a weekend for summer and family

i spent the latter part of the week in new york seeing girlfriends i hadn't seen in months, years, and many years. eve. jacqueline. ayana. meagan. all smithies. each in their own way the antithesis of the farm and yet we still find so much to laugh about. and while that was wonderful i felt myself holding my breath looking at the bluebird sky and thinking of the garden. of the weeds. of the mountain. of nick. of those wretched beasts we dimly refer to as our brood. 


i bussed back to vermont late friday night and my parents met me in town and we rode the rest of the way to the farm together. they dropped me straight off at the barn so that i could milk and feed and close in. i breathed deeply again. nick arrived home the next day and the four of us humans settled into a weekend of early vermont summer. we herded runaway sheep. twice. dad built a dock on the pond with our neighbor. nick made cheese. rudy ate two wheels of drying cheddar + cloth. we navigated the newness of caring for a fox pup. mom made cake and we celebrated birthdays. dad made omelets and many pots of coffee. we brushed the winter coats of the donkeys and horse.  we ran and walked and swam. we hunted morels, furiously. we learned much about morel etiquette. you can politely ask somebody how their morel hunting is coming along but you don't dare ask specifics about where. it will embarrass both them and you as they don't want to tell you where. 


there is nothing i want more in this life than to have my family living on our farm. i don't care much for the goodbyes and the phone calls and the emails. i want them in the cabin through the woods. far enough away that we can all pretend we live in solitude but close enough that you can yell through the window to call them to dinner.

someday. for today i have what kristin kimball referred to in the dirty life as nostalgia for the farm's future. for the someday when the land we farm is our own. when we are picking from an asparagus patch that i had planted years ago. when we have our own morel spot in our own back field. for when we have family and friends staying and living and existing all around us. dreaming about that someday.

while the cat's away...

nick's at play with a baby fox, seemingly abandoned and starving. nothing a bowl of warm milk can't fix. laden with the ever practical-mind of a woman, i've already started asking the hard questions like what are we going to do when he starts to hunt chickens?

read about his little morning at www.wildhumans.org

(sorry for the crooked photo am on iPad and in central park and no idea how to manipulate such things)

as threatened

the weekend was full of kitty watching. here we have friday and fiddlehead. the former being the orange and the latter the gray. friday, because that was the day we picked them up. and fiddlehead for he isn't the brightest kitty and we have been eating many of them so, fiddleheads were on the mind. this is a fiddlehead for those that were curious.

when we weren't playing with the kitties the weekend filled herself with fence work. with potato planting. with shooting-star-gazing on the hammock. with the season's first thunderstorm. with moving cows. moving pigs. the discovery of a new forest run. a very informal open-barn where all of the neighbors on our little mountain road came to meet us. late night butter makings. more yogurt play. with the wonder of how the days could be so long and yet feel so inadequately short. but in between it all we kept sneaking back into the house for a kitten cuddle.

this week will take me to new york for a blistering 48 hours. and nick to boston. we're staggering our trips so that he leaves after morning milking on the day that i come back for evening milking. so if you don't hear much from us, that is what will be. 2 bewildered mountain monkeys coming down to the big cities, trying not to look too out of place.

dandelion fritters

some of you seemed rather curious when i mentioned dandelion fritters on monday. not one to want a disappointed crowd, i have made them for lunch today and took the opportunity to share with you their delight. 

i'm guessing you all know what a dandelion looks like. BUT in the effort of covering my bum, please, ALWAYS consult at least two guides before eating anything edible. in fact just the other day i id'd a leaf of a plant rather quickly and carelessly as a dandelion. it was not. and it made me feel quite silly. i mentioned the guides i use in the post on ramp pesto.


when picking dandelions, try to do so on a clear, sunny day. like most flowers the dandelion will close up and look rather angry on rainy, cloudy days. you want a nice open, calm flower to fry.

my caveat to this recipe would be to make just a small handful. or, make for a group of friends. you do not want to be left, alone, like i am today, with a whole bowl of fried dandelions. you will make yourself quite ill. i promise you.


every part of the dandelion is edible. from the roots to the greens and the flowers. euell gibbons wrote in his book of a family he knew that survived a famine on the island of minorca thanks, in no small part to dandelions. he said they would fry their dandelions in butter. nearly everyone has a recipe for dandelion fritters.  the essential principle is the fritter part. you really need only batter and oil and a hot pan. but i rather enjoyed the recipe from the burlington free press. i love how many times they say local in the ingredients list. it's like a bad tick. and so, here it is, copied from them but i have changed the  dipping sauce. the article calls for chevre and horseradish which sounds delicious but not what i have here. so i used my homemade yogurt and some cut up wild ramps as the dip dip.

dandelion fritters (as found in the burlington free press)

you will need:

2-3 cups of dandelion flowers
1 local egg, beaten
1 cup local milk
1/4 c all-purpose flower (king arthur or other locally milled or grown)
1 c cornmeal (from butterworks, or grow your own)
1 t salt
1 t pepper
1 c veggie oil. i used EVOO, because i read the recipe hastily and therefor not thoroughly and it was scrumptious


directions:

