Tags
barn cats, bloomfield ny, chicken coop, chickens, Cocktails, comfrey, compost, currants, family farm, finger lakes, Gardening, herb garden, homestead, kittens, mint julep, new farm, raspberries, rochester ny, rooster, summer project
We accomplished a lot over the past couple of weeks and I’m finally starting to feel like I don’t have to freak out on a daily basis. The gardens are loaded up and growing – I’m on to doing battle with the rabbits and making sure the chickens can’t help themselves to the plants. 
I am grateful for friends and family members who helped me watch the kids, burn up brush and pull out roots in preparation for some raspberries! We managed to plant some cherry trees, and the currant bushes I planted last fall are starting to fill with fruit. 
I was excited to find a large patch of comfrey growing by the burn pile. Comfrey is an awesome plant to have around a homestead – it has powerful medicinal properties, and is also great for activating your compost. It’s a nitrogen fixer, and I will definitely use it as a chop & drop mulch in the orchard. I’ll talk more about it when I get around to transplanting it. 
The chickens are getting big and brave. They’re getting acclimated to their new home and starting to venture out in search of the best weeds and bugs. Rather than cramming themselves into a chicken blob under the nest box shelves, they are beginning to feel safe getting comfortable and falling asleep on their own. Hilariously, Harvey (the dominant rooster) is now trying to crow. I let them out first thing in the morning – he rushes from the coop, bursts forth from the barn ahead of everyone else, musters all his breath, and goes “aaaaa!” Rather uninspiring but incredibly funny. Teenage chickens. 
The kittens have reached a size that allows them to escape their box, and wander willy-nilly through the basement. It is therefore time to put them in the barn. I’ve been putting them outside with their food every morning with the chickens, and feeding them dinner/putting them to bed at the same time as well…so they’re plenty used to the outdoors. But last night their bed was in the barn instead of the basement, which they did not appreciate. Bing escaped at some point and waited on the porch for us to wake up, and Toothless is just tuckered right out, but they’ll get used to it. Think yer traumatized now kittens, just wait till you meet the vet! 
A good portion of the work around here is not interesting. It’s weeding, mowing, trimming, thinning, weed whacking, cleaning up after animals and kids. It’s masses of excessively dirty laundry, pest control, pruning, tune-ups and sweaty work. We spent the day yesterday just cleaning up around the land. The burn piles had become so large, they couldn’t just be lit, they needed breaking down. Our barn demolition adventures had left our driveway littered with scrap wood and metal, and the newly lovely weather has spurred the growth of weeds.
This coming week, I hope to finish up my rainy day cutting board project, plant my last cherry tree and side dress the fall planted garlic crop. I’m super excited for this garlic because I planted several new varieties last year, which will obviously need taste testing.
The sun is out, the herbs are up, it’s time to make a julep and enjoy the process!
Mint Julep
8-9 fresh mint leaves
+/- 1 tsp simple syrup, agave or honey
5 count (Apx. 2 shots) your favorite bourbon
Crushed ice
I know it’s a pain to bust out your blender, but don’t skip on the crushed ice. It’s really what makes this drink. In a julep cup or rocks glass, bruise your mint. Add your sweetener and bourbon and give it a stir to distribute the sugar. Fill the glass to the top with crushed ice. Enjoy your whiskey slushy!
The lighting is horrid. We sat in a booth along the wall. The can lights from the previous establishments are still in place and they are just so bad (actually, there are very few notable changes). They are all in the center of the room; so there is no lighting whatsoever over the booths that line the walls, which casts a huge shadow if you’re at a booth, and causes the place to look like exactly what it is – a poorly lit basement. At the same time, if you’re sitting in the middle of the room at a table, it’s very bright. I also have a very serious aversion to drop ceiling tiles. I don’t understand why we should stop considering aesthetics once we reach the tops of walls. In addition, while there was no music, there was a concert going on upstairs in the German House; so it was still quite loud in an indistinguishable base sort of way. This might be at the core of the problem with each attempt at this basement business over the years. It’s really just not a good place for a restaurant when that large of a distraction is taking place during the times when you are supposed to be doing the most business. I realize that many people will not be bothered by this, but if you are a stickler for atmosphere, this is not the place for you.
I ordered a cocktail which was called “the thistle.” I cannot complain at all about the size of this drink or the amount of alcohol it contained. It wasn’t as complex as the ingredient list led me to believe it would be, but I suspect this might have been due to the small and quick melting type of ice cubes used.
On to the dishes. We ordered a few things, starting with the pork belly steam buns which sounded so nice, but in reality were almost completely devoid of flavor. The combination of the soft steamed bun, lightly cooked fatty pork and mayo made for a mushy texture throughout. The “togarashi mayo” was the most interesting element of these mini sandwiches. 
You can see that the presentation leaves something to be desired as well (the lighting makes it worse). Next came the fried rice balls with similar results. The equally exciting list of ingredients including kim chi, cheese, spicy pork and garlic mayo left me feeling cheated. I will give them that they were fried perfectly. The texture was lovely, the appearance, the crunch was wonderful. The complete lack of flavor once you bit into them caused us to almost not believe our taste buds. We kinda look at each other and ask “really, that’s it?” We then ordered some chicken wings on the 
recommendation of our server. They were good. They were crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside and the sauce was decent (we tried a couple kinds and both were pretty good – very sweet but not really spicy), unfortunately they didn’t wow me, and by this time we were asking ourselves why we should spend any more money there, which is when we left to go have another drink elsewhere.
We ordered drinks first – wine and beer all around and a craft cocktail to taste. We chose what we thought was the most bad-ass one on the menu: the Spanish Harlem. Let me preface this by saying that these lovely ladies enjoy whiskey of all kinds and generally drink it neat, so the issue here is not toughness. We thought – r
ye, mezcal, vermouth, lemon – awesome, what could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately only 2 of 5 liked it enough to have more than one sip and 0 of 5 would order this again. The words “cleaner,” “gasoline,” and “bacon” were used. I was happy with my malbec, but there are plenty of other options.
Our suspender-wearing server was knowledgeable, polite, prompt and sufficiently indulgent of 5 women more interested in talking that focusing on the menu. All of the food plus 6 drinks ended up costing us each a little under $38 plus tip, which I thought was very reasonable for the experience we had. I will not order another Spanish Harlem, but I will go back.
They didn’t skimp on the duck meat, the tortilla was greasy like anything duck, but still crunchy, the flavor and textures were surprisingly, really well balanced – sweet, savory, creamy, crunchy. And the crème fresh which I thought would be an overkill of creaminess turned out to be perfect. Thumbs up on that.
