Monday, May 26, 2008

Good Friends and Good Food

There is something profound about cooking and eating with people you are close to. This weekend Robin (my wonderful wife) and I had a small campfire party with another couple we know and Robin's sister K~. It was fabulous. You never get too old to roast weenies over a campfire with your friends. Now that we are older, and supposedly more mature, we add sausages, steak, beer and a foil pouch of onions in the corner of the coals. We had a “sideboard”, two tray tables with rolls and condiments. We roasted meat, drank beer and told stories into the night. The dogs lay at our feet and cleaned anything we might have missed. It was one of the better evenings I have had in a while.

The following morning Robin made cornbread which we ate with watermelon for breakfast. Dinner that night was scratch made linguine with a lemon pepper alfredo sauce. We all gathered in the kitchen and Robin and her sister cut the pasta into linguine while I put it through the roller. It was fabulous. I make fresh pasta, on average once every week or two and one of the things I love about it is it never the same twice. The eggs are different and it shows in the texture of the pasta, the sauces I make are all scratch made and are never quite the same twice. Every time they are familiar and new and I love it.

One of my favorite things in the world is to cook for, and eat with people I care about. There is something profound to me about creating and sharing a meal. You tailor it to match your guests, taking into account each person's tastes and what you come up with is a unique meal that will never happen again. You may have the same people over again, and serve the same dishes, but it won't be the same and I love that.

Eating in our culture has become so divorced from the act of sustaining our bodies that we either eat crap or it is a big deal. We shove nutri grain bars in our mouths as we head out the door for work eat fast food for lunch and a frozen dinner in the evening. For something special we go out and pay $30 for an entree at our local restaurant. When I was a child, both of my parents were farmers and at the time I am speaking were just starting their second farm. Mom would come home after working all day and make dinner. Dad would come in from the field to have dinner with us. As often as not he would go back out and work for a couple more hours after dinner, but for that 45 minutes we all sat down for dinner together, as a family. I never appreciated it as a child, but looking back I realize how much of the man I am today comes from those dinners, together, as a family. I learned table manners, conversational etiquette, and formed my impression of what a family is. It is amazing what a simple and powerful thing a shared meal is.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Sparrow Troubles

Last night I went to check on my sparrows (english) and instead of finding a dozen or so of the little buggers I found a hole in the netting I used to cover the front of the cage. Keeping sparrows this year has been a trial for me. Last season I had 6 of them in a cage in my basement and they did fine. I lost them trapping and as hawk food. This year I decided I needed more so I built a larger cage, a 3ft cube. I figure I can keep 30 or so sparrows in it no problem. Well I put the sparrows I had already trapped in and 3/4 of them promptly died. After talking to a friend I realized the cage needed to be much more enclosed so I covered 3 of the sides, leaving only the bottom and the front open. This worked out much better and everyone was happy, until the squirrel liberated the bunch. Then only the sparrows and squirrel were happy. I went out and covered the whole thing with 1/2in hardware cloth yesterday evening and now I am thinking about whether I want to keep starlings or sparrows. I want to hunt starlings this fall so I know I should have a bunch of them on hand, but I know merlins love sparrows as bait. After talking to another falconer I think I will try to keep a dozen or so starlings alive and the sparrows will go straight into the freezer. Of course I now need to build a starling trap, which should be fun. I have the plans for a 5ft x 6ft x 6ft tall V trap that is supposed to work very well. I plan on putting it out in the field where I am harvesting. I usually have a crowd of 50 or so starlings following the harvester.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Banner day at the farm

Today was a big day on the farm. For the first time this season we harvested more than 200 pallets in a day. Two hundred and three to be exact. That is a little more than 2 acres of sod. So far this year we have been harvesting 60 to 150 pallets a day. Things went well, but slow. The field I was in had some bad washouts, minor washouts and a couple of dry spots. This means I had to stop 3 to 5 times per run to skip over an area or clear out the scrap. My misery was written in scrap left in the field. The 203 pallets took 8 hours to harvest which is about 25 pallets per hour. On a long run in a good field I can harvest 40 - 45 pallets an hour.

The weather was interesting as well. The day started out cool and cloudy with the occasional spit of rain, after lunch we had hail and a couple of downpours broken up by moments of sun. Then at the end the sun came out and we had, for a moment, the most stunningly beautiful, cloudy, sunny, rainy, warm and windy 45 minutes. Then it rained some more.
Well here I am. I decided to start this blog, believe it or not because I am a terrible writer. I don't think this is acceptable so I am going to practice. Please feel free to comment, criticize or commend. I will be writing about whatever happens to move me when I sit down, probably family, farming, falconry, food, cooking and the trials and joys of family business.