Circle M Farm

Michael Perry kicks off his memoir Truck: A Love Story on a pile of sheep manure the size of a yurt. Then Chapter 2 begins with an absolutely delectable recipe. This method of making tomato sauce and stock is attributed to Tom Colicchio’s Think Like a Chef a few pages later, but here is Perry’s version:

I roasted [the tomatoes] in a deep pan with salt, olive oil, cloves of unshucked garlic, and sprigs of thyme. You ladle off the juice every twenty minutes or so and freeze it for a sweet, delicate stock best consumed during snowstorms. The residual pulp gathers body from the garlic and spirit from the thyme. The spent garlic, when squeezed warmly from its husk directly upon your tongue, will slacken your face and make you shimmy.

My gosh! I know it’s January and I lost a whole season of fresh tomatoes to late blight this past summer, but I’d just about give an entire chest freezer of pork and beef to be able to make that right now.

As I eagerly anticipate my freezer packed full of pork and beef by next Monday, I’m suddenly looking at the ubiquitous pile of gift catalogues with fresh eyes. I’m drawn to all the slow-cooker gadgets and fancy knives and even just bought a new gravy separator for myself for Christmas. Here’s a really good-looking recipe I tore out of the Williams-Sonoma temptation rag:

Steak and Mushroom Stew (featuring chuck roast AND bacon!) continued »

Those of you who’ve been reading along lately have doubtless ascertained that gathering up animals for hauling is just about my least favorite part of this farm adventure. Nevertheless, that dreaded task is generally accomanied by one of my favorites – working with our little butcher shops to decide what cuts we’ll choose from each animal harvested. Every year at this time, I pull out The Joy of Cooking and Julia Child to review the meat diagrams and re-read the beef, pork and lamb recipe sections. I also dig out the pile of recipes I’ve ripped out of magazines and printed off the web to try when I’ve got all my cuts available to me. In addition, I consult with my regular customers about what preferences they have. Then I call the butcher and make it happen – continued »

Yuck! What a dismal ending to the growing year. We’ve spent this week slogging through some very messy fields to bring in the last of the crops. You always wish your final days in the garden could be balmy and warm, but they rarely are. You imagine yourself triumphantly plucking great beautiful brightly colored beets like jewels out of the black dirt, but you generally get to bring in some cold muddy lumps that only reveal their beauty with a firm scrubbing. The great thing about a rainy cold fall is that it makes you wish for snow! And that is just where our thoughts are turning. How much fun would it be to cook up a hearty Potato Leek Soup with Pumpkin Pie for dessert while watching clean white snow cover up the mucky driveway? I guess there will be plenty of time for that sort of fun soon. Here’s what else is in your final box: continued »

Such a bittersweet week in the gardens as we say goodbye to most of the plants in anticipation of tonight’s frost. I felt like the bunny in “Goodnight Moon” as I went row-by-row touching the plants for the last time while harvesting the final fruits. “Goodbye eggplant. Goodbye peppers. Goodbye squash. Thank you all very very much and goodbye.” Soon we will actually be putting the garden to bed for winter as we mulch perennials and clear off debris. continued »

This box’s vegetables have been harvested in an 80-degree afternoon, a chilly rain, a clinging fog, a terrifying wind and an evening so cold we wore winter coats. (That was last night – hauling in all the squash and watermelons before they got damaged by the predicted frost.) All in one week! continued »

Yesterday I witnessed 10 geese leaving. They were silent, which was odd. Did they feel bad leaving in the steamy hot weather? Do they have a secret about the winter that we don’t know? Either way, it was rather disturbing to watch their departure southward from underneath my sweaty sun hat. continued »

Hard to believe we are harvesting fall crops and now we’ve finally got summer weather! The plants really don’t seem to know what to do. Except the watermelons. They seem to be the happiest I’ve ever seen. Huge, juicy and sweet as can be. Consider these the last taste of summer. Here’s what else is in the box: continued »

Now that our houses are cold more evenings than not, it seems natural to use the oven at night to roast meats and vegetables for that lovely, smokey fall flavor. I’ve mostly put up my frying pan in exchange for baking sheets and the Dutch oven. You can roast a lot of what you got in the box this week – the peppers, tomatillos, kohlrabi, onions, eggplant, yellow squash and fennel will all surprise you with the subtle changes in flavor that occur with roasting. Mostly things get sweeter. Here’s what else is in the box: continued »

Boy, we had a close call this weekend. Sunday the overnight forecast was for 37 and in our valley we can generally count on being 5 degrees colder. With the threat of actually hitting freezing, we headed out to the gardens in twilight and draped the basil and peppers with floating row covers. Thankfully, we only dropped to about 34. Had it been much colder, we would have lost all the bean plants, the corn still on the stalks, the tomatillos and maybe even all the uncured pumpkins and winter squash we’ve been tending for so many months. Cold as it was, we are seeing some stress on the cucumbers, zucchinis and melons. Oh, but we feel lucky! The gardens are still producing lots of beautiful food, while our thoughts are turning to the rich and warm recipes of fall. We’ve included some for you below. Here’s what’s in the box: continued »