Category Archives: Sustain

Farm life, fruit desserts, The Garden, The Recipes

A Poem and Blueberry Blossoms for a Rainy Day

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Looking Out

 

Rain today is grace
out my window,
here inside
a pool of warm soft
prayer for a day
gained like the gift
of a blue hen’s egg
in the barn’s new hay;
a simple wool sweater
cocoon of words and
songs and coffee all
morning and into
afternoon’s breaking
clouds, pushed on
by a front insistent
on sunshine for the
sweet, long-shadow
close of day.
–      SM, April 29


Rifling through a drawer this week I found a poem I’d written in April—April of 2008, not long after coming to the Vineyard. But it felt familiar and comforting and perfect for this April (well, May now) and this rainy week. So I share it with you. And I’m sharing this beautiful picture of blueberry blossoms in our garden, because they fill me with hope and excitement. And because once again I don’t have a new veggie recipe I can offer you this week. Ironically, it’s not for not cooking. It’s just that I’m beholden not to publish the recipes.

I feel blessed with all the good work I have on my plate right now—writing, cooking, creating—but like Shylock’s pound of flesh, it’s all spoken for. I can’t share recipes or writing with you that’s bound for publication somewhere else down the road. I bet a lot of cookbook author-bloggers have this dilemma—you can be developing new recipes all day and not be able to share even a small bite with your blog readers. So it goes.

Since I have blueberries on the mind (not only am I excited about having our own bushes this year, but I’ve been cooking with blueberries this week, too. Yes, out of season—another quirk of the recipe development life), I’ll share a simple and delicious recipe for a crisp over on the Edible Vineyard site, just in case you can’t wait for summer.

And for those of you wondering how the baby chicks are doing, I share these pictures of Bambi, Libby, and Farmer. Bambi is chick no. 49 and has been living inside the house in a box on my desk under a lamp since the day after the chicks arrived (she was tiny and hadn’t figured out the food-and-water routine). I’m afraid chick no. 50 died rather suddenly last Saturday afternoon. We had high hopes for her since we’d managed to bring Bambi back from the brink with plenty of water and food, but this little gal was already on her way out when we took her out of the brooder. Libby was here and we shared that sad and inevitable aspect of farm life together. Fortunately, the other 48 are zipping around the brooder, growing their wing feathers already and eating and drinking (and napping) like crazy.

Meanwhile, we are using this time with Bambi (short for bambino) to teach Farmer about chickens—a couple times a day we take Bambi out to hold her and let Farmer sniff her. He gives her a kiss (a big slurping lick, which, yes, could be interpreted many different ways) and then moves along. Bambi seems nonplussed and hasn’t tried her beak out on him yet.

There’s all kinds of other stuff happening on the farmette; for instance, we now have a tractor. And it was free. I am not kidding—free (and it works). But that’s a whole ‘nother story. With the work Roy’s already done with it—and the 60 animals—it just seems like we blinked and the farmette grew up and became a real farm overnight. It must be meant to be, I guess. For now it’s back to desk work for me on this grey day, and may we all wake up tomorrow to sunshine and blueberry blossoms and little “cheep cheep” noises coming from a cardboard box.

Farm life, The Garden

While the Cat’s Away

Under cover of darkness, we stole off the Island last Sunday and whisked Libby away to Florida for five days. It felt very sneaky, leaving the farmette and our jobs this busy time of year. And risky, too, what with hundreds of new seedlings in the garden and many still under lights inside. Not to mention live animals who, unlike plants, need fresh food and water every day, not just occasionally. But I shouldn’t have worried; many good friends stepped in to care for chickens, bunny, lovebird, seedlings, and dog. Despite the heat wave while we were gone, the garden is thriving (see the radicchio and bok choy pics below) and the hens are happy. So is our resident mouse (or mice), who chewed his way through insulation again to come have a party inside while we were gone. Fortunately, he (or them) mostly feasted on bird food.

