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Author Archives: Sylvia Burgos Toftness
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Too hot? Rained out? Enjoy a cool Deep Roots Radio blast from the past.
Sometimes, it’s just too hot to be out in the garden or pasture for too long. And then when it starts to pour, well, outside work gets cut short.
Never fear. Whether you’re in the sun, in your tractor cab, or calming down for the night, you can stream or download a Deep Roots Radio podcast that helps connect the dots between what we eat and how it’s grown.
Connecting the dots between what we eat and how it’s grown
The weekly radio show features interviews with guests from all over the country. They provide a wide range of perspectives and experience. In fact, in the last 13 years, co-host Dave Corbett and I have chatted with lawyers and farmers, ranchers and policy makers, advocates and investigative reporters, scientists and educators.
Topics range from cookie laws to winter cooking, from cattle grazing to the tie between Napoleon and food canning (yes, there really is a link), from food waste to food salvation and distribution, farmers markets to farm adventures, making cider to the value of working with stock dogs. Then there are interviews with herbalists, chefs and environmental conservationists, and lots more in efforts to re-imagine a better, healthier agricultural/food system.
Here’s a link to the radio archive. It offers some of the several hundred shows we’ve done over the years. You can listen online or download to your phone, computer or iPad.
Enjoy!
Apple River Farm Tour, July 15, 10AM – 4PM Visit our Farms!!
Well, we’re just one day out from our first annual Apple River Farm Tour – yahoo!!
Pack your sunglasses, grab your insect repellent, and your sunhat for a great day of self-guided tours of up to 9 local regenerative farms. We’re beekeepers, flower growers, humane livestock stewards, chicken keepers, and mushroom growers, apple and berry producers, maple syrup producers, and lots more!
Brochure & Map
Scan the code or click here for your brochure and map.
And after the day of tours, there’s a relaxing event at Dragonfly Garden, just south of downtown Amery.
The participating farms include:
- Blackbrook Farm
- Bull Broom Keep (that’s Dave and me)
- Northwood Mushrooms
- Schoen Valley Orchard
- Threshing Table Farm
- Turnip Rock Farm and Cosmic Wheel Creamery
- Two Bees and a Bud
- White Pine Berry Farm
- Z-Orchard
See you soon!!
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- Bee on echinacea
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- Buelingos and hawthorn
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- Oyster mushrooms growing in logs
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- Chickens
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- Tamworth pigs
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- Black-eyed Susans
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- Cabbage
Tune in Sat., July 1, 9-9:30AM Central for chat about Wisc Women in Conservation Week
It’s the first day of July and the sun’s shining. As the day warms up, I’m thinking about the day’s chores: fill the cattle trough with fresh water, water the new tree and shrub plantings, and check on the health of the native herbs that grow across our pastures and down by the brook.
Kriss Marion
Those native plants are a significant asset on our farm, and we’re working to preserve and encourage them. Lots of other farmers are doing the same. This morning, on Deep Roots Radio we’ll chat with Kriss Marion to learn how the Wisconsin Women in Conservation works to encourage conservation measures on land owned and farmed by women in Wisconsin.
We’ll also learn why Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has proclaimed July 10-16 Wisconsin Women in Conservation Week, and for the third year in a row! There’ll be lots of celebration going on that’s free and open to the public.
Please join us today, July 1st, 9:00-9:30AM Central Time, by dialing in to 93.1FM in and around Amery, WI, or www.wpcaradio.org worldwide.
Will Wisconsin proposed legislation cripple the state’s event barns? Listen in 6/17, 9-9:30AM Central
Last week, legislators introduced a bill to the Wisconsin Assembly to overhaul the state’s liquor laws. Unfortunately, this proposal contains language that would severely limit the ability for family farms to rent space for celebrations, such as weddings. Here’s a link to the AB 304 language that’s posing the deep concern.
