Food | Robin's Outdoors

Category Archives: Food

Am I the one behind the times?

April 9, 2013 Daily Farm Life, Eat local, Feature, Fishing, Food, Garden, Homestead, Hunting, Life in the woods, Maine, Maine Outdoors, Nature, Poultry, Putting Food Up, Robin's Thoughts, Small Farming, Vegetable Garden, Wild Harvesting

Backwater. Backwoods. Out of touch. Out of date. Woods queer. Stuck in the past. These are terms used recently to describe people like me. Obviously, they are not terms of endearment. They’re not positive images as they’re being used in these conversations.

Here’s a little about me, in case you’re a new reader. I hunt, fish, paddle, forage and have a one-acre garden. I raise chickens, ducks and turkeys for meat and eggs. I’m a dumbass with a smart phone I barely know how to use to make a call (it’s not set up well). I don’t care to know more. I can make calls, text and send pictures. Apps? I have a great flashlight… All the other apps came pre-installed. My name is Robin, and I am an app failure…and I like it that way.

Fawn Runner Ducks

I’m on Twitter. I thought I’d enjoy sharing #TreestandTweets but it was annoying. I’m not sitting in a tree to tweet; save that for birds. I’m there to hunt and be aware of my surroundings. I have followers but I don’t follow the rule of following back everyone who follows me. I’ve never been to a Tweetup and have never felt the need to, even “for my career.” I have a Facebook page for my writing but don’t post there a lot. No need to inundate anyone with reminders about me; they know where to find me.

Out of date. I’m anti-genetic engineering, anti-Monsanto, anti-food lot, anti-antibiotic in factory farms…I’m anti-factory farms. I know what’s in my food. Like a growing number of people who are paying attention, I provide at least some of my own food. If you aren’t already providing some of your own food, you are behind the times. I can feed myself with food I grow, raise and buy locally. So I’m out of touch, backwater, backwoods, stuck in the past, but I can feed myself.

I’m out of touch. My kids didn’t get cell phones until they were driving. We live 20 miles from the high school, further from their jobs. They had cell phones with limited amounts of minutes so that they could call us in an emergency. We <gasp> were pretty insistent that they communicate with people face to face. I’m not used to this commonly accepted bad habit of ignoring people in favor of someone else.

I’m out of touch even with a cell phone. If your phone rings in a restaurant and interrupts someone’s meal I won’t hesitate to tell you we are not in a phone booth. If someone else is more important than the people you are with at the moment, do the unimportant people a favor and leave. Get off the phone and communicate face to face.

Backwoods. You bet! Forty-five acres in the middle of thousands of acres, no neighbors in sight. I can feed myself from the land. We heat our home with wood, a renewable resource. I’m not depending on anyone to keep me warm. Or fed.

We burned four cords of firewood in the winter of 2012-13.

Woods queer: (adjective) a milder form of insanity that results from living in a rural isolated environment, typically the woods or forest. Ok, I’ll claim that, but I don’t think I’m any more insane than the city or urban queer. We’re all a little insane (but some of us don’t know that yet) no matter where we live.

Backwater. Backwoods. Out of touch. Out of date. Woods queer. Stuck in the past. Happy. Satisfied. Fulfilled. Content. Well fed. Warm. Self sufficient. It works for me.

I live here.

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Using Your Stored Vegetables

March 23, 2013 Eat local, Food, Recipe

A reprint from the Quoddy Tides newspaper.

By mid February a lot of the vegetables you stored last fall have been eaten. It’s time to go through what’s left, use up anything with soft and spoiled spots and toss anything too far gone but not moldy into the compost bin. Replace the vegetable that are still firm and lasting well for another time. It’s time to check the apples too. Even long-term storage varieties are pushing the limit now.

If you don’t have anything stored you can run out to the local grocery to buy them. We don’t all have room or the inclination to store vegetables.

Let’s start by making a Winter Squash Soup. This recipe is very simple yet tasty. My favorite squash is the dry Waltham butternut but a wet variety such as the humongous Blue Hubbard will work in this recipe. Prepare and cook one large or part of one large winter squash, or use leftovers from a previous meal. The uncooked portion of a large squash can be stored in the refrigerator for later use.

Sautee a medium onion in a small amount of butter or olive oil. Add this to

Six cups of cooked and mashed squash.
Using a whisk, add one half cup of heavy cream and one to two cups of chicken or vegetable broth until you have the consistency you prefer
Add salt and pepper to taste.
If you’d like to sweeten this soup you can mash a peeled and roasted apple or a half cup of honey.

The soup is ready to serve when thoroughly heated or may sit for an hour to let flavors blend. Store the unused portion in a covered bowl in the refrigerator.

One of my favorite winter desserts is pumpkin pie. If you’re buying a pumpkin you should look specifically for a pie pumpkin. At this time of year you’ll have a hard time finding one in a store so try a local farm. I’d love to be able to tell you how to make a wonderful pie crust but since I lack the ability to do so, I can’t. In a large mixing bowl mix:

Two cups of cooked and mashed, well-drained pumpkin
Two large eggs, or one duck egg
One-half to one cup of sugar (I use raw sugar.)
One cup of milk or light cream
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/4 cup real maple syrup, molasses or honey
1 teaspoon salt

Mix well and pour into your uncooked pie crust. Bake for 50-60 minutes at 350*.

If you’re not used to using fresh pumpkin you might want to add more than one cup of sugar to the recipe. You should adjust the cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves to suit your tastes.

Rutabaga, usually called turnip in this part of the country, is another of my favorites. Both rutabaga and turnip work well though I find rutabaga to be better in storage in my cellar. I’m perfectly happy simply simmering rutabaga and mashing it with butter, salt and pepper. You can add a mashed, baked apple or honey to sweeten a somewhat bitter rutabaga. Or, simmer carrots with the rutabaga, drain and mashed together with butter, salt and pepper.

Scalloped Rutabaga & Apples

Six cups rutabaga, uncooked and shredded
Two cups apple, sliced
¼ cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste
4 tablespoons butter

Mix rutabaga, 1 1/2 cups chopped apple, maple syrup, salt and pepper. Place in a buttered 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Spread 1/2 cup of apples on top and dot with butter. Cover and bake at 350° for 1 1/2 hours

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Cooking Moose Steaks

March 22, 2013 Cooking, Eat local, Feature, Food, Recipe, Wild Harvesting

Moose steaks are one of the simplest wild game meats you can prepare. Following these steps will take your steaks from the fridge to the plate in less than 30 minutes. You’ll need:

One serving of steak per person
fresh mushrooms
scallions
salt and pepper
butter

Take the steaks from the fridge and unwrap. Place them in a single layer on a plate. The single layer is important; you want the steaks to warm up. Very cold meat will constrict when it hits a hot fry pan and become tough. Salt and pepper each side to taste.

Delicious moose steaks

Clean the mushrooms with a dry paper towel. Avoid washing as water causes mushrooms to become soggy. Wash and chop scallions.

Melt butter in a medium-hot fry pan. Don’t let the butter smoke. Sear the steaks in butter, turning only once, approximately 60 seconds per side. Remove the steaks from the pan and set aside. Add a little more butter if needed and saute the mushrooms until almost done.

Return the steaks to the fry pan to finish cooking. Moose steaks are typically cut thin. I turn our steaks after three minutes, cook another two to three minutes and remove. The biggest mistake you might make is over cooking. Over cooking lean meats such as moose can make it tough.

Toss the scallions on top of the steaks a minute before removing them from the pan. Remove steaks, top with mushrooms and scallions and enjoy!

These steaks were cooked in a workshop I taught at Winter Skills Weekend for Becoming an Outdoors-Woman. They were so tender we cut them with our forks.

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Bear Meat Quiche

March 6, 2013 Black Bear, Black Bear, Feature, Food, Maine Outdoors, Outdoor Women, Recipe, Wild Harvesting

Bear meat quiche. Did you just make a face?

Bear meat stinks, it’s tough and it tastes horrible, right? Wrong. If you field dress the bear quickly, cool the carcass immediately, and process it correctly–just like every other animal–it’s delicious. I dispelled the myth of bear meat being horrible at Cooking Wild Game, a workshop I presented at Maine BOW’s Winter Skills weekend.

We sampled the cooked sausage before adding it to the quiche and all agreed, it was delicious!

The best quiche I’ve ever tasted.

This quiche is simple to make and uses only one bowl other than the baking pan or pie plate.

Bear Meat Quiche

Line a 9 x 9 baking pan or pie plate with pie crust

Layer: (don’t mix)

2 cups of shredded cheese on top of the crust.
1 pound of precooked bear sausage on top of the cheese.
1 c chopped onions
2 c sliced fresh mushrooms
6 eggs, scrambled with 1 oz cream or milk per egg
Salt and pepper to taste

Bake for 45 to 60 minutes at 350*. It’s done when a knife removes cleanly from the center. Let cool 10 minutes before cutting.

