“The Distance Between Us” – vocals and fiddle with The Molloy Family Album. Adobe Books, San Francisco, 7/6/’08.

“Ani” – cello with Chris Brocco. The Tannery, Santa Cruz, 4/5/’08.

“Sick Satellites” – saw with The Molloy Family Album. The Tannery, Santa Cruz, 4/5/’08.

“The Distance Between Us” – vocals and fiddle with The Molloy Family Album. The Tannery, Santa Cruz, 4/5/’08.

“Thy Darkness” – fiddle with The Molloy Family Album. The Tannery, Santa Cruz, 4/5/’08.

“Waiting” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“Waiting” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“Jameson” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“The Boy and Roberta” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“Cleo” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“All I Need” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“A Turn Around” – fiddle with Vince Mtz. & The Great Blue Yonder. Cafe International, San Francisco, 2/15/’08.

“Two Goliaths” – fiddle with The Molloy Family Album. Edinburgh Castle, San Francisco, 8/30/’07.

Having copious amounts of delicious, quality honey is one of the things that makes staying at a bee farm worth the stings. This is honey that sells for $18 a quart or so, so having it at my disposal for free is a real luxury. I started playing around with baking with it, and the best thing I’ve pulled off so far is this honey whole wheat bread. I chose a really dark and richly flavored cat’s claw & mesquite for this bread, which comes out with subtlety in the bread.

Honey Wheat Bread

• 500g whole wheat flour

• 230g all purpose flour, extra for kneading
• 345g warm water
• 170g milk
• 50g cat’s claw/mesquite honey (or any dark, flavorful honey), extra for glaze
• 10g (3 tsp) yeast
• small amount of butter for glazing

Dissolve the yeast with the warm water in a large bowl. The water should be just above body temperature.

Add whole wheat flour, milk, honey and salt. Mix with a wooden spoon until combined. Begin adding all purpose flour one cup at a time until a doughy consistency is attained and the mixture pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Transfer your dough to a floured board. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 – 15 minutes. Once kneading is complete, form the dough into a tight ball and place into a large greased bowl. Put the top side down first, then flip it over to grease the whole loaf.

Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 90 minutes.

Once risen, punch down dough, deflating and pressing the air bubbles out of it. Cut the dough into two equal pieces with a sharp knife or bench scraper. Form each into a ball then stretch it out into an oval shape. Lay each into a greased 9×5″ loaf pan.

Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 60 minutes. Halfway into the rising time, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Just before baking, melt a small amount of butter and honey together and brush over the top of each loaf. Slash the top of the loaves with a sharp knife or razor.

Put the bread onto a center rack of your oven and bake until evenly browned, about 45 minutes.

As soon as I got back I wanted to drink something cool and refreshing that was not water, which I’ve had plenty of. The big watermelon recently harvested from the garden was practically begging to be turned into aguas frescas.

I remember having a great agua de sandía at a Cuban restaurant in San Francisco, and from what I can remember, it was just watermelon, lime, mint and a sweetener, all of which was on hand.

The ingredients were all home grown here at Bee Chama Honey Farm, with the exception of some random key limes I found in the fridge. And, being on a bee farm and all, I picked a light, candy-like meadowfoam honey to sweeten the drink.

The hardest part was picking seeds out of the watermelon, which I am apparently no pro at. After managing to get some watermelon satisfactorily liquefied, I added two key limes, a sprig of mint, and honey. It turned out great, but being one who can’t stop from experimenting with chilies lately, a threw in a pinch of roasted red chili powder to my glass. Then it was perfect.

Agua de Sandía

• 1 seeded watermelon – as much of it as will fit in your blender
  
• Sprig of fresh mint
  
• Two key limes, peeled and seeded
  
• Light, sweet honey to taste (approx. 1 cup)
  
• Roasted red chili powder to taste
  

Chop the seeded watermelon into small chunks and blend until liquified. Add mint and limes and blend until incorporated. Add honey a bit at a time to taste. Add a small amount of chili powder if the mood strikes you.

So imagine my confusion when I was to bake in Earth Mountain Farm’s outdoor kitchen (unclean!) with a wood fired stove and just the bare possible minimum baking equipment. My only measuring device was a glass liquid measuring cup – fine for liquids, but inaccurate for dry ingredients. No teaspoons, tablespoons or scales. No oven thermometer. I was scared.

I decided to make scones again, because I make them so often I feel like I could eye the right mix of ingredients pretty well. I rummaged around the pantry until I found some chocolate chips, pecans and shredded coconut, which I thought would make a pretty tasty scone.

We heated up the wood fired cob horno, and waited while it heated up for a few hours. There was no way to say what the temperature was, but pretty hot would cover it. While I was waiting, I got inspired to make some carrot muffins from some of the amazingly sweet and yummy carrots growing in the garden.

Cob Horno

I should also mention that I’m used to baking at sea level, and here I was around 8,000 feet higher. Things didn’t quite rise like I’d hoped, but they rose enough to be good. What we managed to keep from eating ourselves, we saved to sell at the farmer’s market and blues festival the next day. Oh, and I also managed to assemble about a hundred veggie burritos to sell as well.

