores. I was glad to see the campers' enthusiasm for learning about native edible plants, collecting seeds, and taking cuttings of herbs. Go forth, young scouts!

Urban Land Scouts--Composting with Worms

This past Wednesday at Beardsley farm, the Urban Land Scouts had their penultimate meeting of the series and learned how to make worm-bins out of five gallon buckets.  And although I'd known about composting with the help of worms for a while, I've never really bothered to do it--after all, we have a (somewhat successful) compost pile. Why bother with the worms, I thought? Actually, that's not true, and that's not what I thought at all. Earlier in the spring, I tried to make a worm bin out of buckets, and failed; I knew my failure by the worms' determined escape from the home I had created for them. I abandoned the project and released the worms back into our compost pile, not really reflecting on my failure until now.

At the workshop we learned that if worms are escaping their home, that means something is not right in their environment; we also learned that it is necessary for worms to have some sort of moist bedding--we used soaked newspaper shreds--to be happy. (After all, as Shannon reminded us, "A dry worm is a dead worm." The picture is of her showing us how to make the bedding.) It is exactly this bedding that I neglected to make in my earlier attempt, although I knew that worms love to eat half-composted fruits and vegetables and need a little shovel-full of dirt in their habitat.

I still feel a little strange taking worms out of their natural habitat and keeping them in a bin in our kitchen; however, now that I know that this type of worm thrives on food scraps, and would soon die off  if put into the garden bed (as was soon to be the fate of the worms we dug up from Beardsley's compost), I feel a little better.

For some reason what was most surprising to me was that Shannon was handling the worms and the compost without gloves, and so lovingly! She would take a mostly rotted apple, break it apart and show us how the worms love its moist environment. She instructed us to feed the worms in our bin by burying the food scraps somewhere beneath the bedding, and as squeamish as I started out the workshop, I think that I will be ready to do this in a day or two. After all, it's just worms, and my own food scraps, and newspaper--all things that I decisively handle.  Make soil with the help of worms!

Inside the worm bin--see the worms?

Urban Land Scouts--Saving Seeds with John Coykendall

Yesterday for the Urban Land Scouts workshop (level 7), the scouts had a chance to spend time with John Coykendall, the master gardener at Blackberry Farm.

John has been collecting heirloom beans for over four decades, and knows an astonishing amount about the history of the various beans that he's tracked down. Some of the beans that he's acquired were guarded by families for generations; one of the field peas that he showed us dated back to the 1790s! Not only did the beans have fascinating histories, but they were also very beautiful. I'd been wanting to see (and grow!) Christmas Lima beans for a while now, and John had some of those, along with at least a dozen other varieties of beans and peas.

John also brought a few different gourds and explained about the various different uses for them. Before there was Tupperware, gourds were used for storing salt and sugar; they were also used as bowls and dippers. But I digress. What I loved the most was to hear John talk about the seeds.

In these days when produce is hybridized to withstand exceedingly long transport--as so many plants and vegetables are bred to create tougher, more uniform-looking fruit and seed--we are losing genetic diversity.

Not only that, but if we shop at most supermarkets, what we often buy--and get accustomed to--is bland, flavorless produce whose main goal is to arrive at its destination unbruised. Or we become used to just a few different kinds of grain, legume, or fruit, and don't even know about the value and taste of the hundreds of other varieties. I know that when I was canning apple sauce last fall, I was surprised to learn that some apples are better for sauce, while others are best for cider. And it's the same with beans: we know so few varieties, when there are still so many in existence!

This is why the conservation of heirloom seeds is so important--it preserves diversity and a wider genetic base. It keeps the history of our food alive; it keeps food important in ways greater than just sustenance. As the Urban Land Scouts were gathered around to begin the meeting, John Coykendall looked around the circle and said, "This is going to be the future of seed-saving--it's going to be you, and people with such interests."

I walked away from the day with a good bit of knowledge about seeds--for example, I learned that saving seeds of hybrid plants is no good, as the offspring will likely develop undesirable traits of one of the parent plants; this means that the Sungold seeds that I'd saved earlier are no good (and maybe it's for the best that those tomato plants got pummeled by hail). I also walked away with a pocket full of beans. I sat down when I got home, and sorted them--I have a couple of most of the types of beans and peas that John brought. They'll be good for the next 4-5 years, with at least a 50% germination rate, and I'll try to grow a few of them, maybe even this summer. The good thing is, even if I have one or two of the beans, I can grow them, and have more than enough seeds for the following year.

I hope to have the pleasure of John Coykendall's company again soon; he may be coming back to Beardsley next year, and I just might make a trip to Blackberry Farm to follow him around for a while. If you have a chance to spend some time with him, I highly recommend it!

