Ain't it funny how time slips away? The past few weeks have seen tremendous change in my life. I was blessed with the opportunity to spend a couple of days surrounded by colleagues and friends at the start of May and the rest has been a blur of deadlines, packing, and moving back to Atlanta while doing my level best to keep my clients unaware that anything had changed at all. In many ways I succeeded, while in others I did not. The articles I started with the intent of including in this issue did not make it to deadline, and for that I must apologize. I have no doubt that what you will find in this issue is a small collection of information-packed interviews and a new product review that has me ready to pull out my credit card. You'll find the same passion for this business that we started with in January, and that's one thing you will never see missing within the pages of GrowWrite! Magazine. On behalf of the writers who dug in and devoted a great deal of time and energy to the work you see here, I thank you for reading and hope that you will continue to be a part of our growing family for a very long time to come.
I have a nice collection of cookbooks that are very dear to me. I will grab one or two on a quiet Sunday morning along with a coffee and curl up in my comfy chair and turn the pages in equal parts awe and inspiration. The cookbooks chosen that morning will be reflected in the dishes that turn up on our plates over the next few days. My favorite cookbook authors are special to me and it used to be that the closest I got to knowing them was their bios in the back of the book and watching their appearances on television shows. These days I am ‘friends’ with my favorites on Facebook and can ask questions when I get stuck and even tag them in photos of my success with their recipes. If I am very lucky, I get to meet them in person. Such is the case with Rose Levy Beranbaum. I attended a book signing for her newest book, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, at The bluecashew, in Rhinebeck, NY. An amazing kitchen supply store, I wanted everything I laid my eyes on there. It is more like part kitchen supply store, part art gallery and you really have to experience it to get it. I actually was going to support my friend, Ben Fink, who is responsible for the amazing photography in the book. Seriously, Ben’s photos are so good that you might just think you can smell those goodies. While I adore Ben, I must say that meeting Rose was such a wonderful treat. She is warm, soft spoken and gracious. I have attended many book signings where the signer smiles and nods as you chatter nervously to them, not even lifting their eyes to you as they sign and hand you the book while reaching for the next book to sign. Rose is not one of those people. She asked where I had driven from and told me a funny little story about arriving at college in Vermont. It had personal, girly details that I won’t share here. The encounter made me fall instantly in love with her! I was honored that Rose also graciously agreed to this interview.
gw!: What was the most challenging part of writing a follow up to The Cake Bible? Making sure the photographs reflected the text. It was a great opportunity to have almost every cake pictured and I wanted to make the most of it. gw!: Where did you study baking? LeNôtre, in Plaisir, France. I got my BS and MA in Foods at NYU but most of what I learned I learned by doing (on my own). gw!: Why, out of all things food related, did you choose baking? It intrigued me. Also baking combines so many of my interests and skills: my appreciation of logic and precision, my love of creativity. And of all food related things, baking is (or perhaps should be) the most visual. I studied fashion design at The Fashion Institute of Technology and adore crafts so baking and cake decorating was a perfect fit. gw!: Who was your first baking inspiration? Paula Peck, then Maida Heatter. gw!: What about now? Who is your current biggest baking inspiration? Me! I am inspired primarily from within. This is not to say that I don’t sometimes find amazing new things produced by others such as Thomas Haas’s exquisite Stilton cheesecake that he contributed for my next book, and Marcy Goldman’s’ delicious honey cake which also will appear in The Baking Bible. continued on next page
gw!: What one recipe in the book would you recommend to start with for the best results for someone who has never before baked a cake from scratch? I would suggest the Apple Upside Down Cake—it’s the first cake in the book, as upside down cakes are so loved for their delicious simplicity and versatility. gw!: My favorite chapter in, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, is, Babycakes. In the marketplace, cupcakes are still trending well. As a general rule, is working with smaller cakes easier or more challenging for the novice baker who is entertaining? Baby cakes are more time consuming, as the batter needs to be distributed between many little cups as compared to doing one cake layer in a cake pan.
gw!: As an enthusiastic young foodie, I can recall all too many failures in my first kitchen capers. Can you recall a recipe attempt that ended tragically wrong for you? Not counting the first cake I made, which was from a mix, and not a tragic ending as I glued the three broken pieces together with canned frosting, it was the lemon meringue pie and that was indeed a tragedy as all of us poor college students had contributed money to buy the ingredients and it was a total failure. But the silver lining here is that it prompted me to become a baker and get to the bottom of why the filling wouldn’t thicken. It turned out to be the hardness of the water in northern Vermont, which prevented the cornstarch from thickening. And I learned something about myself: instead of giving up I was determined to get to the bottom of the problem.
