Closing up for the season

After an unusual season with respect to weather, the time had come in our region to put the farms and gardens to bed for a winter's rest.  Our garden was spent, since the frost has sealed its fate, and we wereequally ready to rest until we begin preparing for the next season in the coldest part of winter.  

Our dear friends, the Zilke's, had labored with love, determination and sheer guts for many months to deliver the freshest, healthiest produce to their CSA members and patrons of the farm stand.  The time had come for them to close the big white doors on the barn and spend some time recharging their batteries.  Just as the farm needs to spend some time resting and recharging for the next season, so do its caretakers.  

S, the little one and I had the high privilege of spending much of their last day at the farm stand with them, while they buttoned things up and made the final preparations to take a break. We spent time harvesting sunflower heads to salt and roast later (another post to come),  husking a truckload of popcorn, cleaning up at the stand and helping them ready it for their absence. 

It was a cold day, and it got less pleasant as the day went on.  It was as if Mother Nature were saying, "It's okay.  You can rest now.  I've got it from here."  As the day neared its close, it began "snowing."  It wasn't real snow, with fluffy flakes, but a hard, frozen pellet like snow that made it clear we no longer needed to be outdoors.  The message was heartily received. 

Bound for Florida with nearly a solid month of rest and relaxation as their only obligation, these hard-working and deserving farmers were ready when this day came.

Tom and Vicki made the final decision and, together, flipped the sign that held their hours to reveal a new message:

Side effects can be distressing

Everyone has experienced the negative side effects of medication at some point in their lives. Nausea, weight gain, headaches, the list is endless.   We come to expect some side effects to simply be a consequence of the need for medication.

The same can be said for some aspects of life.  For instance, living outside the confines of the city, what some would call "the country," has it's own set of side effects.  On remote and some not-so-remote roads, people dump trash and televisions and the like along side the road.  I simply can't imagine where they think the stuff is going to go, it certainly won't biodegrade and it isn't going to be picked up by the junk fairy.  Nevertheless, people don't think, and they dump things along side the road anyway.

Since living in my house (off and on for the last 8 years or so), I had not encountered the side effect that has begun plaguing me until recently.

"The Beav" napping, days after he adopted us - MAY

One evening in May, I was headed out to put the chickens to bed when a cat scooted out from under the rabbit hutches and ran a short way. I clapped my hands and tried to shoo him away.  Instead, he ran under the wheel barrow and cried at me as though I had scared him.  He followed me around and refused to leave, spending evenings crying on my porch.  I took him to the vet, only to find that he had been neutered and released in my area with FIV.  FIV is the feline AIDS virus.  He CANNOT come in contact with my healthy house cats, or he could infect them.  The vet wanted to put him down immediately, but I protested.  I took him to the humane society, hoping they could help him find a forever home.  They informed me that they would not adopt him out, but they would not put him down either.  Essentially, they would treat him medically, vaccinate him, and release him back in the "area in which he was found" (at my house).  I resigned myself to this fact and made him a home in a separate part of my house, where my house cats are not permitted.  He lives happily here and has put on weight, grown his fur back and become a playful and loving kitty.  Cats can live relatively long and happy lives with FIV, although often shorter lives that healthy cats.  Secondary infections are the main cause of death in these cats.  So, as long as we can keep him healthy and happy, he can have a good life.

Rain eating one of his first meals - JUNE

In June, another cat showed up... this one very vocal and a little more shy.  Like the first, it was thin, and was apparently blind in one eye, but not unfriendly or mean.  I was certain it was a girl, until the vet told me otherwise.  It spent several days watching me from a distance before deciding to follow me everywhere I went in the yard, including the chicken coop.  We decided to let him audition as a mouser in the coop, since the chickens didn't seem to mind him and he paid them no attention as well.  We had been telling him to "go away" without results, so Lexi decided we should name him "Rain" as in "Rain, Rain, go away...."  She is such a doll!  I loved the name, so it stuck.

I went to a different vet with this cat, as I was VERY unhappy with the way my previous vet had handled the situation with the last stray.  This time, the vet diagnosed the stray with Feline Leukemia.  Contrary to my previous experience, the new vet spent time telling  me about how cats with Leukemia can live a long happy life with proper care.  It was settled, Rain is our mouser.  He seems to really be happy with that...as he spends lots of time in the coop and never asks to come indoors.

