Fields and Fire

do a little (sun) dance

Well, last Thursday I was so tired of chill and rain, and wet clothes mildewing on the drying rack that I finally made a fire in the woodstove, cranked up The Talking Heads, and got my boogie on with Ella.  While we can't claim full credit for the sun coming out the next day, I like to think we helped.

I don't know about you, but personally I'm totally thrilled to see the concept of CSAs spreading, and also expanding in concept (click here if you don't know what a CSA is).  We're pushing this idea forward ourselves, obviously, with Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain's CSA.  We're also personally members of a delicious meat CSA (Chesnut Farms - delicious, grass fed meat delivered frozen once a month).  And newest to me - my membership to Foxfiber Farm's wool CSA (or "sheep shares" as they call it).  Once a season, I get two skeins of yarn in the mail, in the colorway I've pre-chosen.  It's gorgeous fiber, and I love getting my yarn right here in the Valley, from such talented folks.  Wait, not folks, neighbors as Ben is reminding me over my shoulder.  And he's absolutely right.  Neighbors.

We were quite busy this weekend, waving from Roy's horse-drawn wagon in a Fourth of July parade, working on the horse stall for Cole, harvesting the last of this year's strawberries (precious!), and the first of the summer's raspberries.  Yeah!  I've been wondering, as Ella devours fistful after fistful of berries, how on earth we could satiate her berry appetite if we didn't grow our own.  We just planted two blueberry bushes, with a plan to order more late this summer.  I always flinch at the price tag at first ($35), but then I think about how much each little basket of blueberries would cost if I bought them instead.  Maybe I'm telling you something you already know (I hope so!), but until we end our culture's  ridiculous war on dandelions and obsession with lawns instead of growing food and beauty, it can't really be said too much. Not to mention that a grocery store (or even a farmer's market) doesn't look like this:

Today I proved (though it may never happen again) that it is possible to make jam alone with a two year old.  And neither of us even cried!  (Thanks once again to the Ergo and nursing, of course.)  It was fun, and I love how well we're doing with preserves so far.  Right now we're doing about a batch a week - not too shabby! 

Ben got the summer newsletter printed, so we'll post it very soon on the updated website, and we'll have hard copies at the bakery, for anyone who wants a copy to hold in their hands. 

small grains

I wanted to share more photos from our small farm in Shutesbury, particularly of the grain trials we're doing.  Here are the oats, and some spring-planted Glenn wheat:

 

I had planned a lot more photos for this post, but had so many wonderful visitors at the bakery today that I didn't have time to get them in!  So more to come very very soon. 

To answer a burning question from CSA members, here is one really great cookbook that covers all the grains we're growing (plus more!), with basic cooking info and some really delicious, creative recipes.  It's Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way by Lorna Sass.
And here is the (slightly altered recipe) for baked beans I mentioned last time, taken from Cooking from Quilt Country by Marcia Adams. 
Baked Beans from Scratch (serves 6 - generously)
1 pound navy beans or Boston brown beans (more on this below)
pinch of baking soda
1/4 pound salt pork or bacon (optional)
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup molasses or maple syrup

Soak the beans overnight in water to cover.  Do not drain.  The next day, bring to a boil and add the baking soda.  Lower the heat, skim the foam, and simmer, partially covered, about 20 minutes, or until the skins peel back when blown on.  Drain, reserving cooking liquid in a separate container.
Preheat oven to 300 F.  Place bacon or salt pork in bottom of a bean pot or deep 2 qt ceramic casserole (a metal pan works fine, and I've also done this in a crock pot from this point on).  To the drained beans, add the remaining ingredients; mix well.  Pour bean mixture into pan, add enough of the bean liquid to cover.  Bake, covered, for 4-6 hours.  Keep checking, adding more liquid as necessary so the beans remain covered at all times.  Do not stir, because this will make the beans break and become mushy.  Cook until tender.  Yum!

So, the original recipe calls for navy beans, but you can bet your britches that the original Boston Baked Beans were made with . . . Boston Favorite beans.  Which we planted this year, with seed obtained from the fabulous Seed Savers Exchange.  Can't wait to make my baked beans with the real thing this winter.  

We have a subscription to Orion Magazine at the bakery, and each issue really blows me away with its fresh ideas and well-crafted essays and poetry.  How lucky are we to have such a wonderful magazine made locally (and completely ad free!)?  Last issue's article "The Barbaric Heart " by Curtis White has really stayed with me.  It discusses capitalism as a modern form of barbarianism, and that the antidote to this is beauty, and thoughtfulness.  The whole article can now be read online here, but I particularly wanted to share this excerpt:

 "What we want is the beautiful. We say it with a smile on our faces when we go for a hike, or when we visit an “eco-friendly” town full of bike paths and locally owned shops with a mountain vista in the background. We do not say of such places, “I’m grooving on this system’s ecological balance.” Or, “The Green Economy is working well.” We say, “It’s beautiful here!” And yet when we set out to make our most public arguments for nature, we seem almost embarrassed to say that what convinces us is the argument of the beautiful. The thoughtfulness of the beautiful. In fact, I’m embarrassed right now!"

