The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon August 24th, 2010

I worry about rain a lot here, but not usually this way. Most years, we get more than 60 inches of rain, including reliable, regular summer rain.  Last summer we had more than 45 inches of rain *between May and September alone.*  The previous year the summer was more moderate, but included at least two storms with more than six inches in under 2 hours, and the expected flooding that accompanies this.  I worry about rain – but not about too little rain.

Except this summer. I woke up the day before yesterday to a day of steady rain, and I literally couldn’t remember the last time I’d awakened to rain, or we’d had a real rainy day.  This summer has been very hot and very dry – we’ve had less than 10 inches of rain from May to August, which is very unusual. I know for many of you that would be ample, but remember, our vegetation isn’t designed for that little.

To give you a sense of how little I usually worry about rain, let me note that in the 7 years my main garden has been in the front, we’ve never bought hose enough to reach the back half of it – that is, I’ve never, ever watered that part of the garden, except the occasional sprinkle on new seedlings.   This year, we got hose.  After all, I had just planted the back end of the garden with wetland medicinals and native plants to take advantage of the dampness – a dampness now completely imperceptible.  My direct seeded fall crops mostly either didn’t germinate or withered in the heat and dry weather, despite regular waterings.

But mercifully, starting Sunday, the rain came and it rained more or less nonstop for two days.  It is cool here now, and moist, and more like what we expect here in summer. 

The good news about the heat and drought is that we are having the best year we have ever had for peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and okra, which means your blogiste is spending much of her time over a canning kettle and laying things out in the dehydrator.  The good news about the rain is that now we’re not having heat and drought anymore . 

The kids see the rain primarily in terms of their creek and its wildlife - the waterbound portions of which were dying off pretty rapidly.  The boys were thrilled that the rain would fill up their creek and save the remaining crayfish and minnows – they are there right now getting filthy, examining the life in the creek, and probably annoying the heck out of  our great blue heron who considers that new life his private preserve.

Me, I’m grateful for the sake of everything – and looking forward to weeding in the coolth and canning in the same.  It is amazing what a difference a rainy day or two makes.

Jessie kidded in the wee hours of the morning on Monday – a single buckling, which was pretty amazing given her size.  It wasn’t even that large a baby.   I admit, I was a little disappointed, since I particularly wanted one of Jessie’s daughters this year, but this is one of those “win-some, lose-some” things that goes with agriculture.  I have explained to Jessie how she can do better next year – twins and does and not making us wait, and I’m sure she listened carefully and will take my comments under advisement .  Her baby has her adorable snub nosed face, and I’ll put up some pictures soon.

We are now officially done with kidding for the year (woohoo!) with a final count of 10 babies from 6 does (Tekky, who may or may not be pregnant, or may or may not be infertile or may or may not have been pregnant early and aborted is a big old question mark, but in any case, not having anything anytime soon, and is living with the boys), five does and five bucks.  We’ll be keeping one wether and one buck, and selling the other three wethers, so I’ll put info up about the boys ASAP if anyone wants adorable, friendly pets, lawnmowers, horse companions and brush clearers.  We’re retaining all the does, as we build up and improve our herd, but will have milkers and babies for sale in the spring.

Things are busy here otherwise – lots of preserving and late season garden work to do.  Eli is on vacation, which is not his favorite thing, so that takes up time too.  We’re getting our firewood and hay in this week – once a year we borrow a pickup truck from my friend Elaine who owneth the sheep, and use it to haul all the things we need a truck for.  Putting 200 bales of hay (some of which is for bedding, other for fodder) into the hay barn is a project in and of itself – good exercise, kind of fun, but a project.  Although before we do that we also have to clean out the hay barn, replace some of the broken pallets the hay rests on, and figure out where the rabbits are going to go (they are getting a corner of the hay barn this year, instead of living in the main barn because Phil-the-housemate is allergic to them – he can stand coming in for a few minutes to feed and water them when we’re away, but can’t do all the chores in the main barn if the buns are there.)

