Recov­ery at the Farm

We’re here!  Red Gate Farm, at last.

Well, I mis­s­peak.  There is no Red Gate.  We are at Farm.  I’ll explain.

On May 15, at 4:38 p.m., a tor­na­do ripped through our town, for appar­ent­ly about 10 heart-stop­ping, tree-felling, hav­oc-wreak­ing min­utes.  Hun­dreds of trees were ripped, with their roots, from the ground.  Cars were crushed, hous­es demol­ished, roads blocked, wires destroyed, pow­er out.  Our lit­tle bit of par­adise was not immune.

We received pho­tographs in Lon­don that just broke our hearts.  A tree fell across the road, crash­ing into our beloved old tree that had held Avery’s child­hood swing.  That tree in turn fell into our front-room win­dow, and onto the chim­ney, which then let go its cap­stone to crash into the roof, break­ing the sur­face of the shin­gles in sev­er­al places (leaky kitchen roof, as we dis­cov­ered dur­ing yes­ter­day’s rain­storm).  Most pathet­i­cal­ly, the Red Gate was com­plete­ly destroyed.

So when we arrived two weeks ago, instead of our idyl­lic, peace­ful, noth­ing-bad-ever-hap­pens-here par­adise, we found this.

But let’s con­cen­trate on the pos­i­tives: our intre­pid neigh­bors Mark, Kon­nie, Ter­ry, Regi­na and Egbert, Mike… they sim­ply descend­ed on Farm in our absence and res­cued her as best they could.  Tar­pau­lin on the roof, board­ed-up win­dow, the logs cut up and car­ried away.  The Tree­man came and took away Avery’s swing tree (the stump removal will come lat­er).  We can nev­er, nev­er thank each and every per­son enough who came over and spent days and days clean­ing up on our behalf.

I don’t know why I find it so dis­con­so­late to arrive to a ter­race and path­ways choked with weeds, but I do.

So the first morn­ing, recov­er­ing from jet­lag at 6 a.m., John and I were hard at work with just my fin­gers and his leaf­blow­er.  Sev­er­al sweaty hours lat­er, we were rewarded.

John moved wood-chip piles (think­ing thank­ful­ly every moment that some kind soul had tak­en the time to reduce a fall­en tree to such man­age­able pro­por­tions), I picked up end­less piles of sticks, we filled the bird-feed­ers and wel­comed dear, dear Jacque, the fence-whis­per­er.

Jacque brings a com­pelling gen­eros­i­ty to his work, real­ly a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to restor­ing some­thing pre­cious from the past.  He seemed unper­turbed, un-frus­trat­ed that all his hard work from two sum­mers ago, bring­ing the fence back to life, had been destroyed in ten min­utes.  “I will enjoy revis­it­ing this beau­ti­ful, peace­ful place,” he said calm­ly, with his mea­sur­ing tapes and twin­kling eyes.  We are grateful.

We raked up more wood­chips, reveal­ing frag­ile grass­es beneath.  There were sev­er­al days of steady, heart­en­ing, sum­mer rain, the kind that makes you think you can see the grass grow and the hydrangea blos­som before your eyes.

The old lawn guys had heart­less­ly aban­doned us, see­ing how dis­tressed our prop­er­ty looked, so we found new lawn guys.  They made every­thing beau­ti­ful, once again, although it is tak­ing some time to get used to the loss of Avery’s “swing tree.”

I rearranged the bed­room!  John is quite right in object­ing to every flat sur­face, includ­ing the floor, being cov­ered with books, so I scooped up a par­tic­u­lar­ly spi­dery, dusty pile from the bed­room floor and arranged them on the chest, first emp­ty­ing said chest of unwant­ed clothes and donat­ing them to Good­will.  Every­thing in the bed­room looks so cosy and tidy now!

Vis­i­tors have come, in all their heart­warm­ing glo­ry.  Jill and her fam­i­ly!  (I was so relieved that the girls want­ed the tram­po­line out; what if they had out­grown it?  They had­n’t.  We hauled it out of its spi­dery barn in the heat.)

