The Farmette Report

Enjoying the day

Thursday was my birthday, and as is my custom, I took the day off from office work. Some folks have told me that they find this a "quaint" custom, and I suppose they mean that a middle-aged woman should be above making such a fuss over a birthday. Apparently most women my age prefer not to dwell on anything that reminds them that they are getting older. I've never been one to resent getting older, especially when you stop to consider the alternative, and neither am I someone who requires being "fussed" over. Rather, the customary day off came about because of my career in human resources management - and the first year when a manager at a company where I worked needed my presence during the termination of an employee who had numerous performance issues. It occurred to me that I had better ways of marking the day than firing someone, and so we settled on another date for our meeting with the soon-to-be former employee - and I have taken my birthday off ever since.

This year, I wanted a quiet day of reflection. I planned to achieve this by taking my knitting and sitting out back with the donkeys nearby while I worked on my current project. What luck - the day promised to be unusually sunny and lovely. The temperature was a mild 65 degrees, with a slight breeze. A beautiful day for idling around the garden and the donkeys.

As you can see, I was not the only one who welcomed the sunny day! With his high-maintenance white coat, you'd think our cat would know better, but he couldn't resist lounging in the sun-warmed earth of the one of the small raised beds next to the kitchen.

I set out towards the donkey's main pasture, passing one of their dust baths on my way to a pretty spot where I could sit and knit. Look what the dust bath revealed, plain as day:

At first I thought these were groundhog prints, because we see those critters the most - and their paws are so well padded, but after consulting one of our wildlife books, I'm not so sure these aren't raccoon prints. Groundhogs have four "toes" in front and raccoons have five. Plus, it looks like the edge of the longer rear paw is visible in the lower left corner of the photo. The tracks couldn't have been there long, either, because the donkeys use their dust bath several times a day, especially when the day is sunny. But then that would mean that we have a raccoon traipsing around in the donkeys' dust bath during the day.

Speaking of donkeys, Molly and Ambrose most obligingly followed me to my knitting spot. They grazed nearby while I knit, an arrangement that seemed to content us all. Every once in a while, one of the donks would come over and visit with me while I scratched behind an ear or offered a treat of carrot or while Ambrose tried to mouth the yarn I was working with.

At one point, when I got up to stretch my legs, Ambrose ambled over to check out my unguarded knitting bag. At least that's what I thought he was up to, until he made it clear that his real interest was in sniffing the rock where I had been sitting. Have I ever mentioned how much the donkeys are like big dogs?!

After knitting for a good while, I took a walk with the donkeys before ending my relaxing afternoon sojourn. I passed under the tall spruce on my way to the house, and there - newly dropped - was the tree's latest gift:

Harbingers

Our crocuses have arrived! I almost missed them because my focus has been on other things, but yesterday was unseasonably warm and sunny - perfect for checking in on going's on in the garden. The daffodils have been shooting up for a few weeks now, and today they obliged us with their first blooms.

These are at the side of the barn, in view of Molly and Ambrose. I wonder if they appreciate the sight as much as we do? Not likely, but that's okay.

While the flowers are a welcome harbinger of Spring, we've also had some unwelcome activity from the local groundhogs and at least one... skunk. The skunk problem started a few weeks ago. At first we thought that maybe a skunk had been hit by a car on the road in front of our house. But the smell kept going away, then returning on different nights. Then we thought that perhaps a skunk had tried to help itself to our cat's food, and there had been a tussle followed by a spraying outside our kitchen door. But the smell outside went away fairly quickly, while inside the house, and especially in the cellar, the smell remained fairly strong. Then, one night around 3 am, we got hit with a renewed blast of skunk that was so strong, it woke me - gagging - from a sound sleep.

What to do?

Keith did a little research and discovered that skunks move from one den to another fairly often. They like to use burrows created by groundhogs, and we definitely have more than one entrance, and maybe even more than one burrow under the 90 feet of porch that wraps around two sides of the house. The Humane Society suggests persuading the tenants of these burrows to vacate by tossing ammonia-soaked rags into the holes, then semi-blockading the entrances so that we can tell if there is any new traffic. If the hole remains unused for a few days, it is safe to close it up without worrying about trapping anything inside.

Keith went looking for burrow entrances this morning, so we could plan our campaign. At the far end of the porch, near the outside entrance to the cellar, is a retaining wall. Last year, a new burrow entrance was dug into the top of the hill on the other side of the retaining wall. This morning, when Keith peeked inside the hole - a groundhog peered back up at him!

