A Peeping Spring Tonic

My friend, Faith, came out from the city to have lunch today, bringing along the six baby chicks she had just purchased at our local feed and seed. We had a heat lamp set up over a galvanized tub to keep her little pullets warm while we visited, but soon cuddled up with the fuzzy little 5 day-old chicks, tucking them in our shirts to keep them warm, delighting in nosing their fuzzy down, their pipping voices, their tiny scrambling feet. How invigorating new life is, in celebration of the end of winter!

 Just the sound of spring chicks peeping is a natural tonic to the winter-pressed soul.  Right now is the time to visit your local feed and seed or Tractor Supply Center to simply listen to the sounds of peeping, whistling, chirrupping chicks.  Immediately, the sound triggers a sense of joy at the new life thrumming and thriving in springtime.

Though some days still feel raw and blustery, spring has begun, if you know where to look for it!

If you can't get out to a feed and seed to see baby chicks, here's a link to a Hawk's Hill Farm video of our chicks growing up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HDpiJuqS7U

Hoping you are cozy as this little chick, and enjoying the harbingers of spring!
Betsy

A Late March Foraging Walk

Snowflakes have danced over the greening grass all day long.  At dusk, just after David and I came in from our venturing, a wall of white swept in over the neighbor's pasture from the southwest, making me glad for indoors and warmth.  Muddy knees.  A mug of tea.  A soft seat where I can watch the bread bake in the hot oven.  Simple pleasures work their magic on my soul.

The tail end of winter is the time of year that seems the hardest to eat locally, but I love to defy such rules of thumb. I took a basket and a trowel along when David and I went out to pull the taps on the Sugar Maples.  After we removed the spiles and thanked the trees, we stopped down to visit the hens and give them some stale bread.

Down by the chicken tractor, outside of the electric fence is a bed of Jerusalem Artichokes, also known as sunchokes.  A native to North America, the wild sunflower produces knobbly tubers that Native Americans cultivated and ate.  In just a few minutes, I had dug an easy handful of the roots, which I now munch on.  Crunchy, earthy and a little sweet, the tubers are surprisingly mild-flavored for a wild food.  Like most wild foods, the J-chokes are high in nutrients including iron, potassium, thiamine and fiber.  They are high in inulin, a carbohydrate that is considered diabetic-friendly (though consuming a lot of inulin leads to flatulence), and are a crunchy addition to salads, or may be cooked like potatoes.  I've even seen recipes for fried sunchoke chips.  As with all wild foods, positive identification is critical.  I had planted the Jerusalem artichokes in that spot and watched them bloom, so I knew what I was digging, but if you go hunting J-chokes, make absolutely certain you've got the right plant. This time of year, without flowers or leaves present, identification is much more difficult.  (My favorite field guide is the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants.)

The tops of the tall sunflowers still bear seed heads.

Digging at the base of the old stalks yields golden nuggets of wild food.

 

The product of 5 minutes of scratching the earth.

I suppose I could add the collection of some icy cold and delicious Sugar Maple sap to the wild and local food collection, as I kept some of the last sap to drink.  I pulled the taps because the red maples' buds are beginning to swell, which will make the sap taste bitter when boiled down.  And because with the thaw, my attention must go to the garden now.

The last of the maple sap.

I also collected 14 eggs from the hens.  Back inside Soulstice, lettuce greens growing under lights have sprung back from the last picking.  Maybe I'll make up a salad of lettuce, leftover carrots dug on my last foraging walk, hard-boiled eggs, and a maple syrup-based dressing!

Even if you don't have J-chokes to dig or hens on the yard, you can eat local food treats right now.  I'll leave you with an easy dessert recipe you can try this weekend:

Baked Custard

2 cups Brunton's milk
2 eggs from Shepler's Farm (if you don't have your own flock)
1/4 cup local honey or maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Beat all ingredients together with a wire whisk.  Place four ramekins, small mugs or heavy teacups in a lasagna pan or other baking dish.  Fill ramekins/cups with sweetened milk-egg mixture and pour boiling water into pan to surround the cups.  Bake for 30-45 minutes or until a knife inserted near the edge of a custard cup comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool completely before covering and refrigerating.  Best served cold, and delicious plain or with fresh fruit.

In the end, eating wild and food you've collected from the land or purchased from a farmer produces a feeling of connection to the land, a sense of groundedness and gratitude.

