What´s in my Backyard

Chia plants blooming. At R$100/kg, I better get my own supply.

Alfavaca, basil-like rougher leaves that can be used to season meat just like it would bay leaves. Easy to grow, I brought some seeds from Campos, State of Rio. I had never heard of it before.

I paid R$6.90 for a single long loofah with a hope of getting the seeds. They came all mashed, except for 3. I first sowed on a plastic cup and later transplanted them by the fence. This is the only survivor, but the loofahs are curving themselves, so I can tell they are not going to be the same as the one I bought.

Tangelo of some kind. Half an orange makes a meal.

Japanese Nira (Allium tuberosum) grows vigorously. It is good in omelets or in pork dishes. Not used in Brazilian cuisine.

Turmeric Time

That´s how most of us know store bought turmeric - as a yellow powder






But it actually comes from a gingerlike root - Curcuma Longa





It starts from a plant like these - the leaves should be dry (mine are not quite yet)





Dig the small roots out to your joy!





Such a delight to see these wonderful "gold from the earth" - as it is known in certain parts of Brazil - sunbathing




For culinary use, I can just smash it, cut it, or grate it into the cooking rice or stews. But if I want to store it in a powder form, I heard, I need to boil, dry, and grate. Some people just sun dry it before grating. In either case, you will be rewarded with bright yellow tainted palms just like Moroccan women.

Okra

Okra plant. Pods clinging too long...they may get woody. Not all Brazilians like okra - slime is to blame - nonetheless, the rest of us is absolutely crazy about it. To avoid getting it slimy, I heard you can add vinegar or lemon while cooking or washing, I am not sure. I do none of them. My strategy is to fry in hot oil, without stirring too much. Cutting into bigger pieces and patting washed okra dry also helps. Okra goes well in tempura, deep-fried coated with cornmeal, fried like potato chips, smothered with tomatoes, and combined with shrimp or chicken. We, country people, hundreds of miles away from the beach, eat smothered chicken with okra which is previously fried and added at the end (to avoid slime). Yeah, we can pickle okra too. I also eat it raw, sliced in diagonal, with soy sauce and drops of lemon. It can´t get any simpler.

Smothered Chicken in Fresh Turmeric, Mustard Leaves and Okra

My neighbor Rosa gave me a freshly butchered chicken that minutes before was freely running around her house. It was a payback for something that I don´t remember what. We trade goodies so often that it became part of our routine.
The free-roaming chicken was never part of my diet growing up. The first time that I saw it on a pot, I thought it was strange: skinny long legs, speckled yellow skin, though, and very little meat to eat. I have noticed lately that farm-raised chicken has been smelling strong, with soft slimy flesh, with fat marbling the breast fillet. So when my neighbor told me she would give me one from her stock, I watched as many videos possible on how best to cook it. While I used a crockpot to make the stock, I marinated the rest of the meat in garlic, onions, salt, and pepper overnight. (Brazilian cuisine is not much more than garlic-onion based seasoning.) In a large casserole, I fried the pieces until golden brown. I stepped out of the kitchen and plucked the roots of turmeric. I had never gotten turmeric roots before, so I was not sure I would find any. What a nice surprise to collect small, yet dark yellow roots that smelled earthy. I added small amounts of hot stock and ran again to my veggie garden to pick up some mustard leaves, cilantro, parsley, and green onions. Some more hot stock to pick up fresh corn, which was badly attacked by a bird from the parrot family. In the small patch of okra bushes, I have more pods than I can pick or eat. In an hour, lunch was late but ready. Such a delicious, substantial meal that I need a nap now.

