At Home on Clove Brook Farm with Christopher Spitzmiller

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh so i remember when i was last here this was your ancestral portraits one on one and they've now been moved over to make way for fanny's ancestors you can see that fanny's ancestors are a lot fancier than mine or a minor simple he was a shoemaker in framingham massachusetts and fannie's lineage is from england and germany and all over the world not so fancy they're all from mario bottas's state everything on the wall except for the two little brackets came from him it's a really nice tribute to half with my friend so this is my small collection of um or ever growing collection of marion mcavoy pieces downstairs in the living room there's the cork box that she says i was her first customer and of course she did the shades in this room too on the bedside table laps since you and stacy last visited we've done a lot of transformation here we have put in the garage that was not here before which is a greenhouse in the winter and in the summer we store the cars in there and extraneous stuff the garden has been greatly expanded the dove coat has been put in um populated with indian fantails and white doves they're such a pleasure to hear cooling when you're out there working in the garden and then you go up and you see the pool house and the pool garden and the pool there's an oval pool there that was a albert hadley inspired thing from a garden that he had a picture in one of his scrapbooks of the pool house is based off of the temple of pan which is the william tent design and then one part one bunny williams and one part the bannermen's garden designers over in england and they do those horn clad buildings okay this pool house just gets it's not even a pool house i don't even know what this is like a house that we all could live in forever that happens to have a pool go lay on that sofa i think you'll enjoy it it's an aiken sofa that was a favorite of sister parishes it's got a single bed size mattress on there and put those four toe pillows behind your head and just zoom out into la la land just the phrase single bed size mattress you had me there and anything that's good enough for sister parrish is good more than good never oh this is incredible and then you can walk down from the pool garden and see anthony's new vegetable garden which has got all of our vegetables in it we've got uh rhubarb tomatoes um onions all kinds of things that you can eat it must be so convenient to have like all your own packing plates when you're entertaining i mean we have a lot of dishes here an endless supply they're made right next door so you just go over there when you want to get something new number one really important question is can i have one of these before our lunch sure okay thank you they look incredible now when i was driving over here i wanted to ask you every time i see you i feel like you're expanding not only the farm literally here with animals and outbuildings and everything but i feel like you're ever the student you're ever the learner how much of this is self-taught and how much did you bring from childhood between the gardening and the cooking and the animals the cooking recipes the combination of three different recipes yeah let's start right here i've taken one part this recipe one part the other recipe i've made it like 35 times and like tested it and done different versions of it and kept notes the chicken recipe is one that my mother and i came up with it's based off of one part the zuni cafe in san francisco it's based off of chicken that they do and my mom and i have simplified it and made it easier so the trick to the chicken is to use a chicken that's three and a half pounds to four and a half pounds not too big wash it well dry it inside and out take a tablespoon of salt put the tablespoon of salt on the back of the chicken inside the chicken on the top of the chicken and then i put it on a ceramic plate and put it in the refrigerator for eight to 24 hours to let the bird dry out you take any excess water off put it in a hot hot pan with two or three tablespoons of olive oil sear the top sear the bottom put it in the oven for 45 minutes and it comes out let it rest for 10 and you've got better than restaurant chicken you'll love it so these are shallots that you leave the skin on cut them in half put two or three tablespoons of duck fat which you can get at your grocery store your specialty food market sprinkle a little bit of sugar in the pan a little bit of salt and you're going to put this in a hot oven about 450 for about 20 minutes until the bottom of the onions get brown they become caramelized and so yummy during um kovid martha's niece gave me a piece of starter and i taught myself how to do bread and so the recipe that she gave is a little complex but um i've even learned to do that in a one day thing usually it's a three day but you can sort of get things done if you learn what corners you can cut it sounds like you do love taking things that other people have perhaps done and making them your own and learning how to do it and then adapting it for your own life here i mean it just seems like you're always teaching yourself things definitely because you also don't always have the ingredients on hands that you might need to do maybe you have um you know like i'm in an apple tart the other night and i didn't have any granny smith apples i had some honey crisp apple i used them later you don't worry about it you just get it on the table and have it all look good and that's the important thing is to be a relaxed host that's that's the best host how about when it comes down to gardening and all the things that you've learned and that you do between the seeds and the the flower arranging and i mean everything how much how recently have you taught yourself all that you know i'm constantly reading a lot about it and speaking to friends and seeing what they do but so much of it is what works for you you know you can do things that are not exactly in the instruction book and it will turn out fine you know it's not like baking where you've got to have a certain thing gardening is very sort of free-flowing and like the cooking thing i keep a notebook of the things that worked and the things that didn't and there are triumphs and there are failures you know mentors and teachers you've had a lot of great ones along the way i'm sure they're very much in your mind when you're here at your farm you know now that you've officially become with this book a mentor to a lot of people that don't even know you yet that are going to look at how you brought to life i hope so yes that's the whole reason i did it what i did it for is to inspire people to say okay i can grow this i can bake these cookies i can do this maybe i can't do it exactly how chris is nor do i i don't do the same thing that money does or the same thing that martha does but i get inspired by what they do and say okay what's my version of it how am i going to pass this on i have a cookie question whenever i do chocolate chip cookies i follow the recipe exactly i preheat the oven just what they say it's always either too undercooked even if it's exactly when the time is up or if i wait it gets burned on the bottom and then it's too hard what why are these so perfect my trick is is to wash them like a hawk you know when the time is coming upon me okay i look at that oven i say oh it's in two more minutes and i don't walk away from the oven i make myself that's my mistake stay right close to the oven and we take i take them out when they're still almost raw in the center okay you know i take them out they will finish cooking on the top of the the oven you don't need them to be done done you can see there's a perfectly cooked cookie in there it's nice and soft and chewy on the inside which is what i'm going for with mine wait are you doing these from bulbs in the winter we do them from two birds we start them from a long sort of potato-like piece that we plant in april and it begins to grow and it's very slow and then july moves around and you can see the growth and they take over in the same spot i put sweet peas in the spring so sweet peas are growing up here we do an early planting of tulips even before the sweet peas that go on sweet peas and then the dahlias are finishing out that are like fireworks so you've got layering yeah so that there's bloom continuously so you want to order all of your bulbs in the seasons that they're blooming but if you order them ahead of time you're going to be assured that you have what you want and there's nothing worse than going to order your tulips in the fall and seeing that sold out thing that's really depressing you don't want that [Music] [Applause] [Music] don't miss another video visit click on the orange queue to subscribe and have quintessence virtually delivered from our doorstep to yours

Channel: Quintessence

Views: 205,339

Keywords: Christopher Spitzmiller, Clove Brook farm, country house, gardening, gentleman farmer, living with animals, sustainable living, country living, pool house, entertaining tips, Susanna Salk, Quintessence, interior design, decorating, at home with, Greek revival, home renovation, farm lifestyle

Id: lV4DQT_xDtE

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021