CertainSeason

Goodnight Irene

We were unscathed, personally, by the storm. In fact I know we've had higher winds. But the flooding in our area is not to be underestimated. And Vermont took a major hit. We went out to see what we could see last night, after the storm had long passed...and it was impossible to get into Granville proper. All the roads in or out were flooded...22...149...Church, North Street...even the road into Vermont....all flooded and impassable. We ended up having to go all the way around on 149, over the hills, over to 22N. And once we got into Main Street, the only way back was the way we came in. This picture (left) was taken this morning, when the road was passable again. The waters have actually gone down from last night (thankfully)...this is normally just a field of grass.

The Pember was high and dry atop the hill. But just across the raging Mettowee...a good four or five feet over it's banks, the Slate Valley Museum had been completely overrun by the river, at one point flowing around and through the museum itself. They were sweeping mud out all afternoon.

More pictures as soon as I can get my computer program to function properly.

Picking Up The Pace

I feel like we've had a steady stream of houseguests since Memorial Day...mostly because it pretty much has been a steady stream of houseguests since Memorial Day.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and tired.

Toby and Kip were up two weeks ago, visiting from Texas. They had been at Easton Mountain and dropped by for lunch on Monday. Then Ron and Jiyoung and Bodin and Reese came up with Rudy (seen demonstrating the finer points of slingshot usage in the photo at the left.)

And before you know it, First Friday is upon us again and this batch of artists was...how do I put this?...stressful. At least that was the excuse they gave me every time they reneged or backed out or didn't bother to show up when they said they would. They were stressed and just couldn't....[fill in the blank]. They were the most unprofessional group of artists I have yet to work with and I would never work with any of them again.

So I was most relieved when Bill told me it was OK with him if I didn't get up Saturday morning and drive down to Connecticut with him to spend the Fourth with all our loving friends there. I just couldn't. And of course that made it possible for Bill to take off early, after work on Friday, which gave him extra time with everyone. And it made it all the easier for me to sit back and realize that I was coming down with a cold and sleep most of Saturday away.

Starve a fever, feed a cold...and I got a taste for a good old-fashioned burger. Stuffed it with cheese and grilled it like any good Fourth of July. It was a gorgeous Saturday night, even if I was feeling under the weather. It was sunny and warm, but not too warm nor too muggy (that may change with the thunderstorms that rumbled through last night.)

The garden is happy...got a little warmth this week, more rain. Some tomatoes are making a go of it. And the fennel and sorrel are taking root. Even got some marina di chioggia's to sprout. Maybe this year we'll actually eat them!

First Friday and Friends

I called Ron and Jiyoung Dailey about a week or so ago and told them they should put Bodin on a train and let him come up for First Friday this time because it was all about fly-fishing and duck decoys. So everyone came up and we had a fine First Friday. Bodin met Ron Duel, an 80-year-old master fly-tyer. When I told Ron that Bodin was coming all the way up from New York City to see him tie flies, he said he had a book with a fly-tying starter kit in it and a book that tells you how to tie and that he would bring it for Bodin!

And this morning, Bodin tied his first two flies.

The rest of the afternoon we ate and sat around the fire. Reese is a little pyro and spends the day finding things to throw in the fire. I'm worried about him.

Scott Frush came up from Albany with Brewster's doppelganger dog...Chloe. She looks exactly like Brewster in miniature. That's her hiding behind the chair. Just imagine Brewster's face and you've got it.

Many Stories. No Pix.

Well the long delay has been due to the intransigence of my technology to cooperate. My camera, from which I have uploaded many hundreds of photos, is suddenly invisible to my computer...grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr  So I have no current photos to show...or at least I have no access to the photos I took for the time being...grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

And there has been much to talk about, too. Ron and JiYoung and Bodin and Reese were here for the weekend. We ate and played and hiked and toured and had a great time as always. We took Bodin to see the Fly Fishing Museum, which Mark Wenser had just taken Bill and I to see a day or so before (Mark designed the building that houses the museum, as well as restorations and updates to Hildene (left) the summer estate of Robert Todd Lincoln in Manchester, where he also gave us a personal tour.) And we drove to the top of Mount Equinox, where we hiked the Lookout Trail...beautiful views.

Let's see....what else? I spent the day yesterday making 75 pounds of merguez sausage with Jody and Luisa Somers at the Dancing Ewe Farm. We dressed out the meat, trimmed it, ground it, seasoned it and finally stuffed it into casings, tied them off in groups of six and packaged them. Handmade from stem to stern. 

And I can't share a single photo of any of it...grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

 

Dancing Ewe

I'm producing this monthly event for the Pember here...First Fridays: Home Grown at the Pember...where we are featuring local artists and, more importantly to my mind, local food. We had the first one last Friday and for the most part it was a success...but it can be so much more.

The local food (wine and food) vendors we contacted basically tossed their product at me and figured they had done their part. This despite my trying to explain that we didn't necessarily want a hand-out or a donation, but that we wanted to present a real "locavore" experience...we wanted this whole event to be an on-going win-win event for everyone involved. Mind you, even having the cheese from Consider Barwell Farm and the sparkling cider from Slyboro Ciderhouse is a pretty nice thing...but again...this can be so much more!

