Landscapes for Landsake

Landscapes for Landsake is an inspired fundraiser that brings together first-rate regional artists, patrons, and the community to celebrate the agricultural landscape in a beautifully restored barn near Cambridge, New York. Artists donate 50% of their sale price to the Agricultural Stewardship Association, which has conserved nearly 17,000 acres of farmland in Rensselear and Washington Counties over the past 25 years. I was thrilled to have five of my paintings chosen for this very selective show. 

Landscapes for Landsake takes place at Maple Ridge, 172 State Route 372 in the hamlet of Coila, just west of the Village of Cambridge. The show opens on Saturday, October 8th from 12 to 5 p.m. with a wine and cheese reception. Admission is $5 per person. The gallery is also open from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday and Monday free of charge.  

First asparagus of the season. 11x14. 2016.

But Is it Organic?

Before signing up for our CSA, I imagined a Lucy Show in the kitchen, where I was stuffing all manor of recipes with zucchini, just to be overrun the following week with eggplant or tomatoes. While cooking from the CSA basket does take some management, it's mostly fun googling the week's vegetable combinations to find new recipes to try. The Fox Creek assortment is fairly pedestrian (no exotic greens or asian roots) which leaves me free to experiment on new things at the farmers market.

One nagging question I had, though, came from a fellow shareholder who's had a lot of health problems and asked if the vegetables from Fox Creek were organic. Hmmm. Because they hadn't mentioned organic, I decided to find out. 

The U-Pick garden contains herbs, flowers, and cherry tomatoes.

I picked a beautiful Saturday to drive out to Gallupville and take advantage of the U-Pick garden, which is part of my CSA membership. While there, I ran into Raymond, who explained that Fox Creek did farm using organic methods but that they hadn't applied for certification. I was reminded of a passage in The Omnivore's Dilemma, where famous-farmer Joel Salatin said that, given a choice, you should start with local food rather than big-box organic. If you buy local, you can always stop by the farm and simply ask about their farming practices. Plus you get to take flowers home!

Community Calling

I got an interesting appeal from our CSA, Fox Creek Farm, right before we went on a long vacation. Back now, and I wanted to bring it up to the Farm Share community and get your thoughts. Our friends at Fox Creek Farm sent along a link to an article in the New York Times: When Community Supported Agriculture is Not What it Seems.  I must say that I've generally been supportive of more ways to shop local. There are many folks whose schedules or lifestyles don't lend themselves to the routine of CSA pick-ups and organizations like FieldGoods allow them to enjoy fresh local produce "on demand." 

What the NYT article points out is that these new ventures are not really CSAs, though they use the language of CSAs in marketing. In fact, they're venture-capital-funded distributors that contract for produce from family farms. While they do provide a new outlet for family farmers, the farmers assume a lot of financial risk added to the inherent weather risks of farming. Fox Creek reports that with the rise of these alternatives, that their subscriptions have been stagnant after a period of robust growth.

It struck me, listening to all the presidential campaign rhetoric, that while globalization is demonized for declining wages in America, there's been no mention of the rise of huge internet corporations for erasing whole categories of work and community. The beauty of a CSA is that you establish a direct relationship with the folks who are growing your food. You get to help out in the harvest if you want. You get to watch their kids grow up. You get to contribute to the health and strength of the community you live in. 

In their latest newsletter, I saw that Fox Creek Farm is offering a 30% discount on mid-season sign-ups. This seems like a great way to check out their produce. They have a lot more pick-up locations than I realized. Pick up times are 4:00-6:00 p.m. If you're interested, you can e-mail them at  foxcreekfarmcsa@earthlink.net or find a pick up location near you on their website at www.foxcreekfarmcsa.com. 

Pick Your Own

I haven't been posting in the blog recently because I've been painting a lot. Between painting, scanning, color correcting, social media, managing my Etsy Shop, and framing, there hasn't been much time for anything else! You can see some of my recent paintings if you scroll down to the end of my painting gallery.

I made these little strawberry paintings to enter into the Saratoga 10x10 show. Finished size of entries must be 10x10" and they should sell for $100 each. The image size of each is 5x5" with generous painted borders. They're painted in oil on specially treated 100% cotton rag paper. It's a new technique for me -- working backwards from a frame size, and painting on paper.  I also used the two Pantone colors of the year -- Serenity and Rose Quartz. The result is sweeter than my normal backgrounds, but I think it suits the subject. What do you think?

These paintings will be on display at the Saratoga Arts Center, 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY from July 9 - August 26. After that, they'll be available in my Etsy shop. By the way, my shop is closed until July 25, because we're going on vacation to Japan (yay!). You can follow our progress on Tumblr.

Fleeting Flavors

There are few foods I’ve encountered that are as polarizing as humble rhubarb. Its sharp puckery taste, like cranberries, requires mounds of sugar to tame. Though beautiful when freshly cut, the sleek red and green stems cook up into a pea-green mush that has all the eye appeal of split pea soup.

But after a winter of little but apples and pears, I was ready for fresh local fruit and decided to figure out ways to eat rhubarb. When the sign went up at the farm stand down the road, I stopped in to buy an early bunch. The fresh-cut bunch of rhubarb was $2.50. It’s an honor system but the cat is keeping an eye on things!