Thanks to Jeremy for the sausage and to Gene for getting it to me. I appreciate it a lot!

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Homemade Bread

February 22, 2013 Feature, Food

I bake bread a couple of times a week from fall through spring. When it’s too hot to have the oven on, it’s too hot to bake bread. The amount of bread we eat in summer drops so there’s less pressure to bake and more acceptance of store-bought loaves. When you’re out on the ice, snow shoeing to a picnic or outdoors in the winter for any other reason, having a sandwich made with hardy bread that nourishes you will help you keep going all day.

This isn’t a step-by-step how-to-bake-bread post, or a recipe. Start with two cups of water, add yeast, maybe some honey or molasses, some flour, a little salt. You mix it up, knead it, let it rise, knead it, put it in the pans, let it rise, and bake. There are a lot of recipes online, complete with instructions.

This is a quick and simple How I Make Bread.

Start with hot water, add butter, let butter melt or get soft, add yeast. Wait til yeast is not-quite this bubbly.

Add flour, one cup at a time, while the KitchenAid hook does its thing. I added whole grain oat flour first, then bread flour, then oat, then bread flour. When the dough is no longer sticky, let it knead for six minutes. Check periodically to add flour if necessary. If you’re kneading by hand you will learn the feel of moisture and consistency as you gain experience.

I knead in some oatmeal for a little more texture and its appearance.

olive oil the bowl to keep the dough from sticking

I coat the bowl lightly with olive oil to keep the dough from sticking.

I covered the bowl with a wet paper towel to keep the dough from drying as it rose. It’s in the coldest corner of the kitchen, away from drafts. The slower rise in a cool place lets flavor develop more than a fast rise in a warm place.

When the dough has doubled in size, divide it in half, knead, and place in bread pans. Allow to rise to full size. This loaf is ready to break. I made slices in it with a sharp knife before it started to rise.

The rolls didn’t rise as fast as the loaf of bread so I placed the pan in a sunny spot. These are ready to bake.

I love the texture of this loaf. It’s hardy without being tough, great for sandwiches.

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Poultry Order 2013

January 25, 2013 Agriculture, Food, Homestead, Poultry

I’m so on the ball this year that I’ve already placed my poultry order with Welp Hatchery. I order all of our birds through Welp. They’re dependable, customer service is excellent and they’re very reasonably priced. shipping is included in the price of the bird, no surprise at the check out. Last year I remembered that I’d forgotten to order meat chickens way late in the year. We butchered them on a very cold, windy last Sunday in October. We’re not doing that again. This year the Cornish Rock broilers will arrive the week of August 5 and be butchered October 6, before the cold sets in. We butcher on Sundays so that we don’t miss a Saturday of partridge hunting. The dates are in my datebook so I have no surprise call from the post office asking me to pick up chicks I’d forgotten about.

We’ll raise 25 Cornish Rock Broilers again, our standard order. I don’t raise them in a small pen with food and water, letting them eat themselves into heart and leg problems. They’ll be on grass and foraging for a lot of their food.

Buff silkies

I’m looking forward to the first order that will arrive this year, 30 Buff Silkies. Silkies are a five-toed, black-skinned (think about that) bantam known for their ability to forage, become broody, and are both heat and cold hardy. They lay very small eggs but the finances make it work cracking three eggs instead of two. I’ll feed them very little from spring through fall. Being small, they don’t eat a lot in the winter. They’ll raise their replacements. The minimum order is 30 chicks. I don’t need that many but nobody was interested in splitting an order so I had to put more thought into it before I placed the order. They’re sold as straight run (common with bantams). Around half will be males. I’ll keep two or three friendly roosters and the hens. The remaining roosters will be offered for sale and those that aren’t wanted will be killed and frozen to be used as food for a friend’s goshawk. No waste.

The silkies I’ve had in the past have been very easy on the garden. They’re more interested in scratching for insects, grubs and weed seeds than eating the plants. I’ll use electro net to keep them in certain areas of the garden to help with weeding and fertilizing. They’ll live in the hen house and have a penned in yard but will be allowed to roam. They will eventually hatch and help raise ring neck pheasant for the freezer.

Now to finish another seed order.

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Local Food in Maine Restaurants

January 7, 2013 Agriculture, Eat local, Food

It’s started with a picture of a sign posted in a restaurant. The sign said “Today’s potatoes are from: Idaho.” The sign was Tweeted and the conversation started. I’ve been supplying restaurants with fresh vegetables for years. I assumed everyone in Maine knows locally grown foods are available to restaurants. Chefs know this, right? As it turns out, not all of them do. And not all Mainers are aware of our growing number of small farms, distribution and what we grow in this big state.

Someone commented that there should be a marketing program for locally grown food. I’ve been so involved in local food production for so long that I forgot that this is new to someone each and every day. Maine has a marketing program called Get Real Get Maine! The website is getrealmaine.com.

The first agricultural event of the year is the Maine Agricultural Trades Show. It’s held every January, this year the 8^th through 10^th. Admission is free. There are vendors to visit, workshops and speakers to attend and plenty to do all three days of the show. It’s a great place to learn about Maine’s agriculture in one spot.

You can farms and food produced in Maine broken down by zip code and county on the Get Real Get Maine! website. There’s more to the site than foods and farms. You can look for places to go bird watching and cross country skiing; for arts, crafts and music festivals and for workshops to attend. There’s a chocolatier in Lubec, raw milk is available in Perham and a self-service farmstand in Weld, and I know about these places because of Get Real Get Maine!

The farmers market page allows you to search for markets in the state and links to resources related to market farming. Information on using SNAP and WIC at markets, how to start a market, the permits needed to start a market and the state statues are listed there. You’ll also find a page for agricultural fairs and events held in Maine each year.

Searching for farms on Facebook is a good way to find Maine-grown and produced foods. Ask friends for suggestions and recommendations. A phone call to your cooperative extension or Soil & Water Conservation office will give you some ideas on where to find locally produced food.

Winter is a quieter time for non-livestock farmers. You might find farmers who would like to tell you about their operation. I always enjoyed hearing from people, especially when I could ask questions of them. It helped me to know what new vegetable or herb I might want to grow by knowing what potential customers are interested in buying.

Food production in Maine doesn’t happen just on land. We have lobster, clams, oysters, mussels, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and fish being managed and harvested off the coast. My Christmas Eve dinner came from the Atlantic Ocean. My father-in-law, Steve, hand picks oysters for a local restaurant. They buy only the best quality shells, those without barnacles. I’m not particular about shells, barnacles on the outside are ok with me. We ate oysters on the half shell, mussels grown on ropes in mussel farms, scallops and lobsters—all produced in the state. I had an interesting conversation about Dad, one I want to continue soon. He digs clams, and seeded (planted so to speak) 400,000 baby clams the week before Christmas. “I didn’t have to do it but I felt like it was something I should do.” We talked a little about oyster farming in Maine.

Oysters on the half shell

During the Twitter conversation I learned of Glidden Point Oyster Sea Farm in Edgecomb. I spent 20 minutes on their website learning how oysters are produced. It’s an interesting process.

Getting locally produced foods into restaurants seems to be more complicated than I thought.

I’m going to make some contacts this week and find out what I can do to help close the information gap.

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2013 Word of the Year – Food!

January 1, 2013 Food

I chose a word for 2012 at the urging of another blogger, and I had a great time writing about “Outdoors.” I’m doing it again this year with Food! I’m excited about this. A lot of what I do revolves around food. There’s the garden, hunting, foraging, fishing and raising chickens, ducks and turkeys for meat and eggs.

Locally grown cranberries are in the process of becoming sauce.

I am not a food blogger by any means. I’m definitely not a food photographer. I can show you the berries we pick and how to turn them into preserves and muffins. How about a nice bass pulled up through the ice for supper? We’ll start from getting to the pond, go on to drilling the hole, setting up the tip ups, what we use for bait and the fish we catch, how to kill the fish so they don’t suffer, then we’ll cook them. While we’re fishing, I cook a hot meal on the ice. Open water fishing is one of my favorite ways to put food on the table. You can laugh with me while I improve my fly fishing skills.

Live Maine Lobster, soon to be stew.

Partridge (You might know them as grouse.) stuffed and roasted next fall? Let’s do it. I’ll be applying for a moose permit again this year. We’ll know in June if I get one. If I do, we’ll go moose hunting, learn how to field dress it (I’m flinching.), different cuts and how to cook the steaks, roasts and stew meat. Deer seems unlikely but with a new compound bow for Christmas, my deer hunting time doubled.

And then there’s the garden. It covers an acre. I have two high tunnels, unheated greenhouses where plants are grown in the soil, even in winter because the ground doesn’t freeze. They cover 2,000 sq ft of the garden. I’ll tell you what I grow, why I chose the varieties I use, how to grow and harvest, and how to cook or prepare different vegetables and herbs. And fruit! I have apple trees strawberries, cherries and raspberries. I’ll wild harvest blackberries and blueberries. Maybe the peach tree will blossom this year, and I’m certain one of the plum trees will.

