Sunday, March 20, 2011

after the party


We sit down at the table.  There are six of us: our friends Mark and Gina who helped the evening stay glued together, Eliza who has been the intern at the restaurant and farm for the last nine months, and her mother Trish, up for a visit.  The old-wood table that Caleb built a few  years ago sits in the middle of the restaurant dining room and feels the weight of all the dishes that have been prepared for own after-the-party dinner: crispy pork, a huge platter of garlic beans, shrimp in black bean sauce, tilapia roasted with lemon grass, red-cooked tofu and coconut tofu, bowls of fresh sliced cucumber, bean sprouts, rice, mint, and basil.

Tonight, Caleb cooked Vietnamese dishes, a collection of recipes from our friend Rebecca’s handmade cookbook from a time she spent in that country, a kind of food he cooks for us in the privacy of our home or at staff dinner.  Tonight, he has cooked these exotic dishes not only for our dinner, but this is what we served to a restaurant packed full of guests who were here to celebrate the launch of a new collaboration between myself and our friends Eleanor and Albert Leger of Eden Ice Cider: an aperitif cider infused with herbs that we have dubbed Orleans.  In this name we wanted something French-sounding to evoke old-world bar magic and something that spoke of place.  Eleanor and Albert live in Orleans County in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont where they produce their silken trio of winter-made ice ciders: Eden, Northern Spy, and a Honey Crisp for Champlain Orchards.

At the table, we are only missing Eleanor and Albert.  They’ve had to return home tonight, a long two hour drive, as tomorrow they have to stop fermentations, and prepare for Albert to return to teaching for the rest of the semester.  They are just doing the kinds of things that winegrowers have to do all the time.  We understand the demands of being cellarmaster, yet we miss them all the same.

We are a little high and a little tired, or a lot tired as I watch Caleb hit the proverbial wall after his day of cooking all this beautiful food, intricate and subtle flavors that weave in and out of the dishes and paired with the somewhat exotic notes of the Orleans in its three different guises tonight: straight-up, with prosecco and lime, and a slightly racy version of a Ramos Gin Fizz, but with the Orleans as the featured player.  The tastes married with the dishes in such a way as to expand and deepen the experience of the food when you put the two together.  

Mark and Gina, who’ve played this game with us before, are the kind of good friends you can call in a pinch when you are in need, and they are there in a flash.  Mark has even been called out of his bed late in the evening to taxi a table of diners visiting from Holland who had walked a couple of miles into town from their inn and thought they could easily get a cab home in our small town of Woodstock.  The skies had unleashed a deluge while they were dining, and there are no cabs.  We were too busy at the restaurant to spare one of ourselves to drive them.  Mark, donning his Brooklyn heritage and persona played the role well, willingly chauffering the visitors to the inn.

Tonight, Gina washed and washed and washed glasses and dishes and forks as they rotated from kitchen and back out to the party.  She wore one of the blue and white striped smocks that Caleb found in a uniform shop in Rome next to a haberdasher for priests and nuns.  It covers her sleek leopard print top and pants which no one ever gets to see as she is in front of the sinks all night.  I’ve asked Mark to tend bar because the third drink is a little complicated and takes time to make, and I know how these events go—there will be other things for me to do—greet guests, dry glasses and ferry them back to the bar, check that there are enough plates and silverware on the buffet, be the expediter.  Eliza is stationed at the buffet serving and talking about the dishes, and Caleb is alternately cooking and checking on guests.  

Of course, I’ve created a rather complicated cocktail for Mark to wade through with many ingredients and long minutes of shaking the shaker while chatting with everyone bellied-up to the bar plus pouring the other drinks while I’m not behind the bar with him.  I could have designed something simpler, but this was the right drink for the right evening, and I’ve never been one to make decisions because it makes life easier.  I’m sure Mark would be able to expound on this if I let him (this is the same man who thinks it would be far more sensible to buy slews of wine glasses each week and recycle them at the end of each night rather than putting up with all the handwashing and polishing we do…), but he is the perfect choice for bartender and soldiers through my demands with style and flair. 
v
There was a buzz, a tangible frisson, on the floor tonight as the build-up of energy slowly rose as more and more people arrived, some from around the corner, some from a couple of hours away, until the hum of conversation and laughter reached pitch.  It was a party, a true celebration, excitement and expectation were as real as featured guests.  But who doesn’t like to have a reason to celebrate?  But even more so, I think the evening was defined by the need for celebration.  We have weathered through a long and very intense winter.  The larger world is in disarray, perhaps more so than usual, and the transition from winter into spring is often painful and homely in northern climes.  The once beautiful snow becomes crusty and dirty losing much of its sparkle and is not much good for anything besides re-adjusting the water table—too icy for skiing, too brittle for snowshoeing, and sometimes dangerous as it melts and causes rise for flood warnings—all a constant reminder that we still have at least six weeks before things really turn around.   It is hard to embrace Winter when she looks spent and rather used.  But the light has changed, it is more clear, more roseate, and softens the harsh reality of mud and discomfort.  Something else undefinable has shifted—Axes?  Or poles?  Or phases of moons or stars or tides?--which has made us buoyant.   

In the dead of winter, the sun goes down at 4:30, and tonight, the light is still filtering in the windows at 7pm.  All around the restaurant we’ve positioned big vases of branches, recent prunings from our plum trees and they are studded with fat green buds.  With the soft light shafting through the space and candles flickering, the golden colors of the Orleans in the glasses, the bright citrus perfumes of lemon and lime, the leafy greens of mint and basil, the voices ebbing and flowing, the heat in the dining room palpable,  the evening shimmers.

