Since the Monterrey Pine has been taken out, we’ve discussed, but tried to avoid the thought that although we did this AFTER the mating season for birds, that there were many birds (and occasionally squirrels) that we would see in the tree. We’ve tried to not think about the fact that we’ve taken away habitat for some of the animals we like to see in our garden, but cartoonist Joel Hodge was determined to not let us forget about it in his latest cartoon called “Progress.”
As always, Joel’s work is copyrighted…enough said.
I should say that we have plans to get the soil in that part of the yard tested to make sure there isn’t any lead contamination (we do live in an urban environment after all) and if the area is “clean” we are going to plant 2 fruit trees in that spot — a Gravenstein apple tree & a Santa Rosa plum tree. We’ve been dying to have 2 of our favorite fruit trees in the yard that will actually work for the cooler West Berkeley climate (example: On August 23rd it was a “balmy” 74 degrees & it was our first hint of summer this season!). Both of the fruit trees we are planning to put in will work well in that climate, unfortunately my absolute favorite fruit tree (Pomegranate) isn’t an option since they need warmer temps to produce.
Since we’ve owned this house and garden, we’ve debated the fate of a tall and broad Monterrey Pine tree in the yard that was casting a shadow over a large swath of my sacred gardening space. We were told that a previous owner of the house had planted one of those “live Christmas trees” that you can buy at the grocery store in December…wait, that’s old school isn’t it. These days you can buy your Christmas supplies around October 31st because retailers don’t make money promoting Thanksgiving, but I digress.
The point is that this tree was planted around 25 years ago and had gotten damned big for my tiny little yard. We deliberated over the fate of the tree for about 4 years. As the thing grew larger and started to put 2 raised beds in perpetual shade, I decided it had to go. I had mixed emotions about cutting down something that large, but I’m committed to growing food and we’ve put sufficient permanent plants in this yard to make up for the carbon sink of that large and out of place tree. RIP Monterrey Pine, you will be remembered but not missed. Here are some photos of the tree and of the Professional Tree Care Company workers taking it out.
My wife told a co-worker & talented cartoonist Joel Hodge about the tree removal and he quickly summed up the situation by condensing our behaviors and personalities into this sharp and witty cartoon titled “The New Backyard.”
NOTE — this cartoon is copyrighted. If you want to reach the cartoonist, I will put you in touch with him.
In case you are wondering, to the horror of my neighbors, I do garden in my bathrobe (they are lucky I don’t garden in my birthday suit, after all this is Berkeley!), too much sun does give my wife headaches, and she is always saying I need to keep the garden clean and orderly. She can’t help it, it’s an Austrian thing…vee must haalf ordah in ze gaaten schatzi! I have a feeling I’m going to pay for that smart ass comment, but I can’t help myself sometimes.
After starting to populate the gardening economics page, I’ve realized that I need to put things into a table to facilitate the analysis. I will take care of that in the coming days as well as update the blog with new entries on different topics that also include photos.
I’ve started to populate the gardening economics page on this blog where I will record the running tally of my harvest this year. There are some things that I haven’t planted yet and haven’t added to the list yet, and others that are already growing, but haven’t gotten to the point that they can be harvested.
The page will continue to evolve and as it does, my wife will be the final arbiter on what amounts to a “bunch” (i.e., a bunch of arugula, a bunch of flowers). Her judgement on how to measure things will provide my “reality check” and prevent me from falling prey to “optimistic exaggeration.”
After thinking about the economics of gardening and what the impact would be on a household budget I decided to post a message on a gardening forum to ask if anyone else had done this type of analysis. Little did I know that I was opening a can of worms (pun intended). What I found out is that there are a lot of people that just didn’t get the point of trying to figure out the economics of a backyard organic garden and some that seemingly felt I was somehow getting ready to slaughter a sacred cow — the back yard garden.
