Baked Eggs with Spinach and Mushrooms

Baked Eggs with Spinach and Cremini Mushrooms w/Clausen's Sourdough Rosemary Toast

This morning, I made my breakfast based on this recipe from January’s Bon Appétit.  Both in print and online, the magazine includes this grandiose quote from the chef: “American and British cooks don’t know how far you can take an egg dish.”  The magazine’s copy goes on to state, “Here, he deftly elevates it to a different realm by flavoring spinach with leeks and scallions, baking the eggs on top and finishing with a dollop of yogurt and a drizzle of butter spiced with a smoky Turkish chili powder known and kirmizi  biber…”  I guess I must eat a lot of egg dishes in that “realm” because while good, his recipe looks like nothing out of the ordinary for me.

My version included red onions, scallions, spinach and cremini mushrooms added after the onions but before the spinach, because, really, what isn’t better with mushrooms?  I could also see bacon in the vegetable mixture.   I chose to flavor olive oil instead butter with chili powder.  The original dish includes both olive oil and butter at different points.  I halved the recipe making this a two egg breakfast for myself.  I’m not sure D. would appreciate the dollop of yogurt.  I think he’d like the rest of the dish just fine.  I did use his trick of seasoning the yogurt with garlic (removed before serving) and kosher salt.

When I make this again, I’ll bake it in oven safe serving dishes or a small cast iron skillet.  I baked it in our smallest Calphalon skillet, but that has a non-stick coating and while it looked pretty in there, I realized I didn’t want to eat out of a non-stick skillet with a fork.  I did transfer it to a plate without breaking the yokes, but it wasn’t as elegant once transferred.  Many, many recipes I have seen for baked eggs involve ramekins, but the only ramekins I have are really tiny and intended for rich, fancy desserts.

2011 Meme

Ariat Boots in Winter Sun

At the end of 2010, I wrote that I saw all sorts of possibilities that I hadn’t seen before.  Now that we’ve had the land for more than a year, it’s really clear that it has changed our lives.  In reviewing my answers to the meme, I actually see that it’s become our life and that’s a good thing.  One of my friends, visiting us out at the land and talking about what she and her husband do on weekends and what D. and I do on weekends, said that her husband plays soccer and other sports and that she often shops.  And then she said, “And you do this.”  And it’s true, without reviewing what we do out there, it’s hard to see our accomplishments because there is so much to do.   If you do the meme, let me know.
1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
I participated in deer hunting.  I didn’t pull the trigger, but I helped with everything else.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I’ve never made resolutions.  The closest thing we have now is a running list of things to do at the land.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
I know quite a number of people who had babies this year, but no really close friends.  Two close friends are expecting babies in 2012.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No one close to me died this year.  A number of people I knew died this year.  The one that bothered me the most was a man I used to work with.  I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years.  He’d been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.  He’d been a very active cyclist and kayaker before this disease took hold.  He left behind a wife and a daughter who is currently attending college.

5. What is the most interesting new place you visited?

The Seed Savers Heritage Farm near Decorah, Iowa in October.  Their orchard, in particular, was amazing.  I’ll definitely want to go back at other times of the year.
6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A fence to keep the deer out of the garden at the farm.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

I don’t remember the exact dates of our trip, but one of the best things we did this year was get back to Arizona.  It was great to see my friend Melanie and her family and to get to some back to some parts of Arizona that we didn’t have time to visit in 2005 as well as some new places.  Dinner and breakfast at  La Posada’s Turquoise Room  were possibly the best meals we ate all year long.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Really good potato and garlic crops.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Failure to outsmart raccoons.  Again.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Ariat Fatbaby boots.  Yay for comfortable work boots without laces in which to get burrs all tangled.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

D.’s.  I’m so glad to have him as a partner in life and as a partner in the land project.  I’ve sometimes worried that I’m dragging him along on my ambitious view of the land’s future and all the work that it entails, but he’s right there with me with ideas, knowledge, skills and strengths that I don’t possess.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the Republican presidential candidates for the 2012 election.
14. Where did most of your money go?

