Black Walnuts

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A few weeks ago we noted that black walnuts were part of our "wild harvest". We actually have a total of at least a half dozen trees growing on the property and this year, three of these produced sufficient nuts for us to harvest. Since these trees fruit every two years we can at least count on a similar harvest next year.

Two weeks ago, the nuts we had collected were "shucked" from their fruit and were washed. Now they should have cured and this week it was time to crack them open.

The shelling of the walnut is actually done in two steps. Because the black walnut has a very hard shell, your conventional nut cracker will definitely not do the trick. So the first step is cracking them open and this really requires a hammer and a very hard surface (in our case a small concrete slab did the trick).

The easiest thing to do at this point is to simply crack all of the nuts before moving on to the second stage.

Now things are just not that simple with black walnuts and things get trickier for this phase of the process.

Unlike its conventional cousin (the English walnut), the black walnut flesh is segmented into four parts (not two). Furthermore, the sections are separated by a thick wall which is as tough as any conventional nut shell.

This calls for a good pair of wire cutters. Making strategic snips around the flesh of the nut you are eventually able to "liberate" some rather large parts of the nut itself....of course this is time consuming and luckily we had our fair share of rain at the farm this week.

The "flotation test" during the washing of the nuts did not let us down and we ended up with a great yield. However we did make one fundamental mistake!

We did not test/taste a nut before getting right down to shelling all of them. It turns out they were still "green" and really not properly cured. The result: a very pungent tasting nut something resembling walnut and raw almond.

To solve this, we decided to place the nuts in an oven at just over 100 deg. Fahrenheit for about two hours (basically artificially curing them). This really had the desired results and we were finally able to use and enjoy this bounty.

Now technically you can use black walnut in all recipes calling for conventional walnuts. For the most part this involves a variety of baked goods.  However, we did find that the black walnut does have a very intense and distinctive taste. In fact some people call for using a quarter of what you would normally use in a conventional walnut recipe.

We decided to make a meal centered on the black walnut drawing on this strong and distinctive taste.

The appetizer consisted of baked brie. This was really easy. We topped a brie with a layer of our homemade black currant jam and then a layer of black walnuts, wrapped the whole thing in a flake pastry and baked.

 The results....well let's just say the baked brie did not last more than ten minutes after it was pulled from the oven.

For the main course we decided to make a black walnut pesto which would be served with fresh fettuccine pasta.

To make the pesto we combined fresh garlic, black walnuts, basil and some of our home grown parsley. All this was thoroughly blended with a virgin olive oil (basically we traded in the pine nuts for the black walnuts). After adding a touch of salt, the whole thing was tossed into our freshly made pasta.

The girls did not make this last either. It turns out that we prefer this pesto to the conventional recipe. Pine nuts have a very subtle flavour whereas the black walnut really adds a new dimension to this traditional pasta sauce.

To end it all, Morgan was inventive now that she is studying baking at the Niagara College Food and Wine Institute. She created desert which consisted of small black walnut cakes. The cakes were layered chocolate and vanilla sponge with a chocolate/black walnut butter cream. Just a touch of black walnut in these cakes and we instantly knew what they were; the taste is so distinctive.

Once again, these certainly did not last long!

To finish off on the black walnut cooking this week, we did our last preserve "experiment" for the country store. We made what we hope will eventually become Ridge Berry Farm Black Walnut "Confiture de Lait".

In the meantime, work on the Victorian manor continued and this week it was time to work on the Mansard roof. 

This activity brought to light a heart breaking discovery. After peeling away at least four layers of asphalt shingles, we discovered the remnants of what was the original Victorian roof around a couple of the dormer windows.

It was heart breaking because of the damaged caused to them, not by time or the weather, but because of the newer roofing layers added over the years.

The original roof was actually made of cedar shingles. They were not only of a tapered thickness but also cut in different finished ends (flat, triangular and semi-circular). The original roofers had used these shapes to create a pattern along the roof line. The entire roof was then painted a burgundy red (similar to what would have been the colour of the barn).

  

At this point we had to decide whether to restore (at least the dormers) or to simply renovate the roof. We had to opt for the latter and cover everything with a new asphalt shingle. It turns out that the cost involved in restoration would have amounted to a small fortune (something which we do not have) since each cedar shingle would have to be hand cut and individually nailed. This was the "heart breaking" part.

As a consolation, we have been collecting any shingle taken from the roof as well as the old hand-made square nails. It is amazing how some of these have held up over 130 years; the cedar looks like it just came out of Home Depot.

Although, rain was the major obstacle to this week's work around the farm. A couple of bright days allowed us to follow up on a few things. 

