Avalon Cider Press Available Now!

It's not every day you introduce a new product to the world.

There are grinders and boxes, press wheels and plates, and about 75 different fasteners.

Information plates, grease, wheels, and handles.


It all has to be put together, too.

The Meadow Creature Avalon Cider press is now available. Get yours in time for 2014 cider season.

Cider Press Debut!

We have a grinder, press, press bags, shiny information plates, grinder-motors, a lot of electric parts, and insurance. Here Bob shows the grinder mechanism to Dr. Norton.

The press is amazingly easy to use – at the VIGA meeting I was turning the wheel using only one finger. The mash emerges from the press almost dry to the touch. 

Bob is refining the grinder-hopper interface so the fruit will move smoothly through to the grinder with no extra prodding, and placing the handles for easy transport. Photography and a manual are next; we'll send out email and postcards when we are ready to take orders. 

We look forward to many cider parties in 2014. 

The Seed Underground

Most inspiring book I've read this summer: The Seed Underground, by Janisse Ray.

Ray is a great writer, a poet, and utterly passionate and inspiring on seed saving and seed culture. The book combines reporting, memoir, thoughtful essay, and call-to-arms. (It's inspired me to sign up for the conference Justice Begins With Seeds, sponsored by the Biosafety Alliance, in Seattle August 2-3. ) If you care about gardens, seeds, or humanity's future on this threatened & blessed planet, buy this book from your local bookseller or from the publisher and read it. Plant some seeds.

"I say, Rev up your awesome. Look around, so many people have put their shoulders into the load. You. Find a place to push. Pick up a tool -- a hoe or a shovel. Start turning the compost bin, to make the soil in which the seed will grow. You will begin at the cente,r the center of many concentric circles that expand further and further out from you. You soon will become a local hero and a local rock star, and from there your influence will wash outward, even across the globe, where so many people are rising up like germinating embryos to claim food sovereignty, to rescue local seeds, and to guard human civilizations cornucopia. Come home. Have the courage to live the life you dream: There is nothing greater than this.

Many of our seeds have been lost forever. But we can protect what's left and in our revolutionary gardens we can develop the heirlooms of the future.

Begin now."

Janisse Ray
The Seed Underground, 194

Cider Press Prototype

The Cider Press prototype is done -- we took it up to Mother Earth Fair this weekend. Many, many hours of work went into making this all-steel version, with electric grinder. There are still some refinements ahead but we are very close to a share-able, sell-able version.

The grinder represents a breakthrough in design; modeled after industrial versions but scaled way down --

Bob and Paul worked on it all last week. We are excited & exhausted!

Production Team

We have a whole awesome production team now: Bob, Paul, Jared, Ryan, and Rhody.

They make the broadforks and soon the cider press. & then a chicken plucker? grain mill? anti-gravity engine? watch this space.

Portland for Easter Weekend

We visited Portland last week to deliver broadforks to Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply and take a break, and got a preview of summer with warm, sunny weather all weekend. Naomi's bustles with activity, plants, and baby chicks.

We were thrilled to meet Binga (pictured) and Oona the goats, who help out in the store and go home with Naomi at night.

We brought more forks for the energetic gardeners of Portland. 

We bought Eric Toensmeier’s new book Paradise Lot, a delightful introduction to permaculture  through the down-to-earth story of building a diverse garden ecosystem in the backyard of his shared house in Holyoke, Mass. (It got a great review in the NY Times, with a cute slideshow of Eric and his gardening partner, their families, and the amazing garden they built.)

I totally dug staying at the Kennedy School. Especially the art.

 

Portage Bay Grange

We were happy and excited to get a call from Kevin at Portage Bay Grange offering to be our retail partner in Seattle. Now you can buy a Meadow Creature broadfork in the U District, just north of the University Bridge. It also gave me a great excuse to visit Portage Bay Grange.

PBG specializes in feed and supplies for urban farm animals, and they have a beautiful array of books and tools aimed at urban farmers, along with some nice soaps, home items, and treats. This would be a fun place to visit just to check out the possibilities or buy a gift for someone who is doing urban gardening. 

The rabbit was feeling shy that day, but the chicks were chipper. From the signage in the chick room, it looks like they get a lot of visitors in to meet the baby chicks. A good winter-day outing for anyone and especially for kids.

Olympia Artesian Well

When I first moved to Olympia in 1981, there were several artesian wells in town, and learning about them helped me tune into the local environment. 

