Time to Make the Chokecherry Syrup.

    I have a beautiful friend named Amy Lesser.  She is an herbalist, a shepherdess, a farmer, a mother, and well, just a really sweet person.  If you were stuck in the wilderness and told to survive, well, you'd want her along.  She would gather wild food for you, make you soap, and probably tell you stories of your ancestors that warmed your heart (I'm guessing on that last part, but I bet she would).  When Amy says it's going to rain, it rains.  When she says fall weather is on the way, it comes.  And when she says that it's time to start nesting and gathering...you better just do it.

   And so we did!  It's funny how we wait and wait for that first tomato to ripen, like its gold, and then before we know it the entire dining room table is covered in ripe fruit, begging to be canned and processed.  Coco Rosie went to my mom and dad's for the weekend, so Joe and I got down to business and started putting up food.  Between the goodies from our garden, and fillers from Family Circle Centennial Farm down the road, there was just produce everywhere.  We canned tomatoes, made dilly beans, and threw on a big pot of veggie beef stew while we worked.  We made blueberry jam and blueberry syrup (bad year for Michigan maple syrup, but blueberries abound!).  There are peaches waiting to be processed, and more zucchini, squash, peppers, and eggplant than I can think about right now.  And then there were the chokecherries...

   We have a bunch of trees out back that we've always called "ornamental cherries."  We were chatting back there with neighbor Al this week, and he called them chokecherries...then he told sweet stories of fishing in the back woods of Canada as a young boy, and helping all of the older ladies make the chokecherry syrup.  Sold.  I live for stories like that.  If some old Canadian wilderness women can make chokecherry syrup, then so can I.

    The tiny berries have an intense tart cherry flavor with a big pit in the middle.  I stewed them down and mashed out the juice.  I make fruit or other simple syrups all the time (ok, mainly for cocktails or coffee, but I make them none the less).  I make blackberry syrup for gin drinks, ginger syrup for Pimms, gingerbread syrup for coffee in the dead of winter...etc.  So, I followed suit and added some sugar and simmered down the chokecherry juice.  I poured it into a jar...and I'll be damned if it didn't set up like the best cherry jam you've ever had!!  Not syrup, but Success!

The chokecherry syrup.  or jam.  or whatever....it's good though!

Harvest Thursday night...

Rain harvest Friday night...

By Saturday we were just screwed (in a good way).

First batch of blueberry jam. The berries are so concentrated with sugar due to the drought this year, that we used less than a cup of sugar for this whole batch..and it set up just perfectly!

This beauty is from Emily and Nigel's crop...gigantic luscious heirloom!

I canned in some of these huge 3 quart jars which will be nice to pull out for soups and chili!

I could not stop taking pictures of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes in jars.  Pure beauty.

Dilly Beans!  I'm not much of a pickler, but we had beans, and we had dill...so there you have it.

An after-canning snack with my honey and the chickens.  They liked dad's cheese-it's more than mom's pretzels.  Fo'Sho'.

The ducks know that there are treats being handed out...just waiting in the wings for their turn.

The Shiekh.  My beautiful rooster.

Lolita, my oldest kitty who is never around for pictures!

Wrapping up canning weekend with a little Sex (the bubbly that is....get your minds out of the gutter people!).  Stay tuned for Saturday morning peach picking pics!   xoxo, e.

Barn Dances & Blueberries.

Let us, if we could, stray from vacation posts for a moment to celebrate some good old fashioned Americana...Barn Dances and Blueberries.

Happy Independence  Day folks!

The other night, while driving home on a dusty country road, we passed a hand made sign;  Barn Dance Parking.  Should we stop? Surely that sign was meant for us!  (in full disclosure, we started driving home when our dear friend called and invited us to that very same barn dance!).  So, we ran home and took care of the animals, and then headed back to the festivities.

It was a celebration dinner/dance for Tillian Farm, and our good friend Chef Alex is a supporter of their local food initiative, buying fresh produce from them for Zingermann's Roadhouse.  A handful of restaurants that support the farm put out some yummy vittles, and the very sweet The Appleseed Collective provided our dancing music.  Coco Rosie couldn't decide between dancing under the twinkling strands of lights and catching lightening bugs...a beautiful Michigan summer night just doesn't get any better.

The Appleseed Collective

Most of my pictures ended up being of Doc posing in his western wear. (but notice Joe and Coco in the background!)

Coco responsibly went and found the name tag table and made herself one.  God I love her.

Lightening Bug Goatee.

