Tikkannen's Berry Farm

Yes, I'm catching up on photos today :)

I've "discovered" Reino "Ray" Tikkanen's (what a great Finnish name!) berry farm on the Sterling/Foster town line. Been getting a couple pounds of blueberries a week from there -- no need for supermarket bananas or strawberries for breakfast this time of year :)

Farm Profile: Tikkanen Berry Farm by Juliette Rogers Published: August 16, 2006 STERLING, CT - Tucked away on a country road that snakes and curves back and forth across the Connecticut/Rhode Island state line, Ray Tikkanen’s berry farm lies in a little valley crossed by a trickling brook. He’s been farming here since 1946, when he returned from the Pacific and his uncle offered to help set him up raising laying hens on his farm. Ray stayed in egg production until 1970, when he “saw the writing on on wall” in US farm policy and how the poultry business was driving egg producers to go into cage plants in order to survive. The industry was consolidating, and producers were dependant on middlemen who bought their eggs at a price of his choosing, and resold them for a profit. Since he didn’t see much of a future in eggs, he reckoned he had two choices: leave farming to work at Pratt and Whitney, or convert the farm to something else.

http://www.farmfresh.org/food/farm.php?farm=7

You sort of need to know where you're going -- he's on Calvin French Road, and while there's a sign pointing towards his place from Cucumber Hill Road...he doesn't have any more signs at the other turns you need to make, until you see his farm sign!

We roasted a pig!

For Eric's 40th.

The guy who owns the trailer has two of them -- we were doing it ourselves, he was catering another party with his other trailer. When he's catering, he starts it at home twelve hours before dinner and then drives over with it roasting a couple hours before dinner.

He raises his own pigs, so between his farm, Stearn's where it was slaughtered, and Eric's the pig had never been more then five miles as the crow flies.

He dropped off this trailer and pig the night before, showed me & Eric what to do to run the equipment. We put bags of ice over the pig overnight, and Eric lit it off at 5am.


Checking out the pig the night before. His younger daughter is at that cool age where she didn't get freaked out -- she came up a little tepidly, but after thinking about it for a moment decided it was pretty neat. Her older sister wanted to avoid any sight of it what so ever!


And the party day.


Carving it up. The guy in the checkered shirt actually knew what he was doing (he grew up in a community where someone was roasting something every weekend)...the rest of us where following his directions. If he hadn't been there, it wouldn't has been as organized as we read off stuff printed from the internet :D




Delicious!

Oscar at Eric's Party

Went up in the morning to help finish setting up Eric's Two-Thirds Done (40th B'day) party (and help with the pig)...Oscar came along.

Stinky of course decided to go under the roaster and got grease all over his head, which meant he got a bath at Erics...which is why he still looks half-wet in some of the photos.

Marinated Vegetables...

I chose to say this was a bold culinary decision -- to marinate potatoes, zuchinni, yellow squash, yellow beans, green beans, and yellow onions from my garden overnight in a mix of olive oil, red wine vinegar, pepper, and Chinese Five Spice.

The decision to marinate was in no way related to discovering I was out of gas last night after cutting them up :D



Little Sweet & Sour sauce as a condiment; betcha a little homemade sweet relish (if I had any...) would've been perfect with it.

The marinade probably worked out just as well, since the zuke, squash, and beans were picked a couple days past their prime. Not bad, just I have to start visiting the garden at least three times a week now :D

Awesome road side stand!

Had to make one of my rare journeys to the corporate office today, after first picking up some equipment at the data center -- I live roughly halfway between the two, so that was a 180+ miles of driving for work today! Took the scenic route back from New London, through Ledyard & Preston, and found this roadside stand in Preston City selling perennials! $20 bought me seven plants :) They might be pretty scraggly by commercial nursery standards, but for cheap money I don't mind waiting for them to grow here! Hopefully I can get them planted Tuesday night, I was moving some more Daylillies tonight.

Is that a peavy in your bike rack, or are you just happy to see me?

Or are you just happy to see me?

Why yes, yes it is. In fact, there's also a 372XP in my trunk!

Eric called me at 10pm the previous night -- a tree I had previously told him to have a tree service take down at his rental property because it was too close to the neighbors for me to handle...finally came down it's own.  

Knew I only needed a few select things...and hey, it saved at least $7 of gas versus taking the pickup :)

Lobster Lunch

Lobster Roll from a local joint (ain't like in Maine, but I'm not in Maine...)

