Equinox Pie!

They say when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade.

So, what do you make when life presents you, just before the Spring Equinox, with too many eggs, a handful of kale sprouts, and eight kinds of goat cheese?

Equinox Pie!

This kitchen experiment was the happy result of a seasonal culinary confluence. The eggs, (including one double-yolker), came from our chickens who have now ramped up production to an average of 14 eggs a day. (Ironically, after weeks and weeks of TOO MANY EGGS, I may not have enough for this week's Winter Market because we're about to put at least a couple dozen into the incubator for our first batch of Spring chickens.)

The kale sprouts are our first harvest of 2010: a handful of sprouts that had to be thinned out from among a spritely batch of seedlings nestled in one of the cold frames inside our hoop house. I couldn't bear to just toss them to the chickens—I wanted to enjoy, appreciate, and honour every tiny green snippet.

And the eight kinds of goat cheese? Oh, what a lovely mishap! A fellow market vendor (Creeping Thyme Farm) had set out his full range of goat dairy products for folks to sample at last week's market. Usually, the samples are consumed with the enthusiasm his delicious products deserve, but it was an unusually warm day. Maybe most of our usual customers were suffering a bout of Spring Fever and couldn't bear to come inside-- even though “inside” just meant walking through the open doors of an otherwise unused commercial-size greenhouse at a local garden center. By noon on that unseasonably warm, clear March day, the solar gain of that unheated greenhouse had all the vendors peeling off their coats and sweaters. By one o'clock, the heat had us rolling up our sleeves. By two o'clock—closing time for our Winter market—my fellow vendor was looking at his table full of fresh, handmade cheeses with something approaching despair. “Could you use these?” he asked, “'cause after all this heat, I really can't save them for anything.”

One delighted smile and an enthusiastic nod later, that entire array of cheeses was bagged up and set in my cooler. I swapped him a dozen eggs and some other farm goods to make it worth his while. Once home, I combined all the softer cheeses (plain chevre, garlic & herb chevre, plain bondon and bondon with bruschetta) in one container. Into another container I packed all the harder cheeses (feta, queso fresco, queso fresco with sundried tomatoes, and ricotta salata). I knew I needed to use them all quickly, but what to do, what to do? I mused and pondered for a couple of days, thought about the eggs and the kale that needed thinning, and rummaged to determine what else might need using up. Then, inspiration struck:

Equinox Pie!

In celebration of the year's turning—complete with my tiny handful “harvest” of the year's first green growing things—I would make a quiche. Now, I've only made quiche a few times in my life, but after flipping back and forth through a few cookbooks to get the proportions and techniques, I thought I had it figured out well enough to have a go.

First, I put on my apron—a custom one made for me by another one of our market vendors. This apron takes a bit of fussing to get off and on, but the vintage style ensures that clothes are well-protected (and it makes me feel ridiculously charming, which boosts my confidence in the kitchen).

Next, I made a batch of pie crust (Pate Brisee, Joy of Cooking, p.591, chosen for its ability to “withstand a moist filling”). I used a cup each of unbleached wheat flour and white spelt flour, a stick of butter, about 2/3 cup cold water, and about ¼ tsp of “Sea Shakes,” a locally-made blend of sea salt, seaweed, and herbs. There: the fruits of the sea and the bounty of the oceans were properly blended with the gifts of the earth. The elements were balanced and harmonized, as equinoctal ingredients should be. Once made, the dough was set in the fridge to rest for a couple hours before rolling out, trimming, and draping in a pyrex pie dish. I crimped the edges by hand, a process that always makes me feel like a happy five-year-old.

Time to tackle the filling: I used six eggs, including one smallish pale green Araucana egg and one monstrous double-yolker from an overachieving Golden Comet. I broke them into a large mixing bowl, beating each egg in thoroughly before the next was added. Into this lovely golden puddle I poured two cups of milk (raw whole milk from nearby Winter Hill Farm, shaken well to incorporate the cream). Next, I added the soft goat cheeses-- about 8 ounces-worth-- and mushed them around a bit. Then I took all the harder cheeses—another 8 ounces or so—and whizzed them in a food processer just enough to break up the larger chunks, then added them to the milk-egg mixture as well. I also tossed in about ½ cup of peas (for color and a sweet contrast against the cheeses' saltiness) and about half of a leek, sliced thinly. For seasonings I added a finger-full each of nutmeg and paprika. I figured the salt and herbs in the various cheeses could provide all the rest of the excitement.