And, that brings us to part deux of this Independence Day post.  Joe's Uncle Mark and Aunt Linda are the proud owners of the Dexter Blueberry Farm (Formerly Zabinski's Blueberry Farm).  Each year around Joe's birthday, July 30th, we get the heads up to go out and pick a few days before the farm opens to the public.  Joe has his traditional birthday blueberry pie, and then we spend the rest of the summer stocking the freezer and our bellies.  Well, Mr. Zabinsky,who still lives on the property, walked through the fields this week and stated that this is the earliest and best blueberry crop on record, and we got the heads up to pick this morning :).  Coco started screaming "the bushes are all blue!"...and they were.  Cluster after cluster of huge ripe berries.  Joe and I picked 34 pounds in an hour and a half (at which point it became oppressively hot at 9:30 am and we had to call it.  but we stumbled on a good garage sale on the way home and scored a rock tumbler!).  I can not urge you good people enough to get your behinds out there and pick.  Fresh, local, and I think they are only like $1.75/pound...for realsies.  Take the kids - make the older ones pick, and let the younger ones play hide and seek between the bushes.  Take a blanket and a picnic...make a morning of it.

10810 Beach Road

Dexter, MI  48130

Follow the signs to tell you which field is open for the pickin'!

The Bluebs (as joe and coco call them).

And this is what 34 pounds of blueberries in a farm sink looks like (minus a few dropped off for Kelly as she did her farm rounds, and a few for Al and Lois).  The blueberry crisp just came out of the oven, and we are prettying ourselves for the pool.  (yes, I love my friends that much that i turned on the oven.  Probably could have just put it on the porch to bake ;)).

Blueberry Crisp:

Layer a baking pan with an inch or two of berries

Sprinkle crumble topping evenly over top

Bake on '350 for an hour (or until the berries bubble through the crisp;))

Crumble Topping:  

Mix together...

1 cup flour

1 cup brown Sugar

1 cup quick oats

Put 1 stick of butter in the microwave and soften it, then use a pastry cutter to cut it into the dry mixture

**You can do this with any berry, add rhubarb, peaches, etc.  Can't go wrong with a crisp!

Joel Salatin Makes Me Want a Better Larder

And I bet that title made you click...didn't it?

This week I went to hear Joel Salatin speak the the Michigan theater.  He is, let's say, the godfather of the chemical free, sustainable, and local food movement (all one, not separate).  He is the hero to many who are trying to self sustain, reduce waste, and feed their families and neighbors with food that is, well, good old fashioned "real food."  Without getting too preachy, I did take away a few life lessons and a new sense of momentum moving into the summer growing season.  Before I begin, let me look back at the notes that my nerdy friend took during the presentation, and then promptly emailed to me afterwards (we thought she was texting through the whole presentation.  newfangled fancy phones.)

Mr. Salatin has a few soap boxes that really resonated with me.  You see, at some point Joe and I decided that we wanted to be "farmers," on whatever scale, learning a little more each year.  We house hunted for a farm that we could plant roots in, literally.  Summer one was good, summer two will be better.  We believe in raising our child (or children) (infertility will get its own post someday) with their hands in the soil and their mouths stained with blueberries.  We grow what we can.  We pick, trade, and buy locally, but we could do better.  We put food in the larder/pantry....

Soapbox 1:  bring back the larder.  He spoke repeatedly of canning, freezing, and drying (dehydrating).  We do this of course, but we can do better.  Last year we put up 50 quarts of tomatoes, and a host of jams, jellies, apple and pear butters, applesauce, etc.  We bought and froze local meat for the deep freeze.  We picked berries till our fingers were stained...and still we ran out.  After the talk this week, Joe and I took stock of the larder and came up with this summer's plan based on what we have too much of and what we needed more of (I HATE buying out of season berries at Meijer)...which brings us to...

Soapbox 2:  Why do you need strawberries in Michigan in February?  Perhaps you should have thought ahead when strawberries were in season in Michigan, and canned, dried, and frozen more of them.  Of course we can't be perfect, but I think a balance in this concept is well worth thinking about.  How much fuel did it take to to get them here from California (or heaven forbid, Mexico)?  Trade and commerce is how this nation runs, so if you can't grow it here, you're going to have to buy it from elsewhere (coffee, chocolate, oranges, etc.)  But I think we've all been duped now and again when buying, say, a bag of apples, and not till we get home do we realize that they are Washington apples, not Michigan apples.  I.e...BUY LOCAL.

Soapbox 3:  Kitchen chickens.  If every kitchen had two chickens to reduce the amount of food waste in landfills, we could substantially reduce our garbage output...because chickens eat almost anything! (yes, some people throw food in the garbage, not in the compost bin.  sigh.)

Anyhoo, it was a night well spent.  Bottom line is that it motivated me to do better.  I'll let you keep tabs on me this summer.  We'll keep you posted on filling the larder!

I like a blog with pictures, so I'll just throw in some pics of last summers larder.  I love that word.

Dexter Blueberry Farm - Thank you Uncle Mark and Aunt Linda!

We did not larder the kitten, just the summer squash.

And I'm quite certain we did not larder the pie.  But Joe is so cute when is makin' pies.

If this was already on Facebook, I don't need to get his permission again to

 post pics of him canning in his undies...right?

Cider makin' at Uncle Scotties...we actually just took the last jug out of the freezer yesterday!

This last one may be my favorite.  One day in the fall neighbor Al called and said 

"Old man Carl has some old pear trees.  He isn't gonna pick em', so if you want em'"......yes please.  Ginger pear butter all day long baby.

The End.