A true fall day.

Early October, 2009

Today has been a true fall day: clear, cool in the shade, warm in the sun, and breezy. I’ve been working out in the gardens and in the hoop house, planting and transplanting, building cold frames, and adding garden refuse to the compost heap.

The first flock of geese went over sometime in mid-morning. A low-flying, ragged formation, making a racket, like a committee whose discussion has degenerated into a shouting match. I was pulling out the tomato plants, setting aside the good tomatoes to ripen indoors, and the geese made such a commotion I had to step outside the hoop house to see what was the matter, imagining that some raptor had flown too close, and expecting to see geese flying in all directions. And while they were indeed an ill-formed bunch, more of an airborne pileup, they were all going and simply making a lot of noise. Perhaps they were new recruits assigned to form their own flock, and hadn’t yet figured out how to fall in, but had lots of ideas on how best to do it.

The next flock went over not long after, and I barely heard it from inside the plastic shelter of the hoop house, so high were they. I put down the turning fork, listened for a moment, then stepped over the tomato cages, (tripped over is more like it) and went out for a look. I had to hunt around the sky for a minute, but they were up there, a faint, long, strung-out V, a little lopsided but clear and steady, and earnest in their work. Their honks sounded like each goose was contributing to a vocal rythmic encouragement, or making occasional reports from the periphery. They came from the direction of Mt. Lafayette, and sheared off toward the Hudson Valley, I thought. I wondered where they would be at nightfall. I wonder if my brother saw them later in the day, down in Delmar…

The third group (now it’s almost lunch time) was large and determined, and low enough so I could hear the wind of their wingbeats. Shuffshuffshuffshuff…Not much talk, but while over my head a couple of birds broke rank from the rear and churned up the middle, then out the front of the V, altering course just slightly in the shift change, and the birds slid back on each side to make room, and then another came charging forward. It looked like a squadron of veterans.

Another high flock, so high it took two minutes anyway to find them, up in the blue void of the mid-afternoon. So faint, I couldn’t see how big a group it was at once, but my eyes slowly picked them out, and they kept stretching on and on, and reminded me of the stories about the huge flocks of passenger pigeons from the 1800’s, which could extend for miles and miles, and millions of birds, until we shot them all, every last one. These geese were out of range, and I could never see the whole flock at once, so faint were they.

The last bunch of the day wasn’t too big, nor too high, nor too noisy, nor too disorganised or too orderly. But it was getting on toward sundown, and they had an air of… well, one sensed they knew that it was getting on, that the day was running out, but that they had to push on, even hurry on, perhaps even through the night. There was nothing leisurely about them. “Come on!” “Let’s go!” I even shouted after them: “Go go go!”

It was a varied and sporadic parade that day, but they were all headed south.

-- Caleb

"Hey, Mrs. Michelle Obama, How do you like me now?"

(Garden Update: December, 08

One of the reasons I have been remiss in keeping my hand in with postings is that I have been busy trying to extend our gardening season by installing a hoop house, or high tunnel, or plastic-covered greenhouse. It’s my first time, so I’ve been a little excited and nervous…)

Garden Update: November, 09:

Here it is a year since we installed the hoop house, and elected our new First Lady into office. Or House, if you prefer. (And let’s not kid ourselves: We were voting for Michelle, as much as for Senator Obama.)

It’s been a busy year, both here on Mt. Hunger Road, and in Washington, D,C., a year in which much has been learned, and endured, and a year in which much has been taken as inspiration in our pursuits. If the First Lady can bring the focus and conversation to bear on our collective vulnerability to the weaknesses of our food supply, I believe much good will come of it. Toward this end I think it important to examine our individual wants and expectations from our food supply.

Not only do I want vegetables particular to the needs of our culinary mission at the restaurant. I want to be less vulnerable to any hiccups in the supply chain (from field maladies, weather-related challenges, and transport SNAFUs) that might deny me access to produce. I want to know what is being done to my food before it reaches me. And I want to grow some of what we need myself. Working in the garden pays us back in so many ways beyond just helping us control our costs in our restaurant. It also provides unbeatable freshness, flavor and nutritional value.

