To the fair, to the fair

There’s a difference in the morning sky these days, a change from the bright crisp newness of early summer. There is a tang to the breeze that blows out of the northwest, rustling the poplars, bending the front yard birches, and shaking the sweet corn so the stalks tip and lean ever southward.  Summer is beginning to fade.

Michael in Contemplation

It has been a difficult year of deaths – a young man’s suicide; my friend, Michael; my beloved Bailey who left us just weeks before his fourteenth birthday – and illness – shingles and plantar fasciitis for Bruce, stomach issues for me, and the increasing challenges of advanced age for my mother. All are reminders that we, too, like summer, are waning. And yet, we persist with gardens planted and the bounty of beans and peas and beets and chard, blueberries and raspberries coming in just in time for this year’s Northern Maine Fair, which begins today in Presque Isle.

Beloved Bailey

We have a long history with fairs. As a child, the end of each summer was marked with wonderful fairs – Rochester and Deerfield in New Hampshire, Tunbridge in Vermont, Eastern States and Topsfield in Massachusetts.  Although like any child, the rides and sideshows drew my attention, I spent hours wandering through the exhibition halls in awe of the produce, baking, canning, needlework, and other exhibits, always dreaming of the day when I could submit something and take home the coveted blue ribbon. My mother always found such an ambition humorous because as she said, I couldn’t boil water without burning it and my one attempt at sewing something – a nightgown in eighth grade home ec – looked more like a tent big enough for Ali Baba and the forty thieves!  Of course, as a girl I had ridden in my share of horse shows at the various fairs, but that was something I just did; it couldn’t match the skill and knowledge of those who created beautiful quilts, fragrant loaves of bread, or jewel-like jars of jam and jelly.

Time and life changes people, and somewhere along the line I not only learned how to cook, but how to cook well. Because we had a lot of kids through our house, and because I only worked part-time to be there for those kids, feeding them all within a budget became my job, and I looked back not only to the days of my childhood when my mother and grandmother cooked from scratch almost everything we ate and canned bushels of fruits and vegetables each fall, but also to the stunning examples I had seen in the exhibits at the fairs.  Somehow over the years I learned how to sew, raise vegetables and herbs, design flower gardens, can and freeze our food, and bake breads, pies, cookies, doughnuts, and other sweets to feed our family throughout the year.  Any possible entries at the fair were usually eaten before I could get them there!

As the kids grew, going to the fair became an affordable and entertaining way to spend time together. When Kasey was just over a year, she was riding the roller coaster at the New Boston Fair in New Hampshire, and by the time she was ten, we had expanded out skills and lifestyle to include raising chickens, rabbits, and pigs. She joined 4-H, an amazing organization for kids, and began exhibiting everything from pottery to pigs!  Toting her and her exhibits back and forth to the fair was about all I could manage.

Kids grow up and leave home and patterns change.  Although Bruce and I continued to go to the Cumberland Fair each September, it was as visitors. We no longer were toting kids and livestock and handcrafts for exhibit.  I still looked wistfully at the exhibits and wondered how my work would measure up.  When we moved to Northern Maine, an area much closer to agriculture and self-sufficiency than metropolitan Portland had been, our first visit to the Northern Maine Fair rekindled my desire to see how my gardening, baking, canning, and handcrafts measured up against those I saw in the exhibition hall. And, it wasn’t long before I gave into the urge.

I began submitting four years ago, largely with the vegetables and herbs we grew, and surprise of surprise, we took some ribbons.  In fact, that first year, I took Best in Show in the canning division for my peach jam. I was hooked! That there was a small cash award for each ribbon – a concept I had never considered – made it even better. We used our winnings to treat Kasey’s family to an evening at the fair.  

 

The tradition has continued, become almost as predictable as the cooling nights, the change in the angle of sun that marks the end of summer. This year, with all the sorrow and struggles it brought and with unpredictable weather affecting the gardens, I feared that we would not be able to gather enough to bother with entering.  Bruce and I had resigned ourselves to budgeting our annual trip to the fair from our regular income.

Late last week we took inventory and were surprised at the possibilities. Yesterday, I loaded the car with basil, oregano, mint, horehound, comfrey, lemon balm, lavender, thyme, sage, rosemary, roses, black-eyed Susan’s, and delphiniums for the first round of entries.  Then returned home and began picking the produce: three kinds of beans, beets, beet greens, chard, garlic, lettuce, onions, peas, green tomatoes, carrots, blueberries, apples, and chokecherries, then poured through the pantry for dill pickles, sweet chunk pickles, sweet pickle relish, brandied peaches, jams, and jellies. Yesterday afternoon I baked a loaf I went to bed tired.

