Ode to Winter

I know a lot of people like Spring because of the flowers and warmer weather and I know a lot of people like Summer because of the long days and flip flops and Fall's great because of the crisper air and football and pumpkins...but to me, the best season of all is Winter.  

I've loved Winter since I was a kid.  I can't really explain why I've gravitated to cold stark Winter.  Maybe it's because I love cold weather and snow (just maybe not in almost mid-March).  Maybe it's because I like rooting for the underdog and liking things most people overlook (and lets face it, around these parts most folks are all about flip-flops and nine o'clock bedtimes).  Maybe it's because I love comfort soups and stews and I can get by with cooking them more in the winter (The Husband is not as big of a soup and stew fan, but there is one I make every Saturday night that he absolutely adores: Shrimp Chowder.  Recipe to follow).  Maybe because it's so festive with Thanksgiving (my personal fave) and Christmas and New Years (and my birthday).  Who knows?  Maybe I'm just wired wrong or something.

Now that I'm grown (yikes!) and have started farming Winter brings a whole new meaning and I think I love it even more.  We close the farm at the end of fall and let out a collective deep breath.  I like to marinate on what we did this past year until after Christmas, and then we start planning.  It's the calm before the storm of Spring where we can decide what we want to do and what we want to add and plan it all on paper and have this wonderful idea of how we want the year to go before real life and the weather and time constraints mess it up.  It's the time where we can do a bit of traveling (mostly to meetings and conventions but it's traveling just the same.  This year we got to go to Lake Tahoe.  Lake Tahoe!).  It's the time where we can make plans with our kids and family without it having to revolve around what's happening at the farm this week.  It's a time where I can catch up on housework and cook things that take longer than thirty minutes.  It's a time of renewal and a time of hope.  

"What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?" John Steinbeck

Well, we have some exciting changes coming to the farm and a few new things we want to try and it all looks good on paper right now and we're very hopeful it's going to be great.  Now it's time to take that collective breath in, because we're in the last gasp of Winter here and Springs coming fast, and that means it's time to get out and get to work!

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter." Rachel Carson

As promised, here's my Shrimp Chowder recipe.  It's loosely based on one I found here by Sara Moulton (I'm a PBS nerd).  It's super easy and pretty quick to make, filling yet not heavy, and perfect for Saturday evenings at home.

Shrimp Chowder (I’d say it makes enough for a family of four or two very hungry adults.  If you’re feeding a crowd, I’d double.)

1 pound of shrimp (I go Atlantic Seafood on Royall and get the bag of already peeled and de-veined ones, because I’m lazy like that)

1 pound bacon (I really like Heritage Farms bacon even though it’s pricey.  It has amazing flavor.  Of course, any bacon will work.)

2 t butter

4-6 good hand-sized potatoes, I like the red ones.

2 stalks celery

½ onion

1-2 cloves of garlic, minced

3-4 tablespoons of flour, depending on how thick you want it.

2 cups of stock (I’ve used chicken, vegetable, or seafood, but currently I’m obsessed with making my own chicken stock so I’ve been using that.  I’ll include that recipe too.)

1 cup water (if I was using broth instead of stock I’d use 3 cups broth and no water)

2 cups milk

1 cup half-n-half or heavy cream, whatever you have.

Old Bay to taste

2 good pinches of dried thyme.

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the bacon, I’ve done it all in one pot but I like to use a separate pan because the bacon grease can scorch if you have your heat too high and then you’ll have black bits in your white chowder.  Set the bacon aside and pour half to ¾ of your drippings in your soup pot and add the butter.  Once it’s melted add your chopped celery and onions and a good shake of salt and pepper.  Since I don’t like celery and onions and will pick them out I leave them big but you can cut them as small as you want.  Soon as they’ve softened some I had the flour.  I use two or three heaping soup spoons but it’s all what you want.  I let that cook a couple minutes until it starts to barely turn brown and I add the liquids. Once that’s combined I put in the potatoes, again, cut to how you like.  I try to go bite sized or a little more because the smaller they are the faster they cook and after I’ve cooked that bacon I’m starving.  Add the seasonings.  I like a lot of Old Bay so I probably put a tablespoon.  Once everything’s cooked through I add my shrimp and cook it until it’s just pink.  Sometimes I cut the heat off before I do this.  The longer they cook the more like rubber tires they will be.  I cut up a strip of crispy bacon and top with it.  YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE BACON.  It makes the chowder.  Enjoy!

