I’ve been looking forward to this for 9 months. Last August, while looking for mushrooms and saskatoons, I came across a patch of wild asparagus and since have been dreaming of a spring feed of asparagus I didn’t have to grow myself. That day has come. It’s worth noting that I am doubtful this is a native species of any kind, but is more than likely better described as a ‘feral’ asparagus. Some remanent of an old market garden or homestead in the river valley, or seeded by a bird. Or something. I don’t care. It’s giant, awesome, free, tasty asparagus.

The top left photo was today’s score. I’ve never harvested asparagus this thick. Ever. And my dad’s patch is about 20 years old – it’s got nothing on this. The thick ones are as broad as my thumb. Because they’re so giant, they add up fast. I only have a dozen or so, but I think 3 would exceed a normal portion of asparagus. The photo below is what they looked like May 3rd, taken on a forage I led for a crew of crazy-cool Slow Food Canada and Slow Food International folks. It was the first I saw them, so it wasn’t hard to get excited about it. That, and the vast majority of what we harvested was white, the soil around it being loose, and easy to dig down a bit to harvest it while entirely blanched. We ate them shaved and whole, raw, atop fresh eggs scrambled in beurre noisette and wild onion. I am looking forward to a pig out of today’s yield – I’ve been abstaining since last season.

No, I will not tell you where this patch is. But I can tell you that there are other patches around the river valley, and legend is they are even more prolific.

I found and wrote about this patch of wild onion in August, and all winter long it’s been in the back of my mind. The long stretch of lack of fresh, green flavors would be abruptly broken by the reappearance of this lovely piece of culinary geniusness. This particular one is allium senescens, its common name ‘german garlic’. I have a hard time comparing it to anything garlic as it strikes me nothing like it. It’s more like the offspring of a one-night-stand of nodding onion and wild chive. Nodding onion, to date, has been the clear winner in the kitchen for allium awesomeness. I think it has a competitor now, as A. Senescens is like nodding onion on steroids. I’m going to have to do some side-by-side comparisons.

Not all allium are safe to eat, by the way. One of the perks of going foraging often is I’d been in this area often enough to be there to see it bloom, positively ID it when it was, so that I was extremely confident come spring what I was looking at exactly. As always with wild food, it’s important to do some considerable homework prior to trying a bit of something. But that homework shouldn’t be a deterrent to learning about and tasting it, that’s for sure. Although a star now because it’s so early, this guy will be in season throughout the summer, so I can visit it regularly as the other greens, mushrooms, and fruits come into season.

When we bought the property we’re now on I started digging up lawn almost immediately. What once was 99% lawn is now maybe 5-10% lawn. I’ve become pretty adept at destroying lawn. 5 years ago, when I started digging up soil that looked like that in the photo [currently excavating for the big-ass wood oven project] – white, granular, entirely different in texture – I thought it had something to do with the previous owners having a dog. I thought it was dog-poo-destroyed soil. Proof, once again, that I’m not always right.

As it turns out, the white stuff is mycelium [mycelia plural more appropriate?] of the shaggy parasol [lepiota rachodes] mushroom. It’s the vegetative part of the fungus that grows in the soil, the ‘mushroom’ bit we think of being the fruit. This white fuzzy, mold-looking stuff permeates the soil, decomposing things, and fruiting when and where it reaches some critical mass. The fruiting locations almost seem random to me in my yard, often fruiting a good 12-14′ feet away from where it fruited last. So far, I’ve dug out 2-3 wheelbarrows full of soil heavy in mycelia. I’ve been dumping it in other areas of my yard, covering it up, with hopes that it will produce more mushroom fruiting. I already get mushrooms in my front ‘forest garden’ due to having moved similar soil there in past years.

It strikes me as odd that me, of all people, happened to have purchased a property whose soil was rich in edible wild mushroom. Strange, no?

How? I’m headed there, bear with me a bit. It’s critical to point out here that we’re eating the top quality ingredients we can find here too. Rather than buying my meat at Walmart, I’m buying the best quality pasture raised stuff I can find. Rather than eating veg bred for withstanding transportation, I’m growing those with the best flavor I can find. We even fit in buying organic grain in there – I think if more folks learned the difference between conventional grain farming and organic grain farming, they’d make that leap too.

Which leads me to an important point: the marginal cost of upgrading. Having visited an organic grain farm and concluded that I didn’t want to feed my family conventionally raised grain, I found a local supplier [Sunnyboy and Highwood Crossing for unbleached white flour] that was selling organic flour for $32/20kg bag. I could buy conventional at a box store for $13 or so. So I was multiplying my food cost 200-300% on grain. This seemed illogical to my inner cheap-ass, but then I looked at the bottom line. If we go through 3 bags a year, I was spending $39 before. Going organic would cost $96. A year. So $63 more per year. That’s $5 of my $400 monthly food budget I’m happy to spend to upgrade. Think about some of the things you spend $5/month on. Parking meters maybe? Those same ‘upgrading’ economics apply to many other items, including meats. And for the record, our budget affords us buying heritage organic whole-grain flours from Gold Forest Grains too.

