Week ending 8/16/09. Making Lemonade out of Tomatoes, Bonne Courage Neighbors, Congratulations Molly/Farfalla..............

Making lemonade out of lemons is an expression, a sort of catch-all phrase folks use when they're trying to make the best of a sub-optimal situation. In our case, it was trying to salvage as many tomatoes as possible and eventually get them to ripen before they succumb to the blight rot! We spent last Monday working in the 90 degree 'dog day' heat to cull the blighted tomato plants and harvest as many viable green tomatoes as we could find. We then began digging the potatoes we hadn't planned to dig until the cooler days of fall. However, the tomato blight is highly contagious to potatoes, both sisters in the nightshade family. We couldn't bear the thought of losing our Yukon Golds, Michigan Reds, Russian Blues and Fingerlings, so we figured we'd better start digging them early. After taking frequent but very necessary breaks for water and brow-wiping, we got the job done and filled the large garden cart with a couple hundred pounds of beautiful and thankfully healthy spuds of all shapes, colors and sizes. There are more yet to dig, all Russian Blues, but their leaves haven't died back yet and the potatoes are still so small that we decided to give them some more time to mature in the ground. In any event, we've harvested enough potatoes to see us through the coming winter and we are feeling that we have indeed made lemonade this week out of some very sour lemons.

The highlight of our week came on Sunday when we hosted a picnic for our neighbors Anne, Mike and Marie who are relocating to Duluth Minnesota for Anne's work. They have been in training here in the snowy mountains of Western Pennsylvania during the past 7 years, for their next step in northern living on the frigid shores of Lake Superior! Yikes! I wonder if tomatoes even grow that far north? But, just in case they don't like it in Minnesota, they are keeping their house across the road from our farm, so they can come back 'home' to Somerset County.......and we are very glad of that, because it means that they will return for visits and we will see them again.


My best laugh of the day came from Art, (Somerset's Woody Allen!) who I call, "Mr. All Or Nothing At All", meaning he never does anything half-way.


While I was preparing food for the picnic, he asked if he could help me do anything. I had forgotten to chop and slice the onions before applying my makeup. Not wanting mascara to run down my face, I asked him to chop the onions for me. As I busied myself with other chores, I heard the weirdest sounds! Turning to look, I saw that he had donned his old snorkel and facemask and was calmly, and without shedding a single tear, slicing and chopping onions. The sounds I heard were him breathing through the snorkel!

Eventually, about 20 friends and neighbors arrived to bid the Grassi's a fond farewell on a hot and very muggy evening. At first nobody would go outside except to grab a beer from the ice chest and come back indoors into the air conditioned comfort! But gradually a breeze began to stir, the front porch became a cool and pleasant oasis, and we were able to dine alfresco in the garden. Amazingly there were few flies or bugs, rarely the case for mid-August, and we lingered outdoors over dessert and watched the children play and the fireflies dance.

"She's a pinball wizard, there's got to be a twist. A pinball wizard - she's got such a supple wrist. How do you think she does it? (I don't know) What makes her so good?"......Lyrics by The Who (with gender liberties taken by Max)............... Molly Atkinson, daughter of LT and sister of Paige, is hilariously funny and literally lives life on the edge of the stage! She works in LA in the movie business, as a Production Coordinator or Asst. Coordinator, or Art Coordinator or Asst., or Costumer, or Seamstress, or Stylist, or some combination thereof. She's a go-getter extraordinaire, sometimes at the Emmys, Oscars, Grammys and BET Awards, sometimes on a series......one never knows where she will turn up, especially Molly. Now add to her list of accomplishments, the highest ranking non-professional woman pinball player in the world, since competing in the World Pinball Championships held this past weekend at Pittsburgh PA! WOW! Congratulations Moll!

It's been an action-packed week, and these are just some of the highlights. Art was also on call, arraigning over a dozen 'alleged' criminals, so we didn't get much sleep during the course of the above events but, as I always tell him, "Heck honey, we can sleep when we're dead, right?" I'm not sure if there is a moral or a lesson this week. Sometimes school is just "out" and we can take a vacation from learning lessons. Sometimes there is a lull and a period of quiet before the storm, too! So, maybe this week's lesson can be found in the words of David A. Schmaltz, "Life is a rollercoaster. Try to eat a light lunch."

