Heartwood

May at the Inn

Wed, 21 May 2014 10:04:15 -0700

May is a busy time at the farm and at the Inn. Yesterday we moved the new hens (and we actually got one rooster too) up to their new quarters in the fenced free range area. They still have to be separated from the old hens until they are not so small...that pecking order can get pretty hectic sometimes! We have named the rooster Steu and the girls are just The Girls. Be sure to walk up and say hello if you are up here on the farm.

Today Neal is cutting the grassy fields and tomorrow it is back to spraying as the mildew is pretty difficult this season. Too much moisture, not enough wind to dry off the leaves, and too much heat make the perfect formula for those nasty spores so Neal is riding the tractor listening to Cat Stephens...never thought that would be the way to listen to that great songster.

As most are aware, Oregon has "Seven Wonders" and we invite you stop in here at the Inn on your way between two of them, The Oregon Coast and The Columbia Gorge. We believe Oregon's wine is the eighth wonder so come join us here in the hills and have a taste of that wonder, Black Walnut's Pinot Noir while looking at iconic Mount Hood in the distance. You know it is also one of Oregon's Seven Wonders. Come see one, or better yet, see them all!

Winter in the Vineyard

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 12:43:41 -0700

January in the vineyard is solitude...peacefulness broken only by the quite call of the Great Horned Owl in the top of the firs west of the vines. Neal begins pruning in January and is out by 7:45 each morning no matter the weather because farming does not wait for the sun. Each day he touches the vines, determining the strongest shoots to leave for the next year's growth and the ones to cut back for the second year. This is the third year Neal has managed and trimmed the vines; a way for him to understand the cycle in vineyard, a way for him to touch each plant and think about the crop of fruit to turn into wine...such is the life of the farmer and the vitner. He sometimes ponders what brought him to this beautiful place in the valley which he strives to nurture and which he cherishes. Each clip of the pruning shears brings him closer to the nature of the vineyard. You should think about coming out to the valley in January or February...solitude in the vineyard is a peacefulness not to be missed but to be cherished among the vines.

Trails to Feast

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 12:36:56 -0700

Feast is coming! It's the Northwest's ultimate food and drink festival, coming to downtown Portland September 19-22. It showcases Oregon's bounty -- it's fresh produce, it's local ingredients, and it's talented chefs, winemakers, brewers, cheesemakers, and other artisans. Offering cooking classes, tasting panels, speakers, food & drink pairings, tasting events, and nightly gourmet dinners, it's everything a locovore could want.

In preparation for Feast, Travel Oregon has put together Trails to Feast, culinary excursions throughout different regions of Oregon designed to introduce folks to the people and places that make up the bounty of Oregon. It's a chance to hit the countryside before heading into the city, to explore new regions or to revisit favorite places. We're on the Oregon Cheese Trail, within an hour's drive of four artisan creameries. One of them, Briar Rose Creamery, is just 1.6 miles down the road, and their wonderful fresh chevre, aged cheeses, and chocolate chevre truffles require a stop. We're also part of the Perfect Wine Country Weekend, located on the Worden Hill Wine Trail and surrounded by the wineries of the Dundee Hills.

In this great segment by Travel Oregon, the scenes featuring Scott Neal of Coeur de Terre talking about his wine were shot on our patio here at the Black Walnut. They got a great shot of our view of Mt. Hood! The last shots of the road past Maresh Red Barn and the hill overlooking Mt. Hood are just down the road from us on the Worden Hill Wine Trail. So whether you're planning a trip to Feast or not, come on out! Join us, and enjoy the bounty.

On Surprises and an Unlikely Recipe

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 15:00:21 -0700

Keeping a luxury inn on 42 acres of fields, forests, and vineyards is a lot of work. In addition to the regular duties and upkeep of the inn, there are a host of farm chores: chickens to keep, gardens to water and weed, gophers to trap, fields to mow, the vineyard to tend. How Karen and Neal have kept it up so tirelessly for ten years is beyond me. And on top of all the regular work, there are always surprises to deal with. Like the other day, when Neal noticed the unmistakable stink of skunk in the garage. He searched every corner of the garage, wondering if he would find a skunk in one of them. He didn’t, to his relief, but he soon found the culprit curled up in her usual spot on the bench outside the front door: Queen Bee. She had gotten herself properly skunked.

