Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Walk The Line

February 26, 2024

A beautiful afternoon - way too warm for typical February but what's typical as we adapt to climate change? We walked along the borders of our property under blue skies, geese honking above on their northward migration. Both of us using trek poles on the uneven ground, over our own hills and dales, checking in with the fluttering orange surveyor's tape marking the iron stakes pounded into the ground so very many years ago.


Nestled just a foot above the ground in the brush, this engineering marvel, caught my eye.



Friday, February 2, 2024

Ground Hog Day

 It's early morning on February 2 and those hardy souls in Punxsutawney are ready for their moment in the bright glare of television lights with their beloved Phil waiting in his burrow.

That first year Arthur and his family had moved away from the beloved family farm, he spent some time in Children's Hospital in Utica, N.Y. Potter County friends and neighbors showered him with cards and letters and, seeing it was in February, Valentines too - many handmade by his former classmates in Mrs. Dewey's room at the Coudersport Elementary School.

His mother, Wanda, had saved these letters and some time later passed them on to him and, being the sentimental one he is, they went into a box into the attic.

I pulled that box out last week and this fell from one of the envelopes along with a card and letter from Aunt Margie Gooch.


  

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Salt Rising Bread

I am convinced there lingers in this old farmhouse a ghostly whiff of salt rising bread. This cold January morning, it joins the fresh aroma from bread we tucked into our cooler when we departed our daughter's Arizona home Wednesday morning. 

Kate has taken up salt rising bread mantle in our family, the recipe passed to her by her great-aunt Dawn Metzger Newton, who learned from her mother in this same farmhouse kitchen where we toasted Kate's bread as special treat for breakfast today.

Salt rising bread carries its own mystique in these parts. These days, the bread from local bakeries (particularly the Giant Market in Wellsville or the Angelica version sold in some stores) is popular and delicious, but for those who grew up with the old-fashioned variety, it's not the same.

It took me a long time to enjoy salt rising bread. My grandfather, newspaperman W.D. "Golly" Fish, loved salt rising bread and I can still see him reaching for a thick slice from the bread plate which accompanied every meal at my grandparents' home. I thought it was disgusting, mostly from its odor. which might be described as dirty gym socks or worse. 

He was a connoisseur of salt rising bread and often wrote about it in his weekly column.

This from November 1967:

"Salt Rising Bread.  It was just about 100 years ago when Golly's parents were united in marriage. Mother had learned as a young girl the art of making salt rising bread. She lived to be 85 years. All that time she baked salt rising and no other kind of bread. All his life it has been Golly's staff of life. Maybe this accounts for the longevity of this scribe."

He wrote so often about his love affair with the bread that readers began bringing him their offerings - both from home kitchens or from local and far-flung bakeries.

As a matter of fact, I remember my future grandmother-in-law, Thelma Metzger, soon after I made her acquaintance, telling me that my grandfather once pronounced her salt rising bread the best he'd had since his mother was living.

Making salt rising bread is not as simple as putting together a yeasted bread. It involves temperature control to grow the sponge. Cookbook author James Beard writes in "Beard on Bread:"

"Salt rising bread is one of the oldest breads in this country, It has delicious and unusual flavor and a very smooth texture. In fact, it is one of the most remarkable of all breads. It does present one great difficulty for the bread maker. It is unpredictable. You may try the same recipe three or four times without success to find that it works the fifth time."

And from the New York Times in an article from 2020, as the world turned to sour dough during the Covid Pandemic:

"... the delegation of bakers who make salt rising bread agree: You want to wake up to it! You want it to hit you the second you walk into the kitchen because it's the auspicious whiff of a successful salt rising starter, the first sign that efficient bacteria have been working hard all night, metabolizing protein in a fast, wild fermentation filling the starter with hydrogen sulfide and other gasses. It's a promise that within several hours, if all goes well, a flat-topped, fine crumbed loaf will come out a rich, yellow gold from the oven."

Kate's recipe, bearing some water spots and other stains, was typed on a computer, each step carefully detailed and described by Aunt Dawn to help insure success. Kate even had a hands-on lesson before she perfected her own technique that involves a yogurt maker and ways of turning off and on an electric oven to maintain the perfect temperature. And even then, there are occasional failures.

While I've never ventured into the world of salt rising bread making, perhaps this will be winter that I do, summoning the friendly ghosts who set their starter in this very kitchen.

