the annual hike to the cabin in Merck Forest

We hiked in two days ago and hiked out yesterday. This year we went with two other families and it was so much fun!

Merry Christmas!

We're all hanging out at home-- it's beautiful and snowy. The dinner is going to be easy since each of us is taking a part -- it's a quirky, high cholesterol meal. We'll fast all day and take our lipitor!

Bernie -- Potatoes -- cheesy mashed potatoes with bacon -- his recipe
Rose -- Salad -- baby spinach with carrots, onions, roquefort, and bacon -- her recipe
Bob -- grilling beef tenderloin
Mary

I love this time of year. The cows aren't in the field as much, but are mainly in the barn and the barnyard. I can feed them more easily, by shoving hay out of the window from the second floor of the barn. Watering is a problem, but maybe this year carrying the heavy buckets of water will give me Michelle-Obama arms. I'm hoping anyway - she's got great arms.

Today I have back to back meetings

processing hogs

Our friends the Muenches have raised hogs and shared them with us the last few years. We've used a local processor, but with the crunch of the fall hunting processing, they've been unable to take us. Barb found another processor, but they can't smoke our hams and bacon. Soooo, I've been searching for a custom smokehouse.

It's funny that you never imagine how many steps there are between feeding

Cookies!

I'm making cookies today -- I love how easy the base recipe concept is -- how you can change a few ingredients and make a whole new cookie --


sugar cookies -- in the food processor -- I made two batches of these separately today.
1. 2 sticks of butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 tsp salt -- process these ingredients together until smooth.
2. add 2 eggs through the chute and process again until

asian marinade for beef

For dinner tonight, I'm marinading a thin hanger steak from our cows in the following ingredients:
1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 2T maple syrup, 2T grated ginger, 1T hot sesame oil

I'll pan fry it very rare and serve it with rice and kimchi that I made this fall. I think I'll cut up cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and serve that too!

our bull --

we share a bull with someday farm -- he's a little guy and just a year old, but dexters mature quickly so we're hopeful our cows are pregnant now. he's cute, but we never turn our back on him. he could accidentally gore you and boom - you'd be dead.

i've been getting up and making breakfast every day this week for the family. the kids go off to work and school with travel mugs of hot cocoa made

Wow -- snow! I love it. I moved things around and the cows are all set -- with water from heated buckets in the barn and hay bales to munch closeby. the chickens are happy with a warmer under their waterer and a heat lamp in the coop. It's happy here on the farm.

Cooking up a chicken with roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sweet onions for tonight's dinner. The seed catalog came, so after

The wind has been really bad since last night. The cows are loving it though. They were running around this morning.

I went to fill their water tank and it was empty this morning. I filled it last evening, so it shouldn't have been empty. I think the water is syphoning back to the house, downhill to the spiggot. i think that's why it seems like there's a leak in it although there's no water on

Roasted up a chicken from our farm last night -- served it with pasta from the local place. I made a sauce of sauted onions and garlic, mushrooms, then added red wine. I added some grated asiago at the end. It was yummy. After dinner was over I boiled the carcass with carrots, onions and celery. Now I have a nice stock in the fridge, ready to go. I like the way these home grown birds just keep on

cheese soup, nighttime chickens and the farm

The house has been getting a new coat of paint. Yeah! It looks pretty. Yellows, white, reds.

The turkeys were processed and are in the freezer. We ate one and it was quite good. What a lot of work, but with a great reward. The cost per 22lb bird was still around $35 each. So, nothing to sneeze at.

The chickens were making a terrible racket last night. I got up at 2am to see what was disturbing

Beautiful fall day here. The bull came yesterday, so the cows are happy. We co-own the bull with Someday Farm up the road and brought him down to stay with our herd for six weeks.

The turkeys are huge -- Matt at Someday has the same age turkeys, since he sold us the poults, and he said the ones he slaughtered this weekend weight 18 lbs. Wow. We're not processing for another couple weeks, so our

fall chores

We're past peak in foliage, which means there are less leaves on the trees compared to the ones on the ground. But, it's still beautiful. I went to Stowe this week for a meeting and the mountains were gorgeous. The lower areas still have the reds of later foliage season, but the upper areas are stark and naked of their leaves. Mt. Mansfield looks like it's begging the sky to be cloaked in snow.

