Can She Bake A (Husk) Cherry Pie?

In some respects, the process of becoming a good eater is almost more fun than the actuality of being one. The road to good eating is paved with firsts--my first portobello mushroom, thick and savory, the piquant crunch of my first pickled okra, the vivid nourishing freshness in my first bite of kale. I may never be the National Geographic explorer to which I once aspired, but I fill my hunger for adventure in the kitchen and the fields. The more unusual the vegetable, the more unexpected the flavors, the more interested I become. As life goes on, however, it becomes harder and harder to surprise me with new tastes. Kohlrabi? I've eaten loads. Cherimoyas? I'm already a fan. I even managed to snag some Colombian fried ants this winter, thanks to a care package from Alina. Thankfully, even as my tastes expand and the realm of the yet-untasted shrinks, I savor my quirky comfort foods: Swiss chard gratin with nutmeg, melon and basil soup, and lemon-cilantro roasted sweet potatoes.

I wonder sometimes how my far-ranging tastes will be expressed in my own future farm. I am, as Andrew reminds me, a bit more daring than the average consumer, for whom eggplant is a walk on the wild side, rather than a seasonal staple. If I grow the unusual varieties and unorthodox veggies which send me into raptures, will I be able to convince anyone else to buy them? My characteristic enthusiasm may be contagious, but rare is the brave soul who has yet taken me up on my suggestion of chocolate-covered radishes (seriously--try it. The sharp, juicy crunch of a radish is perfectly mediated by the rich creaminess of dark chocolate. But then, what isn't improved by a dunking in cacao?) I plan to offer lots of free samples.

Husk cherries (aka ground cherries, uchuvas, or cape gooseberries) are the latest revelation in my quest for novel edibles. Enclosed in a papery shell like a miniature tomatillo, ground cherries hang from their low-growing plants like Chinese lanterns. Within the husks, the fruit resembles a golden marble with an tart, almost tropical flavor. Husk cherries are perfectly delicious on the own as a summer fruit snack, but if you're feeling fancy and want to truly impress, I recommend a ground cherry pie.

Husk Cherry Pie
adapted from the excellent Mennonite cookbook Simply in Season

for the crust:
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 t sugar
1/3 cup butter
3 tablespoons ice water

for the filling:
3 cups husk cherries, husks removed
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

Prepare the crust: mix the dry ingredients together in a food processor, then add the cold butter, chopped into 4 or 5 pieces. Pulse the butter and dry ingredients until they resemble coarse crumbs. Add the cold water and pulse until the dough forms a ball. Remove from the food processor, shape it into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap and chill it in the fridge for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 425. Roll out the dough on a well floured surface until it lines a 9 or 10 inch pie pan. Prick the crust with a fork, cover it with alumnium foil, and blind bake it for 5 minutes. This will make the crust crispier.

Prepare the filling: Sprinkle a little of the sugar in the bottom of the crust. Mix the remaining sugar with the flour, the fruit, and the lemon juice. Pour into the pie crust. Sprinkle the top of the pie with the cinnamon and small daps of the butter. (I find that the golden berries are so pretty that a lattice crust is completely unneccesary) Bake at 425 for 10 minutes then reduce the heat to 350 and continue baking for an additional 25-30 minutes.

Signs and Miracles

In the evening of my first day at Caretaker, a perfect rainbow spanned the valley as I stepped out of the house to walk down to my cabin. At the time, I took the Biblical interpretation, and inferred that it was a promise of a wonderful season, definitely one without too much precipitation. Well. I've seen about 10 perfect rainbows since, and I have now come to the conclusion that rainbows are actually a promise of lots and lots of rain. It's raining now, as I write this, as a matter of fact.

But we have a new sign on the farm, so I'm not worried. A few days ago Katie mentioned that she had seen a dove fluttering around the farm. As anyone who graduated from Sunday School can tell you, a dove brought back an olive branch to Noah, indicating that dry land was nigh. All week long, the sun has shone and the fields have flourished. My garden has been churning out eggplants; we're eating raspberries by the pint; Chloe isn't even kicking the bucket any more. Today brought the greatest miracle of all, however.

