Category Archives: Farm life

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

All the Signs are Pointing to a Great Season

6 Comments

You never know what’s going to pop up next on the list of farm chores this time of year. Actually, there isn’t enough time to make a physical list, as we start working the minute we get up and don’t stop until the sun sets. So we just juggle priorities in our heads and move from one thing to the next—transplanting, seeding, mulching, watering, harvesting, egg collecting, packaging, checking on the baby chicks, setting up the farm stand, mowing, raking, staking, fencing, you name it. So when Libby was here last weekend, a chore bubbled to the top of my brain that I thought might actually double as a fun activity. Kind of a Tom Sawyer trick—sign painting.

We spent the better part of the afternoon painting signs for the chicken coops (each one has the name of a town or place on the Vineyard) and various signs we need around the farm. We even painted a bench. We laid newspapers on the picnic table, opened every half-used can of paint we had, and set ourselves up near the farm stand so we could greet customers, too. I think Libby enjoyed this, though the best part of the whole day was the laugh she got when I toppled over the Adirondack chair while backing up to take a picture of her. For a 10-year-old, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Later in the week, I sat down at the picnic table and made up more signs—this time for our tomato plant sale this weekend. Roy has a most excellent scrap pile of shingles and odd pieces of wood for making signs, so there’s no lack of material. Talent is another thing—this kind of crafty stuff is not my forte, although I sure enjoy the relaxation of sitting down and doing it, and it has to get done. (Better that than say, fix the lawn mower or build nest boxes like Roy was doing!) The signs are important too—the chalkboard sign by the side of the road has brought in lots of tomato plant customers in the last two days. (Today it is covered in plexiglass because of the rain.)

 

Yesterday, in fact, was an excellent day for farm stand business, and Roy and I are feeling good about all the improvements and additions we’ve made for this season, because we can already see our goals being realized. It doesn’t mean there aren’t setbacks, but after three years of doing this, we’re finally hitting our stride. There are good “signs” everywhere—from blossoms on the peas in May to gorgeous basil and fledgling tomatoes already in the hoop house. So it’s good to stop the chore frenzy for a minute, plop down on the farm stand porch, and look around at everything the work has produced. The satisfaction doesn’t last long though, because our eyes always land on something that needs fixing. Oh well! There’s always winter for relaxing.

P.S. Checking up on the baby chicks is not such a bad farm chore!

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, The Recipes

Will it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3? Only the Hens Know

4 Comments

Our 300 new pullets arrived yesterday. That makes a total of 540 chickens for us. The pullets are 16 weeks old and will begin laying small eggs in about a month. By high summer, we will be collecting more than 3000 eggs a week. That’s 250 dozen, plus.

Should be interesting.

The delivery came a week early (of course), with a few days warning. So Roy has been working like mad to get the three new coops built and the fencing up. When the girls arrived at 10 am yesterday, we took them directly out of their travel crates and put them right in the coops to get them used to their new homes.

After setting up the farm stand this morning (above)  and eating my breakfast (Green Island Farm eggs of course!), I went down to watch Roy let the girls out into their lovely grassy field.

But the girls were not in a hurry. We watched and waited a bit, then went back to work. It took the first birds until 2 pm to get up the courage to go out (even though they could see their big sisters in the pen right next to theirs.) And even then, one entire coop stayed put for another hour. It was the funniest thing watching them all standing in the doorways. Which ones would come out first? All I could think of was the “The Price is Right.” Would it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3? Well, the group behind Door #1 were definitely the brave ones, out and about first. (Top photo.) Group 3 (bottom photo) followed, while Group 2 (middle photo) must have had something pretty interesting going on in the coop, because they didn’t budge for quite a while.

It’s a beautiful day for the girls to be settling into their new digs. Let’s just hope they don’t get too adventuresome too quickly. Their big sisters found an opening in their fence yesterday, and about 60 of them went strolling down the Land Bank path right about the time the pullets were arriving. (At least there weren’t as many escapees as last time.)

And fortunately the pullets don’t have to worry about being the new kids on the block for too long. Our 25 baby Aracauna chicks are due to arrive at the post office on Monday. Yes, you heard that right. But they won’t start laying (blue) eggs until September, so that’s two dozen we won’t have to think about for a while!

