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Farmher

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In reading a blog I read daily called Sheepy Hollow Farm I was taken to a site called Farmher.  This is a website documenting women farmers in the U.S. and the photographs are stunning.  It got me to thinking about last weekend.

My sister had a pile of wood in her driveway that needed to be split so last Sunday Bill filled the splitter with gas, hooked it up to the tractor and sent me on my way.  I have to admit I love driving the tractor – especially to other people’s houses.  I love the open feeling as you are driving down the road, the way the tractor sounds.

On the way I passed the home of a classmate of mine (there were only 4 of us total until high school).  He was mowing his lawn and I could see on his face that look of bewilderment – “What is she doing towing a splitter down the road with a tractor?”

When I got to Sue’s we unhooked the splitter leaving it near the pile of wood.  We then proceeded across the field to pick up three large pieces of an apple tree trunk.  They filled the bucket.  After dumping them in the pile of wood we started splitting, each taking a turn at running the splitter or bringing the wood over to be split – both throwing the wood into the pile needing to be stacked.  We were about halfway through the pile when my classmate, his wife and daughter walked by with their dog.  We gave a wave but continued on our quest to finish before we ran out of gas (both us and the splitter).  I said they must be wondering about those crazy sisters doing that kind of work.

That’s what I was thinking as I perused the photography of Farmher.  I saw a woman tilling her garden, out with a chainsaw.  I saw them milking goats, feeding chickens, tending gardens and thought this has been me for a good part of my life in one way or another.  In centuries past the woman did a very large part of the farming along with her husband.  They were a team.  The men did the heavy work, the women made sure they were fed and warm.  They all worked hard.  I come from a line of small farmers, it seems to me that this is the way life really should be.  Bringing forth your sustenance from the land that is yours, tending your field and flock.  Knowing that the work you put in keeps your family happy and whole.

Can All You Can

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I posted a photo of my canyon of canned goods the other day and some comments surprised me.  I grew up canning.  My mother canned – a lot.  We had a large garden and what she didn’t can she froze.  Everything was done with a hot water bath so there were hours spent in front of that stove or in a hot kitchen, it takes a long time to process things with a hot water bath.  She used the WWII volume of the Ball Blue Book.  I still have it but these days almost everything I do is with a pressure canner.  It saves me time, water, energy and sweat.  I am also able to can pretty much anything safely.

This time of year the concentration is on fruit with tomatoes included.  Last week I canned tomatoes, peaches and made apricot butter as well as a few jars of dill pickles.  This week will be a repeat.  I really need about 50 pints of tomatoes to last me until next summer, I’d prefer to have more but tomatoes aren’t as easy to come by this summer due to a blight that seems to have effected everyone everywhere.

The peaches are beautiful this year and I had a really great canning experience this past weekend.  I love it when everything goes smoothly.  I don’t want to fight to peel those peaches.  I read somewhere to make sure the water was at a rolling boil and to dunk only a few peaches at a time for 30 seconds then into the ice bath.  Worked like a charm.  I also made sure my fruit was at room temperature before I started.  Canning fruit at home also allows you to control the amount of sugar that is used in processing.  That’s important to me, I don’t like things really sweet, I want to taste the fruit.

Our pear tree is loaded with fruit this year – I fear for its branches.  The apple trees are the same.  I will probably make a few pints of pie filling from the apples just to see if I can make it work to my satisfaction.  The pears won’t even ripen until after Thanksgiving and I will can those in chunks like I did the peaches.

There is nothing like the taste of home canned food, especially in winter.  I know exactly what is in every jar, there are no preservatives, no additives, no GMO’s.  It’s real food.  There is also the feeling of food security which is certainly what food preservation is all about.  Having enough to eat until the next harvest comes in.  Plant enough to eat now and put by enough to get you to next summer.  We live in a world where everything is immediate.  It takes very little time to empty out a grocery store, they are restocked every day.  I don’t ever want to worry about where my next meal is coming from or not having food to feed my family.  I’m sure that comes from growing up when food security may have been a concern.  I just remember this time of year the shelves were stocked and you had choices.

