Garden Timing, Food Projects and A Very Generous Community

by Gibsey Beckett

My tomatoes, heavy and plentiful, have hinted at red tones for three weeks.  With just seven days left before our One Block Feast for Sunset Magazine, I'm seriously considering the use of a grow light or maybe that Cherokee Sun Dance Ritual to speed the process.  Timing a food garden is next to impossible in my opinion.  This feast may force some unorthodox gardening methods if the sun doesn't get serious in the next few days!  Our entire neighborhood is abuzz with equal amounts of anxiety and excitement in anticipation for the upcoming event, the ripening of vegetables, and the preparations for our party.

As we have learned, a "fresh from the garden" dinner requires months of planning, committees and meetings, test recipes and timelines.  We've managed to take do-it-yourself to the extreme in this contest as we are making, growing, and foraging almost every ingredient for the entire party (save for a few ingredients like cumin, baking powder, yeast, and sugar).  Items that we couldn't grow ourselves, ingredients like olive oil and honey, we sourced to our nearest local producer.  Areas where we needed guidance allowed us the opportunity to collaborate with several generous community members. 

We invited a fellow beach tract neighbor, Farmer Ken, to oversee the chicken slaughter.  With his dusty Wranglers and bare hands, Farmer Ken made sure the Beach Tractors wrapped up their day of slaughtering with nine beautifully plucked and vacuum sealed chickens ready for the big feast. 

The Morro Bay Oyster Company offered our group a bag of 600 oyster seeds last spring, a few lessons in oyster shaking, and a couple of giant Cowboy Oysters!  We plan to meet with owner and operator, Neil, again this week for some tips in oyster shucking and our final harvest in the back bay. 

When our beer garden proved to be too far behind schedule for harvesting and making beer for the event, we called Russell, a master home brewer here in town who kindly brought us into his garage brewery and showed us the way.  Hops too young?  Barley not ready yet?  No problem, said Russell, who recommended a faster and easier variety of beer.  Whit Beer is ready to drink much faster than other beers and was compiled of foraged oranges and coriander (cilantro seeds) from our neighborhood. Mmmm, two kegs of citrusy full-bodied beer await us at our feasting banquet! 

I'm amazed by the wealth of knowledge and talent in our small town, but more importantly impressed by the generosity of these community members for sharing their skills, time and resources with us.

Back to the planning of the feast!  Tonight's neighborhood meeting involves frying up some of today's freshly caught rock cod acquired in preparation for our ceviche appetizer for the party.

We'll also be honing our wheat winnowing skills.  (Try saying that fast three times.)  Apparently winnowing is the sloughing of dried capsules away from each wheat berry.  It sounds tedious but with some fresh fried fish and a cold beer, I think every beach tractor will be ready and willing.  This winnowed wheat will be ground to make the flour for our dinner rolls. 

Daily tasks in the upcoming week include test runs on our trickier recipes like garlic chicken, whole wheat rolls, and beet biscuits.  We'll be making more sea salt this week, perfecting the home brews (both the Whit Beer and a Lemon Ginger Beer), sourcing more local decorations, grinding the wheat into flour, squeezing cane juice for lemonade, milking a local goat for making goat cheese and gathering honey among other preparations for our feast.

We've accomplished so much in a few months together and have enjoyed many casual garden visits, and informational meetings. We've relished in our successes and puzzled over our failures.  I know we are really looking forward to the culmination of our feasting weekend together! 

By the way, the extra-terrestrial of a squash that appeared from a volunteer plant in my garden never did split open and birth an alien as I had expected.  Instead, it turned a golden orange and looked so much like a pumpkin that I cut it off the vine and deemed it so.  Now it appears the unexpected pumpkin vine has birthed six more gourds just like the first basketball sized treasure.  What a pleasant surprise!

Well, the sun just came out so I'm off to watch my tomatoes ripen and shell some sunflower seeds.

Miniature Nubian Goat Image on Banner by Tricia Hulse