Category Archives: Farm life

Edible, Farm life, publicity, The Cook, The Cookbooks, The Recipes

Blue & White and Read All Over: A Blizzard & A Book Party

February 17, 2014 Susie Middleton 10 Comments

The snowflakes that began to fall Saturday afternoon were particularly pretty—billowy and crisp and determined. They came on fast and steady, only an hour before we were due to pile all the food in the car and drive down to Bunch of Grapes bookstore. The forecast had said rain first, starting around 6. It was not even 2 o’clock and it was snowing.

Canceling the Fresh from the Farm book party wasn’t an option. Bunch of Grapes in downtown Vineyard Haven (a nice walking town) would stay open through any snowstorm, anyhow. I had made five different recipes to taste, and we’d sent all kinds of invitations out for the event. Both the Martha’s Vineyard Times and the Vineyard Gazette (as well as the Point B Realty blog) had published nice articles during the week about the book, the farm, and the signing event.

As Roy drove, I let those little negative thoughts come into my head, “Oh, no. No one will want to come out in the snow!” I said to Roy. And he chastisted me. “You wait. You’ll see.”

By the time Dawn Braasch stood up at the front of her bookstore to introduce me, every chair was full and folks were standing around the bookcases. I saw so many friendly faces, and I realized it was very bad of me to underestimate what an incredible community I stumbled into almost six years ago now. Not only did all these folks come to the event, but they withstood listening to me jabber on while a torrent of snowflakes fell outside the big glass windows behind me! Well, at least it was cozy inside (nothing like stacks of books to make you feel safe and warm), and there was food—and wine. But I still have to say thank you (here on sixburnersue is a good place, as I know some of you who were there will be reading this) to everyone for coming out in a snow storm.

Thinking about all this, I walked around the farm on Sunday morning with my camera. The “blizzard” did not leave us 14 inches—maybe only 6 to 8. And more importantly, it didn’t blow out power, though it did leave a lot of branches down. It also left a plucky aquamarine sky and a cool blue reflection everywhere I looked.

Beautiful or not, the winter is wearing on everyone. But all over the Island, and I’m sure in lots of other small communities across the snow-splattered country, there are gatherings like the one we had on Saturday, where the lights are on, the hugs are forthcoming, and the snacks are abundant.

And when all else fails, curling up at home on the couch with a good book is an antidote to all those icicles and chapped cheeks. After the event, a friend of mine, who had bought her 12-year-old daughter her first cookbook at the signing on Saturday, posted a picture of her daughter stretched out on their couch, reading Fresh from the Farm. Looking at that photo, I felt so privileged to be the author of a little girl’s first cookbook. What an honor! I hope that sweet girl has many fun and delicious cooking experiences ahead of her. But I’m pretty sure she does.

P.S. If you are looking for a signed copy of Fresh from the Farm, please visit or contact Bunch of Grapes. If you want a personalized copy, I can sign it at Bunch of Grapes and they will send it to you, no matter where you are.

Photo above courtesy Barbara Welsh

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain

And Now, For the Not-So-Cute Barnyard Animal

February 7, 2014 Susie Middleton

Actually, I wanted to title this blog post, “Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.” But you know, I didn’t really want to scare any one.

A few days ago, I posted this warm-and-fuzzy blog about our new kitten Barney and other cute baby animals that we’ve encountered on the farm. (Barney is doing great, by the way. He has discovered curtains, my keyboard, the laundry basket, Libby’s stuffed animals, and even his first mouse. He especially likes to sit in Roy’s lap while he’s reading the newspaper, helping him to turn the pages with frequent pawing.)

But we have this other creature on the farm of whom I am not so fond. In fact, most days, I do battle with him, and currently I have a scrape on my leg that he managed to give me through my blue jeans. It’s Paulie, the Silver-Laced Polish Crested rooster. I’ve mentioned (and pictured) him before, but I bring him up again now, because he has found a new mission in life: He protects the ducks.