Last year it was too late to sow new crops inside the hoop house in time for a proper winter harvest. We were just trying to get the thing up, covered and closed in, and we had to make do with the escarole and radicchio that remained from the summer season, which happened to have been sown on that site. But that was a small harvest and soon exhausted, and so we had to buy greens through the darkest part of the winter, until newly sown greens finally came up beginning in March, just in time for April vacation. At least by the time we re-opened to start the long season at the beginning of May, there were arugula, curly endive and new baby radicchio ready to be cut, and I had to start propping the door of the hoop house open for the day to keep the crop from overheating. And then the rains began…

Well, Madame First Lady (will I ever be able to address you as gardener to gardener?) this year it’s going to be different. (Ha Ha! Isn’t every year?) We’ve learned a lot, we’ve talked to some gardeners who know much more than we do (thanks Kevin, the brothers at Fable Farm, Eliot Coleman), and we’ve done some reading. We managed to overhaul the interior of the hoop house, build cold frames to protect the greens during the coldest periods, and sow in time so that we will have things ready to harvest by the time the scarcity of daylight brings growth to a screeching halt. We even had the tomatoes inside, so even though the summer was cool and wet, they did ripen (right up into October), and avoided the blight which so devastated tomato and potato crops in this region. (I finally pulled the plants out on October 12. Ripening had slowed dramatically, and the low nighttime temperatures were starting to damage the fruit. But we were able to use only our own tomatoes at Pane e Salute all the way through October until vacation.) There is now newly sprouting spinach under the plastic of the cold frame, where the tomatoes once sprawled in all their bushy and disorganised glory.

So Madame First Lady, if you would like to swing by for a cup of tea to be taken in the sun of the hoop house this winter, there is a little space with two chairs and a table, where we can talk about your plans for the winter garden at the White House, what to sow, soil amendment (no congressional or state votes needed, and no doubt the most productive use of BS ever seen in D.C.!), where to source starts and seeds, President Obama’s and the girls’ salad habits, and how best to promote the expansion of the conversation about our food, a conversation our country so much needs to continue. What will it mean to Americans to see the White House growing food? The implications could be tremendous, especially when you produce “too much”, and you have to give away the excess to neighbors and visitors, one of the great pleasures and purposes of having a garden, when one is blessed by the space to do so.

-- Caleb

(In the photos: 1^st and 2^nd photos, construction of the high tunnel in October ’08; 3^rd, 4^{th and 5th} photos, November 2, ’09. The boxes of radicchio di Treviso, escarole (bionda a cuore pieno and bubikopf), arugula Sylvetta, and curly endive (Romanesca da taglio), and (far left box) frisee; curly endive close up, ready to be cut for salad; Spinach has just sprouted under the plastic in the right-hand box.)

divide and conquer

This fall, I’ve decided to finally divide the iris. I’ve been growing different varieties of iris here for ten years, and I am chagrined to say this is the first year I have set out to dig up, thin, replant. But it is such an arduous job…I hate it and love it.

An old friend who also happened to be a incredible gardener gave me a gift of iris when I first started my garden. She was digging up and thinning out too and I was in sore need of plants. We had tilled a large area in a wild field next to the house, blithely forging ahead without knowing all the mistakes we were making , and there was a lot of space to fill. Since patience has never been one of my virtues—one of my faults as a gardener as I’m always looking for instant visual gratification—I was happy to take as many plants from friends and family that I could that would go forth and multiply, and quickly. Blithely forging ahead. I took gifts of mint, veronica, scented geranium, phlox, and gooseneck loosestrife. My mother gave me tansy (looking back at what is now the scourge of my garden as it snakes everywhere, I wander if she was mad at me…), and my friend Robin gave me both Siberian and bearded iris.

