Stone & Thistle Farm - Farm and Fable Musings

A Ribbon of Coincidences or Are the Planets Aligned?

2012-01-21T15:58:00.000-08:00

(Painting of East Hill by Richard Kathmann)

The Book of Job
Who laid the cornerstone thereof when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 39:7

We saw the movie, Tree of Life starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Stunning visuals. Minimal Dialogue. We loved it but one reviewer said if he could get one person NOT to see the movie, he would have accomplished something. The film is peppered with passages from the Book of Job. Poetry. I wanted to reread the passages, but we don’t own a bible. The next morning I was having breakfast with my elderly neighbor who is an avid bible reader. I mentioned the passage and she turned to it immediately in her bible. We read the Book of Job and marveled at the descriptions of nature and beauty. While I was cleaning the bed & breakfast that afternoon, I pried open a dresser drawer that had been stuck for years. Tucked in the corner was a bible.

Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail? Job 38:22

Moonrise over Winter Pasture

The Trick is the Water

I bought a pasta maker last year and have since abandoned it because I can't get the dough the right consistency to pass through the press. The dough sticks and clogs the machine. Every Saturday we sell our meats and Fable's Kitchen goods at the Mamaroneck Indoor Farmers Market. Three of the 20 vendors are pasta makers. During the slow moments, I asked them how to make the dough. The trick is the water. You have to use warm water although they offered no scientific explanation for it. I unstowed the pasta maker and made ribbons of wheat pasta mixed with the Sarah Palin (our turkey sausage). Last week I helped a fellow timebanker to write a business plan for heirloom masa harina that they grow, harvest and grind. She gave me two packages of masa. I spent three hours trying to make tortillas without a tortilla press. I have memories of walking through the markets in Mexico and hearing the rhythmic pat pat pat of the tortilla makers. My pat pat pat was not working and the result was disaster. The masa stuck to the plastic sheets. We hosted a time bank orientation and pot luck last Sunday. Over 35 people showed up to learn how they can use a time bank instead of money for services they need – house cleaning, babysitting, editing, automechanics, etc. (www.catskillstime.org) Trevor Wilson, the creator of Hard Pan Masa, offered to show me how to make tortillas without a tortilla press. We used two cutting boards, two pieces of plastic. The trick is guess what? Water. Warm water. I am now the tortilla queen. Made stacks of heirloom blue corn tortillas. There is no stopping me now. Now I need to learn how to make a killer Margarita? Anyone volunteering to teach me? Perhaps we can timebank it?

Corn Tortillas

Ducks

A friend from Normany sent me a recipe for Calvados Cake. The recipe requires duck eggs. Two chicken eggs does not equal one duck egg. I tried. The cake was too dense. I gave up on my search for duck eggs and abandoned the recipe. This week a friend asked us to give his two female ducks a home. This morning there were two duck eggs in the nest. Calvados Cake is back on the menu.

Mallard Cross Duck Lays Blue Green Eggs

Grand Jury Duty

I am a grand juror. The job of the 23 member jury is to determine whether the evidence presented by the prosecuting attorney is sufficient enough for the accused to be indicted. A recent case involved illegal possession of marijuana. Did you know that possession of over 16 ounces of marijuana is illegal? And if your marijuana plants are seized they are brought to headquarters and hung upside down in a drying room and months later gleaned. Yes, there is a person who has the job title of marijuana gleaner. The gleaned and dried marijuana is weighed and bagged. If the plants yield more than 16 ounces then you are in big trouble. This week I was listening to radio interview on NPR with Heather Donahue. She wrote Growgirl - How my life after The Blair Witch Project went to Pot. It is a book about the profession of growing medical marijuana. I learned a lot about growing marijuana. As a result of the broadcast, I offered a wealth of knowledge about growing, harvesting, male versus female plants, seeds, etc., during deliberations. My attempts to explain my in-depth knowledge of marijuana farming was shrugged off. When I show up next week, they will just think of me as the pot head in the corner. At least I have all my teeth.

The ribbon continues to unfurl with coincidences related to cardoon, green eggs, bundt cake, Delaware Valley College, black pigs, yarn and zippers. The planets are on a roll. I think it's the right time to buy a lottery ticket.

Wrap Up

The next three months present the biggest challenge of beating that cold and winning the farming in the winter game. Lambing (although only 20 ewes) and kidding begins in a couple of weeks. We are ready this year with lambing jugs and watching for ewes bagging up. The dairy does are in good health and with any luck they will freshen with ease. We hope and pray that we do not lose any does this year from difficult freshenings.

The last belts of cold insured safe skating on the pond. Without sufficient snow for snow shoeing, cross country skiing, our Friday night ski, eat and sauna may have to be a bonfire and skating under the stars. Not a bad way to spend January and February.

Come on out! The store is open and the freezers are packed with cuts of pork, chicken, smoked meats and specialty sausage. The Sarah Palin (turkey, cherries and spices) is on the shelf again and we brought back the George Clooney (goat, pork, spices). Ground beef will be available by mid February or earlier.

Wrap up. Stay warm.

Throw Away the Key

2011-12-28T13:20:00.000-08:00

We are looking forward to booting 2011 out the door and throwing away the key. I am also asking the powers that be to pretty please bring more good than bad in 2012.

2011

January: Good - Granddaughter Catalina Breeze born. Bad: Monster snowstorm February: Good - Oldest son Riley home from the army to see his new daughter. Bad - Surprise lambings in bitter cold. Lamb losses and LGD attack March: Good – 75 healthy kid goats born Bad – lose two excellent milkers from difficult freshenings April: Good - Montecello, Kate’s horse from Welwyn, arrives for R&R from a jumping injury. Bad - Cannot find a creamery to bottle our milk and make our yogurt – creamery building delayed because of finances May: Good - Invited to present at the inaugural Slow Money Conference in NYC and new intern arrives. Bad – farmers market sales affected by bad economy June: Good - Kate is accepted for the Equine Management program at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, PA. Bad – have to borrow money to pay for Kate’s college July: Good – enjoying many guests at the farm stay and Fable is booked solid for Saturday dining and Sunday brunches Bad - The calm before the storm August: Good – Neighbors. Bad - Hurricane Irene and no electricity for five days. Lost hundreds of turkey poults. September: Good – garden harvest is abundant. Farmers market sales pick up. Bad - Storm flooding causes severe damage along streams and roads. Farmers market sales plummet again. Family crises begin. October: Good – Warm autumn. Still picking and canning tomatoes. Bad - Family crises November: Good – great weather and crew for turkey slaughter Bad – Continued family crises December: Good – Kate home from college for the holidays. 2011 almost over. Bad - family issues escalate

Moonfall over Horse Pasture

Newborn Catalina snoozing

Montecello "Monty" arrives

Easter

The Rabbit Fleet

Slaughtering Easter lambsShane becomes Monty's groom

Letting Broiler Chickens out of Night Cabin

View of Farm from Uppper Pasture

White Highlanders on Pasture

Raspberries in July

Catalina at Delaware County Fair. Moo!

Bluebird in our Garden

Riley home to visit Catalina

The Hen Party

Just Picked Tomatoes and Beans

Just Picked Wild Apples for the Press

Shane and Susannah Pressing Cider

The Cider Press

Morning Clouds over Mountain
The Turkey Slaughter Crew Day 1

Turkey Guts

Susannah Plucking Bronze Turkey

Susannah and Kate cut Christmas Tree down

Hauling the Tree Home

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
The challenges of 2011 in both our home and business lives shape our outlook for 2012. 2011 was an important year for turning our energy inward to nurture and heal our family, to break or cement commitments and relationships, to question our judgments and actions, to adjust and make hard changes and to prioritize our goals and actions to attain happiness and sustainable success. A heartfelt thank you to our family, friends and customers who provided us with the emotional and financial ballast to survive the many steps backwards in 2011 and who nudged and cheered us forward with promises of love and commitment. A quick look into our crystal ball reveals renewed hope, happiness and success in 2012. We hope to share it with you.

Summer turned into September

2011-09-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Dirty Hands are De Rigueur

I was handing over change to the check-out clerk at the supermarket the other day. She grabbed my outstretched hand and said admiringly, “You must be a farmer”. She then proceeded to tell me how her grandparents had a farm and how she wanted to buy a farm someday.

I was brought up to keep my nails and hands clean; dirty hands meant that you were god forbid, a laborer. Remember how Rhett Butler figured out that the green velvet curtain clad Scarlet O’Hara was lying about her life at Tara? He spotted her dirt creased hands and knew that the soft cheeked belle was actually working with her hands, a sure sign that she needed a cad to rescue her. While it is nice to be admired as a farmer, I could use a good rescuing now and then or perhaps another pair of dirty hands to share the load.

The Flood and What it means to the Unflooded

Areas along the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers suffered serious damage from Hurricane Irene and Lee. National news focused on the devastation in Margarettville, Prattsville, Binghamton and Wilksbarre. Federal and state relief efforts have been slow to assist towns and families struggling to rebuild so private flood relief efforts are emerging locally in the forms of benefit concerts, events, private parties and auctions. The recent Raise the Roof Flood Relief effort organized by the Hamden Inn, Morgan George of Sherman Farmstead and the Watershed Agricultural Council was a great success raising more than $6,000 for flood stricken farmers. And it was a good reason to see friends and fellow farmers and share food, beer, music and stories, especially after a long, hard summer. The New York Times covered the event. Enough is enough at least for now. The flood relief publicity is killing our businesses. Farmers markets revenue have been down over 40% from last year. Local restaurants are serving only a handful of customers on the weekends and hotels and bed and breakfasts in the region are still unbooked for the upcoming holiday weekend. Why? Tourists and weekend home owners, after seeing news footage of some of our Catskill towns, are assuming that roads are closed, businesses have floated away and the landscape is littered with debris and mud. Most of our region was seriously unaffected by the floods. We lost power for five days and had to dry off our milking goat herd because hand milking was impossible without power. We lost a slew of turkey chicks because they did not survive the first night without heat lamps. But after a week, life returned to normal. Except our businesses. Farmers are helping farmers by lending a skilled hand for farm work or offering to bring unscathed fall crops to the farmers markets, by loaning hay, helping with milking and lending farm machinery and tools. Instead of organizing a fundraiser why not encourage visitors, tourists, second home owners to return to the Catskills and support our farmers, stores, restaurants, hotels and events. Better yet - go to the farmers market this weekend and support the farmers who are supporting their fellow farmers.

First Frost

The first frost came precariously close to my herb and vegetable gardens. The frost line was one foot from the garden gate. I stopped weeding the garden two weeks ago and it is a disgrace, a wild tangle of weeds taller than my waist. Somewhere in the overgrowth are the potatoes, onions and beets. A good hard frost will kill the weeds and reveal where I planted them. The sun chokes were blown over by the Hurricane winds. So there is a natural hedge row of yellow flowers along the end of the garden. Since there are still ten jars of sun choke relish in the canning cupboards from last year, I may forego digging the tubers this year. I harvested the rugosa rose hips and made rose hip jam and sauce. The seeds inside the shell are coated with sliver like hairs and when digested, irritate the digestive tract. The aborigines called it itchy bottom disease. After reading that, I painstakingly cut and deseeded every rosehip that I harvested from four large rosa rugosas. After many hours of cutting, seeding, boiling, straining, jamming and canning, the harvest yielded four eight ounce jars of sauce. In terms of labor, they are worth an ingot of gold – little jars of rose gold. I will open one jar every month from January to April to help me get through winter.

The Creamery is Coming Up

After the excavation debacle, and then weeks of flooded post holes, we finally got the foundation and the perimiters up. Trusses and roof are next. The equipment is in storage or on hold until the building is up and weatherproofed. The barn raising date will be announced soon. Our farmer friends Dave and Sonia gave us a gallon of sheep milk. I made a gallon of sheep milk yogurt in the picnic cooler. The yogurt was thick and creamy and as Sonia described it, like white velvet. We are fielding calls from people interested in learning how to make yogurt and ice cream. Once we are up and running, the possibilities are endless.

Turkey Time

Because we lost most of the turkey chicks for the smaller size turkeys during the hurricane, we have a very limited amount of small size turkeys this year. So if you are looking for fifteen pounds or less, please order now. If the owls don’t stop picking them off, the larger turkeys will be in abundance this year. The owl net we attached to the roost seems to be fending off the owl predators. A reminder - we are usually sold out by the end of October so order early this year. Broad breasted bronzes or broad breasted whites are the breeds – the taste is the same – the bronzes have black pin feather marks on the skin and tend to be smaller.

Fable

The last brunch of the season will be held on Sunday October 11th. Only a couple of more weeks to join us this season for the farm tour and buffet brunch. Dinners at Fable will continue as long as people continue to make reservations. Last year, the last dinner of the season was the weekend before Thanksgiving. After Columbus Day, we bring in leather chairs, sofas and rugs and tuck the table up to the fireplace. The menu changes to hearty stews and soups and other seasonal fare that highlight the autumn harvest. The menu for the next two Saturdays is on our website at http://www.stoneandthistlefarm.com/fable.htm

July is Hotter than Hannah

2011-07-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

Hotter than Hannah
I walked into Annutto’s the other day and the woman next to me exclaimed, “Wow, it’s hotter than Hannah.” Who is Hannah? How hot is she? I continued my produce shopping with an image of scantily clad, busty Hannah – kind of the Hustler version of Elly May on the Beverly Hillbillies. Hard to banish the image from your brain while you are buying local melons.

Duck Soup

Do you recall the duck disaster last year when 100 ready-to-slaughter ducks escaped through the fence and swam down the stream. We can only imagine they made it all the way to the Susquehanna River. Never found a single feather. The ducks are on the other side of the road – a good distance from the stream. Ducks are happiest in water so we have a swimming pool for them. They make a mess of the water and it has to be changed daily. We are slaughtering ducks every Thursday along with the chickens. Here is my favorite duck recipe using the raspberries that are ripening faster than we can pick them.

Whole Roasted Duck with Raspberry Port Sauce
1 five lb whole duck
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup melted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
Rub salt, pepper, and paprika into the skin of the duck. Place in a roasting pan.
Roast duck in preheated oven for 1 hour. Spoon 1/4 cup melted butter over bird, and continue cooking for 45 more minutes. Spoon remaining 1/4 cup melted butter over duck, and cook for 15 more minutes, or until golden brown.

Raspberry Port Sauce
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
1/4 cup ruby port
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons seedless raspberry preserves
1 tablespoon raspberry vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup raspberries

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the shallot and cook over moderate heat, stirring frequently, until softened, about 2 minutes. Add the port and white wine and cook over moderate heat until the sauce is reduced to 2 tablespoons, about 7 minutes. Add the raspberry preserves, vinegar and mustard and whisk over low heat until smooth. Add the raspberries and cook, whisking gently to break up the berries. Whisk in the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and season with salt and pepper; keep the sauce warm.