And attacks me when I go in the duck pen. Roy, not so much.

Paulie was a lonely rooster. He never got along with the other baby chicks when he arrived as our speciality “surprise” chick with the batch of Aracaunas last spring. Roy didn’t want to get rid of him, though he also didn’t want him in with our large groups of laying hens, so Roy built Paulie his own little coop and pen. Paulie regularly got out of his pen and free-ranged around, trying to cozy up to our original six Ladies, who are very independent and wanted nothing to do with him.

But when we got the ducks in early January, we set them up in a pen near Paulie’s, and Paulie immediately hopped over and joined them. Little by little, he’s made himself the Boss of the Ducks. He is so happy to finally have something to protect that he is taking his job very seriously.

Every day he seems to get a little bolder, and lately he’s taken to charging at me like a bull running through the streets of Pamplona.

The only good news about this is that now I am prepared (or at least forewarned). The other day, when I went into the pen to grab the water bucket, I didn’t realize that Paulie was stalking me until he latched on to my leg and started hammering away at me.

When I told Roy this later, he said, “Why didn’t you just swing the bucket at him?”

Oh, right. You know it’s funny what boys automatically think of doing that doesn’t necessarily occur to a girl. Although, I think that probably would have just made Paulie angrier. Paulie doesn’t attack Roy, because Roy has been handling him on a regular basis since he was a chick.

Thinking about this, I went back this morning to read a piece I remembered really liking in Edible Vineyard magazine by Kate Tvelia Athearn, who lives not too many miles down the road from us on another small farm, and writes lovely pieces about small farm life. Her story about Chickenzilla made me feel like I could keep working to improve my relationship with Paulie.

We’ll see.

I could just let Roy feed the ducks, which he does often anyway. But he’s got the 500 hens to deal with, and my route between the six Ladies and the 20 Aracaunas takes me right past the duck pen, so it makes sense. Later this spring, we’ll probably let the ducks free-range a bit, so that might change the dynamics.

But it would be okay with me if Paulie disappeared. I know, that’s terrible, isn’t it? Roy wants to show him in the Fair this year. Fine. Maybe he will get kidnapped. Or, since he can’t see very well due to the mop on top of his head, maybe he could fall off the back of the truck on the way home from the Fair, and he wouldn’t be able to find his way home. I wouldn’t do that though, either, because then my friend Joannie Jenkinson, the town animal control officer, would get one of those calls to come rescue a rooster. And, unfortunately, she already gets too many of those.

So I guess I’m going to have to learn to put up with Paulie. Or not.

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain

Too Cute: A Little Girl + Baby Farm Animals

February 3, 2014 Susie Middleton 2 Comments

Libby and I were watching a show on Animal Planet this weekend called Too Cute. It’s a good name for a program about puppies and kittens and other baby critters that happen to wander into people’s lives. Because honestly, who doesn’t find baby animals cute?

Around here, I’m embarrassed to say, we’re rather obsessed with baby critters. In fact, we weren’t just watching them on TV this weekend. We had one (have one) right here in our living room.

We have a new kitten.

He is 9 weeks old.

He is black and white and cute all over.

His name is Barney, because he’s been living in the barn. That is, after he got separated from his mom, a feral cat, and Roy began to feed him and talk to him. Eventually, Roy scooped him up and put him in a crate. It was just a matter of time before crate and kitten moved indoors.

After his first night in the house late last week, Barney came with us for a visit to our fabulous vet, Animal Health Care. There we learned that Barney was in fact Barney, not Barn-ie or Barnadette. He was a he. And healthy. And apparently, on the far side of too cute. Everyone at the vet held him, passed him around, snuggled him, hoarded him.

“Wait, that’s our kitten!” I said.

“Sorry, we’re kidnapping him,” they said.

