Friday night. What could be better for a simple dinner on a frosty night, while sitting on the sofa watching a DVD, than Flammkuchen – German pizza?

Flammkuchen – literally, “flame cake” – is a dish from the Alsace-Lorraine region (much of which bounced back and forth between France and Germany over the last couple of centuries).

Flammkuchen is made like a thin-crust pizza, topped with crème fraîche, onions, and Speck - a salt-cured and lightly smoked ham. My first taste of Flammkuchen came about two decades ago while Irina and I were staying in Cousin Alexander’s Bauernhof, right in the heart of the small German village of Oberotterbach.

Elements of Cousin Alexander’s “farm” house – like the rear wall, which the house shares with the town Catholic church and cemetery – date from the 13th century. All the while we stayed there those church bells pealed every fifteen minutes, day and night, ringing out the quarter-hour and the hour. It’s enough to make one an atheist.

It really was (and is still) a farmhouse, dead square in the middle of town. Behind those big doors are a central courtyard; barns, stalls, and sheds; tractors and wagons; a well; a kitchen garden; and a wine and root cellar beneath the living quarters. Farmers live in the village, and sortie out to their fields each day.

Oberotterbach lies just across the border from the French town of Wissembourg, which marks the start of the Deutsche Weinstrasse. Here’s the Deutsches Weintor through which we drove back and forth between Germany and France in our ancient, borrowed Fiat Cinquecento.

The border control station was just on the other side of the “wine gate”. The border controls were a joke, as they were easily circumvented. Rather than staying on the main road, instead take one of the numerous back roads that crisscross the border through the vineyards. During our stay there, EU borders were opened and the inspection stations between Germany and France shuttered.

We often walked the ~4 km to Wissembourg from Oberotterbach through the vineyards and over a shoulder of the Sonnenberg, avoiding roads completely, ending up in a bar where the Gitanes and Gauloises smoke hung so thick and heavy you had to crawl on you hands and knees to see and to breath. But I digress.

The oldest building in Oberotterbach contains a Zehntkeller (literally, “10th cellar”), which was used for storing the local baron’s “10th” share of the harvest from the surrounding area. Kind of like a 13th century version of a local IRS. Centuries later, a cramped corner of that vaulted cellar housed a jazz club called the Musikantebuckl.

Along with the music they served local beer, local wine, and Flammkuchen baked in a wood-fired pizza oven. Love at first bite: I was closer to heaven than a kid from Sacramento could ever reasonably expect to find himself.

Though the Musikantebuckl is still jumping, getting there on a Friday night is now out of reach for us. But it’s easy to recreate a bit of that heaven right here. The biggest challenge is to find a substitute for Speck, which isn’t readily available here. Some recipes call for bacon, but we find bacon too fatty and too smoky. We’ve found that the uncured side of pork we get when we buy a half a hog (which would be bacon if it were smoked) works just fine once it’s trimmed of all fat.

Flammkuchen à La Ferme Noire

For two 12? Flammkuchen:

1 lb Irina’s bread dough
½ lb well-trimmed pork belly, cut into small cubes
1 medium red onion
6 oz crème fraîche (we use the delicious crema Mexicana that is available locally)
Sea salt
Crushed black pepper
A small piece of a whole nutmeg, crushed.

Place the dough on a well-floured surface. Divide into two pieces and roll into balls, coating liberally with flour. Flatten a bit with the palm of your hand, and roll out with a pizza roller, dusting with additional flour as necessary.

This dough is really wet, so it demands a bit of special care for the process to go smoothly. When you’ve finished rolling the skins out, make sure they are well dusted with flour. Fold into halves, then quarters; place on a board covered with wax paper (we use a couple of pieces of Masonite cut into 12″ x 12″ squares), unfold, and set aside to rise for an hour or so and to dry on top a bit.

While the dough is resting, rising, and drying, trim any fat off the pork and cut the meat into small cubes. Put the cubes of meat in a bowl, add salt, crushed pepper, and crushed nutmeg, and toss until the meat is evenly coated. Peel the onion and cut into thin strips, separating the layers.

About half an hour before cooking, put your pizza stone into the oven to pre-heat. You’ll want to use a very hot oven (like 500°). We most often cook pizza outdoors on a gas barbeque, especially in the summer when you don’t want to be heating up the kitchen.

While the oven and pizza stone are getting hot, prepare the Flammkuchen. The pizza skins must be transferred to a make-up board. We use larger and thicker pieces of Masonite for this purpose, 16? x 24? x ¼”; Masonite has a slick and slippery surface, and the ample size of the make-up board allows plenty of room to get the pizza sliding around freely before sliding it onto the hot pizza stone to bake. First sprinkle the make-up board liberally with corn meal (the corn meal acts like little ball bearings). Then flip the pizza skin on top of the corn meal so it’s waxed-paper side up, and peel off the wax paper.

Spread the crème fraîche over the pizza skins. Sprinkle evenly with the onions, then with the seasoned meat. Tap the side of the make-up board to make sure the pizza is sliding free, then slide the pizza off the make-up board and onto the hot pizza stone.

Close the cover (or the oven door) and bake until the crust is browned and crispy. As my dear departed father would say, video camera in hand, here we are.

We had planned to save one of the two Flammkuchen in the freezer for another day, but it tasted so darn irresistible we ate them both!

We have made vegetarian versions of Flammkuchen too, substituting local wild mushrooms (from The Mushroomery) for the pork. While not traditional, it’s really delicious, too.

After a barren spell in November, our Muscovy ducks are laying again. Keeping a light on in the duck shed until 10:00 every night seems to have made a difference, as they began laying again shortly after we began that regimen.

Some of the ducks are content to lay in the duck shed. When we open the doors to let the ducks out in the morning (having been shut in over night to protect them from predators) there the eggs are, in the nests the ducks nestle into the straw in the corners of the shed. All we have to do is bend down and pick them up.

For other ducks, laying their eggs in the duck shed simply won’t do. So they seek out less convenient places. Some locations become semi-permanent, and they revisit them regularly: underneath the outdoor workbench behind the potting soil containers, behind the garbage and recycling cans, underneath the tarp covering the compost pile.

A few hens, however, are really secretive. They don’t want you to know where they are laying their eggs, and if you discover one location they tend to abandon it and find yet another. When the duck shed door is opened in the morning these secretive hens set off: alone, determined, and with a purpose. If you want to find their eggs, you have to follow them, and do so carefully and innocuously.  If they see they’re being followed, they will abort their clandestine mission. And if you divert your attention for just a moment they can vanish, disappearing into the brush.

Meet one of our surreptitious hens.

After watching this hen for several mornings I finally succeeded in tracing her to her nest right in the middle of a pile of brush and prunings waiting to be burned. And I do mean right in the middle. I had to carve my way in, using hand shears to tunnel a passageway through the bramble. Stretched out flat on my belly with only my ankles hanging out, I retrieved eight eggs.

Crawling on my belly like a reptile to find eggs simply wouldn’t do. I set a torch to that pile. She’ll never use that nest again.

The next day, that hen once more set out for her burn pile. What few coals remained of that pile were still smoldering. She circled it again and again, repeatedly coming back to and stopping at what had been her entrance. You could almost see her scratching her head: what the hell happened here?

