Guess What?

Last Saturday, I spent close to 9 hours helping to slaughter 150 chickens at a nearby farm. This isn't any old farm, either. In college, I spent spring break with 4 friends in Wisconsin, backpacking and helping out at a sheep farm during lambing season. A lot of northern Wisconsin looks similar - the usual matrix of mixed pine/maple/ash forests with farmland, so that when I arrived in northern Wisconsin this summer, I felt dim recognition, but had no idea that I was a mere 5 miles down the road from that sheep farm!

It took me a month to bike down the road to the farm, which is run by this wonderful duo, Kim and Rich. It must have been surreal to see me biking up their path, 3 years after I had visited before. A lot had changed in those 3 years. They had transitioned from raising sheep, which they milked for artisan cheese, to a mixed meat CSA. (Unfortunately, the nearest market for ethically raised animals is in Madison, 4 hours to the south of the farm, but nonetheless, their first year has been successful.) I promised to come by again, and two months later, I was far overdue for a visit.

My roommate and I biked down with a conciliatory apple pie one afternoon. Kim invited us to eat some with her (topped with fresh whipped cream....). This was the first weekend I had been in town for 2 months, and coincidentally was also one of their big slaughter days. Lauren and I volunteered to come help out, and showed up at 6 am in old jeans and our big rubber boots. I had never slaughtered anything before. We had an assembly line, almost exactly as Michael Pollen describes it in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Kim would bring in the chickens, turn them upside down in four tall funnels, so that their heads emerged from the bottom. With the obvious expertise of a women who has been around this process her whole life, Kim would cut through the main artery on the chicken's neck and let them bleed out onto a trough of woodchips below. The next portion was the most disconcerting to me... after a couple of minutes of sporadic muscle movements, the spasms would get really strong. It was the proverbial "chicken running around with his head off" spasms and sometimes they were so strong that the chickens would flip out of the cones and we would have to chase them across the room. As the day wore on, this became more routine.

When the chickens were finished, Lauren and I would grab a couple of feet in each hand and dip them in hot water for a minute. Next, we would drop the chickens in a big cylindrical plucker with spray jets, rubber spikes, and a spinning bottom. It kind of reminded me of a water theme park ride fused with a medieval torture device. When the chickens were de-feathered, we would pass them off to the eviserating crew - Rich and Sharon, who cut off the feet and head, pulled out the inards, and washed the carcass. Tessa, a spunky 13 year old (who just killed her first bear this Fall, by the way), weighed and packaged the chickens.

The process could not have been done more consciously or humanely, but I never thought I would eat a chicken again at the end of the day. My mind was numb, and I had chicken shit, innards, and feathers all over my boots. All I could think by the end of the process what the nursery-rhyme-like anthem, "Guess what? Chicken butt. Guess who? Chicken poo." I had seen so much chicken butt and chicken poo. Guess what we got to take home with us?

A chicken! The next day (I know, shameless), we roasted the chicken. Craig came to visit, and had been wanting to try a chicken that is cooked with a beer can inside of it. It was so amazing. Everything was moist, the sauce was spicy and beery, and we devoured the chicken. This is the recipe that we used. Try it.

Free Fruit

We have been graced with a week of sunny, low-humidity days. For me, that means pulling out my camping equipment and scrubbing everything. For local farmers who have (sometimes literally) been underwater this rainy summer, it is hay-baling time. Somehow, September and Fall are almost here. I don't know how this happened, but suddenly the days are getting shorter and the leaves are beginning to lose their chlorophyll. With the season change comes one of my favorite things: apples, and a new experiment: wild grape picking.

I mentioned this before, but I picked probably close to 100 pounds of apples from a neighbor's trees a couple weeks ago with Emily and Martin. Martin had spotted the trees, laden with apples, and guessed that they were not picked. We asked, our neighbor gave us the go-ahead, and soon the three of us were gleefully biking home with backpacks full to the brim with apples. We poured the stash on the lawn and went back for more.













bare feet stand on my tired shoulders
toes curling as her arms reach for that big perfect apple
she grasps it only to realize bruises
no matter
we put it in the backpack with the rest of them
and picking up the bikes from the trampled grass
we ride home
-Martin














So far, I have made three pies and eight quarts of applesauce. The applesauce has been really easy to make, especially since we borrowed an apple mill and giant canning pot. You essentially just cut up apples, cook them in a covered pot with 1" of water until soft, then turn the crank of the mill. The mill is kind of like a colander with pressure, and does a good job of separating the applesauce and cores/peels. I sweetened the applesauce with apple juice and seasoned it with cinnamon. Lauren and I did a taste test experiment with sugar, honey, orange juice, and apple juice as sweeteners. We agreed that the sugar and apple juice were the least intrusive.

















