Pickles, Jams, and other Goodies

The garden is really kicking in now . . . kale has been in for weeks and yields lots of good salad greens, greens to use for other purposes (steamed, or in omelets, for example); wax (yellow) beans are producing nicely and I'm thinking of pickling some of those; beets are lovely, first two rows of corn is ready to be picked, steamed, and frozen; pickling cukes are producing like crazy and I just processed what will be the last batch for us this season; and have had a few tomatoes, although not enough yet to go into a canning frenzy on those. We are out of nearly everything "tomato" from last season - canned tomatoes and salsa are gone, there's one jar of juice, and a couple jars of ketchup left . . . restocking is vital!

Darrell has made blueberry jam and peach jam, and is planning on peach pie (YAY!) and freezing the rest of the peck he got last week.

Last night I dug up a few potatoes off the Kennebec row and made scalloped potatoes with ham from a picnic shoulder from one of our Berkshire hogs - so yummy, and the left-overs make a great, quick lunch for both of us.

I spent a lot of time in the garden this weekend getting caught up on weeding and tilling - the recent, blessed rains had the little weeds popping out all over! Plus I actually got a major weed-through on the asparagus rows done - it's a challenge and entails crawling on hands and knees under the asparagus ferns - not a perfect job, but the rows are cleaner than they've been for awhile!

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Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey - fun with Corn Chowder!

Many of you who know us know we usually make Turkey Pot Pies (see the recipe on our blog) with leftover Thanksgiving goodies. We still love Turkey Pot Pie, but we still have so many from last year (an even bigger bird than this year!), we decided we would do other things with this year's leftover turkey (we roasted a 33# bird from the flock we raised). So I made a Turkey Corn Chowder that is savory and yummy out of part of the leftovers. Here's how it came to be: Finished Turkey Corn Chowder First, right after Thanksgiving, I put the turkey carcass, from which most of the large meat pieces had been removed, into our 22-quart stock pot, along with some carrot, onion, and celery, to make turkey stock. When the stock was done simmering, I had pulled the carcass bones and all the meat that had cooked off out of the pot, picking out bones from the meat. I had about 2 quarts of small chunks and bits of turkey, most of which was the very tender, sweet meat that is around t...

Big turkeys from our farm - happy customers at Thanksgiving!

Well, our turkey raising experiment this year went well - probably a little too well. We had a lot of orders for birds in the 15 - 25# range and our smallest bird was over 21#. They REALLY thrived out in the pasture. We plan to raise more next year, but probably start them somewhat later (these birds were 22 weeks old) and manage their feeding protocol a little differently. We used the two biggest birds - 41.25# and a whopping 41.90# guy . . . whew! Darrell had written an informational piece about " How to Handle Roasting a Big Turkey ", and I had some of those big disposable roasting pans to give to people who feared their regular roaster wouldn't cut it. So, several of our customers shared their story of what they did with the bird and send some photos. There're also photos at the end of what we did with the two monsters. Leah C. sent these photos and a note about their experience. She had been leery of doing a big bird, so Darrell's instructions and ...

Mushroom & Andouille Sausage Soup

For our retail pork offering, we had some sausage processed as "andouille", which is used a lot in spicy southern cooking, especially Cajun/Creole. We wanted to try some of it ourselves, so went searching for recipes calling for andouille sausage. This recipe comes from this link for Southern Food and made a great "chilly, rainy night" supper for us. This is a delicious creamy mushroom soup with a little cheese and chunks of andouille sausage. Feel free to use another variety of smoked sausage in this recipe. Ingredients: 1 tablespoons vegetable oil 12 to 16 ounces andouille sausage, halved lengthwise then thinly sliced 16 ounces sliced mushrooms 4 tablespoons butter 4 green onions, thinly sliced 1 clove garlic, mashed and finely minced ...

Good Food Down on the Farm

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