Blaaaaahhhg

ARE WE IN F-ING ENGLAND?

2008-08-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

So guess what, guys? MY CAR IS BACK!!! It came back to me by way of a flatbed truck driven by a man named John, who had very few teeth. It's so shiny...it looks totally new. If there wasn't a Connecticut College window cling and a rainbow bumper sticker on the back, I wouldn't know that it was my poor little car.

On Wednesday, to celebrate the return of my car and the rare few hours of sun...

I just realized that I haven't complained quite enough about the rain. Are we in FUCKING ENGLAND? (Can I curse on my blog? I can now.) I feel like we didn't have summer yet, it's just been a very long, wet, spring. I mean, people can't even get their hay in, because there's never a long enough period without rain. How are they going to feed their animals? On Wednesday, there was so much rain that our cheese cave flooded. Boots and cheese wrappers were floating around in a 2.5 foot deep sea of rainwater. Some of the orders we packed on Tuesday were on the floor and got completely ruined, as did a lot of the cheeses aging on the bottom racks. It sucked, basically.

Later on in the day of The Great Flood, it did stop raining for a second. So I seized my chance, put on entirely the wrong attire, and jumped in my spiffy little car. I drove to the trailhead in Branbury State Park to hike to the Falls of Lana and Silver Lake. Being in a hurry to catch those evanescent moments of sun, I had put on shorts and and t-shirt. Who hikes in shorts and a t-shirt through the woods when it has been raining for the past eternity? Me, apparently. I am a big mosquito bite. I'm pretty sure that there is no part of my skin that hasn't been punctured by a hungry bloodsucker. It looks like I have the chicken pox. I'M SO ITCHY. Nonetheless, the hike was absolutely gorgeous. It was like walking through a fairy wood. Moss covered most surfaces and mushrooms of exciting shapes and colors sprouted up along the path. (I was stupid and forgot my camera) After a few minutes of hiking, I could hear the falls. I have no idea what the Falls of Lana generally look like in the summer. I imagine they are a fairly tame cascade...not a RAGING, ROARING, MUDDY, RAPID RIVER TEARING THROUGH THE TWISTS OF A GORGE BEFORE SHOOTING OUT OVER A PRECIPICE like they were when I saw them. It was actually quite frightening. Even though I was standing at a safe distance, I felt like the river was going to reach out and grab me with its white-capped fingers. But it didn't. Obviously.

I kept hiking up the mountain, and finally arrived at the very picturesque Silver Lake. It was not silver...in fact, it was a rather odd red colour (I can spell it that way because we are in England, now) that made me rather hesitant to swim in it. So I hiked back down (slash ran because of the mosquitos), got back in my car, and drove to my favorite place on earth. The Middlebury Natural Foods Coop. Duh.

While I was shopping, Molly called and asked if I wanted to go to Field Days with her. Addison County Field Days is a big deal. It's a very authentic agricultural fair, complete with sheep shearing, tractor pulls, and a demolition derby. It also has fried dough, caramel apples, rainbow ice, maple cotton candy, and many other (theoretically) edible things, most of which have been dipped in boiling oil and/or painted with butter. As a whole, it was a combination of Ocean City, NJ + the St. Dennis Fair + Belleville or the Green Dragon Amish markets. Molly and I walked around, ate crap, and petted animals. We were so tempted to steal these two adorable calves at the Poulin Grain stand, because no one was watching them...but we only had a minivan and logistically, it would have been challenging. Not to mention illegal. But they had such big brown eyes and long eyelashes...

It was fun. And I got a shirt! Wooo.

Today is Friday, so I am baking bread. I woke up and started to put together 7 batches of bread at 6:30. I got out to the cheese house by 9 and poured a big batch of chévre. Then I cleaned the vat, priced some cheese, packed an order and 30 tubs of chévre. Ate some lunch. Watched a movie. Now it's time to shape the bread.

I hope I didn't bore you to death with this insanely long post.

Final note...I'm leaving in less than two weeks. I'm pretty sure that's the weirdest thing ever.

Quick Note

2008-08-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note...

If you would like a Blue Ledge Farm shirt, I can bring back some when I come home on August 20th...they are $10. A good deal! They come in dark blue, light blue, teal-ish, a pretty orangey color, brown, and purple. Let me know! Comment or email me at lisa.kalan@conncoll.edu.

Rocky Acre Farm Bed & Breakfast

2008-07-30T13:49:00.000-07:00

I am back at Blue Ledge Farm! Last time I posted was before the big Rocky Acre trip, so I can update you on that...

For the past three years, my family has embarked upon the 1.5 hour drive (through the country, past the large signs pleading, "Repent! God will forgive your sins!" Ah, bible pushers...) to Mount Joy, in Lancaster, PA. Our destination? A little B&B/dairy farm called Rocky Acre. There we find kittens to torment, male lambs to avoid, and some mean corn fritters. We only stay for less than 24 hours, but it's always a good, albeit ethically questionable, time. The majority of our stay is spent watching, petting, or rescuing the kittens. It's sometimes hard to decide whether the owners run a cat farm or cow farm. Grace, my 5-year-old niece, and other similarly aged guests at the farm run around trying to catch the kittens and trap them in a playhouse, where they run some sort of dubious cat day care. We found the kids force feeding cat food to the kittens and then putting them down for naps. My sister and I felt bad for the kitties, so we snuck into the playhouse and rescued a few of them. The proprietors of the day care center were not fooled, however. We had to fend them off with protests of, "But this is my kitty!" as they came with grasping hands to snatch the cats back to hellish captivity. The way the children carried those poor baby cats! Though I suppose if the kittens really didn't want to be handled, they would stay away from the kids.

When we weren't involved with the cats, we collected eggs and fed the handfuls of hay to the goats and lamb. My nephew, Carter, made the mistake of going inside their small pasture. Their one male lamb butted Carter's 7-year-old butt all the way across the field, resulting in a very traumatized little boy who will probably hold a grudge against all sheep for the rest of his life. I also hold this grudge. Sheep are the smelliest, most frustrating, most unintelligent animals I have ever worked with. And the males will butt you, which is really frightening until you realize that sheep are herbivores and they're not out for blood.

My favorite part of staying at Rocky Acre (although I kind of hate supporting a commercial dairy) is feeding the baby bulls. The guests aren't allowed to touch the heifers, because someday they will be milked, but the bulls are fair game. If you get up early enough and wander across the street to the calf hutches, the vets will put you to work. They fill giant baby bottles with yellow colostrum milk (the milk that their mothers produce right after pregnancy, full of antibodies and the like) and warm them up. The bulls aren't quite experts at the whole bottle thing...they have trouble finding the nipple of the bottle and some of them can't figure out how to get the milk out. It's all very cute though...even when one of the bulls butted me and I fell on my face. Still cute.

Before I became a vegan, my second favorite part about Rocky Acre was the breakfast. It's the most epic farm breakfast you can imagine. Think scrambled eggs with cheese, cinnamon coffee cake, peach cobbler, pancakes, canadian bacon, corned beef hash, fruit, potatoes...it's absolutely insane. But the crowning glory of this over-the-top breakfast is the corn fritters. I have the recipe somewhere. Made with boundless amounts of lard (I think) and cream and eggs and other such unvegan things, I can no longer partake in the joy that is corn fritters. But I do remember them being crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and perfectly sweet. I miss them something terrible.

Another year at Rocky Acre has come and gone, and my soul is satisfied, although not so much my stomach.

Burlington International Airport

2008-07-24T03:25:00.001-07:00

I'm home! On Thursday, I had to get up at 4 AM and take a taxi to the Burlington airport (because my car is STILL being fixed), and I got into the Philly airport around 8:30.

It's been busy at the farm! We have a new intern, Clara, who is going to be with us for 10 days. So many interns! The farm is crawling with them! Since Clara is there, I am not just sitting around by myself all the time, which probably contributes to my spotty posting lately. Sorry about that.

What's new on the farm...let's see.

Well, Wednesday would normally have been my day off, but since I am leaving for 5 days, I wanted to work. It was pouring when I got up at 7:30. When I asked Hannah what I should do, she suggested that I help Shannon catch all the piglets because they were going to be castrated. I put on my boots and headed out in the thunder and lightening. Hannah said that she and Shannon would catch the piglets and then hand them off to me and Clara. We would then run up the steps and put them in a pen in the barn. What they didn't mention was how bewildered the piglets and their mother looked and how LOUDLY the piglets screamed when they were grabbed. It was not my kind of job. I ran away and went to work in the cheese cave, organizing shelves of packing equipment. Yes, give me a job that involves moving rolls of tape and stickers from one shelf to another. I can handle that.

Last night I went to see She & Him in concert with my best friend Stephania. It was so cool to see Zooey Deschanel in person...it was like meeting a famous person! Even though we didn't actually meet her. She was wearing a sparkly light blue dress and a blue bow in her hair. She also played the tambourine. There is a video below, a stunning example of my film expertise. This is the song "Black Hole."

Before I went to the concert, I went blueberry picking with my mommy. We went to a place called Indian Orchards, which has become my new favorite place to pick fruit in the last few years. They grow their produce sustainably and as organically as possible. We also picked some peaches that smelled so sweet it was like inhaling summer.

Tomorrow is the big annual trip Rocky Acre Farm! WOO!

FRED THE BREAD STARTER

2008-07-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

Hi-

I lend my sincere apology for the lateness of this post. You see- I am too preoccupied feeding, milking, harassing, and talking to goats that I have little time to reflect on my honest experience here in the glorious beauty of Leicester, Vermont. I like maple syrup. And things that don't involve meat but instead involve gymnastics and frozen fruit. and tempe. Tempe in fact has an h in it- or so I am told by Clara Dennis the coolest sexiest person alive- so... I enjoy tempehhh. That is pronounced as clearly as chevrrrreeee. That, if you don't know, is a pretentious cheese. Made from goats milk. And aged for 3 days. Then wrapped. And served to your lovely mouths with their tongues and teeth open to the new, orgasmically great cheese....taste.

Hope your life doesn't suck, and that you don't have to feed pigs wheyyyy all the time,

sincerely,

apologetically,

lovingly,

Lisa.

(this post was obviously not actually written by me. love, the real Lisa.)

There is an Entire Watermelon in My Fridge.

2008-07-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

I don't have a car.

I won't have one for a few weeks.

I am going insane.

The end.

In other news, there is a cantaloupe, a watermelon, and a bag of grapes in my refrigerator. So I'm going insane, but at least I have lots of fruit!

Happy Bastille Day!

2008-07-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

Hellooooo, dear readers. I will update you on my recent life...

On Saturday, I went to the Middlebury market, as usual. The day started out so slowly that we were legitimately afraid that we would go home with all of the cheese. But it picked up quite a bit and we ended up doing well. And I sold all my bread but one loaf! Yay. That night I went to Branbury Beach with Hannah, Greg, the kids, Greg's mom and stepfather, and Hannah's parents. It was so nice to get in the water, which I haven't done yet this summer, surprisingly.

I worked from 8-12 yesterday, putting together Lake's Edge and pouring Lake's Edge and Crottina. Then Molly came to visit! I introduced her to the goats, and they got along very well. The cats took to her, too.

Today, I worked from 8-12 flipping Crottina and putting together more Lake's Edge. Whew! I did afternoon chores with Tucker and we finished in RECORD TIME, 'cause we're awesome. For dinner, I had broccoli and kale with chick peas. I also roasted a small sweet potato and a beet from the garden! It was SO good. So sweet and beautifully colored.

Mosquito season in Vermont is supposed to be from around May 15th - June 15th (I think), and it was really not bad at all. I assumed we were safe from the mosquito plague after the June 15th deadline, but apparently I was wrong. Lesson #1: Don't assume anything, especially if it involves Vermont and nature. It has been raining a lot here, and all the standing water allowed lots of mosquitos to breed. You can't really go outside without being bitten a few times. It really sucks, because the weather is so beautiful. Hopefully it won't last.

In other, much happier news, Stephania is coming to visit! She and her mom and brother are coming up on Friday. Sam (Steph's brother) is going to be a junior in high school and he is looking at UVM, so they are stopping at the farm on their way to Burlington! Woo!

I put up a new song. It's a Jack Johnson song, which means it's amazing, because the name Jack Johnson is synonymous with amazing. Fo realz.

Michael Pollan, Bread, and Cake

2008-07-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

Some of my boules! Aren't they cute?

