A blister beetle in hand

[HOST INTRO] What do you do when your garden is invaded by bugs?  If you’re an organic gardener, a plague of pests can test your convictions.  Do you patiently pick the bugs off, accept serious losses or pull out the big chemical guns?

In this installment of the Market & Garden Report correspondent Guy Hand visits an organic gardening class struggling to balance idealism with practicality when pests threaten to destroy their crops.

(Hand) So what are these? (Clay) They’re black blister beetles.

(Hand) Clay Erskine is showing me the pests that have invaded his organic gardening class garden.

(Clay) And it looks like just in a five by five square food area there’s about maybe a thousand bugs.

Blister beetles on potato plants

(Hand) These shiny black beetles have descended on the classes previously idyllic organic garden in horror movie numbers.  But rather than bring out chemical sprays, albeit organic ones, Erskine sees the infestation as a way to put fundamental organic gardening principals to the test.

Kids with a tray of freshly-picked blister beetles in vegetable oil (not as appetizing as it may sound).

(Clay) That’s the philosophical idea of organics is that you just don’t knee-jerk spray no matter what.  Organics is more of trying the least invasive process of just monitoring, hand picking and make sure you’re following all the processes before you step it up the next notch rather going straight to the great big gun.

(Hand) The great big gun would be organic pesticides, which can kill beneficial insects as well as pests.  Instead, the class is trying the least invasive method: picking the bugs off plants by hand.  After a long week of handpicking, I ask the class if they’re still committed.

(Hand) Why don’t you just spray rather than spend all this time picking bugs? (Ellie Rodgers) I don’t want to kill the beneficial insects.  Some of it is keeping the natural balance of things and realize you can’t have this perfect, beautiful garden with out pests because a lot of them serve a purpose.  (Hand) Are most of you on board with that, that you’d rather do all those other things before you spray?  (Heather Cooper) I actually would have voted for spraying.  I find that the time issue is just not an option for myself.  And I think it might deter some people that might try organic gardening because if you go and you say you gotta pick all the bugs off and they’re lucky to get the seeds in the ground and consistently watered, but that’s just my own tolerance level.  (Hand) If it got down to losing your tomato plants or spraying, would you feel good about spraying then?  (Class) I’d spray, I think so, I would spray, I wouldn’t lose tomatoes . . .

Gardening class member picking beetles off tomato plants one by one. It's tedious, but less invasive than spraying pesticides, even organic pesticides, on the garden.

(Hand) So far, the class hasn’t resorted to sprays.  As one more alternative, Clay Erskine offers a little gardening philosophy.

(Clay)  When you look at the garden you can’t focus on the worst.  Because there’s always going to be something bad and something going wrong and some bug that’s driving you crazy.  So when you come out, look at all the beautiful things . . .

(Hand) For Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Deborah Jantzi of Treasured Sunrise Acres with raw cow milk

Idaho, however, recently changed it’s laws to allow the selling of raw milk.  In this installment of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand  goes to the farmers’ market to talk to Idaho’s first licensed raw milk dairywoman

(Woman at Market) So can you tell me about this? (Jantzi) It’s raw milk.  I have raw cow and goat milk.

(Hand) You know we’ve been living in a processed, pasteurized world a long time when people ask “what’s raw milk.”  In the few weeks that Deborah Jantzi has been selling raw goat and cows milk at the Capital City Public Market, she’s been asked that question many times.

(Jantzi) Raw milk comes straight from the cow or the goat.  We don’t do anything to it except filter it and flash cool it and bottle it.  We don’t do anything else, no processing to it.

(Hand) We humans drank raw milk for millenia.  Only after Louis Pasteur discovered that pasteurization killed pathogens, did raw milk fall out of favor.  But Jantzi says there’s a downside to pasteurization.

(Jantzi) When you pasteurize something you heat it up and it kills all the bacteria in it, good and bad, there’s bacteria on everything and if the milk comes from a healthy animal and handled clean you have no bad bacteria in it.  So you’re killing all the good bacteria that’s beneficial to your gut to help digest your food.  It also has a lot of enzymes in it and when you pasteurize it you kill them.