Recipes are going to be the tricky part. I’ll do my best. I seldom use a recipe. I add “this much” until it tastes, smells or feels right.

I forage for mushrooms, including chaga. We love seafood. I bake bread. Steve and I will visit a tree farm on Maine Maple Sunday. Wow. When I make a list like this, how much we do to put food on the table really sinks in.

There will be food related giveaways during the year.

Happy New Year!

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Christmas 2012, the Year of Meals

December 26, 2012 Food

Originally published in Lancaster Farming.

Christmas 2012 will go down as the Christmas of meals. I no longer spend days baking cookies, making fudge and Needhams and filling baskets with goodies to share. This year, the big deal is Christmas dinner…times three.

My parents are going to Disney World for Christmas. I hosted dinner here for Dad and Donna, my sisters Melissa and Tammy and their families. There were 16 of us at the dinner table. Steve, my husband, made two huge pans of lasagna. Melissa made garlic bread, and Tammy made mixed greens salad. It was delicious and simple, and an hour after everyone left, dinner was cleaned up. Three days later, we’re still eating lasagna leftovers.

I think this was the first time we’ve all been together (minus Kristin) since June so it was especially nice. Tammy’s boyfriend Dennis brought his immature goshawk, Kahn, to do some training work in the field behind the house. Kahn is being trained to hunt small game for Dennis. He dined on partridge. Taylor, my future wildlife biologist daughter, was able to handle Kahn, a real Christmas treat for her.

This weekend we’ll host Steve’s father, his step-mother Pauly, sister Erica and her husband Greg. Kristin, our oldest daughter, will be home from Boston. I did the shopping today. This weekend’s dinner will be Maine-raised roast beef, potatoes and carrots roasted in one pan, cranberry sauce from berries I bought at the Maine Harvest Festival last month, rolls and a pie or two. We don’t see Steve’s side of the family often enough so I’m looking forward to spend the day with them. They live on the coast in a part of Maine that’s very different than our heavily forested area. It will be nice to get caught up while we chat around the fire. Conversation will cover what Kristin and Taylor are doing, what Erica, Pauly and I will be growing in our gardens next year, and how many deer we saw but didn’t shoot this past hunting season.

Our third Christmas dinner will be the smallest and quietest, and we’ll have it on Christmas day. Our days of getting up dark and early to see what Santa left in the girls’ stockings is over. Oh Santa still fills their stockings but at 19 and 28 years old, they value sleep more now than when they were much younger. We’ll open presents, clean up the paper, stick bows on the cats, listen to the dogs squeak their new toys a million times, and then dinner will go into the oven. I bought a ham today. I miss the days when our Christmas ham came from our own pig. Sweet potatoes will bake alongside the ham. I’ll make mashed potatoes, a winter squash, rutabaga, warm bread with local butter, pies, and we’ll have Christmas cookies and fudge.

Homemade whole wheat honey bread.

None of the Christmas dinners I served this year are fancy, or expensive, and certainly not gourmet. They are filling and hardy, and while they’re an important part of our time with our families, it is our families who matter most. My 2013 resolution is to spend more time with family. Now seems like a good time start.

As I planned our dinner I was reminded of how much of these meals were purchased rather than coming from our homestead this year. I’m not happy about this. That’s unusual. It’s a good reminder of why I need…and want…to spend more time in the garden next year. A smaller garden this year was nice but it’s time to get back to work. I’ll write more about that later when I write my annual “varieties” column early next year.

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Thankfulness and Gratitude

November 24, 2012 Agriculture, Birds, Black Bear, English shepherd, Farmers Market, Food, Greenhouse, high tunnel, hoop house, Growing Fruit, Nature, Small Farming, Whitetail deer, Wild Harvesting, Wildlife in Maine, Writing

At the end of the Thanksgiving weekend and beginning of the Christmas season, I have much to be thankful for.

It started with the makings of a Christmas wreath. It was 45* last Sunday afternoon. The air was still and the sky clear. I found a clean, empty grain bag in the shed and called to Ava, our English shepherd. “Let’s go tipping.” She, of course, knows nothing of tipping. She’s a dog. Ava is energetic and enthusiastic and will follow me anywhere. She’s a good companion in the woods. We walked to the back left corner of our open three acres of land, followed the grassy trail Steve keeps bush hogged, and onto another cleared trail. The second trail trail was made by a skidder in the winter of 1996/97 when our land, not ours at the time, was last logged. The ruts are deep and collect water, making small pools where wood frogs lay their eggs in the spring.

Ava explored while I walked from tree to tree, down the old rock wall that fell over long before we bought the land, snapping off the tips of balsam trees. I’m thankful for My Creative Diva’s interest in a how-to article on Christmas wreaths. This led me to thinking about the choice I made to give up market farming to pursue writing full time. It could have gone both ways, and thankfully it has gone well. I love what I do and I’ve had a good year. “Paying my dues,” is a phrase I’ve repeated many times in the past year. Without a college degree to prove my worth, I have to pay my dues. Mind you, I know a few college educated people holding writing degrees who can’t write a grocery list, but they’re worthy because they are educated. I’ve been paying my dues and I’m not for one second complaining. I’ve enjoyed the hard work.

Tipping is mindless work; snap the branch off in the right place with my right hand, pile tips on my left arm until I can’t balance them, place the pile on the ground. I go back to get them when I think I have enough to fill the grain bag. There’s a lot of peaceful time to think when I’m tipping.

I’m a little thankful that I miss being a market farmer. It means I enjoyed my work. I’m thankful that I still have two of the three high tunnels that I’ll continue to use to feed my family.

My land is nothing special, but at the same time, it is. I’m thankful that I can feed my family from my 45 acres. We have wild blackberries, raspberries and strawberries growing on our land. There aren’t a lot of any of them but I can make a batch of jam or jelly and eat the fruit fresh. The land supports cherry and apple trees that provide us with fruit, and apricot, peach and plum trees that will produce in a few years. I enjoy the wild mushrooms I pick each summer and fall. Snowshoe hare, partridge and bear give me opportunities to hunt on my own land. I can hunt for deer here but there are very few.

Even in dry years, my piece of land provides water. Natural springs dot a large portion of land close to the house. We can snowshoe to one particularly productive spring, lower a bucket through an opening in the four foot deep snow and pull up fresh, clean water. We’d melt snow first, but I’m thankful for the option.

A large medical bill nagged at us soon after we bought the land. Steve borrowed a skidder. Talk about something to be thankful for—friends who have skidders and generously let us use one when needed. I learned to drive a skidder during the cedar cut. I’m thankful I didn’t hurt myself or break anything. I did turn the skidder into a unicorn when I drove over a 10′ log that somehow, through a series of magical moves as far as I can tell, speared itself to the front of the skidder and stuck up at an angle. Steve thought I’d probably driven the skidder enough and took over. I agreed. He cut cedar trees, sold them to a local sawmill and paid the bill in full. Forty-two of our 45 acres are wooded. We can heat our home with wood from our woodlot if necessary.

This Christmas wreath has sprigs of cedar and pine wrapped in. It smells beautiful and will last well past Christmas day.

The balsam I harvest comes from wild trees I managed to supply the tons of tips I used to make thousands of Christmas wreaths. It’s been a good source of income at the end of the growing season, and one I can fall back on at any time. The cedar and pine I tuck into wreaths and the cones from the white pine trees I decorate with also grow here.

I’m thankful for all I’ve learned about nature here. I’ve learned wildlife tracks, habitat and habits. Dead trees provide homes for three kinds of woodpeckers that I can watch when they start peeking out of the tree in preparation for leaving the nest.

For our family and friends, our careers, the food on our table, warmth in our home, clothes on our backs, my 10 year old reliable vehicle, and the freedoms we’ve chosen, I am thankful.

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Maine Harvest Festival

November 24, 2012 Agriculture, Eat local, Food

The second annual Maine Harvest Festival took place on November 10-11, 2012 in the Bangor Auditorium and Civic Center. People lined up outside before the doors opened Sunday morning while the aroma of wood smoke from Pizza Pie on the Fly’s wood fired ovens and barbecue from Nostrano filled the air. Pizza Pie on the Fly offered pizza to eat there or take home later, after the show ended. Nostrano offered pulled pork, briskets, two kinds of ribs, smoked Atlantic salmon and a variety of sauces. Nostrano, translated from Italian to mean “local” and “ours” describes their fare well.

Pizza Pie on the Fly

According to Judi Perkins, the festival’s organizer, attendance doubled from last year by Saturday. Admission is only $5. “It’s affordable so everyone can attend,” Perkins said. “They’re receptive to five dollars. People come mostly from northern, coast and central Maine, some from southern Maine, and I know some came from other New England states. Attendance was in the thousands but I don’t have the final count yet.” Aisles were wide to provide plenty of room to move through vendor booths and were still packed.