In one of my many farm share projects, I’m scanning and documenting Peg Rau’s treasure trove of handwritten cookbooks from the early 1900s. Everyone has a recipe for rhubarb pie. This one is from 1911.

Recipe from Peg Rau's grandmother's cookbook, written in 1911.

Early recipes don’t include cooking instructions, so I searched around on line to find cooking times for fruit pies, but stuck to the ingredients as written. Let’s just say the results were less than successful. The filling was a super-sweet gooey mess, but nevertheless I loved the tangy rhubarb flavor and decided to wait for strawberries.

Everyone’s raving about strawberries this year and I’m lucky to know a farmer who grows them organically. We’ve been going through a couple of quarts a week on yogurt, in oatmeal, fresh out of the box, and yes, painting them. As we’re getting toward the end of the early berries I decided to try some tarts. I don’t eat a lot of sweets so I figured that strawberry rhubarb “pop tarts” would be just the thing. After merging a couple of recipes from the web, here’s where I ended up:

Strawberry Rhubarb "Dumplings"

Ingredients

• Makes 16 tarts
• 1 cup strawberries, cleaned and washed. Larger berries cut in half.
• 1 cup rhubarb, outer strings removed with a potato peeler. Stalks sliced lengthwise and then chopped into ¼” dice.
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 2-crust store-bought pie crust
• 1 whipped egg

Instructions

• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
• Take pie crust out of the refrigerator and let it rest for 10 minutes
• Cook the strawberries and rhubarb with sugar on low heat for 10 minutes.
• While cooking, roll out the pie crust on parchment and cut into 3 1/2” rounds.
• Strain the sauce and put a dollop of strawberry-rhubarb mixture in the center of each round, leaving a half inch or so.
• Brush the un-filled area with egg, fold the disc in half and press down the edges with your fingers, followed by the tines of a fork. Brush the tops with egg and poke them with a fork to allow steam to escape.
• Smitten Kitchen recommends that you place on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes before baking. Not sure why, but I did this.
• Cook for 25 minutes and cool on a rack when done

Though they would have tasted better with buttery homemade pie crust, these were pretty tasty. A little burst of sweet-tart flavor, leaving you wanting another.

A dollop of strawberries and rhubarb on 3.5" rounds. I should have strained the juice better!

Crimped and poked. Ready for the fridge.

Cooling on a rack. Yum!

Happy Strawberry Season from Farm Share Studio!

First Farm Stand of the Season

Route 146 is a busy state road that runs past my house into Altamont. There are houses strung along its length, interspersed with old fields, thickly overgrown with briars and small trees. About a month ago I noticed the sap buckets, and then the mason jars started appearing. On Easter Sunday morning I finally had time to stop at the first farm stand of the year. 

Many think that eating local is more expensive, but at $4.00 a pint, this syrup is a bargain compared with the grocery stores. I left my offering in the plastic zipper bag and went home to have pancakes.

No lines!

Thanks Schoharie Valley Farms

Did you hear those spring peepers? If so, it’s time for the big farm stores open! The Carrot Barn in Schoharie has finally transitioned from weekend hours to a full time operation. To celebrate, I joined Ev and Peg Rau and about seven little Girl Scouts in Schoharie on Saturday to sign our new book, Stand Tall, and sell cookies. There was an antique show going on the village, which drew a lot of customers into the store.  I was happy to meet Richard Ball, who somehow manages to combine the running of a large, successful, farm with his duties as NYS Commissioner of Agriculture – and remaining a pivotal presence in this community.

Peb and Everett Rau signing books at the Carrot Barn in Schoharie.

I knew I was entering a sacred space when I caught a whiff of freshly baked cider donuts mingled with new potting soil as I opened the door. Ev and Peg were holding court in a little room between the greenhouse and the shop. Many old friends stopped by, but we were all moved when a woman mentioned that she was buying the book for her heart doctor to thank him for caring for her husband who had recently passed away. It turned out that he is the same doctor who nursed Peg through her recent bout with congestive heart failure.  It’s wonderful to see Ev’s book travel from hand to hand, adding new links to the web of gratitude.  

The Carrot Barn identifies all the produce grown by them. Look at those potatoes!

Winter is a tough time if you’re committed to eating local food in upstate New York. Outlets shrink and most of what’s available has been stored from the fall. This is reflected in the Carrot Barn’s current offering, so I like that they have a broad spectrum of produce from other sources to complement their local offerings. You could do your weekly grocery shopping here. Everything is labeled as to origin. You know that you’re buying their potatoes or carrots – but that the asparagus and lemons have come from somewhere else. They have a fantastic selection of local pastured beef, along with local eggs, milk, and butter. And of course, potted plants and home cooked cider donuts! All this is intermingled with a well-chosen mix of cards, books, and prints of local farms.

Schoharie Valley Farms’ Carrot Barn is located on Route 30, just outside the Village of Schoharie.  They’re open daily March through December from 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.

They have a bakery, coffee shop, food market and greenhouse. 518-295-7139.

