I had to show off our Christmas Card - simple and true, we are blessed!

Blessed Tidings Religious Christmas Card

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Thankful . . .

Thanksgiving is the time for realizing our blessings, and the Mattamuskeet Momma home is no exception.  I can't begin to list all of the things that I am thankful for - I think that I would go on for ever this morning, much to the dismay and tummy-growling of my boys.  But there are a few things that come to mind that I haven't been able to share since my long-ago last post.

I am thankful for my family - my three beautiful boys, my wonderful husband, our parents, our sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and all of those that touch our lives and make it better for the love that they share with us.  In this picture, my dad and my sister came to visit and we all worked together on the "family apple pie"  made with fresh, organic apples picked from  my mom and dad's trees.

It is, while in moments like these, that I stop and take a look around at every tiny detail  - the crisp smell of ripe apples, the tangy sweetness of the endless apple peel snakes, the excited chatter of the boys, my dad's rough hands carefully enclosing Eli's little ones as he helps him turn the apple peeler . . .  I try to burn these images into my memory forever, in the hopes of keeping them shiny and new and always within easy grasp, like a warm blanket to wrap around my shoulders on a chilly fall day.

 I am, of course, thankful for the bounty that our garden brings us.  I love the boys' shrieks of delight when they find "giant" vegetables nestled within leafy confines.  Cole had to have his picture taken with the asparagus beans that were "as big as him!"

I am thankful for beauty, wherever we may find it. My sunflowers, waving tall over my garden in the late summer never fail to put a smile on my face.

I am thankful for long, lazy days, where there is nothing better to do than just breathe in the goodness around you.

I am thankful for laughter, of which my boys provide me an abundance.  This is my three in their Halloween Costumes this year.  They were a hit as "The Duck Commanders," and their buckets were overflowing with candy by the end of the night.

And I am thankful for the little things in life, like long naps in the car with a belly full of hot doughnuts.

Take a look around you.  What are the things that you are thankful for?  Even on our worst days, there are always things to be found that make our lives worth living.  Blessings come in all shapes and sizes - make sure you count yours today and every day.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Walking the Walk

Having a backyard chicken flock has become extremely popular in recent years, and our backyard is no exception.  Every spring during our visit to the local Tractor Supply Store, my boys would beg me to bring home chicks.  Of course, I put them off for a few years with the "well, we have to build a chicken coop first" excuse.  But this spring, I decided to finally give in.  After all, we were committing to a sustainable lifestyle, and having our own fresh eggs, along with a troop of fertilizing, bug-picking machines was a textbook requirement.  So before the Chick Days kicked off for 2012, I got to work collecting pieces of leftover building materials around our place.  I looked at coop designs, constructed coops, and countless internet sites.  I found chicken tractors, chicken mansions, and strange homemade converted chicken coop contraptions.  Taking stock of what I had, and the time allotted to me with power tools and a toddler, I decided to convert a cold frame that my dad had helped me build a few years back.  Three afternoons with constant interruptions later, my chicken coop was complete.  We were ready to go get our chickens.  

Our all-recycled coop!

So, we headed out to Tractor Supply, the boys bouncing with excitement in the back of the minivan.  This is when I learned Chicken Lesson 1 - Never tell your children that you are going to get chicks if you are not 100% positive that there are chickens at the store.  The boys were devastated that there had been a run on chickens and there were no more chicks at that particular store.  They told us that there would be another shipment in a couple of days.  So I called another Tractor Supply about an hour and a half away.  "Do you have chickens?"  "Yes, plenty of them!" was the reply, so the Temples loaded back into the van and set off on our epic chicken adventure.  This is where I learned Chicken Lesson 2 - Never doubt that within an hour and a half there can be a run on chicks at the Tractor Supply Store. We emerged stiff legged and rump sore at the store, rushed to the chicken section, only to find - you guessed it - no chicks.  "What happened?  I just called!" I asked the sales associate.  She shrugged and said that a bunch of people had come in and bought chickens.  All of the chickens.  So, we headed back to Hyde County, the boys sniffling in the back seat the whole way.

After the weekend I called our local store again and found out that an order of assorted chicks was arriving mid-day.  We quietly loaded Eli and Greyson into the van, picked Cole up after school, and nonchalantly made our way to the store.  "Where are we going?" Cole asked.  "Umm, errands.  We have to run some errands," I said, a veteran of Lesson 1 and living in fear of Lesson 2.  We showed up at the store and found a feed trough full of black and yellow chicks.  They were Black Australorps, the chickens I wanted, but they were straight run and not the pullets I was hoping for.  Do you think I was going to leave that store without chicks based on the possibility of picking all roosters?   Lesson 3 - The possibility of going home with all roosters is preferable to going home for the third time with a car full of crying children.

