Snowmobile Hell

It’s been such a snowy and early winter that the snowmobilers must be living on their snowmobiles. Many trails go through our neighborhood, and this year, they are also using the roads. It sounds like a heavy industrial park around here. It drives me nuts. I want to go outside and hear nothing but the snow falling. I don’t want to hear the roar and snarl of those damned snowmobiles.
In contrast, Brad’s iceboat customers have been strangley quiet. Usually he starts getting the calls to get their sails repaired as soon as the first ice is safe. This year the snow came before the ice, and it’ s not looking good for good skating or iceboating ice. Somehow, iceboating and skatesailing appeal to my sense of winter sports much more than snowmobiling. Probably because it’s quiet.

Classic New England Seasons

We enjoyed the most perfect snow day this week. We had no where we had to go; it was a snow day from school, and we’d planned a down day to recover from our weekend holiday sale. The snow was picture-perfect - fluffy and light. We stayed inside all day and just watched it fall, baked bread and ate the whole loaf hot from the oven with homemade butter. Then I made an apple pie for supper.

We continue to get light snowfalls to renew the snow cover. It really is classic winter weather, and fine with me for Christmas.

On reflection, I realized that this fall’s weather was the most beautiful in years, following a summer of perfect weather. I now expect a perfect spring. I just wish it wasn’t four months away...

We are rich

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and we’re busy planning the menu. Of course, we’re taking the local food challenge, which isn’t too difficult for us in Maine. We can find all that we need, right here in Maine. We are so lucky and so rich!
Turkey - Mainely Poultry, Warren
Vegetables - our garden, or
Peacemeal Farm, Dixmont, or
Freedom Farm, Freedom
Fail Better Farm, Unity
Shrimp - locally caught in Penobscot Bay, gifted to us by a local fisherman
Butter - I’m making it from organic cream from White’s Orchard Dairy
Bread for stuffing -- Borealis Aroostook Wheat
Sausage for stuffing -- Cornerstone Farm, Palmyra
Mushrooms - Oyster Creek Mushroom Co, Damariscotta
Cranberries - wildgathered and bartered for
Cranberry chutney and cranberry butter -- Half Moon Farm, Montville
Herbs - our garden
Spices - gifted to my brother from a friend who got them in Spain, then sailed home
Coffee - gifted to us by Louella, and picked by her in Mexico last winter
Honey - Gardiner’s Honey, Swanville
Maple Syrup - either Brad’s or Freyenhagen Family Farm, Union
Eggs - ours
Cheese - ours
Milk - ours (but all milk available here is Maine grown and produced)
Salt - maine sea salt
cider - our apples, picked by Brad, pressed at Sewall’s Orchard
apples for the pie - ours
fruit wine - Winterport Winery, or Brad’s

The last and final nut to crack: nuts. We’re looking for Maine walnuts or hazelnuts. We know they’re out there!

Hunting Season

All jokes aside about the month of breakfasts given in our honor, hunting season just makes me sad. Poor Lucy has to wear the silly collar. The goats have to stay in the near paddock, and can’t roam the woods. I don’t feel safe driving the backroads. And I worry about Mrs. Deer, who lives just on the other side of the goat’s fence in the corner of the field. Every summer she appears with her annual twin fawns. But for all that, I’m glad I live where people can still hunt if they want, and harvest the surplus of the woods. People who hunt understand that in order to eat meat, a life must be taken, and at least these lives have been full and free.

Empty nesting

Jessie left a week ago. Louella left in August. Fiona left in September and is settling in at college.
Even my spring kids are kids no longer, but are goatie teens with raging hormones.
I miss my girls of summer.

What do they read to kids these days?

During a conversation with Jessie the other day, I realized that I was always referencing the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series.

Then I got thinking about other books from my childhood that were about what you might term survivalist skills: Swiss Family Robinson, My Side of the Mountain. And later on, anything by Helen and Scott Nearing,

These should be required reading for anyone considering farming. Heck, they should be required reading to any kids growing up. Which begs the question: what are they reading to kids these days???

Butter Trials

My apprentice Jessie and I have been talking all week about the components that would go into a truly local Thanksgiving. I've realized that butter is one area that I need to Get Real Get Maine in... so we've been conducting butter trials all week. We found some at the Coop that's made in Brooks, not too far away, as well as Kate's butter from Old Orchard Beach. But our biggest triumph of the week is that we made butter on Friday! It was so easy -- we bought two quarts of cream, put it in a gallon jar to ripen at room temp for the day, added a touch of MM starter at the beginning. When we got home from market, we took turns shaking the jar, wondering how long it would take, and all of a sudden, there was butter!!! We got 5 8-oz tubs out of two quarts of cream when we were all done. I don't think it was exactly a pound, as it felt lighter than that, and the butter seemed slightly whipped. But the bottom line is that we did it, it was fun, it was delicious, and now we can wow our families with butter at Thanksgiving!

Now I just need to find those Maine nuts to replace the pecan pie..... I need a recipe for a nut pie with either sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds?