Work is Easter

As springtime brings lambing on our farm, Easter brings work. Lambing is defined usually by a slow start and then climaxes to a furious frenzy of multiple births one after the other, and the shepherd must attend or watch over if assistance is needed. So like the proverbial new mom, lack of sleep is guaranteed.
This spring's weather has been so wacky whatever happened to global warming? It's more like global cooling. Rain, then sun, then snow, then brutally cold winds! This ain't right.


Most people experience Easter egg hunts and parades with pretty dresses and bonnets, but not in Vermont. I have lived here almost 20 years now and it still shocks me each Easter when we see some flurries. As seasons change, so do our milking and cheese making chores. Some of our cows have dried off in preparation for the next calving and milking season, so we are supplementing our milk by buying a bit in the interim, from our friends, the Bouchers. If you visit their blog, you'll see some piglets they are graciously housing until we can bring them home. I also located some heritage piglets not far from here, but they are a wee bit young to bring home yet. With so many interested now in raising their own food and purchasing locally, we have had a hard time locating young stock to raise ourselves. So after morning lambing chores we loaded our milk cans and ventured off to the Bouchers to pick up milk.



Upon our return we then had to unload the milk into the tank to keep it cool and then on to more work, wrapping several hundred La Fleurie cheeses for sale.



Then on to feeding chores again. And when it was all done? Time for the humans to eat! Alas, I was too exhausted and frozen to make our ham on the grill, so conjured up a pot of homemade chicken soup from a roasted chicken a few nights before. Ummm. Soul food. I didn't miss the ham a bit. I'll make the ham in preparation to meet with Uncle Sam.

Cheese Demo Healthy Living

A few days ago I was scheduled to do a cheese demo at Healthy Living Market in Burlington. What a great place to do a demo! They have an actual demo 'station' where there is a commercial oven, sinks, granite counter, and a refrigerator. The coordinator, Gerta, set me up with tulips, bowls, signage and cutting boards. I brought three cheeses with me: Butternut, Paniolo and Mountain Tomme. It was such fun that the 5 hour time frame went by quickly as I gabbed away with customers and even some regulars of mine from Burlington Farmers Market. I was told at the end it was a record for sales of a demo. I brought so much cheese and it was almost all sold while I was there! Perks of doing events like this? Gerta fed me from a separate demo! Amir Habib's shiitake mushrooms on flatbread pizzas.

Gluten Free Fish Fry

With all the gloomy, grey, grim early spring weather I had a craving for a Paula Deen moment: FRIED FOOD! Supreme comfort food, fried food has the ability to squelch even the poorest moods, if but for a moment when the indigestion kicks in. But it's well worth it. A close friend is gluten intolerant so I thought I would try a 'dry run' of the menu before inviting her over for dinner. I have made a lot of fried foods from many cuisines and usually use regular flour-which means it comes from wheat.

Many people do not know this or perhaps the information is located somewhere deep in the brain as wheat products are so pervasive in almost every single ingredient list on supermarket shelves today. I began by purchasing the protein ingredients which I decided were going to be Asian and brought home some shrimp, cod, mussels and locally made tofu. Vegetables on the list were zucchini, eggplant, button mushroooms and Napa cabbage.

Most important part of the menu was the Gluten Free flour I would need to use. I chose rice flour as it gives a wonderful light crispy texture to the finished product. Sadly I can't give precise measurements here as I am a cook that doesn't measure unless baking breads or cakes. But I can illustrate some descriptives. When using regular flour (i.e, wheat based) one must mix the frying batter and let it rest for about 30 mins to let the Gluten develop. Well here with non-gluten frying that's not an issue. In fact, it can hurt the final texture and make it less crispy. Therefore less time involved. Yay! I made up a classic tempura batter of ice water, rice flour, club soda and two egg yolks. Basically you want to wait until the last minute to mix this up right before frying. I decided with all the fried goodies I needed a palate cleanser. That's what the Napa cabbage was for. I shredded it up, added some fresh ginger, garlic and rice vinegar and let it all steep together until the food was ready.


