COME TO MY GARDEN Back to Nature
	June 2004

by Shelly MacMahon
Photos by Brad Shifflett

I'm the owner of a small farm. We're riding a current wave of small labor-intensive farms aiming to become profitable by making the agrarian experience appealing to people. We provide learning in a context of fun. We specialize in providing family-oriented, child-friendly experiences.

We're trying to keep the East County agriculture scene viable and strong. When the developments come in this wonderfully fertile land disappears forever beneath the malls, multiplex theaters, and housing tracts.

From Hospital Beds to Seed Beds
My specialty is growing and using herbs. This has always been a passion of mine. I got into the field as a medical professional. I'm a retired critical care nurse and the recovery programs for the cardiac and respiratory patients that I specialized in caring for required a lot of behavior modifications, especially changes in diet and nutrition.

I began bringing in some of the herbs from my display garden that patients' treatments demanded. The patient's spouses would use the plants, leaves, and seeds as the basis for the healthy dishes that the patients' recovery demanded. I would not simply bring my curative herbs and plants to the hospital, but I would work with the patients as they learned how to prepare and use them.

My little avocation grew as I encountered increasing demand for my herbs from the people who lacked another easy source for the plant products their serious medical conditions demanded.

I retired from nursing about three years ago in order to pursue my passion for this full-time. The project has seemingly developed wings and really taken off.

I love the role of farmer working in my herb patches. I particular love the freedom to try things out and see what works, or see what works better.

For one thing, if a plant or even an entire patch dies, I don't worry about it. These things aren't like my former patients where life and death made all the difference in the world to me. Here if things go wrong and something dies, I don't have to worry a moment about the demise. I just throw it on my compost heap and try something different.

Also, I love working in my own place and on my own schedule. During much of my eighteen years as a nurse I typically worked 12 hour nights so I could be home days with the little ones. This was tough. Now it is nice to sleep at night.

Most of all, my farm is just a great place for a human being to spend time. Being in that lovely place, with the sun shining on me, down on my knees and up to my wrists in God's good earth, and participating in the eternal cycle of growing things…. What could anybody do better than this?

Gathering Place for Friends and Family
My farm is a real live Family Affair. My garden is often full of MaMahons and their friends. My four sons are usually hard at work at some task, often with some of their buddies working right by their sides.

It's continually amazing how my son's buddies will come and weed my fields, usually without any pay. But these same kids won't work at their own house. I think it drives their parents crazy.

I guess the reason for this is that my garden is a lot more fun place for kids to be than the typical back yard. Young people are great to work with. Sometimes they are not particularly reliable and require appropriate levels of monitoring. But they are always marvelous to be around. We do a lot of laughing; my garden is a happy place for all of us.

My oldest son, Kelly, is 16 and has developed into a really hard worker. He can drive a tractor and handle a shovel or a hammer like a man. He can do almost anything I need him to do, and I can depend on him to do the job completely and well.

Brett, age 14, is my salesman. My customers love him. He cracks them up. Sometimes they even try to pay him tips. Brett is a hard worker when he has time to work. However, he's a budding thespian and is often rehearsing some play at his Edna Hill school.

Our Logan, is 12 and is beginning to do a pretty good job. He's the athlete of the family and his attention is often directed towards an athletic field rather than to my garden patches. He's a real help here sometimes, when he finds time. He planted all my mints this spring.

Our youngest, Nick, is 10 and is a crack-up. He often work diligently, but still is developing the disciplines required to get something finished and done right. Nick is one of the world's good people. He likes helping people; he's cute and charming and will always bring me water.

Nick's special gift is working with animals. His ambition in life is to own a pet store. He loves all types of animals and does such things as following spiders around the yard, playing with them, examining them, then returning them to their holes. He helps with the chickens, burros, cats, and dogs we have running around the place. Nick is just an animal kind of guy.

A friend of ours, Roxanne Moultry, comes by just to help me design and locate my garden patches. Roxanne has a good eye and an artistic sense about these things. She has been a wonderful help.

Bringing a Living Garden out of a Dead Orchard
We came here in '89, when Brett was just three months old. The place was the site of an old dead apricot orchard. We inherited a wheezy old tractor with the place and used it to mow down weeds, some of which were as tall as the tractor itself. We spent a whole year pushing over dead apricot trees and hauling wood, trash, and brush off the property. I think our neighbors grew a little irritated with us in those days, because we pushed all the ground squirrels and gophers into their property.

We're clean growers and don't use pesticides. We're not certified simply because we haven't had time to go through the mountain of paperwork the certification process requires.

Right now we're in the midst of major transition. Last year we cleaned off the whole property and started over. This has been hard work, but very satisfying. We planted 70 bare root pluot tees. Some people never heard of these things, which are mixes of apricots and plumbs. We already have 15 mature pluets trees, with five varieties. Their fruit is delicious!

The display garden has been completely revamped. Everything else was turned over to black, plowed earth.

From the beginning we planned for Shelly's Garden to be more than simply a source of herbs and produce. We plan to take the farming experience out to people as well as bring people to our farm for the experience.

