little cows & spotted dogs

There’s nothing like taking a ride in this season when the color is coming on and the days are high and blue and breezy, and so, a few days ago, I drove up northwest of Brandon to Spotted Dog Farm. Once there, I surveyed the vistas and spied not one cow. In fact, I’d been talking to Susan and Chic Whiting for a good half hour and the only animal I’d encountered was the enthusiastic and eponymous spotted dog, himself named Hawk, and a spotted pony that we were leading down to a corral. Oh, the registered Irish Dexter Cattle were off in a field (a breezy wave of the hand), said Susan, but I was beginning to doubt it. This wasn’t Montana, for instance, where a beeve could wander miles in its quest for grass.

But darned near it! There were 35 or so head of those diminutive cattle on 185 acres, and they were clear and way back on the back forty. Finally some black- and cinnamon-colored dots began to detach themselves from the rising treeline of one field and, like a wave, rushed the length of the field, stopping in a clump five feet away from us, heads down, necks stretched, their round nostrils whiffing and blowing bubbles, half-masticated clumps of grass sticking out the sides of their faces. These were the yearlings, half a dozen of them or so, sequestered from the mammas and babies so they might begin to learn to wear a halter and come when called.

Susan and Chic see their operation ultimately with three aims – cattle for beef, milk, and burden. At this point the meat operation is in full swing – they are able to sell the beef from six of the animals a year at the Rutland Farmers’ Market, and soon will sell from their farm store, too.

As for milking them – that’s in the future for now, and Chic and Susan doubt they’ll milk for themselves, but will raise the cows to sell for milk. And for burden. For these little cows are gentle, smart, and trainable, and can be used in pairs as farm-teams to do farm work. They will eventually – beginning with these six – be halter-trained, and sold for this purpose, too.

A person or two could own one or two of these little cows and have their own – very creamy – milk, a team, if two, to help pull up stumps or do other farm work, and, eventually, with careful breeding, beef to eat. Gee whiz, and Gee Haw.

The little cattle – boxy like angus or Hereford, but slightly smaller than the Jersey, to my eye – are fully grass-fed, grazing rotationally all the time grass grows green, and eating that grass in the form of hay in the winter, during which they retain the freedom to roam about and snuffle out what winter fodder they might, yet with the option of the open-sided barn for protection against the elements. They have their treats, too, which consist of beet pulp, the stuff that is left after beets are crushed and wrung for their sugar, then dried and compressed. They also love alfalfa squares, and apples from the many apple trees on the property.
We walked back up to the house and I sat on the porch to make some notes.

The Whitings have been here since 2001, with the first of the Irish Dexters, living in a small trailer until their house was hauled up the road in three parts. It’s a pretty house – cape on one side and ranch – with that long porch – on the other, perched on a high gentle rise. There’s a view of the Adirondacks and the acres are hilly, and were overgrown until they began the process of pulling out the Buckthorne that had taken over. What had been 300 acres belonging to the Vermont Land Trust, had been divided into two pieces. It hadn’t been farmed in maybe fifty years and, when it had been, it was a dairy farm.

Working with the Vermont Land Trust has been invaluable to them, a liaison visiting once or twice a year to help keep them in compliance with Land Trust rules and regulations and to offer other kinds of help. It was he who connected them with Diane Heleba at the USDA office in Rutland.  Sally Eugair, from the same office, helped them with a Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP), to bolster up some areas and protect the wetland. EQUIP helped them deal with water quality. Cindy Watrous, from USDA, helped with a cattle nutritional program through a class that Susan took in Middlebury. And Willie Gibson and the Vermont Farm Viability Enhancement Program helped them produce a business plan.

“Networking is what it’s all about,” Susan says.

These names come as easily from their lips as from those of many other farmers I’ve talked to, because these people and agencies have been generous and helpful with their knowledge. And with that help, Chic and Susan have done an incredible job with infrastructure – water lines, barns, and berming of the land into paddocks – and growing a healthy herd.

“Wanna take the (John Deere) Gator and go find the main herd?” Chic asks, and I say an emphatic YES, having feared I’d taken up too much of their time already.

Well, shades of being 12 again. It’s been many many years since I’ve been on a tractor, and this little vehicle is much like one, though it has two seats and a small truck bed. Chic drives, I ride shotgun, and Susan is in the back. She slides off to open the many gates and close them behind us.

We wind up tippy, crooked little paths, around hills, down the farm path, all the way to the back of the farm, and there we find the main herd as we stop at one end of the field. After eyeing us quizzically from afar, the herd thunders bellowing to us down the length of the field. Some of them have wide and wickedly pointed horns. Those I do not approach, though I mix with some of the hornless mommas and babies.

Then Chic turns the Gator around and leads them out of that grazed paddock up to a nearer ungrazed one. It’s a slow start – they stand watching us at first but then notice that the gate is open and Susan and Chic are calling them and they suddenly thunder after us. It’s a wild race, the little truck with a slight lead as wild-eyed, wickedly horned beasts pursue us through the brush. Susan points out the hilly patches that they’ve cleared of buckthorn and other invasives. That’s a nice job, I say, imagining the challenge of it and long days spent outside doing this work. “It’s a good winter job,” says Susan. It’s the kind of  job, I know, that beaches you in the evening in front of a fire and crock-potted stew, feeling immense gratitude at having done real, hard, grown-up work!

The cattle are now contentedly grazing on the new grass, Susan fastens the gate behind us and we return to the house.

My friend, Ann Tiplady, from Red Houses Farm in Wallingford, constantly raises the issue, “Can one make a living raising beef cattle? And if one can’t, should one be occupying oneself in this manner?”
And so I ask the Whitings if they can make a living off this way of life.

“No,” is the answer to that. A rueful “no.” Susan works as a Physical Therapist at the Rutland Hospital, and Chic, a retired policeman from the Hyannis Port area, drove a school bus for several years after moving here but now works fulltime on the farm. He tells me that it is the prevailing wisdom that you’d need 300 head to make a living from it, and that would require a farm several times the size, and then, of course, it becomes a chore. But that number would be for a regular commercial herd. The Whitings rely on ‘value added’ to make a profit, and that value added for them is that their cattle are grass-fed and  tri-purposed.

My next, and last question: Do you love this life? Would you do it again?