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

From One Farmhouse to Another—and A Foggy Morning Walkabout

12 Comments

I am, quite famously, a homebody. For years I had to travel a good deal in my job, but I never really loved it. I was born under the sign of Cancer (with a rising Cancer moon) so I am all about hanging out in my shell, well-fed (of-course), and warm and cozy. If I do go somewhere, I like to stay for a while. It was such a big deal for me to come spend a few months on the Vineyard five years ago that I never left! These days, there are just a couple places—and people—that can pull me off this rock.

One of those places is York, Maine. And one of those people is my best friend Eliza. Who happens to live in York. And there just happens to be a cooking school in York at the famous Stonewall Kitchen complex, and every year they ask me to come teach a couple classes. (Last weekend was my annual trip.) Truthfully, as a cookbook author, I am required to do some travel to promote my books. So I always say yes to Stonewall Kitchen because it means I get to go see Eliza, her husband Chip, her kids Nathalie, Katie, and James—and, Double Bonus Points—our other childhood best friend, Liz Gray, who lives in Maine as well.

Though it’s not just my friends who make me feel so comfortable in York. There is a place—Eliza’s grandmother’s house, which has now passed on to the grandchildren—that I visited almost every summer as a kid. It hasn’t changed at all in the 50 years I’ve known it (except that it is very well-maintained) and my memories are extraordinarily vivid of the happy times I spent there with Eliza and her family—in the house, in the barn, in the fields out back. Old foundations, an old cemetery, a vegetable garden. And my first encounter ever with a rhubarb plant. I remember the rhubarb at Grandma’s house so enthusiastically that I had to go back and take pictures of it last weekend. Eliza’s father Jim told me he thinks it was probably planted in 1932.

For some reason (many reasons probably), during all the years I worked and lived in cities and suburbs, I held Grandma’s house in my fantasies as the ideal home. I always wanted to live in a farm house. I think that’s why I fell in love with our little place as soon as I saw it (even though it is teeny and rustic)—it just felt familiar. Or at least felt like a place this little crab would want to find shelter in. It had lilacs, an old stone foundation, a giant maple tree and rolling fields. But no rhubarb! I thought every farm house had at least one rhubarb plant, but what might have been here is now gone. We resorted to planting our own and have been busy trying to kill it ever since. Most recently Roy rototilled right over the dormant plants. Miraculously, they are up and thriving.

 

Amazingly, I woke up at 6:18 this morning, my body finally adjusting to the seasonal farm schedule I will need to keep. Thinking about how much I love this place and looking at the dense fog outside, I grabbed my camera and did a walkabout, just like Eliza and I used to do as kids in Maine.

 

First, I went out to the fields behind us. Roy is all excited about his mower attachment for the tractor and he’s been making us hay mulch for the garden—yay! I checked on the chickens. I imagined the field with 300 more chickens (they’re coming next week), and saw the progress Roy is making on new coops.

Along the way, I encountered some wild creatures. Pepe Le Pew was waiting for me at the far compost pile. Tom Turkey was busy trying to catch himself a hen. The black shadowy figure in the mist was Farm Dog himself.

Next, I checked on progress in the garden. Peas thriving. Lettuce waiting for me to harvest. Potatoes sprouting. Radishes harvested.

We’ve been working  hard. Blueberries are pruned and mulched. Perennial and herb beds tidied up. Garden beds tilled and planted one by one, paths weeded, transplants in transit. We even have our first cosmos from the plants I started months ago inside.

It’s lovely here—now if we just had a big barn like Grandma’s! (Well, a house like hers would be nice, too.) But there is one thing we have that Grandma’s doesn’t—a farm stand. Here’s a sneak peek at our new farm stand structure—more on this soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life

Small Wonder: Spring on Green Island Farm

6 Comments

I was heading out to the farm stand with this bowl of radishes the other day when a friend intercepted me and bought one bunch straight out of the dish. After that, I rushed in to get the camera before the next bunch disappeared (which it did, very shortly thereafter.) I don’t blame these folks for snatching up the radishes—honestly, is there a cheerier harbinger of spring? Well, I guess you could name quite a few things (flowering trees, singing birds, green grass), but in the vegetable world, radishes are as cheery as it gets. And thanks to the hoop house, I’ve got radishes in April—yippee!

I am celebrating the small stuff all around the farm today as it happens to be warm and sunny, and I was beginning to think “warm and sunny” was some mirage I’d never quite reach. (I should say it is “warmish” here—high 50s.) On Monday it blew so hard that the latch on the gate to the big chicken pen popped open (which it hasn’t done in previous storms) and all of the 200 chickens in it went for a walkabout—over to the neighbor’s woods, through a pine grove, around the future pig pen, and just generally anywhere they could disappear. It took us the better part of the day to get them all back in. Argh. Not to be snide, but I have to say that one of the things I am celebrating today is no wind—and chickens happily back in their pen.