130824 Canning CanyonI know when I look at this my mind is set a little more at ease.  I have good food, I took the time to make it right and now all that is left is the eating.

Tomato Thief

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I have a few combination pots of herbs that have (had) cherry tomato plants in them.  I have had tomato blight this year in a big way so the tomatoes are on some very sad looking vines.

Years ago, when I had only one dog, it was a little schnauzer named Holly.  She was completely food obsessed. Each year I planted a pot of cherry tomatoes in my back yard in Enfield so I would pick one for her every time we went out.  She loved it and her first stop in the yard was that pot.  Buddy came along and she showed him the trick.  Years have gone by and I no longer have tomatoes in Enfield.

Buddy is getting on in years and we think he has a little dementia (which dogs actually do get).  This is what we saw him doing Sunday night.  He was picking the tomatoes off of the vines in the pots in the yard.  He’s hard of hearing so was unaware of me being behind him with the camera, he was totally concentrating on eating tomatoes.

130825 Buddy (1)We all had a little chuckle about this finding it interesting that so many years have passed since he actually did this.

The day was beautiful and we cooked and ate outdoors.  As we were sitting down to eat Bill looked over to the garden where Buddy was showing Chester the ropes in tomato eating in my tomato patch.  One yell and Chester made a beeline out of the place he knows he’s not supposed to be.  Buddy?  He had to have at least one more before he left.

 

Garden Economics

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130824 Garlic

This is my garlic harvest for this year.  A year ago about this time I was thinking I really needed to grow some of my own but when I went onto the High Mowing Seed website with the intention of ordering some and they were sold out.  Bummer I thought – then figured I’d order it for this year. Garlic is planted in the fall, like tulips and daffodils, it needs that fall and winter time to set out its roots.  It then blossoms in June or so and is ready to harvest in July (at least here it is).  The seed companies send out their garlic for planting the first week in October.

I moved on completely forgetting about the garlic. A couple of weeks later I received a package in the mail – a pound of garlic for planting from High Mowing.  I had forgotten that I had ordered it with my spring seeds back in February.  It felt like pennies from heaven because I’d paid for it back in February as well.

The garlic I had ordered is called Music.  It’s a hardneck variety which I know seems to do pretty well around here. I dug a nice bed for them in a sunny, well-drained sight and placed each clove about 3 to 4 inches deep, covered it and walked away.  When spring arrived it was the first plant out of the ground.  In June the blossoms, called scapes, emerge.  I pick all of them off – doing this puts the plants energy in forming bulbs.  The scapes are delicious – I chop them and cook them in eggs for breakfast but they are great in all kinds of things.  Two harvests from one plant.

Towards the middle of July the stalks of the garlic begin to turn brown from the ground up.  I’ve heard that timing is everything with garlic.  You don’t want to dig it up too soon- you want those bulbs as big as you can get them.  If you wait too long the bulb will no longer be tight, the cloves will have splayed out – ready to continue growing for another year.  I had to guess.  I waited until the plants were brown half of the way up the stalk and then I dug one out to see.  It was a thing of beauty.  I dug the rest.

Curing the garlic takes another 3 to 4 weeks. The skins dry to that thin paper we are all familiar with.  I just laid the whole plant on paper in the house and waited (of course a couple of bulbs were sampled along the way).  This weekend I cleaned and trimmed the crop. What you see in the photo is what I grew.  This was a pound of garlic cloves.  The cloves are very large on this garlic so it doesn’t take many to get to a pound.  For every clove you plant you get a bulb.

This garlic is so good I vowed to plant 3 times as much next year – the problem?  It would probably cost over $60 for the seed.

Bill and I gazed at these beautiful bulbs and decided that I would use most of what I grew this year as seed for next year.  It made me a little sad to think about not eating most of what was in the basket but I could quadruple the number of bulbs next year just by planting what was in front of me.  It was sort of a no brainer, but all I want to do right now is eat garlic mashed potatoes from the garden.