Mom and Sue came to visit last week, and as usual, Sue went around fixing things and making them work – she built a hinged cover for the hay feeder to keep the hens from nesting in the goat’s hay.  Whenever Sue is visiting we get proof of what slackers we are.  We had this enormous board on top of the hay feeder which was incredibly heavy and awkward and a huge pain to move for umm…two years.  And although we occasionally thought “maybe there’s a better way” it wasn’t until just recently that it actually occurred to us that we didn’t have to lift that enormous thing every single time we needed to put in hay.  It was just what we did . 

I’m convinced that there are two kinds of people in the world – the kind of person who says “that window is broken, I can’t stand that, I must fix it today” and the kind of person (both Eric and me) that says “Oh, bugger all, that window is open, ok, we’ll just open the other one.”)  I think our failure to be the first kind of person explains a lot about the flaws in our lives .  I’m just grateful to know the other sort!

Plant something:  Lettuce, bok choy and arugula.

Harvest something: Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, onions, carrots, beets, okra, potatoes, green beans, kale, chard, collards, cabbage, parsley, cucumbers, peaches, raspberries, milk and eggs.

Preserve something: Made tomato sauce, tomato puree, canned whole tomatoes and salsa.  Dried sweet corn.  Made the last of the rhubarb sauce.  Dried sweet peppers, made hot sauce, made salt-herb mix.

Waste Not: Composting, feeding of things to other things, picked up scraps for chickens from friends while we were passing by, scavenged my first bag of leaves from the roadside.

Want Not: Bought new farm notebooks for record keeping when the kids got their school supplies – Simon the cartoonist keeps stealing mine and drawing in them. 

Eat the Food: Stewed okra and tomatoes, lemon garlic pickled onions, stuffed tomatoes with pesto orzo…love this time of year.

Build Community Food Systems: Working on a new project – more soon!

How about you?

Sharon

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Sharon August 16th, 2010

Looking at the forecast I’m hopeful that the worst of the blazing summer is behind us – we’re still very far behind on rain, but have gotten enough to sort of make do.  While the hot dry weather has been wonderful for things like tomatoes, okra, hot peppers and melons, I’m pretty much ready to be done with it, especially since teh canning is getting pretty heavy duty.

I picked a bushel of tomatoes today to put up, and I only stoppped because I didn’t want to deal with more than a bushel.  Then I got a phone call from my favorite local farmstand, where I forgot I’d reserved myself several bushels of tomatoes earlier in the season, thinking I might not have this good a crop if thigns turned wet and cool (last year I didn’t put up nearly enough, so I was hedging my bets) – guess what, they’ve got those three bushels of tomatoes for me.  Oops.

So salsa and ketchup, sauce and whole tomatoes it is.  If you are looking for me, I’ll be behind the canning kettle.  There are also the cucumbers, but I’m in denial about those for the moment.

Yesterday was my 38th birthday, and it was not wholly successful.  First of all, I’d spent Saturday night up with a laboring goat.  This one, Selene, has lingering neurological damage and weakness from her bout with meningeal parasite, and our concern was that she might have trouble delivering, even though she can pretty much everything else.  The vet had been encouraging about breeding her, and friends with a goat who also had the same problems had had good luck, but hey, I was nervous.  So when I woke at 12:30 and checked the barn, I stayed out with Selene.

It turned out she was completely fine, except that the buck kid she delivered was huge (I had thought she was going to have triplets) – in fact, he’s bigger than the triplets born a whole week before him.  But with enough time and maternal discomfort, out popped Heliotrope.  We had agreed we would keep one wether, to use as a transitional goat when one of the boys is in with the ladies, so that we never have to keep a goat solo, and after witnessing the amount of trouble he gave Selene, we’ve decided he wins, and we’ll keep him. Selene does not give birth to buck quality goats, but he’s cute and she’s the best and most devoted mother we have. 

So Saturday night was no sleep.  Sunday morning was supposed to be me getting to do whatever we wanted, but my friend Jesse, who I’ve known and loved for 19 years now left a message on our machine.  You see Jesse had stopped by on a trip west a couple of weeks before, and because he missed the kids, promised he’d stop for a bit on his way back.  Although he was meeting up with friends and his fiancee, we were told it would just be him, and he would arrive sometime late on Saturday.

