Friends are the Sweetest Fruit

After canning the meat yesterday I visited our neighbor, Bachelor Farmer. When my cooking mojo is good I like to take him some of what I cook. I really like the guy. He comes off crotchety to a lot of people but we've grown sweet on him, and he on us, it seems. We went out to his yard, behind the old home place, and gathered chestnuts while talking about old foodways, people way up north, and "a whole lot of nuthin'" as he would say. It was a thoroughly pleasant afternoon. I also gathered a few fallen pears to eat fresh. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go over with a ladder and pick slightly green ones for putting up.

One thing I especially enjoy is his love of us far northerners. He lived amongst us for many years and understands that those people in the Really North North (where virtually all of America is to the south) aren't so different than folks around here.

Aubergine is Such a Lovely Word

Aubergines ("eggplants" in American English) are one of those vegetables that are a bit tricky to grow around here. You have to start them indoors like tomatoes but the flea beetles seem to kill them before they're six inches tall. So, for the second year running I went out and bought a couple four-packs at our local garden center. As before, it was the end of the seedling season there, the plants looked neglected and were missing their labels or had two different ones inserted. Par for the course once the little things get discounted.

So, I took them home, interplanted them with dill and my baby asparagus plants and promptly forgot them. The flea beetles have pricked holes in every leaf... really quite beautiful in their perfect distribution... but the plants have flowered and set fruit! Here is a photograph from today's picking. Most will be dried for winter. Looks like I got some sort of standard aubergine and a ping tung long. Sweet!

Happy Thanksgiving

Turkeys at Border Springs Farm

The turkey is all brined and drying in the fridge which is otherwise crammed full of vegetables awaiting tomorrow's cooking showdown. Kennebek potatoes and Seminole pumpkins are awaiting their demise. Do they realize that the lush soil I gave them this summer was all just a trick?

The last time I cooked Thanksgiving dinner was in 2004 when our friends Kirsty and Daisy came over from Scotland. Kirsty wanted to experience the full-on OTT deal right down to Black Friday at the mall so I gave it to her. (In return she gave me her granny's tablet ("fudge") recipe.) I think we had ten that year, which is a lot for us and our little table. We had all the classic New England fixin's plus certain Southern and Southwestern dishes my guests would have rioted over had they been missing. It was WAY too much food but with four in the kitchen it wasn't too bad for work.

This year it's me and my knife feeding four plus a plate for a neighbor who will be working late at the hospital. Our turkey is an humanely raised heritage breed from Border Springs Farm that spent its' life roosting in a hardwood forest about 30 miles from Stratheden. We've had heritage birds before and woweee.... they taste so much better than the 40 cents a pound stuff at the grocery. It's a real treat! I can't wait to see the smile on our elderly bachelor farmer neighbor's face when he tastes old fashioned turkey.

The menu is as follows:

turkey with bread stuffing
mashed potatoes
pumpkin puree
collard greens
broccoli with feta cheese sauce
cranberry sauce
green chile sauce
home-made chutney
real gravy
buttermilk biscuits
---------
peach pie with custard
chocolate cake

That's right- no pumpkin or pecan pie, no sweet potatoes, no green bean casserole. Darn it, this is MY version of Thanksgiving dinner. If I could get good blueberries we'd be having savoury blueberry muffins too. Martha Stuart and relatives rolling in graves be damned.

Late next week we will be picking up another Thanksgiving treat... We gave our friend Tim hunting rights on our property in return for a deer (or more) a year. He's brought close friends half a dozen times this month and they've shot a few out of our overly-large herds but tonight Tim finally got one. So, we have a young doe aging at the butchers and our neighbor has the hide for tanning.

Indeed, it's a Happy Thanksgiving for us!

Red hots

Here for your viewing pleasure is yesterday's harvest, a cat litter bucket (rather large) holding tomatoes from the raised bed garden and chiles from the lower garden. Most are destined for preserving or drying.

Last night Mr. Fuzzy concocted a curry & rice dinner based around the superb pears gifted to us by Bluebird and a mutsu apple from our own tree. Not so bad but the on-line recipe was quite mild; next time around there will be more curry, a tad of cayenne, more apples, and perhaps a bit of prune.

Yes, dear reader, we are enjoying the fruits of our labours on Stratheden Farm.

Thanks for Putting Up with Us!

