So we had an at home Halloween.  I made Champ or Mash of Nine Sorts for dinner.  In rural Ireland (per Elizabeth Luard) the traditional Halloween food was champ, a bowl of potatoes mashed with buttermilk, made green with leeks, enriched with a pat of fresh butter and set on the table for all to share.  This dish also went by the poetic name of Mash of Nine Sorts because it traditionally had nine ingredients: potatoes, carrots, turnips, peas, parsnips, leeks, pepper, salt and butter.  The recipe I used was from the book Cattern Cakes and Lace which had added cheese.  This is all from the Regency Cook whose zoom I had hoped to participate in on Halloween but was sadly cancelled due to illness in one of the presenters.

Anyway, while was mashing to vegetables the Monster mash song came on the radio (KSER) which I thought was very appropriate.

Here is my mash all baked.  It was yummy.

These are the Halloween decorations on the living room table. Pretty spooky, huh?  The 12 sign and the peep hole are from Northern State Hospital.  

We then proceeded to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

Then we watched the original 1931 Frankenstein movie from the Svengoolie broadcast.  And we finished with Young Frankenstein from 1974, but we fell asleep about 1/2 way through.  After all of this, here are the candles after the fact.  Still pretty spooky, I think.

In other farm news, on Wednesday I got an airshow over our farm yet again.  Always so fun to see vintage planes in formation circling over our farm.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Almost on cue, a Great Blue Heron landed nearby.

Tom had finished fixing the farm cart.  Unfortunately the bearings had shattered when replacing one of the wheels so he put on an old wheel which he gets new bearings.  We have to use solid rubber tires on this cart as the tubed tires do not last on our farm.  Our farm cart is critical to the operation as the wheelbarrow cannot handle the incredibly wet ground.

He welded the metal on the cart yet again to strengthen it.  He then started welding our new farm driveway gate.  These are from parts of display racks from the old Macy’s department store from before the mass shooting there.

I took Beth’s advice and made pasties for dinner on Wednesday.  I chose to make Copper Country Pasties.  There were really quite good.

Yesterday there was another heron walking round the pasture.  Not sure if it is the same one or not.  They are always so impressive to me.

Today I had scheduled for Tom and I to get fasting labs drawn this morning.  He does not like to have blood tests done so I bribed him with the promise of a good restaurant breakfast afterwards.  So we went to the Lunchbox Diner in Mount Vernon on a rainy nasty day.  I had the Eggs Benedict (which has been on my bucket list for a while), and Tom had biscuits and gravy.  It was all amazing, including the lunchboxes.

When we got home again, the pastures were flooding yet again.  Tom helped to clear the beaver clogged culvert again and then called the county to clear what he couldn’t.  It is still going to be along winter.

This afternoon we went to visit our friends Pam and Tommy.  Tom picked the last of their apples, and then we went out to dinner at La Conner Tavern.  It was fun hanging out with them.  So that is our Halloween week on the farm and elsewhere.