Four Green Acres

Ruby Gold tomato sorbet: Sweet!

2011-09-15T11:49:00.000-04:00

by June The garden gives us not only food, but such pleasure. Until I started gardening myself, I never realized how very hard it is to grow food. Enthralled as I am by the miracle of compost and of seeds that spring to sprout when water is added, engaged as I am by the sprint to the sun by the corn and by the ohhh! moment of harvesting ample beets and carrots, I remain daunted by Japanese

Sungold noodles!

2011-08-19T18:07:00.000-04:00

By June How lucky are we that readers actually miss us when we're gone? And miss our recipes? We've gotten special requests for more tomato recipes—one request came from a local friend while we were up to our necks in the lake and another came all the way from a friend in Oklahoma, where the tomato harvest is probably almost over (while ours has barely begun). We're honored that friends—far

Our peaceable kingdom

2011-08-11T17:00:00.000-04:00

by June Where have we been? Not far really. Home is a good place to be. But since we've been away from here, how about some postcards of our summer? We've been watching the garden grow in the new beds... and playing with the silly goats... Blossom and Fern "pretend" ride the goats. ...and the beloved cat and chickens, too. We've been raising ducklings... ...into ducks named

The glory of leeks

2011-05-14T10:26:00.000-04:00

by June Fortunately, goats don't eat leeks. They do eat kale—bite, gulp, gone. Chewing as they went, Buttercup and Clover explored the garden one day this spring. Oh, the girls and I flapped along behind them, waving and yelping and shooing them toward the gate. But still they managed to munch through blueberry shoots and raspberry leaves and the lovely ruffled Beedy's Camden kale that survived

Sugar days

2011-03-29T14:32:00.001-04:00

by June Can you tell we've been a little frozen up? It's been a winter of hugging the woodstove (and one another) as the wind howled, the furnace rumbled, and the snow mounted. I know that somewhere it is already spring. The calendar says so. But here we are still swinging between frigid nights and days that are often bright but bracing. Fortunately, that's perfect weather for gathering maple

Celebrating the Year of the Rabbit with homemade dumplings!

2011-02-04T09:26:00.005-05:00

by June What is the potential of some flour and a little water? This time of year, in our home, those humble ingredients are mixed together to become part of a tradition that stretches all the way to China—and back in time thousands of years. When we first brought our babies home, we despaired of being able to give them a connection to Chinese culture in any deeply meaningful way. Living in

Snow and cherries!

2011-02-02T11:32:00.005-05:00

by June The third blizzard of the year is whooshing around our windows. And we are eating cherry pie for breakfast. Eating cherry pie has many pleasures, not least the crunch of the sugared glaze and the tartness of the cherry zinging out of the sweet sauce. My favorite pleasure this morning, though, is remembering the July day we picked the cherries at our favorite farm. I can't cut you a

Battle Hymn of the Bunny Mama

2011-01-24T16:36:00.001-05:00

by June That Tiger Mom has certainly stirred up a conversation, has she not? As an American mother raising daughters who were born in China, I am alert to cultural differences between western and eastern ways of teaching or parenting or... I haven't yet dipped into the book (though I am eager to read it cover to cover). I have read the Wall Street Journal column written by the author. A Yale law

A fresh start

2011-01-10T17:06:00.001-05:00

by June We never intended to wait ten days deep into the new year to wish you happiness, but here we are at last. Where have we been? Outside often...in the glory of snow. Yes, it snowed. Finally. Deeply. It was an actual blizzard. The girls tied a rope from the house to our makeshift barn, a trick they learned in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. They didn't need the rope, as we don't live

Holiday giving: Popover kit!

2010-12-21T16:00:00.003-05:00

by June Who doesn't love eggs fresh from the hens? And all the better if they come with warm holiday wishes and the makings for popovers. One of our great pleasures is sharing food we love. For the holidays, we often try to pack up a mini-meal in a basket. Time is scant for everyone, and if we can give friends a tasty meal—and also help them shift a few minutes toward relaxing by the tree—well

The work of their hands

2010-12-18T15:24:00.020-05:00

by June Elves are busy here. Our daughters enter into the merrymaking with verve, and that's a very good thing. They have taken over most of the cookie baking (and the washing up). They untangle the lights and feed them up to me as I circle the tree on the stepladder. They wrap packages, pack them into boxes, and weigh the boxes for shipping. They sew gifts for one another. I cherish watching

'Tis the season for great expectations

2010-12-04T12:08:00.001-05:00

by June December is the month of making—presents, food, memories. My wish is always to make gifts that light up my dears. Last year I set about my work and ended up making myself a gift that I will treasure forever. It was the gift of a lesson learned the bleary-eyed, head-achey way. About October, I set out to make a Disappearing Nine Patch quilt top for each of my daughters. I cherish the

Stillness: Red, green and sparkle

2010-11-29T16:56:00.003-05:00

by June One of the reasons we ended up in Maine was winter. The snow fell, and it fell deeply, and a body had no choice but to huddle inside by the fire between bracing forays to haul in firewood or to ski through the fragrant woods. For me, winter was time to quiet down and think. It was time to read, time to create. It's not that it doesn't snow anymore. It does. But for the past few years

Mother to daughters: The secrets of flaky pie crust

2010-11-23T15:36:00.001-05:00

by June Our daughters love being in the kitchen. Before they could walk, they'd scoot in on their bottoms. (Crawling was too low-down for them: Who can see anything while lying on her tummy?) We kept a cabinet filled with cooking utensils just for them. As Birch and I rattled away at the stove, they would bang pots with wooden spoons. Their first Thanksgiving, we prepared the feast with them

Rosie is in Cooking Light!