(Hand)  Not everyone in the raw milk debate would agree with Jantzi, but the State of Idaho says raw milk is safe if it’s produced in impeccably clean conditions.

Raw goat milk

(Jantzi)  To be licensed to sell raw milk, I had to have a grade A dairy to start with.  But then I have to go beyond that. I have to test every batch of my milk before I can bottle it.  The dairy inspector comes to my farm on average of once a month, takes that milk back to the state lab and they run all kinds of tests to make sure that it is healthy and that there is nothing in there that’s going to cause any problems for any body.

Cooler full of raw milk

(Hand) Jantzi sells her raw milk at her own dairy, at several farmers’ markets and the Boise Coop.  She’s got other plans as well.

(Jantzi) I am working on a licensed kitchen in my dairy.  I will then be able to do like chocolate milk, raw milk ice cream, we’re working on putting a cheese plant in and then we’ll be doing soft and possibly hard cheeses.  We will also be doing yogurt.

(Hand) But does raw milk taste different?

(Jantzi) Yeah, there’s a difference in taste.  It tastes a lot fuller, a lot creamier, I think a lot better (laughing).

(Hand) If you’re interested in raw milk, Deborah Jantzi will be at the Capital City Public Market every Saturday.  For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Here are several articles on the raw milk issue:

Some Like It Raw
The Truth About Raw Milk Part 1
The Truth About Raw Milk Part 2
Want raw milk? Lease a farm—and hire a lawyer
Is raw milk becoming too popular for its own good?

Photo by Guy Hand

In this episode of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand talks to Clay and Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farms about the fine art of watering.

(Sounds of sprinklers) (Hand) Watering seems so elemental, so simple.  It’s not.

(Clay) It’s kind of mysterious.  You don’t know if you’re doing it right or if you’re doing too much or not enough.  It’s really difficult to know.

(Hand) Farmer and garden class teacher Clay Erskine says you can’t just look at the ground and tell if it’s time to water — especially in our desert climate.

(Clay) I think people over water a lot because the surface will seem dry in the middle of the day and they go out there and everything looks parched and dry and dusty.  In our climate, unless you’re actively watering something, it’s going to look bone dry.  But it doesn’t necessarily need water.

(Hand) So you can’t look at dirt as an indicator.  Josie Erskine says you can’t even look at a drooping plant and always know it’s time to water.

(Josie) Some of your squashes and stuff will look like they need water, they’ll wilt, their big leaves will wilt or the melons will wilt, but they’ll be wet.  Bean plants sometimes can fool you too.  They’ll droop a little bit at their tops and they don’t need water yet.

(Hand) Over watering can be as bad as under watering.  So how do you know when enough is enough?

(Clay) There’s a whole technology of water that you can totally get into if you want to.  I mean you can get tensometers, where it has two different levels of water probes which tells you exactly when you need to irrigate.  But I believe that the best thing to do is just get out there and grab a bit of dirt.

Photo by Guy Hand

(Hand) By that, Clay means dropping to your knees and getting to know the moisture content of your soil.

(Clay)  Like these strawberries right here, they look dry.  But then once you get down in here and you just scratch just a little bit, I mean, not even a sixteenth of an inch, and there’s nice, dark soil there.

(Hand) Before watering, Josie Erskine says to scoop up some soil and if you squeeze it . . .

Photo by Guy Hand

(Josie) . . . and it kind of makes like a what I’d consider pie crust consistency, so like you can either kind of get it to kind of crumble or you can get it to make a ball if you want it to, you’re doing well with your water.

(Hand) So watering is a complex issue with a simple solution.

(Clay) I think the best advice is to just be in your garden and to notice what’s happening and to dig down and be aware of how your soil holds water.

(Hand) Or, as Josie likes to put it . . .

(Josie) The best fertilizer for you garden is your footprint.

(Hand) For Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

(Hand) Or, as Josie likes to put it . . .

(Josie) For Guy Hand, this is your Market Garden Report (Clay) Let’s go jump in the river.

(Mulberry Music) (Hand) It’s not that mulberries aren’t tasty.  They are.  And they’re not rare or hard to grow.  Mulberry trees sprout where ever their seeds fall.  And the resulting 30 to 60 foot high plants are prolific.  What mulberries aren’t are easy to get to market.

