Top Three Unexpected Country Moments of 2011

I know we are already well into the second month of the year, but while spinning some wool this evening, I was inspired.  And I haven't been inspired in a while (hence, no posts) so here it is.  Three of the top unexpected country moments of last year.

3.  At spinning group back in December, we were going around the circle for show and tell (I know, sounds elementary, but it's how we get to see each other's work and share ideas and upcoming events).  We get to Mother K, who is a nun and shepherd of actual sheep at the local convent.  Mother K had spent all day tending to the animals and had basically decided she needed a break for a while, so she came to  spinning group.  She stated somewhat sheepishly (no pun intended), "Nobody there knows I'm gone."  Then in a more playful confident tone, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to seek permission!"  Maybe I shouldn't be surprised by this statement as country nuns are people too and need breaks just like the rest of us.  And they certainly aren't infallable either.

2.  The husband of a friend of mine who is a nice guy and a "real" farmer and do-it-yourselfer (rough around the edges, slaughters his own beef cows, owns multiple tractors, hays his own fields, fells his own trees, builds his own house) stopped by one morning asking me for advice.  The questions were initially about nursing school, which caught me even more off guard, because it was the last thing I would expect from this person (he was looking into pursuing a "real" career).  We stood around for a while, looking at the pigs, talking about farming, the new USDA-approved slaughterhouse opening up, the harvest, etc. like any country farmers would do.  Huh.  While my darling husband has been able to navigate this road much more easily than I (no doubt in part because he is male and the perceived "head of household"), it only took me 5 years of running a small farm to earn some farmer respectability.  Not bad, in the grand scheme of things.  Kristin Kimball writes about a similar experience on her farm in The Dirty Life (I can't quote it exactly because I lent the book out to somebody but I don't remember to whom!). 

1.  My darling husband and I were sharing a quiet meal together in the kitchen one December day when the dogs started barking.  Old Farmer J down the street (another "real" farmer) was at the door.  He wanted to know if we were interested in a Kitchen Table discussion about local food and fiber.  Here is a guy who has worked on a farm his entire life, who puts up 10,000 bales of hay a year,  sells his own grain mixtures and basically lives off the land, and now is spear-heading a local movement.  While we have bought hay and grain and lumber from him for the last three years,  he is probably the last person I would put under the label "visionary".  And yet, here he is, driving up and down the valley, stopping at all the farms, big or small, wondering if we would be interested in such a discussion.  The group has already met twice, and what a lovely range of farming personalities.  The group consists of a couple life-long, honest farmers; there are several yuppy farmers; there are the farmers who want to be organic and use environmentally friendly practices; there are farmers who want to raise exotics; there are farmers who want to barter; farmers who want to sell their goods down in NYC.  We have already decided to set up a farmer's marker right in our little village on Thursday afternoons during the growing season.  Goods ranging from fruits and vegetables to honey to the fiber arts to meat to homemade goat milk fudge and breads will potentially all be available for sale.  Even if it never really gets off the ground, the fact that this particular person had a vision and acted on it is a testimony to all that is good and surprising in the world!

The next Food Network show...

...should be Real Cooks on the Farm.  In it, contestants would have two hours to calmly prepare a healthy meal but everything, except for five ingredients of the contestant's choosing (seasonings, olive oil etc) , would have to be from the farm s/he was plopped down in and NOTHING would be prepared ahead of time (including the butter).  Now, on this farm, there would be a dairy cow, and plenty of poultry.  There would also be beef cattle, sheep and pigs, but I highly doubt you could process these larger animals in the amount of time given.  A huge vegetable garden would be available, and you would hope it would be high summer so that there were actually yummy vegetables in it (you can only do so much with greens and asparagus and the show isn't titled "Extreme Farm Cooking").  There would also be an orchard and berry brambles to find fruit in. If you were lucky to be in a farm in the south, you would have citrus available as well.

