Tag Archives: homesteading

A Winged Elm Farm Alphabet Book: “C”

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“C” is for Crabapples

When planting our orchard crabapples were an afterthought in the main apple orchard. But thirteen years later the larder is full of jars of crabapple jams and jellies. Crabapples with rosemary, with pear, with blueberry and a few jars of apple butters all make buttered toast a more satisfying breakfast.

Thomas Jefferson was able to get 129 gallons of cider from his Hewes Crabapples. My output is more modest. Yet under our stairs are bottles of crabapple wine, cider and mead. The extra fruit is used to make sauces to spoon over pork chops or to spoon into pigs.

It is hard to imagine our orchard without our Calloway Crabapple tree with its bright red fruits each year.

Tip: an aging stockdog

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I gestured to our elderly and now completely deaf cattle dog, “Come on Tip, time to go outside.” She half-heartedly got to her feet, took a step to the door and curled back up.

Reaching down to grab her collar I yelled, “Tip, Get Out”!

She stood, turned from the door and squeezed between a cabinet and the water heater with only her rear and tucked tail visible.

It was 18 degrees outside and I was trying to put her out for the night. Earlier, when the door was opened, she had dashed inside and huddled in the utility room. Faced with dragging our aging and grouchy stockdog out by her hind legs I mulled over letting her stay.

One day while stopping by the Amish vegetable stand and harness shop, Cindy spied a basket of puppies. She bought Tip. The mother was a Blue Heeler and the father a wandering Romeo of collie descent.

That was thirteen years ago. Tip has been our constant companion on the farm. With instinctive herding instincts, she has been valuable in getting recalcitrant cows to move, return to the barn or stay away while hay was set out.

In her first year she took off after a coyote on the property one night. She returned ten minutes later with a wooden stake sticking out of her chest. She had run straight into a patch of brush I had recently bush-hogged. We pulled the stake out and Cindy treated the cavity with iodine.

Later that night Tip went into shock from an allergic reaction to the iodine. We loaded her up and made a midnight run to the vet. He met us there around 1 in the morning. (Vets no longer perform that service. If we have an emergency after hours we now drive an hour to the nearest clinic).

He put her on an IV drip and kept her overnight. It must have been traumatic because even today, if she feels insecure, she will lift up her foreleg and sniff where the needle drip was inserted.

Definitely a dog with grit, if a 1400-pound bull would not move in the cattle chute, Tip jumped in, barked and bit at the heels. She has been kicked and stomped for her reward many times.

She has been the guard dog that keeps substantially large men penned in their trucks. She has rid us of skunks and possums that preyed on our poultry. She always came when called and did her part, until these past few years.

These days it takes her awhile to get up in the morning. Stove-up, she takes a few minutes to un-kink, hobbling on her front legs.

She now stands stationary in the middle of the yard as the younger dogs race past, barking excitedly but unwilling to play. And now reluctant to risk getting kicked she leaves those tasks to the younger generation.

She is still my constant companion on walks in the woods, never leaving my side. Or, while I bale hay, she lays at the edge of the pasture and waits for me to finish.

Last night, after the door was shut, she edged out from the hot water heater, sniffed her foreleg and settled back down on the blanket. We let her stay in for the night. She has earned that right.

A New Year

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Our limbs may be cold this morning but spring still beats in the heart.

December has been mild, though this morning is the coldest at 25 degrees before sunrise. The now annual too soon bud swell has begun with the plum and peach trees threatening an early bloom disaster. Seed catalogs are stuffed in the mailbox each day and in another few weeks we will begin to disc the pastures and sow with rye and clover for an early start to the grazing season.

Meanwhile the cattle and sheep are eating last year’s forage in the form of square and round bales of hay. Each morning and evening we bring a half square bale to the sheep and every few days a round bale to the cattle. The bees are being fed sugar water to avoid starvation. And we are still getting greens and turnips from the garden, where the garlic and onions for next year are thriving.

So, even though winter is now only nine days old our thoughts are on its end game. New lambs, baby chicks and ducks, gardening, pastures, orchards and grapes, it all begins again in just another 8-10 weeks. Between that new season and today we have cattle and hogs to get to market, orchards to be pruned, seed to be started and a few freezes to be endured.