So we picked out eight chicks, hoping they were all hens, and made our way home with a heat lamp, chick starter, more cedar shavings, a feeder and a waterer.  We got the little balls of fluff settled in the garden shed under the heat lamp and gathered around the box to stare at them.  For hours.  People joke about watching "chicken TV."  They aren't kidding.  Chickens are just about the coolest little things to watch, especially with kids.  The boys asked me all sorts of questions about how they eat, how they sleep, how they move, why they peep, and on and on.  We had more in-depth biology discussions over the course of a couple of hours than we have had over the last year.  

So the chickens grew and grew.  We kept them fed, watered, clean, dry, and tucked under their heat lamp when the nights got chilly.  Soon they moved into the coop we had worked so hard on.  We kept them shut in the coop for a couple of days, so they would know where to "come home to roost."  We let them pick bugs in the square run we had fenced in for them for a week.  Then, came the Big Day, when our little chickens became free ranging, and our yard became theirs.  We worried and watched over them all that day, and sure enough, as soon as the sun went down, all eight chickens were cuddled up in their coop.  We shut them up for the night, and so began our routine.  June and much of July passed with the dawning realization that we had five roosters and only three hens.  I knew that the day of reckoning was soon approaching, but I kept putting it off, even as the gangly young roosters began to harass our poor, out-numbered hens.  Then came the day when Eli was wandering outside and I noticed one of the roosters, we called him White Tail for the patchy white feathers that circled his tail, pranced a little aggressively his way.  As Eli is the same height as the roosters, this raised some concern.  As in, Holy-heck-are-the-chickens-going-to-peck-out-my-son's-eye concerns.  I got on Backyard Chickens and asked the incredibly helpful community what I should do with my chicken situation.  The resounding answer was to send my roosters to "freezer camp", at least four of them, if not all five, for the safety of my toddler.

Before I offend anyone who would cry "Why not give the roosters away to someone who needs them?" please understand that where I live, no one needs roosters!  The people who already have chickens have too many roosters, so relocation was not a factor.  But, still, I dragged my feet.  I kept a close eye on Eli every time I was outside with the chickens, which is almost impossible as he cruises around the yard like the RoadRunner, his little feet a blur.  Then came the evening when I was working in the garden and I asked Ed and the boys, who were picking figs for me, to keep an eye on Eli.  Of course he started to wander away as they were picking on the other side of the tree.  The mother's sixth sense kicked in, as a faint "chick, chick" carried to me across the late evening air.  My head jerked up from the weeding and, hoe in hand, I ran out of the garden.  Eli was standing a few steps from the fig tree, and White Tail was speeding across the yard - straight to him.  Screaming "No!  Eli!"  I bolted across the yard.  Cole and Ed heard me, and Cole ran straight to him from the other direction.  We both reached Eli just as White Tail, with puffed up chest, came toe to toe with my toddler.  Of course, when he saw a crazed mother with a hoe and a yelling six year old bearing down on him, he promptly took off.  Cole and I chased him until we were out of breath and he was far from Eli.  Honestly, if I could have gotten in a swing with my hoe, White Tail would have been history.    Regardless, I knew time was up.  Something had to be done.

My mom and dad were due for a visit that week.  Dad gets on the phone with me and says "I hear you need to kill some chickens.  I can help with that."  There is something, no matter how old you are, supremely comforting in the thought that your Dad will take care of whatever unpleasantness you need him to take care of.  Of course, Ed and Cole had said that they were going to kill the roosters for me.  Their method was going to be death by firing squad - Cole with his BB gun and Ed with number 6's.  But, when Dad said he was going to "take care of it" I knew that the roosters' days were indeed numbered.  

My parents arrived, and the next morning I was ready to go.  I was up at 6:30 and collectived all manner of utensils that I thought might come in handy.  When Dad came down the stairs, he found a pile of knives, rubber gloves, bowls, and cutting boards.  He took one knife from the pile and shook his head at the rest.  I was outside trying to determine which roosters were going to go.  There was one especially pretty rooster with a long, fancy tail that Ed and I said we should keep.  We figured if they were going to breed, then we should have the prettiest rooster.  The problem was that I was especially fond of Short Tail, a rooster that followed me around like a puppy looking for treats.  The whole rooster killing experience was hard enough without actually throwing in a chicken that I was genuinely fond of.  So, I decided that I would keep a spare rooster, in case something happened to one of them, and if they harassed the hens or started to fight, one of them would be dinner at a later date.  That said, I had to figure out which one was Short Tail, and not mix him up with another rooster who looked just like him.  Out in the pen that morning, I held out some bread and Short Tail came running up as usual.  As he cocked his head to look at me, I noticed that someone had pooped on his head that night, and a long streak of white marred his iridescent feathers.  It is amazing how providence works - who knew getting pooped on would lead to saving your life?

