Turkey Tracks: A Visit to Hedgerow

Turkey Tracks: September 7, 2014

A Visit to Hedgerow

Just before I left home for a six-day windjammer trip out of Rockland, Maine, friend Kathleen Nixon and I took a spin down to Port Clyde, Maine–the tip of the St. George peninsula, where the St. George river pours into Penobscot Bay.

On the way, in Martinsville, we stopped at Hedgerow, “where the cultivated meets the wild.”

And what a treat that was.

The first thing that caught my eye was the fact that ARTICHOKES were being grown in Maine.

I know artichokes can be grown in Maine as friend Rose Thomas has grown them.

I’ve just never personally seen them growing–period–never mind seen them growing in Maine

Here’s another view of these dramatic plants:

Next, I saw a smiling woman sitting at the picnic table in the left of this picture, braiding shallots. Aren’t they beautiful?

The smiling woman turned out to be Anne Cox, who owns Hedgerow with her partner Julie Wortman.

Next, Anne gave us the most enchanting tour of their various hoop houses, their new chicken coop (built to prevent fox from eating her chickens again), and their elaborate and exciting vegetable beds.

Here’s a melon happily growing on the warm stones of a hoop house.

On our own, we toured the outbuildings where “rustic” furniture, clever/fun hand crafts, GORGEOUS hooked rugs (made by Anne), and produce and value-added food products are displayed.

I am sorry, Julie, that your face was obscured here by a plant… But one can get a feel for the outbuildings, which are so lovely.

Anyway, do take a look at the web site–and ESPECIALLY at Anne’s hooked rugs: www.hedgerowdesign.com.

Hedgerow is one of those special places where creativity sparkles and smiles and beckons you all at once.

I can’t wait to go back.

Turkey Tracks: They Came and They Went

Turkey Tracks: August 21, 2014

They Came and They Went

This blog has been fairly silent since I’ve had my oldest son and my two oldest grandchildren here “summering.”

I picked up Mike and the grandsons in Portland, and the fun began.

One of the first things we did was to go mushrooming for black trumpets and golden chanterelles:

I love this picture of the boys. You can see in their faces the men they will become.

We dried the bounty, and Mike took them home when he left–leaving me the two grandsons for two weeks.

The big draw was the Camden Yacht Club Sailing Camp–their second year and their third year of sailing lessons.

Here’s a gorgeous photo Mike took of the harbor one morning, looking back to the mountains, which are covered with clouds.

The boys swam most days in the morning during the camp–which involves VERY cold water. So we lowered the temps in the hot tub (children under 12 don’t have the body temperature alarms that adults have) and let them use it to warm up daily. They soon discovered the pleasures of skinny dipping in the hot tub and thought themselves very naughty.

L&H Burger in Rockland, Maine, was also a great spot to warm up–or so the kiddos claimed. The milkshakes here are just the right size for kiddos to have with their burgers and fries. One of my own memories is my dad taking us swimming on Saturday morning at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana, and buying us cheeseburgers (with dill pickles inside), fries, and chocolate milk shakes. I can taste that meal to this day.

We had one artist excursion downtown–here they are looking back into the amphitheater.

And here’s at least one thing among many they could sketch:

Low tide in the harbor and skipping rocks proved to be a much bigger draw for them however:

They could almost cross the river on the exposed rocks, if I had let them. The seaweed, though, is very slippery and there are barnacles…

Archery was of huge interest this year. I bought them 22-pound recurve bows and good arrows, which was just about right for them. We had to do You Tube research to figure out how to string them, how to knock the arrows, etc.

These bows are not play toys and can shoot really far and really powerfully, as you can see from this little video:

Here’s what happens when you misuse a bow by stretching and releasing without knocking an arrow in an effort to tease your brother:

Lesson learned.

We also kayaked, swam, explored, and read aloud the whole of a nearly 500-page book that Kelly needed to have read by the start of school on Monday, August 18th.

I will go on record to say that I am appalled that schools are getting out in mid June and starting back in mid August. Kids need time to be kids, and they learn important lessons–or can–if immersed in nature. This move is NOT about kids, or lost learning over the summer–it’s about working adults who need child care. And it’s about creating a whole nation of disciplined subjects whose sole purpose in life is to WORK, not to live their lives outside of work. Rant ended.

I don’t have pics of kayaking or swimming–I just got too busy and wrangling the kayaks with two boys underfoot isn’t easy. There isn’t so much they can do to help, and they are like puppies when they have free time and are kept in one area–wrestling, etc.

Here’s a pic of Pirate Bo on the last day of sailing camp. (They dug up a treasure chest in the sand and found “treasure.”)

After a pizza lunch, they headed for the airport and home.

It was a good, good trip to Maine.