May you find ways to connect with the land even on snowy, cold, blustery days like today.
Betsy

Waxing Towards Spring

The narrow moon hangs bright in the dark sky tonight.  Waxing.  It is building towards full, just as we are building each day towards the land awakening and beginning the life cycle of the farm again. Saturday, we boiled down 20 gallons of maple sap over a wood fire outdoors to make a half gallon of syrup.  Our first crop of the year has been harvested and canned up.  Beyond the syrup production, the day gave us peeks of sunshine to bask in and visits from friends curious to experience small scale maple sugaring firsthand.  An old country friend from my childhood would have called Saturday "a red-letter day."  The kind that slips past too quickly, filled with glimpses into friends' true thoughts, shared laughter, and delightful surprises. Like when my friend, Cheryl, offered to make vegan biscuits to feed the hungry little boys running about the farm.  She taught the boys how to mix up the dough and roll it out, letting the 3 year-old knead and help pat and cut out the dough.  In a trice, Cheryl popped two trays of biscuits into the oven. We took the basket of piping hot quick breads down to the fire to nosh on with butter and damson plum jam while we chatted and stirred the pans.  So many stories & connections --the sun set on us chatting.

Inside Soulstice, the broccoli, cabbages and Brussels sprouts I started in January have nearly overgrown their plant stand, and it is time to start heirloom tomatoes and peppers for the garden.  I spent yesterday potting up leeks, onions, kale, and lettuce plants, and filling trays with potting soil to start tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in.

Broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts reach for the sunshine

A source of winter salads.

Leek and onion transplants.

Today found me out in the woods at Raccoon Creek State Park, taking time away from the farm to prepare for a class I will teach in Nature Journaling this Sunday afternoon at the Park.  For more information or to register, click here.

Handmade nature journals ready for class participants.

While rambling the spring woods, I recorded these thoughts:

A Time of Awakenings-- Maple buds burst red and bulbous, Spring Beauties reach narrow green fingers through pale oak leaves, the Turkey Vultures sail again the azure afternoon sky, and the world fills with light.  Lighter coats, brighter sunshine, lighter hearts now unburdened with the first week of warmth behind us.  Again I can lay on the forest floor and gaze at the mesh of arms and twiggy fingers above me.  Again I hear the humble burble of bluebird voices.  Again my hand sketches unmittened.  Last week's exhalation and shaking off of winter's crushing weight has unfurled into this week's grateful acceptance of new expectations.  The snow that showered us yesterday couldn't linger past noon today.  The pruning put off by February's cold is scheduled.  The chickens will leave the barn tomorrow to return to pasture.  Seeds sprout under lights.  Birds sing us to the bus stop at sunrise, and driving is easy on dry pavement again.  Welcome spring and the easing of the soul.

May a sense of spring dawn upon your soul this week,
Betsy

Our cat Chubby reveling in the spring sunshine.

Tiny New Year

(Blast from the past -- This post was written in early January and temporarily forgotten!)

January is full of tiny joys, the time of year when you feel the pause after the party, the quiet after the rush, the simple after the lavish.   The seemingly still landscape reveals small wonders.  Today's tiny things for me included the joy of whisking bread crumbs off the wooden cutting board onto the snow by the kitchen door for the Juncos and sparrows; the pleasure of eating a small bowl of warm oatmeal with my True Love at the kitchen counter; watching the sun come out after the snow, clearing the sky momentarily to blue dazzlement;  watching a dust devil whisk glittering snowflakes into a fairy spiral in the air, only for an instant.  The quiet of the house seeps in; the voice of the wind sings its ancient song, cutting runes in the snow; the cats curl and nap; and peace settles in my heart, knowing the day lies open to be filled with words.

This morning, just after sunrise, as Kate and I walked against the biting wind to the bus stop, we tucked our heads against a buffetting zephyr and spotted our cat, Chubby, astride our boots.  Oh no!  The one cat who follows, puppy-like, and has no sense of cars managed to sneak out behind us on our way towards the road at rush hour.  I spied the old greenhouse down the hill, scooped up the cat, and tucked him in amongst the dead weeds and dry perennial herb stalks.  He'd be safely contained there for 15 minutes away from the rushing traffic.  When I came back, he was happy to be picked up and cuddled, and expressed his gratitude by purring and rubbing against my parka.  Nuzzling his warm fur, I inhaled sage and catnip, the scents of summer he had encountered in his captivity.  Add another tiny joy to the morning.

