Category Archives: Sustain

Edible, Farm life

Decorating the Farm Stand with Farm Finds, Picker Style

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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

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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

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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.

Edible, Farm life

They Don’t Call it Harvest Time for Nothin’

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Yesterday, I picked 22 pounds of beans—green beans, yellow beans, purple beans. Actually Roy helped at the end, as the sun was going down—after he finished washing and packing 800 eggs. Then we sorted through 250 pears and apples that have landed in our lap. After closing up the farm stand, locking up the chickens, and eating a quick supper of cold roast pork, fingerlings and arugula, we hopped in the car and made an egg and bean delivery down to our friends at Lucky Hank’s restaurant in Edgartown. It was a long day. (I was happy to find I could stand up this morning though, as I thought I might get frozen in crouching-bean-picking position. My poor back!)

You’d think, with the crazy August tourist season behind us, that we’d be less busy. But September is always a bit of a trickster like that. A lot of the veggies and flowers are actually much happier now, and either they’re finally hitting their stride, or they sense that cooler weather is coming and they should start producing faster. In the case of the beans, the survival instinct had set in. They were ravaged by sparrows in August and subsequently responded with millions of blossoms. The eggplants are flowering and fruiting like crazy, the zinnias are soaring, and not only are we still picking cherry tomatoes, but there’s a round of ripening beefsteaks out there that looks a whole lot better than anything we saw in August. Go figure.

So there is stuff all over the place—pears in the feed shed, apples in the shop, tomatoes on every surface. And, um, pork in the freezer. Our pork. Yes.  I’ll spare you the details right now, but I will tell you it is the most delicious pork I have ever eaten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ironically, with all the veggies and fruit around, I still don’t have time to do much preserving. (Fortunately, most of it will travel to grateful homes via the farm stand!) I did make a quick tomato sauce from odds and ends this morning, but I think farmers and preservers must be two different people as it is really hard to find time to do both.

Beyond harvesting, we’re also busy turning over a lot of the beds in the garden, planting more fall lettuce and greens. We’ve already turned the hoop house over, too. Goodbye cucumbers, hello carrots. Meanwhile, Roy is trying to get a lot of off-farm work done and I am trying to wrap my head around book promotion, which requires as much attention as actually writing the book!

Oh well, it is all good. I hear we are in for a very cold winter so soon enough we’ll be house-bound, with intermittent dashes to the hoop house and the chicken coops. And somehow winter always seems a whole lot longer than summer. Yikes, maybe I should just stop and enjoy this beautiful fall. (Truthfully, I actually like picking beans.)

 

 

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life

A Walk (or Two) in August–What a Concept!

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Normally we don’t “walk” in August. That kind of walk, you know—the strolling kind, where you let the world wrap you up in its beauty—just doesn’t happen in high season. But the other day my friend Heidi (of newly minted MV Sea Salt fame!) said she’d stop by for a quick catch-up in early afternoon, and when she got here, I suggested a short walk.

It was such a clear, bright day and the breeze was purring along, and well, why not meander down the Land Bank path behind our homestead? (The path actually squeezes between us and the four acres we lease behind us that house our chickens.)

It’s a lovely, short walk, past cornfields, over a shady brook, along a brambly old cow fence, and out onto a spectacular low grassy plain called the Square Field.

Here and there, Heidi pointed out a flower or herb or plant to me that I wasn’t familiar with. And we both got excited when we found wild blackberries tangled along the fence line.

The walk was so relaxing (and really a no-brainer since it was so close by), that I decided to go again today after the morning farm-stand rush, and bring my camera with me. I had wanted to go back with Roy last evening. I knew he’d be excited to locate more wild blackberries, since he’s been stalking them like crazy. (We now have a couple pounds of berries in the freezer, all from the fields around us.) But farm chores keep us really busy in the evenings, and now the light is closing in on us earlier and earlier.

So I wandered off today alone while he was resting, and just as I was changing my camera lens to get a close-up of a blackberry, I heard a faint whooshing noise and then a decided splash. It was Roy at the little bridge over the brook behind me. He had untied his sneakers and stepped into the water. All along, I knew he wasn’t far behind me.  (What was he doing in the water? Maybe looking for the troll under the bridge?)

We sat together quietly for a while on the bridge, looking for trout in the stream. Then we continued on the walk together, spotting wild cherries and a patch of once-cultivated raspberries, admiring the field of goldenrod and Joe Pye weed, and then heading back up the bank and along the corn fields, past our chickens and up to the back gate of our market garden.

