Category Archives: Sustain

Farm life, The Garden

Sunrise and the Spider Web

1 Comment

The spiders and I were up early yesterday, weaving our webs for the day. I didn’t really think of it that way when I tiptoed out the door, camera in hand, trying not to rouse Farmer from his puppy dreams, wanting only to capture that big orange orb hovering over the trees. Maybe taking pictures at sunrise is just another way of trying to make time stand still, something I still haven’t accomplished, no matter how hard I try! (At least I can laugh at myself.) But I suspect there’s more to it than that. Just as I suspect the spiders are not weaving those incredibly intricate webs that string from one zinnia to the next simply for the purpose of catching a bug or two. The webs are just too beautiful, too painterly, too fanciful to be merely functional. And they are never more beautiful than when the low Eastern light refracts through the tiny dew drops scattered across them like diamonds. This you notice at sunrise. When you are traipsing through the garden in your pajamas and boots, hoping the beauty and quiet will last forever.

Alas, when the sun gets high, the sparkle dims, and the webs become harder to notice. They are still there of course, just like your best-laid plans. Meant to be broken. The day goes on the way it was meant to go, regardless of your direction. And the garden grows on the way it wants to grow, regardless of your supposed choreography. You know this when you open the gate at the end of the day and walk the paths again, noticing all the surprises it worked up for you. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

 

Farm life, Sustain

Living Local Suits me Fine

The pros and cons of living in a small Island community year-round are hotly debated, but I am forever in one camp. There is almost nothing I dislike about being on Martha’s Vineyard in the fall and winter. The hiking trails and beaches are wide open and that killer natural beauty I’m always writing about is just one big backyard to play in (if you, ahem, have the time!).

Yes, but what do you DO all winter, people ask? (Other than the obvious things, like work!) We see our friends, for one thing. We gather together after a summer when everyone is too busy to give more than a passing wave at the grocery store, and we catch up, and, well, trade notes. When your friends are farmers, fishermen, cooks, gardeners, landscapers, artists, craftsmen, yoga teachers, carpenters, and small business owners (usually two or more of those things, since everyone does more than one thing to cobble together a living out here), you have funny conversations about what everyone is doing to make a go of it.

I was reminded of this yesterday when we hopped across the street to the Ag Society (the Fair grounds) for the third annual Living Local Harvest Festival, a very cool free event that promotes sustainable living. Our conversations with friends went something like this: “How many turkeys are you raising this year?” “Where do you get your baby chicks?” “How are your hens laying?” “How many of those herbal soaps did you sell this summer?” “How’s the marketing going for your new sea salt?” “Can you donate extra garden veggies to the school?” “Are you scalloping this winter?” “Have you tried that compost tea?” “Did you do the seaweed tasting?” “Are you selling your wool this year?” “How’s that book going?”

The generous exchange of information is part of what makes living in a small community so wonderful. And watching friends get creative with their businesses is inspiring. And I think, too, there’s a little bit of reassurance in knowing that no one has it all completely figured out, but that everyone is going to keep trying, no matter what. And in the mean time, we’re going to eat well, let the kids have a great time, take care of the animals, and enjoy being outside.

Farm life, The Recipes

Fall Blossoms, Fresh Grass, & New Lettuce

8 Comments

For a brief moment earlier this week, I felt a huge sense of September-style relief. I had just met a big deadline. Whew. Then suddenly the nights got deliciously chilly, the mornings even chillier, and the cool, crisp dawn air seemed to wrap around me like clean bed sheets, letting me know the peace and quiet (and rest) of autumn and winter were on their way. This was a calm feeling I needed to imbibe, because in a flash, my dance card began to fill up again, and I found myself anxious and wondering why my so-called simple life can get complicated so quickly.

