welcome to the fall

the weather's getting colder. it's raining, which has been so long coming that even I'm glad to see it. and I'm resorting to that old standby: the picture post.

Aitan loading bins at Chubby Bunny, getting our CSA shares ready to go to White Plains

a large turnip in a small wagon

lauren, me, emi, ellie and aitan after loading up the box truck for the CSA delivery

a small blaze of fall a few weeks ago. things are much less green nowadays

greenhouse full of winter squash

butternut, acorn, kobocha, and mystery hybrid!

the mystery hybrid is my favorite

kobocha squash

emi and sunshine squash

Centurian!

hey guys! I rode 100 miles on my bike!

ok, let's back up a little. to start off, I had a totally fantastic weekend. the ride started off with a shabbaton, a weekend retreat at camp kinder ring, in the hudson valley. we left from freedman with our bikes and luggage. most people rode in the blue van, but erin and poppy and I got to ride in the topsy turvy teva bus!

it runs on veggie oil, sleeps five, and makes people smile everywhere. it was originally built by a burning man enthusiast (what a shocker) but since then was bought by the teva learning center and retrofited by jonathan dubinsky to run on veggie oil. he built a really amazing system that uses a centrifuge to filter on the go and can hold up to 80 gallons of fuel at a time. now the bus travels the country promoting sustainability and alternative energy sources such as bicycle generators. it was a fun ride and great to watch people's faces as we drove by. here's poppy and erin inside:

we got to kinder ring, checked in, and discovered that lauren was famous:

I couldn't think of a better cover girl.

kinder ring is a really beautiful space - there's a really nice lake and pretty grounds. jd also took a bunch of us to an awesome rope swing nearby which was fun and terrifying. it wasn't til I had my hand on the rope that I remembered that I like things like that more in theory than in practice, but luckily there were different heights to swing from, so I just chose a lower one. fun. scary. beautiful.

shabbat that night was nice too - eric and david led a musical minyan which was really well attending and had some great singing and dancing, and the rest of the night was chill. they had assigned us a few different bunks, but we just moved everyone into ours and had a big adamah sleepover. then the next day emi and lauren and I lazed around the lake and read and napped and played travel scrabble. it was great to be on retreat as a guest somewhere instead of just being annoyed at all the retreatants at your home. then before I knew it, it was sunday morning, time to ride!

the first day had a variety of distances to choose from - 36, 54, 72 or the century. poppy, daniel, ayelet and I decided to go for the hundred miles - go big or go home. the beginning was pretty chaotic so only daniel and I started off together, but we found ayelet in the first mile, and then around the mile ten turn, who should pull up behind us but poppy. so we all rode together as a strong team, employing an occasional "1! 2! 3! 4!" callout system to ensure that we were all together. we also got some good singing and laughing in there. the ride was so amazingly gorgeous, with sweeping vistas and lakes and farmland and perfect weather - a really great ride.

now, I've run a marathon and done an olympic-length triathlon, and the century ride was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done. much of this, however, can be attributed to the lack of training. around mile 85, as I was struggling to make it up even slight hills, I realized that I'd gone on one 20 mile ride and one 30 mile ride and that was it for training, and what was I, crazy? but we were determined. nancy tried to sweep us around mile 80, as it was apparent that there was no way we were going to make it to eden village by the 5 o'clock cut off time, but we flat out refused. well, I flat out refused for all of us. ayelet: "they want to sweep us!" julia: "NO." nancy acquiesced, but just in case, I spent the last ten or so miles practicing my anti-sweep arguments. we picked up david frankel for about ten miles around mile 80, so for awhile we had a "5!" but he sag'ged himself around mile 90, and we rode on.

since I already gave away the ending in the beginning of the post, I'll just cut to the chase and tell you that we made it.

we pulled into eden village around 5:45, ("not even 6!" said nancy) and ate an enormous meal and just kinda didn't know what to do with myself. that night we had a super sweet campfire and folk circle, which I loved. it was preceeded by a kinda weak hazon trivia game, which jaclyn and I complained about the whole time, but then our team won and we got recycled bike part bottle openers, which was cool. so. eden village was also great - the vibe there is amazing, so much positive energy and music and good stuff everywhere.