About five years ago, these iris were the showpiece of my garden. They bloomed in June, right before and then continued on at the same time as the blue-flowered veronica and the magenta peonies—another gift from another gardener. Things went along roughly the same for another four years, this always being my favorite time in my garden. Every fall though, I could see that the iris were getting denser, and their foliage and mat of roots encroaching on other plants, hiding the sedum and small plants of catmint, even encroaching on themselves.

This June barely any iris bloomed. Too thick and congested, they had no room to gather enough energy to flower. I bolstered myself to dig up and divide.

The worst part of this job is finding the time. The garden has grown to such an extent now, and there are other gardens—vegetable, orchard, vineyard and now a new plot for a new varietal rose garden—that need tending too, that this whole gardening concern could be my fulltime job. I have a lot of iris, and to dig, divide, and separate is a meditative and lengthy process. But this is also the best part of the job, the satisifaction of freeing each bulb from the confines of our thick, clay soil and the other roots of its brethren, to take the time to look at how different each of the iris are in their bulb form, and then to plant them back in loose, well-composted soil, knowing that next June they will burst forth on their slightly exotic stalks and color the garden in all their shades of blues and purples, the gardener’s prized color like the cobalt blue paint of the Renaissance painters.

--Deirdre

vendemmia!

A summer we didn’t really have is gone. Time flown, I’m wondering where we’ve been, what we’ve been doing since our last post. Sometimes living gets in the way.

Fall has settled in now on our pie-shaped piece of meadow and wood. The leaves have started to change to the reknowned oranges, golds, and reds. Yet--even though it is already October, out the windows of our house I can still see a lot of green, and the gardens are still producing valiantly: roses, phlox. rudbeckia, tomatoes, radicchio, zucchini, and Piemontese beans.

On these gray heavy days of late, I can almost imagine we might be in the Piemonte in northern Italy. The woodsmoke hangs and the air is raw just like there at this time of year. The wild-gatherers bring exotic mushrooms to the restaurant—this week white combtooth. And yesterday, our grapes arrived from the market in Boston.

The grapes are from Boston this year because there is a dearth of grapes here inVermont. All of sudden, everyone wants to make wine. People are begging, borrowing, trading, making promises they must keep for a few slugs of grapes. I, too, have negotiated, and if the weather cooperates, harvest here in Vermont will begin any day now, and I will pick up a case or two of Marquette, so that I can begin learning to make wine from a grape I have planted heavily. There is a frisson in the air between the local wine makers, the anticipation of harvest and the pressing. We are very careful not to reveal where we have acquired our bounty—we don’t want to lose our access; we don’t want our gracious vineyardist to be inundated with requests for next year. We protect our sources, so that we can assure ourselves that again, we will get to make wine.

Our Boston grapes are plump and healthy: two slugs of Sangiovese, and one of Barbera, all grown in California. I have gone easy on the amount of grapes to make into wine this year as the goal is to make wine cleanly and properly, to learn the most from a little. Since we have so much work to do still on preparing our cellar—all our time has been devoted to the actual vineyard itself—we don’t have enough space for proper storage for a larger quantity. So, we go to a friend’s cellar who has been making wine for the last seven years to crush, test for sugar, test for acid, and prepare the yeast. When I make my own wine from my own grapes, I will use less intervention. I will rely on wild yeasts that grow on the skins of the grapes and in the seeds, and I hope that the acids will be balanced because of how I’ve cared for the soil. But for now, since I don’t know the growing conditions of these grapes, I will use cultured yeast, the point of this excericise not only to make drinkable wine, but to learn more deeply the chemistry of how to make wine, so that by the time I do have my own harvest, I will understand more intuitively the process. I will know it in my muscles and bones, in my tastebuds, what the must will do, what the must needs. I am learning by osmosis.