Dad was ready and told me to hand the roosters to him over the fence and he would take care of the rest.  Cole was hanging around and I told him to go inside.  He said no, but a look of panic began to overtake him as he saw me hand my dad the first rooster.  I told him again to go in the house, and he ran to the other side of the yard, where I assumed he would go into the house.  Dad stretched the rooster out on the almost horizontal trunk of our old pear tree, and I crouched in the chicken pen with my hands over my eyes.  I looked up after hearing the whack of the butcher knife, just in time to see the chicken leap from the pear tree and engage in its macabre death dance in the yard.  "It's still alive!"  I shrieked, but Dad said no, that's just what they do.  Regardless, the first sight of that was a little horrifying, even more so when Cole came running around the corner of the house to witness the hurky-jerky chicken dance.  Fortunately, I did not have to tell him to go into the house again.  My mom told me later that he blew into the house like a shot, took a deep breath and said "I'm fine, Ma.  I think I'm just going to stay inside."

My Dad and the results of his expert butchering.

After the first, it was easier, and soon we had three roosters killed cleanly.  Dad started to clean them, but I told him that this was where I stopped being a wimp.  As I didn't have a big outside burner for boiling water, we opted for skinning and cleaning the birds.  It was surprisingly quick and easy, and when we were done, we had some of the most beautiful chicken meat that I had ever seen.  We washed it off, put it in a container of salt water, and let them sit in the refrigerator to soak.  Just like that.  

We cooked it for dinner a couple of nights later, and it was the most amazing chicken that I had ever eaten.  Tender, juicy, and almost sweet.  And what made it taste even better was that I knew there were no chemicals in my chickens, there were no strange hands butchering and processing my chicken, there were no trucks and packaging and long hours of refrigeration.  They were my chickens - fat on garden scraps, bugs, and long, warm days grazing the green grass.  

To me, watching my children munching chicken legs and then going outside to water the five left in our little flock, it was an important moment.  It is well and good to talk about sustainability, and to garden and bake and preserve.  But, as a meat eater, raising my own meat and humanely harvesting it is one of the most important things that I have ever done.  That's when it finally felt real to me.  I wanted the chickens for the eggs and for the experiences, but I also had to do what a responsible flock owner needs to do.  It's not all cute coops and chicken pictures, it is indeed a responsibility to the health of my chickens and to my family.  And though it was not my hand wielding the knife, the next time it will be.  And I will be ok with that because, in this sustainable life, you must be prepared to walk the walk, even if you start with baby steps.  Chicken legs, anyone?

Getting Ready for Market Day

I am so sorry that I have not had a chance to write lately, and I have been trying to get a spare minute all week long to no avail!  But today is Friday, which has become the busiest day of the week - the day before the Farmer's Market.  Between my work with my non-profit, chasing after the boys, keeping up with chores, and baking and preserving up a storm, I'm ready to collapse into a heap on Friday nights now!  Just take a look at the preparations:

Our welcome sign for our customers.

Beautiful Candied Fig and Orange Preserves - they taste divine if I do say so myself.  There is something about the marriage between orange and fig that is a match made in heaven!

Baking, baking and more baking.!  I have twelve loaves wrapped and ready to go.  The Momma's Garden Herb Bread is my favorite, made with my organic garden herbs (basil, oregano, dill, parsley and my crushed garlic).  Ed loves the Roasted Sweet Pepper, which is chocked full of roasted Mattamuskeet Sweet Onions and my organic bell and sweet banana peppers.  And the Cinnamon Swirl, what can I say?  I actually hope that I don't sell it all because I make sinful French toast with any leftovers on Sunday mornings!

My mom and dad just came to visit this week and brought me  loads of juicy white and yellow peaches.  I blended this together with pure cane sugar and a little lemon juice and let it simmer to golden nectar.  There is something to be said for letting the flavor of pure, fresh ingredients take the lead, and this is an example of uncomplicated glory.

Ok, so you know me, I had to experiment just a bit!  I had beautiful lavender growing in my herb garden, and I couldn't resist blending it with my peach preserves just to see what  happened.  I made a test batch of Old Fashioned Peach, and steeped sprigs of English lavender in at the finish.  I removed the sprigs and stirred in some lavender flower buds to generate a random taste explosion throughout.  What resulted was a smooth rich peach flavor with a lingering floral essence reminiscent of an English garden a high tea.  I love it when an experiment works out!