Be A Local Hero - Invest in Kortright Creek Creamery

Be a local hero. Invest in Kortright Creek Creamery, and help local dairy farmers succeed. Why are we building a creamery on our farm? We have been milking goats for 15 years. In addition to the sale of raw goat milk on the farm, we have been bottling organic goat milk, making organic yogurt in three seasonal flavors and soft cheese for 8 years. The Big Creamery with which we were working is no longer available. The nearest creamery that can accommodate small producers is over 3 hours away.

We were faced with two options: sell our goat dairy herd and close down the dairy or build a creamery on our farm. Eight years of working at the Big Creamery gave us the expertise on how to bottle milk and produce yogurt and cheese. We learned what to do right and most importantly what not to do. We visited many small creameries to see the operations and inspect the equipment. And most importantly, we asked each dairy producer, “If you could build your creamery over again, what would you do differently?” In collaboration with Farm Catskills, a non-profit agricultural organization, we secured a Rural Business Enterprise Grant from the USDA for the purchase of the equipment for the Creamery. We now have everything we need to bottle milk, make yogurt and cheese and other dairy products. Everything, except the building. The creamery will function as a community creamery for local dairy farmers who want to experiment with creating value-added dairy products and need a facility and a support team to help them add value to their milk so they can survive and succeed. The Farm Catskills USDA grant includes funds for training in production, marketing and distribution.

Invest and enjoy the rewards:
Rewards
$5-$24: a kid goat named after you. You receive a birth certificate and photo.
$25-$49: selection of organic goat milk yogurts (5 6oz cups for $25 or 10 for $49)
$50-$99: selection of organic goat milk and goat milk yogurts
$100: dinner for two at Fable = farm+table or 5 Sunday brunches (excludes, tax, beer and wine and service)
$250: The Farm GetAway - one night stay at Stone & Thistle Farm’s bed & breakfast and dinner for two at Fable= farm+table (excludes tax, beer and wine and service)
$500: The Farm Adventure - Farmer for a Day (see flyer) for up to four persons. One night stay at Stone & Thistle Farm’s bed & breakfast and $150 of meats, cheese, goat milk products or farm products from the farm’s store.
$1,000 +: One day private workshop: your choice of cheese making or yogurt making in the new creamery or sheep herding with expert sheep dog trainer or butchering workshop with rabbits or poultry, plus a farm luncheon plus a one night stay at Stone & Thistle Farm’s bed & breakfast.

Can’t invest cash but have time to help build or materials to donate? Let's barter!
See http://www.stoneandthistlefarm.com/creamery.htm for more details on how to invest.

It’s Rabbit Time
The pasture raised rabbits are ready to slaughter so we are serving braised rabbit smothered in raspberry onion sauce on Saturday July 16th at Fable. I love the taste of rabbit. Yup I am still trying to use up the raspberries!
Amuse: blue cheese and basil honey toasts
Blue Cheese is from Caulkins Creamery, the basil from my herb garden and the honey from Mark Vamos

Starter: smoky bacon and garlic soup
Bacon and garlic from our farm

Main: braised rabbit smothered with raspberry onion sauce
roasted spiked red beets
Rabbit, onions and raspberries from our farm and beets from Lucky Dog Farm

After: greens with berry vinaigrette dressing
Greens from Lucky Dog Farm

Dessert: raspberry pavlova
Raspberries and eggs for meringue from our farm

Hope to see you soon.

Jewels of June

2011-06-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Herding Hens
One of our border collies, Marly, is 12 years old and spends more time in the grass lazing around than working with the sheep or goats. He was herding the hens for awhile and then flopped down to rest and keep an eye on them.

Gender Hopping
You would think an experienced rabbit raiser would know better. Last year I tried to breed a rabbit for four months. I understand that there is no such thing as a rabbit that cannot be bred but I was convinced that I had the only unbreedable rabbit on the planet. Perhaps she didn’t like guys? Perhaps she was already bred? After the four months of every day “put her in with the buck stint”, we slaughtered her – and lo and behold she was a boy with testicles the size of quarters. So last fall I made extra sure that the boys were boys and the girls were girls. We slaughtered the boys and kept the girls for spring breeding. By April 1st all of the does were bred for May 1 kindling. Except one. Every day for thirty days I put her in with the buck. Nothing. Not that the buck was not interested. He just kept trying and trying and the deed was never done. So I checked her sex. Yup. A female. I found three dead kits in her cage. Could she have been bred when my back was turned? The doe in the adjacent cage was due so I was not sure if the kits were from the doe next door that crawled into the unbred doe cage and died. So for the next thirty days I put her in with the buck. Nothing. I did a little research to see if there was such a thing as a hermaphrodite rabbit. The rabbit expert explained how to palpate for underdeveloped male rabbit anatomy. Bet you don’t read this stuff everyday! So I checked to see if there was an anatomical problem according to the expert instructions. Sure was. She is a boy. Where the penis has been hiding for the past six months who knows. It’s not a normal looking penis but it’s there and explains the unbreedable rabbit. I concluded that my unbreedable doe has an incompletely closed penile shaft characteristic of a condition called pseudohermaphroditism. Something new to learn every day. So she is not a hermaphrodite – she is a he with deformity. Will he taste differently?

Just Because I Bragged
Never brag. About anything. The times I remember shamelessly bragging came back to bite me in the ass. Hard. I was bragging to a group of people at a conference last week that although farm chores are endless, at least I did not have horses to take care of anymore… Since my daughter left last spring for an internship at Welywn Stables in Rhinebeck and took her two thoroughbreds with her, the days of mucking stalls, scraping together enough cash for hay, grain and shavings, putting blankets on, taking blankets off, farrier bills, fencing issues and then finding the time to ride, were over. The VERY next day my daughter called me to tell me that she volunteered me to take care of her older thoroughbred that she had been leasing and that Montecello “Monty” was coming home for a few months. And because he was fully clipped for the winter show season, he could not be thrown out in the pasture. He needed blankets on and off, sheets on and off, groomed regularly and hooves picked. And, “Oh by the way”, she added before she hung up, “he needs a pony to keep him company.” The horse barn hasn’t had a horse in it for a while and the stalls are now occupied by kid goats, yearling goats and piglets. We rushed to move all the kid goats into another barn, remove all the nails, clips and pointy edges from the stall, pack in new bedding with shavings and salvage the rubber horse buckets from the dairy. We set up the round pen because Tom didn’t want the pasture pugged up or the grass would not grow. We worked endlessly for three days to get ready for his arrival. I even put up his old brass name plaque next to his stall door, made him a Welcome Home sign. That was in April. Now the pastures are lush with grass and Monty is out on the fields. He has a stream, trees and cows. As long as he thinks he is a cow there is no need for pony. Thank goodness.

Monty bossing the cows

Monty with the cattle

Montecello

Nicole arrives in time to Slaughter Chickens
Our new intern Nicole arrived two weeks ago. Since her cabin has not been built, she is living in the trailer. The first week was very hot and she worked very hard. We were worried that the combination of heat, our crazy family and slaughtering chickens the third day on the job would do her in. She survived it all and has been a great addition to our family and farm. Her main job is taking care of the broiler hens. What a blessing to have someone ask, “What can I help you with?” Music to my ears. We are looking forward to a fun summer with Nicole.

One day old chicks in brooder

Nicole with ready to slaughter broiler chickens

The Garden
I built the pea fence but did not get the peas into the ground until June 1. “It’s too hot, they won’t grow,” my family chorused. I built the fence therefore they will grow. There are peas breaking through the ground. After all it was 90 degrees three days ago and yesterday we had a frost. They will grow.

Memorial Day – Summer in Full Swing
What a way to start the summer. Memorial Day weekend was packed with three farmers markets, Fable on Saturday night and Fable for brunch on Sunday and Bed & Breakfast guests. Busy is great; but why does it all happen at once?

We enjoyed our Fable guests this weekend. Lots of new people were visiting the area for the holiday. We love meeting new people and discovering their connection to the Catskills and to food and our farm. Guests share their favorite recipes, wines and adventures. The Memorial Day Fable dinner was a mix of wild spring food like dandelions caper butter and Japanese Knotweed and Rhubarb compote. Did you know that nasturtium buds taste like capers too? For dandelion capers – pick the flower bud when it is small and tight. Put in a jar with olive oil and kosher salt. Voila – capers! We are continuing our celebration of spring for the June 11 Fable dinner with the best of spring including smoked trout, spinach and rhubarb.
Amuse: smoked trout with honeyed horseradish
Starter: printemps soup
Main: spring chicken roasted with lemon balm and sage and peas in pods with lemon verbena sauce
After: baby spinach greens with spicy rhubarb dressing
Dessert: strawberry sundae with rhubarb compote

Here’s the recipe for Printemps soup
Printemps Soup
Servings: 10
1/4 cup butter
1 pound leeks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 quarts water or chicken stock
3 large potatoes, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
1 bunch fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
4 teaspoons salt
1/2 pound fresh spinach
1 cup heavy cream

1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the leeks and onion, and cook until tender.

2. Pour water into the pot. Mix in potatoes, carrots and asparagus. Season with salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes, until vegetables are tender.

3. Stir spinach and heavy cream into the soup mixture, and continue cooking about 5 minutes before serving.

Hope to see you at the farm or Fable soon. In the meantime, enjoy the photo tour of Stone & Thistle Farm.

View of Farm from Mountain

Irises in hen wagon field

Green Green Pastures

Scottish Highland Crosses

Rabbiting at Stone & Thistle Farm

2011-05-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Rabbit Rerun
Meat rabbits have been part of our farm family for nine years. When my children were young, we asked each of them to pick a “business” on the farm that they could manage independently. They were responsible for the whole project from daily animal care to recording revenue and expenses. We provided them with “seed” money and supervised their project. Katey picked rabbits to raise. We brought her to visit Charlie at Rabbit Tracks farm in Davenport and she chose two meat breeds: a New Zealand buck and three California Red does. Charlie showed her how to keep records for breeding, kindling and general care. We bought Raising Rabbits the Modern Way by Bob Bennett. Katey and Tom built rabbit hutches and bought feeders and water bottles.

Katey nine years old with her first breeding doe

Since Katey left home to be a working student at Welwyn Stable in Rhinebeck and abandoned her rabbits to lavish her love on horses, I have taken over her rabbit business. The first thing I did was cull (slaughter – no waste; we ate them) any of the does (females) that were producing less than four kits (baby rabbits) per kindling (birth). I kept young does out of two litters and bred them to the older buck. After several unsuccessful breedings and small litters of one, even two kits, I realized that the buck was too old. In November, I culled the old buck (male) and bought a young, just old enough to breed buck. Shane named him Bernard.

Winter is tough on rabbits so we provide the breeding does with cages in the barn and pack them tight with hay for warmth. We wait until spring to breed them because the kits won’t survive in the sub-zero temperatures. Now that spring has arrived, it’s kindling time again! Using the young buck Bernard, I bred the does in March. What they say about rabbits is not necessarily true. Bernard was not interested in the does. Like Ferdinand the Bull, he was much more interested in smelling the green hay in his hutch. He cowered in the corner of the hutch and stared at the doe intruder. The Raising Rabbits manual suggested using younger, inexperienced does with Bernard since the older does may be intimidating and too agressive (so much for the older woman initiation theory.) Putting young does in several times with him would make him comfortable with breeding. And to get him in the "mood" the book suggested I tickle his sides. I felt ridiculous getting a rabbit in the "mood", but the session worked and he bred the first doe’s head. It took a few days for Bernard to figure out heads from tails but he finally successfully bred doe #1. How do I know he was successful? All bucks are different, but most of them seize and fall over on their side as if dead when the “deed is done.” The first time my daughter bred a doe she ran off screaming for help believing that her buck was dead. Thank goodness, to the best of my knowledge, she has not had therapy as a result of that incident.

I marked the due dates on the calendar (30 days from breeding) and a few days before the due dates, place nest boxes in their hutches. The boxes are filled with wood shavings and hay. A few days before the does are due to kindle, they begin building their nests. They gather the hay in their mouth and build a deep nest in the box.

Doe gathering hay for her nest

The doe finishes building the nest with fur that they have pulled out from their chests. Some does begin pulling hair out weeks before their due date and they are practically bald at kindling time. Others pull their hair out a few hours before they kindle. I still get excited about opening the hutch in the morning and find the fur nest moving and wriggling.

The Nest box with newborn kits in a nest of fur, hay, shavings

One day old kit

5 week old kits hopping in and out of their nest box

The doe nurses her kits only once or twice a day. In ten days, the kits open their eyes and in three weeks they are hopping out of the next box.

By six weeks, the doe is rebred and the kits are put in rabbit cages that move on pasture.

The cages are dragged on pasture twice a day. The growing kits have ample room to run and bounce.

The Rabbit Cage Fleet

Doe and her 5 week kits in pastured rabbit cage on the farm

The young rabbits or fryers are slaughtered on the farm at around 12 -14 weeks.The slaughter process is very simple and takes five minutes. The skin comes off in one pull. It makes a good muff when scraped, salted and tanned. The head and feet are discarded. Often falconers will use the head and feet for training their prey birds.

Tom slaughtering a rabbit

Rabbit meat is delicious. Older rabbits are made into rabbit stew. Stew can include almost any vegetable. Here is one of my basic rabbit stew recipes.

Rabbit Stew
4-6 Servings
3 - 4 lbs rabbit
6 potatoes, quartered
8 carrots, sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup beef consomme
3/4 cup beef broth
3/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon basil
2 bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon rosemary
1/4 teaspoon thyme

1 Cut rabbit into pieces. Layer onion, potatoes, and carrots in bottom of a crock pot. 2 Add spices to the pot. 3 Add rabbit, salt, pepper, consommé, and about 3/4 cup beef broth. 4 Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Thicken gravy as desired. Serve with sweet potato biscuits.

Young rabbits or fryers are sautéed with garlic and butter and fresh chives or parsley. This is my favorite recipe that we serve mid summer at Fable using almost ripe pears from our neighbor’s pear trees.

Braised Rabbit with Pears Recipe
Serves 4
2 young rabbits, each cut into 6 to 8 pieces
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, finely diced
3 cups dry red wine
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 firm, slightly not-quite-ripe pears; skin removed, cored and halved
3 tablespoons chilled butter

Directions:
Season rabbit pieces and dust lightly with flour. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute for 3 - 4 minutes. Add rabbit pieces and brown each evenly. Add wine, broth, vinegar, sugar, bay leaves, rosemary and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add pears to the pan, cover and simmer for 30 minutes more. Remove rabbit and pears and arrange on plates. Remove bay leaves and rosemary from pan. Whisk in butter until melted and spoon sauce over rabbit.

The Updike
Tom makes a great rabbit linked sausage with rabbit, pork, apple, salt, garlic and spices. We sell it in our farm store and at the farmers markets.