gw!: In the acknowledgements, you give thanks to the legion of bloggers associated with your site, . Your site is also very interactive, with forums & places where you answer people’s questions --- it’s a different world from the one in 1998 when you wrote your first book. How has social media changed how you do business? The web has changed my connection to the world and I love it! The feedback from other bloggers is invaluable. My goal when I began writing books was to share what I loved with as many people as possible and the Internet goes well beyond this. Even people who can’t afford to buy my books can get many of my recipes and answers to their baking questions. When my lemon meringue filling wouldn’t thicken all those years ago there was no one to go to for help. I want people to feel encouraged that they can bake successfully and that it is easy with a little guidance. My biggest goal at present is to have every baker buy a scale and bake by weights, which makes it easier and faster. Just a few months ago the New York Times has added weights to its baking recipes. Bon Appétit is following suit. We are becoming a nation of better bakers and I applaud this. Author's note: I have been trying my hand at the recipes in the book and will be including write ups over on my blog, MidLife Flourish, even the not so successful are still sweet. I'd also like to thank photographer and friend Ben Fink for providing some of the photos used in this article. Dawn Marie Kelly is a Yorkie Wrangler & Writer who has mucked about in the blogging world since 2003. Her newest blog, Dancing Outside The Box, is her latest incarnation. Her passions; food, gardening, writing & people, all come together there. She is the Social Media Outreach Gal at Chick On The Go and operates Not So Silent Partner Productions with her husband Martin. By night she is writing a future award winning scripted television drama. Stay tuned!
Joel Salatin entered my awareness in 2006 via Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. While I had always been interested in farming and food production, I equated Salatin with ranching and so wasn’t immediately compelled to read his books. I was only an urban gardener who had dabbled in growing a few edibles and raised a few chickens. Salatin was a real farmer. Last year, with the local food movement in full swing (and Salatin’s name on more lips than ever) I decided it was high time to educate myself so I checked out The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer. A couple of chapters in and a page of hand written notes later, I was hooked. Over Christmas break I ordered four of his books, including his latest, Folks, This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World. I opened it first to celebrate the New Year. Every single chapter resonated. This wasn’t about ranching, this was about everything. A big picture of America’s food, Folks covers agriculture, ranching, the food industry, our government, our culture. It was the perfect book for an urban gardener who dabbled in veggies and kept a few chickens. As a writer, I also recognized that I was reading a book penned by someone who had mastered not just his subject matter but also the art of writing. Each page was infused with his personal experience (four decades of it), an intense (yet humble) intelligence, insatiable curiosity, wit sometimes sharp and often playful, and an Alpha male point of view that didn’t shy away from criticizing government or the corporate giants. Dang. I knew right then that I had found my favorite book for 2012.
gw!: You have a family history of farming; your father farmed and so did your grandfather. Where did the writing come from and when did you first decide you wanted to write? Salatin: My mother is the theatrical communicator in our family. My paternal grandmother kept a copious diary and was known for her letter writing. My dad was extremely politically savvy and wrote so many letters to the editor of our local daily newspaper that they developed a "once a month" limit to letter writing. He cobbled together some friends who would sign his letters so he could continue to besiege the paper with his thinking, although they contained different signatures. One day the editor noticed that they were all coming from the same typewriter. Ha! I think I've combined my mother's dramatic talents with my dad's convictions. Mom was the high school debate coach and I grew up surrounded by her debaters in our house--and I idolized them. Our family meals included current events discussions and political issues in which Dad was interested--and writing letters to the editor. We never had a TV in the house. We still don't. I read early, and much. Even in elementary school I would come home and sit at my desk cranking out handwritten, multi-page stories. In eighth grade, I joined the high school interscholastic debate team, competed in extemporaneous speaking, and played lead in the school plays. In college I debated intercollegiately and competed in numerous forensics tournaments. As a junior in high school, I began working Saturday nights at the local newspaper (the one that censored Dad) as the night receptionist, answering the phone, listening to the police scanner for wrecks, fires, and crimes, and writing obituaries and police reports. I loved being "in the know." The point of all this is that from my earliest self-awareness, I had a flair for stories, embellishment, drama, and communication. It is a God-given gift and talent, honed by much practice and sharpened by excellent mentors. gw!: I read about that, your journalism work at The News Leader, typing obituaries and police reports while in high school. You returned to that paper for a time after graduating from college with an English degree. Why journalism? And how did that background serve you in your book writing? Salatin: No question, the journalism work at the newspaper, both part-time during my two years in high school, and then for nearly two years after graduating college, made me the writer I am today. I also had two exceptional high school mentors. One was my senior year advanced composition teacher, whose standards for content and grammar surpassed most college English courses. I thought she was the sharpest lady in the world, and her no-nonsense approach encouraged me to excel, to be better. I had already won local essay contests and knew I had a gift for writing, but she challenged me to be better. I know she realized I had a penchant for writing, but she never let on. She just kept pushing me, and I desperately wanted to please her.
