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

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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