My farm birthday!

This blog post would be more appropriate in my other blog (read on to see why), but this will do!

My birthday started out as an ordinary harvest Monday- bunching celery, washing potatoes, packing the truck, etc. Group lunch, same as always. 

I headed back to the kitchen, and then Elsa came up to me saying that Sus needed me to come to the office to tell me something about market. After seeing all my fellow apprentices not-so-sneakily walk across the field, I knew something was up. But I was still so surprised when the back door of the office magically opened and I stepped inside to an empty room with THIS cake on the table:

Everyone sang happy birthday, and then we demolished the cake (FOR LUNCH!!!). 

Angel food cake and marshmellowy icing, made by Elsa!

Then a had a fun day at the downtown market, selling lots o veggies. When I got back to the farm later,  I didn't go to my cabin right away. I went there right before we went out to the local bar, and this is what I found!

Streamers made out of moose poop and fallen leaves
Paper snowflakes
Hanging flowers
Carved turnip faces

It was a wonderful surprise, and it makes it hard to leave my lil' cabin.

To top off my birthday, the northern lights were out for about half an hour that night-- a record for us. I still barely believe they really exist, which makes it more impossible to describe. But guys, HOLY SHIT they are SO BEAUTIFUL! Like fall on the ground beautiful. And not fall as in- leaves that are all on the ground right now and not on the trees.
Anyway, I had a grrrrreat birthday with my farm family!

And to take advantage of the currently (dare I say it?) fast internet, some of my favorite flowers:

Yarrow!

Rudbeckia

Scabiosa

Jumping on the headband wagon

 This group of apprentices is a crafty bunch. Knitting, woodcarving, sketching, sewing, felting, spinning, dyeing. Since we spend so much time living on top of each other, once one of us picks up something, the rest usually follow pretty soon. Right now I'm finally knitting myself a headband. All of the other apprentices gals have had one for a couple months, but I was late on the headband wagon.

My favorite craft is felting.

This may or may not be because it is by far the easiest learning curve. It just involves rolling some fleece and poking it with a barbed needle. Pretty much instant gratification-- I made a rotund pumpkin in about twenty minutes. Next I'm working on little elf/pixie people. They are adorable, let me tell you. It's amazing how much detail you can put on using just one tool.

Our kitchen table is covered in various projects. Right now across from me, Nellie is starting a knitting project with the yarn she dyed herself, and Chris is working on knitting his hat. A wooden whale is on my right, Stephanie's crocheted bikini is on the table next to Nellie's fingerless gloves, a greasy rag from oiling finished wooden spoon is at the far end, and the centerpiece is the foam block for felting.

Craft-o-mania!!!

Animal Chores

This weekend I handed the animal chore torch over lw6ESmic'웽d}m8pZ¥ to write about the animal rotation tasks, and you can decide which tasks I probably won't miss.
The animal rotation lasts for three weeks. So every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, I was up  at 8, bucket in hand and sometimes with boots on my feet (gasp!).

First off you give the goats and sheep half a bale of hay, divided accordingly into the three feeders. Lots of 'MAAAAAAA'ing ensues. Make sure they have water.
Next: Give the chickens food in their feeder and give them water because chances are they are usually out of it. Sometimes throw food in corner for younger chickens because they get the short end of the stick when it comes to food time. The older chickens can be vicious!
Then give some food and water to the ducks and hang around to watch how cute they are when they drink water (once they get over how scary it is to see the same person they see five times a day come into their cage again).
Then carry a bucket of water down to the potato field to deal with the meat chickens. First I have to move the chicken tractor so they can have a new patch of grass to demolish and poop on. The thoughts that go through my head during this time:
"I hate you. I hate you I hate you so much"
"Move! You are so stupid! You need to not get stuck under the pole!"
"Oh my god. You are so disgusting. You pooped in the water dispenser."
But. I do really appreciate them for providing some of the tastiest chicken I have ever had. For special occasions we eat last year's meat chickens. The farm crew next year will eat the chickens from this year.

Here are the meat(head) chickens. 

~9 am: Milking! Modock is our one milking goat, and she is very patient. This is good because milking is a very quick learning curve. The first time milking takes FOREVER and the milk comes out in little spurts, but after that it just gets easier and easier. Now we're getting about two quarts every morning from her, which is a lot less than we got at the beginning of the season, but still enough to keep us having fresh goat milk most every day.