Unfortunately, applesauce making is kind of an unattractive process - being full of ugly apple cutting, mushy apple cooking, and the light brown of the finished product. So, I took the liberty of collecting a pint of wild grapes at the end of my driveway. They are sitting in the fridge, their bitterness masking their flavor. Another day, another project...

Boundary Waters Canoe Area

I don't know why
I don't know why
I don't know why
It takes so long

-Weepies

My life clearly revolves around consuming food

I am actually getting good at canning stuff. I even made my own pectin with apples that I picked from a neighbor's tree (and lemons). I am tired and have to pack for a canoe trip in the boundary waters in Minnesota, but wanted to see these photos all lined up in a row. Pepper jelly, kimchi, and apple rhubarb pie, in that order.

Knee Deep in mud

I have one of the best jobs in the world. I work four long days each week, live in a big, old house for free, and get to wander in the beautiful Flambeau State Forest every single day. To be fair, the mosquitoes drive a body crazy, and I have worn rain boots for 6 weeks straight. Another storm is coming. It has rained so much this summer that it is no surprise that I can hear the constant rumbling of thunder getting closer. I sometimes forget how lucky I am to be working out here. Somehow I forget how much it sucked to work for $7 an hour at Jimmy Johns in Minneapolis. Just thinking about the oil-vinegar smell wafting in the air, the 3am weekends when I flirted towards drunk douchebags for the occasional $2 tip, and the inevitable explosion of anger from the person too late for a sandwich. And then I would walk in the freezing cold to Craig's car, my heart pounding in terror of having to drive the stick shift home. Not to mention my 19-year-old manager who made me slice torso-sized hunks of processed, shrink-wrapped meats when she found out I was a vegetarian.











Kennan, WI

I work in 5-foot tall ferns. I count and measure plants for a living. It is so abstract from any kind of human survival. I mean, I study forests, so that someday papers may be published on this research, and forests can be better managed for wood harvest. In this area, that wood will be harvested for something like wooden pallets. Those wooden pallets will be used for the delivery and storage of any number of things. And somehow I get money in exchange for all of that. Even if you look at the "ecosystem services" that a healthy forest provides for the public, such as water retention and quality, carbon sequestration, hunting, etc., studying a forest is a ridiculous way to make a living. Whenever I get chest-deep in these thoughts, I like to figure out how to feed on my wild surroundings. Nothing is less abstract and less confusing than eating.

I wrote already about ramps, when I pickled them. They are, by the way, kind of awesome. I put them on sandwiches, or with veggie burgers, or eat them whole sometimes. They are supposed to be good with martinis, I guess. I tried them after 6 weeks of pickling in the fridge. I also made some mediocre stinging nettle pesto, which isn't really worth describing.


















Chanterelles

I've finally gained enough confidence to try wild mushrooms. ALSO, with all of the rain we've been getting, there has been no lack of mushrooms. All mushrooms taste differently and tend to be named by the food they vaguely resemble. Of the wild shrooms I've tried, morels and chantarelles are exceptions. The second mushroom we found this summer was the lobster mushroom. I found more in northern Minnesota a couple weeks ago. Lobster mushrooms are fascinating to me, because it is actually an edible mold colonizing two genera of host mushrooms. The older the mold-mushroom relationship is, the more contorted the mushroom. The best part about lobster mushrooms is the color: bright orange. They taste vaguely like lobster.














Lobster mushrooms (someone else's)

Last week, a co-worker found a shelf of chicken-in-the-woods mushrooms. I was gone when they ate them, but had a chance to try it last summer. Yep, tastes like chicken. (ish)

And yesterday, I finally found a group of oyster mushrooms on a log while we were bushwhacking down to the river to swim midday. I haven't tried them yet, but a recipe from Laos called for them, so I added them to my vegetable coconut curry for lunch tomorrow. We've been seeing oyster mushrooms a lot in the last couple of months, but can't remove anything from our experimental plots. Our plots contain forest gaps with downed logs: perfect habitat for oyster mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms, of course, taste like oysters.













Oyster mushrooms

The first time you eat a wild mushroom, you're supposed to eat just a little bit the first day. If you react to the mushroom, you can probably assume that it's not a good idea to eat any more, even if you are positive you can identify it. Different people react differently to wild foods.