Change is Bad

This is one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes, from a movie he made back when he was America’s darling, before he cheated on Mia Farrow with her daughter. He used the phrase to argue that where he was, the role he was in, the rut he was in, was better, more comfortable, than leaping into something unknown, something scary and challenging.

I say this all the time, especially to the new apprentices, when they walk onto this farm and there is nothing familiar to them. It’s all new, all change, all stressful and weeding through personalities, both human and non-human animal alike, adjusting to routines, to house rules, to what the other humans living at the farm are used to.

Shannon came up for two weeks and helped lamb. She overlapped with Sarit, who is new, and she filled her in.

I told her about all of the rules, Shannon said. Sarit’s eyes were big. No shoes in the house, nothing but butts in the bench that Kyle built (don’t pile books, backpacks, sleeping cats, etc here), hang the clothes on the line with pins, don’t leave dishes in the sink, wipe up the floor in the shower, clean the cast iron cooking utensils without water when Kyle is around, with soap and water when Jenn is around, put the lids on the Tupperware, don’t leave the tools in the field.

Sarit told the rules to Anna, who arrived yesterday. She asked to arrange the food in the pantry. I told her that she could re-arrange the milkhouse. Really, I was thinking that I couldn’t handle the change, but honestly, the pantry is a mess.

These two haven’t had any farm experience, and yet, after just a few days, they’re planting the farm’s crops, feeding the animals, helping me do the taxes. They’re awesome.

Did the cows get fed three bales of hay? This is a rhetorical question that I am asking, because I can tell they have. Yes, they say. Well, I respond, they should only get two. Sarit gathers the hay up and feeds some to Michael the horse.

Do you hear the sound that the chicks are making right now? That means they’re out of food and water. Sarit, Anna and Bradford give the chicks food and water. The chicks are happy.

So I intend these questions to be teaching type questions, not intimidating or self-deprecating, but I know that Change is also Scary. It means that there’s this person, who is usually clad in the finest velour and other cast offs garnered from the local thrift store, who has an air of authority about her that is sometimes offsetting, that seems, but doesn’t really mean to, question personal ability.

In March, the changes of season are so subtle that I can track them. The first turkey vultures are back. The red-winged blackbirds and common grackles return. The day lilies are creeping out of the ground, and the garlic and wild leeks are growing. The robins are crazily flying and setting up territories, the potatoes in the root cellar are developing eyes (which will later turn into roots when they’ve been planted) and the garlic and onions that have been stored are sprouting. There are hens setting on eggs to hatch them out, and the peacock is displaying his glorious feathers. Change happens every single day in March and April and May.

It happens every month, every week, every day, incrementally more subtle, but change, just the same.

I no longer work for the Country Animal Hospital, after eleven years there. A shock and a serious source of panic for me at first. I honestly never thought that I would leave there. It was a comfortable place to work and I loved the people. I think that I was a little too vocal about recent changes, and the economy has affected this establishment, as it has many, so there was a need to consolidate. I have had an amazing outpouring of support from the community, and I thank everyone. I believe that things are as they should be, though. The animal hospital needs to stay in business, and I was the most expendable.

I just finished up the Joy of Keeping a Root Cellar, to be published by the same company as the Joy of Keeping Chickens. I’m also substitute teaching and working with a friend landscaping. And I have way more time to farm.

So change isn’t bad- it’s change. And here is spring, at our heels, turning these browned fields into green-gold, bringing bird song, rebirth and warm sun.

Happy Spring.

Gorilla Gardeners

I wanna call Dad, he says to me in a high pitch, after I turn on the tiny solar light, in the corner, near the east window, right where it’s been for the past 20 years. He and Whitney are waiting at the front door until I turn it on. He’s not afraid, he’s full of wonder. He’s amazed, just what I wanted.

At first he protested when I said that I was yanking him from school and going Downeast to Maine, to visit my dear friends Donna, Gerri and Pete. This is the place that I learned how to dig my own well, to butcher a deer, to tan a hide, to can food, to cure garlic for seed, to smoke meat. It’s where I learned how to eat a partridge just killed by a car, how to crack a lobster with just your hands, how to say goodbye to a friend dying of melanoma cancer, just a year and nine months after meeting him. It was a place that was grounding.

