The cat came back

At first I was indifferent. Then it was a bit of a pain, but oh well. Then came the claws. That's when I started pushing back. But no matter what I did, Mocha, the indoor farm cat, just needed to sit on my lap while I was on the computer. The only internet that was available was in the house, and so here you have it: human and cat attempting to coexist with a laptop.

Back in the Groove

Yesterday afternoon as I chopped veggies to prep for pizza night, I started to feel the burn. That little spot on the inside of my index finger, where I once built up a knife callus, is back. And so the blistering begins (again). It hurts with every chop of the knife, but it feels good to be back in the kitchen, turning produce from the field into tonight's dinner.


I had been missing that farm-to-table feeling. There is nothing like racing out to the garden in the middle of dinner to cut some basil because we didn't prep enough that afternoon, and then watching someone devour the food that made your heart rate jump just a few minutes earlier.

 Heather cooks the pizzas in the wood fire oven and Seale cuts and boxes.

 Friday night's kitchen crew: Diane and I. Note the matching bandanas (planned).

This is the night where I graduated from rolling out dough to dressing pizzas.

Midway through the dinner rush last night, as I was delivering a pizza from the kitchen out to the wood-fire oven, something caught my eye. I knew it wasn't right, but it took me a few seconds to register. Then it clicked. "The sheep are out!" Over near the car park area was a lineup of sheep munching on the grass. Already a good distance away from their fenced pasture, they were headed further away. I put down the pizza, called Buddy the farm dog and made a run for the rogue sheep. Together we herded them back to their pasture in a matter of minutes and then it was right back to the kitchen, on to another pizza.

This kind of rush (the moment where you have this inner-battle between your priorities: Farmer first, cook second? Cook first, worry about the animals later?) felt familiar, and reminded me of a predicament I found myself in when I was at Eigensinn. 

I was working in the kitchen that night and in the lull between the fourth and fifth course I went back to the walk-in fridge to get something and out the back door I could see the head of one of the big mamma 300 lb pigs sticking out from the barn. Pig in barn = not in pen = could get into the garden = no food next month. In my chef's coat and apron, I grab my rubber boots and jog out to the barn figuring it's just a matter of opening the gate and shooing miss piggy back in. Wrong. Pigs are smart and this one knew that the barn is where the food is, so I needed to entice her back in to the pen with more than just the waving of my arms. I grabbed a bucket of food and dangled it over the fence. She didn't budge. I figured she was calling my bluff, so I opened the gate wide enough for her to get in, then went to the other end and dumped the food inside the pen. Just as she started to show an interest and move her hefty self towards the gate, the other pigs waddled over for a late night snack. I was okay with sharing except that the crowd of them ended up blocking the opening in the gate. Now that miss piggy was in favour of coming in, she couldn't thanks to the five other pigs who were blocking her while they ate her bait. And so what could a novice do but climb halfway up the gate, bend over and try to physically maneuver the pigs out of the way. Wrong again.


Eventually, I can't even remember how, the pig went back in the pen. It seemed like it took forever. And yet when I slipped back into the kitchen, my absence had gone completely unnoticed. I picked up my knife and we carried on with preparing the fifth course. To this day I still wonder whether anyone looked out the window during those seven long minutes to see the girl from the city trying to cope in her new surroundings: upper half dressed as a cook, lower half dressed as a farmer, propped halfway up a gate, muck all around, losing her mind over an escaped pig.  


Escaped pig, check.
A-la-minute basil from the garden, check.
Rogue sheep, check.
It's good to be back.

There's no hiding where your hands have been when you're working with flour...

Things are getting dirty

I have been spending quite a bit of time here at Suncrest with Heather's 3 year old son Ethan. Each morning Ethan comes over to visit the root cellar where the interns live and we do normal things like hunt for mice and fold clothes. As I leave the cellar to head to the barn to start the morning's chores, Ethan - every day, without fail - asks "does your mom let you get your pants dirty like that?". He has a point. I don't think my mom would care, but the folks at J.Crew would probably scoff at how their pants are currently being treated. Though I guess it's been this way for a couple years now (if you measure my dirtiness by my bridesmaid duties in the past two summers being reduced from 'get a manicure' to 'scrub your hands'), today I felt particularly proud of my heightened comfort level with being really dirty.