A stop in at Soulstice to draw water into two plastic watering cans and snatch a bag of vegetable scraps from the kitchen sink, and my dog and I were back out in the wind heading for the barn.  In their cozy coop, the hens attacked the carrot chunks, parsnip peels and turnip tops while I cleaned and filled their water fount, topped off the feeder and stuffed new hay into their nests.  Standing back for a moment, just taking in the fluffy golden hens busily scratching, pecking, commenting in their growling, clucking voices brought a glow of satisfaction.  One hen scrambled up into the manger, where the 5 gallon buckets and loose hay offered inviting nesting places.  She purred and chuckled as she settled into a lofty pile of new hay, apparently finding the fresh bedding irresistible.  Mark the industry and vigor of the hens as another tiny pleasure -- just a moment in the day.

Today's chore of cleaning out the pantry, culling withered sweet potatoes and soft onions, combining half-full boxes of potatoes, and removing the last butternut squash from a bushel basket led to the discovery of various root vegetables that needed to get used up.  So dinner consisted of Trader Joe's Vegan Chorizo , mashed potatoes and a variety of veggies roasted using Ina Garten's recipe.  The joy of fresh space and order in the pantry, the joy of dinner inspiration upon finding veggies that needed a purpose, mingled with the joy of hungrily nibbling hot sweet potatoes fresh from the oven with David. We have been carefully cutting back our diets to lose a few winter pounds, so when dinnertime comes, we are famished.  And food becomes more potent -- the need fulfilled satisfies more deeply than a whim entertained.

The pleasure of dining at the kitchen counter with David and Kate; the contentment of our warm Soulstice on a cold, snowy, blowy night; the knowledge that our butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and mashed taters came from the now-frozen earth just down the hill from Soulstice nourished my soul.  In fact, I had just the day before walked my garden cart down through the garden gate and loaded it with 10 pounds of carrots, 5 pounds of turnips and rutabagas, a grocery bag of kale with snippets of oregano and cutting celery, and several pounds of parsnips.  The heavy tines of the digging fork that had stuck in frozen earth earlier were able to pierce the now soft mud and pry out some experimental parsnips.  Though I planted them in July, much later than recommended, the cool, rainy weather favored them, and the earth offered up surprisingly thick 10-inch roots, sweetened by the winter weather and untroubled by the many frozen nights.  I had to cut off the top inch or two of most of the carrots as they had been frozen with the earth.  But the hens loved the soft (unspoiled) carrot tops, and the rest of the roots are sweet, juicy and delicious raw.

As I look ahead, I can see winter stretching  out, garden planning, seed ordering, reading and considering new strategies for our homestead.  But for now, I will just relish the moment and the tiny joys of January.

May your winter be blessed with many tiny joys.
Betsy

A Celebration of Color

The sun peeks out from behind clouds, and peers down over the iciest driveway we've ever experienced on Hawk's Hill Farm since we moved here in 2007.  Two inches of solid, hard-frozen ice, polished to a glossy sheen by last night's rain have rendered the driveway so slippy, my dog skitters across it, and he's got claws and a 4-on-the-floor advantage over us humans.

I find it heartening to think that ancient people celebrated today, Groundhog's Day, as the beginning of spring.  Called Imbolc or Brighid, the day included spring cleaning, preparation for early spring livestock birthing, and taking inventory of the larder and hay stocks followed by a feast and celebration.  I reconsider the idea of the beginning of spring and think of the bright colors of Valentines I've been making and my seed orders, garden planning, and plans to tap the upwelling of spring sap from Sugar Maples.  The days are noticeably growing longer.  Today we are halfway between the longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice on December 21, 2014, and the Spring Equinox on March 20, 2015.



So Happy Brighid!  Happy spring!  Happy Groundhog's Day!  My celebration was to feast yesterday on local beef, home canned spaghetti sauce, organic pasta, homegrown green beans and fresh bread for the Superbowl, and to make these rainbow-colored Valentines, bright as spring itself.

Paper strips painted with Dr. P.H. Martin's Liquid Watercolor (found at a yard sale long ago).

Strips glued down and then printed with a carved wood block.

Wallpaper sample, feed bag and old music sheeting combined with a wine cork heart stamp. 

Bubble wrap painted and used as a stamp.

 

Remember waxed paper and crayon-shavings ironed in a sandwich of brown paper bag?  So simple and cheap, now just cut out a heart and gluestick it on the cardstock.

I used the tag ends of the wax-paper/crayon shaving hearts to make bookmarks.

May your days feel spring-y, your ice melt quickly and color and love fill your life.

Betsy

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