Signs of Fall

September passing cool and bright

still signs of young life

with the old, new...   then a clue;

a splash of red and yellow in the still bright green grass shoots.

I look up to see the color in the trees.
                                    
Blueberries long eaten by birds leave leaves... to change;

become brilliant in their last efforts

to improve the painting. Who thought it could be improved upon?

Who walks here to receive these gifts

Who observes the dance of cyclical change and doesn't mourn?

Even though    (fall harvests are abundant)

even through   (the beauty)

even though   (we know winter will bear spring and summer will come again.)

Daily Harvest 9/29/13

Still plenty of cherries and basil...

...but now we also have pumpkins...

...and pumpkin heads apparently.

Objects in Mirror are Closer than They Appear

 4 views

 barn view

 Objects in Mirror are Closer

Objects are Closer than They Appear

by Kim Keown

Rather Large Cucumber

While I was at the farm harvesting and processing food from the kitchen garden, my own kitchen garden was being ignored. Luckily my neighbor waters because his garden is there too. I asked my daughter to harvest the cucumbers and save them for me in my crisper so I could make pickles, and told her to eat the slicers. When I asked her about them, she said, "I didn't see any." I thought that was completely weird because I knew those 3 vines were still healthy. So when I got back to Boston this is what I found. I said to her "You didn't see this?" as I held it up. Its a foot long. And the picklers where fat and orange.

I brought them back to Westport but never ventured to do anything with them. That cabbage was huge too that we got at the Dartmouth Farmer's Market. I made sauerkraut, coleslaw and slaw salad with it and still had some left over.

Fermented Projects

Pickles, I made several batches of 2 varieties. I also made...

Bread and Butter Pickles, Relish and...            ...Cherry Tomato Pickles of course, and...

Fermented Plum Chutney...Seems good with lamb and bourbon. I have perfected a great plum chutney recipe for my taste, but cooking it with vinegar doesnt give the probiotic health benefits of fermented food. I used the same recipe and and just instead of cooking it on the stove with vinegar and sugar-maple is probably what I used, I added instead a little pickle juice to get the ferment started and left it out until it seemed ready to eat.

I did make other Sauerkraut this summer besides the purple sad kraut. My favorite way to eat it, is cold, on a grilled cheddar and sourdough sandwich.

This is not ready yet. It will not be that nice lime green color when it is.

Thanks for visiting...

...this blog and if you were there, me at Open Studios this weekend. Now I will continue to add to these posts(photos, recipes, stories) and create more. So if you liked something you tasted and want the recipe or tips on making it yourself, or want to know more about eating locally, or want to see more photos and videos, follow this blog or check back periodically for updates.

Bumbler 6 by Kim Keown

My art does not stop at the Farm, please visit:

http://circusmirage.blogspot.com/

for more multimedia film & video projects. THANKS!

Tastings Sunday 9/22, Chocolate Zucchini Bread and Relish and Green Cherry Tomato Pickles!

And...Squash Pie!

 Butternut

 Butternut Ripe

alot ripe 

...and then it can be cooked scooped ingredients added put in a crust and cooked again. hmmm sweet and spice!
 

Simple Squash Pie

8 inch pie shell

1 1/4 cups squash

½ cup soy milk

½ cup maple syrup

½ t cardomom

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice-ginger cinnamon clove nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

Mix together ingredients until smooth. Fill pie shell. Bake 350 degrees for one hour.

Yummmmm!

Pickles are still out

Come and taste 2 varieties right now! As well as Cherry Tomato Salsa!

See below for more tastings.

Welcome! 9/21 & 22 Tasting updates just below

Tastings scheduled so far:

Green Cherry Tomato Pickles! Brined

Relish Tasting: Ezra's relish is more traditional, and Kim's Relish is made with apple cider vinegar and coconut palm sweetener instead of white vinegar and sugar. Now!

This morning I have Sun Tea-ready now! Hibiscus based with many yummy medicinal ingredients-relaxing and invigorating.

Cherry tomato salsa & Pickles 2 varieties of fermented(brined)

squash pie-one left to taste today

Chocolate Zucchinni Bread is in process now. And going fast!

I have greens from Eva's greens to be eaten for lunch today as well around 1pm.

