Tag Archives: Edible

Edible, The Recipes

The Compost Chronicles: Black Gold Comes to the Farm

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Lest you think this whole farming thing is all beauty and glamour (yeah, right), I will tell you that the most exciting thing on the farm this week was well, manure, and the most exciting activity was a trip off-island (for about 5 hours total) to pick up a tractor part. Whee! We know how to live. This was our first off-Island escape together in about four months, and what did we do but shop for farm stuff. I didn’t even get my promised visit to Target to look at kitchen goodies. We ran out of time. Oh, well, we did get to stop and visit with Roy’s parents for like ten minutes, which was the highlight of the trip, as far as I was concerned.

But I could tell Roy was pretty excited by the new purchase from The Tractor Supply store. (Who knew there was such a thing—it’s a big box store just like all the rest of them, only full of farm(ish) stuff. Some fun things, like Muck boots and dog toys, but mostly manly items like well pumps, chain saws, fence posts, and livestock gates. Good to know you can pick up a collar for your goat here, or a block of salt for your cow.) The purchase was a rock rake attachment for the tractor (see photos). Roy is prepping a big new vegetable field on our back four (not forty) for next year and the soil is full of rocks. A piece of equipment like this that will drag the surface rocks off and smooth the soil at the same time is a real time-saver. (The soil has already been tilled once.)

And about that other excitement (photo at top): Roy has been helping a friend build a cart for his horses. Not just any horses, but two beautiful draft horses—Clydesdales in fact. You know, big horses generate a lot of well, crap. So our friends call their horse manure CC, for Clydesdale Crap. (Excuse my language.) But the really amazing thing about their CC is that they age it (turning it over as it heats up and “cooks”) for a year before doing anything with it. The end result is crumbly black gold (below), the finest composted manure you could hope to add to a brand new field. And they gave us a whole truckload of it in exchange for Roy’s help.

We also finally have our own first batch of aged chicken manure. (We’re calling ours CP for Coop Poop. All the manure is mixed with straw or shavings when it comes out of the coops. It looks like the photo at right in the beginning.) It’s been a year since we got the first big batch of hens (the 200 arrived last November and the 300 this spring), and 7 or 8 months since we stopped adding to the first pile. Our piles also heat up and Roy turns them with the tractor, so this stuff is breaking down nicely (photo below).

Chicken manure is particularly high in nitrogren, but it, like horse or cow or pigeon or any other kind of manure, should be well-aged (and preferably hot-composted, too) before using in a veggie garden. Roy is going to combine a little of the CP with the CC to lay down on the new field.

Three years we’ve been building the farm and this is the first year we will really be adding significant amounts of fertility to the soil. Up until now we’ve had to purchase most of our organic fertilizer (augmented by small amounts of leaf/household compost), and while we could pull that off with the market garden, it wouldn’t be a good (or affordable) strategy for a bigger farm field.

So there you have it. Not the sexiest side of farming, but maybe one of the most important. So I didn’t exactly get a Susie shopping trip this week, but I did get a happy farm boy, a fun ride in the truck (with Farmer, too), and a good investment for our future. I can’t complain, but I do feel like we’re starting to resemble the Clampetts (of Beverly Hillbillies fame) more every day.

After soil fertility (and sunlight), the next most important thing for a new field is irrigation. So Roy’s working on digging a well (in his spare time, yeah. The well will provide water for the 500 chickens, too.) Then there’s the deer fencing…which might involve another trip to the tractor store. Oh boy.

 

 

Edible, The Garden, The Recipes

Field to Freezer: Sweet Corn for Christmas

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You can have your Santa with his big sack of toys, any old day. Our Santa leaves something much more delicious—bushel bags of sweet corn. Instead of showing up only one night a year, he drops by every other day. And he doesn’t come down the chimney. At least I don’t think he does, because the sack of corn is always down by the northernmost farm gate. (And we don’t have a chimney). But I never see Santa. He and his elves alight in the cornfield and disappear among the tall rows of corn stalks. On my way down to do my chicken chores, I’ll glance at the gate, but nothing’s there. Half an hour later, about the time the sun is just high enough for me to peel off a layer, I circle around the pine grove and, look, there it is! A big bag of fresh-picked corn.

