Thursday, September 17, 2009

Wild harvest

I love to harvest the wild greens in the early spring, I adore the cat tails, and the daylilys, and later the elder flower recipes, followed by the elder berries.

Nothing is as good, though, as the fall harvest. Walking through the conservation areas with the deep, delicious smell of wild grapes on the air. This year we have a huge harvest due to the rains. The black walnuts, wild hazelnuts, black cherries, Jerusalem artichokes, and Autumn Olives. I'll be heading to the dairy this weekend to get some raw cream so I can use the black cherries to make a childhood favorite, black cherry ice cream. It's a taste that grows on you, as it's more musty than the cherries you get in the stores.

I'll be soaking my first harvest of hazelnuts today in a brine solution, to release the enzyme inhibitors they contain. Later, I'll dry them in my dehydrator. The next batch will be soaked and candied in our maple syrup for a healthy snack for the kid's lunches.

This year, I am going to do something more than just fruit leather with the autumn olive. We found an absolutely massive amount of them at the conservation area we had been gathering our groundnuts at. Each bush is literally touching the ground under it's own weight. Autumn olives are one of the highest contents of lycopene known. We are not much in our family for jellies and jams, so that leaves us with dried berries, pie fillings, frozen berries, and just berries in syrup. However, as the fruit leather is a favorite, and needs no added sugar other than it's natural sugars (if harvested after the first frost), we will be running both dehydrators full on for the next month or so as we try to make enough for the winter and to carry us through until next harvest. I also found an Autumn Olive wine recipe. It sounds delicious. This year will be my first attempt at making wine from wild grapes, so I think I will try this also. For those of you unfamiliar with Autumn Olive, it's a red berry with silver speckles on it, and it tastes a bit like raspberry, but after drying, it's very much like a grape-raspberry mix. Taste varies from bush to bush, and it can be astringent, so finding a good bush is important. It can be quite tart unless you harvest after the first freeze, when the sugars develop.

AUTUMN OLIVE WINE

* 4-5 pounds Autumn olive fruit
* 2 lbs granulated sugar
* 1¼ tsp yeast nutrient
* ¼ tsp tannin
* 1 crushed Campden tablet
* 1 tsp pectic enzyme.
* 3 qts water
* Lalvin RC212 (Bourgovin) wine yeast

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Fall planting time

It could not POSSIBLY be time to plant garlic already. Is it? Yes, it is. Sigh.

Time to get your garlic orders in, a recent email says from Seed Savers Exchange.

Yes, it's time to peruse catalogs and select bulbs to plant in the next few weeks.

Not much longer, and we will be seeing frost on our greenery, and then shortly after that, falling leaves on the frozen ground. Beautiful, but such a quick passing to such a short summer. It seems as if we had 3 weeks of summer this year.

Yes, folks, there is even a time for rain, and it was this year.

Peace.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Labor day hike

Things have been very hectic around the farm recently. The turkeys are huge, the ducks are enormous, and our rooster has lost his tail. Our foster dog went home today, so it's the start of a slowdown. Fall is here, and time to start to pick up the pieces from a hectic, crazy summer.


This long weekend, we went to the Cohos Trail in New Hampshire to do some hiking with our two rotts, and the twins. It will be Zen's last hike, she barely made it the second day of hiking. She can do small hikes, but no more overnight, long hikes up mountains. It's the passing of an era, and sad. However, the bright side is that Clay surprised us all by being a goer. He wanted to go and go and go. In extremely cute, Clay fashion, I asked him as we were setting up tents for the night if he wanted to go to the woods, and he got all excited. Duh - Clay, we're IN the woods.

On the kid front, we were very impressed and gladdened to see that they were able to make such a difficult hike their very first foray out. We've taken them on hikes up mountains before, but never with packs on. They were true troopers and kept up and then some. We did about 2/3 of the hike up the 4.5 miles of trails to the top of Sugarloaf the first day, and ran out of daylight. So, we camped and continued on in the morning to have breakfast at the summit. A total of about 3 hours of hiking, with out of shape people and a senior dog... not so bad. The trek was steep and our packs were heavy, but our hearts were light, especially when we saw what laid in wait for us at the top.



Once breakfast was over, and the relaxation and lovin's were done...


we headed back down the mountain. We stopped at a nice waterfall along the way to fill our water bottles and allow everyone to cool off. Zen plopped right down into the water with her pack on, but the rest of us waited to take the gear off.




When we were done on this side of the trail, we crossed the road to start on the path to the Devil's Jacuzzi, a 12 person natural formation with bubbling water that looks just like a jacuzzi. We overshot it, missing the sign on the trail, and wound up at Nash Stream Bog instead. Poor Zen was so tired, but Clay was just going and going like a bunny. Zen needed to stop frequently, so the 2 mile hike took us well over an hour. Finally, we got to the Jacuzzi, and missed the spur path, so we had to descend a sheer cliff face with the dogs, which we did using teamwork and good old muscle. Thank goodness that those dogs trust us so much. The kids were like mountain goats, no problems. They were made for mountain climbing. We sat at the Nash Stream, and Clay just decided to poop out. Everyone else became energized and played in the water, including Zen





Bran was the only one brave enough to try the Devil's Jacuzzi, so Daddy lowered her in. It was too cold and fast moving to just jump in. She touched her feet to the water and promptly declared he could remove her from the water right NOW!


Finally, it was time to go home, and just in time. Zen was absolutely drained and one more second, we would have had to have carried her. The kids were tired and sore, as were we. We tried in vain to find the next mountain, North Percy Peak, before dusk. When night began to settle, the thought of climbing another mountain with a dog that was not able to drag, never mind lift, her paws just seemed unsettling. So, we hiked back to the truck and settled in to a motel for a night of showers, pizza, and a rare treat, television.