Considering our Florida adventure, a mouse party was hardly much of a price to pay. Between an airboat ride in the Florida Everglades, holding a baby alligator, petting a sting ray, visiting dolphins, catching baby lizards outside Roy’s parents house, collecting sea shells, and spotting at least two dozen different kinds of birds, Libby got a National Geographic wildlife week—and a visit with her grandparents—to remember for a lifetime. We didn’t come home with a pet pelican, but I’m still not convinced there wasn’t a lizard in Libby’s suitcase.

Farm life, Resources, Sustain

Of Sky Miles and Staying Grounded: Edible Travels with Susie

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Last Wednesday, I got on a plane to California kicking and screaming. Or I should say, I got in the car to drive to the ferry to get to the mainland to drive to Boston to get on the first of three airplanes to Santa Barbara. This is how it is with me these days: I hate to travel. I’ve always been a homebody, but I’ve never loved a “home” (and all that goes with it) quite as much as I do now. I just hate to leave the Island.

But flying back on Sunday, as I began to write this blog somewhere over Nebraska, I had to smile at myself: getting out every once in a while is good for me! (Except for the part about nearly missing my first plane on Sunday due to, uh, my ignorance of Daylight Savings Time. That nearly did me in.)

I have no right to complain, as I was invited to attend the annual Edible magazine publishers conference and the Edible Institute that followed after it. There are now 72 Edible magazines, including, of course, our own very fabulous Edible Vineyard, as well as our neighbors Edible Cape Cod, Edible Boston, and Edible Rhody.

The absolute coolest thing about these magazines is, in fact, that they’re local. No national magazine can connect you to the local food movement in your own backyard like these guys can. But there’s also a collective inspiration in the group as a whole. When you sit down to read a stack of these magazines (as I did in preparation for my trip), you see that everywhere across the country from Portland to Orlando, local heroes—fishermen, school lunch cooks, cheese makers, beer brewers, market organizers—are tackling the crazy problems in our food system one town, one day, one meal at a time.

In Santa Barbara, I got to meet and listen to some of these local heroes, as well as some national heroes, too. I had a quirky, peripheral duty at the conference: I was there to coach Edible publishers about magazine editing—that particularly funny skill I honed for many years and am now able to pass along from time to time. (It’s a change of pace from cooking and farmette-ing for sure!) But after teaching my classes on Thursday and Friday, I got to hang around on Saturday for the first day of the Edible Institute, a gathering of sustainable food folks put together by Tracey Ryder, co-founder of Edible Communities, and Bruce Cole, publisher of Edible San Francisco.

Listening to the speakers, I was alternately charmed and horrified. Charmed by the likes of Anna Larsen, an outgoing San Francisco entrepreneur (and part-time opera singer) who’s created a seafood CSA (Or CSF)—a way to link consumers directly with their fishermen. Larsen buys fish and shellfish that’s no more than 48 hours out of the water directly from the fishermen, then has it skinned and filleted, and gets it to her weekly subscribers the very next day. Larsen’s “Siren SeaSA” has a long waiting list, despite the fact that customers don’t always know what they’re getting until the last minute and they might get something—like whole squid or sardines—that they’ve never eaten before. It’s an exciting idea that I imagine we’ll see growing around the country.

The horrifying part came when book author Jonathan Bloom took the stage. I heard about Bloom’s book, American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It), when it first came out a couple years ago. But for some reason the stark reality of this problem did not sink in until I heard him say in person, “Every day in this country we waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl.” Unbelievable. The food waste starts with growers who discard unmarketable food and it continues on down the line to supermarkets, restaurants, and home fridges. When asked what the most tangible, productive step in the right direction might be, Bloom indicated that European countries are successfully banning organic waste at landfill, and that this could be something we could embrace. (Short, of course, I was thinking, of changing our cultural mindset overnight). In other words, if a truck could not go straight to the landfill with the less-than-perfect tomatoes, the trucking company might start figuring out how to get the tomatoes to a food bank (at best) or a compost area (at least).