"It was cute." Keith said to me later, as he described the incident.

Cute?! The groundhogs are our sworn enemies. Their extensive digging can ruin buildings, create a misstep that can break a donkey's (or a person's) leg, and do untold damage to a garden. We're supposed to be vanquishing the vermin!

Later this afternoon, I went out to snap a quick photo of the groundhog hole for this post. If I stand on tip-toe and lean over the edge of the retaining wall, I can just see inside the hole. I stood. I leaned over. A groundhog - the groundhog - peered back at me, about 18 inches from my face.

Gahhh! What in the world was it still doing there? Shouldn't it have hightailed it the heck out of there this morning? I quickly held the camera above my head, pointed it at the hole and snapped, hoping for a decent shot.

It's not easy to see, but there it is.

Our first thought was to put a Hav-a-Heart trap near the opening, baited with something yummy, but we don't want to risk trapping a skunk instead of the groundhog. After all, how would you go about releasing a skunk? I keep imagining something to do with Marlin Perkins and tranquilizer guns.

And now I can't shake the thought that, if the groundhog had held its...er, ground since this morning, maybe it couldn't readily retreat or move to another burrow. Maybe it was protecting something. Maybe that something was a new batch of baby groundhogs.

Cute.

This is November?

A woman I know tells me that she can't stand to see what the first hard frost does to her annuals, so she rips them out before the frost comes. Somehow, I find it difficult to pull up prettily blooming flowers, even when it means I'll later be pulling out a sad mass of frost-killed blooms. This cosmo, for example, was still lookin' good yesterday. Even the impatiens, flowers that have little tolerance for cold, are hanging in there - that's how unseasonably warm it has been. But all good things must come to an end, and with our first below-freezing temps of the season expected tonight, today will be the annuals' last hurrah. This weekend, I'll clean out the last of the flower beds.

I'll also start raking; there's been none of that so far. What a strange fall this has been, as though the mini-drought early on, the one that prevented or delayed the trees colors changing to full glory, was also instrumental in the trees hanging onto their leaves that much longer. This week, finally, the leaves have started to fall in earnest. There is raking to be done.

While waiting for leaves to fall and frost to come, we've been cleaning the woodstove flues, splitting and stacking wood, knitting for the holidays, making pumpkin butter, practicing target-shooting with the recurve bow I got while we were on vacation this summer, making yogurt (inspired by Liz) and also yogurt cheese, and just generally hanging out with the donkeys and enjoying the crisp fall air when we can. Oh, and I just saved a bundle on health insurance. No, seriously, in addition to everything else, it has been the busiest time at the office of late because we're starting open season on insurance benefits. That's why I haven't been around as much, which I don't like. But we did save tens of thousands of dollars on my employer's insurance, which I like very much indeed.

Late season supper from the garden

Most of our late-season Mantises (or is it "Mantids"?) have gone brown in order to better blend into the landscape, but this one has kept her green coat. Given her surroundings, the green coat was still appropriate, even on what proved to be the tomato patch's last day before it got pulled out and dispatched to the compost bin.

Our green guest was not the only one to enjoy her supper from the garden yesterday. While cleaning out some of the beds, I gleaned the last of the little grape and pear tomatoes. About two cups of these little gems, combined with some hardy African basil (also from my garden), some diced red onion, good olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt were served with some excellent toasted crusty bread and fresh mozzarella for a tasty supper of bruschetta. It seems fitting that we enjoyed our first and last tomato harvest of the season in the same way.

As I look forward to a sunny day in the 70s, it's hard to believe that today is the last day of October. Temps supposedly got down to freezing last night, but we still have not had our first killing frost. From where I sit, I can look out into our courtyard garden and see Impatiens still in bloom. (I can also see out to the barn, where a couple of little donkeys are keeping watch for me to come out and give them some hay.)

Before I go visit the donkeys, here's a quick tip from a lazy gardener. In our remote location, we get no trick-or-treaters, so I don't go in for Halloween decorations the way I did in the 'burbs. But, if you happen to have a planter that became overgrown with weeds, thanks to your going on vacation and general inattention, and then the weeds died thanks to a drought and even more inattention, you can just plunk a big pot o' mums smack on top of the planter (anchored with a plant stake, if you must) and call the dead weeds a "design element."  As Count Floyd would say, "Oooooh, spooky!"