The truth is that while I should feel grateful for the success I’ve had as an author, many days I am resentful of the corollaries that fall out from that. Not only is my time not my own right now, but I have to force myself not to work in the garden—my Zen place—because it is too time-consuming, and too low-down on the priority list. Of course I still do my farm chores and harvest for the farm stand every morning, and it’s then that I try not to think too much about looming commitments—book signings, photo shoots, media events—and stay in the moment as much as possible. I wish I could keep that feeling all day, but I just don’t seem to get it from other activities. I’ve written about this before, but I often feel a distinctly spiritual aura when I’m outside on a beautiful, breezy day, maybe walking Farmer down the long path through the fields behind us, goldenrod blazing in bloom against a cartoon-blue sky, bees buzzing, geese honking, milkweed crackling. Or simply just crouching in the bean bed  in the garden, picking and tossing, feeling my hamstrings stretch, chuckling at an overgrown bean the size of a small corn cob.

Right now I am capturing (and holding) little bits of joy in a couple ways. First, there’s lettuce. Roy knows how much keeping the garden going means to me, and in only a few evenings of work, he dug and hauled away the dead tomato plants, re-dug the beds, and planted six new rows of lettuce for me to make salad mix for the farm stand. He’s also been clearing a lot of brush and junk with the tractor, building a new storage shed for my garden stuff, and getting ready to build our hoop house. And just today he re-fenced a new area for the chickens so he could move them on to fresh grass; they look so lovely and happy milling around in all that green. When we stop to look around, it is nothing short of exhilarating to see the farm we are building with this little opportunity we’ve been given.

Secondly, there are the flowers. I am tickled to death by all the blossoms in the garden who are turning up their noses at the threat of cold weather. (They’re smart, really—they know frost is still a long way off.) The eggplants are still blooming, the cosmos are rioting, the beans we planted in August are flowering like crazy, some of the cherry tomatoes are still blossoming, and Libby’s Ring of Fire sunflowers just started opening. There are zinnias aplenty, and marigolds and nasturtiums, and garlic chive blossoms and borage. Russian sage. Coneflowers. Cucumber blossoms. And my birthday rose—the one that nearly died from a delayed transplanting, is not only once again covered with leaves, but it just offered up a new bud this morning. Maybe it will bloom when my next deadline is past. I can’t wait.

Farm life, The Garden

Rosie the Ringleader and the Houdini Hens

1 Comment

We had a lovely visit from Brooklyn-based food and lifestyle photographer Alexandra Grablewski this week. She took pictures of us and just about everything on the farm but she was particularly fascinated with the chickens. It’s hard not to be—they are totally entertaining. Especially when they get out of their yard and go on walk-abouts.

I usually know when one or more has escaped the chicken yard, because I hear Farmer whining. He gets terribly upset if I don’t go out and immediately pick them up and return them to the pen. But often this happens during the day when I’m working—plus I know it’s probably just Rosie. Rosie (pictured here) is the independent type and seems to like using her wings to fly over a tall fence every morning. Occasionally two, three, or four follow her, and I can generally round those gals up without help. Roy claims I am the worst chicken rounder-upper out there, and it may be true.

But a couple times in the past week there’s been a mass exodus, so we’ve both had to do our rounding-up best. Look, it’s not like they don’t have a huge yard and fresh grass to feed on. They shouldn’t feel the need to travel—it’s just that, well, chickens like to cross the road, or the yard, or anything. In both of those cases, the culprit has been an unlatched or partially latched door they’ve managed to push open. (Of course we have no idea who would leave the gate unlatched!) And herding 48 laying hens is nothing short of comical.

Usually if you get close to them they’ll squat and let you pick them up. But a few are flighty and will just fuss and squawk and ruffle their feathers and generally be obstinate about the whole returning home thing. These are the ones who wind up underneath the tractor, in a thicket of brambles and branches, or over in the perennial flowers. Rosie will be hanging out with them, you can just count on it.

Eventually, with a chicken (or two) under each arm, we get them all back in. And then there’s the whole going-to-bed problem. Forty-three of the chickens go inside the coop just like chickens are supposed to do when the sun goes down. But five of them have decided that the best roosting spot is on top of the water trough out in the yard. So they have to be picked up and stuck inside the coop one by one. (Roy does this every night.) And if you do it too soon, they’ll just start coming back out as you’re getting the last one in.

Perhaps there’s a reason man started eating chickens so many years ago. Might be easier than keeping laying hens. The eggs are pretty darn tasty though.

P.S. Alexandra’s photos of the farm and chickens are for a future project, so we won’t be able to share any of them for awhile–but promise it will happen when the time comes!