So, dear readers, I will be back this weekend to fill you in on all of the happenings - the tomato horn worms, the chicken killings (long story!), and all of the rest of the homestead news.  See you soon!

Natural Born Salesmen

I had no idea that the boys were natural born salesmen.  I thought that I would have to coax them into talking to any customers who might come our way, that they might be too shy or nervous to speak with adults that they didn't know. Boy, was I wrong!

There they are, my two little entrepreneurs behind our first ever Mattamuskeet Momma table at the Belhaven Farmers' Market. We had decided earlier in the week that we would make our debut at the Market this weekend, so we worked diligently, putting the finishing touches on our preserves. We made twelve half-pint jars of beautiful, rich Blueberry Citrus Preserves that taste just like the warm center of fresh blueberry pie with soft notes of orange and lemon zest, and twelve half-pint jars of Seedless Blackberry Preserves, a deep purple spread with just a hint of lemon zest to complement its sweet-tart goodness. We used what ribbon we could find around the house to dress up the jars a little bit, and we packed them carefully in boxes for the trip into town. The boys whole-heartedly agreed that I should bake up some fluffy loaves of Cinnamon Swirl Bread because "that was their favorite and people would want to buy it from us", so I stirred, kneaded, and baked 6 rolls of soft bread swirled throughout with melted butter, sugar, and cinnamon. We wrapped it fresh from the oven late Friday afternoon, placed our labels and ingredients stickers on top, and we were ready to go.

The Belhaven Farmers' Market is open on Fridays and Saturdays, and of course the boys wanted to go both days.  Thunderstorms had plagued us off and on all day Friday, but by 4:00, the sun finally started to peek out.  We decided to chance it.  We were the only ones at the Market when we arrived at 5:00, but, buoyed by the excitement of our new enterprise, we quickly set up shop and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Every time someone drove by slowly and looked our way, the boys screeched "Look, it's a customer!" only to say "Oh.  Nevermind,"  as the car continued on.  Eli kept himself entertained by building small mountains in the gravel that covered the ground.  Finally, a car turned into the market, and a nice man walked up.  To us.  Our first customer!  Mr. Julian Goff was a wonderfully sweet man who decided to try our bread and preserves.  He couldn't have come at a better time, as the boys who had earlier been flying high on enthusiasm, began to wilt with the evening humidity and lack of excitement.  We thanked him for coming to see us, and then we went back to waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  At about 6:30 I decided to throw in the towel, my decision aided by lack of traffic and the tired grumpiness that was beginning to over take the boys.  Though we only had one customer, I still felt that the evening was a success just because  we actually did it.  It is one thing to talk about making things and selling them at the Farmers' Market, but it is an entirely different thing to load up three little boys, our inventory, and all of the other necessities for a long wait on a warm summer's evening and actually go out there!  The evening was made even more of a success when I returned home and found that Mr. Goff had visited this blog and left an incredibly warm comment about our food and my boys, and I will always be thankful for his thoughtfulness.

The boys begged to try it again on Saturday morning, and 8 o'clock found us back in the parking lot of the Farmers' Market, this time greeted by a whole different scene.  There was a hustle and bustle of set-up at the front stalls, and Cole, Greyson, Eli and I grabbed our things and headed for an empty table.  We heard a lady ask us if we were setting up, and we said "Yes!" in all of our goofy excitedness.  She gave us a searching look, and began to explain the market to us.  All I can say is, thank goodness for Elizabeth Gurganus!  In my eagerness to begin our Market experience, and not being able to find a thing on the Town of Belhaven's website about the Market, I just assumed you showed up, grabbed a table and sold stuff.  No, no, no.  The tables all belonged to vendors, the stalls were rented by vendors by the day or by the month, and we needed to go visit the Market manager and register.  Seeing the deflated faces of my boys, Elizabeth took care of us and pulled an extra table from the back of her van.  She helped us set up, and introduced us to everyone.  She makes beautiful hand-made jewelry, purses, aprons, and all manner of pretty and useful items - from wallets, to bibs, and so many other items is a gorgeous array of fabrics.    Heike, in the next stall down, sold a lovely array of art, from bird houses to pillows to stepping stones.  Beverly was the main attraction of the morning, however, with her fresh blueberries and mouth-watering baked goods and preserves.  

Archie and some of his beautiful local produce.