We sat down to a deli­cious din­ner of sous-vide, then bar­be­cued, burg­ers on my home­made pota­to rolls.

Those rolls!  The cap­rese salad!

We sat down to eat.

“Do you think it’s going to rain” Jill asked casually.

“No, I’m sure we’ll get through din­ner.  It’s so love­ly out here!  Besides, look how pret­ty the table looks,” I said gamely.

We took two bites.  The heav­ens opened!

“It’s tra­di­tion!” shout­ed Joel, car­ry­ing plat­ters and hold­ing the door open.  That’s what I love about Joel: some­thing hap­pens once, and the next time it’s tra­di­tion.  It’s not annoy­ing or incon­ve­nient, it’s tra­di­tion!  Inside we went.

It is such a relief to know that fam­i­ly can reunite, that noth­ing ever changes, no mat­ter how tall the girls get.  Jane, stop grow­ing, please!

I wor­ry some­times that the glo­ry days of Red Gate Farm are in the past: the years when the house was filled with chil­dren rush­ing about in bathing suits, Avery mak­ing paper dolls to string up in her bed­room, the slip ‘n slide in the yard.  But then I realise that Avery will even­tu­al­ly redis­cov­er Red Gate Farm as an adult, a place to come and escape from stress­ful city life.  A place filled with won­der­ful mem­o­ries for us all.

Then, on a par­tic­u­lar­ly hot and humid (per­fect) after­noon, up popped dear, dear Felic­i­ty and her family!

Remem­ber them from our last vis­it, the ran­dom knit­ting res­cue/ap­ple-cake gift?

Oh, that cake.

This time we were joined by Felic­i­ty’s moth­er and new baby, Char­lotte Grace.  What a lit­tle gin­ger snap, as her grand­fa­ther calls her.

Susan embod­ies grand­moth­er­hood.  Com­pe­tent, calm, affec­tion­ate, appreciative.

There aren’t enough hours to trade sto­ries with these friends.  Every­one this sum­mer has sto­ries of the storm, but Susan’s of her hus­band takes the cake.  A tree fell onto his car with him in it.  He is unharmed, but he came home to find wind­shield glass in his trouser pockets.

Mark has been by, of course, to tell tales of the storm and its after­math, to shrug off thanks for his incred­i­ble gen­eros­i­ty in the wake of the tor­na­do, his stal­wart pres­ence dur­ing those first frag­ile days assess­ing the dam­age.  He’s more com­fort­able feed­ing his cows than accept­ing praise.

He actu­al­ly talks to them, calls them by name — Brisket, Guin­ness, Sham­rock.  You can see they are lis­ten­ing!  Mark is pure gold.  “How are you, dear?” he asks me.  I loved being called “dear” by Mark.

John has been hard at work final­is­ing Pot­ters Fields details, at his “sum­mer office.”

The view is very dis­tract­ing, in my opin­ion.  I just keep look­ing up, appre­ci­at­ing the bird­song from the finch feed­er, watch­ing the chip­munks chase each oth­er through the grass, watch­ing blue­jays land on the bird­bath, squir­rels sway­ing per­ilous­ly in the trees above, over­head.  Just lovely.

Judy pops by, her first vis­it since los­ing Rol­lie.  She is unchanged, lov­ing and fun­ny and cheer­ful.  It is such fun to spend an unex­pect­ed hour, in the mid­dle of the day, gos­sip­ing, telling tales of Lon­don life, rem­i­nisc­ing about Rollie.

She comes bear­ing gifts!  Her moth­er’s blue­ber­ry cake, a def­i­nite must for Vol­ume Two.  It is tart, soft, unsweet.  Per­fect.  When I get the recipe, I will share.

Per­haps the most glo­ri­ous dis­cov­ery of this sum­mer is the Dol­lar Tree, a place of untold mer­can­tile delights.

In this Shangri-la, one can acquire — for a dol­lar, mind you — wood­en spoons, egg noo­dles, gift rib­bons, bleach, piz­za crust, sin­gle serv­ings of tuna and crack­ers, tis­sue paper, bird, cat and dog food, ibupro­fen, sun­tan oil, laun­dry deter­gent, side­walk chalk, preg­nan­cy tests, hack­saws, hand wipes spe­cial­ly for “boogers”, Vien­nese hot dogs in cans, sparklers, grass seed and Ital­ian sea­son­ing.  It is heav­en on earth.

