Sowing the roots of destiny...

Yes, the title is supposed to sound like an adventure from Call of Cuthuluh or even a video game like Assassin's Creed.  It is what it sounds like; this year I wish to continue in the footsteps of my family line, which was lost for a generation.  About four hundred years ago, my family name was attached to a family of farmers: 'Bauer' is German for 'farmer'.  The story which I have been told time and time again, is that sometime between the 16 and 1700's, a farmer of my family line did something important or invaluable for the lord of the land.  That gesture moved that farmer from an ordinary farmer to a farmer that had a coat of arms and more land.  If you were a farmer with more land, you could become a better farmer and thus the line really took off as farming became something more of just a hobby or a job, but a destiny.

So, farming was farming and in the 1800's, an ancestor of mine came over to America, through Ellis Island.  The family, settled in what is now the area of Corondelet, St. Louis. It was there that in the 1854 census of the city, showed that my family of Anton Bauer and his wife and kids had $1,600 worth of farm property.   That would be about $44K in today's money.  I don't have family records of how much land was theirs and what was on it, but I can show that the son of Anton Bauer, did not have a farm.  What I could see is that at some point, Anton Bauer sold the farm, probably to help incorporate the city of Corondelet.  From then it looks like some of his family had moved to what was then Mathis, Missouri and set up a farm there, where Bauer Road is off of Tesson Ferry, in St. Louis.  There are records of some of the family also setting up a bakery in St. Louis.  It looks like the ones who did the farming, kept up with the farming and eventually produced a son, my grandfather, that would carry on the farming tradition, as it moved into a more modern age.  My grandfather grew up on a farm and then went off to fight, in World War 2.  In the war, he was a field nurse, working in horrible conditions to heal our troops and save lives.  When he came back, he used the G.I. bill to go to school and get a degree in Biology where he then got a job at Monsanto as a chemical engineer.

Like swords to plowshares, the first thing, after marrying, that my grandfather did when he had his new job, was to erect a huge garden in his backyard.  Their two story flat, on Virginia Avenue, St. Louis, had a large backyard, divided in two by a sidewalk down the middle to the back of the house.  My grandfather took one whole side of the yard, probably an area of 10 feet by 20 feet, and constructed a giant garden. I remembered that he created not just a simple garden, but a huge one, in that amount of space.  He constructed a wooden frame around the garden space, which rested on a 2 foot tall wall of stacked bricks.  The wooden frame, was a giant rectangle, enabling him to have a 8 foot ceiling.  The rectangle was covered in chicken wire, to help prevent the birds out and the brick wall kept small animals out.  He even constructed a screen door, for entry and exit.  It was a remarkable build for one person.  I remembered looking up and seeing green beans and squash growing down from the ceiling and plants growing all over on the ground with a red brick walkway through everything. I was always thinking that the garden was the coolest thing I had ever seen one person have and it is amazing what you can do with no zoning laws.

Now, my father, being more of the modern times, didn't have a huge garden when he got married and raised a family; including me.  He kept the yard looking like a yard for his 4 boys to play in.  What he did use, was a small 2 foot by 8 foot strip of land on one side of the back stairs and a 2 foot by 4 foot spot on the other side of the stairs.  This is the best he had to work with and he wanting to continue in the farming tradition, did so by doing simple items and even some items in larger pots.  I remembered that my father grew broccoli, carrots and mint.  He grew tomatoes and peppers and even sunflowers.  I remembered getting good vegetables from that tiny garden.

Now, wanting to carry on the tradition, I had two previous tries.  I had been staying in an apartment with a tiny 3x6 balcony and used a few pots to grow mint, hot peppers, and some herbs.  That was it and they grew well.  When I had moved to a house, my gardening activities were all negative.  The subdivision has a rule that you cannot grow anything but flowers in the front as a garden.  That rule came after we grew hot peppers, tomatoes and even Brussels sprouts. So, we moved those to the backyard, which was a bad idea.  Our subdivision was built on a trash landfill.  While digging for our garden we have found everything from soda cans to whole bags of cement.  This place is a mess, as far as gardening is concerned.  Also of note though, nothing grew well in the back and it may have just been because the quality of soil is so bad and because of the full sun and lack of drainage.  When the contractor finished our house, they turned it quickly over to us, without doing any landscaping or grading.  So, we have no drainage at all in our yard and when it rains, we have a small pond in our yard. The yard is flat so when we tried to grow corn and tomatoes, against the house, in raised beds filled with expensive gardening soil, they began to rot and mold.  We didn't get anything from them.  I know that the soil is bad because we had two large rose plants start in the back and when they were not doing well, we moved them to the front and now they are thriving.  I would suggest that there is probably $300 worth of expensive garden soil, tilled into the garden areas in the back yard versus the $2,000 or so worth of work and products that has gone into the front yard.  Before we had kids, my wife and I spent many summer days and nights preparing the ground for plants and herbs so we have something to show for it.

