Putting the Birds to Bed

Sunday evening, Eric went scouting for turkeys, and Toby and I joined him. The process of locating turkeys in the evening when the birds head up into the trees to roost is known in turkey-hunter parlance as “putting the birds to bed.” It’s a bit of a misnomer, as the hunter isn’t so much lulling the birds to sleep as he is using his owl call to wake up the birds from their peaceful reveries. Since owls prey on turkeys, the sound of an owl’s hoot–whether natural or man-made using a call–startles the birds, causing them to gobble, much like a person starts with a grunt or a groan or a moan or a yelp upon being woken from a doze or deep sleep. The gobble alerts the hunter to the turkey’s resting place. The hunter now knows where to lie in wait when he goes to hunt the bird early the next morning.

I recorded the sounds of Eric’s scouting expedition, which you can hear by clicking the link below. You’ll first hear Eric’s box call, which is a small wooden, rectangular-shaped instrument designed to mimic the sound of a clucking hen and which hunters use to lure in horny Tom’s before they blow the bird’s brain out. (You’ve got to aim for the head, otherwise the shotgun pellets rip up all that tasty meat or you don’t kill the bird “humanely.”) You’ll also hear a gurgling spring creek and Toby’s heavy breathing and jangling dog tags. The owl call comes near the end of the minute-long recording.

Putting the Birds to Bed Audio Montage

Where’s the (local) beef?

A few weeks ago, I visited the website for the Vermont chapter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA Vermont) in search of leads on local beef farms. The site provided a list of 24 “certified organic Beef farmers/producers in Vermont.”

The first few farms on the list—Auger Heights, Back Beyond Farm and Brotherly Farm—were too far away, either in the Northeast Kingdom or Orange County. But Crow Hill Farm in Tinmouth didn’t appear to be too much of a stretch when I located the town in Rutland county on my map. (Rutland is about a 50 minute drive from my home in Arlington.)

I called Crow Hill Farm, which is operated by Caleb and Louise Scott, a few weeks ago, and left a message on their answering machine. I said that I got the name and phone number for the farm on NOFA’s website. I said that my husband and I were looking to buy beef from a Vermont farm. I asked if Crow Hill farm did in fact sell beef to individual customers. I left my name and my phone number for someone to call back.

I never heard from anyone.

On Friday, April 11, I tried calling Crow Hill Farm a second time. This time, Caleb Scott answered the phone. Again, I explained that I got the name of his farm from NOFA Vermont’s website, that my husband and I were looking to buy beef from a Vermont farm, and asked if Crow Hill Farm sold beef to individual customers. Mr. Scott explained that he hadn’t sold beef since the slaughterhouse burned down. I told him I was sorry to hear that. He said, “I’m sorry to hear it, too.”

I was beginning to think that finding Vermont beef was going to be easier for all the wealthy Manhattanites shopping at the Union Square Farmer’s Market than it was going to be for me.

I returned to the list of Vermont beef farmers on NOFA’s website and found one in Rupert, which is even closer to me than Tinmouth: Merck Forest & Farmland Center. I dialed the number and found out that Merck Forest did sell beef that was raised at the Farmland Center. It was frozen, and I could buy it—along with pork and lamb—at the retail store. Linda, the woman who answered my phone call, added that the meat was not “certified organic” because the feed the cows eat is not organic, but she assured me that the cows were not hopped up on any hormones. (Wish she could give the same assurances about Roger Clemens.) I failed to asked what the cows eat, but I’ll find out.

I shared my findings about the Merck Forest with Eric. He didn’t seem crazy about the fact that the meat was frozen. He hates to freeze steaks, thinks it ruins the texture and flavor. I told Eric the frozen meat from Merck was worth trying. He said he wouldn’t mind driving up to the Northeast Kingdom.

Anyone know of a farm in the southwestern Vermont area that sells beef, preferably fresh or vacuum-packed?

(Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net, where I couldn’t find a picture of a steer.)