Week ending 8/9/09 - Weather Extremes, Antiques, Pesto! and Blight....

This week began where the last one left off - the weather was cool and damp and sullen with threatening skies that failed to deliver. We had rare glimpses of the full moon, its brightness backlighting the scudding clouds. Lunacy was rampant with coyotes howling in the night, three ATV accidents and two suicides in our small town. The rains held off on Tuesday evening as we attended Somerset's Community Night Out, but Wednesday's newspaper reported that police had been kept busy all night with drunks and domestic disturbances. By Wednesday the weather was still cool and damp and the nighttime temperatures were in the low 50's with dense fog, just downright cold for early August even by our mountain standards. By Thursday the weather had begun to normalize a bit and we had a great dinner at the Somerset Lion's Club's annual picnic.

On Friday morning we decided that the basil just had to be picked as the plants were beginning to blossom. More worrisome however, was that they were suddenly being devoured by Japanese beetles. So we picked our six basil bushes almost completely clean of fragrant leaves. It's quite amazing that four purchased basil plants and two home-grown-from-seed plants could produce a half bushel basket of leaves! It is even more amazing that the same half bushel of leaves would only yield 2-1/2 quarts of basil pesto for the freezer. I always blanch the fresh basil leaves so that the pesto retains that beautiful deep green color after it's been frozen and defrosted. A delicious bonus is the 'basil tea' that is a by-product of the blanching process. I like to freeze pesto in 1-cup containers and use it throughout the year to make spreadable pesto goat cheese, a mixture of equal parts of pesto and soft goat cheese that we love on crackers or pita chips. We also often make a simple basil alfredo cream sauce for pasta and usually have that topped with sauteed scallops. Our favorite use for pesto is to smear it on the pizza dough before adding the sauce and other toppings, giving the pizza that wonderful fresh garlicky flavor.

So, with the pesto safely tucked away in the freezer for the year, I headed back out to the garden to see what else was ripe. I found perfect baby carrots, some beautiful beets that had been hiding under the potato plants, some late season cucumbers, more zucchini and Asian eggplants. I picked a veritable rainbow of veggies, as many as my basket could hold, and unloaded them all onto the table on the porch just outside the kitchen door that serves as my outdoor cooler in the summer. They looked so gorgeous that I just had to go inside for my camera to memorialize the bounty of this years' garden.

While I had been busy with the pesto and the veggie harvesting, Art had been down at the lake mowing the shoreline with our antique sickle bar mower. This mower is an old John Deere #1 sidebar mower, the first model John Deere ever made, and ours must be at least 70 years old. We bought it when we bought the farm in 1971 and had always run it with our 1948 International 'M' tractor, which has really seen better days. However, since we had recently purchased a newer 4WD John Deere 4720 diesel tractor, Art decided to try to run the mower with it instead of with old "Emmy Lou". After a few mounting bracket amendments fashioned with the use of our welder and the addition of a lengthened driveshaft, his mission was accomplished. The 4720 and the #1 sickle bar were off and mowing! Art did a brilliant job on the conversion and is so tickled to be using the old antique sidebar mower with the new tractor.

This brings me to the sad news of the past week......the late tomato blight has finally struck our garden. We had been watching for it and discovered it yesterday on a couple of our dozen plants. By this afternoon it was rapidly appearing on almost every plant. The weather finally turned to summer with a humid heat wave that rolled in last night, and today we had our first day over 80 degrees since summer began, but it was too late to save our tomatoes from the late blight. We've decided to dig our potatoes tomorrow so they don't fall victim to the blight as well. We will also begin to harvest our unaffected green tomatoes, wash them well and store them to ripen indoors away from airborne spores. We will have to dig out all the plants by the roots, bag them in black plastic bags and send them off the property to the landfill. After this is accomplished, we will need to rototill the soil and then sterilize all of our digging tools. I am encouraged by the news that the late blight does not survive the cold winter weather, and as long as we rotate our tomatoes to a different part of the garden next summer, we should be rid of this disease. I think I might also look for blight resistant tomato plants for next year's garden.