Rabbit Workshops
Tom recently gave a rabbit slaughtering presentation at the Callicoon market to a large group of people who are raising or thinking of raising rabbits for food. We held a rabbit workshop last summer and will repeat it this year if folks are interested. A description of the workshop:

Rabbit to Roaster
Rabbits are caged raised during kindling and transferred to pasture cages at weaning. See the rabbitry and pastured rabbit cages. Learn how to raise rabbits on pasture. Learn how to slaughter rabbits and break down the rabbits into parts used for stewing, braising, sautéing and grilling. A rabbit meat inspired lunch will be served. In Fable, the farm’s restaurant, participants will work together to prepare dinner using all parts of the rabbit (including the liver and kidneys) Dinner will be accompanied by the seasonal dairy and produce raised and harvested on the farm.

You don’t have to be a farmer to raise rabbits for meat. A backyard hutch is easy to make and works well for three to four does. And the slaughter process is so quick and easy that every family should be adding rabbit meat to their diets. The French eat a lot of rabbit and every farmers market in France sells live rabbits which are slaughtered a at the market or at home. We don’t have to be French to eat rabbit. Hop right into rabbit raising or buy rabbit meat at the farmers market Bon Lapintite!

Farmer selling live rabbits at Bayeux Market in Normandy France

Cheese Please and Do you Fondue?

2011-04-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

Cheese Please!
Did you know that small dairies in New York State producing value-added products such as cheese increased 38% in the past two years? Let’s hope that these new cheese makers are getting the education, financial and labor support they need to succeed. We are lucky to have two cheese makers in our neighborhood. Linda Smith of Sherman Hill Farmstead in Franklin, NY makes incredible goat milk cheese and last year applied her talents (quite successfully) to making cow cheese. She built an aging room and is producing incredible hard, soft and fresh cheese. On the other side of us in Jefferson, NY, Ron and Corinne Brovetto of Harpersfield Cheese are wizards of cheese production whipping up amazing tilsit with hops, lavender, basil and tomato. New flavors are added each season. I am looking forward to sampling their new flavors although the raw cheese remains my favorite. So with all this great cheese at our fingertips, we are inspired to eat beyond the cheese plate and cook with cheese.

Do you Fondue?
My parents threw fondue parties in the 1960’s. I have fond memories of dipping chewy breads and al dente vegetables into thick bubbling cheese. For dessert, we dunked chunks of pound cake, whole strawberries, and slices of apples and bananas in simmering chocolate. Meat fondue was only served at adult parties because my mother was epileptic about hot oil spitting and splattering within arms' reach. As my parents happily sipped their martinis (from which we would steal the gin-soaked olives in the morning) we spent the evening sword fighting with our fondue forks. En Garde! At Fable’s February Second Saturday Supper we resurrected the fondue and enjoyed dipping chunks of sizzling beef, smoked ham bites, bacon and sausage in bubbling pots of local cheese. In deference to mom, we used broth not oil to cook the meats. For the cheese fondue, Sherman Hill Farmstead’s Heathen Hill cow cheese is a must.

Ready to fondue? So what do you need to fondue? We use the traditional fondue pots with tea candles to keep the pot warm but fondue pots are commonly fueled by electric or sterno. Fondue pots are easy to find at flea markets and yard sales and fondue forks can usually be found in boxes of odds and ends. Here’s a simple cheese fondue recipe for bread. Watch the pot so the cheese does not burn and don’t substitute the wine or kirsh!

Cheese Fondue
Serves 4

1 garlic clove, halved
8 oz Sherman Hill Farmstead Heathen Hill or Gruyere, grated
8 oz Emmenthaler or other Swiss cheese, grated
1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch
10 oz dry white wine (not vermouth)
3 oz kirsch
1 teaspoon nutmeg

One day-old baguette or other crusty bread, cut into inch cubes. If you only have fresh bread, cut it into cubes, spread the cubes on a cookie sheet and put it in a 200-degree oven to dry out.

Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic halves and leave the garlic in the pot. Grate the cheese; put it all in a gallon-sized zipper bag along with the cornstarch. Shake it up so the cornstarch is evenly distributed amongst the cheese. Heat the wine in the fondue pot on the stovetop; add the cheese just before the wine boils. Lower the heat to medium and add the cheese a bit at a time, stirring in a zig-zag motion, not in a circular motion (this apparently keeps the cheese from balling up, a very big fondue faux pas). Once all the cheese is in the pot, keep stirring; the cheese should be bubbling happily along but don't let it get too happy or it will start to burn. Add the kirsch and stir it for another five minutes or so, until it's thick and creamy. Stir in nutmeg.

Light the fondue burner and move the pot from the stove to the fondue stand. Spear a piece of bread with the fondue fork, stick it in the cheese, stir it around, pull it out, eat it. Repeat repeatedly

Ready to graduate to Meat Fondue?
Because of my mother’s fear of splattering hot oil, I most often use this fondue recipe for meat which uses chicken or meat broth, not hot oil.

Meat Fondue
3 cups chicken stock or beef broth (homemade is best)
3/4 cup dry white wine
2 Tbsp garlic (chopped)
2 tsp rosemary (dry or fresh)
2 tsp oregano (dry or fresh)

Saute the garlic in a splash of the stock for about a minute, just to bring out the flavor. Add the white wine and deglaze any garlic on the pan, and let evaporate for about two minutes. Finally, add stock and herbs and bring to a slow boil. The broth is ready to cook your meat! Use these time estimates for your raw meat and veggies:

Beef (steak) 2-3 minutes (Depends how rare you like it).
Chicken 3-5 minutes (Make sure there is no pink in the meat).
Seafood 1-3 minutes
Veggies: Broccoli, zucchini and mushrooms 2-3 minutes, potatoes 5-8 minutes (just dump them in and scoop them out with a slotted spoon).

Fondue Etiquette and Trivia
Fondue comes from Switzerland but it is not an old, traditional Swiss dish. Fondue was invented in the 1950's when the Swiss cheese industry was sluggish. As a marketing ploy to get people to eat more cheese, the cheese industry launched a Fondue campaign. Marketers discovered that a person ate ½ lb cheese or more when they fondued.

Fondue etiquette: Always stir the cheese when you put your forked bread in the pot; it helps keep the mixture smooth. Never eat your cheese directly from your fondue fork then stick it back into the cheese. Double dipping is not nice for the other eaters (unless you're all family or friendly enough that no one cares, or if everyone has had enough wine not to care).
A traditional fondue custom straight from the Swiss Alps: Men who drop their dippers into the fondue must buy the host a bottle of wine or give the next fondue party, while women who make the fondue faux pas must kiss all the men present.

Cheese Trivia
Tune into WIOX 91.3 radio for Watershed Wednesday’s Farm Chatter for the answers!

1. What is the difference between chevre and chevon and chevron?

2. Why was cheese popular in ancient Greece and Rome but butter and fresh milk was not?

3. Americans eat how much per person per week of cheese? ½ lb; 1 lb; ¼ lb?

4. How much of the U.S.’s yearly supply of milk is turned into cheese? ¾, ¼ or ½ ?

5. A law for local? From 1935 to 1937 state law in Wisconsin required restaurants to serve 2/3 ounce of Wisconsin butter and 2/3 ounce of Wisconsin cheese with every meal served. True or False?

6. Why is blue cheese called blue cheese? Eating the cheese cures the blues; mold spores produce blue green veins in the cheese; Monsieur Bleu invented blue cheese.

7. Which nation eats the most cheese? Italy, France or Greece?

8. What is turophilia? Fear of tourists, the habit of shouting “turo” after consuming a lot of wine or the love of cheese?

9. Why is some cheese more yellow than others? Cheese makers add marigold petals to imitate the yellow imparted by beta carotene found in the cow or goat’s pasture diet; the cow or goat’s main diet is pasture; yellow dye is added to the cheese.

10. What is the difference between cheese, processed cheese and cheese food? If you have ever accidentally grabbed American cheese slices with cheese food in very small letters on the label, you know the difference by taste.

Last Saturday Supper of the Season at Fable
The last Saturday Supper of the season at Fable is April 9th. We are celebrating the arrival of the Easter bunny by eating his cousins. Join us for maple sausage stuffed apple; rabbit pot pie with horseradish whipped potatoes, spring greens and baked apple shortbread with pepper cream. Wine suggestions available at Fable by the glass or bottle are Brotherhood 2004 Merlot or Heron Hill Game Bird Red. Fable is open for the season for Saturday weekly dining May 28th. We are going to have some fun this year with guest chefs, innovative cooking methods and unique eating styles. More to come.

New York State Farmstead & Artisan Cheese Makers Guild Annual Meeting
For current, new and interested cheese makers. Hobnob with New York State cheese makers and learn about the regulatory, production and sales challenges. Get the skinny on how fast cheese makers are growing in NYS!

Wednesday April 20th 10 am to 4 pm at Kortright Creek Creamery at Stone & Thistle Farm 1211 Kelso Road East Meredith 13757 607-278-5800. Enjoy pot luck lunch and cheese sampling and presentation by Dave Barbano from Northeast Dairy Research Center at Cornell University on potential legislative changes involving raw milk cheeses and on milk chemistry research. Please bring: Lunch to share and samples of your cheese; questions, ideas and comments for Guild membership and the upcoming year’s calendar; photos or announcements about your farm and products.

For information contact:
Nancy Taber Richards
Finger Lakes Farmstead Cheese Company
5491 Bergen Road
Trumansburg, NY 14886
607-387-3108 nancy@fingerlakes-cheese.com or the guild’s website: www.nyfarmcheese.org

Get your Goat?

2011-02-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

No Kidding – We’re kidding

Kidding season is in full swing. The first kid goats were born in February’s subzero temperatures. Unless we were at the freshening, some of them did not make it. We also lost a few ear tips from the cold. We have 20 females and 20 males on the ground with ten more does to freshen. All of the yet-to-freshen does are yearlings and we need to pay special attention when they are freshening. We breed for milk production not mothering skills and some of the yearlings are downright bad mothers. They freshen and walk away from the kid(s) without cleaning them and getting them on their feet. After such a painful ordeal, they can’t imagine that there is more “work” to do like making sure their kids are on their feet and nursing. So we have to be in the barn to swoop them up, dry them off and bring them inside for warmth and their first bottles. At any time, there is one to ten goats in my kitchen.

There's A Goat in My Kitchen (Again!)

Normally freshening occurs without much intervention/interference from us. But this year we had three difficult deliveries which required pushing the kid back in, rearranging the head and legs and guiding the kid back through the birth canal. There was a breech delivery which required pulling so hard that I was worried that the kid’s legs would disengage from the body. The kids are tagged with colored and numbered ear tags – yellow for the females and green for the males. The numbers are then logged into an Excel spread sheet so we know who is who.

Kids in Orbit - Pan Feeding

The Bottle Rack Feeding Method

We are building a creamery on the farm to bottle our milk and make yogurt and cheese. The creamery’s equipment is being paid for by a USDA grant but like all monies tied into the government, the project is delayed by funds disbursement. So as soon as we are inspected we can begin raw goat milk sales but will not be selling goat milk products until summer. As a result, we decided to keep the males on their moms so they will grow really fast and fetch us good prices for the Easter markets. The males that are nursing their moms are almost twice as big as the bottlefed males. The nursed male kids have 24/7 access to the mom milk bar and the females and bummer lambs (lambs without a mom) are bottle fed twice a day. We milk the does, pasteurize the milk and feed it back to the kids. Why? Mostly for prevention from caprine and ovine diseases such as CAE and Johnnes. We have used different methods over the years for raising kid goats. We’ve used a lamb bar or suck-it-bucket which is a bucket with ten nipples attached to it. The warm, pasteurized milk is poured in the bucket; the bucket is hung over the pen and the 12 goats go at it. The problem with this method is that some goats get more than others; when the fastest sucking goat is done it moves over to the next nipple and bumps the kid out of the way. The domino bumping continues and one or two kids get very little milk. The other method is pan feeding; most cow dairies pan feed their calves. The kids are not efficient at lapping milk like calves and digestion problems become a huge issue. Clots of curded milk are lodged in their rumens and they eventually die. The third method is the rack. Individual bottles with nipples attached are inserted into the rack and the rack is hung over the side of the goat pen. The design of the rack is not perfect. If you don’t supervise, the domino bumping occurs and the bottles pop out of the top of the rack. But this method is much more efficient than hand bottle feeding, which we are doing now. We are hand bottling 28 kids and lambs. When Riley was living with us, he was able to hold two bottles in each hand and one between his legs. The problem with the bottle acrobatics is that when one the first goat finishes – your hands are occupied and you can’t easily protect the fast sucking intruder from hijacking a bottle in your other hand.

The kid goats are bottle fed for eight to twelve weeks. The cuteness factor dissolves after a few feedings and everyone on the farm looks forward to the last bottle feeding of the season. The weaning process begins at about eight weeks – the kids are eating hay and pasture and small quantities of grain at this point. We bottle feed only once a day for a week or two and then every other week for a week. It is a great day when we can throw out the nipples, the soda bottles and store the rack in the top of the barn until its use next spring.

Goats in Horse Barn playing King of Goat Mountain

The kids and bummer lambs are housed in the former horse barn. We have not horses in that barn for five years but I have a feeling that it will forever be called the horse barn. Barrels are placed on their sides for sleeping and cuddling corners and a couple of platforms are in the middle of the pens for the goats to play on. At two to three weeks, the female kid goats are disbudded; their horns are burned off with a disbudding iron. We used to keep the horns on the goats but it is difficult for the milking does to get their heads in the milking stands and we were constantly rescuing horned goats from entanglement in fences and feeders. Also, horned goats have an advantage and their typical goat play (rearing up and bashing heads) is dangerous for a non horned goat. While the horns are great handles for escorting them to and fro, we have had a few accidental piercings of hands of foreheads.

Let Me Entertain You - Let me Make you Smile!

The Hay Feeder Rubbed the Hair off our Noses!

Yearling Goats in Horse Barn

Why goat milk versus cow milk? Most people who drink goat milk are not able to drink cow milk because of lactose intolerance. While goat milk has the same percentage of lactose and fat, it is easier to digest because the fat globules do not bind together and are more easily digested and nutrients more efficiently absorbed. Many people believe that goat milk tastes “bucky” or “goaty”. I enjoy dispelling this myth with the Udder Challenge – comparing the taste of goat milk to cow’s milk with adventuresome milk tasters. Over half of the tasters cannot distinguish the cow milk from the goat milk. If goat milk tastes like the smell of a buck or a goat, it is most likely because the milk was improperly handled such as leaving it unrefrigerated for a while.

Recipes for Goat Milk
Raw goat milk is the best. The milk holds the flavor of the grasses, herbs and browse that the goats are eating. The flavors of the seasons are celebrated in the fresh milk. In the spring, the goat milk has a green, tangy taste from new grass and is buttercup yellow from the dandelion flowers. When the mint appears streamside, the milk, even as it is milked out of the udders, wafts of fresh mint. By June and by July the distinct taste of wild thyme flavors the milk. In late summer, the taste of hawthorn berries, wild blackberries and raspberries dominates the milk. By autumn, the milk is deeper flavored and more concentrated with taste traces of leaves, mosses, earth and apples.

