Baaa!

I decided to trek over to Drumlin Farm yesterday to go to Woolapalooza. Drumlin Farm is part of the Mass Audubon "Protecting the Nature of Massachusetts." Mass Audubon was selling their membership, which gives you free admission to 45 Mass Audubon wildlife sanctuaries, a full-color guide to these sanctuaries, a one-year subscription to Sanctuary, an environmental magazine, and to Connections, a member newsletter. Plus you get discounts on programs and courses. It looked like a lot of value for a family.

I got there between the big events, a sheep dog demonstration and sheep shearing. I wandered around looking at their chickens first. I found out that free range chickens produce about 330 eggs per year each, but a caged chicken produces 265. Having considered owning chickens in the future, and pondering a flock of 20...would I really have 6600 eggs in one year? That's a lot of quiche!



I then went and checked out the merchants, which was interesting because they were not your typical merchants. The American Textile History Museum was there, and they are having a grand reopening in May. They were giving demonstrations on how to spin wool with a drop spinner and a spinning wheel. Kids were everywhere at this event, and they sure loved poking at (and trying to spin) the spinning wheels at various booths.

I chatted with a woman who makes angora products at Needle's Eye Angoras. She brought along one of her rabbits and let the kids pet it. She told me that she grows much of her own food during the summer and stores it over the winter. She was selling the yarn, headbands, and cute baby booties. She was delighted by the event, "So many parents with children, and they are talking to their children!"

Then I saw one of the main events: a sheep dog demonstration. There were four dogs, but one is still being trained. All the dogs are trained with voice and body at first, but then learn to respond to just a whistle. They love moving the sheep...one was just itching to start.



Whistling to bring them around:



Into the pen:



I went to the lambing shed. There were twins born the night before, and another baby born while I was there!



Along the way to the sheep shearing show, I walked along the Sheep to Sweater Interpretive trail. They were showing how to wash the wool, comb it spin it, and dye it with natural dyes. I liked the pokeweed, even though the color would look terrible on me!



The yellow is a goldenrod dye, and the brown is black walnut, which I learned about in the Foraging for Wild Edibles workshop I went to last year. They also had several pretty yellow dyes made from onion skin.

I ended with the best part, sheep shearing! I thought that I had to take a trip to New Zealand to see these demos, but no! For $10, this was a better deal:

Big fluffy sheep, dying to take off the winter coat when it's 55 degrees out:



Starting to shear:



Halfway there:



Almost done:



Done! With just a bit of razor burn:



This big sheep had about 10 pounds of wool on it, which would make 2 adult sweaters and a few hats. Hats off to you, sheep!

Woolapalooza!

Drumlin Farm is having Woolapalooza for "all things sheep" today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Shearing and knitting o my!

Local food, national news

My blog only wakes up to scratch itself once in awhile over the winter time, generally on meat share days from Chestnut Farms. But now it's spring: people are digging, bees are buzzing, and I'm blogging again.

I joined the Facebook group Support Local Farmers, and they occasionally send information. Today they sent a link to farmfed, which is a site dedicated to educating people about where their food comes from and how to encourage healthy, sustainable farming methods. They have some nice photos of the White House garden ground-breaking.

Last year I cut off my hair for a good cause, but before that I used to walk around Moody Street in Waltham and was often stopped, "Can you tell me where the macrobiotic restaurant is?" Ah, long hippie hair. I didn't know where it was, but since people kept asking me, I figured I'd check it out. Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to Masao's Kitchen, a tiny little place that serves a beautiful buffet of simple macrobiotic vegan fare. You can order dishes of noodles or soup, but we decided to try the by-the-pound buffet ($8/pound). What's funny is that when you click on their menu, all you see are pictures of vegetables. Not bad!

There was a gorgeous dish of butternut squash and onion, which was steamed and brought out the wonderful flavor of the squash. I remember faintly that I was sick of squash by the end of the winter, but that memory is now overtaken by the sweetness of this dish. I had a lentil-chickpea dish with aromatics that was a lot like the dish my college roommate taught me to make. Comfort food. I rounded out my meal with some quinoa and steamed broccoli and kale. I did take little sides of a cabbage lotus flower mix, and a shiatake mix. My boyfriend also had the tofu, which he enjoyed, and brown rice. He ordered a side of the miso soup, which he really enjoyed but felt there was too much! (So I ate the rest...hearty and not at all silty like some.)

We kept discovering new food, but I'd already taken a pound and a half! So I left it at that, and ate it all. The restaurant was packed, and there were many families with little girls...perhaps a dancing school is nearby? It looks like they also do a healthy takeout service. The staff is extremely friendly and seems to love introducing people to the food. Most people there appeared to be regulars.

At the end of the meal I felt like I'd only eaten good things. It's rare to go to a restaurant and feel wonderful at the end, but here's your chance.

Arugula

Soooo excited about the first family's veggie garden--organic, started by Michelle Obama and some local fifth graders. The project is a combination of educating the young, feeding the first family, and providing fresh vegetables for a local soup kitchen.

And they even have the plans for the garden. I love that they are lining the walkways with flowers, especially marigolds, which keep out pests. It's a heavy greens garden, not much in the way of beans, potatoes, and tomatoes. But it'll make nice salads and steamed greens. They devote plenty of space to a variety of herbs.

I've been eating a salad mix from Whole Foods recently that includes mixed greens, dill, and parsley. I'll have to try that this summer with the farm food!