I'm not sure what I learned this week as far as my late, lamented tomatoes go. Maybe I have had reinforced the excellent and oft repeated advice of my husband, "Have no expectations and you will suffer no disappointments." I experienced sadness over the loss of the tomatoes, which epitomize summer to me. But I also shared in Art's exultation in giving new life to an old mower, reminding me that even old things, (people, too) can have renewed usefulness and purpose.......and that gives me hope for the future.

Week ending 8/2/09 - The Great Northeast Tomato Blight

My heart is heavy for my dear friend, Paige Atkinson, who runs a CSA near Lake Placid, NY, as I just learned that she had to destroy her 325 tomato plants due to late blight. The entire Northeastern US tomato crop it seems, has fallen prey to late blight, most notably tomato plants purchased from big box stores. Those that were home-raised from seed seem to be faring better, but they too are susceptible to this airborne blight that releases spores which travel distances on the breezes to affect tomatoes and potatoes, both members the nightshade family. Apparently this is the same blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine that began in 1845 and lasted for six long and deadly years.

So far our dozen tomato plants are unaffected, but the wet and cool weather we've been plagued with, (the 5th coolest July on record with an average temperature of 67.3 degrees), may yet take its toll.The skies have looked like this for the past several weeks, overcast with low, dark clouds moving by, seemingly just above the reach of my upstretched arm. The air tastes wet and earthy, and smells cling to the humidity and are carried along by the constant breeze that turns up the leaves and makes the windchimes clamor. Rainfall this week was 1-1/2 inches, not a great amount for the week but it fell almost constantly, with no respite for the ground to dry out a bit between the tropical downpours.

Every day (several times a day?!) I go out to the garden to inspect the tomatoes and am relieved to find the plants healthy, though the tomatoes themselves seem, to my impatient mind, to be very slow to ripen this year without the heat and sunshine. I suppose we are fortunate that our nearest neighbor's tomato patch is more than 1/4 mile away. The fields that buffer our tomatoes from his have probably kept our tomatoes blightless so far. I cannot imagine a summer without our own home-grown tomatoes, the plants so carefully chosen, planted, protected from frost, nurtured, staked, pruned, pollinated with q-tips (in case the bees aren't doing their jobs correctly!), harvested, juiced and sauced.....it goes on and on, the enjoyment we reap from our own tomatoes. They are the superstars of summer!

This week we ate our Asian eggplants for the first time. Peppers are growing on the pepper plants. We harvested some beets this week and started to dig Yukon Gold potatoes. We planted new crops of spinach, cilantro and a fall beet crop. In the upcoming week I will harvest the basil and make pesto for the freezer. The cucumbers are slowing down now but we still have lots of 8-Ball zucchini, which are so outstanding when they are fried!

Lessons learned (or reinforced) this week: Don't count your tomatoes while they are still on the vine. Impatience is not a virtue; it just makes one anxious. Trust that all is in perfect and Divine order.

Weekend of 7/26/09 - The Great Allegheny Passage

The weeks of summer are flying by and the days go by in a blur and seem to overlap each other. This must have been "dog week" at Jolico, as we had 3 wonderful dogs visiting with us, as well as a few humans. We started the week off with the end of Mike and Connie Mazerov's visit and a trip with them, Dick Diamondstone and Mike and Barb DeMarco to District Court 16-3-03 on Tuesday 7/21. For that period and for most of the previous week, Mimi McClintock was our houseguest.
Mimi is a black Standard French Poodle. Mo thinks she's quite a looker and Art calls her "Frenchy"! We love her dearly and Jolico Farm has become her second home. Here she is free to lounge on the couches, play with Mo's toys, wade in the lake and run like the wind. She and Mo compete for sticks and frisbee's and they spend all their time together, side by side, even when they are sleeping. Mimi spent a week with us from 7/16 to 7/22 and came back for a playdate on 7/23 because she missed us so much! She came for the afternoon and stayed for supper as she eats much better after lots of exercise and when she's eating beside Mo.