Finally, we did make it out of there with Barney, and we spent the rest of the weekend watching Farmer and Barney become friends. Farmer was beside himself with excitement. He always wanted a playmate.

As for Libby, well, nothing’s better than a baby animal.

Who knew this crazy farm life would offer up so many great opportunities for a girl who loves animals to interact with such an interesting menagerie of critters, from snakes and turtles and butterflies to calves and lambs and kids and fawns? You can’t predict this stuff or make it up. It just happens.

Proof is in the pictures. Shameful, yes. Too cute? Definitely. But it’s cold and dreary today; we’ll take a little warm-up, however we get it.

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain

A Black and White Gallery of Winter Farm Photos

January 20, 2014 Susie Middleton 11 Comments

My neck aches from sitting in front of the computer too much. It’s all book promotion, all the time, right now, as we lead up to the publication date. So between emails and phone calls and this and that, I don’t get up and walk around enough.

In the afternoon, I try to do my laps around the corn field. And I did (reluctantly) help Roy clean one of the big chicken coops yesterday.

Of course, I have to walk Farmer now and then. And I feed and water the hens in the small coops first thing in the morning.

And, like a new mother checking on a sleeping baby, I always visit the hoop house, lift up the covers, and make sure the lettuce is still alive.

But about mid-morning, I need a blast of mind-clearing fresh air.

I use the camera as my excuse to go outside. Not a very good excuse though, since lately the light has been dingy and the colors rather cranky and evasive.

What still interests me, though, is texture and pattern.

A grey day on a farm makes you look differently at the odd mish-mash of shapes and materials that lie still in the cold, waiting for the warm day they’ll be useful again (or not).

So after I took my photos this morning, I found looking at them in black and white was much more interesting than in color. (Even the birds looked cool.) So I’m posting a gallery, just for fun. I can think of any excuse to avoid work!

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Garden

Shelter from the Storm: Why Farm Structures Matter

January 2, 2014 Susie Middleton 7 Comments

When you begin growing vegetables and raising animals on even the very smallest of farms, you quickly learn that there are three uber-important issues to deal with: 1) Land, of course. (How much space do you have? How healthy is your soil?) 2) Water. (Where is your source? How will you get it to where you need it? Will you have enough?) and 3. Structures. (Where will you need them? How will you build them?)

Number three might surprise you. But as I walked around the farm in the snow this morning, indulging myself in photos of frosted branches and frolicking hens, I realized how often I focused on the door of a shed, the mullions of a window, the turn of a gate. Out in the back field, I stopped to turn around and take a picture of the farm from afar, and I realized just how many structures Roy has built since we moved here.

While the chickens are happy to hop about the snow (which they sort of peck at instead of drinking their partially frozen water), they dart in and out of their coops when the wind comes up. (Outside, they keep themselves warm by puffing up their feathers to trap air.) And tonight when the bitter cold and wind comes, they will be warm, bunched up together on their roosts, inside their locked coops, safe from predators. We have 8 coops now—one in the process of being converted into a duck house. One coop also incorporates a small area for holding grain.

We have a farm stand structure, which includes a back room where we do all our egg processing. (The front functions as the farm stand and holds the egg refrigerator for customers.)

We have two tool sheds and one grain bin/shed. Roy has converted part of one of the tool sheds into a “walk-in,” an insulated room for keeping eggs from freezing.

The grain bin down by our five biggest coops holds some hay for nesting boxes and coop floors, too. But we could use a bigger area to store hay.

And of course we have the hoop house, where much to my dismay, everything—kale, collards, baby bok choy, lettuce, arugula—is thriving, despite this cold.

Everything inside the hoop house is also under two layers of cover—one fabric, one plastic. And the actual temperature in there this morning was above freezing!

The hoop house is an incredible structure—not only does it protect from the elements, but based on what we’ve sold out of it versus how much it cost to build, it’s a money-maker, too.