Lastly, I tossed in my handful of kale snippets. ( I think the high-end restaurant menus refer to these as “gourmet micro-greens.”) I knew they'd get lost in the mix, but I trusted they'd contribute some ephemeral hint of greengrowiness. I poured the soupy mess into the waiting pie shell. Lastly—and, I suspect, utterly unnecessarily—I grated about 1/3 cup of Monterey Jack cheese and sprinkled it over the top—because, really, is there such a thing as a quiche with too much cheese?

The Equinox Pie baked for about 50 minutes at 350 degress Farenheit. I took it out when the crust was nicely browned and it was no longer jiggly in the middle. It was served to our “Good Dirt” farm book group during a discussion of Derrick Jensen's extraordinary collection of interviews, “Listening to the Land.” (This is, hands down, one of the best books I have ever read. You should read it. In fact, everyone should read it... preferably while eating locally-sourced quiche.)

HAPPY EQUINOX!

Sticker Shock

I was frightened the first time I saw it. The words were plastered to the bumper of a science professor's car, and although their purpose eluded me, I couldn't help feeling a deep sense of foreboding when I read the statement:
"The Universe is Expanding and Everything is On Schedule."



"On whose schedule?" I wondered. On whose agenda, with what printing press? And if everything was expanding, did that mean the very stuff of life itself was being pulled gradually apart? I wasn't sure of its meaning, but that odd little bumper sticker disturbed me enough that I started averting my gaze when I walked through that parking lot on the way to class. Perhaps it was right--it probably was--but I didn't know how it should impact my life and it made me feel anxious. I resolved to avoid it. And yet, every time I walked through that lot and averted my gaze, that sticker's text would swim back into my mind's eye. The very discomfort of it had imprinted it, indelibly, on my awareness.

Last Friday we went to see environmental writer and educator, Bill McKibben. His lecture was part of a series entitled, "Sustainability: Transitions to Resilience." But what McKibben really came to talk about was his current work, a worldwide consciousness-raising initiative called "350.org." 350 parts per million: the level of carbon in the atmosphere above which "life on the earth, as we know it, becomes unsustainable." He spoke with great excitement of displays created on every continent, images sent in from desert villages, metropolitan high-rises, rain forests and glaciers, all proclaiming "350 ppm." Then, almost as an aside, he mentioned that the level of carbon NOW in the atmosphere is actually around...oh, 390 ppm. Oh. Dear.

I found myself right back in that university parking lot, staring at the back of that science professor's car. Two little numbers--two little factoids backed up with reams of evidence--had sent me plummeting into anxiety and fear, despair and depression. Where's the sustainability, the "transition to resilience" in THAT?

Science and religion both have their sacred litanies, their liminal lists of power and persuasion. The litany of environmental degradation inspires its own special terror and awe:

More plastic in the oceans now than plankton...
More heat and moisture in the air than we've ever known...
More cancer-causing poisons in water and soil...
The coral reefs dying...
The topsoil being stripped away...
The Arctic Ocean ice-free in our lifetime...
Less than 5% of the old-growth forests left...
1% of species going extinct every year...

How long, O Earth? How long?
We believe, O Earth.
Help our unbelief.

Despair and depression serve neither the Earth nor the God of Creation. Of this I am convinced. But how shall we respond, in the face of such overwhelming and condemning facts? How shall we pry ourselves off the dead center of ignorance and denial? How shall we transform the self-medicating culture of wasteful, careless consumption that is leading us toward our collective death?

An unquiet mind is a fertile, creative space. So is a troubled heart. Perhaps this is where we begin: in that wild teetering on the edge of the void, where the view can, by turns, terrify and inspire. Perhaps it begins with a willingness to engage, fully, with claims both profound and irreverent, to reach out our aching arms and enter the dance with partners we never thought we'd claim.

I'm still not sure about that bumper sticker. I'm still not sure about its creator's intent. I'm no more certain how to live in an expanding universe than I am sure of how to live in a world that appears to be dying. But bumper-sticker statements offer little in the way of wisdom, and science and technology have failed us--and our planet--repeatedly.

I'm not saying I deny the harsh evidence. I know the great evil and great destruction of which we are capable. But here is what I believe: that our deepest identity is that of creatures, and as creatures we are connected to the entirety of the Cosmos, the Community of Life. I believe we are called, as human creatures, to meet our present challenges with all the soaring, joy-bringing creativity we can summon from the core of our beings. If the universe is expanding, we dare not shrink away into depression and silence.

We had best open our hearts, open our ears, expand our lungs and learn how to tune our voices to Creation's own harmonies. We had best reach out our hands to heal the weary earth. We had best learn how to unplug from all the pretty little energy-sucking techno-pacifiers and reconnect ourselves to the Creating, Redeeming, Sustaining powers of the Universe itself.


