Tag Archives: Farm life

Farm life

Peppermint Kisses & Red-Tailed Hawks: So This is Christmas

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peppermint bowls

coop field

Mr. Big (as in Huge) red-tailed hawk helped himself to a hen yesterday. He has been circling for days, gliding from one pine-tree top to the next, always with an eye down, looking for his opening. The smart and fast hens head for their coops or hide under a canopy of tree branches when they hear his eerie screech or see him on the move. But there’s always one….

Hawks are part of the winter landscape that I love so much, and I can’t begrudge them the hunt. After all, the rabbits and voles and mice that hawks usually dine on have all gone into hiding. (The mice into our house of course—mice being a wee bit more resourceful than chickens, in my opinion.)

tree ornament tree fence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stepping outside these days is such a contrast to the warm sparkly cookie baking/tree decorating/present wrapping vibe we’ve got going inside: The light covering of snow on the spent cornfield, the faintly luminous grey noontime sky, the theater of gnarled and twisted bare-limbed trees in the uber-still air. And that gulp of cold air that catches your breath, the chill that makes you curl your fingers into a fist inside your gloves. Startling.

corn field

I love going outside. And then I love coming back in.

Even though, no matter how much we try to seal all the drafts in this creaky-leaky old farm house, it is still on the chilly side.

lib tree dad tree dad lib

 

 

And our Christmas tree brings new meaning to the whole Charlie Brown thing. After traipsing around out back for far too long on the coldest day last weekend, we finally settled on something we thought would work–with the bare back half to the wall! Roy cut it down, dragged it in, and we had a good laugh.

mouse fox doggie charlie

 

pea pod aliceFortunately, now that I’ve fortified it with my ornament collection and lots of tinsel, it doesn’t look half bad. I just try not to look up when thumbing through Martha Stewart Living. But every Christmas tree is beautiful at night, isn’t it? Especially when you turn all the other lights out in the living room and gaze, mesmerized, at the twinkle show that remains.

sugar starkiss final

 

Now, so far we have eaten every single Christmas cookie we’ve made. Dad ate the beautiful sugar cookies Libby decorated as fast as I could bake them. So much for gift giving (more batches to come.) Yesterday, I played around with egg whites and a pastry bag (big fun) and made peppermint meringue kisses, a recipe by my fabulous baker friend Abby Dodge. I got the recipe out of one of Fine Cooking’s special cookie collections, but it’s on the web, too. I’ve never been a great egg-white-whipper and I think I could have gone a little further with these, but I’m jazzed to make them again. (I tried chopping and smashing peppermint candies a few different ways, too, and that was a hoot.)

In case you can’t tell, I love Christmas. And cold days that make baking, well, essential to one’s well-being. And I also love these precious limbo days at the close of the year. Serious work goes on hold; afterall, there’s a whole new year coming for that.

kiss tissue 2

 

 

 

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, 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, The Recipes

In Between Sun Drops, Finding Time for Fall

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It hasn’t rained here in any significant way for weeks, maybe months. The effect is sort of Eternal Summer. It’s warm, dry, sunny, and blue-sky beautiful every day. Not beautiful in a traditionally stunning foliage-peeping-tour kind of New England way. It’s more of a languorous, dreamy, golden-grasses-waving mirage-like across-the-cornfield kind of way. Time feels suspended.

And yet it’s not. The tautness of summer has loosened a notch or two with every passing weekend, leaving just a little more room for us to breathe and stretch.

We still have a zillion eggs to gather and wash every day. There are greens to harvest every morning and seedlings in the hoophouse to transplant. The new field needs prepping for winter, and there are seemingly miles of chicken fences that need mending.

But there are pockets of time. Time we’re making the most of with some cool activities.

One Saturday we shot a video. Our friends Chris Hufstader and Katie Hutchison came to the farm and spent all day filming and recording us, the chickens, Farmer, and some delicious food, of course. They’ll edit all that into a short spot I’ll be able to post online to help promote the new book.

Last Thursday night, we took part in the Martha’s Vineyard Food and Wine Festival. The opening event was a tasting of farm food (and wine) across the street at the Ag Hall. Our charge was to make something to showcase our eggs, so I spent a couple days shopping, prepping, and cooking 12 frittatas to cut into 250 pieces. It was a fun evening and a nice off-farm outing for Green Island Farm!

I took some time to make bacon (literally) last Monday. When we got the meat from our last pig back from the butcher, I kept a pork belly (these things are huge!) out of the freezer, and then when I had a minute started reading up on how to make bacon. That led me to knocking on my neighbor Katherine Long’s door for some advice and supplies. I came home with 12 books about pigs and pork and charcuterie (among other things.) Katherine is both a former librarian and an amazing, adventuresome cook. Hence the books. The pork belly is now curing in the fridge.

The best thing, though, about shaking off our intense summer schedule, is time for walks and play. When Libby came out a few weekends back, we all took a long walk on our favorite beach on the South Shore. Then we raked piles of leaves for Libby and Farmer to roll in. And carved the little pumpkin that conveniently came right out of Libby’s garden. We made chocolate zucchini muffins at Libby’s request and ate a lot of corn on and off the cob. Libby dressed Farmer in his early Halloween costume (a cape) and chased him round and round our tiny house.

 

 

Yesterday we had Roy’s Mom and Dad and sister Nancy out to the farm for a relaxing visit. Farmer and I showed Peg and Bob the walk down to the creek and the Square Field. I made Compost Soup for lunch. (This is Libby’s name for veggie minestrone, which she actually likes, despite the epithet. She just think it looks like the contents of our little kitchen compost pail—actually the one that usually goes to the chickens, not onto the pile, since it is mostly veggie trimmings.)

Even the sun setting earlier is a bit of a relief for us. In the heat of summer, we get our best farm work done in the cool evenings, and often we are outside until 9 pm. Now we are forced inside at 6 o’clock; soon it will be 5. That means we can’t work quite as many hours in the day (though there is all that accounting to do inside!). Endless summer is nice for a while (and I’m certainly not in any rush for winter), but the solid comfort of a fine autumn day is particularly sweet.

 

 

 

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 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.