Early Thanks

I'm sure that I'm not alone when I say this is my favorite time of year.  For starters, I begin to mentally let go of the garden and simply appreciate every day that it produces food.  My expectations fall away and the worry fades.  We won't break any production records this year, but it was more than enough.  And if one crop failed then another was there to fill any void.  I've put up enough food to relax and enjoy the satisfaction that comes from eating what is available one day to the next.

The evenings are crisp, leaves threaten to burst into the brilliant reds and oranges that so many travel here to appreciate.  We have a sugar maple just outside our living room bay window that is the bell-ringer every year along with the tall oaks that pound out the shortening days with their acorn percussion.

There's a batch of tomato sauce waiting on the stove top to be milled and canned.  A half bushel of apples is next in line to sauce.  Every morning I pick a quart of fall raspberries with our baby napping on my back.  The goats are, at the same time, at ease that the biting insects have subsided and anxious about the cool mornings as they've begun to come into heat.  The meat chickens are also living one day at a time.  They have grown especially fast this year and will be harvested earlier than planned.

We foraged enough wild grapes to try a first small batch of wine.  Soon our local orchard will begin to press cider, which I buy in 5 gal lots for fermentation into apple wine.  Nothing says autumn like fresh homebrew.  

the short on the new

Well, I'm a little frustrated with Blogger as of late since losing my Eating at Home page, which was my minimal effort contribution to this blog.  There once was a time when "publish" meant forever...blood or ink on paper until the skin or bark deteriorated enough to be just legible.  The internet, however permanent in our lives, is not without it's flaws.  Retrieving a record of months is impossible once a "save as draft" button is pushed, which in the rules means unpublish existing page and go back to the last copy saved.  Go figure and good riddance I say!  I learned from my own writings that we tend to eat the same damn thing repeatedly, which for some reason was not readily apparent to me.  Every night I go through the same two-step of what I should fix, from scratch, for dinner.  And it turns out that I "create" the same meals on a regular basis.  Now there are those few inspirations that I get from reading someone's blog or scouring the internet using a keyword search for whatever I have on the counter that is waiting to rot and I can't think to use, but for the most part it is repetition and ingenuity from experience that matter most.  I've been cooking, experimenting and making mistakes for many years, which in most cases allows me to have an idea and run with it, without a recipe.  From now on, I will be working with what is in season using my basic skills, record or not.

August Blues

The garden looked really great about a month ago when I took these photos. Since then, it's taken a turn for the worse. I don't know what it is about July that turns a promising group of plants upside-down with nasty bugs and weeds so much so that I don't even like to be out there in August. With our absences the Japanese beetles have eaten holes in everything, grasshoppers are zooming up and flitting out of reach every time I take a step inside the garden, squash bugs have killed the zucchini and pumpkin plants with wilt, and the tomatoes have early blight. The potato and garlic harvests were also really pathetic. I actually think there were more of both, spuds and cloves, when planted than what we collected after a full growing season. To top it off, a raccoon made a meal of what little sweet corn we were able to produce. This summer has been quite humbling.

Despite the pests and disease, we've still had a remarkable amount to eat and share with two families. We've been bartering cheese, eggs and veg for goat hay out of our neighbor's barn and the single CSA we supported last year returned for this season. The share that usually goes to the freezer is lacking, however. We did very well eating frozen vegetables through the winter and consumed nearly everything that we put up last season. Thankfully, pumpkin puree is still in excess, which we will use over the coming months. I took a few hours to organize the chest freezer last week...berries have their own compartment, meat, as well as 2011 veg, which we'll keep separate from older things that need to be consumed now. This doesn't sound like an exciting chore, but finding some long forgotten morsels to make dinner easy is always a bonus. And with the temperature above 80 degrees, who could complain about a freezer dive. On the bright side, without the extra packages of kale and beans taking space we'll have more room for when the meat chickens go over the rainbow.

Bloomy-rind Divine

I finally stopped eating one of our recently made bloomy-rind cheeses called St. Maure just long enough to take a picture. We've been making this cheese for awhile now providing ample opportunity to make mistakes, repeat mistakes and finally I feel comfortable with it. When I get it right, the young cheese (two weeks after production) is a little firmer than brie with an excellent clean flavor and no hint of bitterness. At this stage, I feel a little salt really enhances the taste and we devour it on crackers. As it ages wrapped in the fridge, the texture becomes soft until it is runny and it begins to develop an acidic bite that most people shy away from. We sampled one at 8 weeks and despite its pungent smell the taste was still wonderful.

