Porksicles (Deep Bedding)

After a prolonged, unseasonable warm spell in January, we experienced a brief, seasonable cold snap last week. Five or six days of temperatures in the high teens and low twenties, accompanied by small hard snow and high winds. 

Our pigs, which were very close to their butchering date, had only the three-sided field structure for shelter, and it was inadequate.

On a particularly cold night I asked Homero to go open a bale of hay for them to use as fresh bedding. He was outside a long time, and when he came back I asked what took him so long. 

“Amor, the pigs were freezing,” he said. “They didn’t even want to come out for food, and when they did come out they could hardly stand up they were trembling so hard.” 

“Oh no! Poor piggies! What did you do? Did you give them hay?” 

“Hay would not be enough, I moved them into the big barn with the goats.” 

The “big barn” is a 12x16’ barn from Home Depot which we have had since we first moved here. Every winter we use a deep bedding system; basically just throwing more and more dry straw down on top of the old, wet straw until it is a good eighteen inches thick. A couple weeks ago I dug down with my hand into the bedding and felt the heat from the natural composting. It was quite hot about six inches down - almost uncomfortably hot. The goats have been benefitting from this heat all winter long. 

Moving the pigs into the barn served a secondary purpose besides keeping them from freezing to death. As you might imagine (or might not, if you have no farm experience), removing a winter’s worth of deep litter is a back-breaking task. Even from a barn as small as ours is - the litter packs down tight and it takes a strong man (my husband) several hours to pitch it all out with a pitchfork, and then he needs a hot bath, a massage, and a shitload of Ibuprofen. Pigs, however, can plow through deep litter effortlessly with their snouts, like little biological diesel tractors. 

The pigs stayed in the barn for four days before the butchers came, and during that time they rooted through the compacted litter like badgers on steroids. The barn is now full of fluffy, relatively easy to shovel compost, which will greatly enhance our garden come spring. 

And the pigs themselves have now been removed to the deep freezers of Lynden Meats; soon to be dispersed to our customers, neighbors, family, and friends in the form of chops, ribs, bacon, and sausage, fuel for many a family feast. The pigs are dead, long live the pigs! 

Going Down in a Hail of Gory

It's February in the far northwest, which means it is the time of year that otherwise ordinary, well-adjusted people begin to contemplate going on a tri-state killing spree just for a fucking change of scenery. 

This is the greyest, wettest month - or maybe not, maybe it’s November but in November this had all just started and you could still feel a sort of relief because you could still remember red leaves against the blue October sky. You could still console yourself by recalling how hot and awful it was in August. In February it’s been grey and cold and wet for four months straight and August is just a dream, just a murmur, just a rumor, not something anyone sensible can actually believe in. Manifestly, February is all there is. 

Mud is all there is. Mud in the barnyard, mud seeping into your socks through the cracks in your gumboots, mud up to the dog’s belly, mud on your sheets, mud in your breakfast, mud in your mood, mud in your soul. 

This morning, it was raining when I went out to feed the animals. Driving rain, actually, sideways rain in a brisk wind that made my hair fly into my face and blind me. Feeding the animals isn’t easy now because the pigs are about as big as they are going to get (butcher is scheduled for two weeks from now) and they - in cohort with the incessant rain - have turned their yard into a sea of brown soup. It’s absolutely impossible to go into their yard for any reason. Besides the mud, the pigs are desperate with hunger. They hurl themselves against the fence as soon as they see me coming and emit high pitched shrieks. 

The pig buckets are tied to the fence with twine, and I have to haul them up over the fence to my side to fill them with grain and slops. Then as soon as I lower them down on the inside, the pigs go into an absolute feeding frenzy and fight and wrangle and wrestle until they inevitably spill the buckets into the liquid mud. The grain disappears. The pigs grunt with frustration and begin whuffling through the mud, presumably searching for the drowned grain. I sigh, and start lobbing apples and chunks of stale baguette over the fence, aiming for higher ground. Soon this will all be over, soon the pigs will cease to be annoying animals who must be catered to at my peril and instead will be delicious cuts of meat that lie passively, quisently in the freezer, waiting for me to use them as I choose. To slather them with flavor, to lay them in a sizzling pan, to inhale their savory aroma and to eat them. The sooner the better.