Dusk on Pelham Lake

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130818 Percys Point

 

Percy’s Point on Pelham Lake has become one of my favorite places to bring Chester.  The lake is such a calm, quiet place.  This particular spot boasts a few picnic tables and a couple of benches.  I was leaning against one of the tables the other day and realized my father had made all of them a few years ago.

We started visiting this spot out of necessity.  Chester likes to be in water when he gets hot but the only water on our property now is a slimy, muddy little brook that is trickling water from the beaver pond above it.  There is no other word to describe it other than gross – and stinky.  When he’s hot he will go into the reeds around it and lies down so he comes out covered with this rust colored goo, yuck.  We’ve tried hosing him off but it’s pretty ineffective and he won’t get into the pool we have for the dogs.  Usually I hose most of the mud off and then bring him to the lake and make him swim for a while until he’s clean.  He thinks this is quite a treat and we are now wondering if he goes into that muck just so I’ll take him to the lake.  Hmmmmm.

There are times that are particularly nice to bring him there.  Last night I was canning and didn’t get to go until almost dusk.  On the way a coyote crossed the road in front of my car.  They elicit fear in many and if there is a pack of them near your yard at night I can understand that – they are loud and talkative.  I’m thinking they are probably the reason I haven’t seen a rabbit since winter as well as every other critter that usually makes its home around the property.  I have to tell you though, they are a magnificently beautiful animal.  They have the most intense yellow eyes, they stare right through you.

As I was tossing the ball into the pond a couple walked by with their little dog on a leash.  I told them about seeing a coyote not too far from there.  Anyone here that has small animals knows that letting them loose this time of day always runs the risk of losing them.  As beautiful as they are being aware is always the best idea.  Meanwhile Chester kept swimming after his ball paying no attention to the couple or their little dog.  There’s is nothing that keeps him from his game.

Family Affair

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130818 Wood (2)

The wood still needs to be cut and split and we had some help on Sunday.  Daughter Amanda, her boyfriend Yusuf and sister Sue all were all there.  I can’t tell you how much you can get done with helping hands.  The saying “many hands make light work” really rang true.

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Each person had their own job, depending upon their skill level with pieces of equipment.  Well, everyone can use the splitter but not everyone can wield a chainsaw (that’s the piece of equipment I stay away from).

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Chester just likes to be in the thick of things.  He’s not afraid of the noise of the equipment or tractor (although he stays away from the chainsaw as well).  The splitter is a real godsend to people our age or anyone for that matter.  The pieces of wood that were dispatched were large, some 25 to 30 inches across.  If they weren’t full of knots they were spit with ease.

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The wood we split Sunday was ash and cherry.  I love splitting ash, it’s beautiful and splits easily.  Cherry on the other hand . . .

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By the time we were done we had a wall of wood over 25 feet long and 5 feet high.  All in all a great days work.

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Of course this was happening all day with anyone that was near him.   Chester had a good day too.

 

Good Food

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My kids call me the doomer.  I try to tell them that I just like to be prepared.  I never want to worry about where my next meal is coming from.  In doing so I have learned to garden in good weather and bad.  This year is one of those years where some things are doing much better than expected while others are an unmitigated disaster.  Every year I seem to say to Bill, “If we had to survive on this year’s garden we would starve to death by February”.  Even though I’m getting better at my gardening and adding more and more perennial beds and plants to the ever changing array of food that I grow I know that it would never be enough for a family to survive on until the next crop comes in.

The main reason I really grow a garden is there is nothing like the taste of a warm cucumber just picked, or that summer tomato.  The real revelation came to me when I grew potatoes for the first time a couple of years ago.  Potatoes freshly dug scream “POTATO” when you eat them.  Something happens to produce the minute it is harvested – the taste begins to wane. There are only two things I grow that improve once picked – pears and long pie pumpkins.

Last weekend we made a spectacular meal of things we have grown (or in the case of the steak watched grow).  These are the meals that are memorable, the ones I like to share with friends and family.  I want them to know their food can be so much better. There is such satisfaction in knowing you started the seeds and nurtured your food.  That there are no chemicals involved in any of the food we ate.  The beef was fed grass and hay from one property, no hormones, antibiotics.  It grew up in fresh air and sunshine.  It tastes like BEEF, not the homogenized red meat you find wrapped in plastic and styrofoam at the grocery store.  There is a huge difference.