Farm life, Sustain, The Garden, The Recipes

A Picnic Table Changes Everything

4 Comments

A few days before my birthday, a picnic table arrived in our yard, carted down the driveway in Roy’s truck. Roy held out for as long as he could, swearing he was not going to pay money for a picnic table when he could build one for much less, or better yet, build us a really lovely outdoor dining table. I know he was disappointed not to have the time to do it this summer, but at least he didn’t leave us without something to sit around for the birthday gathering.

We positioned the table under the shade of the giant maple, which just happens to be about halfway between the back door and the garden gate—the path we travel most often. We intended to move the table after the party, since it’s in the way of the rope swing. But it seems to be settling in, letting us know it’s happy where it is—and happy to do for us whatever we need. Oddly enough, it’s as if the table was always meant to be here, as if the backyard beckoned it to come complete our outdoor living room. (The grill is right nearby, too.)

And now we use the darn picnic table for everything. In the morning, I line up the harvest baskets on the benches and set out the scale and the scissors and the little green pint boxes and the jars of water for the basil and flowers on the table. After we’ve gathered zucchini and cucumbers and cherry tomatoes and what not, we sort it all out on the table and price it for the farm stand. Later in the day, I’ll perch at the end of one of the benches across from Roy, listening to him talk about his day at work while he sips his root beer.

Yesterday I procrastinated (I have two big deadlines looming!) by picking all different kinds of flowers from the garden (including one of the fragrant America rose blossoms from the rose bush Roy got me for my birthday) and arranging them in a row of jars and vases down the center of the picnic table. So beautiful! I got such a kick out of this activity (I’ve always enjoyed setting tables and arranging little flower bouquets), especially since we don’t have a big dining table inside, either. One of the quirks of our little old rustic farm house is no dining room—hence we eat on a tiny dropleaf table in the kitchen.

Of course, the best part about the picnic table is eating on it. There is something so relaxing about swinging your legs over the edge of a picnic bench (rather than pulling up a formal dining chair) that gets dinner off on the right foot. (Libby always requests dinner outside now). And since this is a big, long picnic table, there’s also room to serve dishes family-style. In fact, we put a cutting board down at one end, and anything from the grill comes straight there to be sliced up. Platters of veggies and salads mingle with the jars of flowers and glasses of lemonade, and we can all serve ourselves what we like.

Farmer prefers dinner outside, too. His outdoor lede stretches just far enough so that he can sit right under the picnic table, happily waiting for something to drop. (He doesn’t  have to wait long because he has Roy trained to slip him something every now and then.)

And if it seems like a treat to eat supper outside, it’s even more fun to eat breakfast on the picnic table. That’s my best friend Eliza and her husband Chip on the Sunday morning after my birthday in the photo here. With eggs from our hens, berries from our back yard, and a warm breeze through the trees, I’ll take this any day over a fancy champagne brunch!

Farm life, The Garden

August, All of a Sudden

2 Comments

Just like that, July is winding down. And whoa, here comes August—the big month on the Vineyard. It’s exciting and a little scary all at the same time. Celebrity sightings. (Bill Murray! Ted Danson! Meg Ryan!) Fireworks. The Fair. And a whole lot of traffic. Business is heating up at the farm stand, but we also get a lot of “drive-thrus” who barely brake to see if we have any tomatoes before they move on to the next farm stand.

100,000 people come to the Vineyard in August. (That’s 80,000 more than live here year-round). There is every possible kind of event and activity to go to if you’re on vacation and have that lovely thing called leisure time: Shakespeare, concerts, film screenings, regattas, farmers’ markets, poetry readings, book signings, auctions, art shows, community sings, bonfires, yoga on the beach, flea markets, antique shows, wood-fired pizza night, wild-life walks, sea glass hunting, fishing, surfing, swimming, you name it. Even Roy and I took off our farm boots and gussied up for an art opening down at the Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown last Sunday. My friend Katie Hutchison’s evocative photographs were on show, and this year I treated myself to buying one for my office. And today, I put the high heels on again—this time to sign books down at Bunch of Grapes bookstore in Vineyard Haven as part of Tisbury’s Celebrate the Arts festival.