Still, every morning she’s setting off towards where her burn pile used to be. There’s got to be a new nest. One morning I’m trying to follow two hens. Our burn pile hen disappears behind a copse of trees and brush. I rush to see where she’s gone. Damn, lost them both!

This morning, she’s off again. I’m keeping a loose tail. When I see her round that copse, I high-tail it over there. She sees me, pretends she’s just out on a stroll. But I’ve seen where she’s been looking, where she was headed.

That’s an abandoned wood rat mound, next to an old, rotting Douglas-fir stump. A little searching, and there it is, nestled under and inside the wood rat mound: her latest nest, containing a half a dozen eggs.

Another victory, albeit temporary. Tomorrow the game begins anew.

When you buy a whole or a half lamb from a local farmer, it’s not like going to the supermarket where you can pick out the exact cut you want, whether it be shoulder chops, loin chops, or a leg. Around here, you’re lucky to find a store that carries any lamb at all. In the mid-valley, the nearest place to buy a choice cut like a leg or a rack is probably Corvallis, at an upscale market such as Market of Choice.

When you buy local locker lamb, (half or whole) you get everything – from the neck to the shanks. You have to know how to cook the various cuts, as they each demand to be treated differently. And when it comes to an valuable cut like a rack, you don’t want to ruin it. Unlike a rack you buy at a market that’s been trimmed by a butcher, you cannot simply throw it in the oven and roast it. The rack has to be prepped for cooking first. If your rack comes wrapped in white paper from your local slaughterhouse, you have to prep it yourself.

A rack of lamb comes with a thick layer of fat across the back.

You have to take that layer of fat off. Leave it on and the rack will be impossible to cook properly. What’s more, the result will be a rack that is difficult to cut and serve; and the meat will be drenched in excess, unpleasant-tasting fat.

Fortunately, removing the layer of fat is easy. Simply grab it by one corner and rip it off – it comes off in one piece.  Begin by separating the fat from the meat with a knife at a corner, then pull on the fat, continuing to cut between the fat and the meat with a knife as necessary as you pull the fat off.

Now doesn’t that look better?

There’s some meat embedded within that layer of fat that shouldn’t be wasted. Trim it out rather than throwing it away.

There’s more . . .

You’ll end up with a nicely trimmed rack, a little pile of lamb meat – enough for maybe a soup or a burrito or a stir fry – and a big chunk of fat to be thrown out.

If you want, you can cut out a little of the meat between the rib bones, leaving little bone handles to grab onto when eating. Add that meat to your pile of saved meat trimmings.

We’ve trained our butcher to cut off the chine bone, and he mostly gets it right. With the chine bone off, it’s a simple thing to cut between the ribs, carving off individual chops for serving when the rack is done. If the chine bone is left on the rack, this is impossible – so you have to make sure the chine bone is removed completely at this stage. If some of it is still there you’d best cut it off. A hacksaw works. The picture above shows the chine bone properly removed.

Now the rack is almost ready for roasting. Rub it with sea salt and freshly crushed pepper. Chop up a clove of garlic or two, and the leaves from a nice sprig of rosemary. Put in a bowl with a teaspoon of prepared stone-ground mustard and a splash of red wine.  Whisk in an ounce or so of olive oil. Coat the rack on all sides with the marinade and let sit at room temperature for a while, until you’re ready to pop it in the oven.

Roast the rack in a pre-heated 450° oven for 20 minutes or so, or until the internal temperature reaches 116° (check with an instant-reading thermometer).  Do not overcook! Rack of lamb should be served rare. Remove the rack to a serving dish and let it rest for a few minutes while you get the rest of the meal on the table and prepare the sauce. The sauce can be really simple -deglaze the roasting pan with a healthy splash of red wine, scraping up all the tasty brown bits.  Carve the rack, cutting between and separating the individual riblets. Pour the sauce around the rack and serve.

Bon Appétit!

Old friends from Seattle days, who now live near Hillsboro, were coming to visit this last weekend, along with their son home from college during break. As a special treat, we pulled a package of moose roast, labeled “strap steak”, from the freezer. Saturday morning, I unwrapped it to begin preparing it for cooking. Lo and behold, a flank steak! Of moose!

Flank steak holds special status in our home. The first meal I fixed for Irina back when we were courting was a beef flank steak, cooked over coals on little hibachi at my bachelor pad in Winslow, cooked rare and sliced thin, served with Brussels sprouts, steamed just crisp. Guys: quite the thing to impress the ladies. It worked!

Three exclamation points already, a bit much. But the sentences are true and righteous exclamations – and it gets better. We had already procured special mushrooms for the meal: white elm, and wild hedgehog and chanterelles from The Mushroomery. Grilled flank steak of moose, served with a rich mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes.

First, the sauce.

Wild Mushroom Sauce

4 T goose fat (or duck fat, or butter)
¾ lb. wild or good quality mushrooms, brushed and coarsely chopped
1 large shallot, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
2 T flour
1 C red wine
1 C beef stock
½ C tomato purée
bouquet garni (parsley, celery greens, thyme, bay leaf)
1 whole clove
2-3 carrots, whole
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat the fat in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add shallot and sauté until softened and translucent. Add garlic, cook for a minute or two, then add mushrooms. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes, then add flour. Mix well and cook for a few minutes, scraping the bottom of the pan so the flour doesn’t scorch. Add wine a splash at a time, stirring to form a smooth, thick paste. Continue adding wine, stirring, then add the beef stock and tomato purée. Add bouquet garni, clove, and whole carrots. Bring to boil and simmer for 1 – 1½ hours until reduced to desired consistency. Remove and discard bouquet garni and carrots and season with salt and pepper to taste. May be done ahead of time and re-heated just before serving.

Fresh vegetables are scarce this time of year, but lightly cooked sauerkraut tastes crisp and fresh.

Light winter sauerkraut

1 lb sauerkraut, rinsed three times in fresh water to remove salt
1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
1 large apple, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
2 T butter
1 clove
1 small chunk of a nutmeg
6 juniper berries
1 bay leaf
½ C white wine (riesling or gewürztraminer are perfect)
Salt and white pepper to taste

In a saucepan, heat the butter and sauté the onion until softened and translucent. Add apple and cook a bit. Add the rinsed and drained sauerkraut and toss until well mixed and cooked a bit. Smash the clove, nutmeg, and juniper berries and add to sauerkraut along with bay leaf, salt, and crushed white peppercorns.  Add white wine and cook, covered, for ½hour. Remove bay leaf and serve.

The moose flank steak was simplicity itself: rub with a little sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, and goose fat which we happened to have on hand; let sit out at room temperature for a couple of hours before cooking; and cook over a hot barbeque until just rare (116° internal temperature at thickest part). Slice thinly and serve.

We began with a little salad made with fresh lettuces from the garden, dressed with a choice of local olive oil or local hazelnut oil. Our guests brought a bottle of Cliff Creek Cellars 2005 Syrah, made from grapes from Sams Valley Vineyard in the Rogue Valley. The wine was big, robust and full-fruited, a perfect accompaniment to the rich and deeply flavored moose.

Next morning before our guests departed, we fixed a brunch of scrambled duck eggs, yellow potatoes fried in goose fat, and Irina’s bread toasted and served with raspberry/pinot noir jam. A dozen duck eggs, and duck eggs are big. 20- year-old young men eat a lot – no leftover moose from dinner for a lunch burrito.