So, this is the year where we get serious.  About a 10 minute drive away, hidden away in behind some farmland, sits a garden spot all set up and ready for use.  This spot, currently on property belonging to my in-laws, will be a testing spot for this year's summer activity: a garden.  We do plan on having a house built near there soon, which means that I hope to follow in the gardening tradition.  This year however, we are taking small steps first.  This year, we are doing sunflowers and tomatoes.  It seems reasonable enough.  What makes this first set up so good, is that if everything works great, I will expand it.  I want to have a garden, a plantation, where my young boys can learn about gardens and fruits and vegetables.  We have a dehydrator and I am pretty good and jams and pickles, so I figure that whatever we grow, I will use half of it as fresh items and the other half as preserving.  I will keep you posted, with pictures as I get them.   

People are starving in China...

When I was a kid, I remember my dad telling me to eat all of my dinner because people were starving in China and that comment was supposed to make me feel guilty about throwing something away that someone needed.  It worked on 50% of the time.  I remember my younger brother at some point saying that if my dad was caring about starving kids in China that he should send the uneaten Lima beans to China for them to eat.

As I got older, I worked at an all you can eat restaurant and it was there that I watched just how much food people throw away.  People stuff their cheeks until they resemble squirrels and then complain that they are full when it comes to anything healthy.  I remember a couple that were so large that they had to suck it in and squeeze and wiggle in order to fit into a booth, to eat their food.  I remember a person carry a plate of food in each hand and in the left hand it was stacked with fried chicken and in the other was a mound of fried clams. I would watch these people sometimes take up two chairs, each, as they filled their mouths with food.  While they didn't really waste food, like that, most of them would visit the salad bar and fill at least a few plates up with vegetables. I guess they felt that if they had some veggie plates and ate them that they would feel better about their diet or weight.  What was an issue though, is that they never ate the healthy stuff because they would always dive right into the bad stuff, like the fried foods.  Not to mention just the shear volume of food that is thrown away at restaurants in general.

I remember seeing on Dirty Jobs, that some restaurants are helping out by taking their leftovers, in the trash, and giving it to animal shelters and farms for food for the livestock.  People used to ask me, when I was managing, if we gave the leftover, cooked, but un-touched food, to shelters for people to eat.  We didn't and you know why?  Because the owners of the restaurant didn't want to risk the revealing of our secret recipes. 


This brings me into preserving.  What I do, is a bit of early molecular gastronomy, also known as canning.  You probably don't think of canning using any sort of science been when you think of how everything is done, you realize that while it may not use fancy chemicals, it uses all sorts of outside sources. 

For example: I have been working on jams and jellies for about a year now.  When you work on a fruit spread, you are mixing pulverized fruit with sugar and pectin, which is a natural fiber and thickening/gelling agent, in hopes that it matches the right consistency.  You toss in some lemon juice for a preservative and then you have fresh jam.  Now, while that was easy, now you have to can it and that means taking a freshly sterilized jar, filling it with enough jam that there is still some headway at the top of the jar, and then placing a lid and processing the jar.  When you process the jar, you place the jar of jam, in a pot of water and boil for 10 minutes.  You then take the jar out and let it sit.  What happens is that the insides get so hot they boil as well, sterilizing the food, and the inside of the jar a second time.  Then because the temperature of the inside of the jar is hotter than the temperature outside of the jar, in the air, it creates a vacuum and sucks in the lid, as it cools, sealing the jar.

Why is canning so difficult?  You have to make sure everything is sterilized or else a bacteria will grow, unhindered in a happy and perfect environment and can give botulism.  You also have to make sure that the item is the correct consistency as if it is too thick, it may not heat properly or even stay in the jar and squeeze out during the process. Not to mention that you are dealing with keeping a balance of fiber and pectin to make sure that the food is the right consistency. 

If any of you would like to start canning, buy this book: or ask me and I'll be happy to help, as it is an easy way to preserve and not waste food.