The gardens are still producing like crazy. Kale, chard, beans, tomatoes, zucchini. What a great season we've had. The collective garden still needs to be harvested with its potatoes, beets, onions, and carrots. Mmmm. Soups will be so lovely.

We have to start cleaning up the barnyard. The cows move up closer to the barn in the winter, to have shelter and since the water buckets have to be

fall in vermont

Thank you so much to all of you who've posted comments and shared information recently. I really appreciate it!

As fall approaches, the weather is turning cold, the leaves starting to change, and we're turning towards stacking wood, readying the root cellar, and making thick soups. I love this time of year. I say that for all the seasons, I suppose -- but this time of year is especially

Lemon Turkey Soup

Today, I had a cooked turkey breast and I thought I'd make soup. I chopped up the veggies from the garden and sauted them in the pot. Onions, garlic, celery, roasted red peppers, carrots, and zucchini. I added chunks of turkey and a container of frozen broth. I was fishing around in the freezer and found a second freezer bag of broth and threw that in too.

Well -- problem was -- the second bag

turkeys

The turkeys are very happy in their turkey tractor --and growing fast too. They are maturing very quickly now, and seemed to have developed wattles overnight. They're starting to gobble too.

I'm so glad we're doing turkeys this year. I wish I could give great advice on how to raise them, but since it's our first time, I don't presume to be an expert. There's lots and lots of information online

Cabot Cheese and Butter

We have a food buying and growing collective with several families - buying Vermont produce and dairy foods from Black River Produce in Springfield, and growing our own hogs, meat chickens, turkeys, and a big root cellar garden, with the help of 8-15 families. It's a blast to have a close community that works together for a purpose, then has real cut-throat competitions of creating the best foods

pears pears pears!

We made a ginger pear crisp tonight. I peeled a ton of pears, then cut them up into a large pan, and in a food processor I combined a stick of butter, 1tsp cinnamon, 1 cup of sugar, 1 c of brown sugar, 1 cup of whole almonds, 1/4 cup of candied ginger. Then I added a couple cups of oats and processed a little more. I poured this topping out onto the pears and baked for 45 minutes at 350F. With a

We are using up our tomatoes and eggs with localvore homemade quiche tonight. Scroll down for the recipe and substitute slices of tomatoes for zucchini. 

What makes it localvore? Delicious Vermont Cabot cheddar cheese, Thomas' whole milk from Rutland, our eggs, our tomatoes, and a pie crust made from whole wheat flour from Gleasons Farm up in Bridport and King Arthur unbleached flour, and Cabot

I love the cloudy skies, the cooler temps, the stillness of September days. The branches on the mountain trees are starting to change color, the apple orchard is open for business, and all is right with the world.

We are blessed. Loving family, good jobs, great friends, and temporarily belonging to a patch of the planet on which we can grow really tasty food. No drought, no famine, no floods,

Gazpacho --

So gazpacho is a great way to use up all the tomatoes flowing out of the summer garden. A cuke, peeled and cut up, several tomatoes, a vidalia onion, a few cloves of garlic, 3-4 roasted red peppers, all processed in the food processor with some tomato juice, a little oil and vinegar, salt and pepper - and voila! What if you have a little crabmeat in the fridge? Go ahead, add it. How

Quiche and gazpacho

I'm making quiche with bacon and zucchini, and gazpacho for dinner tonight.

The quiche is one of those base recipes - that you can add anything fresh to - you can switch up the cheeses with gruyere and swiss and add a little nutmeg, or substitute the zucchini with thin strips of roasted red peppers and add dollops of goat cheese. The point is -- with 4 eggs, 1 1/2 c of heavy cream or half and

Our goal is to grow most of our own food, or buy it from people locally who do a nice job and don't waste a lot of resources doing it. We want to pay a fair price too, not the very top dollar for boutique food.

