The hardest thing about cheese making is the waiting. So Saturday I finally cut into a cheese that had been aging in our root cellar since early January. This is blue cheese based on Fourme d’Ambert, one of the oldest French cheeses. During production, the Chewonki farm milk is inoculated with Penicillium roqueforti, the bluish …
These days, as we check every couple of hours for signs of lambing in the barn (none yet – they’re still holding out!), sheep are constantly on my mind. Just this week a Semester 50 alumni named Maggie Kelly sent me the following essay, which she wrote for her college applications. It’s about a very …
I think I have a new favorite fish and kind of an unlikely one. It’s Acadian redfish (Sebastes fasciatus), also known as ocean perch. It’s unlikely because when I was in my teens I spent time lobster fishing and our bait was usually the carcasses of this fish, heavily salted and shipped from Canada. Nothing …
Forestry Bliss: n. The experience of pure delight in a woodlot setting The task of Chewonki farmers and students this time of year is a straight-forward one: produce firewood. The reality of how that plays out is a tad more complicated: farmers fell trees, take off limbs, and cut them to eight to twelve foot …
Spring has sprung. Our lambing season began early this morning when Patches (#19) delivered a single ewe lamb. Phoebe and Josie – two Semester 52ers who had signed up for volunteer lamb watch – found the dark, speckled babe already standing when they arrived to the barn at 3:00 am. Mom and baby are both …
I’d like to share one of my favorite passages from Wendell Berry. It’s taken from the essay “Elmer Lapp’s Place (1979),” from the book Bringing it to the Table: on farming and food. “Standing in the stanchion barn while the cows are being milked, I am impressed by how quietly the work is being done. …
From Aaron Laflamme, Chewonki’s Outdoor Equipment & Logistics Coordinator: Long a staple of Chewonki trips, the Wilderness Trip Cookbook has traveled throughout Maine, the Northeast and beyond dispensing culinary wisdom. Loaded with nutritional facts, cooking methods, and recipes, it has everything the backcountry chef needs to prepare adventure ready meals. Check out the often overlooked …
Semester 52 students headed out on spring break this morning, but the words “break” and “spring” don’t go together in the world of the farm. During these two weeks, the farm crew will continue to crank out firewood. With changing ground conditions this time of year (it’s raining and muddy today, but was frozen and …
This spring several Semester 52 students led by faculty members Pete Sniffen, Esther and James Kary, and Steve Kerchner have tapped 18 maple trees on Chewonki Neck to collect the sap for syrup making. After the first three days of collecting, the group had amassed 21 gallons of sap. The sap was then frozen and …
A reflection from Hilary Crowell, Assistant Farm Manager There are certain tasks that we complete and routines that we follow every day and every week at the farm. In these tasks I am reminded that when we take good care of our farm, the farm takes care of us. We cycle the root cellar produce …
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