It’s been a hot and steamy Independence Day weekend so far. When we entertained family last night I wanted to prepare something light and garden-fresh to transition into dinner. With the first crop of our Brassica oleracea var. italica succession crop ready to eat, we opted for a chilled dairy free broccoli soup.
Let’s begin at the beginning. We grow several varieties of broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica) under row covers in 2-3 succession plantings (and/or transplanting) to ensure vibrant, pest free, flavor and nutrient rich abundance. So. Much. Green.
Broccoli in the Garden (Photo: Geo Davis)
For steaming and eating hot, chopping into crudités and enjoying cold with hummus or dip, juicing into ultra-green magic potion, and puréeing into a refreshing summer soup, broccoli is one of our vegetable garden all stars.
Harvesting Homegrown Broccoli (Photo: Geo Davis)
Green perfection! The massive organic broccoli florets in the photo above overshadow the diminutive cluster of hammocks in the distance. I enjoy the contrast (and the rightful reign of this nutrition superhero!)
Broccoli, Radishes, and Summer Squash (Photo: Geo Davis)
In the photo above a pair of colorful companions (radishes for crudités and yellow summer squash to be thinly sliced on the mandolin and mixed into a green bean salad with vinaigrette), harvested during the same veggie garden excursion, are washed and standing by. Technicolor flavor bombs ready for action!
Garlic Scapes, and Spring Onions, and Broccoli (Photo: Geo Davis)
And speaking of flavor, there are a pair of hidden-but-not-secret ingredients with which I complemented this chilled dairy free broccoli soup. Garlic scapes and spring onions from our Full and By Farm share, sautéed in olive oil to soften the fibers and release the savory deliciousness were then tossed into a blender and puréed. Liquified, really, to ensure it mixes with the steamed and puréed broccoli and the boiled and puréed potatoes.
Sautéing Garlic Scapes and Spring Onions (Photo: Geo Davis)
What do I miss. Ah, right, the dairy free twist. Obviously sautéing in olive oil rather than butter is the first step, and then thinning the blended soup with a non-dairy alternative. My go-to would be unsweetened (and no vanilla) macadamia milk, which would’ve worked perfectly in the soup. But we had none, so I substituted an unsweetened, vanilla-free almond milk. And it worked out pretty well!
A fair amount of chilling is key to develop and meld the flavors, so I moved the pot into the fridge for a little R&R. Once chilled, I whisked and seasoned the chilled dairy free broccoli soup with some lemon juice, celery, salt, and white pepper. Tada! So refreshing.
Last Thrusday’s Full and By Farm share pickup included baking pumpkins and carrots. Fall fare. There was plenty more in the share, but these two struck a Saturday morning brunch chord while speaking with Sarah Kurak. So mentioned a recipe she’d used for baking pumpkin carrot muffins. “Delicious,” she said.
I imagined them into existence during my short drive back the house.
“Guess what,” I teased my bride.
“You want to feed Griffin dinner?” she asked, raising her eyebrows optimistically?
I told her that I was going to bake gluten free pumpkin carrot muffins on Saturday morning. “We can sleep in,” I tempted. “And then I’ll make homemade muffins. From scratch. The who house will smell like a pumpkin pie tango-ing with a carrot cake!”
She laughed. And probably forgot. Until Saturday. When the whole house smelled like pumpkin pie tango-ing with a carrot cake. No. Better.
A quick dip into the interwebs introduced me to Nicole Hunn (@gfshoestring). She must have dropped off a batch of her Pumpkin Carrot Muffins in Mountain View, California for the search doctors to gobble up for breakfast because Google loves her!
And I’m not surprised, because a dozen delicious gluten free pumpkin carrot muffins later my bride and I are now BIG fans. Maybe it’s because her recipe is really for cupcakes, not muffins, but what’s the difference. Carrots, pumpkin, eggs from the local CSA? That’s healthy! That more than qualified these delicious breakfast treats for muffin status.
And then this serendipitous tweet inspired me to take the plunge
Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm. ~ Earl Nightingale #creativity#quote
It reminds me of the decidedly unclever but honest way I describe my dancing: what I lack in skill I make up with enthusiasm. I love to dance. But I’ll never be on Dancing with the Stars. Some day I’ll share a few of my moves. A few because that’s all there are! Or better yet, I’ll tell you the story my first dance experience. In middle school. Embarrassing. Scarring. But that juicy morsel for another day.
For now, the world’s most delicious (and healthy) gluten free pumpkin carrot muffins.
Before proceeding, I should mention a few deviations from Ms. Hunn’s recipe. I skipped the raisins and the chocolate chips. My bride dislikes the former and experiences life threatening allergies to the latter. I also opted for organic canola oil in place of all oil/butter, and I replaced half of the sugar with stevia.