The land.  A pretty good chunk of funds went for paying the electricians for our recent upgrade.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Cider making.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
“The Cave” by Mumford and Sons or any of Adele’s over-played but excellent songs.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a)happier; b) about the same; c) Kind of depends on how you calculate it

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Hiking at State Parks.  This year, we only visited one State Park, once.  We never even bought an annual sticker.  On the other hand, we hiked our land frequently at different times of the year and different times of day.  We’re getting to know it really, really well.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Losing my temper.  I probably shouldn’t kick cars when their drivers “park” them across the bike path where it crosses Regent Street because they’re too lazy to stop before they pass the solid line behind which they are supposed to stop.  Which is a good Six to eight feet before they roll past the line that puts them IN the bike lane.  I did that twice.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

Having celebrated Christmas a week early in Minnesota with D.’s  parents and his brother’s family, we joined our friends, Celia and Dave for dinner on Christmas Eve.  Christmas morning after making an omelet for breakfast we headed out to the farm to prune the apple trees.  We’re not done with this job by any means and we definitely left a mess behind, but at least we have a good start on it.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Maybe with a plan for a house to build on the land.

22. What’s the strangest thing you cooked this year?

We cut up, marinated and grilled  the heart of the deer in November.  Ours was a fairly simple preparation involving thyme, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar.  I got the recipe from Field and Stream.  When we get a deer some other  year, I’d like to prepare the heart more like Peruvian anticuchos.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
The unfortunately named, but hilarious  “Cougar Town”.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No.

25. What was the best book you read?

Probably “Deeply Rooted” by Lisa M. Hamilton.  I also really enjoyed “The Dirty Life” by Kristin Kimball and “Coming Home to Eat” by Gary Nabhan.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Identifying the eerie owl sound we sometimes hear at night.  It’s an eastern screech owl.

27. What did you want and get?

Better apples from the orchard than we got in 2010.

28. What did get, but not want?

Baby raccoons.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

The only movie I saw in a theatre was “Sherlock Holmes”.   It’s safe to say that if I’d managed to find time to see Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” that “Sherlock Holmes” would not be my favorite film this year.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
My 43rd birthday was on a Sunday.  I can’t recall what we did.  I’m sure we were tired.  We spent that early spring day before it out at the farm after a winter of too much snow to drive in.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

If we’d managed to get rid of the house at the farm.  Actually, I guess that’s kind of measurable.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

I’ve completely lost it since most of my newer clothes have come from Woolrich or the Duluth Trading Company and are meant for outdoor work.  I doubt that comparing the merits of various work gloves can be referred to as a “personal fashion concept”.

33. What kept you sane?
Out door time, some evidence of progress with the weeds, books and my bike commute, excepting the two times I kicked cars.

.34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I hate to say it, but Ron Paul is growing on me.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Recall Walker and Kleefisch.  I signed the recall petitions the first day it was legal to do so.

36. Who or what did you miss?
I miss the time that I wrote anything I wanted on this blog.  I need to find a different outlet for writing about the things that annoy me the most.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
My friend Melanie’s friend Kelly.  Kelly is a single mom, very committed to the Pro-Life cause, she’s a veteran of the USMC and a Mormon.  On the face of it, with my lack of children, my unwavering Pro-Choice stance, my lack of military service and my essentially complete lack of religious beliefs, you might think we’d have little common ground.  And you’d be quite surprised.
38. What’s the best thing you learned in 2011?

That we have more native species on our land than I previously thought  This includes Indian grass, phlox and shooting stars.

And a Porcupine in an Oak Tree

Porcupine in an Oak Tree

After a break from the buckthorn project during the gun deer season, and with unseasonably warm weather at the beginning of December, we returned to buckthorn cutting.  We have some really big piles of cut buckthorn now and hope to have decent snow cover at some point so that we can light them on fire to dispose of them and return their nutrients to the ground.  The early December weekend that we returned to cutting buckthorn, Saturday was a little challenging because the Roundup stored in the barn was a little on the slushy side to begin with the temperature hovering at the freezing point, the Roundup was well on its way to being solid and my sponge paintbrush was freezing up and getting stiff by late in the afternoon.  Sunday morning promised to be warmer, so we figured we’d get back to it and really make some progress.