As I am giving the goats their hay (and beating them off me and swearing as they leap up and stand on my chest), I look through the window of the barn into the chicken coop and see that there is a sizeable nest of eggs. Getting to them isn’t easy - the chicken coop is the goopiest, grossest part of the whole barnyard and my feet sink in alarmingly. But I make it, and I extract fifteen eggs from the nest, and place them in the bucket to bring them inside. I will have to wash them carefully, because of course they are pretty disgusting - covered in chicken shit and ordure, with bits of hay stuck to them. People without chickens, or people who do have chickens but live in dry climates do not know - thankfully - how gross eggs laid in winter are before they are cleaned up. 

Chores finished, I trudge back towards the house - in the driving rain. I keep my head tucked down and face turned out of the wind. As I step onto the slimy porch in my slippery gumboots, I instantly execute an inadvertent splits. My front foot slides out ahead of me, my back foot goes out behind. I go down and the bucket full of eggs goes up. Next thing I know I am aspraddle on the ground, and a hail of shitty eggs is raining down on me. Fifteen of them. All of them broke except two; and almost all of those broke somewhere on ME. 

Between the rain and the mildewy deck planks and the thirteen broken eggs and the gumboots, I spent a half a minute scrabbling around on my hands and knees before I was able to get upright. My clothes were such a ghastly mess that I stripped off in the playroom and left them in heap, to spray down with the hose later before bringing them in to the laundry room. 

One long hot shower later, nursing a steaming black coffee, I am trying to decide if August in Cascadia, lovely as it is, is worth enduring the horrors of February. No decisions have been made. I’m going to have to wait for neutral April to help me decide. 

Imbolc 2018

Seen on a walk today: 

All Quiet on the Farm Front

It is the dark days. The quiet time, the resting time. The goats are pregnant - most but hopefully not all of them - and lie around munching their cud and avoiding the rain and the mud. The pigs spend their time rooting around in the mud, looking for a bit of beet or a squash or something they might have missed from breakfast. They are just growing, growing bigger and ever closer to their date with the butcher sometime in February. The chickens huddle up in the hayloft, laying their few winter eggs inaccessibly between the bales.

And we, the people, spend as little time out in the barnyard as possible, to tell the truth. It hasn't been awful, the weather, but it hasn't been nice, either. It's par for the course Pacific Northwest January weather - wet, windy, and grey. Nice weather for watching movies and reading books, not nice weather for trimming goat hooves or fixing fences. Not that those tasks can be put off forever, of course. Just until... just until... well, maybe next week.

Because of the gleaner's pantry, it is always preserving season around here. Lately we have been getting a ton of apples. Last week I brought home a dozen bags of assorted varieties of organic apples. First I made four quarts of applesauce, then I noticed that we already have an awful lot of applesauce that we aren't eating in the cupboard. So I broke out the dehydrator. It has five trays, and can hold about a dozen thinly sliced apples. Then it tales about six or eight hours to dry them the way I like them, so dry they are crispy. The dehydrator has been going for three days straight, and we have three gallon-sized ziplocks full of apple rings in the snack drawer. The kitchen smells great.

There's nothing much on the immediate horizon. The goats aren't due to give birth until late March. Holidays are over, no big celebrations coming up until Easter. My birthday is next week, but it isn't a landmark birthday (46) and I don't expect much of a to-do. Times like this I think I should take up knitting, or set up my studio again and try to get back into painting. Or maybe try again to journal every day. Or at the very least, do some ambitious cooking and baking.

We do have to eat some of the meat from the freezer to make room for the pork that will be coming in soon. Maybe it's time to have a party, and make a big old feast.

