The Deep Freeze

Last night, I watched a movie all about dirt. The documentary was, in fact, entitled "Dirt!" (the exclamation point conveyed by the somewhat manic animation sequences depicting the microscopic life of dirt), and it did an admirable job of describing a conventionally unglamorous substance as worthy of awe and admiration. I came out of the screening with the same buoyant, yearning heart that Coca-cola commercials instilled in me as a child--I wanted to sink my hands into soil, to nurture seedlings, to walk barefoot on freshly turned earth. Which, by the way, is not a good way to preserve soil tilth, but which nevertheless is fiendishly tempting.

I came out into the snow and felt the first pangs of the winter farmer doldrums. Thus far, long- anticipated rest and other seasonal distractions have kept me from missing the dirt. Besides, I've been more than sufficiently busy, between planning next season, visiting family, and (lately) substitute teaching sixth grade math. But the numbers finally got to me. I'm tired of Excel spreadsheets, converting yield per foot into pounds of seed per acre. I'm overwhelmed by seed catalogues and their relentlessly positive descriptions. I'd like some more kale to accompany my veal and potatoes. Watching "Dirt!", I felt envy rise in my chest at the muscles and tan lines of farmers. I'm winded by a romp in the snow, and I haven't lifted anything heavier than a cast iron skillet in months.

I have a plan, however. As soon as I am unemployed again (but before the financial ramification of this state have fully sunk in), I'm buying some dirt. Potting soil, some trays, a few more sprouting jar lids. I'm going to fire up the grow lights that Andrew's grandmother donated to the cause, and I'm going to grow. I'll start my onions, certainly, but I think I'll throw some greens into the mix as well. Maybe a kumquat tree for the corner? Or perhaps I could convert the defunct front porch to our cottage into a very cold cold frame?

Then again, I might feel completely satisfied simply to sit on the kitchen floor with a handful of finished compost, entranced by the sweet promise of fecundity.

Pastured Poultry Preservation

Recently, preparing to leave Massachusetts for a sojourn in the sunny south, I surveyed my winter stockpile of provisions with a critical eye. I needed stock. Chicken stock. Lots of chicken stock. What, after all, is a cold winter’s day without a pot of soup steaming on the stovetop and a mug of cocoa reanimating my frosted fingers? Admittedly, homemade stock has never been my strongpoint—for an embarrassingly long time I suffered under the illusion that one chicken’s worth of bones, if simmered long enough, could magically transform an entire pot of water into a rich, fragrant base for soups. This is patently untrue, as a succession of “subtle” (read: watery) stocks demonstrated. With vegetable stocks I had equally unfortunate results, primarily because I could never bring myself to sacrifice a sufficient quantity of perfectly good veggies to the stockpot. (The one time I did manage to achieve vegetable broth nirvana, as part of an over-ambitious soup-in-a-pumpkin spectacle, I ran a tab of about $50. For soup. Never again, Whole Foods).

But this time around I had several secret weapons: The River Cottage Meat Book, the most scrumptious treatise on carnivory ever composed, 75 lbs of chicken backs and too-small-for-sale birds, and a knowledgeable assistant. OK, so maybe Andrew was actually in charge. He spent the season working at Polyface Farm, our source for stock birds and a perfect stopping point in my seasonal migration from north to south. When I learned that we could borrow a kitchen and two pressure canners in return for one night of feeding the crew, I decided that it was time to purchase additional canning jars, and perhaps buy stock in the Ball company.

Do not be deceived by my history of failure: making a good stock is fantastically simple. As long as you avoid the two great sins of stock-making—overboiling and underpacking—you cannot fail. First, you must pack the pot tightly with your bones and/or meat and add only enough water to cover everything. Second, you must maintain your pot at the most tremulous of simmers for 3-6 hours. We added a few carrots, some celery stalks, and several quartered onions to our brew, but eschewed the addition of any salt. While “salt to taste” seems to be the directive that commercial stock companies cook by (check out the sodium content on that Campbell’s soup!), we wanted to save the salting step for the distant day when we use our stock. Besides, our stock was so flavorful that we didn’t need salt in order to taste the chicken-y goodness.

Several hours later, with the afternoon sun streaming into the kitchen, we began to decant our stocks one by one, first pulling out whole birds, necks, and backs, then carefully straining the broth through a fine sieve. Internet sleuthing had revealed that the fat in our stock could interfere with a proper canning seal or cause the stock to go rancid, so we covered the pots, stashed them in my cat-proof car to chill for the night, and made plans to regroup in the morning. Chicken as air freshener—I think it will really catch on.

Then we cooked dinner for 12 hungry farmers.

Morning found us in the kitchen again, skimming off the risen fat and preparing the safe-like pressure canner for duty. Low acid foods like stock require the high heat of a pressure canner for safe home canning. Please don’t ever use a water bath and call it even—it isn’t. You can, of course, freeze your stock and store it for at least a year, but with our freezer bursting from 130 lbs of veal, we felt that canning made the most sense. We saved the chicken fat (schmaltz) for matzoh balls, stir-fries, and spreading on bread, and we canned our eighteen quarts of stock in just a few hours.