This is the second and last year the Maine Harvest Festival will take place in the Bangor Auditorium and Civic Center. According to Perkins, “The Cross Insurance Center will open in the fall this year and we’ll be one of the first shows in the new facility next year. I haven’t seen it yet. The festival will be able to expand next year because of this new facility. It won’t get too big, though. It will stay with the focus being on customers and vendors.”

Education is a large part of the Maine Harvest Festival. All of the demo spots were filled with cooking demonstrations, each complete with samples for those who attended. “We’re always open to new ideas for demonstrations. If someone has a suggestion of what they’d like to see next year they should get in touch with me.” Abby Freethy, owner of Northwoods Gourmet Girl in Greenville explained what she was doing step-by-step as she cooked. The Civic Center smelled so good by the time she was half way through the demonstration that stomachs were growling. St. Joseph’s Healthcare provided food and nutrition education and served pumpkin risotto. From their vendor booth, they offered samples of pumpkin waffles.

Also included in education were Maine Dairy & Nutrition Council, Maine Departments of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Rural Development and Natural Resource & Conservation Service, the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, Maine Public Broadcasting Network, Maine Alternative Agriculture Association and Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association.

Eastern Maine Community College’s demonstration included tea-sized appetizers, entrees and desserts using 100% Maine-grown ingredients.

“Education and relationships are important” said Perkins. “Vendors provided locally grown food to demonstrators.” Senator Susan Collins and Dana Moos, author of The Art of Breakfast cooked together while Senator Collins wore an apron made by custom apron vendor Yo Momma’s Apron Strings. Pairings served lunch made with local ingredients provided by farm vendors while Evergreen provided live music to add to the already warm ambiance of the day.

Ninety percent of last year’s vendors returned for the 2012 Festival. Judi Perkins expects to retain 90 or more percent of the vendors for next year. “They’re already talking about next year.”

Baskets of Maine, Goodnight Farm

The harvest doesn’t include just food. This year, nine fiber farms and artists were added to the roster. Hatie Clingerman of Downeast Fiber Farm raises rambouillet sheep. In addition to wool, she’s currently spinning poodle hair for a private customer.

Down East Fiber Farm

Patricia Henner and her staff packed up a large portion of the items at Page Home & Farm Museum and moved it to the festival for the weekend. Displays such as a sap trough and other maple syrup equipment guided patrons from the door, down the hall and into the civic center. Photos of our farms of yesteryear lined the wall. Inside the Civic Center, spinning wheels for plant and animal fiber were on display. Looms were set up and ready to use with instruction from Henner and other volunteers. The corn shucker is a reminder of how much simpler the process has become for farmers on much larger equipment. “They started the spirit of the whole festival as you came in,” Judi Perkins said.

Sap trough, courtesy of Page Farm Museum

Six publishers suited to the harvest festival theme also attended as vendors. “The publishers were very happy with books sales,” said Perkins. “One of them sold more books here than a larger show elsewhere,” a good indication of Mainers’ love of cookbooks. Author Jennifer Wixson offered her book Hens and Chickens at her sister Cheryl Wixson’s booth, Chery Wixson’s Kitchen. Laurel Wixson, Cheryl’s daughter, served samples of foods created and cooked with Maine ingredients. “This butter is made from organic peaches and apples grown here in Maine,” Laurel said.

Brewers and wineries offered samples of their wares. Customers purchased bracelets that allowed four samples for $6 or eight samples for $10. While customers sampled, vendors gave advice on pairing their wines and beers with foods. “We had more wineries and brewers this year than last and expect more next year.

The $5 admission fee includes samples from many of the vendors. Candies, beef jerky and Soppressato, cow and goat cheeses, jams, jellies, sauces and desserts were available to everyone. I was pulled into Captain Mowatt’s by the samples served on tortilla chips.

Also included in the festival, Heart of Maine Symposium’s We Can Feed Maine: Why We Should and How We Go About It. John Jemison from University of Maine’s Orono campus spoke about the potential for much of Maine’s food being produced in state. Bob Neal, co-owner of The Turkey Farm along with wife Marilyn, spoke of the ability to raise enough poultry for the 1.3 million people who live in Maine. Large-scale organic production was explained by Meg Scott, owner of Nature’s Circle Farm, and Bob Burr of Blue Ribbon Farm spoke on year-found greens production. John O’Donnell of O’Donnell’s Farm covered heart-healthy grassfed beef.

Judi Perkins looks forward to next year’s Maine Harvest Festival and once again working with Mike Dwyer and his staff. She says they’ve been invaluable over the past two years as she put together the first and second of what’s certain to be a long-standing event.

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Slaughtering Day for the Meat Chickens

November 14, 2012 Agriculture, Eat local, English shepherd, Food, Homestead, Poultry, Putting Food Up, Small Farming

It was cold the day we killed the chickens. Steve finished a few projects he’d been working on outside while I did some housework and cooking. With those tasks done, we could concentrate on the birds. I put the dogs in the house. Ava, our English Shepherd, spent a lot of time with “her” birds, and I didn’t know how protective she’d be of them when they squawked as we picked them up or when they were killed. She has epilepsy, and stress and anxiety induce seizures.

9 1/2 week old Cornish Rock meat chickens

These 9 1/2 week old meat chickens are full grown. The roosters were starting to crow.

Steve found a large, heavy firewood log that hadn’t been split yet. He pounded two large nails into the top, outside edge of the log to serve as the chopping block. The chickens should die instantly, not be wounded. The nails serve as a holder for the bird’s head.

The chopping block, equipped to hold the chicken still.

Nine and a half weeks’ worth of time put into raising the chickens ended quickly. Steve set the chopping block down by the high tunnel. The first chicken squawked and flapped for a few seconds before it relaxed. He carried it to the block, put its head on the outside of the two nails, picked up the ax and with one small swing, cut off the bird’s head. Its wings flapped violently for three or four seconds. When they slowed, he placed the carcass on its back to bleed out.

I handed him one of the two birds I was holding, he killed it, and I handed him the next one. While he killed that one, I retrieved two more chickens from the high tunnel. With five birds ready to be butchered, we headed to the makeshift table.

We don’t eat the heart, liver or gizzard. We don’t know anyone who wants these organs so we no longer gut the birds. It’s kind of a shame we don’t like them but they don’t go to waste so I don’t feel bad about not using them. More about that later.

The air temperature was 40* and the breeze blew. I dislike butchering in warm weather so the cool day was most welcome.

I cut the bottom half of the legs off at the joint. They’re supposed to be great for chicken stock but I’m not able to get past the fact that they step in manure. I dropped them into the offal bucket. I cut the skin open from the bottom of the breast to the top and pulled it away from the meat. It takes a bit of strength to move the skin from the legs. I remove the skin before cooking chicken so there’s no point in going to the trouble of plucking the carcasses. I pushed the bird down the table to Steve. He removed the leg and thigh quarter as one piece, then fileted the breast meat from the bone. That’s it; that bird is done. The meat goes into a large bowl until I’m done with my portion of the work and move it into the cooler filled with 45* well water and a block of ice where it will cool. We worked through five chickens in a half hour, picking up speed with each bird.

Tammy, a friend of mine, arrived to help us at the end of the fifth bird. We caught five birds, handing them one at a time to Steve. I removed the bottom half of the legs, Tammy cut the skin and pushed it back out of the way, and pushed the carcass down to Steve. We had ten birds finished. On the third trip to the chopping block, Steve asked for seven birds, about half of the 15 left.

With the skin removed from the breast, the meat is easy to remove from the carcass.

It takes about 30 seconds to remove both halves of the breast meat.

It took two and a half hours to kill and butcher 25 birds. The roosters were impressively large weighing between 9.5 to 10.5 pounds each. The hens were seven to eight pounds each (live weight). We had more roosters than hens. I hoped for 100 pounds of meat and was very pleased with the end total of 117 pounds.

When the chicks arrived as three day old fluff balls they were kept in a plastic bin in the house. They had a heat pad for warmth. The moved outside to grass during the day and came in at night. I was eager to get them out of the house. They moved to a chicken tractor, then the high tunnel. The weather was unstable for part of the time they were in the tunnel so I had to be careful to open the doors to let the breeze cool the tunnel. There were days warm enough to make it hot inside the tunnel so the birds were outside on grass and in the garden. In the end, most days were cool and cloudy. I opened the doors on each end for air circulation and to let them out, and they often stayed inside if I gave them food. If I didn’t give them food they went out to eat but returned the extra warmth of the tunnel. The high tunnel made my work very easy. It was nice to not move the tractor twice a day at the end when they were at their biggest and messiest stage.