Today is bread day! This means I wake up at 6 and put together 10 batches of dough, which takes me about 3 hours. I don't know why it takes me so long...I'm going to have to figure out a way of shortening that process. Because that's only the beginning. About 6 hours after that, I have to shape the dough, let it rise again, and bake it. The journey ends with me cleaning up the kitchen, absolutely worn out, surrounded by 30-40 crackly-crusted loaves of sourdough bread, at 10:00 PM. All in all a good day. I threw in some mould washing, cheese pricing, and a lot of singing to the Rent soundtrack while I was alone in the cheese house. It was intense.

Last night I made a Gâteau au Citron using a recipe from Orangette. A Gâteau au Citron is a French style yogurt cake with lemon. It's nothing fancy, but it was really delicious.

Gâteau au Citron, adapted from Orangette

1/2 cup plain soy yogurt (or regular yogurt)

1 cup Sucanat (or granulated sugar, or any kind of granulated sweetener. Sucanat is unrefined cane sugar and therefore somewhat better for you)

3 large eggs (I actually used eggs, because they come from the chickens here that run around all day)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp powdered ginger

1/2 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9 inch round cake pan.

In a large bowl, mix together yogurt, sugar, and eggs. Add flour, baking powder, and zest and stir until just combined. Then add oil. It'll seem like the oil will never combine, but keep stirring and it'll become a smooth batter. Pour into pan and slide into the oven.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. DON'T over bake, or I will punch you in the nose.

Let cool on rack for 20 minutes, and then turn out onto a rack.

This cake, we have found, is good with whipped cream and berries, or by itself with a glass of rice milk. Or with peanut butter. For breakfast or dessert. Anyway, it's versatile and totally worth making. I bet you could use sour cream instead of yogurt. Just a thought.

Right now, I am reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. You've probably heard of this book. Or his last book, In Defense of Food. I really think that everyone should read it, especially if you're reading this blog. I think Americans needs to be educated about food and what they're putting into their bodies. This book explains what the hell is going on in this country in term of food, and demonstrates where and why agriculture, big corporations, and the government intersect. Read it...right now.

Jeezum!

2008-07-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

Picture: The top of a wheel of Riley's Coat (a washed-rind hard cheese. it's so delicious)

Today I made pesto.

Basil

Arugula

Garlic

Chévre (fresh goat cheese)

Hazelnuts (or walnuts, or almonds)

Good Olive Oil

Salt

Puree basil, arugula, garlic, chévre, and hazelnuts in food processor or blender. Slowly drizzle in oil while processing. When smooth, add in some more chopped nuts, for texture...if you want. Eat on pasta, on bread, by itself.

Today I woke up at 4:30, did morning chores, and then wrapped Lake's Edge and Camembrie in the cheese cave until I went crazy (approximately 5 hours). Then I led the goats out to the woods; helped Greg fix the grain auger by handing him tools, fetching him Jesus nails, and being a human hammer; and watched the cats and kittens play. The kittens are getting so big! But they're still adorable beyond belief. I wish they weren't so scared of me, because right now they run away when I try to play with them. It makes me feel large and frightening, which I find insulting.

So remember I mentioned my near-death skidding off the road fiasco thing? Well, I took my car in to get looked at yesterday, and they were like, "Um, were you driving this around for a week? This car is so screwed up, what's wrong with you?" I mean, it was making a rather odd noise when I accelerated, but I didn't think it was a problem...but apparently some things were rubbing together that shouldn't have been, and other things were twisted in odd directions. So they took my car, and I was left car-less in Rutland, Vermont. I had to take a bus back. I no longer have a car. Which will be interesting. I'll definitely be eating a lot of garden fresh produce.

Tomorrow is my day off! I plan to go to the lake and swim, because it's gonna be a hot one.

Great Googly Moogly!

2008-07-06T09:40:00.000-07:00

I am sitting down. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's something that hasn't been much a part of my life in the past 48 hours. You see, Hannah and Greg have switched placed with me; they are in Pennsylvania visiting family and I am here in Vermont on the farm. They left at about noon on Friday and will be back sometime today...I think. What I've been finding myself doing most is feeding. Feeding the fire, feeding Connie, feeding the starter, feeding the pigs, feeding the goats, feeding myself. Everything needs to eat.

Friday wasn't too bad...I spend almost the whole day baking 40 loaves of bread, half boules (picture is not mine) and half baguettes, mixing in a little bit of mould-washing and cheese-pricing when I wasn't kneading or shaping or freaking out that I was doing it wrong. It was Saturday that was really killer...I woke up at 4:00 to do chores and was done by about 7:00. Then Tucker came and we got together the coolers full of cheese to take to the market. I was going to Middlebury and he was going to Rutland. Somehow we managed to fit 2 coolers, 2 plastic tubs, 2 tables, 40 loaves of bread, and a tent in my little Jetta. So I drove to the market, set everything up, and then realized that I forgot the tub containing the most important things: the cash box, the cuttings boards for samples, the tablecloths, etc. I was freaking out for about 5 minutes, and then decided to go back and get it. So I drove all the way back to the farm, hit the ground running, grabbed the tub, and drove back to the market. I was only about half an hour late. Whew! While at the market, I sold all my bread but two baguettes! Greg's bread reputation precedes me, but hopefully people will continue to buy. We also sold quite a bit of cheese. It was pretty busy because of the holiday weekend.

I came back to the farm after that and ate lunch...at like, 2:30, and then at 3:30 I started afternoon chores. I sat down for a total of one 1 hour on Saturday. I collapsed into bed that night and then woke up at 4:30 to do it all again!

This morning, the vacuum pump/motor/something broke in the middle of milking, and I had to call the neighbors, who have a cow farm, to come fix it. He fixed it, and I finished milking, but then when I went to run the wash cycle, it broke again! ARGH!!! CRUMBS AND CARROTS! It was frustrating. But it's all fixed now, and I made myself feel better by watching She's The Man (best movie ever) and making vegan chocolate cake. Would you like to make vegan chocolate cake? You can, if you follow this recipe. Omigod, omigod, you guys! I followed a recipe! Well, mostly.

Not-Vegan-Tasting Vegan Chocolate Cake

(adapted from Martha Stewart)

1.5 organic unbleached all purpose flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

1/2 canola oil

1 cup vanilla soymilk/ricemilk

2 Tbs cider vinegar, white vinegar, or lemon juice

Combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a larger bowl. In a smaller bowl, mix together canola oil and soymilk. Mix wet ingredients into dry. Add vinegar and stir quickly. You'll see streaks of white as the vinegar and baking soda react. Pour into a greased 8 or 9 inch round cake pan. Put in a oven preheated to 375 degrees and bake for about 30 minutes. I took mine out early and the middle is still gooey...mmmm. It would be good warm with vegan ice cream.

There's a new song up! It's by a band called She & Him. I think they're just adorable. One half of this duo is Zooey Deschanel, who you may know from Elf (the pretty blond that Buddy the Elf ends up marrying) or Weeds (Andy's crazy girlfriend from Alaska). Enjoy!

WILLAKERS!!!

2008-07-03T17:44:00.001-07:00

Tonight I was just ON A ROLL in terms of cooking. CRUMBS AND CARROTS! It was ridiculous. I made the best dinner I think I've ever had, with no recipe to speak of. I went to the coop earlier today and bought baby bok choy and shitake mushrooms (as well as many other things). When I got back, I was given the gift of broccoli, fresh from the garden! I steamed the bok choy and broccoli and then dunked them right in an ice bath. They were the prettiest emerald green color. I sauteed sliced shiitakes and seitan, and then added the bok choy and broccoli. I made this awesome sauce with maple syrup, ginger powder, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and lots of garlic scapes. I added the sauce and sauteed some more. I slid it all into a bowl and topped it with chopped almonds. The only thing that could have made it better was some rice. But I wasn't going to wait 20 minutes for my rice cooker to make some, so I just ate it as it was. IT WAS SO GOOD. It tasted like Chinese takeout food, but better and healthier.

Before all this coop shopping and cooking business, I had decided to make cookies. My baking has been pretty awful lately, because I haven't used recipes or measuring devices, but this time I was determined to follow a recipe TO THE LETTER. I wanted to make these little lemon buttermilk cookies. I planned to buy buttermilk and butter at the coop, but while I was driving there I saw a farmer herding his dairy cows in to be milked. And the cows were just plodding along in front of this farmer, looking rather dejected...I know that they were out grazing all day, and that they have a pretty nice life...but wouldn't it be better if we didn't have the dairy industry? It would be so much better for the environment. No more cow poop sitting around, releasing tons of methane (a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, perpetuating global warming. Farms could be used to feed people again, instead of growing genetically modified corn to feed animals we eat. And if we couldn't live without dairy, then maybe every family could have just one or two cows/sheep/goats to provide them with milk.

Yes, I'm working on a dairy farm. And I love it, I really do. I love milking the goats and making cheese, and seeing an entire process through from start to finish. But I feel very hypocritical. Especially because the dairy industry relies on the meat industry, and if you're going to go vegetarian, you might as well go vegan. What do you think happens to all the males born to dairy animals? They can't be milked, obviously, so they go to slaughter.

I wish that I could go live in the woods somewhere, in a log cabin with 2 sheep for wool and milk, some chickens for eggs, and a garden...it's obviously that I've been reading Little House on the Prairie. But I do wish we could go back to that time. Those early pioneers worked hard, and they certainly weren't vegans. But they hunted wild game that had lived a full and natural life in the woods. Better yet, we could all live in tipis, like Native Americans and hunt with a bow and arrow. WHO'S WITH ME?

Anyone?

Ah, well. I'll do it alone.

Moral of this ridiculous tangent is: I bought soy milk, cocoa powder, and lemons at the coop and made crazy Chocolate Lemon Cornmeal Sablés. That's what I'm calling them. The chocolate part came in when I realized that I had too much liquid from using agave nectar + maple syrup instead of granulated sugar...so I added cocoa powder. It was good! They're like little crunchy lemony chocolatey bites of yum. But I'm not posting a recipe. Because I didn't follow one. Well...I tried to, but then realized that I was only using lemon zest, salt, and baking soda from the original recipe, and I gave up. OY, what has become of me? You can ask my BFFAEAEAEAE, Stephania, and she will tell you how upset I used to get at the suggestion of using whole wheat flour instead of all purpose white. I followed recipes like I was Hermione in a Potions lesson. And now? I can't remember the last time I didn't substitute something. It's ridonculous.

SWEET MUSTACHE, I'm tired. And I have to get up and start making bread tomorrow. Good luck, me, and good night, all.

Eenie Meenie Miney Moe

2008-07-01T16:21:00.000-07:00

I'm trying something new...I have a little box on the right hand side of the page that should say the title of a song...this week it says "Ashes On Your Eyes." You can click on it and listen to this wonderful song by Deb Talan. Woo!

So aside from a near-death experience on Sunday, life has been pretty much similar. The farmer's market has sped up QUITE a bit...we sold all the bread and almost all the cheese! It was a crazy day, that Saturday. I do chores in the morning, so I'm up at 4:30, and then go straight to the market. The market itself is pretty exhausting...talking to people about cheese from 8:30 - 12:30. I came back to the farm for a few hours, and then headed to Molly's lake house for her birthday party (it was a lot of fun, and I'm going to leave it at that). I didn't get to sleep until 2AM, so I was awake for 22 hours! When I was driving back from the lake the next morning, I almost killed myself by skidding off the road (nearly hitting a tree)...it was a good lesson in driving the speed limit. It was fine, though. My car was a bit messed up, but some friendly Vermonters stopped to help me and I was able to drive back to the farm.

Most things I've been eating lately are Red, White, and Green. Red is usually tomato, White is usually some kind of goat cheese, and Green is any number of things, including kale, avocado, arugula, basil, lettuce, etc. This combo has never failed me. The colors of the Italian flag are the way to go for simple snacks and meals. Put three things on a piece of bread and you're set. The following recipe is not red, white, and green, but it's still delicious.

Veggie Burger of Awesomeness

1 veggie burger patty (I used Amy's...I also like Dr. Praegers/anything that doesn't remind me too much of actual meat) (Or make your own, of course)

Lettuce

Avocado Slices

Tomato Slices

Sprouts (I didn't have them, but it would be delicious...make it and I will live vicariously through you)

Onion Slices

Sliced garlic or garlic scapes

Balsamic Vinegar

Olive Oil

Salt

Put onion slices, garlic, olive oil, salt, and a bit of balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan over low heat. Cook gently, until onions are soft and caramelized and sweet and yummy...about 15 minutes? Cook veggie burger as specified on your particular package. Top with lettuce, tomato, onions, avocado, and sprouts. Eat...well, attempt to eat. It's a bit messy.

Tomorrow is my day off! I am going to do laundry, possibly take my car to a dealer in Rutland, maybe bake something exciting, and participate in a Blue Ledge Farm field trip to see Wall-E.