I want the local artisanal food people to present their work like the artists are presenting their work...like art...so that this area can begin to come back and take some "orgoglio di terroire" "terroire pride" in the beautiful foods and beverages that are created here. We may not be Napa, but we are pretty amazing...

I had read about this other cheese producer in the area...Dancing Ewe...and how they provide cheese to some of the best restaurants in NYC (e.g. Del Posto, which, just this last week, received four stars in the Times and Restaurant Daniel...the list is staggering!)

...so I thought I would see if I could find it and see if I could get them to participate in First Fridays. Well, I found the farm, and it looked like it had been abandoned almost. But I heard some hammering, and I saw a border collie, so I knocked on the glass and this door opens up like a garage door, exposing, inch by inch, the legs, then the torso of what turns out to be this handsome guy...the proprietor, Jody Somers...who proceeds to enthuse all over me after I told him about what we were doing...takes me into the cheese curing rooms and starts cutting slices of cheese...and wrapping large wedges of them for me...tosses in a couple of baskets of freshly made ricotta (the very cheese Del Posto buys...retails for $18 a basket!!!) and then throws in an exquisite bottle of olive oil that he and his wife, Luisa, grow and press and bottle themselves five months of the year in Maremma in Italy!!! Which, of course, means they won't be able to do First Fridays until they come back...but when they do come back he is going to be the "next level" for First Fridays...we're going to start being able to do a real culinary experience with people.

There is much more to the story...but the coolest part is how he "gets" what I am trying to do with the museum as my platform...and he said he would be happy to give me a wheel of their cheese for the event, but that he thought that he and Luisa could present it so much better...and did we have a kitchen at the museum? because he thought it would be really cool to put on a dinner...right there in the museum... His enthusiasm was infectious. He was clearly stoked about what we're doing, and that I seemed to "get" what he was about. So very cool...and on top of it all, he's this handsome guy stuffing cheese in my mouth!!

God I love where we live.

 

A Busy Season

 
The last two weeks have been a blur...between my parents visiting, which was wonderful and preparation for First Fridays: Home Grown @ The Pember, a monthly art exhibit and local food celebration we're starting as a fundraising, consciousness-raising event for the Pember Library and Museum.

The idea is to invite local artists and local food producers...cheesemakers and cider being the most obvious, but there are many others...to a monthly event at the Pember. Seemed like a no-brainer, really. We're in the middle of one of the highest producing agricultural areas in the country.

I had no idea.

Turns out that not one, but two of the local cheesemakers...Consider Bardwell Farm and Dancing Ewe Farm...provide some of the finest restaurants in New York City with their cheeses, to say nothing of Murray's Cheese. And by "finest" restaurants I'm talking about the just-this-week recipient of four stars in the NY Times, Del Posto. And that's just the start. The woman who runs Consider Bardwell Farm is nothing less than Mark Bittman's ("How To Cook Everything") cookbook editor! We picked up some nice hard cider from the Slyboro Ciderhouse. I am not personally fond of hard cider, but this was very nice. That's our friend Mark Wesner in the front and our friend and the artist who made the painting they are standing by, Roy Egg, in the photo. I don't know how much money we made exactly...but it was a very nice evening and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. We even got the mayor to commit to tending bar for us for the next one!

Meanwhile, the weather has been inclement to say the least. Not really "inclement"...rainy would be more accurate. I think they're saying we got something like four to six inches of rain in the prior 48 hours. I think it had to be more than that...it rained, steadily and drenchingly throughout the entire night Wednesday night and well into Thursday. From Thursday into Friday it was off and on, but mostly on, only stopping by mid-afternoon on Friday, just in time for our First Friday event!

Meanwhile...back in the garden, the season is drawing quickly to a close. Those are the varieties of squash we grew in the foreground (l. to r. Marina di Chioggia, pumpkin and golden Hubbards). The can is filled with only one of the many girasoles...Jerusalem artichokes...we grew. And the basket has everything from baby eggplants to the last of the cherry tomatoes, some green tomatoes and a few delicatas.

Some other pix from First Fridays: 

The Good (new) Red Road

Had a load of crushed red slate delivered to "freshen" our circular drive. And to coin a phrase: What a load! The truck was able to maneuver only a very small part of the circle and was forced to drop portions of the load at various places so we will spend a good part of today spreading the red, red gravel around the drive. 

Now if we can just keep Missy from digging in it.  

Fortunately it arrived in advance of the torrential rains yesterday evening which thoroughly soaked everything and left no doubt in anyone's mind that Autumn has arrived. No frost yet, but I am thinking about covering the tomatoes.

Today Patty Wesner and I are meeting at the Pember with the fellows from Valencia 826  (actually here it will be called 826DC ...cute huh? DC...BC...) who are starting the new tutoring center in Washington D.C.  We are loaning them various specimens from the Pember collection to make their "Museum of Unnatural History" decor more authentic. Should be a hoot!