Well, Saturday passed and we wondered where Jesse was. Late that night we got a phone message from him, announcing that he, his fiancee and two other people I’d never met would be arriving at 11:30 on Sunday.  Oh, and despite 19 years of friendship, it was pretty clear he’d forgotten it was my birthday.  So much of the morning was spent preparing for four people to arrive at lunchtime.  And plotting the ass-kicking Jesse was going to get.

As it turned out, while I still would have preferred not to spend the morning cooking and cleaning, it was lovely – the two friends were lovely and one of them, realizing that it was birthday, announced he had a case of Blue Moon Ale in his car he was looking to drop off – the birthday beer fairy arrived!  So it was pretty awesome.  We had a lovely lunch and pie from the local farmstand (the one now holding unbelievable quantities of tomatoes for me).  The afternoon of my birthday was spent cooking for a friend’s shiva minyan (mourning prayer gathering), since our friend had lost her mother earlier in the week, but we’d planned that.

All of which is a really wordy way of saying that one of these days, I’m supposed to get a birthday day in which I get to goof off a lot.  That said, however, with the mountain of tomatoes facing me, I think that might be, say, in December.

Otherwise, things are quiet – we’re milking again, but most of the does are mostly feeding their babies as yet.  The milk quantities will rise gradually over the next few months, in time for some lovely fall cheesemaking.  

Much of what we’re doing is infrastructure re-working and planning for next year’s farm projects.  We’re working on ways to use the CSA model, which I love, without running a conventional vegetable CSA – we did that for four years, and for any number of reasons, I don’t want to do it any more.  But I love the CSA connection, and the way it ties you to your customers.   I also, being a lazy slacker type, like the ways it forces me to structure my time – once you’ve committed to delivery and specific dates, you have to make that work.

We’re considering three CSA model projects.  The first I’ve talked about here before – a seed starting CSA.  I’ll send out a list of varieties and various options on numbers of plants in December and January, and start seeds for people. I love seed starting, and always start insanely too many, so this appeals to me as an excuse basically to grow more stuff.  This will supplement the plants we’ll also sell at farmer’s market.

Second, if we can pull this off, we’re considering working out a schechting workshop with the only conservative schochet in the US, who teaches “slaughter your own” in a kosher style, and setting up kosher (by the standards of Jews who would accept meat slaughtered on farm by a woman and a Conservative, rather than Orthodox Jew – this is a complicated and fraught subject), organic, free range poultry CSA.   This would be a small and specialized market, but it is one we want to serve precisely because it isn’t being served.  We’d slaughter monthly and deliver poultry to our customers for six months - mostly chicken, but duck and turkey as well.  This exercise is more speculative, because it requires that we find a clientele in our area that want what we can offer, accept its limitations, and want to support it.    But the cost of on-farm kosher slaughter through traditional methods in the Jewish community is prohibitive, and that leaves most people buying meat from far away, if they can get organic kosher meat at all – or they buy kosher industrial.  In our case, we schecht our own, but at this stage I won’t do it for anyone else because I don’t feel I’m expert enough.

Finally, I’m thinking about a medicinal herb CSA, and one that could be done mostly by mail, since these are small, light items.  I’d have two tracks – one for practitioners and one for home use, and it would include a monthly delivery of appropriate herbs as they are harvested and dried, tinctured or turned into creams or oils.  I could also make up small themed mail-order medicinal gardens using plants as well, to get people started in growing their own. 

What I love about the CSA is that it connects me to my customers in deep ways – I get to learn what they need and want, and how to get closer to that, and they get tied to the farm and learn about what we’re experiencing.  So I’m experimenting with ideas that would allow me to bring these things together.  I haven’t yet, however, figured out how to make a goat CSA .

What else is up here on the farm?  Not a whole lot – the boys are done with a month of camp and swimming lessons, so there’s some more quiet time, and at the end of this week, Eli will be done with his summer program.  The latter is a mixed blessing, since Eli really doesn’t enjoy disruptions in his routine, and making sure his needs are met will take more time and energy – but at the same time, it is nice to have him more fully integrated into our day to day life.