On tomorrow’s Deep Roots Radio show, we’ll chat with Sara Hasse, owner and operator of Croix View Event Barn in Osceola, Wisconsin. She’ll describe how this proposed legislation could knock the beams right from under family farms working to remain viable businesses in rural communities. We’ll also look at possible negative impact on other local businesses that benefit from these event venues.
Listen in: Saturday, June 17, 9:00-9:30AM Central on 93.1FM in and around Amery, WI, and worldwide on the internet at www.wpcaradio.org .
Beautiful. Frozen. Blinding and brutal.
Bull Brook Keep
January 26, 2023
The glare off the pastures can send you into snow-blindness in just seconds. The entire farm is nothing but rolling white and blue shadows. It’s still. Snow crystals glitter. It’s a glorious view from this side of the living room windows. The bird feeders hang sad, nearly empty, nagging me to pull on hat, boots and coat, and do the right thing. In a bit.
Each dog has claimed a sunny patch and will remain inert for as long as the sun warms his coat. The only thing that’ll bring their heads up is the rustle of the plastic bag holding the raisin rye bread.
It’s 14 degrees, which means we’re already on the downward slope from today’s projected high of 19. My phone’s weather app forecasts a high of just 2 degrees in a few days; and that after a night crawling to -11. Grrr.
Learning how to dress for the winters of the Upper Midwest was a life-changing lesson when I moved from New York City to the shores of Lake Superior. I was in my early 20s and landed in Duluth with one heavy wool coat. I loved that coat, but quickly discovered it would not protect me from snows off the lake, or the icy winds that blasted down the hills. One of the first things I did was find a local Army surplus store and buy a huge parka. It was bright orange, had a massive fur-trimmed hood, and I didn’t care that I looked like a highway worker. I felt invincible as crossed open fields, climbed into ore carriers, and visited local leaders to get interviews and film for KDAL-TV’s evening news shows. I came to appreciate why my newsroom friends had several coats and jackets to deal with the wide range of temperatures thrown at us throughout the year.
Siggy loves the snow
I left the newsroom decades ago, and I don’t know what happened to that parka. However, warm coats remain a priority as I tend to our small cattle herd. The deep cold freezes the brook. This year, episodes of rain, sleet, drizzle and fog are building layers of ice over dense layers of snow, over rock-hard sheets of ice on every field and road surface. Cars slip and skid. I wear cleats over my boots just to get to the mailbox. It’s awesome, and unforgiving.
But right this minute, I’m grateful for its beauty, the warmth of my home, and for the bright shafts of sunlight traveling across the floor. Time for another cup of chai tea.
How deep is deep snow?
How deep is deep snow?
Siggy, the farm dog
Six inches if you’re a Corgi. Siggy loves it!
Enjoy the fluffy cold! Come visit. Snowshoes and cross-country skiis welcome. Just call.
In between Thanksgiving, Christmas and beavers
We didn’t do a conventional Thanksgiving this year. No turkey, stuffing, or cranberry sauce. Thanks to Dave’s hard work, we had home-grown pork shoulder roasts done Puerto Rican style. Dave grew the pigs, I did the Puerto Rican. I took all the garlic cloves I could buy, smashed them with salt, pepper and oregano, and then rubbed this fragrant paste liberally into every nook and cranny of the roast.
The aromas took me back to noisy celebrations at my grandmother’s apartment in Spanish Harlem. So many aunts and uncles, cousins and laughter, and so much food: the pork, rice and beans, green beans, big salads, and pumpkin pie. My Wisconsin take was just a little different. I didn’t make rice and beans, but I added roasted smashed potatoes and an additional home-grown apple pie. We enjoyed family, laughs and great conversation. A real blessing.
That was last week. Now, we’re cruising to Christmas as snow accumulates and temperatures fall, farm equipment is repaired, and we worry about the beaver dam.
In the 13 years we’ve been on Bull Brook Keep, we’ve never had a dam threaten the brook that runs across the southeastern corner of the farm. For some reason, this fall beavers decided to build just downstream of the property. This has caused two large problems: water backup on the farm, and, a dramatic reduction of the speed of water flowing in the brook. It is the strength of water flow that keeps the brook from freezing over. This is critical because the cows need open water from which to drink. They can’t break through ice.
