Officially Autumnal Tuesday Happenings

Ok, well — it was officially Autumn on September 22nd this year, but the weather shift has made it feel real. Last week folks were wearing shorts for our 80 degree surprise but this week, it’s sweaters and hats. The mornings are chilly. We are due for the first frost next week and though I know my zinnia might be protected enough, it is a sign of the blooming end. If you are sick of my zin/calendula/dahlia celebrations, those days are numbered, but I can’t get enough of them right now. A little bright burst of life amidst the tucking in — our two lovely Ash trees have already let go of their leaves, the apples are in their last weekend for cidering, and the gardens are itching to be put to bed. A few dry bean stragglers, a couple of plumping jalapeno, and flowers are all that are left. Though I was excited to find the Witch Hazel blooming already! Perfect timing.

We’re thinking of starting over a bit in the garden. I think we will broadfork a good turn, layer with compost over everything, and lay new beds next year. Our design has exhausted itself; so many little vegetable beds of things that are not our forte. I’m redesigning for more perennial herbs and flowers, less nightshades (who bring so many pests to our neck of the woods, I might leave those to the pros), more roots and shoots for next Summer and Fall.

We’re drying herbs and flowers for teas and bath soaks. We’re focusing on game nights, family art evenings, and pizza dinners with whatever is in season or comes our way (my Mom showed up with a pineapple the other day, and then a lovely customer showed up today with the most magnificient maitake — thank you so much).

Meanwhile, in the shop, we are gearing up for our first year celebration. We’re organizing some live music, some fun bready bits, and a great time! We’re so appreciative of the community-driven folks who have supported us and made our first year such a success — thank you so much! Our first celebration is really for you. (Keep your eyes open for news on that event for Saturday, November 25th).

Tuesday Happenings (mostly) on the Homestead

The time has come, for us, to assess the waning vegetable garden and start putting it to bed. We should decide to pull all the failing (and flailing) tomato plants give up the last of the cherry tomatoes, the hot peppers (the plants look great but are no longer blooming), the bed of eggplants (which gave us a mere few fruit and many beetles), pick the last of the drying beans on the climbing vines, and feast on the prolific tatsoi still humming along. We have to commit to planting garlic and still try to get seed garlic if we do (they’re great around fruit trees, too, to deter voles, bugs, and deer). And then make a new plan.

The reality is — gardening is hard work. It requires a commitment of time, energy, knowledge, and especially the hand in hand nature of optimism and perseverence. But another reality is — we have to garden for food. We have to. I don’t know what kind of life you live but we’re not always making enough money to buy whatever we want to eat at the store, and food, especially ‘real food’ (how sad that we have to make a distinction) is getting more and more expensive. But with trying to live, eat, and work — the system is not really built to help. And moon-goddess forbid you have anything else going on (like illness, aging, children, disability, education, etc.). Everytime we’ve relied on a system, we’ve lost something valuable (time, sanity, health, imagination, freedom).

Call it bad-planning, bad-life-lessons, resistant subjectivity, or what-have-you but we were never good at ‘careers’ or life plans. When I was young, where I am from — people don’t choose careers or anticipate their futures, they are who they are and they do what comes their way, and they try and make the best of it. The white-middle class upward social mobility directives didn’t come until I was a teenager and my path was already disrupted by then. We don’t sit around and decide to refute this directive, we’re just not built for it, we don’t understand this kind of ‘success’ and can never see how to apply this platform to our lives. We just want to be good human beings. And so, we struggle. We live in struggle. Systems are not really built to help those in struggle but to belittle them and make them feel as if they need to get out of struggle and be ‘successful’. We’re not looking to blame anyone for our shortcomings though we are acknowledging perhaps other folks who understand, and we hope to connect with them. We have been missing the ‘village’ our whole lives, we’re not even sure how it really works but we’re willing to try.

