Surviving and Thriving - Serendipitous Broccoli!

Late spring, when I finally got the garden planted (about 2 -3 weeks later than planned!), I put in 4 broccoli plants. Within a couple of days, some little creature had munched them all down. When I was tilling the garden, little weeds were sprouting in the area they had been in, so I ran across it to clean it up and turned up the little stub that was left of one, still rooted in the soil it had come it. I looked at it and realized there was a little leaf and some green in the stem, so I re-planted it, watered it and watched to see if whatever had decimated the 4 plants came back. That didn't happen, but this little plant was so set back, I figured I would be lucky to get any broccoli off it at all. I looked at it a week ago (early September!), while doing some weeding, and there was no sign of any heads forming, but the plant had grown large and healthy-looking. This Saturday, I re-checked - lo and behold, not one, but TWO nice big heads! Apparently the little surviving stub managed to put out two main stalks (for the uninitiated, you usually get one large head on a stalk, then, after you cut that, the plant continues to produce side stalks and smaller heads until hard frost). Two main stalks on a plant is unusual in my experience. So before cutting these beautiful heads, I had to take a photo. With chicken distribution Saturday and doing tomatoes all day yesterday, I didn't get them cut. You can see the faint yellow where they were getting ready to blossom - pretty tiny little yellow flowers when that happens!

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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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