The answer is instantaneous: “Absolutely!”

I take my leave, thanking them for the time they’ve taken out of their busy day to show me their impressive operation. Susan says, thoughtfully, “It’s good to take a little time, good to answer questions, because it makes us think about them. Usually we’re so busy we just keep on keepin’ on. Good to stop and think about why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

***

The Whitings welcome visitors but ask that you call ahead (247-6076). Spotted Dog Farm is a regular stop for the Audubon Society and popular with individual groups of birdwatchers. I can only imagine what a gold and glorious spot it will be in a few weeks.

Post Script: After this column was published in the Herald, a letter was appended to the column with some thoughts on cows and horns. This is it:

Not to worry about the horns on those little cows. Dexters are very friendly. But... if the animal wanted to hurt you.... horns would be the least of your worries! They can all kill you with very little trouble, if they wanted to. I watch my cattle & they don't use their horns to fight w/ each other. They head butt.
Dexters have an extreme amount of vasiclature in their horns. Like an elephants ears, they dissipate heat, to keep the cattle cool. I have a few cows that came to my farm w/ their horns removed. Poor things suffer terribly during heat spells.

Addenda: 10/12/10 
Sue checked out this information and got this reply from Animal Welfare Approved:

Horns for thermo-regulation

There is potential for sheep, goats, cattle and bison to use their horns as part of their thermoregulatory (temperature regulating) processes. In cattle the extreme is the Ankole Watusi , a cattle breed native to Africa which has horns that can grow up to six feet long, honeycombed with blood vessels. This makes perfect sense as the Ankole Watsui evolved to live in areas where the temperature stays very high all year round.

The way the heat exchange process works is for blood to be pumped round the ‘core’ of the horn – the bit that actually has blood vessels in it – and as this blood passes close to the outside of the horn heat can be lost to the atmosphere and cooler blood returns to the body of the animal.

However, other cattle breeds evolved to live in colder environments and there is a difference in horn morphology for cattle breeds from tropical and temperate zones. Research has shown that in temperate species the surface area of the vascularised inner core is reduced while the thickness of the outer keratin sheath is increased. This limits heat loss from the horns, as in colder climates loss of heat would be a welfare negative.

Animals have evolved to adapt to their environment but this adaptation takes many thousands of years. An animal from a hot climate cannot suddenly switch from using their horns to cool themselves to stopping that heat loss. It is worth noting that antelope originating from Africa have actually been found to have frostbite at the tips of their horns when they are kept in zoos in cold countries – the cooling effect of having horns cannot be controlled by the animal.

The Dexter is obviously a temperate cattle breed; originating from south west Ireland. Its horns will therefore not be a major part of its cooling process.

Further to the points above, thermoregulation in cattle is not solely a function of having horns. There are a number of breeds and strains of cattle that are polled – that is they naturally do not have horns. A number of popular cattle breeds such as the Angus are polled cattle and other widespread breeds such as the Hereford have polled strains. If the only way cattle could heat regulate was through their horns these animals would not look very healthy.

When temperatures exceed the thermo neutral zone for cattle – at around 85F or more – the animals regulate their temperature by evaporative cooling. Evaporative cooling is mainly effected through sweating and respiration. Heat stress is a function of time, temperature and humidity, because cattle rely on water evaporation via sweating and panting to dissipate an excess of heat they have generated metabolically or absorbed from the environment. High humidity makes evaporative cooling less efficient. Cattle will seek shade when it is available to minimize the effects of high temperatures.

There are negative points to having horns for the animals and for the stock people managing their health and welfare. Animals can damage one another with horns – a boss animal whether male or female will keep less dominant animals away from feed and water with its horns. Breeding males can fight and injure one another with their horns. In the wild this is about survival of the fittest and allowing younger animals with different genetics to take charge of the herd and breed. In a farming situation this could be the incapacity or loss of your best bull. Lastly there is a human health and safety issue with handling horned cattle. A horned steer that throws its head around when it is being handled can be a considerable danger to those trying to work with it.

There are some farmers who choose to keep horned cattle and who have the particular skills and equipment to manage them – for example feeders and squeeze chutes must be specially adapted for horned animals to prevent them being trapped or injured.  AWA would never require that such farmers moved to breeding polled cattle or that they disbud their calves to stop horns growing. However AWA does recognize that for other farmers and other breeds disbudding calves may offer the best welfare for life. AWA does of course specify the age and methods of disbudding that are acceptable to minimize the stress of the operation. AWA does not allow the mutilation of dehorning – the removal of the horn once it is fully formed and attached to the skull.

References:

Picard K, Festa-Bianchet M, Thomas D (1996) The cost of horniness: heat loss may counter sexual selection for large horns in temperate bovids. In: Ecoscience 3(3): 280-284

 http://countrystudies.us/united-states/weather/vermont/brandon.htm

I call my egg Mariah

I’ve been traveling a long food road  for most of my life, and that road was at first a circling, curving, hilly one, filled with daily routines like eating watermelon slices on Grandma’s kitchen stoop after supper at the end of a long hot farm day, with all the tired men and women and kids there in the dusk, sitting on the well platform; talking and slurping. I am bent over the glistening black-speckled, salt sprinkled crimson crescent I hold in both hands between my rolled-up overall-covered knees, my bare-feet plunked in the sand below, toes slightly curved inward, spitting seeds that will sprout between the stones, those sprouts surely trampled on our everyday tromping. And things like the milk pail slung inside the kitchen door after each evening’s milking, and long hot strawberry days.

Then that road straightens out into a highway, and alongside it are big barns filled with dairy cattle day and night. You see those barns in Vermont, too, and they look almost idyllic set in those green fields. But where are the cows? Not a sign of one. They’re never outside – their entire lives are spent in that barn, being fed hay and grain and antibiotics and hormones. That’s the reality of BIG for you – these farms milking from 225 to a whopping 1400 cows, with not a ray of sunshine or blade of green grass to satisfy their four stomachs.
Is BIG a bad word when it comes to food?  Umm, well, half a billion eggs from TWO Iowa farms were recently recalled in the salmonella incident.

Yep... Half a billion eggs from just two farms!