With Roy gone to work, I’m left to find something with wheels to haul the bag up to the farm stand. I don’t mind the effort, because I always start smiling when I see that corn. What could be better than having oodles of fresh sweet corn around! This week we’re getting a variety called Sparkle—last week one called Providence, and my favorite, old-fashioned all-white Silver Queen.

Okay, truth is, Santa is really Morning Glory Farm farmer Simon Athearn, and the elves are his corn-picking farm crew. (But I really don’t see them.) We get to sell their delicious corn at the farm stand this time of year, as their late varieties are growing right next door to us.

Inevitably, an ear or two or three meanders off the farm stand and into our refrigerator. (You know, you can’t sell an ear that someone’s ripped the leaves off of, or that maybe fell on the um, ground, or something.) So we are having this totally lovely corn-every-night-in-October experience. (Try this.)

The corn is so good and there’s so much of it right here, that we decided to “reappropriate” a dozen (or so) ears today and get them processed for the freezer.

Blanching and freezing corn is not rocket science. (See easy direx here.) But I remember doing it a few years back and not being so happy about the results after a few months in the freezer. So I took extra care today not to overcook or waterlog the corn and to spread it out on sheet pans to freeze before packing. (I wish you didn’t have to blanch it at all, but you must or an enzyme will hasten the deterioration of the corn).

To my great relief, we now have sweet corn in the freezer for the cold months. We could even have it for Christmas, no Santa needed.

Edible, The Recipes

A Tale of Two Rooster-ettes

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Way back in May, we got 26 baby chicks: Twenty-five Aracaunas, who are about to drop blue eggs any day now, and one “bonus” exotic mystery breed chick, which turned out to be a Silver Polish Crested.

Now that the girls are four months old, we have to face the reality that not all of the girls are, well, girls. Though they don’t seem to actually know that.

Polly, our Polish Crested, didn’t get along with anyone right from the start, so she had to be separated. She had her own special dog crate in Roy’s shop for the first couple months. When it was time for her to graduate, Roy fashioned her a special little coop-within-a-coop that opens out onto her own little pasture-pen. It’s no wonder Polly is fond of Roy. Only problem is, Polly is really Pauley. She crows. (Or tries to crow—it sounds painful.) And she doesn’t cock-a-doodle-doo at the usual rooster-crowing times, like sunrise. She crows when Roy gets home from off-farm work in the early afternoon. And she crows at sunset. (See, I still refer to her as She.)

She also stays happily in her outdoor pen until dusk. Then she decides to roost on top of the deer fencing between her pen and her neighbors until Roy comes along, plucks her off, and tucks her into her little coop for the night. She could fly out and wander around (any time of the day), but she doesn’t. Okay, I mean he doesn’t. It doesn’t look like a terribly comfortable spot to hang out, but apparently it appeals to him.

Over at the Aracaunas’ coop, we have Henzilla (above). We started calling her that when clearly she was growing twice as fast as the rest of the girls. Honestly, we knew she wasn’t a hen, but the name kind of stuck. And the funny thing is, though Henzilla wanders around the pen towering over all the other girls, she doesn’t seem to be very aggressive and she hasn’t learned to crow yet. She’s pretty mellow in fact. (If you can describe an Aracauna as mellow—they’re all pretty skittish. If you want docile, go for a Buff Orpington like Martha.) Anyway, I feel sorry for Henzilla, because she just seems like a really awkward teenager to me (handsome though she is!). And plus, once she  does get her Superman cape on and transform into a real rooster, she (he) might not be around for long. Roy has always said, “no roosters.” Except Polly/Pauley, who he thinks is special just because she looks exotic. Which he does. If you like feathers.

Well, who knows what will happen. With 550 chickens, 9 coops, and several large chicken pastures (not to mention 450 eggs a day) to manage, Roy is always fine-tuning the chicken operation. If I were a rooster, I might try and impress Roy, too. Considering it’s all about the eggs around here, just being exotic might not cut it.

 

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, publicity, The Cookbooks

A New Cookbook, with A Side of Memoir: Fresh From the Farm, by Susie Middleton (yup) — coming soon!