Against the Odds

When the first proof of my new book with Everett Rau arrived, I took it over to the nursing home to show my father. Somehow the images of early farming pierced the fog of his Alzheimer’s and he said, “I think I’m going to enjoy this.” As word spread that I had actually written a real book, members of the staff sat down and began to read – every page – and then look at me like I was a magician or alchemist. 

First order just arrived today. Can't wait to take them over to Ev!

After years of being the client, it’s been humbling to be the creator. For a year and a half, I visited Ev’s farmhouse kitchen once a week and he narrated stories of his childhood with stunning clarity. I transcribed the tapes and shaped them into stories, which he patiently reviewed. I spent a lot of time on internet research and with local newspapers to fill in gaps in his memories and to place his stories into context. Ev’s parents embraced the Brownie camera, even as they struggled to pay other bills, so we have a rich documentary history of early years on the farm.

After 96 years in a small town, Ev has an astonishing number of friends and acquaintances. Nevertheless, a book like this is destined for a small publishing audience. Though I'm used to working with teams of really smart people and fabulous designers, I decided to do the whole thing myself – from start to finish. I produced the book through CreateSpace, an on-line publishing service that prints with Indigo presses. Along the way I taught myself Photoshop, InDesign, and the gnarly world of tweaking photos for print. I learned that, among other things, I’m a lousy copyeditor – as I found a few glaring errors in what I thought was my final proof! I also gained a new appreciation for on-demand publishing . . . . No inventory. . . . No upfront costs. And experienced its limitations . . . . Every printing is different. . . . Don't they have quality control?

But though I’m a little shy of sharing the results with my exalted designer friends, I’m so happy to bring Ev’s story to the world. As a child of peripatetic parents, I’ve always been fascinated by those who choose stay in the place where they were born. In many ways Ev’s story is typical of his generation, as he dealt with the wave after wave of changes that shook the twentieth century. Yet his dogged connection to the land and ability to conceive of ambitious new projects well into his nineties is an inspiration to me and, I hope, to others as well.

Stand Tall: Against the Odds by Everett Rau and Laura Shore is available on Amazon.com and through the CreateSpace web store for $20.99. To keep the price down, I've chosen not to sell through book distributors but hope to sell directly to our local bookstores.

Are Cows Really Worse than Cars?

I was talking with a friend yesterday, who was admiring my paintings of fruits and vegetables.  His family had been cattle farmers and he mentioned a couple of things about beef that I found surprising. 1) Yale's food service claims that sourcing beef from New Zealand has a smaller carbon footprint than sourcing locally. 2) During the latest round of climate negotiations he read that giving up beef would have the biggest impact globally on climate change.

Worse than cars, I wondered? How is that possible?

I found a good post by David Suzuki that includes the source of the New Zealand idea and also explains why increasing consumption of factory farmed beef on a global scale is a dangerous trend: Food and Climate Change

I'm not a beef booster, but since switching to all-local diet in a northern climate I've come to appreciate the value of animal protein between November and May!

I guess, like anything, the real answer is, "It depends." Many farmers around here have a lot of hilly, rocky soil that has been denuded of trees for generations. Grazing is an appropriate use for the land and provides beef and lamb that is low in fat and high in nutrition. 

Factory farming, corn-fed cattle, and cheap processed foods seem to be the real culprit. They're bad for our bodies and bad for the planet. Perhaps Yale's food service could partner with regional farmers -- and as a result provide a market for sustainably raised protein? 

Showtime!

So happy that my paintings are on display at the Hive Gallery at 321 Main Street in Schoharie, NY. My produce "portraits" are a tribute to the Upstate New York farms and farmers who work so hard to supply our family with beautiful, fresh produce throughout the growing season.

The show features oil paintings, giclee prints and cards and will go through the end of July. Please stop by for the opening party on Saturday, June 27 from 1 - 4 p.m. 

10% of artist proceeds will be donated to the American Farmland Trust "No Farms No Food" campaign.

Superabundance

These days it seems we have a superabundance of everything. Too much cold in winter. Spring days that are too beautiful, because too dry. And now too much rain. In the rolling glacial plain where I live, the old farm families are leaving their land. Too many rocks. Too much work and too many worries. Fields where cattle and sheep used to graze are now covered with too many small trees and weedy shrubs in dense thickets. 

Yellow willows. ©Laura Shore 2015

This painting is from a photograph I took in New Salem in January 2011. My mother always looked to the bright yellow willows and red saplings as a sign that winter would turn to spring. I made this painting this winter in her memory. 

Five Questions for Gade Farm

These are the greenhouses in mid summer, full of bedding plants and hanging baskets grown on the farm.

Last year I asked my CSA farmer for advice on starting seeds indoors. He looked a bit sheepish and replied that he bought his seedlings from Gade Farm. That’s good, I thought, so do I! Gade is located near the junction of Route146 and Route 20. Situated on a busy road in the center of Guilderland they’re well positioned for retail but still grow most of what they sell on 100 acres and in their extensive greenhouses. My garden is stocked with Gade perennials and I usually pick up annuals and lettuce plants in the spring as well.

The photo was taken March 1. Can't wait for retail operations to start on March 20!