When not brows­ing the aisles of the Dol­lar Tree in search of orig­i­nal flavour “Bugles,” or birth­day cards, I’ve nat­u­ral­ly been cook­ing up a storm.  There is a new pota­to sal­ad in our reper­toire!  The addi­tion of ten­der sum­mer corn is a very good idea.

Red Gate Farm Pota­to Salad

(serves 6)

1 1/2lb/3/4 kilo small, new, or Jer­sey Roy­al potatoes

1/2 red onion, chopped fine

1 stalk lemon­grass, chopped fine

1 ear cooked or raw corn, ker­nels chopped off

hand­ful fresh dill, chopped

hand­ful fresh chives, chopped

zest of 1 lemon

juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup/64g mayonnaise

fresh black pepper

Mal­don salt to taste

Steam the pota­toes until ten­der, about 20 min­utes.  Cut each in half and place in a large bowl.  Sprin­kle over all the oth­er ingre­di­ents up to the lemon juice.  Com­bine lemon juice with the remain­ing ingre­di­ents and toss togeth­er with the pota­toes until thor­ough­ly mixed.

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We’ve been deep-fry­ing every­thing under the sun, because WE CAN.  But­ter­flied shrimp was divine.

But­ter­flied Fried Shrimp

(serves 4)

1 lb/1/2 kilo big raw shrimp, shell on

1/2 cup/64g all-pur­pose flour

1 egg, beaten

1/3 cup/ 42g Panko breadcrumbs

1/3 cup/42g  cornmeal

1/3 cup/42g  Mat­zoh meal

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp gar­lic powder

fresh black pepper

Peel off all but the tail of the shrimp shells.  The tails are per­fect han­dles!  Using kitchen scis­sors, cut up the back of each shrimp as deeply as you can with­out split­ting them.

Mix togeth­er the Panko, corn­meal, Mat­zoh, and sea­son­ings in a large, shal­low bowl.

Put the flour, egg, and crust mix­ture into three sep­a­rate, shal­low bowls.  Dip each shrimp first into the flour, then the egg, then the crust mix­ture  Set aside whilst you heat your oil.  When a bit of bread­crumb tossed into the oil fries imme­di­ate­ly, you are ready.  In batch­es of about 5 shrimps at a time, deep-fry for 1 1/2 min­utes, then lift out onto paper tow­el with a wire bas­ket with a han­dle.  Serve with spicy mayo.

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John has, of course, been sous-vid­ing every­thing that does­n’t run away in time.  The best sug­ges­tion, made by my friend Orlan­do, has been burg­ers.  You’d fear — or at least, I did — that they would get smushed in the plas­tic-bag process, but no: instead of vac­u­um-pack­ing them, you go for the “dis­place­ment” theory.

Sous-vide Burg­ers on Pota­to Rowils

(serves 6)

3 lbs/1.4 kilos beef (either ground, or ground at home, as you like)

6 tbsps duck fat, goose fat, or butter

Fox Point Sea­son­ing, or just Mal­don salt and fresh black pepper

Sim­ply place each burg­er in a ziplock plas­tic bag, add a table­spoon of your cho­sen fat.  Add sea­son­ings and low­er the bag, unclosed, into the water bath just with the ziplock above the water sur­face.  The air will mag­i­cal­ly dis­ap­pear, and you can seal the bag.

Sous vide the burg­ers at least 45 min­utes at 54 degrees Fahrenheit/12 Cel­sius, or up to two hours.  Fin­ish on the grill or in a fry­ing pan.  Serve with “Pota­to Row­ils.”  So-called, obvi­ous­ly because of Sinamin Row­ils.

I’m going to give you my dear friend Orlan­do’s exact instruc­tions here, just because I love to hear the sound of his “voice” when I read his recipe.  He’s very dis­cur­sive and explana­to­ry, but it is a sim­ple, for­giv­ing, fool-proof, deli­cious recipe.