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Keeping a secret for more than a year is hard, you know. And I can’t say that I didn’t hint here and there—I couldn’t help myself. But now, with only about 5 months to go until pub date, it’s the right time to let the cat out of the bag. Otherwise I might bust. So…here goes: I have written my third book! Okay, so maybe that doesn’t sound so monumental or exciting when you see it written down on paper (or read it on a screen). But I have to tell you, this book rocks. It’s totally awesome.

Here’s why:  It’s called Fresh from the Farm: A Year of Recipes and Stories, and yes, you guessed it, the “farm” is our farm, Green Island Farm. And not only is this book a cookbook (125 recipes), but it’s a story too—the story of how the little farm came to be. (So, yeah, I got to write the story, so I’m pretty psyched about that.) Now add more than 100 photos of the farm and absolutely gorgeous finished-food photos to go with the recipes (Thank you, Alexandra Grablewski). Just for good measure, add an appendix of farm design ideas (by none other than RR). And put all that in a 256-page hard cover book. And then thank The Taunton Press (and especially my editor Carolyn Mandarano) for deciding to publish this book—and executing this cool concept so assuredly. (Breathe, Susie. Really, this is all so fabulous, as my friend Katie would say, so I get a little worked up.) There are even a bunch of my own photos in the book—woo-hoo!

Fans of Fast, Fresh & Green and The Fresh & Green Table will be happy to know that the seasonal recipes in Fresh from the Farm are just as carefully crafted and cross-tested as in my first books. (Thank you Jessica Bard and Eliza Peter.) And while each one makes happy use of a veggie or fruit we grow on the farm (or eggs, of course), this time I got to do everything from breakfast to dessert—and even meatloaf! Here are a few teaser recipe titles:

Roast Parmesan Crusted Cod with Baby Potatoes, Bell Peppers, Onions & Thyme; Chinese Grilled Chicken and Bibb Lettuce “Wraps;” Spicy Thai Shrimp and Baby Bok Choy Stir-Fry; Grill-Roasted Fingerlings with Rosemary, Lemon, Sea Salt and Fresh Corn Vinaigrette; Farmhouse French Toast with Backyard Berry Syrup; Libby’s Lemon Blueberry Buckle; Lobster Salad Rolls with Fresh Peas; Curry-Coconut Butternut Squash Soup; Baby Kale and Blood Orange Salad with Feta and Toasted Almonds; Autumn Pot Roast with Roasted Root Veggie Garnish; Honey-Vanilla Roasted Pears. 

So you can see that Fresh from the Farm is firmly in the cookbook camp. But as you make your way from early spring to late fall, from Bibb lettuce and fresh peas to blueberries and butternut squash, you’ll also be traveling through the first couple years of our garden-to-farm journey. (The text runs around the recipes on every page.) How we landed our little farmstead, how we started with 8 chickens and wound up with 550 laying hens, how Farmer came to be the Farm Dog, and how a hoop house, a free tractor, and four acres sealed our fate.

I won’t tell you any more now. Don’t want to spoil the fun you’re going to have when you get this gorgeous book in your hands! But I will try to give you a few more details in the upcoming months. But for right now, believe it or not, you can already pre-order Fresh from the Farm on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It’s also listed with the Indie booksellers, and since we love to patronize independent bookstores, I’d encourage you to go ask your bookstore to pre-order it for you if you like. Or you can just be patient and wait until February 11, 2014. But I wouldn’t know anything about patience!

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.

Edible, The Recipes

No More Whining–The Tomatoes Are Here

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Proof positive that my patience (or lack of) is worsening by the year (and my memory, too): I checked our records (record-keeping nerd that I am), and, in fact, we picked the first of this years Sungolds and Early Girls EARLIER this year than last year–and the year before! (That’s tomatoes from the garden, not the hoop house. The hoop house ones came almost a full month ahead of the field tomatoes.)

So I must officially stop complaining about the tomatoes (and everything else) being late this year, especially because now they’re officially here! Or at least some are; beefsteaks are still mostly green.  And I have nothing further to say on the subject; I simply offer the proof: Sungolds, Sweet 100s, Yellow Pears, Black Cherries, Early Girls, and Juliet Plums above. Ripening now and soon to be taste-tested:  Cherokee Chocolates, below. Time for salsa and bruschetta. Finally.