Harvesting Chestnuts

Saturday, October 12, 2014

Today is one of those perfect fall days that fill state park parking lots with cars, pickups and horse trailers.  The sky opened the day azure and full of sunshine to show sumac and maple leaves off to best advantage and has mellowed into a partly overcast with patches of its original brilliance, but even the clouds are white and gilded with sunshine.  And the sassafras and hickory leaves glow more golden and rich in the filtered light.

In the luster of the afternoon sun, a bowl of chestnuts sits, ancient as the White-Tailed Deer who I stole them from.  Our daughter, Sarah, home from college for the weekend, helped me gather the nuts from their prickly husks yesterday afternoon before dinner.  The deer had hoovered all of the nuts on the grass beneath the Chinese-American Chestnut hybrid that old Zeke planted years ago on the farm.  But, using sticks, Sarah and I were able to knock ripe nuts, still in their sharp-spined husks down and extract the beautiful chestnuts.

I don't know how ancient people managed to pluck the rich nuts from their prickly protection, but we used our sneakers to peel away the husks, popping open the seed ball and carefully picking out one, two or even three lustrous, earthy nuts to drop into our collecting bag.  When it came to reaching the really high-up nuts just out of reach of our sticks, we stood for a moment, puzzling how to snag them, wishing for the telescoping apple picker up the hill in the barn. Sarah brightened, "What am I thinking?  I'm standing next to a forest!"  and disappeared off into the woods, returning with a truly Olympic-length pole.  We bagged a bunch more nuts, enough to make a really good batch of roasted chestnuts.













Why is it that wielding a long stick, on a sunny Friday afternoon, gathering food from the land makes me feel that delight of childhood?  How natural it feels to gather nuts, to chat with our dear Sarah, to listen to the Blue Jays in the woods, and breathe the fresh autumn air.  Humans were made to interact with the land, with each other, and to admire the beauty of the earth and all of Creation.

May you find the fruits of the land, and the beauty of the land in sustaining abundance this week!
Betsy

Rainy Day Friends

Thank God for the dedicated customers who come out with umbrellas on a rainy October market day, for they made my day on Monday as they zipped up and bought dinner rolls, fresh chocolate cakes or a pumpkin bread.  A quick word of chit chat, a shared smile, and they were gone.  Angels unaware perhaps of the gift they bestowed on this baker and her hard-working man.  We were up at work at 6 am, mixing up dough (me), rolling out the second oven (David) and tending to the new flock of pullets (David).   And we busied straight through -- baking, cooling and packaging pies. cakes and breads, loading the truck with tables and tent, bags and baskets -- until we bagged the last warm raisin breads, loading them in the truck and bumping down the gravel driveway and out onto our country road.  The morning's sunny disposition, the brilliant blue sky crisp white clouds and winds that whisked the glowing leaves -- embers of the Sugar Maple's earlier autumnal flame -- had inspired my baking as I kneaded whole wheat bread dough for loaves, and blended up butternut squash for pumpkin breads.  I kept asking "Please stay, blue sky."  But as Robert Frost discovered, "Nothing gold can stay."

In hunching under raincoats and umbrellas, in dodging under our market tent to stay dry while shopping, in bringing the kids to pick up fresh food right after school, everyday folks, our regulars, brought the sunshine back into the day, and brought the light of gratitude to my heart.  So, thank you, heroes!

Funny thing, When we thanked customers for coming out in the rain, they seemed surprised for the gratitude, as if they didn't understand the good they had bestowed on the raincoat-clad farmers behind tables of zucchinis, spaghetti squashes, tomatoes, apples, and bushel baskets of corn, cabbage and sweet bell peppers.  So this post is dedicated to those little things you do that bring joy to others -- pulling in to say hi and buy a sticky bun and a bag of crisp fall apples or a bundle of kale. Simple, small, but with a positive ripple in someone else's day.

We had worried that the rain that began to patter down just at the opening bell of market, would keep customers away, and we wouldn't make gas money.  But, by the afternoon's end, we sold most of our miniloaves, chocolate cakes and apple pies, and many of our risen breads.  Including most of our sticky buns. I was grateful to buy some organic broccoli from Bill Bertram's booth, pack up the truck and get down the road to dinner and warmth.

The fall harvest continues.  Come see us at the parking lot of the Weirton Goodwill and the Newlife Worship Center, 306-308 Penco Road, Weirton, WV.  Click here for a Google Map & street view of the lot.  (You can see our "King Corn" sign against the light post.)  We will be there every Monday from 3 to 6 pm, rain or shine from now until the end of October.  You can also visit the Weirton Market on Facebook.

There's still time to get some great local food!
Betsy

Harvest Week

Warning:  The end of this post has graphic, step-by-step photos of butchering a chicken.   Please don't scroll past the beets unless you feel comfortable viewing them.