And fencing—well, that is one of your top-of-the-list structures on a farm. Lots of post-hole digging and deer-fence-erecting went on here, not only to protect our crops, but to create very large (semi-)protected pastures for our chickens. (Additional guy wires cover the pens; they’re intended to discourage hawks but don’t always work.) We were lucky to have a good deal of property-delineating fencing (like that above) in place when we arrived.

We don’t have a barn—yet. Roy has converted a small former garage on the property into his workshop. Long ago, there was a grand barn on this farm (the remaining stone foundation is where we housed the pigs this summer), but it would cost a fortune to erect a new one there. (Oh, and the pig pen itself was another structure! The stone foundation formed three walls, but Roy repurposed old railroad ties and wood pallets to make a secure fourth wall and gate.)

Which brings me around to the cost-of-structure issue. Always a good idea to look far ahead and budget for these things, as we did this year for the farm stand, the new coops, and the grain bin.

And then, salvage, salvage, salvage.

Roy recycles as much old (usable) wood, windows, doors and hardware as he can. (People actually bring us stuff now, too—recycling is a way of life here on the Island. Witness the compost pile, below, of donated horse manure.)

But of course you need someone to do the building, too. We are very lucky here on Green Island Farm to have a farmer who is also a licensed builder, but partnering or bartering with someone with carpentry skills can be a good plan. Keeping the structures as simple and efficient as possible is important, too. For a small operation on a budget, fancy is not practical. Also, living with a problem for a little while, if possible, can present the best solution.

All this reminds me to tell you that I’m pretty excited that some of our resident builder’s designs have been included in a special appendix in my new book. So when you get your copy of Fresh From the Farm, be sure to turn to the back of the book for drawings of a great small chicken coop, a basic farm stand, a covered raised bed, and a seed-starting system. (Thank you, Roy!)

In the meantime, stay warm and dry. (I almost forgot that part—you need a house, too, to shelter the farmers. Nothing fancy, though. Remember, they don’t spend too much time inside.)

Edible, Farm life, The Recipes

The Year in Photos: 2013 on Green Island Farm

December 26, 2013 Susie Middleton 6 Comments

January

Brrrrrr….

Crunch, crunch through the snow and ice.

The new hoop house, post-hurricane, post-nor’wester, mid-snow-spell, still standing.

February

Winter whites aren’t so bad…a simple cauliflower gratin made a hearty dinner.

Crisp, rosy Pirat lettuce thrived in the hoop house–year-round growing might just happen!

March

Baby kale rocked the winter garden.

So we mixed it with Savoy cabbage for a spectacular slaw.

April

Cosmo seedlings were happy, happy in the hoop house — hope for the flowers.

We made farm bouquets of white daffodils to honor the Boston Marathon bombing victims.

The first bok choy harvest from the hoop house was perfectly lovely with no pest damage.

May

It doesn’t get any cheerier than this–little bunches of Easter Egg radishes hit the farm stand.

The brand NEW farm stand, I should add.

But the little heads of purple bok choy got my vote for prettiest spring vegetable.

The 300 new pullets got used to their new digs pretty quickly…

…while the yearlings were laying like crazy.

And of course there were new babies.

June

This first crop of Nelson carrots were extra sweet.

And guess who arrived at the farm? That would be Wilbur and Dozer.

The birthday rose started blooming.

And an uninvited guest stayed for the weekend, much to Libby’s delight.

Harvesting and washing all those salad greens was just exhausting, Farmer said.

July

Finally the good stuff started rolling in.

Meanwhile the boys got bigger, thanks to nonstop snacking.

August

The farm stand looked spiffy in high summer.

And then it was Back Yard Black Raspberry Ice Cream time again–the best!

The Fair was pretty swell too–lots of blue ribbons, including one for Libby’s eggs!Cosmos and sunflowers went into knock-out mode in late August.

September

Goldenrod and Joe Pye Weed painted the path along the Square Field.

Apples and pears decked out the farm stand.