My favorite goat milk recipe is Cajeta, a Mexican caramel that is drizzled over ice cream or pound cake or eaten with a spoon right out of the jar.

Cajeta
2 quarts of goat's milk
2 cups sugar
1 large, plump vanilla bean, preferably Mexican, split open (or substitute 1 tablespoon pure Mexican vanilla extract)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1. In a large, heavy pot (not iron), combine the milk, sugar, and vanilla, and place over medium heat. Stir regularly until the milk comes to a simmer and sugar is dissolved. Remove the pot from the heat and add dissolved baking soda; it will bubble up. When the bubbles have subsided, return it to the heat.
2. Adjust heat so that the mixture is simmering briskly but not boiling. Cook, stirring regularly, until the mixture turns pale golden, about two hours.
3. The milk should be stirred regularly as it begins to thicken and turns a caramel-brown color. Don't allow the milk to stick to the bottom of the pot. You can drop a few drops into a small glass of water. If a soft ball forms, the cajeta is ready.
4. If you take the pot off the heat and allow the cajeta to cool, it should be a medium-thick sauce. If it's too thick, add hot water, 1 tablespoon at a time until it is the proper consistency. If it is too thin, return to the heat until it thickens.
5. When the cajeta is cool, remove the vanilla bean. Strain the cajeta through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl or wide-mouthed jar, then scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the cajeta. Refrigerate until ready to use. Cajeta is best served warm.

It is difficult to make goat milk cream as goat milk is naturally homogenized. It requires a separator. We make a lot of goat milk fudge, ice cream and chevre. Spring's offerings of chives and dandelions mixed in the chevre is a little slice of heaven.

What is your favorite recipe with goat milk?

It's in the Soup and Good Farm and Food Reads

2011-02-03T09:59:00.000-08:00

It’s in the Soup

My dad sent me a new cookbook last week - Earthbound Harvest – a collection of stories and recipes from the organic vegetable farm in Carmel, California, The book opens with a story of how the farm grew from a ramshackle road stand to a multinational corporation. The beginning recipe section is a celebration of soup. The first recipe is for Nan’s Tomato Rice Soup made with canned tomato juice, beef short ribs, onions, celery and rice. Simple. Perfect. This chapter, which also includes chicken parmesan soup, shrimp and corn chowder, curried garnet yam soup, pear and fennel soup and butternut, white bean and chard soup, inspired me to begin a journey discovering soup. Not only is soup the perfect meal for fending off the chills of February, it is the ideal way to glorify leftovers and make use of the canned harvest in the cellar pantry. My husband was searching for celery to dice into the egg salad. The celery? It’s in the soup! Cranberries? It’s in the soup! Cinnamon bread? It’s in the soup! Now my family peers first into the stock pot to see if the food for which they are searching is in the soup.

Soup for breakfast? Absolutely. A steaming bowl of broth is perfect. After morning chores, instead of another cup of coffee (so much caffeine), I curl my cold fingers around a bowl of meat broth. The freezer is full of stock so I started canning it. Some people are paranoid about running out of half and half or toilet paper; I worry about running out of stock or broth. So every chicken or turkey or rabbit carcass, every pork or lamb chop or beef bone relives as broth. And every nib of onion, celery, turnip, carrot or leek is thrown into the pot. Good stock is like a strong foundation; it is easy to build something great from good stock. Soup is a diary of what we have eaten during the week. Leftover rice, vegetables, meats, chutneys are thrown together to create soup. Jackson Pollock probably made great soup. Making soup is as creatively satisfying as painting or sculpting but more so because it nourishes us.

Nan’s Tomato Rice Soup
From The Earthbound Book by Myra Goodman

3 lbs beef short ribs on the bone untrimmed
2 large onions, cut in half through the stem end
4 ribs celery including leaves
2 large cans (64 ounces each) tomato juice (from my canned tomatoes)
1 cup long grain white rice
salt and black pepper

1. Combine the short ribs, onions, celery, and tomato juice in a large stockpot. Place the pot over medium high heat, cover and bring to the start of a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the meat is so tender that it falls off the bones, about four hours. Then let the soup cool for 30 minutes.

2. While the soup is cooling, combine the rice and 2 cups water in a medium size saucepan, cover, and bring to the start of a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the water has been absorbed and the rice is tender, about 15 minutes. Remove the lid and let the rice cool.

3. Strain the soup through a colander set over a clean saucepan. Skim off any fat that has risen from the surface and discard it. (Alternately you can refrigerate the soup until is it chilled and then remove the layer of congealed fat that rests on the surface.) When the bones and vegetables are cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the bones and add it to the liquid. Discard or save the bones, onion and celery for stock.

4. Reheat the soup covered over low heat. Season with salt and pepper (Depending on the tomato juice you use, you may not have to add salt.) Divide the rice among the soup bowls, ladle in the soup and serve hot.

Other great soup recipes can be found in my favorite recipe books The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marion Morash and Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

Good Farm and Food Reads

I want to read as much as I can before the kid goats are born and we are milking twice a day and bottlefeeding 50 goats two or three times a day. My favorite books about food, cooking or farming are below and were found at my favorite used book stores The Bibliobarn in South Kortright and the Rose and Laurel Bookshop in Oneonta :

Tender to the Bone from Ruth Reichl. I laughed the hardest about her accounts of her mother’s poisonous cooking (really – she poisoned a wedding party with bad fish.)

Comfort me with Apples by Ruth Reichl. It’s not as good as Tender but still insightful about her days as editor in chief of Gourmet Magazine.

In Good Hands – The Keeping of a Family Farm by Charles Fish. A great history of a Vermont Farm

First Person Rural – Essays of a Sometimes Farmer by Noel Perrin. It brought back memories of our early farm escapades

Of Sheep and Men by R.B Robertson A great read about sheep, herding and dogs in the 1950s in Scotland.

A three book series: Moving UpCountry, Living UpCountry and Growing UpCountry – Raising a Family and Flock in a Rural Place by Don Mitchell. Packed with delightful adventures about families, flocks and farming.

I would love to hear your food, farming, cooking “good read” suggestions!

January Jewels of Thought

2011-01-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

We slaughtered a pig before Christmas for an adventuresome colleague. He made hams in brine, and bacon and blood sausage (we saved the pig's blood). He boned and rolled the loins with the cracklin' tied on and made tenderloins as Wiener Schnitzel. He shared the finished results in the above photos. The other photos describe the kill, scalding and scraping the skin and cutting the pig into primals. The prize was the head, carefully wrapped. I can't wait to see what Jason does with the ears, jowls, snout and tongue.

Snow Storm and Border Collies Cavorting

During Christmas week, a couple of feet of snow were dumped on our valley so we had a white white Christmas. Since our only travel was to the barns and pastures and back to the house, it was a joy to be snowed in.

New Year Food Resolutions

We are fortunate to have farm fresh eggs, milk and grass-fed meat and a cellar with canning cupboards stacked high with green beans, jams, jellies, coleslaw, applesauce, tomatoes, tomato paste and sauces and salsas. The root cellar is brimming with parsnips, squashes, potatoes and onions and the leeks are still in the garden. I pour boiling water over the leeks buried in the snow to unearth them. My New Year Food Resolutions for 2011 are:

• Host a pantry swap in April so ten years from now there will not be ten-year old pickled cauliflower in my canning cupboard
• Buy a milking cow so I don’t have to buy milk from the store or bribe my family to drink goat milk
• Plant more exotic greens and edible flowers in the gardens
• Build a smoker for meats
• Make bread more than once a week
• Cook more in the fireplace using methods such as string turned roasting
• Eat more wild and foraged food
• Try to buy less than 10% of the food we consume from the grocery store.

When I shared these resolutions with my friends they asked me to come up with resolutions for people who do not have access 24/7 to farm fresh, organic food. The points below were shared at the Farm Catskills Annual Meeting in 2009.

1. Stop drinking sodas and other sweetened beverages (like iced teas, energy drinks, etc). You can lose 25 lbs in a year by replacing one 20 oz soda a day with a no calorie beverage (preferably water). (from Center for Science in the Public Interest)

2. Eat at home instead of eating out. Children consume almost twice (1.8 times) as many calories when eating food prepared outside the home. And, you’re more likely to be eating locally grown foods, and more of your food dollars will go to a local farmer.

3. Stay away from processed foods; prepare meals from scratch. Many delicious and nutritious meals can be made very quickly and simply – and you get more nutrition and value from your food dollars.

4. Tell schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks. Over the last two decades, rates of obesity have tripled in children and teens.

5. Eat local, grassfed meat. An estimated 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals in feedlot conditions. Grassfed meat is available year-round from local farmers who do not give their animals growth hormones or routine antibiotics.

6 . Buy organic or sustainable food with little or no pesticides. According to the EPA, over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the U.S.

7. Support a local farmer; visit your farmer's market, join a CSA, or shop at a locally-owned food retailer.
Buying local foods allows farmers to keep a larger share of each food dollar, AND keeps more of your money circulating in the community. Find local farmers near you at www.purecatskills.com

8. Make a point to know where your food comes from—READ LABELS.
The average meal travels 1,500 miles from the farm to your dinner plate.

Comfort Food and Fable
Our bodies crave comfort food when the temperature drops and the snow piles high and the winds are ripping and whipping. We want to eat stews, roasts, soups, puddings and pies and eat next to the fire sipping hot spiced cider and red wine. So to give you what we crave - Fable's Second Saturday Suppers begin January 8th and are held the second Saturday of every month from January to May at 5 pm. Come sit by the fire and share supper with us and friends and neighbors at the large farm table. Three courses for $30. Great selection of local beer and New York State wine. The menu for January 8 is:

Starter: winter greens with poached pear vinaigrette
Main: zinfandel glazed beef short ribs with horseradish mashed potatoes and bacon braised brussels sprouts
Dessert: old-fashioned baked custard with caramelized sugar sauce

Here are a couple of comfort food dessert - Custard and Bread Pudding:
Old-Fashioned Baked Custard with Caramelized Sugar Sauce
6 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 cups goat milk or whole cow milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/8 tsp. nutmeg

In a large bowl, beat eggs slightly, add sugar and salt; mix well. Add in milk and stir well. Flavor with vanilla
and nutmeg, mix thoroughly. Butter a 9x9-inch baking dish and pour in custard mixture or butter ramekins. Place dish or ramekins in a shallow pan containing warm water; bake at 325 degrees for 75 minutes or until knife inserted in middle comes out clean. Pour caramelized sugar in each ramekin or serving dish.

Bread Pudding

2 cups granulated sugar
5 large beaten eggs
2 cups milk
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 cups cubed Italian or French bread, allow to stale overnight in a bowl
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
1 cup chopped walnuts

For the sauce:
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1 egg, beaten
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup brandy

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 13 by 9 by 2-inch pan. Mix together granulated sugar, eggs, and milk in a bowl; add vanilla. Pour over cubed bread and let sit for 10 minutes.
In another bowl, mix and crumble together brown sugar, butter, and pecans.
Pour bread mixture into prepared pan. Sprinkle brown sugar mixture over the top and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until set. Remove from oven.

For the sauce:
Mix together the granulated sugar, butter, egg, and vanilla in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir together until the sugar is melted. Add the brandy, stirring well. Pour over bread pudding. Serve warm or cold.

One of my favorite comfort foods in rice pudding but no one in my household likes it so I don't make it. We had a big New Year's Day bash and Morgan George of Sherman Hill Farmstead brought a rice pudding I remembered from my childhood. I resisted the temptation to whisk it off the table and hide it in the closet so I did not have to share it. Chicken in A Pot is my favorite main meal - using a whole chicken in the crock pot and adding homemade chicken stock and the assortment of vegetables are in the root cellar. And bacon. Bacon marmalade will be available in the farm store in a couple of weeks.

The New Oven - the Fireplace

We saw this method of string turned roasting at the Farmers Museum. Here is our version of Roasting Chicken in the Fireplace usingthe String Turned Roast Method.

Let's Eat Pie and Pigs

2010-11-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

The turkeys, ducks, and chickens have been processed for the winter. The farm is quiet except for the pigs fighting over the pumpkins. Thanksgiving has come and gone but left us with a few extra rolls around the waist from eating too much pie. But really, except for the added calories, how can anyone eat too much pie? Hungry? Eat Pie. Depressed? Eat Pie. Bored? Eat Pie. Stressed? Eat Pie. Angry? Eat Pie. Ecstactic? Eat Pie. Lonely? Eat Pie. Feeling Svelt and Beautiful? Eat Two Pies.

WIOX Radio in Roxbury's Farm Chatter features me and Tara Collins the first Wednesday of every month at 1 pm. On December 1 we will be chatting about pigs and pie and local and seasonal holiday gift ideas.

Farmer Tom Warren will be the guest this week to talk about how pigs get to be pork on a platter. He will chat about raising pigs and feeding pigs alternative crops such as pumpkins. He spends way too much time watching the pigs chasing pumpkins in the fields. You can imagine what a riot it is watch big fat pigs frolicking after giant orange marbles rolling about the field.

I will talk about Colonial Minced Meat Pie. This is a pie filling recipe from an old colonial Willambsburg recipe book that I used in my Perfectly Pie Gift baskets. The gift basket included filling for minced meat pie, cherry pie, apple and cranberry pie, ready made crusts (just add water) and pie plates and servers. Two of my favorite relatives are getting this for Christmas. This recipe is sweet and savory and conjures up memories of fireside cooking and cozy Colonial suppers.

Colonial Minced Meat (real) Pie

1 1/4 pounds of beef round or leftover roast
1/4 pound suet
1 1/2 pounds apples
1 cup raisins or currants
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon clove
2 teaspoons nutmeg
1/4 cup brandy
2 cups cider or apple juice

Double recipe for Pie Crust

1 tablespoon butter (optional)

1. If uncooked meat is used, simmer beef 2-3 hours or until very tender, adding suet for last 1/2 hour of cooking.

2. When cooked, chop beef and suet very fine, into about 1/4-inch pieces. 3. Pare, core, and chop apples to make 3 cups. 4. Mix beef, suet, apples, raisins or currants, white and brown sugars, spices, brandy and cider or apple juice.

5. Prepare pie crust.

6. Line pie plates with pastry, fill each with half of meat mixture. Cover with top crusts, seal edges, slit holes on top for steam to escape. If desired, spread a thick layer of butter on pastry for flaky upper crust.

7. Bake 3/4 hour in 400°-425° oven.

Yield: Two 9-inch pies

These pies are available from Fable's Kitchen in our farm store and the Callicoon Farmer's Market on Sundays.