Produce is labeled by origin, which helps me support local farms.                                                     

Started in the 1990s, the farm stand carries Gade-grown fruits and vegetables along with other locally grown food – all labeled as to origin. Prices are typically better than supermarkets and the food is always peak freshness. You can also find Meadowbrook Dairy milk, bacon from Oscar’s Smokehouse, local eggs, meat, cheese, and sausages. My neighbor swears by their raspberry pie. And because they also carry foods they don’t grow (you can get lemons and avocados) I’m often able to skip the grocery store altogether!

Gade Farm is a NYS Century Farm, which means that the Gade family has been farming here since 1878.  They support local food vendors and carry on a lively schedule of classes and other activities. You can find out more on their website: gadefarm.com. I caught up with a busy Jim Gade, who’s managing the farm now with his two brothers and getting ready for opening day on March 20.

1. How/when did you become a farmer? 

I grew up on our farm, and have been farming all of my life. I became a partner in the business in 1987.

2. What kind of farming do you do? 

We grow vegetables out in our fields, and in our greenhouses/fields we grow all sorts of bedding plants, vegetable starters, herbs, hanging baskets, perennials, and we have a large selection of roses, trees, & shrubs in our nursery.  We have about 1 acre in greenhouses (from cold frames to fully heated), where we grow all of our bedding plants, vegetables, hanging baskets, pots, perennials. Many start there and move outside, where there are about 3 acres for growing perennials and mums outdoors.   

3. What gets you up in the morning? 

Depending on the day, either the sunshine or my internal clock. Though some days when I’m really tired it’s my external alarm clock!! On market days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) I get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the Menands wholesale market to sell our product.

4. What keeps you up at night? 

The weather!  Especially when I hear that it is supposed to get really cold, I worry about the greenhouses staying up to temperature.  Also, when there is supposed to be a hail storm, too much rain, (or not enough), too cold, too hot... And it’s worse because these are things I have NO control over!

5. Do you have a favorite recipe to share? 

Some of my favorite foods are eaten best fresh out of the field -- watermelon on a hot summer day, corn on the cob, a fresh sliced tomato. Delicious!

Asparagus grown at Gade. © Laura Shore 2014.

Disconnecting from the industrial food system has been a fairly gradual process in our house. Our grandson still prefers Little Debbie brownies to Nancy’s homemade… and we still crave citrus in winter. But for the most part our food now has fewer frequent flier miles than we do and we couldn’t have done it without our farm CSA, the Schenectady Greenmarket, the Gade Farm, and the Honest Weight Food Co-op.

Happy CSA Sign-up Day!

I know, you thought it was Valentine's Day. And while people who live on chocolates, flowers, and restaurant food may revel in the PinkFest, those of us who like organic strawberries with our chocolate are thinking about summer and wondering what will come in our first farm box.

Until two years ago I was nervous about committing to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I liked going to the Schenectady Greenmarket and it seemed counterproductive to drive long distances to pick up food at a farm. I was also worried that there would be weird food and/or too many vegetables for us to eat in a week. 

I finally decided to give it a try when I stumbled on a super-local farm that I could bike to on volunteer days. I have to admit that we did get a lot more radishes early in the season than we expected, but the super-fresh organic blueberries, strawberries, garlic, and greens more than made up for it. I cut back on growing vegetables at home and planted more cut flowers. Paying ahead for vegetables meant that we could splurge on a grass fed beef share from Gordon Farms and start getting our milk delivered at home in bottles from Meadowbrook Dairy. So not only do I get great, healthy food but I also get to feel like a princess. And we still go to the Schenectady Greenmarket and other local farm stands to fill in gaps.

When I learned that our farmer was ending his program this year, I headed to LocalHarvest.org to see what other local CSA programs are out there and I urge you to do the same. As you scroll down the list you'll be amazed at how many deliver to convenient sites. You'll want to narrow down your choices and then click over to the farm's own webpage. And pay attention to signing deadlines and discounts. I was happy to learn that Fox Creek Farm doesn't have a work requirement but does plant a You-Pick garden. I donated my early-signing discount to their new program that provides fresh food to underserved neighborhoods. Plus they deliver to a spot in Altamont that's just a mile from my house. So my princess status will be guaranteed for one more year. 

These red turnips came from the farm CSA. One of the best things about CSAs is being able to try new vegetables. Tip: Just about everything tastes better roasted.

Five Questions for CeCe Tkaczyk

1. How did you become a farmer? 

It is in my blood.  I’m the third generation farmer in my family. My grandparents emigrated from Germany and started out as potato farmers on Long Island. They moved to a small hilltop dairy farm in western New Jersey where my siblings and I were born. I grew up on dairy farms, milked lots of cows, showed them at county fairs and was even a Dairy Princess. I have a B.S in Agricultural Science from Rutgers University where I met my husband. In 1989 we bought a small dairy farm that had not seen any animals in many years and have been fixing it up ever since.

2. What kind of farming do you do? 

We raise Jacob sheep, which are a primitive breed (they almost became extinct). They are a small breed, spotted, and can have two sets of horns. They are beautiful and very unusual.  I use their wool for yarn, mittens, and hand-spinning. And yes, they are also delicious.