This weekend, we're making strawberry-rhubarb jam, and building a horse stall!  Giddyup.  Here's wishing you a handmade, beautiful weekend.

June garden

Rain rain and more . . . rain.  I'm having some deja vu of last summer, but this summer at least, we're better prepared to bring in the grain, no matter what the weather.  Ben is hard at work preparing a summer newsletter, with lots more on this, so I won't steal his thunder.  But I will tell you that Ben, farmer Adam, Seth Seeger, a metalworker, and a volunteer engineer have been very busy building a grain dryer from scratch.  Yay!

Despite the rain, and the unnervingly cool weather, the garden is moving right along. 

We've been out in the drizzle, harvesting strawberries before they dissolve, getting ready for jam-making this weekend.  I'm determined to kick serious preserving butt this year.  I'm so ready to never see the inside of a grocery store again.
We planted corn in our field at home again, since the crows ate all the little shoots last time.  A few hours later, we heard the raucous sound of . . . a pack of crows, in the corn field.  We've put out piles for them to eat, hoping that Eliot Coleman is right and crows with full bellies won't go to the trouble of digging up our corn.  Arrggg. 
It seems that nearly every week Ella still has a new first, but this is a big one, I swear.  First haircut!  I especially like how in this photo she seems to have done the haircut herself.

Our draft horse search continues.  We were very lucky this week to meet a local teamster, Roy Nilson.  He's a super sweetie and knows a lot about the horses in the area, so we're hoping this means we're closing in on ours!  After meeting Roy and two possible horses (huge Belgians), Ben was so pumped that the next day he, Seth, Cristie, and Jeanine put up fencing for the horse paddock.  One step closer.

putting food by . . . and putting seeds in

Well, to back up a bit . . . I'd like to share some photos from the CSA bean planting last month, taken by the lovely Alice Flood Posner, who works down at the New England Small Farm Institute. 

This is farmer Adam Dole, loading the bean seeds.

 

And here's the John Deere, getting ready.  Does the tractor look like it's seen a few seasons of work?  That's because farmer Arnie Voranger collects and restores antique tractors (pre-1950s).  As Adam says, there is a lot of embodied energy in these machines - we're not using the latest "greatest" machines for a reason.

Thanks again for sharing these, Alice!  I, for one, can't wait to eat some of these delicious beans come harvest time, and all through the winter. 

Which brings us to a cooking secret.  A two-part secret.  Number one, rehydrated dried beans rock.  If you've never tried it, trust me.  I always used to get canned beans because it seemed so easy.  But once I began picturing the mountain of cans that a lifetime of bean eating might produce, I decided to give it a try.  Luckily for me, I had a copy of Cooking from Quilt Country, a really cool Amish cookbook that has a great baked beans (from scratch) recipe.  The recipe contains this secret, which makes cooking dried beans go quickly and smoothly.  Soak your beans overnight, drain, cover generously with water and add a pinch of baking soda.  Then bring to a boil, skim off foam (and, oh my, there will be foam), simmer until ready.  Delicious beans, way more quickly.  The baking soda changes something chemically that allows the beans to absorb the water more readily.

And for flashback number two, this was the scene in our kitchen a few weeks ago (photos by lovely WOOFer and talented photographer Jeanine Dargis):

   

Local Hadley grass is too good to have only one month of the year.  So for the first time, we made pickled asparagus.  Now it's on the shelf in our pantry, waiting to bring us some yummy green in the dead of winter.  We're very blessed to have this pressure cooker, which was my great-grandmother's.  You can't really see them in this photo, but is has wooden handles (actually incredibly useful - they don't get hot!).  I've ordered a new sealing ring, but other than that I think all the parts are original, and we have the original manual/recipe book.  I love love love using this cooker, which my grandmother brought to me last summer, just a few weeks before she passed away.

 

We also have a new vegetarian lunch option at Wheatberry these days - this delicious lentil brown rice salad.  We kept making (and devouring) this at home, and we're always searching for delicious vegetarian options to bring to the bakery.

 

And I finally gritted my teeth and patched up our quilt.  I was being pretty silly, really.  It's been our main quilt for years (with two large dogs on the bed), and was really in need of patching.  I was worried that it was going to look, well, patched . . . But once I decided to think of the patches as adding to the quilt, not flawing it (because those holes looked so great, right?), I got into it.  Especially since I have a big pile of really little scraps, only useful for projects like this.  I even got to use a homeless little quilt patch my grandmother had made.  

 

And last but certianly not least . . . this envelope might look plain, but it contains the checks to pay for the mill!!  Hooray!  Delivery estimate is about a month (we are ordering this custom made from Germany).  We are super excited, although it won't seem totally real until it arrives.  

 

Some folks had questions about how to leave comments.  If you go to the post you want to comment on, at the bottom in somewhat small letter should be a link that says "Comments."  If you click on it, it will show you everyone else's comments, and give you a box where you can leave your own!  Happy commenting, and have a great weekend everyone!