An Organic Urban Yard in Less Time Than a Sit-Com

The Boy has helped me brew on several occasions but this was “his” batch. Last summer we went to visit the local brewing sage, Mike O’Brien and the Boy bought the ingredients for a batch of stout, his favorite style. He’s had to work two part-time jobs to make ends meet so we haven’t found time to brew this batch until yesterday.

In case anyone is following along at home, this is a rough approximation of the recipe we used. The bags of specialty grains were unmarked.

11.5 oz Crystal Malt
8.5 oz Chocolate Malt
7.5 oz Black Patent
9 lbs of Maris Otter
2 oz of Amarillo hops
Danstar – Windsor dry yeast

We typed this all into our BSOC (Brewing Software Of Choice – in my case it happens to be BeerAlchemy, a nifty Mac-based application) just to make sure we weren’t totally out of whack. Ideally, this is on track to be an American Stout.

We brewed indoors because my propane tank is empty… and because I didn’t relish sitting outside. The “big” burner on our new stove threw off a stunning amount of heat, nearly as much as the outside burner so the brew day wasn’t noticeably longer than usual. Cooling was a bit of a drag but as, 20MintueJan’s photo yesterday showed, it’s amazing what a pile of snow accomplishes.

Original gravity was 1.052 which wasn’t bad especially given that we batch sparged and that we had a bit of a calculation error with mashing temperatures. By bedtime, the carboy was gurgling happily and this morning we found the lid had been popped.

The great thing about brewing with friends or family is that there are stretches of time when nothing particularly is happening (during the mash, during the boil…) when it’s a natural, low-pressure time to chat. It was great to catch up a bit with the Boy and I hope this turns into a habit, an activity we can do together.

Sometimes you’ve got to make your own fun…

And today, after a long, dry hiatus, 20MinuteJim and the Boy did.

Jim had taken a temporary vow of not-brewing in order to devote energy to wrapping up some home improvement projects. While one has to admire that sort of self-less self-denial, one’s spouse also might start to miss the dependable presence of home brew. Eventually, the supplies ran low.

Thank heavens for project completion, for New Year’s resolutions, for day’s off and the boundless of energy of the young, i.e. the Boy (cuz those big pots of steaming mash as heavy!) Today the house smelled like a brewery– and I loved it!

Now the yeast is pitched, the pots are washed, and the spent mash is in the compost. Let the count down to new brew begin!

Our city collects yard waste at the curb, and then makes and sells the resulting compost, and I’m very pleased that it does. We abstain from contributing on a regular basis, however, except for the odd bag of weeds mixed with raspberry canes, because we have our own compost pile to feed.

A couple of years ago, one of the neighbors who lived in one of the nearby small apartment buildings knocked on our door and asked if he and his girlfriend could put their kitchen waste in our compost bin. They’d seen our black square composter from their apartment window. I was slightly surprised by this unexpected request, but, after talking with him for a few minutes, I readily agreed. They were not compost novices, and he assured me that they were put only vegetative waste in the bins. I admit that it was initially a little odd to open the compost bin and regularly see items we hadn’t purchased or added (when did we have blueberries? oh, that wasn’t us!), but we got used to it.

The neighbor who were garden with also likes to contribute her kitchen waste to the compost bin. We have an irregular system where she sets containers out on her back porch, and I take them to the compost bin with me. Winter has thrown off my schedule, however, and yesterday she patiently pointed out several containers of now-frozen kitchen scraps waiting on the back porch. I gathered them all up today and topped up the compost once again. Our container is getting a little full. We can’t add more to the Compost Tumbler in the winter because the contents sort of freeze to the bottom and make turning it pretty unsafe! We may need to expand our compost empire!

When we lived in Toronto in the 1990’s, one of our neighbors kept her compost bin in the front yard because that was her yard space in the shared house. One day she asked in a suspicious tone if we’d been putting stuff in her bin. No, I assured her, we wouldn’t do that without permission. Someone, not us, she then supposed, was adding little bags of kitchen and mixed waste to her compost bin. Shortly after that, we noticed a padlock on the compost bin! It was both funny and sad that someone had to guard her compost bin from someone else who wanted to love the earth by composting and at the same time had no idea how to do it properly.

In the 20 years since, composting has come a long way in gaining popularity among lots of people, not just hardcore organic gardeners and hippies! I am pleased we can do our part. I’m also really pleased that we can compost in a neighborly way.

It’s still winter, which is part of the gardening season, believe it or not. In Michigan, it’s the planning, dreaming and scheming phase of gardening.

We have the good fortune of gardening with our next door neighbor, a generous senior citizen who appreciates gardening enough to share her ground with us. She had invited us to come for brunch today to talk about this year’s garden. We had a lovely meal together, perused some seed catalogs, brainstormed some additions to this summer’s garden, and conversed about matters ranging from theoretical physics to politics to the existence of God along with what we are going to grow this year. We covered a lot of ground.

Here are some of the ideas we came up with.
• We’ll grow carrots. We haven’t grown them here since our soil contained a lot of clay, at least when we first started gardening here. Over the years our soil condition has improved. Plus, our neighbor requested some.
• We will try lettuce and cucumbers again. One of the great things about gardening together is that we have space to experiment. We have grown the former with a good deal of success and the latter with not much. It’s always fun to see what thrives in any given summer.
• We will give successive planting of peas another shot. Our neighbor’s yard has a great “pea garden” on the west side of a trellis. It’s proven to be a good place for planting peas so we will continue to grow them there this year. We hope to time it right and get in a second crop this year.
• Green beans! Somehow, they were skipped last year, and I missed them. I am really fond of our bean growing structure, a 3 bamboo poled tower with a terracotta topper which we re-assemble with a lot of stress and cursing involved. The part I like is when the beans actually start growing UP the tower and make a green teepee that appeals to my inner child.
• More variety of greens/ less kale and collards. We did not plan together as well last year so we ended up with about 20 kale plants and a dozen collards between the two yards. That was too many. We will grown a dozen kale perhaps and half as much collards.
• Mmmmm squash. We all agreed that more squash would be a good idea. So we will plant more summer and winter squash both.

The afternoon sun shone brightly in Michigan today, belying the 20 degree F temperature outside. Our conversation and planning generated a warm atmosphere that, combined with the sunshine, made spring seem just around the corner.

How did you celebrate National Pie Day?

Fortunately, a friend informed me about the annual January 23rd event in time for me to make a Wild Blueberry Pie. Fortunate again that we had frozen wild blueberries in the freezer, set aside for an occasion just like this. I think the folks at the American Pie Council would be pleased.

Not my loveliest pie ever, but it was tasty nonetheless.

We also like to celebrate Pi Day, which is on March 14 (3.14) in honor of the mathematical constant Pi. Some math teachers I know like to make a big deal out of Pi Day, and, from my point of view, any occasion that calls for pie is worth celebrating.