In other news, I finally invested in a real knife, the Wusthof Grand Prix II. I bought it at on the edge at Faneuil Hall Market Place, explaining to them that I get a lot of fresh meat that needs to be broken down sometimes, as well as tons of fresh veggies. And it's amazing! It takes about half the time for me to cut the meat and veggies, and the cuts are more even and accurate. It makes cooking fun again! OK, end of advertisement.

Suggestions of spring

I walked down to the square today just to go to the bank, and it was gorgeous out. Except for the snow melting everywhere, it felt like spring! I wanted to volunteer at The Food Project, but apparently that doesn't start until April. Alas...will have to wait to play in the dirt.

I picked up my meat share from Chestnut Farms this week:

• 1 leg of lamb (beautiful! I'm thinking of saving it for Easter, but it'll be tough seeing it in the freezer for that long).
• 1 chicken breast.
• 1 package of chicken legs.
• 1 package of three greek lamb sausages.
• 1 package of ground beef.
• 1 top round steak.
• 1 package of breakfast sausage.

I went to the doctor's last week to discover that my cholesterol has dropped 41 points in the past five years! I attribute this to the veggies and lean meat from the two CSAs that I participate in. It's also a lot of food, so I've significantly decreased the amount of ready-made snacks and dinners that I used to eat. Less salt, less corn syrup, less trans fat. All good things.

I'm reading a beautiful book This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm by Scott Chaskey. He's farmed in Cornwall, England and on the South Fork of Long Island at a CSA. He brings together farming and his love of poetry in a thoughtful, topic-based book. He does not go through the seasons, he isn't providing how to's. He paints pictures of various crops, farmers, CSA members, animals, whatever has moved him in his life as a farmer. The romance of the farm.

Meat days are happy days

Kim at Chestnut Farms is trying to figure out if cats like lamb liver or beef liver better, and she was selling the stuff off at $1 a package. I grabbed some lamb liver in the hopes that I could convince someone to make a lamb liver dinner with me. So far, not a lot of interest. C'mon guys!

This month's share:

• 1 package of maple sugar cured hickory smoked bacon (yes, I'm on the "more bacon" list).
• 1 package of 3 Greek lamb sausage.
• 1 package of pork loin chops.
• 1 package of maple sugar cured bone-in ham steak ends.
• 1 shank steak.
• 2 packages of ground beef.
• 1 package of pork breakfast sausage patties.
• 1 porterhouse steak.
• 1 package of steak tips.

After yet another snow storm this year, I'm dreaming of lettuce and turnips from our first veggie share this summer!

Speaking of summer, it sounds like the farm is trying out goats this year. Yes, for goat meat: "I'm not milking anything!" they say. It sounds like it's been a tough winter on the farm, with the cold, cold January we had right after my "it hasn't been that cold yet" post. Serves me for talkin'. Anyway, I love goat curry, so hoping to try their goat this summer if it happens.

Again, it's a great time to go veggie CSA shopping, so I encourage everyone in MA to go to NOFA Mass. There are many different types of CSAs, so it's best to look for one nearby that fits with how you eat. Some give you tons of food, others are more modest. Some you have little choice and really eat with the harvest, and others give you points to pick out how much of each veggie or fruit you want. Some you go to the farm, others you might go to someone's home or other drop-off location. You might have to put in a day or two of work each season, and you might be able to get a free share if you do enough work. Many donate extra veggies to food banks, and some are full-fledge non-profits. I'd love to hear about your farms, and it's been wonderful that several people I know are newly signed up for shares next year. Good eatin'.

My winter blog is as quiet as the sleeping fields

The only thing happenin' on the CSA front is a cold frost and the monthly meat share. Actually, we've had plenty of warm weather in MA, no difficult frosts, so it wouldn't surprise me if a few veggies were still growing slowly around the state. At our first veggie distribution last year, we had some turnips that had been in the ground all year.

Last week I made a trial run of applesauce, using this really easy applesauce recipe. Sure, it was sweet, but it's so much yummier than the watery, bland store stuff. I have a ton of apples that need eatin' so I plan to try a bigger crockpot of the stuff some time this week. I had it with pork chops from Chestnut Farms...delicious!

The brave folks at Chestnut Farms drove through the Western MA ice to distribute shares today. It was rainy here, and luckily most of the ice had melted. But yuck, what a job. It makes you remember that you have to be outside in all kinds of weather as a farmer, and I'm sure that the share distribution is one of the less messy jobs. I worked from home today. The building manager called to kick my car out of the parking lot for plowing, so I took a quick hop down to the drop-off location to pick up my share early. Normally I get there a couple hours later, so I was amazed at the dozens of coolers they distribute! I know that they were recently able to quit their square jobs to be farmers full time. Such a wonderful thing.

This month's share:

• 1 maple sugar cured bone-in ham steak.
• 1 lamb shoulder (yay! I have no idea how to cook this, but it looks beautiful).
• 1 package of ground beef.
• 2 shank steaks.
• 1 chicken breast.
• 1 package of maple sugar cured hickory smoked bacon.
• 1 package of steak tips.
• 1 large rib steak.

This past month I've had less steak. I used to dread the stuff because I didn't know how to cook it, but with the miracles of marinades, dry rubs, and a good tenderizing blow, I'm starting to get into the whole steak thing. Thanks Food Network!