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The second teacher was my high school journalism teacher and the faculty sponsor of the high school newspaper. The journalism class was also the newspaper staff. In those days, we used manual typewriters to create copy. We justified the right margin by typing slash marks at the end of each line from the last possible character until the return bell dinged. Then we retyped the copy, counting the slash marks and inserting spaces as necessary to justify the right margin. We've come a long way, baby. Again, this teacher knew she had a live wire in me--I was already working part-time at The News Leader-but never coddled me. Her constant admonition: "A banana is a banana is a banana. It's never a long yellow fruit." She instilled in me a directness in speech and writing that have stood me well. Finally, my editors at The News Leader made sure that my weakness toward storytelling did not cheapen the facts in news stories. I especially enjoyed muck-raking work, investigative research, and making politicians squirm. The negative was having stories spiked. It happened several times and made me ready to leave as soon as possible. Because some local politician was an officer at the Kiwanis club, or because a large advertiser's wife believed such and such, I had numerous stories spiked. Unprintable because they violated some mucky-muck.
Even today, I'm still looking for that young person to operate a hard news weekly. People do not get the news, especially from local papers where fraternization, civic clubs, and advertising relationships overwhelm the newsroom. It's the same way on a national level, but harder to correct. With today's publishing software, a person could create a hard news weekly that would turn the average community upside down. A whole network of informants would keep the phone ringing with hot tips of shenanigans to expose. In only one year I developed several informants that led me to expose things that eventually led to some powerful local bureaucrats having to resign in ignominy. That felt good. Finally, I would say that the newspaper experiences gave me the discipline to write. When it's 11:30 and the presses run at midnight and you're feverishly finishing a late-breaking story, the editor doesn't want to hear about writer's block. Just banging it out is important. Today, when I write books, I schedule a multi-day period and immerse myself in it from dawn until bedtime, just banging through it. I'm sure other people have different techniques, but I think the discipline of newspaper work, and hard news specifically, has given me the tools to efficiently crank out material.
gw!: While America has long had a tradition of self-publishing, there seems to have been a particularly snobbish attitude toward self-publishing in America for decades until recently. You self-published seven books in the last two decades. What you think about self-publishing and what would you say to those writers who are thinking of going down that road-less-traveled? Salatin: Self-publishing has been good to me. But like most things, I didn't figure it all out at once. Let's set the context: Teresa and I got married Aug. 9, 1980. I left the newspaper Sept. 24, 1982 and returned to the farm full time. Dad passed away in 1988. By that time, Teresa and I were sure the farm would make it. We weren't rich, but we sure weren't starving and we were even putting some money in the bank for savings. In about 1989 we hosted a farm day for the Virginia Association for Biological Farming. I had edited their quarterly newsletter for a couple of years after leaving the newspaper, and then was elected president. A Pennsylvania fellow who wrote a column for the bankrupt and brand new magazine Stockman Grass Farmer (SGF) came to that day and was so taken by our farming methods, he wrote a long article about Polyface for the magazine. The editor was so taken by the article that he called me and asked if he could come for a visit. Allan Nation, my mentor and hero, visited in 1989 (or thereabouts--who's worried about particulars?) and immediately asked me to write columns for him. I was overjoyed to be back writing something again after a couple of years' hiatus. He was bankrupt and couldn't pay anything, but I obliged happily. That year he hosted his first national conference and asked me to do a speech about pastured poultry. I did. It brought the house down. Suddenly we were getting calls from around the country: "How do you do this pastured poultry thing?" In 1991 I typed out a simple "Pastured Poultry Manual" and offered it for $15. Held together by brads, it was about 50 pages, regular 8 ½ x 11 typing paper, and we collated them by hand in the living room. In one year, we sold 1,000 of them, primarily through the SGF readership. Wow, there's money in them thar new ideas. Allan encouraged me to turn the manual into an honest-to-goodness book. Here's the awesome part: knowing my desire for value adding and do-it-yourselfing, Allan offered to either publish the book for me (the magazine operates its own in-house publishing brand called Green Park Press) or shepherd me into doing it myself. Once I found out that the author got less than 10 percent of the cover price, I couldn't imagine having him publish it. After all, I'd just taken in $15,000 on a simple loose-leaf how-to manual; why would I trade that for $1,500? Allan and his wife Carolyn were as good as their word, sending me sample bid sheets, particulars on ISB numbers, Library of Congress, and potential short-run paperback book printers. I typed the manuscript on the typewriter and sent it to a friend who could make a camera ready copy. In 1993, we self-published Pastured Poultry Profits: Net $25,000 in 6 months on 20 Acres. Now nearly 20 years later, it is still selling better than ever, with total sales about $60,000. continued on next page
