When Melina Hammer and her husband Jim Lafferty bought a house in Accord in 2018, Hammer’s habit of setting elaborate, texturally rich, sensuous feast tables for friends bloomed from hobby to business. With her husband, Hammer is the co-owner of meal-centric, farm-to-table Airbnb Catbird Cottage.
When they bought the 1946 Cape Cod, it included vestiges of a large perennial garden planted in the 1970s. Over the past few years, the couple has been working to bring it back to life, as well as planting heirloom vegetable garden, which they harvest from to create their guests’ meals.
After serving dozens of guests over the last two years, Hammer is ready to share her recipes in her book, A Year at Catbird Cottage: Recipes for a Nourished Life. The book came together from notes she scribbled as she planned meals for her guests. Catbird Cottage is filled with furniture and art by family and friends. Hammer’s grandmother’s paintings decorate the walls of the sitting room, and ceramic pieces created by her friends fill the cabinets. That intimacy transfers to the book.
In one picture, Hammer wears a citrine ring passed down from her mother. Hammer cooks with ingredients foraged from the surrounding property and grown in her garden. In her book she includes advice for foraging beginners by introducing wild ingredients and covering how to identify, harvest, and use them.
At Catbird Cottage, Hammer plans her menu around the seasons. “The seasons are much more clearly defined here in the Hudson Valley,” she says. “Which brings a preciousness to certain wild foods, knowing that they are more fleeting, and as the seasons evolve they will vanish altogether.” A Year At Catbird Cottage is organized the same way. Among the 100 recipes are crispy pork and fennel meatballs for spring, french toast with wild berry compote for summer, roasted cauliflower with harissa for autumn, and tomato clams with sourdough toast for winter. Hammer also covers how to preserve seasonal foods for year-round use.
