Homegrown Breakfast Casserole

This breakfast casserole needs very little introduction.

I first made this for my family on Christmas and everyone loved it.

I knew Christmas morning would be a flurry of wrapping paper and excited babies and I didn’t want to miss a moment!

I assembled the casserole the night before, then popped it into the oven to cook while the girls were opening presents. By the time they were finished, it was ready to eat!

I’ve made this multiple ways now. I’ve added sautéed onions and peppers to include a few veggies. Shredded zucchini would be easy to hide with the potatoes. I’ve used 1 pound or 2 pounds of sausage depending on how many people I needed to feed.

I change up what kind of sausage I add too. This week I used Red Pepper pork sausage and it added amazing flavor! I also think Jalapeno pork sausage would be fantastic in this, it gets just a tiny bit spicy for my kids though.

I like to make this on Sunday morning, then we eat it for breakfast (or sometimes lunch or snacks) throughout the week.

Homegrown Breakfast Casserole

• 1 or 2 pounds of Grass Powered sausage (pork or chicken, any flavor, 2lbs makes it heartier for a big crowd)

• 1 bag hashbrown potatoes or about 4-6 potatoes shredded

• 1-8 oz block Monterey Jack cheese shredded (or your favorite cheese, or leave it out!)

• 8 Grass Powered pasture-raised eggs

• 1.5 cups whole milk, heavy cream or half and half (any combination works)

• Butter for cooking the hashbrowns

• 1 tsp ground mustard (optional)

• Salt/Pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a casserole dish with your favorite non-stick spray or oil

2. Brown sausage in a skillet and set aside

3. Brown hashbrowns in the skillet then transfer into the casserole dish and press down a bit to create the bottom layer

4. Top hashbrown layer with browned sausage

5. Top sausage with the cheese.

6. Scramble the eggs, milk and spices together then pour over top of the casserole layers.

7. If you aren’t ready to bake, cover the casserole and refrigerate.

8. Cover and bake for approximately 45 minutes (check the middle to make sure the eggs are done all the way through). If baking the refrigerated casserole it will take longer to bake.

9. Enjoy! Sometimes we go crazy and serve this with a few drizzles of maple syrup… it’s a perfect sweet and spicy combo!

Sausage, Potato & Greens Stew

This recipe is DEFINITELY one you will want to try out this Winter. It’s tasty, filling, and an easy way I can get bone broth AND greens into all of us without any resistance.

Jesse has proclaimed it his absolute favorite soup ever and in the top 5 of his favorite meals, and even our 2 year old who tends to be fairly picky will clean up bowl after bowl of this soup.

It seems like such simple ingredients, but there’s something about it that comes together to be so good!

I also really like this soup because 100% the ingredients can be purchased locally without even stepping into a grocery store. It feels amazing to craft a meal with ingredients that were raised on our farm, or came from our farmer friends!

We like to serve it with a fresh baked loaf of crusty bread, or some fresh rolls or bread from the farmers market plus a touch of parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

Sausage, Potato & Greens Stew

Ingredients:

1lb Grass Powered pork or chicken sausage - any flavor is great! Chorizo or Hot Italian for a bit of spice, or any mild sausage is perfect if you’re feeding young kids

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced (or skip and spice it up with garlic powder)

4 cups homemade or Grass Powered bone broth (store bought chicken or beef broth works too)

About 5 medium potatoes cut in half lengthwise then sliced into 1/4”ish thick slices (or just chunk them up, it’ll be fine)

1/2 cup cream or 1 cup whole milk (don’t be afraid to add more or leave it out completely depending on preference)

2 cups greens - kale, spinach, chard, whatever you have on hand. Remove thick stems and roughly chop

A few sprinkles of our Farmstead Seasoning, or Salt/Pepper plus optional Onion Powder/Garlic Powder/Red Pepper flakes to taste

Parmesan cheese for serving (optional)

Steps:

Brown onion and sausage in a dutch oven or pot until onions are soft and sausage is cooked through. I usually like to brown the sausage until it’s a bit crispy but it’s totally up to you! Add the garlic in the last couple minutes of browning time. Add broth and potatoes then let simmer with a lid on the pot until the potatoes are tender. Remove the pot from heat, add the greens and stir until they have wilted. Last step is adding the cream or milk and adding spices, giving it a quick stir and you’re ready to eat!

Options: Sometimes I like to thicken up the soup with a bit of instant mashed potatoes (it does ruin the 100% local ingredient vibe, but helps my tiny human get more into her mouth and less spilled down the front of her shirt). And as I said in the recipe, you can substitute any kind of sausage and greens into this recipe. We’ve tried all kinds of variations and they all come out delicious!

Quick Tip: If you forget to thaw the sausage ahead of time, no worries. If you have an hour or so before you start cooking, place it in a large bowl of cool water. It’ll thaw fairly quickly, just make sure you cook it that night! You can’t pop it back into the freezer or fridge for another day after quick thawing this way.

Or, you can unwrap it straight from the freezer and place it in your pot on low heat. A lid helps speed things up. You may also need to add a touch of oil or lard to keep it from sticking. As it thaws, peel back the thawed parts and break it all up as it thaws and softens. It takes a little longer this way, but it’ll cook up just fine!

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Our 5th Year of Farming - Why This is Actually a Really Big Deal

It’s finally feeling like Winter on the farm!

Eliza and I lit a fire in the woodstove over the weekend. It takes awhile to get the whole house warmed up, but it's nice and toasty now. Wood heat is the best! It's actually been so warm most of the winter we haven't burned much wood because it gets too hot in here. Plus we ran out of hours to cut enough firewood last year, so we've been conserving until we have a day to go cut and split more.