And that won't fit on a bumper sticker.


(image source: galaxy)

Just Ducky

I was a water baby. Almost forty years ago, I swam out into the world under the sign of The Fish. I spent most of my growing-up years on an island under grey Northwest skies, surrounded by salt-water rhythms and moon-drawn tides. I commuted to high school by ferry boat.

After a desert pilgrimage of sorts to attend graduate school in Colorado, I headed back out to the sea as quickly as possible-- this time in another direction, but with no less thirst in the journey and no less relief to arrive at a different ocean's shore.

I love oceans. I also love the North. I have spent time in Southern climes, testing my vocation and my ability to itinerate, but the North always feels most like home. It is my belief that we each carry an inner landscape--mostly a reflection of the place or places in which we grew--and I've found myself most at peace when my outer landscape contains the same elements (salt water, evergreens, mountains) as my inner one.

It made sense, then, to choose Alaska after Venezuela. It made sense, I thought, to choose Colorado for my next sojourn from my growing-up island--it had mountains and evergreens at least--but in that dry, high state I found myself thirsty and homesick nearly all the time. And then I made my way to Maine, seemingly the best of all options: ample salt water along its beautifully complicated coast, forests of spruce, hemlock, fir and pine, and mountains more ancient--if less dramatic--than the upstart Cascadian and Olympic peaks of my childhood home. Oh, and then there was the snow: famously cold, snowy winters, a longstanding source and inspiration for songs, poems, and legends galore. Add to this the lure of a certain bagpiper, and I was hooked.

So, now it's late February in Maine. Along with my birthday today, I celebrate almost a decade of full-time residence in the north-easternmost U.S. state. I have braved wild winds for New Year's Day walks along the shore. I have shoveled my share of deep, drifting snow. I have strapped on skis and snowshoes to traverse the winter woods in search of frozen water in all its beautiful permutations. But winter is changing.

This is our driveway today. In spite of my best efforts yesterday afternoon, the farm truck could not *quite* be coaxed all the way onto higher ground. I suspect my best hope is to make no attempts to move it until the weather shifts, the ground (hopefully?) dries out and the currently liquified muck freezes hard again.

Global Climate Change, I've read, is all about extremes. Wet seasons will be wetter, dry seasons will be drier, and storms will be stormier. Our current storm started yesterday morning and flood warnings are posted for our entire county all the way through tomorrow night. We often get similar conditions in April, but February?!? Oh dear.

But there are some things a flood does well. It may not beautify the landscape with white fluffy drifts, but it does help a farm dog find all her snow-buried tennis balls. It also highlights, for a farmer, those areas of the farm that would most benefit from some serious Spring Cleaning. For us, the work area beyond the woodpile demands the most immediate attention. That's where the spare lumber got stacked from last year's farmhouse renovation. That's where the leftover gravel sits, a remnant of plumbing and fencing projects. And that's where the farm dog dropped a most illustrative object that rose to the occasion for this February flood:

Heifer-After

LOSING APRIL IN FEBRUARY:
AN ELEGIAC (de)COMPOSITION IN HONOUR OF OUR LATE HEIFER

The Old Woman whistled and the wild wind blew
And the beetle-ridden spruce tree cracked in two
And that was the start of the whole to-do:
The week we composted a cow.
















Aye, down went the spruce on the old house roof.
While the man in the moon looked on, aloof...
Then the heifer slipped on a half-lit hoof,
The week we composted a cow.

Up with the dawn and our dear heifer down--
No time to mourn for those eyes of brown--
For the neighbors instantly started to frown,
The week we composted a cow.

The experts we called said to gather some brush.
Order a truckload of horse-poop! Rush!
(The neighbors peered with a horrified hush)
The week we composted a cow.















No time to weep, farmer. No time to yell.
We downloaded a fact sheet, (from Cornell),
Then we laid down quicklime and covered her well,
The week we composted a cow.

Well, word got around. The Selectmen beckoned.
The neighbors made motions and looked for a second.
And so we went down, and wrangled, and reckoned
The week we composted a cow.

Impressed by our fact sheets and photos and charts,
The Selectmen pondered it all in their hearts,
Then... commended our decompositional arts!
The week we composted a cow.

Now April the heifer's tucked safe in her pile.
We permit ourselves, now, a tear and a smile.
But the neighbors won't ask us to tea for a while...
Now that we've composted a cow.


--copyright Mainecelt February 11, 2010

Mama was a Rolling Crone...

Dear Mom,

Today's your 64th birthday. No, you're not losing your hair--I love the pride with which you wear your silver crown--and not much else about the song really matches, but one thing's for sure: I do still need you, now that you're 64.

