ARE WE IN F-ING ENGLAND?

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.