Interesting Information: Homemade Laundry Soap Update

Interesting Information: August 21, 2014

Homemade Laundry Soap Update

In a nutshell, it’s really good.

I like it a lot.

See the recipe elsewhere on the blog.

I’m not so crazy about the smell of it, but it CLEANS!

And its CHEAP!

Turkey Tracks: Budget101.com: Make your own Laundry Detergent

Turkey Tracks: July 29, 2014

Make Your Own Laundry Detergent

Friend Bonnie Sinatro posted this “recipe” on Facebook the other day.

Hmmmm, I thought. That’s really interesting.

And note that Bonnie used THE UNCOOKED version of the recipe–which I will also do.

Here’s a picture from the Budget101 web site listed below.

Budget101.com – – Moms Super Laundry Sauce | Whipped Laundry Soap | Make your own Laundry Detergent.

Basically, this laundry soap uses 3 ingredients and makes 1/2 gallon, for under $2 for each batch, and washes 128 loads with 1 Tablelspoon a load:

The Fels-Naptha soap gave me some pause, so I did a little research–especially after I bought it. It does contain petroleum products, and there is one that is toxic. But that’s the ingredient that helps dissolve grease. And there are dyes and a really strong fragrance chemical smell.

I’d still say it’s worth a try. Various users write that this mixture is good about removing stains. And it’s really cheap.

If you want an environmental laundry option, try soap nuts. I use them all the time. they are the dried fruit of the Soapberry tree and are a natural cleaner (Sapindus mukorossi). I find they work really well. I use more of the nuts for dirtier clothes. I do treat stains, especially grease stains, before washing.

Each batch of about six does about six loads of laundry. And the little baggies come with the packet. I’ve had this package for about 18 months now.

Here’s another non-toxic laundry product I keep on hand for dirtier loads:

It does about 100 loads for about $11.

Turkey Tracks: My Dog Food

Turkey Tracks: July 23, 2014

My Dog Food

With the dogs I have now, and which I’ve had for 12 years and 9 years (Penelope, No No Penny, PenBay–was about two years old when we rescued her from Katrina), I’ve never used dry dogfood.

Up here in Maine, I am able to get whole chickens (skin, bones, organs, meat) ground up for $1.59 a pound. I mix that pound with 1 cup of dried veggies (Sojos) and one cup of water and let it sit overnight. This batch feeds two small dogs for two days. I only recently added the veggies as both dogs needed to drop a bit of weight. I’ve been very pleased with the addition of vegetables.

Before Maine, I used various ground muscle meats from the Virginia grocery stores, mixed with veggies I cooked. That’s ok, but eating all muscle meat isn’t great either. Make sure you get at least 15% fat, not all lean muscle.

I’ve never added grains to dog food. And I supplement with some of my constant and ongoing bone broths, leftover foods and fats they like, and so forth. Penny likes fruit. Reynolds does not.

Both dogs LOVE raw chicken necks–and those are filled with so many great things for dogs.

The dogs love this current mixture, and they are really healthy. People can’t believe their ages (10 and 11). They don’t have any old-age white on their faces, their coats are thick and glossy, their eyes are bright, they have no skin issues, and their poop is great.

I think feeding issues show up when dogs get old…

Penny’s teeth stay pretty clean because she will chew bones. I use a 5 or 6-inch marrow bone (those little ones don’t get chewed) that makes her work to get at the marrow.

Reynolds won’t chew bones on a regular basis, so I have to have her teeth cleaned about once a year–which is hard on her I think. My holistic vet uses a chemical that knocks her down, cleans her teeth, then rouses her up with the antidote. It’s the same process that you see when a vet knocks back a lion, or tiger, in order to check them. I am with her the whole time, touching her and talking to her. We did the teeth cleaning thing last Monday. An hour later Reynolds enjoyed a walk all along the Belfast harbor. You’d never know she’d been knocked back an hour earlier.

Turkey Tracks: Soaking Nuts

Turkey Tracks: July 23, 2014

Soaking Nuts

All nuts and seeds need to be soaked, sprouted, or fermented in order to get rid of the awesome chemical packages they carry to protect themselves from being eaten before they can sprout and grow. Some of these chemicals are phytates, and phytates can seriously inhibit your body’s ability to keep or use the minerals it takes in.

When I mention “soaking nuts” before eating them, the listener’s eyes glaze over, and I get slotted into the category of “weird woman.”

But, you know, it isn’t hard to soak nuts. And they are delicious afterwards.

Here’s a bowl of walnuts soaking in my kitchen the other day:

Basically you just cover the nuts with water and add some salt. I used two tablespoons for this lot

After soaking for from 12-24 hours, I scoop them out and dry them in the dehydrator–which does not take all that long.

