Castle Valley Mill Blog

  What does Fall mean? Usually, it means celebration.  Crowding around the table with friends and family, traveling from state to state to get those annual visits in, and the on-ramp to the December holidays and New Years. This year, obviously things are different.

      Yet here stands a unique opportunity: To simplify.  Time that was used in prior years to plan traveling, rush to the mall for gifts, or navigate complicated family relationships is now left vacant. The noise in the background is quiet, and we are now home with those we’ve been home with all year. There’s a hint of something new and fresh, rather than the end.  There’s the opportunity for gratefulness. 

Autumn is upon us and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. At Castle Valley Mill, the scenery changes from the vibrancy of greens and blues to the calm tones of oranges, reds, golds, browns… the softer colors of the season emerge that make us want to snuggle into cozy blankets, sip tea and hot chocolate by the fire, and visit with family while looking forward to Thanksgiving. In our family, Mom starts prepping for Thanksgiving in the few days prior. Homemade cranberry sauce, apple and pumpkin pies, a turkey, grown on Castle Valley Mill grains for us by a good friend… On the great awaited day there’s a centerpiece of wild ivy and evergreens, with a flower placed on each person’s plate. Everybody sits at the table, and going from oldest to youngest, we all say what we’re thankful for and add our flower to the centerpiece. This year more than any other, we are thankful for close friends and family.  With the pandemic, we’ve had to dial in on who and what matters most to us, to choose who we spend our time with… keeping in sight those small things we are ever so grateful for. This year, we invite you to bring home the colors of fall with the flavors of Castle Valley Mill.  From our hearts to yours, we hope you enjoy the beautiful season ahead.

Browngold’s Homemade Apple Pie

1 Double Pie Crust:

2 ½ cups Castle Valley Mill Spelt flour

2 egg yokes

½ lb. Cold, cubed unsalted butter

Ice water

Put flour, salt and butter in Cuisinart. Pulse 4-5 times. Add 2 egg yokes pulse 3 times. Pulse and drizzle water simultaneously until mixture looks crumbly. This step is usually where panic sets in.  Put in less water than you think. Test the mixture by squeezing a handful. If it sticks together, it’s ready. If not, add a little more water. The dough should NOT look like a ball in the Cuisinart. It should look like a bowl of clumpy coarse sand. Empty contents on sheet of plastic wrap. Form a ball by hand and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 24 hrs. if you have the time. If not, 1 hour will do.

Filling:

10 med Granny Smith apples

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup lemon juice

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp. Vanilla extract

4 Tbsp. Spelt Flour

1 egg or egg white for egg wash (whisk slightly with a fork)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Peel, core and slice apples. Fresh squeezed lemon juice. Mix the sliced apples with the remaining ingredients except the egg whites. Let sit for 5 mins. Put apples in roasting pan. Cover with foil and place in oven to cook for 15-20 mins or until the apples are firm but easily skewered with a knife. Refrigerate apple mixture until completely cooled. Get ready to roll! Cut crust in half. We like those clumps of butter. Makes for flakiness. Make steam holes in top crust. When apples are cooled place in a double crust, trim edges and make sure there are steam holes in the top. Pinch the bottom and top crusts together. Then tightly crimp. Place in 450 degree preheated oven for 10 minutes for crust to “set”. This step cooks the bottom crust and firms the top crust. After ten minutes, cover pie with foil, turn oven to 375 degrees and bake for another 40-50 minutes. Pull off foil and brush pie with egg whites leftover from double crust recipe. Or, you could whisk a whole egg and brush with that. Bake pie uncovered for 5-10 mins or until golden brown. Let pie sit 15 minutes before slicing.

Every so often, the creek floods and uncovers what’s been hidden for years- even decades. Ancient relics have been hidden away under years of gravel and mud. Hidden from the light of day, and elements of the environment, anything that becomes buried by time will likely last- until the next flood rips away the cover that’s tucked it in the creek’s bed for a century or so.

