Category: Food

The hens aren't retired after all

My hens abruptly stopped laying back in the summer after two years of laying strong. I had no eggs at all during August, September, October, November, and much of December. I still have a great deal to learn about chickens. The only theory that I could come up with was that they had already reached henopause, so now I would have to support them and pasture them, as promised, for their remaining Golden Years.

But then all of a sudden, in the last week, they started laying huge, beautiful eggs. I am mystified. The only theory I can come up with is that they cannot tolerate hot weather. I have definitely found that my chickens, types that are said to be cold-weather hardy, are much more uncomfortable in the summer than they are in the cold of winter.

By the way, I am down to two chickens — Patience and Ruth. Chastity died during the summer. I have no idea why. She was fine in the morning when I let them out, but I found her lying dead in the grass during the afternoon. It was not a hot day. There were no signs that any kind of predator was involved. Chickens, I understand, sometimes choke to death. So that’s the only theory I was able to come up with.

During my eggless months I bought a dozen eggs only once — good eggs, supposedly, from Whole Foods. I almost threw them out because they were so pale and pathetic. Clearly, if you want good eggs with deeply colored yolks and great flavor, they’ve got to come from pastured hens.

Family heirloom bean seeds

My older sister and I have often lamented that the heirloom seeds that were used for so many years on my mother’s family farm have been lost. But my sister recently discovered that a cousin has been growing green beans from family seed for many years. That cousin sent me some of those seeds. They’ll definitely be used in my garden next year.

My mother grew up on a good-size family farm in the Yadkin Valley, a place that had been in the family at least since the days of my mother’s grandfather, which is as far back as living memories go (my mother will soon be 88). Most of the farmland has been split up and sold off, but a few acres remain in the family.

This farm — which I well remember from my childhood — was highly self-sufficient. It even had its own blacksmith shop. Most of the food was grown and preserved for the winter on the farm. Preserved foods were canned, dried, and fermented. Fermented foods included pickles and sauerkraut. The farm produced its own milk, butter, and ham. There were draft animals for farming (I can remember the mules), though of course tractors came into use later on. The farm could make its own corn meal, but wheat flour was one of the few staples that had to be bought, along with pinto beans. Flour and beans were bought in 50-pound sacks. The farm even made wine and moonshine. I believe the winemaking and distilling had shut down by the time I was a child, though there was a kitchen closet with the scent of wine that I was never permitted to open when I was a child.

My mother’s father took pride in providing for a generous and well-stocked kitchen. And my grandmother’s cooking is still the family standard that I and my siblings and cousins aim for.

Ah, toast

One of my motivations for wanting to evolve the abbey bread into French loaves was to make it possible to slice it for toast. If one makes bread every day, then it makes sense to have one warm and fresh for supper and one left over for breakfast.

The Dualit toaster, by the way, is a beautiful toaster, but its working parts are unremittingly aggravating. The “lifter,” instead of coming straight up, comes up at an angle, pressing the toast against the side of the slot and trapping the toast inside the toaster. It completely dumbfounds me how a toaster maker could put so much thought and expense into the exterior design while making the working parts almost useless. It makes me want to put a curse on English engineers. I bought the toaster some years ago at Williams Sonoma. I don’t recommend it, unless they’ve re-engineered the lifter.

This morning the stuck toast started to burn, setting off the smoke alarms and scaring the cat half to death. The toast was nice, though. The burnt edges even add to the provincial flavor. Maybe that’s what those old English designers had in mind?

Fall cookin'

I have a visitor from California, so the abbey kitchen is running at high speed, as it did while Ken was here. This is a green pepper stuffed with rice, cheese, and vegetarian fake sausage; mustard greens; a roasted tomato; turnips seasoned with toasted sesame oil and Greek yogurt; and abbey bread. All the produce came from my garden, except for the tomato, which came a friend’s garden near Asheville.