Also, this morning I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Finding Your Soul, and in his post today, “Everything We Need Is Right Here,” David Anderson talks about all the wonder that’s right in front of our eyes while we’re off seeking something better somewhere else. So I thought to take the camera and snap a few other things I’m marveling at now that spring is actually coming to Green Island Farm.

Chartreuse maple flowers unfurling on bare branches against a Carolina blue sky.

 

Big fat healthy tomato plants in the greenhouse. We started our “early” tomatoes in February and have managed to bring them along nicely, letting them hang out in the hoop house by day and stay snug inside the house at night.

 

Copious amounts of bok choy to sell at the farm stand. We grew the first batch in the hoop house. Batches 2 and 3 (including the pretty purple stuff) are coming along in a long raised bed outside the hoop house (where the early tomatoes will be transplanted in a few weeks.) Get some of this delicious veggie into your kitchen soon–here’s one recipe idea (a stir-fry; my friend Joannie says this is the best!) and here’s another (my friend Eliza’s favorite–Spicy Noodle Hot Pot!).

 

 

The pea plants germinated beautifully and are ready to come out from under cover, where they’ve been hiding from the birds.

 

Basil seedlings are healthy and we have hundreds of them!

 

Beautiful Pirat Butterhead lettuce is “too pretty to cut” my friend Mary says. Alas, I’ve already tucked into it and pulled heads for the farm stand.

 

Last year’s everbearing strawberry plants already have blossoms.

 

And yes, the grass is green. I know, I know but this is a big deal to me. We’ve been looking at mud for months. This is the pine grove at one end of our back field, where Farmer and I go for walks.

And when it comes to being excited about springtime and fresh grass, no one’s happier than Farmer. We’ll be walking along and all of a sudden he just gets down and does a roly-poly in the grass. He stands back up, shakes, and then skips off, happy as can be. We should all be so carefree. Maybe if your day isn’t going so well, you could try rolling in the warm grass!

 

 

 

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain

Beauty and The Beast

4 Comments

The day before we go to pick up Libby, we tell Farmer, “Guess who’s coming tomorrow?” First his ears perk up, and then, when we say, “We’re going to get LIBBY!” he runs around the living room and jumps up on the sofa to look out the window.  “Where is she? Where is she? I can’t wait! I can’t wait!”

By the time Libby leaves, Farmer is so exhausted that he climbs up on our bed and doesn’t move for two days.

He loves that girl like nobody’s business. And she loves him. A little girl and a dog, made for each other.

This is the kind of weekend when farm chores can be overwhelming, and Farm Dog and Farm Girl are both co-opted into helping. Roy is teaching Farmer to herd chickens. Plus, Farmer has to keep an eye out for customers coming down the driveway and duly alert us when he sees them. Libby, admittedly, is a good deal more helpful than Farmer. Together, we’ve been moving seedlings back and forth from the house to the greenhouse, planting more flower and vegetable seeds, picking lettuce, washing lettuce, packing eggs, putting the covers back on the garden beds that blew off in the wind the other night, and weeding  her garden plot.

Since these two hard workers deserve a break, Roy has taken them for a romp down at Quansoo beach.  Actually, they just got back, blowing in the back door, giggling and jingling. Libby is covered in sand and has a big grin on her face. She fell in the water apparently. Fortunately, Farmer didn’t have to rescue her. All is well. They had fun.

They will both sleep well tonight.

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

Gone Greenhousin’ — See You Later!

2 Comments

You know those kitschy signs you see hanging on back doors that say “Gone Fishin’’” or “Gone to the Beach?” Well, you’ll have to excuse my silliness this morning, but I am heading down to the hoop house and hanging a virtual sign right here that says “Gone Greenhousin.'” Because I’ve been sitting at my desk all week, aching to get down there to plant and transplant and pot-up and putter. So off I go. If you are looking for me, this is where I will be. In a place that feels like summer–a place that is actually warm!

Though you could say I jumped the gun a little bit, it’s nice to have heat loving plants like cosmos (top photo), nasturtiums, and basil hanging around. I cover them with plastic at night when the temperature in the hoop house goes down to just below 40°F. On a sunny day, it quickly gets up to 80°F, though we bring it down to 70°F by popping in the screens in both doors.