Back at the farm, it’s a strange time. Anticipating the August crowds and the ripening tomatoes is a little nerve-wracking—will the two come together to make the farm stand profitable this year? It’s hard not to think of August as an all-or-nothing-proposition, but in reality, we are still thinking ahead to September and October and planting more crops. September is a good month for the farm stand, and last year we stayed open all the way through November. So yesterday Roy planted two more rows of potatoes, and I tracked down my cranberry shell beans to plant for a fall harvest. With any luck, we’ll get another bed of carrots sowed soon, too. And before you know it, those 50 baby chickens (now nearly pullet-sized, growing their combs) will be laying eggs. This fall, we’ll finally have all those eggs everyone is always asking for.

In the kitchen, I’m taking advantage of the first sweet corn from Morning Glory Farm and making lots of corn sautés with our lovely skinny green and yellow beans added in. We made Backyard Berry Ice Cream this week, and we made three kinds of pesto with our lush basil. We made a batch of deviled eggs with some of the pesto, and we brown-braised our Red Gold potatoes with garlic, a couple garden Serranos, and a few leaves of chard wilted in at the end. And I am just like everyone else on this island—chomping at the bit for a juicy ripe red tomato. There’s one I’ve got my eye on in the garden. It might be ready tomorrow or the next day. But I think it’s taking its own sweet time just so it can show up on August 1.

Farm life, Sustain

Ants-in-My-Pants Excitement

1 Comment

Roy got me the best birthday present any one could. He invited my best friend to come visit and help us celebrate. Eliza and her husband Chip arrived yesterday, hopping with their bikes on to the freight boat at the last minute after driving down from Maine. It’s almost embarrassing how excited I get about seeing Eliza, but honestly I hope I never lose that stomach-fluttering kid-like glee. (We’ve been friends since we were babies.)

This morning, I was thinking about this squirmy ants-in-my-pants excitement I get about special things. (It drove my Mom crazy when I was a kid—I never sat still!) I happened to be looking back at pictures from the farm this week—the beautiful yellow beans we’re growing for the first time and our very first strawberries and blueberries. These things just knock my socks off! How lucky I am to be surrounded by beauty and friends this weekend. So what if my heart sometimes skips a beat? It’s a small price to pay.

Farm life, publicity, Sustain, The Cookbooks, The Garden

A Radio Tour and One Very Special Garden

3 Comments

This week I started my “radio tour” to promote The Fresh & Green Table. I do this from home, which is very cool because I do not need to dress up, put on makeup, cook tasting samples, or make ferry reservations.

In fact, except for the 15 to 20 minutes I’m on air (and the fact that I have to pay very careful attention to the special Google radio calendar the PR folks have set up for me so that I don’t miss a time switch), I can still forge ahead with all the projects I’ve got swirling around at home.

The biggest challenge so far is getting Farmer not to bark (usually when a farm stand customer comes down the driveway) or play with his squeaky toy while I’m recording. I have to sit in the living room with the land line and the book in my lap (no multi-tasking for those few minutes), but Farmer doesn’t quite understand that I haven’t plunked down on the couch to play with him. Most of the spots so far are in the morning so I try hard to not only get the harvesting and farm stand set-up done before hand, but to also get Farmer’s special field walk in, too.

Still, radio is fun—especially if the hosts are engaging—and I enjoy it. But we’ll see how I feel after a few weeks since I’m supposedly on the hook for 15 to 20 hours of this, which my friend Katie kindly pointed out adds up to between 60 and 80 radio spots! Yikes. I’ll post a partial schedule of spots on the home page here, as I will be on all over the country.

We are still madly trying to keep up with things in the garden—especially the tomato staking, turning beds over for second season crops, watering (rain is nonexistent), weeding, and pest warfare. But every time I let myself go out there (it’s so hard to concentrate on all my desk work and recipe deadlines when the garden is calling), I feel like I’m entering the Magic Kingdom. I continue to be fascinated and amazed by little seeds germinating, blossoms turning to fruit, berries ripening; how it all happens when you’re not looking is the essence of the magic show.