A quick look at inflation and seed cost. My grandma’s 95. She was born in 1917, before the end of WWI. I’m sure a bunch of carrots at the market, if they were there at all, were a few cents. Seed cost would have been fewer cents. Almost a century later that bunch of carrots at a farmers’ market, $5, say. When I’m a senior, it will likely be $10-20. And I’m not begrudging the farmers those prices – they have to pay for their time to feed you. But the seed cost remains pennies. In fact, if you save seed [and Monsanto doesn't sue you for intellectual property theft, that is], seed can still be free. As time passes, I’m convinced the economic value of seeds will become more and more obvious to the average consumer. The spread of end-product cost and seed cost is growing. I’m doing more and more seed saving. Did I mention the free part?

So I’ll cut to the chase on a few items. Let’s start with fruit and veg. Because we pick fruit until we can pick fruit no more with Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton in the fall – saving fruit on the tree or bush that would otherwise get hauled to landfill – our fruit cost has fallen to essentially zero. And no we don’t need to eat apples all winter. Our freezer’s full of sour cherries, black currants, raspberries, apples, apple juice, and more. You could argue that I have to include my cost of gas to harvest fruit, but I’d argue that I don’t, because you wouldn’t include your cost of gas to go to the box store to buy the stuff.

Our annual seed budget for veg is about $100, and I could easily tighten that up if I felt it was necessary. So yes, that $100 bill pays for enough vegetables to feed our family for the year, year round thanks to cold frames and my root cellar [also economical to build]. So substantially all of our fruit and veg for the year costs a whopping $100 or so.  ’But I live in a condo downtown and don’t have a garden‘, say you. Your solution is the Edmonton Organic Growers’ Guild - you can take the LRT to the UoA farm, spend some afternoons and evenings pitching in, and they get grants to pay for seed and tools, so your organic veg is free. There’s that word again: free. And would you believe they’re actually looking for people to take them up on this deal?!?

I’ve done beef-onomics and pork-onomics for years. When I first started buying whole animals, I was highly motivated to figure out if that big expense up front worked out in the end. Turns out for pork that no matter how I spin it, it works out to about $2.25 a lb, give or take a dime or so. Keep in mind, this is pastured, low-density, antibiotic+hormone free, happy pig, and I can shake the hand of the farmer I buy from. Box store pig isn’t any of those things. Yet my $/lb works out to less than the box store. Yes, less. I’ve done the math. So top quality meat for less than box store prices. The catch: you have to actually buy and use a whole animal [ie, not just eat its tenderloin or boneless skinless breast], and spend some time processing it yourself. And therein lies the rub. Time.

Most folks, when I start talking about food economics, will grab ‘time’, and toss it in my face. ‘You must spend every waking hour growing, processing, and preparing your own foods‘, say they. Anybody that knows me knows that’s not true. For example. It takes me 2 hrs to take a side of pig and break it down. That’s wrapped, packed, in a freezer, cleaned down. Folks will spend 2 hrs watching a movie and think nothing of it, so I’ll take that to mean 2 hrs is not a big time commitment. Harvesting apples [did I mention free?] in the fall can be done at a rate of about 100 lbs/hr, say. If you buy apples at the market for $2-3/lb say, than the economic value of your time is $200-300. Per hour. Not a lot of time, but even if it was it’s an economically efficient use of it, even if you get paid a whole lot at your day-job.

But even if it did take a lot of time, I’ll argue til the end of the earth that perhaps we should start to be okay with spending more time handling our own food. Call me crazy. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I’ll still get those telling me they have NO spare time, AT ALL. Not one single day on a weekend a year. I think that’s dysfunctional and more is required than a reinvention of your food life. So long as folks own TVs, there are some spare moments in the week. If you’re that person that’s so strapped they need to figure how to best utilize those few precious spare hours per calendar year to maximize their food budget – email me or let me know in the comments. I’ll be happy to help you. But before you fear the time commitment, ask those that do it – grow, process, harvest, cook, and otherwise spend time with their food, and they’re likely to tell you it’s a wholesome, productive, happy-making ‘work’. A therapy of sorts. It’s good for the brain. It’s good for the health. It’s good for the pocket-book.

Willing to share your food budget? Any food items you haven’t found an economical solution for?

This issue is ramping up momentum because the city is in the throes of putting together a ‘Food and Urban Agriculture Project’, and while I have yet to run into anybody in the food community that has a clue what the city’s up to, apparently they’ve done some work that will be unleashed at a conference held on May 25-26. Sadly, it will cost you $184 to attend to find out what’s going on or to share your voice, for what is tagged as “a key milestone in the engagement process”. Even for not-for-profits. Ouch. Liane wrote a really solid post about this whole thing. I’ve paid my dues to be there, and can’t wait to find out what the heck is going on, and who ends up having the $ to be part of the conversation around urban ag in the city.