To do this year round, we need to preserve our foods. But we are trying to do that without it costing a fortune -- ie, not freezing everything where we have to run 2 large freezers year

Today was an amazing day. We enjoyed the crystal clear skies and cool weather. After chores, a neighbor came by with a large container brimming with galumpkis. She brought us pierogies on Friday. We traded some honey, but I think she brought these lovely dishes as a present for Dr. Bob. We're so lucky to have such friends and neighbors.

The cows are still eating grass in the fields, which is a

musings on late summer chores and Mother's Summer

I love the chilly mornings in September like today. Summer's not gone, but it's starting to slip away. I think of September as Mother's summer. When my kids were little, it felt nice that they were happily back in school, but I could still enjoy the warmth and relatively longer summery days. Labor Day's the childrens' last day of summer, but we have a few more weeks left to enjoy.

I'm picking

The chickens grew up and we harvested them today. 24 birds, each about 6 1/2 pounds. Thank you chickens, and thank you to the collective for helping with the heavy lifting. All of my worries about how much we'd end up with and would everyone be satisfied were for naught. We had a conversation and for the 2 hours of hard work, each of the 3 helpers from the collective took 4 chickens home for $11

zucchini casserole

There's a joke in Vermont that the only reason we lock our cars is to keep people from leaving the extra zucchini from their garden there. Here's a nice way to use up your zucchini, to keep you from having to snoop around in your neighbors driveway.

Zucchini casserole -

4 lbs of zucchini - or a combination of zucchini and summer squash, or whatever vegetable you have in abundance from your

wildcats

I keep seeing these websites that have photos of bobcats in Vermont. Some people think that the much larger catamount is still around too. I know something got one of my chickens this summer -- it reached into the chicken tractor in the field and cut the chickens neck. The bird survived by there were blood and feathers that made me sure it was something with very sharp claws.

I'd love to hear

the cow with her calf -- i painted this photo.

collective pigs

The hogs that were being raised by the Muenches for the collective were purchased in the spring when they were too young to be sent away. Unfortunately 2 of the 4 died of pneumonia and one of the two remaining has grown very slowly. So, we have 8 families and one hog to share.

But, the Muenches did all the work raising the hog, the daily chores of feeding, watering and insuring the hog fencing

comments

If you like this blog, I need your comments. I also need you to share a link to the blog. I want to make sure the blog is serving a purpose, or else it's just not worth the time away from the farm to keep writing it. Please let me know what you're interested in.

group processing of chickens

Today several members of the collective are coming over to help process the meat chickens. I can't wait for the birds to be in the freezer but it's hard work. In exchange for helping us do this hard work, the members can take birds home to their families for the initial cost of the chickens and for the grain costs. The problem is it's really hard work to raise these birds -- you feed them and

our Thai/VT beef salad

Do you know how a recipe can become your own? You keep making that same brownie recipe and pretty soon you're comfortable enough to start adding or changing things -- you're adding dried cherries or chocolate chips, or maybe a little espresso.

I've taken a number of ethnic food recipes and made them so many times that they're now my own Vermont recipes.

Summer Thai/VT Beef Salad -
3 lbs of

I am loving life. Bernie's back at school and Grace is headed there this week. Rose is looking for a job. Bob and I are planning a vacation in the not too distant future. It's not that I don't enjoy the kids. on the contrary, I enjoy them because they are people who are doing things -- going places as they used to say. I enjoy their humor and their energy. I like that they have things that

canning

I'm working on canning the preserves and marmalades I made over the last three weeks. I like to let the stuff accumulate in the fridge, and wait for a day to can that is either cool, or very warm when I know I'll have the air conditioner running, to start the canning pot boiling. The jams last a long time in the fridge but take up too much space, so eventually it all has to be sealed properly to