My neighbor’s camo

I bumped into a neighbor the other evening while I was walking my dog. I noticed he was wearing camoflage. Why is Steve wearing camo, I wondered. What could he be hunting this time of year? Then it dawned on me: Turkey hunting season opens in two weeks. My neighbor was going scouting.

This is the turkey Eric shot last year:

I like to call this photo “Bye, Bye Birdie.”

(I know, the date on the photo reads 2004, but that’s because we hadn’t set the proper date on the camera.)

The Challenge of Buying Local

April 11, 2008 — About six weeks ago, some friends of ours bought beef from a farm in Greenwich, New York, about 20 minutes from where they live in Sandgate, a small town in southwestern Vermont.

“We should do that,” I said to Eric as he told me about our friends, the Monahan’s, beef bounty. “Only we should buy meat from a Vermont farm,” I quickly added. Eric, a life-long Vermonter, concurred.

Why Eric and I haven’t done this—purchased meat directly from a farmer—sooner is beyond me. After all, we live in a state known for its dairy farms (say cheese!). We like to support local businesses (a pox on the big box stores.) And we fancy ourselves more-or-less aware of the source of our food—though admittedly, Eric, who grew up hunting and fishing and who continues to bring home grouse, ducks, turkey and occasionally a deer, is a lot more aware than I. (I do, however, cook a lot of what he drags in dead through the kitchen door. Venison Bourguignonne anyone? Home-made turkey soup?)

Over the past couple of years, Eric and I have taken some small steps to reduce our dependency on the supermarket. For example, from June through October, we buy produce at a local farm stand, Clear Brook Farm, since I’m incapable of cultivating anything but weeds in the beds around our house. (At least we’ve got dandelion greens for salads. If they were good enough for Martha Stewart when she was at Alderson, they’re good enough for me.) And throughout the year we buy chicken, pork and beef from the two butcher shops in our small town instead of at the grocery store. In fact, when Riverside Custom Butchery opened across from the East Arlington post office last summer, Eric and I were eager to support the new establishment, which is within walking distance to our house. One day, when we were picking out some nicely marbled ribeyes for our charcoal grill and our rumbling stomachs, I asked the butcher, earnest do-gooder that I am, where the meat came from. We figured he was getting it from a local farm. Not so. He told us he got it in Boston.

So much for buying local.

I guess the realization that our “local” butcher shops weren’t so local coupled with our earnest desire to support Vermont businesses (and farms are businesses), coupled with the fact that hey, our friends were doing it, prompted us to get off our lazy butts and find a farm from which we could buy meat directly from the grower.

Note that we are not doing this because we were inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s book about subsisting exclusively on local foods for a year. We haven’t read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Nor are we doing this because of Michael Pollan’s portrayal of industrial farming and the corn industry in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. We haven’t read that one, either. So far, there’s no dilemma for me: Give me Oreos or give me death. (Of course, if I read Pollan’s best-seller, I might think differently about those corn-sweetened cookies.) Anyway, we don’t need to read books by the New York intelligentsia to understand the importance of eating local and especially of supporting Vermont businesses.

In all seriousness, though, I am facing a dilemma, and I would venture to bet that legions of other ordinary, middle income Americans like me face the same conundrum when it comes to buying local: It ain’t always easy and it ain’t always cheap. Buying local forces me to prioritize what’s most important in my life. It calls on me to make tough choices about where and how I’m going to spend my hard-earned money at a time when I’m struggling to pay off an oil bill that’s grown as big as my monthly mortgage payment, in an economy that grows more unstable every day. Fully embracing the “Buy Local” or “Localvore” ethos requires me to execute on my ideals, to act on my beliefs, to literally put my money where my big mouth is.

Over the next several months, I’m going to share with you my experiences procuring (hunting, fishing, growing, foraging, purchasing) and preparing wild and local foods in Vermont. I hope you’ll share your experiences and recipes in this forum, too. To what degree do you subscribe to the localvore ethos? What challenges have you faced trying to eat local?