Hickory Nut Pie

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This week, we only had a short respite from the snow. With another snowfall under our belt, it has been rather frustrating to complete our Fall farming chores. However, there is still much to do inside. So this time, we decided to tackle our Hickory nuts foraged earlier this past September.

We discovered the Hickory Nut when we first arrived on the farm over two years ago now. It is a delicacy somewhat unique to the region as the trees (the Shagbark Hickory) thrive in the small patch of Carolinian forest of the region.

Foraged Hickory Nuts

Having been left to cure for the past couple of months, the husk of the nuts had turned black and it was now time to process them.

The nuts are ready to process.

Husking Hickory nuts is a rather simple process. These things are designed to open up when the nut falls from the trees. They separate along the ridged lines of the husk. If for any reason they prove difficult, a light hammering of the top of the nut splits the husk in four sections.

If necessary, a light hit to the top of the nut releases it from the husk.

With the nuts released from their husk, the next step is to wash them. At this point, we also separate the good nuts from what we suspect are the "bad" ones. Nuts that float typically have very little flesh or have been compromised by insects. With foraged wild nuts, you should not be surprised if that amounts to a large percentage of your harvest.

The nuts are washed and sorted for "floaters".

Cracking of the Hickory nut is perhaps the most difficult part of the process. The nut is very hard and the flesh is actually separated inside the nut with rigid sturdy shell walls. Conventional nutcrackers will not do, so we use a slab of concrete and a heavy hammer.

Cracking the nut is a arduous and difficult process.

Laying the nut on its flat side makes it easier to break, but the result is a mess of broken shell and mashed flesh. The trick is to actually crack it on its narrow side. It makes the nut difficult to hold, but you are much more likely to be able to extract large pieces of nut from the shell.

Shelled Hickory Nuts ready to be enjoyed.

Once shelled, we found it is absolutely critical and necessary to sort through the flesh for any additional little pieces of shell. No matter how small, they are so hard that they could seriously hurt your teeth.

We found that one of the better ways to enjoy Hickory Nuts is in the form of a pie. Since their taste is akin to the Pecan, our pie recipe is based on a traditional Pecan pie.

For two cups of nuts, we use:

• 3/4 stick of unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 3/4 cup of corn syrup
• 2 tsp. of vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp. of salt
• 3 large eggs

In a pan, we melt our butter and combine the brown sugar, salt, and vanilla. Over medium heat we dilute the sugar in the butter and bring it to a creamy, syrupy consistency. To this, we then add the corn syrup.

In a separate bowl, we whisk our eggs and then add the corn syrup mixture.

In a prepared pie shell, we place our nuts and then cover with the egg/corn syrup mixture.

The whole thing is baked at 350 deg. F for about 50 minutes or until the filling firms up. As the pie bakes, the filling with rise giving an indication of its readiness. Once cooled, the filling will flatten again and be nice and firm.

The result is a delicious seasonal tart which is wonderful with a dollop of Chantilly cream and a cup of coffee.

Hickory Nut pie...a great seasonal treat.

Elsewhere on the farm, our "tenant" bees were lucky to have been cared for before all this snow arrived. The bee hives have been insulated and we now have our first batch of Ridge Berry honey.

Luckily the bee hives for insulated before our first snow.

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Meanwhile, the family and our customers can finally enjoy our first batch of local honey.

Next Spring, we plan to tackle our own hives and learn the art of beekeeping.

We'll close this week with the return of the Wild Turkeys. Just in time for the American Thanksgiving and the Holiday season, these birds continue to roam our farm. They are beautiful and rather large birds. However they are also quite shy and make it rather diffifult to capture them on film. 

This week, we did manage to get quite close.

Wild Turkeys continue to visit in this Holiday season.

Snowed In

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With most of the snow now melted over the past 24 hours, you would not think it ....however the week was a complete "write off" from a farming point of view.

Although we were not as hard hit as up state New York (we did not get the "lake effects"), the amount of snow we did get transformed our Growing Dome into an igloo.

Not exactly easy to work on the farm in these conditions.

The net effect is that this week felt more like mid-Winter than Mid-Autumn. In fact, visiting Wild Turkeys made it really feel like Christmas.

Christmas Turkey anyone?

Surprisingly, for a passively heated greenhouse, the Dome itself is still producing. We are still growing Tomatoes; the Kale is doing rather well; and, we've even started to get new Eggplants.