On Saturday we picked up Luke Robinson and his 2 Great Pyrenees dogs, Hudson and Murphy from the trailhead at Ohiopyle, PA on the Great Allegheny Passage. Luke and the boys are walking 2,400 miles over 2 years from Austin to Boston, to raise funds that will finance the first ever nationwide epidemiological canine cancer study. Their website, http://2dogs2000miles.org explains their mission, is where they post their blog and Twitter feed, and where donations can be made and items can be purchased in support of their walk. I have been following them on Twitter for some time now, and when they came through Pittsburgh a couple of weeks ago and then literally into our backyard here in the Laurel Highlands, I knew I just had to offer them a night's rest in a real bed and a couple of good, home-cooked meals along with a shower for Luke and an opportunity to get his gear and clothes cleaned up. The weather over the last few weeks has been rainy and stormy and they all appreciated a roof over their heads, a soft bed and, for Murphy and Hudson, some time off-leash with the opportunity to run free here on the farm. We enjoyed having them with us and making a fuss over them. We returned them to the trailhead at Confluence PA this afternoon and saw them off on their way east.

They are hoping to make it to Meyersdale PA by Wednesday, at which time they will meet their ride back to Pittsburgh for some more events where they are scheduled to appear, before heading back to the trail and on to Leesburg, VA around September 1. They plan to be in Washington DC on September 18th. Future stops include Baltimore, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Allentown, NYC for Christmas, Hartford, Providence and Boston by May, 2010. We wish them Godspeed, and our prayers for a safe and gratifying mission. They are very special guys.

Week ending 7/18/09

Sunday evening and another week of summer is gone. Gone too is an old and dear friend, Patty McCurdy Pearce, who passed away on 7/15/09 with friends and family by her side. Patty became my friend when we were both 14 and found ourselves in the same homeroom at Peabody High School in Pittsburgh, PA. The date was September, 1960. We spent 4 years of high school sitting side by side, and have served on our high school reunion committee together in past years. Patty was a vibrant, witty, energetic, funny, flirty, beautiful woman who loved people and music and laughter and good food. At age 62, Patty died too young and too quickly from a raging cancer that had taken her life before she could even be diagnosed. Rest in peace, Patty. You were, and always will be loved.

On a happier note is the visit this weekend of dear friends Mike and Connie Mazerov from Houston Texas, formerly from Pittsburgh, PA. We attended a wonderful reunion yesterday at the home of David and Mickie Chatkin, that included friends of Mike who grew up together during the 50's and 60's on Lilac Street in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill section. Mike and Connie, along with Gerri Lockhart, will visit with us tomorrow and stay overnight until Tuesday when, with Dick Diamondstone and Barb and Mike DeMarco joining us, we will visit District Court 16-3-03 to watch Art in action dispensing justice.

Lessons learned or reinforced this past week: Live each day to the fullest and be all that you can be. Have no regrets in life. Never pass up a chance to tell someone that you love them. Good friends are precious. Good health is the most precious gift of all of the blessings that God bestows upon us, for without good health, life is not as sweet. In the end, love is all there is........

News for week ending 7/11/09

We have come to the end of another busy week at Jolico Farm. Much progress was made this past week, though not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears! The floors are finally finished and all the baseboard trim has been installed.

I had called a local cleaning company to get an estimate on washing down the walls, woodwork and ceilings in 3 rooms and 2 hallways, as the grouting process had deposited a lot of dark dust on every surface. Two young men came to measure the areas to be cleaned in order to prepare a cost estimate for the job. They came on Thursday 7/2, and promised to call with the estimate 4 days later on the following Monday. Well, I never heard from them on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, so on Thursday (one week after they came to look over the job) I decided I needed to wash down the walls and woodwork myself or I was never going to be able to live in my house again!

So, I spent the day Thursday washing down the dining room walls, downstairs hallway and the walls going upstairs, as well as polishing the furniture, washing the windows and vacuuming and mopping the floors. It felt good to finally be moving in a forward direction, and the newly cleaned areas were so fresh and shining clean. On Friday I spent the day washing all the china and crystal and replacing the pieces in the china cupboards and unpacking and putting away the rest of the dining room housewares.