Previous tastings no longer available:

Cold Cucumber Soup made with raw milk kefir and herbs from my JP garden.


Please keep checking the blog here for more times of the tastings, and new posts!

To see all the posts, look on the side bar and click individual ones, or if you've scrolled all the way to the bottom, click on "Older Posts." Make sure not to miss any.

Sunday will be the tasting for the Chocolate Zucchini Bread, so check back for the time:

Me & Zuke

This is the one for the bread!

Purple Cabbage sad kraut

Sauerkraut. I never liked it anyway. But now it’s my new granola. Lacto fermentation is the most recent biggest thing to hit the slow food movement. It’s probiotic. It heals your gut, or so they say, and I am trying it. I have 3 autoimmune diseases and I will try just about anything right now to feel like a person. Waking up is like dragging myself out of the grave everyday. I feel like a sloth. I don’t act like a sloth. I work hard and long sometimes, but I don’t feel good and I haven’t for a long time. Doctors look at me like I have 3 heads. I look pretty healthy, except for a few middle age unmentionables. But they want to remove a few of my organs and I feel if I let them it won’t end there. My immune system has decided to attack me and I want to find a way to get it to stop. I started eating all kinds of lacto fermented food, but I needed to be sure it was raw-not pasteurized-and I have a lot of allergies to ingredients in some of the products on the market.

A green cabbage starts out a cool lime green color, and then gets blander as it ferments, ending up looking tan.  A purple cabbage starts out purple in the jar and becomes an amazing scarlet color when it is fermented.

So I grew a purple cabbage in my garden. I tried to grow more, but the seedlings didn’t survive,

so I bought one small flat at a farmers market, planted them, and one was beautiful. The one I planted on the farm. I nurtured it, I photographed it, I checked on it everyday. I planted 4 marigold plants around it to ward off bugs, and I harvested it just in time, before the bugs got too far in. It was small, but I sliced it thin, added the salt and massaged it until my hands were tired, purple and felt as bruised as they looked…until the pieces were soft and when I squeezed them they dripped purple water. I put it inside a Le Parfait wire bail jar. The kind with the rubber gasket and the wire that will snap open so the jar won’t explode if the pressure builds up.

Well I have made sauerkraut before(never from a cabbage I grew myself though) and I know that if the liquid doesn’t stay above the solids it turns a weird color on top. I guess it is still edible, but it doesn’t look appetizing. So I tried putting a glass inside the wire bail jar that would hold down the solid cabbage under its liquid. But when I put the top on, it sounded like I broke the glass. I looked and it was all in tact. Thank goodness.

The next day I opened the jar to check on it because there was a frothy white stuff developing on the top of the liquid. I took out the glass and scraped it off. No big deal it wasn’t mold and even if it was I’ve heard it said…no bid deal, just scrape it off. But when I pushed down the glass to hold the solids, under the liquid, and closed the top of the wire bail jar I heard that scraping glass sound again. This time I noticed the nick, in the edge of the top of the glass bail jar lid. Was there glass in my sauerkraut?

Was it possible this cabbage I had nurtured would have to go uneaten? Was my only last hope of healing my autoimmune diseases ruined? I couldn’t throw it out. I couldn’t let it go.

I started to search for the glass, knowing full well that it was dangerous to eat the sauerkraut now even if I found the glass pieces. But if it were one piece and it fit perfectly? I was massaging the cabbage again and I felt the sharp edge. It stabbed me and I almost cut myself. I found a piece of glass, but it wasn’t big enough to fill the nick. I continued anyway. I really couldn’t let it go. I grew that cabbage right outside in my garden.  Was I really not going to be able to eat any of it? Finding the piece had given me hope. I could find another.

Maybe some of the pieces had fallen out of the jar. I searched the table, the stove, the floor. Nothing.

I went through handful by handful and didn’t find any more glass. I strained the liquid. Still, no more glass. My boyfriend suggested a cookie sheet so I spread all the solids out on a big one and looked. Nothing. I started to go through handful by handful again, this time small ones massaging and dropping them onto the cookie sheet. I found another piece! I fit both into the nick and there were still two spaces. Even smaller than the pieces I had found. I knew this was not good. They would be hard to find. They may be shards.