The Olympia brewery in Tumwater was running an advertising campaign that ascribed the beer’s quality to “the artesians,” portrayed as helpful gnomes or devas.

One artesian well was in front of the old Mark & Pak grocery store; it was paved over when the store was remodeled for BayView. The drinking fountain at the corner of 4th and Washington was artesian, and may be still. The Spar advertised its pure artesian drinking water. 

But the pipe that jutted from the asphalt in the middle of the parking lot near 4th and Jefferson was the best one to catch drinking water. With several gallon or five-gallon jugs, you could get a day’s supply for a communal household in a few minutes.

The access in the parking lot was contested for years; water advocates wanted to see the whole site made into a park, while the owners had no interest in parting with a valuable piece of real estate. Urged on by advocates, the city eventually came to a deal with the parking lot owners and acquired a portion of the lot for the Olympia Artesian Well. 

  

This beautiful mosaic art was added recently. The water flows at 10 gallons a minute, and it’s free. When I stopped by to take pictures on a brilliant, cold January day, the dude filling his jar saw me with my camera and asked, “Have you TASTED it?”  

It’s delicious. 

The Problem Is The Solution

 Permaculture could be described as a design philosophy that mimics nature in using the inter-relationships of many parts to create whole systems. A way of creating harmony and balance in the relationship between human beings and our environment. Perhaps a way of designing our way out of the Peak Everything crisis we  designed our way into.

These notes from Toby Hemenway’s permaculture class, sponsored by Seattle Tilth, serve as aphorisms and practices that could be applied to gardening, to art-making, to teaching, and to many other disciplines.

While the Problems Remain Complex, the Solutions are Remarkably Simple. 

We are creating models of creative regenerative systems…

Whatever the problem is, life has run into it before…

         Add organic matter!

 

  

We make sacred the things that nourish us.

Local Food - Chimacum

On our cider tour two weeks ago we were amazed & delighted by the local food culture center that has sprung up at the crossroads of Chimacum, Washington.

The first thing we found was the Farm's Reach Cafe -- diner style food made with local ingredients: beautiful soup, salad, sandwiches, and pastries. I don't think the chocolate was a local product, but most of the menu is.

The next day we found the Chimacum Corner Farmstand, which is full of lovely local stuff, and enough from beyond the immediate area to make dinner (pasta, wine, dessert). We wanted to try everything and bought a bunch of multi-color carrots in white, orange, and purple. 

The burgeoning local food movement shows the creative, determined, and optimistic ways that people -- especially young people -- are responding to our food-energy-climate crisis. Growing your own and eating local provide fresh and nourishing food. And support the local economy. And take money away from the industrial food system. And establish bonds between people and their land. And reduce the amount of toxins used on our food -- assuming that a lot of this gardening and farming is organic or no-spray. And help people learn about food, science, nature, botany, biochemistry, nutrition, and cooking. And encourage creativity in the kitchen! and create beauty in the landscape. Done right, with permaculture techniques, growing food can sequester carbon in the soil, addressing the problem of global warming.

And of course Broadforks are really helpful if you want to grow food without plowing or tilling.

Cider Tour: Finnriver

We took an overnight up the Quimper penninsula to Chimacum and Port Townsend to get away and visit cideries, starting with Finnriver in Chimacum. Chrystie was incredibly nice to us, the tasting room is beautiful, and the cider is AWESOME. We'd tasted the black currant cider in Seattle and were excited to get some to bring home.

Christie offered the dry and delicious pear sparkling cider -- it's would be great with dinner. For an apertif, or a sweet fiend like me, add a drop of pear wine with apple brandy.  Wonderful. My favorite is currently sold  as "spirited apple wine." It tastes like an excellent, applish port, but apparently it can't be called port for abstruse liquor-law reasons. We bought a bottle and I had a drop before my evening bath. We call it Not-Port.

Chimacum is beautiful and the food/cider/farm scene around there flourishing. We talked to many enthusiastic participants, and enjoyed abundant locally-grown food and drink.

A Good Start in Broadforking

A customer sent us this charming picture of an 18-month-old getting a head start on the broadfork.  He seems to be having a good time. Whee!