Good night.

Crack Pizza

2008-06-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

At Shelburne Farms they even put people in pens.

Hail!!!

My dinner for the past two nights...recipe in previous post.

Remember when you were little, you and your friends used to say that thunder was God going bowling? Or that rain was God crying? Well, if that's true, then the Vermont weather God is a bipolar toddler who has frequent tantrums. Today it was warm and sunny (I think...I was in a cave, so I can't be sure) and then all the sudden it was cloudy, and then it thundered, and then it POURED SHEETS OF WATER AND HAIL THE SIZE OF MARBLES, and then it was bright and sunny and warm again. In a matter of maybe...30 minutes.

Our sourdough starter is ready to make bread! Yay! Greg made some test loaves earlier this week, and I got to have two of them...and uh...they're basically gone now. I like bread. Especially this bread. I'm pretty sure it's the best bread I've ever had.

Anyway, today we made 7 batches of dough, each one enough to make 4 loaves. We then shaped them into baguettes and rounds, scored them, and popped them into the oven. Now there are lots and lots of loaves sitting in a big cloth bag, ready to be sold at the market tomorrow! Excitement.

Greg made pizza with some of the dough. I'm pretty sure he should open a restaurant. It was deeeee-licious. Yes, I fail as a vegan. Shut up.

I'm milking tomorrow morning, so I am heading off to bed. Bed time for Big Bird. Nighty night.

Quiche Puff

2008-06-26T18:43:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I've been an inconsistent blogger lately...but I've been really busy!!! Sometimes I'm just lazy...like Monday night...and Wednesday...but listen to my Tuesday schedule, and maybe you'll understand why I wanted to go to sleep instead of blahg. Wake up at 4:30AM. Milk 5:00-7:00. Feed pigs and non-milkers 7:00-7:30. Cheese house, wrapping and packing orders 8:00-4:00PM. Get in car, drive to Williston 5:00-6:15. Gymnastics 6:15-8:15. Drive home 8:15-9:30. Eat a snack, shower, and sleep! My Thursday schedule is the same, but I wake up at 7:00. So maybe now you can sympathize.

Since today is a Thursday, that means yesterday was a Wednesday, and it was my day off. I didn't have anything planned except food shopping, but Hannah kindly invited me to go strawberry/cherry picking with her and Livia and Hayden! If you have ever seen me in the months of June, July, August, September, and October, you know how obsessed I am with picking edible things. Especially apples and pumpkins and blueberries, but you know, strawberries and cherries are fun too. In Pennsylvania, especially at Linvilla Orchard, I'm pretty sure that it's cheaper to buy apples in a store than to pick them yourself. But in good ol' Vermont, I could get tons of strawberries and cherries for only $7 something. And Linvilla certainly doesn't have a view of mountains and Lake Champlain.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with all of the fruit that I had collected, but I found a recipe for strawberry bread...like banana bread, but with strawberries. Of course, my version substituted every ingredient besides the strawberries...whole wheat instead of white flour, agave nectar instead of sugar, egg replacer, Earth Balance instead of butter...oh, and I didn't use measuring cups or spoons. You can imagine how it tasted. Like shiit-ake mushrooms. Actually, it's not that bad, just a bit floury. I'm obviously not including the recipe for that, mostly because I have no idea what I did. I really need to start following recipes again.

So exciting news! I mentioned it in paragraph #1...I am doing gymnastics again! I go twice a week to a gym in Williston called Green Mountain Gymnastics, and I'm part of an open gym program for middle school/high schoolers, neither of which I am. The coach is going to be a senior in college, though, and she's really nice, so I feel fine. Woooo for getting back in shape! Yeah, about that...I feel like I've been run over by a tractor. It's been more than I year since I've done gymnastics, and my body is protesting, loudly and painfully. But it's ok! It feels great to be back in the gym.

This is what I've been eating for dinner recently, because of my strawberry surplus.

Salad is Cruise Control for Awesome

Salad:

Any type of mild lettuce you like, washed and torn into pieces

ARUGULA....mmmm

Sliced strawberries

Small pieces, crumbles, of goat cheese (I used our herbal chévre)

Diced avocado

Sunflower seeds

Dressing:

2 parts Good olive oil

1 part Good balsamic vinegar

Maple syrup

Salt

Garlic scapes

For salad: Combine everything in a bowl. Duh.

For dressing: Whisk together olive oil and vinegar. Add a little maple syrup and salt to taste. Slice garlic scapes into tiny thin disks and add to mixture.

Pour dressing over salad, grab a fork and a good book, and head on outside.

Weekend with the Parents

2008-06-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting when I said I would. I'm a bad bad blogger. Oh well. Who reads this thing anyway?

I was a bit too busy to post over the weekend because my parents collected me on Friday and we set off for a whirlwind tour of Burlington and the surrounding area. The first day was really amazing...we stopped off to look at Shelburne Farms. It's this GARGANTUAN estate built by a man who had married into Vanderbilt money (you know, the family with the railroads). You walk into the Farm Barn and it feels like you're entering the courtyard of a medieval castle, complete with turrets and a bell tower. It was utterly gorgeous. The first thing we did was get a snack...a veggie platter with fresh little carrots, baby beets, and radishes from their garden, homemade hummus, their fresh baked bread, and Shelburne farms' cheddar. "Wow," is all I can say about that. After we finished, we went and looked at the animals, including a colossal brown swiss cow. I could have sworn she was part elephant. I am going to have pictures of lots of these things, but I haven't received them yet.

We drove around some of the property and saw this Hummer:

Which made us laugh.

For dinner that night we ate at American Flatbread in Burlington...it was delicious. They use all local and organic ingredients whenever possible, so I felt good about throwing my veganism to the winds. We buy their pizza at Whole Foods, and it was really exciting to eat at the actual restaurant.

Saturday was the Burlington Farmer's Market, and it was AMAZING. There was a ton of produce, especially strawberries and lovely greens. I bought some rainbow chard and garlic hummus (from a vendor called "Chick Peace"). Then we met this guy, Dylan, who is a sort of family friend type dude...it's complicated. Anyway, we know him, and he has an organic vegetable farm called "Digger's Mirth." Isn't that a great name? Doesn't that just invoke images of the earth laughing up vegetables? I like it. Dylan took us to the farm and gave us a little tour. It was beautiful, and really interesting. And he gave me some adorable little carrots! I took some pictures...

We had reservations for Black Sheep Bistro in Vegennes, because it was highly recommended by Hannah and Greg. It was far away but worth it. There was a lot to see on the way down and the town of Vegennes is very quaint. I got curried asparagus soup and a spinach beet salad. Mmmm. Oh, and Ben and Jerry's for dessert! Cinnamon Buns ice cream in a kid cone.

For breakfast today we went to a crepe place called The Skinny Pancake. The place was very cute, and had the potential to be delicious, had I not ordered something vegan. Who orders something uncheesy in a crepe place? That was dumb. Ah, well. I'll know for next time.

And then it was time to go!

And now I'm watching the Olympic Trials, angry that I'm not at home in the stands. Grrrr.

One of the Girls

2008-06-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

Picture: My drawing! I have the artistic skills of an very talented toddler! It looks a bit better in person, but not much.

Because Hannah and Greg are artists, they have a studio on the 2nd floor of the New Barn. It's beautiful and bright and stocked with easels and brushes and pastels and the like. Today I felt like doing something vaguely artistic, so I climbed past the eagerly bleating goats on the first floor and up into the studio. And then I looked around, feeling very much out of my element. I grabbed a pencil, paper, and chair, and sat down by the window to sketch what I saw. I tried my very best and STILL ended up with a drawing that could have come from my 2nd grade portfolio. I like it though. I actually put a lot of thought into it, successfully captured some things. Like how the sky looked before a recent storm, and the way the fields sometimes look like a patchwork quilt, and the different layers of the mountains. I gave no thought to perspective...the goats are as big as the trees. Ah, well. I showed it to Hannah and Greg and they managed, admirably, to make positive comments without laughing. Quite impressive on their part, I think.

Then I had an urge. I had an urge to know what it's like to be a goat. I went downstairs, climbed the fence, and sat down in the middle of the pasture. I picked a blade of grass, I put it in my mouth, I chewed it thoughtfully. Then, suddenly, I was surrounded by a small herd of young goats, who seem to think that everything is edible. Everything. My shirt, the ties on my pants, my fingers, my hair, my ears, my nose. I'm surprised that all the features are left on my face. If the goats had their way, I would be a naked, earless, noseless, fingerless, bald young woman. Eventually their nibbling tickled too much and I had to stand up. I discovered that being a goat mostly consists of standing around eating grass, baahhhhh-ing at everything that moves, and running in and out of the barn for no particular reason. It's an action packed life.

Remember when I made those soba noodles with almond butter sauce a few weeks ago? I found an interesting recipe on Orangette for soba with a peanut lime sauce. I've adapted it below:

Soba with EXCITING Sauce

Organic, All Natural Peanut butter

Lime juice (I didn't have limes, so I used lemons)

Olive oil

Soy sauce

Cayenne pepper

Powdered ginger

Chopped Garlic

Nutritional yeast, obviously

Water, to thin it

Soba noodles

Daikon or regular radishes, sliced thin

Lamb's quarters, spinach, or bak choi, sliced thin

Carrots, sliced thin

Whisk together all ingredients for sauce until it turns into something sauce-like. It'll be lumpy for a while, but keep stirring and it'll become smooth.

Boil soba noodles for about 2 minutes, until al dente. Drain and rinse in cold water. Put in bowl, mix with veggies and sauce. Enjoy!

I have felt entirely uninspired for the past few days. You may have noticed that. I think that I am going to make this a Monday-Wednesday-Friday blog, that you can stop by on your way to check xkcd. If you don't know from xkcd...that would sadden, but not surprise me. I wouldn't have the faintest idea of what those four letters represented if I hadn't met Susanna and her posse of webcomics. You'll have to do the research yourself, though. I don't want to make it too easy to discover.

Just...Don't Drop The Soap

2008-06-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

I worked from 5 AM until 4 PM today. That's 11 hours. The great thing is, it barely feels like I'm working. It's amazing. Who else has a job like that? Only me.

Tomorrow is my day off, and then my parents are coming up to visit from Thursday to Sunday. Very exciting!

I'm not quite sure why, but I am happy to an extreme degree. Which is nice.

For dinner, I had tempeh tacos. I made some more tortillas from the leftover dough I had, and then made a filling.

Barn Swallows

Tempeh Tacos

Tempeh, cut into 1/4 inch strips

Sliced red bell pepper

Sliced onion

Sliced mushrooms

Spinach

Red pepper

Curry powder

Nutritional yeast

Soy sauce

Sesame oil

Avocado slices

Heat oil and add peppers and onions to pan. Saute until onions are softened. Add tempeh and mushrooms, cook until tempeh is golden brown. Add spinach, heat until wilted, season with soy sauce, red pepper, curry powder, and nutritional yeast. Fill half a tortilla, top with avocado, fold in half and eat!

I'm going to have a midnight (midnight = 9:00) snack of whole wheat tortilla + maple syrup + peanut butter + banana. Goodnight!

Short But Sweet

2008-06-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

I am trying to think if something especially notable happened today...

Can't think of anything.

Actually yes! Milking went REALLY well today. I finished in a very reasonable amount of time...it probably took me about 1.5 hours.

And another thing! I bought these amazing looking, perfectly ripe strawberries at the co-op. I ate them, and then decided to call them "S.O. Strawberries." S.O. standing for "Spontaneous Orgasm." That's how good they are. I started to eat them just by themselves, but then I remembered the bar of Lake Champlain dark chocolate that I had also purchased at the co-op. I melted it in a makeshift double boiler and dunked the strawberries. A few of them got a sprinkling of spicy pumpkin seeds. Yummy.

Also, it was the most gorgeous day, 78 and breezy.

Happy Monday.

Father's Day

2008-06-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

I'd like to dedicate this post to fathers everywhere, especially my father. And, of course, my brothers, Andrew and Dan. Oh, and Greg! Happy Father's Day to all (for whom it is applicable).

In other news, the piglets have arrived! I found out this morning, but I think they were born last night. There are eight, of all different colors. Some spotted, some orange, some pink, all adorable.

So this morning I woke up, which I took to be a promising start to the day. I fed my starter, because from days 10 - 14 of growing a starter you feed it three times a day. Feeding just consists of adding certain amounts of flour and water and stirring. It's quite smelodious (to quote my father on Father's Day). Is that a positive statement? I'm not sure, but it's meant to be one. It smells pretty good, like apple cider vinegar.