Nothing is All on Sundays

June is over. Many thoughts, no writings whatsoever. End of Fall, but thankfully we haven't had cold and dark days. It's been a year since my father passed away. Like the days that precede Easter, I can't express my feelings into words, remaining in a contemplation mode. Today is a beautiful Sunday. Perfect sunny day, the most pleasant temperature, no wind, no dust, no flies. And also silence on the farm. I had built a "nethouse" for my vegetable garden, but the veggies seem not wanting to grow. We had a long drought, a few days of very heavy rain, and no cooler days. The great advantage of placing a net all over is the absence of white butterflies and other flying critters. I was just not prepared for what came under the earth - ants. The hardest one to kill using natural methods. I remember the year I arrived at the farm how bountiful we had. Vegetation was lush, wild cucumbers and other goodies grew abundantly, trees were carried with juicy fruits, and best of all, I had a great vegetable garden cultivated with a minimum of knowledge. This year, the poncan orange tree shriveled, the lychee tree got some kind of new bacteria, no cashews, no mangoes, and almost no avocado. The new fruit trees that I planted yielded sour or tasteless oranges. Except for the lime tree, everything else seems to have gone wrong. Can you believe that my smooth skin chayotes grew some tough spikes? I only collect the young ones, as the older ones can really hurt. I watched a TV rural program this morning. It said that the swine raising is having many losses and some towns have gone to emergency state. It is really hard to bear with all the heartbreaking that farming brings. It doesn't depend solely on hard work, but on the weather, the international market, the world economy, and everything else. I still don't know what I should do in case my chicken coop tenant decides to leave, or if my mother's pension stops. I greatly depend on these two for a steady income and family survival. As I have told you before, my farm is almost all rented out, and I have kept a part of it for my orchard and garden. I don't even have animals such as pigs, cows, goats, sheep, or chickens. In truth, I can't have some of them because of my dogs, some other because of a lack of know-how, range-free chickens for the prohibition for having commercial egg farm on here. The only thing that I could have were pigs, but my daughter said that she loves spare ribs, bacon, sausage, loin so much that can't have them. So we continue having dogs only. The two cats that I had adopted got killed by our Border Collie mix. Sometimes I feel that I am not living a real farm life - of course not. I can't have the basic things such as farm animals. But I still love living on the farm. I wake up early and can breathe fresh air while sipping a cup of coffee, which was roasted and grounded by me. While the farm is not producing as much as I expected, the town is fun. On Sundays, there is a nice farmer's market on the main street, close to butcher shops, which we have many alongside with pharmacies. While the restaurants are poor in town, the butcher shops roast beef, pork, and chickens for our Sunday lunch. The cheapest and most popular item is the roasted chicken with potatoes. The meat falls apart, while the bones come out clean. Some chickens get seasoned mandioc flour or cornflour stuffing. That's a plus too. But to me, the real advantage of living on a farm has to do with Sundays which used to be very boring - the "nothing to do" day. Now I expect Sunday especially for being a "nothing to be done"day. I want all the silence it can offer. Like orthodox jews observe their Sabbath, I want my Sunday even motionless. No driving, no going out, no visitors, no phones, no decision to make. I just want to rest my head on a cushion and stare at nothing. Nothing is all on Sundays.

Life Never Left Us

I was going to write “life is slowly coming back to the farm”, but, in truth, life never left us. A series of new happenings made me aware that life continues on, in its eternal cycle. It rained after a long drought. The very hot days are over now. It´s the Fall season. I am planning to start a new vegetable garden, in a smaller scale, closer to my house, in its original place. The “professional” spot where we cultivated two years ago was yield to the cattle. I rented out the spot. I have called the carpenters to build a structure that will hold a net that blocks 30% of the sun. And hopefully, it will stop white butterflies from sitting on the leaves. It looks like a greenhouse, except that it is not temperature or rainproof. Vegetables don´t grow too well under the hot sun, and that´s why it´s mandatory to have all this netting. The old patch didn´t have it – I had great veggies, but, they were tougher than the ones that we find at the market. I am excited about this new project. More than having a passion for growing veggies, I love freshly picked leaves for salads and the freedom from visiting the farmers´market. A few days ago I was looking for watercress for a special dish (oxtail stew). No grocery stores would have it, so I needed to wait for the market´s day in order to prepare this food. Sometimes I want cilantro, and almost no one has it. Fresh basil? I think I am the only person who loves it. In less than a month, I should have arugula, which is one of my favorite leafy green. In four months, my garden will have all that I used to have before, and probably nobody else in town. Who can grow (or know) celery? Peas? Edible flowers? Just me who had the privilege of living in the San Francisco Bay Area.