2011 Season Vendors:

Meats (organic, pasture-raised, or grass-fed): Autumn’s Harvest Farm (beef, poultry, pork, rabbit, turkey) High Point Farms (beef, poultry), Hector Hill Grass Fed Beef (Cook’s), Windsong Farm (lamb, poultry)

Produce/Herbs/Fruit: Sage Hen Farm, High Point Farms, Waid Apiaries, Hilker Haven Farm,  Three Stone Farm,  Silver Queen Farm, Ronin Farms, Dragonfly Gardens, A & G Fruit Farm, Windsong Farm, (Van Donsel) Family Farm, Bear Acres, Six Circles Farm, Jackman Vineyards

Dairy/Eggs: High Point Farms (eggs), Sage Hen Farm (eggs), Cayuga Lake Creamery, Ronin Farms (eggs), Lively Run Goat Dairy, Muranda Cheese, Three Stone Farm (eggs), Autumn’s Harvest Farm (eggs), Silver Queen Farm

Plants/Flowers: High Point Farms, Silver Queen Farm, Ronin Farms, Graceful Gardens, Dragonfly Gardens

Value-added Ornamentals/Products (baked goods, honey, maple syrup, herbal products, jams/jellies, wine, juices, etc): Silver Queen, Ithaca Bun Company, Waid Apiaries, Maude’s Treasures, Hilker Haven Farm, Ronin Farms, Dragonfly Gardens, Black Diamond Ranch/Loon Cliff Specialties, Savijuice, Windsong Farm, (Ryan’s) Family Farm, Three Stone Farm, (Van Donsel) Family Farm, Wide Awake Bakery

Crafts: Waid Apiaries, Balance Aroma Therapy, Maude’s Treasures, Lolalove Pottery, Gorges Gourds, Looking Glass Designs

Supper Food: On The Street Concessions (gyro & pita sandwiches), Thai Palace (authentic Thai & Lao food), Good Truck (Mexican)

2011 Season Vendor Links:
http://www.HighPointFarms.net   <http://www.cayugalakecreamery.com<http://www.autumnsharvestfarm.com     http://www.windsongfarm.com      http://www.dragonflygardens.org, http://www.livelyrun.com     http://www.savijuice.com    http://www.muranda.com    http://Lolalovepottery.com http://www.threestonefarm.com    http://balancearomatherapy.biz http:www.wideawakebakery.com    http:wwwrosiesgarlic.com

Intertextuality allows us to “eavesdrop on the conversations between storytellers centuries and continents apart”….and to “observe the workings of the narrator’s art…in the transition from one genre to another”… for example “we encounter a different concept of the person, on the one hand, in myths and folk-tales, which tend to elaborate on generic types who learn but never change, and on the other hand, modern novels, which tend to dwell more on idiosyncratic individuals, who do change.”

This book is a good next step after Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

For example, at Green Star Coop on Wednesday en route home from a BBGI meeting,  I discovered that Side Hill Acres, in addition to their crumbly goat cheese (easily sprinkles on top of whatever suits you), they now offer a goat cheese spread.  I bought it on a whim.  At The Piggery‘s new retail store in Ithaca, yesterday (Saturday), en route to Ithaca Farmers Market with my friend Jane Milliman, publisher of Upstate Gardeners Journal, I purchased a jar of pate and 1/2# of thinly sliced deli ham. I know what to do with their amazingly fresh, smoked ham (Eggs McLallen, Wafflini). So the question is, “Will guests eat pate for breakfast?”  I would. Hmm, I think to myself, how about a fruit and cheese plate with.. instead of a slice of ham… a dollop of Piggery pate slathered on an Ithaca Bakery roll or baguette? Write in and let me know what you think.  Anyway, what I really want to write about is this morning’s breakfast with the Three Sisters – inspired by the breakfast burrito served by Solaz at Ithaca Farmers Market and the Iroquois League whose lands encompassed the Finger Lakes and east to the Hudson River.