I let the dogs out when we finished. Ava sniffed around the table where we’d cleaned the birds, and had no interest in going to the high tunnel to see that the birds were gone. She seemed to already know. She didn’t look for them. Our morning routine involved tending the meat chickens first, then the laying hens and turkeys, then the ducks and bantam chickens. Ava rounded the corner of the shed and raced to the tunnel first each morning. She hasn’t done it since the birds were killed. We killed chickens a month after we got her as a pup and again last year. As a two year old in her third season of working with meat chickens, she remembered how this works. She’s an excellent asset to our homestead.

The meat was cooled overnight, drained and packed in Food Saver and Ziplock freezer bags. I used quart Ziplocs that are made to prevent freezer burn. A small hand pump sucks the air out of the bag. The Ziploc bags are easier and faster to use than Food Saver bags (which you have to make individually). If they work as well in the freezer at preventing freezer burn I will use Ziploc exclusively next year.

This is the first year in many years (I don’t remember how many.) that we didn’t lose any birds to predators. It was by far the easiest, most successful year we’ve had with meat chickens.

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Preparing for Slaughtering Day

October 29, 2012 Eat local, English shepherd, Food, Poultry

Nine week old meat chickens.

Previously published in Lancaster Farming.

It’s almost here. I marked October 28 on the calendar as butchering day for the meat chickens that arrived as three-day old chicks in late August. This has been one of the easiest groups of meat birds I’ve ever raised. The unusually cold nights have evened out and the birds have grown large enough to deal with the cold. Keeping them cool enough is a bigger challenge. I have to open the tunnel up for air circulation and let them out before the daytime temperature starts to climb.

We started with 26 chicks. One died not too long after they arrived. The remaining 25 have thrived. They’re so big now that they waddle but they’ve been moving so much every day that their legs and hearts are strong. I refer to them as “the birdzillas” now. As soon as they see me walking with a bucket they waddle toward me as fast as they can. Buckets mean food and water, both of which they’re always glad to see.

The chickens have done a good job of cleaning up weeds growing in the potato section of the garden. They weren’t far behind my husband and nephew the day they started digging potatoes, and ate earthworms and insects. They’ve also done a remarkable job of stripping seeds from grasses. They never wander too far.

Ava herds any stragglers in before dark. There were a few that wanted to stay outside for the night but she broke them of that quickly. We are diligent about having them closed in safely before the raccoons and skunks are out for the night to avoid losses. A barred owl spends a lot of time in woods right behind the house and would be well fed for many days on birds this size.

The high tunnel I’m using this year is being re-purposed as an arbor for the grapes next year. It’s been very convenient and certainly kept the birds safer with less work than the chicken tractor does. I’m going to have to figure out a better plan for next year after having it so easy this year.

I’ll be shopping tomorrow for supplies. The rolls of Food Saver bags are almost empty. I need one roll of the largest bags available, and two rolls of smaller bags. I hope the largest bags are big enough to hold whole roasters. If not, I’ll have to figure out something else. The birds will be frozen up to a year; I don’t want them to get freezer burned. The smaller bags are used for pieces. We leave most of the thighs and legs together and put two in a package. About half of the breast halves are packaged together, the other half individually for convenience. A half breast is enough for chicken fajitas and sandwiches for just the two of us. I miss the ease and convenience of the zipper storage bags that allowed air to be pulled out. There’s a new one on the market, and I’ll give it a try, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in it. I’ll try it on a few packages and wait to see how well it works.

I need a new marker that will write on the packages and not smudge. Sharpies have always done well for me. Next on the list, two rolls of paper towels. We’ll use a lot of them to keep the butchering table neat and clean. (The chickens will be slaughtered away from the butchering table.) Nitrile gloves are a must-have. My hands get cold quickly. Keeping them covered with thin gloves keeps them warmer and lets me still feel what I’m doing. I’ll buy a new garden sprayer for the hose. The current sprayers have been on the ground and aren’t clean enough to use in meat processing. The new sprayer will be run through the dishwasher.

The coolers will be brought up from end-of-summer storage, scrubbed inside and out, and disinfected with a 10% bleach spray. Our well water is around 45*. We’ll cool the meat in one cooler before moving it to other coolers to store overnight on ice. I’ll do the packaging when I get in from deer hunting Monday morning.

The chest freezer will be cleaned out, defrosted and repacked between now and butchering day. We still have chickens left from last year that need to be placed in the top basket of the freezer to be sure we use them first.

Steve will sharpen the knives and ax, and prepare a new chopping block. He puts two spikes into the block to hold the chicken’s head in place.

I’ll feed the chickens for the last time on Saturday morning. They won’t get their usual pail of food late in the day Saturday. It’s easier to keep a clean work area if the birds have empty digestive tracts. They’ll have all of the water they need. If it’s not too warm on Saturday, they’ll stay in the tunnel so that they don’t fill up on grass.

I’m not looking forward to the work, and will be very glad when it’s done. It hasn’t taken a lot of time or effort to raise what I expect to be more than 100 pounds of meat for the freezer.

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Meat Chickens – Five Weeks

October 26, 2012 Agriculture, English shepherd, Food, Putting Food Up

Raising meat chickens isn’t very exciting or interesting after the newness wears off. They’re cute at first, then not as cute as their feathers fill in. By the time they’re feathered out, which has happened with the five week old birds, cute is out the window. They’ve been demoted to something on my daily to do list. This is how I make the separation between the chickens here temporarily, being raised as food, and the laying hens that are here for several years. These are not birds to get attached to. I treat them respectfully and take good care of them but they won’t see me often in the next four or five weeks.

The birds are five weeks old and average three pounds each. I’m happy with their growth. It’s not so fast that they’re going to have leg problems and not so slow that I’ll have to keep them into November.

The chicks have been kept in the chicken tractor unless the weather is bad.

There isn’t any chance of skipping a day of moving the chicken tractor. These birds, Cornish x Rock, are poop machines. As soon as the grass dries in the morning the tractor is moved sideways to fresh grass. I move the front, the back and then the front again. It takes about a minute. The chickens are in and out of the tractor during the day. I put their food in the tractor but their water outside to help keep them moving. A tarp is zip tied to the tractor. It covers about two-thirds of the tractor to provide shade and protection from the rain. At night, we add another tarp to cover most of the tractor to help them stay warm and safer. There’s enough open area to allow air flow.

The base of the tractor is made of 2” x 6”s. Ten foot PVC pipes are attached to both long sides of the base with U brackets and form a Quonset-shaped frame. The frame is covered with coated wire to add support and stability, and keeps the tarp from sagging. It’s tall enough for chickens and turkeys.

U clamps are used to attach pvc pipe to boards to form the frame of top of the chicken tractor.

Something interesting but unfortunate happened when the chicks were four weeks old. I told Ava to put the chickens in the high tunnel. We were going to have three days of rain; the tunnel is the best place for them in bad weather. The birds are used to her being with them and will follow her around. She moved the first 20 in a few minutes while I cleaned and filled chicken, duck and turkey waterers. I didn’t see chickens out but a head count in the tunnel showed only 20 birds inside. “Ava, bring me the chickens.” She went to an old chicken tractor off to the side, waiting to be dismantled. I don’t know if Ava put the birds in there or if they went in on their own. Ava refused to go in and herd them out. She’s stubborn but she enjoys working. It’s not like her to refuse to move the birds. I leaned in to pick one up and heard the distinct hum of an angry yellow jacket. I put the dogs in the house, safely away from the nest, to avoid making the situation worse.

The yellow jacket nest was out of sight when the tractor was upright.

One of the chickens had been stung and was trembling in the far corner. It gasped for breath. I was sure it was going to die. I sprayed the flying yellow jackets and as much of the nest as I could see. When the four loose birds were safe and sound in the tunnel I returned to the tunnel to retrieve the dying, or by then, dead bird. It was not only alive, it ran away from me. I caught it, took it to the tunnel and put it down. It fell over, gasping again, and looking like it was on the verge of dying. I checked on it several times before the rain started. It alternated between gasping and dust baths. I’ve never seen a bird as dirty as this one. I don’t know the significance of the dirt bath or that it helped the bird in anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to tell it apart from the rest of the chickens if it hadn’t still been dirty. It made a full recovery.

We’re planning to butcher the chickens on October 28, before we get busy with deer hunting. It seems like a long time but the first five weeks passed quickly; these five weeks will too.

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Meat Chickens – Three Weeks Old

October 25, 2012 Agriculture, English shepherd, Food, Greenhouse, high tunnel, hoop house, Poultry, Putting Food Up, Small Farming

Ava’s charges, also known as the meat chicks, have been here for three weeks. They’ve grown from tiny yellow puffballs weighing in the neighborhood of two ounces to an average of 15 oz. Yes, I weighed a few. I was curious. They’re 20 days old as I write this and are growing well.

Ava herds the chicks out of the tractor.

