Dutch Oven Cooking Project

I led our 4-H club in a Dutch Oven Cooking project. It was my first time leading these "fire and knives" activities. We all learned a lot about cooking, and got a good bunch of healthy living information thrown in.

Beyond the cooking, I tried to tie this in with other 4-H projects. We talked quite a bit about gardening. Which ingredients that we were using could be grown in a garden? What could we do with our food scraps? What could we do with the ash?

As part of the project, each club member had to give a presentation about some aspect of dutch ovens. I was surprised at how many history projects we had ranging from the origins of cast iron and charcoal to the etymology of the name dutch oven.

We also worked with some interesting dietary challenges. One of our club families does not eat pork. Another member has a dairy allergy. Another avoids gluten. While we did not make every recipe fit every diet, we did make a number of accommodations in an attempt to help everyone gain cooking skills and still being able to enjoy the food we made.

Not only did the club members learn a lot, we really built some bonds across our families. Dutch oven cooking has a lot of waiting time, and we all got a chance to visit with each other, learn about each other, and grow closer as a community.

And the biggest sign of success: everyone wants to do it again next year.

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Fruit Field Day

We were able to attend the 24th annual Fruit Field Day at the University of Idaho's Parma Research and Extension Center. While much of the research is geared toward commercial growers and there is plenty of focus on chemical pesticides and fertilizers, there is still a lot of good information to be gained for a home orchardist wannabe like me.

The number of species and varieties that are researched is here is well beyond the scope of the home orchardist or food forester. In the photos above it's easy to see grapes, peaches, apples, plums, quince, and pears. The center also conducts research on nectarines, cherries, almonds, walnuts, jujube, haskaps, persimmons, pawpaws, strawberries, blackberries, and maybe some fruits and nuts I've forgotten or don't know about.

Research often starts with 20 or more new varieties of a given species to see how each variety performs over many years in this climate.

We did get some suggestions for some of the fruit varieties that can be grown successfully in a home orchard in this part of Idaho, including:

• Buckeye Gala apples
• Kikusul asian pears
• Tomcord grapes
• Flame nectarines
• Golden Nectar plums

I'll keep my eyes open for these varieties.

This is the wall of apples. Apple trees are placed just three feet apart and are espaliered along seven wires strung at 15-inch intervals. They are working on different angles and different material between rows. They are also using interesting pollinators like manchurian crabapples. The center is doing similar high-density research with table grapes.

Here is some research that I'm pleased to see is happening even though there is no direct benefit my gardening system. This area controls 21 stations where water and nitrates are measured in order to determine the minimum amount of each needed to produce apples. It makes me feel good to know commercial orchards are using the results of this research to minimize water and nitrate use which should lead to fewer nitrates in our groundwater.

This was my favorite research project: a table grape that has been given no irrigation water at all. It's a variety from Iran that is already proving to grow well in Idaho.

All in all I enjoyed the field day. It's good to see research being done and results disseminated to commercial growers and home orchardists alike.

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Duck Pond from a Repurposed Bathtub

We were talking about how to put in a duck pond. My wife did some internet searching and found that some people simply use an old bathtub. I was going to look around on craigslist when my teenage son reminded me that we had an old bathtub sitting in the barn. We also found an old closet door in the barn to use for a ramp.

The duck pond water will be great to use in the gardens. I need to find a way to make it easy to pump water from here to the raised beds. I'm also wondering if there are any plants that can grow in a bathtub duck pond that will help filter the water some and give the ducks some munchies.(Note: according to the forums at permies.com, plants in a bathtub won't work out very well.)

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