Tomatoes are still ripening in the unheated Growing Dome

The Kale is still doing well (we need to pick it before it wilts)

Even Eggplants are fruiting.

Not being able to work outside, meant it was time to start our 2014 vintage of Kiwi Wine.

With our new fermenter, we are scaling up our production volumes and refining our recipes. Because this wine is technically a fruit Mead or Melomel, this means we are now processing local honey in rather large volumes.

Our wine batches now demand a lot of local honey.

Since we just finished the Kiwi harvest, we certainly had enough fruit on hand. After washing and processing (we cut both the stem and flower ends), we tend to freeze them for future use. This week, we decided to use a few kilos to prepare our wine.

Frozen Kiwis ready to be turned to wine.

Our process is rather simple. After boiling honey and water, we combine the solution with our Kiwis. To this, we just add a wine yeast and wait, 4 weeks for the first fermentation and at least another 4 weeks racked.

As we scale up this year, we did encounter an issue. We did not leave enough "head space" between our sealed lid and our mash. The result is another lesson learned!

After a night of fermentation, we found the kitchen smelled a lot like yeast and we began to hear a hissing noise from the fermenter. After a quick look, we realized that the wine in process was spewing through our airlock valve. Of course this lead to a massive clean-up...although we did not lose much.

Finally this week, we leave you with 3 videos created by the FeastON program of the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance. We're really proud to have participated in this program since it really reflects what we are trying to achieve here at the farm.

The first video is really a mini commercial for the farm.

The second video is a good description of what some of us aspire to do in Niagara.

The last video really expresses well what FeastON is all about.

A New Orchard

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This week, we were excited like children waiting to unwrap Christmas presents. The reason is that we were finally able to take delivery of our very own Apple trees. These were specifically grafted for us over a year and a half ago and they were now ready for planting.

As far as orchards go, our plans were to create a rather small one consisting of some 100 trees. However, the varieties we chose are rather uncommon.

The first step, once we had the trees on hand, was to keep the roots properly watered. We did this every day by soaking them in one of our rain barrels.

Keeping the saplings watered as we prepare our plot of land 

The next step, proved rather difficult. The concept was to create a grid of staggered rows. Simple enough, until you realize that we were aiming to establish our small orchard on a hill with three rather steep gradients of up to 20 feet.

After a tedious amount of measuring, we were able to plot out our planting holes using our backhoe. Since these Apples were grafted to dwarf trees, we decided to use staggered rows with a spacing of 10 feet.

In the distance, our new orchard is laid out and ready for planting.

We planted the trees with a mix of our soil and some horse manure. Luckily, we managed to accomplish the whole thing before the start of this year's first snow fall.

This new orchard consists of 10 varieties. Perhaps one of these is well known to some. The others are primarily old heirloom Apples with a couple of exceptions.

So here's what we got:

Cole's Quince: Known as Pear Apple or Quince Apple, this variety dates from as early as 1806 in Cornish, Maine. Raised by Captain Henry Cole and described by his son in "American Fruit Trees" in 1849.

Cole's Quince

Golden Russet: Perhaps the best known of our varieties, this is of American origin from Burlington County, New Jersey in the 1700's.

Golden Russet

Kandil Sinap: This is a uniquely shaped Apple from the Crimea or Turkey, known in the 1800's but perhaps much older.

Kandil Sinap

Baldwin (Pecker): A monument was erected in Wilmington (near Lowell) Massachusetts in 1895 to the Baldwin Apple. It marks the estate where in 1793, Samuel Thompson discovered the first Pecker Apple tree (later called Baldwin) while locating the line for the Middlesex Canal.

Baldwin

Karmijn de Sonnaville: This is a variety bred by Piet de Sonnaville working in Wageningen in the Netherlands in 1949. It is a cross of Cox's Orange Pippin and the Jonathan.

Karmijn de Sonnaville

Browns Apple: This variety is originally from south Devon in England, from the early 1900's.

Browns Apple

Bulmers Norman: Originally from Normandy, France and developed by H.P. Bulmers (of Srongbow fame) in Hereford, England at the beginning of the 20th century.

Bulmers Norman

Michelin: Originated in Normandy in about 1872 with M. Legrand of Yvetot, Normandy. It was brought to Herefordshire in 1884.