3. What gets you up in the morning? 

Right now it's lambing season, so seeing what’s new in the barn is very exciting. It’s like Christmas morning every day!  

4. What keeps you up at night? 

I worry about whether the sheep are warm enough, especially when they lamb in this cold weather. The sweaters help!

Lambs born during an extended cold spell needed a bit of extra help so CeCe cut down an old sweater to keep them warm.

5. Do you have a favorite recipe to share? 

I love cooking things that take hours when it is so cold out! Here’s my favorite leg of lamb which is also a one-dish meal. The lamb is braised in the oven for several hours with fresh herbs and potatoes and carrots. It’s very easy, and promises to keep both you and the house warm!

Braised Leg of Lamb 

INGREDIENTS: SERVES 6–8 

• 1 6–8-lb. semiboneless leg of lamb 
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 
• 3 lbs. small red potatoes, scrubbed clean 
• 15 cloves garlic, crushed 
• 6 large carrots, peeled and cut into 3" pieces 
• 6 sprigs fresh rosemary 
• 2 bay leaves 
• 1 large yellow onion, cut lengthwise into eight wedges 
• 2 cups chicken stock 
• 1 cup white wine 
• Minced flat-leaf parsley, to garnish 

INSTRUCTIONS 

1. Arrange a rack 8" from broiler element and heat broiler to high. Put lamb in a large roasting pan, season generously with salt and pepper, and broil, flipping once, until browned, about 25 minutes. Remove lamb from oven and heat oven to 325°. 
2. Arrange potatoes, garlic, carrots, rosemary, bay leaves, and onions around lamb; pour in chicken stock and wine. Season wine mixture with salt and pepper and cover pan tightly with aluminum foil. Place roasting pan in oven and cook, turning lamb once, until fork tender, 4–5 hours. 
3. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool 20 minutes. Transfer lamb and vegetables to a large serving platter and sprinkle with minced parsley; serve pan juices on the side. Serve with the potatoes and carrots that are cooked in the braise.

This recipe was printed in SAVEUR Magazine, 2010.

Farm Share Studio Launched One Year Ago

Asparagus © Laura Shore 2014 from Barber Farms in Middleburg, NY

I started Farm Share Studio because I believed that the best way to preserve the agricultural landscape I love would be to create a demand for local farm products. Providing a living wage to farmers would make farmland more desirable for farms than for real estate. By painting seductive images of local produce, I thought I could inspire people to shop at local farm stands and join CSAs. I can’t know if my produce paintings have ignited any sparks. I do know that they make people stop and smile when they see the cards and prints at shows. I expect that the people who are drawn to the paintings are already members of CSAs, shop at the co-op, and farmers markets. But their purchases have allowed me to share nearly $400 of my revenue to The American Farmland Trust and to the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy. What I didn’t realize was how much this would change my own life.

Barber Farms is one of our first stops at the Schenectady Greenmarket every Sunday.

We live in an agricultural paradise, surrounded by farm stands, so why do we shop at grocery stores that import our produce from California and Mexico — even in the summer?

Inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, we committed to eating all of the organic produce in our CSA basket each week and to purchasing the rest of our needs (as much as practical) from farmers markets or the co-op. What this means, in practice, is that we cook a lot more at home. Each week is an adventure as we figure out what to do with French breakfast radishes or collards. What we’ve learned is that home cooking from farm fresh ingredients tastes immeasurably better at a fraction of the cost. 

Home cooking also takes more time. Last year our family grew from three to four when we took in our autistic granddaughter. My partner was working overtime and I became the default cook and caregiver. I planned meals and shopping the way my mother used to. We had a lot of soups and stews. I planned for leftovers, which I froze, for eating when I needed a break from planning, chopping, and cooking. Life in the kitchen, for me, was a battle to be waged, with dinner on the table precisely at 6:00 every night because of our granddaughter’s need for structure. She returned to her home mid year and my partner retired about the same time. Since then we’ve become more relaxed in the kitchen. Sometimes taking turns, sometimes sharing the work. Nancy is a bread baker and is more inclined to pull together recipes from far away places like South America, Japan or Turkey. Cooking has become a journey... a way of life. We spend more time in the kitchen because we can, rather than because we have to. It’s sad that this is a luxury in today’s world but I've learned that we all have more time than we think. It’s all about how we choose to use it.

Tim Rau with his grandfather, Everett, in in front of one of their historic Dutch barns.

One of the best outcomes of this project was meeting the farmers. I realize now that our culture idealizes farms but looks down on farmers. We like our farmers to be ivy league graduates with clean fingernails in barns fit for wedding receptions. Otherwise they can grow our food but we don’t invite them to the party. This summer I conducted a public interview with Everett Rau, a 95 year year old farmer from Altamont, to coincide with a Village Archives exhibit on the Altamont Fair. Though Ev has spoken widely on Dutch barns, wooden tools, and farming history, he had never spoken in his home town about his life. The village hall was packed with nearly 100 friends — ranging in age from 16 to 90. Ev held forth for over an hour on his personal history on land farmed by his family since before the Revolution. He talked about an age when farming was done with horses and harvesting was shared between farm families. He experienced the shift to combines and the lure of off-farm work after World War 2. He spoke with enthusiasm about the new projects on his Pleasant View Farm — pigs and pastured turkeys raised with solar electric fences and non-gmo feed. He sees the new farming methods described by our friend Gary Kleppel in his book, The Emergent Agriculture, as salvation for the small family farms that still make up the landscape in Upstate New York.

