It’s seems that the world outside is thawing to her satisfaction – she’s already in the creek, chasing chickens, making mudgames, and helping her Dad boil maple syrup, trim moth nests, and cutting wood. Inside, she is making many beautiful beaded bracelets, doing her nails (a lot, and make up, too! as you can see), baking (she just baked an apple cake last week and a yellow cake with cream cheese frosting and pink sparkly sugaring the week before!), and cooking in general (this is her open omelette with parmesan – ha!), and enjoying her adorable world. Not so painful after all.
It’s been awhile since we’ve gathered our thoughts here. A Winter full of working as best we can at the life we want; isn’t that we’ve all been doing? For sure. We’re now at that crossroads between what we thought we wanted and what we want now – or rather, new insight on what we don’t really want but already have.
Like this house. We should have read our Nearing more closely – the master homesteader himself says very clearly that buying an old house is a lost cause for a homesteader (I’m sure if you are the kind of person that wants to focus on fixing up old houses, that is certainly admirable but focusing on one or the other is perhaps likely the key element here). But of course, we thought we could do both. It is a good thing we like to be outside, but the Winter has been a bit harsh – lots of water, lots of ice, tons of wind.
Last year, in my limited capacity (under Lyme treatment, for which I am still in), I began growing more flowers. Who doesn’t need more flowers in their life these last couple of years?! We have such a solid Farmer’s Market and CSA options that frankly, the work to put in for regular foodstuffs is better left to the ‘experts’. We still continue to grow much fruit on this property and expect to expand our care and systems for their continued growth (White grapes, Concord grapes, eating apples, cider apples, pears, plums, peaches, blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, ground cherry, elderberry, as well as cultivating wild patches of juniper, and various shrub/tree fruits), we boil sap for syrup, and I have also been expanding both my medicinal foraging repertoire and cultivating more herbs for teas and medicines. This year we are hoping to refine our spaces so that we can begin to start sharing them again.
Because that’s what it’s all about, no? Sharing the knowledge and the respite of this land and the little part we play in shaping it. We are talking about pop-up dinners, outdoor bread oven classes, foraging and medicine making workshops, stone building demonstrations, and yes – flowers. Flowers everywhere. It’s time to shape up and turn our faces towards beauty; to remember how beautiful life can be, even in deep times of struggle.
I do hope you are able to find a path to beauty, and also to us.
Just knowing that February is gone gives me hope. By the first of March I have had enough of shoveling snow, sanding icy steps, entering and leaving the schoolhouse in the dark, making treacherous pre-dawn treks down slushy county roads. I know better than to think winter is over, but a day will comin in early March in which the air carries a certain quickening softness and I whisper to myself, “The back of winter is broken.” ~ from Reeser Manley & Marjorie Peronto’s The New England Gardener’s Year
One winter I lived north, alone and effortless, dreaming myself into the past. Perhaps, I thought, words could replenish privacy. Outside, a red bicycle froze into form, made the world falser in its white austerity. So much happens after harvest: the moon performing novelty: slaughter, snow. One hour the same as the next, I held my hands or held the snow. I was like sculpture, forgetting or, perhaps, remembering everything. Red wings in the snow, red thoughts ablaze in the war I was having with myself again. Everything I hate about the world I hate about myself, even now writing as if this were a law of nature. Say there were deer fleet in the snow, walking out the cold, and more gingkoes bare in the beggar’s grove. Say I was not the only one who saw or heard the trees, their diffidence greater than my noise. Perhaps the future is a tiny flame I’ll nick from a candle. First, I’m burning. Then, numb. Why must every winter grow colder, and more sure?
Here’s to new friends! Especially at a time when it is particularly hard to meet new people and to have the space to get to know them. But children are brilliant at that, anyway – no expectations, no messy introductions, they just sort of jump in and figure out whether or not it’s a decent match. Seems like a lesson that adults are likely to continue to ignore but I find it inspiring. So, Duende met another little gal at the Farmer’s Market (her family are local meat farmers; beef, chicken, lamb) and they seem to hit it off – D has an extra pair of skates (the next size, from the Swap Shack!) so they were both able to skate at the park. Supercute (and look how dramatic the sky was yesterday)!
The ‘great tucking in’ is underway around here. The leaves are dying back or falling off (in many cases, in one fell swoop!). We’ve spent a little time trying to glean out the last of the garden – Fall Raspberries, Wonderberries, dry Vermont Cranberry Beans, Calendula, Herbs, and collecting some seeds (Echinacea, Common Milkweed, Black Hollyhock, Blue False Indigo, Evening Primrose, Calendula, Bee Balm’s, Snapdragons, Pansies, Rue, etc). I love seed saving. I didn’t get to save as much as I wanted this year but I did get some and invested in some seed packets to decorate and share over the holidays. I managed to dry some herbs and flowers this year, too, but again, not as many as the last couple of years where I sometimes have 2 full hanging drying racks, a dehydrator, and likely something on drying shelves in the garage or hanging on the porch. I managed a batch or 2 of Red Clover, Calendula, Bee Balm’s (both Wild and Scarlet), a bit of Yarrow, Mullein, and Comfrey, Raspberry Leaf, and later this week I will dry some Apple slices for teas and next week or the week after some Rose Hips for tea and bath.
The new store and business site will be up and running this week! Stone Broke Bread might be coming to your town (ok, only if the town is somewhere between here and Portland, Maine) – with a new business structure of Community Supported Bakery Shares; an innovative share model being tried out in other places, too, as a way of connecting and building both business and community together, not as economic relations but as ecological ones. Get on the list! We’re excited to roll this out and see our ‘customers’ become ‘community’.