Happy Holidays

Haku and Paloma enjoying a little couch time while we watch Christmas movies. 

Paloma with her cousin Selah lighting Hanukkah candles last week. 

Whatever holiday you celebrate this winter season, may you enjoy good cheer with your loved ones. 

What is Guacamole, Anyway?

Let's get one thing out of the way: there's no such thing as one "right" way to make guacamole. There are not even one hundred "right" ways to make guacamole. There are as many "right" ways to make guacamole as there are abuelitas in Mexico. 

I'd like to be a fly on the wall listening to a hundred Mexican abuelitas argue about how to make guacamole. There will no doubt be virulent partisans: for or against the inclusion of tomatoes; the chunky tribe versus the smooth; those who advocate garlic and those to whom garlic is a barbarian adulterant. 

If we turn to etymology, as I always do in times of doubt, we find that "guacamole" is a compound word made up of the Nahuatl words for "avocado" and "sauce." (Well, okay if you want to get technical the Nahuatl word "ahuahacatl" actually means "testicle" but that's only an interesting aside. Avocados grow in pairs. Picture it.) Therefore, guacamole is simply a sauce made with avocados. Quite likely, for the prehispanic residents of Mexico, guacamole may have consisted of no more than mashed avocados and salt, perhaps with chiles. 

I don't know enough about regional Mexican cuisine to pinpoint a cook's origin by her guacamole recipe, but I know how they do it in Oaxaca - or, okay, at least how my husband's family does it. In Oaxaca, guacamole contains tomatillos. When Homero and I were getting married, my mom hired some great caterers and told her we wanted a Mexican buffet. They worked up a sample menu and invited us to taste it. It was fantastic - the food is what everyone remembers about my wedding - but Homero had a problem with the guacamole. They had made a chunky style guacamole with tomatoes - like a pico de gallo suspended in a mousse of whipped avocado. Homero barely recognized it as guacamole - he wanted something looser, soupier, more liquid. In Oaxaca this is achieved by blending the avocados with soft simmered tomatillos, fresh raw chiles, onion, and cilantro. Oaxacan guacamole is smooth, of variable spiciness, and most often used as one of several garnishes on tacos, chilaquiles, enchiladas, or what have you. It isn't a "dip," per se. 

Over the years, I've developed what I consider to be my own ur-guacamole recipe, meaning the list of ingredients without which I cannot make guacamole, but in practice, I seldom make guacamole the same way twice. That list is:

- avocados (of course)

- chile (much preferred fresh but I'll use cayenne powder if I have to)

-cilantro

-lime

Onion is nearly as essential but I don't include it because  if I didn't have an onion (the horror!) I wouldn't let it stop me from making guacamole if I had all the other ingredients. 

In Mexico, avocados are cheap. Even in the states, in some areas, avocados used to be ubiquitous and inexpensive. In fact, they used to be called "poor man's butter" in Florida. Alas, no longer. Even in season, avocados these days are pretty dear. So I'm often looking for avocado-extenders. 

If I happen to have them, I'll use tomatillos. I like to use them raw, however, instead of simmered. For one thing, who is going to make guacamole if it involves actual cooking? For another, I like the fresh, slightly citrusy acidity of raw tomatillos and am not a fan of the soft, almost slimy texture of cooked tomatillos. 

Other extenders I've come up with are decidedly less traditional. I have used sour cream, yogurt, and even 

(Dum Dum DUM....) 

Mayonnaise.

I started one time throwing in plain, tangy yogurt not as an extender, but because I was looking for a way to make the guacamole less calorically dense. I decided I liked it. The acidity of good yogurt is a nice balance to the creaminess of avocado. 

Personally, I like the texture that the addition of dairy products brings to guacamole. Avocado is so creamy and rich, and it seems to me that extending it with other creamy and rich products like sour cream or mayonnaise preserves that quality.  That creaminess always needs to be balanced by the acidity of lime. I might extend that to include lemon, but in my mind citrus is the only possible source of acidity. I have occasionally heard of people using vinegar and while I would never do such a thing, I'm not going to tell anybody else what to do. 

