Kimchi Workshop at Little River Market Garden

In the northeast section of Miami called Little Haiti, just across the street from the railroad tracks, sits a truly charming, year-old market garden owned and run by Muriel Olivares called Little River Market Garden. This past season was her first year of running it, complete with CSA shares, and she's done a remarkable job. She recently posted on her blog that she's been able to expand the garden through the kind offer of a friend 5 miles away.

One section of the garden.

The difference between the garden when I first visited last October for the Market's first seedling sale and today is downright incredible. Muriel has clearly been working her tush off. The wood-burning oven her father had just started in October is now finished, functional, and fantastically beautiful. Do you sense the note of envy in my voice? Her compost pile makes me a little green, too. It's at least double the size it was since I last visited.

Wood-burning oven Muriel's father built.

Today I attended a Learn to Make Kimchi workshop held at Muriel's Market Garden and had a blast of an afternoon. About 25 of us sat in chairs set up in front of the wood-burning oven and were thankful that Muriel had been quite thoughtful about scheduling the workshop at 3 p.m.--we had lucious shade to sit in.

Muriel Olivares speaking to Kimchi Workshop attendees.

Muriel demonstrating how to make chili paste at kimchi workshop.

Muriel slicing radishes and turnips for kimchi vegetables. Volunteer adding veggies to kimchi tub.

Muriel and volunteer mixing chili paste into kimchi vegetables. Note both are wearing gloves for protection.

Finished kimchi mixture.

Two beautiful speecy spicy jars of kimchi.

Happy Little River Market Garden Kimchi Workshop attendees.

We finally meet! Marian Wertalka, author of Redland Rambles blog.

You want a recipe, do you? I know you do. Muriel just finished posting it on her blog, so here goes:

Little River Market Garden Kimchi

Makes about 2 quarts

Wash and coarsely chop 2 cabbages (the traditional type of cabbage is Napa and it’s my personal favorite,  but any variety will do, including bok choy, savoy cabbage and regular green cabbage; they each give you a slightly different result in terms of flavor, color and texture).

Soak chopped cabbage in a salt brine either overnight or for a couple hours. Salt brine is made by adding 2 tablespoons of salt per quart of filtered or spring water.

After soaking, dump out brine and rinse cabbage 1 or 2 times with filtered or spring water.  Drain cabbage.
Wash and cut off any bad parts of either 2 medium daikon radishes or any combination of radishes, turnips and or carrots.  Chop into thin strips or rounds and add to drained cabbage.

Now make a chili paste!

Add to a food processor:

2 quartered onions (any type)
1 cup of peeled garlic
half cup of peeled ginger (I like a lot of ginger)
about 5 fresh hot peppers, such as cayenne (5 will give you a pretty spicy paste, use less if you like)
1 cup chili powder (Note from Ara: I don't think this is regular chili powder - I'm thinking this is more along the lines of cayenne pepper or Ancho pepper powder - and you could always grind up dried assorted chili peppers in a spice grinder.)
a couple teaspoons salt
a teaspoon of paprika
quarter cup of vinegar (my favorite is apple cider)
teaspoon of honey
tablespoon of olive oil

Blend until the consistency is smooth and everything is thoroughly mixed. Add about 2 cups of chili paste to the vegetables and store the rest in the fridge. It keeps indefinitely and can be used as a seasoning in many different meals.

Stir the vegetables to coat evenly with chili paste and it’s done!

Stuff the kimchi into glass jars and let it sit on your kitchen counter with the lid slightly unscrewed.  Make sure to place a shallow bowl under each jar because the veggies continue to release liquid and it will likely spill over.  It’s also likely to get bubbly, as well, which is a good sign of fermentation. It can be eaten fresh the day it is made and in fact, you should taste regularly to check for flavor development. After about 1 or 2 days, screw the lid on tightly and store in the fridge for up to a year. The kimchi continues to mature and evolve into a more sour flavor as it slowly ferments in the cold temperature. Everyone prefers their kimchi at different stages. I can personally eat a quart every couple of weeks and the flavor gets really good the second and third week.

Don't think twice about playing with the amounts of spices, types of vegetables (you could use broccoli, brussel sprouts, carrots, purple cabbage, cucumber, zucchini, yellow squash), perhaps try toasted sesame oil instead of olive oil in the chili paste mixture or adding a dash of fish sauce or anchovy paste, varying types of peppers (habanero, Scotch bonnets, or Thai bird chilis for the spicy-minded folks; poblanos and jalapenos for those who prefer a milder spice). Use your imagination and have fun!

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Planting in old toilets. Why not? I think they're rather pretty.

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Update on the Meat Birds

Our version of a chicken tractor.

We put some corrugated plastic sun shade on the top to help reduce the heat of the afternoon sun.

An overall view. It's 4' x 4' x 12'.

Two weeks old, eating like hungry chicks, and starting to feather out.

Cute as buttons, but not real happy with the camera.

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The Meat Birds Are Here

Cute little buggers, aren't they?

Peep, peep, peep. The back of the house is filled with an undulating cacophony of melodic peeping interspersed with sporadic eery silences for 10-20 seconds and then back to peep, peep, peep. Our meat birds have arrived! I almost forgot they were coming with all the excitement of buying the farm, getting ready for closing next week, beginning to pack, and making list upon list of things to get done.