Then I had breakfast...obviously, I ate chili on a piece of bread with cheese. Because I'm too cool for cereal. I worked in the cheese house from about 8 - 12, flipping chévre and pouring crottina/Lake's Edge. And then I was free! I fed my starter again, and then started to think about feeding myself. I had a plan, and that plan involved homemade flour tortillas. I'd just read, on Orangette (see previous post), about making your own tortillas. It just so happened I had all THREE ingredients required to make it. Well, she said to use white flour, but I only have whole wheat. So they were whole wheat tortillas. And they were DELICIOUS. Here is the recipe, adapted from Orangette (Molly Wizenberg), who adapted it from Saveur Cooks Authentic American.

Barn Swallows I

Whole Wheat Tortillas

4 cups organic whole wheat flour
6 Tbs vegetable shortening (Earth Balance)
1 1/2 tsp salt, if shortening is unsalted

In a small saucepan, bring about 2 cups of water to a boil.

Mix together flour and salt in a large bowl. With there being a dearth of large bowls in my apartment, I used a stock pot. Mix in the shortening with your fingers until the flour mixtures is a coarse meal. Add about 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 cups of water (enough so that the dough holds together), and start by mixing with a spoon. Once it is cool enough, bring it all together with your hands.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for about 2-5 minutes, but no more.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 min.
Heat a 9" cast iron skillet over medium heat, with a tiny bit of canola oil.

Cut ball of dough into 6 wedges. Cut wedges into 3 to make 18 wedges in all. Take 1 wedge and roll it into a VERY thin circle about 8 inches in diameter. Put dough in pan and cook for about 20-30 seconds, until puffed. Flip and do another 20-30 seconds until golden brown. Cool on rack, and repeat with remaining wedges. Don't stack until wedges are completely cool.
Yield: 18 tortillas

I ate these tortillas as part of soft tacos made with more chili (can you overdose on chili? I hope not), avocado slices, and crottina leftover from the farmer's market. I am still so full from lunch that I'm skipping dinner altogether.

I lazed about all afternoon...except for the hour I exercised, and the half hour I weeded the garden. The rest of it was spent reading Orangette and The Paupered Chef (another food blog, check it out. One of the writers visited our farm yesterday)...and, I confess, on ConnColl Confessional and Facebook.

The writer of The Paupered Chef has kindly identified those mysterious garlic greens from last post! They are called "Garlic Scapes," and they are the first young tendrils of garlic plants. I found a lovely looking recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto from A Mighty Appetite, which I would most certainly make, had I in my possession a food processor. Someone else must make it and tell me how it is...assuming you could get your hands on garlic scapes, which, come to think of it, is rather unlikely. Keep an eye out though! Stop by farmer's markets.

Barn Swallows II

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator

Intense. Like camping.

2008-06-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

Picture 1 : All the things I got at the market today...organic garlic greens (I don't know what they are, that's what I'm calling them), organic microgreens, and lamb's quarters.

Picture 2 : My chili. It was intense.

Check out this blog, entitled "Orangette." It puts mine completely to shame. I will persevere, however, and continue to update my inferior blog. NOTE (20 minutes later): I just found out that this Orangette woman, Molly Wizenberg (she's Jewish!), is a published writer. I no longer feel like a sad excuse for a blogger.

It was a Saturday, a market day, a morning milking day. I was out of bed by 3:30...I woke up for some reason. It happened to be a good thing, though, because I put some rice and water in the rice cooker and then went back to sleep. When my alarm rang at 4:30, the rice was done. I mixed it with some rice milk and maple syrup for a breakfast porridge. Pretty yummy! Milking was easy, although we had to continue recording the amount of milk each girl was giving. Then Hannah and I walked the goats out to the woods and I fed the piggly wigglies. One of the big sows is pregnant, and when I walk out there I keep expecting to see a jumble of piglets lying somewhere. But it hasn't happened yet! I'm having daydreams about Charlotte's Web.

I helped out in the cheese house pouring chévre for a little bit, and then Hannah dropped me off at the Middlebury market to bring reinforcements to her dad (her parents do market duty...her dad goes to the Middlebury market and her mom to the Rutland market). The market slowed down a lot once I got there, and we didn't sell as well as we had been. I talked to some pretty cool people though...one guy, Casey, was coming to the Middlebury College language school from Wisconsin. He didn't come to our tent to buy cheese...he came for our competitively priced Blue Ledge Farm t-shirts. He left all of his shirts on the train. I felt a bit used...but he was going to be learning Russian, and I, being of Russian ancestry, was charmed. Tucker also came by, with some of his family. They all seem really sweet.

I had $4 left to spend in my wallet...I spend ALL of my money on food. I just can't help it. The co-op is so enticing. I spent $3.50 at the market and was able to buy a bag of organic micro greens and...well, I'm not sure quite what they are...they look like chives/onion grass/scallions, but they're not hollow. Anyway, they are amazing and taste like mild garlic. We traded cheese with this adorable old lady and she gave us bags of Lamb's Quarters. It's commonly considered a weed, but it's actually very nutritious and tastes like spinach. I can't wait for the market to really pick up and more produce to become available.

So I went to the co-op in the afternoon because I was DETERMINED to make chili. I'd seen Hannah and Greg and the kids eating chili and I was like...I WANT IT. But it had meat in it. So I made my own! It is probably has the most ingredients of any chili ever made.

Barn Swallows

Chili con EVERYTHING (but carne, of course)

Minced Garlic

Diced Onion

Diced Red bell pepper

Diced Carrot

Diced Potato

Diced Fresh tomato

Pearled barley

Black beans

Crumbled tempeh

Canned diced tomatoes, squished up a bit.

Frozen corn

Frozen peas

Sliced Button mushrooms

Cumin

Cayenne pepper

...I think that's it.

So, don't do what I did, and use dried black beans that have been soaked. Cheat and used canned black beans, and your stomach will thank you for not making it wait to eat for an hour or two. The recipe is pretty simple. Saute onions, garlic, and bell pepper for about 3 minutes or so. Season with cayenne pepper and cumin. Add carrots and potatoes. Saute for a few minutes. Add barley, tempeh and canned tomatoes. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and cover. Simmer for 30 minutes. In the last 5 minutes of those 30, saute mushrooms, corn, and peas, and fresh tomato until hot. Add to chili. Simmer for another minute, then serve. Garnish with chopped scallions and cheese of your choice...I used some crottina. Mmmm. It was totally worth the 2 hours it took for me to make.

Whew! This was a long one.

Yowch!

2008-06-13T09:19:00.001-07:00

Picture 1 : This is not Vermont. It's France. But I love this picture, and I didn't feel like going downstairs to get my camera to upload the lovely photographs of my damaged digits. So here are some sunflowers.

Remember how I mentioned my haying blisters and hay chafe? Well, today in the cheese house we salted the camembrie. So my hands were covered in salt. It was a really terrific experience, overall. But actually, the camembrie is my favorite cheese to make. The curds are really fun to pour and when you are salting the cheese it's all round and cute and feels like some sort of strange sea creature...in a good way.

I feel like a gymnast again! My hands are all blistered and my biceps are nice and sore.

I worked in the cheese house from 8-12, salting and then wrapping and pricing for the market tomorrow. I ate lunch and then made some vegan peanut butter oatmeal cookies. They're pretty good...but I am not going to put the recipe up, because I don't remember it. I kinda just made it up. I really must start measuring when I bake. I don't have dry measuring cups with me, so I keep eyeballing everything/substituting/making things up. That's fine for cooking, but with baking it's a bit more dangerous. After my cookie adventure, I had afternoon chores. A week-ish ago a big tub came in the mail, containing these crazy contraptions that measure how much milk each girl is producing. It helps you figure out if your goats are "earning their keep." We used them tonight, so after each goat was done milking, we took a milk sample and recorded how much milk they had produced. We have to do it tomorrow morning as well.

My favorite part of the day? When Hannah chased the goats up into the parlor yelling, "THIS IS NOT A PETTING ZOO!!!"

After chores, Tucker told me what he was doing during chores...half the baby goats got out of their pasture and he had to get them back in the new barn. He got them in the barn, but not inside the fence. So we spent about 15 minutes fighting with these little kids, shoving them through a door without letting any of the other ones out. I would compare the experience to wrestling with an octopus. Not that I've ever wrestled an octopus, but imagine it would be similar. Then one of the milkers, Ember, got in with the non-milkers, and we spent about 20 more minutes trying to catch her and put her in the correct pasture. GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! CRAZY TOWN!

Then I made dinner...I had broiled zucchini and potatoes with some LaLuna on top and some sauteed spinach and kale. Just lots of vegetables today. I actually don't think I had any protein today...hmm. I'll have to have lots of beans or lentils tomorrow. Tomorrow is farmer's market day! WOOOOO.

As Cool As I Am

2008-06-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'm tired. So I'm not putting up pictures or writing what I ate or doing any of that superfluous nonsense.

Today I woke up. At 7. And then I worked from 8 until maybe 2 or 3 (?) salting chévre, washing moulds, and pouring camembrie. When I emerged from the temperature controlled cheese house I found that it was a beautiful day! Breezy and in the 70's. Now that's what I imagined a Vermont summer would be like. I weeded the garden for about 45 minutes...I could have seriously done it for a few hours, but that was when the first wagon of hay arrived. Duh duh duhhhhhh. I'd unloaded hay once at my horse farm camp, SMA, and it was not the most pleasant experience. Although they did take us out for ice cream afterwards. Hey, Hannah and Greg, why didn't you guys buy me ice cream? Oh, that's right. I'm a vegan.

Anyway.

One person has to stand in the hay wagon and load bales onto the belt that carries the bales up into the hay loft. Two other people are up in the hay loft, grabbing the bales and stacking them. I wasn't really too much help because I can only lift one bale at a time and each bale is almost as big as me. I got some cool haying blisters, though. And some lovely hay chafe on my arms. It's really attractive. And I got to ride in the hay wagon! Hay rides never get old, apparently.

In other news, I climbed halfway up the silo. It was a beautiful view.

I ate some stuff for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was good.

Good night.

Burlington

2008-06-11T16:31:00.001-07:00

Picture 1 : I stopped at a pick-your-own-strawberries farm on the way up and bought some strawberries. They were yummy and pretty and sadly not organic.

Picture 2 : IT WAS SO GORGEOUS. I almost drifted into cars in the other lane because I couldn't stop looking at the views. So beautiful it was nearly deadly.

Today is Wednesday, and it was my day off. (So, have you memorized my schedule yet?) I woke and up and had breakfast...I'd run out of rice milk and cereal so I did this weird thing where I took leftover brown rice and mixed it with organic peanut butter, maple syrup, and ginger. It was pretty good. Then I got in the car and made my way north on Rt. 7. I was heading toward Shelburne (about 40 minutes away), where there is a gym that offers $5 open workouts. (That's a ridiculously good price, btw). It took a while to get there, because 1. it's far away and 2. they were paving and painting lines on the road. Once I got there...funny story. I walked in the door and the first thing I saw were five 3-year-olds bouncing on a trampoline. The second thing I saw was that the ceiling was about 9 feet high. And the third thing I saw that the "gym" was about the size of the cheese house. And it was at that point that I realized this was a gym for people that do not exceed 3 feet. AKA small children. AKA not me. So I kind of giggled to myself, and then walked right back out. I sat in the car, a bit miffed, and then called my dear mother, who always knows what to do. She told me the addresses of three other gyms in the area (at this point, I wasn't just going to drive back to the farm) and I plugged them into my handy dandy GPS and went on a tour of the Burlington area. The first gym I stopped at was Champlain Valley Gymnastics (CVG) in South Burlington, and they had a nice sized gym with all the equipment. They don't currently offer open workouts though, but they might call me about working out with their team. I left and went to Hruska Gymnastics Academy in Winooski...but they were closed. They do offer open workout on Sunday from 1-3, and it's the home gym of the UVM club team. They're kinda a bit deal. After Hruska's I went to Green Mountain Gymnastics. I almost gave up on finding it, but I'm so glad that I didn't. It was a clean, beautiful gym that's set up very much like my gym at home. The woman I met there, Robin, is probably the nicest person on the face of the earth. They have an open program for middle and high school students on Tuesday and Thursday nights that I could come to, and she gave me the forms and the prices and all the information and I'm totally set EXCEPT that I have to call Head Over Heels in Rutland to make sure it isn't just for little kids. Because it's way closer than Green Mountain. But yay!