The chick starter I’m feeding the meat birds is powdery. I dislike it a lot but it’s the only starter available locally. By locally, I mean within 50 miles. The dust floats through the air and creates a film on everything in spite of the air purifier a few feet from the chicks’ bin. And, they stink. Before I had all of the newspapers under them changed they’d already pooped on the fresh papers. It was too cool at night to leave them outside. I’ve shuffled my poultry around to avoid a chicken and duck-killing skunk until I can catch it. Having the chicks in the barn wasn’t an option. I moved them to the enclosed sun porch.

Two days after moving them to the sun porch, I moved them to the small high tunnel. They’re outside all day every day with the exception of one rainy day. We got 4.5 inches of rain in 18 hours. During the day they chicks are on grass. They’re closed into the tunnel in late afternoon. They sun warms the tunnel. At sunset, I move them into the plastic bin, place the cover upside (so it can’t clip on and suffocate them) on top of the bin, and they’re toasty warm in the morning.

This is a lot of extra work. I probably should have ordered them a month earlier. Next year. I’ll remember this next year and avoid the constant chick shuffle.

At this point, extra work excluded, the chicks are still very easy to care for. I started with 26 and still have 25. The chick with black spots didn’t look good one morning and was dead a few hours later. It happens.

During the day I feed and water them, count them to be sure none have squeezed out, and walk away. These are meat birds. They’ll always be well cared for but they’re not pets. It’s important to be very clear in the difference between the barnyard hen that lays eggs and stays a few years, or maybe her entire life, and the birds that are here approximately eight weeks.

Ava keeps the chickens safe from predators.

If you’re familiar with raising Cornish rock crosses or similar breeds in backyards, you’ve probably heard how gross, dirty, disgusting, fill-in-the-blank they are. I raised them that way the first year. I kept food and water in front of them all the time. They had room to roam but with unlimited food, they had no need to get up and move. They really were repulsive. The following year was better. I took their food away from them in the evening, leaving only their water. They were less disgusting. I made more changes the third year. I put up a portable fence around the tractor, opened the door and let them roam during the day. And roam they did because they were hungry. I fed them in the morning to help with morning chill. They were fed again in early evening to get them to go back into the tractor without having to be herded in by one of the farm dogs. They spent the day chasing grasshoppers, beetles and other insects. Just like “normal” chickens, they took dust baths. They behaved like the laying hens. I let them into the portions of the garden not being used. It’s a great set up. They scratched up grubs, ate weed seeds and deposited manure. As soon as they’re full feathered out, the tractor is moved to the garden when the soil is dry enough. They’re moved back to grass before rainy days.

Twenty five chicks have eaten 50 pounds of food in three weeks, plus whatever they’re finding on their own in the grass. They’re still too small to manage grasshoppers alone but a few chicks competing for the same one can catch it and pull it apart by fighting over it. It takes effort on their part but eventually the grasshoppers they catch become a meal.

Ava helps me in the evening by herding the chicks. She brings them to me to move into the bin for transfer to the high tunnel. She stays nearby and checks on them often during the day. When they’re old enough to be turned loose into a large area, she’ll spend several hours inside the fence with them. The rest of the day, she’ll be outside the fence to chase away hawks, eagles, late-migrating turkey vultures and anything else she thinks is a threat to her birds. I’ve corrected her twice for picking up uncooperative chicks to bring to me. She used to drag a mean rooster around by a leg when he didn’t cooperate. I stopped that habit but could see she was still tempted. He was mean so…well…off with his head. Problem solved then. I’ll probably have to remind her to “let it be” a few more times. She’s stubborn.

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Tips and Hints for Campfire Cooking

October 9, 2012 Campfire Cooking, Camping, Cooking

Cooking over a campfire has the same effect as having someone else cook a meal for you – the food tastes better. That little bit of change is nice. The combination of cast iron, wood smoke in the air and the great outdoors naturally go together.

Campfire Cooking, making Maine Guide Coffee

Photo courtesy of Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife

Everyone can learn to cook on a campfire. Start simple and add new dishes as you get comfortable. Can’t build a campfire in your yard at home? That’s ok! You can cook in your driveway using charcoal briquettes.

Hints & Tips

You can duplicate the oven temperature called for in recipes by using the proper number of charcoal briquettes on top of and beneath your Dutch oven. Each briquette adds 15* to 25* of heat. If the breeze is blowing you’ll need a few extra briquettes.

It’s better to cook with lower heat for a longer time than to use too much heat and burn your food.

This chart gives you the number of briquettes needed on top and under the Dutch oven to hold the temperature for approximately an hour. Warm/hot days will extend the time, cool/windy days will decrease the time.

Have hot briquettes ready to add at the right time if necessary, or add cold self-igniting briquettes to the hot briquettes at the 45 minute mark.

Baking the frittata on charcoal.

This chart includes temperatures and methods for using charcoal with a Dutch oven.

For roasting, use half on bottom, half on top.

For stewing, use one-quarter on bottom, three-quarters on top.

For boiling, all heat on bottom.

8” Dutch oven

350* – 10 on top, 6 on bottom
375* – 11 on top, 6 on bottom
400* – 12 on top, 6 on bottom
450* – 14 on top, 6 on bottom

10″ DUTCH OVEN:

350* – 14 on top, 7 on bottom
375* – 16 on top, 7 on bottom
400* – 17 on top, 8 on bottom
450* – 19 on top, 10 on bottom

12″ DUTCH OVEN:

350* – 17 on top, 8 on bottom
375* – 18 on top, 9 on bottom
400* – 19 on top, 10 on bottom
450* – 22 on top, 11 on bottom

Moist meals are usually the easiest for beginners. Before you bake bread in your Dutch oven, try a soup, stew or chili.

Hot coals are easier to cook over than an open flame.

Choose Dutch ovens with legs. They’re stackable. Legs allow air flow below the oven so that the coals don’t suffocate.

When cooking over an open flame, use a grate supported on rocks or bricks, or a tripod. The tripod allows the pot to hang over the flames.

Unless you’re searing or sauteing, start with a cold pan or oven. Food is less likely to stick and will warm up evenly.

When stacking, put the meal that needs the least heat on the bottom. Desserts are usually fine cooking longer at lower heat. Use your center oven for roasts. Place soups and stews that can take extra heat without burning on top. Get used to cooking with one oven, and then add a second. Got that figured out? Add a third. If necessary, move your ovens around half way through. I add two or three extra briquettes or coals to the top of an oven before adding the next oven. It takes extra heat to warm the cool cast iron before cooking starts.

For messy meals like sticky desserts or breads that might not lift out well, line the oven with foil. Use one large sheet of foil so that liquids don’t get lost between the foil and cast iron.

Flip the lid over and you have a skillet.

Use heavy duty foil for foil packs.

If you don’t have a gravel driveway or safe ground surface for charcoal briquettes, burn the briquettes on an old cookie sheet. Raise the cookie sheet up on bricks to avoid charring wood or leaving marks on concrete. Convenient, and cleanup is easy.

Want to grill but don’t have a frame? Build a stone frame that is narrower than your grill. Build the fire inside the stones. When the coals are ready, place your grill on the rocks. No need to carry extra equipment when nature will provide it for you. I prefer perking coffee on the grill so that I don’t let it boil over and put out coals.

SAFETY: If the wind is blowing enough to blow a spark, get out the Coleman stove.

Easy Fruit Cake

2 cans of sliced fruit with juice
1 cake mix, your choice of flavors

To ease cleanup, line the Dutch oven with foil.

Pour both cans of fruit and all of the juice into a cold 10” to 12” Dutch oven. Evenly pour the dry cake mix over the fruit. Smooth out, pushing a little more cake mix to the edges than the middle for even cooking.

Place the lid on the oven, the oven on the coals, more coals on top, and bake for 30-45 minutes.

Vegetable, Beef & Barley Soup

Choose and prepare your vegetables. Solid vegetables such as carrots should be cut into bite sized pieces to ensure thorough cooking.

Brown beef in a hot Dutch oven. Drain the fat. Be sure to put the fat in a safe place to avoid attracting bears and other wildlife. If you’re using lean meat like venison or moose, there’s no need to brown first. Cooking the meat with the other ingredients helps add flavor you’d lose to browning.

Mix ingredients the same as when you’re cooking on the stove at home. Preparation is the same; the cooking method is the only difference.

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Campfire Cuisine

October 8, 2012 Campfire Cooking, Camping, Cooking, Outdoors

Campfire Cuisine. Is it as fancy as it sounds? Yes and no. It’s time consuming but simple once you get the hang of cooking on a fire. And it’s delicious. The same meal cooked indoors just isn’t as tasty as food cooked outdoors. The combination of cast iron, fresh air, wood smoke and atmosphere can’t be beat.

I was privileged to work with a Maine Guide and Lou Falank, an outdoors and primitive skills educator at BOW’s (Becoming an Outdoors-Woman) Introductory Skills Weekend. We led a workshop on campfire cooking early Saturday morning. We finished at 11:30 am and lunch was served at noon. I was so full I didn’t make it to lunch.

