Lambs Quarters & Competition
The week has flown by. The previous two before this one were warned to be “hard ones” but as the temperature kicked it up a notch and a new apprentice arrived we somehow were even more swamped. Planting season is in full force.
When speaking about absolutely crushing it plant-wise these past few weeks, my mentor was pretty profound. He pointed out that you cant go back in time and plant a seed. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago or right now and all that jazz. For the farming season, the best time is right now, and with the literal food supply of multiple people tied into the farm and its production, you aren’t just planting seeds for yourself. This metaphor is not hard to stretch over towards activism, community building, revolution. Do what you can, right now, and then keep doing what you can in all the subsequent nows. Seizing that proverbial moment (or the means of production) the best way to spend our time. Conceptualising farming aside, this week has been a pretty long one.
This week’s tarot card is the Two of Pentacles, the balance of opposing weighted ideas; the taught and saught. The path through decision is not the simplest but a choice must be made, time and tide wait for no one. Ask yourself: what am I prioritising? how am I spending my time? what ball will I drop? how can I drop it gently?
June arrived and set up shop I chanced to discover someone on Instagram. Carleigh Bodrug is wonderful, she’s been making the lilac lemonade and dandelion coffee. And she has 500k followers. Props to her, but boy did that cause a momentary wobbly.
From this wobbly, I quickly recovered and really started analysing it. My first thought had been to give up on Scrap Kitchen, it was brief, it was fleeting, but it was there. Then came the desolate wonder of how I was to compete. The five stages of grief wafted past at some point and then I got the fuck over myself. Someone else having a shittonne of followers and making wonderful foods that encourage people to explore and eat the local plamts, to reconnect with nature, that can only be a good thing. She is of course not the only person doing this, I have mentioned the phenomenal Alexis Nikole, the medicine circle, Poppy Okotcha, Max La Manna, sustainable Sabs and Isaias Hernandez. Hell, the platforms they have build should only ever be cause for hope. How very late-stage capitalism of me to even consider it a competition. If anything, finding someone doing similar things to me means there is an audience for it and I just need to get a little better at social media. Also, it means there are collaborators, confidantes, co-conspirators out there in the war on over-consumption, capitalism, colonialism. Of course there are. How the fuck else are we going to build a better world if not by working together. The point in this tangent, this admission of unchillness, is to reconsider competition, the idea of it. Pitting like-minded people against each other, even if we do it to ourselves. Who the shit does it serve? Where can we reach out, collaborate?
As the farm comes together around us, stitched in sweat and sun, so too does the small garden patch by our house. Though I have planted nothing there but a handful of (so far) unsuccessful passionflower seeds, there is now a veritable lawn of lambs quarters. Punctuated too by dandelions, roses, clematis and some yet unidentified others. I spent this morning extracting the rose seeds from their winter-dried hips, in an attempt to make this oil to avoid internationally purchasing this Amazing Face Oil (might have to bite the bullet on that one). This afternoon’s attentions turned to the Lambs Quarters.
Also known as White Goosefoot for its shape and characteristic dusty white coating, Lambs Quarters is an edible perennial. This means it is annually recurring, somewhat immortal in plant terms. While it might not come back exactly the same each year its seed falls nearby and pops up unaided each spring. The opposite of this is an annual plant. Although, arguably, if you let plants get to their full dry maturity then they are mostly perennial. Let a tomato fall from its parent plant and watch a cluster of tiny tomatoes appear next spring. I digress.
Lambs quarters is related to quinoa, beetroot, chard and spinach, and a member of the Amarnath family. Upon reading that it made sense to me, the seed pods, leaf formations and root structures of all these plants share tangible links. No shit if they are related. On that note, you can eat beet leaves and chard roots, remember this when clearing out your garden beds.
Within farming, a native form of lambs’ quarters was one of the first plants to be cultivated in North America, and in Eurasia, it can be traced back in archeological records for thousands of years. It’s also commonly known as wild spinach; it actually outcompetes “tame” spinach in terms of nutrient and mineral concentrations. I hate to say superfood, but damn son! When cooking it I would suggest this stunning Wild Greens Pâté, preserving it in a Kimchi, serving up this classic side dish from Maangchi or even in a “Green Custard”. Once planted it is pretty hard to get rid of but also much easier to grown and harvest than spinach. Since it is a perennial it will seed in place and return each year, but if you spot some while out and about and want to build up a patch of your own, why not try saving the seed.
If you check out Eat the Seasons this week they are absolutely eviscerating the misuse of courgette by restaurants offering it as the only vegetarian option. That is to say, courgette and cucumber are in season, and there are a bounty of recipes I covered last week. After offering an absolutely delightful alternative to spinach with lambs quarters, let me chuck a few cute recipes at you: A Life-changing Dip, A Veganisable Flammkuchen and an Apple Kale Cake that could easily have a spinach/lambs quarters swap out.
Stone fruit are also coming right along: apricots, cherries and the rest. I have watched the Nanking Cherries next to our greenhouse turn from twigs, to flowers, to shoots, to baby fruits; slowly soaking up the sun and getting up to size. We’re a little behind up here in the mountains so in less frost-prone climates there should be cherries on the horizon. With stone fruit, a clafoutis is a way to go but preserving in alcohol is also the one. Lots of recipes also recommend grilling stone fruit with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar to top off a salad. But in all this preserving the harvest is all about keeping and reallocating the abundance of spring and summer into the colder months. Vinegar or sugar are the preservation vectors to go with stone fruit. The pits are also possible save and therefore plantable, however planting whole fruits helps with the fermentation of the seed coat and improves chances of growth. Have too much of a harvest? Give it away and plant a couple whole. Let me know how it goes…
This week’s podcast accompanied my several hours trimming tomatoes on friday. It’s a brilliant dive into the dichotomy of the crow and the dove in the story of Noah’s arc and how this can be applied to climate adaptation, medieval texts and race.
This weeks’ Scrap Kitchen seems a little all over the place but astrologically that’s pretty on point (mercury being retrograde and all that). I would like to thank each and every damn one of you for reading and supporting what I have to say, but a special shout out to my babe Michelle (one of my faves, owner of Chatty Cats Care and my first supporter on Buymeacoffee). Anyways I’m signing off for now, save your seeds, send me a comment and share this bitch.
Until then, stay scrappy
M
Image credit: Vuitton Lim, Miguel Ibáñez, Louis Hansel and Monika Grabkowska.
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