Some of you might remember this. 2-3 years ago, I came up with the mad idea of building a huge-assed [17+' wide] masonry wall of kitchen awesomeness in my back yard. Did all the research. Drew all the plans. Had them approved by the city and the gas company [crossing a gas line, not because anything's gas fuelled]. Then, decided that tackling it the year we had a newborn in the house was likely not the responsible thing to do. So it got shelved.

I then built ‘the temp‘, re-purposing the stack of cinders and bricks intended for ‘the big project’ to make them less in the way and more useful. Turns out the temp was a resounding success. 3 hour time investment gave me a wood oven and wood fire grill that will have lasted 15 months or so. But alas, the heat took its toll on the pavers in the design [see photo top left], which has compromised the structural integrity, as well as the usability of the temp. The temp will be seeing its last day standing today.

Which leaves me with two masonry-wood-fire projects. 1 – the big project. The shovel has hit the dirt to dig foundation. I have no idea when I’ll finish, but am taking the first steps in the journey. Keep telling myself Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s a bit daunting, but very exciting. 2 – the temp 2.0. I need a setup in the interim built elsewhere in the yard where it won’t be in my way. I believe it will be a cob oven and smaller wood grill. We’ll see what comes of that project. I see muscle soreness in my future.

Just a couple days prior to going to shoot video of yet another nice person and their backyard chickens, this lady got a visit from a bylaw officer asking her to remove her birds or pay the $500 fine. Admittedly, I was relieved that they had paid her a visit before I did the video, otherwise I’d feel like it was somehow my fault. She’s decided to not pay the fine and see the city in court. As it turns out, she has to wait in line as another decision is pending thanks to this guy. She’s since started an Edmonton chapter of CLUCK. I had her speak to $ cost, time cost, and a variety of other topics that folks generally ask about when it comes to backyard hens.

I know viewers will ask or be curious around how she got busted. Although I don’t know the specifics, I do know that she was perhaps pushing her luck on a couple fronts – first by having roosters [generally a no-no even in cities that allow backyard hens, and source of potential noise complaints], but perhaps more of a liability was that the chickens are allowed to roam freely in the neighbourhood. I certainly wouldn’t care if she was my neighbour and did that – perhaps a rogue egg would end up in my yard, my garden would get fertilized, or it would eat some insects for me – but I completely understand that somebody on the block is bound to object. Let your cat roam, no biggy [illegal], let your hens roam, $500 fine [also, illegal]. I never thought I’d find ‘pet law’ interesting, but it most certainly is.

As an aside, River City Chicken Collective is now on Twitter @rivercityhens.

I’ve been writing about bacon for years now. As in, 6-7 years. I’ve made it umpteen times, yet there are always little refinements here and there to make in the process. You’d think I’d have run out of things to say about it too by now. Nope.

I feel like this episode should be rated ‘N’ for containing the evil ‘Nitrates’. But for all you nitrate haters, consider this: “the permissible amount of nitrate in comminuted meat products [sausages], is 1718 mg/kg.” The amounts of nitrates naturally inherent in vegetables are then quoted, again in mg/kg: “spinach, 1631. beetroot, 1211. lettuces, 1051. cabbages, 338. potatoes, 155…” The list goes on. I’m quoting the book ‘Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design’ by respected charcuterie authors S., A., & R. Marianski. The authors then go on: “If one ate 1/4 lb smoked sausage, the ingoing nitrate would be 430ppm. That would probably account for less nitrates than a dinner served with potatoes and spinach.” 

That’s right. That box-store bagged spinach [which has a nasty history of carrying deadly pathogens, I'll add], cooked into a nice lasagna, would very likely have far more nitrates in it than a healthy portion of bacon. There are many things to fear in the food world, but let moderate use of nitrates not be one of them. And lastly, let me say it for the record: bacon without nitrates is not bacon, it’s pork belly. If you’re smoking pork belly without nitrates to get a ‘pretend bacon’ or ‘nitrate-free bacon’, you’re missing the point that nitrates are present to avoid you having a intimate encounter with ‘Mr. Botulism’.

Ever since my first visit to an urban backyard coop, I’ve been sold that backyard hens are a genius idea. From quality fresh egg supply to insect control, pet companionship to the ultimate supply of fertilization for the yard and garden, they make sense. Yet in many urban areas, bylaws restrict having poultry, full stop.

In an effort to bring some awareness to the issue, I’m producing a series of videos about folks with backyard coops in Edmonton, so that those who might want to give it a shot can get ideas and inspiration, and most of all so that those that oppose it can hear from those that have them – to perhaps balance their perspective a bit. I know I had a pile of questions about urban hens prior to checking out my first setup – all of which were quickly alleviated. River City Chickens has been advocating for a bylaw change for years here with no success, yet the City of Edmonton claims they want a progressive urban ag policy. Something there doesn’t add up.

The gentleman in this episode is not what you’d typically expect as the stereotypical chicken-keeper. Male, military, dog owner.