The pumpkins are here!

Welcome, Fall!

By the calendar, we have another ten days til fall officially arrives.  But as we're waking up this morning, it's forty degrees!   So we're thinking soup, sweater weather and, of course, PuMpKiNs :)

October 1st is Open House, so put us on your calendar!

More Pie Please

"Perfect Peach Pie" or "Perfect Strawberry Pie"

Crust:

1 1/2 C flour

2 1/2 T sugar   

1/2 t salt

2 T milk

1/2 C oil

Mix minimally & press into pie plate with large spoon (fingers work too).  Bake @ 325 til golden.   Easy!

Filling:

1 C sugar

1 C water

3 1/2 T corn starch

dash salt

Cook & stir til clear (3-5 min).  Add 3 T dry peach jello.  Cool a bit.

Layer sliced peaches (4-6) & filling.  Cool in fridge.

Serve w/whipped topping.

Also great as chocolate or banana cream, etc.

This crust is so good, you might decide you never ever  have to roll out a pie crust or buy a pie crust from the grocery again!  

Art Jewelry by Megan

Aren't these pieces--and the photography--gorgeous?!?  Handmade   jewelry by the artist Megan Adamski.

 Love these feather earrings.  

Watch for Megan's art jewelry at The Farm.  We hear she can be persuaded to make custom pieces too!

Preserving Hydrangea Blooms

We love hydrangeas at The Farm and we're always looking for ways to preserve them so that we can enjoy them year-round.  Many of our customers consider them their favorites too, so you'll find them tucked into our wreaths and arrangements throughout the shop.     Last weekend we traveled to Ohio Street Originals in Quincy, where our friend Deb Damhorst is our go-to expert on preserving flowers with glycerine.   

This is Deb's workbench where she preserves hundreds and hundreds of hydrangea blooms every season.  The blooms are bundled and placed in the glycerine solution where the stems will pull the solution up through the flower.  Eventually the water in the flower is replaced by the glycerine, leaving the bloom  soft, supple, and preserved.    And she sent  that bucket of beautiful blooms back to The Farm with us!  Here are a few more shots taken at OSO.

Beautiful bundles hanging for air-drying.  Deb grows and harvests all of her flowers from her own gardens.   Her husband Mark makes awesome willow furniture too.   The majority of their products are sold wholesale to vendors  and they also have a small retail shop that is open by appointment or chance.

A big big Thank You to Deb!  She was so friendly and so generous to share her experience and knowledge.  It was a great visit!   We can't wait to see how our own preserving experiments   turn out :)

Farm Mail from Gail

I must say, I don’t remember such a long heat wave!   But we know this too shall pass, right?  And on the up-side – the shop is cool, and stocked up, AND we’re serving icy tea to make your walk in the garden more pleasant.  (because there are a lot of things blooming!)  And inside, you’ll find quite a few things marked down to make way for new goodies.  So, grab a friend or two, maybe plan for lunch at Morningstar, and come on out! 

Regular Hours – Tue thru Sat, 10-5  

Phone – 217-632-2888

Web – www.visit-thefarm.com

Facebook - Visit The Farm

 

Fruit Pie

How long has it been since you're had real, home-made strawberry pie?  Too Long??  Yeah, here too.

This was made with a combination of an old old recipe from a church cookbook--still one of the best places we know to find a tried-and-true recipe--along with a new crust  & topping recipe from Cook's Illustrated.  CI always has gorgeous recipes that tell you exactly why you should follow the directions they give.   But try as they might, some of us are going to have our way with the recipe and make it our own way :)