The mistake I've made with this one is letting condensation drip onto the aging cheese from the fridge's upper coil. It's not noticeable at first, always dripping when I'm not looking/thinking, but then I start to notice that the rind is smooth and yellow, instead of furry and white, and it is LOOSE. The cheese becomes gooey between it's body and rind and flipping tends to tear the rind. Despite all of this, the cheese is still yummy but definitely lacking in appearance and more likely to become contaminated. I keep the aging cheese dryer by inverting a plastic tub over it, between the cooling coil and cheese so condensation drips are diverted away. Any moisture originating from the cheese drips/evaporates away from beneath, since the rounds age on a plastic mesh mat supported by a standard plastic coated wire fridge shelf. It sounds way more complicated than it really is. Don't let the smell fool you, this type of cheese is divine and it's only a little more work than chevre.

Bachelor Pad

This is the new man in the yard (left). He's older, but from great lines. We will use him this fall for all of our gals, keep any new does (hoping the boy:girl kid ratio will improve in 2012), and then breed kids to our first and younger boy, Glory Days. Bandito is from Dragonfly Farm in MA and is out of Twin Creeks Stella Luna and PromisedLand Incredible Hunk, both productive show animals to say the very least. Bandito is a little shy, quiet and very sweet...just my speed.

At first the boys had to tussle a bit which naturally brought the girls into screaming heat, but have since made good company for each other. Or at least the pee-in-the-face and mounting-each-other activity, notorious for boy goats, has eased somewhat. My daughters will never require the birds and bees talk after all of the gratuitous viewing they will engage in. This is yet another great reason to begin your own mini-farm. Early childhood education has nothing on us.

The boy's house came together in time, despite the circumstances. The walls bow and knock when they are asking to be fed in the morning. I think it may just be enough to hold their strength. The fencing, however, is another failure. I thought the gauge seemed off when I bought it at Lowe's, but otherwise was ecstatic at the price and felt committed after hauling it home, the hatch secured with bungee cord and huffing diesel all the way home. Laughably, they always escape when we are away and our goat-sitter is good enough to "fix" the fence, however temporarily. I'm fortunate they are well-mannered misters and I also know that when they really want to leave it will be short work to ease out of their confinement. Best to replace said fencing prior to breeding season or I will be sorry.

On loss.

Every farm, however small, suffers losses and recently we have been beset by them. Several weeks ago we lost our favorite doe kid this season, Tripoli. She was gorgeous beyond belief and maybe never suited to this ugly world. After a month of wasting away with diarrhea, she finally passed. I believe now that her dam never fed her those first few days and it took too long for her to show any interest in a bottle. I should have forced a tube down her throat to feed her colostrum after 24hrs, but I mistook her disinterest in eating as a sign that her mother was nursing in private. Combine a first-freshening doe with a freshman mistake in goat husbandry and you get a wasting kid. Despite eating, she never put on weight and took little interest in running and jumping with the others. She was bigger and healthier the day of her birth than any other of her short life.

About one week before Tripoli died, we started losing laying hens to a clever raccoon. One-a-day and with no obvious signs of forced-entry, I began to blame the chickens for cannibalism and a recent change in feed. Even after discovering the thief, we failed to secure the coop against his persistent attacks. With net electric fencing installed, I finally succeeded in trapping the chicken-eater two days ago. I dispatched him and he suffered less than his prey.

Within this short period, we also lost my father to a brain tumor. Where keeping the little farm was once an obstacle to visits with family, it has become a great distraction from the reality of my father's death.

The Orchard

We spent Memorial Day weekend mowing the new orchard with our scythe. It has been planted with 4 apples, 2 pear, 2 peach, 3 cherry, 3 plum, 2 apricot trees, 2 currant, and 4 blueberry bushes. This is something we can check off the long-term goal list. My parents gifted us two fruit trees last year for our wedding anniversary. The idea grew on us and it will forever be a place where I think of them.

Trying to keep up with the busy bees.