En route to homemade gluten free pumpkin carrot muffins… Yum or yuck? We'll soon find out! @ Rosslyn http://t.co/msYZ1u21
We ate our first muffins hot out of the oven. I melted a bit of butter inside. Hot tea. Birds at the bird feeder. Bluebird skies. Late morning, but still in pajamas and bath robes. In short, the odds were stacked. And yet, I feel comfortable saying that the muffins were delicious. It wasn’t just that the moment was ripe. The muffins were amazing!
We had seconds. Thirds. Fourths.
Really.
I’m not exaggerating. They were that good. You might want to give Ms. Hunn’s recipe a try. After all, culinary creativity is a natural (and inevitable) extension of our enthusiasm. Which reminds me, you may want to try a few funky 1980’s dance moves while you’re running the blender…
As asparagus time begins yielding to rhubarb time (photo update soon!) I brainstorm asparagus recipes that I’ll lament overlooking once seasonality advances our homegrown ingredients. A vague recollection sends me filtering through old blog posts and then drafts of incomplete blog posts. I find notes started on May 14, 2014, and I know what my final garden-to-gullet asparagus recipe will be: green eggs and ham.
Asparagus Green Eggs
Although there are many tasty ways to concoct delicious green eggs (avocado, artichoke hearts, succulent spinach fresh from the garden,…) today I will alchemize the quintessential taste of spring — delicate asparagus spears bursting with their 100% unique tanginess — and hyperlocal, free range eggs from Full and By Farm.
Green Eggs and Ham: garden-fresh spring asparagus (Photo: Geo Davis)
Look at the brilliant yellow-orange color of the eggs! Almost too colorful to believe. And yet this is the signature of local, free range eggs. We consider ourselves fortunate indeed to enjoy a steady stream of organic eggs from Full and By Farm.
Green Eggs and Ham: farm-fresh eggs from Full and By Farm (Photo: Geo Davis)
Although at other times we might’ve been able to prepare pork from Full and By Farm (or another local farm) in this case I’ve used dulcedumbres, smoked ham from the Village Meat Market just up the road in Willsboro.
Green Eggs and Ham: deli sliced ham from Village Meat Market cut into strips (Photo: Geo Davis)
As the ingredients start to set up with a little heat, the yellow, green and pink are still distinct, three parts of a perfect medley.
Green Eggs and Ham: local ingredients and lots of love! (Photo: Geo Davis)
Cooked to perfection (overcooked, my bride would say), green eggs and ham, make the perfect breakfast, lunch, or dinner!
Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham
I imagine that many of us, perhaps even most of us.) remember the book, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. If you’re needing a little blast from the past, enjoy this video.
Another spectacular day in Essex! Perfect summer days mean great gardens, and soon enough I’ll be posting a garden update to show you how well the tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and Brussels sprouts are doing. But first I’d like to introduce you to one of the lifestyle luxuries we’re able to enjoy as Essex residents. Please meet Sara Kurak and James Graves of Full and By Farm.
We pick up our farm share every Thursday evening, and Sara emails the farm members in the morning to let us know what to expect. I’m including last week’s note in its earthy entirety below, and the video tells a little piece of the haying story described in in her note. I hope you enjoy both! Here’s the Full and By Farm note for June 17, 2011.
We are trucking right along this week—moving animals, planting crops, harvesting, weeding, cutting hay, cutting soap, building wagons, enjoying the moderately warm sunshine. This is our first year cutting our own hay and the learning and preparation curves have been steep. Given the uncertain weather predictions for the week and all of our new-to-us equipment we decided to cut one small field on Tuesday and get the process down before going for it whole hog. We took Abby and Lightning out on the horse-drawn mower, selecting the smallest field, but coincidentally the steepest and least rectangular. They took it on like champs, despite several problems with the mower, and the sneaking suspicion that lots of sharp scissors are following right at one’s heels. James is out now tedding the field, we plan to rake, bale, pick-up and unload all TODAY. Hay wagon building has largely been a late night activity. If we seem a little shell-shocked at pick-up tonight, please be nice, it’s been a long day and week.
The vegetables are perking up and getting green out in the fields. Our current harvests however are still being hampered by the earlier mud season issues of poor germination and cloudy skies, followed by the really hot week which caused the soggy, stressed out plants to bolt. All this to say that we are starting to harvest a little bit of a lot of things. Great news on the variety front, but hard to divide up 40 ways. We’re getting creative though and offering up some fun stuff at the share tonight and as well as sweet things to nibble on while picking them up.
Three important things to know today:
1) We are having our spring farm tour and member dinner two weeks from tonight, on Thursday June 30th at 6pm. We’ll provide a farm-fresh dinner and solid wagon ride. You all bring the desserts, a place setting and drinks to share. Please rsvp by email or the list in the csa room. I’ve put in the rainbow request already, but they won’t guarantee a thing this far out.
