Good Food Down on the Farm

When we used to have laying hens years ago, we made our own mayo all the time. Once we had converted our single-room chicken coop over to the meat birds, we suffered over the loss of having our own eggs. Now that we're back into the egg business, this weekend we made mayo (the last store-bought jar was empty, having gone into egg salad last week!), and yesterday Darrell made a cooked custard to take as a dessert to my mom's house for Easter. Making Mayo This recipe comes from an old recipe book by Vincent and Mary Price (yes, the actor) called " A Treasury of Great Recipes ", published in 1965. It also, BTW, is the source for the basic recipe I have adapted for great guacamole. Anyhow, here's how easy it is to make mayonnaise, per the Vincent Price recipe. Homemade mayo has a shorter shelf life than store-bought because it's not full of preservatives, so make what you need, and try to use it up in a week and a half or so . . . 1. Measure 1 Cup salad oil ...

Last Tuesday, between the rain showers, Darrell went to pick up 9 little feeder pigs. We also have 3 little ones that were born to a sow here, which means that toward end of summer and into fall, we will have pigs to sell - finally! We had issues getting feeders, tried farrowing a couple of sows this winter, which didn't work out well due to the cold. We are set up better for that, but now that spring may actually be upon us, things will be easier on that score. I wanted to take photos of the little pigs in the field pen, but it has been so wet and nasty since they came, they are penned inside the big shelter - we didn't want to risk them getting too cold and too wet and ending up dying of hypothermia. They have plenty of room inside the shelter, and are bedded in deep straw to keep warm. They sleep in a pile like puppies and kittens - so cute! When it dries out some, they'll get turned out into the larger pen - I'll get some photos of them at that time. Several of ...

I picked up some oxtail at our favorite butcher shop (yes, we do buy some meats, especially beef!). I also bought a couple of nice chuck roasts. We did a pot roast for dinner one night, and I seared and braised the oxtail in another dutch oven at the same time. The left-over pot roast meat and juice and the meat and juices from the oxtails went into a soup pot yesterday, together with potatoes, carrots, corn from the garden from 2010, peas, barley, and some additional seasonings. Dinner last night was this thick, flavorful soup and French bread that Darrell made. Probably the last pot of veg/beef soup I'll make until next fall - but I do love it!

Darrell had an extra pie crust and was looking around online for an interesting one-crust pie recipe (we had brought a custard pie to someone's house the other night, and the pie crust recipe we love makes two crusts). He found this on AllRecipes.com . The submitter says it was an old recipe when she was born, in 1919! A couple of comments said that it was too sweet - the recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar. Someone pointed out that back in the early 1900s, people were using raw sugar, which was not nearly as sweet as our refined sugar. So, he cut the sugar down. He also added an extra Tbs. of flour and an extra egg for thickening. Note that the crust recipe is from the AllRecipes page and not ours. Old-Time Buttermilk Pie (Darrell's adaptation) Ingredients CRUST: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup shortening 1/4 cup cold milk 1 egg, beaten FILLING: 1/2 cup butter or margarine 1 1/2 cups sugar 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour 4 eggs 1 cup buttermil...

Our small flock of laying hens are finally producing regularly, and giving regular eggs, not pullet eggs. If you'd like to stop by to pick some up, give us a call or send an email to make sure we have eggs at that moment and that someone will be here to help you. We're selling them at $2.50/dozen. And, we're accepting clean egg cartons - let's keep the waste down!

Some of our meat customers have asked if we raise our animals on non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) grain . . . the answer is, no, because getting such grain is virtually impossible, and if we got it, it would be so expensive no one would be able to buy our meat! One ongoing struggle for organic farmers has been GE crops and cross-pollination (read "contamination), by which a farmer using GE seeds can cross-pollinate a neighboring farmer's crop, even though that farmer is trying to raise organic, non-modified grain crops. Farmer A doesn't set out to cross-pollinate Farmer B's crop, nature just makes it happen, with wind, birds and insects - all the usual methods by which plants are pollinated. Here's a blog post from Whole Foods from late January this year, as they came under fire for supposedly supporting GMO foods. They are discussing a specific recent USDA decision about GE alfalfa here, but some statistics they cite for other GE crops are staggering: ...

Our young flock of laying hens (gotten last fall as the cutest, fuzziest little chicks you could want to see!), have finally started laying eggs. They are not all laying yet, and the eggs are the smaller "pullet egg" size, but it won't be long and they will be up to full production. We have a mixed flock of Buff Orpingtons, Barred Rocks, Silver-laced Wyandottes (beautiful birds!), and Black Australorps - all brown egg layers. It has been many years since we have had a laying flock, and we have really missed having those eggs! The color of the yolks is an amazing deep color and the shells are very hard, as we give the birds calcium supplement. A very far cry from the thin-shelled, watery-yolked eggs we've been buying in the store in the intervening years! I've posted a couple of photos that show these birds as they grew from cute little chicks to mature birds. those cute, fuzzy chicks! Young layers growing up Mature layer flock Yummy brown eggs!