While pulling up black plastic yesterday afternoon, we noticed something red though the opaque plastic walls of the hoophouse. We closed the hoophouse 3 weeks ago in defeat, convinced that the blight had finally invaded even that safe haven. The plants were beginning to die back from disease, and the fruits lacked even the merest pink blush. In their prime, the hoophouse tomatoes had grown into a jungle, so we anticipated a huge hassle in removing the dying vines. To simplfy our task, we decided to hasten their death by roasting the tomato plants to death. We left the sidewalls down, the doors shut. We stopped running irrigation to the plants. We imagined their leaves shriveling from 145 degree heat, the blighted fruit withering even as it rotted.

Instead, we seem to have created juicy, sweet, California-style dry farmed tomatoes.

Late blight is a fungus like disease, technically classified as a "water mold." It spreads through the air, but can only really infect a plant when the leaves are wet and the temperatures are between 60 and 80 degrees. Our benign neglect prevented the introduction of cool, humid air, and the brutal daytime temperatures within stopped the blight in its tracks. Even better, the sudden stress seems to have kicked the tomatoes into high gear. When we opened the door this morning, we found plants so heavy laden with fruit that they could barely support themselves on their trellising. Sure, there are some blighted fruits and dead leaves in the hoophouse. But to haul a cart full of ripe, red slicers up the hill felt like the greatest victory of the season.

Oh and that dove? It is actually a white pigeon with an affinity for compost piles. Better than a rainbow, I say!

Because these tomatoes are such precious commodities, I can't offer recipes that utilize the normal summer abundance of tomatoes. For us, raspberries are the wonder crop this year, which has inspired me to try an unusual take on chilled berry soup. While I'm sure it seems crazy to put jalapenos in a berry soup, the peppers actually add the perfect piquancy to turn a dessert soup into something a bit more substantial.

Chilled Garden Berry Soup with Lemon Verbena
Recipe courtesy of Homegrown Pure and Simple, by Michel Nischan
Note: Lemon verbena is an unusual herb with lanceolate leaves and a heavenly lemon aroma. It is a perennial, so if you can purchase a plant and find a spot for it in your garden, you will be richly rewarded.

1 cup honey (I imagine that you could reduce this a bit, depending on the tartness of the berries)
1 cup lemon juice
2 Tablespoons grated lemon zest
1 cinnamon stick
4-5 teaspoons seeded, finely minced jalapeno (the seeds are where the real heat of hot peppers is, so do NOT include them in this recipe)
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 pints garden berries (I used raspberries, but the recipe assures me that any combination of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, or strawberries would be delicious)
1/4 cup loosely packed lemon verbena leaves, sliced
whatever lemon verbena stems the leaves were on

In a small saucepan, combine the honey, lemon juice, lemon verbena stems, lemon zest, cinnamon, the chopped pepper, and the verbena stems. Simmer for about 5 minutes over low heat. Season with the salt, remove from the heat, and let sit for 10 minutes to cool.

Put the berries in a food processor or blender. Add the honey mixture, pouring through a fine sieve. Process until smooth.

You can sieve the soup again to remove some of the seeds, or simply stir in the sliced lemon verbena leaves and chill until serving.

You Can Take the Girl Out of Georgia...

When I first came to Caretaker to interview, Don warned me of the brutal heat of a Berkshire summer. "There will be about a week in the 90's," he said seriously. "Only one week?" I asked incredulously, "I think I can handle that."

That week, in all of its sun-baked glory finally arrived last Friday, and I have spent every sweaty moment since in a heat-addled bliss. It is finally hot enough to swim.

Water, as I have noted, is abundant in the Berkshires (this summer in particular). Long-ago glaciers gouged ponds in the earth; streams bisect the valleys and trip mellifluously one into the next. Frankly, I'm not sure why farmers in these parts even both to establish irrigation systems. Unfortunately, most of this water is frigid, a shock to the system on all but the warmest of days. If I'm to cool off at 6 pm, when I get off work, by jumping in a swimming hole, it had better be a scorcher of a day. I've gone swimming for five days running now, and I couldn't be happier.