Life is hard on the farm. I’m going to miss that goose fat when it’s gone.

For New Year’s Eve, a small group of neighbors have a tradition of imposing on the hospitality of a couple who live enough nearby that driving is not an obstacle on this most celebratory of all the holidays. The mantle of “chef” has somehow settled on my shoulders for this event. This year, I was asked to prepare the “bean thing” that served for dinner last year.

I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, much less last year. What in the world could that “bean thing” have been? I’m thinking, must have been some version of cassoulet. Let’s take inventory: in the freezer, ham hocks, side of pork, sausages from Michael, goose stock and duck stock. In the refrigerator, leftover goose from Christmas dinner, plus more meat picked from the bones boiled for stock. Goose fat and duck fat. In the cellar, onions and garlic, and a jar of canned tomatoes from the garden. All we need are a couple of pounds of cannellini beans and we’re good to go.

New Year’s Cassoulet

Serves 12 – 16

2 lb. canellini beans
8 T duck or goose fat
1 head of garlic, peeled and smashed
2 large onions, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
2 ham hocks
2 lb. side of pork, cut into 1?cubes
1 bouquet garni (4 sprigs savory, 4 sprigs thyme, 4 sprigs parsley, 4 sprigs celery greens, 3 bay leaves)
1 quart jar puréed tomatoes
1 cup white wine
2½ quarts goose or duck broth (chicken stock will do in a pinch)
4 confit duck legs (we used goose, both left over from Christmas dinner and picked from the carcass after being boiled for stock)
4 lb. pork sausages (we used 4 garlic sausages and 4 jalapeño sausages from the Pepper Tree)
2 cups bread crumbs

Day 1

Put beans in a large bowl or other container, add water until water covers beans with 2 or three inches to spare, and soak overnight.

Day 2

1. Heat 4 T duck or goose fat in a large braising pan.  Add the pork cubes and brown on all sides; remove and set aside.  Brown the sausages and set aside, then brown the ham hocks and set aside.  Toss the onions and carrots into the pan and sauté until the onions are softened and translucent.  Splash in the wine, add the broth, then all of the browned meats.  Add the bouquet garni.  Bring to the boil, the simmer, covered, for 1½ hours until the meats are tender.

2. When done, pour everything in the braising pan through a colander, catching the stock in another pot.  Remove and discard the bouquet garni.  Pick out the meats with a pair of tongs and set aside to cool a bit.  Run the other solids caught in the colander (onions, carrots, garlic) through a blender until they form a paste; add paste to pot with broth and mix.  When cool enough, trim excess fat off pork chunks.  Trim meat of ham hocks and discard everything else (save the pork fat and all of the other bits from the ham hocks except the bone for the dog).  Cut sausages into enough pieces that you have at least one piece of each kind of sausage per person.

3. Drain beans.  Put beans in a large pot, cover with water, bring to boil, and simmer for ten minutes.  Drain and rinse.

4.  Return beans to pot.  Add stock, making sure beans are well covered.  Bring to boil and simmer for 1½- 2 hours until beans are just tender.

5.  When beans are done, spread ½ of beans on bottom of braising pan.  Spread meats (pork, ham, sausages, and duck or goose) on top of beans.  Cover with remainder of beans.  Cover and keep in refrigerator.

Day 3:  serving day

1. Heat oven to 300?. Drizzle cassoulet with duck or goose fat. Add enough additional broth to just cover the beans and bake, uncovered, for 3 hours.

2.  Remove cassoulet from oven.   Sprinkle with bread crumbs.  Drizzle with remaining fat.

We then took the cassoulet with us to our friends’ house to finish:

3.  Bake the cassoulet at 275° for 1 hour longer, until it is richly browned on the surface. Let rest for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Et voilà.

I think I prefer the cassoulet without the bread crumbs: instead, finish it off by baking for one hour at 325°. You still end up with a nice crusty surface.

This cassoulet was so tasty our New Year’s Eve hosts invited themselves for leftovers the next day. For me, the best is yet to come: after all the meaty bits have been picked over, the beans make for the best damn burrito that has ever passed a pair of lips.

Oh, turns out cassoulet wasn’t the requested “bean thing” after all. Consensus was, last year’s dinner was soupier, and served in a pot rather than a flat braising pan. By acclaim, a new tradition is born.

Can an event be called “celebratory” if everyone is home in bed by 10:00? We never even got around to opening the champagne.

Heartwarming news: the first lambs of the season were born today, January 5.

Twins, a boy (gray) and a girl (black), to a first-time momma, both strong and healthy. It’s a good day to be born, sunny and warm. Yesterday’s high was 63°, downright balmy for January. Today looks to be an encore.

. . . just before lunch, in plenty of time for a nap before preparing Christmas dinner. It’s tradition at our house to host Christmas dinner for those of our friends who find themselves without family or other obligations. Nontheists enjoy eating and drinking as much as anyone, as do they enjoy joining together with dear ones in gratitude for the past year and in anticipation of the next.

This year’s group was small and intimate -just the right size for a Christmas goose to serve as centerpiece of the meal. Guests were expected around 4:00, so that’s when the goose had to go into the oven to be served an hour and a half later.

First course was squash bisque, followed by a lovely salad of mâche, fresh from the garden.

Mâche Salad with Orange and Pomegranate

For 6-8:

Fresh mâche leaves, a healthy amount, rinsed and dried
1 pomegranate, seeded
1 orange, peeled, divided into sections, and cut into bite-sized pieces

Arrange mâche leaves on plate. Sprinkle with pomegranate seeds. Decorate with orange sections. Drizzle with dressing and serve.

Vinaigrette dressing

6 oz hazelnut oil (or extra virgin olive oil)
2 oz seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 t prepared honey mustard

In a bowl, dissolve mustard in vinegar. Whisk in the oil a little bit at a time until smooth and creamy.

The result? A dish of exquisite beauty and delicacy.

We got a fresh goose from Rain Shadow El Rancho. Two days prior, I prepped the goose and set it to dry in the refrigerator, first trimming off the wing tips, cutting out the neck, cutting off the Pope’s nose. For citrus, I used the zest from 8 mandarin oranges that happened to be on hand. I then immediately made the sauce: roast the giblets and goose trimmings along with a quartered onion and a few carrots in a 375° oven until well browned; pour off the goose fat (save that precious fat!), deglaze with a bit of white wine, add stock (we had some nice duck stock in the freezer – commercial chicken stock would work, too) and a bouquet garni, bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of hours. Pour through a strainer into another pot. Carefully spoon off and save the layer of fat that floats to the top. Bring the stock back to a simmer. Dissolve some cornstarch in cold water, whisking with a fork. Pour slowly into simmering stock, whisking with the fork. Repeat, adding additional cornstarch until the stock thickens to your liking, then let cook for a few more minutes.  Store in refrigerator until needed. When it comes time to serve the goose, all you have to do is pour the fat off the roasting pan, deglaze, add the cooking juices to the reheated sauce, stir in and serve.

Our 8½- pound goose went into the oven at 4:00, and was perfectly done by 5:00.