2) We are officially rolling out the Full and By Farm “Go Whole Hog” challenge tonight!!! The rules are simple: fill out a card for your household, this will live at the farm. Check off the boxes after you’ve used each of the cuts on the list**. When your card is completed you will get a hand printed “Go Whole Hog” shirt or grocery bag. **And don’t worry, we’ll help you out with some of the more challenging ones.
3) Our last spring calf was born on Monday into a muddy puddle. It was a rough entry, but his long legs helped him out. We had originally named him Gus after the legendary Texas Ranger Augustus McCrae. But after getting to know him a little the name just doesn’t seem right, mostly due to his challenge with direction (i.e. his tendency to walk the opposite way when we move the cow herd). We’re considering Gonzo and Gulliver. Bring your vote tonight, write in’s are welcome.
In the veggie share: lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, spicy lettuce mix, braising mix, stir-fry add-ins, spring onions, spinach, nettles (by popular demand) potatoes, celeriac, black and white beans. coming soon: garlic scapes, baby turnips and radishes.
In the meat share: pork, chicken and ground beef, lard and leaf lard, lavender soap.
Adirondack autumn is sliding stealthily into winter. I’d better accelerate my fall iPhonography retrospective so that I’m ready to chronicle Rosslyn’s soon-to-be-snowy winter. In order to fast track the process, I’ll [almost] skip the textual annotations that I included in Adirondack Autumn 2012: Part I and Adirondack Autumn 2012: Part II.
The video slide show above is story enough, I think, but there are a few images that beg explanation. There are several photos related to boating because me bride and I stretch the season as much as “comfortably” possible in the autumn. In fact, we stretch the whole season, starting early and ending late. Most years we are able to enjoy a six month sailing, windsurfing, waterskiing, wakesurfing season starting at the beginning of May and ending in the final days of October. So these images are a watersports swansong of sorts.
A more rigorous editor would have eliminated the “live simply” snapshot, but I love this t-shirt given to me by my sister-in-law. Sure, the graphic’s great, but it’s the reminder that I value each time I come across it on my t-shirt shelf. I’m hoping to play with the idea in a cartoon soon, a sequence of the simple pleasures of rural Adirondack living with the slightly ironic banner, “Live simply!” Stay tuned…
Veteran RR readers will know that the squirrels occupy a dramatic place in our Rosslyn lifestyle, so I won’t get into that here, but those images capture the quirks and charms of our “Adirondack monkeys”. Squirrel-proof birdfeeders? We’ve tried five varieties so far, but the squirrels always succeed. And the squirrel perched on the edge of the stone water trough? Just try to convince me he’s not peeing in the drinking water!
I included my ever growing collection of gardening books because I was reminded again this fall that gardening occupies my imagination even as the gardening season is ending. One might expect their enthusiasm for planting and weeding and landscaping and harvesting to flag after many months of spring-summer-fall gardening. But instead, my mind turns to next season. Adirondack autumn means fall planting. Maintenance. Changes. It’s been a busy fall for Rosslyn landscaping and gardening projects, but I’ll postpone these updates until later. And once the snow begins to fall I pull out the books again and begin to sketch plans for next spring, make lists and schedules, order seeds for indoor forcing,… By late winter when my seedlings are well underway in our basement under lamps, I’ll begin pruning fruit trees. In short, even in the Adirondacks gardening is a year round passion.
The shots of tempting chalkboard menus come from the Essex Ice Cream Cafe which for the first time (ever?) is open year-round for breakfast and lunch. And, soon, they’ll be launching a turn-back-the-clock delicacy that not only tastes sensational, but carries some personal satisfaction as well. More on that once the secret is no longer a secret and the most delicious maple-derived confection in the world is available again, more than a century after it was first produced in Essex. Okay, I’m teasing you. Details soon!
Perfect transition to that odd photo at about 1:02 in the slide show. What’s that?!?! Dog food, perhaps? Actually that was a memorable venison stew with spinach. Deer hunting is an important part of North Country culture and though I do not partake (I’m a poor gunner, and I find it difficult to shoot anything that can bat an eyelash at me,) I love venison. Several generous friends share with me each fall, and this stew was the best I’ve ever made. Lots of onions and wine get cooked down with the venison, and lentils and wild rice are added toward then end. The spinach was a last minute stir-in. So, it’s a feast for the belly, not the eyes.
The next picture, a step closer to eye candy, is broiled cabbage. Sounds unpromising. Try it. Delicious. I’ve made it several times, and it I can manage, I’ll share the ultra simple recipe soon. Even non-cabbage stalwarts love it!
I think that everything is self-explanatory. If not, let me know. Thanks for sharing our Adirondack autumn.