More 'MAAAAAAAAA'ing happens.

Throughout the day the chores involves getting enough greens for the animals. This could be anything from fireweed to dandelions to cauliflower leaves. The best is cauliflower and cabbage leaves because they are huge and take very little time to gather, so seeing huge buckets of harvested cauliflower was very exciting these past few weeks. Seeing huge buckets of cauliflower leaves produces MUCHO 'MAAAAAAAAA'ing.

Here they are eating cabbage leaves. The goats on the right usually end up pushing everyone else outta the way.

Some days the animals go out to pasture. This is a win-win situation, because you don't have to get buckets of greens for them, and they get to frolic in some grassy area and eat all of the things. Sometime I can get them to come in by whistling, but usually I have to go around the back of them and walk them up. Once a couple start running up towards the pen, the rest will follow. This applies to when they go to area they shouldn't be in also. Like when they got into the seed field by ripping through the heavy metal gate during a field trip. They ate some turnips, which to be fair needed thinning anyways.

Around 4 pm I check the hen house and pick out all the eggs. Usually we get between 12-15 per day.

Last stop of the day is the meat chickens again. Water and food and annoyance at their poop.

Animal chores! The end.

The Apprentice Life

We've spent the past three months living in extremely close quarters with 6 other people. It's a struggle at times (mostly just to keep the kitchen clean), but we magically all get along... better than you would expect from a random group of twenty-somethings who wanted to work and learn on a farm in Alaska for the summer!

To describe certain feelings and experiences, we've come up with a few expressions that we use multiple times a day.
The first one: Hangry. Hungry + Angry
Sometimes we'll get grumpy and snappy and in a funk, and then we realize that it is really just our hanger speaking. Usually shows around 11 am or 5 pm. It can get bad. Luckily there are now rows of juicy sugar snap peas to apPEAse us when hanger strikes.

Then my favorite: MLIF. My Life Is Farm
We throw this word out probably too much now, but it's so perfect.
The farm kids are playing with legos mixed with dry moose poop. MLIF.
My hat fell down the outhouse... MLIF!
Can't make it to the kitchen without stopping to eat peas for five minutes... MLIF
Boot zippers are stuck because there is poop jammed in them. MLIF!
Eat as many peas as possible during the week so that we don't have to harvest as many on harvest days... MLIF.

Throwing poop at your friends and coworkers is the norm (compost heap making!), shoes only happen when the cracks in your feet get too bad, dinner can be found 20 steps from the kitchen, there are always shavings from wood carving on the floor, second lunch happens most days, and hot chocolate is the hottest commodity.
It's hard to believe that we only have 7 weeks left here... time flies! But at least there's more thyme in the garden!

Remember Helen and James?

Well, sad news, but they are no longer with us.

.

.

.

Ok ok that was mean. They are totally not dinner. We could never. 

But they did get sold to a neighbor, and we didn't get a chance to say goodbye! We were heartbroken, but at least there was still Tristan (Gigantor) and a lot of cute cats to snuggle with.

But then! Lo and behold, who came walking up our driveway today looking groomed and plump but the two bummer lambs themselves! They came to gorge themselves on grass be pet by large amounts of children for the open house.

mmm mmm mmm green things!

I got a good James cuddle in, and got to hear Helen's strange bleat again, and life was good!

Those eyelashes!

P.S. Life on the farm is pretty crazy right now. What with balancing field trips, harvesting, cultivating, visits to neighbor farms, figuring out what the heck to do after this apprenticeship, eating baked goods provided by Domestic D-Rod, and being rained on a bunch, we've had no time to update this here blog. Blog post about our trip to Denali coming up soon, I promise!

Chickweed.

Tastes like raw corn on the cob.

Good in salads.

Grows fast.

Small white flowers.

Bright green.

Devil Plant!!!!

Yup, chickweed is our arch nemesis here at the farm. This plant looks innocent at first glance- weak stem and no pokey bits, pleasant color, not poisonous. But we learned fast that this is not a weed to ignore. It encroaches on any free ground space. It can take over a bed in no time at all, and winds its way around the pea stalks and tangles in with the baby carrots, leaving little space and light for them to grow. Waaaaah!

