Food & Farm Notes

December 7, 2007

Early this morning, I woke to a world that was one multifaceted jewel with every surface glinting – silver in the shade, gold where the sun was striking. I watched a jay perch on the porch chair, survey the luminous world, and move on. A moment later, a red-tailed hawk soared close to the house and landed in a spindly tree. He didn’t turn his head when I opened the door – all senses were finely tuned to the field below.

My thoughts went there too, and for a similar, though more distant, reason: food. He was looking for breakfast, a field mouse or vole. I was thinking of next summer’s suppers, redolent with garlic. For although it was 11 degrees when I woke this morning, Henry was already down in his fields, laying thick mulch over his tens of thousands of garlic plants – tending to them as tenderly as a mother tucks a blanket round her sleeping child.

Although all seems still in the fields, already the strong bone-white roots of the fall-planted cloves are reaching down into the soil, deeper and deeper, positioning themselves for spring when they will begin supplying the water and nutrients needed to shoot the green garlic stalk up through the mulch.

But that green growth is at least four cold months away. Now, in our fields, the quiet and crucial work of winter is going on: the repairing and rebuilding of soil structure, and the restocking of water in the soil. I love this time of underground activity, of repair and rebuilding. It’s a time for internal life, which has often been more real to me than external life. Whether the sparkles sifting through this evening’s air are snow or simply time passing earthward, who can tell?

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But there are two things to tell you in this first of the intermittent winter Food & Farm Notes – both concerning lucky ducks.

First the real ducks, which were lucky to be raised by Dennis and Emily Wettstein and their nine children, lucky to be raised by a family that knows the true meaning of husbandry -- not only of animals, but of the land. Husbandry is the name, says Wendell Berry, of all the practices that sustain life by connecting us to our world. It is the art, he says, of keeping tied all the strands in the living network that sustains us.

Suffice it to say that Dennis and Emily and their kids made these ducks part of a vibrant living network. They raised them from one-day-old ducklings that arrived on the farm courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service, to healthy adults, grown fat and happy on a diet of grasses, clovers, dandelions, insects, and organic grains that were raised, ground, and mixed right there on the farm. These ducks were definitely living la dolce vita, and you will taste it when you roast them up for holiday fare – or just for yourself one of these wintry nights.

Ducks are seasonal, reaching their full size and flavor in November, and Dennis and Emily recently had about 50 ducks organically processed in the Amish facility in Arthur, IL. They weigh about 4 pounds each, and are $6 a pound. I will be coming up to the city this Sunday, but only bringing up as many ducks as I have orders for. So e-mail me with your order (number of ducks and pick-up location).

You can pick them up Sunday in either Evanston or Chicago. I’ll be in Evanston from 3 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, upstairs at 1227 Dodge (near Dempster), and from 8 to 9 p.m. at 442 W. Aldine, near Belmont and Broadway in Chicago. (Call 847-338-1861 if you have any questions)

"Not only the Roman medical writers of the time make mention of it, but likewise the philosophers of the period. Plutarch assures us that Cato preserved his whole household in health, in a season when plague and disease were rife, through dieting them on roast duck."
-- Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management

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GOAT MEAT. My sister Jill still has a few goats, which can be processed to your specifications. The meat will be coming up to the city sometime close to the 20^th, but needs to be ordered now, so call Jill at 815-269-2003.

Henry’s Burdock and Sunchokes are in repose in our winter storage pit, but I can take orders now, if you would like some delivered to you around the 20^th -- just email me with what you’d like and we’ll be in touch later about the details of the delivery.

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My lucky-duck tale to tell is that I have finally turned a corner and am beginning to breathe more deeply and see more clearly. In the winter, the view to Henry’s bottom field is clear – you can see it all the way from the top of the tree-covered ridge. The view inward also becomes clearer as activity lessens and there is time to uncover what’s been simmering within all year – all these many years since the fateful day I sped on down to Springfield one warm May afternoon to file the articles of incorporation for The Land Connection, our educational nonprofit. I remember returning directly to Henry and the crew in the upper field, near the sweet anise hyssop starts, and thinking my life was about to change. And it has, in many ways.

From that day in 2001 until today, The Land Connection has grown fast and furiously, with generous support from many of you, and with many on-the-ground successes: saving farmland from development, transitioning land to organic production, facilitating the first organic meat processor in the state, and launching a full-year farmer-training course, Central Illinois Farm Beginnings, which I will continue to administer.  

But since that day I ran down to Springfield 6 1/2 years ago until today, my life was rarely my own. All things have their seasons, and as we enter this winter season of underground work, I am very pleased to announce that The Land Connection has a new Executive Director, Megan Lewis.  Megan comes to us from the American Planning Association (APA), where she was a senior research associate, working on land conservation, climate change, energy efficiency, and green building.

Hiring an Executive Director means that I will begin to have the quiet time to re-stock and re-structure, and to begin the work so many of you have encouraged me to do for so long: namely, to write. I want to write about the inspiring farmers I know – experienced ones with a world of hard-won wisdom, and the new farmers who are leaving lives of security for lives of meaning, returning to family farms, or buying new farms of their own. I want to write articles and editorials that counter the prevailing notions that we “feed the world” and that our current food system provides us with “safe and abundant” food. Mostly, I want to describe the intricacies of daily life lived close to the earth: weather, wildlife, farm-life, seeding, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, seeding . . . .

I very much look forward to the work of writing, the concentration that comes from paying attention – to a blue jay on a porch chair, or a heavy-shouldered hawk on a spindly tree. In these moments I almost glimpse what I was born to -- not so much in the jay or the hawk, as in the pulse that forms the words, the prose that can dip and shimmer with thoughts, and with usefulness and meaning. When that happens it is exactly like sparkles of icy snow, sifting through the air, fine as any fairy dust. But how can we know if this is time falling, or snow? Writing is a strange and solitary thing -- one that I hope to be sharing with you as time goes on.

I am very much looking forward to the next phase of growth for The Land Connection with Megan at the helm -- and ask you to join me in welcoming her aboard.

I am also looking forward to this underground season, a time of revitalization and rejuvenation for both the soil and the soul.

Best wishes to all of you this Holiday Season -- and don’t forget to send me your order for duck (coming this Sunday), and for burdock, sunchokes, or goat (coming in another week or two).

Terra

Oh . . . a recipe . . . J

Crisp Roasted Duck

A whole roasted duck doesn't have to be fussy. With just a few hours' roasting and hardly any work at all, you can have a juicy bird with crisp skin—the best of both textures.

1 (3 to 5 pound) duck
2 cups boiling-hot water
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.

Thaw the duck (24 – 48 hours in the refrigerator), then rinse duck inside and out. Prick skin all over with a sharp fork. Fold neck skin under body, then put duck, breast side up, on a rack in a 13- by 9- by 3-inch roasting pan and pour boiling-hot water over duck. This is said to tighten the skin and to make it crispier in the end.

Cool the duck, then pour out any water from the cavity into the pan. Pat the duck dry inside and out, reserving water in pan. Then rub duck inside and out with kosher salt and pepper (and any herbs you may like).

Roast duck, breast side up, 45 minutes, then remove from oven. Turn duck over, and roast 45 minutes more. Turn duck over again (breast side up), tilting duck to drain any liquid from cavity into pan. Continue to roast duck until skin is brown and crisp, about 45 minutes more (total roasting time: about 2 1/4 hours). Tilt duck to drain any more liquid from cavity into pan. Transfer duck to a cutting board and let stand 15 minutes before carving.