The last hour

Well, we're just about there. With one hour left on our Kickstarter urban greenhouse project, we have been fortunate to have so many wonderful friends, family and even strangers who have donated to help our urban farm take off this year. With all of your help, we've surpassed 250% of our original goal.

Thank you, thank you, and...thank you! Look here or on our Kickstarter project page for construction updates and information on our art-glass rewards for our wonderful donors.

Whistle while we work...

 Melissa and I broke ground on our new greenhouse today at the 92nd Street Farm Patch. Yesterday we purchased all the lumber and hardware needed for the 6x10x5.5-8 structure. We also acquired the used brick pavers for the floor, and a vinyl gutter that will feed our rain barrel. It's all coming together rather rapidly, and yet there is still so much more to do.

For one, we have just over 24 hours left to fund our urban farm and greenhouse project. Follow that link if you want to help get our urban farm off the ground. A hearty thank you to those of you who have already backed us. As you can see, your support is already going to great use.

Now that the foundation has been dug out, we will need to clean, sand and prime our windows. The brick pavers will need to be laid out and leveled. Then we can set our concrete piers and place our posts. After that comes the fun and exciting time of measuring, placing windows and cutting. Once this is done our walls will be constructed and then secured onto our posts. The plexiglass roof will come last. When all is up, we can install our art glass windows and paint on our pretty colors!  

Only when all this is completed can we actually start our seeds...hopefully by mid February. Throughout this upcoming month we will also be working on the art glass rewards the backers of our kickstarter project are looking forward to. Needless to say, we're quite busy. 

 - Ben

Welcome to our outdoor pantry...

Our "new" greenhouse door

Doors are important things. They are portals into places we find sanctuary in, such as a home or a bedroom. Some people have pantries where a door is a sentinel for a cache of food. Our "new" door was such a guard, standing watch over an unknown pantry somewhere in Seattle.

Found at the restore, this sand blasted, glass and wood door will again serve as a sentinel. Only now it will be a living pantry, a greenhouse. Inside we'll have baby greens, beans, squash and tomatoes to name a few. Feast your eyes on the first component of our greenhouse.

The door (right) was purchased thanks to the supporters of our Kickstarter greenhouse project. There are only 5 days left to help fund our greenhouse and brand new urban farm. If you've already helped out, share with friends. This Sunday we will be acquiring the remaining materials needed to begin construction. Our first plants need to be planted by mid February, so look for updates to come very soon.

 - Ben

Green Dragon Soup!

Mexican Strain tomatillos at the peak of the summer!

Happy Year of the Dragon to you all!  Flying Bear Farm is starting to get really busy with an incredible Kickstarter project on deck, seeds coming in the mail and plans constantly being drawn.  Even though we’re busy, Ben and I are trying to make time to eat really well and be with friends when we can!  So this weekend we made a unique soup to share with our food luvin’ friends…and with mostly ingredients that we grew, harvested and put up last summer! 

As a nice break from the heavier and sweeter root veggies and squashes of winter, we created a tart soup with Mexican flavors.  The main ingredients, tomatillos and green tomatoes, were frozen by my mama at the peak of the season when we couldn’t even think of eating any more of them.  Pulling those out of the freezer in the middle of January rocked my world! The recipe was a joint effort between Ben, my mama and myself, based a little on a tomatillo and pork stew my mama makes for me (well, for the family, but I like to think it’s for me).  The honey in this recipe is a foil for the bitterness of the green tomatoes, and adds a little funky, earthy sweetness to the bright, tart taste of the soup.  So, maybe you’ll be inspired to try this soup, too!  If you do, let us know it goes!  And play with the recipe!  I love playing with my food…Here’s the recipe:

Summer in January!

Green Dragon Soup

8 cloves garlic, minced

1 large onion (approx. 1 pound), chopped smallish

1 gallon bag frozen tomatillos, chopped bite size

2 quart bags frozen green tomatoes, chopped bite size

1 cup dry Dragon’s Tongue beans, boiled to just tender

(*We decided more beans would be better, so if you have 2 cups, throw that all in! Also, you can of course substitute any kind of dry bean)

Cumin seed, to taste

Chipotle chile powder, to taste

Celtic sea salt, to taste

1 tablespoon raw honey (or more to taste)

• Saute in a separate pan the onions, garlic, chile powder and cumin until onions are soft

• Put tomatoes, tomatillos and onion mixture in big soup pot and turn on high

• Boil for 5ish minutes

• Add beans and turn down to simmer

• Once at a simmer, add honey and salt to taste

• Simmer for 10ish minutes, stirring to mash up larger pieces of tomatoes and tomatillos

• Turn off heat and cool to an edible temperature

• Garnish with chopped cilantro, sour cream and/or lime

Enjoy your new year!