Of course, the ironic counterpoint to my love affair with cold water is that these hot days also send me into the kitchen to slave over a cauldron of hot water canning jams, pickles, salsas and just plain fruit. Rutabagas will only carry me so far through winter. Alas, my dreams of a pantry red with tomatoes is not to be, nor the "tomaisins" (sun dried cherry tomatoes) I had so eagerly anticipated. I'll replace them with pickled beets, dilly beans, and tomatillo salsa.

And peaches. Just as it wouldn't be summer unless I immerse myself in water, nor would the season seem complete until I have consumed and canned at least a bushel of peaches. Katie was kind enough to bring me back two bags of gargantuan Pennsylvania peaches when she returned from vacation, so I spent Tuesday night racing to can many of them before they crossed the fine line from ripe into rotten. I've improved since my first marathon cannings last year, when I managed to sully almost every pot in the house over the course of far too many hours. This year I'm avoiding the newbie mistakes: I started my canning bath water first--though after I had ensured that my pot was deep enough to hold my jars. So I skinned and I chopped and I pitted and I boiled, until the dust settled and I was left with 5 quarts of peaches in a light honey syrup just waiting for the winter doldrums to strike.

How To Can Your Own Peaches

First and foremost, set a large pot of water to boil--this will be your hot water bath. Place some sort of rack in the bottom of the pot, so that jars will not rattle against the bottom of the pot when processing.

Set a second, smaller pot to boil, and fill a small bowl with ice water. Cut a shallow "x" in the bottom of each peach, and when the second pot comes to a boil, immerse the peaches one at a time for between 30 and 60 seconds to loosen the skin. When you remove a peach from the hot water, immediately plunge it into the ice water (the goal is not to cook the peaches.) If the peaches are ripe, the skin will slide right off.

In the meantime, in a small saucepan, bring 1 quart of water and a scant 1 cup of honey or sugar to a simmer. This will be your canning syrup. The sweetness of your syrup is a matter of taste--my recipe is considered "light". Depending on how many peaches you can, and how full you pack your jars, you may need more or less syrup. I made 5 quarts of peaches with 1 batch of syrup.

Once all the peaches are peeled, cut them into halves or slices. Pack your (very clean!) jars with the peaches and pour the canning syrup over the peaches until it comes up to the bottom of the neck of the jar. Poke and prod the peaches to release any air trapped at the bottom. Screw canning lids on your jars--they should be sealed, but you don't need to really jam them down: the processing will do the real sealing.

Carefully lower the filled jars into the first and largest pot of boiling water. Water needs to cover the lids completely. Once the peaches have been processed 25 minutes in boiling water, remove them from the pot and allow them to cool on a counter. Store in a cool place for up to one year.

Delusion/Delimma

I've been lax as of late, for which I apologize. In part, my sporadic posting has been the result of over stimulation: I first went on vacation to Virginia, where I visited Andrew at the now-famous Polyface Farm; then I attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association Summer Conference in Amherst, MA. Between processing 600 chickens in 4 hours, taking notes on 7 excellent workshops, and participating in a pie-eating contest, it has been a busy couple of weeks. But perhaps a larger explanation for my silence on the blogging front has been a series of challenges, which this season keeps throwing at us.

It began with out strawberries, which received rain almost from the moment they first blushed red. Not only did the lack of sun make the berries watery and less-than-optimally sweet, but it also allowed fungus to spread rapidly, killing the plants and rotting the fruit. Then, on June 1st, we suffered the latest frost in anyone's memory. We covered everything we could to protect our fragile transplants, but a strong wind in the night bared the melons to the frosty air. We lost a huge fraction of our early crop, and then the ensuing rains of June polished off the rest of the crop, other than a few hearty vines. Before that, Don had never lost a crop in 15 years of farming.

The cold and wet of June and then July brought other disasters as well. Phythophthora infestans, also known as Late Blight, traveled swiftly from Ohio to Maine, killing every tomato in its path. Eschewing dangerous sprays (even certified organic sprays can be extremely harmful if the farmer contacts them in the process of spraying), we watched as our gorgeous, luscious tomato plants swiftly rotted before our eyes, literally days before our first harvest.