Until this afternoon: tomato harvest. Heather and her intern Theresa ran out of time to trellis the tomatoes earlier in the season, so the plants now lay sprawled across the ground. To harvest them we had to tiptoe through the rows like we were walking through minefields, careful not to squash anything under our feet. The problem came when I started picking the ripe tomatoes off the vine. At every second or third pluck, I would wrap my hand around the fruit only to have my fingers sink into a mushy gross wetness on the other side. The tomatoes looked perfect on the upside, but many had rotted on the bottom from touching the ground. I made the mistake of wrapping my whole hand around the tomato several times - cringing at each go - before I trained myself to only touch what I could see. Of course five minutes later, too caught up in the positioning of my toes and knees on the minefield, I would forget and grab the whole tomato again. Yuck! 


And so there you have it. Just when I was making progress - away from pretty city clothes and hyper cleanliness - I slide back as I gag at that 200 foot row of half-rotten tomatoes.

The fruits of some 3 year old labour: 
here is the result of a morning of clothes-folding help from Ethan.

Say my name!

During my short stint at Eigensinn, there was always a veil of mystery around the other interns who would form our team for the summer. The owners never seemed to know the names of those who they had accepted to come and work (volunteer) for them and as they were staggered over two months, start dates were also a bit of a guessing game. We knew that the last intern to arrive was male, but the owners couldn't remember his name, except that it started with G and was followed by a regular name. One day after a little brainstorming, another intern supposed that his name was Gwayne (G + Wayne) and it stuck. We mused about Gwayne and wondered where he was from and what he was like. Eventually we forgot that this was just a guess until he appeared one day and introduced himself as Glynn. Close, but no cigar. Of course the wife still couldn't get it straight and referred to him as Flynn for the entirety of his fleeting stay at the farm. Like me, he escaped, only lasting two weeks. Maybe there was a part of him that just wanted to go where everybody knows your name.

Though it had similar 'blind farm date' qualities, my arrival at Sucrest Gardens Farm in Wisconsin was the total opposite of that experience. My first day was filled with pizza night prep and by 4:30 we were in full swing: rolling out dough, dressing them up and flying pizzas into the wood-fire oven. I was quickly welcomed in to the team and over the course of the night several people - CSA members, family and friends - introduced themselves to me. "You must be Jen! From Canada, right?" 

My friend from France, Carlos Toneloc, modelling his Canadian Girls Kick Ass tank top. I gifted it to him about four years ago. Too bad, as it would have been the perfect uniform for my American farm tour.

Crossing state lines

I left Squash Blossom Farm today, but not without having a chance to see the way they do their version of pizza nights. Susan and Roger are throwing around the idea of a restaurant bent to their farm, but for now they just do it with friends once a week. Susan keeps a great blog about the farm, and in her post about the latest pizza night, she put up a video of my dough tossing skills. Unfortunately she filmed it sideways, but we agreed that this makes it look even more impressive. Check out her post here.


Today's lesson was not about farming, but about the advantages of not having technology at your fingertips. I packed my computer, ipod and cell phone into my big travel bag this morning for my trip over to the pizza farm in Wisconsin. While I was waiting at the bus stop, Bored out of my mind with the book that I was reading, I had no other distractions to turn to, so I struck up a conversation with a lady my parents age who was absolutely fascinated by my desire to be a farmer. It's not often that I meet someone who is over 50 and sees the value in small-scale organic farming, let alone encourages others to do it. We sat near each other on the bus and as I left she advised that as long as I showed my parents that I was safe and happy (according to her, this is is all that a parent wants for their child) that I would have their support. cute.


The bus dropped me off in the right town, but the wrong end of it. Turns out they cancel the stop at the University while school is out for the summer. Didn't think of that. And didn't have a map or a phone that would tell me where to go. I went in to the nearest hotel to ask for directions, crossing my fingers that the guy at the desk would be helpful despite my not being a guest. Sure enough he looked up directions for me and then frowned as he delivered the news that I would have to walk 5 miles (almost 10km) to get to the coffee shop where I was being picked up. In 20 minutes. Before I could react, a little old lady who was sitting on the opposite end of the lobby piped up and insisted on driving me there. She knew exactly where it was and claimed to be going in that direction anyways. My friend Jacquie once told me that she met some of her best friends hitch hiking, so I bit the bullet and accepted. Though I don't know if it counts as hitch hiking when you didn't ask for the ride. Either way, two new friends were made today thanks in no part to Apple, Rogers or Bell.

Cheese please

While my brother was downing jugs of Kool Aid, I developed my own childhood food obsession: melted mozzarella. I thought I had kept it a total secret until 13-year-old me overheard my Dad talking to a friend one day, musing about his weird kids, "yeah and the other day I look in the kitchen and Jen is diving in to a plate of melted cheese out of the microwave. That's it. Just melted cheese." Busted!

Though I now openly love cheese, I have adjusted to only eating it in socially acceptable formats.