Coming soon: What We Did While the Stock (tremulously) Simmered or In Defense of Fat or Why “Lard-Bucket” is Really a Term of Endearment

Undercover Farming

When I first visited Serenbe, in December of 2007, most of our fields were incognito, hiding under a winter cover crop and resting until spring. To my untrained eye, however, Serenbe seemed a very small farm, only growing in a few patches here and there on the farm. Once I began working here, in March, I gradually learned to distinguish the covers of vetch, clover, winter peas, and rye from the green grass between beds. This was a critical skill to develop, as grassy lanes function as roads for our tractor and truck, but woe unto you who drives through a covercropped bed. The weight of a tractor or truck will instantly compact our carefully cultivated fields, destroying the light, fluffy tilth that we have teased in the hard Georgia clay with deep-rooted covers, spading, and the addition of organic matter. Over the course of the season, covercropped fields gradually came into production: we mowed the covers, tilled in the dried grains, grasses, and legumes, and dug our hands into the rich soil beneath.

I now approach December from the opposite end, no longer waking our fields up to the fertility of spring, but tucking them in for a long winter's nap. We've spent the past few weeks covercropping with a vengeance, as we didn't want to miss the window of warmth in which our covers will establish themselves before the first frost. We've sown our fields with oats, rye, clover, and vetch, all hardy winter crops. Each cover has different properties, so we vary our covercrop application to the needs of the particular bed. Oats are a good cover for fields which will come into production in the early spring, as oats "winter kill," naturally dying down toward the end of winter. This creates less work for us as we integrate the dead cover back into the soil. Clover provides bee fodder, fixes nitrogen from the air into the soil (it is a legume), and is easy to kill, making it an excellent choice for early spring beds as well. A healthy crop of clover has self sown in the beds and paths of our current brassica field. We're happy to let it thrive, as it grows low enough not to interfere with our broccolis, cabbages, kale, and collards, and it chokes out more noxious weeds.

Whereas clover simply blankets the ground to out compete other weeds, rye has what is called an alleleopathic effect on the soil and actually discourages weeds from growing. Hairy vetch fixes the most nitrogen of our covercrop quartet and adds a great deal of biomass in its many leafy tendrils. It, however, is a total pain to kill, and tends to get wrapped around the tines of our tiller.

To spread our covers on a field before tillage, we use an Earthway brand hand-operated bag seeder, which looks a bit like a cross between a knapsack and a hurdy-gurdy. We adjust the bottom aperture according to the size of the seed we are spreading, before filling the bag with the desired seed. Then, keeping a steady, fairly swift pace, we walk the field in straight lines, turning the crank on the seeder to scatter the seeds. Crocs, for the record, are NOT good shoes for an activity that involves quick-stepping through tall grasses and grains: the first time I covercropped I lost my shoes repeatedly. Once we've seeded the entire field evenly, we till the old plants in along with the new seeds and hope for a rain the next day. If the seeds stay in the ground without being watered in, they are liable to lose viability, or get eaten up by passing bids. The drought that descended on us for most of September set us back in our covercropping, as we had nary a raindrop for almost a month. Finally, we ponied up and bought overhead sprinklers so that we could get our covers up in time. Of course, about a week later, the rains finally came.

Beet it!

I first visited Serenbe in early December: it was a bright, crisp day shortly after the last CSA of the year. I caught the farm as it was settling down for its winter nap, and as a result the fields were appropriately subdued, with green and brown the dominant color scheme. I had trouble imagining the riot of color that would herald spring--it seemed a quiet farm.

Not so, any longer! Each day reveals fresh blossoms on peach trees, strawberry plants, and even our cover crop of vetch. My newly trained eyes catch colors where before I might only have seen a green wash. On field walks this spring I'm forever stopping in my tracks to admire tiny yellow buttercups or the brilliant purple stems of last season's beets. Those tell-tale purple stems in particular have become an obsession of mine, calling me to harvest every time I pass their bed. I can't get enough of the satisfying pop that ushers the beets out of the earth or the shockingly bright colors hidden beneath their dusty skin. Beets seem to me a good season-transitioning vegetable: nourished by the ground as it slumbered, earthy in flavor, but still suggestive (in that stunning purple core) of the colors of spring.

Because we have about bushel of beets still in the field, I'm always looking for ways to use them up. This slightly untraditional borscht puts the humble beet front and center (don't make it unless you like the taste of beets!) but gives them a bit of polish with lemon pepper, scallions, and dill. I served it with pasta, though a heaping beet green and spinach salad would be an equally delicious accompaniment.

Borscht
makes 4 hearty servings; takes just over 1 hour start to finish

4 large beets (I used about 6 medium to small ones)
1/3 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon local honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon pepper seasoning
2 cups buttermilk
2 scallions, white part only, minced
fresh or dried dill
plain yogurt or sour cream

Place the beets in a large sauce pan with water to cover. Bring to a boil and let simmer until beets are cooked, 30-40 minutes. Remove from heat and drain, saving at least one cup of the liquid. Set the beets aside to cool.

In a saucepan, cook the oatmeal on low with 1 cup of the beet water until all the liquid is absorbed. Meanwhile, peel and quarter the beets.

Place the beets, oatmeal, honey, lemon juice, and lemon pepper in a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Add the buttermilk and process until blended. Return the soup to the stove and heat until warmed through. Serve with a garnish of the scallions and dill as well as a dollop of yogurt or sour cream.

my thanks to Diana Shaw's Vegetarian Entertaining for the inspiration for this recipe