We are now picking ...

What a beautiful summer day ! Best of all, the local orchard announced that their cherry trees are ready for picking.

When that announcement is made, you better get there fast since the local bird population also has its eyes on the cherries and will strip a tree in a flash as soon as they are ripe.
I had visions of jam, desserts, rows of gleaming canning jars filled with cherries, cakes...can you tell we love cherries ?

On the way to the orchard, I saw these elderberry blossoms and picked a bag full for an experiment. I'm going to make elderberry blossom syrup; it's supposed to be delicious mixed with mineral water or prosecco. It's a German recipe from a cookbook given to me by the Global Clapotis Knitter .

When I got to the orchard, the trees were absolutely weighed down with fruit and picking was quick and lots of fun. Blue skies, puffy white clouds, pleasantly cool with sunshine and birds singing and the occasional cherry to eat while picking - what's not to like ?

I finally stopped picking when I ran out of bowls. When the cherries were weighed, I had picked 24 pounds .

At home, I made a batch of jam and we had this Clafouti for dessert. What a delicious day !

An end and a beginning

This was the porch one week ago - happy houseguests eating lunch in the warm sunshine. Please note the tomatoes from the garden.

Here is the same scene today. Winter has crept into the valleys and up our hill. We had a hard frost last night - gone are the peppers, the Swiss chard, the herbs and the last flowers which were hanging on until this morning. The water in the horse tub was frozen and the garden hose spit out little rods of ice when I turned on the water.

Luckily I planted a winter vegetable garden yesterday before the freeze. We learned about this method at the Unity Fair this fall. Elliot Coleman made a hoop greenhouse right in the garden with lectrical conduit bent into a half circle and stuck into the ground. The resulting hoop tunnel is covered with a special cloth to keep warmth inside the tunnel. When the temperature really drops , a plastic covering is added and the whole thing supposedly stays warm enough to grow greens in Maine. I planted peas, both shelling and snow peas, lettuce, spinach and onions. I am so curious whether this will work.

Goodbye chickens - hello coq au vin !

Even though I'm trying to be matter of fact about the demise of the chickens, I obviously wasn't as cool and calm as I thought - look how shaky the last chicken picture is.

They are being "processed" as I write and will be ready for the table in just a few hours.Thank goodness we don't have to do it ourselves ; in the nick of time we found a farm which will kill, pluck, eviscerate and bag the chickens,i.e. " process"them. Chicken barbeque anyone ?

Maybe the chickens should have engaged this artist to escape their fate ?

BYFG

We belong to the Backyard Fruit Growers, a wonderful organization which promotes fruit growing by sharing information, know-how and an exciting annual apple tasting. There were about 80 different varieties of apples to sample, most of them old varieties which cannot be bought in a store any more. The members and their guests munched and sampled and made notes, so they could vote for their three favorite varieties at the end of the day.


There was even a table with exotic fruit - jujubes, kiwis, cactus pears, paw paws, persimmons, pears, both Asian and domestic, and some nuts - all grown by the members of the group. I had my first taste of wild persimmons and loved the flavor until my mouth puckered horrendously. Apparently that's the typical aftertaste of a persimmon and can be quickly remedied by a slice of cheese, which had been thoughtfully provided.

There was homemade cider as well and apple butter made entirely without sugar according to an Amish recipe. Cider is boiled down and reduced by half, thus concentratin g the sugar in the fruit and then the peeled apples are added and boiled until they make applebutter. At this point it can be left as is ,or some spices can be added , such as cinnamon, cloves and allspice. I was told that the Amish make this in a big copper kettle and as soon as one batch is finished , the kettle is passed on to the next farm - it is passed on so fast, that the kettle never even gets rinsed out! I'll definitely have to try to make some of this yummy applebutter here at home .

And which apples were Number One in my taste test ? Tioga, Ashmead's Kernel and Swarr - did you ever have a taste of any of them ?

Local ? yes Inexpensive ? No !!

Well, here is the breakdown for T's fish dinner.

Fish, caught by son-in-law $0
Fine for parking in a Handicapped Parking Spot $ 202.00
Towing car to impoundment lot $ 204.00
Fee charged for using a credit card to get car out of hock ( what the...? ) $ 24.50

Total $ 431.00

R' s new hairdo and sad expression - priceless !



And yes, the car is ok and back home in the garage - phew !!!

We're making cider...sort of

Here's the newly built cider press. It has a 1.5 ton jack which pushes down on a plate inside the tube to squash the apples and squeeze out the juice.



Here we go - cutting up apples and grinding them in the food processor. The ground apples are then placed in a cloth and made into a sort of bag, which is put into the hole in the tube. The jack then descends and exerts pressure.



Hurray, we have juice and it tastes pretty good !



Uh oh !!!! Too much pressure is bowing the metal grate under the tube ! There are ominous cracklings and poppings. Stop the press !



The mechanical crew ( composed of T ) has gone to the barn to figure out how to fix our problem. Here is the cider we have made so far.

Overwhelmed

Just feeling really, really overwhelmed these days. What with R having difficulty adjusting to her new class, W screaming bloody murder at every opportunity and the mail piling up it is all I can do not to run screaming from the house, let alone procure and eat an entire meal of locally produced food! I still do my part though - just this afternoon I called in to Martha Stewart Living Radio and asked the invited guest (a NYC chef) why in God's name he bought chickens from CANADA? He diplomatically explained that the producer is within a 250 mile radius (his cut-off point) and that he tried to buy locally for years but the product wasn't uniform enough. And then I won a free cookbook! Written by himself! Hurrah - that did lots to boost my spirits. Will be sure to cook from it and report back once received. Tomorrow Paul and I are off to a wedding in the North Woods of Wisconsin to the Red Crown Lodge. R and W are staying the weekend with the in-laws and I am having some serious anxiety over leaving them. I wish I could be more laid back!

More Sightseeing

From the big city to the country - we've seen the sights around here with our guests. They enjoyed Washington, DC as well as visiting our neighbors, the Amish. We had a typical enormous Pennsylvania Dutch meal with them and the Europeans tasted root beer for the first time. What a surprise - it wasn't beer !

It was great fun seeing our everyday world through their eyes - we are fortunate that we have rolling hills, farms and the Chesapeake Bay right at our door, so there is really lots to see and do.

A big hit was the arrival of 50 chicks destined to become dinner. The houseguests are city people and everything here on the farm was fascinating to them .

Picking apples from the tree, the barn chores every morning, all the tools and equipment that accumulates on a farm and the ability to roam the woods and pastures in every direction were new experiences for our guests. Even the summer chorus of crickets and cicadas was new to them - they couldn't sleep at night because of "the noise."

They left yesterday for New York City and in one week we will pick them up there for a trip through New England . I'm totally looking forward to some local lobster eating in Maine !!!

Eating locally

After reading Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle , we are thinking about eating more food which is produced locally.

You can't get much more local than this - the blueberries next to the house are ripe
and ready for a blueberry pie. This is grocery shopping at its finest !

And I like all the other customers, too.