Urban Land Scouts--Fed by the Land

Jeff Ross, discussing the onion

When I earned my Urban Land Scout Level 4 badge last year, I didn't know much about foraging. Well, I knew something--just enough to put a few things on the Urban Land Scouts map, and know that I could handle the thorns of the wild blackberries in order to make dessert out of them. I also knew that there was wild garlic growing around our neighborhood, but I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
I was looking forward to yesterday's workshop as a kind of chance to re-affirm my level 4 badge--I definitely wanted to learn more about the edible things that could be foraged in the urban and suburban environment. Once Jeff Ross, the garden manager from Blackbery Farm, started talking, I couldn't help but try to hurriedly write down everything that he said. In the hour and a half of the tour, we barely made it outside of the grounds of Beardsley Farm; in that time, Jeff identified at least twenty five different edible or useful wild plants, and discussed some of the lesser-known points of a couple cultivated ones. In the picture above, he's demonstrating that the stringy roots of onions--the ones most people usually cut off and discard--have a lot of the great onion flavor, and taste incredible when flash-fried.

My head is still spinning a little, not just from the sheer amount of information Jeff presented yesterday, but with the knowledge that it was only the beginning. There is so much more to learn! I'll leave you with a picture of my notes--maybe you can make some sense of them. By the end of the workshop (on the following page, not pictured), my notes deteriorated into exclamatory remarks, such as, "Forsythia is NOT edible!! Pea tendrils are delicious! Let your collards go to seed and eat the florets!" Let me know if you have any questions, and keep in mind that a lot of the notes are specific to Beardsley. (Also, I probably misspelled or mis-wrote a few things....)

Urban Land Scouts--Seed Bombs

Last year, when Katie Ries was showcasing her Urban Land Scouts exhibit, I had just gotten a Shitty Summer Job, and could only make it to one of the events. It was then that I vowed that if the Urban Land Scouts were to ever meet formally (or informally), I'd be there. I have been fortunate to attend the weekly evening workshops at Beardsley farm for the last couple of weeks, and am starting to look forward to the rest of the meetings even more.

At the workshop yesterday, we made seed bombs (and no, they're not nearly as violent as they sound--just balls of compost, clay, and seeds). As much as I am excited for and supportive of the Urban Land Scouts, I have to admit that at first, I wasn't looking forward to making these; they seemed haphazard and unimportant. However, as my hands sank down into the bucket of compost and clay, as I began mixing and forming the seed balls along with my seed-ball-forming team, I started to understand the process in a different way. First of all, it was just that--a process; I got to spend time with fellow scouts, talking and keeping my hands busy. And as Katie said, the seed bombs are a hopeful gesture--they are little parcels of seeds that go where a gardener wouldn't, and they provide edible plants for an uncared-for space. Because seed bombs are (often) not tended by anyone, they are at the disposal of nature's cycles; when it rains next, the seed bombs we launched last night will start disintegrating, and some seeds will (hopefully) begin germinating. I think that my initial hesitance about seed bombs was about just this: I was only in control of depositing them, but not much else, and because it's my first year growing anything, I've wanted to have control over the plants at every stage. With seeds sown outside of my control, I don't have a say, and so can only observe what happens. And I think I'm fine with that.

(And this part is more for my records than anything else, just in case I want to look in on some of the seed bombs we threw last night: in the planter on the side of the Technology Center; in the raised beds in the front yard of an abandoned house, the old playground, the abandoned school..)

Urban Land Scouts--Saving Seeds

7 - The Urban Land Scout plants and cares for seeds.

Seed saving is an important gesture of both hope through the winter and self reliance. It is how generations of growers have preserved heirloom varieties or hybridized new strains with combinations of desirable traits.

Sungold

Last year, our CSA share included Sungold Tomatoes. I don't know what it was--I usually prefer a slightly tart tomato, and love Green Zebras--but the Sungolds won my heart. I would dig them out from the half-bushel basket as soon as we would get into the car to drive home, and eat a few right then and there. I tried rationing them throughout the week, but quickly found out that when ripe, these little golden spheres don't last long; I knew that I'd been saving them for too long when a few of the Sungolds' skins broke. It was then that I decided that I must save some of the seeds and plant them in the spring, rather than just composting the tomatoes.
I know that because we're signed up for the same CSA this year, we'll probably get more Sungolds, but I don't care--I could eat these tomatoes every day. Besides, there are rumors that the Sungolds make a beautiful tomato jam, and I'm itching to try to make a few pints of this, knowing how much I like home-made ketchup. So, about a month or so ago, I started some of the tomato seeds inside. We haven't had as much sun as I'd hoped for, and our window sills aren't the best for tomatoes, but they seem to be doing well. I have a couple plants of few different varieties, but I'm most excited for the Sungold tomatoes.

If you've never saved tomato seeds before, you should try it; it's not difficult, and very satisfying. Even if you just grow one tomato plant, the work is worth it; and it's completely worth it to know exactly where the seeds came from, too!