Those eggs came from chickens raised in chicken ghettos – slave chickens raised in tiny cages, their beaks cut off, their bodies managed impersonally like lifeless little cogs in a machine.  Those were 99¢ a dozen supermarket eggs or even $2.50 – who knows what they cost. In the long run they cost way too much.
But I don’t worry about salmonella or anything else when I break an egg into a frying pan, because my eggs come from chickens that peck here and there, into cow pies even, under the sun and trees, in the fresh air. They live like chickens should, according to the wisdom of old Mother Nature. And you know what? There’s really no reason to be eating supermarket eggs if you live in Vermont. I can’t drive a mile in any direction from Wallingford without seeing an Eggs for Sale sign plunked in someone’s yard, and I pay anywhere from $2.50 to $4.00 a dozen for them. The thought of 99¢ eggs makes me gag.

I could grow my own layers and meat birds, but I have a shameful secret, and that is I don’t particularly like chickens. I grew up with them, you see – Grandma raised them for eggs and flesh, and I found them dirty excitable things who invariably pecked me when I slipped a small hand under them to steal their eggs. They didn’t peck Grandma – Oh no! – they bent over backwards for her to steal their eggs. Maybe it had something to do with her calm, musing air as she scattered grain and seeds for them in the chickenyard, clucking along with them; or the way she would bend over and capture one and stand up smoothing its rindy feathers against her bosom.

About as far as you can get from my attitude toward chickens (and much closer to Grandma’s) is that of Farmer Bill, who stopped by last Saturday to drop off a dozen eggs from his own chickens, and while he was at it also brought me a pint of hard-won raspberries from the earlybird vendor at the Farmers’ Market, and a copy of his Chicken Things newsletter that he puts out a couple of times a year. I opened the egg carton and the eggs within left me in no doubt that they were fresh as the dawn, still stippled with grass and who knows what.  He apologized: “I almost forgot them, and didn’t have time to clean them.” They were heavenly, the palest of pale yellow, pink, and green – or was that blue? – and giving off that ineffable scent of grass and chicken.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one of the lucky people who regularly eat Farmer Bill’s eggs (though I am one of the lucky people who regularly eat eggs from Sunset Farm and other vendors at the Rutland Farmers’ Market), and the reason I was receiving these was an email I received from Ms. Bill a few days ago in which she told me about the flock of chickens that resides on their almost-off-the-grid farm in Danby, with which I was immediately fascinated.

She wrote, “We've been keeping the same chicken flock going since 1987. Our original chickens came from a farmer friend who had been interbreeding for years on his farm in Little Compton, Rhode Island, so we started with a mix of Araucana,  Rhode Island Reds and who knows what else.  Early in the 1990s we brought in some Buff Orpingtons and Silver Spangled Hamburgs to add to the gene  pool, and along with them came a free chick which turned out  to  be an Araucana rooster, so that strain got boosted.  A few years  later  I got some fertile Rhode Island Red hens from a friend.  Ever since, the flock has proliferated by hens going broody and hatching out their own chicks.  Half of the chicks are roosters, and we butcher them  on the farm and eat the meat.”

Of the chickens’ present life, Farmer Bill writes, “This farm is an ultimate fantasy destination – if chickens elsewhere knew about this place they’d want to vacation here. Green grass... begins right outside their doors; they have barnyard, meadow, forest, and front yard and orchard, and each has what I now view as ‘that special place’ that makes all the difference, a contentment spot, a ‘mini jungle’, a spot of close trees, bushes with open shade underneath. They spend hours a day as a flock just sitting in their jungle rest retreat...” 
He goes on, “I see the farm as a place where the chickens have the opportunity to express their ‘chicken-ness’ to the maximum. They can make choices (they like that) and go from one mini-environment to another and they like the trip, I can tell.” Bill particularly likes being able to afford his chickens the cow-shelter, “an open-sided shed of sunshine and shade mix, usually containing a couple dozen chickens, a cow, and a goose – the perfect pastoral scene.”

I’ve seen these chickens and the farm and I can attest that these are happy chickens. And now I’ve eaten the eggs, too. I ate a pale green one and my Breakfast Partner got a pale pink one. I called my egg Mariah. BP’s egg went unnamed and right down the gullet. The yolks were bright yellowy-orange, the whites stood right up, not spreading around, so the finished fried egg looked like a golden patty, not an insipid pancake. Yes, they were delicious.

Mariah is the one on top

Ms. Bill told me, “About 10 years ago, scientists recognized that eggs that come  from chicks hatched out by mother hens contain a bacteria that is a natural protection against salmonella.”  Factory chicken farms do not leave the chicks with their mother/breeders long enough to acquire that bacteria.

And then she said this, stating my own thought:

“It strikes me as perverse that our society has ruined something so beautiful as the production of an egg. Chickens are amazingly smart creatures, with far more personality than most people give them credit for. Locking them up in cages where they barely have room to turn around, keeping them indoors all the time, feeding them who knows what (well actually I do know and it involves taking the hens that die at the factory and shipping them to a production facility where they're processed into chicken feed...), is so inhumane, and most people don't seem to know or care.” 

Farmer Bill teaches a select few some tricks, such as climbing upon his shoulder and eating treats out of his hand. He thinks that,  “what makes a chicken a pet is getting a name.” For instance, the rooster pictured on Bill’s shoulder is named Speckles, for his speckled breast.

Farmer Bill and Speckles, photo by John Geery

You will probably not be eating Farmer Bill’s eggs – they are very difficult to get ahold of, being in very high demand – but you certainly have many other sources for excellent eggs. Hie thyself to the Farmers’ Market, for instance...

You might want to get off the food highway, if you’re on it, and get on a small macadam road that curves and climbs into more interesting, and delicious, food terrain.

minding my own (garden) business

These not-very-attractive structures provided the structure for the flourishing garden above

With magnificent beneficence I handed off my 35-year-old flat garden to Leo this summer, while I took on some rather unattractive black plastic bins in which to plant my new garden. It’s the newest – and most severe – transition in my garden since thirty-five years ago when we came here to build a life in this shabby old brick house and its bare – except for a couple of lilacs and  three maple saplings – half-acre corner-lot-that-(now)-thinks-it’s-a-farm.

