Down on the Farm

Waverly at market yesterday

Waking up from a nap.

Powering up . . .

Fully awake!

Sheri's Melting Squash Risotto

This is a recipe by my sister in law, Sheri. Unfortunately, I lost the recipe she wrote out for me. Sheri, if you're reading this, please make corrections! This is the version I made tonight for dinner, and it turned out great (though not as good as Sheri's!)

Sheri says its based on a recipe by one of my all time favorite cookbook writers, Lorna Sass. Lorna Sass is a big advocate of pressure cookers, and my love of her cookbooks eventually persuaded me to get one. This recipe is a lot easier with a pressure cooker. Anyway, here goes.

Ingredients:
one tablespoon olive oil
two small or one medium onion
a medium to smallish buttercup squash
2 cups risotto rice
4 cups stock
1 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon salt
parmesan cheese
ground pepper

1. Peel the squash. This is difficult. I find it's easiest to slice the squash in half, lay it flat side down on the cutting board, and slice off the skin with a sharp knife. Be careful! I usually have to cut the squash in quarters to get the skin from the middle of the halves and follow up with a peeler for the spots I missed.
2. Take out the seeds and cut into 1 inch chunks. (Shape doesn't matter becase the chunks will melt into the rice, but they should be similar in size.)
3. Coarsely chop the onion. Warm the olive oil in the bottom of your pressure cooker, if you have one, or in a regular pot. Cook the onion until translucent or so.
4. Add the chunks of squash, risotto, and sage. Stir well -- so all the rice is coated with oil.
5a. If you have a pressure cooker, add 3 1/2 cups stock and the salt, bring up to pressure for 5 minutes, release using a quick release method. Test the risotto --it may need a bit more stock and a minute or two more cooking. (This last part is not under pressure, but stirring constantly.)
5b. If you don't have a pressure cooker add the stock 1/3 cup at a time. Stir constantly. As soon as the stock is absorbed (which you know becase the spoon leaves an empty strip behind it), add another 1/3 cup stock. This takes about 30 minutes.
6. Serve with grated parmesan (I like lots) and black pepper

Makes a lot. It will freeze well.

Yesterday morning

Week four of the CSA

I've started writing up little flyers to put in with the CSA baskets to explain what folks are getting. This is the flyer from yesterday.

CSA September 22, 2004

Again, we are very interested in your feedback (and recipes!)!

Cha-Cha-Changes (or Deep Thoughts with Farmer Pete)

I have had this post brewing in my head for a while, but I am not totally sure where it goes. But the advent of foliage season, with its accompanying crush of out of state license plates, seems like an appropriate time to try to tie together three recent related incidents.

First, my older brother went by The Farm a couple of weeks ago. The Farm is in Connecticut, and it is where my family used to spend the summer when I was a kid. As I discussed in an earlier post, it is perhaps one source of my farm dream.

In any event, thirty years later, The Farm is overgrown and uninhabited.

Here my Dad and I clean out horse stalls thirty years ago.

And here they are today.

The Farm is now owned by an out of town doctor who bought the place as an investment. He wants to raze the farmhouse (which dates back to 1790) and subdivide the acreage into four lots. He wants $1 millon for the land (or roughly $100,000 per acre).

I have a lot of fond memories from The Farm. It was a little tough to see it has fallen into disrepair, and to think that it may be subdivided to make room for some more McMansions. When I was a kid, the eastern shoreline of Connecticut was still mostly countryside and summer cottages. It has now become a suburb of New York with multi-million dollar waterfront homes, big, shiny cars, fancy coffee shops and cell phones. The last thing that area probably needs now is more development and McMansions. But I guess everything changes eventually. I just hope the people who live there now enjoy it as much as I once did. But I don't think I would like living there now.

The second incident was when I was driving somewhere the other day with my friend Harry. Harry grew up in the next town over, as did his father, as did his grandfather. We were discussing how much the area where I used to spend my summers in Connecticut had changed. This got Harry to talking about how much the Norheast Kingdom of Vermont where we live now has changed, just in the last fifteen years. Lots of people from out of state have moved up here with their professional degrees, and tried to do things like start organic vegetable farms. . . Harry didn't really say that -- he is much too nice and diplomatic to do that. But it almost got a little awkward, because we both knew that I was one of the out of state people that he was talking about. Despite the fact that in three short years I have begun to feel like a part of the landscape up here, folks whose families have been here for 200+ years will probably never consider me anything but a relative outsider. And the arrival of people like me must signal some of the same changes for Harry that the development of The Farm does for me now.

Lastly, our friend Cornelia, who works on the farm some, brought us a series of three articles from the Boston Globe, all discussing how great it is up here in the Northeast Kingdom. While the articles were kind of neat, and affirmed my feelings about the NEK, they really only made me wince. It made me realize that more people will probably continue to come up here, and in fifteen years, I may be just like Harry -- lamenting the vanishing Vermont that used to be.