There were other moments that completely stopped me—listening to journalist Tracie McMillan talk about working in the garlic fields (in 100-plus-degree heat for $2 an hour) for her undercover work for her new book, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table was certainly one; watching a clip of Roberto Romano’s film The Harvest/La Cosecha, about child farm laborers in America, was another.

But there were plenty of hopeful moments, too, and I have to leave you with my most favorite. Watch this episode of The Perennial Plate, and you’ll see the work of a young chef and a young filmmaker who have driven around the country making a weekly documentary about real food, about cooking, about life. (This episode, “God’s Country,” stole my heart, but there are plenty more to watch online.) Both Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine are lovely and down-to-earth in person. They said they might be visiting the Vineyard some time soon—great news!

Now if I hadn’t gotten on that plane for Santa Barbara, I would have missed a lot. Sometimes my plate seems full enough, but then I realize I’m the kind of person who’s never been shy about second helpings. And I have to remind myself that if you’re someone who cares a lot about how the world eats, every once in a while you’ve got to sit down at the table with strangers.

eggs & breakfast, Farm life, Sustain, The Garden, The Recipes

Could You Have Nest-Box-Checking Disorder?

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Anyone who works at home should have a chicken coop. Forget rummaging through the refrigerator, surfing Facebook, or even sneaking a spell on the couch to flip through catalogues (I never do that)—checking the hens’ nesting boxes for eggs is the best procrastinating maneuver ever. I should know. I’ve been getting up from the computer about 12 times a day to go outside and look for eggs. I guess I have Nest-Box-Checking Disorder, because I can’t help myself. Finding an egg in the hay—especially when it is still warm and I can hold it in my cold hands like a little hot water bottle—is like Christmas morning, over and over again. (Much better than Groundhog Day.)

During the darkest days of winter, we were only getting a couple of eggs a day. Now that the days are growing longer (we’ll have a whopping10 full hours of daylight on Feb. 11), the ladies are laying more. (Some gals were molting, too, so they were redirecting their energies towards changing their feathers rather than laying.) Sometimes when I go to check, there are three or four eggs lying together—almost always in the same box, as these girls have a strange preference for crowding. We keep a special bowl in the mudroom for collecting the day’s eggs, so that anyone can add to it. (Roy often checks the boxes first-thing when he comes home from work, as he has Nest-Box-Checking Disorder, too. The hardest thing to do for both of us is to refrain from checking when Libby is here, because, after all, it’s not a very nice thing for an adult to usurp this especially kid-friendly activity.) At the end of the day, we count up the eggs, ooh and ah over the different shapes and colors and speckles, and refrigerate them.

Even if there aren’t any eggs in the boxes, I still get a kick out of visiting with the ladies. They make all kinds of clucking noises and rush from their outer pen to greet me, as they know I often have lettuce or hamburger buns or leftover roasted vegetables for them. It’s a good life these gals lead; we just got them a special heated chicken-waterer so their water isn’t frozen over in the morning. (Actually, the present was more for us, as walking back to the house to change the water every morning is a pain.)

While I love checking on the ladies, I have elevated the art of procrastination to include all of the animals on the farmette. Cocoa Bunny literally runs circles around her cage if you bring her a green treat (like these Brussels sprouts), and Farmer is up for a good walk about a zillion times a day. Most mornings, and usually almost every evening around dusk, Farmer and I track the wild bunnies, which thrive here in a Watership Down kind of way. God knows how many there are—maybe thousands? There were so many tracks in the snow this morning that Farmer’s nose was snow-encrusted with all that sniffing.

If all else fails, my last procrastination technique is to look out the window right next to my desk. If there aren’t birds snacking at the birdfeeder Roy has kindly hung within my sight, then a group of six or eight wild turkeys is often strolling by, just a few feet away. They’re good for a glance or two. But I don’t think I’ll ever get Bird-Watching Disorder. After all, looking out the window is not half as much fun as actually getting up from the computer and walking outside. And coming back in with something good to eat.