The problem then was how to wash her. I like the skin on my hands and arms too much to have ever tried bathing a cat, but I understand it’s an unpleasant experience for all involved, even without the stink. Thankfully for Neal, Queen Bee is a pretty relaxed cat. Not enough to spare him an unpleasant experience, but enough to spare him his skin. Neal put her in a wire dog crate so she couldn’t run away and bathed her with tomato juice, because everybody knows that’s what you’re supposed to do. But it didn’t work.

I met an organic farmer a couple years back who told me he grew up keeping skunks as pets. He would de-stink them himself, and he had tried every method of getting rid of the smell (except, apparently, the method of not keeping skunks as pets). He claimed that the end-all solution to skunk smell was to burn cornmeal and stand in the smoke. I imagine it just makes you smell like skunky burnt cornmeal, but he swears by it. It’s still untested, so if anyone feels like trying it next time they or their pet gets sprayed, let us know how it goes.

What ended up working for Queen Bee was a simple mixture hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap. Of all recipes to put on our blog, I never thought we’d feature one for anti-skunk solution, but here it is:

Anti-Skunk Solution

1 quart hydrogen peroxide (the 3% peroxide kind)

¼ cup baking soda

2 teaspoons dish soap

Mix all the ingredients in a pail.

Don’t wet your pet – putting this on a dry coat is ideal.

Apply the solution from the collar back toward the tail, and do not get it anywhere near your pet’s eyes or nose!

Lather it up and massage it into your pet’s coat for about 5 minutes.

Rinse your pet thoroughly, making sure none of the solution gets anywhere near their eyes or nose!

Repeat the lather and rinse process up to three times.

And keep a good sense of humor. Most unpleasant things turn out better that way.

Lavender Lemonade

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 11:57:22 -0700

This time of year, lavender is in its prime. The official Oregon Lavender Festival may be over, but the lovely herb continues to flourish and dots our property in patches of purple and white. One of my favorite uses for lavender is Lavender Lemonade – it’s sweet, tangy, floral, and it’s a perfect thirst-quencher on these hot summer afternoons. You can make regular old lemonade and just throw a handful of fresh lavender flowers in it to infuse, but I’ve found that the best method uses lavender simple syrup. Make sure to use culinary-grade lavender, meaning lavender that hasn’t been treated with any chemicals. Fun fact: If you use the variety of lavender called Hidcote, your lemonade will turn pink.

For the Simple Syrup:

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

¼ cup dried lavender flowers, or two generous handfuls of fresh blooms, stripped from the stems.

Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a rolling boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

Once at a rolling boil, add the lavender and stir, continuing the rolling boil for one minute.

Take the pan off the heat and let the mixture infuse for one hour.

Strain the mixture into a clean jar, using a fine mesh sieve.

Simple syrup can be refrigerated for about a week.

For the Lemonade:

2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice, strained

2 cups Lavender Simple Syrup

6 cups water, or to taste

In a large pitcher, combine the lemon juice, simple syrup, and water. The amount of water can be adjusted according to how full-bodied you like your lemonade.

Pour over ice and garnish with a couple fresh lavender sprigs and a slice of lemon.

Enjoy!

The New Pecking Order

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 16:31:50 -0700

Two very special deliveries came the other day. The first was the Cadillac of chicken coops, handmade by Tristan Nichols of The Chicken Coop Store. It arrived in the afternoon, and in a matter of minutes was assembled next to the garden awaiting the second special delivery: ten young hens. They came in the back of a white SUV, huddled together in two crates, their necks resting on each other’s backs. They were hesitant to leave the comfort of their huddles for the spacious coop, even with its fresh hay, full feeder, and comfortable roosts. Neal opened the crate doors, but they refused to come out, even with a couple gentle shakes to the crate to coax them out. “Okay,” he said, “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” He reached in and grabbed a hen by the legs and pulled each one out in an unhappy flurry of squawking and flapping. Once they were free of the crates, they resumed their huddle in the corner of the coop furthest from Neal.

They're taking a while to adjust to their new surroundings and still resume their nervous huddle in the corner whenever the coop door is opened. But today, their fear of humans at the door was quickly replaced by a new terror: the five old hens. They're big. They're intimidating. And they're not messing around. One of the young hens had become a nuisance over the past couple days by pecking the others and being generally quite mean. But when the old hens arrived, the matriarch immediately singled out the mean one. She marched right over, puffed herself up, and actually kicked the her in the face. They fought it out, but not for very long. Now the mean one huddles in the corner by itself. I guess that settles that!

The old ladies have gotten right down to business showing the young ones how it's done. They've taken very quickly to their new roosts and nesting boxes, and have already laid four eggs today. Here's hoping the young hens settle in and do likewise.

