Cows waiting to go out

Off to the pasture

Following the cows

Leading out the horse

Today, for the first time, I had the charge of two cows, a horse, a goose and more than 40 chickens. Our neighbor asked us to take care of them for the weekend. The two cows have grain in big flat bowls in their stall, and the horse gets his feed in a bucket. After we put the food in place, Cherisse and I opened the pasture gate and they eagerly filed into the barn, into their respective stalls. Once they were locked up and munching, we tossed in hay. The cows’ bowls had to be fished out when they finished eating (so they didn’t get mucky overnight, and so we could fill them with breakfast in the morning). Somehow one of the bowls got nudged to the back, out of reach. Cherisse eventually worked her way behind the stall and hooked it with a rake. The goose has her own stall, and went in to escape us. When I brought her food, she hissed at me (I had read about geese hissing, but the reality is quite surprising).

I thought I would be an old hand with the chickens, but entering a coop with 40+ hens is a little unnerving. Like ours, they crowded around to get the feed and cracked corn we’d brought, which meant they were underfoot. Some of them flew in the rather close quarters, so I was happy when we’d collected a tin of eggs and made our escape. The dog, Jake, accompanied us on the rounds.

Tomorrow morning we’ll give everyone breakfast and then let the large animals back into the pasture. The cows go on their own, but I will have to lead the horse—just like those kids at the Guilford Fair.

Today I used three marvelous inventions. The first is the heated mattress pad. Our bedroom stays cold, which is better for sleeping, but challenging when getting into bed on a cold winter’s night. Now, 15 minutes before bedtime, we turn on the mattress pad (which brilliantly comes with two different controls), and then slip into a toasty bed.

The kitchen scale is another essential creation.  Cherisse bought it for making bread, because weighing the ingredients is far more accurate than using measuring cups. I pull it out almost every day. We use it for canning our vegetables, for weighing dried beans to cook for soups, and to constantly satisfy our curiosity about odd things (like how much the giant chicken eggs weigh).

Crockpots (or slow-cookers), once popular in the 70s, have made a resurgence. This morning I used ours, putting in the chicken carcass from last night’s dinner, covering it with water and adding some herbs, salt and pepper. I set the cooker on low for eight hours, and now we have a nutritious broth, without the onions I can’t eat (and every store-bought stock contains). Tomorrow I will make soup.

Thanks to all the people who came up with these life-changing devices. Someday I may contribute my own.

I’ve yet to master the blueberry pie. It always turn out too liquid-y. By no means is this a disaster…the result is a combination of pie and blueberry syrup, especially good with vanilla ice cream. The small blueberries held surprisingly firm, considering the amount of juice they produced. The pie was delicious, a reminder of summer on a bitter cold day.

The class sounded fabulous. The teacher, a master cheese maker from Narragansett Creamery, taught the class to make mozzarella, yogurt, butter, and ricotta. They also made a hard cheese, formed into a wheel, which needed to age at least six months. At the end of the second day the wheel was raffled off, and Cherisse won it.

Storing the cheese at the right temperature proved a challenge, and at first too much mold grew on the outside. A search online informed us that this was easily removed. Once the cheese was back in good condition, we decided to keep it in the refrigerator. Not ideal conditions, but the best we could devise.

There it sat for 19 months, forgotten in the cheese drawer. Today our friend Lori came up for a visit from New York and asked about the cheese. So we thought, why not see how it turned out?

The outside rind had mold on it, but this was easily removed (and didn’t permeate beyond the rind). When we cut inside we found ribbons of (desirable) mold running through the center. It looked—and tasted—like some of the special (and expensive) cheeses I’ve purchased at the Union Square farmer’s market in New York. It was pungent, very flavorful, and wonderful. Worth the wait.

The room is functional, and suitable for its intended purpose, so we didn’t give it much thought until the washing machine died. Then we discovered the room must have been built around the machines…the washer wouldn’t fit through the narrow door. Cherisse had to dismantle the doorframe and remove some brickwork in front of the dining room fireplace in order to get it out, and the new one in.

On nice warm days we’d hung clothes outside on the line, both to save energy and because we loved how the the laundry smelled after drying outside. We did use the dryer, but decided not to replace it when we got the new washer. We hated to discard a machine that worked, and we didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily. So Cherisse rebuilt the doorframe, in effect sealing in the dryer. It lasted a couple more years, and then gave up.

Now we wash laundry only on nice days, in summer or winter. With sun and a breeze, clothes will dry on the clothesline even in freezing temperatures. There is something about seeing clothes drying, courtesy of nature’s power, that lifts the spirits. As I hang up the laundry, lines from Wynonna Judd’s song “All Of That Love From Here” usually run through my head:

I can see the cotton sheets, they’re swinging in the wind

I’m swinging in the wind

I close my eyes and my mind flies

And I’m right back home again, I’m right back home

Walking in the woods with the dogs—especially the first walk of the day—is often a slow process. They sniff every branch, twig, and leaf, sometimes backtracking or following a trail along a route indiscernible to us.

We are excluded from the wealth of information gleaned by the dogs about the comings and going in our woods. With their keen noses, they keep track of creatures we will probably never see.

The last time Cherisse and I had been to dinner together in a restaurant was April 2011 in Freeport, Maine, on our annual trip to Fedco to pick up our tree order. In part we’re reluctant to leave our home in the evening (it is cozy, and we like being with the animals), and we prefer to eat our own food…knowing where all the ingredients have come from.

However, there are now some wonderful restaurants in Providence which prepare food from local sources, with great care and skill. Nick’s on Broadway is one, a comfortable, casual restaurant with exceptional food and service. We went there last night, and sat at the counter (we didn’t have reservations) watching the chef and sous chefs prepare wonderful meals in the open kitchen. We chatted with the wait staff about the food and their local vendors.

I had the lamb special with a white bean cassoulet (the lamb came from just down the road from us, Hopkins Farm in Scituate) and Cherisse had fresh caught cod over wilted greens (our waitress told us that the fisherman brings each day’s haul in straight off the boat…nothing is frozen). I also ordered a winter vegetable side dish that I watched being tossed in a skillet…every meal at Nick’s is made to order.

Nick’s has a tasting menu, and if we’d had more time we would have been tempted—you provide basic parameters of what you like, and then leave it to the chef to prepare a three- or five-course meal for you. I can’t imagine you would go wrong.

A meal that good, in such a warm ambiance, lifts your spirits, so perhaps we should dine out a bit more frequently. However tonight we’re having “Vegetable-Lentil Soup with Fragrant Broth,” from Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cookbook. With a salad, bread—and our animals sleeping near by—it doesn’t get much better.

The chickens took the day in stride—to them the few days of snow and cold we’ve had so far were an aberration, an annoying interruption in their otherwise happy outdoor existence. Although one of the Anconas might not have been so happy today; this morning she laid an egg that weighed 3.25 ounces, the largest egg yet. It was a day of anomalies.

l-r (in ounces): Ancona 2.125; Dominique 1.75; Ancona 3.25; Rhode Island Red 1.875