And our fine-feathered Polish Crested turned out to be Paulie, not Polly.

October

We loved the October light and our first Sugar Pie pumpkins.

Options for a harvest frittata were endless in October.

November

The Aracaunas started laying–some blue eggs, some green.

A November surprise brought us this rare juxtaposition: Snowflakes on nasturtiums.

For Thanksgiving, we made a potato, gruyere, and horseradish gratin.

December

A winter warm salad template got a lot of hits on Pinterest!

We made peppermint meringues from our egg whites.

And roasted beet “jewels” from Fresh From the Farm!

We cut down our tree…

and hid the bare spots with lots of ornaments and tinsel.
We snipped holly and cedar from the back fields and decorated the farm stand to look festive.

At last, it was Christmas morning: Warm popovers and cool winter light on Green Island Farm.

It was a year of plenty.

“And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.” — Wendell Berry

May 2014 bring you lots of every-day, garden-variety moments of joy.

Farm life

Peppermint Kisses & Red-Tailed Hawks: So This is Christmas

December 19, 2013 Susie Middleton 4 Comments

Mr. Big (as in Huge) red-tailed hawk helped himself to a hen yesterday. He has been circling for days, gliding from one pine-tree top to the next, always with an eye down, looking for his opening. The smart and fast hens head for their coops or hide under a canopy of tree branches when they hear his eerie screech or see him on the move. But there’s always one….

Hawks are part of the winter landscape that I love so much, and I can’t begrudge them the hunt. After all, the rabbits and voles and mice that hawks usually dine on have all gone into hiding. (The mice into our house of course—mice being a wee bit more resourceful than chickens, in my opinion.)

Stepping outside these days is such a contrast to the warm sparkly cookie baking/tree decorating/present wrapping vibe we’ve got going inside: The light covering of snow on the spent cornfield, the faintly luminous grey noontime sky, the theater of gnarled and twisted bare-limbed trees in the uber-still air. And that gulp of cold air that catches your breath, the chill that makes you curl your fingers into a fist inside your gloves. Startling.

I love going outside. And then I love coming back in.

Even though, no matter how much we try to seal all the drafts in this creaky-leaky old farm house, it is still on the chilly side.

And our Christmas tree brings new meaning to the whole Charlie Brown thing. After traipsing around out back for far too long on the coldest day last weekend, we finally settled on something we thought would work–with the bare back half to the wall! Roy cut it down, dragged it in, and we had a good laugh.

Fortunately, now that I’ve fortified it with my ornament collection and lots of tinsel, it doesn’t look half bad. I just try not to look up when thumbing through Martha Stewart Living. But every Christmas tree is beautiful at night, isn’t it? Especially when you turn all the other lights out in the living room and gaze, mesmerized, at the twinkle show that remains.

Now, so far we have eaten every single Christmas cookie we’ve made. Dad ate the beautiful sugar cookies Libby decorated as fast as I could bake them. So much for gift giving (more batches to come.) Yesterday, I played around with egg whites and a pastry bag (big fun) and made peppermint meringue kisses, a recipe by my fabulous baker friend Abby Dodge. I got the recipe out of one of Fine Cooking’s special cookie collections, but it’s on the web, too. I’ve never been a great egg-white-whipper and I think I could have gone a little further with these, but I’m jazzed to make them again. (I tried chopping and smashing peppermint candies a few different ways, too, and that was a hoot.)

In case you can’t tell, I love Christmas. And cold days that make baking, well, essential to one’s well-being. And I also love these precious limbo days at the close of the year. Serious work goes on hold; afterall, there’s a whole new year coming for that.

Edible, Farm life

Decorating the Farm Stand with Farm Finds, Picker Style

December 10, 2013 Susie Middleton 7 Comments

Artsy-craftsy I am not. That doesn’t keep me from trying. For the better part of 30 years, I’ve indulged myself with ridiculous forays into the world of “natural” holiday decorating, usually concocting something that generally falls apart in a week, if not an hour. (For the record, my sister Eleanor, who will be reading this blog and laughing, did inherit the artsy gene. Growing up, we had a neighborhood contest, and she often won for the decorations she did for our house.)