I went to sleep way too late that night, and then up the next morning, ready to ride again! there was a 60 mile option or a 30 mile, and I went for the 60, although in the first moments I regretted it - we started off on a tiny hill and I barely made it - I just had nothing left in my legs. but then I warmed up and it wasn't so bad. we formed another team which I liked to call Team Excessive Call-out, especially towards the end of the ride as we all got a little punchy ("Dog up! Baby right! Hole! Hole! Hole!"). Chad was a great leader, especially as we got into the city, since the last ten miles of the ride were his daily commute and we didn't really have to use the cue sheet at the same time as riding in manhattan traffic.

the second day ride was not quite as beautiful as the first day, a little more suburban, but still a great experience. we cruised into riverside park and met up with everyone, and then critical massed it a few blocks to the jcc, where we had a post-ride party on the roof.

then, back to the farm! in the aftermath, I've been pretty tired and hungry, but I can't say that's too different from normal. I'm off to nyc and philly for the rosh hashanah weekend. catch y'all in a few.

seasons shifting

things are getting very autumnal around here. the nights are cooler and cloudy and the skies are grey. the greenhouse is full of onions and here and there are trees full of orange leaves. fall raspberries are getting ripe and winter crops are being seeded.

but there's still touches of warm weather and summer, like this awesome cherry bomb pepper

and its tasty companions

which emi and I turned into an excellent dinner.

in other news, yesterday the dairy team plus jaclyn took a field trip to surprise lake camp and eden village camp to pick up our goats that spent the summer at camp, gizmo being one of them. I'm so excited that she's home. with seven more kids and two adults, the barnyard's definitely fuller and there's been some headbutting as pecking orders are re-established.

here's emi and vivian on the ride home

we stopped to get fries.

so now everyone's home again, including this kid we call evilface, because, well

I mean, c'mon, look at that mug. and down in the corner is gizmo. gosh I love that goat.

honey!

ok. I fully admit that I am terrible at this blogging thing. let's just move on, shall we?

I went home to california for a few weeks, which is partially why I haven't been updating, and upon my return to the farm felt a little touch of malaise, but luckily cool things have been happening to remind me why I live here, like: honey!

we've got a colony that overwintered on beebe and yesterday jaimie decided that it was time to extract. I wasn't there for the actual extraction, so I have few details on that, but many details on the uncapping and spinning (and clandestine finger licking).

to start at the beginning, here are the bees in their happy bee life on beebe hill:

they forage all around, but over this spring and summer they've especially been buzzing in the buckwheat that was planted as a cover crop around the raspberries. since honey is named after the pollen the bees collect while they make the honey, that would make this (mostly) buckwheat honey.

so jaimie, along with the able assistance of some adamanikkim, opened up the hives and removed the supers which the bees had been stockpiling honey on.

the supers are wooden frames with a plastic insert to help the bees know where to start making the honey. the bees make the hexagonal cells, fill them with honey, and then cap them with beeswax. our job yesterday was to uncap the comb and extract the honey, which we did with the help of a heated knife and a honey spinner.

the layer of beeswax is very thin, so the goal is to tread lightly and try not to scrape any of the honey off with the wax.

the heated knife is slightly controversial, since the ideal is raw honey and the knife does slightly heat the honey, but it sure makes it a lot easier to uncap the comb.

lots of combs to uncap. everyone got a turn.

then the spinning, which yonah is a total pro at.

the inside of the extractor has a metal mesh cage with space for two supers to stand upright facing each other. the centrifugal force sends the honey flying out towards the walls, where it eventually drips down to the bottom to form a delicious pool.

here's nachshon and bonnie showing off a uncapped super with the honey spun out of it. you can see the comb shapes and the plastic interior.

then after all the uncapping, spinning, and general stickiness, the honey was free flowing.

we got almost two gallons, not bad for one hive and a late harvest - the first one since 2006.

yum.

occasional t-storms

oh hey guys!

so really I have to tell you a main reason why I haven't been updating is that my camera broke and I think a blog post without pictures is bor-ing. but, here it is anyway.

there's been some major heat wave action going on over here lately. the last few days it cooled down but last week was hot, hot, hot. quote of the week goes to ellie, our farm manager, explaining to the adamahniks how they'd be working in the heat: "ok, first of all, it's not going to be 100 degrees. it's going to be 96, 94, 95 tops."

so it was pretty miserable there for awhile but then the heat broke and now we're back to normal days in the 80s and nights in the 70s. actually last night it was 63 degrees, which I really enjoyed.

in other news, I cut my finger on a rusty oil barrel working on my biochar project last thursday, which was instantly enraging because I hate hurting myself, but it's actually healing pretty well. annoyingly, I got through all the metal fabrication with no problem (some drilling, some sawzall'ing) and then just gouged my finger on a snag checking the barrel sizes. grr. luckily I am regenerating myself, just like a starfish.

other than that, I've been making pickles, force-feeding goats deworming pills, causing compost 'issues', and
making cheese and yogurt. farm life is good - summer veg is starting to be ready in great abundance. tomatoes should be ripe soon, weird for a california girl like me that's used to having them around already.

apparently we've been having some predator issues around the chicken coop at night, so shamu's up there right now with a pellet gun (and possible a rifle) defending our little egg machines. stay tuned for that update.

chicken is chicken?