So, when we assess the garden, we have to assess our whole lives. When we have a bounty, we share. We share to our detriment sometimes, because at that moment, we decide that someone else might need it more. Or because it invigorates us to be able to share. And because we’re not planners for an unknown unseen future, we’re pretty tied to the moment. I’m easily distracted from weeding by taking pictures of bees conserving their little fuzzy energies by taking a cool weather nap on a dahlia or by counting witch hazel buds and seedpods. You’ll find the baker tasting apples for flavor profiles, or sewing small books these days, though much of his time is spent taking care of us (he’s always fixing things, cleaning things, or trying to figure out how to make our loose ends meet). And D is the Queen of making art out of nature or cardboard — yes, I wouldn’t trade this ingenuity or imagination for anything but it’s mostly because that is what she has, she is economically inventive. This is the only semi-valuable lesson we can teach. We know it well.

We don’t prefer to struggle. We’re open to new lessons, and try and soak up all we can. But like our derelict garden, reassessment is necessary for new growth and opportunity. Lately, I think, we’ve been relying on a quiet set of systems which aren’t really serving us well. We tried to blend in (yes, this is us blending) and are not necessarily happy with the results. Our garden is not thriving. We’re going back to the integrity of ground to build better.

A Musing for a Monday

My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer
~ Mark Strand

1

When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon’s ash-colored coat
on the black bay.

2

Soon the house, with its shades drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour’s spell,
she will think how we yield each night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that brought her to this.

3

My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small creatures —
the mouse and the swift — will sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air, to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
It is much too late.

Recipe Thursday: Rock Bottom Parmesan Pasta

This is essentially a recipe for Eggplant Parmesan but I’m open to whatever the garden (or my lovely CSA, i.e. someone else’s garden) brings me. It is not fried (but you can do whatever you like) or a massive hassle. And it uses up old bread or the cracker bits left in the bottom of our cracker jar.

It took me forever to like eggplant. It wasn’t a vegetable I grew up with at all and then when I did try it I was likely a budding teen who (like ours) was not sure about such things. What I found, as an adult (and I was really an adult by the time I found eggplant to my liking — in my late 30’s), was that I didn’t care for Italian eggplant so much. Y’know, the large bulbous spongy guy that we were all instructed to slice thick and salt heavily…but there is a whole world of beautiful eggplants out there with no such rules: green-apple colored and sized ones, small persimmon colored Turkish eggplants, long thin white or purple, short squat and striped, midnight colored ones with the shape of a giant heirloom tomato, lavender and pinkish purple small globes, etc. Though I have found that Italian eggplant is not the end of the world anymore either. Most of the time I want any of them to be sliced thin, brushed with olive oil and salt, and roasted until crispy on the edges. Maybe one or two of them want to be in a ripe Ratatouille, slow roasted over a live fire or sauteed in a Caponata. Maybe even a few want to be roasted and then mashed into Baba Ghanoush with tahini and sumac — but not today!

On this day, they want to be breaded, baked, topped with cheese and spread out onto linguine with some red gravy. However, they are not the only goodies who would work well with this — zucchini/yellow squash, cauliflower, tofu, chicken or pork cutlets (or even beef patties) all sound scrumptious. Maybe you’ll come up with other things, too!

Rock Bottom Parmesan Pasta
Serves 4-6

1 lb Eggplant (of your choice, or zucchini, cauli, tofu, meat, etc) sliced 1/4″ thick
2 Large Eggs (broken and whisked in a pie plate or deep plate), add a little salt
1.5 cups AP Flour (alternatively use GF Flour, or a 3:1 combination of Brown Rice Flour and Tapioca/Cassava Flour or Arrowroot Powder), a sprinkling of salt (in a wide plate)
2 cups Breadcrumbs or Cracker Crumbs (our sourdough crackers make a nice crispy crust) (in a wide plate) + 1 Tbsp Italian Dried Herbs (oregano, basil, marjoram, etc)
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
1 lb Pasta of choice (we used Linguine this time but whatever you like is best)
1 Jar of favorite Pasta sauce or whip it up homemade (my Italian step-grandmother just groaned, as if you could ‘whip up’ gravy)
8 oz. Fresh Mozzarella (we used Narrangansett Creamery sliced mozzarella, already perfect size!)
1 cup Shredded Parmesan

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. On a sheet tray drizzle olive oil all over. Start pasta water.