I'm choosing to write about chickweed because I was thinking about what I would tell people what I was doing on the farm all day. It's changed from what I did at the beginning, which was mostly pulling weeds and shoveling compost. Now the answer is: cultivation! Not to be confused with weeding, apparently. Cultivation is selectively picking out the weeds out of the beds. We use tools like the scuffle hoe, co-linear hoe, wire weeder, flame-thrower and our hands to help us. And we spend hours each days getting chickweed (and other weeds) out of the beds and into the duck or chicken pens. I eat a lot of it too.

Just thought our dear readers should know... if at any point from 9:15 am our time to 4 pm on a weekday you are wondering what we are up to, chances are we are pulling chickweed out of the garden! Now you know what it looks like! Or maybe we are doing our watering chores. This week I'm on upper field drip, and D-Rod is on lower drip. But that's another story for another day!

Domestic D-Rod (Or how cooking is the most fun thing ever)

Google image search provided me with this for "Cursed Clive”
I don’t know whats going on, but everyone looks
super concerned about it

You stand everyone in a circle.  One person starts, saying their name and an adjective that starts with the same letter (or sound) as their name (IE Stinky Steve, Pillaging Pete, Curse-ed Clive) (Also double as good pirate names). You proceed left or right, and each subsequent player says first the names and adjectives of each proceeding player, finishing with their own name and adjective.  At the end you challenge as many players as you can to say everyone’s name and adjective.  For bonus challenges you may rearrange the order or try making people say just names without adjectives.  Theoretically by the end everyone knows everyone else’s name, and knows that they hate whomever made them play another dumb name game.

If you’ve ever been at a summer camp you’ll be familiar with this game.  I don’t know if it is a fixture of any other establishments, for all I know the senate is full of Boisterous Bobs and Diligently-fulfilling-all my-campaign-promises Daves, but  identification activites are a MUST for camp counselors.

Point of Story, the apprentices at Calypso were played this game informally.  (we did not stand in a circle, we were really just making up adjectives for each other that started with the same letter as our names).  Everyone had a pretty funny one, but the one that has stuck the most was mine: Domestic D-Rod.  In addition to learning about farming, education, and not having kids soon, I have learned that I love to make food.  I’m going to post about making bread one of these days (my passion for baking is on the rise), but today you’re hearing about sorbet!

Rhubarb.  GIT YOU SOME!

Rhubarb sorbet is REALLY EASY TO MAKE provided you have (get this) rhubarb and an ice cream maker.  I recently learned that you can get an attachment for your kitchen aid that is an ice cream maker and it cranks it out so you don’t have to!  So but anyway, the rhubarb sorbet recipe I used is (this isn’t going to surprise any of you) the first one that comes up when you google “rhubarb sorbet”.  Also (this, too, will surprise no one) I didn’t follow it.

These are the ingredients for the sorbet recipe which I didn’t follow, but for argument’s sake I’ve included them.  I’ll include my final recipe at the end.

• 3 1/2 cups of chopped fresh rhubarb (4-5 stalks)
• 2 1/2 cups of water
• 1 2/3 cups of sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 2 teaspoons of orange zest
• 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons of corn syrup

It’s hard to tell in this picture, but that is a HUGE Rhubarb leaf
My cellphone was included for scale.

Rhubarb is a really really cool plant, it looks sort of like celery, but the bottom (and sometimes the whole length) of the stalk is pink or red.  It doesn’t taste like celery.  It’s very sour, and has a sort of savory taste if you eat it raw, it sort of reminds me of meat a little bit.  It does not taste like meat if you cook it.  It grows in dense clusters of stalks, which have one big leaf on the end of each of them.  The flowering stalks are round, hollow, and have smaller normal stalks branching off of them part way up.  It is sour because it contains Oxalic Acid.  The leaves contain a higher concentration of this acid and, as a result, can make you sick.   So don’t eat them.

It’s THEIR fault mine wasn’t all Fuchsia-y

So to make about a quart (one large yogurt container full) you’ll need 3½ cups of chopped rhubarb.  The recipe I looked at claims that this is about 5 stalks and they’re full of it.  Rhubarb does not come in uniform thickness, nor are they all the same length, therefore trying to specify stalk number is a futile effort.  By all this I mean I didn’t count how many stalks I used, I doubled the recipe but also defiantly used more than ten.  Also, the stalks I used were green and pink, because they do that, and so the end result isn’t as pink as the one in the picture on the website (I’ll give you a minute to google it right now.  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.  There you go, it’s less pink than that).  If you want to make it as pink as that stuff, use only the red parts of the rhubarb (IE waste a bunch of it).