The Ladies

Sat, 13 Jul 2013 12:18:10 -0700

I got out of my car at the inn one morning and heard a commotion up the hill. Before I could place the sounds, a frantic hen came sprinting around the bushes as fast as her little legs would take her, with a very happy chocolate lab in pursuit. It would have been comical had I not known exactly how it was going to end. I ran up the hill as fast as I could, shouting, “No! No!” at the dog, but it made no difference. I lost sight of him in the tall grass, and when he reappeared, the hen was limp in his mouth. I kept running and shouting at the dog, because now I was mad. But one look at me, and he ran into the woods in a flurry of feathers and was gone.

Between the mysterious chocolate lab, the coyotes, the hawks, and old age, our ladies have suffered quite a loss. We’re down to five. They do give us a few lovely brown eggs every day, and they do take care of all the leftover food scraps from breakfast – bits of waffle with Chantilly cream, applewood-smoked bacon, asparagus, mushroom, and cheese frittata. It’s a tough job, but they’re happy to do it.

And so, Bruce the Egg Guy comes every other week, bringing flats of beautiful brown and white eggs fresh from his farm to supplement our egg supply. We’ve been hoping increase our flock by raising some chicks, so we decided to buy a rooster from him. He has a few, but he had one in particular picked out for us. “He’s huge,” he said. “Massive. And you won’t have any trouble getting fertilized eggs.” Great. I’ve had my ankles attacked by roosters enough times that I’m less than thrilled about the arrival of a gargantuan, he-man Chanticleer.

We’ve been expecting its arrival for weeks, but every time Bruce comes, no rooster. “So where’s the rooster?” we ask. “Ah…I can’t catch him,” he says. Every week it’s the same: “Still can’t catch him.” Last time he came, he said he might need some help to catch him! So, if there is a rooster, not only is it huge and aggressive, it’s skilled in evasive maneuvers. I can’t wait.

Well, we’ll get a rooster one way or another, and when we do, hopefully it’ll cheer the ladies up. They’ve been looking a little grumpy lately.

Strawberry Jam

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:47:05 -0700

Grandpa showed up at the kitchen door yesterday with 4 giant flats of local strawberries -- time to make the annual batch of Utz family strawberry jam! I'd been looking forward to jam day for a while. I made my own jam for the first time last summer, and now I'm hooked. Homemade jam is so simple to make and so much better than the store-bought stuff that I'm surprised more people don't make it.

"We always use Grandpa's recipe," Kris told me, "So it's awesome that he's going to make it with us this year." Grandpa went straight to work, washing all the strawberries in the prep sink, and then carefully de-stemming each berry. Kris mashed the berries and stirred in the ingredients, and the two of them chatted as they worked.

"Grandpa," Kris asked, "remember when you used to pick huckleberries and make jam? Was that when you lived up on the ridge?"

"Oh, yes." he said. "Mother would take us kids and the horses and the double boilers - all the canning equipment, and we'd pick huckleberries all day, all up the ridge and down the other side. And Mother would make huckleberry jam right out there in the field. We'd have huckleberry jam every day!" He laughed. "We were the fattest naked kids in the country."

"Weren't there a lot of bears out there?"

"Oh, lots of 'em! The bears were pickin' huckleberries right along with us."

I listened with delight to Kris and his Grandpa reminisce and tell stories as the wonderful, dense aroma of crushed strawberries filled the kitchen. Before too long, they had about seven gallons of strawberry jam - plenty, I'd say, to last the family and our guests until strawberry season next year.

Want to make some, too? Here's what you'll need:

7 cups mashed strawberries (about 3.5 quarts of fresh berries)

1/2 cup lemon juice

2 boxes of pectin

9 cups white sugar

1 cup honey - We used the incredible dark-golden wildflower honey from Kris' backyard beehives. Delicious!

1 cup corn syrup - Since we're not cooking the fruit, the corn syrup is necessary to keep the sugar from crystallizing. You can omit the corn syrup, but you'll have to boil the berries and increase the amount of sugar in your jam.

Here's what to do:

1. Wash berries and remove the stems.

2. Mash up the fruit. If you're making a small batch, a potato masher on a baking sheet works well, but since we had 48 pints of berries to tackle, we used our commercial stand mixer instead.

3. Add ingredients to the fruit in this order and mix well after each addition: Lemon juice, pectin, sugar, honey, corn syrup.