Right now, my ten year-old, who just 18 hours ago was in tears at the thought of not having wi-fi for three days, is dragging out skins of cured skunks and Australian possums. Donna’s house is phantasmal. What’s this one, Mom? I think it’s a mink. For those of you who don’t know, Whitney was an apprentice here in 2008, and is probably my closest friend. She’s amazing in her own right, but that’s another blog…

Kyle likes to describe Donna as ornery. She’s done everything, seen everything, and she truly could do anything else. She’s buried a husband and her best friend, she knows how to shear sheep, rake blueberries, preserve any food you can think of, make the best homemade wine you could drink, tan any animal’s hide, make friends with Feds and foes, she’s truly an idol. Right now, she’s working on a collaboration with University of Maine Press to catalog all of the plants on Acadia National Park.

The first night we arrived there, Gerri and Donna had gone to dinner at Oscar’s, a local lobsterman and friend, where I later bought 21 pounds of lobster to freeze at $4 a pound. That they’re gone, and we’re alone in the house gives me just enough time to show Whit and Bradford around. I show them my favorite things: the hand-dug root cellar, right down to granite; the reading lamp made out of sheep’s legs, the sepia picture of Bradford Kausen, whom our son is named after, looking contentedly out onto the water. Whit and my Bradford are rewardingly awed and amazed. This house has been completely constructed by this woman, her husband and her friend’s hands. She is not dependant on anything more than community, friendship and loyalty.

Mom, I wanna come back here with Dad to clean up the Little House. It’s where I lived for nearly two years, helping Brad die, helping Donna, learn to live, with Pete and Gerri and a slew of others. My son gets it. The magic of this place, the necessity of self reliance and close community. What a tonic in this bleak, dormant season of resting.

The Down Time

I joke about the fact that from December to March is supposed to be what we call the “down time”. Certainly, it’s not in May, with the frenzy of plowing and preparing and planting, consumed with getting fences up and animals on permanent pasture for the next six months. It’s not in August, when the crops are ready to harvest, and so much needs to be dried, canned, and frozen in order to savor summer’s bounty during the dormant months of winter.

I actually use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning, no bird song or bright light to tell me it’s time to rise and do the chores that never go away: cows, sheep, pigs and chickens all need to be fed, even in the winter.

We’re interviewing potential apprentices almost daily during this time. The state of the battered economy seems to have tipped in our favor somehow; just four years ago, there was only one applicant worthy of consideration. Last year and this, there are hordes of qualified people, looking to learn how to be self-sufficient. From entire families to newly graduated from high school, it’s a tonic to see how much enthusiasm there is out there for wanting to learn how to do it by oneself.

I was explaining just last night to Sarit, one of the people visiting to see whether Fat Rooster would be a good match for her to learn some farming skills, that it is a very unpredictable profession, this farming. I like to have a list of tasks everyday, neatly ordered, from most important to least. But invariably, the list will go out the window. Take this morning, for example.

My plan was to head to Central Supplies and buy sawdust for the chicken coop. A writer from Edible Green Mountains, a magazine about sustainable agricultural practices throughout the northeast (there is an Edible series for most regions in the US), is supposed to come and visit the farm and its chickens. I wanted to spruce up the place because honestly, the January thaw has just begun, and the accumulated manure in the coop of the past three months is a bit, well realistic. On Monday, though, it’s supposed to be in the 40’s, so I’ll get to shovel it out when it has thawed. Then, I have this book with a looming deadline, and I really need to sit down at the computer to finish that up.

At chores, I noticed, in horror, that one of the ewe lambs that I kept as a replacement ewe, has permanent nerve damage to her left shoulder. She got it caught in one of the grates in the barn, crossing to the pen where they spend the night. Her useless leg is dragging now, with no hope of repair. So I’ve called the butcher, and he’s on his way to slaughter her so her meat can be used and her skin can be tanned. At first, I thought it was Maple, the lamb who has been promised to Shannon, who apprenticed here last year. Even though I knew how impractical the thoughts were, when I thought that the lamb was Maple, I was devising methods of casting the leg in my head. It’s not her, and for that I am grateful.

After getting off the phone with the butcher, the phone rang again. A little voice asked, who’s this? It’s me, Mom, I say. What’s up? Visions of swine flu creep into my head. He hasn’t been vaccinated, because I think he already had the flu last year before it was a media staple, when I waited up with the bacons, and his temperature raged for four days, hovering at 106. Mom, he says, did you know that today was a half day at school? No, baby, I didn’t. There goes the trip to the farm store for shavings.