It’s time for another Rosslyn Roundup to share everything Rosslyn-related that I didn’t get a chance to post this past week. Summer in the Champlain Valley has a way of inching along slowly, slowly, slowly and then suddenly galloping off! This summer was not exception, but the transition was even more apparent because of protracted Lake Champlain flooding. With almost two months a record breaking high water, the flood delayed the normal spring/summer transition. And once the water did finally drop, everyone hustled double-time to catch up!
This has been especially evident in our fair hamlet by the lake. Essex is undergoing a veritable renaissance! Despite early concerns that The Old Dock Restaurant and the Essex Shipyard and Rudder Club might be unable to open for the season due to severe flood damage, both are racing a July 1 opening date. And that’s only part of the Essex renaissance. Nary a storefront in the village is empty, and the offerings are exceptional. In fact, there’s so much activity that a new website has been born to tell the Essex story called Essex on Lake Champlain; it will serve as a digital bulletin board and community blog for Essex, New York. I’ve included a parade of blog posts from the website in my roundup below, so I hope you’ll take a moment to discover why Essex is such a grand place to live and visit.
In addition to the Essex stories, I’m starting with a post about the now ubiquitous Adirondack chair courtesy of Wanda Shapiro (@WandaShapiro), the author of Sometimes That Happens With Chicken. Although this chair proudly announces its Adirondack heritage wherever it is enjoyed, not many know that it was actually invented in Westport, the next town south of Essex. You may be surprised about its history!
Without further ado, I offer you the June 27 Rosslyn Roundup:
The Adirondack, Burnell, Westport or Muskoka Chair: Westport Chair was the original name for the Adirondack Chair… There is in fact a small town populated by about 1500 people called Westport, New York, on the western shores of Lake Champlain. It is on the very eastern edge of the Adirondack Park, and is quite a picturesque vacation destination. In1903 one Mr Thomas Lee set about to build the perfect chair for such a spot, as all his relations had taken up those in his mountainside cabin.
Travel Writing Contest Hosted by Champlain Area Trails: Get your pencils sharpened, your laptops powered, and your cameras ready, Champlain Area Trails (CATS) will soon launch its first Travel Writing Contest. It’s your chance to write about your travels in New York’s central Champlain Valley—to share your favorite experiences on the Champlain Area Trails–whether it’s hiking, walking, skiing, snowshoeing, birding, tracking, picnicking, or a little bit of each…
Provisions and Paparazzi in Essex, NY: “Essex is alive with both new and well-established businesses, opening up, dusting off and getting ready for the season…” So opens Sue Cameron’s “Provisions and Papparazzi” post on LakePlacid.com on June 14. Essex is alive! It’s incredible how much is going on in Essex these last couple of weeks. Essex businesses have proven that even a record breaking flood can’t drown the Essex spirit. Residents, businesses and friends of both are pulling together for what is shaping up to be the best summer in decades.
Longtime Residents Recall Essex Inn Years Ago: Last Sunday Alvin Reiner at the Press-Republican ran a fascinating story about the Essex Inn and the fusion of past and future in this historic landmark recently renovated by the Daltons and now open to the public. “We are reaching out to bridge the gap, as there is often a lot of knowledge that gets lost,” she said. (via Press-Republican.) Essex has long represented an important bridge back into history, but the Dalton’s Essex Inn revitalization is one of many new bridges forward toward a bright and shiny future.
Summer Arrives in Essex on Lake Champlain: Kim Rielly posted an enthusiastic blog post about summer in Essex celebrating flood recovery, exciting new businesses and the timeless charm that has drawn visitors and residents for decades. She asks, “could it possibly be true that the recently-submerged businesses were planning to open THIS summer? It’s true. In fact, the community is not only ready to welcome visitors for the summer – it is veritably BUZZING with activity.”
Pantouf’s Celebrates Summer with Beautiful Glassware: Yesterday I visited Helen Goetz at Pantouf’s in Essex. If you’ve never seen her beautiful glass work, now’s the perfect time to swing by before she gets swarmed with visitors… In addition to showing me her colorful glass serving platters and pitchers, Helen graciously toured me through the home, explaining how it had been configured and functioned when occupied by the Essex town doctor.
Live Well in the Champlain Valley: Another new addition to the Essex wellness scene is blooming on Main Street with the opening of Live Well. The beautifully remodeled space offers a wide range of health and healing services, and represents the collaborative genius of three Champlain Valley holistic health and wellness practitioners…
Full and By Farm, June 23, 2011: We took advantage of the beautifully sunny weather spell to make hay. We cut about 22 acres starting last week, and successfully baled 19 of it. The rain caught us in the middle of raking the last small field and we had to abandon the project. Once the grass and clover is cut rain begins to leach away the nutrients. Four straight days of rain is enough to ruin the hay as winter feed. It’s always a sad defeat, but part of making hay with an ever changing weather forecast.