What does it all mean? I am not sure. I definitely mourn the changes that development brings, and I tend to think that over-population and an economic system premised on continual, infinite growth can't be sustained. But for some reason, I don't dissolve into melancholy. Instead, I suppose I should savor what I have today, because this life is beautiful.

Tonight's the night

We are supposed to get our first frost tonight, and it looks like we will get there. At about 4am it was 33 degrees on the porch, and the temperature almost always dips 2-3 degrees right before sunrise, so I think we will hit 30 degrees around 5:30-6am.

However, there are things we can do to cheat the frost. We cover most low growing plants with row covers. For bigger plants, such as the last batch of broccoli we are waiting on, we are trying (for the first time) to use the overhead irrigation system we got this year. That is why I am up so early -- I just went out to turn on the irrigation.

The irrigation water keeps the plants from frosting because (1) it is warmer than the air temperature and therefore warms the plant, (2) it is moving, which means it takes a lower ambient temperature to freeze the water, which prevents frost from forming, and (3) as the water attempts to freeze, the freezing process releases some energy, which can also buy the plant a degree or two of heat. At least, that is the theory -- I will let you know how it works, if it works.

But eventually, the cold will come and the season will end. That is why I was saying to Maryellen last night that we need some sort of first fall frost ritual here on the farm -- like a big green pepper and fried green tomato meal or something. Suggestions are welcome.

Update -- 8:20am: We did have a frost, and a preliminary survey looks pretty good. The broccoli and beets under the irrigation look fine, and most of the covered stuff should be Ok -- it probably only got down to 30 or 31 degrees. We definitely have some damage to our cherry tomatoes, but they were almost done in any event. So we dodged a bullet on this first frost.

Party Party Party

Tuesday was Waverly's birthday, and Monday was the birthday of Susannah, who works with us on the farm. So we decided to have a party Wednesday night in honor of both of them.

Here is Waverly sporting the baling twine and wildflower necklace she got from her pals Ethan and Emma.

Emma hits one out playing whiffleball.

Tractor manufacturers must put some magnetic device in each tractor that is designed to attract kids. Here Maryellen commands the ship with Wavo, Tommy, Ethan, and Emma on deck.

Waverly's pal Tommy, aka "Super T", reviews his oil pressure with his Mama, Tracy.

And then he reaches for the ignition. He is only 16 months old, but he is a natural on the heavy equipment.

Dinner around the fire pit we built up in the field this weekend.

And Susannah and Waverly blow out their candle back down at the house after dark.

All in all, not a bad time!

Week three of the CSA

We are having a lot of fun with our CSA. Here is CSAer Zoe with Waverly and this week's basket: mesclun, sun gold tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, broccoli, green peppers, white salad turnips, baby beet greens, and young carrots.

Also, CSAer Emma and her mom Dana came by early to help us pack the baskets. Thanks Emma and Dana!!

Happy Birthday to Waverly!!

We can't believe she is one already. She is the greatest!!

Beautiful day

It doesn't get much better than today. 75, sunny, dry.

Although, there are a few leaves starting to turn, here and there.

Don't see them in that photo? They are right there.

Honest.

Mmmmmm. . . . salad mix.

Veggie people

Our barn is kind of huge. And it is a major part of the farm complex around here. In fact, it was the subject of the very first post down here on the farm.

Back when we bought the place, we weren't really sure what to do with the barn -- the debate was whether we keep it, and sink some money into it, or we tear it down, and sink money into building a new, smaller, more manageable barn.

Well, it looks like we are going the preservation/restoration/re-creation route. We had four different people come look at the barn, and all four said that besides the north foundation and a couple of holes in the roof, the barn was in pretty good structural shape. In other words, if we took care of those problems, we could stop the structural bleeding, and begin to think about how we could affirmatively convert this old dairy barn into a veggie palace.

This week, the crew finished work on the north foundation.

The local old barn guru did the work, and we are very pleased. As Susannah said after viewing the finished product, "It just looks a lot safer." And it is.

And my farm mentor Richard has helped us think about how we can start to more efficently use the barn for veggies. So we have a lot to mull/work on this winter.

The barn work also brings us to an interesting milestone -- we have now spent about 4 times as much on the barn, as we have fixing up the house. When we were looking for a farm years ago, a real estate agent said, "You can always tell horse or sheep people because the barn is nicer than the house." I guess the same might be said for us veggie people too.

This week's CSA

This is week two of the trial CSA. So far it's going great on our end! I think it's going well for the subscribers, but I need to figure out a way to get more feedback. Did I already write that we filled out five available slots and had to turn folks away? We did. Which I think is a good sign for next year. This week I subjected participants to a photo shoot. Arthur Green above, Dana Kraus below.

In the basket this week: mesclun, sun gold tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, broccoli, green peppers, red onion, cucumbers, beets, and string beans.