With the added vendors on this Saturday morning, there was much more traffic coming in and out of the market, and the boys were soon caught up with the buzz of activity.  So many people to talk to and see, and yes, customers even came to visit our little borrowed table!  The boys were ready this morning, and when the first person showed interest in our goods, Cole asked, "Would you like to buy our bread or our jam?  It's really good."  Greyson piped in "Yes, and if you buy one thing its $5, and if you buy two things, then it's $10.  Don't you want to buy two things?"  I had to put my hand over my mouth so I didn't laugh at loud at their earnest sales pitch.  And this was no fluke, but instead, was repeated over and over again during the morning with no coaching from me.  It was nice to see how seriously the boys were taking our venture, and the responsibility that they felt for selling the things that we made.  Or maybe it was just the visions of the Legos they wanted to buy with their share of the profits that had them so fired up.  I wasn't looking the gift horse in the mouth.

We stayed until about 10 o'clock, and then we packed up and headed off on a supply-buying trip to Greenville.  I had a table to buy, among other things!  We had a great first weekend at the Market. We met some amazingly nice people, vendors and customers alike.  Everyone was warm and kind, and made us feel welcome right from the start.  At the Market, even if it was for a brief couple of hours, I felt like the four of us were a part of something that we could be proud of.  It was a great feeling.  

I want to thank any of our customers who might be reading this for supporting us in our fledgling efforts at local food commerce, and please tell me what you think of our preserves and bread in the comments section.  The boys and I are already hard at work for the coming weekend, where we will have some new bread and preserves varieties.  We spent last evening picking figs from our monstrous ancient fig trees, and we will be making half-pint after half-pint of glorious golden jam.  See you on Saturday!

Just Off the Boat

Summertime in Hyde County means an abundance of food of all sorts. Beautiful vegetables and fruits flourish in our dark soil, and my boys and I have been enjoying a steady stream from our gardens and local farms. My favorite local summertime food doesn't plant its roots in our fertile earth, however, but can be instead found in the rich waters of the Pamlico Sound that hug our coastline. That's right, I'm talking about shrimp!

The Pamlico Sound stretches over an area of 1700 square miles, and due to a maze of shifting shoals, its depth averages about 15 feet.  Receiving freshwater from the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers and the Albemarle Sound, as well as saltwater from the ocean through multiple inlets, the Pamlico Sound offers a mix of habitats that supports a wide array of aquatic species.  About one-half of the entire state's shrimp production comes from the Sound and its tributaries.  The two most commonly harvested shrimp species in our area are the brown shrimp and the white shrimp, with the brown shrimp moving through the Sound in July and August, and the white shrimp following in September and October.  

So a hankering for steamed shrimp made me round up the boys and head on down to Engelhard.  A short 20 minute drive had us at the docks of Williams Seafood, the place we go every summer for mounds and mounds of beautiful fresh shrimp just off the boat, and today was no exception.

You have to feel great when you pull up somewhere for fresh seafood and this is the first thing that you see.  It can't get any better than this, unless you were actually eating them on the boats fresh out of the nets!  An assembly line efficiently hauled the precious cargo onto the dock, where they were placed into buckets of fresh, icy water, rinsed and drained.

From there, they were transferred to the sorting tables, where a quick-fingered crew de-headed and sorted the icy shrimp.  Cole and Greyson watched the entire operation with rapt attention, and when I asked them what they thought of what they were seeing, Greyson said that he "bet everyone sure had some cold fingers."  I would have to agree with him there!

We left Williams Seafood with 10 pounds of beautiful shrimp and great big smiles on our faces.  As I loaded up the boys for the ride home, I told them that I had "fun, fun, FUN!"  and Cole said, "Mom, why do you sound excited like a little kid?"  I told him that it was because I knew how good those shrimp were going to taste for dinner tonight, but that was only half of the truth.  The whole truth is that I love this!  I love driving around Hyde County and discovering all of these wonderful places to buy fresh, local foods.  To me, there is nothing better than knowing exactly where my food comes from, and if I can't grow it or raise it on my own, then the next best thing is buying it from my neighbors and their local farms and businesses.  Doing this not only gives me the peace of mind of knowing that I am feeding my family the freshest, best food I possibly can, but it also helps support the place that I now call home and those that have made their living off of this land and these waters for generations.  I am doing the right thing for the environment, for my family, and for my community, and that is what what brings the smile to my face and makes me "excited like a little kid!" 