I headed into downtown Burlington for lunch. I ate at a restaurant called Zabby and Elf's Stone Soup. It's mostly vegetarian/vegan (which is why I ate there) and it was really quaint and delicious. It's buffet style with lots of different options. I had a tempeh stew, kale, brown rice, sweet potatoes, and a little bit of salad. I was in macrobiotic heaven! I walked around after lunch and shopped a bit...it's the biggest city in Vermont but it's probably smaller than Penn State's college town. I walked into the Burlington co-op but it was so big that I got really overwhelmed and fled. I stopped at the Middlebury co-op on the way home and got some miso paste.

For dinner, I had a bowl of homemade miso soup, some seaweed salad, and some quinoa salad. The miso soup recipe...I think either I need to perfect it, the recipe isn't very good, or that's just how traditional miso soup tastes. I'm thinking it's option 1 or 3...I trust Christina Pirello, although sometimes she scares me a little bit. Either way, I'm not going to post the recipe quite yet.

Barn Swallows

Seaweed Salad

Arame (soaked 3 minutes, boiled for 10)

Sesame seeds

Toasted sesame oil

Soy sauce

Brown rice vinegar

Red pepper

Combine everything. And eat it.

Quinoa Salad

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup water

Tomato

Peas (fresh or frozen)

Scallions

Olive oil

Sea salt

Nutritional yeast

I tried SO HARD to resist putting in curry powder, but I succumbed. I love it too much.

Bring quinoa and water to boil, simmer for 15 minutes. Dice tomato. Slice scallions. Boil or steam peas until tender, then drain. Mix all ingredients together.

Such a busy day! I left at 10 and got back at 6. Craziness.

Breathing Tornado

2008-06-10T18:26:00.000-07:00

I actually caught a picture of the lightening! After maybe, 45 tries.
It was another crazy Tuesday! I milked in the morning, so I was up before the sun...probably a good thing, because it ended up being about 1,000,000 degrees again. I'm really starting to like the goats. Once you get over the fact that they're stubborn and sometimes very unintelligent, you see that they each have their own distinct personality and are often reminiscent of people that you know. Or maybe it's that most days, I see more of the goats than I do of people, and they are becoming human in my mind. Either one. Anyway, after I milked, I fed the pigs. It was getting quite balmy by that point and I was all sticky and gross. While I was filling buckets of water and whey for the pigs, I poured all this cold water over my head. Greg noticed that I was soaking wet and asked me if I was okay...I think he thought I was dying of heat stroke and sweating to death. But no. I had just stuck my head under the spiget. I gave the pigs lots and lots of water because it is so hot, and I gave myself a nice workout bringing those buckets back and forth about 10 times. I took a break and then helped Hannah bring the goats out to the woods where it's nice and shady. Some silly goats refused to come with us and they stayed in the barn all day. After that I worked in the cheese house until 1:30 packing restaurant tubs, wrapping Lake's Edge and crottina, pouring chévre, washing moulds, and cleaning the bulk tank.
We heard there was a tornado warning in the area, so we brought the goats in from the woods early. Right after they were safely in the barn, the wind really picked up. Every unlocked door kept banging open and shut...I felt like I was in some sort of goat farmer horror film. You could actually see the wall of rain coming towards us. Pretty creepy. It ended up being a short-but-intense thunderstorm and then it was sunny again. No worries. And now it's a lot cooler and it's supposed to be in the high 70's tomorrow, I think. That would be great, because I'm planning to head up to a gym (as in gymnastics, not like, treadmills) in Shelburne and take advantage of their hour of open gym. I'd rather not have it be like PGC where it's 100 degree in the gym and the bars are dripping wet BUT WE STILL HAVE A 5 HOUR PRACTICE. Yeah...fun times at summer workout.
So after the non-tornado, I made dinner. I feel like I've made something exactly like this, but it was really good. So I'm going to post the recipe anyway.
Barn Swallows
Brown Rice With Many Things In It
A handful (literally, I took a handful) of cooked brown rice
Kale of any sort (I used some from the garden...mmm)
Arame
Mushrooms(shitake would be more authentic, probably, but I used button)
Onion
Garlic
Fresh Ginger
Sesame seeds
Nutritional Yeast
Sesame oil
Red pepper
Soy sauce
Cut the stalks out of the kale and drop leaves into boiling water. When they turn a vivid shade of green, fish them out and put into an ice bath. Take them out of the ice bath and slice into strips or smaller pieces.
Cook arame according to package...soak in cold water for 5 minutes, drain, and boil for 10.
Dice onion, mince garlic and ginger. Put in pan with sesame oil and sesame seeds. Saute until onions are soft. Add mushrooms, saute until soft. Add kale, arame, and rice. Cook until everything is hot. Add soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and red pepper. It would be good topped with avocado...don't know what I didn't do that. Oh well. Yummy healthy goodness! SEAWEED...CRUCIFEROUS GREENS...FIBER...EAT IT....

I hear thunder in the distance. When I was little, I used to call it "wonder." Wasn't I cute?

Cinnamon Bell

2008-06-09T17:02:00.000-07:00

I WANT TO GO TO SLEEP so this is going to be short. I hope.

Daily Blue Ledger:

I woke up at 7 and went out to the cheese house at 8. I flipped crottina in RECORD TIME and then put together some Lake's Edge. It was weird, I've worked with the ash at least 3 other times, but today I could smell it. Very odd. Then I wrapped camembrie until 12. After that, I ate some of the camembrie that I'd be saving in my refrigerator since last weekend; it was so perfect and delicious! I'm glad I waited. I kinda moseyed (that's actually how you spell the past tense of "mosey"...does that look strange or is it just me?) around until it was time to milk. I think that's what I did, at least. The heat may be affecting my memory. I had Tucker to help me milk, which was lovely. It's easier with two people. Feeding the pigs, especially, is so much faster. We had no major mishaps, although when I looked in during the 2nd to last group, there were 5 girls instead of 7 in the holding area. I don't know where these girls go! It's a mystery! Anyway, I went out and immediately found the two that were missing. Finding them, however, is one thing. Catching them is quite another. One of them is really old and adorable and wears a bell around her neck and just submitted meekly to being led back inside, but the other one decided that she didn't want to be milked today. So I ran around after this goat in my spotted boots for a little while. She tried to hide herself in a group of three goats. Really? Three? Like I'm not going to see you? So I caught her then and brought her back in. In general, though, it was very successful. I had a light salad for dinner...

Barn Swallows:

Avocado Tomato salad with Lemon Ginger Dressing

Avocado slices

Tomato slices

Cooked/canned chickpeas

Any kind of sprouts...alfalfa, pea, sunflower, etc

Lemon

Olive oil

Salt

Fresh Ginger

Nutritional yeast

Put avocado, tomato, and chickpeas in bowl. Top with sprouts. Grate ginger, squeeze juice into a small bowl. Add lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to ginger bowl. Combine. Pour dressing over salad and sprinkle some nutritional yeast on top.

Night night, my vast readership.

A Taste Of India

2008-06-08T13:08:00.001-07:00

Picture 1: Oh, those Vermantas, they do what they want ta.

Picture 2: This shirt says "America's Pastime." I, of course, read "Erica's Pastrami."
Have I mentioned that I don't have air conditioning? I could have it, but I'm just masochistic like that. Just kidding, I like the heat. Although, less humidity might be nice. I'm a bit too sticky and sweaty to really be seen in public.

Daily Blue Ledger:

Woke up at 7, cheese house by 8ish, poured curds until 12ish. Then I went from cheesemaker to housewife and made lunch, took out the trash, did my laundry, hung everything on the clothesline, washed the dishes, and folded my dry clothes. Afterwards, I went for a little walk to a bridge that overlooks a creek/river/stream and read my current book while other people were fishing. When I got back to my little apartment, I realized 1. I didn't feel like cooking dinner and 2. I had an intense craving for Indian food. So I went out for dinner! By myself. Which was an interesting experience...I've never done that before. Not sure I want to do it again, but I'm glad I did it. I got Aloo Chana Saag (Potatoes and Chickpeas in Spinach) and Garlic Naan. The best thing about Indian food is that you can always take some home with you and have the leftovers for lunch. Or breakfast, if you're me. Oh, I forgot to mention that before I went out I did a Zumba (I obviously just discovered you could link things on the blog) tape and danced around like a fool in 95 degree heat for about 40 minutes.

Now I'm going to sleep! Because on a farm, that's what you do at 9 PM.

HOT

2008-06-07T15:37:00.001-07:00

I had such great pictures for today but I can't put them up! UGH blogger.com fails me sometimes.

I feel like in Philly, the temperature doesn't go from 60's to 90's in the space of a day. But that's what it does in Vermont! It was rainy and cold yesterday, and today it is humid, hot, and sunny.

Daily Blue Ledger:

I woke up at 4:30 for morning chores. The day started off on the wrong foot when I was herding the girls into the barn. Three of them were having some kind of epic goat battle and apparently they were too engrossed to listen to me. So it took quite a while to even start milking. And then once I'd started, two girls in the fourth group jumped off the platform, pulling off one of the units that mechanically milks the goats. Connie (the dog) tried to help me by attacking the goats, which was obviously not very helpful at all. And then in the last group of girls, there were only 6 (as opposed to 7, the correct number). AHHHH goats. They make me go crraaazzzyyyy. After that, I fed the pigs. At this point I was sweating because it's so lovely and hot! Yay heat!

I worked in the cheesehouse for a little bit and then weeded in the garden. We're trying to turn a patch of grass into a garden, so it's a constant struggle against the encroaching weeds. I made one row of spinach/beets look pretty. It took 2 hours to do it.

In the afternoon I went to the co-op, where I discovered the spice section! THEY HAVE EVERY SPICE IMAGINABLE! I could have sat there for hours, I swear. They even have flowers and medicinal herbs. Things like "skullcap" and "slippery elm." I got out my camera and took a picture, and some lady walked by and looked at me like, "Um...what are you doing?" She apparently couldn't relate to my love for spices. I came back from the co-op and started to make dinner really early because it was kinda elaborate...I made these crazy veggie burgers.

Barn Swallows:

Oddly Sweet California Veggie Burgers (makes 4)

1/2 medium sweet potato

1/2 cup quinoa or millet

1/2 medium carrot

1/2 small onion

1 large garlic clove

sesame oil

1/2 cup fresh or frozen peas

1/2 cup cooked or canned chickpeas

salt

garam masala

cumin

cayenne pepper

curry powder

ginger powder

1/8 cup whole wheat flour

1/8 cup sunflower seeds

1 Tbs lemon juice

alfalfa sprouts

avocado slices

your favorite salad dressing

Bake sweet potato at 400 F for 40 minutes, or until soft. Peel and mash, when cool enough to handle. Cook quinoa in 1 cup water for 15 minutes, or until liquid is absorbed. Mix with mashed potato. Finely chop carrot, onion, and garlic (or pulse in food processor). Saute with sesame oil until onion is translucent. Add to millet mixture. Boil peas until tender but firm, about 3 minutes. Mash peas and chickpeas and add to millet mixture. Add lemon juice, sunflower seeds, and spices. For into 4 patties. Cook patties in skillet with sesame oil for about 7 minutes on each side. Put on bun or bread or lettuce leaf or nothing at all, top with avocado slices, sprouts, and dressing. Complicated and possibly not worth the work, but interesting nonetheless.

I just checked the weather and it's going to be in the 90's or high 80's for the next three days. The only problem with that is that I have to wear long pants for both milking and the cheesehouse. That sucks. Ah, well, it's part of the job. Hope it's not too hot where you are, readers of my blahg! Readers of my blog who don't post comments anymore. I'm going to have a question at the end of each post that you can answer through a comment. If you don't know how to post, I'm pretty sure all you have to do is click on "post comment," type your comment, write in that wiggly word that shows you're not a robot, and hit "publish your comment." Maybe it's more complicated than that, I'm not sure.

Here's todays question, which is not in the form of a question. It's more like a mandate:

Think of a new kind of chévre...so far we have cranberry walnut, herb, and pepper. Ready...go!

Banana Pancakes

2008-06-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

Picture 1 : My fingers yesterday after washing moulds

Picture 2 : My starter

This morning when I looked out the window I saw the it was going to be a grey, chilly, rainy day. So after I worked in the cheesehouse wrapping chévre from 8-12, I went back in my apartment, turned up the heat a bit, put on my pajamas, and put on the song "Banana Pancakes," by Jack Johnson. And then I realized that I needed to make banana pancakes.

Barn Swallows

Vegan Whole Wheat Banana Pancakes

1 large banana, sliced

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 Tbp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup rice/soy/hemp/almond milk

2 Tbs oil or melted Earth Balance

3 Tbs agave nectar or maple syrup or honey or juice

VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP

Mix dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately, then combine and mix until just combined. A few lumps okay...don't overmix. Heat pan with oil or Earth Balance and pour batter to form 4 inch circles. Place banana slices on top. Cook until the edges look dry and you see bubbles. Flip! Cook for about 2 minutes on the other side, until golden brown on each side. Serve with VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP, smile at the rain, and eat up.