Then, we created a vegetable garden in the southwest corner of the lot. It flourished, over the years, from a flat square to raised beds held in check with cinder blocks, rocks and this-and-that-and-various-other-shards –and-detritus to serve as walls and dividing points. Fifteen years ago, when Tomato Imperative! was published, I spent much time being photographed among my jungle of tomato plants out there. But since then I have spent many-too-many hours cursing my neighbor’s Box Elder tree that has increasingly encroached on my garden’s space, until now it blots out any speck of afternoon sun from 2 or 3 o’clock on. It gives the owners a sense of privacy, though, and they’re not about to cut it down on accounta my garden!

Well Damn! Aren’t vegetables, isn’t food, more important than the shade of a shallow-rooted junk tree that grows like a weed? But wait! At the same time – somehow ignored by me – an oak tree grew midway on the southern perimeter of my yard that, when he planted it, Leo told me would be a small tree. It grew inexorably, with a shadow that progressively ate into my morning sun time until, these last couple of years, my vegetable garden transformed into a shade garden. Hostas, anyone?

These things happen so slowly, so incrementally, that it renders us stupid! Perhaps, I thought, the downward spiral of my vegetable garden was directly connected to my developing a black thumb! I decided to test that hypothesis last summer when I placed a leaf-composting bin – a round black heavy-plastic thing about 2.5 feet high and 2.5 feet in diameter, with 1 inch perforations all through it – that I’d got at East Creek Plaza at the Rutland County Solid Waste facility – in one of the only spots in the entire yard that got full sun most of the day. That happened to be on the very northwest corner of the lot, on the side street, behind the boatshed, about as far away from the kitchen and from my casual view – and therefore, enjoyment – as it could be.

I filled it half-full with the previous year’s chopped leaves, then added well-composted horse manure, my screened vegetable compost, and soil from the shaded garden. In it I planted a sungold  and a brandywine tomato, nasturtiums, Serrano peppers, and a butternut squash, parsley, ad infinitum, and let ‘er rip! She did beautifully well – that is, before the dreaded late blight turned my tomatoes into nasty monsters. But the peppers lasted us all year, the nasty urtiums were vibrant, and the squash fed us till Christmas.

This was early season last year with my first experimental container

So it wasn’t my thumb, I thought, as I stood on the porch and looked out at my shaded yard: It was the damned tree! But, I said to myself, Which tree? I had no control over my neighbor’s tree, but I DID have control over that ‘small’ oak that towered 50 feet in the air (or was it 100? In my mind it was Redwood-sized) that shaded the entire yard. That and the white pine on the southeast corner that had grown from a throw-away sapling from the Vermont State Fair 25 years ago into the towering and not very attractive thing that it was now. A call to ‘tree-flyer’ Barker to take them down , and I could move my vegetable garden to the middle of the yard!

“Cutting down two perfectly healthy trees?” my daughter chided. I flinched – how could I justify that? Easy! Vegetables were more important than trees. So was light! And sun! “Well you’d better get your arse in gear, then,” she said threateningly, “and make sure there’s a garden there next summer!”

In the fall I had my young yard-worker – Kyle LaMothe – chip up all the leaves with the mower, then rake and move and heave them (“You’ve got more leaves than a forest,” he panted) into the center of the yard, thickly layered (a foot deep) over a large section of forgettable perennials, and the rest were layered over the beds in the existing garden. In November Tree Flier did, indeed, show up to take down those two trees. A few days later we got the first substantial snow and, as a result my yard looked like a war zone all winter.

Come spring, I was out straight with work and had only time to glance askance at my new ‘garden’ and the wreckage in the yard. Imperceptibly, though, the wreckage declined, and that was because Leo was solidly and stolidly spending any free moment using a come-along and a splitter (maul and wedge), punctuated by the occasional rasp of a chain-saw, to clean up the mess.

Below, the first photo looks southeast -- the pine tree gone; second photo south -- the oak tree, too!

So. Now it was up to me. It occurred to me that I’d had such good luck planting in that plastic leaf composter last summer that I should utilize the remaining ones right in the front yard, and determine from the results what contours exactly the permanent garden should take. At the end of the season, if they were placed correctly, we could just put up some retaining walls, pull up the cylinders and rake out the soil into beds.

So that’s what I did – I filled four composters, right in the middle of the yard, with the chopped leaves, compost, and soil, then added some Winterwood Farm shellfish compost that I got from a Farmers’ Market vendor last winter. In them I planted tomatoes – Sun Gold, Celebrity, Brandywine, Striped German, and Pratico; as well as French filet beans and eggplant; peppers – Hungarian wax, Serrano, and early Jalapeno; Crookneck yellow squash; and some very long, very prickly Japanese cucumbers. In smaller containers set in full sun I planted basil, okra, and Rosemary.

 Below a Sungold Tomato, eggplant, and peppers are just planted.

Okra is a member of the hibiscus family, as shown by its blossom

I weed standing up. I harvest standing up, which is particularly nice when it comes to the beans.

In the old, flat garden – which now, too, gets much more light – Leo tilled in that thick layer of chopped leaves and planted greens and carrots and brassica. My self-seeding herbs still grow themselves there. The peas loved the leaf-lightened soil. Never have we had such a bountiful harvest.

Dear Reader! Please join us in paying  obeisance to the absent oak tree (thank you for your life), the absent pine (good riddance), and the omnipresent sun and sufficient rain of this lovely summer, because our gardens do extremely well! And I’ve had zero angst stemming from the neighbor’s tree all summer, for I believe I’ve learned the true lesson of  changing what I CAN change and disregarding the rest!

***

These gorgeous things aren't mine but those of Alchemy Garden at the Farmers' Market.
Thanks, Lindsay and Scott

The tomatoes hung in thick green clumps for the longest time. First to ripen were the Sun Golds – several hands full every day; next was one Celebrity, which is no surprise, but what is a surprise are the enormous Brandywines and Striped Germans, and even the Praticos – ripening faster and faster every day. Which puts me in mind of tomato soups, especially this one from Tomato Imperative!.