While that awaited me, I prepped the vegetables by cutting them up and drying them on towels. This is a must for frying otherwise it will spatter and come out soggy and not as crispy crunchy.


Next up was cutting the fish, and tofu. Same process, making sure everything was dry and ready to fry.





I discovered a great product to make prep time even quicker. This frozen package of mussels, cleaned, debearded and ready to go!



The local tofu is made by Vermont Soy a bit north of here, and what great packaging!



All that was left was a dipping sauce for all and to get fryin'! I grated some fresh ginger and garlic over a bowl,


added some tamari sauce (San-J wheat free), sesame seeds, sesame oil, scallions and rice vinegar all to taste.


Meanwhile the rice was cooking and the oil in the fryer was heating up.



Next I made up the fryer batter which consisted of ice water, rice flour, 2 egg yolks and some club soda. I do this by sight and it should be made right before frying. Asian cooks actually mix it with chopsticks until barely come together with lumps left in. I used a fork as I had no chopsticks on hand. The thickness should be that of thin cream. And I actually put the ice right in with the water.
Below is tofu being dipped in the batter before lowering into the fryer.



And some cut up cod fillets in the fryer.


I got so fry crazy I began to fry everything in sight! I even fried little cuts of scallions. Just to hear that sizzle and take in that wonderful fried food smell. Unfortunately as time is of the essence in this sort of meal, I stopped taking photos when it was done. And the food was on! What's next? Fish and chips. This time a beer batter for the cod. The gloomies are gone.

Endnote: everything was fried at 375 degrees F.

Comforting Casserole

I haven't written in a bit as we have been frantically frazzled like chipmunks preparing for winter stuffing their little holes in tree trunks with nuts. Seriously though, we have been working to finish up more planks in the cave to age lots of 'Butternut' cheeses we have been making lately. The weather has been so incredibly brutal and dry this winter that each week it seems we have yet another cold front affronting us! So to evade monstrous cold hauling to the cave, we moved a slew of Butternuts before one hit. We moved 80 wheels in one day and stocked planks full. Back and forth, back and forth to the cheese house. I must say my biceps better be getting stronger!

In addition, my husband had been hauling logs out of the woods and sawing, chopping and splitting each day. It's been so cold that we have had to burn one extra woodstove to keep the house warm at night. You see we burn wood that we harvest ourselves from the land, in an outdoor wood boiler. Then we also have the back up woodstoves inside the house. While he has manned the outdoor boiler, I have essentially womaned the woodstoves...


After making cheese, moving cheese, doing firewood, one can barely get enough energy to make dinner. So I decided to just throw a few things together and arrive at a comforting casserole. The kind that finds you in the chair asleep ten minutes later. First I made some elbow pasta, then a roux (mixing butter and flour together in a paste and adding milk from the dairy until thickened), then chopped up some of our ham from the night before, a bit of spinach from the market and grated Butternut on top.............and voila!


Perhaps I should confess, asleep in five minutes.

Yes We Can...and we did!

Wow! What a day for America. On this day last year, there was doom and gloom among us and not much to look forward to-for the economy. Or our cheese business. Well, that changed in 2008 and so now has our whole country.

When JFK poetically said decades ago, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what YOU can do for your country" now resonates with our 44th president of the United States of America. This great country was built on what I called 'a tossed salad' in my entrance application to college many years ago. I had the task of writing an essay describing why this country was a mixed bag or salad of different peoples, if you will.

I too am from Hawaii and largely raised by my maternal grandmother, I also attended Punahou School, as did Barack Obama. I have traveled quite a bit, as has he, and this brings with it a sense of open mindedness that is not often found when one lives in one town or place his or her entire life. That is not to say I generalize. It is just that one is exposed to many different types of people, cultures, beliefs, cuisines etc. And early on. We all bring with us our own life experiences.

