Living in rural America you are not likely to find a Starbucks, Target, Cosco, movie multiplex, Home Depot, Trader Joes, commercial airport, or a wide range of fine dining and entertainment hotspots “just around the corner”. More likely they are 90 miles in one direction or another. What you will find is a collection of family owned and operated small businesses serving an eclectic range of needs. One example is the Machipongo Trading Company with their local coffees from Eastern Shore Coastal Roasting Co.

The owners of Eastern Shore Coastal Roasting Co. have a solid range of coffees they have blended and roasted themselves and are not just some repackaged bulk purchase from “elsewhere”. What’s even better is they love to hear what people think and want. Kristen and James use treat their coffee just like a microbrewery treats their beer. You might even call them a “micro-roaster”. What is so great is that a micro-roaster can do small batches – all the way down to 7lbs. With this little tidbit, I contacted Kristen and setup an appointment to visit and talk about coffee !

Coffee has more distinct flavors than wines – most quote, “more than 700 flavor constituents”. Knowing what you like is one thing. Describing it is much harder.

Anyway, Kristen first had me try each of the blends they had available (over a period of weeks – not all in one day). Then I cam back with my comments. From that information, she selected and roasted three single-origin beans – Guatemalan, Sumatra Mandheling, and El Salvador Peaberry – as well as their house blend. They ground all to the same consistency and it was back to taste testing at home.

The first few days were tough.

• Day 1 – make a single espresso shot of each and taste side by side “strait up”. Serious buzzing ensured.
• Day 2 – make a single espresso shot of each with a measured amount of whole milk and taste side by side “strait up”. Again, serious buzzing ensured.
• Day 3 – repeat Day 1 with a 1/2oz of chocolate syrup in each (this is what I enjoyed while in Rome a few years back). Sadly, less buzzing ensured which meant I was adjusting to the mega dosage.
• Day 4 – blend 50/50 of Guatemalan and Sumatra Mandheling and add milk. Fortunately the withdrawal was not as bad as expected but I definitely did not want to escalate back to 4 shots before 8AM.
• Day 5 – blend 50/50 of Guatemalan and El Salvador Peaberry and add milk.
• Day 6 – blend 50/50 of Sumatra Mandheling and El Salvador Peaberry and add milk.
• Day 7..10 – I was traveling
• Day 11 – blend 1/3 each and add milk.
• Day 12 – make a mocha from the Day 4 blend.
• Day 13 – make a mocha from the Day 4 blend using a different espresso machine
• Day 14 – make a mocha from the house blend

So, now I have my notes from all of the above (along with a serious caffeine addiction). It’s time to return the Machipongo Trading Company for a tasty breakfast and a conversation with Kristen. Soon, theSalmonFarm may have it’s own signature coffee !

The snow has stopped falling. The sun is out. The walks and porch have been shoveled clean. It’s time for some fun in the snow – as I have often said, "I hate snow but Zen loves it so much, I tolerate it." I can add to that, that it makes for a rare photo opportunity for this neck of the woods …

snow on the holly ………………. and in stereo

it’s not the Christmas card, but it is real

Zen really does enjoy the snow !

While I’ve seen my share of Canadian Canada Geese since moving to the Shore, this is the first year for seeing Snow Geese. And like so much here, it is the scale of things that makes it that much more interesting. Rather than one goose or a small flock, more than a thousand of the birds arrived. They may stay on the Shore for the bulk of the winter before starting to move north again. Most of these birds like the sea side but given the inclement weather they’ve made some adjustments to their patterns and preferences.

As you can see in the footage, it’s been damp, cold, and gray for the past several days. Still, the epic proportions of the bird and the size of the flock (swarm is more like it) make for spectacular visuals during the morning coffee !

click for a much larger view

If you can identify the bird, please comment. The image is of poor quality but it was the best I could do on short notice. I’ll try to get a better image if/when it returns.

We are near the end of the raptor migration here on the Eastern Shore and given the farmhouse is not near water, I did not expect to see much without putting in some effort. However, over the past week, I have noticed a few hawks hunting the fields for food. This morning I was checking out some project work and was surprised to see this bird at the edge of the lawn, about 400 ft away from the farmhouse.

There are tomato fields adjacent my farm and Zen and I did a little math recently. WE attempted to calculate how many plants there were. Here is what we came up with …

• there are approximately 45 acres
• the crops are divided into zones and there are 7 zones
• each zone is divided into "banks" and there are 10 banks in each zone
• each bank contains 6 rows
• each row is approximately 500 feet long
• plants are approximately 18-20 inches apart (my estimate is very close to 20 inches)

By these calculations, there are approximately 125,000 tomato plants and these plants are commercial grade generating as many as 15-20 large full tomatoes. That’s a lot of tomatoes ! (And this is just one field.)