1. for sauce, whip ingredients and set aside. serve with fritters. (again, use whatever sauce you can imagine, including the chevre and horseradish, or my yogurt with ramps).
2.  collect your dandelions from a nice clean pasture (not one where your dog or boyfriend pee). if they look clean, you needn't wash them.
3. mix up your batter including all the ingredients save the oil and the flowers.
4. put your oil in pan and heat. you want about a 1/4 in of oil. CAREFUL. hot oil has a very unpleasant reaction when contacted with the skin.
5. when the oil is hot dip the flowers into the batter while holding onto the stem and then drop them flower side down in the hot bubbling oil. again, careful.
6. cook until goden brown. fork or spoon them out of the oil and serve warm with the sauce of your choosing.

honestly, anything fried is delicious. i bet i could fry up worms if things got desperate enough and find them tasty. but the dandelion does have a bite to it that adds to the enjoyment of the fry.

i hope you all enjoy.

happy friday. we are adopting 2 kitties tonight from a farm the next town over. this should provide for a painfully adorable week-end.

giving thanks to winnie

it occurred to me this morning as i flung myself out of bed at 7:21, nearly 25 minutes late for the  1/4 mile walk down to the barn, that there is a part of my life here on the farm, a rather big part, that i have mentioned only in passing. that part being milkings. the very milkings that have become the leader of our new world. the blessing and curse of milkings. the product of which provides the bulk of nourishment to my little family. the stress of which keeps us in battle with state laws. the necessity of which binds our bodies to the farm. once at morning and once at night.

we went to dinner at the house of dear friends last night to celebrate the end of year 2 of law school for them. by 11 pm we were, as it goes now, yawning too uncontrollably for proper conversation and had to pardon ourselves home. i'm more accustomed to being in bed by 9 these nights and so with the sun hidden behind some very grumpy rain clouds this thursday morning my internal alarm excused herself and thus the late start.

it is hard not to be rather bitter on the subject of milkings on rainy late mornings like this when all we wanted was to sleep off a night drinking whisky with friends. the definitive responsibility of a milk cow hasn't fully set in yet. we still go about our lives pretending this isn't forever. of course we haven't skipped a milking yet and would never do that to winnie. but it doesn't stop us from living our lives as though it is a problem that will find its own solution.

like next wednesday when i have made plans to be in new york and nick has made plans to be in boston. two of us away does not a cow milk. and yet, we can't seem to want to find a compromise.

i let myself carry this bitterness some days for winnie. as though she is the one that has burdened us. i carry it as i drag myself down to the barn at dawn, in a mix of pajamas and yesterday's work clothes. teeth unbrushed. stomach empty. feeling a little resentment for the sleeping nick and rudy. i curse the interminable cold of the milking parlor as i make my way through it and to the animals. i curse the darkness, the dankness that seem inherent qualities of all milk barns. i curse the pile of scrap pipes in the corner that we have deemed worthy of saving and unworthy of using. i curse the heft of the milk pail that we inherited with the barn and curse our lack of money to buy something lighter and easier on my tired arms. i curse the new chicken nest to the left of the barn doors and wonder how many other unsanctioned nests the chickens have hidden.

and then i open the doors. the cursed doors that are missing 2 wooden panels and 6 glass panes. and there she is. her eyes like that of a cartoon deer. she blinks at me. she takes a big smell on the corduroys i  have been wearing for the last 6 days.  she gently pushes by me,  through the open doors and lumbers to her stanchion. without any words. without any curses. without reprimanding me for my tardiness. the simplicity of her duty melts all my resentment away. she is such a large, prehistoric looking creature. such a far cry from the cats and dogs i have had my whole life. she is filled with milk and she is waiting there, patiently, to let me take it.

i don't have any photos of me milking winnie. or nick for that matter. there is something inherently private about the act. i haven't felt comfortable about bringing my camera down with me.  and so, i haven't and you must forgive me the lack of photos and my fumbling for words as i describe the milking.

as she waddles into her stanchion i am immediately filled with guilt for the wait i have given her this grey morning. her udder is swollen with milk and her back legs are awkwardly trying to negotiate the ground below while the udder bounces between them. once she is still i tie her tail to her leg to avoid a wet whip to the face mid milking. i fetch some warm water and begin to towel off the mud and straw and poop from the night before. she isn't as fastidious a cow as our sweet bella. and so i find myself doing this every morning. i suppose when your udder has reached a certain swollen size cleanliness falls from your list of cares.  after her teats are clean in the vulgar way that you would feel comfortable drinking from them (in a sense that is the standard raw milk must meet) i fetch the wretchedly heavy milk pail and assume my post.

i found nick an old wooden milking stool in celebration of our first cow and his 29th birthday. originally i selfishly pitied ourselves and the measly $30 i could afford for his birthday present but on these mornings i have come to cherish the little stool. it sits barely 10 inches off the ground which puts my face right at the crook of her left hind leg and belly and my hands at her udder. she quietly chews her cud and as i begin to work down the first milk in her teats she lets out a big sigh. which relaxes me and we work quietly and steadily to empty her udder. it takes all of 20 minutes. sometimes longer depending on how tired my arms and hands are. but we are finished before i am even fully awake and with that my morning has officially begun. i go on to filter and jar the milk, clean the parlor, and feed the chickens and pigs.  and winnie slowly walks back out to the field to resume her hours with the quickly growing grass.

as far as i can tell there is no better way to start my morning than this simple act of milking. certainly, there are ones like today's where i spend much energy begrudging the choice of a milk cow and the freedom we have lost and the bits of our lives that have become that much harder. but there is no creature better at calming me and helping me welcome the morning than winnie. and for her i am eternally thankful.