Wild Mushrooms

Posted on August 31, 2009 by cmf

Big Bolete

When my stepmother Susan was here last week, we went mushroom hunting. It’s been an uncharacteristically wet summer, and we really cleaned up. We found this gorgeous big bolete, which was nearly entirely clean of maggots (not always the case with these big ones), as well as a bunch of smaller boletes. It was a good haul and we only had throw out one of these for being too maggoty.

pile o'boletes

But the big excitement, at least for me, was that we found nearly five pounds of Chanterelles. I love chanterelles and this was the first summer I’d paid enough attention to the tiny clues mushroom people drop, and managed to find out where they grow around here.

sink full of chanterelles

They take a little time to clean up, since they tend to grow very close to the ground, so they pick up a lot of lichen and pine needles. Some people say not to wash mushrooms, but I always do. There’s so much dirt and stuff to be cleaned off, and since I’m going to sauté them up anyhow, I don’t worry too much about picking up a little extra water. I’d rather that than a big old pine needle in my mouth.

Chanterelles need to be put up differently from the boletes. We sliced the boletes and arranged them on cake racks, as I usually do, but chanterelles don’t dry well. So the way to put up chanterelles is to sauté them in butter until they give up all their moisture, then freeze them. What could be more festive than this sight?

chanterelles in butter

Chanterelles sautéing in butter? Yum. You have to cook them down for quite a while — they’ll go from that bright orange to a sort of dull ochre, and they give up a lot more moisture than you’d think.

Of course you can also put some aside, as we did, and make a nice dish of Chicken with Chanterelles and Cream:

1 chicken, cut up
1 pound chanterelles
2 shallots
1 clove garlic
1 small bunch thyme
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup cream

Salt and pepper the chicken and brown thoroughly on all sides. Remove from the pan and add the shallots and chanterelles. Sauté until the chanterelles have given up most of their moisture, then return the chicken to the pan, add the garlic, the thyme and the wine. Simmer over low heat or pop into a 325 degree oven for 20-30 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken to a platter and keep warm. Add the cream to the pan, bring to a boil and cook until the sauce just thickens. Pour over the chicken and serve with rice or noodles.

The $21 Chicken Coop

Posted on August 28, 2009 by cmf

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for ages, but my vacation got in the way. We finally finished the chicken coop. Chuck built the actual coop part ages ago, but after Ray killed the hens, we had to enclose the whole space, which took a little while. And I’m proud to say that the only thing we bought for the coop was a roll of plastic bird fencing. Everything else was recycled. There is chain link fence along the bottom part of the enclosure and then I covered it with old twig fencing that I’d saved when I replaced the chain link with stockade fence — it looks good and keeps the chickens from sticking their heads through the chain link (where Raymond would like to bite them off). I also used recycled twig fencing on the roof of the enclosure for shade (although I have to get out and zip tie it down before the fall winds start). It gets really hot in that back corner of the yard, and not only does the twig fencing provide some shade, but I can hose it down for a little evaporative cooling as well. I used an old window screen up on top of the coop roof — it provides some structural support and keeps the hens from breaking out into the alley.

beer box nesting boxes

bucket nesting boxes

I made nesting boxes from stuff that was lying around. We’ve been drinking this cheap beer all summer, and the boxes work really well. I also used five-gallon buckets for nesting boxes under the roosting bar — they protect the eggs from chicken poop. We’ll have to see how this all works in the winter. So far, the chickens like the nesting box closest to the wall, and the two buckets. There are seven chickens, and when it gets cold and we have to start closing the coop door at night, it might get pretty crowded in there. But for now, these are working really nicely.

coop gate

The last frontier was the gate. The original gate is the recycled gate from the chain link fence, but since the wily chickens kept coming over the top, Chuck pulled this partial screen door out of his stash of recycled house parts, built a frame for it, and attached it to the original gate. It’s a little goofy looking, but works really well and keeps the chickens safely inside.

So there it is, the $21 chicken coop. I spent money on the hens (about $12 for the first six, then $5 a piece for the replacement hens), and money on the feeder ($15) and waterer ($27). But for the coop itself, it was all recycled. The wood was from Chuck’s stash, the body of the coop itself was a packing crate in which my friend Sabrina had some old family portraits shipped over from England, the twig fencing was orignially on the chain link fence I replaced here at my house, the wire fencing for the roof was left over from the garden. It’s been about a month with the new chickens, and so far, mortality is at zero, and we’re getting half a dozen eggs a day. Go chickens!

First Tomatoes of the Season

Posted on August 26, 2009 by cmf

Jaunne Flammé, Grushovka, Galina, Prairie Fire

Here are the first tomatoes of the season.

Yes, I realize it’s the end of August. It’s been a long cool summer here in Montana, and the tomatoes have only just now started getting ripe. Just in time to be swathed in plastic sheeting.

The romas are looking good — I planted two kinds, Borghese and Milano Plum, both from Seeds of Italy. They’re just starting to pink up, but I’m beginning to see homemade sauce and salsa in my future.