Taters, green & yellow beans, onions, squash, zukes from my garden in oil & pepper and cooked on the grill.  With a dash of sea salt once it got to my plate.  Everything but the taters (Monday evening) were picked immediately before lunch :)

Harvest Meal...

Yukon Gold taters, yellow squash, zuke, onion, green beans, yellow beans...all from my garden. Oil & Pepper, wrapped in Reynolds Wrap, grilled up with a steak :)

A triple today!

First taters, first maters, and first green beans out of the garden!

Found the potatoes when weeding a flower bed last night -- it was the potato bed last year, so that wasn't surprising.  They went well with lunch:

Tonight I was doing some more weeding, and had a couple cherry tomatoes and a couple baby green beans fresh off the vine!

Could've even had a small summer squash if I had wanted to :)

Miscellaneous Stuff...

Various stuff I've found over the last month...
Joyce Ballatyne -- apparently a PG-13 version of Norman Rockwell :)

Links to more of her stuff here and here.

Another Steampunk...love the soft lighting and the loom in the background (one of the best pics from technical & content I've seen!):
Stu finally got laid off -- he's one of those characters you meet that you'll NEVER forget! He's a pretty simple guy, but epitomizes the Improv principal of "just say yes" and see what happens when you don't hold yourself back:
http://www.telegram.com/article/20120624/COLUMN27/106249579

Nick Kotsopoulos Politics and the City
Several “suits” recently gathered outside the Telegram & Gazette building on Franklin Street for a press conference.

Among them were Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray; U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester; City Manager Michael V. O'Brien; state Rep. John Mahoney, D-Worcester; Craig L. Blais, president of the Worcester Business Development Corp.; and Richard K. Sullivan Jr., secretary of the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Standing behind Mr. Murray during the press conference, and between Mr. Mahoney and Mr. McGovern, was a rather unassuming guy dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. It was Stu Herman, and he was there simply as an observer.

To say that Mr. Herman looked out of place among all the “suits” at the press conference would be a bit of an understatement.

In reality, though, he was very much right in place; in fact, he fit in just fine and was more than welcomed.

You see, Mr. Herman, very much a blue-collar working guy, is well-known to many local politicos, even though he is not actively involved in politics or government in any way.

He has made friendships over the years with several politicians and has had a Forrest Gump-like knack of popping up in places with prominent political figures, including those who had presidential aspirations and some who even ended up in the White House.

When George H.W. Bush made a presidential campaign stop in Worcester back in the 1980s, Mr. Herman not only met Mr. Bush, but he also got some personal tips from him about his upcoming vacation. When Mr. Herman mentioned that he was about to go on vacation to China, Mr. Bush, who had served as an envoy to China for President Gerald Ford, took time to suggest places for him to visit while in China.

“He was a really nice guy, very friendly,” Mr. Herman, a lifelong Worcester resident, recently recalled.

Over the years, Mr. Herman has also brushed shoulders and had encounters with many other national figures, such as Jimmy Carter, Edward M. Kennedy and members of the Kennedy family, John Kerry, George McGovern, Bill Clinton, George Wallace, Ralph Nader, Tipper Gore, Mitt Romney and Deval Patrick, just to name a few from the state and national level.

And there were many on the local level as well, especially folks such as Mr. Murray, Mr. McGovern and Mr. Mahoney.

There was the time when Mr. Kerry was marching in a parade in Worcester with Mr. Murray. When Mr. Murray happened to see Mr. Herman standing among the crowd lining the street, he waved him over so he could have his picture taken with Mr. Kerry as the parade was going on.

“Stu's a good man,” Mr. Murray said last week. “I've run into him at a lot of places and a lot of situations. He's one of those guys who understand Worcester in the best sense of things.”

Mr. Herman also had many friends in the sports world, most notably longtime Boston Red Sox fan-favorite Johnny Pesky and former Red Sox catcher and hometown hero Richie Gedman.

When I worked in the Telegram & Gazette Leominster Bureau in 1978, I went to cover a baseball clinic Mr. Pesky was conducting at Doyle Field. After the clinic, I went to interview Mr. Pesky, and when I told him I was from the T&G the first thing he asked me was: “How's my good friend, Stu Herman?”

For the past 43 years, Mr. Herman has worked at the Telegram & Gazette. For many years, he has handled the mail that goes in and out of the building, as well as being in charge of newspaper back copies.