“While other jobs make you a living, farming makes you life.”

— Ev Rau

After our performance, Ev asked if I’d write a book with him. I told him I’d never written a book and he said he hadn’t either, but we could figure it out together. Each week we spend two hours recording his story and he answers all my naive questions about agriculture and history patiently and with good humor. Ev has the ability to make friends with people of all kinds and I’m honored to be counted among them. What I learned from Ev is that, while other jobs make you a living, farming makes you life. Some were born to farming, but today, many farmers have day jobs as computer programmers, heavy equipment operators, salesmen. The successful ones are hard working, smart, and optimistic. They’re mechanical wizards and entrepreneurs. They’re caregivers and environmentalists. This year I’m looking forward to sharing Ev’s story. This year I’ll learn to write a book.

 

Who’s afraid of the prime rib roast?

This year I was invited to sell at the wonderful Octagon Barn Winter Market, a beautiful post and beam structure on the top of a windy, snow-covered hill in Knox, New York. About an hour into the show I spotted local farmer, Sandy Gordon, selling grass-fed prime rib from a cooler for an amazing $10 per pound. Christmas dinner!

I’m not a big beef eater. I don’t know much about the various cuts of beef or how to cook them.  After googling around, I ended up back at seriouseats.com, where they’ve done exhaustive work on the subject. Grassfed beef is leaner and tastier than factory food, but it can be tough if not treated gently. The folks had turned around the traditional high heat sear followed by low heat roast. They recommend a long, slow roast at 200 degrees followed by a high heat sear at the very end – once  the meat has had a chance to rest for at least a half hour.

I was enjoying the party too much to take my own picture. This is from seriouseats.com but it looks exactly like my roast. Yay.

I didn’t realize you were supposed to “dry age” the meat, so I let it sit, uncovered, for about four hours before cooking. I was a little worried about the fat content so draped some garlic flavored beef bacon over the two 3.5 lb. roasts before cooking. I placed both roasts on racks in a 200˚ oven for exactly four hours, when the roasts clocked in at 130 – 138˚ internal temp. I let them sit for an hour or so and as we were setting food on the table and moving people in that direction, I popped the two roasts into a 500˚ oven for eight minutes and began to carve. I held my breath, but both roasts were perfect. Did I say PERFECT? The meat was juicy and pinky/red all the way through with a nice crust on the outside. Tender. Did I say tender? And yes, tasty.

To go with the meat we served a beautiful raw Brussels sprout salad and gruyere scalloped potatoes along with a squash-rice bake my brother supplied. After dinner we had a whimsical bouche de noel and amazing cookies courtesy of Nancy.  Everything was home made and most of the ingredients were local, except for the cheese, the chocolate, coffee, wine, and almonds. 

To Buy or Not to Buy

When Nancy and I met, we were in our 40s and had two households full of stuff. We decided against exchanging gifts for birthdays and Christmas, opting instead for trips together. One of our most memorable travel meals was in a small Moroccan restaurant in Paris on New Year’s eve. We had neglected to plan for the event and the streets were mostly deserted – shops and restaurants closed. We wandered about the misty streets, wondering if we would have to eat our stash of chocolate and goat cheese for dinner.  I can’t remember the restaurant name or the street but I can still taste the salty sweet lamb tagine that we shared.

Though I love the symmetrical sloping shape of the tagine, I’ve never managed to own one. This year we talked about getting a tagine as a family gift and Nancy found a cast iron beauty at Williams Sonoma. But before she hit the buy button, she remembered reading that a dutch oven is an acceptable substitute. We have several dutch ovens on our overburdened shelves. Did we really need a $286 cooking pot weighing nearly 10 pounds, that has traveled from France to California and back to upstate New York? We decided to find out.

We chose this recipe for beef  tagine from Jamie Oliver that tasted just fine in the Dutch oven. Remarkably, we had all the ingredients. The stew beef came from Bella Terra Farm and the ras el hanout spice mix and butternut squash were purchased at the Schenectady Greenmarket. I substituted homemade beef stock for vegetable and used heirloom roma tomatoes from our friend Ev Rau, which I roasted and froze this fall.

The meat's been marinating for hours. The tomatoes have thawed and we're ready to go. BTW the long squiggly things in the squash box are fingerling sweet potatoes. Not one of nature's better ideas.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ pounds stewing beef
• olive oil
• 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
• a small bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 x 14 ounce can of chickpeas, drained
• 1 x 14 ounce can of chopped tomatoes
• 3 ½ cups vegetable stock, preferably organic
• 1 small squash (approximately 1 ½ pounds), deseeded and cut into 2 inch chunks
• 3 ½ ounces prunes, pitted and roughly torn
• 2 tablespoons sliced almonds, toasted

This is a very satisfying winter dish. The squash held it's shape but also helped thicken the sauce. The ras el hanout spice mix gives the dish a complex, smokey flavor. If you don't have a Moroccan grocery nearby, here's a recipe for the spice mix.