I’m starting to feel the real press of autumn coming on – particularly since the Jewish holidays are so early this year (that, of course, is misnomer – they fall the same way they always do by the lunar calendar, but since we use a solar calendar they seem that way ) – September will be mostly taken up by holidays.  This is nice in many ways, because it means October will be more laid back, and while we’re eating outside in the Sukkah, it should be warm enough to be pleasant, but it means that school, the holidays and everything else come bang up against us in a just a few week’s time.  Have I prepared my homeschool stuff for this year?  Nope.  Have I ordered firewood yet?  Bought the winter’s hay?  Dealt with the damned tomatoes?  Nope.  Better get cracking!

Plant something: lettuce, spinach, arugula, chives, green onions, peas (for pea shoots, not peas at this point), broccoli raab.

Harvest something: Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, onions, carrots, beets, kale, chard, peaches, green beans, summer squash, cabbage, lettuce, fennel, cucumbers, peppermint, vervain, anise hyssop, betony, dill, sage, pennyroyal, holy basil, basil, oregano, thyme, gotu kola, spilanthes, blackberries

Preserve something: Tinctured spilanthes, vervain, gotu kola, thyme. Made ketchup and salsa, dried peppers, dried peaches, dried tomatoes, made blackberry jam.

Waste Not: Collected the first batch of dried leaves off someone else’s yard – yay, free organic matter!  Otherwise, the usual composting, not wasting food, etc…

Want Not: Began to clean out my attic. That will be a job.  Many interesting things to be found, I suspect. I’m looking specifically for canning jars – I know I have a couple more boxes hiding in there somewhere, and I’m nearly out of pint jars.

Eat the Food: Gorged on blackberries – straight, as cobbler, as sauce over ice cream, in cake.  We’re a bit cold for blackberries here, and the only picking place is kind of a haul, so we are only going once.  So we might as well enjoy!  We’ve been eating tons of what I call “tomato goop” although frankly, it needs a better name that is truly evocative of its awesomeness.  All it is is sliced tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and breadcrumbs, cooked in the solar oven until it is all soft and served over toast.  Yum!

Build community food systems: Gave a couple of local talks about gardening.

How about you?

Sharon

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Sharon August 9th, 2010

We’ve hit the high season for produce, which is a good reminder that once harvested, you cannot screw around.  When the peaches need canning, they need canning.  Trust me, you won’t like the fruit flies and the mold.  Ask me how I know this!

We’ve also hit peak goat birthing, with Eric delivering five babies on Saturday while I was on a train back from Maryland.  Three does and two bucks – and bucks from Bast, who I was hoping would give us one.   Maia’s two girls are “Licorice” and “Marshmallow” (remember, we have an herb them going this year, the first baby was Meadowsweet), Bast’s little doeling is “Calendula” and the two boys are “Basil” and Goldenrod.”

 Frodo, our herd sire is getting on in years for a buck – with all luck he should have 2-3 more good years of fathering babies, but bucks don’t live as long as does (the physiological stress of rut) and just in case, we wanted one of his sons.  Bast, whose sire is Gilgalad, Frodo’s nephwe, is about as closely related to Frodo as you can get, and she delighted us by giving us two boys, so at least one of them will be a keeper.  Hard to prefer between them as yet, but I’m leaning towards Goldenrod, who is slightly longer, and has a studly name (we cracked up when Isaiah suggested it).

Mina, Jessie and Selene have yet to kid, along with Tekky, who is way behind the others and may birth in September, October or never.  We think she probably aborted the first time, but aren’t sure.    But Selene is due tomorrow, Mina and Jessie early next week (Jessie possibly earlier, but probably not).  So we are on goat watch.

While I was on the train to Maryland, I did some of the math on the break-even point for our farm, including one scenario that used only goats, and found that we could achieve our ag exemption and our goals for net sales if we upped our goat production into the low thirties with does – we have the land base for that (and more, but I want to stock pastures at well below the maximum), and we love working with the goats.  So we’re thinking of expanding the herd into the thirties, and possibly replacing the sheep with fiber or meat-fiber cross goats – angora, pygora or perhaps kiki meat goats.  Still mulling the details on all of this.  But in general we like goats better than sheep. This has had the advantage of making it easier to eat the sheep – but I don’t think it compensates for the fact that most of the year we don’t find the sheep nearly as much fun or as interesting as the goats.

