From Blossoms...

It's bounty time here in Traverse City and I find myself busy, busy, busy.  I've been shucking corn, boiling tomatos, slicing cucumbers, picking blueberries, peaches and everything else that I can possibly find.  It's a bit of a mad house, in a way.  There is so much fresh food that is coming into season, that it is hard to find time for other things... like bathing! Like taking care of the doggie... oh well... winter is for that!

So, my sister and her daughter were up last weekend and we picked some peaches.  Okay, we picked a half bushel of white peaches and red havens. It took all of 20 minutes and our bushel was full of firm and luscious orangey peaches...  It was fun.  These gals should be farm hands...

 

I'm thinking of peach compote, peach pie, maybe peach and raspberry crisp... peach butter...

oh my...Here is a beautiful poem about the summer harvest...

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

Katie and Hotshot

Mmmmm... just who is nuzzling who here???
I love this picture of Katie... she loves this horse, and i think i can feel it here...

 Katie and Hot Shot are a new team.  And they are so much fun to watch.  In a nice, gentle harmony...

She rides with the wind.  Notice, he doesn't have a bit in his mouth.  She is balanced and upright while riding bareback.

On the way to Utah, via the Badlands and Steamboat Springs...

I'd been looking forward to our family vacation for a couple of months.
Our purpose was sentimental. We were going to deliver Jim's father's ashes to the family farm in Neola, Utah.

My mom decided last minute that a road trip/camping trip with Jim's side of the family sounded like a big adventure. So, she stuck out her thumb and we picked her up.  First stop... Spearfish Canyon and The Badlands.

We left early on Tuesday, mom and dog Tessie in the back seat.  We rode the car ferry over to Wisconsin and then headed west for Denver.  In Denver , we picked up The Vaughan's and met up with the other Horrocks family in Steamboat Springs, Co.

This is a wonderful picture that I did of Roan at our first campsite in Steamboat.

it was beautiful , at that first campsite... 

...to be continued...

Happy Eggster

I know, I know- I haven't been around… I've been hibernating.  That's what one does in the winter… and by the looks of it, I should still be sleeping away.  I can't believe it is April 20th and snowing!  Yes, the snow is beautiful... BUT IT DOESN'T BELONG HERE ANYMORE!

Oh well, I don't think anyone is listening. So, let's just forget about that for the moment.  In the mean time, in the spirit of spring, let's dye some Easter Eggs the old fashioned way. 
Natural dyes make for some lovely colors. Since there is so much talk about color additives causing more health concerns than we ever realized, I thought that it was time to experiment with food based colors.  I looked around on the internet and found a lot of suggestions for making colors, like purple from wine or grape juice and blue from blueberries.  My favorite, until i blew the egg up in the microwave while sitting in beet juice, is beet juice. But, based on the color of the inside of my microwave-the color is beautiful- it really can't be improved upon for magenta.  Unfortunately, I don't have a good example of the magenta...

Every color that I have here, is from a natural source.  (except for the luscious blue egg in the rear of the basket- I just had to have a beautiful blue-I am a photographer, first and foremost!)
I mashed about a cup of blueberries into a small glass with two tablespoons of vinegar and about 1/2 of a cup of water.  The blue is a nice dusty grey blue.  The uneven color and mottling on the egg is because of my leaving the blueberry pulp in the glass. Vinegar allows the color to set.  It will probably also flavor your egg if you leave the egg in the color long enough.

I was able to get a luscious yellow by using 2 Tablespoons of Turmeric in about 1 cup of water.  The yellow will deepen the longer you leave the egg in the solution.  Wow!  Really beautiful...

The  warm brown was the result of using coffee grounds in 1 cup of deeply brewed coffee... I love the mottling that occurred because of the grounds rubbing up against the shell of the egg.

Anyway, it's loads of fun to be creative with your dyes. 

Ornaments and Sentiments

These ornaments are special to me... so is my doggie Tess.

The swan leans over my branches like a perching, golden wish. My grandmother owned these original German ornaments and passed them down to my mother, and now,
she to me.

The blue snow makes a blank- et across the landscape.  it's chilliness,

pulls my shoulders in.

The sparkly lights of the season 

give me back my warmth.

In a Pickle, in the JAM!