The Old Dock Restaurant: The Old Dock Restaurant is a seasonal restaurant and bar located in the Historic Hamlet of Essex, New York. Guests arrive by automobile, private boat or on the Charlotte-Essex… Slips are available for our guests who arrive by boat. Passengers on the Charlotte-Essex ferry have the option to leave their automobiles in the free parking lot at Charlotte and when they arrive in Essex stroll a few feet to the Old Dock.
The good folks at Cooking Up a Story featured this farm stand video about North Country summer living, and I couldn’t resist contacting them to find out where the farm stand is located. They responded quickly:
They are in Alburgh, VT – which is in the northwest corner of the state – nestled against NY and Canada, along Route 2. Drive up and check them out sometime. Really nice people!
Close enough for a visit, but not swing-by-and-grab-some-sweet-corn close. Too bad! Nevertheless, it’s an inspirational story. We used to have a similar farm stand near us in Essex, New York that was run by the Sayward family for many, many years, but it closed up a few summers ago. I still miss it!
Farm-to-Table, a North Country summer tradition (Source: Rosslyn Redux)
We’ve belonged to two CSAs since moving full-time to Essex, Essex Farm and Full and By Farm, and we grow a large vegetable garden and a gradually expanding orchard (with quite a few different types of fruit). So I’m not complaining, but I do love the experience of visiting a neighborhood farm stand. It’s nice to meet the growers, hear their stories, learn new ways to prepare the fresh produce.
With September and October skulking away and November slithering in, I’m dishing up a photographic retrospective, a parade of annotated images gathered “on the fly” over the last few months.
Timber Rattlesnake killed on Lakeshore Road in Essex, NY on August 22, 2012.
This first photo was actually taken in August, but I couldn’t resist including this unsettling image. I came across this freshly killed three foot long Adirondack timber rattlesnake while cycling along Lakeshore Road near Essex. The blood was fresh and the rattle had been cut off.
Although I want to believe this near-black Crotalus horridus was accidentally hit and killed by a car, it prompted a serpentless September rattlesnake safari, and catalyzed much conversation with friends about our local population of timber rattlesnakes. How can we protect them?
I’ll share rattlesnake news if/when relevant. For now I’ll move over to the autumn harvest. Given our hot, dry summer it was been a phenomenal year for most locally grown produce.
While we began flirting with frost most nights in September (earlier than the previous two years), tender vegetables like tomatoes were still coming out of our own garden and our local CSA, Full and By Farm, owned by Sara Kurak and James Graves.
These “ugly but delicious” heirloom tomatoes from Full and By Farm tempted me despite the fact that we’d been giving away and composting excess tomatoes since August. Too many, too fast. I’d been eating 2-3 tomatoes every day for lunch and dinner. Literally. I’m not exaggerating.
When I posted the picture of these yellowish orange tomatoes on Twitter and Facebook, several friends insisted that these tomatoes weren’t ugly. True. They were voluptuous and vibrant and even a quick glance discloses the explosion of flavor they pack.
But many of the heirloom varieties that we grow in our vegetable garden and the Full and By farmers grow are often referred to as “ugly” simply because they lack the uniformity of color and the blemish-free skin of the hybrid varieties usually sold in stores. In fact, the “uglier” the variety, the better they usually taste. One of my favorites, Black Krim is a perfect example. I wish I had posted a photo when they were still producing…
These hot, hot, hot peppers (early Adirondack autumn colors?) were part of our farm share pickup for several weeks.
I don’t tend to use many hot peppers in my cooking (and I grow several varieties in our own garden) so I haven’t been loading up on these, but I find them beautiful. Beautiful! I’m always amazed how naturally glossy and polished peppers and eggplant are. And the green/red mottling is exquisite.
If you scratch and sniff the photo, you just might understand why the farmers remind us again and again, “Those are hot!”
And what better complement to those exotic peppers than a not often witnessed artichoke blossom.
We grew Imperial Star Artichokes for the second time this summer. Last year we successfully propagated and matured a half dozen plants. But the result was only a few smallish artichokes. Lots of effort for negligible reward, but I was encouraged to try again. I’d never even known that we could successfully grow artichokes in the Adirondacks.
The discovery was made in the fall of 2010 while visiting the gardens of Château Ramezay in Montreal. I was astonished to see the thriving plants, and immediately began researching. It turned out that Imperial Star Artichokes are productively grown as annuals in Maine and other parts of the Northeast. We vowed to try to our luck.
This summer we had nine plants of which two never produced artichokes but the other seven each produced multiple artichokes. Several plants produced five to ten artichokes apiece. We’ve felt truly fortunate each time we’ve harvested artichokes for lunch or dinner. Can believe that artichokes are yet another highlight of Adirondack autumn?
In fact, so abundant were the artichokes during August and September that several began to bloom before we could harvest them. The photograph above nicely conveys the part-sea-anemone-part-fireworks blossom of an Imperial Star Artichoke. A favorite of our Rosslyn honeybees.