Chilled North African Soup

We wanted an uncooked tomato soup with a Moroccan flavor. The spices are mellowed in oil and broth over heat, then added to the uncooked tomatoes to make a very striking soup. The flavors flower, gorgeous and unexpected.
•    1 cup rich chicken broth
•    3 tablespoons olive oil
•    1 tablespoon honey
•    1 teaspoon salt
•    2 thin lemon slices
•    ½ teaspoon crushed caraway seeds
•    ½ teaspoon cinnamon
•    ½ teaspoon hot paprika
•    ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
•    3 large, ripe, juicy tomatoes (1 ½ pounds) crushed
•    1 tablespoon each minced fresh cilantro and Italian parsley
•    thin lemon slices
In a small pot place the broth, oil, honey, salt, lemon slices, caraway, cinnamon, hot paprika, and ground cumin. Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook for 15 minutes. Place tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley in a serving bowl or small tureen. Strain and stir the hot flavored broth into the tomatoes. Chill several hours to allow flavors to marry and serve garnished with thin lemon slices.

***

Slit these spicy Hungarian wax peppers from stem to tip, take out the seeds, stuff them with Stilton, sprinkle with bread crumbs, put them into a cold oven and turn it to 450° and when it has reached that number the peppers will be done. And delicious!

This article first appeared as a Twice Bitten column in the Rutland Herald on August 17.

my lunches at Sissy’s

It’s a pretty 15 minute drive for me up 140 from Wallingford to Middletown Springs and lunch, and it’s one I’ve made every Wednesday, it seems, throughout July.

Because, although Sissy’s Kitchen serves breakfast, lunch and dinner Wednesdays through Sundays, I’ve only been there for lunch; and I want you to know that even though Sissy’s is a take-out place you can usually find a place to perch – either at a table on the front porch or in the sylvan back gardens – for long enough to eat her beautiful food, much of which she sources locally and all of which she prepares with the care and expertise that her long career in food – much of it as chef/owner of the Dorset Inn – affords her.

Her website bills her place as a retail outlet, and it is full of charming touches – like the twig and small lights chandelier on the porch ceiling; selected crafts of  pottery and wooden bowls and cutting boards, and her own bottled sauces and salsas as well as a selection of cookies, including the best knife-thin gingersnaps I believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of biting into (at 25¢ apiece) and other baked goods. Yum. Yum.

For my first lunch I met Elsie Gilmore there because I wanted to meet this young woman who was so kind and effective in helping my son Spencer a few years ago when he suffered the devastating loss of his house to fire. Since she divides her time between Sarasota and Middletown Springs, I had my chance. I wanted to thank her and I wanted to know what she was about.

She’s about Green – ways to lessen your carbon footprint, which you can see on her website.  I’ve watched her do that herself on Facebook, where she downgraded from car to scooter to bus to shank’s mare back up to scooter. And she’s about reaching out to women, helping them to connect and to succeed in business.

I had the Ploughman’s Lunch – a pork pie enclosed in pastry, served with potato salad, red onion jam, Consider Bardwell Dorset Cheese, hard boiled egg, sliced tomato, and sliced apple $8.95. Even though I’d fasted all morning the sight of that plate made my eyes pop and I was sure I’d be having it for supper, too. But No! Bite by tasty bite the plate was cleared, as Elsie devoured her Prosciutto, Pesto and Fresh Mozzarella cheese on Cibatta Roll. We sat at a table on the porch, and then, being nosy, scouted the gorgeous gardens out back where Sissy grows much of the produce she uses in the kitchen, with the help, it must be admitted, of the amazing gardener Paul Morgan.

***

Next week I had lunch with Angela Miller, the owner, with her husband, Russell Glover, of Consider Bardwell Farm in West Pawlet. I hadn’t seen Angela since last fall when we met for dinner at the Victorian Inn at Wallingford.  I’d first met her at the Consider Bardwell booth at that frigid first year festival, in 2007, of the Winter Farmers’ Market. She struck me then as a pretty blond woman, petite, retiring but warm, almost shy but forthright. We talked about cheese and I sampled. Those were some wonderful cheeses. In 2008, when finally I drove to West Pawlet and saw the gorgeous (300 acre, red brick) farm and talked to Peter Dixon, the cheese maker, I couldn’t quite square the whole thing in my head. I knew Angela had her own literary agency in New York City. Driving from NYC to W Pawlet and back each week? Melding or leaping from one end of life’s spectrum to the other? THIS woman? It didn’t compute. And, really? It still doesn’t.

But sometime this summer I picked up her new book, Hay Fever, from the Consider Bardwell stand (which she no longer womans) and it had lain on my coffee table since then. You know how it is that sometimes you’re reluctant to read something that a friend has written? What if you don’t like it? What if you find it boring, or the voice is off, or... I don’t know! Anyway, one night, when I had first begun reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, I picked up Angela’s book as I was making myself a supper sandwich, flipped it open on the kitchen counter and began to scan through it, like you do with a new book sometimes, trying to get the lay of the land.

It. Was. Fascinating! Angela’s voice came right off the page and into my ear. I flipped it shut, took my sandwich and glass of wine out to the porch and started at the beginning, leaving Lisbeth Salander to languish pour le nonce.

It was all there. No punches pulled. Names named. An honest –  heartrending sometimes; joyful, too – account of real life on a real farm. But this is not your ordinary farm, nor is Angela – or her husband, (whom she calls Rust) – your ordinary farmer. Rust has his own architectural practice in NYC, too. Both are very successful. Thus – as a rule – she usually drives from NYC to West Pawlet on Thursday night and back again to the city on Monday. By 8AM next morning she’s sitting in the Chinese beauty salon in her office building getting redone for her city look – nails, hair, makeup – and  taking calls from “my authors” on her cell, “they don’t know I’m not in my office.” The goats take care of her country remake every Thursday evening with their nuzzling and kisses. Angela loves her goats and they love her!

I got up and emailed Angela, "You never even told me you were writing a book, and it’s terrific!"

She wrote back, "That’s probably because we don’t see each other enough. Let’s have lunch."

That next Wednesday, Angela pulled up in a utilitarian van with no air conditioning. It was sweltering. She was wearing black denim jeans and a white muslin top that she worried she would drip pulled-pork sauce on (BBQ Pulled Pork on Cibatta Roll with cole slaw  5.95). I had what Elsie had had the week before, (Prosciutto, Pesto and Fresh Mozzarella cheese on Cibatta Roll 5.95). We strolled out back to the gardens and found a shady table. And talked. For a leisurely but intense couple of hours.