Which brings me to my main point. Any given dish made by any given cook has a story, a history. That history interacts with the tastes and the resources of the cook to produce a new dish - the actual dish that the cook is putting on his or her table on any given evening. "Authenticity" is a moving target, not a static Platonic ideal enshrined in any particular place or time. I am a good cook - I'm both respectful of tradition and inventive and innovative. I use everything I have at my disposal - the knowledge imparted to me by my mother and mother-in-law; the skills I have developed through trial and error; the ingredients unique to this farmstead, this time and place; and the feedback from my husband and children, my "customers." 

The food that I place on my family's table night after night is the unique and personal expression of the covergence  of multiple factors. That makes it "authentic." My guacamole is authentic. Is it authentic Oaxacan? No. Is it authentic Oaxacan-American? Yes.

Is it delicious? Hell to the yeah. 

December Doings

Spiced candied pecans. Made these today to send out in small pretty parcels to my family and close friends. A good friend and neighbor of mine has a relative who owns a large organic pecan farm in Texas, and every year that relative sends her a couple of big boxes of shelled organic pecan halves. Her kids sell them at a very good price to bolster their own Christmas funds. This year I got five pounds. They are the best pecans I've ever tasted, hands down. And they aren't made worse by candying them. Here's how I do it: 

Preheat the oven to 275.

For each pound of pecans:

Whip 1 egg white with one tablespoon water until frothy. Set aside. 

Mix 1 cup sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cayenne, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. You could vary the spice mixture to your taste. One year I made curried pecans. 

In a large bowl, pour egg whites over pecans and mix well to coat. Then add sugar mixture and turn well. Pour out onto a baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes, stirring the pecans well every 15 minutes. They should be almost dry at the end, and toasty but not very browned. 

I'm going to have to keep these pecans under lock and key until I get them packaged up and out the door. 

This year's advent calendar of events. This is the third year in a row I've done this. Some of the events include public festivals like tree lighting ceremonies and free Christmas concerts; some are family traditions like baking cookies and decorating the altar; and some are church events like helping decorate Zion for Christmas and going to the annual Carols by Candlelight evening. A few days just say "redeem this ticket for a piece of Christmas candy." 

Truthfully the kids are getting a little old for this - Hope is 14 and Paloma is 12. Every year I think "this might be the last year I can convince them to sit down and cut out snowflakes with me!" But so far, they have been excited to turn over the tags every evening before bed and happy doing the activities with me. Yesterday we put up Christmas lights, and tomorrow we are going to make cards, to mail out along with the pecans. 

Beautiful frosty December mornings. The mountains have snow on them, and the porch is icy enough to go skating on. 

Time to check the front closet and go over our supply of gloves and hats, and to get out the door a few minutes early to give the cat time to warm up and to defrost the windshield. 

All is well on the farm and we are ready for winter. We have hay, we have a freezer full of beef, we have propane and we have extra quilts. We are snug as bugs in rugs. 

Hosting (Thanksgiving Menu)

It's my turn to host Thanksgiving. The job revolves between my mom, my sister, and I, with my mom usually taking two years out of three. Just these past couple of years she has unckenched a little, and been a little bit more willing  to cede the hostess role.  Even as a guest, however, she still commands the menu by the simple method of bringing every single dish she would cook if she were hosting herself. 

However, it is indisputably my job to furnish the turkey. After all, I do raise the silly things. This year is a little awkward. I made a mistake about the date of thanksgiving (I thought it was the LAST Thursday in November when it's actually the FOURTH Thursday in November. Normally one and the same, but not this year) and so Homero will not be here. He was planning a trip to Oaxaca, and I blithely told him "just make sure you're home by the thirtieth!" 