I took a few last photos of our first pumpkins (Yay! We’ve got one already ripe and quite a few on the way…)

 

and I took in the best fall flower show I know—sunflowers and cosmos.

 

When I was sitting quietly with Roy on the little bridge over the brook, watching for life under the water and squinting at the sunlight glinting across the surface, I thought it was the most perfectly peaceful moment of the summer. And one I might not have experienced but for my friend Heidi.

But of course, being one of those people who can never get enough of a good thing, I am thinking I may have to go back again tomorrow. While this weather lasts….

 

 

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life

Blue Ribbons, Burgers & Blackberry Ice Cream

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A light rain drizzled down on us tonight as we trudged back across State Road from the Fair grounds to the farm. Looking back, Libby noticed our feet left a pattern on the rain-glossed blacktop. It’s almost as if we’d worn a path in the road with so much criss-crossing. You could even see Farmer’s paw prints. (Yes, Farmer got to go to the Fair—three times. French fries—yes; cotton candy—no.)

Now we are all a little comatose, having eaten ourselves silly for four days. Because of these darn free passes the Fair folks give us every year, we indulge ourselves ridiculously and eat nearly every meal at the Fair. This year we made a habit of trying as many different things as we could—barbequed ribs, chicken tacos, steak tacos, pizza, burgers, veggie tempura, sausage and peppers, French fries, corn on the cob, strawberry shortcake, fruit smoothies, ice cream, fried dough, cotton candy. Yes, you read that right—it is not the healthiest list of food. But we had a blast and took Iphone pictures of most every dish to document the extravaganza.

Back at the farm, at least Libby and I added some veggies and fruits to that list, since we were harvesting (and snacking on) tomatoes, green beans and blackberries together in between Fair forays. But then we had to go and make ice cream. I know, I know—what a crazy weekend to make homemade ice cream. The problem was, I had promised Libby that we’d make our annual batch of berry ice cream while she’s here on this visit. A promise is a promise. And this year, we are overflowing with blackberries, and I’ve been picking and freezing the ripe ones every day.

Fortunately, making ice cream happens in small steps which you can squeeze in between Fair visits. You make berry puree. Chill it. Make custard. Chill it. Combine puree and custard. Chill it. Put mix in ice cream maker (the old ice cream maker that doesn’t freeze very well). Put ice cream maker back in freezer and stir every once in a while. Give up on getting anything that’s really completely frozen. Eat soft-serve blackberry ice cream: The absolute most delicious stuff in the whole world. I promise. Libby promises. Even Roy raved.

And speaking of raves. We’re voting MV Ag Fair 2013 our fave so far. Not that winning a blue ribbon for our eggs, our green beans, our cosmos, and Libby’s plum tomatoes has anything to do with it, mind you. But it did put us all in a dandy mood Thursday. And then the sun shone bright in a picture-perfect blue sky for three days. There was a soft breeze and there were stunning sunsets. We saw lots of friends. A mommy sow had 10 piglets in the animal barn Thursday night. (We went to look at these little tiny creatures maybe 12 times after that.) Roy won stuffed animals (a pig and a frog) for both Libby and me. Farmer made new friends and ate his first onion rings. He and Libby are passed out on the couch, side by side. Exhausted, stuffed, happy.

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

The Fair, the Farm Stand, and all the Festivities

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There’s barely a minute to breathe and yet I am practically hyperventilating. I’ve never been good at containing my excitement, and this year, I seem to be more excited than ever about Fair Week.

You could get really cranky around here during the third week in August when traffic tangles up and thousands of people descend on the Island. And I must admit, after an onslaught of farm stand customers—and traffic jams in our own driveway—yesterday, I was just plain exhausted. But I woke up to the clear air and blue skies today feeling giddy.

This year the President’s family vacation overlaps directly with Fair week, making things even more exciting (or more frustrating—depending on your point of view) than usual. We happen to be on the excited end of the spectrum on this one, too. Friday we were given the opportunity to contribute to a gift basket of local food heading directly to the chefs who will be cooking for the Obama family this week (at a house only a couple miles up the road from us). We sent cherry tomatoes and eggs, and a pint of Fairy Tale eggplants, too, which apparently the chefs especially liked. Roy is really hoping that the President is waking up to a breakfast of Green Island Farm eggs—but who knows?!