Our week has felt very autumnal, and very focused on gathering in the harvest.  Monday was bean picking and a crazy lot of baking in preparation for our Weirton Market.  Tuesday found me with a bushel basket of beets to can for winter eating.  

The morning dawned foggy and magical, and I tried out a quicker way to peel the beets this year.  I used to say my little paring knife was my favorite food processor -- it still is -- but since my friend Walter gave me a hand-crank apple peeler, slicer and corer, I have become a believer in speeding up food prep with the right tool.  The coring & slicing apparatus is removable, allowing me to spear a round beet, and crank merrily away.  I chopped the beets, boiled them for 5 minutes in water, and then filled wide-mouth quart jars with the cooked beets and 1/2 teaspoon of salt before sealing and processing them for 35 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure in my pressure canner.  As I worked, rain moved in over Hawk's Hill, and the cooler temperatures had me closing windows and feeling cozy and delighted to be in the kitchen putting by for chilly days ahead.

The 25 pounds of beets we bought from Jodikinos Farm at Weirton Market yielded 18 quarts of finished beets.  They look like ruby jewels lining the pantry shelf, and feel like earthy insurance against the dullness of winter.

And I had all of the peels to feed to my pullets!

Chicken Harvesting  

Wednesday was chicken harvesting day, and time to take 14 older birds from the yard to the freezer for more winter meals.  The flock had been our laying flock, but had ceased to lay much, so it was time to make room in the chicken tractor for the young birds growing up in the barn.  

Here's the hen in hand.

Chicken harvesting takes some planning ahead: I watch the weather, for I butcher the birds outdoors.  We set up the equipment the night before.  I used to read over Carla Emery's instructions in The Encyclopedia of Country Living, but I've done it enough, that I can "hear" her simple words in my mind, along with my mother-in-law, Anna's remembrances of her own mother cleaning chickens for dinner.  Anna's job was to catch and kill the chicken, and bring it to her mother to scald, pluck, clean and fry.  Just before my first adventure killing chickens, Anna described the process her mother used, carefully showing me the hand motions her mom used to clean the entrails out of the carcass.  Every time I harvest chickens, I picture Anna's hands as we sat at her kitchen table, demonstrating the careful scooping motion her mom used.  It was valuable instruction, and like much of what I do out here on Hawk's Hill, I felt the presence of these homesteading women alongside me as companions and to give me confidence when I felt uncertain of my skills.

When I have the first chicken in hand, I often think about my own limited lifespan, look out at the day, give thanks for what I have, and imagine, if this were my day to leave this earth, what would I want to last see and experience?  In this way, the chore takes on spiritual depth.

Our butchering equipment was very inexpensive, made from leftover items in the barn, or plucked from the dumpster (in the case of the double sink).

I always wear a heavy glove on my left hand to
prevent cutting myself.

David made me a killing cone from sheet metal attached to a 5-gallon bucket.  Filled half full with water, the bucket holds the chicken securely, allowing me to quickly sever the main artery in the neck, humanely killing the chicken, and prevents the "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" stage of chicken butchering.  Keeps the bird clean.


   The blood drains into the bucket of water.

After rinsing the dead bird with a garden hose to wet the feathers, I dunk it in boiling water for 30 seconds to make plucking easier.

Chicken plucking is easier on my Buff Orpingtons than the few Dominiques I raised.  The Buffs' feathers just come out in fistfulls after scalding, leaving a white, clean skin.

Passing the carcass quickly through a
flame burns off the fine hair-like feathers you can't pluck.














Then, I remove and discard the feet...

... and the head.  Then I cut off the neck from the carcass to save for making stock.


 I make a very careful cut between the hip bones. I must not cut into the intestines to keep from fouling the meat. This is the opening that allows me to reach in to loosen the entrails with my hand.  Pretty soon, the innards are outed and I carefully cut around the cloaca to allow the entire mass to drop into the trash bag.

 I always look over the entrails to check for any sign of disease.  The entrails look clean, and I found one last egg inside this old hen.

Outing the innards

This is the gall bladder and the most important part of the entrails not to break.  Any meat that the bile touches must be thrown out -- a waste

 The finished bird is ready to be washed with soap and water inside and out, rinsed, ziplock-bagged, put into a grocery bag and weighed.  This one weighed in at 3 pounds, 5 ounces and went into the deep freeze.

As the week draws to a close, I plan to spend tomorrow tidying and reorganizing my pantry so that I can get to all of those canned beets, salsas, onions braids and bushel boxes of potatoes.

Thanks for sticking with me through this long post.  The more we know about our food and how it is processed, the better we are able to make decisions about our food.  In the case of our home-raised chicken, I feel grateful knowing that the birds were raised without antibiotics, without animal by-products in their feed, and having lived a clean life in the fresh air on pasture.  When I come to the end of my days, I will give thanks for having lived in the fresh air, on the good earth myself, with the grace of God and the balm of home-harvested foods to sustain me and my family.

Wishing you a happy harvest week,
Betsy