Another thing that I noticed this morning, besides the rain, is that my sourdough starter has doubled in size! It's so cool. I wish I had taken a picture of it yesterday, so that you could compare, but just know that yesterday it was half the size and looked like goo. Now it's bigger and frothy! Excitement.

After lying around in my pajamas and eating banana pancakes, I changed into dirty jeans and a fleece and went to milk the goaty goats. When I was on the third group of goats, Chris came to deliver a bunch of goat's milk (we buy milk from a farm nearby). So I stopped milking for a little bit to help him pour these huge metals cans of milk into a tank. Fun fact: Chris is left handed too! I get really excited when I meet other left handed people. Anyway, I went back to milking and for the first time, there were no crazy problems! WOOOO! I did spend about 5 minutes trying to get one girl in the last group up onto the platform, but eventually I succeeded. Then I fed the pigs and made dinner. I sauteed spinach with garlic, onions, and sesame seeds and brown rice. I topped it with avocado slices, soy sauce, and nutritional yeast. Yum yum.

It's Thursday Again!

2008-06-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

It's Thursday again! Thursday, if you don't remember, is the crazy cheese day where I wash moulds for hours. But since Tucker's working now, it was not as crazy. My fingers still got pretty pruny though.

Daily Blue Ledger:

I woke up at 7:00 and did all that morning stuff like eating breakfast (I ate leftover samosas...yum!), getting dressed, etc., and went out to the cheese house at 8. I was about 5 minutes late because I was downloading some Sufjan Stevens. I had an urge. We salted the chévre from yesterday, washed ALL those moulds, and sanitized the camembrie moulds. Then we had a nice long lunch break, during which I ate salad and swung on the swing set. Back in the cheese house, we cut the curds, poured the camembrie, and cleaned the bulk tank. Then it was 4 and we were done! Time passes so quickly while I'm working. It's almost frightening. I made a quick dinner...

Barn Swallows:

Potato Tomato Salad

Potatoes of any sort, boiled

Tomatoes

Basil leaves

Olive Oil

Balsamic Vinegar

Paprika

Salt

Slice potatoes into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Put in a hot pan with oil. Sprinkle salt and paprika on top of each slice. Cook until brown on one side, and flip. Sprinkle again with salt and paprika, and let brown on other side. In the meantime, slice tomatoes slightly thinner than the potatoes. Layer potatoes, tomatoes, and basil leaves. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with more salt, if desired. Enjoy this light dinner.

After dinner I babysat for Livia and Hayden from about 6:30 - 9:30. We watched Howl's Moving Castle (that animation in that movie is so gorgeous...everyone should see it and read the book) and read 101 Dalmations. I've never had such an easy time babysitting. Those kids are awesome. And now I'm going to sleep! Goodnight.

Sweet Cecily, Samosas, and Starters

2008-06-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

Daily Blue Ledger

Today was a Wednesday, so it was my day off...yay! I slept until 7:30 and then got up and made quinoa porridge, which was really quite yummy.

Barn Swallows I

Quinoa Porridge

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup rice milk

Banana slices

Maple syrup

Ginger powder

Flax seeds

Put quinoa and rice milk in pot and bring to boil, simmer for 15 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Put in bowl and add sliced banana, maple syrup, flax seeds, and ginger powder. Stir and eat!

Then I spent about 2 hours downloading contemporary folk music off Limewire...should I not say that on the internet? Whatever...the RIAA already caught me once. I'm a bad girl. I got some great stuff, though...it's cool, the iTunes store gives you a whole playlist of suggested artists that they think every modern-folk-lover should have. So it's like, David Gray, Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton, The Weepies...and I downloaded a few top songs from each.

After that, I felt like I should probably go outside or something, so I went to visit Molly at Sweet Cecily, where she works. Sweet Cecily is a store on Middlebury's Main Street that is probably the cutest thing I've ever seen. It's similar to Blue Tulip...but just much better. It has all these fairy knick knacks and soaps and cards. The best part is the view; there's a balcony the overhangs the waterfall. It's gorgeous. So after I visited her, I went to the co-op and got a multi vitamin, just to make sure I'm getting all the right nutrients, and some fruits and veggies. Then I came back to the farm and looked up a recipe for samosas, which I had never made before.

Barn Swallows II

Vegan Samosas

Dough:

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 Tbs oil (I used 1 T sesame and 1 T olive)

3/4ish cup warm water

3/4 tsp salt

Mix together until forms a ball with a "pie-crust texture" (that's what the recipe I used said, interpret as you will). Let rest for 30 minutes.

Filling:

3 potatoes, peeled, boiled, and mashed

1 small onion, diced

1 cup peas

A medium-spiced chili pepper, minced (I didn't have one, so I used a red bell pepper)

Garlic

Oil or Earth Balance

Spices: Nutritional yeast, curry powder, garam masala, paprika, salt, cayenne pepper

In the meantime, saute onions, pepper, and garlic in oil until soft. Add peas and mashed potatoes and combine. I added a little Earth Balance at this point. Add all spices, blah blah blah...

Ok. Preheat oven to 375. Divide dough into 8 pieces. Flatten each piece into a square a 1/4 inch thick and about 4-5 inches across. Put some filling in the middle and fold diagonally to make a triangle. Pinch edges together firmly. Place on greased baking sheet and put middle of oven. Bake for about 20 minute? The recipe said 40-50 but I think that's incorrect. Just make sure they're not burning. Let cool a bit and enjoy.

Greg knocked on my door tonight to ask if I wanted to make sourdough starters for bread. And of course I did, because cooking's my thing and I love bread. It's a 14 day process to grow a culture, and it starts very simply. You sanitize everything, then mix together flour and water in a big container. To start off the fermentation, you use some type of organic fruit...we happened to have apples. So you put apple slices in cloth bags squish the juice into the starter and put in the entire bag in the mixture. Then the lid goes on tightly and it sits until the next step. It's really a growing thing, and it has to be fed like an infant. It's sitting next to my bed and I'm going to sing to it every night so it feels loved.

It's getting late and I have to go to sleep...night night.

Another Tuesday

2008-06-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

Picture # 1: The sky in the Simpson's opening theme

Picture # 2: The sky in Salisbury, VT

Starting off with a story...so Greg's stepdad found my blahg online somehow (impressive and slightly creepy) (Hi Greg's stepdad, if you're reading!) and told Hannah and Greg about it, and apparently sent it to some of his family (Hi extended family!)...so my audience has grown. It makes me feel slightly famous, and slightly nervous. I'm just going to continue on my merry blogging way, though, and try not to censor too much. Because then it would just be boring.

Today was another one of those crazy Tuesdays, although it wasn't really that crazy for me. I went to bed late last night because I was up blahgging (late means 10:00), and then I woke up at 4:30. So I was pretty tired all day, and consequently I had one of those days where I just annoyed myself to death. Almost everything I said made me want to punch myself in the diaphragm. So then I tried to stop speaking, which was almost as bad. Oh, well. I really must get more sleep.

The Daily Blue Ledger:

Woke up at 4:30 and did morning chores. We just had a new girl freshen (I believe this means when a goat starts giving milk after having a baby? possibly? Hannah? Greg?) and she was so good for her second time being milked (first time being last night). I was excited during the 2nd to last group of goats because I'd done the whole thing by myself and there were no problems. Then during the last group I realized there were only 6 girls instead of 7, which meant one girl broke out while I was milking. So I ran all over the field looking for a girl that hadn't been milked but I couldn't find her! I'm really hoping there will be a day when none of these crazy things happen (milk spilling on the floor, goats jumping off platforms, missing girls, etc). Ugh, what can I say, I'm a recovering perfectionist. I worked in the cheese house after that. I learned how to coat hard cheese with wax, which I'm really not very good at. I think it might be easier if my hands were bigger and I was taller. You dip a wheel of cheese halfway into the melted wax a few times and then spin it around so there aren't any drips. Then you dip the other side, and then repeat the whole process. It's really important to make sure that there aren't any pinholes in the wax, or bad molds will grow in there. I also poured some chévre and tasted the new cranberry walnut chévre (SO YUMMY). I think that was it...I gardened after that. I weeded for about an hour and then Hannah and I planted corn! I love the garden. Oooo the spinach was ready to eat so I picked some, even though I already have a ton of spinach. You can never have too much spinach, I always say. I know Popeye agrees with me.

Barn Swallows:

Veggie Fried Rice

Cooked brown rice

Garlic

Fresh spinach

Button mushrooms

Red bell pepper

Peas, fresh or frozen

Sesame Oil

Flax seeds

Sunflower seeds

Flavorings: Soy sauce, Maple syrup, Nutritional Yeast, Red Pepper, Ginger Powder

Saute garlic and red pepper in sesame oil until soft. Add mushrooms, cook until soft, add peas and spinach, cook until spinach is wilting. Add rice, saute until hot. Add sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and all flavorings. Healthy Chinese food!

Tomorrow is my day off, but I think it's going to rain. We'll see what I do! Your guess is as good as mine right now.

Sorry, Guys...

2008-06-02T16:33:00.001-07:00

So I've been a pretty terrible blogger lately...but I have been really busy. So where did I leave off? Oh, yes. Sunday. Oh, it's only been one day since I posted! That's not so terrible. So my Sunday schedule is lovely, because I work in the cheese house from 8-12 and then I'm done! I can wake up late and get out early. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my half day off, and I was determined not to sit around by myself, so I decided to finally contact the one person I know up here, Molly. And she was a good friend and invited me to hang out with her and her friend Abby. Wooooo people my own age! We went to get ice cream (which I don't eat, sadly) and walked around Middlebury. Oh, fun fact about Vermont! Not only are they the state with the largest number of western Buddhist converts, but they also call soft-serve ice cream "creemees." It's like, "Hey, I'm bored. Wanna go get a creemee?" I think it's cute but I'm pretty sure I sound ridiculous saying it. So I'll stick with good old soft serve. Then Molly and her mom (who I really love) and I went to see the Narnia movie, which both Molly and I had already seen. It's so epic, everyone should see it at least twice. But it was really nice to not be sitting alone on the farm.

Daily Blue Ledger:

My sister Rachael has cleverly come up with my daily summary title...apparently the name of the newspaper in Superman is the Daily Ledger? Anyway, very cute, I'm a fan.

This day started out normally, 8-12 in the cheese house. It's June 2nd, Tucker's first day! He seems really cool. He's going to be a senior at Middlebury, and he's an environmental science/geology major. Anyway, I flipped and wrapped some Crottina, put together some Lake's Edge, packed restaurant tubs of chévre, and rolled chévre in herbs. They just came up with a new chévre! We already have plain, pepper, and herbal. Now we're going to have walnut cranberry. It sounds so good, but I have yet to taste it. I've heard that there's a place that makes chévre with chocolate...I think it sounds really interesting. In a good way. So after my cheese duty I went to the co-op, bought some yummy food, and came back to do evening chores. It was the first time I had to bring the goats in from the woods (they graze in all sorts of different terrain: woods, wetlands, and open fields). It was a crazy experience. It's actually hilarious...you call the goats, and they just come trotting along in a double file line along their little goat trail. Getting them all in the barn took about a 1/2 hour, because some of them break away and you have to drag each back separately.

A Goat's Tail:

When I started milking, in the very first group (the groups usually start out being well behaved and by the end are absolutely stupid) a goat jumped of the 3 foot high milking platform and ran out the barn door. My worst nightmare had come true. Remember when I'd written about my vision of me running up the road in spotted rain boots? Yeah. It happened. Minus the roadkill. Scariest thing ever, though. I caught her eventually and brought her back, and that was my exercise for the day. And after that, the rest of the goats were just their usual stubborn selves. Once I was done milking, I had to clean up and feed the pigs (also very stressful, because of aforementioned Miyazaki film).

Fun fact about me: I'm dumb. Today I got shocked by an electric fence. The end.

Barn Swallows:

I was so tired after that milking that I just made a salad...

Mixed Greens

Black Beans

Avocado

Goat Cheese

Carrot

Sunflower Seeds

Annie's Goddess Dressing

Combine ingredients, toss, and eat. So simple.

Sorry for the lack of pictures...they wouldn't load for some reason. Hopefully it'll work tomorrow.

Rutland Market

2008-05-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post because I want to go to sleep...

