Home Orchard Society Arboretum

Sometimes rain -- even at the end of a long sopping stretch of days -- is magical. In this case it made for some very ethereal photos of Home Orchard Society Arboretum manager Karen Tillou. Yesterday I took a trip south to Clackamas Community College home of the HOS Arboretum and met with Tillou. We snuck in and out of the tool shed (rain and more rain) for a couple hours talking about fruit trees, shrubs and vines, the history of HOS and why I should use an ale or a cotes de blanc yeast the next time I make hard cider. It was a great day and worth the trek. The HOS Arboretum is always in need of volunteers so if you or someone you know has time to thin, weed, prune or harvest for a few hours in upcoming months the 1.6 acre arboretum is a great place to lend a hand.

Tools of the trade

Home Orchard Society Arboretum Open year round 9am-3pm Tuesdays and Saturdays www.homeorchardsociety.org Contact: Karen Tillou 503.338.8479 Find directions here

Homemade Hard Cider Pt. 2

A quick recap: We rented a mill from F.H. Steinbart Co. in Southeast early November and supplemented our meager backyard apple supply with some heritage reds from Woodland, Washington. After a day of rinsing, halving, milling and pressing we filtered the cider, added some champagne yeast and then funneled it into a 3-gallon carboy. We let the carboy sit in the utility room to for a few months and do its thing.

That's where we left off.

Come January we racked off the cider which means we siphoned it into a clean carboy. Well, in our case we siphoned the cider into a food-grade bucket, cleaned the carboy and then siphoned it back in. Before cleaning the carboy we poured the yeasty sediment in the bottom into a stainless bowl and then wondered what to do with it.

According to the great Sandorkraut -- Sandor Ellix Katz author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Micorwaved:

When you rack and bottle wines, you are left with yeasty sediment at the bottom of the fermenting vessel. This sediment is not pretty, so generally it is not bottled or served. But all the deceased yeast is full of B vitamins. If you’ve ever used nutritional yeast, it is essentially the same thing as this.

Wine dregs make a rich and flavorful soup base. Try following a recipe for French onion soup, substituting wine dregs for one-quarter of the liquid. Be sure to boil it for awhile to cook off the alcohol. Inhale the fumes for an intense sensory experience!

Deceased yeast

Over at the food website Culinate I also got some advice from a site member to marinate some fish in the cider lees. I meant to do that but the only thing I did with the lees was add a few tablespoons to some braised greens. Then it started to make the kitchen ripe so I tossed it in the compost. Next time...

Racking gave us a chance to give the cider a taste (the only other time we'd tried it was at press) and it was already pretty good -- fresh, slightly sour, subtly sweet. Much better than we thought it would be considering we didn't use very complex apples. Typically hard cider includes some tannic, sour and not-so-good-to-eat-fresh apples.

So we racked off the cider and set it back in utility room to do its thing. The cider was fairly clear at this point, as opposed to how hazy it was when we first pressed it, and getting more and more golden by the week as tiny particulates continued to sink to the bottom of the carboy.

Come mid-February we added a final jump of sugar, corn sugar to be exact, for natural carbonation. Prior to this the yeast had been feeding solely on natural sugars -- no sugar added. We did this as we bottled -- adding a half teaspoon to each bottle -- while siphoning the cider and then capping the bottles with an old capper I found at an estate sale.

We kept the twenty-some bottles in a corner of the kitchen until a beer and mead brewing friend told us that would kill off the remaining yeast needing to carbonate it. He recommended a warmer spot for the final ferment so we moved the bottles upstairs next to a small wall-mounted heater and waited.

A month later at our first barbecue of semi-spring we cracked open a few bottles of the cider with our friend. It was crisp, light and effervescent, slightly sweet, and the essence of autumn apple. In other words, it was delicious. We were happy that we hadn't botched the mild carbonation by keeping the cider in our cold kitchen for a few days after bottling. In the end we had less than 30 bottles from about 80 pounds of home-pressed apples.

Will we do it again? Yes. This year? Maybe. I'm making dandelion wine for the second time this weekend but hard cider requires a lot more time, energy and equipment. It was worth it but I'm thinking it may be more biennial for us.

Almost ready and waiting

Hard Cider Part One...

Give gardening a chance: Oregon Food Bank

A couple week's ago I started my volunteer practicum for the OGCP that I took this fall. I'm planning to volunteer with several different food/gardening organizations in town this year so I can learn as much as possible for the book while helping out. A couple weeks ago I volunteered at Oregon Food Bank's Eastside Learning Garden.

