Harvest, September 26

"Rosa Bianca" Italian eggplant, various bell peppers, and zucchini.

MORE tomatoes!

The cockscomb celosia is going nuts in the garden.
Think I'll keep growing the burgundy and scarlet. The lime is unremarkable.

Mini-watermelons are now ripe as are most of the pumpkins (which were 

harvested and stored last week). We have two pumpkins that are carvable, 

the rest should be yummy for baking and soups.

These "Petite Yellow" watermelons are sweet! Now I just have to get
my children and my customers used to picking or spitting out seeds
because the flavor is truly worth the effort.

I grew these "Chinese Mini Gourds" to test for fall decorative sales.

They're adorable keepers. You clean them in a solution of 10% 

natural bleach and it helps them "keep" longer.

Apple Cider!

Shana and Hallel came to the farm yesterday to work for a few days. They are a huge help as we prepare to  tuck the garden in and finish mowing the mulch hay. They brought an apple "slusher" and cider press as well as several hand-picked bushels of apples from a farm near their home in Rindge that is on the market and essentially abandoned. With Naish's new friend, Camden, and Don as the experienced apple presser, we lit a small bonfire and got to work in the wood shop on cider-making last night (a school night to boot!). Great fun and superb cider!
(I apologize for some of the fuzzy pics as I was trying to avoid using the flash in the fluorescent lit space.)

Jack picking the just-right apples

Shana, Hallel, and Art transferring the apple "slush" into the press bucket

Apple "slush" before the pressing

Art monitoring the cider progress

Apple "slush" gets pressed by a board that's hand-cranked

And the "crankers" hard at work

Inspecting the machinery

Adding the last "umph"

And the cider pours out! It rather gushes which surprised me.

A fuzzy pic of the product. When all was done we had perhaps pressed 15 gallons!

So yummy! Shana and Hallel are taking two of these large 5 gallon jugs to ferment for some rip-roaring Hard Cider!

Adam Ezra at Paradise

photo by Bob Olshansky

We went to Boston on Saturday and visited with Bob and Nan in Wayland and Jeff, Wendy, Ivy, and Reed (briefly) in Brookline. Had a lovely dinner with a new rice noodle with tomatoes and bok choy recipe that was dee-lish. Nan stayed with the kids and Bodhi while Bob, Art and I went to see Adam's show at the Paradise Lounge. Thanks Nan! We are still recovering from the fun, late night.
It was an incredible show. Lisa, Guy, Sam, and Allie were there too and we all danced our asses off. My one disappointment was that much of the video footage I thought I got of the show didn't go through on Jack's new "bloggie" video camera. I did get a short clip that I've been trying to upload to the blog but have been frustratingly unsuccessful. I will keep trying. In the meantime, for those of you who aren't familiar with Adam's music, please visit his website - www.adamezra.com. He's an amazing song-writer, singer, and musician with a rockin' band.

Food Rebel

This article came through my Working Farm Collie listserve. The Linde's have a long way to go to become true food rebels, but I'm convinced that it is one of the most powerful changes we can make to truly affect change - environmental, humanitarian, health, and community. I am also now more acutely aware of how nearly impossible it is for small farmers to thrive and how hard they must work to serve their communities while putting food on their own tables, so to speak. And though we're now living rural, I know these kinds of choices can be made in the city and suburbs to which farmer's schlep their products, sometimes daily.

The paragraph below is a teaser. The full article can be read by clicking the title which is linked to the blog "Honest Meat." (Careful, my vegetarian friends, don't go wandering too far on this blog, there are some challenging pics for those of us who choose not to eat animals.)


So You Say You Want A Food Revolution
You go out to that hot, new restaurant with the tattooed chef that is putting on a whole animal, nose to tail special dinner. You bliss out on highfalutin pork rinds, braised pigs feet, rustic pate, and porchetta. A few months later you nibble on small bites as you stroll down the city street, blocked off for some weekend 'foodie' festival. You go back to your Monday-Friday workaday routine ordering pizza, buying some frozen chicken breasts at Costco ("hey, at least they are 'organic'"), subsisting through your hectic week (although you still have time for at least 2 hours a day of TV).  You manage to get to a farmers market about once a month, but the rest of the time your eggs and meat come from a blend of Costco, Trader Joe's, and maybe Whole Paycheck now and again. You like to think of yourself as a 'foodie', you watched Food Inc. with your mouth aghast, you own a few cookbooks.  Guess what? You are NOT changing the food system, not even close......

The Light in September is Different

Morning

Afternoon

Candia Soccer Tournament

On Sunday, Naish's travel team won 2 of its 3 games.

Tomato (and Dried Bean) Season

Of the varieties we grew this year, the green and yellow tomatoes are the tastiest raw!

I brewed up a vat of marinara sauce on Sunday. It took hours to simmer and reduce.

The beans took a hit in the dry heat while we were away in Woods Hole.
I started "threshing" them on saturday. Hopefully I'll end up with 2 cups
of the black bean "Cherokee Trail of Tears", and this white "Provider" bean.

"Painted pony" beans are in the foreground and "Calypso" beans are the black
and white ones. I think they should be renamed "Ying and Yang" because
most have the perfect reproduction of the symbol.

Our Resident Herpetologist

Naish has NO inhibitions catching and holding snakes.

This Garter Snake lives in the rock wall by the kitchen garden.
He did seem to calm down after a few moments of Naish's gentle handling.

You've Got Mail

Congratulations, Alex! The U.S. Postal Service still delivers goodies.

Boy vs. Wild

Naish has become obsessed with the show "Man vs. Wild." If you haven't seen it, it's pretty crazy. A man is dropped off in the middle of some (usually) remote, challenging environment and he manages to "survive" on bugs, slugs, raw animal parts and to explain all the nuances of wilderness survival as he does so. Anyway, Naish is finding the farm a great place to try out his skills. He speared two frogs down by the river, worked with Jack to build a fire, cooked the tiny things, and ate what he could. Didn't like the flavor so much. He built a snare for chipmunks (no victims, yet) and a lean-to shelter by our kitchen rock wall. There are patches all over the yard where he's dug up roots and skinned "moss" for his various exploits.

September Weekend

Back-side of the barn. I love the colors here.

Walking down Barker Lane.

Art's Buckwheat. This is part of the site Art is preparing for the orchard.  Dutch clover gets seeded next.

Bodhi's now 9 months old. Becoming quite a handsome gent.

View of Pumpkin Field and the front hay field from Barker Lane

Here's the view I have when I sit on my kitchen porch. 

We call this long, narrow field "Pumpkin Field," as David said that's what grew here. 

Our newest compost pile. It'll be brown gold when it's done.

Weed choked but the blooms are many.

Home-made pizza dinner with Shana and Hallel who came to help out on the farm. Their work included prepping the  blueberries and strawberries and planting grass seed. What a HUGE help. Thank you!