We've been reading Will Allen's terrific The Good Food Revolution, which puts the urban gardening movement in the context of his own life, his family's story, and the larger picture of the Great Migration of African American people from the South to the North. I really appreciated his historical perspective on how the move north, for many people, exchanged one set of problems for another, including the loss of a direct connection to the land and the ability to grow and eat healthy food. Allen's work is so inspiring -- he's learned to grow food in a northern, industrial city, recruit people to get involved in farming, and teach people about composting, tilapia growing, beekeeping, keeping chickens... His organization Growing Power really does grow like a weed, like a bean plant, like a blackberry bramble -- spreading, growing new roots, starting seeds everywhere.

The urban food movement might be the most hopeful thing now happening in our culture. It's a direct response to problems of unemployment and poverty, diet-related health problems like diabetes and heart disease, and the consolidation of our food system by a few multinational corporations. Growing our own food -- from rural farms to city lots and rooftops -- is as revolutionary as it gets. Also nonviolent, healthy, and fun!

Urbs in Horto

One of the coolest things that has changed in Chicago in recent years is the proliferation of street gardens, both in yards and in the planting strip between the sidewalk and street. Lots of folks grow native plants, prairie plants, flowers to attract butterflies and bees... On Michigan Avenue there are big planting strips with spectacular plants, monarch butterflies -- I've seen huge dragonflies zooming over the traffic. When I was a kid those strips were basically grass, mulberry trees, and dog crap. It's exciting to see the potential of the "city in a garden," Urbs in Horto, coming to fruition.

Allen Ginsberg wrote in 1975 "Written on Hotel Napkin: Chicago Futures";

Wind mills churn on Windy City's
         rooftops              Antennaie
               collecting electric
above thick-loamed gardens
         on Playboy Tower
Merchandise Mart's compost
                                   privies
        supply nightsoil for Near North Side's
                                  back gardens...
...
bathtub beer like the old days
Backyard Mary Jane like
                                 old days...

 * * *
and see, it's all coming true!

Northern Indiana Farmers

On a family vacation in Indiana we went to the Michigan City Farmer's Market (open Saturdays) and to the nearby Sevick Gardens & Farm Market store, which is open during the week. I remember going to Indiana for apples (John Hancock Fruit Farm in La Porte) when I was growing up, but it seemed like Indiana had less farming and more suburbs in recent years.

On this trip, though, we had bison burgers from Broken Wagon Bison, fresh peaches and blueberries and onions, from Sevick Gardens, and I got beautiful pumpkin-clover honey to bring home.

It's exciting to see the resurgence in local food and no-spray farming happening everywhere. The pastries at the Farmer's Market were awesome, too.

The MeadowCreature

Here's a rare image of Bob actually using the Meadow Creature broadfork, his design, based on a traditional tool. The broadfork was made for centuries by local blacksmiths, designed for local conditions and needs. There are a lot of broadfork designs out there, with different kinds of handles, length of tines, width, and weight. Ours is unbreakable, all-welded steel construction, designed originally for the sand-clay-gravel soils we have on Vashon Island and around Puget Sound. The steel handles won't flex, wasting your effort, or break, wasting your afternoon. The tines won't bend if you hit a rock; with some extra effort you can dig it out.

We now have 3 tine sizes: the standard 14-inch  for breaking sod, digging out blackberry crowns, and hand-tilling your beds; the professional-grade 16-inch for extra-deep cultivation of established beds; and the lighter weight 12-inch, which is a bit easier to use but perhaps not quite as powerful if your goal is to turn an acre of asphalt into a thriving garden. The 12-inch isn't on the web site yet but send us an email (sales AT meadow creature dot com, no spaces) and ask for one if you like it. The 16-inch is a terrific tool for growing extra-long parsnips, but harder to use if you're not a big tall person. If in doubt, go for the 14-inch.

Grow Your Own!

People have good reasons to be concerned about our food – where it’s coming from now, and how secure that supply will be in the future. One hopeful response is that so many people, in so many places, across generations, are starting gardens, collaborating on community gardens and farms, shopping at Farmer’s Markets, and joining CSAs.

At the Mother Earth News fair in Puyallup last month we were heartened to meet so many people who were united by their passion to grow their own food, raise their own meat, and develop their own energy. People were excited about chickens, sheep, solar panels, growing herbs, saving seeds – and those common interests brought everyone together across a variety of political and social views.

This article by Rebecca Solnit in Orion magazine speaks to the growing movement of urban farming and gardening – a way to grow food, develop skills, and build community: Revolutionary Plots.