continued from previous page The argument for using a publisher is always about total sales. Publishers will argue that they can sell way more than the individual because they are connected to industry standard marketing pathways. But they have to sell a LOT more to win the argument. I knew this how-to book would not be a best seller, so I figured I'd rather sell 30,000 at a $10 margin than 60,000 at a $2 margin. That assuming, of course, that the publisher actually doubles your sales. Notice that before self-publishing I already had a following. I was writing columns in SGF, speaking at conferences, and was considered the go-to expert, worldwide, on pastured poultry. That was a huge leg up. I always tell people considering self-publishing to get their name out there first. Write articles, do speeches, something to get name recognition. Then the book sales will follow. Remember, half of all books ever published in history have never sold more than 1,000 copies. That's tough odds unless you have an incredible talent (Dr. Seuss) or an incredible idea (pastured poultry). Self-publishing has become much easier with desktop publishing software, PDF and everything computer-based. Interestingly, many of the old bricks-andmortar marketing pathways are also breaking down. After Salad Bar Beef came out in 1995, Ben Watson at Chelsea Green Publishing saw the two books at a conference in New England, took them home, and realized these were exactly the kind of books Chelsea liked to handle. He called me and asked if they could distribute them. I became a distributed publisher for Chelsea and it was one of the best decisions I could have ever made.
Chelsea handles bookstores, libraries, schools, Amazon.com, etc. SGF doesn't handle any of my books anymore because Amazon undersells them. Allan has made a strategic decision not to allow any of his Green Park Press books on Amazon--if you want one of his several titles, you have to get it from SGF or ACRES USA magazine, another of my special media friends. Allan and I have gone around and around about my decision to let Amazon carry my books versus his decision to not participate. Neither side is right or wrong. I'm frustrated that Amazon has so changed the face of book marketing. But I've gone with the times and am very pleased. My Chelsea checks today are 10 times bigger each month than they were from SGF bookshelf section. Have I sold my soul? Time will tell. I hope not. I think I'm Chelsea's number one distributed publisher now. My only beef with them is that they don't really market books they don't publish. They offer them in their catalogue and ship them, but nobody actively markets them. The advantage to me, of course, is that I don't have to worry about all that shipping and packing. If I were more computer savvy and wanted to hire someone to do it, I probably could, but I don't want to. That's not my talent. So I help employ people at Chelsea and they write me a nice big check every month. Seems like a good tradeoff to me. I don't think my reach or success would be half as far without them. The last self-published book we did, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer (late 2010) has already sold nearly 20,000 without a single review or any marketing effort. I am blessed indeed. Look for the second part of this interview in the next issue of GrowWrite! Photos in this article were provided by Rachel Salatin Photography.
Sandra Knauf and her daughter Zora are the feminine forces behind the new "everything BUT how-to" garden writing magazine Greenwoman Magazine. They also have a new group blog in the works, Flora's Forum. When she's not working on literature and art, Sandra loves to be in the garden tending vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers—both at home and at Vermijo Community Garden near Colorado's Pikes Peak.
It’s that time of year when gardeners are thinking about fertilizing, so for this installment of “Reality Check” we decided to take a look at two organic fertilizers we like: Milorganite and leaf mulch.
Milorganite: Is it Safe? As you probably know, Milorganite is treated sewage sludge (also called biosolids, which sounds a bit nicer) from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. Heat-dried to kill pathogens, it’s a great source of organic nitrogen and it’s marketed for use in home gardens, as well as for lawns. Milorganite is sold in pellet form and it looks a lot like ordinary, granulated fertilizer only it’s a darker color and much smellier. No, it’s not smelly in the way you’d imagine considering the source, but it’s definitely unpleasant, which is why it’s probably an effective deer repellent. Though Milorganite has been around for decades, it doesn’t get talked about as much as other fertilizers do and that’s probably because it doesn’t sound too appetizing. Still, with the increase in interest in organics, we’re getting questions about Milorganite more often, and there are some important things gardeners need to know before choosing this fertilizer. Most importantly, opinions differ on whether Milorganite is safe to use on food crops. According to researchers at Cornell University “safe is a relative term” when it comes to Milorganite. They say this because though it does meet the EPA’s criteria for home and garden use, some people remain concerned about the level of contaminants it could contain, such as pharmaceuticals and toxic, organic chemicals that are often present in sludges but not monitored and regulated. Gardeners who choose to use Milorganite on edible and/or non-edible crops are advised to minimize risk by keeping the fertilizer away from kids and pets who might eat it, or at a minimum put it in their mouths. (Apparently some dogs really like this stuff.) Edibles grown in gardens fertilized with Milorganite should be washed well before eating.