Happily I averted any serious baking disasters. But I had one more challenge before I left the farm – it was one of the other volunteer’s birthday, and we were planning a little dinner celebration. I was asked to make the cake – oh, and without flour and butter, if I could help it.

I could eat something with flour in it every day, maybe even three times a day, for the rest of my life and never have any ill will toward it. I go through massive bags of it at home, and it’s the first thing I go to when asked to make a cake. Here a few people were saying they were still on flour overload from the muffins and scones, so a flourless cake was in order.

I admit I used a little flour – just a few tablespoons! – but I did manage to steer clear of butter. To keep the cake from becoming a big rectangle of fudge, I whipped egg whites to a fairly stiff meringue using a whisk that you hand crank. It was some serious work and made me miss my KitchenAid a lot. That got folded into the batter and popped into the wood oven.

The cake was looking quite beautiful – rose just a little bit, then started to set nicely – until I tried to take it out to poke at it and accidentally hit the top against one of the wire racks. So now it had a little scar… no big deal. I left it in and decided not to fuss over it for a while. But one of the problems with the wood oven is that its temperature fluctuates wildly depending on what’s happening in the burner. I guess the fire got fed and things heated up, because before I knew it the outside was a little burned.

So it wouldn’t be the most beautiful cake ever, and I hadn’t made any plans to frost it. Oh well! I was confident it would be tasty anyway. We couldn’t find any birthday candles, but a couple of tea lights stood in. I served it with a jar of home made peach butter, and despite it all, it was rich, chocolaty, and great.

My favorite thing, and what I was there to see, was the Sheep to Shawl demonstration. There were a few young angora goats being sheared at top speed by a professional sheep shearer, who I’ll get to work with for a day at the end of this month. Should be exciting and chaotic.

Shearing – looks more traumatic than it is.

Next to this was a spinning demonstration. After the freshly sheared wool is cleaned and carded (combing to align the fibers), the long strands of it are spun into yarn. There are different types of spinning wheels or spindles, and the one pictured below is foot peddle powered.

Judy spinning yarn.
  

Once it’s been spun, it looks like the yarn we’re used to. There was a demonstration of natural dyes that was pretty impressive. They were using different flowers, herbs, barks, bugs, and minerals to get different the yarn different colors.

  

Natural dye color spectrum.

There was, of course, a store where you could buy a bunch of knitted and woven things and hand spun yarns. It was a challenge to leave without a bunch of yarn, but fortunately my suitcase is so close to bursting that I couldn’t dare add anything to it. That and the sheep rancher I’m staying with will probably let me take some to knit for him. Weaving looked really impressive and made me wonder if I shouldn’t buy a loom. Maybe one day.

Weaving loom.

While I was helping at the Earth Mountain farmer’s market stand, I had a chance to meet some of the other vendors. One of them was Cynthia Cronan of the Capra Collina goat dairy. Their booth held samples of some amazing fresh cheeses, and we got to talking about our respective love for all things goat.

In a very lucky twist of fate, I was able to spend a couple of days at Capra Collina, meeting the people and goats behind the delicious cheeses. The first morning I was there began with a few hours of herding, which turned out to be a very different experience than what I’d expected. If you remember from my writing about the Gavilan ranch, goat herding there was basically a constant battle to keep the many, many goats from running away. Here, there were less than half as many goats, and all of them were very well behaved. It was more like taking a hike through the woods with the goats as companions.

One very exciting aspect of these walks was that there was a handful of sheep accompanying us, and I’ve been wanting to spend some time with sheep. They’re ridiculously cute with their tiny heads and legs and big fluffy bodies, their milk has a better nutritional profile than cows or goats, and, as if that wasn’t enough, they are made of meat and wool. These guys were here strictly as meat sheep, but I was happy to see them nonetheless. Whether or not they were happy to see me is up for debate. One approached me a few times to sniff and try to eat my camera, but otherwise they chose to avoid me entirely.

  
Sheep do not like having their pictures taken.

The milking here is done by machine, which I was skeptical of at first. I enjoy hand milking and always thought it might be gentler than a machine, but the goats here seemed perfectly comfortable with it. And it was a lot — LOT — faster.

  
The machine.

The milk here is largely turned into cheese to sell to the public. And since they don’t pasteurize, selling becomes a little bit complicated. Instead of exchanging a bit of cheese for a bit of cash and being done with it, people are sold “shares” of goats. They’re basically becoming a very minor shareholder of the farm, and therefore an owner of the goats, and therefore they can legally buy the raw products of said goats. It’s a little confusing, but these are the hoops small dairies have to jump through to stay within the law until better legislation is passed. Capra Collina is a member of the Raw Milk Association of Colorado, group of raw milk advocates.

They specialize in chèvre, a very simple goat cheese that is fresh, soft and spreadable. It has a pleasantly neutral flavor which makes it work in a seemingly endless variety of situations. They really do put it on everything – it comes out with the pancakes at breakfast, gets chips dunked into it for a snack, gets spread on baked potatoes and tacos for dinner… my regret is that I didn’t have a chance to try it in a dessert context, but I’ve got a feeling it would make an excellent base for a tart filling.