Today, Saturday, I cleaned the rest of the house, moving the furniture out from the walls and wiping down each piece with polish to rid everything of the fine dark dust that had settled throughout the house. I am down to the wire here as I have company coming for a visit tomorrow and I wanted to have everything back in place by then. The picture above of the new floors shows how great the job turned out!

Oh, yes.............on Friday the wall washing company finally called to give me their price for the wall-washing job. $1,200 to wash down 3 rooms and 2 hallways! I thanked them very kindly for their trouble and told them that, like the Little Red Hen, I'd done the job myself!

Lovely New Floors

This has been such a busy week at Jolico Farm. We are in the middle of a huge flooring project in the farmhouse. We are replacing 1100 sq. ft. of carpeting with porcelain tile on the main floor of our home. Our entry hall, mud room/dog room, downstairs bathroom, kitchen and dining room are now all covered with beautiful chocolate colored tile but it's been a trying two weeks with 2 crews of tile artisans working in all of our rooms at once.

Poor Mo and Kitty. I think they have suffered the most with all the disruption. Kitty's litter box was moved upstairs and she has adjusted well to that. Mo heads outside as soon as the workmen arrive early in the morning, and he doesn't venture back indoors until he's sure all the activity has stopped for the day. He really dislikes the sound of shop-vacs and tile saws! I've pretty much stayed indoors, keeping an eye on the men as they do require a project coordinator, as well as the fact that it's been a rainy period here. I've also been researching in preparation for writing a grant for Bakersville Fire Department. They gave me exactly 10 days' notice on this one!

Art has been having a great vacation week. He planned to take this week off from work, as he does every year. He just didn't know that the flooring guys would pick last week and this one to lay our new floors. Art had ambitious plans to fix the water pumping windmill as it had a broken shaft at the top of the tower and he did accomplish this big job yesterday. He made many climbs to the top of the tower as Aermotor had sent him the wrong parts the first go-round. The new ones finally arrived yesterday and he was able to complete the job, so we are back on wind power for our water system.

Art also swept our main chimney, the one attached to our Tarm wood-burning furnace and he swept out all the clean-out doors and connecting pipes. He is always happy when he gets less than a bucket-full of ash and carbon because that means that our furnace has been burning efficiently. Yesterday he also spread 22 tons of gravel on the road down to our lake, after having cleaned the ditches out of last fall's leaf mold with the hi-lift bucket. It was the first stone we've put on the road in 8 years so this was a timely project, too.

Today we had problems when the men pulled the toilet out of the downstairs bathroom and the water supply line kept leaking water. After two trips to the plumbing supply store, Art got the correct parts and was able to fix the faulty valve, and the bathroom tile was finally installed. After grouting is completed tomorrow and the toilet is reseated, we can again use the bathroom. The kitchen should also be finished tomorrow and the fridge and range will both be placed back into their respective slots from the center of the kitchen floor where they are sitting right now. Needless to say, we picked up some pizza for supper tonight as we were not able to use our appliances to cook a meal.

Tomorrow should be a wrap-up day for the project with only a few small details to be completed into next week. The oak moldings and trim strips will be installed and the grout will be sealed. I can't wait to wash the grit off the new floors and everywhere else in the house that it seems to have coated! I will probably be cleaning all weekend but in the end, as with all major upheavals, this one will be worth it!

This is the first post of the Jolico Farm Blog. Today is Saturday, June 27, 2009.

Jolico Farm is located in Somerset, PA, high atop the Laurel Ridge off of Exit 110 of the PA Turnpike. Founded in 1971 by Maxine and Arthur Cook, Jolico Farm was named for Joseph and Lillian Cook, Art's parents. The name was used several times in the past, first as the name of the Cook family's beach house on Long Beach Island, NJ back in the 40's and 50's. The name of Jolico was also given to the Cook family's winter home in Miami Beach, Florida in the '60's. As a tribute to Joe and Lil Cook, Art and Maxine named their farm, Jolico Farm when they purchased the property in 1971.

After so many years of living at Jolico Farm, there are many stories to tell and I will get to some of them in the course of my ramblings. But I started this blog this evening on a whim and it is late so I will keep this entry short and end it here.