Dig In! is an ongoing early spring through late fall program at Oregon Food Bank's two Portland learning gardens for which volunteers of all ages help weed, prune, sow and harvest food for various local relief agencies. If you've ever been to the Northeast Portland DEQ you were just a stone's throw from Oregon Food Bank headquarters and its next door 17,000-square-foot Eastside Learning Garden.

For my morning shift -- on a Thursday 9am to noon -- we met up in the barn, introduced ourselves (nine or ten of us), discussed what needed to be done and then did just that. I started off by pruning a young but sprawling grape vine with a seasoned OFB volunteer and then for the remainder of my shift harvested several rows of big and healthy collard greens planted late last summer in between the chicken coop and the berry brambles. We composted the critter munched and slug slimed lower leaves and left plenty on the stalks for a staggered harvest.

There were mothers and daughters planting peas, others pruning raspberries, and folks removing over-wintered cold frames from raised beds until everyone came together a bit before noon to rinse and box the morning collard and beet harvest. When all was said and done several buckets full of fresh collards and beets were hand-carted just a few steps away to Oregon Food Bank headquarters where they'd soon be repacked and distributed to various local relief agencies.

Although I won't be back for awhile now due to a significantly sliced and bandaged right ring finger (apparently my kitchen mandoline doesn't differentiate between radishes, apples, carrots and fingers) once I'm shovel-in-the-soil ready again I'll be back to lend a hand. There's a lot to be done in the OFB gardens this spring and it's not a huge time commitment.

Another way that local green thumbs can help out with OFB is the Plant a Row for the hungry program. I'm thinking about doing that too...

Eastside Learning Garden 7900 NE 33rd Drive Westside Learning Garden 21485 NW Mauzey Road

Harvesting collards

Homemade Hard Cider Pt. 1

Last fall my boyfriend and I decided to finally make good use of the apples from the ancient apple tree in our backyard. I'd heard that F.H. Steinbart Co. rented out one of their cider mill/presses every weekend in the fall for $20. I called as soon as I found out last summer when our apple tree was set with loads of good looking fruit. I thought it would probably ripen around late October just as it had the previous fall so I reserved the press for the first weekend of November. That happened to be a very busy weekend -- Wordstock, my first face-to-face with my publisher, an all-day rain garden/stormwater management class for the Organic Gardening Certification Program, and cider making 101.

Two things happened that had a huge effect on the latter. First, we lost a major limb of the apple tree mid-summer, which completely obstructed the street behind our house and sent tennis-ball-looking, unripe apples all the way up and down the street. Because of that we had to do some major emergency pruning to save the tree. The next impediment to our home cidery: the slim-pickings apples that remained ripened early. Very early. Most were good to go by early September. Although apples keep well -- two months was pushing it and to be honest there just weren't that many still on the tree. Our cider press reservation was firm, however, and no other weekends were available. I started hunting for apples.

I surfed Craigslist and found a man with a small home orchard in Woodland, Washington with ripe heritage red apples (not a variety just a description -- he's not sure what kind they are) ready to sell for a good price that sounded like they'd make a decent, but probably not great, hard cider. I was ok with a small batch of decent cider for a small chunk of change. It'd be good practice for our future bumper crop cider. I drove out with my puppy picked up the loot and headed home. The apples had been sweated (stored for a couple weeks so that they'd ripened into peak flavor and sweetness) and were ready for cider. We rinsed them, halved them and threw them into the apple mill/grinder -- stems, seeds and all...

Into the mill

After milling we put the apple pomace (the resulting bits and chunks) into the press and then started hand cranking the juice. That took the most time.

Pressing the cider

Cider Falls

As you can see a lot of bits made it into the cider. That didn't matter because before pouring the cider into the carboy, with a packet of champagne yeast, we filtered it through cheesecloth. Apple Bits was a nickname my friend Mary Ellen gave me in grade school. If only she could see me now.

80-plus pounds of apples became a mere 3 gallons of cider. Our how-to book Cider Hard & Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own by Ben Watson for The Countryman Press doesn't suggest an apple to juice ratio but surfing around online it seems like the consensus is that roughly 15 pounds of apples usually translates to about a gallon of cider. Either we need to do some push-ups in prep. for this fall or our apples weren't exactly up-to-snuff juice wise.

Cider's home for a few months

After all that, which took the better part of a day, we had three gallons of cider in a carboy with a purge tube stoppered to the top leading to a half-full bottle of water. This way nothing noxious or foreign could travel into the cider but if the fermentation got particularly feisty and bubbly the cider would overflow into the bottle of water. We kept it in the utility room and checked on it every few hours at first and then every few days. Once the initial fermentation was over, about a week or two I think, we removed the tubing and topped the carboy with a regular fermentation lock. Then we left the cider largely unattended until January.

Hard Cider Part Two...

