What a lovely weekend. We watched a softball game, took care of a sick teenager, and pulled the summer furniture outside for restationing on the patio and front porch.

We restrung the interior cow fence to create 5 mini-meadows for the cows to rotationally graze. In the winter, we undo the handstrung interior fence because the snow shorts it out. I worked in the vegetable garden also - turning the soil over and putting more manure in the raised beds so that I can plant carrots, beets, greens, peas, and potatoes this week. My blueberry bushes in the back garden are barely alive, probably because the cows got to them in late fall.

I cut back the dead seed heads from the perennial beds in the front of the house, raked out the leaves, cut back the rose bushes, and edged the garden. I started digging up the beds to add manure and to aerate the soil, but lost steam. I'll work on that next weekend. It will be awhile before we can safely plant flowers in the front anyway.

On Saturday in the late afternoon, Bob and I took a walk up the Mad Tom Notch trail, which is actually an old road that used to bring cars to Peru, just over the mountain. The Mad Tom Brook winter runoff washed out the road one too many times and they didn't rebuild after that. But you can walk from our house to the Appalachian trail this way, traveling 2 miles of rocky trail with 3 stream crossings.

It was hot and we stopped and took our shoes off to put our feet in the brook. But, we couldn't keep them in there for more than a few seconds since the water is probably 40 degrees! Sitting near the brook felt a little like sitting in an airconditioned room since the breeze that blows across this water delivers a pleasant chill.

I was thinking about how the freezers are emptying out, pantry shelves seem not as packed, and all the cheese caves are unplugged and washed out, ready for a new batch of cheese this summer. I love using up all the foods we put away and not seeing much go bad. Inevitably, some of the pumpkins rotted back in January and mice got into the apples despite our having 3 healthy cats.

For the most part, we ate much of our own food including pork, chicken, and beef from our collective or our own efforts all fall, winter, and now spring. The canned peaches went into smoothies, as did frozen strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. We just opened the last jar of applesauce, but there's still apple butter on the shelf. The honey is holding out and we have a new batch of maple syrup to be rejarred and then stored.

I like trying to be self-sufficient in producing foods and then trying hard to coordinate meals to use the food up. It is a puzzle sometimes and each year I'm making discoveries. This fall I won't put up as many pickles, okra, or apple butter. I won't spend any time rendering lard. But I may make some soups using summer produce, and pressure can or freeze those. Progresso just doesn't cut it anymore!

spring work

The potatoes are here - and it is almost time to plant them in the collective garden. My seedlings are coming up and our thoughts are turning towards the home gardens too. Here are some of the chores we'll accomplish in the next 7 days:

1. edge the front flower garden, rake out the leaves, order mulch
2. bring the patio furniture out, fill the flower pots with soil and plant some pansies for now
3. construct the cold frame for the annual transition of seedlings from indoor lights to outdoor chill
4. muck out the cow stall and the near side of the paddock and create a new manure pile
5. move the old manure piles to the raised beds of the vegetable garden, rototill the lower garden to get it ready for the potatoes
6. get ready to cull the old laying hens to make room for the new flock of red sex links, due in a week.
7. plant lettuce, kale, snowpeas, potatoes, and beets in the garden
8. ask Farmer Hayes to come and till the collective garden to allow us to plant potatoes, organize a couple of planting and field work days with the group, and get the summer weekend watering/weeding schedule together, plan a potluck

I'm making 'Nfigghiulata Antica today, a recipe from Carlo Middione's Food of Southern Italy cookbook. I have my own crust recipe that I do, but I love the rather unique assortment of meats and vegetables in Middione's recipe. I'm bringing it to a dinner party as an appetizer.

First I make dough - then I roll it out and scatter sauted ground veal, pork, parboiled cauliflower, pitted black olives, scallions, sauted chopped onion, steamed swiss chard cut into ribbons, cubes of provolone, and thin strips of buffalo salami on the surface. The combination is rolled up in the dough like a jelly roll, and baked on a greased pan for an hour and a half. Then I cut it into cross-wise slices of steaming hot deliciousness.

I double the following pizza crust recipe - but I give it to you in single crust proportion since most food processors stall with the doubled recipe. I do my own recipe because I like to use instant yeast to avoid the proofing and I also love my food processor instead of using up precious time kneading bread.


Mary's Pizza Crust - and East Dorset Bread Roll
Combine 1 1/2 tsp instant yeast, 2/3 to 3/4 c water, 2 c. flour and 1 tsp salt and process until it rides around the bowl for 2 minutes, adding more water or more flour to allow the ball to form. Let rise for 1 to 2 hours in a large bowl with a damp towel on top. You can create your own bread roll with any combination of goodness on top, but go lightly on juicy ingredients to allow the bread dough to bake through. Bake at 325 degrees F for 1 1/2 hours. Brush butter on top of the crust before it cooks.

I think spinach, broccoli, carmelized onion, feta and black olives would make a nice combination of items for these rustic bread rolls. Or...sundried tomatoes, scallions, sauteed crimini mushrooms, and sauted hot sausage.

I was walking up our road yesterday, taking my daily stroll, and I saw a bat flying alongside me. He was floundering, and you could tell not just because he was out during the day, but because he flew unsteadily. One of those enormous pickups came barrelling down the road from the other direction and caught the bat square in its front grill. I cringed and covered my face, fully expecting the smooshed bat to come flinging at me. I don't think the truck's driver saw the bat, so he really had to wonder what I was reacting to. It must have made a funny scene.

