The Musician Gardener: SNOW ICE CREAM

Old Time, Celtic, Maritime Music, Gardening and Small Scale Farming

I didn't know I was a musician gardener.

All my life I've loved getting my hands dirty gardening, keeping small livestock, and playing traditional music, but I always thought that was just a peculiar combination that occurs in a completely random fashion. But one day my wife Sara and I were talking with a neighbor who ran a one acre educational garden down the street from us. He mentioned that as soon as the growing season was over he was going to hit the road with a bluegrass band he played with. He smiled and said that he felt really blessed to live the life he had- getting to play in the dirt and play on the stage. I had no idea he played in a bluegrass band so we talked shop about music, gardening, and travelling for a bit. After we said goodbye and started walking away Sara turned to me and said "oh I know what you guys are, you're Musician Gardeners."

Suddenly it clicked, all my life I've known and met people who combine their lives like that. friends, neighbors and other folks who combine their love of the land with a love of music, often the very music that grew and still grows out of that land.

This blog hopes to explore that relationship and to let other Musician Gardeners out there know that we're actually a demographic!

Sunday, January 13, 2013

SNOW ICE CREAM

When I was a kid every once in a while when there was a good coast of fresh snow on the ground my mom would go outside with a salad bowl and pack it full of snow for us to eat. What, was she cheap? was this the depression? You might ask. No, it was snow ice cream!

A few days a go we got a rare 3-4 inches of snow here in the potlatch river valley. Since this doesn't happen too often and since my daughter and wife had never had snow ice cream before I went out and filled up three bowls of fresh clean snow, poured milk and maple syrup over them and treated the family to nature's snow cone.

If you've never had snow ice cream I definitely recommend it. It's as a texture somewher between home-made hand cranked ice cream, and a slurpee. Since this was sort of an off-the-cuff treat I didn't have all the ingredients I like to use. To do it right follow these directions.

make a snowball in a bowl

mix a few drops of vanilla into a cup of half and half

pour the mix over the snowball untill it's saturated

pour maple syrup over that

Eat and enjoy! Just make sure the snow's not yellow....