Talking Turkey

2010-11-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

Going Going Gone
The calendar page flipped to November and just as we predicted, turkey reservations came barreling in! The sad news is that we were sold out of turkeys by October 30th and the spare turkeys we saved for us were eaten by predators on November 1. Coyotes came down off the ridge and picked off one turkey one night and three the next. Flora, our livestock guardian dog was unable to deter them. Last night we put up an electrified corral and herded the turkeys into it at dusk. We moved the night roosts into the pen. We added one more LGD to the pasture. The racket last night was horrific - howling, barking, whining and yipping. At daybreak the turkeys were unscathed and happy to be released into the pasture for a day of roaming, scratching, pecking, grazing and roosting.

Talking Turkey and Food on WIOX
At 1 pm on Wednesday November 3rd, Tara Collins and I will be talking turkey, Thanksgiving, recipes, local food, stuffing. I will test Tara on her turkey facts and quiz her on facts such as: What is the name of the skin that hangs from a turkeys neck? Wattle, snark, garble, swag? Tune in tomorrow for the answer to this quiz question and to test your turkey knowledge. Did you know that before the 20^th century, pork ribs were the most common food consumed at Thanksgiving because most pigs were harvested in November? So the theme of next month's Farm Chatter on Wednesday, December 1 is Everything Piggery.

The centerpiece of Thanksgiving is the turkey but the centerpiece of the turkey is the stuffing. A few years ago there was a nationwide alert that stuffing should not be cooked inside the turkey because it may not reach a temperature high enough for safe consumption. Phooey. I have been stuffing stuffed in a bird for decades and am not going to sacrifice the yummy turkey juices mixed into the stuffing because of a food safety alert. My favorite stuffing recipes are:

Pumpkin Stuffing (Make chili and cornbread a few days before Thanksgiving so you have stale cornbread for this recipe.)

Adapted from recipe of Dean Fearing, Mansion at Turtle Creek, Dallas, TX
6 servings
1 cup diced pumpkin (from 1 whole small pumpkin)
3 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups diced sweet onions
1 1/2 cups diced celery
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/4 cup finely chopped sage leaves
Salt and cracked black pepper
2 1/2 cups stale cornbread
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup chicken stock
Parsley sprigs, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Cut pumpkin in half, and then cut each half into several pieces. Place the pumpkin on a baking sheet and roast until tender, about 30 minutes. Let cool, peel away skin, and dice. Lower oven temperature to 350 degrees F. In a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Add onion, celery, thyme, and sage, and saute for 5 minutes or until tender. Season, to taste, with salt and cracked black pepper. Meanwhile, crumble the stale cornbread into a large bowl. Add sauteed vegetables to the corn bread crumbs. Stir in remaining 1 tablespoon butter, beaten egg, and roasted pumpkin and mix well. Then add the chicken stock and mix well. Transfer stuffing into a medium-sized casserole dish. Bake for 45 minutes. To serve, cut stuffing into squares and garnish with a couple sprigs of parsley

Sausage Stuffing with Fennel and Roasted Squash
The richness of the sausage is a great match for bright, fresh fennel and sweet squash.
8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
Nonstick vegetable oil spray
4 cups 1/2- to 3/4-inch cubes peeled seeded butternut squash (from one 1 3/4-pound squash)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
3 cups chopped onions (about 1 pound)
2 cups chopped celery (4 to 5 stalks)
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped fresh fennel bulb (about 1 medium)
1 pound pork sausage
1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons chopped fresh marjoram
12 cups (generous) 1-inch cubes day-old pain rustique or ciabatta bread with crust (about 1 1/4 pounds)
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 cup (or more) low-salt chicken broth

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray rimmed baking sheet with nonstick spray. Scatter squash on sheet in single layer; sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Roast squash until tender, stirring occasionally, about 55 minutes. Transfer to large bowl; cool.

Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add onions, celery, and fennel. Sauté 8 minutes. Add sausage. Sauté until vegetables are tender and sausage is cooked through, breaking up sausage with fork, about 10 minutes. Add all herbs; sauté 1 minute longer. Add to bowl with squash. DO AHEAD Can be made 1 day ahead. Cool, cover, and chill.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Divide bread between 2 rimmed baking sheets. Bake until bread is crusty but not hard, reversing sheets after 5 minutes, 10 to 12 minutes total. Transfer to very large bowl and cool.

Butter 13x9x2-inch baking dish. Stir vegetable mixture into bread. Whisk eggs, salt, and pepper in small bowl to blend well; whisk in 1 cup broth. Add egg mixture to stuffing, tossing to combine evenly and adding more broth by 1/4 cupfuls if dry. Transfer stuffing to prepared dish.

Bake stuffing uncovered until cooked through and brown and crusty on top, 50 to 60 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes.

Lastly, Tara will be tasting one of my new butters from Fable's Kitchen new product line of chutneys, butters, pot pies, pates and other goodies. The butter is great on toast or on toasted cranberry or pumpkin or zucchini bread, a dipping sauce for pretzels, a dollop on cheese, or spread on the bottom of a pie crust for apple or pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Walnut Butter

Makes 5 cup jars
3 1/2 cups canned pumpkin
1 cup toasted chopped walnuts
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
4 1/2 cups sugar
1 box surejell fruit pectin
1/2 teaspoon margarine or 1/2 teaspoon butter
Measure pumpkin, walnuts and pumpkin pie spice into 6- or 8-quart sauce pan.
Prepare jars; keep lids hot until ready to fill jars.
Measure sugar into separate bowl.
Stir fruit pectin into pumpkin mixture.
Add butter.
Bring mixture to a rolling boil on high heat, stirring constantly.
Quickly stir in sugar.
Return to rolling boil and boil exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat.
Skim off any foam with metal spoon.
Ladle quickly into prepared jars, filling to within 1/8 inch of tops.
Wipe jar rims and threads; cover with two-piece lids.
Screw bands tightly; place jars in hot water.
Boil in water bath for 5 minutes for 8-oz jars.

Last Dinner at Fable is Saturday November 13th. We would love to see you. The menu for the next two weeks is:
November 6, 2010

Amuse: caramelized apple onion bites
Starter: sausage stuffed apples
Main: horseradish crusted beef roast and garlic roasted potatoes
After: crispy greens with maple cider vinaigrette
Dessert: maple walnut pie with double whipped cream

November 13, 2010

Amuse: cheddar dumplings with hot pepper dipping sauce
Starter: winter kale and bean bruschetta
Main: roasted and beer brined chicken with malt glaze with rustic herb stuffing
After: mixed greens with cider pepper vinaigrette
Dessert: spiced caramel pear tart with ginger cream

Second Saturday Suppers, three-course supper for $30 begins in January. Game Night (board games, cards, etc) is coming. Look for information in the next blog.

Autumn Underway

2010-10-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Tribute to Peter

Katey’s horse died a couple of weeks ago. He coliced the day we left for Virginia Beach to visit Tom’s parents and then coliced again mid week. An ultrasound revealed a sizeable tumor on his intestine. We made the decision not to operate and to put him down. Katey bought Peter two years ago. He was a seventeen hand, chestnut, off the track thoroughbred. His racing name was Peter L. Thunder. Katey put her heart and soul and countless hours into training him. A racehorse is a challenge to train. Peter had to unlearn how to be a racehorse. I remember the hours she spent teaching him to stand and not move off her leg when she mounted; how she had to teach him to turn right. I remember the first time she took him to horse show and the announcements via the loud speaker triggered “GO” in his brain and he tried to find the race outside the ring. Peter was never crazy like some thoroughbreds. He was sensible, sound and sensitive. He would not eat hay off the stall floor so we had to put the hay in a hay bag hung from the wall. One night he pulled it down and in the morning, I found him tangled in the hay net. Although he was terrified; he stood still while I untangled the net from around his legs. With my head under his massive body and next to his plate like hooves, he could have seriously hurt me. Peter was a natural jumper. One day we set up jumps in the arena and let him free jump – asking him to take the jumps with a prompt of the whip. He soared high over each jump. We let him cavort about the arena. When we turned our backs to chat, to our surprise, on his own, Peter took the jumps just for fun. Peter and Katey progressed from the arena to the trails and to jumps in two years. When a horse is young, the partnership is a little lopsided. Katey became his “babysitter”. He looked to her for direction, reassurance and confidence. During the past few months the relationship between Peter and Katey started to change; Peter was taking care of Katey – making sure that she was safe and sound while she was on his back. We miss Peter – we miss his beauty, strength, gentleness, desire to love and be loved. We miss his quirks, playful antics and his incredible drive to succeed and be the best partner Katey could have in and out of the arena. Someone told me that losing a horse, because they are our partners, prepares us for the big losses in our lives. And that every horse we ride in our lives, the spirits of the horses we have loved and lost are in our hands, our breath and in our hearts. And the last horse we ride on earth is the embodiment of the trust, courage and strength that we gave and got with every horse we loved throughout our life. That is going to be some ride…..

Range Roost or Turkey Jungle Gym

Turkeys normally roost in trees to stay safe from evening predators. Our hillbilly version of a range roost we built last week provides the turkeys shelter from the rain and a primitive but adequate place to roost during the evenings. The roost is moved with the tractor’s fork lift once a week on to new pasture. When raising livestock, we try to imitate their natural setting as closely as possible while keeping them safe from predators such as dogs, skunks, hawks and owls.

The turkeys are broad breasted whites and broad breasted bronzes and are happy and growing plump on pasture grasses and grain. I read an article on Mother Earth News that when poultry are under stress due to overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, they are twice as likely to carry foodborn bacteria such as Campylobacter in their intestines and surrounding meat which causes serious illness in humans when they eat the poultry. “The bacteria’s ability to affect the chicken is enhanced if the bird is in a stressful situation and the bacteria is also more likely to affect the muscle tissues, “ reported a food safety expert at the National Centre for Zoonosis Research in Liverpool, UK.

We are certain that we are raising happy AND safe turkeys for Thanksgiving. During the 20 years we have been raising turkeys for Thanksgiving, I learned that the flip of the calendar to November 1 triggers a flurry of turkey orders. We sold out last year by the first week in November. If you don’t know your plans for Thanksgiving, then order one for Christmas or the New Year! And who says you can’t have turkey for Easter?

We are offering the work for all or part of your turkey program again this year. How much of your turkey you earn depends on your skill level, the number of hours or days you work, how much you complain about the cold, how entertaining you are during turkey slaughter and a host of other criteria.

Pumpkin Parade
T
he lower field produced a bumper crop of sunflowers and pumpkins. A couple of our bed and breakfast guests spent the morning planting sunflowers in zig zag rows; they will be proud of the results of their farming endeavor. We harvested sugar pumpkins, turban squash, butternut squash and a heritage French pumpkin the day of the frost that killed all the plants. Lucky us. Frosted pumpkins and squash do not keep in the root cellar. While we have been successful in root cellaring potatoes, onions, beets and sunchokes, pumpkins are still a challenge. I have not been able to keep them past Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Pigs

We fenced the pigs in the pumpkin patch to clean up the leftover pumpkins, squash and sunflowers. They are also doing a great job taking down the burdock. They are having an early Thanksgiving.

Early Autumn

The leaves have turned earlier than usual this year. Most of the tourists visit the Catskill for leaf peeping on Columbus Day weekend but I don’t think there will be many leaves left on the trees, especially if we get big winds and cold snaps in the next two weeks. The geese started heading south a month ago but their flight activity is increasing. The migratory flight path for the Canada geese must be directly over the farm because hundreds of geese bed down in the corn fields and ponds. Their morning departure is louder than takeoff at a major airport.

How Many Tomatoes Can One Woman Can?

As it turns out, a lot. And pasta sauce, salsa, puree. I am going to keep canning until the frost although the canning cupboards are full. I am secretly hoping for an early frost. I dried a lot of tomatoes and canned dried tomatoes, garlic, basil and olive oil. Layers of summer in a jar. I am also drying apples for the granola I make throughout the winter. A neighbor has arbors of ripe grapes so I am going to try drying grapes. How hard can it be to make raisins? Stay tuned.

The rose hips on the rugosa roses were ripening fast. I made rose hip jelly. You can add apples, lemon or oranges to it. But the basic recipe is as follows:
Rose Hip Jelly
• 8 cups of rose hips
• 6 cups of water
• 1 box of certo
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 5 cups of sugar
Boil the rose hips for 10 - 15 min. until soft enough to crush. Crush them and squeeze through cloth, to make juice. For every 4 cups of juice add one box of certo and bring to a boil. Add the 1/2 cup of lemon juice and 5 cups of sugar (1/2 tsp. of marg to prevent foam). Bring to a boil and boil hard for 2 min. Remove from heat and pour into sterilized jars and seal with caps and rings. The jelly has a wonderful flavor and is the consistency of liquid honey.

Smoking is Smokin’

We borrowed a friend’s smoker and have been smoking chickens, sausage, duck, eggplants, almost anything. There are tricks to the smoker such as using apple juice instead of water for the pork. Pairing hardwoods with meats. Tom is the smoker master!

To Swap or Not Swap

My gym gals and other friends with flexible work schedules decided to hold a clothing and jewelry swap on Thursday October 7th at the farm. It is a pot luck lunch at 1:00 followed by the swap. If you have anything you want to swap, bring it. If not, come anyway as you may find something for your friends or family.

I went through two closets. I pulled everything off the hangers and separated it into three piles. Definitely swap, maybe swap and keep. I collect vintage clothes and most of them I have not worn since I was 20. It was very hard to part with the Indian skirt that I wore to the first picnic with my husband or the full brim hat I wore to a friend’s wedding or the evening gown I wore to a friend’s charity ball in Boston. A skirt with beads and embroidery reminded me that while everyone was wearing t shirts and jeans in college, I was wearing skirts. I loved skirts and still do. Into the swap pile went most of my college days and 20s living in NYC. The pile is monstrous – a bright colored, beaded, embroidered, jingle jangle, satiny, strappy, oh so not me anymore mountain of memories. At least I had the good sense to get rid of my maternity clothes years ago.

Bye to Brunch

The last Sunday farm tour and brunch at Fable is October 10th. We are seriously considering doing another farmer’s market on Sunday next year instead of the farm tour and brunch. The tour and brunch is more an act of love than a source of income. While we love sharing our farm and our food with families, we have to be realistic about the cost/time/profit equation. Do we charge more? Charge for the tour and for the brunch? Make the tour shorter? Serve less food? Reduce labor by using dogs to clean the floor from the carpet of muffin crumbs and eggs deposited by the toddlers. Draw straws with guests and the three short straws do the dishes? Pick and cook your own brunch? Ideas are welcome!

October at Fable

October menus celebrate the harvest with apples, pumpkins, leeks, potatoes and grass fed meats.

October 9, 2010
Amuse - acorn squash, apple and sage puffs
Starter - pumpkin and chestnut soup
Main - bistro steak with shallot merlot sauce
After - crispy greens with apple vinaigrette
Dessert - apple cup pies with crème frâiche

October 16, 2010
Amuse - buttermilk fried chicken livers with merlot gastrique
Starter - apple potato leek soup
Main - roasted chicken with apple wine sauce
sautéed leeks and root vegetables
After -mixed greens with herb vinaigrette
Dessert - autumn gold pumpkin cake with goat milk caramel

Hope to see you soon.