Roast Christmas Goose

Ingredients

• fresh goose
• zest from 4 lemons and 3 limes
• 2 tsp Five-Spice powder
• bouquet garni of parsley sprigs, thyme, sage, bay leaf
• 1 T sea salt
• 1 T freshly crushed black pepper

Preparation

1. Calculate the cooking time (see tips, below). Check the inside of the goose and remove any giblets or pads of fat; pat dry inside and out. Using a sharp knife, lightly score the breast and leg skin in a criss-cross (this helps the fat to render down more quickly during roasting).
2. Grate the zest from the lemons and limes. Mix with 2 tsp sea salt, the five-spice powder and pepper to taste. Season the cavity of the goose generously with salt, then rub the citrus mix well into the skin and sprinkle some inside the cavity.
3. Rub the inside of the goose with the zest/spice mixture and the herb sprigs inside the bird and set uncovered on a rack in a pan in the refrigerator, preferably for 1 or 2 days (this dries the skin, which helps it turn crisp during roasting).
4. Heat oven to 240C (450F), turning the heat down immediately to 190C (375F).
5. Place the bird in the roasting pan, breast side down. Allowing about 7 minutes per pound for roasting; check with an instant reading thermometer as the end approaches so as not to overcook. Turn the goose over (breast-side up) halfway through.
6. When the goose is done (~160° internal temperature, measured at the thickest part of the thigh near the body), remove from oven, take out and discard the bouquet garni. Leave goose to rest for ~30 minutes, covered loosely with foil – the bird will be moist and much easier to carve.

Carving

Take a sharp, long thin-bladed knife and separate breast meat from breastbone; carve breast meat into slices. Detach the legs, then slice off the thigh meat.

Here’s the result.

As an accompaniment, we served mashed potatoes and sauerkraut – and of course, pinot noir and Irina’s bread.

Sauerkraut with apples and pears

2 lb sauerkraut
1 large shallot
1 apple
1 pear
2 T butter
2 t Five Spice powder
12 juniper berries, crushed
1 bay leaf
½ cup white wine (Riesling is perfect)
½ cup chicken stock

Rinse and drain sauerkraut in fresh water 3 times to remove all the curing salt. Chop shallot; peel and dice apple and pear. Sauté shallot in butter until softened and translucent. Add apple and pear and cook for a few minutes. Add sauerkraut and toss well. Add white wine and stock, then add seasonings and bay leaf. Bring to boil, cover, and simmer for ~1 hour.

Dessert was an assortment of traditional German Christmas cookies and stollen, from recipes brought by Irina from the old country. Those are recipes for another time . . .

It’s been a tough year for many of our friends: body parts giving out; sometimes without health insurance; parents becoming frail and forgetful, and even dying; enduring a job with low pay or no benefits, or enduring a job only because it offers the chance to buy health insurance; periods of underemployment or unemployment, with benefits running out;  accidents or unanticipated and expensive repairs that sap limited and dwindling cash reserves. The fraying of our nation’s social fabric is evident in the lives of those we love. Yet there remains beauty and awe in the very mystery of being. As Tiny Tim observed at the end of A Christmas Carol, God Bless Us, Every One!

One advantage of having a great goat dairy in the neighborhood (Fraga Farm) is the ready availability of a by-product: young male goats. While you can’t get milk and make cheese without a doe, almost all bucklings are as redundant as American labor – but unlike unwanted workers, good at least for the table.

Goat cuts closely resemble lamb, only a little smaller. We’ve found that for cooking, you can treat goat just like lamb. And what better than goat loin chops for solstice dinner?

Grilled Goat Chops with Fresh Rosemary and Garlic

For two:

4 goat loin chops, preferably 1¼ – 1½ inches thick
1 clove garlic
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 T olive oil
1 T tamari
Sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste

Strip the leaves from the sprig of rosemary and chop. Peel and chop the garlic. Mix the rosemary, garlic, olive oil, and tamari in a flat-bottomed container large enough for the goat chops to lie flat. Coat the goat chops on all sides, and add salt and pepper to taste. Let rest at room temperature for an hour or so, or at least while the barbeque is getting hot. Cook until rare or medium rare, turning to get nice crossed grill marks on both sides.

We served the goat chops with small, whole grilled potatoes that we had first par-boiled, and with a salad made with fresh lettuces from the garden with dried tomato chips, toasted squash seeds, crushed hazelnuts, and a hazelnut oil dressing. Simple, local, and festive.

We used to trim the chops of fat before cooking so we won’t have to mess with it at the table. But now, we can’t leave Zooey out – she’s part of the party and deserves not to be ignored. She loves the fatty bits, and potatoes and vegetables too.

And even though the chops had were really small – not more than 4 oz each, with only a couple of ounces of meat – two were plenty for the three of us. We just don’t each much meat any more. So two chops were left over for burritos  the next day, for lunch. Carve off the meat, trim off any fat and gristle, and cut into small cubes; sauté in a bit of olive oil just until warm; and serve in a heated flour tortilla with beans, grated cheese. Yum!

Last spring you planted cabbage seeds; then transplanted the seedlings out to the garden; watered and tended the cabbage plants all summer; harvested the cabbage heads in the fall; shredded and salted the cabbage and pressed it in a big crock.

It’s December, you’ve got a hundred pounds of sauerkraut sitting in the cellar. Now what? How often can you stomach sauerkraut with sausage?

We’ve found that we really like sauerkraut prepared with a variety of meats: pork belly, sausage, ribs of all kinds – pork, beef, lamb – and poultry, especially duck. Duck hindquarters work well, as they are best braised. The other day non-pork eating friends visitd. Sauerkraut with our own Muscovy duck seemed the perfect treat.

Since there were to be eight of us, we used the wings as well as the hindquarters, to ensure we had enough meat to go around.

Sauerkraut with Muscovy Duck

1.5 liters sauerkraut
2 Muscovy ducks
2  medium onions, diced (we substituted leeks)
1 apple, peeled and diced
12 juniper berries, crushed
2 whole cloves
1 small bit nutmeg, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 C duck stock (chicken stock, if you don’t have duck stock)
1 C white wine
Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse sauerkraut well (three times in fresh water) and drain.
Cut wings and hindquarters off carcass. Remove duck breasts and save for another meal. Reserve duck carcass for stock or soup. Trim duck fat and save.
Trim upper part of wing from lower 2/3, reserving middle part and wing tip for soup or stock. Separate leg from thigh; chop thigh into two pieces.
Render duck fat.
Brown duck pieces; when browned, remove.
Add diced onions and cook, stirring, until softened.
Add apple and cook a bit, then sauerkraut. Cook for  a few minutes, stirring.
Splash with white wine; add stock, then browned duck pieces, bay leaf, juniper berries, cloves and nutmeg.
Bring to simmer and cook, covered, for 1½ hours or until duck is tender. Season to taste.
Serve with mashed potatoes and a nice little pinot noir.

Here’s the finished product.

This recipe would work equally well with a stewing chicken, game hens, or a small turkey, and would be even tastier with the addition of some pork or sausage. The possible permutations are endless, offering myriad ways to enjoy your summer garden all winter long.

My sister complained that last week’s missive didn’t have any Thanksgiving photos. Hey, gimme a break – I was trying to get the newsletter out before the event. Anyhow, here you go, Peg!