Adirondack autumn is also the perfect time for sailing on Lake Champlain. Although my bride and I have mostly concentrated on windsurfing in recent years, I often find myself gazing longingly at larger sailboats gliding gracefully across the water.
For most of my life I’ve dreamed of a swift sailing vessel large enough to live aboard and wander from port to port, slowly gunkholing my way around the world with occasional blue water crossings between continents. I even have a name for my ship. And her dinghy. But I’ll keep them under wraps until the time is right.
This handsome navy blue sloop was in the neighborhood for a few days, repeatedly cautching my eye because of its minimalist but handsome design. Elegant when drifting in a light breeze and even more so when scudding through whitecaps riding a stiff blow!
Although I’m aware that my critics may justifiably accuse me of bellybutton gazing each time I post a new image of Rosslyn’s boathouse, I simply can’t resist it. This architectural folly has enchanted me since childhood, and now that I have the opportunity (and responsibility) to care for her, I’m all the more smitten.
This photo was taken at dawn after a forceful windstorm (an unwelcome hand-me-down from Hurricane Isaac) that loosed one of the Adirondack chairs from the deck and dumped it into the shallow water of the beach. We were relieved to recover the chair because it was a handmade wedding gift from a close friend. Though one armrest was shattered, we will repair and repaint it this winter so that it will be ready to enjoy again next spring.
And, as if hurricanes weren’t enough, a short time later we were warned that a tornado threatened! A tornado? It does seem that extreme weather is becoming more and more common.
Only a couple of days before, Camp Dudley, a boys camp in Westport, NY where I spent a couple of memorable summers as a boy, was hit by an destructive windstorm that damaged roofs and snapped trees.
This moody black and white photo of the dockhouse was taken in the hours awaiting the tornado. Anxious hours.
Fortunately we were spared the worst of the tornado, but our good friends who own a home north of us near Valcour Island were not so lucky. They lost a towering old growth tree and their boat docks were tossed and somersaulted out into Lake Champlain. Fortunately nobody was hurt and the docks were able to be recovered.
In a similarly ominous vein, this photograph of Rosslyn’s waterfront not only conveys the foreboding of stormy weather but also of summer passing. Or at least that was my hope. You’ll have to be the judge.
The lighting and the shading suggest an antique photograph (thanks to a handy iPhone app which allows limitless technical control over the image elements) while the angle and unpopulated Adirondack chairs and beach add an eerie, abandoned feel. As if a seasonal camp or resort is about to be mothballed for the winter.
There’s irony in this, of course, because Rosslyn is our home. Once our summer guests depart and Essex village slows down, we experience a second wind. We are revitalized. But that story for another day…
Although we have several times hunkered down in anticipation of severe weather this fall, we’ve been been spared each time. And each time the skies have cleared to reveal blue skies and sunshine enough to warm our optimism. And even the occasional wild turkey feather. Check out this bumpy but fun video of twenty turkeys in Rosslyn orchard.
I’ve walked the property after these storms to survey fallen limbs and other damage. Each time I’ve been relieved with the minimal damage. We’ve lost many branches and leaves, but few trees. Perhaps this is due to some sort of cosmic payback for the damage to our fruit trees this spring when a powerful hailstorm destroyed an ancient crab apple and killed seven young fruit trees in our orchard.
Chief among my concerns when the winds howl (or the snowstorms dump, dump, dump) is our carriage barn which is overdue for a new roof.
When an old barn collapsed at Full and By Farm a couple of winters ago I started looking more critically at our historic carriage barn. Although it is in surprisingly good shape for its 100-200 years, the structural elements of the post and beam construction are under-built by modern standards. There are several areas where settling and sagging cause concern, and we’ve been moving forward with plans to secure the building and replace the roof.
If all goes as planned, construction will begin soon and we will be spared another anxious winter worrying that the snow load will overcome the proud old building. I will post updates if/when this project advances.
The perils and challenges of severe weather for homeowners with aging property are plenty, but there’s little pleasure in fretting. And there’s ample pleasure in celebrating the harvest, so I’d like to return to the topic of harvesting, preparing and preserving the vegetables of our labors.
But I’ve already droned on ad nauseum, so I’ll save further harvest updates for your next installment… Stay tuned for Adirondack Autumn 2012: Part II.
I’ll change gears from Rosslyn boathouse and waterfront snapshots to a few garden harvest memories.
We had enormous luck with melons this season despite a slow start. Actually, our luck was mixed. We grew about thirty medium sized cantaloups, but the squirrels (and raccoons?) devoured them as they ripened, successfully gobbling up every fruit before we could harvest it.
We had better luck with watermelons which either enticed the wild critters less or were better protected by virtue of their hard, thick rinds.
And a half dozen heirloom varieties of eggplant (eighteen plants) produced a bumper crop. Although we’ve grown eggplant for three or four years with decent luck, this summer was something else. The plants exploded up out of the drought cracked soil, quickly rising above my knees and in many cases reaching all the way to my waist.