And I think the goats are more likely to turn a profit, particularly the small goats – bringing small scale production of meat, milk and fiber into people’s communities has a lot of virtues, IMHO, and the desire for it seems to be there – small goats can be maintained in a lot of neighborhoods.

The herb and vegetable plant business has more imponderables in it – our estimates on sales and costs are pretty preliminary and still in the experimental stages.  We’ll just have to see how that works out.  Look, over the next few weeks, for a big expansion of this website and the farm materials.

The main goal is for us to put our own subsistence first at every stage – that is, all of our forms of agricultural production have to feed or serve or help us first – that is, I want to sell dairy goats only over and above our production of our own milk.  I want to produce vegetable plants as a by-result of also raising my own seedlings.  I want to produce medicinal herbs and herb products over and above our own use of the herbs.  Any other way just doesn’t seem to make sense – growing food to sell and then using the money to buy other food –  that’s the failed model of agriculture that has cost us so much.

That means that what we do can’t take away from our subsistence activities too much, and ideally, is integrated into them.  It doesn’t, however, mean that I feel a need to produce everything I use.  We have in the past cut a portion of our own firewood, but last year I didn’t cut any – whch means this year I’ll buy all of our wood from neighbors.  I didn’t grow any sweet corn this year, since we were working on the bed building, much less as much as my kids would like to eat.  We don’t produce our own (traditional) hay on any scale, and we probably won’t do so – four of my immediate neighbors sell hay as a main portion of their living, and I’d much rather work with them.  But that doesn’t stop me from experimenting with woody crops for winter hay as well.

Doing the calculations on how to make the farm profitable and successful for us involves balancing on three legs – maintaining and increasing our subsistence activities, the things that get us further along in meeting our own needs.  Expanind the production of things that are both needed in my area and also concordant with my basic values as a farmer – that is, I want to produce things that people need and that enrich my community.  And finally, building strong relationships with both other growers and producers and also customers.    The great thing about havintg three legs is that is way more stable than two .

Meanwhile, the subsistence preserving is going apace – and I’m working on getting the small kitchen ready to be a preserving kitchen for the production of syrups and jams for winter.  

The peaches are ripe, and the early cabbages are ready to be made into slaw.  The first peppers are in, and I’ll be making hot sauce soon.  We’re eating the eggplant so fast I doubt I’ll freeze much, but I’ve had some luck with freezing eggplant purees like baba ganoush and chinese style strange flavor eggplant.  The heat and drought have been good for crops that don’t usually grow that well for me – I’ve got an abundance of okra, peppers and tomatoes, and even a few small watermelons looking hopeful.

It is time to plant the last round of fall crops, excepting spinach and arugula, and I’m looking forward to getting those in the ground.  Meanwhile, we’re in that stage where everything is rich and abundant and hey, what’s not to like about that!

Plant something: Beets, arugula, pea shoots, kale, turnips.

Harvest something: Eggs, milk, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, beans, beets, onions, garlic, cucumbers, zucchini, peaches, blackberries, kale, chard, many herbs.

Preserve something: Peach salsa, mint sauce, rosemary-lemon jelly, dried peaches, salsa, dried various herbs, tinctured various herbs, made pickles.

Waste Not: The usual

Want Not: Nothing unusual

Eat the food – corn, tomatoes, green beans, eggplant… in every conceivable combination.

Build community food systems: Attended a meeting with Poverty agencies on adapting to peak oil, food was a major component, including advocacy for urban small scale meat production on city food waste, and, of course, more gardens.

Sharon

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Sharon July 22nd, 2010

The problem is that all the new garden beds are not yet built.   This makes it very hard to fit in my fall crops, as planned.  Why are they not yet built?  Well, because I was building a buck pen, so that Frodo and Cadfael, our slightly smelly gentlemen could have their own spot.  Why didn’t I build the buck pen earlier, so I could have the garden beds ready?  Well, because I was building a second kidding pen to accomodate the very close due dates of our goats.  Why didn’t I build the kidding pen earlier?  Well, because I was building the herb production beds.  Why didn’t I do those earlier?  Well, I was away visiting my family.  So there’s definitely a way to blame it on my Mom .

