It's (Gonna Be) the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

This year Larry decided we should be pumpkin ranchers.

In search of a garden goodie that would not take a ton of maintenance yet yield an easily

Yikes!

salable product, he planted all pumpkins in the front garden.  Their leaves have now exploded, literally filling the garden, and blossoms are visible.  

The blueberries out back, after doing squat the last few years and being afflicted by some sort of creeping crud last season, are bearing beautiful fruit.  Larry also planted a few beets, cabbage for his sauerkraut (oh, the humanity) and basil because what’s summer without fresh basil and mozzarella salad?

This past winter’s long, icy grip is a not very distant memory.  When the sweat is running down my back, I remind myself of how I couldn’t get close enough to the woodstove last winter.  I will not complain about the heat this year.  Not once.  It’s become a personal challenge.  Anyone who hears me do so has my permission to slap me.

Our big news is that we’ve put the house on the market in anticipation of Larry getting a job transfer and moving to warmer climes.  In an effort to look more mainstream, we mowed our yard this year.  I admit, it does look nice.  I left a few pockets of wildflowers, where they were actually in greater population than grass or weeds.  They provide pretty bursts of color.  I wouldn’t exactly call what we have a lawn, more like evenly cut green stuff, which, from a distance, could pass for a lawn.  To my dismay, it all grows pretty fast.  I’ve gotten back into the lawnmower groove, which is good exercise.

The front of the house has been power washed, scraped and repainted, and the porch has been reroofed to match the rest of the house (kudos to Larry for working like a dog on all this).  Rehab projects take forever when you’re chipping away at them on weekends.  The painting of the porch seemed like the never ending story and I wouldn’t wish painting lattice on my worst enemy.

When it was done, though, Larry couldn’t stop admiring how much better it all looked.  “We should have done this years ago,” he said, and it was hard to disagree.  We didn’t because we were always too busy working out back on pastures, which have gone by the wayside this year.

And we still have our Final Five chickens.  Tough old broads, they are.  They’ve become fixtures, following us around and gracing us with one to three eggs a day.  

I’m enjoying the yard more this year – futzing with my perennials and doing small yard projects I haven’t had the time to do before.  I don’t have the niggling guilt in the back of my mind that I’m not doing enough with the horses, because they’re out of my equation.  I’m getting the itch to ride again, but it’s not a burning desire.  At least, not yet, not here.  I’m not sure where I’m at with that right now.

Meantime, we’re enjoying our summer immensely – watching the gardens grow, giving the house some long overdue sprucing up, enjoying our time together right here, right now.  And oh yeah, we need to cracking on firewood.  So I can huddle up to the woodstove next winter.

A Visit to the Adirondack Meat Company

Big doings around town lately has been the opening of the Adirondack Meat Company, a processing plant (slaughterhouse) in Ticonderoga.  Local producers of local meat have had to go to Eagle Bridge or other fairly distant locales to have their animals butchered for sale.  AMC provides a much needed service in our area.  

Their primary focus is threefold, according to owner Pete Ward:  Humane treatment of the animals, sanitation and profitability. 
  
AMC processes beef, pork, goats and sheep.  To butcher buffalo, elk, etc. they need an exotic animal license, which they don’t have at this time.  They also don’t butcher poultry, so my girls are safe for now. 

It’s wonderful to see how a new local business is taking off, and what they’ll provide to the community in the way of jobs, and a delicious end product.  A retail store is in the works as well. 

Larry and I took a tour of the facility during their open house and received a valuable lesson in processing.  Before taking the tour, I had a broad understanding of how the animal gets from Point A (animal) to Point B (barbeque).  And here is, I believe, the opportunity for real learning.  

In brief, the animal comes in from the holding pen into the kill room, where its dismembered and gutted.  It then goes to a cooling room when the carcass temperature is lowered to approximately 39 degrees.  From there it goes to an aging room, where it stays for an average of 7-10 days. 

At that point, the carcass is cut into specific pieces parts and packaged.  Some is turned into ground meat.  It all ends up in the cooler for either pick up by the customer or for direct sale to the public. 

While it was awesome to understand the entire process, I found the kill room the most interesting.  Here’s where things really happen.   

A participant on the tour asked if someone could be in the kill room when the action was taking place, say someone who brings in their animal for their own personal consumption, and wants to watch the process.  The answer was no; only the processors and the USDA inspector are allowed in the kill room.  Understandable.   

