Days 55-57 (8/19-21/12): Farmer Anna

Dilly Beans

Mary made a master to-do list for Jillian, Annie, and me covering the days that she'd be gone.  Since I've been on the farm for the longest of all the apprentices, I've been given the 'overseer' role: making sure Annie and Jillian understand what they're supposed to do, checking in with Mary, managing the money, etc.  It looks like it's going to be a pretty relaxed week with simple chores like watering plants, harvesting veggies, feeding the animals, quick hoe-weeding, and general upkeep.  To my great delight, I watched the shop all day Sunday and Monday.  Mary came back for the day on Tuesday, but I was in the shop a lot despite this.  On Sunday, I harvested blackberries, mostly from our neighbors property (with their permission).  I didn't dress properly and had to tough it through the thorns - my wounds are still visible.  I baked brownies (um brownie better, yes) and made 16 tussy mussies to hang beautifully around the shop on Sunday too.  I use three kinds of flowers in my tussy mussies, each of which dries maintaining its brilliant pink, white, purple, yellow, or orange color.  

On Monday, I harvested all of the tomatoes: plum (aka pace) tomatoes from Field 6 for Kenya's fundraising, orange heirloom tomatoes for sauce later that day, and big red tomatoes for shop.  My favorite part about harvesting tomatoes, still, is feeding the hornworms I find to the baby turkeys.  For the fresh tomato sauce, I cut the small heirloom tomatoes into quarters, not bothering to core or peel them (I took off any stems).  I covered the bottom of the baking pan with a thick layer of the cut tomatoes and added basil and dashes of sea salt, and mixed.  I let this bake uncovered at 300 degrees for 2 hours (no less).  After letting it cool, I spooned the mixture into a food mill which turned it to mush, poured these into containers to be frozen. This fresh tomato sauce will be delicious on pastas.  On my bike ride after work, I ran into a moose.  I had been in Maine all summer, waiting for this moment.  A baby moose was in the road ahead of me.  The man in a car beside me was watching the calf, too.  We figured the mom must not be too far, so he said he'd drive next to me so I wouldn't get too close to the calf and as to not be vulnerable to a protective mother moose.  The calf had only a right antler and was stumbling in circles back and forth on the road, oblivious that it had an audience.  The man said the calf probably had a worm in its brain that moose can get, so must be sick.  I hope that beautiful 7'-tall calf ends up okay.
Today I fed in the morning, and had an unusually challenging cleaning day.  I cleaned the stalls of Ladybug, the sheep, both horses, and the steer (they stayed in today and kept whipping me with their poop-caked tails while I was trying to clean) like usual, but also changed the bedding in Mr. Duck's cage and cleaned the turkey coop (I should have had a gas mask for that one).  I don't think the baby turkey coop has been cleaned since June, so the entire floor was caked with waste.  I put down lime before adding fresh shavings to prevent stench.  Mary came home today, bringing groceries and laundry with her.  Annie and I cut off the stems of green haricot vert beans and put them into pint jars to make dilly beans (spiced with crushed red pepper, a peeled garlic clove, and dill plant).  I took Kenya's pace tomatoes out of the dehydrator and added blackberries that Annie had picked this morning.  I jarred the dried tomatoes that Kenya will sell at the Common Ground Fair for fundraising.  I used imperfect tomatoes to start on the tomato rice soup that I'll work on tomorrow.  I peeled the tomatoes by having them sit in a strainer in boiling water for a minute and then chopping them into a pot.  The big highlight of today was Katy coming today!  Katy drove down from her home in Bangor to spend some time with Jillian and me.  She helped us finish our chores for the day, and we ate dinner at Cafe de Bangkok, Hallowell's premier Thai and sushi restaurant.  We walked along the river, spent time in a used book shop, and got ice cream at Friendly's.  Katie has been jarring pickles and applesauce galore at home and brought us a jar of her homemade applesauce - delicious.  It was great to see her so happy and active and it was so sweet of her to make the trip down.

Moose calf