We are a fine group, three couples, cranking the crusher, blending grapes, taking notes, practicing the science. We taste other people’s wine while we work-a Marquette made only an hour and a half away from here. Late afternoon turns into evening, and we adjourn upstairs into the warm kitchen to prepare dinner and watch our cultured yeast grow and bubble near the stove. We eat a beautiful meal of grilled chicken, flattened and pressed by bricks in that old Italian style, served with roasted beats and squash, a spinach salad with fennel, almonds, and pears. We finish with plums poached in a little of the Marquette served with fresh whipped cream. A dish in Italy bawdily called Cosce di Monaca—nun’s thighs! All the while we taste through a varied and staunch line-up of wines: Grecchetto from Umbria for the white, Aglianico from Basilicata, Sagrantino again fromUmbria, and to finish, a Brunello. Well, not exactly to finish, there is still the small Venetian glasses of Vin Santo to end the meal with the plums. Holy wine for a holy dessert.

Roger and Deb, our hosts, send us home with a mason jar of fresh grape juice crushed from the Alicante grapes Roger is using in a blended wine he will make this year, so that tomorrow morning, we will have the juice with our breakfast just like countless families in France and Italy who will start their mornings with fresh grape juice during the crushing of the harvest, and have started their mornings during this season just like this for hundreds of years.

--Deirdre

weather

Has it really been two weeks since the last post???? What have we been doing? Planting 230 vines. The weather has confounded, rain, rain, rain, making the ground too wet to plant. Bare root plants of La Crescent, Frontenac, St. Croix, Frontenac Blanc, and Marquette waiting, waiting, waiting. We grab at the sun on the 1,2,3 days it shines and work from early til late. The heat feels good. Now, all the vines are in and staked, some still to be tied. The rain splashes up on leaves causing black spot on some. Just like the roses. And the Japanese beetles have come. Late, but still here. They are like Venetian lace-makers creating a fretwork in the leaves. How satisfying to smash them between two pieces of broken terracotta! The beetles, not the lacemakers....Bloodlust and more rain....

--Deirdre

come hail or high water

It rained from lunch onward, then miraculously it stopped. This after 24 days of rain in the month of June and the beginning of July. But who’s counting? I hadn’t been until someone brought it to my attention. Last year we joked that it was our English summer because then there was also rain in June and the roses were fat and sodden, and our young cousin Claire came to live with us for a few months to garden and work in the restaurant. We made jokes that we were introducing her to local society and that we must find her her own Mr. Darcy. This summer really has been like an English summer, and more so. And all on account of the water. Ha! I meant to write weather.

It is July now and we are hosting the first of our summer outdoor degustazione, or wine tasting events—la garagista. Only a few days after the 4th of July. The 4^th of July passed as a long day of rain with a fire in the woodstove just to get the chill out of our bones. Where are the hot 4^th of July’s I remember? When the evening is still so warm and the air thick like cream that it is a relief to hold a cold glass with ice in it next to your cheek or along your own jugular vein? Where is the 4^th of July when we ate dinner under the locust tree, just the two of us, dressed in linen because it was so hot, and watched the fireflies illuminate the meadow? No, this is the summer of cold and damp.

It has been hard to keep up with garden chores and clean up because of the inclement weather, and worse yet trying to prepare the earth for the 300 or so vines that have arrived in cardboard boxes with packing peanuts and stuffed snuggly in black crates. Our clayey soil clumps with wet and is too drenched to properly till. We have yet to open our terrace for the season. There’s been no reason to hunt for the shade of the rose pergola. Two cushionless chairs sit forelornly against the wall, and the gold painted chandelier with the two remaining bobeches hangs high and candleless just like it did all winter. At least then, the glass beads caught the light and looked like icicle or snowflake. The light on these rainy days has been too flat to reflect anything.

The weather report for the evening of our tasting calls for heavy downpours and thunderstorms with the threat of high winds and the possibility of hail. Hail, the vineyardist's nightmare. But we forge ahead. We open the terrace bringing cushions and furniture. We lower the chandelier and fill it with candles that I know, even on a good day, will never stay lighted. But I am forever the optimist. We move potted roses and lavender, and finish weeding. We pretend that we will have a nice day. For a moment, we balk and think to move the event to the restaurant, but that defeats the purpose of having guests wander the gardens and plant a grape vine, or toast to a visiting winemaker’s new vintage in the garage. So, we hold fast and feel courageous. We’ve already had 23 days of rain. Will anyone really care if they are out in another?