(Bart Rayne) The picking is really fragile.  They shatter really easy, they fall off of the tree.

Bart Rayne of Next Generation Organics with boxes of mulberries

(Hand) That’s Bart Rayne.  He and his wife Elayne of Next Generation Organics in Homedale are here at the Capital City Public Market selling delicately picked and packaged mulberries.

(Bart)  You gotta be really careful picking them.  And so they don’t transport, they don’t really travel really well, so we pick ‘em right into these little containers, we can get a lid right on ‘em and then bring ‘em to the market, put them on display and that’s as few steps as we can get in there.

(Hand) Farmers’ markets provide the perfect and often only outlet for short season, fragile and unusual foods — like mulberries.

(Hand) So can you tell me what they look like and what they taste like. (Rayne) We almost equate it to like a Concord grape, they’re just a really mild flavor and not a lot of tartness really like a lot of other berries.  They look a lot like a black berry or like a logan berry, just real mild so they lend to a lot of different preparations it seems like.

Elayne Rayne of Next Generation Organics at the Capital City Public Market in Boise

(Hand) Can I taste one? (Rayne) Yeah, please.  (Hand)  It is really good, it’s very subtle, but tasty.  I can see how it would make great sauces or jams.  (Rayne) Yeah.

(Hand) Mulberries can also be made into wines, syrups or just eaten out of hand.  They make natural food and fabric dies and their leaves are that famous favorite of silkworms.  The Raynes found mulberries just growing on their land.

(Bart) We lived there for probably a couple of years before we even realized we had these trees on the property.  You know, we were back there with some friends and it was just like wow this tree has tons of berries on it.

(Hand)  The Raynes had to do a little research before realizing their mysterious found fruit was mulberry.  Elayne Rayne:

(Elayne)  We just love that the tree was there when we moved in that we didn’t have to plant it, we don’t have to do a whole lot of maintaining.  It’s just kind of a gift that was there.  It’s unusual and people are always really intrigued by it, which is fun.

(Hand) Farmers’ markets give small producers like the Raynes the chance to turn backyard surprises into marketable produce.  But the mulberry season is short.  Tomorrow may be the last Saturday the Raynes have their nursery rhythm berries at Boise’s Capital City Public Market.

(Mulberry music)

(Hand) For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Backyard Chickens

[HOST INTRO] A bird is helping blur the boundary between urban and rural America.  A few years ago, a chicken would have been a reliable sign that you’d crossed into farm country.  No more.  As correspondent Guy Hand reports in this installment of Edible Idaho, chickens are invading many American cities — and helping urbanites connect not only to their food, but to a new kind of community.

(Chicken sounds)  (Blackhurst) Yeah, come on . . . (Gate clicking) Most people come in here and they say “I don’t even know that I’m in the city.”

(Hand) That’s because Jay Blackhurst and his neighbors have turned a hundred foot long, dirt alley into a shared chicken run.  They call it “The Collective Coop” and it’s populated with poultry.

(Blackhurst) In the 50’s I guess when they built this neighborhood, they had never really opened the alley up to cars or anything.  And so when I moved here five ears ago, it was just weeds.

(Hand) Blackhurst decided to clean up this Boise alley, fence it off and put in a few chickens.  He didn’t expect to start a movement.

(Blackhurst) And soon as I put my chickens back here, then Lisa and Keith wanted to put their chickens back here and then Molly said can I put chickens back here and I said lets put ‘em all back here.  So then I had my coop, I got rid of that and we made this one collective coop.  (Hand) So this is a community shared coop?  (Jay) A community shared coop.

(Latimer) It’s amazing how the chickens have transformed the back alleyway so everyone can enjoy it.

(Hand) That’s neighbor and fellow chicken owner Lisa Latimer.

Jay Blackhurst and Lisa Latimer in their neighborhood chicken alley called the "Collective Coop."

