three bags full

The lambs have been sheared for the first time in their little wooly lives. Ayana and I were planning on watching many youtube videos and then going for it on our own, but several kind and concerned women thought that could be rather dangerous for my sheep. So, I stuffed away my pride,  relented, and hired a shearer. I am so glad I did. She was strong and fast, professional and kind. She showed us the very basics of the job, making it look viciously easy in only the paradoxical way things that are extraordinarily difficult can appear. 

Now I have this wool. Something to consume myself with this winter when we are more confined to the indoors than we would like. It hasn't snowed yet. And, I won't be starting this until it does. But once the snow falls, I must skirt the fleece. Then scour it. Then card and comb it. Then spin it. Then weave it. I have the vainglorious aim of weaving a proper rug out of it all. Who knows? Though, I must say, I am rather excited about this very small but very new chapter of farming that I am adding to our mix. Handwoven Icelandic wool rugs from Vermont. That's something I could someday sell to you city folk, yes?

mellow yellow

Today is the first sunny day in seven. They are threatening snow flurries for Sunday and tomorrow doesn't look so great either, so we must revel in the yellow today. 

Ayana and I made a honey custard ice cream last night with honey comb candy, and, it being vastly inappropriate ice cream weather I thought I would share the recipe. 

The following is adapted from Andrea Reusing's Cooking in the Moment. 

For the ice cream custard :

make at least 3 hours and up to 24 hours before serving

makes 1 quart

4 farm fresh orange egg yolks

3 c. whole milk, or preferably full cream milk

2/3 c. honey

1/8 t. salt

an ice cream maker, a whisk, a thermometer and a stovetop

Whisk together honey, egg yolks, and salt and set aside. Heat milk in saucepan on medium heat stirring frequently until a steady simmer. Remove milk from heat and add (SLOWLY and while whisking) the hot milk to egg/honey mixture. Careful not to scramble the eggs, hence slow and whisking. Return mixture to the sauce pan, and on medium low heat, stirring constantly, bring mixture to 175°F. Remove from heat and pour into a clean bowl. Allow for the steam to settle off the custard and then place in the fridge for at least 3 hrs of chilling.  Once chilled put through your ice cream maker per their instructions. 

Sprinkle the honeycomb candy on top for ultimate un-fall enjoyment. 

For the honeycomb candy: 

needs at least 20 minutes to chill in the freezer

2 T water

2 T honey

1 1/2 t baking soda (twice sifted)

3/4 c. sugar

a candy thermometer, saucepan, whisk, and a greased cookie sheet

Pour water into saucepan, then sugar, then honey. Don't mix the ingredients in, just allow the heat to take over. On medium high heat allow the mixture to reach 300°F (candy thermometer). Remove immediately from heat and sprinkle in baking soda. Quickly combine with a whisk in several strokes and pour the now ever expanding mixture (thanks to the baking soda) onto the cookie sheet. 

Allow it to cool in the freezer and then break into shards to serve over honey ice cream. 

fiddlehead and sabia and the want of horse

Fiddlehead and I want a lot of things. We want an indoor toilet. We want those insulated rubber Muck boots. We want the chickens to not wake up so early. We want the grey cat who lives in our barn to let us love her and pet her. We want land we can call our own, with an old farmhouse and a post & beam barn. We want a café to open up on our dirt road and we want the New York Times to be sold at our gas station. But, most of all, we want a horse. I want a horse. I need a horse. Fiddlehead could probably, in actuality care less for having a horse. He doesn't seem to be too thrilled when we make him sit atop Sabia, our landlord's aging buckskin. But I am consumed with the thought. Of riding my horse over the hill to see the neighbors, or corralling the cows with him or packing a picnic in his saddle bags and taking Nick and I to the top of the mountain for lunch. I want to get a small cart to have him pull fencing materials across the farm and feed for the chickens and hay for the cows. Someday I want to get two bigger, draft horses, and name them California and Davy Crockett (long, childhood imaginary friend story) and have them pull a plow and a cultivator and a sleigh in the winter.

Someday soon, when we buy our own land, we will get a horse. Or three. Right now we have a self-imposed moratorium on new animals. Let's wait to see how winter plays out. 

good tidings by train

  

Ayana is taking the Vermonter train tomorrow up from New York and is staying the week. She thinks she is coming up to enjoy apple cider donuts and the peak of the trees. Really, she will be here to help me move the pigs across the farm, to shear the sheep for my first time ever, and to plant garlic. I also don't plan on letting her leave, for, as you know, I am short in the Friend Department up here in Vermont and know enough to not let one out of your sight once they have been found.

good morning

Every morning the sun rises through these still-green hills right up over our East-facing bedroom window. Long before it actually cracks the horizon and soaks our room golden the cats furiously purr and knead my slumbering body. Nick and I have an unspoken arrangement of a tradeoff for who lets out the chickens in the morning. The other gets to sleep in an extra 30 minutes and to Top It Off they get their choice of coffee or tea in bed. Today was my morning to serve.  In an unprecedented bout of planning I had us put the chickens in garden for a couple of days. After they have scratched and pecked and eaten the left over kale and the fallen tomatoes and deposited as much poop as their little bodies can muster we will put them back on pasture and replace them with the pigs to finish the garden job. Manure and tilling and garlic prep all through the power of animals. Its a glorious thing.

So, this morning, it was I who lay, body still, eyes open, in wait for sunrise. The cats had long since woken me but I refused to rise until that impossible sun rose even with our window sill. When he did, I pulled my used body from the unbelievable warmth of the blankets, put on my long wool underwear and one of Nick's sweatshirts and my muck boots and poured the cats, Rudy, and myself out into the coolness of today's sunrise. While it always seems insurmountable, getting out of a warm bed on a cold morning, there is nowhere I would rather be than there, with those chickens and their unabashed enthusiasm for life. It always reminds me of this photo I snapped one morning on the farm in North Carolina.