Copy Cat - JULY

We shut him in the coop every night, feeding him then, for his own safety.  Raccoons are vicious and we don't want him fighting them, other cats or anything else.  In July, Rain didn't come home for dinner in the evening.  I called and called, but he did not come.  I worried all night.  The next day, I saw him wandering around by the raspberries at the bottom of our yard.  I called and called but he didn't respond.  Something seemed strange about him.  I walked down to make sure he was okay, when I discovered the cat I was calling to was NOT Rain.  We dubbed this one Copy Cat, since he looked SO much like Rain.  He didn't stick around, and Rain returned, thankfully.

I call him YoCinnamon Sam, S calls him Apple. :-) - OCTOBER

Here we are, in October, and another cat has been dumped. I was sitting outside this weekend, manning our garage sale and petting Rain, who was curled up in my lap. A simply gorgeous, smokey cinnamon colored cat wandered around the corner of the garage and right toward me.  I held Rain tightly, so as not to allow him to defend his yard.  I shut him in the coop and worked at trying to get near the stray.  I have been keeping Rain contained and working to build trust with the new one. I really want to get him into a travel kennel and get him to some medical help.  When he showed up, he had a wound on his left temple and appeared to have been neutered VERY recently, as in, maybe that Sunday.  His ear was freshly clipped and still bleeding from it.

I am just furious that someone would treat an animal this way, and release them in an unfamiliar area like this, to potentially starve to death or meet some horrible end by tangling with another animal.  I know that there is at least one, maybe several, groups participating in Trap, Neuter and Release programs, but they are not supposed to dump animals.  They are supposed to release them where they were captured.  What they are doing to these animals is inhumane.  I suspect ALL of the cats that we have seen were dumped in this manner.  Nearly all have been friendly, leading me to believe these are NOT feral cats, but were at one time house cats.  I also suspect, that maybe most of them have FIV or Leukemia and have been judged "unadoptable."  This may be why they are dumping them.  Whatever the circumstances, I find the whole thing distressing and disgusting.  Humanely releasing animals and dumping them are two different things entirely.

This is one side effect of living "in the country" that I find disheartening, distressing and disgusting.  I will do everything I can to find out who is behind this and put a stop to it.  These animals deserve a chance at life... not to be dumped hungry and alone, fresh after surgery into an unfamiliar place with no real shelter available.  If they believe what they are doing is the humane way of treating animals, they are dead wrong.

Zilke Vegetable Farm Stand

It is no secret that I love hanging out with the Zilke's and spending time shopping their farmstand.  Over Labor Day weekend, I had the privilege of helping them out at the stand on my two days off (Friday and Monday) in order to give them a little freedom on those days.  It was a welcome respite for me as well. I got to spend the days surrounded by gorgeous produce and in the company of some truly superb folks.  

Friday was a very hot day.  Nearly 100 degrees Farenheit, it was sweltering when there was no breeze. I can't say that I minded it in the least.  The customers were wonderful and gobbling up the corn as fast as we could stock it on the shelf.  It was interesting to watch folks choose what they wanted fresh for their holiday get-togethers.  Helping them find the right, fresh, delicious produce to make their meals special was a ton of fun and immensely rewarding.  

Chestnuts roasting over.... um... aluminum foil?

Forgive me for the lack of timeliness of this post.  We picked up the chestnuts a couple weeks ago, but I have been a bit under the weather as of late and not up to writing.  As I am finally beginning to feel better, I am going to work on catching up on what we have been up to lately!

Ok, so the best way to roast chestnuts really is over an open fire, but I didn't have that option. SO, I did it in my home oven.  Results - very good!

Recently, we stopped by Zilke's Farm Stand to say hello and see what was new.  There was something truly new arriving as we walked up - freshly harvested LOCALLY grown chestnuts.  The bonus - they are grown with out the use of chemicals and pesticides. They were just being delivered and could not have been more temptingly beautiful.  We waited patiently while they were weighed and packaged and took home a gorgeous pound of them to try.  I don't believe I have ever had chestnuts before, so I was excited to try them.

Canning fail... Can I get a Mulligan?

