the farmer got upset with his oldest son who is driving the grain cart for not helping combine drivers clean their headers out… he was just telling him the other night how it is his job as a cart driver to get out and help them…
so yesterday, my sixteen year old, trying to be as helpful as possible, tore across the field to be of assistance to a combine driver who was stopped…
and we haven’t stopped laughing/crying ever since…
because this particular combine driver’s header was not plugged… that was not the reason for the combine sitting motionless… ‘nature had called’ and my son got there just in time to witness it…
I remember when I first married the farmer and asked him, a few years into farming, what happened if he needed to ‘use the facilities’… if he would have to jump in his truck and go knock on a door of the closest farm house and hope they didn’t mind him destroying their bathroom…
I did not grow up even peeing outside… in fact I was just running in a race last weekend and needed to pee the entire 2 hours but with no outhouse in sight I nearly wet myself finishing the race to get to a bathroom… so the idea of doing the other thing outside seemed barbaric and outlandish to me…
apparently sometimes it can’t be helped…
and, much to the farmer and myself’s enjoyment, our oldest son got to experience one of these times… just trying to be helpful… when no one needed him to help…
I had to quickly get that story out of the way before I discussed food… but it for sure is the highlight of harvest for the farmer and I… we are pretty sure nothing will top the amount of enjoyment and laughter we have had over this awkward moment…
continuing with the farmer’s Grandma Swan recipes, and seeings how when you make pie crusts it is in batches of four, I had enough crust for two more pies…
I generally have had to go to the farmers Grandma’s old yard to get some of her rhubarb but I actually planted my own rhubarb this year… so the raspberries and rhubarb are from my own garden… my daughter and I were pretty pleased with ourselves…
I tend to overfill pies so I have learnt to place them on parchment lined baking sheets
Grandma Swan's Sour Cream Rhubarb Pie
Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 cup sour cream
4 cups rhubarb, cut into small chunks
1 cup frozen raspberries
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soft butter, cut into chunks
1 unbaked pastry shell
Directions:
in a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour and sour cream
add the rhubarb and raspberries and combine
pour into an unbaked pie shell
in another bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar and butter until crumbly
sprinkle over the pie
bake at 425 for 15 minutes
lower heat to 350 and bake for 30 minutes or until fork tender
this was an odd day that the smoke from all the forest fires in BC was not actually blocking out the sun so my daughter and I enjoyed some deck time in the sun while husking corn… I always call it shucking corn… the farmer told me I was wrong… but I just did a little google search and found out we both are correct… take that…
the nice thing about the old recipes I find is they are simple… generally have a very short list of ingredients…
Grandma Swan's Scalloped Corn
Ingredients:
- 16 oz. can cream style corn (I used fresh corn on the cob cut off)
- 1/3 cup chopped celery
- 1 cup cracker crumbs (I used Panko bread crumbs)
- 1/4 cup chopped red onion
- 3/4 cup diced cheddar cheese
- 2 beaten eggs
- 1/4 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 cup milk
Directions:
- combine all ingredients
- pour into greased 1 1/2 quart casserole dish
- bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes until top is lightly browned and center is set
this was one of those days that I didn’t get started on cooking until after lunch and it was a full on panic and scramble to get everything done… I could not have done it without my ten year old daughter being a huge help…
also the laughter that kept welling up inside me also assisted in getting me through the stressful afternoon of cooking and dishes…
thinking of my son taking the tractor over to the stalled combine only to find someone attempting to have some privacy… I’m giggling as I write this
Grandma Swan's Mandarin Orange Lettuce Salad
Ingredients:
Salad:
- 1 head romaine lettuce
- 1 can (bag now) mandarin oranges, drained
- chow mein noodles
- 1/2 sunflower seeds (optional)
- green onions
- 1/2 cup cashews, chopped
Dressing:
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 clove garlic
- 1/2 tsp dry mustard
Directions:
- for the dressing, blend in a Vitamix or shake very well in a Mason Jar
- there actually were no directions for this salad… I guess you just make the salad!
this dish is a harvest classic and one of the farmer’s favourites… I made it into casseroles and covered them to cook them… generally I would have just made the beef/soup mixture up and poured it over the egg noodles but I found this way was a bit easier for packing up…
Grandma Swan's Beef Stroganoff
Ingredients:
- 1 lb round steak or stew meat, sliced thinly
- 1/4 cup flour
- 1 tbsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1 can cream of chicken soup
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 cup minced yellow onion
- 1 pkg white button mushrooms, cut up into chunks
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pkg egg noodles
Directions:
- for the meat, dredge in flour/salt/pepper mixture
- place in heated butter in a frying pan with lid and brown
- set to the side and cook onion and mushrooms
- in a large bowl, combine the steak, onions, mushrooms, soup and sour cream
- place in a 9×13 dish in an oven at 325 covered in foil to keep warm
- boil egg noodles and serve over the egg noodles
just remember, it is always good to help out… even if it ends up not being helpful… and your family laughs at you for the remainder of harvest
i feed a farmer 
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