I put them in a Mason jar and they keep for a long time. Now I have an asset to use as my heart desires. All for less than 10 minutes of real work.

These are WALNUTS, which need to be refrigerated, so into the frig they went.

Not all nuts need refrigeration. And some nuts, like cashews, need only about 6 hours of soaking–or they get mooshy, would be my guess.

For more information on good-food practices, I cannot recommend highly enough getting a copy of NOURISHING TRADITIONS, by Sally Fallon Morell and Dr. Mary Enig, both of The Weston A. Price Foundation.

Turkey Tracks: Rose Thomas and La Dolce Vita Farm

Turkey Tracks: July 19, 2014

Rose Thomas and La Dolce Vita Farm

Rose Thomas is an amazing baker and an amazing friend.

Rose bakes in a wood-fired oven (and in other ovens too) and her commercial kitchen is almost finished.

Her baking is…delicious…and her other cooking is…inspired.

Take a look at her Facebook page if you can, and you’ll see what I mean.

Rose has been to Italy many, many times over the years and worked in farm/resort kitchens there as well. One place she goes is to the Tuscan kitchen and farm Spannocchia.

Her La Dolce Vita Farm is a really fun place to be, and I go over about once a week on Wednesdays to pick up milk and yogurt that arrives. This week, though, I got there on Thursday, and Rose was baking for the Isleboro Island farmer’s market on Friday.

Here’s Rose on this big baking day–the oven is behind her and she’s already loaded about 15 loaves of this bread into the oven’s maw–with more to go.

She uses Tartine bread–from the famous bakery in California–as her ultimate model for her loaves. She will cut the tops of these loaves with a razor before she puts them in the oven.

Here’s a pic of the inside of the oven, which is, unfortunately, blurry, but it gives you some idea:

Earlier this spring, Rose knew that I was down to three hens with two of them not laying and that I’ve talked about getting Buckeye chickens for some years (they’re hard to find in Maine). So, she surprised me with some Buckeye chicks that she is raising, and I’ve been visiting them when I go to the farm.

The Buckeyes are the brown chicks, and the Cockoo Marans are the speckled ones. The latter will lay a big chocolate brown egg, and the Buckeyes will lay a lighter colored brown. Both of these breeds are big hens and are very cold tolerant of our Maine winter.

The chicks are almost big enough to be released to the freedom of the yard. They have to be big enough to handle the other hens in the hen house.

And I can’t wait to bring some of both breeds home. When I do, I’ll return two of my more…territorial…hens to her flock so they won’t beat the new chicks to death.

Rose is also raising four pigs. They’ve doubled in size over the last week.

Here they are:

And, here’s a picture of the heavenly milk and yogurt I’m getting from MilkHouse–who drops off at Rose’s farm. Can you see that the cream on the milk bottle reaches all the way to the bottom of the jug handle? That’s Jersey cows for you…

I am so spoiled up here in Maine…

And I know it.

Turkey Tracks: CSA Bounty

Turkey Tracks: July 19, 2014

CSA Bounty

My CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) is Hope’s Edge, in Hope, Maine.

My pickup is on Friday, which was yesterday.

Friend Giovanna McCarthy picked up for me as I spent the day on Vinalhaven Island (an hour ferry’s ride away) with my book club.

So, I came home to two large sacks in the garage refrigerator that include a gorgeous fennel bulb, lots of greens, peas, spring onions, herbs, broccoli, and on and on.

It was…a haul.

So, I spent this morning processing food.

Jennifer McGruther of THE NOURISHED KITCHEN in a recent blog post noted that when she has a glut of greens, she dries them in the dehydrator and pulverizes them to green dust in her food processor and stores them in jars. She adds the “green dust” to soups and stews at will. I really liked that idea. (Thanks, Jennifer!)

So, my greens are upstairs drying out as we speak. AHA! It’s the inaugural summer use of the dehydrator, which runs day and night in August and September. I took the lid off so you can see. I’m drying kale and beet greens.

I used the chard leaves and a lot of the CSA produce in a summer soup–whose base is a VERY rich turkey bone broth. I wrangled my 23-pound Thanksgiving turkey for two whole days this week, which freed up needed freezer space and produced a lot of cooked meat. (The cooked drumsticks I refroze and will use them to build more bone broth AND some delicious dark meat for a soup/stew.) The turkey came from Golden Brook Farm, owned by Susan McBride and Chris Richmond.

Here’s the soup. I ate it for lunch, and it was so delicious. It has the turkey bone broth, garlic scapes, onions, carrots, the fennel bulb, wintered-over potatoes, a handful of small broccoli crowns from the garden, celery, dried cherry tomatoes from last summer, fresh herbs–and that’s all I can remember. I stir the chard leaves in at the last minute. And I used the turkey fat on top of the jars of broth to sauté the veggies. The only thing from “away” was the celery.