But this is the opportunity to really educate people.   

I would like to put in the Suggestion Box that AMC install a viewing lounge adjacent to the kill room.  Bring in school groups for field trips – particularly little kids, educate them early - and let them see how this part of their nutrition pyramid comes to fruition.  Call it “Meet Your Meat Day.”  The permission slip sent home for parents to sign could have a smiling cartoon hot dog and hamburger on it, symbolic of some childhood innocence about to come to an abrupt end. 

Before it was a hamburger or hot dog, it was a critter on four legs coming in from the holding pen, none the wiser.  Then it becomes a hanging carcass, with its heart, liver and lungs on one tray and its head on another, to be inspected by the USDA.  Its hide is skillfully peeled back so as to not contaminate the meat, its hocks removed and innards eviscerated and put in a refrigerated holding tank, to be collected for rendering.  

I’m reminded of one of the few episodes of Duck Dynasty I’ve been exposed to. Phil Robertson graphically demonstrates for a group of elementary school kids how to dismember a duck.  Later, as he recounts the event to his wife, he says “And that’s when the little girls started to squeal.” 

I imagine there would be a lot of squealing going on in the viewing lounge at AMC.  Some of it would probably be coming from me.  But that’s okay.  Nobody ever said reality was pretty.  It is tasty, though.

Click on this link to learn more about the Adirondack Meat Company.

Let Go or Be Dragged

Hello 2014, you shiny faced little pixie you. You have no idea how happy I am to see you here. Your predecessor 2013 was a little harsh, and not just on me. Lots of folks had a rough year. On the 30 Acre Wood, she lulled me into a false sense of security for the first five months of the year, and then let loose with the big smackdown.

I’m won’t say it wasn’t necessary, but it was a little heavy handed. Yes, she got my attention. After the pain subsided and I was done being an angry bee and the pity party was over, I began to see the point she was trying to make.

Ignore your deepest feelings at your own peril.  I had been fighting the feeling that the horses weren't working out for us, but I refused to recognize it or acknowledge it. 

When you’re stuck on being identified with or as something, even if it’s just in your own mind, giving it up can be a mental impossibility, which turns into a physical impossibility. But the universe knows better.  And the universe always gets her way.  If you’re not paying attention, she drops the subtleties. And the next thing you know, you’re lying on the trail with a broken leg and your horse is gleefully galloping away from you.

Sometimes you need to let go, even if it’s wrenched from your hand. What once filled your soul may not be working for you anymore, for whatever reason. If you’re holding too tight to something, even if it’s no longer serving you, you can’t hold anything else. That can be self limiting at best and mentally crippling at worst.

Life After Horses has been a major adjustment, but it’s beginning to feel alright. Larry and I have had the opportunity to do more things and travel more freely, and that feels wonderful. The universe pried my hand open to make me let go, and now that my hand is beginning to uncramp, I’m able to hold other things.

This spring we may get some beef calves, to keep the pastures from going feral and to fill the freezer in the fall. A new batch of chicks may inhabit the coop. I’m looking forward to finally tackling some of the yard projects I’ve been trying to get to for several years now, without feeling guilty for taking that time away from the horses. And who knows – horses may very well indeed be in our future. Sometimes you need to take a breather to come back to something with renewed passion and joy.

What do you need to let go of, that’s no longer serving you? Join the Bona Fide Butterflies at their "Letting Go" retreat on January 24-26, 2014 at the beautiful Glen Lodge in Warrensburg, to explore what you may need to release in your life and how to move forward.  Best of all, it will be in a playful, friendly and relaxing weekend with kindred spirits. Trust me, it’ll be easier and a lot more fun than breaking your leg.

 

 

Taking the Plunge

I filled out the application. I scanned it to my email. I wrote the email to Shelby Davis of Mr. P’s Mountain Smokehouse. I thought about it one more time, looked over the edge, and hit send. That was it. The point of no return.

The 30 Acre Wood has officially become a vendor for Schroon Lake’s 2013 Opening Weekend festivities, where I will be selling my homestead soft cheeses. I’m scared to death.

They say if you wait to be ready for something, you’ll never do it. I’d been debating whether to do a booth for the weekend after Shelby tossed me the idea.