The weather then perked up for a bit, and we hoped to recoup our losses and move on with life. Until a storm system dumped 5 inches of rain on us in 1 day, followed by another 2 inches two days later. (As a point of reference, the average month here recieves around 4 inches of rain). My garden all but became an aquaculture site*, and our bare summer fallow field moonlighted as a small pond. A few days later, a new disease surfaced in the peppers, and possibly in the summer squash. Plant pathologists from the extension service gave us the grim news: a different strain of Phytophthora, this one a soil borne disease which can survive in a field for years and will attack solanacious crops and cucurbits--aka everything tasty from summer.

Agriculturally, this season sucks.

Increasingly, I've come to empathize with the position of conventional farmers, the sort of folk who wrote the essay "The Omnivore's Delusion" (not to be confused with Michael Pollan's best-selling book, The Omnivore's Dilemma). But before anyone starts advertising conventional fungicides to me, allow me to reiterate my commitment to our growing practices, even in the face of (some) crop failures.

"The Omnivore's Delusion" is an important essay, I believe, one that should be read by anyone who considers him or herself an advocate of sustainable, local ag. This is not so that you can "know the enemy" and thereby outsmart them (such an antagonistic mindset only serves to repackage and recycle a long-standing and singularly vicious mistrust between city and country, conservative and liberal). No, I cite Blake Hurst's essay because it offers a long overdue reminder of the complexity of farming.

I agree with the author, that a great many people seem to revere Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is the Word made print of the sustainable ag gospel. Pollan is a good man, and one of the most articulate advocates for me and other farmers like me. But he is not a farmer. There are a great many things he either does not know, or does not have the space to include in a book. Reading Michael Pollan no more makes you an expert on agriculture and food policy than sleeping at a Holiday Inn Express makes you a heart surgeon (despite what the commercials would lead you to believe).

It does make you a more informed consumer, and it provides a certain amount of critical vocabulary with which to then may seek out a deeper understanding.

Take late blight, for example. Hurst, hearing of the tomato blight in New England, would probably say, "for the sake of your family and the financial solvency of your farm, you should spray fungicide and save your harvest." I, on the other hand, view late blight this year as a reminder of the value of diversification and of our CSA community. Our shareholders have supported us stalwartly in this challenging season and frequently expressed the sentiment that this year, more than any other, is an example of why they joined a CSA. Not everyone can or wants to be a CSA farmer. But it is one way, just as surely as commodity corn is another way of farming (and one dependent on federal subsidy largess).

My kind of farming is not a rejection of technology, just as growing corn is not (inherently) a rejection of soil stewardship. The theme that I kept coming back to again and again as I read Hurst's piece is this: look closer. In this sense, he offers a valuable perspective.

*Though, miracle of miracles, it survived the deluge and has been thriving when all else fails. Continue sending good thoughts my way, whoever you are!

I Scream, You Scream

I've learned quite a bit about cows this year. Of course, I came to Caretaker knowing little more than that cows are the first step in ice cream, and therefore worthy of all due reverence and respect. Having spent the past few months living around them, moving them from pasture to pasture, and, as of late, milking Chloe, my appreciation has matured, and I have come to consider them a critical element for a farm.

First and foremost, we keep cows for fertility. All winter long, our cows spend their nights in the barn, where they ruminate, moo, and poop. Every morning, we send them back out to a snowy pasture and muck out their stall. The accumulated manure from a winter's worth of long nights forms the base for all of the compost that we spread on our fields and use in potting on our transplants.

Additionally, our elderstateswomen cows Lucy and Lukey provide us with two calves each year, which we raise for beef. Chloe's calves will be sold either as 4-H Heifers (if female) or as beef (if male). In that respect, then, our cows are a renewable resource, giving back to the farm each year.

In my opinion, Chloe is the real star of the show. Learning to milk has been a lesson in bovine anatomy and health certainly, but it has also reinforced farm values of patience and persistence. As I now know, you have to milk out all of the regular milk in order to get to the cream. There are no shortcuts or exceptions, and if you neglect to "milk her out," she'll give less milk the next time you milk. So you have to milk for as long as she keeps giving, even when she kicks with devilish precision for the bucket, even when she shuffles sideways into a corner, even when she somehow knocks the lid off the grain container, sticks her head in, and somehow contorts herself so that she is perpendicular to her normal milking position. Despite all of this, I'm totally in love with Chloe and the daily gift of milk which she gives us.