That means he isn't available to butcher the birds. Aside from the one I will be serving, there are three others, already sold to neighbors. I could, theoretically, kill and clean a turkey, but it would look like a coyote did it. Not the nice, presentable, ready to cook carcasses my customers are expecting. So I went begging on Facebook, and found someone willing to do the job tomorrow, just in time to provide a fresh bird that won't need to be frozen. I'm paying ten dollars a bird plus some grass fed beef. Another day I will write about the difficulty of getting poultry butchered around here - it's a perennial problem. 

I have a couple of unique challenges this year, and it really isn't very convienent for me to host. Since Homero is gone for two weeks, I am handling the farm and the girls on my own. Both girls have demanding sports schedules, even over the break (Hope has wrestling practice even on thanksgiving day itself). I have my own interpreting work. And my knee, alas, has decided to go on an absolute binge of pain and weakness. For the first time ever, I've had to resort to a cane, in addition to a brace. I'm about as crippled up as I've ever been, and it's really very annoying.

The girls have been wonderful, though. Today, they helped me round up the turkeys, tie their feet together, and lay them under a blanket in the trunk of the car. There's small chance I would have been able to do that alone. And this afternoon, Rowan came over to help me clean the house. Well, she helped me pick up around the house, so that the cleaning lady I engaged for tomorrow will be able to actually clean. 

All in all, I am feeling rather hopeful. Supposedly, my

Mom is bringing desserts (my siblings and I have a betting pool going - my bet is six pies, a pan of brownies, a cheesecake, and a platter of cookies). My sister always does the mashed potatoes. That leaves, for me:

- one heritage breed pastured turkey, roasted with

- bread and herb stuffing

- mushroom gravy (for the vegetarians)

- wild rice salad with fennel and hazelnuts 

- plain baked garnet yams

- green beans with balsamic dressing

- mixed green salad

I feel a bit of a slacker opting for plain baked yams rather than something fancy like yam soufflé with pecan streusel or the "festive yam confetti" I've made years past. But enough is enough. And the wild rice salad is a great family favorite that I enjoy making every year. 

Wild Rice Salad with fennel and hazelnuts

-1 lb pure wild rice, cooked according to package directions

-1 large or two small bulbs fennel, thinly sliced, and feathery fronds reserved for garnish

-1cup dried tart cherries, or zante currants 

- 1 bunch green onion, thinly sliced

- 1 cup roasted hazelnuts, lightly crushed

- good quality olive oil

- good quality balsamic vinegar (or lemon juice)

- salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

In a very large bowl, combine all ingredients. Toss well and let sit at least 4 hours before serving. 

Predator Problems Redux (Coyote Edition)

We always lose chickens over the winter. Always. Some years are worse than others, but on average I'd say we have about a 30% chicken attrition situation over any given winter. And some years are just terrible. This year has been a bad one so far. 

We started the fall with eleven hens. Now we have five. It's especially annoying because these hens were youthful and excellent layers. Golden sex-links that I bought in spring as pullets. This was their first laying year, and they provided us with a surfeit of delicious eggs. The second year of a hen's life is generally her most prolific, and the third and fourth years are also excellent. I was looking forward to several seasons of eggy abundance. 

We've known for some time that we have a coyote problem here.  I have seen them, in broad daylight, in the neighbor's field, and we hear them  singing on moonlight summer nights. In general, I appreciate coyotes as a savvy, adaptable animal. They are handsome too, no matter what their detractors say, with their sandy brown coats and their sly, intelligent faces. Losing a chicken here and there is the price we pay for living in this lovely rural area. I'd be sad indeed to never hear coyote song again. 

But I do draw the line at the loss of more than half our flock, and it's barely November yet. And yesterday they took a turkey - a well grown hen, who was already sold at $4/lb. Now I have to call a customer and tell  them their family will be eating store-bought turkey this thanksgiving, and that makes me mad. 