(Latimer) We got to know Jay and his family, we know Molly and her family, we know quite a few other neighbors that we’ve met and all the children come back here and play.  There’s hardly an evening that goes by that all of us aren’t out here visiting or enjoying each others company.  So it’s a wonderful thing for our neighborhood.  (Hand) So community sort of brought together by chickens?  (Jay)  Yea, yea, pretty much.

(Hand) So how do people keep their eggs separate?  (Lisa)  Oh, who ever needs eggs get eggs for the day.  (Hand) So there’s no egg accounting or anything? (Jay) No nobody’s. . . (Lisa) We all think it’s wonderful that Jay has a little 2 year old, she has a basket, she gets the eggs and then she distributes them around the neighborhood.  It’s just cute watching the kids out there.

(Latimer) This house on the end just sold, so (laughing) we have to get them involved pretty soon.  (Hand) Do they have documents they have to sign or anything? (Laughing) (Hand) Chicken friendly . . . (Jay) Chicken friendly documents, for sure. . .

(Hand) Now, the community nature of this alleyway chicken scene isn’t typical, but it does illustrate an exploding national interest in raising urban poultry.

Sign on Boise chicken coop

(Ludlow)  It’s actually been about 2 1/2 to 3 years where the trend really started to pick up.

(Hand) California-based Rob Ludlow is owner of Backyard Chickens.com and co-author of the book “Raising Chickens for Dummies.”

(Ludlow) What I’ve seen is that people see that chickens really are a multi-purpose pet.  They’re relatively easy to care for, they eat bugs and weeds in your yard, they generate fantastic fertilizer, they’re fun to watch and interact with.

(Hand) And of course, they lay eggs.  But Ludlow says there’s another, more fundamental reason for the popularity of urban chickens.

(Ludlow)  And I think this is the biggest, especially over the last 2 years.  Many urban, suburbanites really want to join in the movement towards self sufficiency, growing local, being green, etc.  The problem is that most people don’t have the ability or the space to raise cows, pigs, have a huge garden.  Having a handful of egg laying hens in a relatively small yard allows these people to participate in these movements without having to change their zip code or move to another city.

(Hand) A large number of urban areas have written ordinances that allow for chickens.

A white crested black polish backyard chicken

(Ludlow) Berkley, Seattle, Portland, those are some cities that are chicken friendly . . . San Jose, San Francisco, chicken friendly.  On the east coast New York is chicken friendly . . .

(Hand) There are cities that worry about the possible noise, odor and sheer Beverly Hillbilly-esque nature of urban chickens.  Salem, Oregon currently prohibits chickens.  Spokane restricts the building of coops.  But Boise allows three hens per small urban lot and, on larger lots, more.

(Medlin) Chickens!  Come on, come on (laughing)

(Hand) Polls say the number one reason Americans keep chickens is for eggs — meat is a distant third.

(Medlin) . . . That’s Cheeky and that’s Parrot . . .

New backyard chicken enthusiast Shellan Rodriguez and friend

(Hand) . . . but a close second — and this might come as a surprise to some — is companionship.  The birds themselves, and their interesting, sometimes complex behavior is what first attracted Boise’s Susan Medlin to a friend’s chickens.

(Medlin) The more I observed them, the more fascinating I found them to be.  And they were clearly not the bird brains that they’re made out to be.  That’s quite a misnomer actually.

(Hand) Medlin became a backyard chicken expert, raising her own brood and eventually teaching classes on the subject.

(Medlin) The long and short of it is that chickens were really my doorway to avian life.  And I’m amazed and I can understand now why people are such dedicated birders and they’re just incredible.  And so chickens, I have chickens to thank for that and they are a credible members of the whole bird family.

(Hand) Urban chicken owners in a recent survey said they felt that chickens were easier to raise than dogs and nearly as easy as cats.

Reuben Kosche in front of the family coop

(Medlin) I think if the chickens had their way, the chickens would be house chickens, they would be lap chickens, they would be under the covers chickens.

(Hand) This rather cozy relationship with a farm animal is a far cry from the factory-like realities of large poultry plants.  The backyard chicken movement is, at least in part, a reaction to the harsh, some say inhumane treatment of poultry — as revealed in recent books and this scene from the documentary Food Inc.