Swiss Chard seedlings, Round Two, are coming, and lots more lettuce, like my favorite Flashy Green Buttercrunch. I’ve already transplanted 400  lettuce seedlings into the garden outside. They’re covered with row fabric.

Today I’m going to fill a flat with more baby bok choy seed, and maybe transplant some dill and parsley seedlings. I’ll dip the pots in a weak bleach solution first and rinse them off.

 

Cherry Belle and Easter Egg radishes (right), sandwiched between arugula sprouts, will be harvestable in only a couple weeks and I’m still picking from the first planting of this beautiful Red Pirat lettuce.

And if I really want to daydream, I can look out the newly installed rear (eastern) door onto the “back forty” (actually the “back four”) where visions of strawberries are dancing in our heads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life

These Are The Days

11 Comments

Lest you think we are all farm and no play around here…Yesterday we took advantage of a 24-hour visit from Libby and the most beautiful day we’ve seen in months and headed up to the clay cliffs at Gay Head for a spectacular beach walk.  My Iphone ran out of juice, so I didn’t get to document Libby covered in clay from head to toe. (We always forget to bring appropriate clean-up materials on this kind of walk.)

While Roy looked for arrowheads and Libby painted herself with warrior clay, I lay down in the warm sand with my face to the sun and almost fell asleep. In my head, Keith Urban’s song, These Are The Days, was playing. Partly because I was thinking, “These are the days we’ve been waiting for all through the cold mucky winter.” But also I was thinking how great it is to be present and to know that it absolutely does not get any better than it is right in that moment.

Maybe all that sunshine was going to my head—it is incredibly uplifting after all. And no doubt we are very fortunate to live in such a beautiful place, though we tend to forget it sometimes. But no matter where you are or what the weather is this Easter weekend, I hope you find yourself walking into the light, enjoying moments with your family or friends, and remembering to take a mental snapshot of what you love most so you can conjure it up on a rainy day.

Animals, Edible, Farm life, The Recipes

Jumbo Eggs & Chicken Collectibles; Plus A Cabbage Recipe & A Candle for Sixburnersue

5 Comments

Merrily skipping outside with my camera this morning, I had visions of writing about hope and rebirth (jumping right past St. Patrick’s Day to Easter), so I started snapping photos of chives and daffodils poking through the ground.

Then down to the hoop house I went (again) figuring I hadn’t yet inundated you with enough baby seedling pix.

 

Oh, and the first true leaves on the tomato seedlings under the lights—you’d have to see those.

But very quickly I got distracted. I went to check the nest boxes and found a lovely egg in a sunny bed of straw.

And then I remembered that every night while we’re washing and packing the eggs, I marvel at how striking they look in their almond and apricot and melony hues, so tidily arranged in their cartons. I wanted to show you our cool product.

 

And then I remembered that I keep meaning to photograph the jumbo and miniature eggs we get. The jumbo eggs, mostly double-yolkers, are so huge (sometimes more than 3 1/2 ounces) that it makes you wince thinking about those 4-pound hens laying them. We get three or four jumbos every day. The minis are more of an aberration. (The egg in the middle, below, is normal sized.)

Off I went to photograph eggs, and in the process, I added a chicken to one of the photos (see top of blog). We have a lot of chickens. Not just live chickens…

…But wooden chickens, china chickens, iron chickens, chickens on dishtowels and pot holders, chickens on plates and mugs. We are guilty of collecting them, and friends and family give us more. (Roy already had the one below when I met him. He and Libby bought the one above for me a couple years back.)

 

My friend Eliza gave us these great hen and rooster salt and pepper shakers.

 

My friend  Heidi dropped by yesterday with a cool hen tote bag and some produce bags from her sister’s company, Ecobags.

 

My mom recently passed along this lovely Nicolas Mosse plate and the great Barred Rock look-a-like (at top).

 

Our friend Mary gave us this wonderful Bridgewater chicken mug.

 

Roy’s mom found us an old egg carton stamp in an antique store…

 

…and Roy picked up this old egg scale at a tag scale.

 

One chicken-y shelf in our mudroom includes Roy’s egg cup from childhood and a little wooden toy rooster from Portugal I had as a child.

In the end I decided to share our chicken collectibles with you in the blog today. But then I figured I shouldn’t ignore St. Patrick’s Day altogether, so I found the link to this fabulous cabbage and potato gratin I created and posted two years ago. Reading that post, I realized (yikes) that St. Patrick’s Day is Sixburnersue.com’s official anniversary. Apparently you folks have been putting up with me and my rambling blogs for three years now—wow!

