Quaker Creek
Quaker Creek borders one edge of the farm. The overgrowth along the edge helps to keep soil from eroding, but it also hinders access to the creek. Locals have caught carp and trout. Strands of stinging nettle are still green, and visible. It would be nice to clear a little patch by the creek to have access to it in the summer.
Mystery Plant and Taproot
Serious Taproot
Is this a weed? A runaway vegetable? It grew very close to the edge where weeds have run rampant, so I’m not entirely certain this is an intentional crop. The leaves remind me of cabbage, but the root reminds me of a sweet potato.
Who doesn’t love a good hot sauce? Spicy and flavorful is how I like it. More recently, I have been loving Korean-style gochujang, a red pepper paste that comes with bibimbap. It has a sweet finish, even while your mouth is on fire! I also have been using a lot of Thai sweet chili sauce for Vietnamese style sumer rolls, which has a sweet foundation with just a little spice.
We didn’t head to the farm this weekend, so I had a chance to experiment with homemade hot sauce. After trying to seed 2 cayenne peppers with my fingers wrapped in saran wrap, I realized it wasn’t worth the trouble. After all, Sriracha hot sauce uses everything. So I blanched the peppers for a few minutes – and promptly started coughing. The spice travels in steam form, fills the entire house, and makes the back of your throat feel hot. Note to self to keep a lid on it next time.
Yield: about 36 oz
Harvest Colors
Seeing the frost line in the shadow of houses and barns, you begin to appreciate the immediacy of temperatures. Most everything has tuned to a harvest gold. The galinsoga weeds, which turns out is edible and delicious, were killed by first frost and now droop close to the ground.
This is what happens when you don’t discipline nurture young pumpkins. They push the boundaries, holding onto a lifeline, and risk everything to cross over to the greener grass on the other side.
Yum, savory!
The bounty of herbs at the end of the season triggered the waste-not reaction in me. After harvesting quite a bunch of sage, thyme, oregano, and parsley over the weekend, I parceled it out for friends. I couldn’t quite figure out the herb in the picture and thought it a variety of thyme.
A few days later, a bakery owner wrote back to say they used the thyme in a soup. But wait, I didn’t have enough thyme so I gave them oregano. Another friend commented that she was probably buying the wrong supermarket oregano because mine looked different. Self-doubt crept in. Did I mix up thyme and oregano? And what exactly is this herb that smells like a cross of thyme and oregano?
It turns out I ought to be eating humble pie flavored with savory. I never even picked oregano because it wilted too quickly and tasted too sharp, leading me to believe it might have been a weed. The tiny-leaved wiry bundle was thyme. And this cross-over herb is winter savory! Savory as a noun. Wow.
A few weeks ago, I saw the tomatillos plants on the ground and shrugged it off. The papery husk had gone brown and I had no expectations. Today, DH picked up a few and found they were still hard. Talk about an accidental 5 pound harvest! There were probably many more to be found, but we stopped after a full crate.
Last week, I also saw some garlic on a side of the barn. I meant to investigate but didn’t get around to it. I had mostly given up the idea since we were nowhere close to actually buying seeds and would miss the planting window. As soon as Dan got to check it out, I was climbing down that ditch faster than a gopher to collect the garlic. My conjecture is that a crate tipped and a bunch fell over. They were root side up and stem side down, lying softly atop yellowing weeds. Some cloves had already split apart from the bulb and had grown fresh roots. Eyeing a strip past the herbs, I cleared some weeds with a hoe, pulling at grass and amaranth with reckless abandon. Dan helped to dig a 6 inch trench, and I began setting garlic cloves into the soil 6 inches apart. This little crooked 100-foot trench marks our first planting on the farm!
Okra Flower
Okra Pods
Okra flowers are on their way out, and the pods are gigantic and inedible. Dan wanted to save some seeds for next year. Intuition told me that the dried pods on the stem were the ones to go for. Dan happily lopped off a few dozen, and split the pods by hand with the kid. Next year, I will see if we can turn tough okra into a bath louffa or callus scrubber.
Pumpkin Flower
Pumpkin
Squash
Hidden in the last field, I stumbled over live pumpkin vines with flowers on them. Some pumpkins that were living too close to the edge rolled into the ditch that separates us from our neighbors. On a field that isn’t maintained, and apparently, with a gopher problem, I salvaged about a dozen mixed-size pumpkin, butternut, and squash. It will take a while to figure out what is what.
Habanero
The cayenne and habanero chiles are in their glory at the end of the season. I could not let them wither on the plant and started harvesting the ripe ones. 3 pounds of cayenne and 2 pounds of habanero for the first haul is not too shabby. Now I have to figure out who can use them!
Dill
Besides the chiles, several herbs are also showing off. Parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, mint and dill were lush even without much rainfall in the past 2 weeks. The basil already went to seed.
Stinging Nettle Leaves
Stinging Nettle Bush in Flower
I spotted bunches of jagged green leaves near a patch of felled corn. The vibrant green leaves caught my attention. Then I recalled a foolhardy time thinking I found Lemon Verbena at a local park, only to pinch it hard and have it sting me back. It was stinging nettle, I’ve learnt my lesson.
Gopher Entry Point
Unlike urban legends, farm rumors are often true. I do believe this is a gopher hole.
It was a decidely unorthodox decision, diametrically opposed to what average middle-class city-dwelling first-time parents would do. One might be expected to be disabused of the romance of living small in a city apartment and upgrade to a bigger house. One might be expected to feel the crushing pressure of finding appropriate schooling and head for the suburban districts. One might become disenchanted with alternate side parking and trade it in for a driveway. But these are problems so simple to grasp and easy to fix. Many city folk had already beaten a well-worn path to nearby locales and following them would be a no-brainer.
But we had several considerations. A place would not too expensive, with low taxes. A place would allow us access to amenities such as a pool. A place within a decent school district. A weekend place. A place with something to do. A place to draw family and friends in the summer time. A place not beyond an hour’s drive, and with public transport nearby. A place where we might be able to forge friendships with other hard-working determined folks.
Beach house. Country house. Westchester County. Connecticut. Long Island. New Jersey. What say you, impossible? Let’s take close and afforable. Ha! Or what about good school and low taxes. Double ha ha! Pool amenities and public transport. Does that exist? From this oxymoronic jumble of wishes, emerged another option.
It’s an option that many have run away from as quickly as they could. It’s an option that was industrialized and upsized after World War II. It’s an option that traditionally stood in stark contrast against university and post-graduate degrees. Since Dan and I have plenty of the latter, we figured it was a fine time to turn to the root of being human. In dirt. Specifically, a farm in the black dirt region in Orange County, NY.
Russo Family Farms 