ATTENTION LISA RUTH KODMUR. DO NOT READ THIS POST.
or anyone who feels squeamish about slaughtering animals for food, I guess. which, if you don't eat meat, you're totally entitled to your opinion, but if you eat meat and you still don't want to read this, then I think you should take a look at what's behind that.

ok, now that that's out of the way, happiest of interdependance day to all. here in falls village, we celebrated yesterday by killing 67 chickens, watching fireworks, singing loud and not quite so tuneful patriotic songs, and eating some of the aforementioned chicken in a fried manner.

our friend cody works on a farm down the road and as a side project he raised some meat birds to sell, and yesterday was their fateful day. I heard cody got up at 4am to turn on the scalder, but the rest of the crew got up at a more reasonable hour of 7am and made it over by 8 to start the day off. we formed a loose game plan, said a few words, and got things going.

going from 'a chicken' to 'chicken' has the following basic steps: killing, scalding, plucking, eviscerating, final clean. we all jumped around from station to station depending on what needed to be done, or perhaps what you felt your particular aptitude was - meg's a big fan of the plucker. I'd never killed anything before (if you don't count the squirrel I ran over on my bike by accident) so I wasn't quite sure how it would affect me, but I felt okay about it. As a eater and enjoyer of meat, I think it's important to acknowledge that I know where the meat actually comes from and not shy away from it. I slaughtered about ten of them - we put them in kill cones (upside down traffic cones) and cut their throats so they bled out, which is a fairly humane way to do it - they bleed out in a manner of seconds and - I was going to say that it was fairly painless, but not having been through the process  I guess I can't say that - but I will say that they didn't appear to suffer. then they get dipped in the scalder, a large container of water holding at 145 degrees, for about a minute. it's good to get multiple dunks, something about the air between the dipping really loosens the feathers. then to the plucker, which was a large box with a rotating drum covered with rubber 'fingers' which spun around. the technique is to hold the chicken by the feet and kinda throw it on there, turning it all about so the plucker gets all surfaces - it's kind of like driving a slightly out of control car, if that car also had a dead chicken for a steering wheel.

then on to the gutting - I don't know how many I gutted, but it was a lot. we saved the livers, hearts and feet for sale, and the rest goes to the compost. the tricky part is getting the gallbladder off the liver without puncturing it, which if that happens necessitates junking the liver and a whole table spraydown. I definitely refined my technique as the day went on. then there's the final cleanup, rinsing off and getting the last feathers, and off the chicken went into a tub of cold water to await purchase by a happy customer.

it took us about 5 hours to do all 67 birds (we're not professionals here) and then we collapsed in a gross sweaty stinky mess to eat lunch and lie in the shade. here's emi showing off the final product:

we love america

then, after a very unsatisfactorily short nap, I fried up one of the chickens, meg roasted one, we threw some blankets in the car and headed off to the lime rock raceway, our local racetrack, for fireworks! 

for some off reason the fireworks around here are on the 3rd, but that's ok. we had a great picnic, ate some delicious food and saw some great fireworks. afterwards we hung out for an extra hour or so to avoid the massive traffic jam in the parking lot and sang every america song we could think of.

today, some bbqing and lawn games. tomorrow, back to work. happy 4th!

you get the salt, I'll get the dill

it truly is summer: the first future pickled things of the season have been immersed in brine.

I had a morning work session last week with jacob, one of the adamahniks, to do some experimental pickling and see if we could get a seasonal product out of it. I've pickled turnips and garlic scapes in the past with some delicious results, so I was trying to replicate what I did before and also try some other new things. we also pickled some kohlrabi, which is a root like veggie with the consistancy of an apple, an unearthly purple peel, and a nice sweet interior. I've never pickled kohlrabi before, so I'm curious to see what happens. we pickled on . . . thursday, I think? and I tried a few slices today - they have good consistancy but could be pickly-er. keep on proliferating, little lacto-bacilli.

altogether, we made about 10 jars containing turnips, kohlrabi, dill, garlic, garlic scapes, pickling spice, hot peppers and bay leaves in pretty much every permutation you could imagine. I'm very excited in particular about batch gimel, which has turnip, dill, pickling spice, hot peppers and garlic scapes.

perhaps you are curious about what the heck a garlic scape is.

that picture ist a nice amalgam of my job nowadays - sometimes I'm stuck at the computer, sometimes I get out into the fields to do a quick harvest. those green spirals are garlic scapes - essentially the immature garlic flower. when the garlic really starts to mature, it sends up the scape, which we cut off as soon as it reaches a certain amount of spiral (I say one, ellie says two). the idea is that by stifling its reproductive urges at one end, it'll send all its energy into the bulb and make it nice and fat. then we're left with these lovely scapes, which have a mild garlic flavor and are really fun to cook and pickle.

in closing, a quiz: which one of these is not a pickle?

no fair using the internet to cheat.