Here’s the noble bird, before being sliced and served.

That’s a 20 pound, free range turkey from Joe and Karen’s Rain Shadow El Rancho, processed right on site at their own facility that does poultry other area producers as well (including our ducks). The turkey was Joe and Karen’s contribution to the dinner. Isn’t it wonderful to be part of a great community?

The photo shows the beer drinkers’ table. As you can see the beer is pretty local – Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter from just over the hill in Bend, smooth and creamy, perfect on a cold day while relaxing snug and toasty by the wood stove. Never fear, the La Ferme Noire Pinot Noir was flowing freely as well.

Each of the 20 guests brought something – in particular, I thought Kim’s chocolate chili was killer, even if it’s not what one might associate with Thanksgiving. It deserves to become a La Ferme Noire tradition – we’ll have to ask Kim for the recipe.

Irina made the beautiful orange soup in the photo.

AUTUMN SQUASH BISQUE WITH GINGER

Ingredients

2 tsp vegetable oil
2 cups sliced onion or leek
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 2 inch cubes (= 4 generous cups)
2 pears peeled, cored & diced
2 gloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped (or 1 tsp powdered ginger)
½ tsp thyme
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ cup plain non-fat yogurt (Greek yogurt is best)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium heat
2. Add onions (leeks) and garlic and cook, stirring constantly until softened, 3-4 minutes
3. Add squash, pears, ginger and thyme, cook for 1 minute, stirring
4. Add broth and water; bring to a simmer
5. Reduce heat to low, cover pot and simmer until squash is tender, 35-45 minutes
6. Purée soup, if necessary in batches, in a food processor or blender
7. Return soup to pot and heat through. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice; stir
8. Garnish each serving with a spoonful of yogurt

My contribution was to cook the turkey. Here’s how:

Two or three days before cooking:

1. Trim off wing tips, the neck, and Pope’s nose.
2. Dry  turkey inside and out and rub skin and cavity with a mixture of about 2 T coarse sea salt and 1 T of freshly crushed black peppercorns.
3. Put turkey on a rack inside a pan and then uncovered into the refrigerator to dry (this helps the skin to turn crispy during roasting).
4. Right then make the sauce. Throw turkey trimmings and giblets into a roasting pan, along with coarsely chopped carrots, celery, and onion.
5. Roast in a hot (~400°) oven until well browned and caramelized.
6. When turkey bits and vegetables are all well browned, removes from oven and place roasting pan on a burner. Splash in about a quarter bottle of dry white wine (an open bottle of pinot gris was handy) and scrape brown bits off the bottom of the pan with wooden spoon until they are dissolved in liquid.
7. Add chicken or other poultry stock (we had a couple of containers of chicken and duck stock in the freezer – a good quality store-bought stock such as Kirkland is okay, too) until turkey parts and vegetables are immersed and you have enough liquid for your sauce.
8. Add herbs and spices:  parsley, thyme, and bay leaf from the garden, a couple of whole cloves, perhaps a piece of star anise.
9. Bring to a boil and simmer for three hours or so.
10. Strain through a colander into another container and let cool.
11. When settled, spoon off the fat layer on top.
12. Refrigerate stock until ready to use. Having the stock finished on Monday means a lot less fussing when company is around on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day:

1. Take turkey out of the refrigerator in the morning to warm to room temperature before going into the oven.
2. About two hours before serving place turkey, breast-down, on a rack in a roasting pan. Add ~two cups of prepared stock. Put into a pre-heated 450° oven, immediately reducing heat to 375°.
3. 45 minutes later, flip the turkey so it’s breast-side up.
4. About an hour and a half after going into the oven, the turkey will be done. An instant reading thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the flesh where the thigh connects with the body should register 150°. The result: a beautifully browned, tender, moist, and juicy bird.
5. Remove turkey to a warm platter and cover loosely.
6. While the bird rests a bit before slicing, bring the prepared stock and juices from roasting pan to a simmer.
7. Thicken sauce (I like to thicken with corn starch rather than flour – it’s easier to control and I think results in a more refined texture). Put a couple of heaping fork fulls of corn starch into a small container, add cold water, whisk with a fork until dissolved, then drizzle into the simmering stock while stirring. Let cook a couple of minutes until stock thickens.  Repeat until you get the texture you want.
8. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For ease of carving and serving I first remove the hindquarters from the carcass, and then each breast in one piece.

Then the turkey is a snap to slice. You had to be quick: all the dark meat disappeared first.

And of course we had plenty of Irina’s famous bread, fresh, warm, and crusty from the oven.

Party animals that we all are these days, we had cleaned up and were in bed by nine.

The next day, the turkey carcass and all the leftover bones and trimmings went into the stock pot, along with aromatic vegetables (carrots, onions, and celery), fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, bay leaf), and a couple of whole cloves. A couple or three hours later, I strained the stock, set the bones aside to cool a bit, and put the stock back on the stove. I added a handful of barley (grown by our friends Paul and Nonie), sliced leeks, and diced carrots and turnips, all from the garden. When the turkey bones had cooled enough, I picked off the meat and added that to the pot, and then some diced potatoes. Simmer a bit more, until the potatoes are tender. Et voila! Turkey soup!

We’re now in to December, and we’re still harvesting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower from the garden – in fact, we have a new crop coming on, from the seedlings we transplanted out in August.

It’s pretty nice not to be dependent on the supermarket for vegetables, even in December. And really nice not to have to drive, or to travel at all, to get them. They’re right outside the door, fresh as can be.

Firewood is cut, split, and stacked. Chimneys are swept and wood stoves cleaned.

We’re processing tomatoes from the garden into salsa, stored in jars in the cellar; and into tomato sauce, for the freezer. This year, for the first time, production of peppers, cilantro, and basil is keeping up with the tomatoes.

Garlic, onions, shallots, and potatoes are already hanging in the cellar. Squash vines are beginning to wither, and we’ll soon gather winter squash to be stored away. We’ve already put up one batch of sauerkraut, and two more are fermenting away.

We’ve been eating lemon cucumbers and summer squash. Corn has been late this year, but is finally coming in. We’ve been harvesting broccoli and cauliflower, and should start harvesting Brussels sprouts soon. As an experiment, this year we started and planted out another crop of broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, to see if we can grow them through the winter and into next spring. Dry beans should soon be ready for picking and shucking. Our green bean crop was a total failure, succumbing to gophers this year.

The solarium is finally finished . . .

. . . and beginning to be planted.

Two years ago – before the solarium was in the works – we planted an Asian pear tree, in a spot which inconveniently turned out to be right front of the solarium door. It will have to be moved to a new home this winter.

With leftover Solexx sheeting, I threw together a row cover . . .

. . . which I think I’ll use to grow mâche this winter. The mâche, along with lettuces and spinach, have been started and are growing in the greenhouse, to be transplanted out when ready.

We’ve been replanting and picking lettuces and spinach all summer long.

In the vineyard, grapes are just now turning color.

I recall that in the late ’90s and early years of this century, verasion happened around mid-August. But the last few years, it seems to be happening later and later. In what turned out to be the great and bounteous vintage of 2008, veraison was around September 8. That was really late; we had resigned ourselves to not making wine that year, until a late and extended warm and dry spell turned dross into gold. 2011 is two weeks behind 2008. We’ll see . . .

