Monthly Archives: June 2013

Our Hipster Fathers

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Dad July 76

No, the above picture was not taken last week showcasing the spoils of dumpster diving behind the Salvation Army. This is a picture of my father taken in July of 1976.

Today is father’s day, and it caused me to reflect a little bit and dig up some old photos of my dad. He’s not dead or anything, it’s just that all the other hipsters were changing their facebook profile pictures to old pictures of their dad so I figured I better get to it. As I digitally flipped through my iPhoto library, I realized that my dad sure did look like a modern day hipster.

My dad isn’t a hipster, though. Sure, he wore horn-rimmed glasses; but he was active in the Marines at the time and didn’t really have a choice. Yes, he wore a big flat-brimmed baseball cap; but he liked to play baseball, so there was nothing ironic about it. See that mustache? Nothing hipster about that; it was the 80s: people actually liked mustaches. And yes, his child is running around in not but hand-me-down overalls; but I’ll take credit for that one.

IMG_0474My dad has taught me a lot over the years. He stayed at home and took care of the house, fixed the things that were broken, and built things that he needed to use. We gardened together, washed the cars together, cleaned the pool together, and mowed the lawn together. He taught me how to ride a bike, load a paint brush, hold a hammer, and use a power drill. While I use all of these skills to perform my daily hipster house husband tasks, my dad wasn’t a hipster, but his resourceful spirit and industrious nature continue to inspire me in my life.

I love you dad, and thanks for not being a hipster.

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What’s in my Window #5: Sage

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There are many ways to hipsterfy yourself around a particular topic. The most common way to is to find obscure things and make them part of your everyday routine (such as mopeds and mustache wax). Alternately, you can use more common things in a very obscure ways (bicycle polo and stemmed beer glasses). For the very artful hipster, however, doing the obscure thing is way too hipster-mainstream.

Take for example the humble sage plant. Hipsters of course have found the most historic and obscure uses for this herb and made it part of their routine: brewing it in tea, burning it as incense, using it as a natural preservative, and even naming their babies after it. This is one instance where I like to pull a reverse-hipster: since any hipster can do something obscure; it’s even more hipster to do something absolutely common with sage. I like to cook with it.

Sage has been a staple in our garden since I first heard Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair. Cut fresh, I’ll throw it into stews and soups. Fresh chopped sage mixed with a little olive oil and fresh cracked pepper makes an excellent wet rub for grilled chicken. In order to keep a ready supply of sage year-round, it’s important to be able to harvest and preserve sage properly. Because the sage leaf is more fibrous, I find that it takes a little extra effort to dry it out fully.

Fresh lungwort hangs between bunches of sage that have been hanging for a week or more.

Fresh lungwort hangs between bunches of sage that have been hanging for a week or more.

This year I did a two-step drying process. First, I tied bunches of larger branches to hang dry in the window until the leaves were mostly dry. Second, I removed the leaves from the stems and branches and allowed them to further dry by placing them in my Costa Rican seed-drying gourd and hanging it in my window for another week or so. This little gourd was a gift from my in-laws, bought from a farmers’ market in Costa Rica. (If you don’t have a Costa Rican seed-drying gourd, you can alternatively use a brown paper bag with holes poked in it).

Dried Sage

After further hanging in the drying gourd, this sage leaf is ready to be processed.

When I am convinced that the sage has dried sufficiently, it goes into the mortar and pestle. To maintain an even consistency, I push my crushed sage through a sieve before storing it in a spice jar (similar to the way I harvest basil).

Sure, I don’t do any of the most obscure things that you can do with sage, but that’s just fine. You’d expect every hipster to do that, so instead I use my hand-picked organically-grown sage for common culinary uses. If it’s not obscure, at least it’s ironic.

My Modular Rooftop Garden, Part 1

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BeforeAfter

One of my favorite parts about being an urban-dwelling hipster is being able to have a roof garden. Seeing as how hipsters are generally a self-aggrandizing group, I manage to work it into many of my conversations. Examples below:

Example 1:
Other person: I sure do love this spring weather.
Me: I just hope we don’t get a late frost again this year. My organic heirloom radishes have already begin to sprout on my rooftop garden.
Other person: Oh that’s cool! Rooftop gardens are really popular now.
Me: Well, I had a rooftop garden before it was mainstream. You’re just jumping on the bandwagon.

Example 2:
Other person: I’m thinking of getting a burger, what are you doing for lunch?
Me: I packed a salad with organically grown lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, and cucumbers. I grow my own salads at home in my roof garden since the produce they sell at the farmers’ market is never fresh enough for my refined vegetarian palate. Meat is murder, murderer.

These are extreme examples, surely. Especially considering that I don’t think I have ever turned down an offer to grab a well-made burger, and I am rarely that obviously vindictive about other people’s life choices. The point remains the same: I have a roof garden.

The truth is that everyone can grow stuff. As a matter of fact, stuff has been growing all by itself for a long time. Roof gardening only has a few adjustments to compensate for the fact that you’re on a roof instead of on the ground. The biggest adjustment I had to make is moisture control. Our garden is on a black rubber roof, and I have had to employ various strategies in order to keep my vegetables well-watered. I had read about self-watering containers in The Urban Homestead a while back, and tried them out for the first time last year. This year we went into high production and tripled the amount of self-watering containers we use.

Building a SWC is a fairly simple process, and consists of two nesting 5-gallon buckets, a wicking chamber, and a piece of PVC. I only caution you to make sure that you use food-grade plastics so as not to leach any harmful chemicals into the vegetables you are growing. I found old pickle or sauerkraut buckets from a local restaurant that didn’t charge me to take them off their hands. The smaller wicking chamber we made out of 32 oz yogurt and sour cream containers.

The way they work is really ingenious, and unfortunately I can’t even take credit. Between the two nesting buckets there forms an open reservoir. The smaller container, drilled with many holes, goes into that reservoir. When everything is put together, a PVC pipe goes from the top of the bucket lid down into the reservoir, allowing you to easily fill the reservoir with water. After filling the inner bucket with dirt, the smaller container acts as a wicking chamber, drawing the moisture up from the reservoir and delivering it to the growing vegetables. This closed system keeps evaporation to a minimum and an even moisture level in the soil throughout the hottest days of summer.

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This year we have six tomato plants, four pepper plants, and an eggplant all growing from SWCs. Since our roof gets so hot, we also put them on top of pallets to avoid heating the water unnecessarily. The best part about it all is that I didn’t spend a dime to build them!