Their other main cheese is a feta preserved in a flavored oil (I tried it with oregano and it was really delicious). It has a much more distinct flavor than the chèvre, and goes great with salads, and I was happy to just eat it by itself.

They put a lot of work into making their cheese taste its best, and their samples are good enough to sway anyone. It doesn’t hurt that they make an effort to have great presentation as well, decorating their jars and cheese blocks with wild harvested herbs and flowers. Visiting was a great (and delicious) experience, and only furthers my new desire to have goats wherever I end up.

Since last I wrote, I’ve moved around a bit. I got inspired to keep traveling while I have the chance, and found Earth Mountain Farm in southeastern Colorado to visit. I’ve been there for the past two weeks or so, living completely off the grid in a handmade tipi.

This has been quite an experience for me – the first time in quite a while that I’ve lived without those silly luxuries like running water and electricity for any length of time. It’s surprisingly comfortable now that I’ve settled in, though. Solar panels provide enough power to have lights and occasional internet access, we cook on a wood stove and cob horno (a very cool oven), and there’s solar hot water for showers. Since I’ve arrived, there’s been plentiful rain, which is caught and used for dishes, showers, etc., and some is filtered for drinking water, and there’s a well for irrigation.

The farm (kinda) supports itself with a 20-member CSA (Community Supported Agriculture – sort of like a subscription to weekly produce) and farmer’s market sales, although the couple who run it have to work off the farm from time to time to keep money coming in. There’s been a lot of grant writing lately, and hopefully they will get some help from that.

One of my first tasks was to help build a tipi that would be raffled off as a fundraiser. As simple as they look, there’s a lot of work and skill involved in building these. Joni, one of the owners of the farm, interned with her very talented neighbor for a year to learn the craft, and now was able to make her own. She uses a high quality, waterproof fabric, and the wood for the posts is harvested from her land. I mostly helped by trying to keep the fabric from getting tangled in the old fashioned foot peddle sewing machine she used and sanding the rough spots off of the tipi poles.

Joni, tipi sewing.

We put it all together for the first time at the Trinidad Blues Festival where we were holding the raffle. It turned out looking great, and we sold plenty of tickets at $10 each. It was such a good fundraiser, she’s going to be raffling off a kid’s tipi soon.

This is monsoon season in the southwest, and it ended up pouring rain at the Blues Festival, which probably ended up being a selling point for the tipi. It may have been the only dry space on the grounds. You wouldn’t think it because tipis have a big hole at the very top, but they stay nice and dry. Thank god, because I’ve been sleeping in one every night, and haven’t woken up wet yet. The other great thing about them is that you can put a little wood stove in them and have the smokestack go up to the outside. It’s been really nice falling asleep next to a safe, warm fire every night.

I’ll be staying at Earth Mountain for only one more full day, then I’m leaving first thing Thursday morning to party all throughout Fiesta in Santa Fe. I’ll be a little sad to leave this place – everyone’s very open and welcoming, and there’s a really strong sense of community here. But, who knows, maybe I’ll be back. For now, there’s more exploring to do. After Santa Fe, I’ll be heading to a honey farm in southern NM and spending some quality time with bees.

We’ve finally worked things out where I can milk them without them putting up much of a fight. We give them a little bit of grain to distract them while we’re milking, but if you’re not done by the time they’ve eaten all of it, a lot of them will start to kick and beg for more food. I’ve gotten a little faster, but I’m no pro. There’s one goat in particular that has the tiniest teats of them all yet produces the most milk, which makes her a real pain. Literally – my hands hurt after I’m done with her.

Milking Dee

It’s a quick process once you get the hang of it, and I think it’s kind of fun. I’ve gotten to really like goats in my time here (yet, sadly, still don’t really like goat milk). They have pretty strong personalities and are really interesting to spend time around.

Once we have all the fresh goat milk, we take it back to the kitchen where it’s filtered. It’s a clean process, for the most part – we wash all the goats’ teats and the area around them before milking – however, hair and little bits of hay or whatever can get into the milk bucket. It’s just not possible to prevent that without a milking machine, and I’m a big fan of doing things by hand. It seems gentler and more personal. The filter will catch all the stray things that no one wants to drink.

Milk Filter

Once the milk’s clean, it goes into a glass jar that’s labeled with the date, and then is immediately refrigerated in a cold water bath to get it cooled down quickly (milk is warm when it comes out of the goat, but you knew that…). That’s pretty much it! Drink away or turn it into cheese as you will. This farm doesn’t pasteurize, which could be good or bad depending on who you ask. I’ve been drinking a lot of dairy here, and I haven’t really had any problems. It seems like the natural way to go for me, but I understand the bacterial concern.

A refrigerator full of fresh milk. The jars on the left with the more deeply colored portion floating at the top contain cow milk. The cream naturally separates, forming that “cream line,” while goat milk is more homogenized. You need a special machine that they don’t have here to separate goat cream, but I hear it’s delicious.