When we woke up on Sunday morning I was thinking about pouring our coffee into our mugs from Mulberry Pottery, but D. said, “Weren’t we going to go for a walk?”  I had less than great enthusiasm for our previously agreed upon plan, but chose to keep up my end of the deal and instead poured it into the travel mugs and got dressed to go outside.  We walked out along the trail and took the spur down closest to the stream and past the coyote den before rejoining the main trail to the back.  We didn’t hear much and the sunrise wasn’t spectacular, but we did scare about four or five deer out of the thicket at the bottom of the valley.  I didn’t get a really good look at any of them because my view was obscured by trees until they were well up the hill in the neighbor’s field, but D. swore he heard antlers crashing against something before they cleared the woods.  Maybe.  We definitely heard a deer snort, so I’ll bet that big buck is still out there somewhere.  We cut down to the bottom of the valley and I noticed a tree that was kind of hollow at the bottom with lots of evidence of traffic around its base.  Sure enough there was a raccoon in there doing its best to sleep.  It startled me a little and I just stepped away and around the other side of the tree.  Much as raccoons are not welcome in or near our buildings, they are part of the ecosystem and if they’re willing to live in trees, I’m willing to leave them alone.  We made our way back up the hill and I started studying one of the oak trees.  I saw a huge lump on one branch that perfectly matched the color of the bark, but it was so round, I just couldn’t believe it was part of the tree.  Our first thought was “raccoon” since we have such an abundance of those, but no ringed tail and no little bandit face.  Also not right for an opossum.  Porcupine, yes.  Porcupine.  Everything I’ve been able to read suggests we’re too far south to be in the range of porcupines, but I’d say this picture suggests we are not.  Another interesting animal and one with which I do not intend to tangle.  I also hope that somewhere down the road I never have to pull porcupine quills out of a dog either.

D. on the edge of the buckthorn project, looking west

We walked back and cooked breakfast and then stopped through the barn to get our tools and head back to the buckthorn.  Porcupine still lying on the branch and completely nonplussed by us, by the hawk that flew over and screamed, or the murder of crows making a racket as they flew south toward a different patch of woods, possibly intent on harassing an owl that was only trying to get some sleep.  We spent a good part of the day cutting and stacking even more buckthorn.  It was considerably warmer and I had no trouble with freezing of herbicide or paint brush.  It was actually warm enough not to want the jacket I would have preferred for this task.  I also learned that D. is willing to walk a mile to bring me a tweezers.  Well I suppose that is the easy way out if the other possibility is to fireman carry me out half that distance.  But I do appreciate it.  I guess I’ve also learned that I should always take my Swiss Army knife out there.  One never knows when a tweezers or scissors will come in handy…

While we didn’t quite make it to either the north or east property lines, we did finish off this particular stand of buckthorn and for the first time, I really think we can win the buckthorn war.  It’s early though and while we think we have this area cut and poisoned and we’ve scattered some prairie seeds, it’s too early to say that our work is done.  I suspect it may still take years of maintenance.  It’s already looking more like the oak opening it’s supposed to be.

More Buckthorn Piles. We'll try to save the small oak in the foreground.

Deerhunting, Opening Weekend

Some people buy land for hunting.  We bought land and then starting thinking about what to do with it.  What to do with it includes building a house there some day.  We are working at improving the orchard.  It also includes some gardening and a good bit of eradication of invasive weeds to make way for restoration of plant communities which existed before white settlers showed up.  Our goals for the land also include taking advantage of the abundant wild food sources.  So far, this has included garlic mustard, black walnuts, wild raspberries and ground cherries.  We’re still hoping for morels or hen of the woods mushrooms.  And at some point, I’m quite sure we should take advantage of the roots from the wild parsnip even though parsnips are by no means my favorite.  Last year, we decided we weren’t ready to take up deer hunting.  I have zero experience with hunting of any sort.  D. hasn’t hunted in years, never shot a deer, though did help his father with field dressing one year when he was at his parents’ during hunting season.  I also have a pretty queasy feeling about fire arms.  Sure with a .22 rifle, I can hit a paper target, a plastic milk jug or a raccoon, but taking down a beautiful animal like a deer with a .30-06 is a bit beyond what I can mentally or physically do at this time.  On the other hand, twelve years ago, I tasted venison for the first time.  It was simply pan-fried in olive oil along with some Jimmy Nardello peppers and served along-side some heirloom tomatoes both grown by the same man who shot the deer the previous fall.  I was smitten both with the man and the venison.  That man is gone, but my appreciation of venison lives on.  Since I’ve known D., now and then we’ve received some venison when a friend’s hunting party has had a bit more success than they expected.

