in my kitchen, around the farm

early August edition

We’ve officially entered into the time of year where my management skills are called into favour. The foraging for plants, both medicinal and culinary, is a critical part of my life. I not only love learning and deepening my understanding of our local plants, but they’re also a necessary component to healing us, keeping us in good stead, and feeding us. As with all things, just because it’s “free” to forage, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost. Convenience frees up time. Growing, harvesting, curing, canning, fermenting, culturing, tincturing, salting, butchering, and harvesting our own food is not convenience, but it is deeply meaningful. Foraging is not convenience. But what better way to use time than in the forests and the fields with the monarchs and the knocking raven?

Harvesting chicory. I feed the tops to my appreciative meat rabbits. The roots are mine.

Some of the chicory roots go in the solar dehydrator. I never wash roots before putting them in here. The soil is easily brushed away when they’re dry and I like to keep as many of those beneficial microbes as possible. Still more roots are indeed washed and chopped up before being tinctured.

These two rabbit sisters, Magda and Elizabeta, are over five years old now. They live together and raise their young together with every litter. It’s rewarding to see them dig tunnels and be as rabbit-y as a domesticated rabbit can be.

I’ve been feeding the rabbits some of the felled apples along with their daily foraged plants. This little brown fella’ is my current favourite. So plump and round. I thought there were only six kits with these two gals last litter, but it turns out there were only hiding them from us. At last count there were fourteen, but I’m betting there’s one or two still hiding when I go into their house. I’ve found rabbits with moderate litters of 7-9 kits that are given breaks from breeding in the cold months live longer, don’t suffer from the maladies many rabbits do, and generally seem happier with nicer babes.

This week I brought in an enormous amount of fruit for our fruit buying club. Our lovely fruit farmers in the southern part of our province shipped us up crates of white fleshed nectarines, golden plums, the first of the summer’s peaches, and apricots. I, personally, bought 170 pounds worth this time. By the time the season is over, I estimate that I will have around 500 pounds of fruit put up. That doesn’t include the apples which I will make great barrels of apple cider vinegar, cider, and various preserves with. I will also keep some stored fresh in the root cellar. Oh, I suppose that also doesn’t include the pears. Then again, that also doesn’t include berries that have already been put away. So maybe it’s a little closer to 800-900 pounds.

So who in their right mind processes that much fruit? Well, let’s break that down a little. First, I’m not buying fruit in the winter when the fruit is but a dream in a vine or tree’s heart. The vast majority of this fruit is being cooked down into chutneys, glazes, sauces, and the like. It’s an incredible amount of work that results in a small fraction of what you start with. But, that’s how we use fruit. I don’t eat all that much fresh fruit at all. We are making it into accompaniments to go with savoury dishes. That’s how we like it best.

With the early golden plums, I’ve thus far made roasted plum butter, plum cheese, and a plum glaze. Tomorrow I will make some plum chutney, ferment a big batch, make some plum vinegar, and freeze dry a few pounds. These aren’t the best type of plum for drying. That comes with the later varieties.

When making my fruit cheese, I keep the pits in while cooking everything down. The pits add extra flavour and pectin. Necessary for that thick jell needed with fruit cheeses.

Organic muslin tied up with hemp. Be careful with regular cheesecloth and kitchen twine which is made with GMO cotton and quite literally soaked in glyphosate. Not something you want soaking for many hours in your food.

I’ve written before about my approach to food - slow food for fast food. It’s at this time, when I’m making all of these foundational ingredients in big quantities that I save myself much time and effort in the coming year. The plum glaze I make and preserve now is popped open and poured over a duck with some rosemary sprinkled in come the fall. It’s a deceptively easy and quick meal, real fast food, that is earned with our efforts now. For now we continue to care and feed the ducks that will one day be in our pot. We harvest the herbs. We prepare the preserves.

It’s easy for me, when there is so much to do, to put my foraging on the back burner but I’ve learned that never works out well. I would prefer to spend time foraging over being in my garden, or anything else for that matter. Nothing is quite so satisfying for me as slowly roaming the forest and then coming home to tuck a new tincture into my apothecary cabinet to work its magic. There is a great feeling of security and connection for me to continually learn more about what’s available to us in our locales. This week I made my annual artist’s conk and velvet roll-rim tinctures. I also made seven different oxymels with everything from echinacea to oregano flowers. These are key components in some of the blended tinctures I make. I have long appreciated artist’s conk, but my adoration deepens as I learn more and more from this incredible fungi.

Chamomile surrounding the duck and goose pond. They’re not interested in eating it which is a boon for me.

Velvet roll-rim. Not a good eating mushroom, but…

A phenomenal component of my homemade digestive bitters. And so darn pretty, to boot!

Tincturing artist’s conk. You need a good, strong knife and muscles for this job. This fungus is a cousin of reishi and continues to marvel me with its generous and benevolent gifts to human health.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the old apple trees around our farm. We have counted twelve old grandmother trees, craggy but still heavy with fruit. People used to plant apples for different uses and there were thousands of varieties. Today in the grocery store we have five or six that are all overly sweet and bred to travel and keep for long periods. Not exactly what makes a good apple. The apples around our farm are unlike any I’ve ever seen. There are medium sized yellow ones with pink polka-dots that remind me something I ate once a long time ago. Their sweetness is profound, but it’s not cloying. They’re crunchy and explode with juice in one bite. Others are dripping with juice but hard as rocks. Still more are deep red with large moon-shaped circles and perfect for grabbing off the tree for a bite. This year we found another apple tree hiding in the tree line. Always something to delight in if we take the time to delight.

Our heartnut tree. These green, unripened nuts have gone into a homemade nocino. We’ll see how it turns out. It’s my first time using heartnuts instead of black walnut. I have faith!

Hyssop and echinacea. Two of the oxymels I made this week. Oxymels are simply fresh herbs with half honey/half raw vinegar (ACV is good) left to steep. A wonderful way to extract the medicinal components of fresh herbs.

And with that, I am off. Today will be processing still more fruit, making my chicory tinctures, and salting and drying a bunch of herbs. It will be a full day. I suspect I will be harried and pulled in many directions. Even still, I will not forget my bigger duties of loving up a man that I am so privileged to spend my life with and making sure my daughters know how much I love them. Those things can be missed in the busyness of the tasks, but they’re the most important of all. I can be kind and I can be love. And so I will.

I don’t know why I find baby pears so adorable. Must be the plump, round bums they have.

I’m relieved the apples and pears come later in the season. There’s too much going on with all of the other fruit now. How considerate these trees are.

p.s. I’ll show the details of what’s being made in my kitchen this week in the chat. Hope you’ll share what you’re concocting, too.