So I guess I’ll punt the day, and write this blog, and get the lamb butchered and work on the book. And play a game of cards with my son and make kale and sausage soup.

Soon, the chickadees and starlings will begin singing their songs of spring. The woodpeckers will drum out their secret knocks to keep potential rivals for females away. The sun will warm the sugar maples and the sap will run. For now, there’s skiing and sledding and snow. And chickens in the house, who can’t survive in the barn. Dad, Brad asks. When are the chickens going back in the barn? When we plant the onions, Dad replies. Interesting, I think. Since this year, we’ll be starting the onions from plants in April, not seeds in February.

Yeah, Right

Yeah right, is my son’s new saying. He’s going to be ten years old in less than two months, and he knows that this is a big birthday celebration for most ten year-olds. I’m pretty much a stick in the mud when it comes to traditional celebrations like this, and I only acquiesce to a birthday celebration because he so loves parties, and I do too. He’s been lobbying the details for two weeks now, fully two months before the big event. He’s outlined plans, favors, games and the menu. So today, we sat down and talked about particulars.

Five kids

Whaat? Are you crazy? Only five?

Yep, five. Name them.

I tap my pencil, while he digests the words, gauging whether I’m serious or not. Finally, he starts. He analyzes his choices, and wonders if inviting one probably-no-show will jeopardize a most-likely-will show. He spits them out, one by one, girls last, because, well, it’s not cool to invite the girls anyway. We settle on eight in the end, because I always give in, and because they truthfully won’t all show anyway.

We talk about the games they’ll play, what the theme will be, the menu (he wants pie, not cake---it’s genetic on the maternal side), the time of day it will occur. It’s kind of fun to plan, because he has real ideas of how it should unfold, and I love party planning as much as he does.

The farm will be very much put to bed by January fourth, his birthday. The sheep will be coming in and out of their nightly pens, basking outside in Vitamin D for at least eight hours of the day. The cows will be in the barn in their stanchions, for the long haul, waiting until May to go out again. We’ll be down to just the laying hens, on their timed lights, providing them with 13 hours of daylight. It cons them into thinking that it’s summer. I use the same hours of light to keep from going into an abyss of depression: no light, cold, hunkered down in the house.

But there will be snow. And crazy ten year-olds, careening down the steep banks behind the house, aiming for the greenhouses on their out of control sleds.

No presents, I announce.

Are you really my mother? Dad, did she really have me?

No presents, Dad reiterates.

You’ll ask for donations to the food shelf instead.

Yeah, right, he says (but it sounds like Yeahhh, Riiiiiight). There’s maybe zero people in this town, and maybe three in the state that need food.

Ohh, ohh. This I can work with. This is something to work on.

He recently did a food shelf drive in school. I was so proud of him, because he came up from the pantry, two bags brimming with food. I picked through it and reduced it to one bag (I can proudly say that we have just recently been relegated to above poverty status and no longer qualify for food stamps).

Oh, he pined (after I had reduced the bags to one), now we’ll never win.

Never win what??? Apparently, the class that brought in the most food for the food shelf would win a pizza party. It had become completely foreign to him why they were gathering food. Then he told me how a classmate’s sister’s class was sure to win, because she (as a kindergartner) was sneaking food past the parents every morning to win the prize.

AHHHHHH!

So this year, after his birthday, on Monday, we’re going to the food shelf with his presents of food. I’m so proud of him that he didn’t pitch a fit, after explaining that, yes, there are hungry people, and yes, we have food, so we wouldn’t necessarily know that there are so many without. He takes it for granted that there should be food but why wouldn’t he? That’s what we do. We may not be rich in greenbacks, but we certainly are rich in greens.

Now if I can only make it through the Sponge Bob theme birthday….

Bacon and Vampires

New Moon


Yep, it’s true. I can’t wait till the new vampire segment is out. I devoured all of the books, I bought into the fantasy. I love the story. But tonight, I am fascinated by what has been lost in our culture. - the art of making bacon. It has nothing to do with vampires, but everything to do with ecstasy. Who can say (of the meat eating variety) that he or she does not hold a special place in his or her heart for bacon?

It’s just pork, just flesh from the belly of the pig, but somehow, it’s transformed into a delicacy of indescribable sensation...bacon.

Do we know how bacon happens anymore? Is it easier for us to conjure up werewolves and vampires than bacon?