I remember when we told some of our friends and acquaintances that we were moving to Hyde County.  "Just for the weekends, right?" was the general response.  No, we would say, for good.  "Really?" would always come their incredulous response.  "Well, what's there?"  No, we had no family there, and we didn't know many people, but none of that mattered to us.  This place spoke to us - this flat land of verdant fields, wet woods, cypress fringes, and waving golden marshlands.  This place where I see more black bears walking edges of the roads than I see passing cars.  This place where the Tundra swans sing you to sleep on late November nights.  This place where my boys roam wild and free, faces sporting sticky brown Lake mud, warm blackberry juice, and careless smiles. Just like the Robert Frost poem from which Hyde County adopted its slogan, we  too took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

I want to thank those of you who spend your precious time reading my thoughts and ramblings, and please feel free to drop me a line in the comments section.  I would love to hear from you!

Mattamuskeet Momma is Open for Business

Today was a big day for the Mattamuskeet Momma venture.  We were visited by Sherry Batot, a Food Regulatory Specialist with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.  Ms. Batot performed a thorough Home Processor Inspection, which consisted of checking my kitchen and pantry for many things, including cleanliness, dedicated business spaces for processing equipment and finished products, water supply, proper refrigeration, adequate and safe lighting, and proper facilities in the adjacent bathrooms.  She also approved my product labels, and was a great source of information, help, and advice.  The boys and I had spent the last two days organizing, re-organizing, and cleaning the kitchen.  Not that the kitchen wasn't clean, mind you, but we wanted to make sure it was extra sparkling clean for the inspector's visit!  I have never seen the boys so dedicated to helping me clean something.   When Ms. Batot took a look at my Lazy Susan Tupperware cabinet, Greyson proudly exclaimed that he had organized it all by himself, which is no mean feat, as this is the cabinet that Eli hits on a daily basis.  In about one minute, Eli can turn a perfectly organized cabinet into a landslide of plastic containers, strewing lids hither and yon from one end of the house to the other.  After so many episodes of this, I must admit that I had taken to tossing the containers back into the cabinet in undignified heaps and shoving it closed with my foot.  Greyson definitely earned his chocolate ice cream reward this afternoon!

What all of this means is that Mattamuskeet Momma is a North Carolina approved home processor for breads, preserves, jams and jellies, and that we can now sell our products.  The boys were so excited, they wanted to jump in the car and go to the Farmer's Market right now!  I had to tell them that the Belhaven market wasn't open today, and more importantly, we didn't have any preserves to sell yet!  So Cole declared that tomorrow morning first thing we would venture into town and get our supplies, go back home, and get busy making jam.  What kind of mother would I be to not agree with such enthusiasm from a six year entrepreneur?  Speaking of enterprises, the boys' pumpkin patch is coming along beautifully, the plants already almost to Cole's waist.  The sturdy vines are already sending out runners and are studded with male blossoms that have yet to open.  A few female blossoms are starting to emerge, their bases already swollen with the promise of new pumpkins.  A recent severe thunderstorm took its toll on two of our young plants, snapping them off cleanly at the base, while the rest remained, luckily, unscathed.

Our first order of business tomorrow upon returning home will be to transform some beautiful Hyde County blueberries into blueberry jam.  Stumbling across Carawan's Blueberries in Swan Quarter was an unexpected delight.  All last year, off and on, I had asked anyone and everyone if they could tell me where the nearest place to pick blueberries were.  I got a few recommendations to try Grassy Ridge, the predominantly Mennonite area of Hyde County that I visited for some amazing strawberries about two years ago.  I loaded up the boys in the van and we ventured out that way, hoping to come across a sign along our journey.  As we passed peaceful farms and neat homesteads, along with the Rose Acre Egg Farm, we were hopeful that we would spot a homemade sign offering you-pick blueberries.  Unfortunately neither the boys, with their faces smashed intently against the windows, nor I happened upon a blueberry farm, so I continued on to Plymouth to pick up some things at the local Piggly Wiggly.  As we pulled out of the parking lot on our way home, I happened to see a little sign at the stoplight declaring "Carawan's Blueberries - We Pick, U Pick" with a phone number.  I pulled into the nearest parking lot and dialed the number, only to find out that Carawan's was about fifteen minutes from my house on the other side of the lake.  Only in my world do you have to drive an hour in the opposite direction to find out that what you were looking for was right down the street from home! 

We crossed the Lake Road and went east along 264 until we passed Mattamuskeet Seafood.  That's when we spotted the small, hand-lettered sign proclaiming simply "Blueberries" and pointing towards a dirt path skirting a corn field.  We drove down the path and entered a clearing that the boys breathlessly declared as "heaven."  Row after row of head and shoulder high blueberry bushes loaded with their deep indigo bounty greeted us.  A small farm shed sported an old-fashioned basket scale, with the instructions to weigh our berries and place our money in the tin.  We wasted no time, an armed with old plastic ice cream buckets, we commenced to picking.  