To that end, the very best thing I did all week was to help Libby plant her garden. At long last, we finally got every other bed and path laid out, shaped, planted, mulched, irrigated, etc. so that we could concentrate on her little plot. Since the new part of the garden tumbles down a gentle slope, we laid out the beds running across the slope, but with a big center path cutting through them down to the lower gate. We worked down one side of the slope, making beds as we went, and then came back up the other, which left us with the last bed actually right back at the center of the garden—where the hoses, the buckets, the tools, and our feet usually meet. There Libby’s garden came to rest. I am so glad of this, as originally it was planned for the bottom of the garden—a place that seems very far away now. I love the idea that her space is right in the thick of things, and that amidst all these business-like rows of market vegetables lies a comely patch of flowers and seedlings with a lovely little brick path right up the middle of it.

Libby laid the bricks and chose her garden stars from a stash of tomatoes I saved, from a trip to the nursery to look at flowers, and from some of the existing rows of veggies. From the beginning she’s had her eye on the Bright Lights Swiss Chard—especially the pink stalks–and in fact has been nursing a “sick” chard  in a small “plant hospital” she created several weeks ago. Despite the heat, we successfully transplanted that chard and another, as well as some cosmos for her flower row. She also picked out a pale pink primrose and a stunning candy-striped geranium at the nursery. We sowed carrot seeds (her favorites), several kinds of lettuce, and a few Ring of Fire sunflowers from a seed packet Dad picked up. She chose a Sun Gold and a Juliet plum tomato to plant (she’s hoping to bring her mom plum tomatoes later in the summer), and best of all, at the nursery we found one of those charming Alpine strawberry plants with the teeny tiny strawberries dangling off it. We gave that a place of honor right between the carrots and lettuce. The two chards flank the entrance, which is marked by a very cool glass-embedded cement stepping stone that she and I made from a kit her grandmother Peg (Roy’s mom) thoughtfully gave her last Christmas.

I wasn’t sure at first how excited Libby was going to be about having her own garden. She is, first and foremost, an animal and living-creature lover. (Dad got her a butterfly net last week and she trailed around with this all over the place.) I thought to myself that maybe I was just trying to hand the keys to the Magic Kingdom over to her for selfish reasons. But I watched her enthusiasm build as she realized the garden really and truly was all hers. I watched her run to the truck when Dad pulled into the driveway and drag him out to see the garden. I listened to her ask if we could go out and finish planting the second day. And I listened to her (a girl who holds her emotions close) say, “This is so awesome.” More than once.

While we were planting and chatting, she told me, out of the blue, that she plans to be the first woman president of the United States. But first she is going to be a veterinarian, she said. I had to smile, because only that morning I’d been giving her a little spiel (while we were playing Gardenopoly and she was raking in the money, as usual) about her future, how she should be sure and look after herself, develop special skills and a good career, work hard and save her money, etc. etc. I know, I know, she’s only nine.

But tomorrow she turns 10. And four days later I turn 50. And from where I sit, I see a very smart little girl with an entire world of possibilities and opportunities ahead of her. And while I know that I have Grace and luck to thank for many things, I’ve also pursued what I love with a passion and never shut the door on learning. I’ve had amazing teachers along the way who’ve taught me the thrill of planting the seed and watching it grow—no matter what kind of “garden.” It’s an honor to get to pass that thrill on.

Farm life

Don’t Miss the Magic

2 Comments

Blink and you miss the magic that happens this time of year in the garden. Me, I actually have to remind myself to look up and all around me, as I tend to focus hard on one thing at a time (a trait—along with nearsightedness—that I inherited from my father). I can be concentrating so intently on picking peas that I don’t notice the ruby red nasturtium blossoms that have flung themselves out from a dark cool hidden place among the pea vines and are spilling across my feet. Without my glasses on, the world can be a blurry place, too.

But I don’t want to miss anything. The other day I happened to have the camera in hand when a butterfly landed on our new coneflower, blooming in a smoldery pink and orange hue that reminds me of a Peter Max sunset poster. It’s lovely to capture this in a photo, but even the camera can be a hindrance to just experiencing a warm early summer day.