 Spice Rub

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon ras el hanout spice mix
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 tablespoon sweet paprika

Massage the beef in the spice rub and refrigerate overnight. When ready, saute in olive oil. Add onions and cilantro stems. Once the onions are soft and fragrant add chickpeas, tomatoes, and half the stock. Cover and cook for 1.5 hours. Then add squash and prunes. Cover and cook for another 1.5 hours, adding more stock if needed. If the mixture is too soupy at the end, uncover and cook until it's right for you. Garnish with toasted almonds and cilantro leaves. Serve with couscous. Yum!

Cows at Gordon Farms

We decided instead to invest in a farm share for local pasture-raised beef. Gordon Farms is up the hill, about 8 miles from Altamont. Each month we’ll receive 6-7 lb of grass feed beef in various cuts delivered to the house. Instead of churning through fossil fuels and filling our shelves with one more seldom-used implement, we’ll be supporting a hardworking local farmer and forging stronger connections in our community.  Plus the meat tastes so much better than supermarket beef and we can sleep better knowing that we’ve taken one more step away from consumerism and the industrial food economy.

Thanksgiving 2014: THE END

We were so relaxed going into our Thanksgiving dinner. Since we do it on Saturday it seemed that we had all the time in the world. Silly girls. Friday night we put together what seemed like a pretty manageable to-do list and then Saturday morning all hell broke loose.  No pictures because we worked nonstop from 7:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m. when we fell into bed exhausted. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way you can relax at your own party is to have it catered!

Menu

• Bread medly including breadsticks, two kinds of sourdough dinner rolls and really cute pumpkin dinner rolls
• Cider-brined turkey
• Gravy
• Dressing with bacon and sausage
• Mashed potatoes & Macomber turnip
• Roasted/caramelized root vegetables: whole carrots, beets, fingerling sweet potatoes & potatoes split lengthwise roasted then sautéed in butter and rested in a warm oven for an hour or so. Everything is better with butter and these were really good.
• Butternut squash & sweet potatoes roasted
• Harvest salad: rosemary-infused fingerling sweet potatoes & potatoes, fresh kohlrabi matchsticks, Macomber turnip fresh through the mandoline and roasted in chunks, watermelon radishes, toasted sunflower seeds, red pepper, roasted Brussels sprouts & cauliflower, frisee, dinosaur kale in thin strips and Brussels sprouts leaves for garnish.
• Fennel risotto (from sister Jaye)
• Snacky stuff (from sister Margaret)
• Saratoga beer (from brother Bob)
• Entertainment (from brother Don)
• Desserts & wine (from cousin Margie)
• More desserts (from daughter Kori)
• 3 purchased pies from Shaker Shed
• Edelweiss wine from Altamont Winery

Sources

• Altamont Winery
• Barber Farm
• Bella Terra Farm
• Cornell Farm
• Gade Farm
• Honest Weight Food Coop
• Meadowbrook Dairy
• Migliorelli Farm
• Pleasant View Farm
• Schoharie Valley Farm
• Shaker Shed

Notes to self:

•  A fresh, crispy salad with lots of diverse ingredients is a nice idea but not very practical for 24 people.
• Preheat the crockpots so you can put cold ingredients in and actually warm them up.
• The Thermapen doesn’t lie. If it says 154˚ it means that the meat is still raw. Thankfully we had already cooked one turkey to perfection.
• 1 brined turkey = 1 gallon of gravy
• Two 16 lb. turkeys or one 30 lb. turkey for 24 people
• You can’t have too much stock
• Caramelized roasted vegetables (whole carrots) were a hit.
• Just make two breads: pumpkin rolls & crusty rolls
• Apple & pumpkin pies work fine frozen and reheated. The Dutch Apple pie was a mess. The topping melted into the filling. It tasted fine but looked nasty.
• You don’t need 3 pies, gingerbread, pumpkin loaf, and chocolate mousse cake for 24 people. Assign desserts and don’t buy or make your own.
• The wine was sweet and strong. It held up well with the turkey dinner.
• Every year I have to reinvent the gravy: Get some stock simmering on the back burner.  Pour drippings from the turkey pan into gravy separator. Skim fat from the top into a large saucepan (I had about a cup) and get it really hot. Add an equal amount of flour slowly, whisking the whole time. Cook, stirring until the roux reaches the right brownish color. Stir in the pan drippings. Add warm stock until the gravy reaches the right consistency. Keep stirring until it boils and keep adding stock as necessary. One turkey made about 2 quarts of gravy.
• Remember to thank everyone for coming so far, bringing so much, and doing the dishes!

Turkey Twins

I don’t expect anyone will care about turkeys now that everyone is off to the mall, but we do our Thanksgiving on Saturday, so I’m just now finishing the “Service Turkey.” I thought I’d make notes here and to have something to refer back to next year.