I have to thank you for that. And for helping me get through a nasty winter. Whether it’s shamrocks or garlic chives, fresh eggs or baby lambs, there’s plenty about spring to jump start our spirits.

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain

Ruffled Feathers

5 Comments

Believe me, I did not want to write about the weather again. I know, if you’re like me, you could really care less about what the weather is in, say, Charleston or San Francisco or Denver, if you’re not there. And don’t plan to be there any time soon. And I’m pretty sure you’re not coming to Martha’s Vineyard, what with the ferries docked and the planes grounded. Yes, we’re pretty much marooned. This time, a storm off the New England coast has been spinning around in a circle for three days. THREE DAYS of nonstop wind, and over the last day or so, spitting sideways icy icky precipitation. Every time we walk out the door, which we do, uh, a lot, what with 250 chickens to feed, water, let out, let in, etc., we get pummeled. What a winter.

There’s a lot to be grateful for, I know. We do not have 34 inches of snow on the ground. Our house is not falling into the sea (unlike some on the New England coast this week). We have heat. And food (of course). And power. So I have no business being so cranky. (The hens, on the other hand, have every right to complain, which they don’t, even when they venture out of their coops to try and scratch around in the mud, which is pretty futile. Their feathers flip up and around and backwards, making it impossible for them to puff up and keep warm. Ruffled feathers indeed. They march back inside pretty quickly.)

Instead of the weather, I’d wanted to tell you about all the lovely seedlings we’ve got going in the hoop house. But I’ve sat frozen at the computer, thinking if I do that, the one big mega-gust is going to come along and finally blow the hoop house down. (As it is right now, when you’re inside the hoop house it’s as loud as a helicopter landing pad. We open and close the door as quickly as possible so that the wind doesn’t rip it off.)

I must have faith that nothing is going to happen to the kale and chard and spinach and mizuna and tat soi and mustard and 12 kinds of lettuce seedlings we’ve got started—or the beautiful lettuce we’re already harvesting in the raised bed. And that the soil in the garden will dry out enough to get our peas in the ground in a few weeks. And that the sun will come out.

In the mean time, I sometimes just go down to the hoop house and stare at the incredibly beautiful colors of that lettuce—it’s the perfect antidote to the gray skies—and pinch myself that we have all this opportunity, all these possibilities, before us. And daffodils already poking up in the maple grove. Spring will come—on its own schedule.

And for now, at least someone in the household is enjoying the snow.

 

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain

About Those Piglets, Honey

7 Comments

We talked to a man about a pig the other day. At the grocery store. Not in the pork section, but over by the front door, where the newspapers and flower bouquets are. It may seem an odd place to discuss livestock, but our town is small, there’s only one grocery store, and in the winter, you know or recognize most everyone in there. Business happens between the curly kale and the navel oranges.

When we walked in, I veered right to look at O magazine, while Roy moved on down the produce aisle to talk to someone. I looked up and saw that it was the pig man. “We’ll take four,” I heard Roy say. Luckily, I put the magazine down in time to walk over and say, “He meant two.” More is always better, if you ask Roy, but if we are going to raise piglets for the first time, then I say start with two, not four. We’ll get them in the spring and it will take six to seven months to raise them to slaughter weight (250 pounds). They’ll need a pen and shelter, not to mention food. A lot of food. And a lot of water. And then of course, we will need a big freezer, which we don’t have. (One can only hope that our luck with free appliances continues.) These are Berkshire pigs (like the black sow above, right), known for very tasty bacon.

It is no secret that I am crazy about pigs. (That’s me in the  top photo, five—yes, five—years ago in my first few months on the Vineyard. I was developing recipes for my first book and feeding leftovers to some friendly sows owned by my new friend Liz Packer. I subsequently went around taking photos of pigs all over the Island. My favorite is below.) So this is surely going to be interesting. Both Libby and I have suggested that maybe one of the piglets should be a female. You know, just in case we decide to keep a breeding sow. I’m really not sure who is crazier, me or Roy. It’s kind of a dangerous combination. Will keep you posted.

In the meantime, just to gear myself up for all this, I’m going to make these delicious spareribs from Fine Cooking magazine for the Super Bowl. Or maybe these meatballs. Or this ragu. Yeah, I know, yikes.