10-10-10

We spent a beautiful weekend celebrating the wedding of our friends Eser and Tim on the gorgeous Maine Coast. The joyous celebrations enabled us to visit and catch up with many of our friends from Washington, D.C. Our love to Eser and Tim and to Sheila (my cousin) and Carlton who were married on Saturday, the ninth!

Jack and Art looking dapper with the Atlantic Ocean and the October Maine foliage in the background. Naish had a BIG soccer tournament in Rochester, NH, this weekend and his team, the Stratham Strikers won all four of their U10 games. Go Strikers!

finger condoms, saramago, and (yes) more tomatoes

finger condoms! (yes, Alex, the peas are for you)

Seems gardening has its perils for us lefties (klutzes?). I cut my right index finger with the pruning shears on Friday and shrugged it off. But yesterday, I gouged my right ring-finger with the floral shears when I was snipping  tomatoes to store (and ripen indoors at the end of the month). Even though it was a gusher, it wasn't until this morning when it was swollen, black & blue, and throbbing that I reluctantly went to get it checked. Too late for the stitches I should have gotten on both cuts but I had them cleaned and steri-stripped, a tetanus shot, and (goody!) these cute finger condoms. (Sorry about the pic, it's tough taking a pic with the wrong hand and a wide angle lens to boot). Aren't they adorable?!

So I've started a book I must say is worth commenting on here. The Elephant's Journey, by Jose Saramago is just divine and I highly recommend to all. Much of Saramago's work (he's Portugese and his novels are available in translation) is rather dark and very much worth a read too (Blindness, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Death with Interruptions, etc). But this little gem already has me chuckling a few chapters in and Saramago's chapter-long paragraphs lend themselves superbly to this wry and gorgeous fable.

We've been very busy between farm and garden work, soccer games, and brewing up bi-weekly vats of marinara to freeze. I swear I am not sick of eating tomatoes (they're scrumptious!) I'm just tired of trying to keep up with them so they don't spoil before I have a chance to save that warm flavor for the winter months. I've also been running out to pick Cockscomb Celosia and Gomphrena and tediously de-leafing and hanging them to dry. We'll see how they turn out.

Jack is in a major book-reading marathon and I can't keep him in books. I'll add his recent reads to the family reading list shortly. He's batting a thousand on all his subjects at school and I've also noticed that he is now, perhaps, a half an inch shorter than me!

Naish is starting early New England and American history. His teacher commented on a Batcheldor who settled New Hampshire and pointed out that Naish lives in one his ancestors homes. I think Naish was pleasantly surprised at the confluence of this history lesson and his new home.

It's cool here (not chilly yet). I'm checking the 10-day forecasts fastidiously as we have over a thousand bulbs to plant (tulips, narcissus, alliums, lilies) and some corms and tubers as well. The trial garden gig is up and flower farming must commence! More on bulb planting and, possibly, an exciting Winnicut River Farm announcement to come.

Alex's Credits

Click the title of this post to go to the film trailer for "Figure" and be sure to pause when the credits roll. Great job, Alex!

Bonus, I think I've been able to upload that video from Adam's concert. Check it out and visit his web-site.

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......