The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon November 22nd, 2010

Sorry for the radio silence – it has been a hectic couple of weeks here with travel and talks and family visiting and birthdays and all sorts of stuff, but life settles down for a week now – yay!  Peace and quiet and getting things ready for winter, which is on the cusp of arrival.  But the ground isn’t frozen and there’s still a few nice days coming before the weather changes.

The tulips went in last week and were promptly dug up by my damned chickens, who keep sneaking into the fenced yard. The problem was largely resolved by the reintroduction of something in a missing species niche – ie, we put the dogs in the side yard to defend the tulip bulbs with their lives. 

The hens have just about stopped laying, so I actually bought eggs to make enough pumpkin pie.  We probably should light the hen house, but the results have never been impressive, and I tend to think that the hens need their quiet time too, just like I do in the winter.

The big news is that the goats are being bred for spring babies – older does only.  Bast, Arava and Jessie have already had their day, with Mina, Maia and Selene yet to go.  Frodo is happy as a clam!

I have a bit more late garlic to go in, and a few more bulbs, and then I’m done.  But my next garden project starts almost immediately – I have to set up the seeds to winter-stratify outside – so many of the medicinals do best when they’ve had a nice period of cold. 

We have to get the rest of the firewood under cover, and the rest of the hay moved over to the barn, but after that, winter can come, and I’m ready to settle in. I’m hoping to get most of the major projects done by the end of this week – it will be a quiet one, with guests only for the actual day of Thanksgiving, and Eric is off for most of the week, so we’ll get a lot done. 

For Thanksgiving, we’re having our usual turkey, plus our friend Joe makes Peking Duck (he’s half chinese and not from turkey) as well, which is a lot of fun.  Otherwise, we’re traditional – we’ll be eating the enormous Hubbard squash that Mac the Pyr is afraid of (vengeance!) and there’ll be the usual roots and sweets.  We already have had pumpkin pie – that’s what Simon wanted as his birthday “cake” and I’m always amazed at how delicious those winter luxury pumpkins are – they are far and away the best pie pumpkin on the earth.

I cleaned out and moved the food storage over, and found some ummm..tasty snacks for the chickens.  Let’s just say that I can’t think of any good reason why there would be baby food in my food storage, given that the baby is five, but so there was .

I managed to get some of the pruning done, but I really need another afternoon with the shears.  The buns are moved to their winter quarters in the hay barn, so winter preps are coming together. I’ve got to knit faster, though, since the boys are expecting hats and mittens!

After all the chaos, it feels like we’re coming into a homestretch of sorts – that life is getting manageable. I’ve been travelling way too much – I’ve averaged twice a month, which is just too hectic and taking up too much of my mental space.  It is the season of the year to cuddle in, and I just want to be at home.  And now I am.

Plant something: Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths (ground and pots for forcing).

Harvest something: Turnips, beets, kale, chard, bok choy, arugula, turnip greens, pea shoots, jerusalem artichokes, chinese cabbage, burdock root

Preserve something: Canned up some applesauce, dried burdock root

Waste Not: Fed babyfood and a few other things to chickens, collected lots of leaves for mulch, fertility and goat snacks.

Want Not: Sorted through the blankets and flannels and mended a lot.

Eat the food: Pumpkin pie!  Shepherd’s pie (I had extra pie crust) with veggies.  My first lamb and lentil soup of the season!  Massaman curried root vegetables. 

Build community food systems: Did a talk in Albany about our local food system.

How about you?  And what are you cooking this week?

Sharon

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Sharon October 31st, 2010

This week seems to have been the transition point from early to late autumn.  Early autumn is a time of harvests and golden afternoons, with crisp and chilly nights.  Late autumn here is cold, one finds the spots where the windows have yet to be sealed by the cold wind blowing inside (I hate to seal up the windows before winter sets in in earnest – fresh air on the occasional warm day is just too important!) and there’s a transition from October’s brilliance into November’s brown.

I like November, actually.  I always have – it gets quiet and peaceful, and while it is cold there’s still a lot of nice days left of what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “football weather.”  Planting is done save bulbs and the garlic I forgot about and the thinsg I’m winter sowing.

It is time to fill the porch-root cellar up and take the ice packs out of the fridge and put everything on the porch.  We look forward to this all year – the enclosed porch becomes our walk-in fridge and it is so much more accessible than the regular kind – no losing things in the back, no more playing with ice.  Yay!

We need to get our wood and hay in – the hay was supposed to come yesterday but it didn’t.  Our neighbor who brings it over is a busy guy too, so we just assume things will work out.  No pressure.

Hemp and Basil went home to their new place yesterday, and it was  a real pleasure to meet their new owner and know that they are going to be happy where they are. 

The hens are barely laying, but despite that my wonderful step-mother made us a whole set of beautiful new nest boxes, in the hope of getting them to lay somewhere other than the goat’s manger.  The chicken area looks completely refreshed and beautiful!