The chickens are going to be hot today. I guess we all are. It's going to be the last heat wave of the summer, or summer as defined by the school year, since school starts tomorrow. We're processing the birds on Sunday, so I hope they make it until then. When they are large, it's hard for their little hearts to keep up. And, when it's hot and they're large, they are prone to susceptability to

my first cantaloupe

I left the kitchen this morning to enter my second office, and let the screen door bang against its frame. The door is badly in need of repair, and before the fall spiders take it over, Bob will take it apart and replace the screen that came out of its grooves. Your back door is your front door here in Vermont, so what do people think when they see this relic? Few people come up the driveway and

A Femivore bucket list

As a professional woman with one foot in the world of public policy, and one firmly stuck in the mud in my 22 acre farm, I am a proud femivore. I raise chickens, minicows, bees, turkeys, laying hens, and lots of veggies. We are trying to raise as much of the meat we eat as possible -- and what we don't raise we usually buy from a wholesaler who buys mainly native produce. We have a buying group,

damage from the wind storm

Burton Island, VT -- please, please don't go there

Burton Island is a wonderful state park in Vermont, in the middle of Lake Champlain. No cars, just tents and lean-to's and a lot of really nice people. But, it's really hard to get campsites there due to the popularity. So, I'm going to show photos from our trip there this month, but please, please don't ever go there, unless you just want to make a day trip of it.

cookies, not brain surgery

If you're like me, you like to have a few recipes memorized so that you can go in the kitchen to whip something up with no fuss. Memorizing recipes has made me understand the concept of the food a bit better. If you know the basics for a cookie -- you can fool around and make any cookie you want.

Yesterday Rosie said -- I wish I could have a cookie that tastes like the way the lemon ginger

Short ribs -- easy!

Okay -- so we boiled the heck out of short ribs in the crock pot -- for a few hours anyway. Then I sauted in olive oil some chopped vidalia onion, garlic cloves, chopped celery and carrots, and then put the short ribs in for a quick braising. I also added some fresh thyme, sea salt and pepper.

I poured in 1/2 bottle of nice red wine, then the beef stock from the crock pot. It's simmering away

In this kitchen, there's a lot going on

Margaret stopped by to pick up some peaches -- I was a little embarrassed by how many projects I had going on in the kitchen. I started a bunch and then got carried away today.
1. whole wheat bread - 2 loaves with the artisanal flour from King Arthur are rising and almost ready for the oven.2. a crock pot full of short ribs - I didn't braise 'em or sauce them up -- just put them in a pot with

Lemon Ginger Marmalade

Should I make it like I make preserves? Maybe peel the lemon zest off and cut it into thin strips, then cut up the pulp and cook with minced ginger and sugar? Maybe a little pectin?

Or, should I make it like the way I make marmalade -- and boil the lemons with water and ginger chunks for a couple hours, then cut it all up into thin slices and cook with sugar and a little pectin?

It's not an

36 hours in Manchester, VT

If you had only 36 hours to be in Manchester Vermont -- I'd recommend a hike, a nice dinner and lunch, and some shopping.

1. hikes -- Equinox trails - Equinox Mountain - climb to the top like my son's soccer team did this morning for their first pre-season workout, or take a stroll around the pond. there's a huge range of hikes on the mountain. This is my favorite place to see Vermont fall

More canning this weekend

When making jams and jellies it always seems like recipes call for a blend of cups of sugar and to cups of fruit that is the same -- it makes it easier to memorize the recipes too. I made these this weekend too.

Orange Peach Marmalade --
6 cups combined peach and orange cut up - 5 cups peaches/1 cups orange -- cut up fine
6 cups of sugar
2 T lemon juice, peel from 1/2 orange cut up fine
Cook

Canning good garden foods

I had a great time yesterday making tomatoes, corn and limes into winter treats. I have more tomatoes to work on today. What I really wanted to do was make and can foods that we typically buy -- not just plain canned tomatoes, but spicy chili tomatoes, ketchup, and tomato sauce. I'll conquer the sauce today.