Unfortunately, the bad news is that I have now stumbled into not only a wealth of backyard greenery (the farm is full of pines and even hollies with berries on them!), but I also have a little farm stand to spiff up. And a farm stand, as far as I’m concerned, might as well be a doll house. So cute, and it just screams out to be decorated.

So now I am dangerous.

You will be happy to know that half-way through my personal decorating party I staged on Saturday, I gave up on the “swag” to drape around the cut-out window in the farm stand. Short of calling my sister or my friend Mary Wirtz (who will also be reading this and laughing), I had no choice. My limited patience with wiring branches together (that of course didn’t stay together or hide the gaping holes) did me in.

But I did manage to take advantage of some cute props. Since Roy is a picker/junker extraordinaire (I think I’ve mentioned before that American Pickers is his favorite TV show!), and both of us love old metal stuff (and 50s Santa mugs), I had a few things I could simply fill up with snipped pine, holly, and juniper. (The chalice at the top of the blog is a Roy pick.)

I tucked in a few blue eggs here and there, and, voilá, holiday decorations, farm-style.

Then I added a plate of clementines (and a plate of fudge–now gone; cookies coming) for our egg-buying customers who are still visiting the farm stand. And I was happy.

There was a clutch moment (actually before I started decorating) when a classic argument about colored vs. white lights threatened to derail the farm stand decorating project. But after I explained the whole greenery/antique junky stuff theme I had in mind, Roy agreed that white lights were best. I haven’t been able to get a good photo at night, so you will have to make do with this grainy one.

Next up: Heading out back with Roy and Libby this weekend to cut down the Christmas tree. And Libby and I have collaborated on a surprise Birthday/Christmas present for Roy, which we’re picking up this weekend. He claims not to want to know what it is, but I’m going to have to tell him soon. Hint: It waddles.

Edible, Farm life

Thanksgiving Tinsel

November 26, 2013 Susie Middleton 4 Comments

Roy walked in the house this afternoon with an armful of dried Japanese maple leaves. “Wanna see something cool?” he said, as I scraped pumpkin cheesecake batter into a gingersnap-crusted springform pan. I turned around and fell in love at once with this wispy pink cloud of rosy what-nots. Our first holiday decoration, we decided—Thanksgiving tinsel.

It’s funny about Thanksgiving week, how different and special it feels. The normal routine is knocked about just enough to open up space and time for those pause-button moments, when you notice something beautiful that the wind blew in to your back yard.

Sure, it’s cold. The chickens’ water is frozen. Ratzilla is back in the attic. (And his cousin, Ratatouille, is in the kitchen. I found his stash of chocolate chips, toasted almonds, and doggie kibble behind Mastering The Art of French Cooking the other day.) The wind blows through the windows of this old farmhouse like nobody’s business.

But the hoop house is warm and snug in the early afternoon sun—a good place to go and just rest for a minute. And Roy’s newly built insulated “walk-in” shed is keeping the eggs from freezing.

This week the sun is closing down before 4 pm, and the early darkness is startling. But morning brings customers down the driveway to buy three or four dozen eggs at a time. Everyone is smiling, talking about who’s coming to visit, whether the boats will run in the storm, what they’re planning to cook, how the menu’s coming together. For cooks, there’s sheer joy in all the choices, the dogearing of cookbooks and downloading of recipes. The permission to bake everything from dinner rolls to lattice-top pies. Or to completely deconstruct the spice rack, as I did this afternoon. That I admit, was probably not necessary. If the spices are getting a little old, well, at least there are fresh herbs still alive outside. Sage and rosemary—my heroes.