Across the street, the carnival rides on trailers are lining up at the Fair Grounds. Tents are popping up; the hall doors are open wide while workers set up the display tables inside. Hay for the animals is moving in to the barns, bleachers are lining up, and the fireman’s burger booth is already in place. Best of all, two people on bicycles came down the driveway this morning to give us our four free tickets, which we receive for being abutting neighbors to the Fair Grounds. (The best part about this is that we get to smell the pigs smoking all day. Um, other pigs, not our pigs. Who are really big, by the way.)

Wednesday, we’ll all go down to Oak Bluffs, pick up Roy’s parents at the Island Queen ferry, and spend the evening at Illumination Night at the Camp Grounds. After an old-fashioned sing along, at exactly 8 pm, thousands of paper lanterns will light up on the front porches and walkways of every gingerbread cottage in the Camp Ground. It is breathtaking and stimulating and enchanting all at once—even if you do, once again, have to negotiate the crowds.  (If we can pull it off, we’ll go back to Oak Bluffs for the big fireworks Friday night, though the Fair may keep us away.)

The Fair begins on Thursday, and our friends will come and park at our house and join Roy, Libby and I to walk over for dinner. By then, we will have already raced over once in the afternoon to see if the Hall has opened and the vegetables have been judged. I don’t think this is going to be a big year for us, ribbon-wise, but you never know.

We’ll still have to gather, wash and pack 500 eggs every day. And harvest tomatoes, eggplants, beans, zucchinis, peppers, cucumbers, kale, chard, flowers, and basil every day for the farm stand (and set up the farm stand every morning.) But we’ll squeeze in all the time we can over at the Fair. Roy and Libby love the rides, and we all love the animals, especially the oxen, and the um, piglets. (The theme of this year’s Fair is going hog wild!) So by Sunday we will be exhausted. But I don’t care. Did I mention I love Fair week, that we wait all year for this excitement, that this is one of the reasons I love my life and my farm and my family and my Island? Yep.

Animals, Edible, Farm life, The Garden, The Recipes

Where the Wild Things Grow

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I swear, the garden (and the hoop house, too, for that matter) have a strange and wonderful life all their own. Who knows what goes on behind the gate when you’re not there?  Start with bees, birds, butterflies, moths, spiders, beetles, chipmunks, crows, sparrows, slugs, crickets and frogs. Add blossoms, shoots, vines, suckers, spores, weeds, seeds, fruit. Then Water. Wind. Sun. Pollination. Photosynthesis. And all that above ground—you can’t even begin to name the players down below.

Now throw in some man-made stuff. A trellis, a fence, a rope, a pot, a stake, a spade, a cart, a bench. At night, the wild things secretly romance and spar and dance and croon and sidle up and tangle over and generally do what they do. Because you’re not looking.

It’s only in the morning when you shuffle across the dewy grass and open the gate…or in the evening when the light is dying and you finally remember to check on those hoophouse tomatoes…that you see. And even then you must be paying attention or you will miss something great or weird or funny. But you will always find something satisfying, something that’s grown another foot or finally started to bear fruit.

Here are a few surprises from this week on Green Island Farm. (Admittedly, not all of them are nature-made. There are two farmers working on this farm, and very often one is doing something that the other doesn’t even know about it. Until stumbling upon it.)

This is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a while: A Patty Pan squash plant on steroids, I guess. I have no idea why this happens, but where one or two blossoms are supposed to be, there are literally hundreds–and dozens of fruits already forming. This surfaced beneath the UFO-Saucer sized leaves (right) of one of the hoop-house squash plants.

Also seemingly overnight, the cucumber plants climbed up to the top of the hoophouse, unleashed a shower of little yellow blossoms, and began to spit out little spiny cucumbers.

By sunset, the cucumbers were full-grown. Okay, maybe not sunset of the same day, but it really seemed that way.

 

Out in the garden, there were strange going-ons everywhere. One day I found Farmer meditating by the bush beans. Or perhaps he was praying, I don’t know. But the next day, I collected our first nice batch of beans. Farmer might have some special communication powers I don’t know about.

 

Weird balloons, fake birds, fake snakes, and other puzzling man-made objects also began to show up in the garden this week. Then one day, the plastic falcon moved, presumably to protect a ripening Early Girl from a sparrow attack. He knows his job.

The balloons with the eyeballs are just plain creepy (wait until Libby sees these), and I do a double-take every time I see them. They seem to be working though; nothing goes near them. Go figure.

Of course, there are some pretty accidents, too. (Or maybe they’re not accidents.) This year, the daisies, coneflowers, and daylilies made friends, completely unintroduced by us. Who knew they would get along so well?  (About as well as the eggplants and green peppers, which are neighbors, too.)