(Woman) It is nasty in here.  There’s dust flying everywhere.  There’s feces everywhere.  This isn’t farming.  This is just mass production like an assembly line in a factory.

(Hlebechuk) I think if you educate yourself to the whole industrial farming at all by either reading a book or watching a documentary, you kind of get scared.

(Hand) That’s Deanna Hlebechuk.  She and her family raise chickens in downtown Boise’s North End.

(Hlebechuk) It’s really a horrible way for these animals to be treated and I think by having our own chickens and a son, it helps him be educated as to making better choices during his life.

Fresh backyard eggs, the #1 reason people keep chickens

(Hand) Hlebechuk’s husband, Robert Kosche knows just how far an urban chicken farmer will go to save a bird — bird a commercial poultry plant would throw in the bin.

(Kosche) We were brooding a little hatchling that had what’s called splayed leg syndrome where the legs are kind of rubbery and kind of splay out to the sides.  If that’s not fixed the bird will die within a week or two because he can’t get to food or water.  So what we did, was we took duct tape in kind of a McGyver fashion we built a little leg brace for this chicken.  And every day we would do a physical therapy with this little bird, we would pat him on the bottom to make him run, he would run a few feet and then tumble and then he’d run a few feet and he’d tumble.  And after two weeks we took the braces off and the bird could walk on his own.  The bird grew up to be one of the strongest we’ve ever seen.

(Hand) Physical therapy for chickens is not likely to be adopted by commercial agriculture.  Yet this small act illustrates the ethical gap that’s grown between industrial food producers and many consumers.  Raising backyard chickens may not change the poultry industry, but it will bring urbanites closer to their food — and make for better omelets.

(Hand) For Edible Idaho and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Here’s a story on cool backyard chicken coops.

And an unsettling new revelation: Arsenic in chicken feed

Peaceful Belly gardening class at Hidden Springs

[HOST INTRO] For the last two months, the Market & Garden Report has aired tips on vegetable gardening — with the help of Clay and Josie Erskine of Peacefully Belly Farms.  That’s the “how” of gardening.  Today correspondent Guy Hand is going to look at the “why” of gardening — why so many people are suddenly interested in growing their own food.

(Gardening Sounds) (Guy Hand) A recent survey says over a third of U.S. households grew vegetable gardens in 2009.  That’s nearly a 20% increase over the year before — or 7 million new families growing food.  But why?  I recently wandered through a season-long gardening class taught by Clay and Josie Erskine — asking students: “Why do you garden?”

(Adriana Veloza) I was telling my sister I want to get back to our roots.  She said what do you mean your roots?  I’m like human roots when we actually grew our own food and nothing came prepackaged and we were aware of where our food was coming from.

(Michael Rupp) To be able to turn our yard into something that’s fruitful rather than just a plot of grass that looks nice, to actually have it work for us and feed us.

(Dana Doherty Menlove) For me I feel like one of my jobs as a mother is to teach my children how to sustain themselves.  I just wanna have skills to teach them how to grow food and know where the food comes from.

(Deanna Hlebechuk)  I like getting dirty.  It’s fun, it’s lovely.  And you know, you walk away with the fruits of your labor you enjoy all week long.

(Hand) So what are you doing right now? (Mike Wallace) Right now I’m just pulling weeds out of the raspberries.  They’re getting a little big.  (Hand) And do you think it’s worth it with all the manual labor that’s involved? (Mike Wallace) Oh it’s peaceful.  Once you get into a rhythm and just start weeding you can pretty much think about everything else except the weeding.

(Heather Cooper) To me that’s a great thing you can do for family and friends is feed them and to feed them fresh food is even more satisfying.

(Don Pollari) The more work you put into it the commitment grows and the connection to the land grows and the connection to the result grows and by the end the rewards far outweigh what you put into it to me anyways.

(Sara Cohn) It’s a nice opportunity to get outside when you’re in an urban area and connect to blackbirds and the wind.

(Dana Doherty Menlove) Everyone seems to bring so much good energy here, that you leave full.

(Karen Hammond)  And I get to garden with other people which has been kind of fun.  Something Josie said was once you garden in a group it’s kind of hard to go back to gardening alone. And I love that and I keep thinking about that.