Peace,

~Melissa

Holy cow!

We're both amazed and humbled by all of the support from our friends, family and even strangers! I for one am shocked that we blew past our minimum goal in less than 24 hours. But perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised...

Everything we raise past our minimum is greatly appreciated and even needed. The $650 was the bare minimum of materials necessary to build a functional greenhouse. It did not cover our labor or furnishings for the greenhouse such as trays, pots, compost, soil, seed warmers, grow lights and shelving. We are also purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of seeds, and plants like our kiwi vines for the 2012 season. The past-goal amounts will help to defray some of those costs.

Your continued support will not be wasted or go without our thanks. There are still art glass rewards left for those of you who want some of our custom art. If you want to send the elves back to the workshop, you can always help us out a little more.

Thank you, thank you! I can't wait to post updates of the greenhouse as we start building (after the snow melts of course).

 - Ben

Help us build a greenhouse!

Melissa and I have officially launched our greenhouse project on kickstarter! We have less than 14 days to raise our minimum amount of $650. We have to reach our minimum to get funding, but WE CAN go over. That means every little bit REALLY HELPS. It also means that if you are able to be generous, that is also amazing. Your donation will buy construction materials (lumber, art glass, re-store windows etc). The goal covers the minimum material costs. If we go over, those funds will buy plant seeds, compost and other farm essentials. Learn more on our project page:

SUPPORT OUR GREENHOUSE PROJECT HERE

Kickstarter is a way to fund small, unique projects like ours that also makes the donor a part of the action. When you view our project, you will notice that contributors get rewards. Those of you most like us (poor) get your names memorialized in the art glass panels that make up part of the greenhouse. We'll also give bite sized donors the final specs of our greenhouse so you can build your own if you wish. Middle weights get glass art refrigerator magnets, and heavy weights get glass garden art. All the glass art will be hand made by Melissa and me in the Brown family art studio in Greenwood. 

Thank you , thank you, thank you for your continued friendship, love and support. Follow this blog for continued updates!

Seed Love

I do love seeds…Love affairs with the seed catalogs of winter are commonly mentioned amongst gardeners and farmers and I am no exception!  Just ask Ben, I’ve been going to sleep looking at Abundant Life and Territorial catalogs for weeks and working doggedly to prepare smart and creative seed orders.  I love this process because it’s all about imagination, dreaming up possibilities, being hopeful and brave and trusting that spring and summer will really come back.  This choosing process also gives us an opportunity to establish how we want our urban farm business to grow in the warmer months by deciding what our identity is, what we want to provide to our community and what we want to eat ourselves!

Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries

My favorite seed order as of this moment is the package of Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherries from Uprising Seeds in Acme, Washington.  It’s an heirloom in the Solanacea family (a cousin to the tomatillo) that has been grown in the U.S. since at least 1837 and probably before that, brought here by Polish immigrants (weird, I know!).  The taste of these little gems is mystifying: slightly tropical, unctuous, savory and sweet and tart all in one.

I’m getting most of my historical information about this delicious plant from Bill Thorness’ great book Edible Heirlooms, which details the histories of many heirloom food plants that grow well in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s a great resource for the kind of urban farming I love, a toolbox for building connections to the food plants that we used to know so well, that have travelled all over the world with us and have grown in our grandparents gardens.

Knowing the stories behind the plants we are growing is something that Flying Bear Farm has at its core.  Therefore, new-found plants like the Bitterroot Buttercup Squash cultivated in Ben’s homeland of Western Montana and the Hot Portugal Pepper with a long historical journey from Brazil to Angola to Portugal (one of my ethnic homelands!) are cherished possibilities in our garden plans!  Old favorites like the CupaniSweet Pea (the original strain of sweet pea) and Wild Arugula (from seeds saved over multiple years in our family gardens) round out our planting plans.