And finally, there are just some things that happen on the farm that you really can’t explain. If you remember, we brought home two pigs a few months ago. If you look very carefully in this photo of our pigs, there are three heads. I couldn’t get them all to look at the camera at the same time, but trust me, we’re feeding three fast-growing, mud-loving, root-grubbing pigs. Which is why their pen doubled in size. (How that happened, I’ll never know.)

 

 

You really have to keep your eyes open around here.

 

Edible, Farm life, Vegetables

Summer Veggies Have A Mind of Their Own

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Harumph. I am so not very patient, and just cannot believe that the summer vegetables are on their own schedule, not mine. I mean, really. Hurry up, already!

I am all disgruntled partly because while I did a good job on my spring planting, I once again under-planted for early summer. Peas and carrots are all gone, lettuce has bolted, bok choy a distant memory. And I apparently have still not mastered the art of controlling insects that eat chard and kale—argh! So I am putting undue pressure on the squash, beans, peppers, eggplants, flowers, and yes, tomatoes, to hurry up. (Fortunately, we’re getting a great yield on our potatoes, which Roy has been harvesting every day, and eggs are flying out of here as fast as we can gather and wash them.)

Finally this week we started to harvest a little of each of the summer veg. But am I grateful? Noooo, of course not. All I can do is complain (to myself) that there aren’t more. It takes a while for everything to really start producing, but I can’t wait! To make myself feel better (Roy does not seem at all concerned about this), I’ve been madly weeding and replanting the open beds with carrots, turnips, fall squash, more kale, more summer squash (to foil the squash borers) and whatnot. And, um, lecturing the eggplant. (“Could you try to produce more than one fruit at a time please?”) The poor eggplant—it’s a new variety called Orient Express, and it’s already providing fruit three weeks ahead of last year. (Apparently my patience gets shorter and shorter every year.)

At some point I realize that these conversations I’m having with myself and the vegetables are not very productive. And that, in reality, we have more of the summer veggies planted than we’ve ever had, so we should be overflowing in August. So when I start complaining about all the time we’re spending harvesting beans and tomatoes, you can just kick me. Or something.

In the meantime, I’m offering a few pics of this week’s goodies. They do make my heart sing!

 


Animals, Edible, Farm life

Famous Farm Dog Finds Nirvana in the Garden

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There’s no doubt who is top dog around Green Island Farm. But lately, what with the addition of more baby chicks and pigs, too, Farmer has been feeling a bit insecure. (He tends to be a little clingy, anyway, having been a rescue dog.)

Normally he lies outside the back door on his lede, where he can watch all the activity and greet the farm stand customers. He is especially fond of the ladies (lots of tail wagging, no barking), but can be skittish around certain large men with deep voices and lots of facial hair! And the ladies love him. In fact, a woman I had never seen in my life got out of her car the other day, rushed over to him and said, “Hi, Farmer!” Turns out she’s been reading the blog for a long time and knew who Farmer was, only this was her first visit to the farm. Lots of regular customers greet him by name and regularly coo over him. He loves it. (Joannie, Sarah, and MJ all bring him biscuits, too–so spoiled.)

But he doesn’t like losing site of Mom and Dad, so lately he has started whining when he can’t see us. Usually I am in the garden harvesting or working.

At some point, it became clear to me that Farmer wanted “in” to the garden. I was pretty hesitant to bring him in there with me, because when I’ve done this in the past, he’s started running around in circles, tearing through beds willy-nilly. But, you know, he is two years old now, very mature. And with the raised beds and paths clearly delineated, he has pretty much learned to go up and down the paths in a polite manner.

Besides, I soon learned, all he really wanted to do was lie on a nice soft bed of hay mulch and rest, keeping one eye on me and one on the sparrows swooping everywhere. Occasionally he’ll get up and sniff around a bit (he likes the strawberry plants), or move to the shady side of the pea trellis. If a customer comes right up to the garden fence, he might get a little excited and trample something (nothing too major), but mostly he is happy to be leash-free and in the thick of things.

For a real treat, Roy will come get him and take him out the back gate (leash back on) to visit the piggies. He desperately wants to be friends with the pigs and will stand up, his paws on the edge of their wall, and whine. He and Wilbur reach out to each other, nose to snout, and seem to be saying a pleasant hello.

Back to the garden Farmer goes, where from a particular vantage point, he can also keep an eye on “his” 500 babies—the chickens. All is well in Farmer’s kingdom. As long as he doesn’t get left alone.