Anyhow, last year, we weren’t ready to hunt, but this year, we decided that we would.  When I say “we”, I really mean, not me.  I wanted hunting to happen, but I didn’t personally want to shoot.  I also wanted to make sure that I wasn’t pushing D. to hunt if he wasn’t comfortable with it.  He assured me that he wanted to do it.  We see (and admire) deer on our land all the time.  A couple of months ago while I was cooking dinner, D. took the picture at the top of this post.  Just a few weeks ago we went for a walk with a glass of wine in hand after finishing up our work for the day, but before cooking dinner.   We saw a minimum of six deer that evening including two bucks.  Last weekend as we were leaving at dusk, we saw four does in a nearby field, one of them being chased by a buck.  Deer are very plentiful in our area.  So plentiful, in fact, that our area is targeted for herd reduction because of chronic wasting disease or CWD.

Friday night, we set out for the farm, our plan was to be there at the opening of hunting season on Saturday morning.  Friday night, I set the coffee up so we could just flip the switch in the morning.  In the morning on Saturday, D. went out early to watch for deer and I set about cleaning, hearing gunshots now and then, none of them very near.  We’d agreed to go out to breakfast in town  so that we could also make a necessary trip to the hardware store a little later in the morning.  At the hardware store, we witnessed a relatively uncomfortable conversation between a man who had three small kids in tow and one of the guys working at the hardware store.  He was saying that he didn’t want to buy a hunting license if he wasn’t legal to carry a firearm…words like injunction came up.  We transacted our business and left.  I put our squash soup in the small slow cooker to heat, read Food and Wine for a while and napped.  Before lunch, D. had seen exactly one deer, running, really far away, across Otter Creek on a neighboring farm.   She was running toward our land, but must have stopped or turned elsewhere.   After having some soup, I walked out with D. the next time he was going to sit and wait for deer.  I walked all the way to the back of the property hoping to scare up a deer or two.  I found nothing.  Well, I found nothing on the back of our loop trail.  Then I walked down the hill to our little stream where I heard movement.  I saw four deer hiding down in the thick brush near the stream.  Three of them took off in an easterly direction, away from D.    The fourth deer took off across the stream to the south also away from D.  She would have been a perfect shot for someone in the deer stand up the hill had anyone been up there.  A little while later I heard a shot not too far to the east.  Maybe at one of the deer I drove out of the safety of the thicket in the bottom of our property.  Maybe not.  I’ll never know.  D. continued watching our valley south of where he was sitting.  I walked back cutting behind him.  He waved me over and asked that I wave my hat if I saw anything when I got to the top of the next rise.  I climbed the hill and just shook my gloves at my side and I went to sit and watch from behind the barn.  I saw no deer and dark drew closer.  We got cleaned up and went into town for dinner.  The tourist season has really slowed down and the waitress asked me what brought us in tonight.  I said we’d been hunting at our land south of town all day without any success.  We had a nice dinner and drove back.  Even though it was early, we were tired and read only for a little while.  It had been dark all day, misting intermittently.   D. had only seen four deer that day, but he’d seen a pair of hawks, a pileated woodpecker (which I had heard) and I’d seen and heard nuthatches flitting around a bur oak tree.  Again, we set the coffee up so that we could just flip a switch in the morning.  D. filled up our thermos with coffee and took a chair and his insulated seat pad.  We agreed that I’d make breakfast to be ready around 9:30 since all plans regarding deer hunting are predicated on failure.  I expected him to cross the valley and sit over near the pines, but then I watched him head down to the barn.  I poured myself a cup of coffee and crawled back into bed since the warmest place to be was between the flannel sheets.  I lay there for a while thinking that it would be easier to read if I made the futon back into a couch instead of leaving it flat.  I considered this for about five minutes, hearing far off gunshots now and then from about the first moment that it was light enough to shoot.  It was then that I heard THE shot.  I knew it was really close and I figured it was D.  I put on shoes and wandered out to see what had happened.  I saw him walk out from behind the barn, giving me a thumbs up sign.  I then realized I was still wearing a grey fleece pullover and the black cotton knit pants I’d been sleeping in.  I said I would put on something orange and come over and help him with the deer.  I put on jeans, socks, hiking boots, my orange pullover and orange insulated vest, orange hat and orange gloves, stuffing a couple of pairs of latex gloves in my pockets.  I hopped across the stream and made my way up the hill to where D. was kneeling next to the deer pulling out a couple of knives and positioning the deer for field dressing.  She was a big beautiful doe and we can only assume that she had a good life until she didn’t live anymore.  As I helped him with field dressing the deer, I saw a hawk fly over and then scream when it had floated past us nearing the tree line.  I noticed various other birds and eventually a small flock of geese flying over.  D. told me that there had been two deer this morning.  The one he shot and another, either  a smaller doe or possibly this doe’s fawn from the past spring.  When we were finished, D. pulled the deer out to where we could take her for registration and I took the rifle, the knives and a plastic bag in which we’d put the heart and the liver.  We don’t have running water, let alone hot water, so I boiled water so that I could clean the knives and wash our soup dishes from Saturday and then I went down to retrieve D.’s chair, seat cushion and untouched thermos of coffee.  I found a rifle casing on his chair, so he must have stopped to pick it up.  I stuffed the empty rifle casing in my pocket.  D. finished assembling the cargo tray for the trailer hitch and we picked up the deer to take her down for registration.  Given the concern over CWD, the rules say that if one shoots an antlerless deer, one can shoot a buck.  Actually the rules say that one can shoot a buck no matter what, so now, if so inclined, D. could shoot two bucks.  One deer is enough this year.  We’ll probably go out to the farm next weekend,  but I don’t think hunting is on the agenda.  I think we’ll make sure that we can start the tractor and swap out the heavy front gate for a cable instead.  We’ll wear orange to ensure that we are visible to those who are still hunting.  We’ll stay out of their way and silently I’ll wish them well.