Catsup/Ketchup -- I made a gallon this weekend

ingredients -
olive oil - 2 T
2 onion,

Gifts from Ecuador

The smell of my knitting bag is intoxicating. Last night I went to our collective's pot luck and my dear friend Pia came with small baggies of dried herbs. It looked funny of course, like we were making some kind of illicit deal, but I greedily grabbed each bag and took a deep whiff - the complex scents of Anise, Talamancan peppercorns, cumin, and other precious herbs from Ecuadoran, Pia's

harvest

The weather was gorgeous today. I picked zucchini, green beans, tomatoes, herbs, and even cantaloupe from the garden!

what we're doing here

The egg recall has made me think more about why we do what we do. Is the food system safe in this country? I guess it seems worthwhile to grow our own food as much as possible, or to purchase food from reliable sources and store it for year round use. We buy locally often because we feel we can trust farmers we know. But, we don't shop at the farmer's markets much. It's just too expensive. $3.50

I'm working on canning things that we usually buy...and some special items that we would just really enjoy.Raspberry JamPeach Orange MarmaladeChili CatsupAmish CatsupRed Chili RelishPickled peppersPeach ChutneyYum!

honey woes

Our honey has been amazing - 13 gallons from the three hives so far. Bob thinks we'll probably extract a few more gallons before the weather turns cold. Of course, the best laid plans often need to be tweaked -- in this case, the extractor is on the fritz. We were okay about investing the money into the hives and tools to have bees. We were told we could borrow our friend's extractor whenever we

Camping menus for localvores

We went camping on Burton Island, in the middle of Lake Champlain, this weekend. I gathered up good food from the pantry and freezers and brought it along. I love cooking outdoors, especially in such a beautiful setting. Having our local or home-grown food made it even more delicious.Friday dinner -- salmon -- ok not local -- but cooked in packets of local onions, garlic, and our zucchini. Served

Dill pickles and roasted red peppers

Yesterday I made 3 gallons of dill pickles and 1 1/2 gallons of roasted red peppers. I'll use both all winter long. The peppers are great in soups, in place of fresh peppers and are stored in jars of olive oil in the fridge. The pickles stay in their gallon-size pickling vats -- food grade plastic containers with lids -- in the back of the second fridge we own. I let them sit in the brine for a

mama's bread

Made two loaves of bread today -- my kids call this Mama's bread --Mama's bread - 1 loaf3 cups of unbleached flour -- stir it up before measuring it out1 1/3 tsp salt3 T sugar4 T butter cut up2 tsp instant yeast -- this is Red Star or SAF yeast that you don't have to proof first -- works better and you can buy a 1 lb package and keep in the freezerabout a cup of waterCombine all the ingredients,

I was out watering and feeding the turkeys, both groups of meat birds, laying hens, and cows. Well, just watering the cows because they still have plenty of grass to graze on. The air is so thick with humidity, you could almost drink it straight out of the sky. Is there an animal that can do that? I need some of those.Tomorrow's our big day for meat bird processing. The first batch are going to

Nature likes to play tricks on me.Today I was running a little late to make a lunch meeting. I didn't plan the chores well and ended up with no time and a lot to do. Without a doubt the best way for me to have something go wrong is to make too many plans. As I was filling the water reservoir for the chicken tractor, it came lose and landed with a giant woosh -- and I was drenched head to toe.

old walls

I took a walk out on our ridge on Sunday with Bob. There's one area where our land dips down to a stream. We walked along the path and stood next to the large stone walls that must have kept the sheep from crossing the brook. Up the narrow valley, the stone foundation of a mill wheel still sits. A moss covered stone wall serves as a retaining wall for a narrow path along the far side of the

Suggestions for canned peaches

Tonight's supper will include green beans from the garden, a meat chicken from the flock, and local potatoes and onions roasted up. I have a lot of leftover jars of canned peaches from last summer, so I'm looking for suggestions on what to do with them. Peach chutney - I'll make this tonight. Saute for just a couple minutes cut up shallots, garlic and jalapeno. Add chopped up home canned peaches

We extracted honey tonight from 5 honey supers. Bob weighed each box before and after extraction, so there was about 35 to 38 pounds of honey in each one. A quart of honey weighs around 3lbs -- so each super had around ten and a half quarts in it. That's a lot of gallons of honey! It's very light in color and really delicious.Chris and Pia came over and ate dinner with us and helped us extract.

baby cows, turkeys on zucchini, and other stuff

The chickens don't know what to make of the oversized zucchini in their coop.We couldn't get close enough to the baby cow to spray him/her with an all-natural fly spray -- maybe tomorrow.