Walking out to work in the fields, I used to look in at the cows (who don't often deviate from a strict schedule of graze-ruminate-graze-chill-ruminate) and think to myself, "what a sweet life. they just eat and sleep!" Recently my perspective shifted, however, when I realized that cows require the near constant feeding to sustain their body mass on a diet of grass. If you or I tried to eat grass, we'd literally starve, as the energy to extract nutrients from pasture would exceed the caloric gain. But cows, with their four bacteria-rich stomachs, are able not only to survive on grass but to thrive on it. For our cows, grazing is quite literally their job, and they do it with a diligence that would make a drill sergeant proud.

In honor of our cows, here's a recipe (I've been terribly lax in my recipe posting, though I have been cooking plenty of delicious things) worthy of truly good milk. If you have the good fortune to have access to Jersey cream, try this one out. You won't be disappointed.

Lavender and Honey Ice Cream
This is a custard-based ice cream recipe, so it works best if you make the custard ahead of time and then throw the cream in and churn it all while you are eating dinner. The ice cream will be ready as soon as you finish you meal. It goes extremely well with a chocolate zucchini cake...

6 T honey
4 egg yolks
2 t cornstarch or arrowroot powder
8 lavender spikes (the flowery bit)
2 cups milk
2 cups cream (whipping cream, if you are buying it at a store)

Put the honey, cornstarch, and egg yolks in a medium-sized sauce pan. Whisk them together, and add in the lavender flowers (stripped from the central stem) and a little of the milk.

Pour the rest of the milk into a small saucepan and heat it to a boil, stirring. Pour the milk over the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly as you pour.

Return this custard mixture to the stove top and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens (this will happen sooner the creamier your milk is. Don't use skim, I beg you. ) Do not let it boil. Once the custard has thickened, remove from heat and let cool in the fridge for a few hours.

Once the custard is cooled and thick, add in the cream and churn in an ice cream churn.

An Ode to Chloe

When did I become a farmer, rather than simply a curious person who wanted to grow food? I don't think it was the day that I signed up for the next agricultural census, or my first garlic harvest, or even when I worked through summer's heat in Georgia or a month of rain in Massachusetts. Of course, such a stepping into self doesn't occur in the course of a day, any more than I wake up each year on my birthday feeling a full year older. I do feel, however, that milking a cow is a milestone worth noting.

Chloe calved for us on a Sunday night near the end of June. We sat outside her stall, transfixed by her straining labor--Jerseys are notoriously melodramatic, Don says. Finally, with a little bit of help from Don, the slick, skinny calf slid out onto the straw. He lay there, limp and discombobulated, and Chloe busied herself by licking him clean like a fussy mother. In short order, his hunger got the better of him, and he began floppily stretching for his mother's teat. This continued for a while, Chloe cleaning, the calf balancing precariously then tipping over under his mother's ministrations, until finally satisfied, Chloe let him have his first draught of milk. Micah, Don's 3-year-old son, had already christened the calf Jingle Bells.

For about the first week after calving, a cow produces a super rich milk called colostrum, which is critically important for her calf's healthy development. We milked Chloe that first week so that her milk production would remain high, but allowed Jingle Bells to drink as much as he wanted, and we fed the surplus colostrum to the pigs. I waited impatiently for my turn. Finally, the following Monday, we began milking Chloe for ourselves. Jersey milk has the highest butterfat content of any of the common dairy breeds, and truly, you can taste the difference. The beta carotene in the milk gives it an ever so faint ivory tone, and if you let the cream rise, it will form a thick almost golden crown on the milk. I used to drink milk as an excuse to eat cookies; with this kind of milk, it is the other way round.

Even with Jingle Bells freely nursing, we're getting up to 2 gallons of milk a day, and even making butter, queso blanco, sour cream, buttermilk, ricotta, paneer, feta, and whipped cream, we're still practically swimming in the stuff. Its a good life.

