Dinner To Go

If you are as busy as I am right now, you don't have a lot of time to cook. Breakfast is coffee and some nuts and dried fruit, lunch is something fast from the garden cooked in one wok and set over rice with some soy sauce and spices. Dinner? What do I look like?! There is no time for dinner. If there was, well, by 6PM I either want to be on horseback or visiting with friends. I don't want to cook. It's either hot or I am tired, (at least this week anyway). So I have started eating dinners in jars. They say necessity is the mother of invention, right? So here is my saving grace:

You slow cook whatever meat you choose. Right now it is pork, since I have that in the freezer, but this would work for lamb, chicken, mutton, and beef roasts too. You get the slow cooker plugged in and fill it up with a hunk of meat and flavor agent of your choosing. My recent combinations are bbq sauce, honey, and pork. But a can of tomato basil soup and rabbit or beef with diced tomatoes and kidney beans would be just fine as well. Mostly it is savory dishes, with a tomato based sauce. Add spices to taste, don't scrimp on salt. Let that slow cook all day while you work in home or office, run errands, raise children, whatever it is you do that isn't in the kitchen. Then come dinner time all you need to prepare is some rice (in a rice cooker, stovetop, or microwave) and fill half a jar with the cooked rice. The hot rice, then topped with the hot stewing meats, is all you really need. But here is the kicker: you chop up some veggies from the garden into dicey pieces and because of their smaller size they are able to be cooked (steamed) by the heat of the rice and meat with the mason jar lid closed. I make these meals in jars and can take them to friends houses for a quick dinner, serve them on game night, or wrap one in a towel and put it in Merlin's saddle bag for dinner with a view. It's delicious, super easy, super healthy, super fast. You can use local meats and veggies from your local farmers or your own backyard in an economical way too. Since local meats can be expensive, you can make one prok shoulder last for ten-fifteen meals! These freeze great, right in the jar, and so you can fill the fridge with ten or so and take them out when hungre strikes. Awesome.

Bon Appétit!

Ticker Tape

Recent Clarity

Right now the farm is in full production. Everything I do is happening at once. There are vegetables in the garden that need weeding and harvesting. There are pigs in the pen, who need twice daily food and water checks. There are sheep and lambs in the field. There are two goats, one that needs to be milked regularly. It's all happening around usual farm chores, writing deadlines, appointments and obligations and I do not dare complain. I am busy but optimistic about this autumn. That breakdown last week, the tears and the reality check were necessary for this recent clarity.

The past few days were eventful here. I handed in the second round of edits on my fifth book. If that is approved I get paid a partial advance, enough to cover August and September's mortgage and truck payments. That is a HUGE weight off my shoulders and will have me singing at Fiddle Camp this August. I was so worried this fall would just be about panic and fear but right now things are looking up. Thanks to encouragement from readers (I am behind on replies to your emails but so grateful for them) and your generosity of spirit, time, and resources this farm is still standing, and dare I say it, looking more productive than it has all year. Getting out of that funk, dealing with priorities cleared out my head. It shook out some confusion and helped me get my act together. In the fray of it I didn't realize how many things were falling apart around me. Hedges needed trimming, the lawn needed mowing, things needed to be groomed, cleaned up, just invigorated again. I got out the hedge trimmers, rake, and spent a few days just cleaning things up and clearing things out. I feel like a lot is on the mend that was careworn.

I got to spend Friday mostly doing this stuff. It was a 14-hour outside workday, starting at 4:30AM but by the time late afternoon rolled around I had this place in magazine shooting shape. At one point I just stopped to look at the day's efforts and before I wrote down the next day's to do list I just forced myself to walk back to the pig pen - a creation of friends and forced will - and just watch shoats scratch their butts on posts and roll in the hay. In meditation, or fascination (probably both), I stared at these guys. What I was looking at was hundreds of meals for friends and me. There's a lot of work between here and there, but if I stay true to the path so many great people I truly adore will be fed from a bit of land and work. Including everyone who helped make that pen happen. To think about all that while a little gilt rubs her nose in the dirt and then flops into a pile of hay in the shade was a nice way to end the work day.

And if that wasn't enough to validate my little turning point, I knew I had less then two hours to be at Skidmore College in Saratoga to help Patty and Steele get ready for the Floral Fete Parade. I was going to end this day riding in a horse cart down a main street in city celebrating 150 years of horses, culture, and history. No. No no no. I do not dare complain.