And to answer the question as to why it's salt-rising bread? I read today that pioneer women always kept a bag of rock salt by the fire where they cooked. When they would make the starter, they would tuck it down into the warm bag of rock salt which kept it at the right temperature.


From Potter Enterprise, 1949



From Potter Enterprise, 1938






Friday, October 6, 2023

Autumn

My barn boots leave a path through the dew-heavy grass on the way to the high tunnel these autumn mornings - a path that disappears as the sun moves higher in the sky.

When we arrive at October, everything looks tired in there save the August lettuce planting, still bright and cheerful just inside the door.

There are a few tomato vines tethered to their strings with fruit still ripening - especially the rangy bright yellow Sun Golds.  Warm sunny weather brought us a couple more zucchinis and brave flowers under the mildewy leaves still attract bees - bumblebees mostly as the honeybees prefer working the fields of goldenrod.


 

My penchant for leaving once-cultivated flowers to self seed yields bountiful crops of calendula, nasturtiums, marigolds and sunflowers growing in random places throughout the tunnel, leaving seed heads that keep the chickadees and goldfinches happy before we fill the bird feeders.

But the star of the show is the trellis with Fortex snap beans still putting out blossoms and each day handfuls of  lovely green beans!

My goal is to have the cleanup complete and most beds cleared of their spent plants, vines and weeds before the killing freeze sends the temperatures into the 20s.and ends growing time even under the soaring plastic cover.

Kale, chard and the few carrots will stand the killing freeze that's coming soon and I'll soon stretch floating row cover over their beds in hopes of keeping something green on the table into the winter.






Monday, August 21, 2023

Effects Of Climate Change?

In other years this would be the time of year we're wandering through the apple orchard, looking for those first ripening early season apples - Yellow Transparent , Zestar, Williams Pride or the famed Duchess of Oldenburg.



But it's not to be in 2023 for a late season freeze (21 degrees) in May dashed our hopes for a bountiful harvest.

Therefore, we won't be offering our spectacular organic apple cider this fall and there won't be a farmstand opening in the former horse barn.

Here's a report from Greg Peck (Cornell University) and Scott Ramsey (New York Cider Association), published on July 17 of this year that tells the sad story.

"For cider apple growers in New York, 2023 was set up to be a banner year. Many orchards that had been planted over the past 10 years were finally expected to be in full production... There was a tremendous bloom on cider apple trees in 2023.

Unfortunately, cold temperature returned with a vengeance on 18 May. Most region experienced temperature below freezing, with some locations getting into the mid-20s. Trees in bloom or with small fruitlets experience a range of damage from outright crop failure to varying levels of fruit loss and fruit peel damage...."


You can learn more about the frost/freeze event by visiting https://data.nysipm.org/weather-events/20230518/map.html


And Pennsylvania DEP has gathered information about Climate Change here.


Saturday, August 19, 2023

Milkweed

 

I've been keeping my eyes on the milkweed plants that have taken root in the high tunnel, waiting for this annual event.


Larva of the Monarch Butterfly - I spotted 10 in various instar stages last week when I carried my phone with me for my morning check-in.

This morning it's kinda chilly - 49 degrees - and I'm sitting in the living room with a second cup of coffee. But I'll don the fleece soon and pull on my barn boots and visit the milkweed patch to check on the caterpillars. 

I read this article this morning to refresh my memory about the life stages of the monarch. Now I know that I won't find the chrysalis on the milkweed but will perhaps they'll be hidden nearby.

Stay tuned!

Friday, June 2, 2023

Potato Time Again

There are potatoes sending out sprouts in our garden space - at least I think they're growing. The climate-change weather pattern brought us above-normal temperatures then below-normal temperatures and now heat and lack of precipitation.

Arthur, seduced by the offerings of our favorite organic seed potato purveyors, ordered way more seed potatoes that we want or need to plant this spring. We have extras safely stored in the cellar waiting to go to someone who is looking for variety and deliciousness and wholesomeness - for they are certified organic certified seed potatoes.

Send an email (metzgerfarm@gmail.com) or call the home phone (814-274-8004) if you're interested - time's a-wastin'!

Soon there will be acres and acres of potatoes growing in the fields on this old farm. As a matter of fact, my olfactory senses tell me there's some manure involved this sunny day.

Carol Metzger (Wilkerson) and
Dawn Metzger (Newton) among the
potatoes "by the sugar bush".
July 1950


and from the same roll of film,
this one says "over to Sheldon's"
See the tractor near the horizon?