22. August 2011 by admin.

 Introducing…Watermelon Guy!

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12. February 2011 by admin.

Free-range chicken by our friends Shannon and BJ. Chicken soup by Ilene. Pottery by Suzi Hanson at Catoctin Pottery. All raised and shaped and made with love, it must surely cure what ails.

A flu has been visiting my house this week.  Thank goodness I remain well and can play host. The others are in varying stages of better and well.

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2. February 2011 by admin.

A quick glimpse at some snow highlights on the farm–

Its never fun to lose electric power and phone service, but we had some fun with it and appreciated roughing it for a while. I think my boys enjoyed candlelight so much that they would like a lights-out night every once in a while, when we set up a lantern and skip the lights for the night. Since we heat the house with wood anyway, we weren’t freezing without electricity, I’d be complaining if I had been freezin! We melted snow over the woodstove for drinking water…I’m grateful that power returned after a couple days, I would not have been happy melting snow for the cow water trough. There’s no skipping pancakes around here:

Skiing on the farm was fun in this big snow.

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11. August 2010 by admin.

 The bees have been busy, beekeeper Steve keeps an eye on them. He has worked hard this spring and summer to keep our bees happy. Steve is passionate about beekeeping and community education about honeybees. We are eternally grateful, so of course, we feed his family heirloom tomatoes.  Are you an aspiring beekeeper? Take a class with Steve! Phil did. Steve also sells all the supplies, check it out at http://honeybeehabitat.com

The kids are getting geared up to check in on the bees and collect a little honey. We sure didn’t expect a speck of honey, so this is a real treat. We left plenty of full honeycomb in the hive to feed the bees through the winter.

Steve and one of the frameless combs. The bees made their comb without any foundation comb, isn’t it beautiful? That means we can eat the honey right in the comb, my absolute favorite taste sensation of all time.

Look at my brave kids! They are so interested and Steve is so patient.

Jonah gently brushes the bees off the comb we are collecting.

Here is Steve, enjoying some bee-gold in the comb with us, right in the garden. What an incredible treat. Thank you, Steve!

Posted in Family, Animals, On the Farm | 1 Comment »

25. May 2010 by admin.

May has been a whirlwind of farming adventures! Here are some “journal notes about goats”:

One of our goats, Hazelnut, arrived this week [early May] with her sister, who is just visiting, and I already have a dozen farm stories to share. OK, Hazelnut is a companion goat. A “companion” goat, you may ask, with a smirk? Yes, indeed. The milk goat arrives later in the week, and Hazelnut will be her little friend. And who’s the twin over there? That’s Hazelnut’s sister, Apricot. Another nice little goat, she is. She is just visiting until the milkgoat arrives. Oh dear, the companion to the companion goat.

Animals make the best story fodder. Noah and I took to reading a chapter book to the goats in the morning. I set up a blanket seat for us and we read James Herriot Dog Stories to the goats all this week.

They are a little playful at the beginning and want Noah to put out his hand for a hand-headbutt. They eat and enjoy our company. Then they settle in and lay down near us, listening to the stories. One morning, when I paused from reading, Hazelnut looked up at me with an expression like “Keep reading”. Eventually, they nap.

Noah and I laugh that we are like Fern in Charlotte’s Web, reading to the animals in the barn. We watch the cows come in to listen across the fence (wondering if we’re passing out some grain). The chickens stroll in to see if there are any chickens in the story, some of them crossing into the goat paddock to check out the grain bucket. Now a good laugh, because today, I was surprised when Tigger the cat peeked out from an opening under the shed wall next to me and joined the crew. There are cats in some of the stories, so no wonder.

Sitka is there too, laying patiently on the other side of the gate, wondering if he’ll ever be invited into the goat house. For now, he waits patiently, and listens for his favorite dog in the stories, Gyp the sheepdog. Sometimes he gets excited and barks at the goats, and I have to stop reading and tell him to lay down again.

Today [later in the week] was exciting. Our milk goat Avanell arrived and it was time for my first try at milking. She seemed to get along with the other two just fine, gently letting Hazelnut play headbutt with her. She followed to the goat milkstand and jumped right up to eat. She finished eating well before we finished milking and she patiently waited. Such a good goat! So patient with our beginner hands doing the pinch and squeeze over and over. Yes,”we”. Jonah needed to try, and Phil needed to help. And when we were finally done, she jumped down and just walked over to her gate. At first, my left hand wanted nothing to do with this party, and I was slow. But it only took about four days to coordinate and not long before it was easy. Welcome, Hazelnut and Avanell!

