You all don’t mind if today’s post is just a bunch more pictures of Stella, do you?
She’s been getting her fill of colostrum, too! In a few days, Luna will stop producing colostrum and start producing milk, and we’ll be able to start milking her! She and Stella will start spending 12 hours per day together, and 12 hours per day apart, so that we each will get half of Luna’s milk.
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Tagged Calves, Luna, posted by Caroline
It’s happened, you guys!!!
Sometime this afternoon between 2 and 4 pm, Luna walked into the copse of trees in our front pasture and delivered a beautiful baby heifer. Around 4, Zac walked into the pasture to check on her and found her with her baby.
She looks exactly– uncannily– like Luna. Same kohl-rimmed eyes and the same black-tipped ears, the same black muzzle and speckles.
Luna’s softly mooing at her to encourage her to stand up, licking her all over, and generally acting like a textbook new mother. It’s such a relief to see that all’s well with mama and baby!
We’re leaning pretty heavily towards naming her Stella.
I just am so grateful that a) it happened and b) that it happened so easily! Stella’s just as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as her mother. She’s about the size, I guess, of a medium-sized dog– maybe 40 or 50 lbs– but with long little fawn-like legs.
My heart is just melting. We are all so happy!
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Tagged Calves, Luna, posted by Caroline
So, remember how were super-hungry and tired the day we made shakshouka for dinner? That’s because I’d been gardening all day, and Zac had been building this fantastic potting table for the greenhouse! I swear, it belongs in Country Living.
It’s quite shallow, but runs about 2/3 the full length of the greenhouse, and is exactly the perfect height for me. There’s a lower shelf for storing flowerpots, seed trays, and other big things. But the best part is the slatted section for potting, which features a drawer to catch and reuse any extra potting soil. Just another reason to look forward to winter– I’m in love!
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Tagged Features, gardening, posted by Caroline
It’s an ironic truth that the late summer– when it’s hottest and driest, and gardening interest begins to flag– is the busiest time of the year in the garden. Not only is there harvesting to be done (although the crazy heat put a damper on some of that), but it’s time for the fall garden to be put in, and there are preparations to be made so that next spring’s garden is as fruitful and floribundant as it is now. It’s a time of year to test any gardener’s dedication, and a time of year that will pay off for the longest time.
We had a couple from Texas stay with us for a farmstay this past spring who joked that the summer was their winter, and that the coming of the cool weather in the autumn was their springtime. I think it’s a pretty fair assessment and a smart way of looking at things to consider the late summer and early fall a second spring in the garden.
As such, we’re doing lots of work to get the garden ready for fall. These are those cabbage seedlings from a few weeks ago:
We’ve thoroughly enriched the old garlic bed with compost for transplanting the seedlings once they get a little bit bigger:
We’ve also got a few beds in cover crops– cowpeas and alfalfa– which will help protect and enrich the soil for the next 8 months:
It isn’t all work and no play, though! The herb garden in the front that Diane helped me plant is doing great!
The sunflowers and German chamomile are worth their weight in gold– I feel so happy whenever I see them. Zac and I are thinking of planting the whole fenceline with sunflowers next year, but I don’t know whether or not we’ll have the energy (or if Jerry will reach his long llama-neck over the fence and eat them all!).
The tiny, tiny crop of raspberries is nearly ripe:
and I have a feeling that, in about two weeks, the coronets of blossoms on our second-string tomato plants will be replaced by wreaths of fruit. We’ll be ripping out the beds of tomatoes pretty soon to plant peas– we’re hoping to squeeze in a fall crop– but these plants will stand along the garden fenceline until the frost comes.
And the brave leeks that Emily helped me plant are also doing wonderfully. The super-thick layer of mulch they’re growing in not only keeps their stalks blanched, but also keeps their roots cool and moist.
How is your garden doing in this record-breaking heat? What are you doing to get ready for the fall?
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Tagged Features, gardening, posted by Caroline
Earlier this week, Zac and I found ourselves at the end of the day without any plan for dinner– we’d spent the day building a greenhouse table (him) and getting the vegetable beds ready for fall planting (me). We were starving, and getting grouchier by the minute (I’m particularly guilty of that one). Reader, it was a moment that called for convenience food.