Because I hate what is put into the process of curing a modern day pork belly, I do it all at home now. The pig is killed here, cured here, and last night, thanks to my husband Kyle, the meat began the last process of being smoked here. He made a smoker out of an old fridge. We were lucky, because this was a fridge from the 1960s, metal, ceramic interior, and smokehouse-worthy, so it was well-suited for conversion. There was no plastic interior to worry about, no Freon gas hidden inside its interior to discard.

Kyle spent the day wrapping cabbages in newspaper to store in the root cellar for the winter. They’ll keep in their container until June this way, wrapped in their moist blankets. Kyle asked me what the world would be like when there were no more newspapers, and I had no answer. Will the ability to preserve our food for winter be as wondrous as the existence of vampires? Will bacon be so foreign that it is easier for us to believe that a mortal and a mythical creature can fall in love?

My friend happily signed onto a half a pig for her freezer the other day. She didn’t know that hams and bacon meant extra work. Hams are just roasts unless they’re cured, and bacon is just pork belly unless it’s tended to. Far from pork belly is bacon. She’s
pregnant, so when asked if she wanted it cured and smoked, she said no- savvy to the modern processes of pumping nitrates into the meat to combat botulism, she had no idea that bacon and ham are what they are because of the process they go through- brining, then drying, then smoking, to achieve that achingly good, buttery goodness. Yes, you can cure bacon and hams without nitrates.

In order to finish the bacons in the smoker, I resolve to stay up all night. Bradford has the beginnings of what looks like the swine flu (fitting since I am processing pork), so I have two excuses to stay vigilant tonight. Every two hours, I go out to the new smoker, feed the tinder box with a mixture of dry and wet hardwoods, and fill the reservoir with water. Every two hours, I gauge the fever raging in my son, and swab him with wet wash clothes and prompt him to drink water.

At 3:36 am, after the bacons have turned a golden brown, and I know that I will be awake in just two more hours, and Bradford’s forehead is cool with the sweat of a broken fever, I crawl into bed with two cats and Kyle. It is warm and cozy, and I am soon dreaming of vampires.

At 4:13 am, this all abruptly ends, with Kyle’s shouts of : “ It’s on fire, the smoker is on fire!”

I open my eyes to see flames reaching up to our bedroom window, almost 15 feet high. I run out, with a bowl of water for a grease fire, and throw it on the inferno, only to make everything worse. Kyle appears with the fire extinguisher and gives a mighty blast, then another and another.

In my head, I am still thinking that we can save the bacons. I’m yelling for him to stop with the chemicals, that I can put out this inferno which is now melting the ceramic, with water. It’s roaring. Reaching up and over to the bush that lays next to the propane tank which feeds our cooking stove. “They’re gone, they’re gone, it’s gone,” he says, with another blast. He was a forest fire fighter for years… I am out of my element. I sulk back to the house and try to sleep for two hours before my day has to begin. I don’t know what has gone wrong. Did the grease from the bacons cause the hot plate to flame up? Did the string used to tether the bacons to the hanging wire fail and topple the bacon onto the hotplate?

Kyle joins me in bed after he is sure that the fire has been put out and begins giggling at his poetry:

Autumn, and the smell of apple wood smoked bacon drifting toward the bedroom window. The sun is up, flowing in the south window. Wait a minute- it’s four o’clock in the morning, it’s too early for the sun to be up, and from the south???

Be quiet, I say.
Bacon. Do vampires like bacon? I bet werewolves do.

Gourmet Gone

“…influence and spending power now lies with the middle class.”
- Conde Nast, speaking for why Gourmet magazine was forced to close its doors.


Huh?

I am saddened and disheartened by the news that my favorite foodie magazine, after 70 years of publication, has been forced to close. Conde Nast sites that a 43% decrease in advertisement forced it to do so, keeping the more frugal Bon Appétit afloat in our stagnant economy.

What this means to me, as a hardcore foodie, is that we have reached a place where it is no longer status quo to drop $700 for a table for two at dinner.

This should make me happy. I have always hated this excess, and I think that the frivolity and wastefulness is somewhat like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand in today’s economy. I know how strongly I feel about these things when my son becomes horror stricken at the restaurant when he can’t finish his side stack of strawberry pancakes, and is inconsolable about the shear waste of food that will not be composted, but will instead by chucked in the trash. I try to explain to him that this is a good thing to feel, that next time he will be more frugal in his choice, maybe share it with another person, or order less. At age nearly ten years old, he understands that waste is ridiculous.