I am trying to find more time in the day to simply take it all in, so I got up extra early this morning, just after the sunrise. Nothing’s more beautiful than the garden in the fuzzy morning light when all the plants are shiny and taut. It’s the best time to harvest leafy things for the farm stand, too, while they still have water in their stems and before the heat of the day comes on. Tiptoeing around this morning with Roy, who’s always an early riser, we made all kinds of discoveries: four big cucumbers, fully ripe, which we had completely missed, lying on the hay mulch beneath their blowsy leaves; potently fragrant fresh basil absolutely ready for harvesting under the Remay; little green tomatoes everywhere; a frog living in one of the bean beds; the first ripe black raspberries down near the old barn foundation; a new swath of wild pink roses in bloom by the chicken coop; wren babies in the barn; our own first ripe blueberry. Much later on, I took patient Farmer for a long walk and we saw tiny pink blossoms on new raspberry canes and sampled our first ripe wild blueberries. Farmer played his favorite game of hide and seek with the  bunnies, and on the way back we stopped to say hello to the chicks, who rushed to the fence to greet us.

The rest of the day—the parts in between—were more focused and less serene. I think I’ll get up early again tomorrow.

Farm life

Whistle While You Work

10 Comments

My favorite episode of I Love Lucy is the one where she and Ethel go to work in a chocolate factory and are assigned to wrap chocolates that pass by on a conveyor belt. The belt speeds up and they can’t keep up so they start stuffing candies in their mouths to hide them. Life on the farm is a little bit like that right now. The days speed by, and it’s impossible to keep up. You know what you’re supposed to do, what the next thing on the (mega) chore list is, but just when you decide to go plant that row of beans, a crow flies into the barn and gets stuck in a window, the dog throws up something he’s found behind the barn, three customers come down the driveway looking for eggs (and you’re all out), and Sugar the Aracauna chicken has escaped from the chicken yard again and is digging a dust bath in the perennials. And drat, you realize you forgot to check on the babies (the baby chicks), who are really teenagers now and eat and drink like crazy.

You must look pretty silly, you realize, with a hen tucked under one arm, a jug of water under the other, trying to shake a stick at a crow, and check the inside of the dog’s mouth all at the same time.

You finally decide to go inside and get some work done (work as in recipe-testing, writing, that sort of thing), but pass by the garden on your way in and realize every single bed needs watering, the cover has blown off the arugula, and you haven’t dealt with those earwigs that are eating the bok choy or the weeds taking over the chard bed. There are two hundred tomato plants, half of them knocked over by the wind, staring at you, saying, “plant me, plant me.” You check the farm stand and it is out of lettuce, so you have to decide whether to harvest more or to go out to the road and erase “lettuce” from the sign. There are eight flats of peppers and eggplant seedlings on the work table waiting to get transplanted into bigger pots and a flat of basil begging to go in the ground.

Back inside, you recalibrate and set a very simple goal—a recipe test using three ingredients—rhubarb jam. Whew, you manage to accomplish that, but then complicate your life by trying to pull off a grilled chicken recipe test for dinner. You go collect the last of the day’s eggs, trek to the compost pile, put Sugar back in the pen again, and go inside and start chopping ginger and garlic just as Roy pulls in.

Discussion ensues: Do we work or eat? It’s a toss-up…we thought maybe we’d finish digging the beds for the tomatoes tonight, but Roy also wants to get some work done on the babies’ big-girl coop, which has risen to the top of the priority list. He needs to move some brush, too, so as the sun slowly sinks, he moves from tractor to mower to tiller to shovel. From yard to garden to bed. I finish watering, organize the tomatoes, move bags of cow manure into the garden.

It’s time to lock up the ladies (the hens) for the night, set the rat traps (yes, rats), cover the brooder box, shut the garden gate. Move all the flats of peppers and eggplants back inside. Turn off the hoses. Cover the hay with a tarp. Rake. Pick up odd bits of trash. Watch the bunnies come out to feed. Shut down the farm stand, bring in the sign, record the day’s sales. Plan tomorrow morning’s harvest. Where did the day go? In only a few hours, the alarm will be going off, and we’ll be doing it all over again: Harvest, wash, water, weed, dig, till, plant, mow, tie, clip, cut, cook, grill, nail, sand, haul, stake, scoop, pin, rake, level, sweat, smile, laugh.