We talked about her voice. She told me how she had written notes through that 2008-2009 year and given them to her co-writer (the title page says By Angela Miller with Ralph Gardner, Jr), and he had captured her voice and put the book together. Later I googled him and from what I found he doesn’t hesitate to be hard-hitting. He’s written extensively for magazines and newspapers – I got quite caught up in his compelling account of the Tony Marshall/ Brooke Astor affair from last year; one in which I hadn’t the slightest interest at the time  – and is Senior Special Writer for The Wall Street Journal. Hay Fever is his first book.

We talked a lot about the mechanics of raising goats, milking them, and making internationally-acclaimed cheese out of the milk. “Most cheese makers don’t milk their own goats,” she told me. “It’s like having two full time jobs – three, if you count my agency.” (Oh, now why would we count your agency??!!)

She told me she slept in her car during kidding season, which is March and April, during which she tries to stay at the farm most of the time. “The house is too far away from the kidding barn,” she said. “I couldn’t have someone running to the house to get me every time I was needed.”

We talked of the satisfaction she gets from the mix of all the farm workers from all strata of life – from 18 year old tough-talking pure Vermonters to the Texan who travels up to W Pawlet for every kidding season. When she first went to New York City (from her mother’s organic farm in Pennsylvania), she found herself dating a publisher and their whole social scene was literary. That was when she determined she wanted publishing to be her career, not her life.

We talked a lot about the dilemma of when to separate the kids from their mothers. We talked about the tragedy of male kids, most of whom are destined to be slaughtered.

We returned again and again to a vituperative letter to the Manchester Journal that had taken Angela to task for the euthanization of a kid that the writer took totally out of context. Angela was distraught at the letter as she had been distraught at the necessary euthanization.

A neighboring farmer had stopped her at the general store. “He said, ‘we farmers know that life on the farm holds its tragedies. But we don’t write about it.’ I think I should have pulled my punches on that one,” she told me with regret.

But that’s one of the strengths of Hay Fever – she pulls no punches!

We got up to walk through the gardens. I had one last question. Angela’s in her early sixties, but doesn’t look it. And to my earnest question, “How long can you continue to do this?” there was, uncharacteristically, no answer.

***

The following Wednesday, I took my visiting friend from Virginia – Dana Squire – to Sissy’s for lunch. I had the Seafood Salad Roll (Shrimp and crabmeat tossed with celery and mayonnaise) 7.25, while Dana had a wrap (Fresh Mozzarella, zucchini, yellow squash, spinach, roasted red pepper, black olive tapenade, sun dried tomato puree 5.95). We sat in the back and talked, and then inspected the gardens. Dana has gorgeous gardens of her own but she was entranced. 

This week, my daughter will be visiting. I wouldn’t be surprised if  Sissy didn’t see me again! Maybe we’ll all go for dinner this time.Maybe I’ll see you there! Maybe you’ll be reading Hay Fever!

originally published in the Rutland Herald 08/03/10

lazy

Ahhh. This hot weather is right up my alley and, lucky for me, coincides with a time when I have no onerous deadlines, meetings, easily identifiable tribulations, or haunting trials. Gardening and reading are about it, and trying to catch the latest little red squirrel in a compromising, no-exit situation.


And, of course, attending the Farmers’ Market. Last Saturday provided that gorgeous haul you see above:

Two cheeses (bottom left), Mettowee, from Consider Bardwell – a fresh goat cheese from the first batch of the summer – and a pepper-clad Camembrie from Blue Ledge Farm, both highly, highly desirable. Let's keep going counter-clockwise: There's Radical Roots' artichokes (I lucked out) 4 of them; the remains of a cut kohlrabi that Paul's interns were sampling to Foggy Meadow's customers – sweet and crunchy; then Alchemy Garden's iceberg lettuce – sweet and juicy and crunchy. Then – you can’t see anything but its shine – a black/purple eggplant from Dutchess Farms; Chioggia beet greens that Paul slipped into my basket; and a bulb of fennel and a tomato – the first of the season – from Dutchess Farms. Not shown are thin French green beans from Foggy Meadow, a chicken from Sunset Farm, and a big loaf of multi-grain bread from Connick’s Sandwich Shop booth. And the scattering of green peppers? All from MY new garden. So flavorful, especially the Hungarian Wax.

Am I crazy, or what? How were two people to eat this plethora before next week's Farmers' Market? And not even two – who knew when Leo would return from the canoe retreat!

Well, I made a pretty admirable beginning, if I do say so myself, with thin sliced bread slathered with bits of the little button of Mettowee. While I sat on the porch reading – you can guess can’t you, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – with one eye and watching that naughty, saucy little squirrel avoiding my trap with the other. And the sun pouring down, and the sounds of my tomatoes turning red. And the basil yipping in the dooryard.

(I always take a great deal of satisfaction when I include that timely last phrase in my July columns, since the first time I wrote it maybe 20 years ago my editor deleted it, saying, “Basil doesn’t yip. Avoid hyperbole.”

Now I ask you – where would I be without hyperbole?

Now, of course, I have a wonderful editor who says, “It’s a column. You can say what you want to... within reason.”

It reminds me of a piece I did on a fishing resort a few years ago in which I wrote about a ghost, and also wrote that I fled screaming back to my cabin. The editor balked at the screaming. “Did you really scream?” he asked. No, I said. “Well don’t say you did,” he said, “avoid hyperbole.” Wellahhh, I said, very hesitantly, what about the ghost? He didn’t mind the ghost.)

I was not hungry after that for a long time, until, in fact, dusk obliterated Kalle Blomkvist (my editor made me omit Lisbeth’s middle name for him) on the page and I began thinking about that eggplant sliced thin and fried crisp. Mmm. Oh yeah. One nice thing about being alone is that you cook – and eat – when you’re hungry, not when somebody else is, or at some other arbitrary time.

Into the kitchen, Pandora playing Phillip Glass, sliced that firm little eggplant thin, sprinkled the slices with Wondra (do they still sell that stuff? My canister of it must be 15 years old if a day, used only for a bit of crispness at times such as these), when I heard footsteps on the deck and Leo arrived home, just in time, trailing a little duct-taped-together-canoe behind him.