When we first arrived here, we were thrilled to have our own (albeit wild) asparagus. We had never seen asparagus transform into ferns before. This week they surprised us by also producing berries. These beautiful plants now look like delicate miniature Christmas trees....and this is what we will sign off with this week.

Getting Ready for Next Spring

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Much of our week has been dedicated to getting ready for next spring. Of course, this continues to involve clearing land. As well, we have been forced to prepare for new rows of canes or vines. This means more weeding. Regrettably some of those weeds are very persistent and have required some serious old-fashioned tools such as the pick ax.

In his haste to clear some of our front lot, Tristan was also rather embarrassed this week. Somehow he managed to back up the tractor in the portion of the forest that encompasses a swamp. The result was not pretty. He was seriously stuck and the more he tried to get out....the deeper he got in!

So how do you get a tractor out of a swamp? You call another farmer with a larger tractor for help. In this case, we called Bryan, our tenant farmer. He was kind enough to drive his Kubota over and Tristan was seriously thankful....but still more than embarrassed.

In anticipation of next Spring, we also took the opportunity to clean up one of our Arctic Kiwi rows. Although you can get a lot of information from the Internet on everything from trellises to planting and pruning, the difficulty here is that there are no directions on taming vines that have been left wild for well over ten years. Our problem is that since we weeded the Kiwis from grape vines and very thorny bushes, we were still left with what resembled a massive "ball of twine" (even though the Fall meant that the vines lost their leaves and we could see things a bit more clearly).

Our solution to this mess was simply to retain one very healthy vine from every root. It took a lot of cutting and sorting through the jumbled mess, however knowing what we will need for trellising we thought this our only hope. In the end, we just hope we have not been overly aggressive and killed these plants. 

Our plans for next spring also include more raised beds. The small success we have had in growing our own food has us determined to do more (we're thinking of a family competition). To do so, we decided to pull together at least 3 more raised beds with the wood remaining from our first efforts.

Our success with the raised beds has not been limited to the green tomatoes we reported on last week. In fact what has been truly a surprise is our celery.  It is tender, and much more flavourful, less "watery" and much less "stringy" than what you would normally find in a grocery store.

The problem with such a crop is what to do with it. Luckily, one simple recipe has become a family favorite over the years. It involves sliced celery and grilled Portobello  mushrooms. Simply salted to taste and tossed in virgin olive oil, they are served with coarsely shredded Parmesan cheese. Now that I have found out that celery is apparently a perennial, I have to say, we will never buy celery again and enjoy this combination many more times in the future.

As a PS, last week we talked about the versatility of green tomatoes. I forgot one more thing that can be done: leave them on the window sill to ripen! The results will definitely not be any worse than grocery bought tomatoes that have likely matured under similar circumstances..

Our experiments with preserves for the Tea Room and Country Market have continued. This week was an expansion of the "confiture de lait" effort we reported on last week. This time, we added a farm product and part of our "wild harvest". Prior to finishing the jam, we added ground hickory nuts which had been previously pan roasted. The results were delectable. 

Now our problem for next season is that we are completely out of Hickory nuts. Regrettably, we think that it will now be 2014 before any guest can have the experience of Ridge Berry Farm Hickory Nut "Confiture de Lait"! We now know what to do (and how to do it) so we hope to gather many more Hickory nuts next Fall.

On the home front, renovations to the Victorian manor continue and are progressing well. We have also started the "gutting" of our Victorian barn. The hope is to transform the Tea Room kitchen into a proper and safe cooking environment (one in which we can also produce our preserves). 

We also expect to transform what are effectively 2 garage bays into a country market (Opening Day if all goes well: 1 June 2013).

We have had some beautiful and warm autumn afternoons this week. Now that the Milk Weed pods are splitting and shedding their seeds, we will leave you this week with the Fall colours of the farm.

Green Tomatoes

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After recovering a large amount of green tomatoes from our raised bed last week, we were faced with the challenge of preserving and consuming them. Frankly, I had never tried these before and it turns out they are not the acidic fruit I expected them to be. So this week was primarily dedicated to this surprise harvest of green tomatoes.

The first attempt to use the green tomatoes came in the form of a pie. Unlike most other families in Canada we decided to celebrate our Thanksgiving dinner not with a pumpkin pie desert, but a green tomato pie.

Using a home-made shell (Christine is great at producing these), we prepared the filling very simply as you would an apple pie. This just entailed a mix of white and brown sugar, some cinnamon and a touch of flour to thicken the filling once cooked. The tomatoes themselves were just diced and mixed with these ingredients.

The result was quite a surprise. The pie was as good if not better than a home-made apple pie! In fact, the family consumed the entire thing before I could get a second taste.