Farm life, The Recipes

Cow-Spotting, Garden-opoly, A Girl, & A Dog–Reasons to Forgo New Year’s Resolutions

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Lately I’ve been accomplishing nothing and enjoying everything. This may seem like a small matter, but for me it is a big deal. For years I rushed from one thing to the next; I couldn’t stay still long enough to appreciate and experience the good stuff right in front of me. I thought being goal-oriented was a good thing; now I think that strategy is flawed. That’s why I don’t make so called “New-Year’s Resolutions” which I think we forcefully and awkwardly impose on ourselves to manufacture some sort of tangible (usually physical) benefit, while we leave our inner selves untended to. My only real goal these days is to stay present in my life. This means slowing down, being patient, and listening to what the universe is trying to tell me.

This weekend that meant watching a little girl grow. We picked Libby up and brought her out to the Island on Thursday and returned her to Falmouth Monday night. Roy is working hard on a house renovation, so Libby (and Farmer, aka The Black Rider) and I set out to have a good time together during the day while Roy worked. By the end of the holiday, it wasn’t just the physical time spent with Libby that I enjoyed so much—it was the surreal sense I got of watching her personality forming, her confidence building, her creativity exploding, that made my spine tingle. Never could I have been a witness to this in my old life; I believe that’s why Libby showed up in my life when she did.

We played four rounds of our new board game, Garden-opoly, a thoughtful gift from my sister Eleanor. And this is just uncanny: Libby won almost every time, just like she does when we play Monopoly. (I thought maybe I stood a chance with this game; when we played with Roy on New Year’s Eve, I was in the lead before we went to bed. That was the best I did all weekend.)

Many people would find endless hours of board games and being beaten by a nine-year-old hard to take, but the giggles and smiles and gleeful squirming were just priceless. Plus, there’s a whole improvisational story line that arises when someone’s hot—we started calling Libby “Miss Gardenopolis.” Watching her organize her properties (her favorites, not surprisingly, were Tomato Terrace, Green Bean Bypass, and Strawberry Fields), stack her money, and build her “greenhouses” (aka hotels) made us proud. (It makes me think she’ll make good financial decisions when she grows up! Her biggest strategy is to hide one of her $500 bills under the board until late in the game. She doesn’t buy every property she lands on, either—how can that be?!) And seeing her exercise a bit of charity and kindness was gratifying too—she would occasionally offer to lend me some money or overlook a debt, and she chastised me when I passed up an opportunity to visit the “Free Compost” corner, where hundreds of dollars awaited. Libby’s prowess at Garden-opoly also makes me realize that I made a good decision to add a “Libby” section to the new expanded vegetable garden this year. I’m sure it will prosper.

On Friday, Farmer and Libby and I went cow-spotting down at the FARM Institute, taking along our cameras (Libby got one for Christmas) to photograph the interesting beef cattle lolling around. (Fortunately, Libby is crazy about animals—probably even more than I am, so farm trips are easy entertainment for us.) Afterwards, we went shopping for the ingredients for home-made pizza (her favorite—she is chief “decorator”) for Friday night and roast chicken and make-your-own-brownie sundaes for New Year’s Eve. (Fabulous brownie recipe here. Pizza recipe coming in new book.)

Probably the most fascinating thing for me was seeing how Libby entertained herself during those times when I did need to do a little desk work or a few house chores. One morning, she built an elaborate “condo” out of leftover Christmas boxes and home-made confetti for her collection of little toy lizards. There was also a larger toy dragon protecting the kingdom from intruders. (And an entire narrative to go along with this.) But I especially loved watching the games she devised to play with Farmer. Often a dish towel or a kitchen apron would make it into the  mix—either used to dress up Farmer, who doesn’t seem to mind a bonnet or a skirt—or as a bullfighter’s cape. (Toro! Toro!) Ring-Around-the-Rosie was popular…though noisy. (Everything shakes when these two race around the downstairs of this tiny farm house, which literally has only three rooms—not including the mudroom—on the first floor, and also has terribly uneven floors.) Hide-and-seek was popular, too. And occasionally, Libby (who is tiny for her age) would actually get on top of Farmer and ride him like a horse. Amazingly, this dog thinks there is nothing more fun. (He’s been a total nut since she left.)