Maine Guide coffee: Mix coffee grounds with an egg… Photo courtesy of Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife

The morning started off by meeting Steve in the parking lot at 6:45. We carried our equipment up the rocked stairwell to our site under a tipi. With a few minutes to spare, the three of us had time to talk. If I have half of Lou’s knowledge and woods wisdom in my lifetime I’ll be satisfied.

We started with Maine Guide coffee. I looked forward to this coffee for weeks. The grounds were measured out then mixed with an egg, including the shell. The shell eliminates some of the acidity. When the coffee is done, the grounds and egg are removed in one piece. I had the last of the coffee and was amazed to find only a few grounds in the bottom of my cup. Honestly, the mass of egg and grounds is unappetizing to look at but you quickly forget about it after one sip of coffee. It’s worth mentioning so that nobody is turned off by the grounds when they make it the first time. Do it! It’s excellent coffee. If you’re buying a pot, get one with a metal handle to avoid melting it the fire. We used my pot on the Coleman stove to keep it whole.

Making Breakfast Fritatta over a campfire

Eggs, onion and seasoning were on the ingredient list for breakfast frittata. Photo courtesy of Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.

About half of the class baked a frittata for breakfast. We (I say “we” lightly. Participants did all the work.) used moose breakfast sausage, onion, bell pepper, seasoning and a dozen eggs. The meat was so lean it didn’t need to be browned prior to mixing the ingredients together. Good flavors aren’t lost to browning and make the frittata that much more delicious.

Moose sausage, ready for the rest of the ingredients.

It’s impossible for everyone to build a campfire at home. With that in mind, it is possible to cook outdoors using charcoal. We placed charcoal briquettes on a cookie sheet to keep the lighter fluid and flames off the dry pine needles and leaves. The top of the Dutch oven has a lip perfect for holding briquettes. The number of briquettes under and on top of the oven to reach 350* depends upon the size of the oven. A 10” Dutch oven needs 14 briquettes on top and seven beneath to reach 350*. They’ll last about an hour, more than enough time to cook our frittata. The frittata was done in 25 minutes. There wasn’t a photographer at class when breakfast was ready and we ate it so quickly I don’t have a picture. Sorry!

Baking the frittata on charcoal. Photo courtesy of Tammy Lea Photography.

The other half of the class made baked beans. The beans were precooked to give them a head start. Our workshop wasn’t long enough to keep them at the fire starting with uncooked beans. The mixed beans, molasses, dry mustard, two pounds of pre-sliced salt pork, onions and other ingredients. They filled the Dutch oven and placed it beside the coals.

Next on the menu, soup with moose burger, seasonings, a few bouillon cubes for added flavor, carrots and barley. The ingredient list was limited for simplicity. At home I add corn, green beans, onions, garlic and anything else that sounds good at the time. I’d give you the recipe but I don’t use them. Some of this, a little of that… We didn’t brown the burger. Everything went into the Dutch oven; we added water for broth, put the cover on and nestled it against the coals.

Lou Falank taught us about hemlock and balsam teas. Photo courtesy of Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife.

Lou taught us how to make hemlock (no, not the poisonous kind) and white pine needle tea. He put water on to boil before showing us the proper way to harvest from the trees. The hemlock tips and pine needles steep in hot but not boiling water. I was surprised at how good both teas taste. I expected them to be bitter but that wasn’t the case. This is so simply and tasty that I’ll be making it here at home often. I can steep the tea in a pot on the back of the wood stove to have it ready all winter.

Hemlock twigs and pine needles steep in boiled water.

Back at the work table, participants kneaded bread in plastic zipper bags. They wrapped the dough around sticks and cooked it over an open flame. Delicious! Steve formed the extra dough into cakes and cooked them on a griddle, also delicious. They used a basic dough recipe that can easily be adapted to add different flavors.

Bread on a stick, baked beans and soup cook around the campfire. Photo courtesy of Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife

Campfire cooking is simple. Nothing has to be fancy or contain a long list of ingredients to be tasty and nutritious. It’s easiest for beginners to start with moist meals like soup and baked beans because they don’t burn. You Tube has a lot of instructional videos online.

I’ll post the handout on tips and hints tomorrow. It includes how many briquettes to use to create oven temperatures in the Dutch oven.

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Growing Cranberries in Maine

October 4, 2012 Agriculture, Eat local, Food, Growing Fruit, Homestead

This story originally appeared in Lancaster Farming in the fall of 2011. I spent a few hours with Kathy at her bog in Downeast Maine. It was a beautiful day. It was my first trip to a bog and I learned a lot.

Maine is an ideal place to grow cranberries. The soil is acidic, days are warm during the growing season and nights are cool. Natural springs fill ponds with fresh, clean water that can be pumped into bogs for watering and flooding.

It’s the third week of October and time to harvest the cranberries at LaPlant Family Bog. Kathy LaPlant and Sue Dall, who is an employee of Jasper Wyman & Sons, operated the water reel, referred to as “the buggy.” The women looked closely through an opening in the cranberries beneath them into the water for something that doesn’t appear to be there. Dall climbed off the buggy, looked into the water and deliberately moved her feet. LaPlant moved the buggy slightly back, then to the right while Dall kept looking. Dall climbed onto the buggy and they moved forward several feet. Dall picked up a pole from the back of the buggy and expertly jabbed it into the water with enough force to make it poke into the ground and stand straight up.

“Meet me down there!” LaPlant hollered over the noise of the water reel, motioning toward two pickup trucks parked further down the bog. As LaPlant and Dall slowly made their way toward me on the reeler, berries bobbed to the surface in a straight row behind them. A slight breeze blowing in the right direction pushed them to the end of the bog.

Kathy LaPlant and Sue Dahl harvest cranberries

Kathy LaPlant and Sue Dall work in LaPlant’s cranberry bog.

LaPlant and Dall backed the buggy up to shore, climbed down and started pulling plant matter out of the reel. “We were looking for the edge of yesterday’s work so that we could start again. We go over the berries twice. We go over the first row to get started then go over half that row again and start the next one at the same time. The poles mark where we’ve been so we know where we need to go,” LaPlant explained. Reeling the five acre bog takes a day and a half.

“Someone came in to do the dry harvesting for me last week. He used a machine for the first time. It’s much faster than raking them. In four hours he harvested 35 totes. That’s pretty good with the learning curve,” explained LaPlant. Totes were stacked at the cottage. When the wet harvest is finished in a couple of days LaPlant will clean the dry berries. “The dry cranberries are the ones you see in bags at the store. They last longer than the berries that get wet.”

The cranberries are huge and beautiful. There aren’t many white berries floating on the water. “They need warm, sunny days and cool nights,” Dall said. When they don’t get enough sun they ripen but they don’t turn dark red.” Dall broke a white cranberry in half to show the dark seeds in the center, an indication of ripeness. With 11 years of experience with cranberries, Sue Dall is a walking encyclopedia.

Cranberries float on top of the water

LaPlant added, “They use the white cranberries to make white cranberry juice.” The bog is half full of water during reeling. When reeling is complete, LaPlant fills the bog to have it ready for booming.

“The majority of cranberry growers are women out here,” said Kathy LaPlant. “The men grow blueberries and the women started growing cranberries. I thought if they’re doing it, I can do this too.” LaPlant manages LaPlant Family Bog, one of the aspects of her family’s business.

“When I started with this, cranberries were more lucrative than they are now,” she said with a slight frown.

The five acre cranberry bog

The LaPlants were harvesting trees on land owned by Murray LaPlant, Inc, the family business, when Kathy LaPlant was considering growing cranberries. “They had the heavy equipment out here thinning the red pine stand so it was convenient. They cleared this space. For a while it looked like a desert. They dug the bog and hauled in sand, installed the pipes and sprinklers. When the Tonka play was over and the fun stuff was done they left me all alone out here. I like it though.”

LaPlant lives at the bog for much of the growing season. It takes an hour and 15 minutes to drive from her home to the bog. During the coldest part of the season she has to be there to make sure the plants are protected from frost. “I turn on the sprinklers while it’s still dark and cover everything. It’s beautiful when the sun comes up. It looks like crystals when the bed is frozen.”

Kathy LaPlant untangles weeds and vines from the reeler.

“The first time I saw it I thought I’d killed everything,” Dall said. “I called and said I didn’t know what I did but I killed them. They said it was supposed to be that way. Now I think it’s beaitful. You can’t get it in a picture, the light is never good enough.”

“I used to sleep in my truck,” LaPlant explained. Then Murray gave me a camper. Let me tell you something. I hate mice. I walked into the camper one day and there were four mice on the sticky trap. I slept in the truck again.” Murray LaPlant was Kathy’s father-in-law and the founder of the family business. “I asked Murray if I could sell the camper for the same amount it costs to buy one of those buildings the Amish in Smyrna make, could I buy one? He said yes so that’s what I did. Mice don’t get into the cottage because there’s no plumbing holes. There’s no way for them to get in.”