We hold onto that shimmer at our own dinner.  It is dark outside now, and almost time to go home just like everyone else.  We raise glasses and tell jokes and talk about vacations.  Someone laughs with abandon.  It is the Ides of March, a craziness that marks a month that comes in like a lion, and supposedly leaves like a lamb, a month of wind and temperament, but also sun and seduction.   We pour Orleans into our glasses for a final good luck toast, and we pour ourselves into this melting and groaning that will eventually lead to Spring—
--Deirdre  

  



Friday, March 11, 2011

pruning



I’ve waited too long to write.  My memory seems to be not quite as it used to be.  In the glory days of youth, I could remember faces, place names, historical dates, addresses(but somehow, never phone numbers), what I ate, drank, when, where, and why. 

I’m trying to remember that sunny day last week.  Ah, yes, it was Wednesday.  A brutally early morning to run errands and attend appointments, then a return home  to that bright sunshine as if this was the beach in southern Italy, or coastal Florida rather than an alpine enclave that comprises our farm.  Sometimes that word does not want to come trippingly off my tongue: farm.  I can’t ignore it anymore, we can’t ignore it anymore, this is a farm, has become a farm, is still becoming a farm.  I think if I say it enough times, quickly enough, it will become like second skin, not even a second thought.  

I never expected to be a farmer.  I’m not entirely sure what I expected, maybe days at the head of a classroom, and that may still come to pass, but I didn’t know that working the land would offer some of the most grueling, heartbreaking, and satisfying work I’ve ever done.  I didn’t know that the work would actually feel like a second skin, almost like intuition.  And that’s the strange thing, we are still so young in this work as farmers (young as in experience, not necessarily in age…)and there is still so much to learn and understand, that when this farming business feels absolutely right, it takes you a bit by surprise.

The sun is beating down, and this is one of my days to prune in the orchard.  Caleb pruned all last week.  I’m strapping on my snowshoes and have one pruners in my back pocket and one in my hand.  The light is so bright and bouncing off the white landscape, I’m wearing sunglasses.   The trees are big enough to be generous bearers of fruit and usually much taller than me.  But with the two feet of snow-pack, I am that much closer to the tops.  But I’ll still have to use a loppers to get at the highest points.

I’ve never pruned our trees before, other than occasionally stealing flowering branches for a bud vase or a floral arrangement in the restaurant.  This is bad behavior.  To prune during flowering is like tying your dog on a very short chain in a dirty yard with no shade and no water, or forgetting your child in the grocery store and driving on home without a care in the world.  I realize as I look at these trees that I will have to stop that behavior.  At least on our own trees.  I will have to pilfer elsewhere.  But that’s always been my modus operandi:  Rose bushes, hydrangea, and peonies in other yards are never safe from my coveting eye, and my snappy sheers.  

Somehow the real, legitimate pruning of our trees has always fallen under Caleb’s purview before this, and because his domain is already quite full, it hasn’t always been easy for him to finish the work.  This year we’re serious about these apple trees, so we are sharing the work.  I’m already nervous about pruning our grape vines come April, even after the patient tutelage of our friend Emanuel in Burgundy this fall, but apple trees are not the same creatures.  Pruning can make or break your plant, it can be the deciding factor between a good season and a bad.   

I’ve taken some time to look at our handy Little Pruning Book: an Intimate Guide to the Surer Growing of Better Fruits and Flowers by F.F. Rockwell and published in 1919.  It’s been reprinted in the Small Farmer’s Journal, Fall, Vol. 33, No. 4.  (There’s that word again: farm. )  Mr. Rockwell has many good things to say about the process of pruning, but he has four points he says to be sure to always keep in mind, and which I carry with me at the ready, just like the extra pruners in my back pocket:

First: always leave a clean smooth cut.  Careless cutting or dull shears, leaving a ragged edge, means slow healing and increased danger—to say nothing about its being the earmark of a slovenly gardener.

Second: Cut just the right distance above the bud.  If you cut close to it, it is likely to be injured.  If you cut too far above it, a dead stub will be left.  On small branches and twigs, cut from a quarter to less than half-an-inch above the bud.  If pruning is done when plants are in active growth, however, the cut should be made close to the bud, as it will heal almost immediately.

Third: Prune above an outside bud.  This will tend to keep the new growth branching outward, giving the plant an open center with plenty of space and light.  While in some specific case there may be reasons for selecting an inside bud, this holds as a general rule.

Fourth: Cut close up to and parallel with the main branch, trunk or stem.  In removing a branch from a tree or side shoots from shrubs or plants, the leaving of a stub, even it if is a short one, delays the healing or makes it possible for disease and germs to enter, thus providing for future trouble.

So, with a fair amount of trepidation, I start.

I take the pruning branch by branch.  I step away occasionally to look at the tree as a whole with the question: is it balanced?  The work goes both slowly and quickly.  There is a meditative quality to the process and Time seems to be neither moving or standing still.  The sun is hot and bright and feels like a balm to cold bones.  The air is fresh and cold and feels like it must be full of the best oxygen.  After a while, I realize I am already on the third tree and any residual fear is gone.  

The snow-covered ground is littered with fallen branches to be collected in bunches.  Some will come inside to be forced for blossoms in vases (old habits die hard….), others will be evaluated for suitability as cuttings, others will be left to dry as wood for cooking.  (Doesn’t pork roasted over  apple wood sound pretty darn good?)

The trees look airy and shaped liked lacy goblets, arms reaching out and up.   When Caleb returns home, he helps me reach the tops I can’t quite get to.  The sun starts to shift.  It’s already three in the afternoon and we have yet to eat lunch.  We decide to stop for the day and catch a bit of sun on the porch with a glass of wine, some salame, little pickles and bread.   We close our eyes to the warmth on our faces and think of bees humming in blossoms in just a few months time, the the fruit ripe on the trees.

--Deirdre