Pota­to Rowils

(makes 8 large or 12 small)

About 400g pota­toes, peeled and cut up

2tbsp but­ter

12oz bread flour

1 sachet instant yeast (or 30g fresh yeast)

1tbsp sug­ar

1tsp salt

1 egg, plus anoth­er for glazing

Boil the pota­toes in water — no salt — until soft. Mea­sure out 5tbsp of hot pota­to water into a bowl, and drain the pota­toes. You want them quite dry, so return to the pan and shake about over a medi­um heat so they steam and dry off a bit. Mash thor­ough­ly and mea­sure out one cup of mash, pack­ing it very firm­ly into the cup. (Note: I have bro­ken TWO cup mea­sures doing this, so per­haps don’t do it too firm­ly.) (Dis­card remain­ing pota­to or use in a soup.) Stir in the but­ter till melted.

A stand mix­er such as a Kitchen Aid is best for the next step. Put the mash, which should be warm (but no longer actu­al­ly hot), in the mix­er bowl and stir in the flour, yeast, sug­ar and salt on low speed. Now add the egg and the reserved pota­to water. (If you for­got or lost the pota­to water, no big deal, just use warm water). Mix for 5–10 min­utes until you have a soft, slight­ly sticky dough. If the dough is alarm­ing­ly sticky, add more flour, 1tbsp at a time. (Some­times when mak­ing this the whole pro­ce­dure seems to have been sticky. This isn’t the end of the world — in fact the result­ing rolls will be super-soft and ten­der — but it doesn’t make han­dling the dough very pleas­ant and can lead to feel­ings of panic.)

Spray or oil the dough in the bowl and roll it about so it makes a rough, oily ball, cov­er and allow to rise for about 45 min­utes to an hour. When it has dou­bled, weigh the dough (in grams is eas­i­est) and divide by 12. Pat the dough out on your work sur­face — you may or may not need flour to stop it stick­ing — and divide into 12 pieces. 

Line a bak­ing sheet with bak­ing paper. Flour­ing your hands etc if nec­es­sary, roll each ball into a ball, smooth and taut as pos­si­ble, and place seam side down on the bak­ing sheet. Con­tin­ue with oth­er balls. I like to space the rolls about 3cm apart, so they join up when ris­ing and bak­ing, but you can keep them sep­a­rate if you prefer. 

Cov­er with greased plas­tic film and let rise until dou­bled — about 45 min­utes. Heat oven to 210C/190 fan. Just before bak­ing, brush the rolls with an egg which you have beat­en with a pinch of salt and splash of water. Bake for about 12–15 min­utes (turn­ing tin at half time), till deep gold­en in colour. 

(An alter­na­tive to the egg glaze is to brush the rolls with melt­ed but­ter, which can be done before bak­ing, at half time and after bak­ing. Well, why wouldn’t you?)

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And corn on the cob!  I make it a point in July and August in Con­necti­cut to eat corn on the cob at least once a day.  Obvi­ous­ly there is the time-hon­oured method of buy­ing it at the very best farmer’s mar­ket or farm stand, in our case Starchek’s in Southbury…

Then it’s a mat­ter of sim­ply pulling off the silks, rac­ing the cobs to a pot of vig­or­ous­ly boil­ing water, and cook­ing them for 4 minutes.

But there’s also corn chowder!

Corn Chow­der

(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter

1 car­rot, diced

1 white onion, chopped fine

3 cloves gar­lic, chopped fine

2 sticks cel­ery, chopped fine

6 ears raw corn, ker­nels scraped off

3 stems fresh thyme, leaves only

4 cups light cream or half and half

hand­ful chives, chopped fine

fresh black pep­per and Mal­don salt to taste

Melt the but­ter and sweat the veg­eta­bles, up to and includ­ing the fresh thyme, until soft.  Add the cream and warm through.  Top with the chives and season.

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And there’s scal­loped corn!