This was my first time picking blueberries at a farm.  I was used to picking my own berries at home from my knee-high spindly plants, and was usually ecstatic when I came away with a handful (which was then promptly eaten by one of the boys before I could make it into the house).  We arrived at the field at 7;15, and I told the boys that the goal was to pick 10 pounds before the sun went down.  We picked and picked some more, the boys surreptitiously shoving berries into their mouths whenever they thought I wasn't looking, though their moans of delight gave them away every time.  Eli had no such qualms about hiding his berry eating from me, and promptly discarded the bucket in favor of the two-handed pick and shove-into-his-mouth method.

After the sun went down, we began to get nervous about achieving our 10 pound goal before dark. The boys asked if we were going to stay out here picking blueberries all night, and I urged them into double-time.  Finally, we thought we might have enough and made our way to the scale.  Our three buckets, and my estimation of what was residing in Eli's belly, came up to ten pounds, and we put our twenty dollars into the tin  and headed for home.  Cole asked "how come we didn't know about that place before," and I told him all that mattered was that we did now!  I know that it sounds silly to say that our evening picking blueberries was one of the best ones that we have had since moving to Hyde County, but it's true.  We laughed, made up blueberry picking songs, and had a contest to see who could pick the most.  The boys couldn't stop talking - no one fought, no one cried, and Eli was content to roam, pick, and eat, settling down in the soft grass between bushes to rest in between blueberry binges.  The boys said it must be Heaven the minute they stepped out of the van, and in a way, I think maybe they were right.  

Beautiful, Bountiful Beans

The warmth of mid-June marks the beginning of the time of plenty within gardens and fields, and Hyde County is no exception. Over the last two weeks, I have harvested pickling cucumbers, bell peppers, banana peppers, red potatoes, yellow summer squash, zucchini, strawberries, and peaches. The first blush has colored my Roma tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes are ripening by the juicy handful. The blackberries are slowly working their way from red to deep purple, tempting and jewel-like among gently bending branches. The Mattamuskeet Momma house has been a busy one, with cooking, eating, and preserving our bounty to last us the year long, and according to the boys, nothing is more fun than snap beans.


I do not plant snap beans in my garden for a couple of reasons. One is that to produce the amount of beans that my family can go through in one year will take more garden space than I am willing to dedicate to it at this point. Believe me, I tried with my first garden. I thought that I had planted more than enough green beans for dinners and the freezer and ended up scavenging through my bush beans to find enough for the pot that night! The main reason, however, is that Hyde County farmers do a splendid job of growing acres and acres of beautiful green beans just a few miles from my house. The arrival of the yellow bean-picker machines signify the time is at hand, and the rumble of eighteen-wheelers down the road, open trailers piled high with tender pods rallies me to load up the boys and head to Mattamuskeet Fresh Produce. A packer and shipper of Hyde County local produce, Mattamuskeet Fresh Produce handles a variety of vegetables, including cabbages, cucumbers, sweet corn, zucchini, squash, and of course, beans. My first year here, my Fairfield ladies in-the-know sent me down the road to purchase my first crate of snap beans, and I have been hooked ever since. The quality is always superb, the sorting is almost amazingly perfect, and the beans are delicious. This year, armed with my camera, my brood and I descended upon the packing plant. The owners welcomed us warmly and showed us the process from bean truck to bean crate.

The proud owners of Mattamuskeet Fresh Produce!

The beans leave the trucks and enter the tumbler.

The trucks pull around back, where the trailers loaded to the brim with just-picked beans are dumped into the tumbler.  From the tumbler, the beans are then sent along conveyor belts to the sorters, a group of diligent workers that remove any beans that aren't up to quality standards.  From there, the beans are ferried by additional belts into icy water for "hydro-cooling".  This removes the heat from the fields, and ensures the beans stay fresh, plump, and perfectly delicious.  The beans are then packed in crates and placed into waiting trucks.  The process is a short one, extremely efficient, and is a great way to buy local beans, most of which are harvested from fields only a few miles in each direction from the plant.  The boys love coming here to "see the machines" and I love coming home with top quality produce that had been picked from the fields maybe a half and hour before I arrived.  

The beans are sorted by hand to ensure the best quality.

The beans are cooled, packed, and sent on their way!