Since Farmer and Libby wear each other out, eventually Farmer climbs up on the couch and passes out. Then Libby, in her feetsy-pajamas, lays down next to him and rests her head on his chest. Roy smiles and I just sigh. Watching these two befriend each other is a hoot. And spending time with Libby isn’t just rewarding—it’s a whole lot of fun.

Susie's sustainable writing, Sustain, The Recipes

My Gratitude List, Pink and Green Friday, 2011

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The whole Black Friday thing scares me. Just the name alone conjures up images of medieval plagues and stock market crashes. The next image that comes to mind is small children being trampled by greedy shoppers storming the gates of Made-In-China Chain Store [insert favorite name here] to procure the latest big screen TV sets for cheap.

A much better idea is Small Business Saturday, where people can support local entrepreneurs and actually return dollars to their own communities. And purchase something truly special.

But since it is still Friday, I’ve decided to rename today Pink and Green Friday. Just because. Yes, pink and green are my favorite colors, but happily, they also represent good causes—supporting breast cancer research and clean energy, for two. So maybe this is a better way to carry over our good feelings from Thanksgiving, to think about generosity and gratitude, instead of greed.

I admit, I am a day late expressing my thanks properly. I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude all day yesterday, but that didn’t translate over to sitting down at the computer. And today I thought, well, it is good to be reminded of how healing gratitude is on any old day, especially something called Black (I mean Pink and Green) Friday.

So I went out in the garden and took random photos of small things I am grateful for. And decided I’d write a “snapshot” gratitude list. (A wise woman once gave me this idea—writing a gratitude list is an effective mood-switcher if you’re feeling off.) Figure you could do this any day, anywhere, any time of the day. (Yesterday my gratitude was all about chocolate cream pie. And making gravy with Roy…taking walks with Farmer…setting a pretty table…playing Scrabble…eating my own home-grown veggies…a lot of different things.)

In the garden this morning, I was grateful for:

1. The beauty of the silvery, sparkly frost; the promise of changing seasons

2. Our compost pile (it worked!); adding yesterday’s scraps to the new pile

3. The cold frame—and the happy lettuce inside

4. The perky bed of arugula, still thriving under the row cover

5. The fact that I didn’t pull up all the Brussels sprouts, that the cold must finally have gotten the cabbage warms and that maybe we can eat some sprouts now

6. A sunny day to hang the clothes out on the line

7. Roy’s woodstove firing up in the barn

8. Happy chickens, colorful feathers radiant in the low morning light

9. Feeding Cocoa Bunny frosty kale leaves and breaking the thin layer of ice on her water bowl with warm water

10. Volunteer cilantro, flourishing parsley, sturdy rosemary, all still alive for the pickin’

11. Yes, those darn rutabagas—one the size of a football now

12. The view of the fields I never get tired of—especially looking out at the open space where the garden will grow into next year

13. A new garden shed donated by a neighbor; an old wheelbarrow salvaged; all our friends and neighbors who help make the garden possible

14. Leaves for Libby to jump in when she gets here

15. The blueberry bushes we planted for next year

16. That spunky baby bok choy plant that has survived all odds

17. All my little tools bundled up in the handsome trug Roy made

18. Tables set up all around the yard for me (by you know who) to arrange all the contents of the 32 boxes of books I retrieved from storage—cookbook sale tomorrow!

Less stuff, more vegetables. That’s my mantra for Pink and Green Friday.