Today was and IS an incredible day. As I ventured out on deliveries today after the cheese make I noticed the roads totally devoid of cars. The buildings were mostly empty. Only those who must work were out and about. I delivered to one tavern and saw the entire place packed with people, mostly young, at the bar, watching Barack Obama's inaugural address. I listened to it, mostly, in its entirety in the car, with great coverage on NPR. Brilliantly written, I resonated with what he had to say especially to inspire service, and responsibility. We are living in the techno age, the most recent young generation, about to graduate from high school or college has grown up unlike any other generation. I think they call it the X gens. Mostly exposed to computers, emailing, texting-- things appear like instant gratification. Baby booming parents often times, instilled in them a sense of deservedness, perhaps from a well-intentioned desire to provide what they did not have. The people who have come before us without peace in the world and economies in disrepair know the true value of hard work and service. I am hoping in this time now with Barack Obama, the younger generations that come after will be able to rise up to the challenge and work hard, give service, volunteer. It is not about the almighty dollar, or getting good grades to attain the highest paying job but about mindfulness, gratitude and being a steward of the world. As farmers, we like to call ourselves stewards of the land. This means we don't own the land for ownership sake but 'own' our behavior on it. That is to say, we must account for our actions. Just like we must be accountable for our actions in service, at work, and to our Mother Earth. I can say this as I have been a farmer most of my adult life, therefore quite trained at hard work and accountability. Anything that happens on a farm aside from acts of God (weather) is at the conscience of the farmer. And even though I have both a B.A and a B.S (quite over qualified for the job), I feel as though my service to these animals and this land make me more whole. I strive to provide healthy food, humanely raised to the folks we encounter here on this little piece of the Earth. So now on to better things and giving service. Let us begin and ride this next journey..........It shall prove to be a very powerful one.

Farmer's Market in the New Year

Well the weather sure was frightful and yet lots of folks came out to shop at the Burlington Farmer's Market in this New Year. With several more lamb shares and pork shares to deliver I made the trek to the Memorial Auditorium in minus 15 degrees. Yikes!

Products available were winter vegetables like rutabagas, turnips, daikon radish, potatoes, carrots and even some winter greens. Jewelry, clothing, dried flowers sure enough to perk up anyone's mood were also lighting up the room. There was even a new vendor working on his senior thesis at UVM demonstrating the craft of lacto-fermented vegetable making. He had his setup with cabbage to show how to make old world traditional sauerkraut. What an innovative thesis for the nutrition world!

Speaking of raw sauerkraut, several days ago, I met a friend for lunch at Jeff's Maine Seafood in St Albans, Vermont. He had a Reuben sandwich made with the Flack Farm's lacto-fermented sauerkraut. I even had a bite and there's nothin' like it. It lends the sandwich a nice crunch instead of sogging up the bread and a mouth-watering bit of tartness (from the tang of raw lacto-bacilli in the cabbage). Also, imagine my surprise when I noticed one of my cheeses on their menu. Who knew?

It was a nice change to see a few of my regular customers from the summer market as well as some new faces-it seems as though it has been so long. One man even bought some of my cheese to bring to an Inaugural event in Washington, DC!

I am grateful that despite the weather my health was well enough to make this market.

Life's Challenges

Well it sure is cold. I hate to sound like a broken record but tonight I heard that 2/3 of the USA is under a 'cold weather' advisory. Predicted to get below minus 15 between today and tomorrow, here in my neck of the woods. Talk about a challenge on a farm. It means buttoning up barns and making sure all animals have extra hay to generate more heat in their bodies and well, hope.

When one is diagnosed with cancer, after denial, there is often a pledge to live in the moment, at present. For the future is, at best, on hiatus of the mind. This is what I pledge, now, to live in the moment, and breathe. For it is all I have. THIS moment. To breathe and relinquish the past and not focus on the future. For what is the future? A fantasy, an ego-based desire, wishes, dreams, hopes, and wills of this or that-to happen. Well now I must pledge to just be...........