Last Sunday my Dad woke me up with a synopsis: “I was checking the other side of the bank after the flood and I saw something sticking out of the water… “ That something, it turns out, was a millstone that had been revealed by the recent flood in the past week. No stranger to these weird outlandish precursors to stories, I got out of bed, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, and headed down to the dam.

Since last week, the stone has moved from the other side of the bank to our front lawn. It sits by the wall overlooking the dam, under the maple tree that might even predate the stone itself. Running my hand over the deep and worn lands and furrows of the stone, I have to wonder what history has bypassed the banks of Castle Valley, as the water rolled over this relic of industry for the past century. WWI. The stock market crash. The great depression. WWII. ​The birth of Rock n’ Roll. The Korean conflict, the Nuclear War scare, Vietnam, the birth of every family member who has and currently resides at Castle Valley. It was there. Frozen in time, sitting, sidelined from the world of daylight and sky, patiently waiting in the cool mud of the creek…

“There was a time when the word from which lady sprang meant a ‘loaf-kneader’. To our own and our families’ distinct profit–and with little effort–we housewives can become ‘ladies’ again” (I. Rombauer, 1962).

I grew up in the era of the bread machine. Throw the ingredients in, push a couple buttons, and leave to come home to a freshly baked box-shaped loaf. Sure, the house smelled wonderful, and the bread was guaranteed to rise and bake perfectly, but I missed out on the hands-on experience and comfort of bread making.

As early as March, the first month of quarantine in Georgia, many people, not just ladies, had turned to bread making to fill their free time. After the run on toilet paper and hand sanitizer, dry yeast quickly disappeared from the store shelves, and Facebook and Instagram filled with pictures of beautiful, brown loaves of bread. Flour was in high demand as millers struggled to make the transition between providing bulk flour for the restaurant industry to providing small packages for the retail industry. Castle Valley Mill was able to adapt quickly to meet the demand. The transition involved long backbreaking days, but my sister and her family took pride in knowing they were providing comfort in a time of unprecedented stress. 

After attempts to “reopen” the economy, COVID numbers are climbing, and I am waiting to be handed the “Go Back to Start; Do Not Pass Go” card. I told my sister I might want to try my hand at sourdough starter again, since yeast will be impossible to find. Last year, I managed to keep some gifted starter alive for several months before losing it in the back of the refrigerator. Keeping starter is like keeping another pet. I wasn’t ready for the commitment last year, but now that I have more time and structure in my days, I am ready to be a better dough mama. Last week, I got my sourdough care package from Castle Valley Mill and have begun my venture into raising my sourdough baby from a sterile dough ball into a yeasty living creature that needs to be fed every twelve hours.

In my true academic nature, I hit the books to do some research. It has been a tradition in our family that when a daughter leaves home, she gets the most recent edition of the family cookbook. I inherited my mother’s cookbooks and have three generations of these kitchen bibles. The earliest is my mother’s mother’s The Boston Cooking School, by Fanny Farmer, published in 1935. My mother’s copy is 1959. By 1962, she switched to Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking. Each edition contains entirely new recipes and advice based on the industrialization of flour and bread making. My edition of Joy is 1997, when I graduated college and moved to Miami, much to my mother’s horror (her only knowledge of the city came from Miami Vice). But, in Miami, I was a sous chef at a catering company where I was assigned to make focaccia. It was my first real experience working with flour and yeast.

Based on my literature review, sourdough starter appears to have been a staple in the traditional housewife’s kitchen, whereas now bread making is for people who have the luxury of time and patience. The ’62 edition only mentions starter in the “Know Your Ingredients” section and lacks the step-by-step instructions on growing your own yeast that my ’97 edition includes. “Natural Sourdough Starter” instructions fill most of the page with multiple steps requiring a minimum three days to cultivate. No wonder families kept this stuff alive for generations. Clearly, sourdough is not for the casual bread-maker. If at the end of the second day, it hasn’t formed bubbles yet, it tells me to throw it out, and Go Back to Start; Do Not Pass Go. 