Meanwhile, on Monday, I began my week on the milking rotation. Milking Chloe is both incredibly fulfilling and terribly frustrating. Frustrating because Chloe is getting used to me, and thus has a tendency to kick at the bucket. Twice now I've had to discard a partial pail of milk after a dirty, well aimed cow hoof splashed into its contents. Even with my stops and starts, though, I love the rhythm of milking.

We tend to our animals with respect and care, but rarely do we have time in our days to sit with and observe them. Not that I really want to bond with our pigs, or our chickens, or even really with our beef cows. All of those animals are transient, serving a short term purpose for which we appreciate them. They will be eaten with gratitude, not remorse. But Chloe is our milk cow. She'll give us milk and an yearly calf for twelve or more years, and her manure will fertilize our fields and pastures. We can love her. And every morning when we milk her, we can sit close, with our heads resting against her side. We breath in her sweet cow smell--not of manure or barnyards, but a fresh scent, like clean laundry with soft animal overtones. We sing to her in time with the sound of the milk hitting the pail.

Stone Soup

So in my free time this year, I've taken on a new hobby--gardening. I admit, part of my motivation for creating a garden is the dumbfounded looks I get from shareholders and friends when I say that when not farming, I garden. But really, my gardening project was mainly a Southerner's rebellion against the constraints of a Northern CSA farm. In April, I was appalled to discover that we don't grow eggplants, watermelons, cauliflower, or sweet potatoes, all of which I consider practically food groups in their own right. Because I have a strange farmer complex, in which I can't fathom purchasing produce which I might instead be able to grow myself, I immediately began adopting a bad British accent and querrrying Don, "might I have a bit of earth?" I think he missed my Secret Garden reference, but he did spade up a patch of sod down near the cabins and he invited me to do with it as I saw fit.

All eagerness and anticipation, I raced down to view my domain. There I encounteredmy first challenge: rocks. New England is notoriously rocky (Andrew informs me that the early settlers honestly feared that the land was cursed, as every winter's frost heave brought new stones to the surface), but my plot was almost absurd in its stoniness. As I hunkered down and began pulling rocks, I began to fear that there might be nothing left once I had cleared my field. What little soil thinly coated the rocks was mostly the sandy runoff from the nearby stream. I knew that my land would drain well, but I feared that my crops would be starved for nutrients in such poor conditions. While my seeds grew into transplants in the greenhouse, I passed my weekends carrying bucket after bucket of rocks to the growing pile at one corner of my garden. Once the ratio of soil to stones had shifted in my favor, Don brought down a huge load of compost and spaded it into my field. My soil was still a far cry from the nearby beds in which I spend most of my time, but I finally felt like a plant might not die immediately if subjected to life in my garden. Besides, I was beginning to find earthworms, which I took to be a hopeful sign.

The second major challenge of my garden is the quantity of sun it receives. This summer has been unusually wet and overcast (undeserving of the name "summer," if you ask me) and to make matters worse, my garden only receives direct sunlight for part of the day. I ordered eggplant and watermelon varieties which claimed to be suited for Northern growing, but decided not to take any chances. After measuring out beds, digging pathways, and raking everything flat, I laid black plastic for my eggplants and watermelon to heat the soil. I also opted to cover all of my transplants with row cover, both to deter pests and to hold in extra heat at night. Finally, after what seemed like endless preparations, I put my plants into the ground. (Sadly, the sweet potatoes were not to be, as I was never able to find affordable slips--a.k.a. baby sweet potato plants--anywhere nearby)


As my transplanting drew to a close, I discovered an unanticipated problem; I had more land than I had plants to fill it. Well, I might have been able to fill it with eggplants, but even I wouldn't know what to do if all 22 of my plants started bearing fruit. I decided to give away my surplus eggplants and fill my extra space with extra flower transplants that had been languishing outside the greenhouse. I filled the end of my garden with flowers: gazanias, black eyed susans, statice, and several husk cherry plants. I mowed the clearing to remove slug habitat (all of the rain in June and now July has turned Caretaker into escargot heaven), and then stopped to marvel at how rocky, sandy soil in the midst of a grassy meadow had become my tiny garden.