We concluded that this could be a great desert for the coming winter months and decided to dice a few of our tomatoes for storage in what is now our packed freezer.

Obviously we still had quite a bit of tomatoes left, so we went on to try another recipe. This time it was green tomato relish. We shredded tomatoes, onions, green and red bell peppers. Using cheese cloth, we let the juices drain from this mixture and then added some celery seed and mustard seed. The whole thing was cooked with a combination of vinegar and sugar.

The result was actually quite pleasing. Although, I was not a fan of relish before, I've now developed a taste for it. Perhaps a British "thing", we found it went extremely well with a strong cheddar cheese.

Even though we used quite a few pounds of tomatoes and generated jars of relish (perhaps more than a year's worth!), we were still left with a lot produce. So another effort in canning was called for. This time: green tomato salsa.

In this case, we combined diced green tomatoes with diced red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, onions and cilantro. We added cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper along with a good dose of lime juice and vinegar. We boiled the mixture and after some simmering we were ready for more canning.

I have to say that this salsa is one of the best I have ever tried. Although we made quite a few jars, I think they will be consumed quite rapidly.

Of course, we still had more green tomatoes to consume! So one last recipe was called for.

This time we tried fried green tomatoes. Something new to most of us (although Candice had once tried these in  Louisianna). To make these, we prepared a batter of buttermilk and eggs. After dipping sliced green tomatoes in this batter, we covered them in a mixture of corn meal, salt and pepper.

We then simply pan fried the tomatoes roughly 5 minutes per side.

The results were once again surprising. These things tasted much better than they looked. So we decided to slice some of our green tomatoes in preparation for freezing (hoping they will hold out well) with the intention of having some of these at hand for future frying. My next challenge will be to develop a hot sauce for dipping.

In the end, I think we've come to two conclusions. First, you can grow a lot of food in a very small amount of space (we still have more green tomatoes to process!). Second green tomatoes are actually a very versatile food that can easily be transformed into a tasty treat.

Although harvesting is now mostly over, we can still take the time to pick a few things that remain on the land. This week, Grandma Scholaert came to the farm and had a thrill picking more green tomatoes (of course!), celery and parsley from the raised beds, but as well wild Rapini and arctic kiwis. In fact, when I thought we had pretty much picked everything, the kiwis have become more evident now that the vine leaves are falling. They are very ripe and still a pleasure to eat even so late in the season.

We continued with the development of our preserves this week. This time it was all about "confiture de lait" or milk jam (I have to admit, it does not sound appetizing in English). Confiture de Lait is originally from Normandy and being half-Normand, I had to give it a try.

The legend is that this was developed by one of Napoleon's army cooks. Of course, the discovery was the result of a mistake. The cook had left sweetened milk on his stove and returned to find what would eventually become "confiture de lait".

This preserve is very similar to "dulce de leche" which is very popular in Latin America. The primary difference is that the latter uses concentrated milk and does not usually include vanilla.

This brings me to the ingredients; very simply, they are milk (NOT skimmed or partly skimmed but as whole as you can get it), sugar and vanilla. I combined 1 litre of milk with 1/2 kg of sugar and a vanilla pod. You simply bring this to a boil, skim the residue that forms on the surface and then bring it to a simmer. 

The next step is perhaps the most tedious. It will take 1 1/2 to 2 hours to achieve the desired caramel brown colour and consistency. By this time your ingredients will have reduced to no more than 1/2 litre. During this period it is very important to keep watch on the mixture stirring consistently at least every 10 minutes.

The result is a really decadent caramel!

The trick now is to incorporate produce from the farm. I have a few things in mind, the first being the nuts that are so abundant. Right now the Black Walnuts are curing, but in the next two weeks, I am looking to create something special which I think will be a delicious topping to scones for our Tea House.

Our work on the land also continues and mostly we are still cleaning the forward half of the farm. The immediate results are amazing and I think we've already tripled the fruit production area. Now we face the difficult task of deciding what to plant and in which proportions. Already planned for next spring are black currants, red and yellow raspberries, red gooseberries and two varieties of cider apples. This alone encompasses more than a thousand plants and I'm afraid we will have reached our planting capacity ....but definitely not the land capacity. 

I leave this week with a very common sight in this part of the world, particularly in the fall. This is the Blue Jay. Now that they have paired, these birds can be seen flying all around the property, competing rather aggressively with bright red Cardinals.

Renovating a Victorian Manor

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We have not talked much about the old Victorian Manor in the past weeks. After tearing away at some walls and flooring, it was time to decide how we would approach this major project.

Before discussing the project, I wanted to highlight one final key aspect of the house which really suggests the fact that it was itself a "renovation" of an older homestead. This is all revealed in the back walls.