At Squash Blossom farm there are four cows, one of which they milk. Before she gave birth, Lafonda was giving up to 16 litres of milk a day. Now that she feeds her calf, they are only getting about 2 litres a day for the household, but that is plenty for making cheese and ice cream. On Sunday I learned how to make mozzarella and used the whey (the by-product of cheese-making) to make herbed ricotta. Not only was it easy, but it tasted like real cheese - the kind you want to just melt in the microwave and devour. 

I am going to be the best farm wife ever.

 Mozzarella in the making

Mozzarella balls

Herbed ricotta

Nature's Kool Aid

Since he was old enough to put a cup to his lips, my brother has been hooked on Kool Aid. Growing up there were two things you could always be sure to find in our kitchen: 
1. A stockpile of Kool Aid packages in the cupboard, multiples of each flavour
2. A green plastic jug of Kool Aid in the fridge (if the jug was empty it was on the counter no more than a few minutes before Scott whipped together another batch)


I was never totally into Kool Aid, but I did drink it here and there throughout my childhood and as such I consider myself a qualified taste tester. I put my Kool Aid tasting skills to use this week here at Squash Blossom Farm when Susan taught me how to make Sumac-ade. It tasted so good and Kool-Aid-like that I bet I could even trick my brother, despite his 22 years of brand loyalty, into drinking it.


Sumac-ade recipe in 4 steps:
5 sprigs of red sumac (the berries are ripe when the pollen rubs off easily)
1 litre of cold water
sugar or honey, to taste
1. Dunk the sumac berries in the water. 
2. Rub the sprigs against each other and stir the berries around to remove all of the pollen.
3. Strain out the solids
4. Add sugar until it tastes great

Sue demonstrates her straining skills

And if Scott doesn't buy it as Kool Aid, here is my back-up plan: Sumac Mojitos. To the recipe above, add mint and rum. done and done.

Sue shows off the secret ingredient to Sumac Mojitos

Squash Blossom from the inside out

As a kid, my mom always had a vegetable garden in the backyard - a corner of the yard in which I had a fleeting interest. Until I started my own little plots (strawberries and then a grape vine), my involvement was begrudging and limited to helping put out compost in the spring and harvesting veggies a la minute for family dinners through the summer. Though I'd like to say that I always had an inner desire to be a farmer, my mother would probably blow my cover by telling you that I was generally uninterested in the garden until the end of July when the carrots were ready. My interest would peak for long enough to enjoy the fruits of her labour - the carrots anyways - and completely vanish from September to June, when all the actual work was being done. 

So I'll say that the backyard garden laid a foundation, back to which Barbara Kingsolver led me five years ago when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I was mesmerized by this book. Coles Notes: writer in her 50s moves her family to a farm where they attempt to live off the land for a year. It was a true story and it planted a seed in my mind: this could be you someday. 

When I set foot on Squash Blossom Farm, it was like I had walked into Barbara's book. Susan and Roger had grown kids and real jobs when they decided three years ago that it was about time they pursued their farm dream. The 10-acre plot that they bought is exactly how you would picture a quaint country farm: red barn, white picket fences, chickens, turkeys and ducks running loose, a handful of cows roaming on the pasture. Susan, Roger and their two interns (Bethany and Brendan) welcomed me with open arms and I soon joined in on their adventure: a farm dream in the making, learn-as-you-go, Kingsolver-style.

I woke up at 5am on my first morning on the farm due to a time-change/alarm clock fail. This is the not-too-shabby sunrise that greeted me out my bedroom window.

Another inside-out view from the kitchen to the farm. The tent in front of the barn shelters musicians who come to play at the farm on Sunday afternoons.

The electric fence dance

Leg 3 of Plan B is in full effect. I made it through US customs and am set to spend the month of August visiting farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Upon arrival, I spent two days in Minneapolis with my aunt Stephanie who invariably introduced me as her cousin and took me to a restaurant called Heartland that serves local food, does their charcuterie in-house and has a market on the premises where they sell preserves and fresh produce from local farmers.

The purpose of this post is for you to imagine something that I wish I could have documented. Pictured at left is my aunt's horse. She brought me to visit her just before dropping me off on the bus to Rochester, MN. The gate was surrounded by muck, so the only way to get in was through the white electric fence. What ensued was like the Limbo but way more awkward, with the consequence of losing (an electric shock) being much worse than a little embarrassment in front of your friends. In the end Stephanie danced her way through the upper hole while I opted to steamroll along the ground. I left the farm with a coat of freshly cut grass velcroed to my clothes, a new farmer-lesson under my belt (how to gracelessly navigate electric fences) and off I went to meet my first American farm family hosts at Squash Blossom Farm.

