We had another day of gorgeous weather at Seven Oaks today. I ran around to job sites today while Dave made the necessary improvements here on the farm. He started out with gentle weeding and then did some mowing before changing the tractor implement in order to switch to plowing. He also harvested vegetables which we were lucky enough to eat for dinner! I make it sound more romantic than it is, perhaps, but that is because some of my last posts have been rather graphic!

So, let me back up a bit before I get into the dinner hour which was quite exciting. Back to me….I arrived at my first job site around 7am and had a nice conference with the carpenters there. It was a relatively quiet morning since many people are tagging on a vacation day to the 4th of July and so the roads were free of rush hour.

There was a bit of a scramble with changes to the construction plan on one job but that was all resolved by about 10am. That was when I arrived home and saw that Williams-Sonoma was advertizing an extra 20% off their sale prices on items in their store only. I had been lusting over a Le Creuset brand Dutch oven in the perfect color for my kitchen, ‘Ocean’, but had been stopped by the price tag. Well, they had a slightly scratched one reduced by 50% and then with today’s added 20% reduction and my 10% trade discount, this was too good to be true!  Come to Papa!

So, the day continued, yada, yada, yada, until dinner time when I decided to pull out all the stops. Sometimes you just have to evaluate the players and figure out what role they will play. Here were my list of players tonight: green and yellow summer squash, two types of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, green scallions, and green peppers. Dave had picked up .33 lbs of boneless pork loin from the butcher, Bob, this afternoon.

I relied on a simple summer squash recipe from my brother. It involves sauteing sliced squash and onion with some olive oil and some added spices. I added a pat of butter since we were splurging on all fronts!

We have enjoyed this simple squash sautee for the last couple of years but I was able to enhance it this year by the addition of  our dried thyme from last year’s harvest. I keep meaning to put all those leaves in a spice jar!

The pork recipe is something from Hoosier-ville, Indiana. They have a wonderful treat called “Chicken Fried Steak” which is actually a pork loin wedge that is flattened, breaded and then fried and ultimately served on a bun like a hamburger.  The history of it comes from Wienner Schnitzel which is a German way of preparing pork. For more info, this is a fine link on The History of Schnitzel. http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/Schnitzel/

It is well received with mustard and if you order it in a restaurant it would look like this:

It is to die for when done correctly.  We don’t eat much meat any more but but when my dear husband, brought home two thin slices of a boneless pork loin chop today as I reported above I decided to make my own version of these. I smacked them with a ‘trudge’ which looks like this. One side is flat and the other is pocked. I used the flat side to make 2 really thin pieces of pork. They were almost see thru so they cook almost instantly.

Then I dipped each piece in egg, and breaded them with panko (a Japanese version of bread crumbs) which looked like this. A heavy hand with the pepper grinder is all they needed.

Here are the pieces frying in the pan!

When finished, we had a lovely dinner that looked like this! No need for a bun!

We just got home from a lovely dinner hosted by Ben and Sue Schwartz where they featured our blueberries in three of the dishes they served tonight. The food was delicious and the berries were used in such a creative way; I will take note of their recipes for the future use of our fruit!

The dinner salad was spinach, toasted hazelnuts, blueberries and feta cheese with a light vinaigrette. I’m not sure if there was anything else? It was lovely.

Then, they served a savory blueberry sauce for the grilled salmon that was just incredibly tasty and a very creative use of the berries. I will have to get this recipe from Sue and see if I can post it if anyone is interested. YUM!

As a finale, they served a most wonderful blueberry pie. Sue had seen a section in the NYTimes the previous day which was all about pies and had followed some suggestions for using cornstarch as the pie thickener and also leaving half of the berries whole and uncooked. It was really a great pie, so I will have to remember that as well to try in the future. Thanks, Ben and Sue for hosting us and making such great use of our produce!

What a contrast in weather between this year and last! We were in a record heat wave and drought at this point last year and now are experiencing record flooding and unusually cool temps! Although we are relieved of the job of frantic watering and moving hoses around, we are now overwhelmed with rain. When we look back at harvest numbers from last year, we are behind on almost all fronts except for the berries.

That said, we have been able to keep up on the consumption end of things. We have been picking a couple of peppers and squash each day and can manage to turn them into a veggie dish for dinner with ease. The lettuces and scallions are under control as well and we enjoy getting to use them nightly.  Today was the first green bean and tomato harvest which was modest but there is a promise of lots more to come! Dave is always focused on the traditional harvest dates for certain crops, so it is with great fan fare that he can say he was able to harvest the first ripe tomatoes today.

With the threat of so much produce clogging our current freezer space, we bought a new upright freezer yesterday and were able to haul it home from the local Sears store.