(Robert Kosche) But it also allows us the opportunity to come out here by ourselves and just enjoy the garden. So you can be out here with a great group of folks or you can be out here when no one else is out here and it’s all yours.  It’s spectacular.

(Hand) A few answers to the question: Why do you garden?  For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Sheriff Bob Wroten patrols thousands of acres of backcountry ranch land in Eastern Oregon looking for suspicious signs that may be clues in the disappearance of cattle. Wroten and others suspect they are being stolen as each can fetch up to 1500 dollars.

JORDAN VALLEY, Ore. – The term “cattle rustling” might conjure scenes from an old spaghetti western. But in the vast desert range of Oregon, Idaho and Nevada, cattle rustling is a modern-day problem. In the past three years nearly 27-hundred cattle have gone missing in Oregon. Wanted posters are being tacked up in small-town shops. The nation’s poor economy isn’t helping. Correspondent Anna King explored some of that remote desert country in southeast Oregon. She has our story.

The rangeland outside of Jordan Valley, Oregon is vast. Out here beef cattle range for months at a time over thousands of miles.

[Sound: Wind on bluff, cattle…. Hardware store]

Jayne Collins runs a hardware store in the tiny town of Jordan Valley. Collins and her husband also run a medium-sized cattle operation with about 700 head. The couple lost 100 pregnant cows, and their peace of mind, a few winters ago.

Jayne Collins: “When this thing happened and we were sure that these cattle were stolen I haven’t had a full night sleep since then.”

Collins says the stolen cattle and the down economy has set them back significantly. She and her husband are unable to buy new farm equipment, take a vacation or retire anytime soon.

Jayne Collins: “It’s just always there like a cloud. Hanging over you, you know. It’s gone.”

Trying to find these cattle is Malheur County sheriff’s deputy Bob Wroten. He and one other law enforcement officer are responsible for regularly patrolling 6-thousand square miles of range.

Bob Wroten: “It’s just hard to fathom how they get away. They just disappear.”

Wroten says cattle theft is a big deal. A cow equals money on 4-legs. One pregnant mother cow can pay out 15-hundred dollars. The calf she bears is worth another 5-hundred.

Wroten says theft seems to increase when cattle prices rise. Everyone in this area seems to have a theory about the rustlers: Some think they are loading cattle on trucks under the cover of bad storms. Or perhaps organized crime is involved. Worse yet, many ranchers believe that it’s their neighbors stealing their cattle. They say the country out here is too vast and too remote for outsiders to navigate. And outsiders would be recognized as being somewhere they didn’t belong.

[Sound: Bel-A Ranch ambi quiet; horse whinny and horse chewing on bit ]

Others don’t think it’s theft at all.

Casey Shelman: “The country is too big.”

Take Casey Shelman who runs the Bel-A Ranch outside of Burns, Oregon. The Bel-A looks like a movie location: wooden corrals and a sprawling ranch house. Shelman says sometimes lost cattle might just be dead cattle from bad management.

Casey Shelman: “Maybe I’m just too sheltered and too naïve. But I think there is more cattle management than it is neighbors being down and out and being able to steal from their neighbors.”

Shelman says sometimes cattle ranchers put old cows onto new range that the animals are unfamiliar with. The cattle can’t find water or good places to hide from the bad weather.

But in this day and age, with radio collars and microchips isn’t there a good way to find the truth or track these cattle better?

[Sound: Calves ] At a different ranch, the cowboys say sometimes the best security method is something that’s really old – branding.

[Sound: Fire]

These cowboys say tattoos can be changed, microchips can be cut out and ear tags can be ripped out.

[Sound: Bawling calf getting branded]

The owner of this ranch and the cattle is Martin Thompson. He sports sun-leathered skin and blood-stained hands from castrating calves. Thompson says cattle ranching is already stressful nowadays.

Martin Thompson: “The work part isn’t any harder. It’s just margins are slimmer. You know just tougher. Less room for mistakes. There are more requirements to sell your cattle, they want different shots. It’s all together different than it used to be.”