Take each slice of Eggplant and dust with the AP flour, then dip in Egg, then coat in Breadcrumbs and place on the sheet tray with the olive oil. Continue until all slices have been floured/egged/crumbed. And bake them until they are crispy and brown, flipping them halfway through baking (about 20 minutes total). When they are done baking, top with mozzarella slices and turn off oven, letting it melt on them in the residual heat.

Meanwhile, cook pasta and pasta sauce as per directions (or usual).

Plate as preferred (D likes hers ‘deconstructed’ with everything separate while we generally like our pasta tossed with the sauce) adding the mozzarella melted eggplants, and a smattering of Parmesan cheese to taste. Enjoy!

To up the ante: * add parmesan to your breadcrumb mixture, * add spinach or shredded kale/chard to pasta water while cooking pasta, * layer a shaped pasta like penne (cooked just under al dente) into a casserole dish with sauce, cheese, and baked-breaded vegetables, top with cheese and foil and bake for another 15 minutes until bubbly and hot

Tuesday 2-Do List

  • Decide if the apples are lovely enough to press this weekend, despite the plethora of baby apples the growth has not been great due to pests, continual rain, and poor pollination. I think we are canceling the apple-pressing gathering, which means we will be open Sunday, September 17th at the shop. I’m a little sad because it means we’re not having a Harvest Party this year (which a few past have been quite memorable).
  • We’re getting signage later this week (very exciting) and upping our game offering yearly memberships for our Community-Supported-Bakery. We’re also adding all kinds of exciting events (St*tch ‘n B*tch — every 4th Sunday of the month, new art shows lined up, great readings, discussions, and coming soon — baking classes, I love to watch him shape bread!) and getting ready for both the Autumnal Equinox and Samhain — lots of fun to come. Stay Tuned!
  • And though we are not pressing apples, I will be out and about this week gathering a late Summer bounty for Winter teas. There will be enough apple-y bits for drying apples, Calendula, late season Red Clover, Mints, and soon the Rosehips will be available, Wild Sarsparilla roots, and Hawthorn. I missed my Bee Balm/Bergamot and Berry leaf moment. But there are lots of other moments.
  • Lots of beans are still growing and drying nicely in the garden. The jalapenos are getting big and the tomatoes are crazy (we’re a bit overrun with cherry tomatoes, but many split with the water inconsistencies) — keeping up with the garden has been a challenge (the cucumbers are ginormous!) but the flowers are lovely this time of year — zinnia, sunflowers, celosia, dahlia, marigolds, and yes, calendula.
  • Now that I am done with my dissertation (on aesthetic philosophy, anarchy, and ecology), I can focus a bit on my art practice. We’re arting together as a family (family art nights!) which pleases me ridiculously — J on his bookmaking, D on whatever projekt she’s excited about (cardboard technology is the new theme and she’s getting ready for a new cycle of pottery classes), and my work with wild apotropaic.
  • Nights of bread spreads (Harold is what we call bread and cheese/veg plate for dinner), and Shakshuka with chard and local feta/eggs, bartered chicken and roadside zucchini (with a secret parmesan baguette), and Spanish Tortilla, ribs and corn on the cob = the menu for the week…
  • Today, the 2-Do is to go to the Farmer’s Market in Augusta (lovely farms and folks), marinate some ribs for tomorrow (I hope I find corn at the market!!), and relax with my people and eat celebratory Two Fat Cats cupcakes!! Tomorrow, we’re hoping to get started on some house projects, finish a grant proposal, and breathe in and out.

Sometimes that should be on the 2-Do List: just breathe.