So at Ithaca Farmers Market, while hovering at the Solaz counter, after waiting in a long line (very popular!) to place an order, I watched staff prepare customers’ breakfast burritos; I asked what kind of cheese they used (grated Monterey Jack and cream cheese mixed and melted right into the scrambled egg pan). Perfect. Goat cheese spread instead of cream cheese. The experiment occurred this morning. The scrambled eggs came out thick and creamy. Tres hermanas?  Here’s one Central NY girl’s take on the Iroquois’ legendary Three Sisters: warmed corn (gluten-free) tortilla, garlicky black beans, and sauteed squash (zucchini)…along with Mexican-style spicing and the scrambled eggs, a dollop of guacamole, etc.  And a bottle of Cholula hot sauce on the table for individually dispensed heat.

Just pictured the small bag of chipotle peppers sitting in the kitchen cupboard….hmm.. what to do next?  Want the smokey flavor, but not so much heat…at breakfast.

[ Guest breakfast review: "Fantastic!" and "thumbs up!" ]

Alder stumps

We lost a huge box elder in the early summer. On the day of an impressive wind storm a huge bole split away from the trunk and clipped the corner off of a neighbor’s garage. Luckily it didn’t do major damage to her garage, but some limbs did pierce the roof of the old chicken coop that she uses for storage. We got a lesson in insurance coverage. It was deemed an “act of God,” and we were not held liable. We would have been liable if an expert had told us that the tree was dangerous and we hadn’t done anything. On the contrary, we had no idea it was about to split down the middle. Our neighbor’s homeowner’s insurance covered the cost of repairing the garage.

We had a tree guy (Limbwalker) come to remove the rest of the tree and cut up the fallen limb. I was not there to see it, but our neighbor watched the three man crew fell the box elder. Apparently each of them set out a pair of stakes and took bets on where the tree was going to fall. It fell directly between the stakes set out by the guy handling the chainsaw.

Its removal left a black walnut standing tall and spindly on the property line. It also let a lot more light down to the ground over there. I’m curious to see how the day lilies are going to react. They got to soak up extra light through this growing season. Will there be more flowering in spring 2011? I’m also wondering if it is going to held a beleagured trio of alders over there. They have some sort of disease that is causing the foliage to wither shorter after it comes out in the spring. Most of the mature limbs are either entirely dead or large parts of them are. But the plant keeps sending up new wands from the roots. I took one of the clumps down to stumps shortly after the box elder succumbed. If it comes back without disease, I will probably immediately do the same to the other two.

In the spring I will be moving boxwoods. Deirdre doesn’t really want them in the shrub garden anymore. The other things that she planted a few years ago have no attained a reasonable size and the boxwoods are just in the way. We moved them intially just to get them away from the foundation. They had been planted within two feet of the house all along the west side. I moved three down to the northeast corner under the large black walnut and they do not seem affected by its alleopathogens at all. On the contrary, they are growing faster than any of the other boxwoods.

I continue to fill in that northeast corner with compost, rocks and any sort of natural landfill materials. We entertained the idea of putting a compost pile there and surrounding it with a bamboo screen. That may happen in the coming year. Depending on whether our bear population continues to increase. Apparently nothing attracts bears like a compost pile.

Hole for bulbs in shrub garden

My last horticultural endeavor of the year was to plant 1000 Narcissus “Poeticus” bulbs between Thanksgiving and the first of December. I started in the shrub garden, planted some in the beds in the front of the house and then put the majority of them in the meadow garden. It started near McLallen Street and then worked my way all the way back to the northside of the meadow. They are in clumbs of 10 to 15 in (what I hope is) an irregular, organic pattern sweeping through the landscape. I made sure to avoid the areas that are kept sodden by natural seeps and the downspout from our roof.