Home preservation isn't always successful.  Things happen.  Jellies don't set, jars don't seal, headspace is misjudged, ingredients get forgotten, recipes gets scorched... the possible fails go on and on.

I have been doing a tremendous amount of canning as of late and was bound to have a bad day eventually.  I decided to take care of two ingredients that were at risk of going bad one evening last week (Friday, if I remember correctly).  The green beans were overflowing and had more than filled a crisper drawer in the refrigerator.  They needed canned or would soon turn limp and mushy and not be suitable to eat.  I could not let the labor involved in growing and picking them be for naught, so I passed on dinner with friends to take care of them.  Mom, S and I prepped nearly ten pounds of beans and I got to work getting them in jars.  In my zeal to get them in the canner, I forgot to add the salt.  I immediately panicked, as I had never forgotten an ingredient like that and I am always a nervous mess anyway when I am using the pressure canner.  I posted on my canning mentor's facebook page, and later received reassurance that the beans would be fine, that they should simply be labelled as no salt.  Apparently in this case, the salt is just for flavor.  Anyone who knows me well, knows I do not like making mistakes.  Even small ones like this, I take rather personally.

While I was working on the beans, we were also scalding the most ripe peaches from a bushel I "accidentally" came home with.  I intended to pick up less than a peck, but when the orchard informed me that they had 4 pecks of seconds available, I could not help myself.  The ripest ones needed dealt with that day, so we prepped them for pie filling.  I have never made peach pie filling for canning before, so it was new to me.  Additionally, I had never worked with Clear Jel, so I was really setting myself up for trouble.  As the recipe went together, it seemed as though the Clear Jel was not working until, WHAM!, it set up like glue in the pot.  However, instead of looking like the beautiful pie filling in the pictures I had seen, it looked like a big pot of snot with some peaches in it.  Not only had it set up strongly in the pot, there were not nearly enough peaches in it.  I measured based on weight, according to the directions, but I see now that I need to make sure I have more peaches available while I work in case it doesn't seem like enough when it comes time to mix the fruit in.

As it hit its "WHAM" set up moment, it began bubbling violently in the pot.   I was stirring and trying to bump the heat back down when a big, thick, boiling glob flew up and hit my hand, burning me bad enough to blister.  There I stood, running cold water over a fried hand, thinking about my saltless beans in the canner (worried still as I had not yet been answered), and looking back toward the stove at pie filling that looked more like mucous than food.  It very much felt like a failed evening of canning.

The bright side is, the blisters weren't so bad from the burns, the beans will be fine and the pie filling clarified while processing, so it at least looks nice in the jars.  I will just add additional canned peaches when I make a pie with that filling.  It was a good lesson in canning for me.  I have had a fair amount of successes and needed a bit of humbling it would seem.  The wonderful thing about having trouble with canning is that you can always try again!

Canning Marathon #2

As I said in My First True Marathon, I seem to just have an ingrained need to can.  Each time, I forget the pain I will feel in my feet from standing for 12 hours at a time and the pruney fingers I will have from washing and preparing the harvest for preservation.  I lose sight of the potential for steam burns and the frustration from jam or jelly that just won't set.  Even if the memories are fresh, they take a back seat to the complete joy I feel seeing the colorful jars cooling on the counter and hearing the "plink" of metal lids sealing against their glass vessels.  It all fades away as I get into another weekend, packed with canning.

I had a very ambitious weekend the first time around, finishing 77 jars of tasty delights to add to the pantry.  I really never thought I would can more than that in a similar amount of time.  Much to my surprise, this weekend proved otherwise.  We canned a total of 89 jars in two days. Even more remarkable was that 74 of those were done on Sunday alone.

Kitchen science experiment

I read about it on Lou's Penny Pinchers Pantry Blog; making Sauerkraut at home.  It seemed easy enough and I thought it worth a try.  Since my cabbage never made it in the garden this year, I picked up a nice head from my favorite local produce stand.  Mom and I attempted to use my little mandolin to shred it, to no avail.  The enormous head of cabbage we chose just would not fit on the blade neatly.  As always, my ever helpful prep artist, Mom finely chopped that whole head of cabbage by hand.  I can see now why people invest in (or rig at home) full sized slaw slicers.