The late cukes are where the peas were.  The mesclun mix, instead of bolting, has actually gone on producing beautifully, so I can’t take that out.  The herb beds are already crammed tight – half of what’s in them is going to come out again and be moved into other beds, also not yet built.  I had another herb bed, but it turned out the dogs really liked to lie on it, and dogs are not good mulch, just in case you didn’t know.  Everything there had to come out  – I may still be able to make it work, but now I have to raise the beds up.

The green beans I hoped would be ready to come out aren’t yet, so I don’t have their space, and I have already cut down on zucchini plants – one needs extras in July, but by August, they aren’t worth it.  The sweet corn will be out soonish, but not yet.  So what’s a girl to do, but dig, dig, dig.

I’ve also got to set up another rabbit cage – the little doe that came out of Rosemary’s last kindling needs to be moved out before Rosemary has her second batch of babies.  I’m planning to buy another doe and buck this year – maybe from she of the bunnies if she’s got stock (hi Michelle), but I want to check out the fair first in a couple of weeks.

We’re harvesting all the good stuff  – the one advantage of a hot, dry summer is all the stuff I usually struggle with is doing really well.  My first eggplant is ready.  I’m getting enough tomatoes for salads, if not yet for canning.  The basil is exploding, and it is time for pesto making.  The hot peppers are booming – yay – speaking as a serious pepper-head, this is a real novelty and a joy. Hot sauce and salsa, here I come!

The rain hasn’t been ample, but it has mostly been enough to get along, and we’ve got more coming.  I hear an inch tomorrow – woohoo!  I’m trying to keep up with the herbs, and while they don’t dry quite as fast as I’d like in the drying room (previously known as the mudroom) the quality is great – green, fragrant, perfect.   

The boys are excited about naming all the baby goats.  We’ve decided that this year’s theme will be herbs and flowers.  We’re keeping the best of Frodo’s boys as a buckling, since Frodo is getting on in goat years and we’re a bit paranoid about losing his brilliant genetics.  The boys quite innocently suggested that we could name a buck “Goldenrod” or “Mandrake” and I admit, Eric and I had a good laugh on that. 

It is time to order my garlic and fall bulbs – I always get ornamental bulbs as part of my birthday present (in a couple of weeks) and this year we’re planning on radically expanding our garlic production.  The rest of the garlic is just about ready to harvest, and that’s tomorrow’s job.  The major challenge here is keeping the garlic out of Eli’s hands – he loves the long stems to play with.

I’m going to set up a segment of this blog to show farm products for sale and goat genetics and things, if I can pull it off, and ideally lots of pictures!  All of this is coming just as soon as I actually get time for it – but that will have to be soon, because there’s a nagging feeling in the back of my brain that I have a book contract to deal with at some point .  Best get things done soon.

Plant something: Echinacea, eclipta, mesclun, turnips, beets, kale, broccoli, peas, scallions, lettuce, arugula, daikon, kohlrabi.

Harvest something: Tomatoes, eggplant, basil, mesclun, zucchini, summers quash, green beans, carrots, daikon, new potatoes, bok choy, lettuce, meadowsweet, yarrow, mongolian yarrow, holy basil, mint, curry plant, sage, plums, raspberries, blueberries, eggs.

Preserve something: Dried many herbs, made blueberry-honey, blueberry jam and blueberry crisp filling.  Dried blueberries.  Made rhubarb sauce.  Dried peaches.  Made red currant jelly.  Saved pea seed.  Froze eggs.

Waste Not: Cleaned out the old stable for its transition to buck and winter poultry housing, and put the remaining old bedding in the garden.  Otherwise, the usual composting, mending, etc…

Want Not: Nothing new

Build Community Food Systems: Spoke at a hearing on a local community garden proposal – I think they’re going to get one.  Began pestering folk at my shul about setting up a community garden onsite.

Eat the Food: Making a lot of potato salads – I don ‘t like mayo, so they tend to be with a mustardy vinagrette instead – I really like the one with capers, garlic and last year’s dried tomatoes.

How about you?