A big project for us while the weather holds out is replacing a failed septic system. This involves a new drain field . . .

. . . as well as a new tank.

That’s our friend John Powell doing the work. The puppy – Zephyr – belongs to friends living in town who need a puppy-sitter for a few weeks. She’s really “digging” being a farm dog. Reverting to city life is going to require a tough adjustment.

When oil prices rise, recession often follows. That’s what happened in 2008, according to economist James Hamilton of the University of California San Diego in his paper titled “Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007–08”.

The U.S economy remains in the doldrums. The European and Japanese economies aren’t any better. In the face of continuing economic weakness in the developed countries oil prices stubbornly are remaining at historically high levels.  Brent crude, which now is the global benchmark, has remained over $110/barrel for months; WTI prices have only recently fallen below $90/barrel.

Why are oil prices remaining high? Demand in the developed countries has been falling . . .

. . . but demand in the world’s poorer countries has been increasing, and more than enough to offset the drop in demand in rich countries . . .

. . . while global oil supplies are remaining about the same, as seen in this graph posted by Gail the Actuary (Gail Tverberg) at Our Finite World.

Biofuels are making up an increasing share of total global liquids production, as seen in this graph posted by Stuart Staniford at Early Warning.

Staniford notes we were up to just shy of 2% of global fuel being biofuels in 2009 and probably crossed that in 2010.

One consequence of diverting agricultural production to biofuels is soaring food prices.

High food prices have tragic consequences. Shortages and near-historic prices for staples such as corn, wheat and sugar have magnified the impact of the drought now ravaging the Horn of Africa, according to a new report by the World Bank. The report calls out production of biofuels – specifically America’s production of corn ethanol – as contributing to rising food prices.

The lack of economic growth is ultimately responsible for the debt crises confronting the U.S. and Europe.  As Gail Tverberg points out at Our Finite World, paying off debt is easy in a growing economy – the increase in wealth makes it possible. But in a shrinking economy, or even a level economy, the reverse is true.

The loan plus interest takes a larger and larger chunk out of the borrower’s declining income stream, leaving the borrower with less money left over to pay for the necessities of life. Before long, debt becomes more difficult or even crushing to repay, leaving default as the only option.

Global warming and climate weirding aside, we find ourselves in quite a predicament.

Corn yields were 5.5% lower than they would have been if the environmental factors remained constant, and wheat yields were 3.8% lower. Wheat production in Russia showed the biggest drop, with yields off by 15%. Soybeans and rice were relatively unaffected, due respectively to being grown in areas not experiencing as much warming and thriving in higher temperatures. The United States has been lucky so far: temperatures in the midwestern corn and soybean belt during the summer crop-growing season have not yet shown an increase.

John Cox at Discovery News has posted a map from the study showing global temperature and precipitation changes.

The authors of the study — David Lobell and Justin Costa-Roberts of Stanford University, and Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University — warn that as temperature increases accelerate in coming decades, the negative impacts on food production will also increase.

Stuart Staniford at Early Warning discounts the importance of last summer’s heat wave and drought in Russia to the current global spike in food prices, instead attributing the spike to diversion of food crops to biofuels. The results of his analysis are shown in this graph.

The biofuel feedstock appears as a negative quantity (the idea being it’s a deduction from global food supply). Staniford’s conclusion: biofuels are much more significant than Russian weather fluctuations as a factor affecting cereal food supplies.

Still think biofuels are a good idea? That it’s more important to feed our cars than our people?

Energy is used throughout the U.S. food supply chain, which is divvied up into seven stages:  farm production and agribusiness (agriculture), food processing and brand marketing (processing), food and ingredient packaging (packaging), freight services (transportation), wholesale and retail trade and marketing services (wholesale/retail), away-from-home food and marketing services (food service), and household food services (households).

The processing stage seems to be where most of the low-hanging energy-saving fruit is to be found. Michael Bomford in an article titled Beyond Food Miles at Post Carbon Institute explains:

Buying from the local farmers’ market offers great opportunities to cut down on food system energy use, but it’s not because the food there has traveled less than the food at the grocery store. It’s because the aisles of a typical grocery store are mostly filled with highly-processed and packaged food, while farmers markets offer mostly whole or minimally-processed foods.

The energy intensity of our food system keeps getting worse rather than better. During 1997-2002, per capita energy use in the United States declined 1.8%, while per capita food-related energy use in the United States actually increased by 16.4%. As a share of the national energy budget, food-related energy use grew from 12.2% in 1997 to 14.4% in 2002 and is still growing, from 14.4 percent in 2002 to an estimated 15.7% in 2007.

Transportation is a small fraction of the food system energy budget.

However, the energy intensity of food transportation in the U.S. food system is growing. Food shipments are increasing in volume, at the same time average shipping distances are increasing significantly. These food-mile increases translate into substantial growth in energy use by food-related freight services.

A big culprit in the increase in energy usage in the food system is replacing human labor with machines. About half of the growth in food-related energy use between 1997 and 2002 is explained by a shift from human labor toward a greater reliance on “energy services” across nearly all food expenditure categories. The report blames “high labor costs” in the food services and food processing industries, combined with household outsourcing of manual food preparation and cleanup efforts through increased consumption of prepared foods and more eating out. Replacing humans with machines is also responsible for the increasing energy intensity in the “agriculture” stage.

Household operations – which is defined to include energy use for major kitchen appliances, auto use for food-related trips, and related energy flows for home food preparation and serving equipment – account for the highest food-related energy use. But food processing shows the largest growth in energy use, as both households and foodservice establishments increasingly outsource manual food preparation and cleanup activities to the manufacturing sector, which rely on energy-using technologies to carry out these processes.

The obvious way to cut down on energy usage in the food system is to cut out as many of the intermediate stages between “agriculture” and “household” as possible: buy directly from the farmer, cutting out processing, packaging, transportation (remember, your trip to the farm is already included in “household”), wholesale/retail, and food service entirely, or at least as much as possible. If we want a more energy-efficient agriculture we will have to reverse the historical trend and begin to once again employ people rather than machines.

Michael Pollan sums up everything we need to know about food and health in seven words: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

“Eat food” means to eat real food – vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, and meat, too, as livestock are an essential component of an ecologically sustainable food system.  Eating food would not only be healthier for us. It’s the only means to a healthy economy and a healthy planet.

In July 2008 – just before the big crash – gasoline prices exceeded $4.15 a gallon and gas station sales accounted for 12.47% of retail sales. When gasoline prices last rose to $3.25 a gallon, in March 2008, gas station sales accounted for 11.55% of all retail sales – significantly more than now.

Fuel prices aren’t the only thing that have been soaring – food prices have been, too. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reports global food prices reached an all-time high in January 2011.

Last year, unusual and extreme weather – too hot or cold, or too dry or wet, due in part to global warming-induced climate change – affected major food producers and exporters around the world, from Russia and Ukraine to Canada and the U.S., Germany, Australia, Pakistan, Argentina and the countries of Southeast Asia.

Food riots have started again. Political unrest, stoked by rising food prices, is sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, threatening the stability of the world’s oil supplies. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain have seen political uprisings. There have been demonstrations in Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, and now Oman. Were instability to spread to Saudi Arabia, the world would tremble indeed.