This is a really pretty picture I took of chopped rhubarb.

No but seriously, ginger is a Big. Freaking. Deal.

I had ginger, and no orange zest, so I heavy loaded ginger in my first batch, and it was really really good.  That said, I’m a total ginger junkie, so if you don’t L-O-V-E love (you’re supposed to say each letter out loud, followed by the whole word, like El Oh Vee Eee Love) ginger, you don’t have to add nearly so much.  You could also add some other stuff to it if you wanted, like lemon juice, or some other fruit, or pretty much whatever you want.  I’d recommend against Goldfish or Kale, but hey, whatever sheers your sheep, man.  Also, don’t try to zest clementines.  I don’t have a funny picture to go along with this, but that mess does not zest! 

There is salt in me, do you know why?

Next you put your rhubarb and your ginger or whatever in a pot with 2½ cups of water, and your sugar.  The recipe calls for 1 and 2/3 cups of sugar but I did a bit less than that because I didn’t want to cut the rhubarb’s tartness too much.  You also put some salt in.  I didn’t measure this.  Does anyone know why the crap everything you ever cook calls for salt?   Like, cookies call for salt.  I think there is a great salt conspiracy, where producers of salt are trying to keep their product relevant and are paying everyone to say “yo throw some salt in that puppy” on every damn recipe.  I think it might actually matter with this one, since it does change the boiling point of water, but still, screw you, salt!  Anyhow, you bring your rhubarb water sugar and (sigh) salt mixture to a boil, then let it simmer until the rhubarb falls apart easily.

Sorry for freaking out earlier, I’m cool now, man.  Really.

At this point you’re supposed to let the mixture cool for ten minutes.  Nothing indicates why you do this, nor is there any criteria for what constitutes “cool enough”, so I pretty much just did whatever on this.  Anyways after your cooked rhubarb mess has chilled out sufficiently, you blend that mess!

That is one fiiiiiine strainer you go there!

You’re supposed to blend it in small batches, I guess in case you’re using a blender for GI Joe’s or something, since you can definitely fit a quart of liquid in a normal blender.  Anyhow, after that you strain out the pulp using a fine mesh strainer.  This part is funny, because the first time I did it I pushed most of the pulpy stuff through the strainer, and the sorbet turned out perfectly.  The second time I removed most of the pulpy stuff, and the result was a glorified slushy.  Feel free to experiment with this, I certainly intend to.  Maybe you don’t need to strain it at all.  Then you’re supposed to add corn syrup.  I added some honey, I don’t think it matters.  Either way, you want to chill the puree after for a few hours until it too has calmed down.  Err... cooled off.

This is my favorite part of the recipe.  Now you “follow the instructions on your ice cream maker”.  So... make it ice cream.  After it finishes, you still need to put it in the freezer, but the end result, at least for me, was AWESOME.  That said, I outsourced the ice cream maker part, since one of the people who works here has an electric ice cream maker.  This is what I got back.

So. Good.

 We served it at our fundraising brunch this past sunday over rhubarb crumble.  Be jealous.

 

Mom, Dad, if you really loved me you’d come visit me in Alaska and let me make this for you.

 OKAY.  So in fine

31/2 cups rhubarb, chopped

1 2/3 cups sugar

2 1/2 cups water

ginger to taste

like, some salt but not a whole lot, and maybe none who knows

whatever the heck else you want to put in it but not Goldfish

maybe some honey

Put rhubarb water sugar and ginger and salt and not goldfish into a pot.  Bring said pot to a boil, turn down heat and let it simmer.  Once rhubarb falls apart easily, take off of heat and let cool for a little while, or maybe don’t.  Puree sugary gingery rhubarb compote.  Strain it, or possibly don’t strain it, or aggressively push it through strainer with a ladle.  Maybe add some honey.  Cool that in the fridge over night.  Put in your ice cream maker and then do whatever you do with those to make ice cream (proceed to crank it, or push “On” or whatever).  Freeze the resulting sorbet, or just eat it.  In fact, at pretty much any point in this recipe you can just eat what you have, it’s all pretty good.