Sharon

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Sharon July 12th, 2010

We are rarely away from home as much as we have been these last few weeks.  I was gone for three days at the end of June, beginning of July, and then for the last four days.  We have one more very short trip (Eric and I are, wonder of wonders, going away for 24 hours sans kids – thanks to generous Grandmothers!!!!  We’re going to go on a busman’s honeymoon and  visit a couple of other farms )

We spent the last few days enjoying ourselves with family in the Boston area – end ended with a wonderful family bash to celebrate my Great Aunt Sally’s 90th birthday.  When I was a kid I took such family occasions, and the pictures they always made us take for granted – but now I keep thinking “how many 90th birthday parties will I get to go to?”  The elders of my own childhood are mostly gone now, and every remaining member of my grandparents’ generation is someone my kids will remember only through the lens of childhood .

We stopped as we often do, at Old Sturbridge Village on our way there, a living history museum that reproduces life in the 1830s.  Because Sturbridge is just about halfway between my parent’s house and our house, it is a place we can all meet in the middle (which we do a couple of times a year), and also a great stopping point on a long car trip - it comes just about at the point the words “he’s touching me” start coming from the backseat.

My kids love Sturbridge and so do I.  When I was a child, it was also almost exactly between my home and my Grandmothers’ home in Waterbury, CT, so many of my childhood memories focus on Sturbridge.  My sons particularly love the Parsonage – one of the houses with a lovely garden and a traditional attic room with two beds.  The first time we went through the interpreter said “how many kids do you think would sleep here?  Probably four.”  She clearly expected the kids to be shocked at the idea of everyone not having their own beds, but my boys just laughed and said that was just how they sleep.  So since then the kids like to pretend they live at the Parsonage.

The days before we went were busy, trying to keep up and get ahead and deal with the extreme heat.   Now that we’re back and the kids are going to camp and other summer programs (half day for the three younger ones), Eric and I are looking forward to three hours every single morning to devote to the farm and farm work. 

We must build a buck pen.  We must build another kidding pen.  We must clean out the back area of the barn, which until recently had a wood cookstove in it (which has now found a new home – yay!) so we can move the winter milking back there and also set up beds for the dogs.  We are having friends over to install our new manual well pump on Thursday.  The sheep are arriving tomorrow, along with Xote the guard donkey, and there is fence work to do in the meantime.  There are garden beds to build and fall seeds to start.  There’s plenty for us.

The cherries are done for the season, the peaches and apricots are nearly ripe.  The black currants are ripe as well, despite heavy depredations by the goats (they will be moved ASAP, but until this year they’d been ignored).  Tomatoes are starting to come ripe, zucchini are in full swing and the beans are in progress.  We’ve also been eating the best mesclun mix I’ve ever had – called “the kitchen sink” by Pinetree seeds, it has a strong emphasis on my favorite, spicy parts – arugula, mustard, etc… plus pea shoots, asian greens and even a little lettuce .

Summer is settled in to stay.  The babies are coming.  Life is good.  And although the trips have been fun (and the last one should be too) we’re almost home for the rest of it.  I’m glad to be here.

Onwards:

Plant something – I didn’t plant much of anything due to the heat.  Started some broccoli and asian greens indoors.

Harvest something: Tomatoes, yarrow, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, the last of the snap peas, onions, green garlic, motherwort, mongolian yarrow, lemon balm, lemon verbena, sour cherries, raspberries.

Preserve something; Dried herbs, made cherry pie filling.

Waste Not: Nothing unusual.

Want Not: Made our usual Boston-area run of the awesome local Savers.  Found pjs for the kids, pants without giant holes for the husband, tshirts for Eli, pants for children with no behinds to hold them up for the other boys .

Eat the Food: Ate my Moms’ delicious food, including fish from their seafood CSA.  Can I just say how jealous I am?  Also ate what we call salsa salad a *lot* (we call it that because it started out as a salsa, but we eventually decided we just liked it plain) – chopped tomatoes, beans (black, pinto or whatever you like) and sweet onion (we use a variety called “candy”) mixed with lime juice, salt, a little sugar and chipotles.    We usually eat this with corn on the cob and salad.

Build community food systems:  Nada, although I got to see the results of my step-mother’s hard work on her community garden expansion – that was awesome!

So how about you?

Sharon

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