Crust:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 Tblsp sugar
1/4 teasp salt
8 Tblesp unsalted butter  (confession:  the above crust was made with salted butter, so the added salt was omitted)
2 ounces cream cheese
Coat a 9 inch pie plate with cooking spray.
Beat butter and cream cheese in a large bowl about 2 minutes.  Add flour and combine on medium-low speed until mixture resembles course cornmeal, about 20 seconds.Scrape down sides of bowl and increase mixer speed to medium high and beat til dough begins to form large clumps, about 30 seconds.
Save about 3 Tbls of the dough for the rim of the crust. Roll out  into a long thin rope and place it around the rim of  crust, pinching to make a fluted edge.   (A good idea, which turned into a bit of a mess, so this step was also omitted.) Press dough evenly over bottom of pie plate towards sides, using heel of your hand, working up the sides to evenly distribute.  If you use the reserve-rope method, good for you!  If not, pinch around the edge to make a little flute for the edge.  Cover with plastic wrap and let chill for one hour.
Heat oven to 325 degrees and pierce bottom of crust several times with a fork.  Bake til golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes.  Cool. 

Strawberry Filling
1 cup mashed strawberries
1 cup sugar
4 Tbsp cornstarch
1 cup cold water
1 Tbsp lemon juice
red food coloring
1 1/2 qt fresh strawberries. hulled and sliced
Blend the mashed strawberries with sugar and cornstarch.  Add water and cook until desired thickness.  Add lemon juice and a few drops food coloring; cool.  If too thick, add a little water.  Put fresh berries in the pie shell and pour mixture over top.   Refrigerate til ready to serve.

Topping:
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 Tblsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream
Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth.  Wtih mixer running, add cream and whip until stiff peaks form.

And there you have a really really good strawberry pie.  And even though local strawberry season is over, we're heading into blueberry season and how long has it been since you've had real, home-made blueberry pie?  :)

Quilts in the Garden

 You might remember that the Farm gals are quilters (except for the blogger and we won't talk about when she last picked up a needle!).   These pictures from a recent Michigan garden walk & quilt show may inspire us to have a "quilts in the garden" day at The Farm too :)

No, we don't have a buggy, but we do have a tractor.  Maybe Eric would let us use it for a quilt rack?

As you can see by the plastic, some quilters took extra care to protect their pieces from contact with any garden soil or rough edges of furniture.   It probably is true that quilts in the garden undergo some risk.   But what a beautiful way to enjoy them for a day.

And this one was hanging in an all-white garden in dappled shade.  Perfect.

So what do you think?   Maybe we all should get our beloved quilts out of the dark closets where they are folded and bring them out into the light--or shade-- of the garden for an afternoon.  And if you do, please take a picture and send it to us--we'd love to see yours too!

Every Fairy Needs A Garden

We're seeing fairies these days.   And not just at The Farm!  What?!?  You don't believe in fairies?  Hmmm. . . Well, take a look at these gardens and let us know what you think :)

These little guys were spied on a recent Michigan garden tour:

 And this last garden is by Growing Herbs for Beginners in Rochester.  Check out their how-to  if you'd like to build a little garden for the fairies in your yard :)

Garden Tour Season

Look what we spotted on the Rochester Women's garden tour  today--a flower-filled Rich Zimmer arranger from The Farm!  You know how much we love those flower arrangers  so it was really fun to see this one.  This garden was featured on the tour and Sue made us feel so welcome.  She even shared a seedhead from these gorgeous fluffy pink poppies.

  And she had another sweet surprise for us too.  Even though her peonies had finished blooming, she had cut these and stored them in her fridge so she'd have them for today's walk.  Want to know how she did that?  We did too!

To hold peonies for this special occasion, Sue cut them in tight bud,  rolled the entire stem & bud in damp newspaper and stored in the fridge.   Next year, we are so doing this too!  Here are a couple more scenes from this beautiful garden:

purple smoke bush

tiger eye sumac & ornamental peach

Thanks so much to Sue for opening her garden today!  Garden walks are a great way to get new information and inspiration.  Be sure to check out Secret Gardens of Menard County, featuring eight Menard County gardens this coming Saturday, June 18th.  And stop by the Farm--we're featured on the tour too!