Michelin

Kerry Irish Pippin: Originated in Ireland in 1802.

Kerry Irish Pippin

And finally, the Frostbite which originated in Minnesota in the 1940's.

Frostbite

This collection of Apples will be added to our 2 Empire and one McIntosh, along with our Crab Apple tree (which we have yet to identify) and our five old Pippin trees which we now believe to be Cox's Orange Pippin, based on the fruits we found this year.

Our very own Cox's Orange Pippin

You may wonder why these varieties. They will be for eating and cooking of course, but our key objective is to create a unique cider, perhaps resembling something which may have been in vogue in Victorian times.

We'll end this week with a picture of the farm as we now struggle with our first (and rather early) snowfall.

If this keeps up, it will become difficult to finish our Fall chores.

Our First Open House

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This week was a very busy one for us. For the first time in a while, it had nothing to do with farm chores, but rather our first open house. With hundreds of visitors, this turned out to be a rather successful event we are likely to repeat next year.

Tristan traded in his tractor for the BBQ, serving fresh sausages with some of our very own sauerkraut.

A farmer tuned cook.

Vendors were displaying their wares for Christmas, including our own gift baskets.

The transformed Tea Room was operating at capacity.

Native artist and spirit reader, Leona Skye was kept rather busy.

The most popular aspect of the three day event however turned out to be our house tour which was carried out to raise funds for the Welland Historical Museum. The tour focused on the history of the property and the two rooms allocated to our art glass gallery, where we focused on our Art Nouveau and Art Deco collections.

Explaining the architecture of our new home

We were overwhelmed during some of the touring sessions

Sharing our passion for art glass and the history of the old Victorian manor

Although we are still recovering from what became a very busy three days, we're already planning our next event: a Christmas Champagne High Tea to be held on December 6. Anyone interested should certainly call and book ahead of time!

Back to Trellising Kiwis

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When we first arrived at the farm in 2012, we knew we had some Kiwis growing on a small patch of our land. Having not been pruned for years, these had gone "feral" mixing with Wild Rose bushes, Wild Grapes and a variety of saplings, from Sumac to Mulberry.

Almost 2 years ago now we decided to attempt to tame these plants and enjoy their fruits. We experimented with pruning and trellises. We effectively tackled two rows of plants with about a dozen rows having been identified in the brush.

With two growing seasons under our belts, we now have a better handle on what we did right and what could have been improved. So this year we decided to at least free up another two rows... if not more. So along with our other tasks on the farm, we have been dedicating every morning to the Kiwis.

The objective is to have clean rows of trellised and pruned Kiwis from what is now effectively thick bush.

The objective is to get this.....

....from this!

The most tedious task is to free the Kiwi vines from the other feral plants, as well as from themselves. The Kiwi vines will grow upwards of 15 feet per year and will rapidly create an entangled mess.

Based on our past experience, we've learned that the best way to tackle this mess is to start from the bottom. It's almost like giving a hair cut to something that looks like Cousin It! We were somewhat shy to do too much cutting the first year; we now know that we can be quite aggressive with these plants. In fact, once on trellises, the vines can be pruned twice a year.

Based on out first row of trellises we've also learned that bringing a "bush" down to two mature vines will ensure fruit production for the following year. Since our trellises run from North to South, we send one vine North and the other South on one of our lines.

How we prune this mess has also come down to an art. There is very little and next to no information on how to prune "feral" Kiwis. So we have developed our own method.

We cut back each vine in a piecemeal manner, working our way up the vine and cutting at each junction. The objective is to get a healthy vine with at least two years of growth that has its start close to the original "trunk".

Working our way to two vines.

The whole process is daunting at first. In fact it can be quite confusing. What is important to note is that the diameter of the vine is not at all indicative of the age of the vine. Some vines will start to be one size and eventually split with a larger diameter the following year.

The most important thing to note is the colour of the wood. New vines will be light brown. In subsequent years, they will turn dark brown then grey. The much older portion of the vine will look dead with the outer bark flaking away. You should not be fooled by this as they will be very much alive. The vines that are actually dead will pull away easily like any other dead wood.

Colour differences with the age of the vine

What looks dead is actually very much alive

The reason we are paying a lot of attention to the age of the vines we prune is to ensure fruit production once we're done. Kiwi flowers and their fruits will occur on third year growth; this correlates to vines that have just become grey.