Leaves make good fertilizer and mulch We are often told that it’s a good idea to use mulched tree leaves on lawns and gardens. Rather than bagging up leaves and putting them at the curb, gardeners are advised to rake leaves into piles and run over them several times with a lawn mower (you don’t really need a mulching mower if you go slow). The pulverized leaves are then spread in a 2- to 3-inch layer over the lawn and on top of garden beds. This is a great advice for several reasons. All those leaves aren’t going to landfills, for starters. And when they’re spread out over the soil, they help suppress weeds while moderating soil temperature and reducing erosion. Mulched leaves also make great fertilizer because they provide nutrients to the soil as they decompose. According to Mark Keaton, staff chair for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, fallen leaves contain 50 to 80 percent of the nutrients trees extract from the soil during a growing season. In particular, fallen leaves are a good source of nitrogen, offering anywhere from 1 to about 2 ½ percent nitrogen as they decompose. To put that into perspective, figure that if a tree’s leaves offered 2 percent nitrogen it would take 100 pounds of dried leaves per 1,000 square feet to provide 2 pounds of nitrogen. That’s all the nitrogen 1,000 square feet of turf grass should need for a year, and it’s also about the right amount for a garden bed of that size, too. Know, however, that big leaves that have not been mulched well enough can shade out grass a little bit. And nitrogen won’t be available until the leaves break down, so it would probably be a good idea to use a small amount of another organic fertilizer to supplement your leaf mulch. On the weed control front, research conducted by Alexander Kowalewski at Michigan State University has shown that using maple and oak leaves as mulch can help control dandelions in Kentucky bluegrass. Unlike past studies in which leaves may have contained some pesticide residues, researchers at Michigan State used only pesticide-free leaves in their tests. Learn more about their findings here: http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/19/2/297.abstract Jeff Gillman is an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota. Contact him at www.gardenprofessors.com. Meleah is a journalist, garden writer and master gardener. Contact her at www.everydaygardener.com.
I have had my iPad2 since the day it came on the market in 2011. I love it. Love is not a strong enough word. This is not a review of my iPad though. It is a review of the one thing that made me fall deeper in love with my iPad. I stumbled across the Beacon Case website back in February and was drawn in by the beauty of what seemed a sturdy, functional case that reminde me so much of my much-beloved Moleskiene & Leuchtturm notebooks. While reading the story of how the case came to be, I loved that it was being made by buddies, Jeff Hobble and Matt Winslow. Matt & Jeff have put their hearts, souls, and sweat into these cases all while still working day jobs to pay the bills. The result is the Beacon Case for the Kindle Fire and iPad 2 with a case for the iPad 3 soon to come. I was lucky enough to get my hands on one and after two months of religious use I am ready to share what I have learned.
When I slipped my case from the burlap I could smell the wood that it’s made from and was impressed with it’s weight and solid feel.I loved that it arrived in minimal packaging. Just slipped inside a burlap sack.
I love that for every Beacon Case they sell, they donate $5 to water projects around the world. That's a great standard for a product that is proudly Made in America. The cover is constructed by a family-owned bindery located on the outskirts of Chicago in business since 1945. A small custom cabinetry shop in Spartanburg, South Carolina provides the gorgeous Baltic Birch frames that cradle each tablet.
I love that my iPad now feels like a book when I hold it. It makes it feel like more of the work tool that it is instead of a toy. I am better able to stay task focused now.
This baby is discreet, too. Until I open it, folks don’t even notice I have an iPad. Another real plus is that the cover is magentized to put the iPad to sleep when the cover is closed. The cover also flips back and becomes a stand for the device.
As for the downside, there is really just one thing I discovered when I knocked my iPad off my coffee table a couple weeks ago. Luckily it was over carpet, because as it fell, the iPad popped right out of the case. No damage to my tablet or my new case, thankfully! So there you have it: The Beacon Case for iPad2. I give it two (only slightly clumsy) thumbs up! Dawn Kelly, reviewer