I need you because we're both still raising each other, both still discovering the height and depth and breadth of our womanhood. Even though I've flown far from the small island nest of my childhood, we still are strongly linked. We are linked by our shared love and reverence for the land. We are linked by our shared linguistic silliness. We are linked by our shared hunger for beauty and our far-reaching theological curiosity.

Sometimes it's unsettling, this powerful connection. I'm not always ready to acknowledge how close we are. When I left on that plane for my first year of college in Alaska, I felt like a mustang just released from a rodeo gate, wild to bust loose from the (admittedly self-sought) burdens of The Dutiful Daughter. I longed to discover who I was apart from all others' expectations. Away in the frozen north, I spent long evenings staring up out at the snowy fields, softly illuminated by an ice-ringed moon. I wrote, sang, and--safe in my ivory tower--wept with abandon. (The freedom to sob my heart out was, oddly, my dearest new luxury after years in a five-sibling household with very thin walls.)

After the novelty wore off or the tears wore out, (I can't remember which), I lunged toward a new goal: to major in "international everything." It was a path you'd set me on, with your own voracious reading habits and deep affection for the diversity of human cultures. In letters and phone calls home, I'd relate my latest leanings and learnings. Your responses alternately impressed and irritated me; I was trying so hard to reinvent myself, trying to "compare and contrast," but you always agreed, approved, or at least understood. So much for rebellious differentiation!

As the years have unfolded, neither of us have ever managed to satiate our hunger for learning. We are both the daughters of teachers, after all. How delighted I was to watch from the sidelines (a.k.a. graduate school) as you celebrated your (mostly) empty nest by enrolling in poetry and forest stewardship classes! How much fun we still have, comparing notes from garden shows and farming workshops!

So, here I am, entirely myself, entirely my mother's daughter. You are still on the island, immersed in the business of gardening, surrounded with the fragrant fruits of your labours. You do not rest on your laurels. Your creations dazzle the senses and bedeck countless homes and businesses. They offer a benediction of beauty at rituals and events. Every year, you rework your plans, introduce something new, and push the edges of possibility. Here on this farm, I pay homage (momage?) as I echo your movements, sorting seeds and playing in the dirt.

Thank you, Mother. Thank you for your boldness, your wit, your spirit, and your stubborn dedication to being Truly Yourself. I still look to your wisdom and your witness. I still need you, now that you're sixty-four, and I am profoundly thankful for the healthy choices you've made to ensure you'll be around for many years to come. Although I suspect no child can have too many mothers,(biological, spiritual, and otherwise), you are still my Best Mama. Happy Birthday!

Fifteenth Night at the Ceilidh Palace

...and a glorious time was had by all.

Not to be confused with Caesars Palace (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him), the Ceilidh Palace is the long-awaited addition to the home of our dear friends, F. and J. (For those still unfamiliar with the term, a ceilidh [pronounced "KAY-lee"] is a sort of musical pot-luck, where the entertainment tends toward the home-grown, free-range and organic.)

These two extraordinary musicians had long dreamed of building a splendid space for bardic gatherings. They poured the foundation years ago, but challenges all-too-common to the life of working artists made their plans go aft a-gley. This past year, though, they finally tackled the task's completion. We compared construction notes along the way. We merrily joked with them about our "competitive housebuilding," but many's the time we shared mutual congratulations over clever requisitions and creative use of cast-offs. We encouraged each other, commiserated over the "joys" of trimwork and drywall, and blessed each other's households with gifts of food, music, and friendship.

This weekend, they inaugurated the new space during their annual Twelfth Night Ceilidh & Conflagration. (Technically, counting from Christmas, it was Fifteenth Night, but the evening was too perfect to be bothered by technicalities.) In the past, this event has consisted of a fragrant, steamy elbow-to-elbow potluck in one room and a jam-packed music session in another, with scarcely room to butter one's bread or draw a fiddle bow. Folks took turns going out to gather around the snow-banked bonfire. They braved the frigid January night not just for the spectacle of the high-leaping flames, but also for the brief freedom to swing their arms and move easily about.

This year, the bonfire got off to a very good start with two crackly-branched Christmas trees. As in past years, many guests brought something to contribute to the fire, from tiny wish-enscribed slips to multiple file-folders of burdensome paperwork. (The year I graduated from seminary, I contributed a small papier-mache effigy I dubbed "the algebra monster." I gleefully threw it into the fire, thereby declaring my symbolic freedom from long years of abject algebraic failure in a host of mathematics classrooms. I felt cleansed by the act and willingly endured the bemused and befuddled looks of those standing near me.)