Oh my... summer is here and the fresh food is rolling in.  First up on my plate is the strawberry.  The most luscious, delicate and reddest of fruits. Can you think of a better way to enjoy them than to pick them yourself?   Thankyou Urka Farm in Traverse City.

There are a million things that you can do with strawberries, and I like to eat them fresh, first and foremost.  But, when you've tired of strawberries on your cereal, your ice cream, your smoothies and your shortcakes, and you've picked 20 lbs. and you have 18 left over and you've found yourself in "quite a pickle", the obvious solution is fresh homemade strawberry jam, withOUT packaged pectin.  Having failed previously at my attempts to make a natural pectin jam, I decided to consult the books and the blogs again, to see if I could solve my problem.  I found a wonderful discussion about Strawberry Jam without boxed pectin from MothersKitchen.  I also found a simple remedy in a book about preserved foods called Preserved written by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton.

So, I sat down on a rainy Saturday morning and came up with my own recipe.  I made the jam in the simplest way that I could.  I made a natural pectin from 5 chopped up granny smith apples combined with 1 large lemon also cut up into little pieces.  I boiled this concoction for about 15 minutes, until the fruit turned to mush. This was the technique noted in MothersKitchen.
In the mean time, i LIGHTLY boiled 16 cups of whole fruit strawberries with the juice of one large lemon.  In Preserved, the authors contend that the juice of the lemon extracts the pectin from the seeds of the strawberries. I boiled twice as many  strawberries with the juice of one lemon  for one hour (very light boil).
In the mean time, I pushed the apple and lemon pulp mixture through a sieve in order to have 2 cups of this mixture that would also serve as a pectin.  The strawberries slowly turned to mush and did not boil over into a foamy mess.
Then it was time to add the sugar.

  I try to limit my sugar intake, so even though both recipes recommended about twice as much sugar, I opted to use about half, or 7 full cups of sugar to the 16 cups of now boiled down strawberries.  I also added the apple mixture to the pot. In essence, I combined the recipe from Preserved with the recipe that I found on MothersKitchen. I boiled this new mixture for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly and slowly coaxing the mixture to rise up to 220 degrees, the magic number for the sugar to reach a setting point.  After testing my jam to see if it was ready by dropping a dollop onto a saucer, chilling it to see if I could coax a wrinkle, I was ready to jar up my jam.
Okay, I'm not an expert cook- but I managed to make some incredible jam.  Into the sterilized Ball jars they went. And my leftover pounds of berries will be gracing the insides of PB&J sandwiches and the tops of crusty pieces of toast for at least another year.

Yummeeee!   :-)

                                                                                

which came first...the chicken or the farmer?!!!

Oh my gosh.  What fun!!  Raising chickens in the back yard.  So, what came first… the chicken  or the chicken farmer??

most likely the backyard came first!!             :-)

Meet the Casey family, urban chicken farmers (along with other various callings!) from the inner city of Traverse City, Michigan. They aren't your typical chicken farmers, since this is somewhat of an experiment for the young family who has taken to loving and naming the chickens such affectionate names as "Butter", "Sweetheart" and "Owlie". But their flock (i mean progeny) is delightfully diverse, a very progressive notion for the contemporary urban farmer. And don't be mistaken, these chickens are loved. Not for their juicy breasts or long legs, they are valued for the chickens that they are. :-) Another progressive notion...They have the best coop, the best compost and more freedom than "ButterBall" from Pilgrims Pride could ever imagine! I don't think that these gals will ever end up on somebody's plate. I hope not. They are individuals... with their own personalities... i mean chickenalities...

What's going on??? What does this all mean?

Welcome to 2010 and the new Michigan economy!      :-o  

Where else could you live on an urban farm inside the city limits and be able to bond with chickens???
(answer; Detroit)

Maybe the Casey family is setting a new trend or maybe Traverse City is just a small step behind Detroit. In any event, urban farms are springing up all over Michigan and the country. The notion to return to our roots and to live more sustainably entices us. We're tempted to grow our own herbs, gather our own eggs and despite it being on a 50x100 foot city plot, we're reconnecting, even if it is with feathery chickens.
                          Nature beckons us.
                          It is the way forward.
                          To love the chickens...