  These beans came home with me, and for the bargain price of  $30, I took home two crates which equals about 60 pounds of beans.  At a cost of only 50 cents a pound, I will have a freezer full of beans for countless side dishes, soups, stews, and casseroles until June comes around once more.  Of course, produce prices change frequently, so you can always call ahead to find out the prices that day, but I would pay a higher price with no hesitation for these plump pods of crunchy goodness.  The best part of all of this is that I am helping to support local Hyde County farmers and businesses, something that I believe is key to learning how to live sustainably.  It if doesn't come from our own gardens, then the next best thing that we can do is purchase produce from our local farms or businesses.  With a little research, anyone can find great local food options without having to resort to purchasing supermarket produce that has traveled across the country, has spent days (if not longer) in transport from field to table, and contributes negatively to the health of our environment.  Now that the boys and the beans are all loaded up in the mini-van, a short mile and a half drive sees us at home and ready to begin the fun!

The boys and I start an assembly line to get our beans ready for the freezer. Of course the question arises of "why freeze instead of can?" , and my answer to that boils down to personal preference and canning abilities. Beans, being a vegetable and low acid, require a pressure canner for safe home preservation, something that I do not have any experience with to date. Some of my older lady friends tell me that they have processed beans in boiling water canners for years with no negative side effects, but in my way of thinking, botulism only takes one mistake. To start on the assembly line, we decide who will be "snippers" and who will be "snappers". I remember my mom's hands flying through a bowl of beans - snap off the ends, snap in the middle, and done. I like to use a pair of kitchen shears to snip off the ends as the "snipper" and I then toss the whole bean in a pile in front of my "snapper" who breaks the bean in half and puts them in the bowl. The snapper is the best job for the youngest child, as directing them to break off the ends can result in too little or way too much being broken off the beans. Because the snipping takes longer than the snapping, it works best to have two on snipping. Cole volunteered for snip duty with me this year, and we quickly loaded up a pile of beans in front of Greyson.

Eli did a little of everything - snapping, eating, throwing beans all over the porch, loading up the beans on the back of his toy trucks . . . In this day and age, people tend to reminisce about sitting on their grandmother's porch and snapping beans or shelling peas. There is something about a warm early summer day spent on a shady porch with your family all together working towards common purpose of putting fresh food aside for the winter. It is timeless, and I suppose if you ask 9 out of 10 mothers today if their children would help them snap a bushel or two of beans, the answer would be a resounding no. But I think, in a lot of cases, we sell our children short. If we, acting as parents, take the initiative to turn off the television and video games and say, "this is what we are going to do today, because I love you and I want to make sure that you eat healthy food," then we can start a critical dialogue with our children. I love my boys, and they are no different than other boys their age in terms of interests and energy. The difference is that we constantly talk about food - what is good for you and what isn't, where our food comes from, and why it is better for us and the world around us to grow our own food and eat locally and seasonally. At six and four, Cole and Greyson understand this and make observations and decisions of their own. At 20 months, Eli knows that fresh food looks better and tastes better. He will often be too full for dinner, as he frequently roams my gardens in the late afternoon, cheeks full as a squirrel with ripe berries or crunchy sweet peppers. It is up to us to take our role as parents seriously and lay the groundwork for our children to develop responsibility for their health, as well as for the health of the world in which they live.

Even Daddy gets into the act!

After the beans are all snipped and snapped, I get them ready for the freezer. The beans need to be blanched in boiling water for three minutes and then place in an ice bath to stop the cooking process, in order to ensure crisp, flavorful beans all winter. I use my huge canning pot, and shuttle beans bake and forth from pot to the ice bath set up in my big farmhouse sink. When the beans are blanched just right, they will turn an impossibly brilliant shade of green, glowing with the light that nature bestows upon fresh young grass or new leaves.

I let the beans drain in a large colander and then I place them into freezer bags.  When all was said and done, I had 12 gallon bags of snaps for the freezer, a large pot simmering on the stove for dinner, and some great memories to share for years to come.  Not bad for a day's worth of work.   For as long as I can remember, my mom always made a big pot of snap beans for us to feed off of for a few days, and this is the same recipe that I prepare for my family.  In the bottom of a large pot, I sautee about 6 strips of turkey bacon, diced into small pieces, until it is crisp and fragrant (in my mom's recipe it was ham, or country ham, or some type of smoked pork).  I add the beans to the pot and put in enough water to cover them.  I add salt, pepper, 3-4 cloves of fresh crushed garlic (yes, that's my garlic), five or six diced chopped new potatoes (yes, those are my potatoes - I know, I know, I am way too excited about my garden this year!), and let simmer all together until your desired firmness of beans is obtained (anywhere from half and hour on up).  It is simple, delicious, filling, and so good for you!

My mom's famous snaps and new potatoes - yum!

Of course, some members in the family may prefer their snap beans raw, but who I am to argue with taste?