Making hay

It's a funny thing: growing up as a kid not far from here—fields and woods and lots of farms—I never truly appreciated the work of the men who made their livelihood tending crops. Each spring they'd rumble out to the fields in their tractors, spreading the stink of manure throughout the valley and raking up earth that sat buried for several months beneath layers of snow and cold, gray skies. I'd be out on my bike, riding off excess sugar and discovering new ways to crash, and from dawn to dark, those guys would plod through the fields planting, cutting, fertilizing and tending things that, somewhere along the line, gave us our very sustenance. All the while, I couldn't have cared less.

Over this past Memorial Day—a three day weekend, Monday off, I get to mow lawn and take it slow—every field surrounding our property was a beehive of activity. Sun and clear skies brought them all out: beautiful and dry, ripe for cutting and drying the hay. Like starlings they came upon the fields, chopping, raking, turning, and finally baling the goods. Monday, a national holiday when most everything is closed, I sat on the porch swing transfixed, watching them work until well past 9 p.m. Get it done before the weather turns. Before it's dark. Before all the work is ruined.

It's a tough life, to live by the whims of the weather. I complain of digging a few plots of earth for a garden, about the ache in back and the blister on my thumb, but watching those guys is good medicine.

Thank you Mr. Keller

Outside of gardening and mowing the lawn – which, I might add, takes up an unbelievable amount of time – we haven't made much progress on the house recently. Part of the problem is cooking. As much as we truly enjoy it, the process sucks up most evenings and leaves little time for after-work home improvement projects. A typical evening involves arriving home around 6 p.m., doing prep work, assembling the dish, applying heat, waiting for magic to happen, and then sitting down for chow around 7:30 or 8 p.m. By the time we're done, I have no energy left. (As an aside, Christ, do we need a dishwasher. I feel like it's an endless task – dirty dishes just multiply continuously. To think I used to say I enjoyed doing dishes. WTF?)

Anyway, just to make it seem like I'm doing something other than sitting on my ass, I'm sharing with you my favorite roast chicken recipe. There is nothing quite as satisfying as a good roast chicken, and everyone should know how to do it. Plus it's easy. Our kitchen is circa 1950, has an oven the size of a shoebox and we pull it off just fine. This particular recipe is stolen from Thomas Keller.

Shopping list:
- 1 chicken, free range if possible, around 3 or 4 lb.
- butcher's twine (ya gotta truss the sucker)
- 1 heavy roasting pan or large cast iron sauté pan
- 2 tsp chopped fresh thyme.
- 1 TBSP butter
- kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Meanwhile, take the chicken and dry it thoroughly, even inside the cavity (paper towels work well). Dry heat is the key here; otherwise you risk a finished product that lacks a really crisp, flavorful skin. After the bird is dry you'll need to truss it. This is not rocket science, and really keeps the breast moist. Next, rain salt all over the bird, even inside the cavity. You'll probably use close to 1 TBSP. Place the bird in the roasting pan or the sauté pan (I like my cast iron sauté pan for this purpose). Cook the bird for 40 or 50 minutes, until the skin is nice and brown. Remove the bird from the from the pan and whisk in the fresh time and 1 TBSP of butter. Baste the bird and let it rest for 10 minutes. You can serve it however you like – I take off the wings, remove the legs, and slice the breast off, serving one leg and one breast / person. The chef gets to enjoy the crispy, fatty tail. It's unbelievably tasty.

I especially enjoy it with some sautéed brussel sprouts and a nice bottle of sauvignon blanc or chardonnay.

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em

One of the outbuildings on our property is what most folks around here call a summer kitchen, though I'm not sure that's entirely accurate for this structure. Inside is a massive, cast-iron wood-burning stove – the sucker is probably 5' wide by 2' high by 4' deep – that was used to cook scrapple, among other things. The stove is essentially a giant box with two doors in the front for loading wood and four burners of varying sizes on the top. Just to the right of the stove is a large pivoting post, sort of like a block and tackle, that has a huge hook hanging from a horizontal crosspiece. This was used to swing the huge vats of pork fat and spices on and off the burners.

In a small addition off the original building, though, is another room, approximately 15' x 8', that's been constructed out of cinderblock. The place smells like burnt wood, with the subtle lingering odor of dog piss, an olfactory clue to the building's insubstantial role over the last several years. Carved out of the back corner is what looks like a closet measuring about 4' x 5', with one door and a small hole notched out of the wall. Open it up, and the interior is charred black. This is the smoker, and it's become a mild obsession of mine.

This winter I bought Michael Ruhlman's book “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing” and I've been slowly working my way through it – slowly because there are plenty of other things vying for my attention lately. Like Ruhlman's other books (“The Making of a Chef,” “The Soul of a Chef,” etc.) it's a fantastic read that details the process of smoking and curing in terms that a novice can understand. He does it so beautifully, though, that you can't help but want to become a professional boutique charcutier, living amidst salts, pork and smoke as a means of income. I dream of getting some good cuts of pork and smoking my own ham or bacon, or even curing some nice Prosciutto di Parma in the root cellar.

First, though, there's painting to be done.

On the lower part of our property is a spring-fed pond that is occasionally used to irrigate surrounding crops. It's a bit barren, and long term I'd love to introduce some ornamental grass and other landscape elements to make it a bit more pleasing. But the problem of the moment is the slow and steady growth of filamentous algae all around the perimeter of the pond. The algae is particularly thick at the upper end where the spring is located. From what I've read, the problem is likely a result of runoff from fields and a septic drain field that lies a couple hundred feet above the pond.

I had heard of barley straw as a solution to controlling algae, but after further reading I found that the results were inconsistent, and even when effective the straw needs to be introduced early in spring, before algae growth occurs. I wrote to the Penn State cooperative extension – an excellent resource for any agricultural-related questions – asking for their advice on managing the algae. I specifically wanted something non-toxic that would not harm the numerous fish (including two huge carp) that call the pond home. They pointed me in the direction of a product called Green Clean.

I'm guessing the pond is about 1/3 of an acre in size. My measuring method is admittedly suspect, since I used Yahoo Maps to view an aerial photo and gauge the relative size of the pond. I've been meaning to do some real measurements and somehow I just never got around to it. At any rate, based on the size, I'm estimating volume of the pond is 350,000 gallons using an average depth of 3 feet. 4 pounds of Green Clean should do the trick, but I'll be doing more thorough measurements this weekend to make sure that's correct.