There’s no food more convenient than an egg, except maybe a jar of home-canned tomato sauce. Luckily, we have both in great supply here at the farm.
I’d been repeatedly running across recipes for shakshouka, the North African breakfast dish of eggs poached in tomato and pepper sauce. I showed the recipe to Zac– it’s from Yotam Ottolenghi’s wonderful cookbook Plenty– and he told me he could adapt it to work with canned tomato sauce.
Here’s what you do.
Start by toasting off the cumin seeds in dry pan. This will really build the base flavor for the entire dish.
Leave the onion and pepper sliced large because they will cook for a long time and you want them to hold their shape. I also like to leave the spicy peppers in large pieces so that the whole dish does not become too spicy but there are still burst of spicy flavor.
Now cook both types of peppers and the onions in the pan with the cumin.
Add all of the spices and the sugar to coat the cooked pepper and onions. This helps to spread the flavor and make sure they are well incorporated.
Once the spices fully coat the peppers and onions add the tomato sauce and cook slowly. Do not add eggs until the sauce doubles in thickness.
Make little nests in the sauce to hold each egg. This helps the eggs to better poach in the sauce.
Once the eggs are set, serve with some crusty or flat bread. The dish makes a great hearty breakfast or a quick solution for dinner.
Ingredients
3 bell peppers
2 small red onions
4 jalepeño peppers
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 small bunch basil, minced
4 sprigs fresh thyme, minced
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups plan tomato sauce
4 eggs
Recipe:
Start by toasting the cumin seeds in a dry medium sized skillet. Once the seeds start to brown and become very aromatic add large julienned onion and bell peppers. Cook on a medium low heat until the onions become translucent and the peppers begin to brown. At this point add all of the remaining dry spices, thyme, and basil. Combine until the spices cover the peppers are onions. At this point add the brown sugar stir to combine and then quickly add the tomato sauce to prevent the sugar from burning. Now reduce the pan to a low simmer and cook until the sauce becomes at least twice as thick. Once thickened remove from heat and create 4 small nests in the onions and peppers that will hold the eggs. Add each egg quickly so that they will cook at the same speed. Return the skillet to a low heat and cook for 10-12 minutes slowly simmering. Once the eggs are cooked but still runny (you can cook the eggs all they way through if you prefer) remove from heat and serve with crusty bread.
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Tagged Features, food, posted by Caroline
We’ve got a whole bed of peppers waiting in the wings behind the corn (thank you all for your kind– and very helpful!– comments on that post, by the way), peppers which, by rights, shouldn’t be here in the first place.
Since we lost our first set of pepper seedlings in the Great Tomato Freeze of mid-April, I remember planting the seeds for these guys in early May. During our Spring Shearing party in mid-May, the little overloaded (my fault) greenhouse collapsed, which wiped out a full half of the seedlings– all our jalapenos and most of the Thai chiles.
The plants that survived have endured all sorts of disasters. I remember planting the tiny seedlings in June with Charlotte, and, honestly, I think we half-forgot they were there. With the dramatic and beautiful rows of corn acting as a screen, who remembered to bother looking at some scrabbly little pepper plants?
Somewhere in there, Zac put a thick straw mulch on them, but we’ve otherwise left them to their own devices. Luckily, they love the hot and dry weather we’ve been having.
The large majority of our plants are Alma Paprika peppers, which, the seed packet promises, change from a creamy white through yellow and orange to a cherry red. After ripening, you can either eat them fresh or smoke them to make paprika (guess which one we’re planning on doing?).
The plants are loaded with peppers, glossy, healthy, and still flowering– all there is to do is endure the wait for these I-can’t-believe-we-actually-have-them peppers to ripen.
Once the season’s over (come on, Autumn!) I’m planning on digging up a few plants, in the hopes that I can get them to produce peppers throughout the winter in the greenhouse. If any of you have ever done anything like that before– maybe with an ornamental pepper?– I’d love some tips!
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Tagged Features, gardening, posted by Caroline
There have been a few questions about Luna, our sweet and beautiful dairy cow, and so I’d like to answer them all in one post.
1. Luna is doing fine– happy and healthy, eating grass and drinking water. This is a picture of her from this morning.
2. She’s still pregnant. You remember that Doctor Grover came out to confirm her pregnancy back in June– the direct quote, and most memorable picture in my mind is our vet, reaching all the way up to his shoulder into Luna, and saying, “Yep. Feels like a face.”