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21. February 2010 by ilene.

Sunday pancakes are a special treat at our house. Join us for this morning’s virtual pancakes. It might take a little longer than most households’ pancake breakfast, but we enjoy it. It starts with grinding two grains–rice and buckwheat. These are gluten-free pancakes, so we start with brown rice and grind it into a nice fresh brown rice flour. I first became interested in grinding my own grain for two reasons. One was inspirational–I read in Michael Abelman’s book Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It which includes a farmer who grows her own grain, works her land with draft horses, and made Michael fresh multi-grain pancakes by going into her pantry and grabbing handfuls of grains to start. In America, we have forgotten the art of fresh flour. Every town used to have a grain mill, and every household used fresh flour. Flour in its original form goes rancid quickly. But at some point with stripping the grain of its fiber to make white flours, it was possible to store grain longer and mass produce flour. Now we have forgotten how wonderful fresh flour is, and how varied the grain possibilities are. So, my second reason for grinding my own grain is that I was buying rice flour often, and storing it in the frig or freezer. It is more convenient to buy a grinder and a 25 pound bag of brown rice. But wow, I discovered what a treat fresh flour sure is! Most evident in these lofty wonderful pancakes.

Here is Jonah grinding the grain with the handcrank:

He’s cracking the rice grains. It could be set to a finer setting, but for a five year old on a handcrank, cracking the grain is work enough.

When he is done with his hard work, and his brother gets his turn, then I hook up the motor base, set it on fine, and it grinds in a flurry (fury? flurry is more appropriate here).

I grind buckwheat groats too, and mix that into my recipe. Today we are using the last bag of frozen blueberries picked and frozen last June.

And here is the best part…enjoying!

Here is my recipe. The source is Bette Hagman’s book The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy: Wheat-Free and Gluten-Free with Less Fuss and Less Fat . But note that I have made several changes to the grains of this recipe, and I’ll note those as changes.

Gluten-free Pancake Mix (I’ve made it into Buckwheat Pancakes)

2 cups of Gluten-Free Flour Mix*

2 cups of Buckwheat Flour (my addition, the original recipe uses 4 cups of GF Flour Mix)

(1 cup buttermilk powder, but I skip this and add a dairy liquid to the batch)

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

4 tsp baking powder (did you know you can make your own?? another post coming soon!)

2 tsp baking soda

—————

Beat together 2 eggs, 1 cup water (or milk), 2 tblspoons oil. Add 1 1/3 cups mix. Beat until smooth.

* Gluten-Free Flour Mix:

6 cups rice flour (I grind my own from brown rice, so its brown rice flour)

2 cups potato starch flour

1 cup tapioca flour

These starches are available at natural food stores. This makes a big batch of flour mix. You can cut this in half and I believe it will be enough for a double batch of pancake mix.

Posted in Family, Recipes | 1 Comment »

22. November 2009 by ilene.

As farmers, we are busy during the growing season, so we tend to do more trips during the off season. And, as busy as we are catching up with the rest of life during the cold months, its a good chance to take a break too.  The erratic temperatures that are the new norm often challenge us in our farming. Thank goodness for diverse vegetable farming. It is risky business to plant a monoculture of one crop, but especially in times of erratic weather. For us, we grow a gazillion different things, so all our carrots aren’t in one basket. or eggs. or you get it.  The erratic weather concerns me as a warning of global warming and general disturbance. But I surely took the gift of near 70 degrees in November while we were on our short but sweet beach trip. We spent lots of time on the beach. A few days later they got a hurricane with tons of rain that flooded out the beach and Route 1. I was interviewed on the beach for a newspaper article titled “Why the @*&% do you visit the beach in November?” They took cool photos of my boys and the dog on the beach, but did not print those. Here is the boring article they wrote.
Good thing I took some pictures too:

Phil’s red shiny beautiful hair gets more red and shiny and beautiful in wind.

Sitka LOVED coming on our trip and was such a good beach dog, you’d think he was leash trained. He is more cow herder than leash dog, but he is doing both really well these days. I’m warning him now though, he is NOT coming to Florida with us.

I used to love playing in tidal pools like this as a kid. This is Noah, transplanting sea grass. Always farming…

Sand Boy, flinging sand…

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