Giving Thanks;

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year! Family, cooking, baking and a nice healthy dose of vitamin D made for a great time. The greatest part was getting to cook with my mom for two days straight. Cooking has become the main form of expressing creativity in my life, and sharing that with my mom was such a great feeling. My mom has always been an excellent baker. Growing up she could whip up a batch of cookies like they were nothing and on holidays she would make pies. It was so much fun to be together in the kitchen, her baking away and me knee deep in cooking. She made two amazing black & blue berry pies, one with lattice work across it, and another with hearts carved into the top crust.
Funny story: I woke up the morning before thanksgiving and told eric that i would do anything to eat one of the arkansas black apples I had left in our fridge back home. And much to my surprise when we went to the Ventura Farmers Market that afternoon there was a vendor selling my favorite type of apples! So, luckily I got to make a cranberry apple crumble, rye bread stuffing and of course our cider glazed turkey all with the arkansas black apple!!
I hadn't made a turkey before and my mom was more than a little apprehensive about us being in charge of the central dish of her favorite holiday. But I think we made an excellent turkey. We used my great grandmother's turkey oven, stuffed the bird with thyme, onion and apples & let her roast for 4 hours. In my opinion, the quality of the turkey comes out not only in the meat but also in the gravy made from the roasting juices. Oh! The gravy was divine. When testing it out I had eaten three tablespoons of it just to check, double check and triple check that it was as good as it tasted the first time.
A Big Big thank you to everyone in my family who came over and ate with us. I had such a good time cooking for you all and my only regret is that we didn't do thanksgiving up here at my house so I could hoard the leftovers!
PS. Check out my mom's amazing 1950's kitchen. I was coveting those cabinets every second...

Practice of Sustainable Agriculture

My class this year is called Practice of Sustainable Agriculture, or PSA. We spend two days per week working on the TESC Organic Farm and two days per week in class. This plus the additional required farm hours and work has kept me pretty busy these past few weeks. It's almost inconceivable how much I have learned and done! There is nothing I have done that feels so rewarding and important. I'm really focusing in on what I want to do professionally and food will be at it's center.
Within the class I am in the Annual/CSA group, so we're in charge of selling food at market, packing Community Supported Agriculture boxes, planting cover crops, planning for next year, harvest, planting and writing the CSA newsletter. In addition we will be redesigning the table we take onto campus to sell produce and building a new veggie washing station.
Friday, our class will be attending the Washington Tilth conference in Yakima, Washington. I'm planning on keeping this close to updated, so look forward to some interesting fodder.

It's been so long;

It's been SO long. Part of that is the start of the school year, another part is the trip to Ireland in mid-october and perhaps the most significant part is sheer laziness.
I've been taking a class on the campus Organic farm. & farm life has really transformed the rest of my life. Working and learning alongside such intelligent and motivated people has turned my intensity up Up UP!
Today in class we had Faith Hagenhofer give a guest lecture and train us on felting wool. Last week we learned how to use natural dyes and this week we felted the wool we dyed! As a class we felted two large tapestries and might have enough felt to turn them into slippers for everyone. Faith is a fiber farmer in nearby Lewis county and is a proponent of something she calls the Hundred Mile Sweater. It is her own spin (pardon the pun) on the local food movement. Her question is "why isn't there a local fiber movement?" & I completely agree. A good friend from class is going to teach me how to spin, which will add a whole new dimension to the process of making my own clothes. Thank you Faith, for giving us your time.