The Buckthorn Wars

A year and a half ago, we never thought we'd make it through the spiny brush to this ladder. This ladder now stands in the barn.

The first time we ever walked the property before we bought it, part of the trail toward the back was nearly impassable. Horrible, spiny invasive weeds like buckthorn and multiflora rose, both brought to this country from Europe and Asia, respectively and buckthorn was promoted as hedging, multiflora rose as a “living fence” encroached on the path. Both of them are out of control in many places and no more so than on our land. They dominate the back of the farm.

Now that it’s finally cool enough to work outside with long-sleeved tough clothing, we turned out attention to getting the ladder out. We never really thought we’d get to it a year and a half ago. Yesterday, armed with shovel, loppers, bow saw, a sponge paint brush, and a small container filled with concentrated Roundup, we set out to get the ladder. At first I used the saw and the loppers to cut my way back to the ladder. D. busied himself with digging out the multiflora rose with the shovel. This is a method recommended by the Wisconsin DNR and we’ve found it effective since that is how we cleared the garden and orchard of the stuff and with a whole season’s worth of growing, it hasn’t become a problem again. I eventually made my way through multiflora rose and wild black raspberry canes. Reaching the ladder, I looked further down the hill and noted that it was mostly open. We thought we’d cut a path down to the stream from there. D. had never been down there. I had managed to brave it in January dressed in very tough clothing. I surrendered the saw to D. and he took out the larger buckthorn trees. I stayed out of his way and cut the smaller buckthorn as well as the multiflora rose with the loppers and I painted the stumps with Roundup using the sponge paint brush. Sure, I’d rather not use Roundup, but here, there’s no way around it. If one just cuts buckthorn it vigorously sends up even more shoots. This method is also recommended by the Wisconsin DNR and we hope it works for us.

Buckthorn leafs out early in the spring, blocking light from the forest or savanna floor and effectively stops any understory plants from growing as well as preventing native tree regeneration. I was struck yesterday by how little was actually growing under the buckthorn. Much to my surprise, I did see one tiny oak seedling. Buckthorn may also alter soil nitrogen dynamics. The slope on which we were cutting it is steep and erosion is now something of a consideration. I wonder what sort of seeds may be lying dormant there right now. I wonder whether we’ll find that this is yet another area where we’ll next need to fight burdock and wild parsnip or whether native plants will spring forth. Close by, we have both shooting stars and bergamot, so I am cautiously hopeful. We also have a bin full of native plant seeds and I think next weekend, we’ll disturb the soil a little with a rake, spread those around and hope for the best.  One way or another we’ll restore our land to the prairie and oak savanna that almost certainly occupied it before it was settled by the descendants of Europeans.

Pressing Cider from our own Apples

Homemade Cider

When I was little, I remember visiting a friend of my father’s who had a cider press.  While I was fascinated with the machine, I was suspicious of the final product which was dark and cloudy.  After all, the cider that my parents usually bought was clear and yellow.  Essentially apple juice, which was pasteurized, filtered and shelf-stable until it was opened.

Then last year we didn’t really have time to get the orchard in shape in time for apple season, but we had the opportunity to press cider with D’s parents.  We knew we wanted to press our own cider.  We knew we wanted to make hard cider.

