The Farm Kitchen

The East Garden has been completely laid to rest for the Fall. Each raised bed has been stripped of it’s vile weeds and a thick coating of compost has been laid over it all. Even the bed that surrounds the fence (that surrounds the garden) has been cleared and thus treated, so that next Spring all I must do is plant and water, water and plant. This has been such a strange year! Usually about this time (actually, two months before this time), I would be done and ready to be so. Now I find myself pouring over plans for next years garden. Some things are already known. That bed…

The good weather continued throughout the weekend, making it an all-around remarkable birthday, really. We (being my sister and mother) went kayaking at my favorite hidden lake (it’s tucked in behind a cemetery–you’d never know it was there–and it’s a honey-hole for fishing–caught my first fish of my life there, as a matter of fact). That was Saturday. On Sunday, which was the actual birthday in question, we had a fairly low-key kind of day. After church we came home and settled in a bit. I took my standard Sunday nap, and then got to cooking. Hey. Leave me alone. It’s something I enjoy. And enjoy it I do, but…

So no rolls last night, but I am making them for tonight. We’re having a(nother) beautiful day today, sunny and mid sixties, so it felt like time for a last hoorah on the grill. Cheeseburgers it is, and of course, a cheeseburger isn’t complete without it’s bun, so that’s what I’m making as we speak. Well, okay, not that exactly making it; the rolls themselves are doing that; in the way of puffing out a bit. Once they’ve gotten to be the proper shape and size, I’ll bake them for a bit in a hot oven and call it a day. I tend to like my rolls with flecks of…

The sun has finally come out and with it a nice soft breeze; a perfect day to hang clothes up on the line, which is just what I have done. More leaves were moved from under the big maple out front to the berry patch–this time the rosehips and the raspberries. If this nice weather holds out tomorrow I’ll work on the blackberry patch and the cranberries. Then that will be just about done, which will be fine with me. By this time of year I am ready to slow down a bit with a good book and a cup of tea. There’s a pot of chili on the stove,…

The drizzle continues on this first day of November, but it’s warm–nearly sixty degrees. And it’s a good thing, too, because the furnace decided not to work. It appears now to be it’s annual thing. Sometime in November it up and decides it’s done. We coax it along, pat it gently, plead with it to give us another year, and it does. One of these days it will not be so easily swayed. But, thankfully, today was not that day. It only needed a new battery; an easy fix. But, I must say, my heart skips a beat each time it decides not to work. A furnace isn’t an easy…

The rain is coming down in sheets, but it doesn’t seem to bother the pigs at all. Oh. Didn’t you know we had pigs? Yes. They came on Sunday and now we have pigs. They’re pasture pigs, so we put them in the chicken yard, under the mulberry trees. Oh, my did Chicken Little have a fit about that! She spent the whole day squawking to anyone who would listen. She’s much better today, though. She’s discovered that a pig can be useful, after all. Now you’ll find her right behind them, scooping up all the worms their digging brings up. I spent the morning moving leaves from under the…

Last night, as we do on most Tuesday nights, we had a largish group over for dinner and prayer. Each of us brings a dish to share, and since I had some portobello mushrooms I wanted to use up and some fresh rosemary looking a bit limp, not to mention that last bit of a block of asiago cheese, and I’d just made some good bone broth and had a bit of that left in the fridge. In short, it was leftovers to begin with. Yes. My kind of food. Now, to make arancini, you have to have leftover risotto, and in order to have leftover risotto, you have to…

November 1st. That’s the starting date to enjoy the (canned) fruits of our labor. The date plugged into all of my calculations of exactly how much I had to can from our Kitchen garden to feed us all this Winter. Six months. November to April. That’s (approximately) twenty-four weeks. So, if we’re having spaghetti once a week, we’d needed twenty-four quarts of sauce. The same goes for chili (actually, those twenty-four quarts can be turned into chili, Spanish rice, or goulash–you know, in case no one actually wants to eat chili each and every week), and etc. and so on and so-forth. And while God was very good to us…