It was his employment at the T&G that gave him access to the many politicians who passed through the doors at 20 Franklin St., either to meet with the editorial board or reporters. Mr. Herman knew when these folks would be in the building and he made a point of being there when they arrived — sometimes to the chagrin of some who felt it was inappropriate for a non-news person to badger those people.

But Mr. Herman said no one ever gave him the brushoff. In fact, many often took the time to talk with him, and some even obliged with an autograph or posed for a photograph.

There were times when Mr. Herman even had more access to political figures and their families than reporters did.

Back in 1978, President Carter's mother, Lillian, came to Worcester to participate in a friendship exchange that was going on with teenagers from Ireland. One of her first stops was the mayor's office in City Hall, and before she arrived her security people made it perfectly clear that all reporters had to stand in the hallway well away from the mayor's office when she arrived. There would be no access to Mrs. Carter.

But that didn't stop Mr. Herman, who happened to be there as well. When the elevator opened and Mrs. Carter emerged, he made a beeline right to the president's mother. What was most remarkable was that he not only got right up to Mrs. Carter, though he did startle her a bit, but he got to shake her hand — actually it was more like squeezing her arm — and talk to her, all while her security stood by. It was like they knew who he was.

Then there was the time when President Clinton came to the DCU Center. Several reporters expecting to cover the president inside the building were being turned away by the Secret Service, but Mr. Herman somehow got in.

“They began kicking out reporters, then a Secret Service guy came up to me and asked if I worked for the T&G,” Mr. Herman recalled. “When I told them I did, they let me in.”

Perhaps the quintessential Stu Herman “brush with greatness” occurred at a Democratic State Convention held at the DCU Center.

Mr. Herman was walking around the convention floor when someone came up to him and told him he had to take a seat. When he asked where he should sit, he was directed to an unoccupied seat among some people — it just so happened they seated him with the Kennedy family.

“When I sat down I realized I was sitting next to Caroline Kennedy and in front of me was John Kennedy Jr.,” Mr. Herman recalled.

It also just happened that when Mr. Herman went to take his seat, his camera lens accidentally conked JFK Jr. on the back of his head.

“I apologized to him, and he told me not to worry,” Mr. Herman said. “He was pretty good about it. He told me he was all right and there was no problem. They were both very nice people.”

Unfortunately, these kinds of stories may be no more.

Sadly, Mr. Herman's job at the T&G is being eliminated with the move of the newspaper to 100 Front St. His last day is Friday, which happens to be 43 years to the day since he started here.

“I'll miss a lot of the people here,” said Mr. Herman, who began working at the T&G when he was in high school. “I'm looking for a new job, but I don't know what's going to happen. I don't want to sit around and collect (unemployment). I want to work; I need to work.”

Hopefully, Mr. Herman will land on his feet and find a new job soon.

Meanwhile, his departure will leave this newspaper without its unofficial greeter to visiting political movers and shakers of this country, this state and this city. You can bet, though, that some of those who have been to the paper in the past will be looking for him the next time they stop by.

Memorial Day Weekend

What $70 of bark mulch looks like -- and this is the real stuff from Hull I haven't put any new bark mulch down in a long time -- I will probably end up using three loads over the course of June in order to get all the flower beds I want to do be done. One of the beds before: And after...once I get caught up I should only need one load a year or perhaps every other year: Then in the afternoon I hauled four loads of grass clippings from the dump. Had to use the hay fork to load it all in, and then unload it. I had wanted to finish weeding and fixing up the asparagus patch before taking pics...but after the work on Saturday with the mulch and a 15 mile bike ride on Sunday I was too tuckered to do anymore in the garden this weekend. This is the end of the garden I'm letting be mostly fallow this year...and hope to haul in copious amounts of grass and leaves to help boost the organic matter dramatically. Didn't quite know what to plant in this area, so I threw in a couple six packs of strawberries. The brush/weeds in the rear are on my shortlist to cut down this year, and I want to remove the stones and pile in plenty of organic stuff from the dump to help build up the soil. Next spring I'd like to extend the fence to include this area within the fence line (which requires cutting back more brush and removing some stones so I can mow around what will be the new back side). Really poor germination on corn again this year; last year I had a near total failure. This is an early variety of corn (the Silver Queen was an almost total failure). I plan to till up the Silver Queen bed again and re-plant with a second batch of this stuff. I <3 my Scuffle Hoe...made real quick work in the nice soil in these beds. Taters will need to be hilled this weekend :) Blueberries are starting to really mature:

First lettuce of the year

Could've been picking it already, but been dealing with the Asparagus Onslaught :) Also picked some onion greens -- had some "leftovers" from last year I through in a corner when cleaning up, and they started growing again this spring. The bulbs won't be good keepers, but I can clip them for greens. Working from a home office sucks. Olive oil up the grill, light it, throw on meat, run down to the garden to pick some veggies...it's a tough way to make lunch :D

Weeding Update

Starting to transition from "Gardening" to "Weeding" :) The weeds are REALLY bad this year with how warm it got so early. This is more like mid to late June weeding. On the left are the row covers I bought locally...no where as nice as the good stuff on the right (that the mouse ruined half of...grrrr.)

People's Tramway

More on the rail trail in Killingly:

NEW HAVEN, Jan. 12 - The New Haven Road has just purchased through the People's Tramway Company of Danielson, Conn., the Webster and Worcester Street Railway Company. The purchase gives to the People's Tramway Company control of the trolley lines from Danielson, Conn., to Worcester, a distance of forty miles. The company recently acquired the Putnam and Thompson Street Railway Company, and later took over the Webster and Dudley system, the latest purchase of the Webster and Worcester completing the circuit. The New Haven Road will extend the People's Tramway line in time to Norwich, thus connecting with the steam road along the Thames to New London and forming a continuous line from Norwich to Boston, a distance of 120 miles. The People's Tramway system will run express trains, freight, mail, baggage, and passenger coaches over the newly acquired line. The express trains will make stops only at Putnam and Webster in the through run from Danielson to Worcester, and will run at an average speed of thirty-five miles an hour. A smoker will be added to the through trains. The price paid for the new roads is comparatively small. The Tramway stock is $400,000. Webster and Dudley $50,000, and Worcester $150,000, making with the bonded debt an outlay of $1,000,000. The road when completed will cater to fully 120,000 people. Railroad and trolley men see in the move taken by the People's Tramway Company a step in the programme of the Consolidated Road to occupy the trolley field ahead of the electric road companies. By taking over the new lines the New Haven Road stops competition at Worcester and controls all of the trolley business of Eastern Connecticut. The line will be used as a feeder to the steam roads at Worcester and Norwich. The New York Times New York, New York 13 January 1901

Nice simple lunch

A fish filet, brown rice, and garden fresh asparagus.

Filet was just one of those square breaded things I could through in the oven since I didn't have time to grill up a salmon filet

Rice was the first I cooked in my new rice cooker, does a much nicer job then boiling in a pan!

"Homemade" tartar sauce...ok, it's just some relish mixed with Miracle Whip

Garden Update...

Not sure I can remember everything :)

Planted today:

Tomatoes:
Mortgage Lifter (6)
Cherry (2)
Better Boy (I think) (1)
Early Girl (3)
Roma (3)
Brandywine (6)
_______ (1)
Yellow (3) (Was a last minute addition after Mom said her father used to grow them and she likes them).

I have half of several six packs that I still have to decide what to do!

Peppers:
Sweet (3)
Jalapeno (3)

Eggplant:
Black Beauty (3)
White (3)

Also planted yellow and green Kentucky Wonder green beans, pole style, along front of fence.

Why I love Game of Thrones

Not sure this scene will get the full impact for those who don't follow...the quick plot summary here is Lord Tywin thought Arya, who was in hiding less she be taken hostage, was a commoner prisoner when he appointed her Cup Bearer. In that servant's role she's privy to conversations that would be very useful to her brother, who is currently fighting Tywin. Tywin also set in motion the events that resulted in Arya's father being betrayed and killed.

Plowing the Community Garden

So, last year while I was out looking at the tornado damage, I came across the awesomely big Wilbraham Community Garden and googling them found out that the Eastern Connecticut Draft Horse Ass'n has an annual plow day there. And I remembered about it! Went up for about a half an hour to watch them work -- so quiet for so much work being done!








The garden won a grant from Pepsi Bottling Company, so they had a bunch of folks up providing labor to go with the grant:










The electric battery driven hydraulics were awesome -- the plowman would just tap the foot pedals to raise and lower the plows. Very quick compared to the guys futzing with the manual levers.