Chicken Stock (I got this idea from Pioneer Woman, to give credit where it’s due)

1 small chicken (or the leftover bits and carcass from one you’ve baked)

½ - whole onion chunked

1 stalk celery chunked

1 large carrot chunked or 5-10 baby ones

1-2 cloves garlic, mashed

Water

Put the chicken in the crock pot and stuff the vegetables in.  I only really cut them so they’ll fit in my crock pot and I mash the garlic with my knife and peel it just to help release the flavor.  If I’m cooking this to make chicken soup with I add salt and pepper.  If it’s going to be strictly stock I don’t, so I can control the amount to seasoning when I actually make my dish.  I either do this right before I go to bed and cook it on low all night, or right when I get up and cook it on low all day.  I have done it at lunchtime for chicken soup and cooked it on high all afternoon.  There is no right or wrong.  It will make a stock so good and thick and flavorful you won’t go back  to the bottled stuff.  And it’s amazingly easy.

Week 1

Okay y'all, last week I blogged about the Matthew flood and literally A DAY LATER we had another one that was probably 90% of what Matthew was, so, with rain forecast again this week I have promised I will not talk about our second major flood in six months and I will not.  I will post pictures and let them speak for me.

This was taken Wed. evening as the water rose.

Thursday morning we woke up to Lake Odom

The water at it's height covering the back yard.  It was only a few feet lower than the Hurricane.

The canal of water flowing across my neighbors land from the little river onto ours.

 The first week of the 2017 CSA is behind us and it was, well, I'm looking for a better word than disaster and coming up short.  Maybe a semi-disaster.  A couple months ago Wayne UNC Health Care (formally Wayne Memorial Hospital) came up and asked us if we'd be interested in doing a farmers market there at the hospital.  We jumped at the chance even though we'd never done/weren't terribly interested in doing a farmers market.  Honestly, you work and work and work to produce the produce (see what I did there ;) and sell two squash...money wise it's never seemed like a huge win for us.  However I thought it'd be a great chance to get the word out about our CSA and would be a good opportunity.  Finally about a week and a half before we were set to begin I got the green light from the board.  So yesterday my new employee Melissa (of Adventures of Frugal Mom fame) set off.  I was not prepared.  Last week was super stressful because of the flood, then Monday I was horribly sick due to the perfect storm of something emitting pollen and mixing with those crazy winds (I have no voice today.  The Girl got up and said 'what happened to your voice?  Did it float away?  Maybe she has some lingering flood PTSD?).  In an effort to be efficient, I got the bright idea to 'lets pack some deliveries' at the farmers market while we're waiting for customers, so we dragged all out product from the farm with us, then down to the farmers market location (the sunken outdoor patio connected to the cafeteria), then we didn't use as much which meant I could have put that much more in my boxes but I couldn't, because people were already picking up at the farm and it wouldn't be fair.  Not to mention we didn't start deliveries until 3, which is waaaay later than I would like.  It was a huge mistake on my part that left me feeling horrible last night.  I emailed my customers and within minutes I had messages of support back which lightened my mood so much and made it where I could sleep last night (couple years ago I took a MBTI test for the Karl Best Ag Leadership class and got INTJ, when I make mistakes I tend to agonize over them until I come up with a solution).  Another instance of us having the best customers on the planet!

Odom Farming Company TO GO

But, now I know what not to do and what to expect at the farmers market, which I think was a success.  Everyone was excited for us to be there and we were excited for the opportunity.  We have a new plan of attack for next week and I only see good things in our future, even if we started off on the wrong foot.  In the words of Scarlett O'Hara...tomorrow is another day!

Water

I’m going to make a blanket statement here.  I feel like of all the resources in the world, water is the most vital, and with our changing climate it will only get more so.  Without it you cannot survive.  You cannot grow food.  You cannot take care of yourself.  It can be your biggest blessing and your worst enemy.  As I sit here and watch this rain fall today, I know it has been both to me.  We've had years where our location to the swamp and river have proven vital to our survival.  We've had years where I just wished I could spread a tarp over the field and keep the water off the plants.  Farmers say a dry year will hurt you but a wet one will kill you.  I believe it. 

This is the Hurricane Matthew post.  I’ve sat down five or six times to write it.  I tried last fall and couldn’t.  I tried after Christmas and couldn't.  How do you sum up a disaster that big?  How do you convey the feeling in your heart when you drive up to your farm and see it under water?  We were blessed that our home was not hurt.  We were blessed that our families remained unscathed.  We had a lot of things going for us, but we had one big one going against us.  I know to a lot of people what we lost seems like nothing.  It was just a corn maze.  It was just a field of corn.  You can plow it up and plant again.  At least it wasn’t a building.  At least it wasn’t your house.  No, it wasn’t and believe me, I am beyond thankful it wasn’t.  But it was still important to us.  So here’s our Hurricane Matthew story. 