August Daze

2010-08-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Vacation in a Melon

The many visitors who visit the farm on vacation ask us when and where we vacation. If I am in a surly mood, I answer, “Vacation! What’s that?” We take our vacation in moments – increments of minutes or hours or if we are lucky, half days. My favorite get away spot is the hammock. I can grab 15 minutes and swing with eyes wide open taking in the canopy of trees overhead. The second best vacation spot is the patio at sunset. We dine at the patio table and sit with a glass of wine in hand listening to the farm quieting with the evening and admiring the sun setting as the night cold caresses our shoulders. When there is just enough light left to see, the vacation ends and we close the turkeys and the chickens in their night pens for the evening and head off to milk the goats. It is fun to hide away as an overnight guest in our farm bed and breakfast. But unlike our guests, we have to cook our own breakfast. We often sneak off to Pine Lake for a quick swim or we take half day trips Cherry Valley to pick up piglets. The most sociable vacation spot is the Wednesday Delhi farmers market. Seth Heller and his lovely daughter Laura sell me fruit and vegetables for Fable to supplement what I have growing in my kitchen gardens. The melon I bought this week was the sweetest and shortest vacation. In one bite of sunny summer sweetness, with juice dripping down my chin, I experience every vacation moment of the summer.

Kitchen Garden Jungle

The vegetables were ready to harvest two to three weeks earlier this year because of the long bouts of sunshine and dousing of summer rains. The garden was so overgrown that the weeds are towering over the zucchini plants but not as high as the sunchokes. I was so embarrassed of the jungle condition of my garden that I spent the day in the drumming rain picking and weeding. The garden looks disheveled as if it needs manicuring but at least it is tamed. The huge zucchinis rivaled in size the baseball bats sold in Cooperstown. The Asian cucumbers were wrapped around themselves creating cucumber sculptures. The cauliflowers seeded, the cabbages were bigger than globes. I dug the overgrown beets, lobbed off the cauliflower and cabbage and wrangled the zucchini bats from the plants and fed it all to the pigs. The pigs devoured the beets, chomped a few bites out of the cabbage, nibbled on the zucchini but stomped on without eating the cauliflower. Next year I will plant a separate beet garden for the pigs.

Pardon my Boys

Three Highland calves were born this week, one girl and two boys. Their shaggy coats and big heads remind me of Ewoks. The moms stow them in the tall grass or under a tree and wander off to graze. I surprised them in the tall grass and two calves jumped up and turned their butts on me but peeked around to see if I was approaching. The new mom, who is used to mingling with us, turned to me as if to apologize for their unsociable behavior. One more calf is expected this week.

In a Pig’s Eye

The new piglets are sequestered in the horse barn for a few weeks while we prepare a fenced area that will keep their curiosity from leading them through fences and into the road. Most of them are males so we will be castrating next week. If we wait too long, the chore is more of a wrestling match that includes kicking and biting (the pigs kicking and biting us!) in addition to twisting, squealing and squirming. You don’t want to drop a pig on its head when Tom has a scalpel in his hand.

Scrambled and Upside Down Eggs

The hen laying wagon has to be moved by the tractor at dusk when the hens are sleepy eyed and roosting. We hook the tractor up to the wagon and pull it yards and sometimes miles. Can you imagine the hens’ surprise when they wake up to a different landscape? Last night we attempted to move the wagon uphill but it tilted precariously and rolled off the wagon frame and down the hill. The hens were rudely woken, rustled their feathers and roosted on the ceiling. By morning, all the uncollected eggs were scrambled and the hens were figuring out how to lay their eggs upside down in the laying cubbies. The wagon was uprighted by mid morning. There is little damage to the house and no hen injuries. Another fix it before winter task is now added to the list.

Turkey Talk

The broad breasted bronzes grow slower than the traditional whites. The whites have graduated from the brooder boxes to the grazing fields and are taking up residence with the ducks. The bronzes have to grow a little bigger before they are ready for the big world of pastures, fencing and colder night temperatures. A cold hard rain with gusty winds swept through the pasture. The bronze was cold and wet. After a quick once over with the hairdryer and couple of hours in a box in the kitchen, it was ready to join the flock.

Magic Nectarines

The fruit from Pennsylvania and New York’s Hudson and Schoharie Valleys is super juicy and sweet this year. The raspberries bore fruit for weeks and we canned and put jam in the cupboards for winter. The never ending blueberries are still being picked. We’ve made blueberry pie, jam, ice cream and muffins. If we are lucky, we will have blueberries through September. This week I am trying to work magic on a crate of nectarines.

Nectarine Preserves
2 to 2 ½ lbs nectarines, pitted and sliced
2 cups sugar
½ cup fresh lemon juice
1. In a deep, nonreactive bowl, toss together the nectarines and sugar. Cover and chill eight hours or overnight.
2. Have ready, hot, sterilized jars and lids. Drain the nectarines through a colander set over a large pot. Set aside the fruit, and bring the syrup to a boil over medium heat. Add nectarines and lemon juice, raise heat and cook, occasionally stirring gently until the fruit has softened, but still retains its shape, about 10 minutes.
3. Using a slotted spoon, divide the hot nectarines between jars. Ladle the syrup over the nectarines, leaving ¼ inch head space. Remove any air bubbles, wipe the rims clean and seal. Process jars for ten minutes in a boiling water bath, cool and test the seals. Or simply cool the jam, ladle it into jars and store in the refrigerator for up to one month

August Menus at Fable

The menus for the next two weeks were designed to use the herbs and vegetables that grown in abundance in the kitchen gardens.

August 21, 2010
Amuse: lemon basil arugula tomato bruschetta
Starter: cauliflower soup with brown butter croutons
Main: ricotta and herb stuffed chicken, garlic roasted potatoes
After: baby greens with herb pear dressing
Dessert: blueberry pear tart with honey whipped cream

August 28, 2010
Amuse: baby blue cheese toast with honey port glaze
Starter: roasted tomato carrot soup with basil
Main: london broil with horseradish cream, caramelized shallots and roasted garlic potatoes
After: baby greens with pear vinaigrette
Dessert: plum and blueberry upside down torte

July: Too Hot to Lay Eggs

2010-07-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

July has been hotter than hot: steamy, sweltering, scorching, suffocating and searing heat. Plants, animals and humans on the farm are wilting. 90 degree plus days were remedied with a dunk in the stream or swim at Pine Lake. At night, the air cools to a not-great-for-sleeping 80 degrees. We had to forage in the far corners of the attic to find fans. Thank goodness we don't throw anything out because the stores were sold out of fans. I heard that people were traveling over two hours to Albany and Binghamton to purchase fans. Am I complaining of the heat? Give me heat over 40 below zero days any day. Fans are whirring, animals are panting and the only cool spot is in the car with the air conditioning on full blast.

The hens stopped laying eggs. How do they stop like that? If you have ever slaughtered laying hens then you know that the oviduct contains a line up of eggs - newest to oldest. So are they walking around with an egg stuck mid lay? Is this egg constipation? Does this mean that when the weather is cooler the hens will drop more than one egg a day to lighten their load?

The laying cabin was moved downstream to the willow tree. The hens are roosting in the trees instead of the cabin. Perhaps they are laying eggs in the treetops. How do the animals stay cool? The rabbits were so hot, we put frozen water bottles in their cages. The dogs are digging craters in my herb garden and camping among the valerian and wormwood. The pigs are wallowing in the swamp areas and taking long mudbaths. The ducks are waterbound and are rock hopping up and down the stream. The cows found a giant apple tree which was occupied by the dairy goats. The goats left in a huff found a bigger, shadier tree. The cows think they secured the prime spot on the farm and the goats are laughing at them underneath their Ritz Carlton shade spot.

The Rabbit Fleet

Tom and Susannah finshed building large rabbit cages that can be moved on pasture daily. The fleet was assembled and launched on pasture seas this week. Each day, the rabbits get a new patch of grass on which to graze and bounce around. The rabbits are much happier, more active and eat more in the pasture cages. The prototype cage was built in May and the rabbits housed in that cage grew faster than the rabbits in the standard cages.

The Danes

WWOOFers Laurs and Manja from Copenhagen were with us for a couple of weeks. They worked sun up to sun down. Their contribution to our farm during the two weeks was huge; they weeded the gardens, picked peas and raspberries, took care of the chickens, slaughtered chickens. We took them fishing on La Fever Lake the other night and Manja caught her first fish.

Tribute to Rosie

Rosie, our tenacious, tough and cranky Australian Cattle dog “Blue Heeler”, died last week. A truck driver rescued her as a stray but could not handle her strong, stubborn personality so he gave her to us. She was the least liked dog on the farm but everyone admired her independence. We don’t know how old she was but she suffered from cluster seizures which had paralyzed her back leg. During her seizures she often went on walkabouts seeking water. We often searched for her for hours and would find her in the streams, water ditches and swampy areas. With a paralyzed back leg, the journeys were tough. Each time, we scooped her up and brought her home and finally convinced her to hang out under the oak tree. She died one morning while I was stroking her head. I miss her nipping at my heels and biting me when I stepped on her. She had an annoying habit of lying inches from where I was working, even if I was moving fast from counter to counter in the kitchen. So when I accidentally stepped on her, she bit my ankle to let me know to watch my step. I love this picture of Rosie. She dove into the offal pile while we were slaughtering turkeys and carried of her prize turkey foot.

Birth to Bones Workshops
How does a chicken, turkey, rabbit, lamb or pig get from the pasture to the plate? We put together a series of summer and fall workshops to provide a hands-on learning experience on raising, butchering and preparing livestock for cooking.

July 14 - Pullet to Pot
Broilers are raised from day-old chicks that arrive via post to eight-week old chickens or broilers grown on pasture. See the different phases of raising chickens from critter proof chick pens to free range on pasture. The full-day experience includes intensive hands-on learning about raising chickens on pasture, slaughtering chickens en plein air and preparing and a whole chicken for roasting or the crock pot or breaking down the chicken for sautéing, grilling or baking.

August 18- Rabbit to Roaster
Rabbits are caged raised during kindling and transferred to pasture cages at weaning. Observe the rabbitry and pastured rabbit cages or rabbit fleet. Learn how to raise rabbits on pasture. The full-day experience teaches you how to raise, slaughter and prepare rabbits for stewing, braising, sautéing and grilling.

September 15 - Lamb to Plate
Lambs are born on pasture in May and are ready for slaughter in three to six months. Learn how to raise lambs on pasture, including lambing, pasture rotation, butchering and preparing lamb. The full-day experience includes intensive hands-on learning about raising lambs on pasture and getting lamb from the pasture to the plate.

October 13 - Piglet to Platter
Heritage breeds of pig – Berkshire and Tamworth - are raised on the farm on pasture and woodlands year round. Experience pork on pasture and learn about farrowing, pasturing, butchering and preparing pork for the spit, crock pot or grill. The full-day experience includes intensive hands-on learning about raising pork on pasture and getting pork from the pasture to the platter.
Workshops are held on Wednesdays once a month. 8 am to 8 pm. $125 per person*. Includes lunch and dinner at Fable, the farm’s restaurant. Participants will work together to prepare dinner using all parts of the animal. Lunch and dinner will be accompanied by the seasonal dairy and produce raised and harvested on the farm. *A minimum of ten persons is required for us to conduct a class. Overnight accommodations are available at Stone & Thistle Farm Stay and B&B or Harmony Hill Retreat Center’s tree house yurts and chalet (a stone’s throw away). www.stoneandthistlefarm.com/bed&breakfast.html or http://www.harmonyhillretreat.com/ Contact Denise Warren at Stone & Thistle Farm – Kortright Creek Creamery – Fable 1211 Kelso Road East Meredith, NY 13757 607-278-5800 http://www.stoneandthistlefarm.com/

The Border Collies
The puppy (almost a year old) Ty is doing great. He is obssessed with rabbits and ducks and is at my side when I do chores. I can't let him out of my sight because he would love to eat rabbits and poultry. The other day, all the bunnies escaped from the pasture box and he wanted to eat them so badly. I told him to lie down and he was so humilated as the bunnies hopped on his head and back. I did not have the camera with the bunnie episode but this is a photo of Ty watching a snake in the grass. Border collies will herd anything. Cade has been working hard with sheep as well as cattle. He just jumped in the stream and decided to admire his cattle herding task. Marly is headed for retirement. I came back from feeding the goats and Marly was playing basketball all by himself. Border collies even herd basketballs.

Lois the Bummer Lamb
Lois lost her mom at two days of age. She was bottlefed with the replacement dairy kids for 12 weeks. Lois thinks she is a goat except she is not as smart as a goat. She bleats and baahs and screams when the goats wander off exploring. She is so intent on grazing that she does not see the goats leaving. To quiet her down, we have to lead her to where the goats are grazing.

Fable
The ducks are hard to process but we celebrated the first harvest with duck confit and duck breast with raspberry sauce. The next couple of weeks will feature goat and rabbit. We will begin serving lamb dishes in early August. Chicken and beef is boring. We hope that more customers will broaden their palate and enjoy different meats and parts of the animals such as feet, hearts, livers and tongues. We picked zucchini from the garden this week. Zucchini is almost three weeks earlier this year. I made zucchini quiche, zucchini muffins and zucchini bread. I am always looking for great ideas for the amuse and starters at Fable. Please email us with your favorites. We are selling rabbit and pork rillette, cajeta and sausages in our farm store and at the farmers market. The products are produced under the name Fable's Kitchen. I can't wait to make bacon marmalade which is "all the rage" in the urban gourmet stores.
We hope you will join us at Fable soon.

July 17, 2010
Amuse: spicy egg shooters
Starter: roasted summer squash soup with parsley mint pesto
Main: roasted goat kebabs on herb pilaf
Dessert: summer berries in mulled cabernet sauvignon with rosemary sorbet and lemon verbena biscotti

Summer-Squash Soup with Parsley Mint Pistou
8 servings
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 medium onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 lb yellow summer squash, halved and thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
1 yellow-fleshed potato (1/2 lb), peeled, halved,
4 cups chicken stock or reduced-sodium chicken broth
for pistou
3/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs
1 large scallion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons water
1/4 teaspoon salt
Melt butter in a 6- to 8-quart wide heavy pot over moderate heat, then cook onion with salt, stirring, until softened, about 8 minutes. Add squash, carrots, potato, and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, then simmer, partially covered, until vegetables are very tender, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool soup, uncovered, 10 minutes.
Working in batches, purée; soup in a blender until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids) and transfer to a bowl. Return puré to cleaned pot and thin with water if desired; simmer 3 minutes. Season with salt.
Make pistou while vegetables simmer:
Pulse mint, parsley, and scallion in a food processor until finely chopped. With motor running, add oil in a stream, then add water and salt, blending until incorporated.
Swirl 1 tablespoon pistou into each bowl of soup.

