TROUTS
LATEST PHOTOS
February, 2011 Issue
#117
SOMEONE’S
IN THE KITCHEN WITH AMY
Amy baked her very
first pie this month, using tips grandma Dunton taught Camille thirty years ago
in her amazing kitchen in Ithaca, New York. It was Garth’s idea to bake a pie but we
thought we’d need to wait until we could score some local apples. And then
Camille went to the cupboard for a can of tomatoes to make pizza sauce and saw
those beautiful peaches we canned last fall. The pie turned out perfect –
molten sweet peaches nestled in crisp, flaky crust.
Saturday night has
become pizza night, a tradition Amy and Garth brought to Moncure and one we
whole-heartedly embrace! The pizza in the picture involved sauce Bob made
from tomatoes he put up a couple of months ago, home made dough, organically
grown pineapple Amy bought during a big moving-in shopping spree, home
made ham-flavored seitan, green peppers and mozzarella cheese from “happy
cows.”
WAY OVER
YONDER
We all took a
break for some fun with a road trip to Asheville, North Carolina, a one night
stay in a hotel, dinner out and a raucous night at The Orange Peel to see Yonder
Mountain String Band. A few more photos here: A Trip to Asheville to see Yonder
GUERILLA
CHORE-FARE
‘Round here we
don’t just do chores, we ATTACK them! Bob used a two pound sledge hammer and a
screwdriver to chip some wax for mushroom log plugging off his ten pound slab of
cheese wax. Robert, Garth and Amy got down and dirty in preparation for
their move to Casa Blanca next door.
BREAKING
NEW GROUND
Spot watches as
our next door neighbor, Fred plows up his sweet corn patch across the
street. Meanwhile, Napa cabbage and watermelon radishes flourish in Edible
Earthscape’s High Tunnel. The high tunnel which, according to Garth, should really be
called a Low Tunnel is an innovative and relatively inexpensive way to grow food
in the winter.
WINTER
GARDEN
Bob’s garden is
idling along, producing salad greens and lettuce and offering a sunny spot for
Amy to do some hooping after work.
BEAUTIFUL
HEADS
The cabbage is
heading up and will soon provide us an excuse for an Okonomiyaki
party.
The garlic and leeks are looking good and we’re getting enough cilantro to jazz
up our weekly pot of beans.
SILVERY
BRIGHT DAYS
Tami knows it.
Spot knows it. The light this time of year is silvery in the same way the
Fall tones are golden.
SARAH AND VAL
What a lucky
Trouts Farm we are to have wonderful people like Sarah and Val stopping in to
visit!
ANOTHER
GREAT POTLUCK
“Uncle”
Glen joined us for potluck this month as well as Jesse, who is living in the big
house at Oilseed with Matt and Greg. Lyle’s brother Glen came down from
Canada to spend some time helping out the business and enjoy our milder North
Carolina winter.
STRETCH
It was a stretch
but they decided to do it anyway. So Garth taped away and Amy shook out the paint tarps and
they freshened
up their new bedroom with some new paint.
GETTING
AFTER IT
Amy obviously
means business, going so far as to climb on the refrigerator to get at the overhead
cabinets next door at Casa Blanca. Back at Trouts Farm, Camille makes golden gravy for the Sunday evening
mashed potato meal, one of our many soothing rituals.
PROPAGATION
A whole lot of
mushroom activity is going on at Trouts Farm these days. Bob is growing
Black Poplar mycelium (a.k.a. Agrocybe Agerita or pioppino mushrooms) in a
mixture of water, dehydrated malt extract and corn sugar. Once the mycelium is
robust, Bob will inoculate dowels and plug the poplar tree so that the mycelium
can slowly eat the tree, giving us delicous edible mushrooms as it does
so. He figures that since we plan on cutting the tree down eventually, we
may as well grow some food on it in the mean time. The oyster mushrooms in
the picture on the right came from one of the mushroom logs we plugged last year
and they were delicious!
PRESERVATION
This hole in the
ground that Jason dug with a rented backhoe will become a root cellar.
Given a short growing season of about 190 days, it isn’t enough to just grow
food, we must also find ways to store it over the winter. After the root
cellar is completed, Jason will be able to stockpile a good supply of root
vegetables like potatoes, onions, carrots, beets and daikon radish. Making
us less dependant on trucked-in food is one of many steps our neighborhood is
taking to make us more self reliant.
DIGGING IT
Camille liked the
patterns Jason created in the red clay with the backhoe shovel and admires the
hard work he put into this project. In our neighborhood, intention is soon
followed by action. It is very rewarding to watch our neighborhood
progress from dependency on corporate America towards interdependency within our
community.
COOKIE’S
BIG SCORE
Camille happened
to be in a borrowed truck with an extra pair of hands when she spotted this
dresser at the recycle center. Without hesitation, she loaded it up and
took it home. Bob liked it and suggested we put it in our bedroom where it
was soon loaded with all of Cookie’s clothes.
Because we live
rurally, we haul our trash and recycling to Pittsboro where Chatham County Waste
Management has put aside a shed as a “Swap Shop.” People leave items
that are too good to throw away in and others pick them up for free. We
totally support this innovative recycling method and have been happily swapping
books, clothes and furniture these past three years.
THIS MONTH’S QUOTES:
“The oil is not gone. This
story is not over. We smelled it in the air. We felt it in the water. People
along the Gulf Coast are getting sick and sicker. Marshes are burned. Oysters
are scarce and shrimp are tainted. Jobs are gone and stress is high. What is now
hidden will surface over time.” – Terry Tempest Williams from “The
Gulf Between Us”
“To see one’s predicament
clearly is a first step toward going beyond it.” – Eckhart
Tolle
“Most Australians look upon
the US with wide-eyed bewilderment. Why do Americans think public healthcare
will lead to death panels? How did they ever believe Saddam Hussein was involved
in the attack on the World Trade Centre? What craziness leads so many to believe
Barack Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim? Why, over and over again, do they appear
to fight against their own best interests?” – Bruce
Elder, Sydney Morning Herald
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