Happy Halloween, everyone!

So far, most of our fall color...

...is in the mums. The trees are only showing a little color so far this season, something I chalk up to our very dry introduction to autumn. Recent rains should make a difference, but thank goodness for a local farm stand that doesn't charge an arm and a leg for their incredibly full mums, now placed variously around our yard. Great for filling in the garden beds with a little late season color. In barn red:

And saffron orange:

Volunteer army

I don't know anything about growing pumpkins, but after one took over our compost bin in a wonderful volunteer effort, I figured I should study up on 'em. One of my all-time fave references for this sort of stuff is the Victory Garden Kids' Book because it's simple and straight-forward, clearly illustrated and photographed, and - since it's for kids - it doesn't promote the use of chemicals in the garden. Yes, there are plenty of organic gardening books around, but this book made for a great foundation when I planted my first tomato seedling almost 18 years ago and I am still learning. Anyway, back to the pumpkins, bless 'em. My trusty reference says to harvest them when they turn orange.... Well, yikes, but some of them turned orange a couple of weeks ago!

On this news, Keith and I headed for our ersatz pumpkin patch with a sharp pocket knife. Good pruning shears would have been handier; pumpkins are somewhat prickly, but the knife sufficed. Note to self: wear gardening gloves when picking pumpkins or grow thicker skin. Or just get your husband to do the harvesting again.

Keith was just in time with the knife. We quickly discovered that two pumpkins had already lost their stems and had gone soft and moldy in places. One of these just sort of turned into liquid as he tried to pick it up to re-compost it - perhaps the beginnings of next year's volunteer crop?

All in all, we harvested nine pumpkins yesterday - shown above with two volunteer pattypan squash and our lovable old beast of a white cat. Two of them were still a little green, but we were ready to clear out the vines and mow the overgrown part of our yard that had been taken over by pumpkins. We gave one pumpkin to our neighbor and another to a brother and sister-in-law. The rest await their fate in our cellar. Both our neighbor and our SIL expressed surprise over the earliness of the harvest, but our squash likely had a nice, warm head start in the protected confines of our compost bin. 

I tell you, this volunteer form of gardening is the way to go - do nothing but just see what pops up in the compost, kind of like pot luck. We already have volunteer tomatoes and petunias and a bunch of other things (but we call those weeds). Keith is already trying to hedge our bets for next year by planning an experiment that involves one of the too-far-gone pumpkins and a wheel-barrow full of donkey manure in hopes of another big producer. Next thing you know, we'll actually have a vegetable patch, and all that it entails, instead of a few tomatoes and herbs stuck in amongst the flower beds.

Now if those harvested pumpkins would just go and volunteer themselves right into a dozen pumpkin pies, sparing me the peeling, cooking, mashing....

Challenge within a challenge

As part of the August Eat Local Challenge, Tomatilla has issued the Paper Chef #9 - the Local Edition. In this challenge, participants are called upon to exercise their culinary skills and come up with a dish that makes tasty and imaginative use of selected ingredients. This month, extra points go to those who take the effort to use local ingredients - "the more local the better." This month the ingredients are:

1. Dried Chillies
2. Peaches
3. Edible flowers

What a combination! As luck would have it, I'm allergic to fresh, raw peaches, but I can eat them almost any other way: baked or cooked in any way, frozen, dried, or canned. Chutney seemed like a good way to go, but that would be best on something like a pork dish, and I don't eat pork (or beef, or most meat). I immediately thought: grilled peaches and ricotta with a spicy chipotle-cinnamon honey glaze. Fresh peaches are still in season here, and ricotta can be found locally. I already have local honey and dried chillies (local, from last year's CSA offerings) in the pantry and a choice of edible flowers from the garden. In particular, I had in mind either the nasturtiums (for beauty) or the cinnamon basil now starting to flower and go to seed (for amazing flavor).

I only caught wind of the challenge this morning, so all the way to work, I thought about combinations of the chosen ingredients. How about a leek soup with a spicy basil-peach pesto, garnished with nasturtium blossoms? Or a peach ice cream that warmed the tongue? Or a large ravioli filled with smokey chillies and peaches bound with local goat cheese? Or a cheesecake or tart....? I could only hope that someone would attempt (and post a recipe for) a chili-chocolate peach cake.