Some ranches have hired full time guards that live and camp with the cattle. Others fly planes or helicopters to check on them. Several states, counties and federal agencies have banded together to collaborate their chase.

Malheur County Deputy Sherriff Bob Wroten says lately things have been pretty quiet with the extra attention.

Bob Wroten: “It’s just going to quit until we let up. You know. The cattle rustling is what I’m saying. We’ve been to court with three different cases. And know they all know that we are flying every other day or as often as we can. I think it’s going to quit until they feel safe in doing it again.”

Wroten says these crimes are as old as the West. And some places — like the remote parts of Oregon – are still wild.

Copyright 2010 Northwest Public Radio

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Jo Anne Smith's sign at Boise's Capital City Public Market

[HOST INTRO] California produces 90% of America’s strawberries.  To grow that much fruit, the California strawberry industry uses highly toxic fumigants and fruit varieties that travel well, but lack taste.

On today’s Market & Garden Report, Guy Hand learns that local strawberry growers are taking a tastier, less toxic path . . . a path that also leads to an Idaho strawberry cocktail.

(Hand) In 1949, Idaho grew nearly 500 acres of strawberries.  But, like most states it couldn’t compete against the gigantic California strawberry industry.  Now Idaho grows less than 30 commercial acres.  But Jo Anne Smith is one of a few farmers trying to reverse that trend.  She’s at the Capital City Public Market selling bright red local strawberries.

Jo Anne Smith of Smith Berry Farm in Payette, Idaho

(Smith) Well, when we moved to Idaho, it was very apparent to me that there were no strawberry stands so I thought one of these days I’m going to grow strawberries and sell ‘em.

(Hand) Smith now grows those strawberries near Payette.  She controls bugs with beneficial insects rather than pesticides and cultivates a fragile but flavorful strawberry called Seascape.

(Smith) This variety that I grow is an old, old variety developed for appearance and flavor, it does not do well commercially because it doesn’t ship very well, but you sacrifice flavor for that ability to have that tough outer skin, (laughing) kind of like the way the tomato has gone.

(Hand)  How’s the season going so far?  This has been a strange Spring.   (Smith) We’re late this season by about 2 weeks but because of the cool temperatures, strawberries really like that, and they hang on the plant longer and they’re really sweet.

Fresh Idaho strawberries

(Music, bar sounds)  That’s good news for Red Feather bartender Mark Allen.  The Red Feather Lounge is just steps away from Boise’s farmers’ market and Allen is one of a new breed of mixologists looking to farmers’ markets for ingredients, like fresh, flavorful strawberries.

(Allen) Today I was going to do a cocktail called the Floradora.  Kind of a more simple drink, hopefully people can make this at home.

(Hand) Allen starts by adding to his shaker a half ounce of simple syrup, which is nothing more than 2 parts sugar dissolved in 1 part water.

(Allen)  And then grab a small handful of the fresh strawberries.  And then I’m going to muddle these fresh strawberries into the sugar.

(Hand) With a muddling stick, he mashes the strawberries into the simple syrup. (muddling sounds)

(Allen) And then I’m going to add fresh lime juice.  I’ve got a hand squeezer here and take about a half of a lime . . . (dripping sounds).  Then the fun stuff, the gin goes in.  We’ll do 2 full ounces of this gin.  I’ll shake that up (shaking sounds).

(Hand) Allen then strains the strawberry-hued mixture into a tall, thin, ice-filled glass.

(Allen) And then I like to add a little texture to the drink, getting carbonation, so I’m going to do ginger ale. And you have the Floradora.  (Hand) Wow, looks good.