July 24, 2010

Amuse: blue cheese and basil honey toasts
Starter: smoky bacon and garlic soup
Main: braised rabbit smothered with onions and grilled red beets
Dessert: blackberry soufflé

Blackberry Soufflé

Serves 6

Butter to coat ramekins

1 ¼ cups sugar divided

24 ounces fresh blackberries

¾ cup butter (1 ½ sticks)

1/3 cup flour

5 egg yolks

2 tablespoons Chambord or cranberry juice

5 egg whites

reheat oven to 400F. Thoroughly butter six, 8 oz ramekins or 2 quart soufflé dish and sprinkle with ¼ cup sugar. Place berries in food processor or blender. Pulse until pureed. Place in a sieve and press gently to extract juice. Add enough water to yield two cups. Combine the juice and ½ cup sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Remove from the heat.

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and whisk well. Gradually pour hot juice mixture and whisk vigorously. Cook 1 minute. Remove from heat and whisk in yolks. Whisk in Chambord.

Beat egg whites in clean dry bowl with a mixture until frothy. Gradually add the remaining ½ cup sugar, beating until soft peaks form, Stir in one cup egg white mixture into blackberry mixture. Fold remaining egg white mixture into black berry mixture.

Spoon into ramekins or soufflé dish and bake 20-25 minutes (ramekins) or 30-35 minutes (soufflé dish) until soufflé rises. Serve immediately.

June - Summer Beginnings

2010-06-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Scrubbing Names off Cups

Our intern from last year was so wonderful that we decided to hire two interns this season. We are fortunate that Susannah returned this year to help us. The search for a second intern began in January. We received 30 applicants and narrowed it down to five to interview. From the interviews, Tom selected an enthusiastic, smart, adventuresome, twenty-something female who agreed to start in May. In preparation for her arrival, we scrubbed down the camper and washed towels, sheets and the dishes that were stored in the camper for the winter. We picked flowers and placed them in vase in the camper’s kitchen table. We assigned her a green, plastic cup for water and wrote her name on it. She stayed less than 12 hours; I scrubbed her name off the plastic cup. I scrambled to find a replacement. The interns we turned down had already found positions so I reposted on the agriculture websites. Within 48 hours I hired a new intern over the phone. He arrived this week. We again readied the camper, picked flowers for his table and wrote his name on the scrubbed over green, plastic cup. He stayed 18 hours. I scrubbed his name off of the cup. So your immediate reaction is that something is wrong with us that we can’t keep interns. Or why after several years of hiring interns, we are lame at weeding out the emotionally unstable, physically unfit applicants with extra baggage. We are beginning to lose faith in ourselves. So while we need an intern as quickly as possible, we are taking a different tactic and hiring an intern via a friend or acquaintance. So when the intern turns out to be a loser, we can blame our friend’s ability to pick a loser, not us. In the meantime, I know someone out there wants to join our family this summer and learn lots of fun ways to farm, market and create new products. With the economy in the tank, private housing, meals and a $100 week stipend, it’s not a bad deal. Heck, I’d take a job on another farm for the summer if the food was great and the work was fun. Let us know if you have any thoughts on candidates and we promise not to hold you responsible for your recommendation. Promise.

Many Huey Duey and Lueys

Last year Tom bought me three ducks at the poultry auction and named them Huey Duey and Luey. They lived with the turkeys and did a superb job of alerting us to any dangers or informing us of when they were hungry. The plan was to slaughter them when we harvested the turkeys for Thanksgiving. The ducks were too skinny and did not have enough meat on their bones to make it worthwhile. We gave them to a friend who gave them to a friend and they are happily swimming in someone’s pond wondering where all the turkeys have gone. The family named one of the ducks Trisket because he is a little “quacker”. Tom became so enamoured of ducks that he ordered 50 Peking ducks to raise for meat. I never knew ducks were so yellow, fuzzy, friendly and so darn cute. The first batch graduated from the brooding pens and are happily quacking in their marsh spa canopied by wild irises. We scoot them into their hut at night to keep them safe from owls, coyotes, skunks and other predators.

The Chicken Vault

We are raising hundreds of chickens for meat and laying hens for eggs. The poultry is in constant danger of assault during the day by hawks and foxes and at night by owls. During the day, the maremmas, the livestock guardian dogs, are used to bark away predators but they are on lamb duty during the night to protect the livestock from coyotes and neighbors’ dogs. Our combat weapon is a chicken vault. At dusk, we shoo the chickens into the vault and latch the gates. In the morning, when the dogs are back on poultry watch, we open that gates and let the chickens out. They spend the day happily foraging and stream hopping.

The Portable Rabbit Pen

Susannah built a portable rabbit hutch from scraps of wood, wire fencing and wire mesh. It is moved every day onto fresh grass. The feeder rabbits love it; they have a lot more space and 24 access to fresh grass. We are trying to train them to move into the box at the end of the pen when we move it. There are some design problems that will be corrected with the next pen. We need to have six more so by the time we build the last pen, we should have the design perfected. Firstly, it is too heavy for me to move. Even Tom strains when he picks it up. The tractor needs to be lighter and we need it to easily slip onto a hand truck. A lot of the designs we looked at have wheels but it makes more sense to use the hand truck for each one. Secondly, the only entrance into the pen is at the box end. So when I need to grab a rabbit for harvesting, I have to crawl inside the pen to get it or get Tom to tip the pen so the rabbit scurry to the box. Thirdly, when it rains, the feeder full of pellets gets wet and the rabbits won’t eat wet pellets. The feeder needs to be protected by an overhang or ideally a box needs to be built around the feeder. I think the feeder is attracting wild rabbits because there is rabbit poop outside of the pen near the feeder every morning. I can imagine a chow line a mile long of wild rabbits.

East Meets West Meets East Meredith

The peas I planted in mid-May are tall enough to need a pea fence. The pea fence is a very large roll of wire mesh. I rolled it up and carefully stowed it in the garage at the end of the growing season. The pea fence is missing. I looked in the garage, all of the barns and even in places that a pea fence would never be, which in my experience after many years on the farm, is usually where it ends up. The pea fence has disappeared. As it turns out, the pea fence was used for the portable rabbit pen. Instead of buying another fence, I decided to make do with what we have. I asked Tom to cut down the sumac near the garden. I cut the sumac into 3 foot lengths and pounded them into the ground. I lashed the sumac branches together will baling twine. The fence is sturdy and has a throw together, rustic look. When Shane saw the fence I created in the garden he said that it looked like a something you would see in Vietnam. I was so inspired by my pea fence that I used more sumac branches to make bean teepees. Shane said it has an American Indian look. Now east meets west in my garden on the southeast side of the house.

The World of Welwyn

Katey is graduating from Delaware Academy High School in a couple of weeks. Her last day of school is Friday. She got a scholarship for a jumping clinic at Cooperstown’s Farmer Museum 4th Annual Horse Clinic this weekend. On Tuesday, she and her horses, Monty, her 17 year old thoroughbred and Peter, her 8 year old off the track thoroughbred, head to Welwyn Stable in Rhinebeck, New York. Katey will be a working student for the year and is excited about getting the opportunity to learn, show and work at the stable. My heart is light when I think about all expenses we won’t have such as horse board, hay, feed, farrier, vet, show helmets, boots, tack and horse show entries and the time spent hauling her horses to lessons, horse shows and clinics. Katey worked to pay for many of these expenses. As a horse mom, it has been an amazing experience watching Katey grow and excel in the equestrian world and my heart is heavy when I think about not having her in our everyday life and no longer being a 4H horse mom and a Pony Club mom. Then my heart is lightened again when I think that the non-stop bickering between she and Shane, the endless laundry, the unpassable back stairs, the collection of dirty dishes in her bedroom, the wait for the shower, the wait for the computer, the obsession with facebook and the cell phone. And then I grow sad again realizing that her new adventure is the first step out the door of which she will never return as our child but will return as our child adult as a visitor, but always as a joy in our lives. If you see Katey, please wish her the best of luck and happiness in her new adventure.

April Farm and Fable Musings

2010-04-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

First Sign of Spring on the Farm

The serviceberry tree, also know as juneberry or shadbush or shadblow, is the first sign of spring on the farm. The tree grows along the stonewall adjacent to the horse barn. It is called the serviceberry because the tree blooms when the ground is soft enough for persons who died during the winter to be buried and is a showy canopy of blossoms during burial services. It is also called shadbush or shadlow because the tree flowers when the shad is running in the rivers. The berries taste like honey and can be used for jams, jellies and pies but I rarely pick the berries before the birds get them. Bird enthusiasts often plant the serviceberry tree to attract birds to their property.

A Lamb in Another Lamb's Clothing

Lambing season has begun. Ten to twenty lambs are born everyday on the West Kortright Church Road pasture. When look in on the flock every morning and evening, we have to match ewes with lambs and tag the lambs with the ewes' tag number - yellow tags for females and green tags for males. Sometimes lambs are lying in a jumble basking in the sun so we have to stir up the pile and observe which lambs seek out which ewes. When we arrived at the WKC pasture a few days ago, a lamb was outside of the electric fence (god knows how it got through the fence) trying to get back to her mom. We put her back over the fence and she ran to her mom. She must have been separated from her mom for a long time because her mom refused to take her back. The ewe stomped and snorted and nosed the lamb away. We scooped up the lamb and continued to search the pasture for more lambs. In the road end near the pond, was a ewe with a dead lamb next to her. The lamb never made it out of the amniotic sac. By the end of the morning, we had ten lambs, a ewe without a lamb and an orphan lamb. An orphan lamb is called a bummer lamb. I am not sure where the term originates but it is a real bummer to bottle feed a lamb three times a day for 12 weeks. Sometimes a ewe will accept a lamb that is not hers under the right conditions. The trick is to make the lamb smell like the ewe who lost her lamb. We made a coat for the bummer lamb. We skinned the dead lamb and made a hole for the tail and plastered it to the bummer lamb and put the lamb in with the ewe. She smelled the lamb with the lamb coat for a long time. We waited anxiously to see if it would nurse. Success! Once the lamb nurses, its poop smells like the ewe and she will accept it. Two days later, the coat is off the lamb and the lamb is happily with her adopted mom.

Broiler versus Layer Chick

Chickens for eating are called broilers and chickens for eggs are called laying hens or layers. Both sets of chicks are five weeks old. The broilers are ready to harvest at eight weeks and the layers will be ready to lay eggs at 20 weeks. A layer chick is called a poulet until she starts to lay eggs.

The chicks will be moved out of their heat box and onto pasture this week. Metal portable shelters (they look like small Quonset huts) are used to keep them dry, out of the sun and safe from hawks. However, the big move to pasture presents risks. If it is too cold or too wet, the chicks pile in the shelters and die. Hawks are their biggest threat - they often swoop into the huts and pick off chicks one by one. The dogs provide some protection from predator hawks. The broilers will be harvested on the farm in a few weeks and they will be available fresh at the May farmers markets. Fresh chickens will be at the markets and in our farm store every week until mid October. The profit from broilers, even at $4.50 lb, is very slim due to large piling and predator losses and the labor that goes into raising chickens.

Bunnies in a Box

Each of the breeding does has a litter. The youngest litter is two weeks old. A first-time doe had 11 babies but the kindling box was too small so she threw out five of them. Unfortunately, she did it in the middle of the night so they did not survive. The oldest bunnies are four weeks old. They are active in their cages, hopping in and out the kindling box and eating pellets and grass.

Goats on Pasture

After a long winter of hay and baleage, the goats travel to the back pasture for the first of the season's grass. They graze non-stop for the first few hours and then collapse with drowsiness from the weight of the grass digesting in their rumens and the feel of the sun on their backs. They wait at the fence at the end of day and are ready to go back to the dairy barn for milking. Electric netting powered by solar batteries is moved from pasture to pasture with the goats and sheep.

Two years ago we decided not to disbud (remove the horns) from the dairy goats. We changed our minds after a few mishaps with horns and milk stands, fencing and our faces. These sisters use their horns advantageously and butt all the other goats away from the choice spots of grazing and the water tank.

Farm Dogs

The new Maremma puppies Louis and Clark have lost their puppy look but not their puppiness. Louis is guarding the dairy barn and Clark is giving Ty the new border collie an approving sniff. Ty's training started a month ago with simple commands of lie down and there (stay). He is keen on sheep and goats and he does a simple job every day such as moving the goats to the pasture which enables him to feel comfortable with the goats and sheep and build confidence as a working dog. He is smart and willing dog; he has already learned how to keep a good distance behind the goats and lie down on command. If the dogs get too close to the goats they turn on them and butt them. If this happens too early or too frequently in their training, it could make a border collie forever apprehensive of working with goats. Ty has a crouch rather than a full lie down which is fine for his work. Ty begins his formal training with Elizabeth Phillips very soon. Ty is not a high strung border collie. He is intense when he is working but knows how to relax.

"That'll do Ty"

Farm Store

The movie Food Inc has been making the rounds and recently aired on HBO. As a result, the store has been a buzz of activity from people buying our grass fed meats and organic goat milk. The farm store is stocked with pork, lamb, beef and rabbits. The eggs are plentiful and the goats are producing tons of creamy milk. The raw milk takes on the color and taste of what the goats are eating. Dandelions and spring grass are the mainstay of the goats' diets so the milk is sweet with a delicate, grassy, tangy taste and colored a soft, buttery yellow.

Fable

The last winter supper is May 8th at 5 pm. The three-course menu is wilted dandelion salad with fresh eggs and smoked bacon, spring chicken and vegetable pot pie with cheddar chive crust and for dessert - farmer’s pound cake with season’s first maple syrup. The cost is $28. Fable's Saturday dining and Sunday brunch begins Memorial Day weekend. The farm stay/bed and breakfast also opens the same weekend so we are working diligently to get the the renovations completed. I was at a tourism meeting the other day and one of the participants suggested we call the farm stay/bed and breakfast "Stable". What do you think? We are squeezing in the renovations between regular chores and planting the gardens.

Gardens

I am hand spading the kitchen garden because the rototiller does not dredge up the big rocks. I am convinced that in the process of turning over the soil, I am loosening the dirt so the rocks can spring forth. We have been gardening in the same plot for twenty years so why am I pulling out three-foot rocks with a crowbar? Where are all those rocks coming from? The garlic is up from last year and all of the perennial herbs survived. The biggest survival surprise was the tarragon. It never makes it through a Catskill winter. The bees in the cedar tree in the front yard also survived the winter although they are using a different entrance to the 150 year old tree. The tree has housed bees since we moved here 25 years ago. While it is not the same hive, there must be a very big honeycomb in the heart of the tree.

Farmers Markets

We hope you survived the winter with minor complaints. We would love to see you soon at the farmers markets or at the farm. The Callicoon Farmers market begins Sunday May 2. The Pakatakan Farmers market begins Saturday May 15th and the opening of the Oneonta Farmers Market is Saturday May 22nd. Support family farms, eat healthier food and shop at farmers markets this season!