We spent some time researching fruit crushers and cider presses and we ended up buying a new cider press, but decided to build a garbage disposal fruit crusher using the old sink  that we rescued from where it was sitting in the scary house on our farm.

Kitchen Sink, Garbage Disposal Apple Crusher with Cider Press in the Background

We fitted the sink with a new garbage disposal.   Originally, we’d thought that we’d “sweat” the apples on a platform at the farm, as recommended in some of the cider making resources we’d read.   We also thought we’d do the pressing out at the farm.  It turned out to be a much smarter idea to press cider at our house.  We brought 11 bushels of apples home over the course of two weekends and sweat them on a tarp on the garage floor.   Reliable clean running water is just about essential, given the need to wash the apples before coring and paring them and again before putting them in the crusher.  Hauling buckets of water from our springhouse where the water may or may not be free of bacteria on any given day is just not sufficient.   Those sanitation issues as well as the ability to refrigerate cider in short order, let alone to freeze things is just not a reality at the farm yet and I suspect we’ll not press cider at the farm until we have a decent house there with running water.  With the generous help of  some friends, cutting apples to get them ready for cider pressing, we pressed over 13 gallons of cider.  We worked from around noon until 6 p.m.  The cider is good, but it’s really sweet.  We froze as much of it as we could.  I’d still like to experiment with making pear cider and hard apple cider, though I don’t think we’ll have enough pears for years, nor will we get to making hard cider this year.

A Pair of Salads, Summer into Fall

September? Pear or Tomato Salad?

We haven’t seen a hard frost yet, so we still have tomatoes, but it’s also late enough in the year to have ripe pears from our orchard.  Last night, knowing that D. does not love the pears as I do, we had separate, but similar salads.  Except for starting on a base of pear slices or tomato slices, everything else was the same.  They each received half of a piece of crumbled bacon and I crumbled some good bleu cheese over them.  Next, balsamic vinaigrette made from a splash of balsamic vinegar, pinch of salt, Dijon mustard and olive oil.  Then I ground black pepper over the salads.

If I hadn’t been trying to finish the salads so I could move on to the rest of dinner preparation, I would have finished the tomato salad with some fresh basil and the pear salad with fresh thyme and black walnuts.  (We still have some of last year’s black walnuts in the freezer even though it’s apparent that this year’s walnuts will start falling on us in large numbers some time in the next couple of weeks out at the farm.  We’re also hoping to see larger numbers of ripe ground cherries in a week or two.  I did harvest some last weekend, but many, many of the ones in the patch below the orchard were not yet ready.

We split a butterflied pork chop from Jordandal Farms, grilled with a balsamic glaze and cauliflower roasted with olive oil and garlic as well as roasted beets.

Apples, Potatoes and Leeks, Oh My!

This weekend, we picked six bushels of apples, dug all the potatoes and enough leeks for one pot of soup

For a couple of weeks, now, the apples have really been ripening.  Two weeks ago, we took a week off to have a 25 mile kayak camping trip and we came back to buckets and buckets of windfall apples.  Too bad, too, because we had to compost them or throw them in a pile out of the orchard since we can’t use them even for cider due to concerns about acetobactor and E. coli bacteria.  It just killed me when we hauled all those apples out of the orchard in five gallon buckets and tossed them in a pile  to keep deer traffic down in the orchard as well as to lessen the risk of insect pests in next year’s crop.   We have some problems with codling moths, apple sawflies and curculios.  Some people have told us that you can’t grow organic apples.  I won’t waste my time arguing with them, but yes.  Yes, we can.  This year’s crop is significantly better than last year’s crop, partially due to weather.  Indeed, the statewide predictions for Wisconsin’s apple harvest suggest that this year’s crop will be nearly 17% larger than in 2010.  So a lot of our luck this year can be attributed to good rainfall and the fact that it hasn’t been as hot and moist as it was last year.  Some of the credit, however has to go to our pruning of the trees and mowing under the trees to keep the moisture down.  We’ll also remove all the downed apples from the orchard as well as any dead wood.  Next spring, we’ll use pheromone traps for the codling moths shortly after the trees bloom as well sticky traps and cider vinegar traps for some of the other pests.  We’ll also prune a bit more aggressively this fall after it gets cooler.  In addition to the apple trees, we found that there are two pear trees in the orchard that are producing small yields at this point.  One of those trees is crowded by a wild plum tree which the birds love, but are bad for orchards, so we’ll take that tree down this fall as well.  About half the trees we planted for the windbreak on the northwest side of the newer orchard have survived and we’re preparing the tree nursery so that we can watch the newest trees more carefully and so we won’t have to haul a wagon full of 5 gallon buckets up the hill to water seedlings.    We’re really encouraged about the potential of the orchard and how much better it looks this year than last year.