The world’s food supply is highly dependent on oil.  In a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Paul Chefurka estimates the operation of the world’s food supply consumes about 23% of the world’s oil.

Oil shortages mean food shortages. Food shortages lead to political upheaval, disrupting oil production. Meanwhile in the U.S., we’re burning over one-third of our corn crop – one-sixth of the world’s supply of corn – to run our cars.  This chart is via Early Warning.

Estimated fraction of the corn crop devoted to ethanol

Running our cars and trucks is once again on the verge of becoming so expensive that the cost will blow up the economy.

And oh yes, in the U.S. the disparity of wealth between the rich and the rest has never been greater.

Rising inequality in the U.S. is one measure of corruption. As the hijacking of the bailout by the banksters conclusively evidences, democracy in the U.S.  – with a big assist from the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore and Citizens United – is nothing more than a sideshow and the U.S. is now demonstrably an oligarchy.

Unemployment? While the “official” rate is stated to have fallen to 9.0% – but that number would be over 11% were it not for millions of people allegedly dropping out of the labor force over the last year. And the more revealing U-6 rate is running at 16.1%.

And food costs? Over the 12 months, the food index has risen 1.8% with the food at home index up 2.1%t; both 12-month changes are the highest since 2009. More tellingly, there has been a dramatic increase in hunger in the United States in the last three years and a record 14+% of the population is on food stamps. Maybe the rich can still buy food, but it’s getting harder and harder for everybody else as their incomes are dropping even as food prices rise.

if food prices are not yet making Americans scream, Americans are much more sensitive to rising prices at the pump – God help anyone who would interfere with our love affair with our cars. The energy index has increased 7.3% over the last 12 months, with the gasoline index up 13.4%. Crude oil prices have been fluctuating around levels last seen just before the 2008 spike to $147/barrel. One additional geopolitical spark could set off an explosion the likes of which we’ve before seen.

How long before growing inequality in the U.S. results in riots and unrest?  Is what we’re seeing in Wisconsin a mere harbinger of more serious struggles to come?

Our politics – whether local, national, or international – is laughably incapable of confronting reality. Here in Oregon, even a “progressive” governor has abandoned his environmental roots and embraced “economic development,” a policy direction reiterated by his newly-appointed natural resources adviser saying the focus will be “on jobs, not mainstream environmental issues.”

Lives, both of humans and political entities, are now at stake. But we’re still thinking within the old paradigm of “growth.” How long can it be before we will at last drop the pretense, and acknowledge, and openly and honestly deal with the new paradigm reality has dealt us?

• The United Nations says that the global price of food hit another new all-time high in the month of January and is projecting that the global price of food will increase by another 30 percent by the end of 2011.
• The price of wheat has roughly doubled since the middle of 2010. Unprecedented flooding in Australia has devastated the winter wheat crop. A severe and long-lasting drought in China is projected to have a huge impact on wheat production. Russia, one of the world’s largest wheat producers, is still reeling from the effects of last summer’s record high temperatures and is actually importing wheat this winter to sustain its cattle herds. Some of the worst flooding ever seen in Brazil has caused huge losses for agriculture in northeastern Brazil while at the same time drought and scorching temperatures are withering wheat, corn, and soybean crops in Argentina.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects U.S. corn reserves will drop to a 15 year low by the end of 2011. The price of corn has already doubled in the past six months. Chinese imports of corn is now expected be about 9 times larger than originally projected for 2011.

While food prices are soaring around the globe, political unrest is rising as well. Here’s a catalog of recent events (hat tip to Jeff Rubin):

• Demonstrators force Mubarak out in Egypt. Egypt is the world’s largest importer. Egyptian food imports have been paid for by oil exports – but Egypt’s oil exports have been plunging since 1996. What’s hard to understand is why Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak would not want to take his purloined billions and flee while he can.
• Political unrest in Tunisia over high food prices in Tunisia recently sent strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali packing.
• Riots in Morocco, Algeria and Pakistan are related to the very sharp rise in food and commodity prices.
• Food riots in Algeria prompted three-term president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to lift a 19-year stage of emergency and to quickly place an order for a record 800,000 tonnes of wheat.
• Saudi Arabia, taking preemptive action, recently announced plans to double its wheat inventories.
• Bangladesh and Indonesia placed record rice orders; the former doubling its order, while Jakarta quadrupled its rice purchases.
• In Bolivia, President Evo Morales has been rattled by protests after trying to lift subsidies on gasoline, flour and sugar in December. He subsequently abandoned the effort — but did remove price controls on sugar, causing prices to double.

One phenomenon underlies these disparate events: the extreme weather that is a predicted consequence of global warming. We are suffering the consequences of global warming right now, as manifested in rising food prices, food shortages, and political unrest.

China may soon be putting additional pressure on global food supplies and prices. The severe drought in the north could result in China, normally self–sufficient in wheat, to become a significant importer this year, an eventuality that would push grain prices a lot higher.

Bill James at Seeking Alpha predicts that Mexico will follow Egypt into collapse within two years, due to the same interplay between rising food prices and falling oil exports:

• Mexicans spend about 22% of their disposable income on food. In 2010 corn prices increased 52% and wheat 47%. With the floods in Australia, ethanol in the U.S. and higher fuel prices it seems likely food will consume 50% of disposable income within a year. That is an average. There will be a critical percent of the population where food costs will exceed their disposable income. Hunger will amplify risks.
• Mexico’s government gets about 40% of its revenues from oil. As noted in BP data complied at Energy Export Database Mexico’s domestic consumption (black line) will force its oil revenues (green area) to drop to zero within a few years. Egypt’s oil revenues dropped to about zero in 2010.

James illustrates his argument with two charts.

Without the ability to feed its people or fund its security forces, how can Mexico remain a viable government?

The question begs to be answered more broadly: without the ability to feed their people or fund their security forces, how can many of the struggling nations of the world retain viable governments? Rising food prices will make this question more and more salient.

The FAO’s website explains how the index is compiled.

The index appears poised to climb even higher, due to factors including oil prices that are rising once again and extreme weather events such as fires and poor harvests last summer in Russia, drought in Argentina, flooding in Pakistan, and heat waves and flooding in Australia. Increases in global population and economic growth in China and other developing countries have left so little slack in the global food system that even a little bit of bad weather can result in big commodity price moves.

We’ve been here on the farm sixteen years now, and it seems every season teaches new lessons.

The grape harvest was a complete fiasco. Despite an extraordinarily cool spring and late veraison, warm and dry weather in late September and early October held promise that a not-too-heavy crop would ripen. Brix hit 19° during the first week of October – another week or 10 days would get it to a perfectly acceptable ideal 21°.

Then the birds moved in. No problem, the propane canon always works. Nonchalantly, I set the canon out in the vineyard and go about my business. A few days later, I walk through the vineyard to take stock. The grapes are gone.

If I had paid attention to what was going on,  I could have dropped whatever else I was doing and patrolled the vineyard with a shotgun from dawn to dust for a week popping off the occasional starling or robin, a small investment in relation to the already-sunk investment in pruning, spraying, and trellising. But complacency means we’ll get perhaps 10 gallons of pinot this year instead of the two or three barrels that were in prospect.

Lesson: Pay attention! Don’t assume that what worked in the past will work this year.