I’m moving the firewood into the mudroom and getting ready for the season of fires – we’ve already had a couple but it is beginning – we’re expecting days in the 40s and nights in the 20s. I have to settle the indoor plants in their permanent sunny spots – there are always too many things I’d like to winter over. 

Otherwise, we’re concentrating on getting the new project up and running.  How about you?

Planted: Tulips, some late garlic

Harvested: Last hot peppers, turnips, beets, kale, chard, broccoli, arugula, mustard greens, quinces, apples, dug marshmallow, burdock and elecampane roots, milk, a very few eggs

Preserved: Made apple quince sauce, dried hot peppers, dried and tinctured herb roots, made a bunch of goat cheese

Waste Not: collected fallen pears at a local orchard for the chickens, arranged to give a good home to the extra halloween pumpkins after the holiday (goats love them!)

Want Not: Sorting through what we’ve got in the house.  Amazing what I find!

Eat the Food: Roasted squash with chipotle-maple glaze, beets with tahini and yogurt,

Build Community Food Solutions: A couple of articles, working on my local food resources evaluation.

How about you?

Sharon

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Sharon October 19th, 2010

It is time to plant things that are dormant but need the winter to settle in – yesterday it was blue and black cohosh roots, goldenseal and bloodroot.  The day before it was garlic, and I still have bulbs yet to plant.  All of these things are somehow mysterious to me – one doesn’t believe they will actually come up and arrive again.  It is an investment in the future.

It is time to harvest the root crops as well, now that frost has killed the tops of most things.  Marshmallow root, elecampane, burdock, elecampane, dandelion and echinacea need to be dug, chopped, dried and tinctured, although a few of the roots will wait until spring, before they begin putting on new growth. 

We dug the sweet potatoes yesterday – despite the hot weather, they didn’t size up as much as I woudl have hoped, but the flavor was glorious, we roasted some to eat with greens and cheese sauce ysetrday, along with the freshly dug potatoes. I’m leaving the turnips, celeriac, salsify, jerusalem artichoke,  beets, leeks, carrots and others a little longer yet to sweeten with a few more frosts, but soon – very soon they will come in – along with half the parsnips (the rest stay in the garden for early spring).   The season of roots is here!

Lots of harvesting but not much planting.  The children collected all the green tomatoes and ripe hot peppers yesterday, and all that’s left in the garden are greens and roots, really.  There are a few flower that haven’t been toasted, and some herbs yet to harvest, but for the most part, the garden is winding down. 

The eggs are winding down too – we don’t light our hen house, and the hens are getting to the point of laying only a few eggs.  But that’s ok – it will pick up again after the new year, and I incline towards the theory that the rest is good for them.

Milk, however, we have aplenty – the only boys not weaned now are Stachys and Hemp, and those two will move up to the buck barn this week – we’re just waiting for Stachys to hit 8 weeks.  Basil and Hemp will be going to their new home soon after.  That leaves just the girls pestering their mothers for milk, but the mothers are increasingly bored with the nursing, and since the doelings are separated out at night, their Moms are giving us great vats of milk, which we are turning into cheese and yogurt, and still overwhelmed by.

Lots of things yet to do to get ready for winter and wind up the season – I feel behind due to the travel and the holidays, but all will come together.  There’s still a little time yet, and autumn ought to have some time for revelling in the year’s accomplishments too!

Plant something: Black cohosh, blue cohosh, fall raspberries, garlic, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple, partridgeberry.

Harvest something: green tomatoes, red tomatoes, hot peppers, eggplant, kale, chard, beets, turnips, carrots, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, spilanthes, marshmallow, burdock, dandelion, elecampane.

Preserve something: Last batch of raspberry jam, green tomato chutney, green tomato pickles, dried hot peppers, pickled beets, tinctured and dried various roots.

Waste Not: Usual composting and reducing of packaging and feeding of things to other things.  Eric seems finally to be making progress on getting scraps from the SUNY Cafeteria to feed our chickens as part of their local foods project.

Want Not: We both finally got new shoes, badly needed – Eric’s were really holey. 

Eat the Food: First pumpkin pie of the season, first batch of chicken soup, first batch of lentil soup, first pumpkin pancakes….the fall cooking is for real!

Build Community Food systems: Off to New Haven this weekend for a conference on urban adapting in place, gave a big talk about food at ASPO. 

How about you?

Sharon

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Sharon September 30th, 2010

I have such a long list of things I need to do this autumn.  We haven’t gotten our firewood stacked.  We only have half our hay in.  I haven’t set up the row covers for the fall crops.  I haven’t even ordered my garlic (pickin’s are going to be slim).  I am firmly, wildly behind.

This is often the case as the holidays finish – the difference is that generally speaking I’m caught up in September and panicked in October, and this year the holidays came early.  The good thing about this is that I have October to catch up.  The bad thing is that because they came early, I feel further behind than usual.  But Simchat Torah is tonight, and that’s the last of the celebrations.