What's not so funny is that 2 years ago there were 10,000 bats up in early March in the Aeolous Bat Cave, a half mile across the valley from our house. One year ago, there were 2,000. This year there were 46. The bats are dying or are dead. The home of the largest population of bats on the US East Coast no longer has bats in it. They are gone.

Easter Eggs and Chocolate Bunny Recipes

When you see how simple it is to make your own chocolate Easter candy, you'll never buy pre-made again. Even artisan chocolates take a backseat to what you can do at home, since you infuse that special ingredient for your family - your love.

We keep the recipes simple - and use similar ingredients from one egg type to another, to avoid a lot of fuss. I am picky about the kind of chocolate I use though - I get 2lb Merckens bars from King Arthur Flour.

Dark Chocolate Covered Coconut Eggs
Mix 1.5 lbs confectioner's sugar, 6 T butter, 1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup flake coconut. Shape into eggs. Dip in melted, tempered dark chocolate. Makes 2 dozen medium eggs.

Milk Chocolate Covered Maple Walnut Eggs
Mix 1lb confectioner's sugar, 4 T butter, 1/2 c dark (Grade B) maple syrup, and 1/2 c. chopped walnuts. shape into eggs. Dip in melted, tempered milk chocolate. Makes 18 dozen medium eggs.

White Chocolate Covered Raspberry Truffle Eggs
Mix 8oz. milk chocolate in a double boiler with 2 T heavy cream, 2T butter, and 2T raspberry jam. Let cool to be able to handle the mixture, then shape into small eggs and let cool to room temperature. Dip in melted, tempered white chocolate. Make 1 dozen small eggs.

Milk Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Eggs
Mix 1lb confectioner's sugar, 1 stick of softened butter, and 2 cups peanut buttter. Shape into eggs. Dip in melted, tempered milk chocolate. Makes 1 dozen large eggs.

Tempering chocolate - I use the seed method - I melt 1.5 lb chocolate in a double boiler, then remove it from the stove and add another .5lb of chocolate, which has been cut up. I stir until it is all melted. Tempering chocolate avoids "bloom" - markings that develop on the surface of the chocolate. Be careful to avoid allowing any water to get into the chocolate too.

Chocolate Bunnies - after I dip the eggs, I pour the remaining melted chocolate into bunny molds, plastic molds that I picked up online from candy supply stores. We'll have white, dark, and milk chocolate bunnies this year of all sizes from 1 inch tall to 6" of solid deliciousness. I wrap these in colored foils and put them in the Easter baskets for our kids- and one for Bob too.

We're also working on our Easter candy. We're making raspberry eggs with white chocolate, maple walnut eggs and peanut butter eggs with milk chocolate, and coconut eggs with dark chocolate. We're also making chocolate bunnies, using the molds we've been collecting.

Mostly, I'm using truffle recipes for the fillings, but also the fondant recipes I've used in the past. I'll post the recipes soon. My friend Meg is lending me her mother's tin egg molds to use too. I can't wait.

Tonight we'll make Ukrianian colored eggs too. I can't wait! This is a day to be in the kitchen!

We're making a special dinner tonight because Esther and I are cooking Thai and Chinese food!

Shallow fried fishcakes –with chili and cucumber salad
Okonomiyaki – Japanese pancakes with cabbage and noodles
Thai seafood salad with squid and shrimp
Chinese dumplings
Macadamia nut choco cookies and grapefruit sorbet

Isn't this a crazy menu?

This was a crazy couple of weeks. I have been working hard, traveling around the state for meetings and up to the statehouse to lobby. We have our new exchange student, so we're trying to have a sit down dinner every night with the whole family. Gracie and Bernie have been running around with sports, and Grace is working on deciding which college to go to. It has been busy!


Around the farm, the cows love being in the field. I need to reattach the interior fencing so that the grass in the field can grow up. We had to order one more load of hay to make it until then. Our chickens are barely laying, but the new laying hens are coming soon.

Will all the stuff going on I realized that I had set up the grow lights, labeled each popsicle stick with the plant names, and filled each cell of the seed starters with soil, but I still haven't planted my seeds! What a dope I am, staring at empty flats and wondering when the seedlings would pop up. Well, I'll plant them today and see what happens. The whole seed starting thing has always been fraught with problems for me - I guess I'm just too busy this time of year. The last several years I've forgotten to label the seed starters, or the labels faded in the greenhouse sunlight.

Well, it's always something, right? And it seems that if the something doesn't involve major illness or job loss, then you're ahead of the game these days.

Have a nice spring weekend!

Woohoo. I just had a good laugh. I heard a pundit complain that people in government have no experience running business so should stay out of it. But, didn't a bunch of the people who have the experience just drive their companies off a cliff? I mean, enough of the free market stuff. If businesses take a big handout, they should expect Barney Frank up in their grill - especially the car companies. Sheesh.

TS Eliot said that April is the cruelest month -


April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Okay - he was depressed and unhappy when he wrote the poem, The Wasteland. He says that winters are cozy and warm indoors and summers have rainstorms, which quickly pass. But spring is a time when things are still dead, but yearning to grow.

I'm not a literary critic by any stretch of the imagination. I have always been touched by this idea though. I know there is promise in spring, but sometimes on the cold rainy days it is hard to believe that all the brown and gray will turn to green. Yet it always does.