Happy Birthday Charlotte!

Charlotte turned 4 last week and was lucky enough to share the celebration with some of her favorite people. Since her birthday falls smack in the middle of strawberry season, we spent the week picking berries for her traditional cake, a three-layer strawberry shortcake. The festivities included goat watching, pea and wild blueberry picking, an ongoing game of croquet (sort of), and a few rounds of marshmallows toasted over our new fire pit. As the party wound down, Cha Cha invited everyone in to meet the newest members of our menagerie, her birthday fish Lucky and Sarah (yes, it’s her favorite name). Happy Birthday, little one!

What do you do at a farm birthday party? Pick peas!

Bea and her blue balloon

Family, cute kids birthday, birthday party

Sarah put on her dandelioned best for Bea’s party on Sunday

There isn’t a weekend that goes by now that I don’t wish had at least one extra day in it, and really two extra days: one to get a little bit more stuff done around the farm, and one just to recover. This past weekend was jam packed with parties and cakes, and we were able to squeeze some farm work in there as well.

Brooke’s amazing bridal shower cake/cupcake creation

On Saturday, Margaret and the girls headed down to Massachusetts for a bridal shower. If we ever open that bakery we’ve been talking about, our 11-year-old cousin Brooke will be our first hire for sure. Check out the cake and cupcakes she cooked up and decorated!

While the girls were in Mass., I headed North to the Fedco tree sale, where I picked up 3 new pear saplings, two apple saplings, and four high bush blueberries. I love the Fedco Tree Sale, but what I loved about it especially this year was picking up our pre-ordered trees seeing “Ten Apple Farm” written on the six foot tall paper bags containing the saplings, next to dozens of other bags with the names of other small farms and homesteads, each one clever, or sweet, or poignant. It was a great reminder that we are a small part of a greater movement taking place, with many people striving to make new (and old) connections to the land, to their food, and find a better way to live. The trees are sitting in our basement, roots wrapped in wet newspaper and sawdust, waiting to get put in the ground. We’ll write more about the trees and planting when we do get them in, later this week if all goes well.

The big event of the weekend was Bea’s 2nd birthday party. If there’s one thing we do well, it’s throw a kid’s birthday party. With birthdays in April and June, Charlotte and Bea will always be blessed to have some number of baby farm animals around for their parties, and so will never be wanting for a petting zoo. Between the baby goats romping around the yard, the the baby chicks in the backhouse, and all the kids taking it all in, with cupcakes no less, it was a day overflowing with cuteness.

Bea and Connor feed Lily and Nadine

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Karl's Birthday Spread

Karl turned 40 this week, and though he spent his actual birthday pruning the apple trees, on Saturday night we celebrated in style. Karl’s undergraduate degree is in Soviet Studies, and he spent some of his early twenties living in Russia, so we revisited his youth with delights that ranged from black bread and salo (cured pork fat, think Solzhenitsyn in the gulag) to caviar and blini. The boldest among us toasted him with vodka or kvass (thanks Pam!), and we all rocked out to the strains of Kino and Leningrad (thanks Robb!). A fine way to start his fifth decade!

I’ve had several requests for the recipe for his chocolate birthday cake. It’s one of my favorite desserts, from one of my favorite all-purpose cookbooks, New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant. The cake is dense, moist, and richly flavored. We’re still savoring the last few slices….

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I spent a good part of my birthday at Skillins Nursery, picking out perennials to add to our front garden. For all that we’ve plunged into on the farm, I still find myself timid when it comes to uprooting plants that came with the house. No matter that phlox has taken over most of the front, or that I’m not terribly fond of the 12-foot-long bed of orange daylilies that runs by the gate. I’ve just felt uneasy tearing out the gardens that someone—several owners and 20 or 30 years ago—worked so hard to create.

Despite the neglect that they’ve suffered over the past few years, the gardens are lovely, organized by height and staggered by season so that something is blossoming from early May to late September. In the spring there are peonies, poppies and ladies’ mantle, shifting towards the summer blooms of iris, roses and cheerful daisies and black-eyed susans. Now, there is an abundance of phlox, some stray echinacea, and a few unidentified purple flowers that seem to multiply exponentially each year.

One day in August, I started weeding, and I was soon overcome with gardening fervor. I’ve never really given much thought to flower gardens, loving cut flowers in the house but preferring vegetables and herbs in the ground. But lately, perhaps because the vegetable garden has gotten so wild this year, I’ve turned my sights to the perennials. It feels optimistic to put things in the ground now, knowing that they won’t bloom until next year, an affirmation of my faith in the future. So the girls and I loaded up the car with bee balm, delphinium, yarrow, and more daisies. We even grabbed a red rose bush, for good measure. A very happy birthday!

Garden birthday, Garden

Charlotte examines a special guest at the birthday party who is taking a rest on the top of her fairy princess strawberry cake.

It was beautiful sack race weather, but the sack races never actually happened. We discovered that when you put little kids and baby goats together in a field on a beautiful day- it’s a recipe for fun all by itself. The kids didn’t need any additional entertainment. They were happy to just run around in the sun. And eat cake. Read more…

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