My most favorite time of the year. The month Sean and I made our vows, the time of the year that I fell in love with the midwest and its beauty, and the time that our rest can commence. While we find dry days in between the moisture to plant the garlic, tuck the tulips in and tie up loose ends through out the yard and pastures, at any point of our property we can look up and admire the beauty of the changing leaves. So many beautiful rust, yellow, orange, and reds for our eyes to take in. The art card for this month features those beautiful colors. Rebecca has chose to capture those falling leaves in fall. For many Northern Hemisphere cultures, this moon is considered The Hunters Moon. It is the time of
the year that hunters would take to the field to harvest animals that were fattening up for the long winter ahead. The Anishinaabe Tribe called the moon The Falling Leaf Moon for the shift in the trees. We celebrate this moon on October 28th. To help celebrate the moon, grab a few of your ripe tomatoes that you brought into the house in preparation for the first frost and enjoy the featured recipe for the month:
Romesco Sauce
½ c plus 2 TBSP olive oil
1 slice sourdough
½ c almonds or hazelnuts or a mixture of the two
3 cloves garlic
1 ½ tsp ground chile
4 roma tomato, grilled or pan roasted
1 tbsp parsley
1 tsp thyme
Salt
1 tsp paprika
2 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled, and seeded
Warm about 2 tbsp of oil in a small skillet. Add the bread, turn it immediately so that both sides are moistened with oil, then fry over medium until golden and crisp. When it’s done, grind it with the nuts and garlic in the food processor until the mixture is fairly fine. Add garlic, chile, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, a scant tsp of salt, paprika, and the peppers and process until smooth. With the machine running, gradually pour the vinegar, then the remaining ½ c oil. Taste and make sure the sauce has plenty of piquancy and enough salt. Store the sauce in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator. It will keep for up to a week.
The fiber for the month is a blend of Blue Faced Leicester and Alpaca, 70/30 blend. This beautiful grey blend is a quick spin and reminds me of the wet dreary days that we endure during this month. There will be 4 oz in each box this month. Along with a set of 5 stitch markers themed toward fall. https://www.twistedoakfarmstead.com/product-page/hand-spinners-celebration-of-the-full-moon
While we have downsized our flock for the season, we are near the finish line of our last batch of broilers. So far this year we have raised out 150 chickens to help nourish our families and our customers. It is an amazing feeling to watch these chickens grow and help transform our pastures along their journey. We have a pasture in front of our house that has been suffering since we moved in. Soil tests were ran and of course their only recommendations was to purchase fertilizer from the company. Not only was this during the height of fertilizer costs but this was also a field that we house our sheep in. That was a big no thank you. So this summer we ran the chicken tractor across a stretch of this soil that was lacking. See that green strip of grass? That has been successfully fertilized every day by our chickens. Every morning since Mothers Day, we walk to the pasture with feed buckets and water, pull their chicken tractor forward 12 feet to provide
fresh soil for the chickens to fertilize and aerate for us. The chicken tractor allows us to keep our poultry safe from predators and concentrate their natural instinct to scratch and peck the soil.
Shifting to warm comforting foods this time of the year brings such joy. We are enjoying nurturing foods that were grown here on the property. Last week, I cooked a nice pot of lamb chili with the soup bones that we still had left from our 2022 harvest. We love making soup and chili with the Spicy V8 juice that we can here at home. For a side dish, Sean helped grind up some of the blue corn we grew from seed that was given to us by New Story Farm. The best part? The flour mill was also given to us by Stephanie and Daniel. While cornbread is more of a polenta cake texture, it was delicious and such a great accompaniment to the chili. We have also been indulging in Angel Food Cake since we use egg yolks to tan our hides. Pumpkin pie was also baked this past in celebration of our harvest.
What are you reading right now? It's that time of the year that I find myself in search of my ear buds and a good book. I like to listen to audio books while I am working at the sewing machine, weaving, or running the mill. I recently started reading a collection that is cheesy and fun by Nancy Warren. The first was titled The Vampire Knitting Club. I checked it out through the Wisconsin Public Library and I am currently waiting for the second book to arrive as well. Until that book, arrives I am working through Unraveling by Peggy Orenstein and Hunger by Donna Jo Napoli. Have any suggestions? Leave a comment below!