But for now our old year is limping out the door, battered by unexpected freak weather and the usual predations by our species. Let us raise a glass and pledge to treat the New Year a bit better. I pledge to plant a garden, drive less, recycle more and learn a new skill, save some seed, visit with neighbors (including those I don’t particularly like), write letters (email counts, texting doesn’t) and be a good steward to this patch of land we call home.

Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve

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The old man who works our dump has a wreath on his work shed and four cars parked at his door. As I unload my garbage the visitors begin to spill out his door calling back over their shoulders a “Merry Christmas” to the man they had all come to see.

In the pasture across the road from the dump are twenty ewes grazing in as pretty a scene as you could paint. Heading back down the road I pull up to a stop sign at the former Galyon’s General Store. I glance over at the parking lot. Two men straight out of central casting, clothed in overalls and with beards down to the waist, stand behind sawhorse tables laden with citrus for sale. It is Christmas time in Paint Rock.

From Paint Rock to Cedar Fork: it is a hardscrabble valley we share. Most homes are a modest eight hundred to twelve hundred square feet. A few of our neighbors have clearly spent their ‘holiday” money at Wal-Mart on inflatable snowmen. More homes are simply decorated with wreaths and a few lights. All have a steady plume of smoke coming out of the chimney. The homes of the older residents all seem to have an extra car or two. Family brought home for the season.

A few visits around the valley to share some of our farm’s bounty and then it is time for a last minute visit to the Farmer’s co-op. Santa rocks gently in one of the rockers for sale up front. It is a downtime for him as he waits for another kid to show up, so he busily texts on his Blackberry. I crack to the clerk that I see no reindeer. He replies, “This Santa arrived in an old Dodge truck”.

Christmas Eve and all is ready. Cindy is home with her family and returns tomorrow on Christmas Day. A final visit later today with Mr. Kyle and a shared glass of Mayfield’s finest. Then perhaps Adrienne will walk up the hill with her bottle of warm gluhwein to toast the evening and an hour or two of conversation before she heads back down to her family.

Midnight, I’ll stroll out to the cattle in the barn to see if they kneel and speak, before turning into my bed.

Merry Christmas!

Homestead Weekend: the productive arts

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Homestead Weekend: a weekend devoted to the productive arts (22 degrees this morning)

1. Squirrel Confit: Every New Year I make confit with the goose legs from our roast goose. It occurred to me that one could make a confit (meat cured in salt and preserved in lard) with anything at hand. What was at hand was a squirrel. Cured in salt, garlic, thyme and basil for 48 hours. Browned in in a skillet with lard. Placed in a pan with enough lard to cover for three hours at 250 degrees in the oven. Pulled out and allowed to cool the squirrel was stored in a mason jar and covered with the lard. Delicious! The remaining meat will be shredded and served over a small portion of pureed split peas as an appetizer.
2. Kimchee: I created a version of kimchee with cabbage, Hungarian and Hatch peppers, ginger, garlic, green onions, fish sauce and salt. Tossing it all together it was packed into a ½ gallon mason jar where it is fermenting nicely. Should be ready in 2-4 weeks.
3. Turnip Kraut: Ten pounds of purple top turnips and greens shredded, salt added and packed into ceramic crock. Fermenting nicely and should be ready in 4-6 weeks.
4. Lard: Five pounds of leaf fat (fat from around the kidneys of a hog) rendered out into beautiful snow white lard. Perfect for baking.
5. Bread: Cindy has been busy baking outstanding bread the past few days.
6. Strawberry Mead: Four pounds of honey, water and a pint of frozen strawberries from our patch, natural yeast and the mix is fermenting quietly in the corner of my study. The mead should be ready in six months.
7. Pork Link Sausage w/figs, brandy and nutmeg: replicating a reference I found to a traditional German Christmas sausage. Four of my favorite food stuffs…how could it go wrong? Making this one later today.
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Reading this weekend two early Christmas presents: The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz (ah, that explains the above) and Faviken by Magnus Nilsson, a great cookbook when you are trying to figure out what to do with your “perfectly shot and mature hazelhen” and that handful of lingonberries, or a backstrap loin of moose.