We harvested literally hundreds of huge, glossy, delicious eggplant for over three months. We ate them every day. We gave them away. We even learned how to preserve them for mid-winer enjoyment.
I grilled and froze eggplant and blanched and froze tomatoes. I even cooked up (and froze) a sizable batch of Khoresht-e Bademjan, a Persian eggplant stew which we’ll devour this winter when the garden is three feet deep in snow!
The “skinny eggplant” photo was taken before slicing and baking them for the Khoresht-e Bademjan. In addition to several long, slender varieties, we grew several large purplish black varieties and pale purple striped varieties. (I’ve previously grown white eggplants, but skipped them this year.)
The eggplant were added to the tomato sauce which I stewed down from these yellow tomatoes, white wine, garlic and minced onion. The house smelled divine!
It was a challenging exercise in restraint to prepare Khoresht-e Bademjan to freeze and eat several months later without allowing “taste tests” to become “chow time”! But most of the eggplant stew is now frozen and ready for a snowy day.
During the same post-workshop burst of enthusiasm for food preservation I explored preparing and freezing stuffed peppers. Turns out they’re better eaten right away. So I picked a half dozen of the biggest sweet peppers; stuffed them with minced chopped/sauteed mushrooms, onions, garlic, piñon nuts and quinoa; and slow-baked them for a delicious dinner. Ah, the harvest…
Of course, Adirondack Autumn isn’t all stormy weather and culinary experimentation. The same chill which revitalizes the heat-stupored mind and sweetens the apples, pears and grapes chills the ankles.
That’s right, fall is marked by a return to socks.
For the first time in months the end of September found me sliding my paws into foot mittens each morning, a subtle reminder, day after day, that retrains the brain into cold weather survival mode after a summer of wild abandon. A small detail you say?
Perhaps.
For you. But not for me.
This Adirondack autumn has remained relatively mild and dry, though we did have a rainy stretch in October that caused Lake Champlain‘s water level to rise rapidly. The rising water posed some challenges for the stone retaining wall we’ve been rebuilding along the northern half of our waterfront, ongoing repairs to damage caused by the 2011 spring floods. We raced to complete the most critical stone and mortar work while the water was still low enough for the tractor to operate on the beach. Given the massive stones used to build the stone wall in the 1800s, a tractor loader and backhoe are a big help! Unfortunately the rapidly rising water reduced the time we could rely on the tractor, and the crew finished the work by hand, relying on levers and pulleys and winches instead of steel and hydraulics and diesel to perform the feats of brawn.
Next week I’ll feature a few snapshots that capture the natural lighting change that is part of Adirondack autumn.
“Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale
As I organize multiple pieces of Rosslyn’s renovation, our littoral Adirondack existence, and my still-young marriage into some sort of coherent storyline I wrestle consciously with occasional incongruities between my story and my life.
The narrative landscape is vast. Too vast, it often seems, to fit into a tidy memoir beginning with the crisp crack of a book spine opening for the first time, and the contented-sigh closure compelling stories demand.
Day after day, week after week I reread and rewrite, sort and distill and sort again, hunting for the essential story lurking amidst a mosaic of daily munge entries; four year’s worth of to-do lists; over fifteen thousand photographs; boxes of technical drawings and hasty sketches; hours of dictation; recorded meetings; and emails. Properly assembled, these miscellaneous artifacts form a multidimensional map of what took place between the spring of 2006 and the present, but they fail to tell the story, they fail to recount the adventure lived.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Image via Wikipedia)
In fact, I am startled to discover that these precise, unambiguous reference points frequently contradict my recollection. Dramatic events indelibly etched into my brain at the time have already blurred despite the brief lapse of time.
I curse my mischievous mind and then accept that 100% accuracy will inevitably elude me. My mind’s imperfect cataloging at once humbles and liberates me. Though an unreliable historian, I am a chronicler and curator of stories, not facts.
Even when my data is unequivocal, I inevitably distort history, omitting and abbreviating and emphasizing, distilling the vast landscape of data into vignettes. These accrete gradually, revealing the narrative design of my story.
I am unlike my father and my brother who posses iron vaulted minds where information is deposited, preserved and safeguarded for later use. When the time comes to retrieve the information, they withdraw it from their vaults unaltered, uncontaminated, reliable, accurate. Or so it has always seemed to me.
I believe that there are different kinds of accuracy. I am a storyteller, not an historian, and though I strive for verisimilitude, some truths are more effectively preserved and conveyed through stories than history or vaults.
Some days I toil like an archeologist amidst a midden heap of artifacts, rewinding time’s mysteries, deciphering the prior summer’s garden vegetables from this season’s rich, dark compost.