I made a salad of slices of kohlrabi, mango, Hungarian wax pepper, and tomato sprinkled with sea salt, coarsely ground pepper, and chopped parsley and cilantro, then drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then I fried the eggplant slices in a little lard and butter.

Leo was happy. What luck that I should be cooking my little heart’s delight just when he walked in the door.

The eggplant was über eggplant, sooooooo much eggplant taste. It reminded me of an anecdote a friend told me about her mother’s husband who could not eat eggplant anymore, so her mother – both of these people are Italian to the core – substituted zucchini in the Parmesan and “They. could. not. tell the difference.”

Let me tell you right now that zucchini could in no way have taken on the characteristics of THIS eggplant, so fresh and firm and, well, über in pure taste!

And the salad, too, was utterly delicious.

***

It’s hot. I need an appetizer. I don’t want to turn the stove on. I have shrimp that I have steamed during the cool hours. I decide to pickle it, and to that end I pull out Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking: Recipes and ruminations from Charleston... It’s one of my favorite books about a fascinating food area that is home to, among many other shining food items and traditions, the shrimp trade. This is his take on pickling shrimp.

Pickled Shrimp

(I adapted a bit – halved his recipe and added the peppers:)

John Martin Taylor (aka Hoppin' John)  writes: "Throughout summer and fall, huge bowls of pickled shrimp grace the food tables at cocktail parties. I like to keep a jar in the refrigerator. The true Lowcountry shrimp salad is composed of pickled shrimp atop a bed of fresh lettuce, with no pasta or mayonnaise in sight...”

• about 1/3 cup of thinly sliced onion

• 1 Hungarian wax pepper, thinly sliced

• 1 bay leaf

• ½ teaspoon salt (or to taste)

• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

• the juice and zest of 1 lemon

• 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

• 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds

• 2 garlic cloves, minced.

• 1 pound cooked shrimp, peeled, tails intact

Combine all the ingredients and pour over the shrimp in a quart glass jar with a lid. Store in the fridge for at least 24 hours before serving. [mine steeped for 6 hours and it was very good] Keeps for up to 2 weeks.

***

I was struck by the pertinacity of this thought from one of my favorite books and writers to our local food culture of today:

Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality...[i]t is born out in communities where the supply of food is conditioned by the seasons. Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature's provisions epitomized in the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch with life itself. When Providence supplies the means, the preparation and the sharing of food takes on a sacred aspect. The fact that every crop is of short duration promotes a spirit of making the best of it while it lasts and conserving part of it for future use. It also leads to periods of fasting and feasting...  Patience Gray in the introduction to Honey from a Weed (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)

There is a wonderful essay by Corby Kummer about Gray here, and if you scroll down you will read Gray on Weeds.

***

And, just to make things perfect, and just like his predecessors the little red squirrel could not resist the peanuts in the no-exit birdhouse and, as soon as he flips into the hole, I’m there stuffing a sock in it, and off we go to the woods to make him a new home.

Farmers' Market Haul

Imagine this: Two cheeses (bottom left) Mettowee, from Consider Bardwell, which is their fresh goat cheese –  this is the first batch of the summer; and a pepper-clad camembert from Lake's Edge Farm. Both absolutely delicious. Let's keep going counter-clockwise: There's Radical Roots' artichokes, highly prized, 4 of them; a cut kohlrabi that Paul's interns were sampling to Foggy Meadow's customers – sweet and crunchy; then Alchemy Garden's iceberg lettuce – sweet and juicy and crunchy. Then, you can hardly see it – a black/purple eggplant from Dutchess Farms; Chioggia beet greens that Paul slipped into my basket; then fennel and a tomato – the first of the season – from Dutchess Farms. Also bought French green beans from Foggy Meadow, a chicken from Sunset Farm, and a big loaf of multi-grain bread from the place that used to be the Yellow Submarine on Terrill Street – I think It's called Connor's Sandwish Shop now.

Am I crazy, or what? How are two people to eat this plethora before next week's Farmers' Market?

Those green peppers – So flavorful, especially the Hungarian Wax – all from MY garden!

an assortment of weeds

  

I love these few hot days mid-summer when the house is dim and cool and the garden is bright and hot and I wander between the two with stops each way for the hourly-changing shady reading spot on the porch or deck, happily torn between writing, weeding, and reading. There's dirt under my nails, sweat running down my neck, and streaks of lily pollen and blackcap juice on my shorts and tee. I am minimally ecstatic.

On one of those trips inside I inspect my friend El's excellent blog, Fast Grow the Weeds dot com, wherein a professional woman lives (close to where I grew up) in Michigan with her husband and child and various animals and gardens. She works from her home office at an entirely separate job while experimenting with eating close-to-completely-off-the-land -- mostly her own -- with local and area supplementation. This involves season-extension and preserving and what does not sound like, but we know is, an immense amount of work. Her latest addition is a goat, her latest activity is making cheese. It seems no hardship to her and hers, but, conversely, a joy. 

On her blog she has quoted Patience Gray in a permanent sidebar:

Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality...[i]t is born out in communities where the supply of food is conditioned by the seasons. Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature's provisions epitomized in the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch with life itself. When Providence supplies the means, the preparation and the sharing of food takes on a sacred aspect. The fact that every crop is of short duration promotes a spirit of making the best of it while it lasts and conserving part of it for future use. It also leads to periods of fasting and feasting...

Patience Gray in the introduction to Honey from a Weed (New York: Harper & Row, 1986)

It is not the first time I have found like-mindedness between us. I was struck by the pertinacity of this thought to our local food culture of today, and in no time at all I had put my hands on this book so lovingly perused over the last two decades. It will stay out of the bookcase for weeks now as I taste its sweetness once again. Until, in fact (if I know myself), the snow flies.

On another topic, Michael Ruhlman posted a Zucchini Fritter recipe just now and he has several curves on it. It is here.

a nice culture of food

Last Tuesday I demo-ed zucchini fritters at the farmers’ market congruently with Jill Corey and cohorts from the Vermont Department of Health signing up a steady stream of WIC (Women, Infants, Children) recipients.