So it was with mixed emotions at best that I regarded the dead coyote that my husband brought me last week. As he was driving home in the dusky evening, he saw a coyote lying on the side of the highway just off our property; the same place that our dog Haku was hit last summer. The coyote was perfect, intact. So much so that Homero approached it cautiously in case it might actually be still alive. It wasn't, but it wasn't long dead either. Still warm. 

Homero dragged it off the verge of the highway and well into our property, for no particularly good reason. "I didn't want it to get run over into mush," he said. "Come look." 

Not having ever been close enough to a coyote to touch one before, I didn't have much of a frame of reference. Local farmers tend to greatly exaggerate the size and menace of coyotes, claiming they are larger than dogs and can drag off full grown sheep. I know that is bull-puckey. Coyotes seldom weigh more than forty pounds, and are quite a bit smaller than your average German Shepherd. This one seemed to weigh about thirty-five pounds, and was female. 

There wasn't a mark on her, apart from a little blood around her muzzle. It's been a cold fall, and her coat was thick and soft. I felt quite sorry for her. I imagined her as one of the pups I'd heard singing earlier, in summer, and that her dan had taught her where to go hunting. She probably knew us as "easy pickings farm." Nice fat chickens, if you can get across the road, look out, it's a bitch. 

Another nice thing about living in a rural area in the age of the internet: it was quite easy to find somebody who wanted to pick her up for her hide. I mean, why not, might as well salvage something beautiful from this disaster. We've lost good poultry and an intelligent animal list her life in her prime, but why shouldn't somebody salvage a nice fur? 

Homero tells me he's absolutely positively guaranteed going to patch up the chicken coop before it gets much colder. I say - as I say every year - that we won't get any more birds of any sort until he does. I know what will happen- the earth will turn and spring will come. Chicks will show up for sale under heat lamps in the farm store. We will look at our sad skinny chickens who survived winter and decide they need an infusion of new blood. We will think we have all summer long to fix the chicken coop. 

 

Brewing Notes (Cider and Wine)

Mainly just notes for myself so I don't forget when I did what. Today I racked the rhubarb wine into a clean carboy. It's been about a month in the first one, and a week in a fermentation bucket before that. I tasted it as a transferred it and it's AWFUL. But that doesn't mean anything. The plum wine was gross at this stage too, and it turned it pretty good. This is only my second attempt at fruit wine. Last year's plum wine was the first. Having never even tasted rhubarb wine before, let alone made it, I have nothing to compare it to. I just had so much rhubarb I had to do something with it. If it turns out horrible it's no big loss - my plant puts out rhubarb enough for as muchexperimentation as I feel like doing. 

Also racked the cider into a second carboy.  The cider tastes pretty good already. It's very dry, though. I think when I bottle it in a couple weeks I will add a bit of sugar for a little sweetness and fizz. I like my cider frizzante. 

Brewing is fun. It feels like magic. 

Beautiful Buck

Fall is the season for making decisions about goat breeding. 

Most goats are seasonal breeders, meaning they only go into heat during certain times of the year. In our climate, the does begin to go into heat as soon as the days grow shorter and the nights become crisp, usually in September. Every doe is different - one of mine, Polly, is an early breeder and goes into heat in late July or early August. If we have a buck on the place, she will get pregnant early and give birth in the depths of winter, which is not good for the survival chances of her babies. 

For that and other reasons, I have not kept a buck in the farm for several years now. It's convienant to have your own buck, for sure. Finding a suitable buck is one of the more time comsuming and annoying tasks of the year. First you have to find a buck you like, of the correct breed, conformation, and vigor. Then you have to talk about testing for communicable diseases and coordinate worming schedules; negotiate a price for multiple does; and decide whether you will transport the does to the buck or the buck to the does, and who will take on that onerous task. Some buck owners want you to pay for feed or to provide specific hay; some charge boarding fees for your does. 