My first attempt at a sourdough boule wasn’t exactly uplifting, but it was edible and very flavorful. I was impatient and needed to give it more time on its second rise. It made hearty dipping bread and French toast bites the next morning. I have much to learn before I pull an Insta-worthy loaf from the oven, but the house will smell heavenly as I pursue this ancient craft.

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The ’62 edition of Joy of Cooking asserts, “Nothing gives a household a greater sense of stability and solid comfort than the aroma of cooling bread.” Putting gender role assumptions aside, this statement has proven true in this time of quarantine. As social and political strife mounts, there’s been a return to the importance of home to provide that “sense of stability and solid comfort.” Many of us who are “nonessential employees” have experienced the shift from breadwinner to bread maker to ease our anxiety or at the very least to give us something to do with our hands.

Be sure to follow #castlevalleymillcreations on Instagram to see my progress and get a glimpse at some of the beautiful creations the pros are doing.

It’s been hot – has it not?  The summer days are rolling steadily through our little valley, bringing nothing less than the humidity and the heat of a Pennsylvania summer.  Here, we say it like this: “August is coming …”  July and August are no doubt the hottest you can be here, and by the creek we get humidity to make you feel like you’re under a wet blanket.  Needless to say, we – of anyone, understand the woes of cooking and baking during the summer.

Table-scapes are my mom’s art medium.  Candles, fancy (or not) plates, table runners and salads that look like they came off the cover of Good Housekeeping – but better.

Working and living at Castle Valley, you learn to be ever-encroached upon, and encroaching on, nature. In the mill, it’s cave crickets in the basement. Outside, it’s Northern Water Snakes, turtles, Wolf Spiders, and recently, it turns out, a Brown Recluse. The joys certainly balance out the (less joyful) run-ins with things we’d rather leave alone.

These guys are a huge part of my childhood. Growing up here, of all places, you have to learn a little coexistence lesson with the wildlife. This includes snakes. Our friends can grow up to 5 feet long, shed wherever they want, and love playing hide and snake in the stacks of our *very nice* wooden pallets.

Snake Hotel stands to this day, and turtle parties are a daily occurrence. Owning, restoring, and operating a 300 year-old mill means accepting the fact that some *residents* have been here much longer than we have. So, rather than plow over the growth of nature in our path, we choose to share it. Snake Hotel keeps our friends out of the well pipes (yes, they actually once clogged the pipes). Turtle parties never fail to put a smile on my face when I peek out the window during the workday. From feathers to shells to scales, nature thrives on and in our creek, and we are elated to share it.

Unless you’re a Brown Recluse, in which case, please follow the tractor treads to the exit.

As all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a resounding effect on the restaurant business and the food industry as a whole.  From food shortages, plant closures, and the complete shut-down of public restaurants country-wide, Castle Valley Mill’s future was uncertain.  Pre-pandemic, our main business flourished among large-scale distributors, restaurants, and the distilling industry. 

When the quarantine began snuffing out businesses, we braced ourselves and prepared for a hard fall both in income and work.  We watched as our shipments halted, product was returned, and our millstones silenced because they had no reason to spin.

Then, on day four or five, our online store began to pick up some weird, unexpected forecast.  The daily orders went from 3, to 5, to 15.  

Roughly a week and a half after our scariest moment, our shipping orders were printing in stack of 150.  That’s 150 people ordering our product. Whether this was to make cookies, bread, muffins, grits, oatmeal- real food, for real people, in a very real situation.  Stores are terrifying, and shelves are empty anyway.  Large mills aren’t fast enough to snap into a retail business model.

Castle Valley Mill had a staff of three: My father, my mother, and me.  Before this, I was studying abroad in Berlin.  I caught a last-minute ticket out on March 15^th.  A day later, the U.S went into lockdown.  Nearly three months later, we are supplying distilleries for hand sanitizer, distributors for small grocery stores, and individual homes for their dinner plates.  We have been pleasantly blind-sided and thrown head-first into being a rock in a storm.  Rather, a castle.  

Welcome to our blog, and welcome to our castle.  Thanks to you, these stones gather no moss.  Our doors are open.