The brick walls of a Victorian home are not just decorative; they are structural. The walls of our home consists of 3 layers of bricks and they are retained by metal anchors and long metal rods crossing the width of the house. These anchors are very evident on the outside walls as large circular metal plates.

The reason, I mention this is that while stripping the back walls, we discovered a fourth brick wall! This wall was actually part of the older home around which this manor was built.

In the process (and to our dismay), we also discovered that our Mansard roof was leaking. This really put the pressure on getting the renovations started and we finally decided to employ a local contractor, Doug Tucker Constructions.

The scope of their project (the first phase of the work we intend to do) now includes: a new Mansard roof, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (one of which is currently a laundry room), a new hallway (linking the upper halves of the manor), a new mechanical room (to provide for air conditioning), a refinished main entrance way and upstairs hall, and finally (something we debated much) an opening of the ceiling directly under the "widow's walk".

To give a sense of what we are starting with (and the mess we are currently living in), we have prepared some "before" pictures.

 As indicated earlier, the big debate was the ceiling just below the widow's walk. This room from the outside seemed purely decorative. It was not readily accessible (just an attic-like hatch) and not very usable (the size would make it only adaptable to storage).

In the end, we decided to completely open up the space. The fellows from Tucker quickly got onto the project and already we feel we made a great decision. Although not finished we already are awed by the effect this change has made to the upstairs hall.

On the farming front, Tristan and I are continuing to clear the land...and there is so much to do. This week we demolished our old "Bush Hog" (a glorified lawn mower/brush cutter).

Tristan was thrilled when we bought a new one and had it delivered. Now we're right back at it and really opening up the land.

In the process of clearing land, we are also learning quite a bit about heavy machinery. This week we were introduced to the "Stumper", a very heavy machine that basically "shaves" tree stumps 6 inches into the ground. After a few painful trials, Tristan actually managed to clear all of the tree stumps in our planned orchard.

Harvesting actually also continued this week. First, I was lucky enough to outdo Francesco on my own mushroom hunt. After a few walks into the forest, I returned with more mushroom than we could possibly eat (4 1/2 pounds of it, all in just 2 mushrooms!).

The question was what to do with it all. One solution was mushroom soup. Milk, butter, salt and pepper to taste, and the result is a delicious soup with the mushroom taking on the texture of tofu.

Christine's "eagle eyes" did not fail us this week as she discovered more kiwi's in our "Canadian jungle". I thought we had picked all we could, but was rather surprised when we came back with a large basket-full (I guess it's time for more preserves).

Afraid that we would be facing our first frost this week, I decided it was time to recover all we could from the raised beds. Our best two pickers (Christine and Morgan) went out to recover all the green tomatoes, celery and kale we had. Although I expected a half bushel to come back, I was completely taken aback by the amount of tomatoes they were able to pick (and they tell me they still left some on the vines).

I now have to figure out what to do with all of these green tomatoes. Originally, I was thinking of salsa but this is well beyond my canning capacity! This being our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I have a couple of ideas which I hope to report on next week.

My personal challenge this week was the wheelbarrow of Black Walnuts. My experiments with Hickory completed, I now had to tackle these. Since the fruits were well ripened (turning black), it was time to "shuck" them. This was easily done by slicing the skin around the circumference and "squishing" the pit or nut out. I have heard of people actually wrapping these things in old linen and just driving over them to get the nut out of the fruit. I perhaps did it the tedious way, using my knife to clean the nut from the remaining flesh (almost like cleaning a peach stone).

Note that the Juglone excreted by the Black Walnut stains like you would not believe. Some of the nuts seemed to be oozing a black ink ready to be used by a fountain pen. As a result, gloves are essential (and for a matter of reference the gloves I put on were not exactly adequate).

Once this process was complete, it was just a matter of washing the nuts in water. Those that float probably indicate insufficient meat or that they have been compromised by pests. Unlike the Hickory, my yield here was much better.

This week, I was doing our nut processing under the watchful eye of a chipmunk....I pray he leaves these nuts alone since the next step is to simply let them cure for 2 weeks.

Finally, the preserve experiments continue and I think we now have the hang of it. I managed to produce a very well set low-sugar jelly; this week it was based on our Purple Raspberries and Baco Noir Wine. Of course, I use local wine from our township and in particular that of Henry of Pelham http://www.henryofpelham.com/ They really know how to process this North American grape. The result is actually very good and I am now thinking of all the fruit and wine combinations we could come up with for our tea house and country store.

I leave you this week, the way we end a lot of our evenings on the farm, walking the dogs down the lane that crosses the length of our property.