My guest post on The Social Silo garnered more attention that I had planned on. People started talking about it. The post directed people to my blog, and the next thing I knew I received email from Shelby asking to profile my cheesiness on the Schroon Laker blog. The small town network is alive and well around here.

My knee-jerk response was "I’m really not newsworthy." Now, let’s think about this a minute. I want people to be interested in and buy my product, yet I’m afraid to let people know about it.  That makes a whole lot of sense.

Our new logo, courtesy of ubertalented daughter Jessica Jones
 

I approached my coworker, Donna Moses, about sharing a tent with me. She makes amazing crafts and figured if we split a tent, then neither one of us has to make a huge amount of product to have a nice display. It was a good way of taking some of the pressure off myself. Then Donna decided not to participate due to numerous family obligations. Totally understandable, but I did tell her that if I have a total cheese-related freak-out going into this, I’m holding her responsible.

So that leaves me and my half-dozen or so variations of soft cheeses all alone in the spotlight. Or at least in the tent.

Fromage draining
this morning

I’m still experimenting and trying to perfect (to the degree that you can) my cheeses. My first mozzarella/pesto log turned into a watery, gooey mess on the first try, but that’s where troubleshooting comes in. I’m trying different flavors for fromage blanc, which has winners and losers. Larry loves them all, so he’s a poor tester, although he’s good for my ego. Friends have been getting samples with "Tell me what you honestly think" attached to them.

If you don’t leap at some point, you never get anywhere. You stand on the end of the diving board forever, with your toes gripping the edge until they cramp. I dove off my board. I emailed Shelby my application. Needless to say, I receive a very enthusiastic response from her.

Had I not pushed myself to do this, I don’t know what I would have waited for before I went "public." A bona fide production kitchen? A cheese cave? Kudos and atta-girls from those nearest and dearest? That’s stupid. Time’s a wastin’, as June and Johnny would say. If I’m not going to have fun with it, what’s the point? And fun is getting out there with my coolers and containers and samples and chatting it up with folks on a beautiful spring weekend.

Now I have to get cooking!  See you in the park on May 25!

The Fifth Season

Someone came up to me the other day and said, "I didn’t recognize your truck in the parking lot. It was so dirty." That’s a tell-tale sign of mud season.

Ah yes, mud season, otherwise known as The Fifth Season, the precursor to spring. That long-awaited time of the year when the robins come back.  And I don’t bother cleaning floors.  Really, it’s like shoveling before the snowstorm ends - what’s the point?

Larry can get up the driveway in his front wheel drive Jetta, but the truck bogs down and I need four wheel drive to get off the road. Either that, or I back up in our neighbor's driveway and get a running start, shooting across Charley Hill Road, hopefully with enough momentum to get me to higher, drier ground.  Going through the turnaround becomes extra exciting, because sliding a foot or so in either direction is going to smack off a side-view mirror.

It also makes for squishy paths to the barn, and once the dirt bared itself, the chickens began to dig and churn and revel in its earthy glory. The horses came off Pasture A, reluctantly and unhappily, as now it has to be protected from their sharp hooves and allowed to grow unhampered. The rest of their area, aptly named the "sacrifice" area, now becomes a mud pit of its own until things dry up. I rotate feeding locations to try and minimize the damage.

Tis the season for old houses like ours to be catheterized. The sump pump is an important part of its long-term care. One spring when we had an ice storm and the power was knocked out, I came home and looked down the cellar stairs, to see kitty litter boxes floating like sand-filled pirate ships in a foot of water.

Mother Nature has been fickle this spring. This morning the sky was bright blue and a warm breeze caressed my face. It is now raw and raining, on the verge of sleeting - again.



[courtesy doranna.net]

It can be hard to stay chipper in weather like this - spring seems so close, yet so far. But yesterday I took a moment to look around the yard - the front garden soil looks black and rich. The perennial bed that I planted last year looks ready to pop as soon as it feels a few days of successive warmth. When I brush a horse, there’s a pony’s worth of hair on the ground at the end (note to self: do NOT wear Chapstik in the barn).    Hardy souls like crocuses and lilies are starting to push through the ground.

And the robins? They’re braving the rain and sleet. They know warmer weather’s just around the corner. And clean floors are way overrated.　


Coming soon to a yard near you!