We loaded the car early, and by eight, I was on my way again, traveling the 22 miles to the fair. The flowers and herbs were judged yesterday, and I hoped with good results. Of all the herbs and flowers, only one did not at least place – the black-eyed Susans. We took firsts in comfrey and thyme, seconds in most of the other herbs. Our tea rose took a second, and the tall deep purply blue delphiniums took first place and Best in Show for cut flowers! This year’s trip to the fair seems guaranteed, and I was optimistic as I unpacked and labeled the vegetables, canned goods, and baking that will be judged later today. Somehow, the year didn’t seem quite so bad.

Making the choice to establish a self-sufficient life is not an easy one. To do so means hours of planning, careful decisions, and sometimes exhausting labor, much of which is often reflected in those exhibits and displays; the ribbons and small premiums are one testament to the fruits of that work. This year has been one of the most difficult in terms of the losses and struggles we have faced, but seeing our efforts lined up with those of others is a reminder of the ability to move on in spite of the trials. While the ribbons and the cash awards are nice, what is more valuable is that exhibiting at the fair provides us with the chance to take stock as we begin to fill the pantry and freezers with the fruits of our labors.  We are reminded of our resilience and that life goes on.

Winter soups and stews

   Three quarts of homemade free-range chicken broth going into the freezer.

One of the joys of living this far out is the terrific availability of local food and the possibilities for great eating. We buy our chickens from Fortune Smiles Farmstead a few miles down the road, and for the most part, we roast them, which means there are always great carcasses left for making stock.

I always start with the Trinity of soup bases: carrots, onions, celery (about one medium of each), all minced fine and sautéed in some good extra virgin olive oil over medium heat until the onions turn transparent. Of course what comes after depends on whether the stock is going into the freezer or the soup pot. Today’s batch is destined for the freezer and for partridge stew, which is a local delicacy that leaves those from away scratching their head in amazement or perhaps confusion. More on that later.
If I am just making good old-fashioned stock, I add in about three cloves of minced garlic that we grow here on the farm, a couple of parsnips (also home grown) scrubbed clean and chunked, a few fresh sage leaves finely chopped, and a sprig or two from the rosemary bush that lives in the master soaker bathtub during the winter and kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Don’t worry; we use the shower exclusively!
I let the garlic simmer over medium heat along with the other veggies for two to three minutes. Be careful not to burn it! Next add in a cup of dry white wine, using a wooden spoon to scrape of the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Let that simmer for a few minutes, and then I throw in one or two chicken carcasses, add about eight cups of water, and bring it all to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for one to two hours.
Now, remove the pot from the heat and let cool for a few minutes before pouring through a colander into another stock pot. Let the leavings – chicken carcass and veggies – cool, and when cool, pick the meat from the carcasses, discarding bones and skin, and any bits of cartilage that have turned up. You can either set the chicken meat aside to go into chicken soup later, or freeze it as I do. What you have left is lovely chicken stock, by half cheaper and quite possibly better for you, than what you can buy in the grocery.
Today, however, some of the stock is going for partridge stew, so we proceed a bit differently. Kate Krukowski Gooding  (http://dancingspoon.typepad.com/dancing_spoon/2010/01/maine-partridge-stew.html)  has about the best recipe I’ve found for this local delicacy, and does a great job of explaining just what partridge is. Our partridge comes from the spruce stands near our farm, and my recipe varies a little.

Bruce spends hours in the fall roaming the woods finding the birds, and if I’m not diligent, they stack up quickly in the freezer, which could violate game laws. The season for partridge ends with December, so I have four plump breasts from this year’s hunting that will be the backbone of our evening meal.

I've added Gooding’s recipe below, and you can also find it (and other good eating) at the link above, but I also add in a few extra ingredients. I again create the Trinity (onion, celery, carrot, minced fine) and add those in to the stockpot first and then brown the partridge breasts before adding in the bigger chunks of turnips and carrots that Gooding does, and a parsnip or two. Then I basically follow the directions she has included in her recipe. Removing the partridge breasts to bone them and reserve the meat is easy as they are small little things and a slotted spoon works well.

I'm making oatmeal rolls to go with this, and it will be a wonderfully hearty meal for a cold January night with the wind whipping around the house.

Good eating to you all! 