The garden has mostly petered out – we harvested most of the summer crops, and all that’s left is the winter stuff and the occasional ripening tomato.  The corn still has to come in, and I haven’t dug the potatoes, sweet poatoes and turnips yet, but that can wait.  I have some winter wheat and cover crops to plant, but that will take time.

I’m so busy with other work that really, a lot has slid.  I haven’t harvested everything I should have – but somehow the jars and shelves are filling up anyway.  This is the good thing about a little bit here and a little bit there being part of our life – spates of discombobulation don’t have as deep an effect as they used to.

And we’re having fun – despite the fact that I’m prone to worrying about what I haven’t done, we had a lot of guests, laughed a lot, ate a lot of good food, celebrated, made new friends, played with old ones and have had a lot of joy.  So I guess I’m ok with running behind.

Planted: Nothing

Harvested: Tomatoes, hot peppers, squash, carrots, lettuce, kale, collards, wormwood, beets, potatoes, milk, a diminishing number of eggs, eggplant.

Preserved: Made some milk into cheese, pickled some hot peppers, made some kim chi

Waste Not: Nothing special, the usual composting and feeding things to other things.

Want Not: Eric and I both got badly needed shoes.   Ordered the kids chanukah fuzzy pajamas.

Eat the Food: Eggplant everywhere – baba ganoush, strange flavor eggplant, parmagiana, with pomegranate molasses.  Also many apples.

Community Food Solutions: Did three talks on local food production.  More coming!

How about you?

Sharon

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admin September 17th, 2010

It won’t officially be fall for a few days,  but we had a night low of 37 degrees, the kids are wearing two layers early in the day and we shut the windows at night.  That’s fall, even if the dates are wrong.  Sometime between our departure and our return, autumn moved in to stay.  We’ll have warm days again, of course, but the change has come.

You never know when it will come these days – sometimes it is warm all fall, other times it gets cold early.  Our first frost has happened anywhere between September 19 and October 30 over the nine years we’ve been here, so you never know what to expect.  And that doesn’t count the basil frosts – you know, those light ones that just toast the basil.  We had one of those the last week in August once.

It is time to try and pull in all I can of summer, and the process keeps us busy – besides the five day diversion during which we ate all kinds of unsustainable things, increased our waste production and otherwise used resources in ways we don’t ordinarily, now we’ve got to come back and get into the groove again.  I’ve got literally piles of produce to attend to right now

I did come back with some wonderful plants that went into the ground yesterday – I took a workshop on propagating woodland medicinal plants.  While our medicinal herb production has mostly focused on wetland herbs, our 19 acres of woods already are home to a small amount of goldenseal and blue cohosh (but not enough that I’d ever harvest any for sale), but clearly can produce the conditions suitable to growing them.  The class, taught by an extension expert from North Carolina was brilliant, and she gave us all plant divisions to take home of Black Cohosh, goldenseal, bloodroot, mayapple and wild ginger. I have small amounts of black cohosh and wild ginger already, but I was excited to get some new planting stock.  It’ll be years before we attempt any serious harvest of these plants, and I’m not counting any chickens before they hatch, but it seems a good use of our land.

Before we left there was an unholy rush to get all the tomatoes processed – bazillions of them, roughly speaking.  They are ripening more slowly in the cooler temperatures now, but I’ll need to do some more.  Today I’m gathering in the pumpkins and bottle gourds as well, and clearing a bed to be made into a low hoophouse for lettuces, spinach and kale.   I’ve got zucchini to dry and cukes to pickle – the final rush.

We’ve been so comatose the last few days after the chronic sleep deprivation of the trip that things have been slow getting started – yesterday we dealt with the last of the sweet corn, and picked the raspberries that we waiting for us so patiently.  Today there’s jam to deal with, and peppers and…

This time of year is my favorite – it feels so lush and rich and the wealth of the harvest makes me happy.  At the same time, with school started up again for Eli and Eric and the busy season hitting before winter, and the wave of holidays, it feels like we go two months at a dead run – and long for the quiet of winter.  I guess it makes the transition easier!

Plant something: Black cohosh, goldenseal, mayapple, bloodroot, wild ginger, winter wheat, lettuce, arugula.

Harvest something: Pumpkins, gourds, squash, broccoli, kale, collards, dried beans, peppers, hot peppers, apples, carrots, beets, daikon, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, pea shoots, many herbs.

Preserve something: Made raspberry jam, made peach jam, dried zucchini, dried pumkin, dried apples, pickled green tomatoes, froze corn, froze lima beans.

Waste Not: We wasted a lot on our trip – there just wasn’t a good way to avoid it.  Sucked.

Want Not: Nothing special

Build community food systems: Gave a talk about why grow food in front of Thomas Jefferson’s Vegetable Garden!!!!

Eat the Food: Lots of corn chowder.

How about you?

Sharon

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