Yellow Finn and French Fingerling Potatoes

Potatoes also turned out well for us.  In the spring I’d purchased French Fingerling and Yellow Finn seed potatoes from Seedsavers.  I think I purchased the smallest amount available for both and between the potatoes that we grew and the potatoes we’ll receive in our CSA share, I think it’ll be a good long time before we have to buy any potatoes.  I dug them all between Friday afternoon and Saturday.  We didn’t weigh them, so I can’t really quantify them, but given the two small bags of seed potatoes, I’m really happy with the yield.  The other really good thing about the potatoes is while we planted them in newly tilled soil in the spring, it wasn’t really possible to keep up with the weeds after a point without stepping on the plants.  I’d say that between shovel and digging fork (which maimed far fewer potatoes) I pretty thoroughly turned over all of this ground again and had the opportunity to pull out, roots and all, any thistles, burdock or wild parsnip that had managed to sprout there.  Next week, I’ll rake in some winter rye seeds for a cover crop, both to keep weeds down and to enrich the soil and we’ll till that back in next spring before it goes to seed.  We’ll also put the potatoes elsewhere next year and I’m flirting with the idea of weed barrier cloth between the rows for next year.

Leeks and onions were a bit more of a challenge for us this year.  I’d started them all from seeds as I’ve done before and the onions lost the battle with the weeds.  The leeks fared a bit better, but it’s certainly going to take more than one growing season to turn a long ignored garden which had filled up with invasive weeds into a normal, productive garden area with more routine weed problems.  I’ll probably grow leeks from seeds again next year, but we’ll buy onion sets at the local grocery or hardware store so that we have a better chance of a successful onion crop next year.  Garlic did great and we’ll grow more of that next year, planting, probably some time next month.  Some will come from our own stock and a couple of varieties from Seedsavers.  I probably need to temper my desire to grow garlic, or I need to find a market for it.  Or give it away…

Since we first made her acquaintance, we've seen the orchard dog every weekend we've been at the farm.

Lastly, the orchard dog keeps showing up.  Sometimes with a second dog, sometimes not.  Now I’m pretty sure they have a home.   I’m also pretty sure that the neighbors whose place is in front of ours on the road consider these dogs a nuisance.  I like dogs and these dogs are fairly friendly.  They generally don’t bark when they’re around, though I’ve heard them bark and howl out in the soybean field beyond our land.  And I think they got scared on Friday night when we were disposing of some pine limbs from the tree that broke earlier in the spring with a fire that for a while shot at least 12 feet into the air.  I really, really want to have a dog.  I’d also like to live at the farm full-time.  I never want to leave when it is time to go home and when things happen there in between our weekends and workdays there, I always feel cheated by what we missed.  The time just isn’t quite right either for the dog or for a change of residence.

A Weekend Off from the Farm

Some time in July, we decided that we should take this weekend off from the farm.  It’s not like we didn’t take last weekend off for the most part, to rent a cabin with friends to swim, hike and relax.  And it’s not like we didn’t take off the weekend when D. was between jobs to have three days of paddling and two nights of sandbar camping on the Wisconsin River for a total of 45 miles from Arena to Port Andrew.  We also had at least three options of things to do this weekend.  The first, attending my 25th high school reunion was never really in the running.  I keep in touch with two of the approximately 200 people from my graduating class.  If anything, I’d be more interested in what certain people from the classes of 1984, 1985 and 1987 are doing  or maybe to see some of the people with whom I went to school from kindergarten to fourth grade than to “catch up and reminisce” about Dog knows what with the rest of the class of 1986.   Other options specific to this weekend included the Annual Firemen’s Dance in the town closest to the farm.  We certainly could stand to make some friends at the fire department and we did pay for tickets, more as a contribution and just in case we decided to attend, but if we’d driven down for that, we would have stayed at the farm.  If we’d stayed at the farm, we would have ended up working today at least for a while.  We can’t help it.  There’s so much to do.  Our third option was a corn boil and potluck dinner that our CSA farmers were hosting at their farm to celebrate the sweet corn harvest and we decided to attend that.  I’m glad we did.  We got to talk with some other people including our farmers about farming and gardening.  There was a young French woman there who grew up in Paris.  She’s been WWOOFing her way across the United States.  WWOOF stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms.  She’d been with our farmers for about a week and a half and was planning to move on soon, possibly to Oregon.  She was funny though, saying she needed farmers who weren’t too picky.   She said she’d do just about any work, but that she didn’t have any specific skills or farming experience and that she smoked like a chimney and that her smoking alone made her unwelcome in some places.