On the other hand, keeping a buck has its drawbacks. They are stinky, in season, and some of them are aggressive. They are generally speaking much harder on fences than does are, and more prone to escape and go marauding around the countryside damaging the neighbor's fruit trees. When breeding season comes around they must be kept separate from the does until such time as you want them bred, and that isn't easy. A healthy young buck will go to amazing lengths to breed an in-heat doe, including jumping a six foot fence. If you are still milking during breeding season, a buck's hormones will taint the milk and give it a rancid, billy-goat odor. 

On balance, I've decided that it's better to rent a buck than it is to keep one year round. For now, anyway. This year it was relatively easy to find a good buck. A friend of the family has a lovely, proven, black and white Nubian that he was willing to lend us for the three weeks it takes to complete a full breeding cycle. He isn't registered, but I don't care because neither are my does. Homero went and got him today. He transported him - crazily - in the backseat of our regular car, which means we will all have to sit on clean towels or smell like a billy goat for the next couple of weeks.  

But I'm happy - the does seem very happy, very welcoming. 

Here's a link to a post from a few years ago about the more historical and spiritual aspects of goat breeding:

http://newtofarmlife.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-must-die-goat-breeding-and-divine.html?m=1

http://newtofarmlife.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-must-die-goat-breeding-and-divine.html?m=1

Piggy Piggy (More Pork)

 Paloma and the Pig 

Two new pigs have arrived on the farm. We weren't looking for pigs; we still have plenty of pork left in the freezer from the last pigs. Those pigs were so vicious and unpleasant that I was looking forward to not having any pigs again for

some time to come. 

However. I belong to a local farmer's Facebook group, and that means I just HAVE to see all the animals for sale at any given time. I can't even help it - it just appears on my feed. In the "old days" three years ago, I had to at least go to Craigslist and seek out animals to buy. Boy, that was like, the Jurassic era. 

So, a neighbor farmer friend of ours, from whom we have bought pigs before (but not last year's evil pigs) was advertising well-grown piglets for $125 each. A friend of his had to leave town quickly unexpectedly for a new job and asked our friend to sell off his herd of nine piglets. From the photos he posted, I could see that they were considerably older than  the usual weaners which sell for the same price. After consulting with Homero, I asked our friend to keep two for us. 

When he delivered them, I was surprised and gratified to see how big they are. They were almost the size of barbecue hogs which sell for $250 or so. I asked what breed they were and I got "Berkshire cross." That's good enough for me. 

These pigs are quite shy, and scared of people. I don't mind; I've found that if the pigs aren't scared of me, then I am likely to be scared of them. They spent the first few days in the big barn, but we have since transferred them to the sacrifice area. There, they can be comfortable in the field shelter, and have plenty of space for exercising. If they root up the ground, they will be doing me a favor, since that earth is compacted and gravelly. 

If all goes well, the pigs ought to be harvest sized by Christmas. In the meantime, we have to eat up the pork we still have in the freezer. To that end, I made a delicious pork roast yesterday. I just liberally salted and peppered it, put it in a casserole with a few cloves of garlic, and then poured over two cups of home pressed apple cider that was a week old and fairly well converted into tepache. I covered the casserole with tinfoil and crimped it well, and baked it at 300 for several hours. Absolutely delicious with smashed Prato salad. 

Happy (Few Days Late) Mabon!

Happy Apple Cider Day (Neighbors to the Rescue)

A close up of the gear mechanism of the apple press. The girls and I had pressed about three gallons of cider today, and were only about a third of the way through the wheelbarrow full of apples, when the press broke.  It always breaks in the same way - the little rod that goes through the horizontal gear and attaches it to the presser-rod breaks. Last time this happened, after I let some over enthusiastic college boys use the press, Homero fixed it by using a nail to replace the little rod. Today, that nail broke in half. 

The girls and I could not figure out how to fix it. It's simple

enough to see how it works but the presser-rod had slipped down inside the tube and we couldn't get it to come up high enough to thread a new nail through the hole. Nor could we figure out how to remove the vertical gear which we would have to do. Nor could we find any tool hanging around capable of cutting off the excess nail so it wouldn't halt the turning of the horizontal gear halfway through a revolution. I learned that you cannot cut a nail with long-armed garden loppers, and it's dangerous, so don't try. 