Fecundity was rampant, with babies both born and not yet born, women with high bulging bellies on which they rested their arms as they waited in line – as though leaning on a fence –  and chubby children.
The women seemed shy and shrank from my proffered wares – perhaps because they didn’t know they were free – but some children said “I’ll take one.” And, with a small dot of maple syrup on the top of the fritter – I think I called them pancakes – they liked them, and came back for more, and with their example others became less reticent. I had recipes for them – simplest thing in the world, cheap, easy, good food. Tasty. Great way to get zucchini down kids’ gullets.

Others stopped by, too, and said they recognized me from that glamorous picture with my Rutland Herald column, and were eager to talk about this fascinating thing – food! One of them, M, is a person I’ve known for many years but not well; not least, perhaps, because he lived in Italy for some years (in a 13th century house that he restored from ‘stones’). While I fried fritters, we chatted, and he rhapsodized about the food in Tuscany that “you would die for” – truffles, for instance, and local sausages and cheeses. Olive oil. M’s yield of olives came just over the brim of the amount needed to have his own olives crushed into oil that came exclusively from his own trees. How many of us can say that?

We talked of just the incandescent life of food from a place that has grown and made its own food for centuries the same, with very little industrial food or indeed food from “away”.  “These excellent zucchinis came from Radical Roots,” I tell him, “and the unsurpassed maple syrup from Smokey House.”

We grin at each other, he snaps a couple of photos (see above) and is on his way. Later he posts one of the pics on Facebook  but, most importantly, below the photo he commented with on-line punctuation, “theres a nice culture of food that gravitates around the farmers market and coop great world class cheeses breads and veggies and organic meat.”


Those words shook me to my very soul. They made me happy. We’re so used to keeping our noses to the grindstone, keepin’ on pushin’ that old boulder up the mountain that sometimes we forget to pause and just  recognize and enjoy what has been accomplished, tip the bottle of Vermont wine over the glass that is sometimes also made locally, and drink it with the pastured and gardened food, and realize what these last thirty years have wrought.

Then, of course, we need to put our shoulders (nose?) back to the (let me continue to mix my metaphors here – all about pushing heavy things uphill) grindstone, wheel? and make sure it keeps going. We never reach the apex of the hill, but we reach plateaus, and then if we get too involved in enjoying the plateau we might begin to slide down again instead of... well you get the gist.


An editorial in Monday’s paper  rhapsodized about farm-fresh food and buying local from farmers’ market and farmstand, and pointed out what economic sense it makes to shop that way. Certainly the Rutland Farmers’ Market has matured beautifully into an every Saturday festival of lovely food, music, and crafts, with a smaller market taking place on Tuesday afternoons. And the Boardman Hill Farmstand out on rt. 4 West, as well as the Radical Roots Farmstand on Creek Road, are conveniently chock-full of beautiful produce. I stopped at the Timberloft Farmstand in West Rutland last week, too, for some of the last strawberries available.

We are lucky people in that, beyond the fact that we need not rely on industrial food, we also find a very genuine social structure when we visit with the farmers. For these are people with whom you, not occasionally but often, have eye to eye conversations. All the shades of social confusion are torn down and tossed streetward as you speak with like souls about the bones of life, really. It’s not passion as much as it’s basic stuff. We are talking of our births and our deaths when we talk of soil and food, and in these conversations we find real connection.


The Rutland Co-op was one glaring omission in the editorial’s laudation of local food, one that I am not sure was intentional but that some of us find deserved. For while our Co-op’s mission statement stresses a partnership between it and local farmers and the exhortation to offer to its members and other shoppers Local First, recently we find it is sadly falling short of that goal, as well as in the quality control of less local foods.

I try to do all my shopping at the Co-op, or at least 90% of it, but a few Saturdays ago I had to go to the supermarket for onions, of all things. The ones at the Co-op were sprouting and browning, while the kale – which was vibrant and plentiful at the Farmers’ Market I had just left – was, in the Co-op’s sparse presentation, yellowing and limp. I think we can all agree that the produce section of a co-op must be at the same time its lovely face and passionate heart, and ours has been let fall far from that ideal.


And it’s not just produce. Last week I went in to buy a bag of Smokey House charcoal. That charcoal is an amazing thing – not only is this old craft learned and practiced by the young people at Smokey House in Danby, which is something we should support, but we benefit by that support because the charcoal is excellent, burning with an even, intense heat down to the barest skim of ashes. I have not found any as good.


I feared I would be unsuccessful when I saw bags of generic charcoal ranged in front of the entrance. “No,” I was informed by the woman in charge of that department, they would no longer be stocking Smokey House charcoal, and if I insisted on having that particular charcoal I could always buy it at the Farmers’ Market!

Great marketing, huh? And one less reason why I would need to enter those Wales Street doors. But enter them I will, and I hope you do too, because we need to make our Co-op a strong link in a sustainable food system that is so important to our, and our children’s, very survival, and to that end we need to keep pushing that boulder up the mountain. I say “our Co-op” because if you are a member – $10 or $20 a year – then you are an owner, as I am, and you have a say in how our dear Co-op is run.  You’ve seen the bumper sticker: The Co-Op: We Own It! Well, it’s true.


We in this area are food centric in the way that other regions are who know their food from beginning to end and who go out of their way not to rely on industrial food. It’s timely and seasonal, so that when something comes along that must be captured and dealt with immediately or never we drop everything and... render some lard from a freshly killed pig, say, or drive up to Shoreham for a day of picking sour pie cherries in order to make a rare cherry pie; and to macerate some of them in rum and sugar for a Christmas liqueur and a New Year’s surprise of potent cherries.

From 6-24-2010 Pie Cherries

We have the opportunity to do that because we have a solid base in this state of producers of rare and decent foods – it’s food that demands respect. The wife of the owner of the orchard (Champlain) was thrilled that we had come to pick sour cherries instead of sweet because her husband had just remarked that nobody wanted sour cherries and he “might as well pull those trees out.” This is just one more instance of Use it or Lose it!


Yes, there is a nice culture of food here and in the greater Vermont and adjacent lands, but it is a young culture, burgeoning, and it needs tending and weeding and constant attendance. It is like a garden. If you only look out the window and smile to yourself how fecund it is, suddenly the weeds begin to strangle out the zucchini – and it is all because you did not walk among the rows and notice the first signs of danger. You did not give it your presence and presence is all.

By the way, the recipe for the zucchini fritters or pancakes can be found in the Co-op recipe area.