Inside the house, a new hearth was blessed and another fire kindled, this time in the chilly but welcoming space of their new greatroom: the ground floor of the soaring post-and-beam Ceilidh Palace. With a canvas hung to divide the space and trap the heat, a set of old church pews set around the edges, and a fire blazing merrily in the grate, the new room was beckoning. Our hosts called everyone in for the blessing. F. played a haunting tune on his flute. The blessing was pronounced, and all drank a toast to hosts, hearth, and house. Then J. cried out, "Let the wild rumpus begin!"

First came the Scottish smallpipes, then fiddles emerged from cases along with harp, whistle, bodhran and guitar. It was tentative at first. Someone led off with "Mairi's Wedding." Then it was "Atholl Highlanders" and "Calliope House." "Lark in the Morning" took wing. Fiddles and whistles wove around each other in "Jenny Dang the Weaver." After a few more tunes, a banjo appeared in the mix. Soon an accordion squeezed in. After years of dreaming, of hoping, of saving and striving, the room came to life and thrummed with rollicking, lilting, toe-tapping, spirit-lifting music. It was a realized vision, a creative conspiracy--literally, a breathing-together--and our hearts beat together to the rhythm of this shared creation.

The evening rolled on. The musicians became more venturesome. In a household full of musical inventions and oddities, someone emerged with one of the oddest: a double-chantered Tunisian bagpipe whose maker had made no effort to disguise the material: goatskin. Attempts to play it engendered uproarious laughter as the awful little goat-bag inflated to an alarming proportion, then emitted one tentative, goose-like *honk.* Although we could all plainly hear the air escaping from the loosely-tied bag, we all cried out for more, each squeak and squawk further incapacitating us with laughter.

Finally the poor creature was rescued and laid to rest, the gasping musicians wiped away tears of hilarity, and the session revved up again. More uncommon instruments were welcomed into the session and the tunes danced from one culture into another: Irish, Scottish, Quebecois, Breton... on into the dark winter night. Outside the sparks did their own wild dance, swirling and leaping high into the clear cold air. The Ceilidh Palace, work of common folk, bedecked with its faint tracery of plaster dust, was a treasure-trove heaped high. That night, we were all rich as kings and queens.


(All text, images, and video copyright Mainecelt 2010)

Another Leveraged Bale Out

The cows weren't expecting this. There they stood, in the pre-dawn winter darkness, looking aimless and sleepy in the middle of the snowy field. Our boots crunched in the ice-crusted snowdrifts as we approached the top of the hill. We would have to be decisive. We would have to be swift.

But it's hard to be swift when you're moving a 4-foot-diameter 500-pound bale. No matter how deep the cleats are on your boots, it's hard to gain purchase in ice and snow. By the time I'd brushed the snow off the plastic-wrapped bale and rocked it loose from the ground, those cows--in spite of the darkness--were acting suspicious.

So, we pushed. The Piper and I leaned our shoulders into the bale, muckling on as well as we could with our gloved hands. We paused to re-plant our feet and rocked the bale some more. Finally, we leveraged that behemoth up...and...over...so that it rolled two full revolutions down the hill. Unfortunately, it was headed exactly NOT towards the pasture gate.

Pause for another correction. The Piper and I stand at opposite "corners" of the bale and push, slowly spinning it a quarter-turn until it's aimed in the right direction. Now the cows are lined up at the gate, snorting and tossing their forelocks. Iona, queen of the cattlefold, firmly plants herself at the fore.

Cows are not good at physics. I suspect their phenomenal digestion is the primary location of their intelligence. No, perhaps that's unfair-- there's nothing in their primal cognition to help them respond when a pair of two-leggeds starts rolling a giant marshmallow down the hill towards the pasture gate before dawn. We had the right voices, at least, so we weren't intruders... and when we sliced the haywrap just before the final push through the gate, those cows caught the clean vinegarish scent that announced incoming food. Hunger and curiosity dictated their subsequent arrangement.

And so it was that, when we gave the final push, that bale rolled down the hill, through the gate, farther down the hill with gathering speed, and...smacked broadside into that poor silly heifer. She gave a surprised wee jump forward, then turned around and stared reproachfully (balefully?) at the still-wrapped bale. I hustled down into the field and pulled off the haywrap. As the tasty contents were revealed, the heifer hung back and stared a minute more--just long enough for me to pull the wrapper off and out of the way--then moved in, determined to bite her breakfast right back.

So this is how the New Year begins: with rolling bales, chores before dawn, well-fed cows, strong women, leverage and surprises. We're ready, even if the cows aren't. Bring it on!!!