The garden surplus I will continue to can to use in the winter months.  Peaches and apricots are next on the list and I will continue with tomatoes.  Even with processing the taste of  home canned fruit of any kind is a revelation in the winter.  The first bite brings you back to summer.  That is what makes all the work of preserving your harvest in the summer worthwhile.

Changing of Seasons

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There comes a time every summer when you feel it, you know fall is just around the corner.  The leaves on the ash trees are beginning to turn, the maples are taking on that olive tone.  We are fortunate to be experiencing beautiful weather right now – cool and clear.  With the realization that the seasons are beginning to change also comes a little panic feeling about what needs to be done before winter gets here.  On the top of the list is cutting and splitting wood.

The weather was just amazing and we have been taking Mondays off in lieu of a week’s vacation, the idea being that we would take the boat to the lake for a little R&R.  Winter is calling though and our shed has a limited supply of wood stored.  The house would be quite frigid in January if we couldn’t at least put a fire in the big fireplace in the living room.  Instead of boating yesterday Bill and I cut and split about a cord of cherry and ash that was sitting in the back forty.  It’s work, but it’s satisfying seeing cord wood in a nice stacked row drying out.  Having a splitter makes it possible for us to do the work, if we had to use a splitting maul and ax I’m afraid we would have to hire a much younger man to do the job.

It took us only 3 to 4 hours to cut and split what we did.  When we came up to make dinner I was concerned with just how achy I was and thought about getting out of bed this morning.  You know that feeling when muscles are screaming as you put your feet to the floor?  Or going down the stairs heading for that first cup of coffee?  I was pleasantly surprised this morning.  I felt good, like I’d done an honest day’s work.  I told Bill I could do that everyday (it’s nice working hard and having something to show for it).  Now we will see if it hits me tomorrow, sometimes it takes a day.

Starry, Starry Night

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130811 PerseidsFor the past week or so I had been thinking about the Perseids Meteor Shower set to peak last night between 2 and 4 a.m.  The weather forecast was for clear skies and Saturday night the visibility of the stars was amazing.  Instead of the usual beach chair I inflated an air mattress and set it in a spot in the yard with the clearest view of as much of the sky as I could.  (Truth be told I could have dragged that mattress out to the back forty and had a bigger view).  I got my camera ready but wasn’t expecting much – it’s a fully automatic SLR that really causes me more aggravation than anything else.

I knew there was no way I was going to stay awake until 2:00 so we went out to our gazing spot with our quilt in hand.  It was around 50 degrees and quite damp but the visibility was amazing.

I would say we didn’t see more than 5 or 6 shooting stars in an hour – they were good ones though.  The real treat was seeing the night sky on such a clear night.  Typically the sky is clouded over – it’s been a few years since I’ve actually watched this shower because of that.

For me the biggest treat of all was the Barred Owls that were all around us for a good part of the time we were there.  It started with just one in the distance calling.  It then landed in a tree in the back forty and kept talking, then to one of the maples near us.  We then heard another calling back in the distance and soon it had joined the one that was closest to us.  When they got together there was such a cacophony I wondered if it was a territorial dispute. There was some very loud squawking.  After a few minutes of silence we could hear one of them calling in the distance again.

It really was such a gift of nature.  The owls were really the only sound while we were out there – other than a few crickets.  I love listening to them talk to each other.  I’m sure all birds talk to each other but nothing is as obvious as this – they are the only ones you hear at that time of night.  There is normally a lot of owl action around the house but this year it’s been quiet.  I was worried about where they might have gone.  It was nice of them to pay me a visit and let me know they hadn’t really gone anywhere.

130811 Perseids (2)Next time I will use a different camera and maybe a tripod, although there isn’t a photograph that would ever capture the expanse of the night sky in a way that it feels when you are gazing up at it.