I started looking for one of these freezers a couple of months ago and found out that they are not as popular an item as they once were for American families. One of my appliance salesmen said he had not sold one in over 15 years! Wow! I grew up with one in the basement of my parent’s house since they would buy half of a butchered cow each year and have it freezer wrapped to feed the family with convenience. My dad and brother were also trout fishermen, so the freezer would hold their seasonal catch as well.

We are delighted to have an upright (vs. chest) freezer now but we had some obstacles to overcome. Thank goodness it fit into Dave’s new pick up truck! Although his BMW was lovely, it wasn’t the perfect ride for a farmer like Dave! Notice the license plates!

This freezer weighed 240lbs and Dave and I were not quite up to the challenge of getting it into the basement ourselves. I called upon our resident deer hunter, Andy, who is one of my favorite carpenters. He brought a friend along at the end of the work day and they were able to transport this big box down to the basement for us. Of course they wanted no $ but we shared a beer, some laughs and plied them with fresh picked blueberries and some strawberry jam. Dave managed to sneak some $ into their trucks before they left.

There isn’t an electric receptacle in the basement exactly where we would like to plug in the freezer, so our electrician, Rich Wood, will make a house call next week. Of course, we will need to add this unit to the generator so that if we lose power, we do not lose our produce!

It is exciting to be able to load this unit up with our summer crops for our winter months of enjoyment. Happy Fourth of July!

I relish my childhood memories with both sets of grandparents. We had wonderful family visits to Lexington, Missouri (paternal) and Freelandville, Indiana, (maternal) family farms. I can, and will, share many joyous stories about my memories of both of those times, but I had a big jolt in the last couple of days as I realized that I had been attacked and was suffering from Chiggers! Actually, our visiting helpmate – daughter Kate – found that she had been attacked as well! UGH!

So, I distinctly remember my maternal grandfather, Irvin Telligman, – “Grand Daddy” – coming in from a day at the farm and going directly into the basement where he would take a shower and change into clean overalls to make sure he had gotten rid of any ‘Chiggers’. The shower in the basement was the only one in the house. It was not a separate room but rather just a corner of the basement that had a concrete formed basin with a drain in the floor and exposed plumbing that allowed one the luxury of rinsing off the dirt of the farm. The walls and floor were just rough concrete. (Benefit…non-slip surface!!!) We were lucky that there was a plastic shower ‘curtain’ to pull for privacy even tho it didn’t really reach from side to side which was worrisome for me at the time. As children, we only took showers down there with the supervision of our mother but that usually meant a joint occupation of the space. Of course, I spent an inordinate amount of time worrying that there was a window  in the upper wall of the space that broached this ‘privacy’ but I realize now that had their not been one, the only light source would have been a naked light bulb nearby but outside of the shower.

None of my worries were more than a child’s imagination. Altho there was a bathroom in the main floor of the house with a tub, IT was only used for the function of the toilet and the sink. I also remember that one didn’t flush the toilet willy-nilly, but waited until there was a reason more than just a little pee to pull the trip lever!  So the basement shower was the only one we used. It was an unheated space since there was no enclosure and therefore one did not linger long. When “done” with the showering part (which we did quickly in order not to waste any water!) we would scatter to the ‘coal room’ about 20 feet away. It provided us with just a bit of privacy despite the joint occupancy with our mother. It was called the “coal” room since it was where the old coal furnace for the house was located and we had a bit of warmth there as we hurriedly dried off and put our clothes on.

It was in the coal room that I first encountered the idea of chiggers. Grand Daddy knew when he came in from a day at the farm (he was the town blacksmith and so spent half his day in both jobs) he needed to rid himself of the dreaded, itchy, Chiggers. As I remember, if he had any evidence of Chiggers he would douse the spots with rubbing alcohol that sat on a shelf there and we would be doused as well if we had ventured up the the farm with him.  The concept has not changed since then. Chiggers still exist and I have proof! I did not have any last year so I’m wondering if they are out in force this year due to the rainy conditions. I think the only way to prevent them from biting is to shower off immediately after being out in the field unless one wants to be covered in DEET every time you venture outside. The rubbing alcohol is the cure-all only after the bite since it helps eliminate the chigger and dry up the skin invasion. Wanna see something gross? Go to the Wikipage and look at what Chiggers are all about!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombiculidae

The other pest we are dealing with are the Japanese Beetles. Ugh! Luckily, this is not something that affects our bodies but the damage they do to our plants is terribly destructive. We are doing the best we can with buckets of soapy water which means when we find them on our plants, we knock them into a waiting container and figure that is one less to deal with. Arg!

The persistent, wet weather is keeping the harvest of some items to a minimum but has enhanced the harvest of others vegetables. I’d say our harvest this year is starting to reel from the effects of the rain as well as the cooler weather. The contrast between this year and last is remarkable! Recently, we have been picking lettuces, peppers, scallions, and summer squash for our dinners. Other items such as radishes, peas, spinach and bok choy are done for the summer but will be re-planted as fall crops. Here is a pic of  a recent dinner.