Today was Saturday, which means market day. I woke up early to milk the goats, and then got dressed in my Blue Ledge Farm shirt and squeezed into the truck. It's about a 30 minute drive to Rutland, but the views were gorgeous, so it seemed to take no time at all. The morning was very misty and damp, and the mountains were just blue-grey silhouettes in the distance. I think it's actually more lovely when it's rainy than when it's sunny. We were worried that the market would be slow because of the bad weather, but it was bustling! We sold all the cheese except for a camembrie and an herbal chévre and I got to keep them, which is freakin' awesome. The Rutland market is a lot bigger and busier than the Middlebury one. The Middlebury market generally is more about quality than quantity...Rutland had it's share of vendors offering crappy t-shirts and generic jewelry. However, the best bread in the state, according to Hannah, is available at this market. It's called Bear Mountain Bread and, although I have not tried every loaf in the state, I would not be surprised if this was the best. It has a crackly crust and a chewy interior and it's absolutely delicious. And the guy selling it is probably the most adorable old man I've ever seen. Hannah told me he's a former Jesuit priest but he fell in love with a nun and they left and got married.

I got paid! Even though I spilled milk all over the floor, they paid me $60 dollars. I got a raise!! Now I'll be able to buy food and possibly gas! Wowie zowie.

There was a little festival hosted by co-op on the green in Middlebury tonight, and I went with Greg and the kids. They had asked us to bring a goat with us, so we loaded up a tiny kid (baby goat) along with the kids (baby humans) in back seat of the truck. This goat was the cutest thing ever...you could just pick her up and carry her around. Livia named her Sarah. Once we got back to the farm and put her back with the other goats, she kept trying to follow us around and wagged her tail like a dog. I wanted to put her in my bed and pretend she was a teddy bear.

Now I'm tired and it's late...I have pictures of the bread and the goat but I'll put them up tomorrow.

Night night.

Stupidity

2008-05-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

Picture 1 My Blue Ledge Farm shirt...they come in also sorts of really adorable colors...this lovely rust/orange is my other favorite.

Picture 2 Vegetables from the co-op!

Picture 3 YUMMY SOUP

Picture 4 A Barn Swallow (I did not take this picture...I give credit to www.wildphotosphotographry.com)

So guess what? I'm getting tan! Working in the garden and eating most of my meals outside is starting to turn me a shade browner. Excitement! I never get tan.

What I decided today is that I'm going to pretend that my blahg is like a daily newspaper. And it will have columns, or maybe sections, like a newspaper. The cute animal story (if I happen to have one) will be called "A ____'s Tail" (insert species). I'll always have an overview of my day, but I can't think of what that should be called. I could just call it the Daily Summary, but that's boring. Or maybe "A Summer-y Day." Anyway, the food section will be called "Barn Swallows" (that's my favorite). If I ever wrote a farm cookbook, I'd call it Barn Swallows, and have a picture of a barn swallow on the cover.

A Summer-y Day

My scheduled hours today were from 8-12 in the cheese house and PM milking (4:30ish-6:30ish). Third day in a row that I could get up late! The day started out well enough; I worked in the cheese house salting camembrie and wrapped cheese for the farmer's market tomorrow. Then I went to the co-op to get some vegetables for dinner...god I love the coop so much. Spinach was on sale! Joyous day. I got back from the coop and got ready for evening milking. The goats were being so obnoxious! You have to open this little door and let in 10 goats, but sometimes they just refuse to come through and it's so frustrating. So that put me in a really bad mood. And then when I was done, I wasn't concentrating, and I turned off the machine without pumping the last batch of milk into the tank, so it all spilled on the floor. Probably like, $50 worth of milk or something. Who knows. I felt so terrible...I'm probably the worst intern ever. I can't believe they pay me. I should ask them not to pay me this week.

Ok, and the angst is over.

A Pig's Tail: This isn't really a story, I just wanted to use the title. I fed the pigs today! That's it. I guess I can say more...there's nothing that makes you feel more like a farmer than feeding the pigs. Something about climbing over fences carrying buckets of grain and pouring it into a feeding bin while 3 pigs and 10 piglets are squealing and fighting to get the food and then carrying six full buckets of whey and pouring it over the pigs heads because their faces are still buried in the grain in the bin makes you feel like you're really in touch with those colonial farmer roots. The whole thing is a frightening experience, however, because while I'm feeding them, all I can think of is Princess Mononoke and those huge boars with those worm things coming out of them....that movie was scary. Amazing, but scary.

To comfort myself after the milking mishap, I made myself some soup. Soup is the most soothing food ever.

Barn Swallows: Vegetable Quinoa Soup

Vegetable broth

Asparagus

Spinach

Mushroom

(Potatoes would be good but I didn't have any)

Peas, fresh or frozen (at the co-op they sell local organic frozen peas)

Quinoa, cooked

Flavorings (I am the queen of spice so I used ginger, red pepper, curry powder, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and sesame oil)

Put vegetable broth in a pot, add asparagus, bring to boil, add mushrooms, boil for a minute, lower to simmer, add spinach and quinoa, simmer until spinach is wilted, and turn off heat. Pour into bowl, add flavorings, and eat! But don't burn your tongue.

So, if anyone has any ideas about what my Daily Overview should be called, post them here. Or email them to me, if posting is not an option for you. Or any ideas for other sections would be good.

Thursdays

2008-05-29T15:59:00.000-07:00

So I know that I said Tuesdays were the crazy day, but Thursdays are even crazier! The problem is, we are producing so much milk right now and making so much cheese that there's nowhere to put it. Greg is trying to make all these cheeses that require all these different moulds (it's funny, because cheese deals with both molds and moulds...moulds are the containers that the curds are ladled into), but there isn't enough space. We're trying to make chévre and camembrie in the same day...it's so complicated that I can't really write it down without boring people to death...sorry if I already have. What it comes down to is that today I washed moulds from 9AM-3PM (6 hours). With a 15 minute break for lunch.

So it's this absolutely insane day and it turns out that there's another tour! It's a group of 40 older people from an assisted living place. Greg was saying how when you get old, it's just like college again (he once worked in an assisted living home)...you're put in one place with people who are the same age as you and they have all these activities set up for you, field trips and classes and such. Anyway, we're trying to wash all these moulds before we have to pour camembrie, but we have to give these old people a tour around the cheese house while we're doing it. Story: Greg HATES flies...understandably, because they bring contamination into his perfectly clean cheese house. So he is this master fly killer. He can just catch them in his hand. It's crazy. And he's giving the tour, and the whole time he's talking his eyes are just following this fly around, and the fly lands right over this tiny old lady's head, and he stops talking and just suddenly slaps the wall over this woman's head and kills the fly. She was scared to death. Thankfully, this incident did not stop them from buying about 200 dollars worth of cheese and shirts.

After I was freed from the house of cheese, I gardened a little bit and made dinner. Dinner tonight was a quinoa salad.

Rainbow Quinoa Salad

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup vegetable broth (or water + salt)

Tomato (red)

Carrot (orange)

Yellow bell pepper (yellow)(duh)

Avocado (green)

Onion

Sunflower seeds (or any sort of seed/nut)

Balsamic Vinegar (or any acidic liquid)

Olive Oil (or any other oil)

Maple Syrup (optional, but yummy)

Combine quinoa and broth in pot, bring to boil, let simmer for 15 minutes/until liquid is absorbed. Chop vegetables into bite sized pieces. Mix balsamic vinegar and oil in a 1:3 ish ratio and add some maple syrup, if you like (I like). Mix everything together, add sunflower seeds, and I added nutritional yeast because I put it on everything. YAY

I didn't take any pictures today because I was so busy : (

Deal with it.

My Day Off

2008-05-28T16:07:00.000-07:00

Picture 1 Lake Dunmore from Branbury Beach

Picture 2 The school bus that came to tour today

Picture 3 The bracelet I made today

I set no alarm, but I woke up at 5:45 this morning. I am just programmed now, after only a week. So I forced myself to go back to sleep until 7:30, and then I got up. It was so cold this morning! I bundled up and refused to go downstairs until about 10.

I heard this weird, completely out of context noise this morning. It was the sound of a school bus stopping right below my window. I looked out the window and found, to my relief, that I was not absolutely insane, and there was a big yellow school bus outside the barn. It turns out that a class from a school in Brandon (a town about 15 minutes away) was taking a field trip to our farm! I creepily opened the window and watched. After I ate lunch outside (mmmm...salad) (i'm like Homer Simpson, but healthier), I saw in the distance and long line of mini vans and SUVs coming down the road towards us. It was weird because the road we're on doesn't really get any traffic and it's mostly trucks. And then they all turned into our driveway and Hannah was like, "Oh, there's the other tour!" It was a large group of adults from Boston who were taking a class about cheese, and they'd come all the way up here to tour Blue Ledge Farm. I thought it odd that Hannah hadn't told me about the tours coming, but it turned out that she hadn't told Greg either...which was funny/unfortunate because he actually had to show them all around the cheese house.

Can't think of a way to segue gracefully into my next topic, but whatever...

I brought lots of embroidery floss with me to Vermont in hopes that I would make bracelets and then sell them at the farmer's market, but so far I hadn't felt motivated to make any. Today, my lack of anything else to do inspired me to pick up my scissors and thread. I watched "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (remember that movie? it's still really good) and made a bracelet (see picture above). (Wow, I use parentheses to a ridiculous extent.) At this point, I was like, WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE I'M IN THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PLACE EVER AND I AM TOTALLY FREE AND YET I'M SITTING AROUND WATCHING MOVIES ABOUT CRAZY GREEK PEOPLE AND MAKING BRACELETS!

So I asked Hannah and Greg where I should go and they suggested Branbury Beach. It's on Lake Dunmore, in Branbury State Park. It's in between Brandon and Salisbury, so they named in Branbury...clever. It's actually quite close, maybe 15 minutes, although it took me about 30 to get there because I went north instead of south on Rt. 7...silly me. I got there and it was soooo beautiful. It's right at the foot of the mountains, and it's not really a beach, just a grassy park with benches and then the water starts. The best part is that there's a swing set. That sounds like a non sequitur, but it's not. Imagine that you have this spectacular view. And then you can SWING while looking at it! It makes it twice a good.

Cute story about the kittens: At some point this morning, I decided to go and play with the kittens. A mother and daughter pair of cats had kittens at the same time, and they're co-parenting! They have two different little nooks, one at either end of the barn. I went to go sit with one mother and four of the five kittens at one end of the barn, and while I'm there, the other mother comes up, grabs a little black kitten by the scruff of its neck, and starts dragging her off to the other end of the barn. By the time I leave, there are only two kittens left with me. They're so cute though! 4 of them are mainly black, but one is excitingly orange. And they all have blue eyes, just like human babies.

Tuesdays

2008-05-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

Picture #1 Nola's Secret Gardens! (If you have faith like a mustard seed, miracles can happen) Picture #2 Isn't he a cutie?

In the recent years of my life, Tuesdays have always been insane. On Tuesdays during senior year, I took a coaching job that required me to be at or driving to Philadelphia Gymnastics Center from 3:45 to 9:30. This past year, I would leave my room at 8:30 in the morning and not get back until 4:00 in the afternoon. And it continues, with Tuesday being the day that the wholesale orders must be shipped. We have to wrap, label, and pack all these orders and have them to the post office before 4.

I woke up and milked, which happened to be a rather stressful experience in itself...while I was milking, Livia comes out of the barn and says, "A goat's out!" Those are the dreaded words...I have visions of myself running up the road in my polka-dotted barn boots shouting, "C'mere girl! C'mere," and then I hear a car coming and the goat darts into the middle of the street...

Anyway, it really isn't all that serious. First of all, I just have to shut the door and she can't run away. Then I have to corner her, grab her by the collar, and drag her back into the holding area. You know the term "stubborn as a mule?" It would more accurately be "stubborn as a goat." Goats are so obstinate that sometimes you have to pull them backwards to make them go forwards. It's ridiculous. So this process took quite a while, but I succeeded eventually. Ten minutes later, however, Livia comes in and says, "Two goats are out!" AHHHHHH! I want to punch these goats in the udders.

Once I finished milking, I worked in the cheese cave from 9 until 3:30. I wrapped cheese and put cute little labels on them, filled out invoices, added up totals, and got a general lesson in how to run a small business. It's amazing that their entire income comes in $100 and $200 dollar sales. Somehow it all adds up to pay the bills.

After that, I was free! And then I realized I had nothing to eat. So I drove to the co-op and bought lots of food, including my favorite thing about Vermont so far, Nola's Secret Garden greens. It's a product from this woman who packages the most interesting mix of lettuces, some mild, some spicy, some lemony...all yummy. She even includes edible flowers and some herbs. Each bag is tied with a colorful ribbon. It's pretty expensive, but it's local and organic and such high quality that I don't mind at all.

