Farm Kitchen Chronicles: Winter Squash Chili

A bright and spicy vegetarian chili with lime juice and black pepper

Readers, it has been a discouraging couple of weeks. Last recipe newsletter I posted a picture of a possible site here, on this land, of a possible farm, and this week I have decided pretty firmly against that site. Permaculturists are taught to observe the land for a year or two (who has two years? I would like to know!) before planting or building anything. Watching this land for just this season, however, I can already see the problems: we are in a valley, for one, so the whole lack of light is an issue that I watched all summer in the garden we had, and now that fall has come and the unmowed hayfield’s grasses have toppled over, like people who have given up, I can clearly see how low the land gets beyond that. It almost looks like a cliff the way it just drops off. If we really were to fulfill the dream of planting our perennials here, it would be like planting into the bottom of a dried-up lake. Paul Bickford, Alex’s boss who died this year, told me that actually, the land we are on WAS supposed to be the bottom of a lake; the state park next door had originally wanted it to be part of the park, and to make it into a man-made lake. Good information to know.