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  Jan. 8th, Twenty-Ten collards and kale under rowcover 18 degrees Thursday morning Our hens are getting old, they will be two years old in February. A dog year is said to be the equivalent of 7 human years. As far as I can tell, with limited research, is that a year in the life of a laying hen is equal to 26 human years or thereabouts. That sort of makes sense. hens begin to produce eggs at around 6 months; or around 13 years old. At a year old, they behave like 26 year olds, pretty feathers, showing off for the roosters, full of themselves, and cranking out eggs. Our flock is now entering their early 50’s in human years. Still young but maturing out of their reproductive stage in life. Unfortunately, the AARC has limited benefits that involve dumplings and stewing pots. Wintertime ChoresThe cold has slowed us down. It is easier for me to work in 95 degrees with high humidity rather than below freezing temps.We have been staying in the house more and building fires in the wood stove. I finally registered my copy of Quickbooks 2008, an accounting program, and have been trying to get familiar with it. Also a book called Market Farm Forms - Spreadsheets for planning and organizing small, diversified market farms with CSA’s Sounded great when I bought it last spring but neither me or Jenifer knows how to use a spreadsheet, although we have tried to learn. Apparently, we do not have the proper software to run the spreadsheet template CD. We still got pencil and paper, 20 years of experience, and Kentucky windage. We go out after lunch and make sure the chickens and pigs have water and feed. Our feed costs have soared in the last two years. We are about a year away from any potential profit from the pigs and our hens are not currently laying enough eggs to cover their feed costs. But they are our responsibility, regardless of profit. We have a good system of underground water lines and cut-off valves that we can get water to the chickens and pigs via long stretches of garden hoses as long as we we pay rapt attention to draining hoses as soon as we are done and shutting off the underground cut-off valve. Collards and KaleBecause of the intense cold weather, some of our collards and kale have beautiful shades of purple. Taste-testing in the field confirms that those leaves are sweeter than normal.We picked for the Saturday market on Thursday. It was a balmy 43 degrees. The forecast for today is a high of 31 degrees. Here in the South, “greens” are often cooked by simmering them for long times – along with a piece of sidemeat, or ham hock. I have discovered a “non-traditional” way of cooking greens that is fast, leaves most of the vitamins intact, and is VERY tasty. 1 big bunch of young collards cloves of garlic to taste (I use 3-4), chopped olive oil Cut the ribs out of the leaves and roll several leaves together in a cigar shape. Cut across the roll in 1/8″ strips. Continue until all the leaves are in thin strips. In a large iron skillet on med-high heat, saute the garlic in olive oil until fragrant – maybe a minute or less. Add the collards and cook, turning frequently all the strips are dark green – maybe two minutes or so. Serve. They are sweet, tender-crunchy, wonderfully fragrant with garlic. My Yankee husband now love that quintessential Southern green – collards. Give it a try! Works with spinach, Russian Kale, and probably a lot of other greens as well. Alison Wiediger, Au Naturel Farm Collard Soup We made this a few weeks ago. It is different and good. The recipe served 8 people as a starter course. I would suggest you cut it in half.
The Wednesday afternoon market at Yorkmont took us by surprise. We got there at 1 pm and were sold out by 2 pm. We brought 50 bunches of collards, two 18 gallon tubs of Tuscan kale, and 22 dozen eggs. All we had left on the table at 2 pm was this giant turnip . We hung around till 3 pm, and then came home. We apologize to any of you that showed up later only to find us no longer there. We could of picked more collards if we had only known. The proper term is “cropping” collards, or so I have been told repeatably by Kevin, who was one of my college roommates at WCU and grew up on a truck farm near Orlando “cropping” collards and other greens. He could be right, but I found it hard to take anyone seriously that would break out their fake goose down Florida Gators puffy coat when the night time temps. started hovering in the mid 50’s… Since I had only been selling 8-12 bunches of collards Saturday mornings at the market, we agreed that 30 bunches would be a good number to pick for Wednesday. Then we picked 10 more. Jenifer started on the Tuscan kale and I picked 10 more bunches collards. The last 4-5 bunches were hard. It was getting dark, the temp. had dropped into the upper 30’s and my fingers were numb and I was having trouble getting rubber bands around the bunches. What a whiner… The Great TurnipThe giant turnip showed up in a bed of collards. I don’t know if the turnip seed was in the collard seeds or if it had been hiding out in the hopper on our push seeder.When I saw the turnip, I yelled at Levi to come down where we were. He was up hanging out with the chickens and geese. I showed him the turnip and told him to pull it up. He was like “Whoa!!!” It was almost as big as his head! Not quite, but close. I don’t know what we are going to do with the turnip. Something weird and odd for sure. Jenifer makes a mean grated turnip salad with, I think, basically garlic, lemon juice, sea salt and freshly ground pepper. It sounds funky and it is. But there is something about the taste. It is not really a side meal dish. Jenifer makes a small bowl of it and it sits in the kitchen and we eat a forkful at a time as we pass by it. But that only requires one medium turnip. I am thinking turnip steaks, maybe marinated in wine and smoked and slow-cooked on the grill… Now that we have three pigs, our culinary failures are just a 75 yard walk up the driveway to the pigpen to become swine treats.