Asheville and thereabouts


I made a three-day trip to Asheville this week. This photo is from the Blue Ridge Parkway near Mount Mitchell


Warren Wilson college is an unusual college that requires work credits for its students. The college has a rustic campus that includes a 300-acre working farm.


Greenhouse on the Warren Wilson farm


The Warren Wilson blacksmith shop


A brick silo on the Warren Wilson farm


The running of the cows. The students are moving the cows from one pasture to another, using the main road.


A late rose in a friend’s garden at Black Mountain

Can whole wheat bread have a good crust?

I sent this photograph of my whole wheat French bread to a friend, and he said it made his teeth hurt just looking at the pictures. To my taste, however, the crust was excellent and not tough at all.

For some time, I’d been planning to do the research and development necessary to upgrade the abbey’s rustic loaves to something with a more exciting crust. The gold standard for bread crust, of course, is French bread. On a recent trip to Asheville, I bought a perforated French bread pan made by Chicago Metallic. That was the first step. The second step was to do some research on how to shape French bread loaves and get the crust right.

Though I knead my bread dough in unbleached flour, I use 100 percent whole wheat flour (King Arthur), to make the dough. The dough for my rustic loaves is really just the same as classic French bread — nothing but flour, water, yeast, a bit of sugar to feed the yeast, and salt. No change was needed in the dough. To get a proper French bread crust, I made these changes in my bread-making process:

— I don’t use a coating of oil to keep the dough from drying out while rising. Instead, I let the dough sit on a dusting of flour in a well-covered bowl.

— I give the bread two risings rather than rushing it with only one.

— From Googling and YouTube videos, I figured out the technique for shaping and slashing the loaves.

— I use a spray bottle to mist the loaves with water before they rise and again before I put them in the oven.

— I throw a little water in the oven to create steam for the first 10 minutes of baking.

These methods are simple. It’s easy, really, to make French bread in the home kitchen. The crust was delicious. The perforated bread pans really do work, and the bread did not stick to the pan, even though I used no oil. Though all the dough recipes I came across mix quite a lot of unbleached flour into whole wheat loaves, I’m not tempted to do that.

These French loaves will become the new version of the everyday abbey bread.

The miracle of rain

Four days ago, .4 inch of rain fell. The day after that, there was another .4 inch. That was enough rain to greatly revive the garden. Tomatoes ripened on the vine that otherwise would have rotted on the vine. The corn freshened. The pumpkins and melons resumed their growth. There may even be more peppers if the rain continues.

I’ll probably scald the tomatoes to remove the skins, then freeze them. As for the pumpkin, I couldn’t possibly eat a whole pumpkin pie. Even though it’s a shame not to use the pumpkin fresh, I’ll probably cook it and freeze it and use it later when I have company. I have at least two more pumpkins that I left on the vine, plus a couple of watermelons and canteloupes. I planted only two watermelon plants and two canteloupe plants, as an experiment. They’ve done amazingly well, so next year I’ll plant more than two.

Baby pumpkin

There’s something magical about pumpkins. I’ve never grown pumpkins before, but I’ve wanted to for years. I thought they might be hard to grow, and they’re said to be heavy feeders. But the vines from my two pumpkin plants are now the biggest, most vigorous plants in the garden.

Last week’s rain helped the garden get through the hot, dry week that followed, with temperatures over 95. Yesterday evening, 1.1 inches of rain fell. I took advantage of the soft ground to do some weeding and hoeing this morning. The forecast for the next five days looks good — pretty good chances of rain and normal temperatures in the upper 80s.

Even with the drought, the garden has supplied 99 percent of my fresh food for over two months. I hardly ever go to the grocery store these days. I had been planning to make my monthly trip to Whole Foods this week, but I realized that there really isn’t anything I have to have, so I’ll wait until I run out of half and half or something. For those of us who use a lot of fresh produce, I can definitely testify that a garden saves a bunch of money.

As for the pumpkins: pumpkin pie!