Guess what? Tomorrow is my day off! I don't have to wake up at any particular time! I can go on a hike or watch a movie or read or play with the kittens or...well, those are really my only options. Still exciting though. Watch me end up volunteering to milk the goats out of boredom. No, I wouldn't do that.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

Pictures: Fun fact about the house...they don't burn any oil! They burn wood in this little contraption. The other pic is in Weybridge, trying to show the view of the mountains and the stormy sky...but it kinda failed a little bit.

I have a schedule now, and on Mondays I don't have to milk in the morning! So I got to sleep in...UNTIL 7:30!!! How luxurious. I worked in the cheese house making a cheese called "Lake's Edge." It's named for the stones on the banks of Lake Champlain, which are striped, like this cheese. We had poured the curds into moulds yesterday, and today the whey had drained out so they were firm enough to work with. The process went thusly: Pack down the curds until they are compressed and flat, sprinkle a light layer of ASH (imported from Canada, made from pine), then add another layer of curds and compress again, then sprinkle ash to coat the outside. And that's it! Then they age for some amount of time and grow a white mold. I've sampled all the cheeses and this is probably my favorite...it's got a kind of pungent, blue cheese type flavor. My second favorite, in case you were wondering, it the herbal chévre.

Memorial Day means very little on the farm, although when I went to the co-op to buy food for dinner and found it closed, it meant quite a bit. Since I was already out driving, though, I decided to go explore. I went through Middlebury, Weybridge, Cornwall, Whiting, Salisbury, and Leicester. They were all very quaint and had beautiful views of the mountains, especially Weybridge and Cornwall...I stopped a few times to take some pictures but wasn't really able to capture it.

Did I mention I got paid? $40! Enough to buy food. I am told it might go up once I'm fully trained, but I'm not worried. I'm here to learn, not to make money. Which is good, because I'm making less than a dollar an hour.

So I'm really liking the comments that people are leaving me. I'm a fan of those. Please continue, or I will stop writing. Yeah, whatcha gonna do now? Bet you're going to write something.

Sunday on the Farm

2008-05-25T15:59:00.001-07:00

Sunday on the farm is the same as every other day because there really is no weekend on the farm. They milk the goats twice a day, every day. Even on Christmas and Thanksgiving...the goats are like time, and they wait for no man.

This Sunday morning I woke up and expected to meet Hannah in the barn, but she slept in because she was up coughing all night : ( So I was left to milk, udderly alone (wow...puns are actually NEVER funny). But I didn't have any problems, and the goats were behaving quite nicely, so it was fine. It was fun, even. You know when you're alone and you are bored so you talk/sing to yourself? Or that could just be me...

Anyway, today I was singing to myself, and I adapted "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" into "Do Your Teats Hang Low?" I think the goats were pleased by my rendition.

After milking I worked in the cheese house, pouring curds to make crottina. I have to lift this pitcher full of heavy coagulated milk for long periods of time. My arm muscles are going to be ridonculous. Especially being short, because I have to hold this pitcher over high tables and pour steadily. It's funny because the whole farm was designed by two six-foot-tall people, and consequently I have to stand either on a stool or my toes for half of the day.

Once I was done in the cheese house, I had to deliver an order of cheese to Cafe Provence, a restaurant reputed to be one of the best in the state (Parents, when you visit, that is where we are going). It was cool know that the cheese from my farm is being used in this highly rated restaurant.

And then I had the rest of the day off!

My day was spent taking pictures with Livia, and admiring her expert photography (the goat picture is hers), and making dinner.

I made something kinda ridiculous and complicated for dinner and I'm not going to post a recipe because it was probably not worth the time it took to make. However, I am putting a picture of it on here because it LOOKED really good. It was an Indian spiced lentil stew with chick peas, tomatoes, and kale over brown rice.

Farmer's Market!

2008-05-24T17:52:00.000-07:00

I took some pictures when I woke up this morning...the first is the moon at 4:30 AM, and the second is the Old Barn...I was trying to capture the fog and the mountains. In the morning, everything in wreathed in great swaths of mist. (Wreathed in great swaths of mist? Really?)

Today was many things. It was exciting, fun, exhausting, and stressful. It's Saturday, which means farmer's market day. The market was on a field in Middlebury across from a picturesque waterfall. I was so busy that I sadly did not have time to take any pictures, but it was beautiful, take my word for it. I'll take pictures when I go back in two weeks (next week we go to a market in Rutland).

I woke up at 4:30 (earlier and earlier, every day) and milked, and then we packed up the truck and headed off to the market. When I wasn't selling, I walked around and bought things. I got some lavender oatmeal goat's milk soap (it smells SO GOOD), award winning Vermont maple syrup (obviously), and a samosa from the samosa man (yum). It was so fun to sell the cheese and watch people's faces as they tasted it...because it really is very good. We sold all the cheese and eggs we brought with us, amazingly. We even sold some goat meat. Yes, they sell goat meat...it makes me a little sad. Except not so much, because after dealing with these goats everyday I kind of want to kill them myself. Just kidding...

For those of you who know Molly Smith (from Conn), she stopped by to see me at the market, which was nice because it's been a while since I've seen anyone I know or even anyone my age. I also met an intern who is working down the road who seems really cool...her name is Laura and she goes to UVM. And she knows Molly, actually.

My favorite thing about Hayden, the 3-year-old, is that he cannot pronounce most words correctly. When he says my name, it sounds very much like "Saweesha." I would like everyone to refer to me as Saweesha from now on...I think it has a nice ring.

I am being an awful vegan...I eat cheese every day. It's kinda hard to avoid, not that I'm trying or anything. I mean, I'm making cheese. That's what I'm doing for three months, and it's not like I'm not going eat it. It's so good too. I'm still not eating milk, butter, or eggs...just cheese. For dinner Greg made burritos that were SO AMAZING...it was refried beans and peppers and onions and a little eggplant in whole wheat tortillas topped with cheese and baked. I usually eat dinner by myself but I had made rice and Greg asked if I wanted to share my rice and share their dinner. That reminds me:

Cute fact about the farmer's market...other venders come over and ask if we want to trade! THEY BARTER. IT'S SO ADORABLE. They just trade equally valued goods. One of the bread vendors came over and was like, "Would you like to trade some cheese for some bread?" Why aren't all transactions so simple?

I think I'm getting this now...

2008-05-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

Pictured above: Organic shelling peas from the co-op and some of the cheeses we make aging in the cheese cave underground.

I feel like I am easing my way slowly into the routine now. I woke up at 5 today and milked and then worked in the cheese house salting the camembrie from yesterday. At about 10:45 I was done for the morning! I went to the co-op, bought some produce, and made some brown rice in my rice cooker (it turned out really well, and involved almost no work) until it was time for afternoon milking around 4:00. After I milked and swept up, Hannah, Greg, Livia, and Hayden went to Livia's t-ball game. It was cool being on the farm by myself. I spent some time with the barn cats (who now follow me around like shadows because I gave them some attention) and the goats. All the goats have names and Hannah knows every one. Some are normal, like Molly and Dawn and Angelica...but some of them are weird, like LT, short for "Left Teat," because her left teat takes longer to milk than her right one.

Tomorrow I volunteered to wake up at 4:30 and milk. It's a Saturday, so I am going to the farmer's market!! Hannah and I take turns selling cheese and watching the kids. It's Middlebury College's graduation weekend, so it's going to be crazy crowded. I'm excited though, because I can walk around and buy food...kinda my favorite thing to do. Ever.

Tonight's Recipe (it was quite good. I recommend it, Laura):

Brown Rice with Kale and Arame

Cooked brown rice

Kale of any kind

Arame (cooked)

Garlic

Sesame Seeds

Sesame Oil

Soy Sauce

Ground Ginger

Nutritional Yeast

Steam kale for a few minutes until it tastes good to you. Saute garlic and sesame seeds in sesame oil. Add kale and arame, saute, then add brown rice. Add soy sauce, ground ginger, and nutritional yeast to taste. YAY!

Day 2

2008-05-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

Today was a really cool day. I spent the majority of it in the cheese house. I started working at around 8:00, took a break for lunch, and then worked until about 4:30. Greg had gotten a delivery of a lot of cow's milk from a cow farmer friend of his, and we used it to start making their one cow's milk cheese. The cheese is a cross between a camembert and a brie, so they call it a "Camembrie." Cute, huh?

The milk had come right from the cow and was still warm when we poured it into the vat to pasteurize it (awesomeness to the max). The metal containers that the milk came in were large and heavy and Greg and I lifted them together and poured them into the big bulk tank...he said I was the best lifter they had had yet, so I guess my gymnast muscles are still somewhat intact. Yay! It was really amazing to watch the entire process...we pasteurized the cheese, added the cultures (bacteria) and rennet, cut the curds, and then started to pour the curds into moulds. This whole process took all day, and it's not even close to done. I ended up wet, aching, and covered in whey, but happy.

I just made dinner for myself...for Laura's sake, I will include the recipe. I ate soba two days in a row...but it's yummy and has good protein so I don't mind.

Sesame Soba Noodles with Arame (seaweed)

Soba Noodles

Arame

Sesame Seeds

Garlic

Soy Sauce

Ginger

Nutritional Yeast

Toasted Sesame Oil

Cook arame and soba according to package directions. Saute garlic and sesame seeds with sesame oil. Add arame and soba, and soy sauce, ginger, and nutritional yeast to taste. Eat!

Exciting fact: There is going to be another intern here starting June 2nd whose name is Tucker...he lives in Weybridge, which is very close by, so he's living at home. Another intern is working at the cow dairy that we got our cow milk from, down the road. I think her name is Laura. So there are other people here! Maybe I will actually have some sort of life! Doubtful.

First Day of Work

2008-05-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

Today was my first day of goat farming. In the morning I helped Hannah milk. This involved letting in exactly 10 goats, sanitizing their udders and hooking them up to mechanical milking machines, waiting until they were dry, and letting them out again. And repeat. They were milking 66 girls today and it took about 2 hours to finish. After that, I fed the goats that aren't being milked and the pigs. The pigs are a sort of natural disposal system because they eat the whey (a byproduct of cheesemaking). When I finished those chores, I helped Greg in the cheese house. My jobs included flipping cheeses, wrapping cheeses, and washing everything in sight. Especially my hands...I'd better get some good moisturizer.

When I was done working for the morning, I baked some bread and made lunch. It was really yummy.

Soba Noodles With Almond Sauce:

Soba noodles

Almond butter

Soy Sauce

Sesame Oil

Sesame Seeds

Cook soba noodles according to package directions. Mix other ingredients in a separate bowl in proportions that seem right to you, and then mix into soba noodles and enjoy!

I realized after lunch that I had nothing to eat for dinner and that no one was going to provide it for me (an interesting notion) and then got in my car and drove to the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op. It's like Whole Foods, but way better because most things are locally grown and they really support small farms. I was obviously in heaven and could have spent all day there but I had to get back to work. I bought a tomato, and avocado, and some locally grown organic salad greens.

In the afternoon I gardened for a couple hours, planting tomatoes and broccoli and parsley. Then I made myself a salad (I have no clue why I'm telling you my life story, here. I hope no one is bored to tears reading this) and now I am writing this!

I'm Here!

2008-05-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

I made it! It took me 7 hours to get here with only 2 stops. But I was pretty impressed with myself...I mean, the longest I've ever driven on the highway was from Philly to Allentown and that's only an hour. I kept myself occupied with my iPod...I am pretty sure I did not stop singing for the entire time, even when I stopped to pee. I sang in the bathroom. Not lying.

I took some pictures on the way up, but I don't have any of the goats yet. I did meet them, but I didn't have my camera on me, unfortunately. They all have names and they are very cute. And they do go "baahhhhh," in case you were wondering. Besides the goats, animals living on the farm include a multitude of chickens, a few pigs, 2 sheep, a dog named Connelly, and a cat who just had kittens.

In addition to meeting the goats, I met the farmers, Hannah and Greg! They are both 30 and very awesome and sweet. They have two kids (children, I mean, not baby goats) named Livia (5) and Hayden (3). They are a little crazy, but not nearly as crazy as my nieces and nephews.

Tomorrow I am getting up at 6 (they are letting me sleep in a bit on my first day) to start to learn how to milk. I'm kinda nervous! I'll keep you posted...the rest of the posts hopefully won't be this long.

First Time Bloggin

2008-05-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

So I decided to create a blog for my summer adventure. For those of you who don't know, I'm working on a goat farm in Vermont for three months. I have to give Susanna some of the credit for the name of this blog, although she thought it should be a "baaaahhhhhg." I decided to go with Blaaaaaahhg though. Do goats go baaah? I hope so. I do so hate being inaccurate.