Other days I seduce and charm and coerce the artifacts to share longer forgotten truths. I plant French Breakfast Radishes and bush beans in the compost-enriched garden and several unlikely seedlings emerge among the radish and bean sprouts. I skip them while weeding, and soon enough I am rewarded with yellow cherry tomatoes, wart covered gourds and a curly garlic scape! Although I’ve grown yellow cherry tomatoes in the past, I’ve never grown gourds or garlic.
I remember that we were given several multicolored gourds to decorate my bride’s annual Halloween birthday party last year. But they were smooth skinned. Perhaps they were discarded in the compost, and a recessive wart gene found its way into the germination process resulting in the exotic adaptation growing amidst the fattening radishes.
And the garlic? We eat plenty from Full and By Farm, our local CSA, but to date I have never planted garlic. I vaguely remember several bulbs that we left out while traveling last winter. When we returned home, the kitchen was ripe with the pungent odor of rotten garlic. The bulbs were discolored, sitting in a pool of their own brown fluid. Several garlic cloves had begun to germinate, pale green shoots emerging from the cloves and arching upward.
I imagine planting them in a terra-cotta pot and placing it on a windowsill in my study. Each morning I inspect their progress. One shoot yellows and grows limp, then wrinkles across the moist soil. The other three grow taller quickly, changing from pale to dark green. Soon they will twist into elegant scapes which I can cut just above the soil level. I will chop them up and sauté them with olive oil, salt and pepper. I will serve them to my bride as a dinner side with mashed potatoes and swordfish, and she’ll smile ear-to-ear, marveling that something so succulent could have grown by accident.
According to Garcia Marquez life is not only the experiences, the moments lived. Life is also the rendering of those experiences into stories, the recollecting, the filtering, the imagining, the sharing. To fully live we must share our stories. That’s an interesting notion in a world that more often favors accuracy, facts, history.
Perhaps even with history we become overconfident that the facts are irrefutable. Only in recent decades have scholars we begun to look critically at history’s biases, often tainted by ideology, objectives or favoring the victors to the vanquished.
Absent an omnipresent video camera that documents my life as I bump along, capturing every minute detail precisely, permanently, Garcia Marquez’s perspective offers reassuring guidance. Though I frequently daydream about a collaborative memoir comprised of the recollections of everyone who participated in the rebirth of Rosslyn, my story is an eclectic nexus of personal experiences, filtered, aggregated and cobbled into narrative cohesion by me.
I write these affirmative lines now, and yet I struggle with it each time my bride asks if she can participate more actively in the revising and editing. Yes, I tell her; when I am done. Which is not to say that I have neglected her input. I have sought it again and again. But her story is different from my own, as are the still unwritten memoirs of many creative and hardworking people who invested their time and energy into renovating our home. I hope to showcase many of their impressions and memories on the Rosslyn Redux blog. And I am optimistic that my memoir will serve as an invitation to dig into their memories and to recount their own versions of Rosslyn Redux.
Thank you, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for your guidance.
It’s time for a late summer gardening update. The August heat’s been great for cycling and wake surfing, and for fast-tracking veggies (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, squash, melons, corn, artichokes, cucumbers, leaks, broccoli and Brussels sprouts) after a rainy June.
But hot, hot days also pose some challenges, especially for the leafy green vegetables like lettuce and spinach which are especially sensitive to high heat. Too much baking sun for too long and both will bolt before your eyes.
Over the last week I’ve pulled up and composted all of the remaining greens. And this weekend I replanted.
Nero di Toscana kale seedlings in a raised bed.
In addition to a new crop of lettuce and spinach, I’m experimenting with greens that I normally plant early in the summer. I would’ve planted kale and Swiss chard at the same time that we put in most of the other early summer vegetable transplants, but an incredibly rainy June didn’t offer amenable growing conditions. By the time the rains passed at the beginning of July, I was racing to try and catch up, and the kale and Swiss chard fell by the wayside.
So I decided to plant both now.
I expect that neither will reach maturity before autumn frosts stunt their growth, but I’m curious to see how they fare. The seeds emerged almost overnight, and I figure even premature kale and Swiss chard will be delicious to eat in late September and early October. I stuck with my favorite kale, Nero di Toscana, but I’m trying two unfamiliar varieties of Swiss chard, Fordhook Giant and Magenta Sunset.
Swiss chard seedlings in a raised bed.
In the second and third photographs kale (left) and Swiss chard (right) flank a row of beets, the only veggie I didn’t compost in this raised bed.
Although I love eating beets, we receive more than enough in our farm share from Full and By Farm, so I grow beets for their “green” instead. Including these beautiful violet black leaves in a salad adds welcome color and a slightly sweet earthiness that everyone seems to enjoy.
I’m confident that the spinach and lettuce seedlings will be ready-to-eat by the end of the month, but the kale and chard are a gamble. I have no idea whether or not they’ll be large enough to eat before frost up some…