A killer day at the office didn't get me home until quite late, but I was determined to go with my first choice and try the grilled peaches. Keith had to work late, too, and when I came home I was surprised to find five messages waiting. One from a realtor who we don't know, referring to us by a name that's not ours, telling us that he understood that we are selling our place and is interested in listing it for us. Not true! Well, he may be interested in listing, but we are not interested in selling. Another message was from an unknown drunk-sounding guy saying "Charlie, man, I heard you blew out your back again, man. Give me a call, huh?" There was a message from bro-in-law number one, back from vacation, checking in. And there were the two messages from bro-in-law number two who was planning on putting my 78 year-old father-in-law on a plane home from Boston tomorrow only to have Pops admit that he would really really prefer not to be negotiating airports and airline travel all by himself after all - even though that's how he got up to Boston to begin with. Tom was going to put Pops on the plane, and Keith would be there to take him off, but if Pops is feeling anxious, well, we need to pay attention because not much makes Pops anxious.

So! Phone calls and whatnot ensued instead of grilled peaches, which is fine. Family and making sure Pops gets home safely is more important. The Paper Chef challenge will remain a paper challenge for me, at least for today.

You all have a good night - and please make sure your father (or father-in-law, as the case may be) knows he is loved.

Blue plate special

Update on the August Eat Local Challenge: After working 14 hours on Thursday and otherwise putting in some long hours last week, it seems there was not a lot of meal planning going on. Instead, before the weekend, we were simply grabbing, grazing, and noshing from the fridge and pantry.  That situation changed with the arrival of the weekend and my Friday visit to the farm where I participate in a CSA program. This week's share included:

• Head lettuce (it’s back after a heat wave caused the outdoor crops to bolt)
• Carrots
• Napa cabbage
• Green beans
• Squash (beautiful yellow and green Zephyrs)
• Cucumbers
• Cherry or Juliet tomatoes
• Slicing tomatoes
• Basil or parsley or another herb
• Fresh garlic
• A hot pepper or two
• A cantaloupe

As if this wasn't enough for two people, yesterday morning I made a trip to our local farmers' market and picked up half a dozen ears of bi-color corn ("Temptation") and some flowers.

Feeling gluttonous for simple, fresh veggies, supper consisted of:

• Steam/sauteed green beans with crispy shallots. The shallots were already on hand; I'm not sure where they're from, other than from the organic market.
• Cole slaw with a toasted sesame seed and soy dressing
• Sliced cucumbers and Vidalia onion marinated in rice wine vinegar Normally, I would have added dill, but didn't have any on hand and couldn't find any locally grown. The Vidalia was not local, but was authentic and already in my larder.
• Steamed fresh bi-color corn
• Grilled Zephyr squash and plum tomato halves
• Chilled melon

Marvelous summer simplicity!

(Hmmm, I wish I were a better food photographer.)

Washington County Farmers' Market
Prime Outlets:   Hagerstown
Prime Outlets Blvd. off Sharpsburg Pike
Wednesday:   3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.   
May 18 – October 26
Saturday:   10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.      
June 11 – September 24
Contact:  Pearl Martin 301-733-4551
WIC and Senior FMNP Checks Accepted
They sell only what they produce!

Day 3: let there be leftovers

Take someone who doesn't know how to prepare a dish that serves fewer than six people and put her in a household of just two, and what do you get? Leftovers.

Hooray for leftovers. It was 95 degrees today. Who wants to cook when it's 95 degrees? Even now, it's almost 80 (with humidity at more than 70 percent), but it's night-time so that means it's a dark heat, so it can't be that bad right?

Stay cool - and eat local. (Am I the only who has seen "local" so many times in recent days that it's starting to look like "lo-cal" as in "low calorie"?)

Our world of insects

Okay, forgive me, but I couldn't resist the cornball title. My five year old digital camera has been giving me grief of late, but as it happens, it rallied 'round when pressed into service in the garden this weekend. Here then, a quick tour. Word of warning for those who dislike creepy crawlies - you may want to skip this post and look at flowers or donkeys. If you like this kind of stuff, click on the pic for an extra close-up.

Ummm.... is this what I think it is? It looks awful. It looks painful. It looks... awfully painful. The poor caterpillar. Ummm, unless it's a Tobacco Hornworm parasitized by Braconid wasp (pupa stage) found in my ter-mater patch in which case I say "go, Braconid parasite, go!"

In less mysterious insect news, this has been a bad year for Japanese beetles. Not a bad year for them, au contraire, but a bad year for gardens being over-run by their insatiable selves.