January Feast

The days are getting longer, we keep telling ourselves and the goats. Still, the act of taking down the Christmas tree does require a little faith that we are truly exchanging lights for light. I dragged my feet a bit, but the tired old tree makes our caprine charges so happy. It's the feast of the Epiphany, for goats!

Parade for the Three Kings

Violet Politely Thanks Us...

And Then Chows Down With Some Little Friends

Sure enough, it's light out at 5:00 PM now. Hooray for sunlight!

Nor'easter

The nor'easter that blew in today is our second winter storm of the season. The season is actually still technically fall, I guess, since winter doesn't officially start until next week. 

Looking Northeast

Friday Recipe: Ratatouille

In the autumn, every warm day feels like a gift. Here on the hill, we have not yet had frost, and although I am no longer watering the garden, as we have instituted conservation measures because of the lack of September rain, it continues to produce some tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Whatever we aren't growing is easy to get from the farmers' market, but every eggplant also feels like a gift.

This is the perfect time to make ratatouille, while we still can, and on a day when the comfort of a slow-cooked stew will hit the spot. Saturday is forecast to be such a day, chilly and wet. As soon as we get home, I'll turn on the oven and get to chopping.

My recipe - really this one's just a template, too - is inspired by the wonderful writer, adventurer, and practiced palate MFK Fisher. If you haven't yet, read Long Ago in France. You can start it while the ratatouille cooks, instead of doing something fatalistic and useful like the storm windows.

You need a couple good sized eggplants (more if you have a giant oven-safe pot), plenty of tomatoes, onions, garlic, and a pepper or two. MFK wrote:

“The first ingredients were and still are eggplant and onions, garlic, green peppers, red peppers, plenty of ripe peeled tomatoes and some good olive oil. Proportions are impossible to fix firmly, since everything changes in size and flavor, but perhaps there should be three parts of eggplant to two of tomatoes and one each of the peppers and the onions and garlic. I really cannot say.

Las Blancas: Buttons, Vervain, and Bluebell

These are from the early summer, in a sweet moment on the hill. The whities, having a time. Vervain is on the left, Buttons front and center, and little Bluebell on the right.

Friday Recipe: Stuff Flowers with Cheese!

Cotton Hill Road is more than just your average thoroughfare. Schoharie County Route 66 is a steep and winding climb, treacherous in the winter; the location of thousands of acres of state forest; home to a hardscrabble mix of Sloughters and newcomers, with some rarely-seen weekenders; and these days, quite a culinary destination. We have our resident brewer (OK, the brewery is in town, but we were the beneficiaries of many a practice batch), Justin at Green Wolf Brewery, we the cheesemakers, and wonderful organic vegetables at The Farm on Cotton Hill. Jim and Greg are the farmers, and Jim and I got together yesterday to celebrate the end of summer by stuffing cheese into flowers and frying them.

I love eating flowers whenever possible, but somehow I never tasted squash blossoms. Now I am hooked! Try them! Here's what you do:

1. Harvest the flowers in the middle of a sunny day, when they are open. Use them right away, or keep them in a cool place to use later.

2. Gather your ingredients: flour and a couple eggs for dredging, some good soft fresh goat cheese and anchovies for stuffing, and olive oil for frying.

Flowers! We will eat you!

Friday Recipe: Summer Bounty Pasta

Got veggies? If you have a garden or a CSA share, I'll bet you do! At the farmers' market, eggplants, zucchinis, tomatoes, garlic, and onions abound. How about roasting them in the oven while you play outside, then tossing them with pasta when you're ready to chow down?

I saved the big tomatoes for sauce

I made this a few weeks ago with the first eggplant in the garden. It was perfect summer comfort food, good for a chilly night, and great at room temperature the next day. I think I used these ingredients*:

1 big eggplant
2 small summer squash
2 garlic bulbs
A quart or so of cherry tomatoes

Fresh or dried herbs: basil, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and/or thyme

Olive oil

Salt & Pepper

1 lb. pasta 

1/2 lb. feta cheese, cut into small cubes (our feta is somewhat creamy, which worked nicely)

*Peppers and onions would be nice additions too

Chop Chop

It's Easy:

The New Girls

There are a few new goat faces here at Cotton Hill Creamery. They are very little, so we won't be milking them anytime real soon. They've got some growing to do. 

Here's Nettle and Olive (with good old Buttons trying to photobomb in the background). Noisy Nettle and Black Olive stick together. This is good, because it allows me to distinguish Olive from Jem, who has one tiny white spot on her left side where Olive doesn't. Otherwise the two are identical.

Here's Raindrops. She is a yearling, actually, but she is very tiny. She has flashy markings and a pretty smile.

Little Daisy just came to our farm this week. She is sweet sweet sweet. After a few days in our pasture, she looks like a basketball resting on four popsicle sticks. She wants to follow me around all the time. Farmer Fin won't let me bring her in the house though.

And here they are all together. With Buttons, of course.