2010-11-22T12:16:00.009-05:00

by June It might be an alarming experience for your favorite hen to be in a food magazine, but since our Rosie is in Cooking Light with all her feathers, Fern and Blossom are nothing but delighted. We're all delighted, actually, that Scott Mowbray welcomed us into his editor's note this month. Thank you to Scott and to the beautiful friend who urged him to read Four Green Acres. Here's a

Thanksgiving in a pumpkin

2010-11-18T18:22:00.001-05:00

by June It's time for Thanksgiving, both uppercase and lower. My thankfulness is brimming this season—not because we have passed an easy year filled with bounty but because the year has instead been a rough passage from one set of expectations to another. And yet here we are. The four of us have encircled one another with love and understanding and laughter. Our friends and family have been

Savoring the harvest: Leek-and-potato comfort, two ways

2010-11-11T15:36:00.002-05:00

by June Autumn has deepened. It all but rattles our bones. What wind! At night, we hear it roaring from a great distance before it hurtles against the house. Our sleep is fitful. Some of us have the sniffles. And, worst of all, we've lost a hen, one of the originals, our Dottie. She got her name from speckles on her fluffy chick forehead, and then she grew into a beauty with a full breast of

How we peel a really, really fresh egg—if we get really lucky

2010-11-04T18:12:00.001-04:00

By June We are waiting for eggs. It's past time (by our eager calculations) for the first egg from our new little flock of Rhode Island Reds, and we can't even soothe ourselves with fresh goodies from the older hens; they are all molting. First eggs are fun eggs. There's the thrill of discovering that first perfect offering, and then there's the thrill of cracking it open: Will it have a

Comfort me with apples—and long autumn walks

2010-10-20T06:36:00.003-04:00

by June We're saying goodbye to the colors—to the oranges and reds of October, but also the green grass that sprouted early this year and has stayed long. Autumn calls us out for long rambles. We climb along rocks by the river. Or we take rides along curving roads and end up at the apple orchard. This is the season of bittersweet truth though—a crackle of ice on the chickens' water,

Goats will eat anything

2010-10-12T15:56:00.001-04:00

by June I always tell Blossom she's good enough to eat.Clover thinks so too.

Savoring the harvest: Roasted raspberry spoon jam

2010-10-06T15:36:00.002-04:00

by June Rain is rattling against the window panes. Outside, the sky is low and dark, but the grass is a lively green and the trees that edge the woods have leaves so bright they seem to give off a kind of light. A fire takes the chill off. I consider that it might be the perfect autumn day. But, then, I considered the same thing two days ago when I was picking raspberries and the sky was blue

Our fast food starts slowly, very slowly

2010-09-23T16:36:00.002-04:00

by June One boon of harvest season is fast food. No drive-throughs here, but we have been known to feed ourselves by walking through the garden—plucking a tomato or two, scissoring off some tat soi leaves, and pinching a handful of raspberries for dessert. Even if we slow it down a little, passing it through the kitchen on its way to the table, preparation is swift and simple. This year,

Savoring the harvest: Sungold tomato jam

2010-09-09T11:26:00.001-04:00

by June Even if Sungolds weren't the sweetest tomato, they would be growing in our garden. To my eye, they are the most beautiful object ever to sprout from a seed (at least by my hand). They are eye candy even before they make it to the taste buds. And when they do reach the taste buds...oooooh-la-la! Sungolds are always the first tomato to ripen here. We eat the earliest ones sliced and

Savoring the harvest: Heirloom-tomato elixir

2010-09-02T15:36:00.001-04:00

by June Here I go with the heat again. But, forgive me, please. It's September, and it is ninety-seven degrees. In Maine. Where we moved to escape the heat and the humidity and... It is unnerving. Fortunately, the sizzling, sunny weather has kept late blight at bay in the garden, and our ripening heirloom tomatoes provide just the thing for my nerves—a beautiful tomato elixir. It's a soup that

Hot, hot, hot: Time to wash the rugs!

2010-08-31T13:36:00.000-04:00

by June Seems summer in Maine is not quite so short after all. Usually the temperature pokes into the nineties for a day or so in mid-summer. By the end of August we're feeling the nip of autumn on the breeze. But this year the thermometer seems stuck on HOT. Yesterday, it was so so SO hot that we had no choice but to wash the rugs. Washing the rugs is a family tradition shared with us by a