First Cheese in 2009

Well, once again while revelers were most likely asleep nursing hangovers from too much Auld Lang Syne, we were up and at 'em making the first cheese of the new year. And I must say I ENJOYED being in there today what with 16 degrees outside and a winter wind advisory and every section of the home cold! Especially since my cheese house with cheese being made must be a toasty 70 degrees for the cheese to develop properly. So what did I make on the first day of the new year? Butternut. The picture below shows Butternuts plank aging in our cave at about 5 months of age.



We are too old to drive over a half hour to see fireworks and toast the night away. We barely made it to 9:30 last night after feasting on bacon wrapped scallops, orange/lemon roasted shrimp and a big salad. Never made it to the beautiful Prosecco I received as a gift......Ah well, do I wish I could have gone into town? Life was simpler when we were young. Farming is complicated!

Farmer's Work is Never Done

Well, it's another Christmas Day and we must work. I decided to make it a bit more special as far as luxury, I'd make a hearty breakfast for my husband and me. You see, even farmers don't always get the chance to eat the proverbial 'farmhouse breakfast' EVEN on a holiday. So while most were still in bed, or perhaps unwrapping gifts beneath a tree, we were already out the door. But what a joy to have our own farm grown foods as well as some of our farming friends to add to it! I fried up some of our own bacon

and made an omelete with Boucher Farm eggs and Orb Weaver Farm cheese.....

And then we were off to go look at some cows at Cimarron Farm.......he had Normande cross cows to sell.

Then back to do chores (farmers' term for each day's work that must get done) and then after that, turn cheeses.

Thanksgiving Alone

This year, for the first time in many years, I didn't have to make a huge Thanksgiving feast. I have made many Thanksgiving dinners in their entirety since a very young age. So I am perfectly comfortable with it. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I was in a bit of a quandary not having a lot of pre-planning, pre-chopping and organizing with the proverbial 'managed time' shopping days. What do I do with my time? Enjoy it. Although foreign me, I toyed with the smaller menu I was now about to create. I decided to boycott the traditional doings for a somewhat 'mixit up' kind.
Final menu was only to be 4 things. And NO stuffing. Certainly would be a guilt-free pleasure not consuming up to 4000 calories in one meal, right? Almost.
The menu?
Crushed fennel, rosemary and sea salt crusted turkey breast on the Primo (previous posts-ceramic cooker)
Butternut squash, apple, onion, Vaquero blue cheese tart
Steamed green beans
Potato gratin with grated Mountain Tomme

Since the menu was short and simple I didn't even have to start cooking until late afternoon. What a wonderful day it was. Slow paced, calm, quiet.
What a joy to not have the baggage claimed competitive and sometimes yucky family dynamics to digress from what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about. To have gratitude for what we are. I thank the universe for who I am, my health and the here and now. So all you empty nesters, young college students, singles, neighbors, and aquaintances, it is very possible to not only have a great time but feel good about it too. My husband and I sat down to some nice bubbly and the meal was on!

Guilt-free pleasure? No. We were still full-and with gratitude. Happy Holidays to all and may Peace come to earth.......

Willow Hill Farm Butternut Squash Tart:

Ingredients:
1 apple (I like Granny Smith), peeled, cored, sliced thin
Butternut squash-cut off neck of squash, peel and slice thin
Half an onion, sliced thin
Approx 1 cup Willow Hill Farm Vaquero Blue Cheese
Tart Dough (below)

Dough:
1 cup flour
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2-2.5 tablespoons ice water
pinch salt

Whiz above ingredients in a food processor about 20-30 seconds until it forms a ball. You know when it's about to form a ball when the sound begins to change to a whirring bogged down sound. The moment a ball begins to form, stop. Dump out onto plastic wrap and form a circle. Put in refrigerator at least 30 minutes before rolling out. When ready just roll out to form the 9" tart pan size. Be careful not to stretch dough when placing in pan as it will shrink when baking.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Roll out dough and fit into tart pan. Arrange alternating apple slices, squash slices and onion slices in a circular pattern following the pan. Bake about 45 mins to one hour. Remove from oven and sprinkle crumbled blue cheese on top. Bake about 5 mins more til bubbly. To gild the lily? Drizzle some honey on top of that!