P.S. Here are some photos the local paper took! You may or may not see pictures of me and Steele Making Out in Congress Park....

Also, here is a totally wordless video of some pigs being pigs.

Sing It, Gibby!

That'll Do, Pig.

Gibson walked into the house dew soaked, paw bleeding, and panting like mad. He was smiling and trotted right to his dog bowl for a long slurp. I wasn't worried about his cut, it was just an open wound on his paw, a ripped scab from a minor slice. Farm dogs get beat up a bit, and his feet are no exception. I took a jar of salve my friends Kathy and Mary gave meant and filled the cut with the herbal remedy. By noon it would be a memory.

He and I just had a great little sheepherding moment on the hill. Ruckus, the blackface ewe who is the smartest and wilyist of my sheep, had escaped and needed to join her friends in their paddock. I don't have enough grass to have the sheep on pasture all the time so I do what I call a hay rotation. They are on hay for 2 weeks, grass for one, then a hay/grass combo before they get rounded up for the grass to heal a bit and shoot back up. This girl was breaking the rules, having snuck out to eat the good stuff. Gibson was wonderful. He kept his eyes locked, his movements calm, and helped me convince that sheep without touching her a single time to enter a gate. He's a persuader all right. She ran inside!

With the sheep working on their morning breakfast (a bale from the back of my pickup, a little soggy from last night's rain)m I walked over to the horses. I did let them out to pasture, and Merlin did that beautiful thing where he rears up and tucks his head and his muscles all bunch and mane flies. It's worth getting up before 7AM to see. They started in on some grass while I hopped their fence to check on the pigs.

Yes, pigs! Four pigs were delivered last night by Tom Brazie. Raised by his brother's family the little guys arrived in two pig crates in the back of his green pickup truck. My friends Tyler and Tara and fond of Tom and wanted to see the pigs as well, so they showed up last minute to help us unload the critters. I think since they were both sharing the pork and helped build the pen, they were pretty invested in Cold Antler's Porcine concerns by this point. Not only did they arrive with their fancy camera, but everyone of us carried a pig across the law, into the woods, and into the new pen.

The little guys screamed the entire time we carried them back into the woods but soon as their trotters hit the ground they were silent. It did not take long for them to find their pig chow and get to work eating all they could. I have only raised pigs in singles and pairs, so seeing the level of competitveness was a bit of a shock! They went to town on that pig chow, eating all they could, grunting and pushing the whole time. It is really a happy scene to watch, and the pen is spacious, shaded, and lets in enough sunshine to let them tan if they want to. Right now while they are this size they are staying in the original pen. Soon I will set wiring into the woods and let them explore and be woodland pigs like their ancestors were. I am getting moveable netting (which they are already trained to) and setting it up so they can move around as I please. I do think it is time to invest in a fence tester. I don't want these guys lost in the woods, that would be a real problem. In truth it's why I put off the pastured pigs for so long. You lose a chicken or a sheep, that's sad but recoverable. Each pig is pre-sold and worth hundreds of pounds of meat in a few months. You can't regain that time or effort by starting over 4 months down the line. This is a little risky, but with good electricity and vigilance I think we will be fine. It's worth it for the bacon. Is it ever.

P.S. THIS JUST IN - Got a call from the post office, 50 chickens are waiting for me. Time to get some coffee!

photo by tara of goingslowly.com

Oshkosh Day 0

Flew from Portland to Phoenix yesterday. Great flight from KHIO to KIWA aboard a EMB-145. Had to re-route due to weather along in SE Oregon. Highlight had to be seeing Area 51 off the left wing and overflying Nellis AFB, NV.

On arrival at KIWA, I made my way over to KCHD for a night flight with Chris Holub (from In The Pattern podcast). We flew CHD -> TFD VOR -> TUS VOR and then a visual approach into 11L. What a flight. Chris filmed some of it. Hopefully he will release it after he returns from Oshkosh.

It's Thursday morning. About to head to KIWA to catch my flight to Appleton, WI (KATW).

Holding Short 31 HIO

Right Deviation For Wx

Nellis AFB

N98711 Power Checks 04L KCHD

Chris Departing KCHD

Sumac-Ade!