Reaching out to Kids, Families, and Adults
This year we are planning to begin a lot of new activities with special events, plus educational sessions and training modules.

We're also sponsoring a farm tour. Bunkers Grill will provide a lunch. The tour will begin at Shelly's Garden and then move to several other local farms, including my neighbor's Alpaca Farm.

As part of the learning experiences we plan to conduct, I bought a life-size manikin that looks like a farmer, complete with whiskers, coveralls, and a corncob pipe. The thing is wired for sound with a speaker and moveable mouth combination that is pretty impressive.

I'm planning to use my faux farmer as a prop to teach ag principles to children who will be visiting my farm. I'm going to use him in a big "name the farmer" contest that will be put before the school children. I'm also planning to take my farmer into classrooms with me and expect that he will become a real attention-getter in initiating the curriculum that I'm developing.

I've been working with a veteran educator in creating a complete curriculum for school children, geared to all learning levels. I'm going to present the curriculum to the district and work through them to pass it on to the schools and the teachers.

One of the personal events I'm planning on this year is Dinner on the Farm, which will include a nice table setup, and a scrumptious meal prepared by a chef. The event will include an informal, personal tour. Diners will be served at tables in the gardens with the full range of entrees, from hors d'Oeuvres to dessert.

Another personal event for people wishing a less formal experience will be Family Evening. This will include some music, a BBQ, and a pleasant place to hang out for an evening.

Making the Herb Connection
My garden provides herbs fresh cut, potted, and dried. An important part of my mission is to educate people about herbs, trying to get them to appreciate the effect herbs can have upon foods. These things are easy to use, but people aren't accustomed to them, or become accustomed to getting these from the jars.

There is a pronounced difference in flavor between a fresh and dry herb: you can crumple it or chop it. The effect is to provide a much fresher taste. Putting fresh dill on a piece of fish, for example, is incredible. Dry dill gives you the taste, but only with a much flatter, muted effect.

One of my passions is teaching people about using herbs and training them about their use. A lot of people love herbs but are unsure about which ones to get and how to cook with them. Here are few of the herbs I grow and a sample of the things that can be done with them.

Adding chervil to salad or soup provides a distinctive celery taste.

I alos demonstrate how adding mint to tea or some other drink is relaxing and refreshing.

Many creative cooks would be delighted to learn the answer to the question, "How do you cook with lavender?" Some of them might be surprised to learn the role that lavender can play in such things as teas, shortbreads, and even potpourri.

Rau Ram is "Vietnamese Cilantro" One of my neighbors actually uses it instead of cilantro. Rau Ram gives a very different kind of kick to the taste buds. It is a little strong, but some people find it very pleasing. It is used in a lot of Asian cuisine.

Kaffir Lime has leaves that you use in cooking. It is like opening a fresh lemon. Incredible!

Capers are a great addition in many dishes, of course. I'm trying to figure out how to keep my caper patch away from the gophers. We made the pleasant surprise that if you miss a caper when you are harvesting, it turns into a beautiful flower for one day.

Stevia is the most impressive of all the herbs. It is a natural sweetener that doesn't fluctuate blood sugar. It is 300 times sweeter than sugar. You can add fresh stevia with mint on the top of a fruit dish for an amazing effect.

It is fun to see people put a stevia leaf in their mouth for the first time and watch the effect. They always go "Wow!" Sometimes they go "Wow!" three times. It is an incredible experience, because nobody believes that a little green leaf could have such a powerfully sweet taste.

I once made a presentation to the Girl Scouts and gave them each a sample of stevia. One of the girls ate hers and then gobbled up everyone else's sample. I had to tell her mom that she'd had her roughage for the day.

Edible flowers is another area of expertise I like to share with people. If you let Nasturtium go to flower, the blossoms can be used as a flavoring. Chopped or diced Nasturtium flowers have a clean peppery taste. It is good in salads. Nasturtium comes in varieties that produce tastes from mild to strong.

Herbs including basil, oregano, and thyme are spices most often used in the leaf form, but the flowers of these are edible. Tastes range from mild to really strong, depending upon the species. You have to harvest the flowers just when they're just opening, however, for the best flavor.

I'm also experimenting with blueberries. These usually require cold weather and acidic soil. We're trying to learn how to grow them in my garden. A bowl of blueberries with cream is one of the best treats there is.

We're going to start a tea garden and serve tea and pastries with herbs, along with an assortment of scones and shortbreads, I'm planning to serve chamomile, lemon verbena, and mints, using the herb stevia as a sweetener.

We'll eventually be supplier to fine restaurants.

If my dreams come true we'll eventually have a little piece of paradise here, providing a place for special events, educational experiences, training and learning — all conducted in an environment of natural beauty.

The most difficult thing in my life these days is not having enough hours in the day to fit it work, family schedules and everything else. However, working side-by-side with my family is wonderful. We end up putting a lot of time out here. On the weekends my husband is right out here with me. We laugh together a lot. Shelly's Garden brings us together.

I'm having a lot of fun, but sometimes think a little downtime would be good. We don't have time for Soap Operas or a lot of video games. Too much to do! Too much fun!

Working together to bring healthy crops out of the soil. It's an old pattern; its a good one.