Digging hole after hole in the yard is instructive. The soil changes greatly from place to place. In some areas it seems essentially undisturbed and in other it is basically backfill, full of debris and rocks and with no topsoil to speak of. Doing the same thing over and over again brought me back to my youth. I used to spend hours day after day doing boring manual tasks like this. With each successive hole you can feel that you are getting a little more efficient at getting the job down. A very basic source of satisfaction.

We tried going without air conditioners for the first couple of years, but Americans are pretty dubious about accommodations without A/C. I have to admit that if I was calling from Philly, where it was 96 degrees and humid, I might have a hard time believing some guy on the phone telling me that it is only 80 degrees and beautiful.

The 1000 foot contour runs across our front lawn. We are on what some people call “McLallen Hill,” which is ridge that extends north from the intersection in front of our house up Bradley Street to Seneca Road. The ground falls away to either side and is dotted with seeps where the groundwater hits a layer of clay and moves laterally until in emerges on the slope. Here you can find sedges, a wetland plant, growing on hilsides with a 45 degree angle.

The ridge is probably glacial in origin and deposited in the Trumansburg Creek valley while the main Cayuga Lake valley still had glacial ice in it. That causes temporary lakes to form in the tributary valleys and layers of sand, gravel (summer) and clay (winter) to be deposited over the years.

You can see bedrock in the creek in the middle of the village. There are three waterfalls in succession just behind Gimme! Coffee on Main Street and upstream from there the creek bed is entirely bedrock. But McLallen Hill seems almost entirely glacial. The side of it has been cut back, perhaps during the expansion of Morse Chain in the late 19th century. Morse Chain grew up between the creek and the hill where Main Street and Hector Street now come together. It has only been like that since 1962, when Rt. 96 was re-routed around the the hill instead of going over it (right past our house). The Morse Chain buildings were torn down and the “pull-out park” installed at the foot of McLallen Hill where the slope had been excavated.

These are the kinds of things that I think about while I am washing windows because washing windows isn’t very exciting. To tell you the truth all the air conditioners are in, but there are still three or four windows left to clean …

The west side of the house gets the dirtiest because it faces Bradley Street and Rt. 96 and the prevailing wind. On Tuesday I started with those windows on the ground floor. Not only are they the dirtiest, but they are also the ones that the guests look at during breakfast. Now they are clean. This afternoon I cleaned the windows of the French doors on the front porch. The south side of the house is the second dirtiest.

Once I get going on windows I wonder why I put it off. It is sort of a rewarding job, really. When they are cleaned there is such a big difference and you refine your technique as you go along, so they go more quickly and you fall into a sort of rhythm.

I am using a squeegee for the first time. I bought them years ago and forgot about them. I am a habitual user of newsprint for cleaning windows. This time I use the squeegee for the first pass and then clean up the corners, edges and tough spots with the newsprint.

I’ll just keep doing a few at a time over the next few weeks and then I will be done until next spring.

First daffodils

Last weekend we called up Soil and Water and asked them, “Do you have any fern left?” and they said, “Six bags,” and we said, “We’ll take them.”

On April 23 I’ll drive over to Dryden and pick them up. The Soil and Water Conservation Service is a part of the USDA. They sell herbaceous plants and shrubs every spring at very low prices.  The ferns come in bags of ten plants, five species in pairs.

We bought four bags last year and the survival rate was pretty good. It actually might have been 100 percent. Sometimes when you plant a fern it will just sit there for a year before deciding to send up some greenery.

The offending Potentilla

We’ve got a Potentilla bush right in front of our front stairs that I have been wanting to move every since we moved in. It isn’t an Abbottswood, because the flowers are yellow, not white, but it has pretty much the same habit. It is planted right at the corner between the walk to the front steps from the sidewalk and the walk that wraps around the east side of the house. It is annoying to brush up against, shovel snow around and mow around. It needs to get a new home. That will happen this month sometime. It is still a little wet right now and it still might snow again.