Homero is in Seattle, and he wasn't answering his phone. I was about to give up, and frustrated because I had hoped to do all my pressing in one fell swoop his year. The apples which we gathered from a friend's orchard had already been resting for about a week and I didn't think they would last a whole lot longer. And I didn't want to clean up the press and the mess and then just wait for Homero to fix it. 

Then I remembered Mr B. The B's are close neighbors and friends from church. They are an elderly couple, from whom  we buy a side of beef every year that they have one to spare. One year, the B's borrowed the press, and when he returned it, Mr B had cleaned and serviced it, oiled it and sharpened the blades. I knew he could make short work of this simple

mechanical problem, and he might even enjoy himself while he was at it. 

Five minutes after I called, both B's arrived. It took Mr B a few minutes to figure out how to get the presser-rod to come up through the tube (it screws, but the mechanism is hidden), and after that it was smooth sailing. We brought over a collection of nails and he chose one, threaded it through the hole, marked where it needed to be cut, and then took it back to his workshop and cut it with his sawzall. There was some fiddling around with pliers and the cotter-pin on the vertical gear, and then presto! It worked! 

We all cheered. I convinced them to take home a little thank you basket, with a half gallon of cider, a few ham steaks from the freezer, and a jar of blackberry jam. They didn't want to take it but I insisted. 

Then we had to really rock and roll to get the apples pressed before dark. Pressing cider is hard work, even with a motorized press, and there were a whole lot of apples.  But we got it done. Hooray for good neighbors, who are handy and willing to lend a handy hand. 

End of Summer Summer Squash Casserole

Although I did not plant any squash this year, the squash has arrived as usual. My neighbor - he of the Hotel-Sized-House (HSH) - planted enough squash for the both of us. And then some. Every few days, we meet at the fence line and I give him a couple dozen eggs or a half gallon of goat milk and he gives me a box of produce. The last box had some potatoes and onions, twenty or so tomatoes, and eight big yellow crookneck squash. 

I've been putting squash in just about everything lately - chicken soup, Mexican rice, scrambled eggs. Nonetheless, the squash piles up. So I went looking for an application that would use up larger quantities. After perusing my cookbook collection and consulting Epicurious, I decided on a yellow squash casserole. I'd never made anything like it before, but it sounded good and it would use up at least two yellow squash. There were several recipes to choose from, but none of them exactly fitted what I had in mind, so I decided to do an experiment. I wanted something like a soufflé and something like a gratin. 

An aside. One of the nice things about being a lady of a certain age - and lord knows the pleasures are few - is that I have accumulated enough skill at a number of endeavors that I need not follow someone else's instructions, but can imagine what I want to create and be reasonably certain that I can in fact accomplish my vision. Sometimes there are failures - of course there are - but sometimes there are beautiful minor triumphs. 

Today's experiment was a success. Actually, it turned out so good that I might make the same thing even when we are not inundated with squash. I might actually BUY squash to be able to make this dish. Here's a recipe.

-Preheat oven to 350

-Make a simple bechemel sauce (about two cups - from two tablespoons butter, equal volume flour, and about two cups milk. I used fresh goats' milk) seasoned with plenty of garlic and fresh ground pepper

-Grate enough yellow squash on the large holes of a box grater to make 4 cups of grated squash. 

- in a large mixing bowl, mix grated squash, one half of a minced yellow onion, three eggs, and the (cooled) bechemel

sauce. 

- blend in one cup (give or take) grated pepper jack cheese

-scrape mixture into a deep casserole dish. 

- top with a mixture of fresh bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, and oregano. 

-bake in a 350 degree oven (covered) for approximately 30 minutes. Uncover and raise heat to 400 to brown the crumbs. 

Serve with a green salad and some sort of starch - pasta or rice.