The final objective: two vines with 3 years of growth, starting close to the main root.

It's easy to see that this clean up of the vines is the most time consuming part of the process. The next step is rather easy: building and setting up the trellises.

Here again, we've learned a few things from our past experience. First, horizontal trellises work very well. They allow you to tame the growth of the vines while making Kiwi fruits easier to find and to harvest.

In fact, while clearing our first row this year, we discovered a lot of fruit still ripening. We would never have been able to find them in their current state. This time of year, the fruits are slightly wrinkled and really at their best (they make for a great sweet snack while working on them).

They wont last much longer, but the Kiwis are at their best this time of year.

When it comes to the trellises, we've adopted pretty much the same methods we used in our first attempt. We start with 10 ft. 4x4 wood posts and 5 ft. 2x4 cross bars.

We found that the best way to mount the cross bars on the main post is to cut the 4x4 down 2 inches and to chisel away the width of the 2x4 (creating an L-shaped groove).

Chiseling away the end of a 4x4 post

We then prepare to mount the cross bars by drilling together the 4x4 and the 2x4 with two holes, one for a 3/8" mounting bolt and the other a 1/8" guide hole for a cable. both are 1" from the edge of the cross bar.

Drilling away at the guiding wholes for both center cable and mounting bolt

We are not very accurate in this process and we really do not need to be. Once the holes are drilled, the cross bar and post are permanently matched.

The last step to prepare our trellis is to drill the other cable guide holes in the cross bar. These are one foot apart and in the center of the bar, resulting in a total of 5 cable holes.  

It's now time to install the trellis. Technically the posts should be 15 feet apart and so should the vines. We basically have to make due with what has been planted. Although the rows seem to be 15 feet apart, this is definitely not the case between the vines of each row. We have some that are much closer together; we also have some rows with gaping holes.

Since we are not prepared to uproot a well established vine, we've decided to work around this when positioning our trellises. We've also discovered a significant amount of new vines. It seems that the Kiwis have self propagated in many places. They do this almost like a Grape vine would. This provides us with new vines to transplant where we have gaps in our rows.

Small field of new growth ready for transplant

To install the post, we use an auger and drill roughly 3 feet. We are quite lucky to have sandy soil devoid of rocks. It is still however a pretty arduous task.

Drilling a post hole

The depth of the hole ensures that our posts will be 7 feet above the ground. The exact height is again not that important. Our plot of land is not level. The Kiwi plot is a hilly outpost nestled between a creek and our "beaver pond". Since the cables we use are easy to work with, we can accommodate the variations in grade.

The posts are simply dropped into the hole and back-filled with sand. We find that they hold quite well based on our first installation.

The last step is to mount the cross bars and install the cabling. The cables we use are made of a Polyamide resin. We find this to be much easier to work with than metal. In fact, we've adopted this material for all of our trellising needs around the farm.  It maintains tension very well, regardless of temperature and it is very easy to install.

To obtain tension on the lines, we did change a few things. First, we drilled our end post 1 foot below the top to install an eye bolt. On the ground, we installed a 24 inch trellis anchor at a distance equivalent to the height of the eye bolt (giving us a 45 degree angle on the main tension cable). We used standard trellis gripples and tensioning cables to complete the installation at the two end posts.

End post tension cable

In order to tension the Polyamide cables on the cross bars, our first installations used a wire vice grip. These had to be installed on the end post cross bars with specially drilled holes and proved to be not entirely reliable.

Original vice grip installation

This year, we decided to adopt a cheaper, easier concept: simple tension gripples. Perhaps not as "neat", using these small devices provides a lot more flexibility at almost half the price.

New end post tensioning gripples

Although we are now facing huge piles of cuttings, the end result is something we can be proud of. We know next year that these Kiwi vines will not only provide fruits but that these will also be accessible.

One cleaned out row leaves a mess of cuttings

We'll close this week's blog entry with a quick update on our Growing Dome.

The weather has turned cold and of course we've already had our first snow fall. In the dome, we're actually still harvesting heirloom tomatoes and some plants are still flowering. The Kale is also doing rather well. We're now thinking of planting some cold weather crops to see how they will do over the coming months.

Still producing Tomatoes in our unheated greenhouse dome