The Siberians are coming in nicely. I couldn’t remember the difference when I was planting between Perestroika and Grushovka, and from what I can tell, there isn’t much. Theyr’e both nice medium-sized early tomatoes, with a good sweet-acid balance. After three or four days in the bowl though, the ones I ate for lunch today were a little bit mealy.

Jaunne Flammé is probably my favorite tomato I grow. You can only just one in this pic — it’s the orange tomato hiding beneath the basil. They’re about the size of a large egg, grow in clusters, and taste wonderful.

The only real problem I’ve had with the tomatoes this year, aside from the weather, is the chickens. I’ve draped that bed in bird netting, but a couple of them have managed to sneak in underneath it somehow — and my first few ripe tomatoes had been cannibalized from the inside. Alas.

So, it was a late start, but looks like tomato season is here … and I’m eating ginormous bowls of tomato and cucumber salad for lunch these days …

Pork-a-Palooza!

Posted on August 25, 2009 by cmf

165 pounds of pig

Here it is — our whole pig, butchered, cut, wrapped, with the hams and bacons smoked. Chuck drove over to pick it up and he said it was a very festive atmosphere over there — a big refrigerated truck filled with orders.

We paid $290 for this pig, which means we’re looking at $1.75 a pound for a local 4-H fair pig. We were late to go look at the animals with the kids, so what we saw was pigs and lambs being loaded onto trucks. It’s a rural ranching community here — that’s what happens after the fair, you sell your animal for meat, and put the money in your college fund.

pork chops, lots of pork chops

Opening the boxes was like Christmas — ooh look! pork chops! there are lots of pork chops, and a whole ham split into two halves, and a lot of breakfast sausage, and ground pork, and bacon, and ham hocks, and roasts — they cut some of the shoulder roasts into smaller steaks, which will be interesting to play with, and they sliced one whole ham into ham steaks that are about a half inch thick — they’ll be great for a quick dinner or an easy breakfast. The only bummer is that I ordered half the belly unsmoked as fresh side pork, but didn’t specify for them not to slice it like bacon. So now we have a lot of fresh sliced side pork that I can’t really make pancetta out of — it’ll be good for paté, or I can play around with cures — it was one of those cross-cultural miscommunications that happen sometimes. Now I know for next year.

It’s the beginning of fall here in Montana — the time of year when we all go peer into our freezers, seeing what needs to be eaten to make room for this year’s harvest. There are pigs and lambs and beef by the side or by the quarter, then the game starts coming in — elk and antelope and deer. Chuck doesn’t hunt, but he does let some of his friends hunt on his land, so he gets meat in exchange. It’s a funny time of year — not really cold enough to want to be eating big cuts of meat, but there we are. I made some Cinammon-Chile Short Ribs yesterday from this unbelievable beef that one of Chuck’s friends raises because well, we had a WHOLE PIG coming in, and room must be made in the freezer. I kept looking at him last night and saying “we have a WHOLE PIG in the freezer!” I’m the kind of person who stockpiles dried pasta when I start feeling financially wobbly, so you can only imagine how safe I feel with a WHOLE PIG in the freezer.

Back on Track

Posted on August 24, 2009 by cmf

From: American Poultry Culture, R.B. Sando, 1909 (gift from Chuck)

It’s been interesting, this “self-employment” thing. I must admit, I’ve taken a very big break — amazing how many things one can get behind on after working a real day job for ten years. I realize that most people work “real day jobs” for their entire career, so I’m not trying to be disengenuous, but before the Big Corporate Job That Vanished, I was a grad student and a ski bum and a raft guide and worked a lot of odd jobs and retail. I’ve worked since I was fourteen, and for most of that time I had more than one job, but it was only this last ten years where I had a real, everyday job where you worked on weekdays, and got official vacations and all that.

And so it feels a lot more like “normal” life to be back out here on the “outside” — a little freaky at times, that was a big security net I just lost, but on the other hand, I’ve had a lovely long break. I got things done in the yard. Chuck and I went camping a couple of times. My beloved stepmother came to visit and we went mushroom hunting (photos to come). I read books. I did laundry. I got the snow tires off my car. I spent time with my pretend children.

And now I’m more than ready to get back to work. There’s some freelance work on the horizon and a novel to write and a whole new schedule and budget and way of life to figure out. So we’ll see how it plays out. Like I said, I’m a little freaked out, but there’s a bushel of apples stored in the basement, six eggs a day coming in from the chickens, and Chuck’s off to Big Timber this afternoon to pick up the pig we bought (butchered, wrapped, hams and bacon and sausage) so at least I know I won’t starve this winter.

The beginning of a new adventure ….

LivingSmall

Life, Literature, and the Subversive Power of Living Small

Monthly Archives: August 2009

Wild Mushrooms

The $21 Chicken Coop

First Tomatoes of the Season

Pork-a-Palooza!

Back on Track