(Hand) Strawberries are now available from several local growers at area farmers’ markets.   For Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

The Floradora Strawberry Cocktail from the Red Feather Lounge in Boise

Floradora Strawberry Cocktail Recipe courtesy of Mark Allen at the Red Feather Lounge:

Makes one cocktail

• 1/2 oz. simple syrup (2 parts sugar dissolved in 1 part water)
• 4 or 5 local strawberries (1 reserved for garnish)
• juice from 1/2 lime
• 2 oz. gin (Allen likes Beefeater Gin for this)
• a splash of ginger ale
• ice

Method:

• In a cocktail shaker, add the simple syrup and strawberries and muddle or mash together with a muddling stick
• Add the lime juice and the gin
• Add ice to the shaker and shake vigorously
• Strain the mixture into a tall, thin cocktail glass filled with ice
• Top with a splash of ginger ale to taste
• Garnish with reserved strawberry

And here’s an article on the controversy surrounding pesticide use with strawberries:

Controversial Strawberry Pesticide Worries Scientists

Meet J.J. Williams. His family owns a winery on a dusty Eastern Washington hill called Red Mountain. At 23 years old, he’s third gen working full-time in the business. And he’s in charge of dealing with the bloggers. J.J. says wine bloggers can’t be ignored. They are continuing to grow in numbers and popularity. That’s forcing wineries to get savvy and give them information, tours and samples. It’s J.J.’s job to sort out which blogs are legit. He says it’s very different than sending wine to an established wine critic.

J.J. Williams: “It’s difficult because you don’t know who you are sending wine to. You don’t know what their palate is. You don’t know what the conditions are they are reviewing the wine under. If they are going to pair it with food — or not pair it with food — or pair it incorrectly with food. Really the nature of blogging is that anyone can have a voice and everyone has an opinion.”

J.J. says all that can get expensive. It’s also hard to track sales stimulated by blogs. But he says word of mouth already sells a lot of wine — and blogging is just another way that happens. J.J. even has a video blog himself called “The One-Eyed Wine Guy.”

On the Web:

Wine Bloggers Conference

One-Eyed Wine Guy

Copyright 2010 Northwest News Network

Listen

Freshly picked summer greens

Cutting tender young greens (they'll grow back).

(Josie) So, right now we’re cutting salad greens, really beautiful salad greens.

(Hand) Josie and Clay Erskine are on their hands and knees with scissors.  They’re cutting brightly colored lettuce leaves planted in a long row.

(Josie) . . . This is a green oakleaf and that is red romaine . . .

(Hand) Harvesting tender, young salad greens is something they’ll do all summer — thanks to what’s called successional planting.

(Hand) So what is successional planting. (Clay) Successional planting means that you’re planting every couple of weeks so that as you’re greens are kind of falling off and not being very tasty any more, or going to flower, you have another bed that’s ready to go.

Rows of recently planted lettuces.

(Hand) You plant every two weeks? (Clay) Yea, we reseed our beds every two weeks so that we have a continual harvest through the season.

(Hand) I’d thought that southern Idaho’s summers were too hot for greens.  They will quickly flower and go to seed.  But Clay and Josie say by continually planting and harvesting young plants, you’ll have fresh, homegrown salad all the way through August.

(Clay) If you have a continuous planting, and you’re just harvesting it as a baby green, after that baby green wants to go to flower or bolts, then you have a brand new bed that’s ready to harvest already.

(Hand) Josie says you just need to keep a couple of gardening tips in mind.

(Josie)  If you’re putting the seed directly into the ground, not a little plant, but the seed in the ground, and you’re using an overhead water system, you can grow lettuce all the way through the heat of the summer.

(Hand) Transplants shock to easily in hot weather, so plant seed.  And sprinkle you greens with overhead water to keep their leaves moist.

Clay Erskine with a freshly picked salad.

(Clay)  So you constantly, every two weeks just make a little furrow in your garden bed, just sprinkle it like you would salt on a dish of food in that little furrow, cover it up and pat it down just with a little bit of soil and you’ll have greens all summer long.

(Hand) Don’t expect lettuces to form heads.  The Erskines say just cut the greens young, letting them grow back, then cutting them again until they bolt or get bitter. Then move on to your next, freshly planted bed.

(Clay) So instead of getting into the mindset where you plant once in the season, instead of just planting them once, harvesting them once, you can get into the habit of planting them every two weeks and then that way you’ll have a continuous harvest through the whole summer.

(Hand) Clay says salad seed mixes work great.  But the same successional routine also works for beets, carrots, chard, turnips and other fast growing vegetable.  Clay says five foot rows planted every two weeks will keep a family of four in salad all summer long.

(Hand) For The Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.