The second piece I found by hearing it tink onto the metal. It was very sharp, a tiny razor shard. It could do serious damage to an esophagus. I tried to imagine swallowing it with sauerkraut. I thought to myself, "I could just eat it myself, but not serve it to anyone else." I then asked myself, “why would I eat something dangerous when I wouldn’t let anyone else?” I have eaten fire before. I was a circus performer for a while. But I had no desire to walk on or eat glass. Finding this piece and fitting it into the nick with the other gave me enough information to know that I still had at least 2 more pieces to find. I hoped, but realized, it could be hopeless.

I was still picking up small handfuls of one day to be fermented kraut and dropping them onto the cookie sheet. Examining them with my eyes and my fingers. I searched by feel and by sight and listened for the sound of fragments of glass falling onto the metal. I tried to stay present moment by moment and not space out. Even though I had found the other two pieces by chance, when I was spacing out. I started to ponder whether or not I should use my intuition or vigilance. I let go of the idea of eating the kraut and waited to see if the pieces would present themselves to me through the act of letting go. No deal.

I was now using a white bowl and taking even smaller finger-fulls, dropping them into the bowl and listening for another tink; watching for reflected light. Some of the smaller pieces of cabbage reflected the light just like glass…but they were soft. Some pieces felt slightly sharp. I realized that a tiny shard could be lodged in a larger piece of cabbage and I wondered what would happen after the cabbage was digested leaving the undigestible shard somewhere along the track of my intestines.

At this point I started to realize I was never going to eat this sauerkraut but I was obsessed with finishing. I searched again the entire amount finger-full by finger-full. I still could hope that I would find pieces that fit perfectly into the nick and I would be able to eat my kraut. I wasn’t paying attention but a glistening piece of something caught my eye on the side of the porcelain bowl. It was so tiny. It didn’t even fill one of the remaining spaces. Just like finding the other two pieces it made me simultaneously, realize I could never eat the kraut, and hope to find more pieces that would fill the entire nick.  Again I thought “I could eat it, take a chance, I just wouldn’t serve it.” Again, I asked myself, “why would I risk what I could not allow others to chance?”

I was still only half way through the third round of sorting cabbage and glass. I tried to refocus. I knew it was ridiculous to think about eating this, so why was I still sorting? Why didn’t I just throw the whole thing out when I first saw the nick in the glass? Because I cant let go. Because I cant just accept that I have a disease. Moment by moment I felt flaccid pieces of cabbage. It was drying out and wouldn’t have enough liquid to ferment anyway. The last piece was so small I could never trust that I had all the pieces even if I found more.

I finished anyway, the third round of looking at almost every piece of sliced cabbage.

I didn’t find any more pieces and although I did contemplate going through a 4^th time piece by piece, I didn’t. I knew I would never know if there were one teensy razor sharp flake that may not be fatal, but could cause more problems than I already have. I planted and raised that cabbage. I probably gave it more care than I have ever given myself, but recently I had grown to like sauerkraut because I thought it was good for me.

 I scooped the pieces into a new Le Parfait, not so parfait, wire bail jar and squished them down with the bottom of a glass-but removed it-and closed the lid. "I just want to see that beautiful scarlet color when it is fully fermented," I told myself…"and then I will take a picture, and compost it."

And I did.

Kim will be at JPOS 2013

Location: 57 Brookside Ave #13 Jamaica Plain
Days:       September 21st & 22nd
Time:      11am-6pm
Links:     Facebook event
               B-Side blog
B-Side is located around Brookside Ave near the Brewery and is made up of many talented artists who live and work in Jamaica Plain. More info. I am lucky to be a part of this amazing group.

Photos of Daily Harvests...

of Ivory Silo Farm...

and of things that grow on their own...

Stories of life on the farm on the blog and in person...
...and treats and preserves from the Kitchen Garden!

Please check back here through out the week and beyond for more will be added.

Things that grow on their own...

Pokeweed, Poisonous and Medicinal

 Goldenrod

 Mysterious berries, Jack in the Pulpit?

Mistletoe Hat

Morning Glory Heart and Stone

Mushroom Ring

Thistle in sunset