Tom, Denise, Katey, Shane and Susannah (she's back!)

Boot Sucking Mud Season

2010-03-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Boot Sucking Mud Season

Patches of snow still dot the north slopes and woods. Several sixty and seventy degree days melted most of the snow and left us with mine fields of dog crap. Spring = mud and crap.

I copied this from Yankee Magazine and have it posted in our mudroom.

Season of Patience

Muddy March creates despair.
with messy footprints everywhere,
But April showers make life wetter
Long before the mud gets better.

Honor Conor
Our 17 year old nephew Conor Warren Reynolds was breaking up a fight at a birthday party in Springfield, Massachusetts on March 13th and was stabbed to death. The vigil, wake and funeral was attended by over 1,000 people. Conor’s parents, Liam and Kate, have been incredibly forgiving, gracious and generous with their hearts and time and opened up their home and personal life to the community, family, friends and the media. During an overwhelmingly sad and horrific time in their lives, they showed us how peace overcomes violence and how our love for Conor is now imbedded in our everyday tasks. I saw Conor’s crooked smile and bright blue eyes in my mind this morning as I was about to tear into my daughter for leaving wet clothes in the dryer and as I was going to harangue my son for never being ready for the bus and as the kid goats swamped me for their bottles and as my husband left, yet again, his crusty bowl of uneaten granola on the counter for me to clean up. Our lives will never be the same without Conor. We will hold Conor in our hearts. Honor Conor.

Little Mice Rabbits
Have you ever seen new born rabbits? They look like little mice: pink and furless. Their moms plucked a lot of hair from their breasts to make their nests and I made sure that they had nesting boxes and lots of straw and shavings. One doe each week for the next several weeks will be kindling. We will have lots of rabbits for the farmers markets. We are going to raise geese and ducks this year too. We had so much fun with the ducks last year that we decided to raise more. Last year’s ducks became such farm favorites that instead of slaughtering them at Thanksgiving they went to live at a friend’s farm. Sometimes even livestock farmers have weak moments and brush pragmatism aside.

I took this rabbit from the nest to take the photo. It is about three inches long. Mom rabbit is checking the nest box to make sure that I put it back.

Fort Hen Knox
There may be a rooster or two in the bunch but we moved the chicks into the pasture box. It is heavily layered with barbed wire around the base and wire panels on top. The barbed wire keeps out the diggers (skunks, rats, voles, etc) and the nets keep out hawks and owls. But we can’t keep the chicks safe from themselves. Within one hour of putting them into the pasture box, they piled in a corner and we lost a dozen. These are heat loving chicks – they like the rays and when they are cold they dive into a fatal mosh pit. We put up more heat lamps this morning and put in a deep layer of wood chips. Unfortunately the box is so heavy that we have to move it with the tractor.

Kid with Kids
The bottle fed kid goats are out in the kid yard on sunny days. Shane likes playing with them. They jump on his back and chew his hair and ears and race behind him up and down hills.

Supper at Fable
The Second Saturday Supper at Fable is April 10th. The menu is focused on using the last of the root vegetables and dried beans and whatever is fresh on the farm. Supper is 5 p.m. for $28 and reservations are required. Join us

Starter
Rain shower salad (baby spinach, roasted beets, bacon, chevre and sherry vinegar dressing)

Main
Puddle jumper cassoulet (pork, rabbit, sausage and bean stew)
Horse radish potato mash

Dessert
Spring fling goat cheese cake with caramel

A Week of Kid Goats, Chicks and Snow

2010-02-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

Spring Zing

The first day over 30 degrees brought a little joy to my morning chores. For the first time in months, the yearling dairy goats’ water buckets were not frozen and the rabbit bottles were not solid ice. There was an extra wiggle and waggle to the lambs and goats’ steps this morning. I was feeling optimistic about spring coming early until I picked the mail up at the post office. The gang, which includes several octogenarians who hang out in the post office every morning, informed me with assured authority that the snow will turn to freezing rain tonight and tomorrow would be a wet, cold, icy day. Joy squashed.

The seed displays are up in the grocery stores and hardware stores. Over the years I have noted that if you don’t buy Burpbee’s organic Lincoln peas or pole beans by mid March, then you have to order by catalog. The stores never restock. When it’s gone, it’s gone. The same is true with canning jars in August. I have developed a habit of overbuying and hoarding.

Little Monsters

My 12 year old son Shane can be very dramatic. During President’s Week school break he was fully integrated into farm life. He woke up early and helped me with chores. He hacked the snow from the wood pile and hauled logs in every day to feed the wood stove and fireplace. He carried water buckets from the only working hydrants across the foot deep snow field to the horse barn. He hauled buckets of raw milk to the kitchen to be pasteurized for feeding the kid goats. He helped me fill the bottles and bottle feed the kid goats with their bottle rack. We needed 28oz bottles quickly so I purchased a couple cases of Mountain Dew. Instead of dumping the vile soda down the drain, I let Shane and Katey drink some of it. Besides getting an energy jolt from the caffeine, they were ecstatic about drinking soda. The kid goats are three weeks old and have lost their cute status. We call them the suckling monsters because they attack us bumping our legs and trying to spill the bottle buckets over and pull down the bottle racks. We just disbudded them so they have coin sized burn marks on their heads which make them look even more like little monsters.

Shane has saved one male kid for the petting area of the farm stay. He named him Camaro. Tom is fond of the kid goat too.
Shane helps me defrost the rabbit bottles, feed the rabbits pellets and hay and rerack the water bottles. He helped me breed three doe rabbits this week. The border collies, if not kenneled when they are not working would spend all day under the rabbit hutches.The rabbitry is very crowded so we are slaughtering rabbits as fast as they are big enough. There are rabbit cages hanging from the walls as well as hutches on the ground. We are building pastured rabbit cages this year. We are using ideas from pastured rabbit cage plans from a French agricultural organization.

Get Out While We Still Have Time

Shane’s big adventure was a trip to the auction barn with male kid goats and a trip to Cornell Cooperative Extension to do his 4H presentation. On Sunday, before his return to school he suffered a complete meltdown. He railed about the unfairness of our lives. He told me that his classmates were going to Florida for the week (I doubt that) and going skiing, shopping in the Albany and Binghamton malls and spending the day watching TV. He ranted that farm life is too hard and we should, “Get out now while we still have time.” He preached that we should give up farming so we could enjoy the “sweet life.” His drama can be very entertaining but he asked me to consider his ranting with seriousness. I asked him to describe the “sweet life”. He rattled off a list of activities such as sleeping late in the mornings, going to fast food restaurants, mall shopping, watching TV, playing air hockey, listening to IPods, spending the day on YouTube. When I pointed out that he had slept to 7:30 am most mornings, had an IPod. IPod and occasionally was allowed to go on YouTube and was welcome to ride with me at the stable during the week, he still felt cheated. Cheated out of what I thought? To be fair, it is tough to never go on vacation because we run a farm, to work outside in sub zero temperatures and to be responsible for livestock every day. However, I have no regrets about keeping television out of the house, banning fast food and never frequenting malls or Walmart. So we compromised. We went to Walmart (I know. I know but it was late and the sports store was closed)and bought a basketball. He has been dribbling the ball for hours. As I write, my head is filled with the persistent thump thump of the ball. I am waiting for the sound of a crash to interrupt the dribbling. Perhaps tomorrow we will go cross country skiing or snowshoeing. In the meantime, there is work to do We have to help Tom unload expired or bad batches of Icelandic yogurt from the back of the truck and feed the pigs. When we deliver our milk for bottling at the creamery, we often bring back at truck load of expired dairy products including milk, creme fraiche, yogurt, cream and kefir.

The laying chicks arrived last week. Tony, the postmaster rings us as soon as the post office opens to beg us to get the noisy, smelly chicks. An entire batch of Rhode Island Red chicks survived the mailing but did not survive the first 24 hours. We take the chicks out of the boxes, dip their beaks in water, give them food and put them under heat lamps. Because the barns are too cold and it is too dangerous to have heat lamps on in the old barns, Tom hauled a huge water tank into the new office, a part of the house that is under construction. 200 chicks are peeping and scurrying and chirping . The chicks are below Katey’s room and after four days the smell of chicks and chick poop has permeated her bedroom. She moved into the guest room until it is warm enough to move the chicks to the barn.

A major snow storm is underway. The roads are closed and it looks like a couple of feet of snow. The sheep and the livestock guardian dogs are asleep under a thick blanket of snow – unconcerned with the snow piling up around their snow den. They stand and stretch now and then to get out from under heavy blanket.

Fable - Next Second Saturday Supper is March 13th at 5 pm

I had to change the menu for the March 13th Saturday Supper because the butchering gods are working against me. The first course was a warm spinach salad with beets and bacon. We sent in pigs for butchering but the bacon won't be smoked in time for the supper. The main course was steak and kidney pie made with local ale but the butcher forgot to save the kidneys from the cow he butchered and he did not save the cheeks! So the rabbits are almost plump enough for slaughtering so we will slaughter on March 12 and I will make rabbit pie. The new menu for March 13th is:

Starter

winter greens with blue cheese and poached pear vinaigrette

Main
rabbit meat pie
horseradish potato mash

Dessert
baked custard with cajeta

The cajeta is the most fun of this supper. It is goat milk and sugar cooked for three days on the stove until it is distilled to a thick, creamy tangy caramel. Great for custard but even better over goat milk ice cream.

Winter Work at Stone & Thistle Farm

2010-02-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

Farm and Fable Musings – February 6, 2010

FARM

Splash of Color at Kortright Creek Creamery
The first freshening of the season occurred this week. Triplets were born, then four sets of twins in 24 hours with only 50 more to go. The herd sire this year is a sungau alpine buck from Linda and Morgan of Sherman Hill. So far, there are splashes of black and brown on a couple of does – the rest are white. The kids are in totes in the mud hall for a couple of days to acclimate to being alive before they are sent to the kid barn. The small barn across from the house was historically used as a pig barn and stored a lot of the harnesses and horse equipment from the carriage barn. Since we have farmed here, the small barn has been a kid nursery, a rabbitry and a farrowing barn. Every trip to the dairy barn yields another kid or two. We only keep the females from the good milkers. The mediocre milkers, first-time fresheners and all the males are sent to the auction barn every Wednesday where they fetch around $10 each. We are often asked why we don’t raise the males for meat. It is simple math. A kid is bottle fed 2 cups of organic goat milk three times a day for 12 weeks. The cost of the organic goat milk is $5.40 (or what we can sell it for) per kid each day. We spend $453.60 in milk to feed a kid from birth to 12 weeks. If we add our labor – the kid would be worth $800. A 12 week male kid sells for about $50. So that is a loss of $750 per kid if we raise the kids for meat.

The Pink Vinyl Bra
We are renovating the center living room and the old dining room. We hoped to be finished before kidding began but the kids came two weeks earlier than expected. The old dining room will be our new office. Tom patched the wood floors, remade wainscoting, and built a closet. In the 1940’s the Haynes family closed off the front porch and expanded the living room area and in the 1950’s added a fireplace and dropped the ceilings 18 inches. We ripped down the dropped ceiling which consisted of sheet rock and fiberglass ceiling tiles. The plaster ceiling of the old porch was painted swimming pool blue.

I did a little research to find out why porch ceilings were painted blue. The most obvious explanation is that blue resembles the sky and the porch sitter had the impression of sitting “en plein air”. Explanations included the color blue prevents flies from landing and wasps from building nests or keeps away evil spirits. The original paint color of the outside of the house was a faint sherbet green. The house, built in 1863, was originally heated with pot belly stoves; a stove pipe ran from the basement to the top floor. One of the upstairs bedrooms (Shane’s room) has a 10 inch hole cut in the floor for the stove pipe. We never patched it – the children loved to hide things down the hole. So when we removed the ceiling under the hole, we were bombarded with balls, Barbie doll shoes, American girl doll accessories, match box toys, keys, coins, Legos and to our surprise, a pink bra. The large pink bra fluttered to the floor. Tom picked it up and said, “Where did this vinyl bra come from? “ When Shane came home from school, we showed him all of the treasures that rained from the ceiling, including the bra. He blushed and explained that during a sleepover, his friend dared him to steal Katey’s bra from her underwear drawer. When they heard someone coming, they stuffed the bra down the hole. When Katey came home from school she identified it as her bra but explained carefully to her aghast father that the fabric is lycra not vinyl. She admonished her brother (I will withheld what she said to him) and threw the bra in the wash. When we removed the fireplace, we hoped to find something interesting like old newspapers or an old coin or two but certainly not a “vinyl” bra.

The liner from the fireplace we ripped out is in good shape and free for the taking. It is next to the road.

In search of another Perfect Intern
Susannah, the farm’s amazing intern and supreme skunk catcher left the day before Thanksgiving and returned home to the Chicago area. Many of you met Susannah at the farmers markets in Callicoon or Oneonta or during turkey slaughter and sales. She is returning this spring for another farm adventure. We are delighted to have her back. Susannah is helping us find another perfect intern. We received over 20 applications and chose six that we will interview next week. I am amazed at the diversity of people who applied for the internship. Applicants included a 30 something mother of toddlers who had not thought through who would watch her toddlers while she was working, a late twenties derivatives trader who listed food allergies, spine injuries and heart problems as “minor” issues for us to work around and the young man who, in his cover letter, described himself as hard working, responsible and innovative. He sounded wonderful until we got to the baggage he was bringing with him – a girlfriend, two German shepherds and three cats. The applicant who wins the “not” prize was the young woman who had been recently diagnosed with agoraphobia and suffers from such intense anxiety attacks that she has work and live without human contact. We are interviewing this week so if you know of anyone we should add to the resume pile, please have them contact us. Susannah is going to help build the cabins for the interns. Tumbleweed Tiny House Company makes great plans for tiny houses on wheels – a sophisticated version of the laying wagon we have for the hens. It will be fun to design and build the cabins.

FABLE

Hitting Bottom with Bottom Round
How many different ways can you prepare chuck roast or bottom round? We have a lot of bottom round roasts that have been in the freezer for over a year. While they are perfectly good, we cannot sell them to the public. So we have been eating a lot of bottom round and chuck roast this winter. We have about 40 pounds left and I have hit bottom with ideas of how to cook and serve it. Bottom round has to be slow cooked in a Dutch oven or crock pot so my creative cooking juices may be hampered by the limited cooking method. This week I am putting 5 lbs in the crock pot and cooking it until it falls apart, shredding it and smothering it with BBQ sauce and serving with coleslaw and homemade crispy turnip chips. Recipe ideas for bottom round are welcomed.

The next Second Saturday Supper is February 13th. The cost is $28 per person and reservations are required. The menu is:

Starter
winter greens salad with blue cheese and poached pear vinaigrette

Main
sirloin loaf
garlic mashed potatoes with mushroom rosemary gravy

Dessert
winter fruit crisp with spiced calvados cream.