Pie in the Sky

The Motherhouse Old Style Life Skills Pie in the Sky Workshop was described as follows: Celebrate harvest season with a homegrown pie. Pluck a ripe squash, collect eggs, make maple syrup, grind flour, and render lard to make a delicious “pumpkin” pie from scratch...


But as we gathered around the table in the milking room at Local Farm, Debra Tyler, founder of Motherhouse, handed us each a Pumpkin Pie recipe and told us she had gone shopping - to two supermarkets - and here were the ingredients for a pie. Were these ingredients really the makings of the Pie in the Sky? We wondered... Then we talked about each ingredient.... and how we could make the pie, from scratch, with what we had available around us... It was beginning to sound like Pie in the Sky....


The recipe called for 2 1/2 cups of pumpkin. Because there was butternut squash growing in the pasture at Local Farm, Debra said we could substitute squash for the pumpkin and off we went to the patch. Each of us picked a rosy colored squash to bring home. We left the greenish ones to ripen on the vine.



The next ingredient called for was 1 cup of sugar. Sugar comes from sugar beets and we didn't have any growing here. So instead we used local maple syrup. September isn't the time of year for collecting sap and boiling it to make the syrup, that time is in the early Spring when the night time temperatures are still below freezing but the days warm up. However, Margaret, Debra's daughter, demonstrated how a tree is tapped and the sap collected.

And lucky for us, Debra had some sap from last Spring, so we each tasted it.


We started the sap boiling early on in the workshop so that we could see how much syrup we would end up with. It takes some time. Because we were using a liquid sweetener in place of the white sugar, we substituted 1/2 cup maple syrup for the 1 cup of sugar.


The recipe also called for 1 can evaporated milk for the filling and 1/3 cup of butter for the crust. We could use milk from the Jerseys at Local Farm in place of the evaporated milk. Jersey milk is notoriously rich - rich in protein, fat, and minerals.




In order to make the butter, we needed cream, and to have the cream, we needed to get the milk and to get the milk, we needed to call a cow. Debra called for Lovely and in she came. Many hands tried milking Lovely, who is a very patient and beautiful Jersey.


Then we learned how to take the cream off of the milk, it is more of a sliding off then scooping motion. We took turns churning the butter.


We needed flour, 2 t. in the filling and 1 3/4 cup for the crust. We are fortunate to have locally grown wheat available from: Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook, NY, 914-677-9507.




We learned about different types of mills and we took turns grinding the wheat berries, using two different types of grinders.


Along with the butter, the recipe called for 1/3 cup of lard to make the crust. Debra told us that lard makes the very best pastry, making it flaky, and butter is best for taste, so that is why we used both. We learned about the two types of fat from a slaughtered pig and we learned how to render the lard.


The recipe called for 4 eggs and since there are some laying hens at Local Farm we collected eggs from the nesting boxes.




There were a number of ingredients - salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla that are not available locally. Debra described their sources.





The butternut squash can be prepared in two different ways - cut up into cubes and cooked on the top of the stove or baked in the oven. Debra prefers baking it, as the flavor is preserved.



Here is a Pie in the Sky which we each sampled, made from scratch, following this recipe:

Mix:
2 1/2 cup pumpkin (we used butternut squash)
1 cup sugar (we used maple syrup)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ginger
2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. cloves
2 t. flour

Add:
4 eggs
I can evaporated milk (we used Jersey milk)
4 t. water (we did not add because we used the liquid maple syrup)
1 t. vanilla

Pour into crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 45 - 50 minutes.

Crust:
1 3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup lard
1 tsp salt

Mix 'til like cornmeal. Add cold water by the Tblsp.