I would also like to encourage you to consider Urban Land Scouts. There are several workshops coming up, and all of them are a great way to sharpen awareness of the natural world and to meet some wonderful folks. Being a part of the Urban Land Scouts has challenged me personally to do more, to be involved in the community, to be aware of my environment. As I expressed in my essay for the ULS blog, the program is a positive "response to fragmented communities, and people's dissatisfaction of being alienated from their surroundings." The steps it encourages you to take may be small, but they have deeper reverberations in your life and the life of others.

___________

Of course, I later learned that saving seeds from the Sungold tomato is not advisable, as it is a hybrid. You can see my post about heirloom seeds and John Coykendall here.

Blackberries

I realize that blackberries have been gone for a while, but as I was submitting pictures of a cake made with foraged blackberries to Urban Land Scouts, I fell into some great reminiscing. The cake that I made was a conglomeration of ideas: the actual cake part was the vanilla cake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, the icing was the lime "buttercream" from the same book, and the filling (as well as the coulis) was improvised by me, with Matt's help. Blackberries and lime seemed like a good combination, and I scraped a vanilla bean into the cake better for a more intense flavor. If you have never macerated berries, I highly recommend it. You can just let them sit in sugar for an hour or so, until they release their juices; or you can make the berries very happy by soaking them in booze (and also sugar). I soaked the blackberries in brandy, and used the resulting deliciousness as the filling for the cake. I also cooked down some berries with brandy and sugar for a coulis, which made me feel very fancy. Here are some pictures of the process. I'll go and quietly remember the blackberries and think of more season-appropriate posts. Until later.

Urban Land Scouts--Badges

Just a quick post tonight; I received my first Urban Land Scout badges today, and just had to share. They are the badges for the first two levels, and for the seventh level. I looked back over the list and think that I may have a few more coming my way in a few weeks. Here they are:

I have also had the fortune of the gift of vegetables from one of my co-workers: a whole bucket of green beans, several zucchinis and yellow squash, cucumbers, and hot peppers. One of the zucchinis was as big as my arm! So tonight we made double batches of both sweet and savory zucchini bread. I'm taking some to my co-worker (after all, he brought us the produce), and will be posting another short post soon about our canning adventures.

Urban Land Scouts

I've been thinking of personal responsibility (to the environment and the community) beyond veganism. For many, veganism is a step in becoming more aware of food consumption and production, but of course, there is more to conscientiousness than just eating vegan food (or not wearing animal products). There are other steps an individual can make towards conserving resources and living sustainably. As a result of all this thinking, I bought a composter with the rest of my tax return, and we moved 2/3 of our winter compost pile into it for quicker composting. I've been combing the area for native edible plants, and I've also been attempting to start a small container garden (out of wooden drawers that we've been taking from the abandoned school next door). Because of all these things--and my interest in building community and supporting the environment, I was incredibly excited to become a part of Urban Land Scouts.

The Urban Land Scouts is a project created by Katie Ries, and it is part of her Master's Thesis work, although I think that it has been coming along for a few years. Katie is involved around town, and is very conscious about people's interactions with the land that they occupy. Here is a brief description of the organization from their website:

The Urban Land Scouts are a new group helping modern urban people become better stewards of the land and communities where they live. Membership is open to all.

Also, here are the core values of an Urban Land Scout:

1 – The Urban Land Scouts looks at the land daily; he is observant of and attentive to it.

2 - The Urban Land Scout tries to identify and use the plants in her neighborhood.

3 - The Urban Land Scout seeks to cultivate native or edible plants in whatever soil he can access and tend.

4 - The Urban Land Scout is fed by the land in which she lives.

5 - The Urban Land Scout makes an effort to grow vegetables.

6 - The Urban Land Scout plants and cares for seeds.

7 - The Urban Land scout shares information freely and teach others what she knows.

8 - The Urban Land scout is lucid, patient, and rooted in the land where he lives.

9 - The Urban Land Scout composts with the help of worms.

10 - The Urban Land Scout shares her harvest.

These are also the ten levels of the Urban Land Scout, and you can see the logical progression--from observing and identifying to harvesting, sharing, and composting. What I especially like about ULS is that it's a project with built-in accountability on several different levels; yes, the project itself is about being mindful of our (urban) environment and connection to food creation. But also, in order to earn a badge, each of the scouts has to document the achievement and report back to the site. One of the tenets of the group is to share information (to blog about it!), resulting in wider awareness of the project and its goals.

As many of us become more and more estranged from the sources of our food, we can become less and less aware of the kind of impact our consumption makes on the community and environment; it is thus critical to pay attention to the land one inhabits--to take care of it, in any way, even if these actions are just small changes to the everyday routine (such as saving seeds from vegetables bought at a local farmer's market). I strongly encourage everyone to become an Urban Land Scout, officially or not. Everyone can become a genuine steward of the land! Everyone can become more responsible to the land and to our respective communities!