We bought two 20.2 turkeys from Pleasant View Farm in Altamont. These summer boarders had a nice life and good, sweet nonGMO feed. They were processed on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. I picked them up on Saturday morning, putting one in the cottage fridge and the other in the cottage freezer. The refrigerator turkey would be brined Thursday and cooked on Friday. The freezer turkey (or Show Turkey as we call it) would be cooked on Saturday for carving. Our plan was to cook the "Show Turkey" au naturel without brining so we could see whether brining diluted the real turkey flavor, as claimed by the experts over at Serious Eats.

All seemed copacetic until I discovered on Tuesday that the freezer turkey was frozen solid (surprise!). I looked up thawing a turkey and learned that it can take 5 days to thaw a 20 lb. turkey in the refrigerator and, oh by the way, we didn’t have any refrigerator space! Luckily we had a blizzard and a cold snap so the back porch has been at a pretty constant 40˚ all week. We’ve been using it as a walk in cooler and moved the show turkey over to the house on Wednesday.

Nancy baked nonstop: wholewheat dinner rolls, cornmeal-sage dinner rolls, breadsticks, crackers for cheese and crackers (!) and a beautiful apple tart with salted caramel glaze for Thanksgiving dinner #1 next door.

Cider-brined turkey

I found this recipe too salty last year but I liked the cider flavor in the meat. I chose to brine the service turkey so the cider would flavor the gravy. I also hoped that the brine would allow the turkey to be reheated without drying out on Saturday.

Recipe

• 4 quarts apple cider
• 1 ½  cups kosher salt
• ¼ cup allspice
• 8 bay leaves
• 4 quarts cold water
• One 20 lb turkey

8:00 a.m. Simmer one quart of cider with salt, allspice, bay leaves for five minutes, stirring until salt is dissolved. Let it cool completely and then pour mixture, water and cider into a brining bag. Let the turkey swim in the brine all day.

8:00 p.m. drain brine, rinse turkey thoroughly and let sit in the fridge (or on the back porch) overnight.

Friday: Everyone else in the world is shopping. We’re still cooking!

8:35 a.m. Cracked the wings and put them under the turkey. Slathered it all over with one stick of melted butter and put it into the oven (legs toward the back) at 325˚. Closed the door and never looked back.

12:00 p.m. The house smelled overwhelmingly of turkey so I checked the temp. The legs were cooked but the breast was still at 135˚ so I flipped it around and closed the door.

12:35 p.m. The breast was 168˚ and everything else was hotter than that. I didn't link the legs to allow heat into the cavity, hoping the thigh junction would cook. Exactly 4 hours to cook a 20 lb. turkey at 325˚.

Sorry the flash makes it look radioactive!

2:30 p.m. Finally got around to carving the turkey so I could save the drippings and make gravy this evening. About half way in I sampled a bit of dark and a bit of light meat. This might be the best turkey I’ve ever eaten. The meat was flavorful and moist -- almost unbelievably good. 

3:00 p.m. I finished carving and after Nancy came back for a second “taste test,” we decide to end the experiment and brine the Show Turkey. Of course I used all the whole allspice in the first brining so we ran out to the store for more. The Show Turkey has thawed a lot and I’m going to follow my sister’s advice. "Put it in water (cider), throw in salt and call it brining!" It’ll be a slightly quicker soak. I’ll take it out tonight before I go to be and we should be good for tomorrow.

On to roasted vegetables, gravy, stock, and stuffing!

Turnitup (sorry)

What’s crazier: to host Thanksgiving dinner for 24 from food sourced within 50 miles or to cook a vegetable you’ve never seen before yesterday? After bringing the turkeys home and settling them into the fridge and freezer, I headed off to the Schenectady Greenmarket, Gade, Honest Weight Coop, and then on to Schoharie Valley Farms. Most of the menu consists of root vegetables in one form or another, gravy, and pie. How hard could that be?

This year I decided to forego my wild rice dressing since I haven’t seen wild rice growing in the marshes around here. But that left us looking for a textural shift from the sweet mushy stuff that passes for Thanksgiving side dishes. We found a roasted vegetable salad that included sunchokes, frisee, and radicchio. It would give a light, bright contrast to the beets and Brussels sprouts. But sadly, we couldn’t find frisee anywhere and the only radicchio we found was at the coop and it had traveled here from Guatamala. Nancy was starting to talk about citrus and I could feel our resolve crumbling.

REALLY BIG turnips at Schoharie Valley Farms.

Schoharie Valley Farms didn’t have much of their own produce, but we added some vegetables we were missing and circled around a display of really big turnips. We were told they were Macomber Turnips, a local specialty, and that some people use them as an alternative to rutabaga. Now this wasn’t much help as a description, since I’ve never cooked a rutabaga! Still, we got two, thinking we could mix them with the mashed potatoes to lighten the meal.

Once we got home and did a little internet research we discovered that our Macomber Turnips are at true find. How many other vegetables have their own historical marker? According to ediblesouthshore.com these gargantuan turnips were developed by the Macomber brothers for the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876 and have been a local legend ever since. And according to Diaryofalocavore.com, they taste good mashed, aerated, roasted, sautéed, or raw in salad. RAW. I'll let you know how it turns out!

The question remains, though: How did they get to Schoharie? More to follow....