Having never ordered chicks myself (I've always shared someone else's order), I was totally surprised when the phone rang yesterday morning at a few minutes after 7 and it was the Post Office telling me to come pick up the chicks. I quick threw on some clothes, brushed my teeth, and set out to pick them up. The 2 ladies working the counter at the Post Office seemed to be just as excited as me, asking me to open the box so they could play with the chicks. I decided against opening the box for fear I wouldn't be able to close it all the way and might have chicks jumping around the car on the drive home. I made a quick detour to the local feed store before heading home because I wanted to pick up a couple extra feeders and waterers so I'd have enough for the 30+ birds in the box. I was out of the feed store 5 or 6 minutes later and home 10 minutes after that, setting up a snugly nesting box for the babies.

I can only say how pleased I am with the purchase from S & G Poultry in Clanton, Alabama. The chicks arrived healthy, and obviously well cared for in a timely manner. I did request that they be sent Express Mail at my expense because I think the shorter trip helps in their survival, but I would do that anywhere I placed an order. I decided to go with S & G because it is owned by a husband and wife team and I've always thought that supporting small business is better than supporting big business, they are relatively local, and I like the fact that their birds are not the usual factory Cornish Rock Crosses, the meat birds sold at most hatcheries and the ones you get in grocery stores. These chicks will take a couple extra weeks to finish growing so will cost a bit more in feed, but I truly believe they will have fewer health problems (no heart attacks or broken legs from too much weight gained at too fast a rate) since they are bred to be foragers and not bred to sit in cages for the duration of their lives. They might even be tastier. That I'll have to let you know when we cook up the first bird.

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Change Is Coming To The Urban Homestead

We did it. We're doing it. We will no longer be urban homesteaders. We will be farmers. We bought a small 5-acre farm in north central Florida. We close on it in just a couple weeks. We're very excited. We're very scared (at least I am). Mickey doesn't seem to be scared, but he doesn't overthink things like I do. Then again, maybe he didn't notice we signed the contract because he hasn't yet brought home a moving box to start packing. Hmmmm. I need to think on that more.

It's beautiful. The farm, I mean. It's in an unincorporated part of Lake City (Suwannee County), close enough to 3 or 4 highways that we can get anywhere we need rather quickly, yet it still takes a 1-lane dirt road and possibly a 4-wheel drive vehicle to get to the property. I'll be using an alternate route (2-lane dirt road) to get to the house as I don't back up well (at all) and I'd be scared to death to be halfway down the road with a vehicle coming from the other direction. And it's surrounded by 3 rivers, the Chattahoochee, Ichetucknee, and Suwannee (I think there's song about this, isn't there?), so we've decided to call the farm "3 Rivers Farm." Aren't we original? Well, actually we must have been because there wasn't another farm with this name in the state, so we grabbed it.

Quick picture of the property and some pear trees.

The property already has a pear orchard on it, a rather neglected pear orchard, that is. But that's okay because that means it hasn't had a lot of chemicals dumped on it in recent years. Plans of course swirl through my head like sugar plums, but there are the necessities first. The backyard has to be fenced in for the dogs. A deck has to be built so that the dogs can get to the fenced-in backyard on their own. That means a ramp as my dainty little dachschunds don't navigate steps well (at all), and I don't want to be lifting 3 dogs up and down all day long. The back door leading out to the new deck needs to be widened as in French doors (preferred) or sliding glass door so that we can get our newly rehabbed antique stove in the house (I'm not going without it), and all carpeting has to be replaced with some sort of new floor (I'm not a carpet person and youngest dog thinks that all carpet is a big wee-wee pad). And all this has to be done before we can move in! This might not be difficult if one is moving somewhere within an hour driving distance, but this is 5-1/2 hours away so getting there to get things done is going to be on the tough side. We'll make it happen, though. I think an air mattress is in order.

Then there are the  farm plans, those ideas that have been swirling through my head morning, noon, and night since we saw the property the very first time. Clearly, we have a crop to start with. The pears. I don't even know what kind of pears they are or what kind of care they need, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I think our second "crop" will be eggs. We can order chicks as soon as we get there so that we can put the larger flock of chickens out to pasture on our intended first vegetable beds, giving the beds a good boost of healthy fertilizer. If we take care of the soil, everything else will fall into place. And I'm making rather quick inroads into the local food/farming community. I think this may be more important than knowing what types of pears are on the property at this point, though it's going to drive me nuts till I know. I'm hoping for more than 1 variety, of course.

So more farm plans. We need a barn. We need an area to wash and pack produce (I'm thinking the back porch for starters). We need to design and build a large portable coop for the larger flock of chickens. We need a shed of some sorts for all the tools. We need farming equipment - not tons, just the basics to get us going (some sort of tilling instrument, a seeder, electric fencing for the chickens and other livestock - hoping to get some Nubian goats for milk, cheese, and soap). Goodness, we need a lot. I know if we take it slow and work on 1 thing at a time, we're going to get there. Especially if I don't overthink it.

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My Chickens Share

There were actually 5 in the nests at once.

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