The troubling thing to me were the responses such as:
“You can’t weigh the economics of gardening”
“Gardening is good for the soul and I can’t put a price tag on that”
“I don’t think I’d want to know what I spend this year, but ten years from now I may look back and consider that it was certainly a good investment”
“This being a drought year I don’t want to track my expenses”
“Just because something doesn’t save much or any money, particularly at first, doesn’t mean it’s going to drive you to bankruptcy”
“I can, freeze , dehydrate, eat, give away, sell…I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to value the pint and quart jars or frozen pints and quart baggies of veggies and fruit that we put up, and then we eat all winter long”
Sadly, I suspect that these responses could be symptomatic of a larger societal ill, which is that many American families shy away from analyzing the finances behind what they are doing in the household.
My hypothesis is that my gardening hobby positively benefits the household finances. As I track the harvest and the expenses that went into it, I’m hoping that I can prove that hypothesis to be true.
Reading through a couple of posts from the archives that called out pricing for certain items at the grocery store, I thought it would be interesting to track the harvest and attempt to develop an analysis of the gross dollar value of the 2011 harvest & then subtract garden expenses (water, organic fertilizer, & other assorted necessities) to see if I’m saving money by growing my own organic produce. Of course this will require me to put a little bit of a business-like structure around my gardening hobby, but it should be fun and interesting nonetheless.
I’ve started to compile some of the basic metrics and will occasionally post updates on my basic financial modeling, on the new page of my blog called…”Gardening Economics.”
On my last trip to visit my Austrian in-laws, we were lucky enough to get away for 4 days to Austrian wine country in South Styria. For those of you unfamiliar with that part of the world, it is south of Graz (where Arnold Schwarzenegger is from) and is close to the border with Slovenia (former Yugoslavia).
One of the things this region is known for besides its fantastic wines (mostly white wines) is a type of Scarlet Runner Bean that the Austrians call “Kaeferbohnen,” and they are known for Pumpkin Seed Oil that comes from a specialty pumpkin known in Austria simply as “ölkürbis,” but it’s proper name is Cucurbita pepo styriaca.
Styrian Oil Pumpkin seeds are used to make what I consider to be one of the most flavorful (and healthy) oils in the world. It is used in Austria on salad, in soups, and for dishes. While passing through Leibnitz, we stopped at a local plant nursery & picked up some seeds so that I could grow this interesting pumpkin in the 2010 growing season here in N. California.
After getting the seeds last summer, I of course realized that growing a bunch of pumpkins is easy. The difficult part is figuring out how to make pumpkin seed oil, but I think I have found the information that I need to be successful with this project…or I’ve found just enough information to make this a time consuming disaster (you’re sitting on the edge of your seat now aren’t you?).
Here’s the basic process:
Grow several pumpkins so that you have at least 3 kilos (6.6 lbs) of seeds.
Harvest the seeds by hand (they even do it this way in Austria), wash them, and dry them well ( the pumpkins themselves can be composted since they aren’t considered a good eating squash).
Put the seeds into the food processor using the pulse button VERY briefly to break up the seeds, but you want the seeds in small chunks, not completely ground up.
Take the broken up seeds and roast them for about 5-7 minutes at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This is important because it is a low enough temperature to ensure that you can still call the oil “cold pressed” and not change the flavor of the oil. It will also make it easier to get as much oil as possible from the seeds in the next step.
Put the roasted seeds through an oil expeller. You don’t need a fancy expensive one with an electric motor. I’m going to get a hand crank one from a Dutch company called Piteba for about $150 USD.
After making the oil, you need to let the oil settle so that the sediment falls to the bottom of your container (a day or two). Then you will be able to pour off the dark green oil into another container and not have any silt – just pure pumpkin seed oil.
Although I’ve found a couple of 30 second videos on YouTube done by Piteba showing how easy it is to make oil from a variety of seeds, the best video I’ve seen with this oil expeller was done by a couple in Montana making Hemp Seed Oil, so I’ve posted it here to give everyone an idea of how this thing works –
I’ll post an update in late 2010 about how this process goes and make a determination at that time if it was worth all of the effort. I’m hoping it will be!