Doing the right thing even when it isn't easy.

New calf! What a treat. Still don't know the gender. It was born while we were away. It is very cute and as always Giddy is a great mama. She always births with no help from us. There was a lot to do to catch up from being away for a week. We had moved the waterer closer to the pasture gate for our house sitter, so I moved the cow waterer and fences around to the original configuration, then

Turkeys are here -- 3wks old

stone walls

My husband Bob is a very busy man. He leaves for work very early and takes care of his patients until late. When he comes home, he eats and does a bit more work on the computer. Often though he'll get changed from work slacks and his oxford shirt to stained shorts, a ripped tee, and a bandana, rolled and tied around his forehead.Then I know he's going to build stone walls. He's out there in the

changing plans and turkeys

The turkeys are coming today! Matt Proft had lots to say about where I could house them, what to feed them, and when they'd be ready.I was very worried about placing them somewhere we've already had the chickens due to blackhead disease. He said that's mainly a problem with large scale operations and not to worry. I was worried that I needed to grow them to 22 weeks minimum or else they wouldn't

The Swiss chard, lettuce, and spinach from the garden has been wonderful. Now the cucumbers and zucchini are coming in. Soon the green beans will be ready. I even picked broccoli today. While I watered this morning, I nibbled on blueberries from one of the garden bushes. Those were really good!The meat chickens are growing fast -- 25 of them are eating 30lbs of feed a week and they are only 3

remember winter!

On a day like today, I think we should all take a moment to remember winter.

Instructions

It may be a sign of age, but I've reconciled myself to following instructions.I used to skip reading the manual and try to wing it. Eventually I'd have to go back and read up on why the cream separator wasn't working right, but it seemed like a time saver to avoid the instructions and just try to figure it out for myself.I'd add all the liquid to all the dry ingredients and stir it all together

Monday, July 5

It's going to be very hot today, so I got up early and watered the cows and made sure the reservoirs for the bell waterers were filled for the chickens. I put a fan in the chicken coop to keep the layers cool. I led the cows up the hill to the shaded field and let them in the gate. I was up so early the chickens hadn't all laid their eggs yet. That rarely happens! I watered the vegetables, the

Grilled salad, grilled plums and salmon

Last night we tried something new. I wanted to cook most of our dinner outside instead of heating up the kitchen. I'm new to gas grilling, so I thought I'd experiment a bit, and luckily it worked out.First, I marinated a 3lb side of salmon and thick slices of firm tofu separately in a combination of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and canola oil. (Proportions: 1/2 cup canola oil, 1/4

Surprise Jacket knitting project

I started a baby sweater and I learned a lot. I learned how not to make a stitch -- that's a term of art "Make" -- I was adding a new stitch in the knitting and leaving a big hole. Simple thing to learn that the yarn you pick up has to be twisted by the needles first. See the holes in the yellow version? I also learned that if you hate the insipid yellow of a baby yarn, you need to give up and

chickens and bell waterers

Well, we finally did it. My sister said we wouldn't be sorry, and we're certainly not. It was easy to do and not that expensive. Phew.We finally set up bell watering systems for the stationary chicken coop with the laying hens, and for the chicken tractor with the meat chickens. We had an olive barrel that had been transformed into a rain barrel, with a faucet at the bottom and are using that as

Tonight we're roasting a leg of local lamb and I'll serve some chard from our garden sauted with olive oil and garlic, with crumbled feta and toasted pine nuts added before serving. Yum! I wish we had fresh raspberries for dessert, but the kids don't want to drive up to the farm up the hill, and I don't either...but tomorrow I'm definitely going. I've already made raspberry jam from the Mad Tom

the cows are still pregnant, still playing.

The garden is sprouting!

the new chickens are here!