If you look over at the sidebar you'll see I've updated the tally on what we've "put up" off the farm so far in this, our first, year. Next year I hope to have more in the "dried" category but that nasty little moisture problem needs to be dealt with first. Thankfully, I've now got a handle on my every-time-the-barometer-moves-my energy-hibernates problem so I'll be better prepared for quickly dealing with the bounty NEXT year!!!! At least one stone has been cleared from that path!

Or, I guess, later this year if those beautiful tomatoes ever color up! We've not had enough sun in the last month to make the tomatoes turn red in any numbers. Well..... ANY number until yesterday. I can always make my Grammie Starbird's vegetable relish and lots of fried green tomatoes if I get impatient. What I really want is to make jars and jars of tomato sauce because we eat a lot of it in the winter.

So far we have a year's worth of jams, jellies, sauces, and pickles.... not too bad for a first try!

Outdoor Food Drying in Virginia

Hello beloved readers. Did you think I'd been crushed by a rabid zucchini?

The snap test indicated "not rabid" but those squashes do come on strong. Maybe five plants was a bit much? We had intended upon drying most of the surplus for use in winter soups and stews but we've run into a small problem known as "fog" and a larger problem called "rain" which sent our initial experiment of outdoor air drying into Boldy Moldy Land. At least it will feed the compost pile.

We have the greenhouse, which gets nice and hot this time of year, but it, too, has a little moisture problem when it rains. After much moving of clods previously known as "The Lawn" to the east side of the greenhouse to create a living sponge barrier, digging a trench to further divert runoff from the slope, and adding a whole lot of daylilies, red hot pokers, and a red Mystery Monocot we're almost ready to roll. (Or string, I suppose!)

Only problem now is to defeat the water that comes in the door. This might require adding a roof panel under the deck but I'm not sure. It's my next move and I do hope to God it works because otherwise I might give in and buy an electric dehydrator.

Until the moisture issue is resolved, the zukes and patty pans are keeping well on the counter for a week until we can eat them or give them to our few friends without gardens. We have an especially enthisiastic chiropractor "from the city" and a nurse neighbor who are happy to have them. (Thanks!)

Giant zuke, anyone?

Nature's Harvest

The greenhouse isn't our only source of home grown food at Stratheden Farm. This wee stretch of Eden has quite a number of wild edibles. Walnuts, spice bush, cherries, apples... There's lots if we're willing to make a small effort. Life was too crazy to go picking dandelion greens (OK, the desert dweller couldn't remember what they looked like when young) and I missed my window for making candied wild violets but we are enjoying onion season.

Mr. Fuzzy went on another hike down to the wilder parts of our property and came back with culinary gold: a bag of wild ramps (leeks.) Mmmm Mmmmm! I'm off to find more interesting recipes than "fry up and add an egg." If I'm going to stink too bad to go out in public I'm going to make it special. We shared them out with a friend who is suffering a broken toe and unable to get at his own patch so I might have to go get another batch myself.

We're also pulling up another wild onion right here in the yard. A couple weeks ago I was snacking on them like one does chives in the garden. (You do chew on chive flower shoots, too, don't you?) Mr Fuzzy wouldn't eat them until The Forester confirmed their edibility. (Wimp!) Those little wild onions pack a big punch and now they're big enough to pull up for the tiny bulbs. I'll have some on a baked potato tonight.

Right now I'm drinking tea made from the prunings of a small black birch that's growing quite inappropriately under the eve of the garage. When I asked The Forester about how to keep these things under control so they don't mess with the foundations he suggested eating it until it becomes a bonsai.

Like most wild teas, birch has a savoury, slightly bitter, undercurrent but the leading flavor is sweet and cleansing. Brings back memories of the last walk I took with my grandfather. He picked something out there in the woods and it tasted really good. Then I moved to the desert so I never knew what it was... until now!

Yes, even without the drama of the greenhouse we're starting to feed ourselves from the farm. It's awfully tasty!

Another beautiful autumn photograph courtesy of Dr. Stratton.
This one is taken from the deck looking southward.

In unrelated news...

As part of our quest for more self-sufficiency April picked and dried basil, peppermint, tarragon, and parsley from our final Santa Fe garden. We got it all packed up the other day and discovered we'd produced 16 jars worth from our "meager" harvest!