All those tomatoes fit in one little jar

Aside from that, while we managed to take a week off the farm, we still had plenty do.  We stocked up on meat at the farmers’ market buying from Jordandal.  Hawks Hill Elk Ranch was missing yesterday.   Yard work included a marathon weeding session, cutting spent flower stalks from hostas and lilies and today we tidied up the tomato plants which were sprawling all over and away from their supports.  D. mowed the lawn.  We also blanched and froze corn and dried a lot of our plum tomatoes.  We’ll certainly freeze more corn and dry more tomatoes before both of those crops end production.  I also ran some errands today including picking up some bushel baskets as we look forward to apple picking soon.

Some Day We’ll Have a Dog at the Farm

I found this dog in the orchard today. She followed me around for a couple of hours.

Some day we’ll have a dog at the farm.   I have a pretty specific idea of what characteristics comprise the perfect farm dog.  I’m thinking some sort of Labrador/retriever mix.  A fifty to eighty pound dog that can run all day and scare deer from the orchards and garden.  One that will dissuade raccoons from hanging out in the barn and other outbuildings.  I also find Australian shepherds and blue and red heelers appealing though I don’t love being herded by a dog when I’m out walking with one or more other people.  And these shepherds and heelers can’t help themselves.   Turns out some day was today.  But due to a variety of circumstances, this was the puppy that we couldn’t keep.

Today, we stopped out at the farm to check on things, get the paths and orchard mowed and to find out how the apples are coming along.  We had some friends out to have a look at the place as well and when we walked up to the garden to look at the potato plants and the apple trees, there was a dog in the orchard.  I think she barked a little and she was kind of skittish, but I kept getting a little closer.   She was so skinny that her ribs showed through her short hair and she startled easily, possibly like a dog who has been beaten, but she was also friendly.  At one point, I thought maybe I heard someone whistle for her, but there was no one around and I think it was just birds and wind.  The neighbors who live in front of us have dogs and I thought maybe she came from there.  I gave her some water, but she also had no trouble finding the stream that comes from the spring both lying in it and lapping it up at the same time in the 90 degree heat.  I walked all the way to the road to see if they were around and I didn’t find anyone.  No dogs in their kennels either.   The dog didn’t appear to recognize that house and instead ran up the road, found some animal that had been run over some time ago and of course rolled in it.

I gave up and turned around, walking back to the barn to get a bucket so that I could pick up the fallen apples in the orchard and pull any obviously bad apples off the trees.  No point in letting those continue.  The dog turned around and followed me.  She stuck close most of the time I was in the orchard, once wandering off and I thought maybe she’d found her way home, but after few minutes she came bounding back.  She followed me the entire time, a couple of times putting her head into my bucket only  to grab an apple in her mouth and to drop it back on the ground.  I told her she wasn’t exactly helping.  She was so skinny, we wished we had some food to give her, but I’m sure that would have just encouraged her to stick around.  If we lived there full-time, we could have fed her and we would have had time to check around with more of the neighbors  and a couple of the veterinarians in the area to see if anyone was missing her.  If no one claimed her at that point, under those circumstances, we’d probably end up keeping her after a few weeks of trying to get her home.

I hope this dog has a home and I hope she gets back there within a couple of days.  We couldn’t really bring her home because this lifestyle of working long hours away from home and driving back and forth between city and farm is no good for a dog.  Even as I write this that sounds more like an excuse than a reason.  Most of all, we didn’t have the time to assess whether or not she belonged somewhere.

As dogs go, even though this one isn’t what I pictured, she seems like just about the perfect farm dog.  While we will get a dog on purpose, someday too, a dog might just show up like this one did and after exhausting all avenues for getting it back home, we’d end up keeping it.  Today just wasn’t that day.  I have mixed feelings about it.