Jennifer McGruther in THE NOURISHED KITCHEN has a terrific recipe (or so it looks) for fermenting chard stems. So, I tried it, but added, also, the beet green stems to fill out the jar. She uses a savory pickling mixture and has what looks to be a lovely combination in the book. I didn’t have all the spices at the seed/whole level, so fell back on a pickling mixture I already had.

In one of the fermented mixtures I’m eating now–that I put up last fall–I put in some whole tatsoi/baby bokchoi leaves with their stems. They are delicious–the stems are crunchy and lovely, so I have no doubt that these stems I did today will be fun.

Thanks, again, Jennifer.

Turkey Tracks: Preserving Summer Food for Winter Eating

Turkey Tracks: July 16, 2014

Preserving Summer Food For Winter Eating

The summer produce up here in Maine is starting to roll into my kitchen, and I work hard to preserve as much of it as is possible.

How nice that Jennifer McGruther’s post today covers the ways she uses to preserve excess produce for the winter.

(If you have not signed up for her blog posts, I encourage you to do so.)

This posting is chock full of great ideas! Thank you, Jennifer!

6 Ways I Preserve Summer’s Bounty and a challenge for you — Nourished Kitchen.

One of the things I walked with from her listing was drying hearty greens and onions, pulverizing them into a green powder, and using them in eggs, soups, salad dressings, and so forth. I’ll be doing that for sure.

I have one of the plastic round dehydrators, and it runs constantly through August and September. I’m dragging it out forthwith to start drying greens. If I were not single and cooking for more than one person, I would SERIOUSLY consider the metal dehydrator she uses. Last summer I dried more food than ever, and I loved having it all ready to use.

Turkey Tracks: Flower Pots and Arsenic in Well Water

Turkey Tracks: July 11, 2014

Flower Pots and Arsenic in Well Water

I have well water.

I love it. The taste is terrific.

But, the arsenic levels have always been borderline in our regular tests–and so I decided it was time to get it out.

I say borderline as the water is right at the edge of the state mandates. BUT, those mandates are probably too high, and we know now that very small quantities of chemicals can have a big impact. Also, the state levels are–and again this is an ongoing problem in this country–a political decision, not a scientific one. Lower the mandate, and a lot of people would have to filter their water, which means lots of $$$$ and lost votes and charges of “big brother.”

The new system went in yesterday. Good heavens!! Look at this!!!

I could have chosen to get out “most” of the arsenic, but decided if I were going to do it, I’d get it all. Getting it all required two separate filtering systems–one for each kind of arsenic. (There are two different kinds of arsenic and each must be treated differently.)

Haskell’s Water Treatment, Inc., were recommended by Mark’s Appliance as “they will do what you need and will not try to sell you what you don’t need.” That’s a pretty good recommendation from people who would know.

* * *

The flower pots I planted are so pretty these days.

Take a look–see also the Annabelle hydrangeas, which are just turning white now.

Annabelles die back totally into the dirt each winter, and it always amazes me that they come back from seemingly nothing to put on such a show.

Here’s the pot that sits on the wall that is, now, rotten and will be replaced in the next few weeks–with materials that will take our winter better.

On the front porch, the Lantana in the pot on the right is gearing up. I really like the pink-tinged ivy in the big pot too. The raspberries in the background are just starting to produce fruit.

Here’s a view down the front porch. It’s so pretty.

The day lilies are awesome this year. (Thank you Tom Jackson Landscape.)

Hope’s Edge, my CSA, is in full swing. Last week was the first strawberry week. Here’s Farmer Tom laughing as I sample one of the strawberries I picked.

There were enough strawberries left this week to get one more quart. These are tiny and so incredibly sweet. The smell and taste like some exotic perfume.

When I think that so few people any more will get to taste strawberries like these, I want to cry. You have to know an organic farmer or grow your own with all the right amendments in place.

My own home patch of strawberries had a banner year. I think I picked the last of my berries yesterday. I have at least six half-gallon bags frozen now.

The garlic scapes are lush this year. I made a soup with some of the heads and chopped and froze the rest to add savoryness to soups and stews.

I’m reading Kate Morton’s THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN at night.

I just finished the audio book MERLE’S DOOR, Ted Kerasote, and really enjoyed it. If you are a dog lover or like to hear tales of living in places like Wyoming, with all its wilderness and grandeur, this is a book for you.

I just started an audio book called IN THE MOON OF RED PONIES, James Lee Burke. Don’t ask me why. It was available on the library audio books list. The beginning is interesting…

And, there’s Michael Pollen’s COOKED in the mornings.

Life is good these days…

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