So as the snow falls outside and I am cozied up with coffee and blankets inside, I am imagining the riotous colors and textures of the summer garden and waiting like a kid on Christmas for the boxes of seeds to arrive at our door!  And then, come mid-February, we’ll have to work hard to plant them all out, in the new greenhouse and the raised beds…totally can’t wait!

With seed love,

-Melissa

Why snow is good for gardens

Seattle's MLK Week Forecast

Snowmageddon 2012 is imminent here in Seattle and everyone is going a little bonkers. It is a bit comical for a Rocky Mountain native. That said, the geography and humidity of Seattle does make for the slickest streets I have ever encountered. So, there are some decent reasons for the sliding cars beyond inexperience. With all the doom and gloom, some people do forget that a little bit of cold and ice now will make things easier in our gardens later.

Pests don't like the cold. The little buggers that like to eat our greens and tomatoes, slugs and flies etc, loose population during longer cold snaps and snows. So come summer, we have fewer of these guys to contend with. I am still learning about the many pests I never encountered in Montana. Many are not found there for the simple fact of colder winters.

Personally, I enjoy the snow. Especially walking in it as it brushes my face in the cold breeze. It reminds me of skiing or sledding back home. For those of you without those pleasant snow memories, you can take comfort in the fact that the snow causes slug carnage. Fewer slugs chewing on your greens is good, right?

 - Ben

Greenhouse project progressing...

The rough design specs and notes

Some of you are aware of our imminent greenhouse project I referred to in the 2012 post. As I type Melissa is working on the www.kickstarter.com video slideshow that will showcase the project to potential funders everywhere. Earlier today I priced out our materials for the funding campaign and we scheduled our construction dates for later this month. I'm excited!

The 10'x6' greenhouse will be made of reused windows, art glass and lumber. It will rest on a simple foundation of concrete blocks and will feature a reused brick floor. The design is modular, like a theatre set, so that the walls and roof can be moved as separate pieces later without too much trouble. 

A greenhouse makes it possible to increase and regulate the temperature to allow for better germination even when our Seattle spring decides to revert to winter.  Plants like tomatoes, corn, eggplants and peppers need a head start in this Maritime climate. 

We decided on the reclaimed glass windows for a couple of reasons: One, we have access to old windows, both through friends and family and through the awesome resource that is the Re-Store. Two, the handmade, upcycled aesthetic is one that we really enjoy, and beauty is always important. And three, glass helps to increase interior temperatures a little more than plastic.   

Pictures, final design specs and kickstarter campaign info soon. Greenhouse here we come!

 - Ben

2012 A Farm Odyssey

Water color on scratch board.
By Benjamin Courteau - 2011

The holiday season is a welcome break that we are always ready for a welcome break from. Now that it is over and the thousands of miles have been tread and trodden, planning for 2012 has begun in earnest. Melissa and I have no shortage of tasks to tackle. Starting a unique business while staying afloat is challenging, but I also feel that it can be very rewarding. Having recently finished our new website, I am excited to attack the next project.

One that I am very excited about, and that we will have more updates on, is our custom built greenhouse project. I have just finished the draft plans for the 10'x6' structure to be located in the 92nd Street Farm-patch. The greenhouse will feature reused windows and lumber, as well as custom stained glass windows. Major funding for the project will be through the amazing website Kickstarter.com. Keep a lookout for our updates on how you can help us build the future home for our baby veggies!

We're also in the process of seed shopping. This involves hours of pouring over sexy photos of glorious veggies and greens in a seed catalog. While I am excited about the exotic varieties of beans we're going to stick in the ground, the addition of kiwi vines to our farm is what I am looking forward to most. Ever had kiwi jam? I made a couple jars last week that is still knocking my socks off!

Perhaps the most challenging goal of 2012 is to find a suitable home in North Seattle where Melissa and I can "homestead" a bit. My lease is up in October, which seems far away, but it is never too early to try and find what we are looking for. So if anyone knows of a small rental house with a larger unshaded yard, feel free to give a heads up.

So it is time to point that nose in the direction of that grindstone and create something amazing. Keep up with  our creation here, on the website and on Facebook. It should be very interesting.

 - Ben