Baaaaaahhhhhhh

The best thing about Canreg Station Farm & Dairy Pasture is that whenever I would call my friend Kelly, who is interning there for 6 months, I got to hear her try to say "Hello, Canreg Station Farm & Dairy Pasture, Kelly speaking" without messing up. In fact I maybe called her more often than I needed to, just to hear her say it.

Back in the winter, when Kelly and I realized that we would both be interning for the growing season, we secretly decided to arrange a farm exchange where we would each visit each other's farm for a week to learn the ropes. We never actually ran this by our bosses, and as our internships began (and I saw my window of freedom slowly closing) we wondered whether we'd ever make it happen. In June, when I called Kelly to announce that I was now free as a bird for the next four months, the scheming began. Finally, during the last week of July, I borrowed my brother's candy van and made my way to Finch, Ontario.

My previous sheep experience consisted of living with a giant anatomically-incorrect stuffed sheep named Princess for two years in University, so a chance to deal with the live version meant that I would be breaking new ground. 


I was welcomed warmly into the Regli family and fed a steady supply of delicious sheep's milk and cheese. Over the course of the week I got to see how Josef, the famous moustached cheese man from the market, made his artisan cheese. I helped Barb milk the 125 dairy sheep and I developed a deep appreciation for sheep manure, which drops out of the animal's behind in neat little pellets. This is very good news. 

To round off the week, I joined Kelly at the farmer's market where we sold cheese, lamb and mutton. Kelly is a fellow city girl at heart and it was fun to see how much she has learned in just three months. Now if only she could get the name of her farm straight....

Even though Kelly is elbowing me out of the way to be in front, I must admit that she is a fantastic sheep milker, barn cleaner and market saleswoman.

Confirmed that I like cows

This is my friend Paul and his summer beard. In the background at about the level of his eyes, you can see a small dark line in the pasture. These are his heifers (read: girl cows who have never been moms) who will eat grass all summer and head to the butcher in the fall. Paul's business is called Grazing Days and he sells shares of beef to families in Ottawa. They pay up front, he raises happy cows on pasture (this is a big deal because cows are ruminants and their bodies aren't good at processing corn which is the standard diet on a factory farm) and over the fall/winter, he delivers boxes of meat each month.


I visited Paul on day 1 of the Ottawa leg of Plan B, but only had a few hours to spend, which meant less time IDing teets and more time hooking up new electric fencing. By the afternoon I was running off to a week at Canreg Station Dairy & Pasture farm to hang out with the second best of the ruminant family: sheep!

Plan B

After a disappointing stint at the famous restaurant farm, I said a premature farewell to Plan A Summer and its 7-day-a-week, 16-hours-of-work-a-day isolated madness in hopes of finding some greener, friendlier pastures. It wasn't long before I had engulfed myself in Kingston's local food scene. To my surprise there were some great things going on, and the establishment of Plan B Summer was like putting together a puzzle where every piece is so exciting that you want it to be the biggest. Goal: learn as much as I can about growing organic veggies, raising animals and preparing local food. 

In week one of Plan B I visited four businesses, each one playing a role in Kingston's local food movement. An organic veggie farm, a cafe that sources food from nearby farmers, a chef-run farm that is building a cooking school, and a veggie farm that is smack in the middle of an organic dairy farm: Root Radical.

Right away I was offered a job working for Emily with Root Radical and a month of vegetable cultivating began. I braved the hot July heat working with some great people, developed proficiency in wheel-hoeing, and witnessed a business model where employees are paid fairly for their work - a not-so-common feat in small-scale organic farming, as I have learned.

Me, Moe, Natalie, Barb and Emily = Root Radical harvest team

Like an eager school kid, working just 8 hours a day wasn't enough, so I asked Emily's parents if I could get in on some cow-milking action. Diane and Peter graciously took me on a few nights a week and showed me the ropes of running an organic dairy. They answered my millions of questions (this was completely new territory for me) and I got really familiar with cow teets - to the point where a quick look at the udders would allow me to identify individual cows by name on the pasture. Weird, right? I became so infatuated with these cows that during my last week, when my help was not needed for milking and the only job on offer was mucking out stalls (read: shovelling calf shit), I jumped at the opportunity.  


Slowly but surely, the breaking-in of the city girl begins.

"Lady Luck", daughter of cow #649 who was born during my 2nd last week. Not realizing that almost all dairy cows are pregnant, I became obsessed with the fact that there would be new life on the farm! (what a nerd) Of course two days later another calf was born and the novelty kinda wore off. Don't worry though Lady, I still think you're a special.