Deer proved a challenge this year, as well. Spraying repellent on the vines once a week managed to prevent serious damage to the vineyard, but you can’t spray blood on vegetables you’re going to eat. Our strategy was to protect rows of crops with wire hoops made from remesh. Remesh works great to make coldframes, the wire mesh supporting plastic sheets under which we set out lettuces and other tender vegetables in early spring, tomato starts a bit later. When the weather gets warm enough, simply take the plastic sheets off and you’ve got a deer guard.

Lettuce and spinach under cold frame, peas under wire mesh

Two problems:  1) plants – peas, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, turnips, parsnips, even carrots – eventually grow up through the mesh, where they can be chomped off; and 2) the 4? mesh, which is nice because it’s big enough to get your hands through to weed and pick, is also big enough so deer can get their snouts through.

Undamaged broccoli juxtaposed to cauliflower eaten by deer. Finer mesh prevents additional damage.

Brainstorm: deer can’t walk through the mesh hoops, and don’t seem to like risking jumping over them. What about a mesh field, surrounding the garden? This proved marginally effective.  To really work, you had to completely surround the area with an impenetrable maze of mesh. This became increasingly expensive, and increasingly clumsy. The mesh proved better at keeping us out of the garden than the deer.

Lesson: Protect the garden with a deer-proof fence. Anything less is futile. Since this is not possible where the garden is now, that means abandoning the raised beds and the soil we’ve been building for years, and moving the garden, starting over in a new location. We’ve already got the spot picked out. The raised beds will be used only for things deer don’t like or that can be well protected: herbs, cabbages, lettuces, maybe squashes and cucumbers. And flowers.

What worked out well this year? Cabbages: we harvested a bumper crop, and have ample sauerkraut for the winter. Winter squashes: again, ample stores in the cellar to last the winter. Lemon cucumbers: delicious cool, crisp salads all summer, and some pickled for storage. Leeks: they’re keeping well out in the garden, and we’re using them in just about everything. Broccoli and cauliflower, aside from the deer. Artichokes, which are now protected by a cold frame so hopefully they will become a perennial rather than an annual crop.

Artichokes protected in straw under cold frame

Ducks seem to be another successful experiment. They are proving able to forage well for themselves so they don’t require the purchase of much feed, are beginning to scour the garden for slugs and bugs, and are easy to care for,. not much trouble, fun to have around – and, as a bonus, lay a few eggs every day and provide meat on the occasion.

We had success this year starting many seedlings in the greenhouse and setting them out early, so as to get an early harvest. But for crops like cabbages, leeks, carrots, parsnips, and turnips, that can be good keepers either in the ground or in the cellar throughout the winter, it’s not necessary or even desirable for them to ripen early. Better to wait a bit. And for home consumption as opposed to for market, it’s better to plant crops periodically, so you harvest a little over a long period of time rather than a lot all at once.  We planted lettuce every week in seed trays in the greenhouse, transplanting the seedlings out throughout the summer as earlier plantings began to bolt. And now we’ve got a goodly amount under cold frame, which could survive and supply us with salad throughout the winter unless we get a really nasty cold snap. But we planted all the broccoli and cauliflower at the same time, ending up with more than we could possibly eat.

Maybe next year, we’ll finally begin to know what we’re doing.

Last week NASA reported that 2010 through September has been the hottest year on record.

According to Dr. Jeff Masters at Wunder Blog, 18 nations have recorded a hottest all-time temperature this year, which is a new record. The year 2007 is in second place, with 15 such records. No nations have recorded an all-time coldest temperature so far this year.

Egypt did not make the list of countries setting new record highs. Nevertheless, according to Mohamed Eissa, chairman of the Egyptian Meteorological Authority:

This year, Egypt had its hottest summer in years.

One result: rising food prices.

A recent report by the Agricultural Research Centre (ARC) cited in the local media said crop productivity had dropped by almost 70 percent this year due to rising temperatures. The report – sent to the Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza – said most crops could not tolerate such a sharp increase.

Egypt wasn’t alone in experiencing crop losses. Extreme heat in Russia this summer caused a spike in grain prices due to drought-induced decrease in grain production. The heat also contributed to a decrease in potato and vegetable crops, productivity of livestock and poultry, increased storing expenses for wholesalers and retailers, increased losses in handling and delivery of perishable products, and overall higher levels of food loss.

A new study published in Environmental Research Letters concludes that climate change will see large-scale crop failures like the one that caused the recent Russian wheat crisis becoming more common due to the increased frequency of extreme weather events. Some areas of the world are becoming hotter and drier, even as more intense monsoon rains increase the risk of flooding and crop damage.

The study is titled Increased crop failure due to climate change: assessing adaptation options using models and socio-economic data for wheat in China.

Another new study titled Drought under global warming: a review warns global warming will lead to multiple, devastating global droughts. This graphic from the study shows increasing severity of drought as the century progresses:

Study author Aiguo Dai emphasizes that quantitative interpretation of the PDSI values shown above requires caution because many of the PDSI values, which are calibrated to the 1950–1979 model climate, are well out of the range for the current climate, based on which the PDSI was designed. Nevertheless, the graphic above, together with all the other studies cited in the study, suggests that drought may become so widespread and so severe in the coming decades that current drought indices may no longer work properly in quantifying future drought.

At long last, our poultry project is beginning to yield results.

Facilities are through the shake-down period and running smoothly, and we’ve been collecting an increasing number of eggs over the last few weeks.

Muscovies are at the water trough (there are automatic waterers inside the shed).

The trough is big enough so that the ducks can get in and swim around a bit, which they seem to enjoy immensely. This trough used to be right on the other side of the fence, belonging to the sheep. But the ducks much preferred the large trough to their small tub, and were constantly going under, over, around and through the fence to get at the sheep’s water. So we gave up and switched. Note the “duck deck” under the trough. Turns out ducks love to eat mud. The trough quickly came to be perched on a mesa. Putting a 4? x 8? deck under the trough solved the problem.

Two Khaki Campbell drakes and Khaki Campbell and Rouen hens are at the outside feeder.

The ducks are finally getting old enough to begin laying eggs. And this week, off some went to the slaughterhouse – all seven Pekins, and all but one of the Rouen and Khaki Campbell drakes. Or at least that was the intent. One of the Khaki Campbell males slipped out the door while I was gathering them all up (I had neglected to install a latch that could be operated from the inside, an oversight that has since been corrected) and, in the dim light of pre-dawn, I inadvertently replaced it with an unlucky Rouen drake. Which is why you see two Khaki Cambell drakes and no Rouen drake in the photo.

fortunately for us Scio Poultry Processing is just up the road a piece. It’s a soon-to-be USDA-inspected facility owned and operated by our friends Joe and Karen Schueller at Rain Shadow El Rancho.

The ducks arrive in crates.

Go in the front door, and come out in cryovac packages.

That’s a dozen ducks, which should be plenty for holiday dinners and more.

We chose to raise ducks rather than chickens because free-range chickens are readily available and affordable, whereas ducks are a delicacy, a luxury item we couldn’t otherwise afford. Getting the infrastructure in place was neither quick or nor particularly cheap, but now we have in place durable, efficient, predator-proof facilities adaptable for a wide variety of poultry.