The problem
Bull Brook runs just 8 or 10 feet from the road that forms the western boarder of our farm. I walked down the road to take a closer look last week, I quickly realized taking this dam down is not going to be an easy task. The beavers used hundreds of long and heavy branches, wedging them tightly to create a structure able to hold back hundreds and hundreds of pounds of water pressure.
Dave has reached out to local officials to hopefully get their cooperation in removing this blockage because the rising water not only affects us but also poses a threat to a public bridge that abuts the farm and to the nearby road. We’ve got to do something sooner than later.
I’ll walk the road again today, while it’s still light.
Meanwhile, I’ve started pulling out cookbooks. What desserts will I make for Christmas dinner? A spicy chocolate bundt cake? Maybe a cranberry steamed pudding with vanilla hard sauce? A frangipane dotted with honeyberries? Hmmm. This should be fun.
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and are looking forward to lots of love, laughter and great food this holiday season. Oh, and no beaver dams.
Elderberries – pratfalls, hazards, harvest – and wasps
My bad! This update is to correct slander to our friends, the bees, and to provide helpful info about the differences between bees, hornets, wasps and yellowjackets.
August 30
Was it just a few weeks ago that lovely elder flowers were in bloom? August has just flown! The day’s are getting a bit cooler now and it’s a race with the birds for the berries.
Yesterday afternoon, I spent about an hour and a half picking ripe elderberries (Sambucus nigra) on state land that abuts a friend’s farm. What a thicket! The area is a jungle of 10-ft high elderberries, tangled vines, and a treacherous mat of foot-snagging fallen branches.
Elderberries – Sambucus nigra
The sun was high and some of the vines were thorny. I was very glad for my thick jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and wide-brimmed hat. I worked for those berries! Over and over, I’d reach up to a hanging cluster, snip the thick main stem, and drop the heavy berries into a bag. About an hour in, I tripped and fell to my knees when I failed to high-step over fallen brush. No harm done.
But, just as I was thinking I was done for the day, I felt hot pain on my left thigh. A yellowjacket (not a couple of bees) had made its way up my pants leg and wasn’t happy about it. It panicked and stung several times. I crushed it through my thick jeans to stop the assault. It hurt!
Once home, I changed out of my elderberry-stained jeans and discovered the inert body of what I at first thought was a bee. After some research, I now know it was an aggressive yellowjacket, a type of wasp. The difference between bees and this insect is evident in the markings on the lower abdomen.
Yellowjacket
Like all wasps, yellowjackets have a segmented body — a nipped-in waist — and are decorated with yellow-and-black geometric patterns. And where a bee can sting you only once, yellowjackets and hornets can sting multiple times.
Bee on echinacea
Here’s some more information about the differences between bees, wasps, yellowjackets, and hornets.
Back to the elderberries: it took well over an hour to strip the fruit from the stems. Now, that’s a messy job! Thank goodness for disposable gloves. Unfortunately, my t-shirt got the worse of it. I’ll have to see what I can do to lift that ink.
About four quarts of berries now rest in the freezer until I have time to process into a heavy syrup. That syrup is the foundational ingredient of my immunity-boosting tonic for the cold/flu season (also includes honey, echinacea and brandy). It’s really helped the last three years.
As for the insect stings — the area’s hot, red and swollen. The first thing I did was rub some lavender essential oil over the area. Then I splashed on witch hazel, and combined tinctures of echinacea, plantain and St. John’s Wort.
Today, Aug. 31st, I’ll apply a compress of freshly mashed plantain leaves combined with dried holy basil moistened with a strong tea of boneset, skullcap, and yarrow. These should help reduce the swelling, heat and pain.
There is so much life and bounty around us. Interested in herbs, shrubs and trees that provide herbal remedies? Leave me a comment or email me, sylvia@bullbrookkeep.com. Thanks.
Sylvia