Scal­loped Corn
(serves four easily)

6 ears cooked corn
four cloves gar­lic, chopped fine
half pint light cream
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3 tbsps melt­ed butter
1/2 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese

Spray a nice casse­role dish (I used a pret­ty oval Pyrex one) with non­stick cook­ing spray, or but­ter it. Sprin­kle the gar­lic over the bot­tom of the dish. Cut the ker­nels off the ears of corn (be sure to gath­er up the few racy ker­nels who will fly off onto the counter top) and sprin­kle them onto the gar­lic, tak­ing care to sep­a­rate the long rows should they stick togeth­er. Pour the cream over all the ker­nels even­ly, then toss the bread crumbs in the melt­ed but­ter and fluff them up. Spread even­ly over the corn and then sprin­kle the cheese over all.  Bake at 425F/220C for about 30 min­utes or until bubbly.

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As a reward for all my hard work, Becky appeared in our lit­tle bend of the road and my, we had fun.  We did noth­ing but talk, real­ly, for three won­der­ful days, catch­ing up as we try to do when­ev­er we are together.

Hear­ing all about the exploits of her three daugh­ters, Avery’s boon com­pan­ions dur­ing our Lon­don years, was a com­plete joy.  How does one fam­i­ly pro­duce an ace accoun­tant, an ele­men­tary school teacher, and a musi­cal the­atre star?  She could­n’t get enough of Avery’s news.  We shared a great many sto­ries, and then the Lyons came to din­ner to meet her, with THEIR three small, com­plete­ly beguil­ing children.

And the fol­low­ing evening, when we were meant to go to Jane’s soft­ball match but it was rained out, we had to come up with some­thing for din­ner on the spur of the moment, Becky casu­al­ly men­tioned, “I could make you my South­ern Toma­to Pie…”  This was so very rem­i­nis­cent of years ago, when Becky casu­al­ly men­tioned, “I could make you my Cheesey Pota­toes…”  Of course, the rest is history.

Now while I don’t yet have the offi­cial Becky recipe, I can tell you briefly how to achieve it.

Lay a pre-made piecrust in a round tin and prick it all over with a fork.  Bake accord­ing to pack­age instruc­tions.  Mean­while, slice three ripe toma­toes and lay them on paper tow­els to absorb any extra juice.  Chop 1/2 large white onion and, when the crust is baked, scat­ter them on the bot­tom.  Lay­er the toma­to slices with basil leaves until you run out of toma­toes, then top it all with 1 cup mayo mixed with 1 cup shred­ded Ched­dar cheese.  Bake at 350F/180C for 30 min­utes or until bubbly.

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What fun we had, long lux­u­ri­ous, humid hours on the ter­race sim­ply chat­ting.  Because Becky is South­ern to the bone, she has per­fect­ed the art of the “vis­it.”  It’s a verb.  Becky “vis­its,” which means sym­pa­thet­ic, tru­ly inter­est­ed ques­tions about my life, cor­re­spond­ing tales about her life.  With Becky, there is no pre­tense that life is per­fect, that we don’t all strug­gle, and there is a tac­it under­stand­ing that with enough warm, gen­uine love for one anoth­er, we can sur­vive life.  She is the most won­der­ful friend.

With Becky gone once more, it was time to head up to Jill and Joel’s for a glo­ri­ous sum­mer sup­per of rose­mary-grilled pork ten­der­loin, pota­to sal­ad, and my toma­to-moz­zarel­la sal­ad with pesto.  Mol­ly had a lit­tle fun with that.

I love Jill and Joel for many rea­sons, but near the top of the list is the fact that they cook for me!  Almost no one does, whether because I insist on every­one com­ing to my house, or for some oth­er rea­son.  Joel went all “awww, shucks” when I thanked him.

It’s such fun to vis­it their fam­i­ly, for a glimpse of life so very dif­fer­ent from our own in Lon­don.  Whilst Avery went through a spell of ath­let­ic activ­i­ty — ice-skat­ing and horse­back rid­ing — she was nev­er one for com­pet­i­tive team sports.  Jil­l’s two girls are just that, always dressed in com­fy ath­let­ic wear and talk­ing about their lat­est soft­ball exploits.  Such love­ly girls.  Mol­ly acquired some pret­ty unusu­al skills at camp this year, name­ly mak­ing this dizzy­ing lit­tle toy.