We thought we had attended our last farmer’s market of the year until I got a call from Natalie of the Grateful Growers Saturday asking us if we would like to join them at the market on Wednesday afternoon. Well, yeah… eating collards, black-eyed peas, cornbread and pork on New Year’s is a southern tradition and what better day of the year to sell our fresh, organic, just picked collards than New Year’s eve. I contacted Maria at Fisher Farms and she said they would also be there Wednesday with collards, kale, and jars of their excellent tomato sauce that they actually make themselves. Besides collards, we will have about 25 dozen eggs, some Tuscan kale, and some arugula. Black-eyed peas represent coins, collards folding money, cornbread = gold, and pork, wealth in general. I ran across an an interesting reason why pork, rather than chicken or beef, is the preferred meat for New Year’s. Chickens scratch backwards, then back up to eat what they scratched up. Cows basically stand still most of the day. Pigs on the other hand, are always rooting forward. Seeking out new opportunities. Cooking CollardsFirst thing, rinse them off. Since our farm has clay soils rather than sand, grit is not much of a problem. We rinse our collards in a couple of inches of water in the sink. If there is still some soil attached, I call that a natural nutritional supplement because we know how it grew and what we amended the soil with. If you don’t know the source of your collards or who grew them, I would suggest rinsing them 3-4 times in cold water. REMOVE THE RIBS – Even on the small leaves. I have tried stacking leaves 5-6 leaves deep and cutting out an upside down V to remove the ribs but the fastest way I have found is to just fold them in half and make one cut to remove the rib. Use a knife bigger than a paring knife and smaller than a chef’s knife. I use a rabbit knife. Don’t discard the ribs. They will go to your pigs, chickens, worm bin, or compost pile. If you have none of the above, discard them around the closest tree. Don’t InSinkErate or put them in a plastic bag destined for the landfill. You can stir-fry / saute collards in 10-15 minutes or simmer them for an hour or so. Minced garlic and onion work well starting out on both methods, your favorite hot sauce, if that trips your trigger, can be applied anywhere along the way. Finish them off with apple cider vinegar and a sparse grinding of black pepper. SplurgingWe are going to eat our collards and black-eyed peas with some oven cooked ribs finished on the grill from the Grateful Growers. We are going to dump a small jar of Fisher Farms tomato sauce into our pot of peas. You can get dried black-eyed peas at the market as well as local cornmeal from Linneys Water Mill in Union Grove. Good-bye 2009It has been a good year for us. We have had our share of up’s and down’s, but we ain’t complaining. Happy MusicIt is late and we have been waiting for our 11 year old Ellie to fall asleep again. She has her suspicions about Santa since she found out that the tooth fairy leaving silver eagle dollars under her pillow was me. I got my suspicions about Santa too but I am not 100% sure. Ellie finally fell asleep. Jenifer and I worked furiously filling the stockings while choking the attached bells so they would not ring. Hung the stockings and laid out the main presents. Ellie is getting an acoustic guitar and Levi is getting a Star Wars Clone Warrior huge tank thing… Similar to the GI Joe of my youth but a much small scale and much better marketing… Jenifer immediately went to bed after we had did our elf work, but I got on the computer to check the weather to see when it would start raining. While sitting at my desk, I heard a burp from my sauerkraut crock that I had started Sunday. That made me laugh. Having a crock of fermenting sauerkraut burp at you early Christmas morning is a blessing. I am not sure what the gases are but they are probably responsible for climate change or something. We attended our last farmer’s market of the year on Tuesday afternoon, December 22. It was somewhat of an odd market because we normally only attend that market on Saturday mornings. But bad weather last weekend prevented us from going, along with other local growers. We had customers wanting our greens and eggs for Christmas and New Year’s that they had missed out on Saturday. So we and four other local farms banded together and showed up and it was a lot of fun. As you can see, this blog has been static since early October. Andy, the guy that had been doing it for me, is one of our CSA (community-supported agriculture) members and did an awesome job! We traded him 22 weeks of vegetables for his IT knowledge and we probably owe him. No, I know we owe him. He as been strongly suggesting that I get out of my baby crib and start learning to crawl with this blog stuff. Of course, he implied it in a very nice and laid-back way. I am just excited that I finally learned how to add content to my own blog! Pictures and videos are next when I figure out how. Sauerkraut – I made a batch Sunday. It should be ready in 6 weeks or so. The moon was waxing and the signs were right. Does that make a difference? I don’t know, it sounds