It's cold but the garden is still producing

Even after several frosts and two freezing nights we still have veggies!!

Here's the menu:

Kale 3 kinds

Mustard 5 kinds

Lettuce 6+ kinds

Spinach

Beet greens

Turnip greens

Radishes in a rainbow of colors

Parsley

Swish Chard

If you'd like to share in the bounty: greens are $3 a pound ( it takes quite a bit to make a pound) and radishes 50 cents a bunch.

Just give Brian a call at:812*521*1063 and we'll pick fresh as long as it lasts.

Smiles,

Dot

PS. We've got eggs!

Something old and Something new

About two miles down the road from our house there is a little country grocery store owned by the McDonalds. It's been there longer than I've been alive and the McDonald's have owned it that whole time. Which in and of itself is pretty amazing.
Just inside the door on your left there is a bulletin board. It has also been there longer than I can remember. People post special events and puppies and kittens, cars, firewood and other things for sale there. I've been checking it for years. You never know when you'll find a treasure.
Well Friday we ran in to get something to drink on the way to town. As is my habit, I stopped to give the bulletin board a quick once over. THERE IT WAS.... something I've been missing for all of my adult life.....
A woodburning cookstove. Specifically an Elmira Stoveworks Sweetheart woodburning cookstove.
Now before you start wondering if I've completely gone off the deep end, let me explain. When I was much, much younger my grandparents bought an old house with all it's contents. One of the things in the house was a woodburning cookstove. They gave that cookstove to my parents for our kitchen.
Of course we had a regular stove too. However, the wood stove gave extra warmth on winter days, simmered great soups when the electricity went out and made a great place to finish boiling down maple sap into syrup. The oven also made a good place to dry out your sneakers on rainy days...as long as you didn't close the even door! More than once I put my socks on the warming shelf above the cooking lids before I went to bed so that I could have warm socks to put on in the morning when the house was chill from the night.
So as you can see woodburning cookstoves hold a special place in my heart full of warm memories.. pardon the pun.
So there was this stove all black cast iron and shiny chrome. I pulled off one of the phone number slips. I then proceeded to hem and haw about calling. Brian finally called. It turned out the owners lived just a little way down the road from us, so we went off to take a look.
It was just a wonderful up close as it looked in the picture! The lady even had the original owners manual and a cookstove cookbook. I really wanted it but didn't think we could swing the $500 asking price.
I told them we'd need to think about it and we'd call back in the morning. Well we didn't think very long. Brian called back that same night and asked what their bottom dollar was. The nice little old lady, who had owned the stove, told him she had been talking with her husband and he said since we wanted it so bad he would let it go for $400.
Brian, Kate and Dillon went after it on Saturday morning while I cooked buttermilk pancakes for breakfast. Now it's in our garage, waiting for the new chimney in the sunroom to be built.
I can hardly wait!!

Persimmons!

It's that time of year again - persimmons are falling! We have persimmon pulp for sale again. This is Brian's favorite time of year. Persimmon pudding is his favorite food. :)

Brian and I are picking up persimmons every morning now. The trees are loaded! You have to watch out when you're picking them up or one will konk you on the head. And it's still early in the season, just wait 'til we have our first frost and they really start to fall.

Brian is chief in charge of pulping the gallons of ripe persimmons we've been gathering. He's taken to rewarding himself by making a deliciously sweet persimmon pudding from each batch.

Hmmmm is he gaining weight?

Is anybody out there?

Hey, I'm starting to think I'm talking to myself!

I'd love to hear your comments about my blog... even if it's just to correct my spelling and puncuation!

Dot

History Lesson

Recently I spent my commuting time listening to "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan. Both of which I would recommend to anyone concerned about what they are eating and where it comes from. I've also been following the distressing happenings in our economy. So when my mother returned from one of her little old lady outings to the antique store with 3 books in hand entitled Stories and Recipes of the Great Depression of the 1930's by Rita Van Amber, i thought maybe I should read them. The three book set is a compilation of recollections of Great Depression survivors and their recipes. Sort of cookbook/history books.
Does this sound familiar? "First banks became worthless. Then businesses and factories closed their doors one after the other when consumer buying came to a virtual standstill. . . There was no money flow. The structure of the American society had disintegrated." Wow! It reads like a commentary ripped right from today's paper.
And that was in the first few pages. In subsequent pages the author quotes folks who lived through the depression. Here are some nuggets quoted from the last "worst" fiscal disaster this country has known.
"The Depression was a good education."
" We had the cellar full of canned goods and vegetables..."
"Raisins were 5 cents a pound. But you seldom had 5 cents."
"Prices were terrible. Banks closed and we lost what we had...I sold 4 cords of wood for 50 cents."
"Milk toast, Ugh! Father called it graveyard stew."
"We all wore the same dresses at school. They were made out of old feed bags and only one neighbor had a pattern. So we all used the same pattern with the same rickrack around the neck, sleeves and hems."

"Eat it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Or do without." That was the motto during the Great Depression.

Perhaps we would to well to take a lesson from the past?