Back in September, Henning and Elizabeth took part in the Lopez Bounty Food Experiment sponsored by the Lopez Community Land Trust and the Lopez Locavores. Read on to learn what one week of eating locally looks like at S&S, and check for new posts in the coming weeks!
September 1-7, 2014 – The Daily Table:
The day begins with early morning coffee and conversation about the day’s activities. Elizabeth has coffee with cream, Henning a latte, with homestead milk or cream. The coffee, purchased at La Boheme, is roasted on Orcas Island.
Breakfasts usually consist of either a cracked wheat or rolled oats porridge (both purchased from Blossom Market), with fruit from our orchard, milk from our Jersey cow, wheat germ, walnuts (Blossom), and unbleached, brown cane sugar (Lopez Village Market); or, eggs from our chickens, long-fermented sourdough rye bread made from farm-grown rye and baked in a wood-fired cob oven, butter from our cow’s cream, and homemade jam.
Lunches feature cold leftovers from the day before, or green and other vegetable salads from the garden, plus rye bread, cheddar and other homemade cheeses and summer sausage from our own beef and pork. Fresh fruit and a slice of zucchini and apple bread round out the meal.
Dinner this week: Monday – tenderloin steak, potatoes roasted with garlic and rosemary, carrots blanched and served with butter and parsley, all items except spices and olive oil grown on the homestead. Spices purchased at Blossom.
Tuesday – Lamb burger served with pickles, lettuce and cucumber, fried potatoes (all from homestead), mustard, mayonnaise and potato buns from LVM.
Wednesday – Cross-rib roast, roasted potatoes and vegetables, fresh corn, cooked by the apprentices from homestead foods.
Thursday – Veal liver (the rest of the animal sold as veal to The Bay Cafe), spiked with bacon, and cooked in a Römertopf (clay pot soaked in water for fifteen minutes prior to being put in the oven), together with carrots, onion, tomatoes, and red wine. Served with green salad, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, and Spätzle prepared by our German guest, Henning’s grandniece, Judith. For dessert, apple and blackberry pie. All ingredients except white flour for the pasta and the pie crust, salt, pepper and olive oil, from the homestead. On Thursdays, as on Wednesdays, we share dinner with the apprentices.
Friday – Baked ham, potato salad, green salad, and the rest of the apple/blackberry pie for dessert.
For all the dinners, we typically drink wines purchased from Blossom or traded for beef from Lopez Island Vineyards, or beer purchased at LVM.
Other food activities on the farm:
This is harvest time. Yesterday, we harvested more than 1,000 pounds of California White, Yukon Gold, Red and White Fingerling, and Red Ladoga potatoes, stored in a rodent-proof bin. We also harvested and threshed an acre’s worth of barley for animal feed, and will be planting winter rye for our bread this month. We have picked many pounds of summer and winter apples, peaches, several varieties of plums, blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries. The summer fruit is eaten fresh, or frozen, dried, sauced, pickled, and juiced. The apples are made into cider and vinegar, or stored for the winter in a cool room. Harvest from the garden is ongoing: root crops, leaf crops, summer and winter squash, several varieties of beans, tomatoes, sweet and Indian corn (for polenta and griddle cakes), basil (made into pesto) and other herbs, eggplant, sweet potatoes (the peas are long gone from the garden and now stored in the freezer). In the garden, we also maintain a top-bar hive of Russian-Carnolian bees, obtained from Eric Hall. They are busily laying in winter stores in beautiful combs from wax drawn from their own bodies (we can watch them work through a side window in the hive!)
Bread baking, Dairy and Whole-Diet CSA:
Once a week, we bake long-fermented sourdough rye bread, a process that begins on Mondays with renewing the starter and culminates on Thursdays when the loaves are baked in the outdoor, wood-fired oven, after which we cook the day’s meal in the residual heat, and sometimes splurge on pizza at noon.
Also, all week, we milk two Jersey cows. We consume the milk fresh or in the form of butter and cheese, including cheddar, feta, cream cheese, Quark, mozzarella, and other soft cheeses. In the winter, when the change in forages reduces the flow of milk, we eat the milk in the form of fermented, aged cheese.
The Whole-Diet CSA provides members weekly with fresh vegetables, stone fruit, apples, and berries; hamburger, cheese, bread, and a bouquet of flowers.
– Henning