Start your veggies and OGCP

OGCP mates milling about after lunch

I wrote a story for the hot-off-the-presses spring Edible Portland all about this fall's first-of-its-kind Organic Gardening Certification Program -- or OGCP -- in Portland. I learned heaps, have already applied a lot of what I learned to my home edible garden, and want to share some more local gardening class options for Portlanders that I just learned about.

Kathy Dang of Oregon Tilth, whom I wrote about in the piece, sent word of OT's monthly veggie growing classes as well as their upcoming comprehensive organic gardener program. If these classes offer even a snippet of what the Oregon Tilth folks served up for OGCP then they'll be well worth the 20-plus dollars they cost.

Also, I thought I'd use this opportunity to offer up a few memories from OGCP that didn't make it into the Edible Portland story. I chopped them or my editor chopped them, a little of both:

Weston Miller, OSU Extension Agent and OGCP co-organizer sums up the two programs like this: "The Master Gardener Program, typically offered during the winter, is a classroom-based program. For the organic program we had a sliver of growing season left that provided more opportunities for demonstrations and hands-on type learning opportunities." He adds, "We based OGCP out of active gardening sites, because our goal was to make it as hands-on as possible."

*****

Our days progress with garden activities such as planting garlic and cover crops and preparing sheet mulch, as well as classroom sessions on everything from plant taxonomy and physiology to soil testing and interpretation. Every Saturday we break at noon for lunch. Lunch is a lesson all its own.

I make my way to a garden picnic table at noon on the first Saturday where several other participants are unwrapping sandwiches, opening thermoses of steaming soups, noodles and teas. On the table: African peanut stew, sauteed vegetables and tempeh, buckwheat noodles, and a veggie-loaded red curry. The edible aspect of gardening is obviously not just an aside for these folks.

Lessons Learned

Roasters: Burlap sacks from local coffee roasters make an excellent re-usable mulch for overwintered garden beds and year-round sheet mulching. Spent coffee grounds from coffeeshops are a good -- and not too acidic -- top dressing and compost amendment.

Barely used: Portland Nursery gets rid of used pots and planting trays on a regular basis and customers are welcome to pick them up at both locations for free.

Beware of horsetails: Although beautiful and eye-catching -- horsetails (those thin bamboo looking plants that populate much of the Oregon Coast) are tenacious, spread quickly and are a home garden nightmare.

The problem with walnut trees: Most of them produce a growth-inhibitive chemical that is detrimental to many plants. So avoid walnut leaves for leaf mulch and compost, and steer clear of walnut bark and wood chips in areas you want affected plants to grow.

Bad for butterflies: Butterfly bushes are invasive and actually detrimental to butterflies since they compete with native plants that feed butterfly caterpillars. If yours is a keeper be sure to cut it back every summer after flowering so it doesn't spread seeds. And last but not least -- an interesting blog from a fellow OGCP participant:

Elizabeth Bryant's Dirt Cheap Gardening

Why my vegetable garden will be less diverse this year

It's happening: spring gardening

1Sorrel in the sun

This week there have been a group of seagulls hanging out in the neighborhood. What do you call a group of seagulls? Probably just a flock. There are usually seagulls here and there in the Overlook neighborhood since we're so close to the river but there have been more than usual this week and they were sunning on our neighbor's roof for an hour or so yesterday morning. The gulls coupled with all the purple and yellow crocuses popping out in our yard and around the neighborhood and the sunny 50s weather mean one amazing thing...

It's time to till. I signed up yesterday to volunteer at the Oregon Food Bank's Eastside Learning Garden for a few hours in a couple weeks. They need volunteers year-round to help sow, weed, water, and harvest fruits and vegetables for hunger-relief agencies around Portland. There's also an OFB Learning Garden in Hillsboro.

This fall I took the first-of-its-kind, 10-week-long Organic Gardening Certification Program -- a partnership between OSU Extension Service, Oregon Tilth, Metro, PSU and East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. During the 10 week organic equivalent of the Master Gardening Program we learned all about plant biology, taxonomy, vermiculture, cover cropping, and more. As a part of the course you agree to a 30-hour volunteer practicum. I'm participating in Dig In! to kick that off. I'm also planning to volunteer with Portland Fruit Tree Project and Growing Gardens.

But I want to start my garden volunteering early this season because there's going to be a lot happening in my own garden this summer. I did a lot of sheet mulching this winter and now have more space than ever for annual vegetables. The mound below isn't a burial site it's the front yard parking strip sheet mulch patch where I plan to grow tomatoes this summer. I covered it with burlap sacks from a local coffee roaster. A month or so ago one of the burlap sacks was taken -- hopefully it's a rough pillow now...

Hard and softneck garlic getting taller

Dirt lasagna