When the rain stops , we wipe off the wet tasting tables and chairs, set up the candles and torches, and put out the white table clothes. We put a tarp on the balcony covering the terrace (we have big plans to put a roofed pergola on top of the balcony which will also shield the terrace, but have yet to get around to it…), the same tarp that covered our house when we took the roof off in order to rebuild it and made every precaution to keep the house from the elements, and it rained, and rained, and rained, and the rain came in the windows and down the walls, the same year I made my first rosolio. For a moment, while we are writing the suggested wine pairings on the black board, and lighting the torches, the sun even comes out. We are all dressed for the evening, and dressed for the weather, our rain boots either on, or ready to be jumped into.

Miraculously, the rain holds off while the clouds gather. Guests start to trickle in, parking in the field and walking across a plank bridge over a gushing swale. The flower garden is spectacular in the gray and dying light, all the flowers and roses shown off to the most dramatic impression against such a drab background. Guests joke about good luck, and say, “I think it won’t snow tonight!” Chris Granstrom, our featured winemaker from Lincoln Peak tonight, from our own Vermont, shows off his stellar line-up of Vermont grown and produced wines –the whites and reds and dessert--to great effect. No one can quite believe such lovely wines can come from Vermont.

At precisely 7:30, the official close of the party (but all good parties never end when they are supposed to--) a huge clap of thunder. I am in the vineyard with a few people planting vines. I go to the garage to get more stakes, and I am caught inside. The rain comes fast and furious. The wine table in the stone garden where Chris and his wife Michaela were pouring tastes comes flying into the garage, along with wine boxes and half-soaked guests. The sky has darkened. The candlelight is bright. Someone’s car gets stuck in the field, and a help party is dispatched. A small river of water speeds down our entrance past the garage and toward the house. Someone hands me a glass of wine. There is laughter and good cheer. We will not be defeated….

--Deirdre

chicago: no. 2 King's on 5th

Several years ago, my mother told me my great-grandfather had a restaurant in Chicago. I thought perhaps I’d come by this restauranting we do honestly. No one is still alive who knew what kind of restaurant he owned, or what kind of food he served. Since my great-grandfather was originally from Stockholm, we wondered if there was a variation on a smorgasbord, or if the Friday night special was Swedish meatballs.

We did know the restaurant was named King’s. And we did know that it was “across from the newspaper”, the newspaper presumably the Chicago Tribune. We knew that it had been offered as a morgue when in 1915 the ill-fated and poorly designed steamer The Eastland capsized in the Chicago River and over 800 people died. We knew that the building was somewhere across the river from the now-famous Merchandise Mart. We knew that the restaurant itself had gone under when the Depression hit Chicago hard. We knew that my great-grandfather had died shortly thereafter, and my great-grandmother had come to live with my mother’s family in Evanston.

What we didn’t know was that the restaurant had been across from the first penny daily called The Daily News that was regarded as the best broadsheet in the city until the Tribune absorbed it in the mid-sixties. We didn’t know that Charles Henry Weegman, once President of the Chicago Federal League Baseball Club, came to Chicago for the 1893 World’s Fair from Richmond, Indiana, and was so inspired and impressed by the city, he came back to live and started out as a coffee boy at King’s. He went onto start his own restaurant chain of lunch counters that thrived in the city. We didn’t know that King’s was the newpaperman’s haunt all during it’s life, and we didn’t know that the Chicago Press Club, one of the official founders Mark Twain, took the floor above King’s for a year while they looked for more permanent digs. We didn’t know that the building that had once housed King’s, long gone now and replaced by a monolith, had been at the corner of Wacker and 5^th, and that 5^th Avenue in Chicago is now called Wells Street. We didn’t know anything about my great-grandfather’s business partner, Charlie King. And we still don’t. We can only guess that he is the mysterious man in a handful of photos that my mother found in a dresser drawer. A man with a mustache, looking out from beneath his eyebrows, looming next to my great-grandfather, jaunty porkpies shading their heads, a palm tree in the background.

--Deirdre