We did­n’t even see Jane until din­ner was long over, when she came in from soft­ball tri­als tired and rav­en­ous.  Such great girls.

Then it was off to the Lyons’ last night for a very wel­come grilled sup­per of salmon fil­lets and corn.  What a cool way to do corn — peel away just the out­er lay­ers of husk and grill!  The silks come away much more eas­i­ly than on raw corn, and you don’t even need but­ter!  But the real draw of the evening was spend­ing time with the beau­ti­ful kids and cats (and Mike and Lau­ren, obvi­ous­ly!).   Here is dar­ling Elizabeth.

She is the most talk­a­tive two-and-a-half-year-old I have ever met, except for Avery!  Full, charm­ing sen­tences, and more than capa­ble of hold­ing her own with her two old­er sib­lings.  John was, of course, a climb­ing frame for all three.

Their chil­dren call us, charm­ing­ly (as Beck­y’s girls do!) Miss Kris­ten and Mr John.  It always takes some time for them to remem­ber us from our last vis­it.  About three min­utes!  And there was dar­ling, dar­ling Jes­si­ca, one of Avery’s first fos­ter children.

And Lib­by, the tail­less won­der cat.

To me, this pho­to­graph encom­pass­es all that is the Lyons way of life: out­doorsy, casu­al, nature-lov­ing, and hap­py to take in a kit­ty with no tail.  They are a fam­i­ly that sits down to din­ner every night, says grace, and set­tles back to enjoy one anoth­er’s com­pa­ny, and ours.  We are so lucky to have them in our lives.

Even with all the activ­i­ty, there is still time sim­ply to sit (espe­cial­ly since we two have now done as much rak­ing, weed­ing, stick-pick­ing-up and tele­phon­ing experts to bring back Red Gate Farm).  So we sit.  There is the bird­bath and the view to contemplate.

I take a stroll down to vis­it Dad in the pond, and with all the night rains we’ve been hav­ing, it’s up and running.

I peek into the chick­en house, sad­ly emp­ty this sum­mer, and remem­ber all the fun we had, the Year I Kept Chickens.

One sul­try evening, our beloved friends Ter­ry, Lin­da and Judy came to sup­per for what was essen­tial­ly a “Thank you for help­ing Red Gate Farm sur­vive the tor­na­do of 2018.”  There are no words for the hours, weeks, months that these friends spent stand­ing in our place, while we watched help­less­ly from London.

We sat down to crab cakes and spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion, every­one telling their per­son­al sto­ry of where they were dur­ing the storm, and what life was like here in the after­math.  I remem­bered the care­ful­ly non-hys­ter­i­cal emails from Ter­ry, detail­ing the progress of tak­ing down trees, putting them through the chip­per, stack­ing logs for the fire­place, meet­ing insur­ance peo­ple.  We thought of jump­ing on a plane, but every­one assured us that as dis­as­trous as the tor­na­do had been, every­one was pulling togeth­er.  In the face of such friend­ship, I can only tell myself that Ter­ry’s twin­kling eyes sug­gest that he, as a fire­fight­er, engi­neer and all-round com­pe­tent guy, he might have enjoyed him­self just a lit­tle, once in awhile.

The fol­low­ing hot day brought a wel­come sum­mer treat: vichys­soise!  There is noth­ing like cold, cold soup in this weath­er, and just the sight of my pre­cious pur­ple bowl gives me joy.

And that, my friends, brings you up to date!  Tomor­row will see us in our car, lunch­es packed, pod­casts down­loaded, bags stuffed with presents brought from Lon­don, for The Great Road Trip of 2018, which quixot­ic project will see us dri­ving 2500 miles in 10 days, to Indi­ana to see my moth­er for her birth­day, to Iowa to see John’s mom, and then dri­ving back.  This will go down in his­to­ry either as the awe­somest idea ever, or a mem­o­ry we just want to put in a deep, dark draw­er, and get on a sen­si­ble air­plane (or six) next sum­mer.  We’ll keep you posted!