LaPlant provides food for workers during the harvest. They can go into her cottage to change into dry clothes, warm up and sit down to eat. The cottage is rustic, primitive and very cozy, especially for a building that has no indoor plumbing. The lights and heat are fueled by propane. It’s small enough for the heat generated by the propane lights to keep her warm on a chilly evening. Although the bog is located close to a busy highway, the area is isolated. Tracks left by a wandering moose show how large he is. “One night I could hear him walking up to the cottage. It was during the rut and I thought I wasn’t having any of that right outside so I hit the panic button on the truck and scared him away.” LaPlant has a sharp wit and sense of humor.

“It was a lot of work getting this done. Natural springs fill the pond. We got the permit to use the water I need from the Department of Environmental Protection. It’s piped in there,” LaPlant said as she pointed to the area where water is controlled at the edge of the bog. “There are 160 sprinkler heads in the five acres. I water them when it doesn’t rain enough. A lot of people think cranberries grow in the water. Let’s get that straight now. They don’t grow in water. They’re watered like a crop and flooded when it’s time to harvest. When there’s going to be a frost I have to run the sprinklers to protect the berries and vines.”

“I use light chemicals. It’s not organic. If I had neighbors I’d have to notify them when I chemigate but since I don’t have neighbors that’s not a problem. I use chemicals for weeds and insects three times a year. I use them lightly, that’s why I still have some tall grass in places. My family eats these and I live and work in here so I’m careful.” Both concern for and pride in her product are evident in her voice. “I walk up and down the bog with 25 pounds of fertilizer in a hand-cranked spreader.” Her left arm holds an imaginary spreader while her right arm cranks its handle. Wyman’s buys these cranberries and tests them to be sure they’re safe before using them. LaPlant has been the top producer several years for farms in her size range.

“It used to be that the cranberries were all put together and used. Now they separate them and test them. That’s good. I want my name on my cranberries,” said LaPlant. “I’m proud of what I grow.”

Cranberries need to be pollinated so bees are brought in. “It’s good timing,” she explained. “The blueberries are pollinated before the cranberries. Wyman’s brings in bees for me and then when they’re all done the beekeeper comes to get them.”

LaPlant has the largest bog in the area. Other growers have larger total acreage but smaller bogs. One acre on the far end of the rectangular bog isn’t producing well. “It needs some work before spring. In the spring I’ll prune the vines and transplant them down there.” She grows the Stevens variety which she purchased from Wisconsin. They’re larger than other berries commonly grown in Maine.

Sue Dall explained parts of the water reel as she refilled the hydraulic oil. It’s a simple three-wheeled machine used to knock the cranberries off the vines. “The hydraulic system runs on vegetable oil. If there’s a leak during harvesting the berries are safe. It smells like french fries some times. We have to pull the plants out of the reel. She has some grass in here. One year we harvested in a hurricane. There were white caps and the wind blew us sideways.”

The bog is topped off with water when reeling is complete. The second part of harvest is spent gathering the cranberries. A leaf blower is used to blow them off the edge of the pond. Someone in the water rakes the cranberries away from the edge. The boom is put together, board by board, and maneuvered through the water to move the berries to one end of the bog. “This is the part of harvesting that people think of,” said LaPlant. “This is the part you see the most.”

On the final day, Wyman’s comes to get the cranberries. “They suck them up into a truck. The water goes out one way and the plants we missed go another and the cranberries are left in the truck.”

When the harvest is finished LaPlant spends time cleaning up and getting the bog ready for winter. It’s the last few days of peace and quiet in her cottage until spring comes.

Cranberries float to the end as they’re harvested, pushed by the breeze.

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I’m Back from Becoming and Outdoors Woman in Maine!

September 16, 2012 Campfire Cooking

Moose sausage for a breakfast fritata at Maine BOW Intro Skills Weekend

Moose sausage for a breakfast casserole cooked on a campfire at Maine BOW Intro Skills Weekend. Photo courtesy of Emily MacCabe, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife

I packed clothes for one hot, one warm and one cool day, then packed for another set of the same days to make sure I had enough. Dutch ovens-check. Folders, outline, paper, pens-check. Sleeping bag-check. I loaded the truck and headed to Camp Caribou on Pattee Pond in Winslow. I spent four days setting up, co-leading workshops and pitching in as a Friends of BOW board member and volunteer instructor at Becoming an Outdoors-Woman in Maine’s Introductory Skills Weekend. I’m tired tonight but still revved up from the weekend. It was fantastic.

I’ll write more soon. If tomorrow’s root canal goes well I’ll be in a tree stand with a Novocained face, waiting for my bear to wander in. If it doesn’t go well I’ll be back sooner than later to hold down the couch and tell you about my weekend.

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Ava and the Meat Chicks

September 10, 2012 Agriculture, English shepherd, Food, Poultry, Small Farming

August 25, 2012. The day Taylor, our youngest daughter, moved back to campus. Moving day is busy. We loaded the Jeep and put a few things in the truck and hit the road. Taylor left ahead of us to make a stop in Bangor. I waited for the phone to ring, but it didn’t. Someone calls to say “Come get them” or “Billy’s on his way by, he’ll drop them off,” but not this year. This year our mail is delivered through a different post office because of cutbacks.

My phone number was on the shipping label. I thought they’d call. They must not have come in. Would they survive until Monday?

We pulled into the drive late in the afternoon. “There they are,” Steve said. Instant relief. He picked up the box of loudly peeping chicks and set them down on the kitchen counter. Ava, our two year old English Shepherd, was ecstatic. She knows peeping means she has work to do. She stood on her back legs, right front foot pawing the air, wanting her chicks. I moved the box to the floor.

Ava tipped her head from side to side, ears perked up, and listened for a few second before the work of getting the box open began. She sniffed the top and sides of the box. She pushed it around the kitchen floor. She found the weak spot, a corner with a lip big enough to get her snout under. She pushed the box to the cupboard for stability, stuck her snout under the edge and pushed up the corner.

“Be easy,” I told her. “They’re babies, Ava. Be gentle.” Ava is an intense dog. She’s one of the two most intelligent dogs I’ve worked. She’s a thinker and a planner, and she’s stubborn. Give her an inch and she’s off on her own. Her way is usually better than mine. Ava has epilepsy. I can almost pinpoint when the changes in her brain started. Stress and anxiety induced seizures. A second medication got her back on track two months ago but I’m still careful to watch her anxiety level. This matters in our story.

Ava snuffled every chick she could reach inside the mostly closed box. A few of them got baths. Poor things weren’t even out of the box yet and they were dealing with an energetic dog that was excited about her 25 new charges. I know she isn’t going to hurt them. She’s very protective of her chickens, ducks and turkeys. And I know the chicks are fine. Ava does this every time we get poultry and they never panic. Maybe they don’t know she could eat them in one bite.

I brought the plastic tub into the house, lined it with newspaper and added food and water. I don’t use a heat lamp in the house. I know two people who lost their barns because of heat lamps. I put a heating mat I use for seed starting under the bin. One by one, I moved chicks to the tub. Ava sniffed each one. After three or four chicks were moved she’d go to the tub, stick her head in, look at them and return to the box. She spent the first six hours watching them. She likes order, and being a herding dog, she puts everything where I want them or where she thinks they belong. She nosed the chicks to one end of the tub. They got to know each other well.

Ava started to become anxious when she couldn’t keep 26 (they throw in an extra in case one doesn’t survive shipping) chicks in the “right” place. I changed their newspapers, took the food and water away and put the cover of the tub on, leaving enough room for fresh air to flow through. To be on the safe side, because she’s Ava and intense, I added a few objects to the lid to help persuade her to leave it be. She hasn’t had a seizure in two months. I want to keep it that way. She relaxed and went to her pillow in the corner. When I got up the next morning she was peeking through the open edge. I don’t know how long she’d been standing there. It was still dark and the chicks were asleep.

In the next few columns I’ll be writing about raising meat chickens in my backyard. It’s a simpler process than many folks realize. I’m sure Ava will turn up from time to time along with battles with raccoons and the resident skunk we’ve yet to trap.

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*My blog, Robin's Outdoors at Bangor Daily News

*On Fridays at Outdoors Women's Experiences.

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2013

Annual Down East Spring Birding Festival

May 24–27
I'll be guiding a bird walk on Telephone Road in Indian Township. For more info go to Down East Spring Birding Festival.

Campfire Cooking

June 22, 9 am.
I'll be leading a Campfire Cooking workshop for Washington County Community College, held at Greenland Point Center in Princeton.

BOW's Introductory Skills Weekend

September 13-15
I'll be co-leading a Campfire Cooking workshop on Saturday morning. On Sunday morning I'll co-lead Outdoors Writing & Blogging with Erin Merrill

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