archaic. But is it? Planting by the signs developed over hundred’s of years from our ancestors watching the movement of the stars, observing plant growth, and paying attention to weather patterns. They spent most of their days outside and sheltered in humble cabins and houses. Most of us have parents or grandparents that grew up in homes with no electricity or running water and living on a dirt road or close to one. Now we are constantly attached to our cell phones, the internet, cable or sat. tv that we feel lost if we cannot have instant access to whatever we want immediately. We no longer spend time looking at the night sky or paying attention to plant growth because we don’t have to. But does that make our lifestyle better? Ellie, I, and my neighbor Carl, drove 2+ hours to Ruthfordton and picked up 4 piglets Sunday. Ossawbaw/ Yorkshire and Ossawbaw/ Hampshire crosses. For breeding stock. I had planned for one of these pigs to end up in our freezer but Ellie named one Penny and Levi named the other Stacy as they came off the truck. Carl took the other two. They are 14+ weeks old and weigh over 50 lbs each. George is glad to have some of his kind around. We named our Ossabaw boar George Washington pig, because he came from the Mt. Vernon Estate. Natalie and Cassie of the Grateful Growers came down Monday afternoon to use our equipment to butcher eight turkeys and a dozen old laying hens. They were helping out a neighbor with the turkeys and the hens belonged to them. It was an somber but enjoyable day, killing animals you have raised from birth for food automatically drags up a lot of philosophical questions. Doing what we do is somewhat solitary work, except for market days. The most enjoyable aspect of last Monday was having fellow farmers on our farm doing a chore we were all familiar with. Natalie and I did not discuss catching the turkeys or chickens in the trailer, or the best way butcher, scald, or pluck. We just started doing it with little conversation. Cassie and Jenifer set up their stations for the final hand-plucking and evisceration. Sounds a little gross, and it is, but if animal protein is part of your diet, you should feel obligated to know how it was raised, killed, and processed. For the last 5-6 years, turkey day for us has been the Monday before Thanksgiving when we dress out and get fitted turkeys right off pasture ready for the oven. Monday, I had high hopes despite the fact we got 1.4 inches of rain Sunday night and it was still raining when we started at 6:45 am. The ground was already wet and the rain had made a sloppy, mucky mess of the ground around the barn and everywhere else. High hopes is the name of the gremlin that perches on the rafters in the barn and sleeps on our equipment waiting for us to be led astray as soon as we think know what we are doing… Jenifer, Levi, and I had loaded our turkeys on the trailer Sunday afternoon and parked them next to the processing area. Our neighbor Carl brought his turkeys here early Monday morning. We had an awesome work crew show up to help. Carl and Sierra from Carlea Farms, some farmer’s market customers and friends, Mike, Michael, and Rob; and David from Renfrow’s Hardware. Carl and I had started hauling the 35-40 gallons of water from the house to the barn. We have 2 five gallon buckets fitted with gamma lids specifically for this purpose. Our water is well water, which is typically 55 degrees, so if it saves time and propane if we fill up the buckets at the house with hot water and tote them to the scalder. I could not get the scalder to fire up, not even the pilot light and it had worked fine a week ago. I spent close to two hours trying to get it to work. We pulled out plan B, which is a turkey fryer kit we can use to heat up water for scalding. Mike suggested calling the phone number on the scalder. I dismissed the suggestion, saying I got the manual laying in the kitchen, those folks are in Missouri and won’t be up our time, and I just did this a week ago and know what I am doing. Michael took Mike’s suggestion and called the phone # and handed his fancy iphone to me. I am talking to a girl/woman in Missouri who, after describing my problem, asked me if I purged the lines for 3-5 minutes by holding the pilot light button in… DOH It was quite humbling, especially since I did that exact same task a week ago. Tom, our Naragansett turkey that has escaped Thanksgiving for the fifth year, was quite popular the week of Thanksgiving He was featured on the Sunday front page of the Stanly News and Press in this photo. Wednesday, he was on WBTV evening news. Lust- Means a range of things. Could be a neighbor or co-worker. Could be as dorky as seed catalogs that start arriving this time of year. My definition of lust is what you want but don’t need. But I need this truck. |
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The chickens were freaked out by the snow last Saturday. They just stood in their coop looking out. After lunch I went and got a round bale of wheat straw with the tractor and spread it out in front of their coop and moved some feeders on top of the straw. The hens loved all the attention.
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