Yet, I thought that Gourmet was really trying to make an effort in a roundabout way. I mean, it was the first publication to link the politics of food with actually eating it. It was the first to discuss the pros and cons, the humane treatment of animals, when considering the boiled lobster dinner, or the finely marbled beef rib steak. It married cultures with food, tracing the ancestory of dishes, of hardships felt in parent countries between the growers and the diners, amidst the elegant descriptions of the foods prepared. It tried to make eating an experience at the same time providing the reader and cook with an adventure and a reality.

Yes, there was decadence. Yes, they spoke elitist. But they also spoke local and sustainable and practical, terms that no other high class, upper echelon publication would dare to broach. Martha brought cool to heirloom tomatoes; Gourmet evoked historical significance with their use.

On the farm, we are experiencing the most support, the most viability and sustainability that we have in the twelve growing seasons that we’ve been here. Support ranges from those who want to barter for their food with work to those who want to buy the best food available, no dollar spared. We have been inundated with qualified applicants for apprenticeships- people willing and eager to learn how to fend for themselves. We have a dedicated following of supporters interested in heirloom varieties of vegetables and fruits, and heritage breeds of livestock. It is an incredibly diverse number of supporters, from all walks of life, not just the middle class.

I am the middle class- we are the middle class. And I for one, will miss Gourmet, where I could transform my cippolini onions (formerly grown by peasants in Italy) my rutabagas (the lowly cousin of the turnip), and my garlic (routinely referred to as the stinking rose) into masterpieces of culinary excellence, thanks in no small part to the folks at Gourmet magazine.

What a waste.

I’m glad that this isn’t our first season farming. I wonder what I would think if it were. Would I just chalk it up to inexperience? Would I stay up late and blame it on the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing?

There’s a barred owl calling out a familiar sound, in between raindrops, “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all?” I hear the sheep, noisy in their August voices, mothers calling to their lambs, coaxing them to be weaned, because they themselves have been called into fertility by the waning daylight and turn of the nighttime temperatures. They’re more interested in the attentions of the ram than that of the lambs, almost two thirds the size of their mothers, still butting for milk and attention. Still, they can’t resist their baby’s call to be nurtured, so they answer them back, blatting their assurances.

In the morning, the ancient black locust tree rings shrill with the songs of adolescent Northern Orioles and Solitary Vireos caught up in the crazy dance of migration. The geese do tap dances through the lawn, complete with mock take- offs and elaborate trumpeting sounds of leaving. Of course, they’re domestic, so they can’t take off at all- they just squawk and carry on.

Everywhere, it is Fall, and we’ve only had ten days of summer. Seriously.

For those of you who’ve noticed, I’m pushing the two month mark in not posting this blog. I am overcome with writer’s block, always wanting everything to come out more eloquently, more fit together and perfect. But it’s like this season. Unpredictable and unwilling to be summoned up. Today I found myself complaining that it was too beautiful out to be stuck inside doing farm paperwork. A complaint that I have not been able to have all summer. So I helped Janet and Tali clean out the hoophouse of the waning cherry tomatoes, who have bravely soldiered through the late blight and hornworms, but are now at their end. We ripped them all out, pulled the grass from the aisles and spread compost throughout the house. After being rototilled, it will be planted to spinach and mesclun for December harvest. Between December and February, it is almost impossible to grow anything in there without heat or lots of layers. Plus, it means walking through three feet of snow.

The barn got white-washed today, and it smells and looks sparkling clean, the manure from the sheep pens having long been removed. The chicken pens themselves will be cleaned one more time before the winter months, and a heavy layer of sawdust and straw litter put down.

The pigs are happily rooting about outside, where Dominic, Janet’s friend, has made them a beautiful pen, complete with a wallow and a shelter.

The fact that we had no summer would be overwhelming me now, but I was incredibly fortunate to have spent five days in San Francisco and another 7 in Hawaii just last week. It was a fabulous trip, so perfect that I can now appreciate these crisp, fall nights and brilliant blue sky days. Everywhere, the last of the summer birds are retreating. The trees are turning colors, and the fall crops are ripening. I need to buy a new alarm clock, because the sky is no longer light filled and packed with birdsong at 4:58 am. Dusk is descending. And I guess I’m okay with that.