All that week we watched the weather.  It’s a compulsive habit of mine to check the weather every time I get on the computer.  We watched the spaghetti plots and rainfall estimates.  I was glued to every news outlet in Eastern North Carolina, the National Hurricane Center, and even those Facebook meterologists who are on iffy credibility at best.  Worrying about the weather is something I’ve done my whole life (honestly worrying in general comes natural to me.  I got it from my granddaddy).  One of my earliest memories was of a tornado outbreak that occurred when I was four or five.  I will never forget how hot it was that day or how black the clouds were.  I will never forget coming out of my house into a drenching driving rain into a yard that was flooded to my knees with hailstones floating on it (when it receded it cut a foot deep ditch in my yard).  I will never forget the fear in my mama’s voice as my daddy tried to get his truck up our dirt path, and the wind was blowing so hard he had the pedal to the metal and it was barely moving (he, of course, thought it was great fun).  I will never forget how scared I got for weeks after every time it clouded up and how she used to have to make me play outside (seriously, it was on my chore chart).  That experience instilled a great need in me to be prepared.  From then on I read every book in the Grantham school library about severe weather to learn all I could so next time I would know what to do.  I’ve also lived through Hurricane Fran where the wind was so strong it blew our front door open and soaked the entire living room and Hurricane Floyd where my uncles pond overflowed and crayfish crawled on Herring Road and we were without electricity for two weeks.  Still, all of my admittedly limited education and experience and first-hand knowledge were no preparation for a storm with a mind of it’s own. 

The back field where the corn maze would be after Hurricane Floyd, Sept. 1999

Where the sunflowers were last year after Hurricane Floyd, Sept. 1999.

That Saturday it rained, and rained, and rained.  I watched Facebook as people started to report water in their yards but it wasn’t until that afternoon that I realized what all this would mean.  Our biggest fear going into this was we’d miss a week of being open to deal with drying out.  We never thought we’d have the flood of the century, 19 years after the last flood of the century.  My husband is never one to stay put (especially after the lights go out).  He was riding around even at 3 or 4 that afternoon (like an idiot).  At 8 he went over to the farm.  He reported it was crazy wet, but relatively unscathed.  At 10 he went and called me with a tone of calm command.  He needed me to get ready to go out and help him, the water was up. It was still raining and the wind was blowing.  I got chilled to the bone as we rode over on the trusty Gator.  As soon as we crested the hill where the building sat I burst into tears and a chorus of "Oh My God’s".  The entire back half of the property was a rising river.  Under what is now the goat shelter we had lawnmowers and equipment parked.  We had an irrigation pump in our pond and a nurse tank slowly getting deeper in water from the swamp.  We pulled it all out with the trusty Gator.  Thank God he was antsy and decided to go check on things.  Then there was nothing to do but wait and see how high it would go (and play Skip Bo with The Boy). 

It went up about six more feet from where it was that night.  The corn was still standing.  We said a prayer and crossed our fingers when the water went down and the sun came out it would be alright. 

On Wednesday, the water began to recede.  Only then did we see the debris left behind.  Our corn maze that we’d spent countless hours planting and fertilizing and cutting out and mowing was now a hot mess.  Our neighbor had picked his corn and these huge masses and channels were now carved through our field and filled with tree branches, random trash, and two feet thick layers of corn stalks.  It didn’t matter that the corn was not blown down.  It had been mowed down by the river.  Well, now what could we do?  For two or three days I walked around in shock as we watched our community sink.  I wasn't prepared for this.  This wasn't supposed to happen.  As soon as we could stand up on the ground without miring completely we did and that first time we drove down there I cried.  This was our livelihood.  This is how we pay to keep our farm.  But, giving up isn’t something we do, so we made the best of it, took the corn maze off the schedule and cut the price, and I think in the end we pulled a decent season out of our hat.  We have the community to thank for it.  We didn't know how everyone would react with so many people having lost so much but everyone rallied.  You don't know how much we appreciated it.  We're just a little farm doing the best we can with what we have and you all make it worthwhile.

Now six months later it's easier to have better perspective.  If this is the worst that happens to us then we'll be lucky.  I can tell you this, it's going to take a few years before we plant a corn maze back there again.  We have healthy 'normal' children, each other, a dry house, and a beautiful farm to raise those kids on complete with the prettiest little river that once in a while turns into a huge destructive monster.  What more could we ask for?

Our farm path around 3 in the afternoon Hurricane Matthew came in.

The normal level of the Little River.

Our irrigation pond with the picnic area behind.

The entire back field and corn maze.

One of the channels made from the corn stalks.