Maine Partridge Stew Ingredients Serves 6 2 tablespoons oil 2 onions, chopped 1 medium turnip, chunked 1 pound carrots, peeled and chunked 3 whole partridge breasts, bone-in 2 teaspoons thyme sprigs 2 teaspoons sage 1 teaspoon rosemary 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper 6 cups chicken broth 1 pound red potatoes, washed and quartered 3 tablespoons butter, melted 3 tablespoons flour Directions 1. Heat oil in stockpot and add onions, turnip, and carrots and toss to coat. Cook for 5 minutes on medium heat. 2. Add Add partridge, thyme, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper and stir. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer for 1 hour. 3. Remove partridge and remove meat from the bone. Add potatoes, cook 20 more minutes. 4. Combine melted butter and flour to make a roux. Add to stew and stir until combined and a little thickened. Add the partridge meat back into the pot, heat through and serve.

Partridge (ruffed grouse) from the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife page

I want to be Tasha Tudor

I want a goat cart and a shadowy barn, soft with hay and the gentle breathing of animals, and big enough to hold a Halloween party, or maybe a barn dance. And I want candles in the windows, and hand-knit mittens to wear when the winter is cold, and beds of flowers surrounding my front door.  I want to be Tasha Tudor when I grow up.

It’s not that I am not content with who I am but rather that I long for a slower and quieter time, a farm in the country where the house is shaded with maples and the pastures beyond the barn and down to the stream are green and soft with new timothy. I want an old fashioned fair, with hand-squeezed lemonade and burly Clydesdales putting their shoulders into hauling a sledge laden with granite. I want Christmas that begins with the onset of Advent, late November, early December, and not in October, as soon as the half-priced candy corn has been sold. I want to live purposefully, meeting most of my needs from within the borders of our farm, or at least within a few miles, so that I am not dashing off every day chasing the dollar, but instead I sit at home in my office and pursue my craft, just like Tasha Tudor did.

We discovered Miss Tudor and her glorious art and wonderful books at Pickity Place (www.pickityplace.com) in Mason, New Hampshire what seems like a hundred years ago, and it remains a place we love to visit. Kasey was small then, and roaming the fragrant gardens, the Little Red Riding Hood House, and the shop are some of our favorite memories. It was also the place that  encouraged my love of herbs and herb gardening.

Pickity Place was always sanctuary and celebration. Amy and I went there one fall, with Anthony, still a very small boy then, in tow, and whenever we had guests, we took them to Pickity Place for an afternoon. But what I loved the most about it was that was where we found Tasha Tudor and her magically wonderful books that Kasey and I spent hours pouring over the beautifully detailed illustrations and reading the wonderful stories she told.   There are few books that I say every little girl should read, but Tasha Tudor’s are among them, if for nothing more than the beautiful artwork and magical worlds she created on every page of every book. Who could not fall in love with the Corgiville Fair or her lovely book of seasons, where in fall there is a barn dance, complete with a farmer swinging a pretty girl on his arm, and at Christmas, the tree gets decorated and presents appear beneath it, one page at a time.

I’m not unrealistic enough to think that such a life is easy; I know it is not. Even with our small approximation of self-sufficiency, we work long hours, year round. But there is something satisfying in those pictures, a sense that what is portrayed there is the result of the sweat of one’s own brow, evidenced in sore muscles and dreamless sleep. It is work for the product of the work and not a sterile paycheck that comes in a white envelope or perhaps even worse, never comes but shows up magically in the bank account. Such things were not possible in Tudor’s day, nor do I think she would have been a big fan of them. Instead, she had a connection to everything in her life. The wood that heated the house against winter cold was felled and twitched from the lot, dragged to the barnyard and split and stacked. Pantry and root cellar shelves are lined with jewel-like jars of pickles, preserves, jams and jellies, butters and compote all made from the provender of the garden, orchard and berry patches. Hay is carefully watched and tended for it means the difference between healthy livestock – good milkers and good layers – and those that aren’t. In short, every activity, every motion has a direct connection to survival and health of the farm and family.

We’ve lost much of that ethic today. We prefer instead fast food, fast cars, fast computers, and in our haste, we pass life much too quickly, taking no time to sit and consider all that is around us, and how much more there is to life than always running. I too get caught up in the frenetic pace, but every so often, I have a day like today when even in the midst of my busy preparations, I am forced to slow down.

I had planned ten dozen cookies, but Silas had other ideas. We waded into the batch of chocolate chip cookies with real zeal. He read the ingredients list whilst I collected everything we needed. He stumbled on some of the words, took a step back and pushed on through. Then together we creamed butter and brown sugar, eggs and vanilla, adding in baking soda and salt, a cup and a half of flour and letting the mixer do its thing until all was blended well. Then we turned it off, and Silas began his job of official taste tester by licking the beaters. We added in the cup of chocolate chips, stirred them round and round with a spoon until blended, and then moved to the table. He measured the cookie size and I plunked the onto the cookie sheets. Batch one went in and filled the house with its buttery chocolate richness, and then they were out and cooling on the rack, and Silas barely containing himself. He wanted a cookie!