The days and nights have certainly shifted here, with our plans and thoughts and energies, getting cozy together – celebrating the seasonal changes with folks when we can (didn’t she do a lovely job on her Bastet costume?! And though she had already decorated a few pumpkins at home – painting one a glorious rainbow, the other with a drawing of Comedy/Tragedy, she & Daddy carved a classic happy Jack on her bumpy pumpkin!), and trying to reinspire our space – all spaces to be reimagined!
I know, I’m sorry; it’s been awhile since I have put out a recipe for you. The reality is – I can’t cook lately. The sickness (Lyme) has made it hard again to function like a human being, now I just hold the couch down (hey, it could fly away!). But I was re-inspired to try and get back into the kitchen with this simple/fast and yet incredibly sexy recipe that utilized the amazing Rainbow Chard I get from my local farm (Andrews Farm out of Gardiner). I’m sure I could have grown my own but these people do it so well, I focus on the herbal additions (the parsley is home grown).
I’m sure I gush about our little swap shack at the Transfer station (it’s not all I make it out to be sometimes; it’s just a little garage at the dump where people bring things that other people might be able to use, rather than just throw them away – because we go relatively often, we do find treasures but there are some days when you wonder why on earth someone would buy these goods in the first place) but it is great for books sometimes. Not too long ago I got a really nice Maine cookbook (signed, too!), Christine Burns Rudalevige’s Green Plate Special: Sustainable and Delicious Recipes. Between that and Jamie Oliver’s book on 5 ingredients, I hope that as I heal I can get back into the kitchen with gusto!
Christine uses Hazelnuts but all I had were Macadamias so that’s what we used – they were a little too sweet, I would think that Pine Nuts could work well though. We served this with simple Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes just flavored with Olive Oil, Sea Salt & fresh ground Tri-Color Pepper. She even has a follow up recipe to use the Chard stems in an intriguing parmesan tartine. Go check it out if you get the chance (or if you are really interested, email me and I will send that out to you!). We did have more fish, so we had more Rainbow Chard leaves (you’ll need a leaf for each piece of fish, I had a couple of extra leaves so I just stuffed them in between the parcels, then butter and salted them). And she conjures a rather complicated lemon segmenting chore that I think could be covered by just hand juicing (I love my glass juicer/reamer) and leaving the pulp in. I also used plant-based butter and it came out wonderfully. If you want to cook the potatoes with them – chop into chunks, season, spread on a sheet pan and cook for 20 minutes at 375 degrees, then when your parcels are ready, raise the temp and cook the fish, leaving the potatoes in there to finish. Even my recently picky 11 yr old eater went back for seconds (because of course, I made more than this recipe called for – she’s growing!).
Rainbow Chard-wrapped flaky white fish with lemon, parsley, and hazelnut relish Serves 4
2 whole Lemons 2 tsp Sea Salt or Kosher salt, divided 3/4 tsp Black Pepper, divided 1 tsp toasted ground Cumin 4 (5 oz – ish) portions of local flaky white fish fillet (Hake, Cod, Haddock, Pollock, etc) 2 Tbsp Extra-Virgin Olive Oil 2 tsp Local Honey 1/3 cup fresh Parsley 1/4 cup Scallions 1/4 cup toasted Hazelnuts (or Pine Nuts) 1 Tbsp fresh Chili Pepper (or 1/4 tsp dried red chili flakes) 3 Tbsp melted Unsalted Butter 4 Large Rainbow Chard leaves, end stalks removed Sea Salt, optional
Preheat oven 400 degrees.
Zest both Lemons. In a small bowl combine 2 tsp of zest with 1 1/2 tsp Sea Salt, 1 1/2 Pepper, and Cumin. Divide the seasoning mixture among the pieces of fish, rubbing it in on all sides, set aside.
Cut the zested Lemons in half (the short way) and juice with a classic reamer, removing errant seeds (the more pulp, the better). In a mini-processor set to chop, add Nuts to barely blitz, pulsing as you add the Parsley, Chilis, and Scallions (it should all resemble couscous at this point). In a medium bowl, with a fork, whisk in the Lemon Juice (& pulp), EVOO, & Honey, 1/2 tsp Sea Salt & 1/2 tsp Pepper. Set aside.
Coat a baking dish with a bit of the melted butter.
To wrap the fish, lay down one chard leaf, shiny side down, on a cutting board. Use a pastry to coat with butter the leaf center where the fish will lay. Place your seasoned portion onto the center of the leaf and fold up the sides, then set the bundle seam side down in the prepared baking dish. Repeat this process, tucking the fish bundles in against each other and any extra leaves in between. Brush butter on the tops and grooves of the bundles and sprinkle with Sea Salt (it seasons and crisps up the chard).
Bake until the fish is opaque in the center of each bundle (12-14 min). Serve hot with the Lemon-Parsley Relish. Enjoy!
It’s been a crazy year so far. Too hot and sticky to really be out a lot this Summer, too buggy, too rainy, too icky – there has been something thwarting our deep outdoor adventures and plans this year. So, there has still been a lot of ‘making’. Making messes, making art, making new plans. Making new friends? Little Ms. Peach has a roller skating date with a new gal of her age and lifestyle, let’s hope for wonderful friendships!
Amidst our restructuring and refurbishing, D has found time to literally ‘make’ some new friends, too – like this crazy ‘gator, and her ‘flugelhorn’, and a birthday crown and clay bowl for Daddy. We managed a day down to Portland to see our lovely friend Justin off on another far nursing adventure, then we hit the East End park for some food truck Gelato and a little swinging. As much as we’re glad not to live in town anymore, we still miss the quiet neighborhoodiness of the ‘Hill.
But some lovely friends are not missing it, so they moved up here near us (yay!!)- D was super excited to have guests over for Daddy’s birthday and that it is likely we will have them as guests more often now – Happy Moving and Making a new space to stay sane, Dear Friends!