4. Pour the mixture into a clean container with a lid and let sit at room temperature overnight until the jam sets.

And that's it! The jam will keep in the refrigerator for up to three weeks or in the freezer for a year.

Spring Bloom

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 10:56:12 -0700

These steadily warmer June days have had a dramatic effect on the land – the strawberries are deep red and heavy in our garden, the lavender is beginning to bloom purple and white, the olive trees are peppered with buds, and the mint has jumped its pot and is plotting a takeover of the herb bed. In the vineyard, the buds are blooming with delicate white flowers, a hopeful sign of an early harvest this year. Beneath the sound of the breeze is a constant chorus of honeybees; when it’s quiet, you can hear them humming as they work.

Queen Bee

Fri, 31 May 2013 15:58:35 -0700

“She’s a working cat,” I tell visitors when they ask about the brownish black furball lounging on the front mat. “She has to stay outside.” But beyond that, no rules apply to Queen Bee. The outdoors is her realm, and she does what she wants. Her job is to protect the property from rodents, which never feels like work to her, and when she’s off duty, she’s parked in the middle of the front mat awaiting her due affection. Most people coming and going stoop to give her a few strokes, but some sit right down on the courtyard cobblestones and dote on her. One day, a man backing out the front door with a wine-laden handcart nearly stepped on her, and she darted out from under his heel and gave him an indignant glare. The man laughed and said, “I see why she got her name.”

The Utz family adopted Queen Bee about ten years ago, when she was a kitten. She and her buddy Tux, a big black cat with a white chest, were strays in a McMinnville park until the family, looking for a couple of outdoor cats to live on the farm, brought them home. Queen Bee has been here since, but Tux, after learning how to invite himself into guestrooms by climbing the stucco walls and wriggling through open screen doors, went to live with a family friend in Eugene. Queen Bee thankfully didn’t pick up on any of Tux’s infiltration skills and is quite content to live outside. She enjoys only the best catnapping spots when it’s warm and retreats to her heated bed in the garage when it’s cold and when the coyotes come at night.

Many guests fall in love with Queen Bee. She’ll follow folks around, walking a foot or two behind them, purring like an engine, and if someone sits down near her, she’ll invite herself into their lap. She loves to be held, and, unlike most cats I know, doesn’t mind being flipped on her back and given a vigorous tummy rub. A few guests have admitted that they were sorely tempted to smuggle her inside for some snuggling. If you're ever in the neighborhood and need a snuggly pick-me-up, come by and say hello to Queen Bee. She'll love you for it.

Staring

Sun, 26 May 2013 13:02:46 -0700

The first thing visitors do here is stare. They get out of their cars, walk straight to the edge of the patio or the nearest window, and just stare. I do it, too, every day. The view is mesmerizing. A recent guest described it as “exquisite and never-ending.” The view never gets old because the landscape is always changing – the colors shifting with the light from neon green to dusky blue, the vineyard rows growing thicker each day with leaves, the mountains disappearing and reappearing as the clouds roll in and out with the whims of May. Sometimes thin fingers of fog curl over the hilltops or a grey sheet of rain walks across the distant valley floor, but that’s less frequent these days. More often now we feel warm breezes smelling like soil and cut meadow grass and watch hawks hover over the vineyards. I’m lucky – I get to spend almost every day here, studying the perfect curve of Prince Hill and the slow progression of spring up the western slopes of Mt. Hood. It can be rare in our busy lives that we get time and space to simply stare at something beautiful, but at the Black Walnut, it’s a daily routine.

The Best Commute Ever

Sat, 25 May 2013 12:37:40 -0700

Most people aren't excited about driving to work, but because I work at the Black Walnut, my morning commute is one of the best parts of my day. I drive up Worden Hill Road from Dundee, and as I climb up out of town, Mt. Hood peeks into my rear view mirror. I drive past the tasting rooms and rolling vineyards, past the bright orange poppies on the roadside, and past the occasional brave soul out for a morning stroll on the narrow road. The road rushes down the hills and gathers in the woods, where I turn onto the Inn’s driveway, downshift, and begin the steep climb up the one-lane drive through the forest, my engine churning in second gear. Sometimes I swing around a turn and have to stop for wide-eyed and startled deer. As I finally climb up out of the woods and crest the hill, I see the Inn, ivy-clad and rosy in the early light. It crowns the hill, overlooking the vineyards and valley, Mt. Hood, and the snowy tip of Mt. Jefferson peeking out over the blue Cascades. If there was a contest for best commute, I'd win.