And so it went through batch two and three, and even four, with chewy crisp cookies lining the wire racks. Silas was a diligent tester: one cookie per batch, with milk please! And then we were done with a sink full of bowls and pans and spatulas and measuring spoons, and he was done.

“I don’t think I want to do anymore,” he said, glancing quickly to see if I was angry.

“One more batch of peanut butter?” I suggested. He shook his head.

“Okay, go on with you then,” I said, so he slid on his shoes and raced through the chilled garage to his great grandmother’s house, and I began making peanut butter blossom cookies.

That’s what Tasha Tudor would have done.

(All illustrations by Tasha Tudor)

First Saturday, December

First Saturday, December

Last night a light snow iced the roads and yards, accumulating only a half inch, just enough to be treacherous. Dawn came jeweled again, diamond dusted with white, and the air thin and crisp. A few thin clouds roped their way across the dawn-peached sky. Today was cookie baking day, and six-year-old Silas and I were scheduled to dive into the dozens of Christmas cookies we make each year. This was Silas’ first foray into the world of Christmas cookie baking with me, and he gallantly volunteered to be the official. taste tester, a job quite perfectly suited for him.

By eight a.m., I had emptied the cupboard; the kitchen table was covered with chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, cocoa, sugar, spices and nuts, colored sprinkles, cinnamon drops, and colored sugars. Let the cookie baking begin. I poured another cup of coffee and checked the student papers printing in my office, then called my daughter to see about picking Silas up to begin our baking adventure.

The news was not good. A wayward tummy bug had crept up on Si in the middle of the night and rendered him incapable of cookie baking for today, and so with Christmas only three weeks away, I was left to the task alone. Real cookie making requires a child. Who else will lend their hands for handprint cookies? Who else has a thumb just the right size to put the perfect indentation in the thumbprint cookies so the blueberry or raspberry jam we made last summer will sit there perfectly. Suddenly the day was not so rosy. 

But the cookies, destined to be shared with the students in my classes and for heaping platters for friends in our town, had to be done.  I fortified myself with another cup of coffee and made my list of things I needed to get baking: a couple dozen eggs from the Sadlers, sweetened condensed milk and maraschino cherries from the grocery. And then I was off to get the last few things I needed to begin what has become an annual ritual.

In the garage, wreaths hang from the rafters, shadowing the already dim interior. The air is sharp with the scent of balsam, the outdoors, and noisy with the whine of the machine Bruce uses to ake the wreaths and the roping we make to hang along th front of the garage, wrap aroud the mailbox. We confer briefly, and then I am off on snow-slicked roads, the morning glittering with diamond-dust whiteness. Winter is late this year, the temperatures hovering in the 40s, and the air amost balmy, but baking is as much a part of our Christmas traditions as the evergreens and snow.

As far back as I can remember, my mother baked trays upon trays of cookies, loaves and loaves of quick and yeast breads, fruit cakes and tea rings that were arranged on holiday trays wrapped in first cellophane and then plastic and adorned with a bow to give to neighbors and friends and anyone who stopped by. The first year Bruce and I were married and living on a shoe string, I made hot cinnamon raisin rolls for Christmas presents for family and friends. In years past, I have made more than 100 dozen cookies in a year, sometimes with help, but usually without, and I have always been content with the baking, the feel of dough beneath the palms of my hand, the careful shaping of biscotti, the heady smell of pumpkin bread and chocolate zucchini cake, snickerdoodles and molasses cookies filling the house. Perhaps even better is delivering the trays, mounded high with food made with love.

And so it begins again this year, but with some sort of poignancy. There are memories in every recipe, laughter and good friends in each, and because of the inevitable creep of time, this year there are fewer with whom to share. And so I am baking with nostalgia, and a few tears as I remember our friend Wayne, my dad, my brother, and most painfully, my dear friend Karen who left an indelible memory on so many hearts. This year’s baking is dedicated to her.

Karen Walker’s Coconut Bars

Melt: ½ cup butter

Add: 2 c. packed brown sugar

          2 eggs

           2 teaspoons vanilla                                           

Beat vigorously and then add:

               1 cup flour

               2 teaspoons baking powder

               ½ teaspoon salt

Stir until just mixed and add:

               1 ½ cup flaked coconut

               1 cup chocolate chips

Mix together.

Grease a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, and pour in batter. Sprinkle lightly toasted sliced almonds on top.

Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 18 generous bars.