I love this holiday that celebrates food and gratitude. What more do you need, really? Well, a warm house would be nice…not that there’s anything wrong with this one…

Happy Thanksgiving.

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Garden, The Recipes

Capturing Time in a Basket of Blue Eggs

November 4, 2013 Susie Middleton 6 Comments

Just like that, the frost came, the leaves fell, the days shortened, and the blue eggs appeared. Sometimes, there isn’t a logic to what happens on the farm, and since change is constant around here, it’s easy to miss the subtle shifts. But then you walk outside one morning and it hits you—another season on the farm has gone by and while you’re already busy planning for the next one, there’s one right here, right now. A spectacular moment in time, one that can’t necessarily be defined or pinned down, just marveled at.

There’s really no corollary between golden leaves and blue eggs; it just happens that the Aracaunas (who grew big and beautiful over the summer) started to lay in earnest this week and we finally have a whole clutch of blue and green eggs to ogle. We’ve been wondering if all the eggs would be the color of Sugar’s—a paler shade of Robin’s egg blue. So far there’s a murky tidal green, a Sugary blue, and one true teal.

The Aracaunas themselves match the leaves that are falling by the zillions, Roy raking them up in bursts of energy while I avoid that least favorite task as best I can. I do haul a cart or two into the garden every now and then, as I am ripping out dead veggie plants, adding compost to garden beds and covering them up with leaves and mulch for the winter. I am weighing down the leaves with spent sunflower and zinnia stalks, which are as stiff as bamboo.

I am also nursing the hoop house back to life, filling beds with transplants and seeds, harvesting arugula and kale, discouraging mice. We are curing pumpkins and winter squash for the first time in the green house, too. I’m especially excited about the Japanese kabocha squash we grew in the back field, though I hope we didn’t harvest it too soon. The vines weren’t quite dry, but they needed to come out for Roy to finish prepping the new field, which is looking spiffy.

And wouldn’t you know it, just ahead of the freezing weather, Roy reached water with the well pipe he’s been driving, driving, driving down into the ground. The new well will provide a closer water source for the 500 chickens and will also irrigate the new field next summer.

Overnight, the summer veggies disappeared from the farm stand. I decided not to foist any more green tomatoes or free jalapenos off on anyone, though we’re still harvesting greens and packing them up for egg customers to discover in the fridge.

The skies darkened and the first rains came over the weekend, happily driving us inside to play board games with Libby. Or I should say, to lose to Libby while playing board games. The marathon Gardenopoly tournament ended like this: Libby—$8,000 and every single property; Dad—bankrupt; Susie—$1. Watching her squirm with delight is one of those moments in time that I really wish I could pin down. As she barrels (or more accurately, skips and runs) towards 12 years old, I want to stay here in 11-year-old world with her just a little longer.

One thing I know for sure: While my memory isn’t so great any more, and some of these moments are going to get fuzzy for me down the road, Libby won’t forget. She’s got a whole lifetime to carry happy farm memories forward. Blue eggs and crazy colorful chickens. Leaf piles and fairy houses. Blustery days, board games, beach walks. Arrowheads, deer antlers, sharks teeth, starfish. Turtles, garden snakes, baby skunks. Owl spotting, sheep watching, pig petting. And hanging out with her best furry friend—Farmer, of course.

Sixburnersue.com

Category Archives: Farm life

Blue & White and Read All Over: A Blizzard & A Book Party

And Now, For the Not-So-Cute Barnyard Animal

Too Cute: A Little Girl + Baby Farm Animals

A Black and White Gallery of Winter Farm Photos

Shelter from the Storm: Why Farm Structures Matter

The Year in Photos: 2013 on Green Island Farm

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Peppermint Kisses & Red-Tailed Hawks: So This is Christmas

Decorating the Farm Stand with Farm Finds, Picker Style

Thanksgiving Tinsel

Capturing Time in a Basket of Blue Eggs

Vegetables, flowers, and serenity with Susie Middleton