3. Zac wakes up every single morning before dawn so that he can check and see whether or not she’s calved. We rearrange any and all travel plans so that someone is always at the farm with Luna, in case she calves. Every waking hour at the farm, we’re on hair-trigger Luna-watch– jumping up from the dinner-table because it looks like she’s lying down is a not uncommon occurrence. If she were in labor, it’s well-nigh impossible that we wouldn’t see it.
And every waking hour, this is our answer from her. Believe me, I know it’s frustrating.
4. Thank you so, so much for your intelligent, insightful, love-motivated comments– we love hearing from you! I promise that we’ll tell you when the blessed event occurs.
5. Even if she weren’t pregnant, and even if she never calved, we would still love her to pieces. She was a wonderful gift from a dear friend, and is just as sweet and affectionate as you please. I hate to make Luna feel like we only care about her calf.
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Tagged Calves, Luna, posted by Caroline
Because those puppies don’t seem to care about their new pool, we decided to take some animals swimming who actually might like the pool.
The ducklings are two or three times bigger than they were at the beginning of July.
And we’re starting to be able to tell them apart, too. We’ve had to take them away and raise them by hand, since Lucy was helping herself to the nest a little more frequently than we were comfortable with. It’s a bit more work, but it’s definitely worth it.
There were some scary visitors who wanted to investigate the pool, but we kept them away.
There was also some head scratching,
a few barrel rolls,
and maybe even a fledgling romance.
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Tagged ducks, posted by Caroline
Some of our many, many chickens.
Bingley
Happy Cini
Willoughby. The more I look at her, the more I think she looks like Alabama.
Perseus and Lyra, two peas in a pod.
Little Clark, and all the lambs behind him.
Corvus and Canis
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Tagged ewes, Features, In Pictures, lambs, posted by Caroline, sheep
About a week ago, I tasted one of the most wonderful delights of summer. From our county’s Farmer’s Market, Susan had brought home a half-dozen ears of picked-this-morning corn. They were cooked as simply as possible: grilled, with butter, salt, and pepper. These ears were so deliciously sweet that, I swear, instead of corn, I tasted coconut, and toasted hazelnuts. These ears of corn were outrageous in their perfection, and I was happy, because I knew that our homegrown corn would be ripening soon, and that we’d enjoy days and days of the same delights.
However, there’s something I didn’t realize.
The variety of corn that I had tasted, despite being sold at the Farmer’s Market, was undoubtedly one of the modern-day super-sweet hybrids (not the hybrid feed-corn variety maligned in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but just as guilty, I suspect, of being genetically tampered-with). The variety that we grew this year, Golden Bantam, is an heirloom variety, suited for those who a) want to avoid GMOs and b) are tired of super-sweet corn, and just want that “real corn” flavor.
As someone who grew up on super-sweet corn– actually, on microwaved packets of Green Giant Extra-Sweet Niblets in Cream Sauce– the taste of real corn was a bit of a shock. I was disappointed in myself when I found that I didn’t like it as much.
The real disappointment came, however, in how the corn looked:
Those empty kernels are places were the corn wasn’t pollinated. A bit of corn pollen has to fall on ever tip of every strand of cornsilk– since every strand of cornsilk leads back down to a developing kernel– in order for the corn to fill out properly. They advise that you plant your corn in blocks, not rows, so that the pollen has a better overall chance of landing on the silk. “At the very least,” they advise, “plant your rows of corn 3 plants deep,” which is what I did, thinking that that would be enough.
There are definitely good-looking ears of corn out in the garden, but they’re not the golden and paradisaical crowning glories that I had been imagining.
It’s disappointing (and embarrassing? But I figured I ought to go ahead and tell my story.). I’ve definitely learned a few lessons about how to plant corn (in blocks!), and a very obvious lesson about which varieties of corn to plant (the kind you want to eat, not the kind you think you ought to grow).
I threw the ears out as a rare treat to Charley & Churchill, who, having no prior experience with corn or built-up expectations, chowed down with a pure and piggy joy.
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Tagged Features, food, gardening, pigs, posted by Caroline