Sustain, The CSA experience

The True Cost—and Reward—of Fresh Food: Time Well Spent

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The hour I spend picking green beans, sunflowers, and cherry tomatoes at my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is the most blissful hour of the week. I usually arrive at the farm around noontime on Tuesdays. The sun is high and hot, and the little ache in the small of my back as I crouch low to hunt for beans reminds me that I’m not in the greatest shape. Some days, as I trek back to the farm stand to collect the rest of my share, my boots squish-squish through deep muddy trenches left behind after a recent deluge. Back home, I find my jeans caked with dirt, pollen, and grass stains. I have Humid Hair, stupidly unbehaving. I am happy.

I unpack my treasures and focus for another hour on washing greens, arranging flowers, rearranging the refrigerator, hauling stems and trimmings to the compost pile. Work like this is so engrossing that it is impossible to entertain the usual distracting conversations in my head. I relax without knowing it. Beans are piling up, so I decide to “put some up” – the expression my grandmother used for freezing vegetables for the winter. It has taken me 47 years and a mid-life course-change to do something she did every summer of her adult life.  I put the beans in boiling water for 2 minutes, transfer them to an ice bath, let them dry, spread them out on sheet pans to freeze, and pack them away in freezer bags.

I know I won’t be able to eat those ripe tomatoes fast enough, either, so I decide to roast them, long and slow and drenched in olive oil. After only a few minutes of prep, the tomatoes take care of themselves while I get back to work at my computer. In a few hours, what emerges from the oven is something so deeply caramelized, so unctuous in texture, and so beautiful (in a decidedly rustic way), that it is hard not to eat them all instead of popping them in the freezer. (Check out my recipe for roasted tomatoes on finecooking.com.)

My CSA experience has been so pleasurable, that—typical me—I’ve lately been wanting the whole world to get in on it, too.  (Find a CSA near you.) Why not? The usual argument against sustainable food is that it costs too much; but for once, I get to poke a little tiny hole in that argument. My CSA share (which I pay directly to the farmer before the season gets going so he has operating money upfront) is a bargain. I opted for a small share for the full season – $465 for 24 weeks – which averages out to a little more than $19. (If I had opted for just a 10-week share, it would have been about $25).

Last week, this is what I got in my small share:  ¾ pound potatoes, ¾ pound baby carrots, ¾ pound tomatoes, ½ pound red onions, ½ pound green beans, ½ pint raspberries, 4 beets, 1 green pepper, 20 cherry tomatoes, 1 fennel bulb, 10 kale leaves, 1 large bunch fresh basil (with roots), 1 small bunch thyme and parsley, 1 head lettuce, 1 cantaloupe, ½ bag mixed salad greens. Plus: 6 sunflowers, and 1 large bunch mixed flowers.

Just for kicks, I priced out this same list of ingredients at a national chain grocery store. Even though the produce looked so dismal that it could have been picked in the last millennium, the total still wound up being more than the CSA: $30, without the flowers. And you can bet very little of that $30 (unlike all your CSA dollars) is going directly to farmers.

I know this is just one needle-in-the-haystack example, that local and organic food is still generally more expensive than conventionally grown food. (Expensive, that is, dollar-wise, though much more economical in the long run when compared to the health, safety, waste, and fuel costs associated with “cheap” food. But for the sake of argument, what if it weren’t all about money? What’s the impediment? Scrolling back up to the top of this blog, you can see the answer in black and white: Time and convenience. Joining a CSA is a commitment, and a bit inconvenient.  I probably spend two to three hours every Tuesday gathering, washing, and storing vegetables. Sometimes I spend more time than that preserving food I know I won’t be able to eat in the week. And then, of course, I’m committed to cooking dinner at home most nights—dinner that always has fresh vegetables in it. But, ironically, those hours I spend and those meals I prepare are also the relaxing, delicious, and gratifying rewards that make my life better, simpler, sweeter. Without making the commitment, I might never have known.

This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post Green page, on September 3, 2009.