We don't have cable, so we don't regularly get to watch the Food Network, but we were staying at a place that did have television this past weekend.  And I confess, I am a little bit of a Food Network junkie.  So this new food show inspiration came to me the other evening when I was in a rush to create a good, substantially portioned meal for my family (sometimes I am accused of making "tapas" sized portions).  I had no time for advanced planning as we ended up being gone all day, but I did know I had a plethora of food available to me.  I'll be damned if I just caved and said "let's go order a pizza".  We have been traveling a lot the last few weeks and the "dining out" category of our budget was literally bursting at the seams. 

So, luckily we had some marinating venison in the fridge (a gift from a friend last fall which we had thawed earlier in the week).  I realize this would be cheating on the new show, but chicken would be an equally good protein and I am confident I could process one of those in about 20 minutes. Knowing the venison needs mere minutes over high heat to cook, I first headed to the garden to gather greens.  I have plenty of different lettuces, but to spice it up a bit, I added arugula and beet greens, some oregano, sage and rosemary.  I also pulled our first three carrots from the garden and picked a few pea pods. 

I had also noticed that the black caps (wild blackberries) were in abundance by our creek, so I went and gathered those (somewhat labor intensive as the berries are small, but so tasty).

I threw the lettuce, herbs, and arugula in the bowl after three washes in the salad spinner (to guarantee that no slugs remained), shelled the peas, chopped the carrots and then added the black caps.  We had bought some River Rat cheese up in Clayton, NY when we were visiting the Thousand Islands, so I added some chunks of that (I guess that would be one of my five ingredients off the farm).  I then added almond slivers (another off-farm ingredient).  For the dressing I used a raspberry vinegar and avocado oil (I know, strange combination, but really good).  I then cooked the venison over high heat (for about 4 minutes total) and put 8-9 pieces on top of the salad. 

There, done.  Probably 40 minutes from start to finish.  If I was doing chicken, it would take a little longer as the bird would have taken about 1 1/2 hours to roast--still within the two hour time limit though.  It's interesting to think about what wouldn't be possible to make in a two hour time slot: bread would be difficult as you wouldn't have time to process the grain into flour. And your main protein would be turkey, chicken, and eggs (or you could do the wild thing, and go for squirrel, possom, muskrat, frogs, I suppose).  It would certainly be entertaining to see what people came up with.

All jesting aside with the Food Network show, it is possible to put together a good meal from scratch, and despite the time pressure, it was actually enjoyable.  Meal time can be stressful and/or monotonous, two adjectives I'd like to eliminate from my vocabularly.  To simplify things, after five years together, my darling husband and I have finally decided to take my mother's fine strategy and prepare a weekly dinner menu.  We will then go one step further and decide who is cooking it each night.

As Julia Child would say, "Bon Appetit!"

Wild Windy Weather

The long Memorial Day weekend has had an ominous start as some very unstable weather has made its way to our area Thursday night.  We were all just getting ready to go to bed when the storm hit us.  The lightning display was spectacular but the heavy winds were quite damaging.  The power went out, causing Bud to wake up, and the boys ended up sleeping on futon mattresses downstairs where they could be calmed by the weather radio and be cooled by the lower downstairs temperatures.  Fire whistles were going off for much of the night and emergency crews were out clearing roads from downed power lines and trees as soon as the winds died down.  We woke up to find that the top 20 feet of one of our tall pines had snapped and been flipped around as it fell to the ground.  Fortunately, most of the downed trees seemed to fall ten feet away from the homes and not directly on them. 

We were surprised to see the fallen part of the tree oriented this way--it had to either have flipped in mid air or been pushed by the wind as it came off.  

Friday was beautiful and my darling husband and I spent most of the afternoon in the garden.  I planted some beets, greens and cucumbers and dug the bean bed.  Unfortunately, last night around 8pm, another set of thunderstorms came through with heavy rain, and I'm sure that most of the seeds got washed away.  We will simply have to assess and maybe replant later in the week.

While digging the bean bed, I came across some old potatoes that were still in the ground so I dug them up.  I also picked some of last year's fall lettuce that had been insulated by the snow and then started regrowing this spring.  The lettuce was delicious in our first green salad of the year.  The potatoes were more of a disappointment, but considering they were salvaged, we didn't have high expectations.  The new potatoes in the neighboring plot will be ready in a couple months.