In other news, our family is entering our 5th year of farming!! I know that doesn't really sound like a big deal, but the fact that we've survived this long is actually pretty huge.

80% of new farms don't make it past the 2 year mark, and only 2% survive to year 5. Isn't that an absolutely heartbreaking statistic?! Thankfully we are part of the 2% that have stuck it out and managed to not bankrupt ourselves yet.

Just in the short time we've been farming I've watched multiple farms around us go out of business or massively scale back for a variety of reasons. Even though the circumstances were all very different for each farm and family, one of the big underlying reasons for changing direction is that it is extremely hard to make enough money to survive without working another job off the farm. Especially with a family to support. It can also be really, really stressful trying to do all the things.

As farmers we are all so incredibly passionate about providing the highest quality foods for our communities, raising our animals humanely, being good stewards of the land and resources, supporting our local economy, building relationships and community that our culture is very much lacking right now, and all the other reasons we are called to this work. We can do so many great things as a small family farm, but at the end of the day no farm is truly sustainable unless it is financially sustainable for the families operating it.

Our food system is in a precarious spot right now. The average age of the American farmer is 55+, which means a huge percentage of our farmland will be changing hands in the very near future. If small farms like ours can't afford to purchase and operate the land (typical cost of farmland in our area is $5,000+ per acre just to give you an idea), it will end up in the hands of developers or investors. Increasingly these are foreign investors.

Our communities need more family farms taking care of the land, but they need to be profitable and financially sustainable family farms so they can stick around for awhile, thrive, save farmland from development, protect and grow safe local food systems, become leaders and mentors for new farmers, support other local small businesses, and provide the healthy food and opportunities for community and connection that all of us need.

My challenge to you as we enter a new year is to support your small local farms as much as possible. Whether you're buying from our farm or others, the majority of your groceries or just a dozen eggs once in awhile, our purchasing decisions today will have a huge impact on what our communities and food system look like in the very near future.

I know it can be less convenient to shop from us and often not your cheapest option. We do our very best to find and create efficiencies to keep our costs low, but we just can’t compete with mass produced and vertically integrated products found in grocery stores. What I can guarantee is you won’t find a higher quality product or one raised with more integrity, passion and purpose.

Thank you for being the hero in our small farm story. We couldn't have made it to our 5th year of farming without you believing in us, valuing what we do, and spending your hard earned food dollars with us. It means so much to our family, and we can't ever thank you enough.

We are just getting started and have so many great things planned for 2020 and beyond. Thank you for being on this journey with us!

~ Dana, Jesse, Eliza & Brynn

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Why Are You Always Out of Bacon?!

If you’ve been shopping with us for very long, you have probably seen the dreaded line through the BACON category on our farmers market signage.

Breakfast is ruined, emotions run high, panic ensues, it’s never fun… and I can assure you we hate it as much as you do!

Our bacon is pretty much amazing. It’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s crunchy, it’s good for breakfast, in a BLT, on a salad, as a midnight snack, the list could go on. It’s basically what dreams are made of, I completely get it.

In a perfect world, we would never run out of any cut, but it’s just not realistic for small farms operating at our scale. Each pig, steer and chicken only has so many body parts!

Part of the bacon challenge is that on a 200+ pound hog, we only get somewhere around 16 packages of bacon. The belly and a little bit of meat from the jaw is the only meat from a hog that can be made into bacon. The majority of a pig is chops, hams, shoulders, ribs and sausage.

As consumers, we are used to shopping the grocery store where every cut is stocked, at all times. We can shop any time of day or night and there will be bacon and pretty much anything else we could imagine, at any given moment, waiting for us to toss it into the cart.

It’s different for small farms. We use and need to sell the entire animal so nothing goes to waste and so we can afford to raise the next batch of animals.

The same concept of cut scarcity is true for beef and chickens too. We tend to run out of cuts like filet, ribeyes and rump roasts very quickly since each animal only has a small amount, but we can’t beef up (ha, get it!) beef production so we always have filet without balancing the demand for the other cuts.

Sometimes we also run out of cuts simply because all of you are amazing and we sell out faster than expected!

It takes 6-8 weeks to raise a batch of meat chickens, 5-6 months before a laying hen starts producing eggs consistently, 6+ months to raise a finished hog, and 2-2.5 years to raise a finished beef steer. When we run out of things, it takes time for us to stock the freezers again.

2019 will be our 4th year farming, and we are continuing to fine tune when we need to have animals processed, how many to raise, and what your favorite cuts are, but we always appreciate feedback about what you like or would like us to offer!

So, my challenge to you is to try incorporating a wide variety of cuts into your meals. Branch out, try something new! And if you need ideas on how to cook it, send me an email and I would love to help. The end result will be more bacon for everyone! :)

~Dana

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Grilled Pastured Pork Chops with Potatoes & Veggies

Marinated Pastured Pork Chops

Ingredients

• 2-4 thick cut Pastured Pork Chops

• 1/4 cup soy sauce

• 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

• 2 tablespoons olive or coconut oil

• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar

• 1 tablespoon mustard - can be regular, dijon, any kind works!

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1 clove garlic or 1 tsp garlic powder

• salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Combine marinade ingredients in a large shallow pan or food storage bag. 

2. Add chops and marinate at least an hour or up to 6 hours. If using a shallow pan, be sure to flip the chops partway through to coat all sides. If using a bag, squish everything around to get all sides of the chops coated. 

3. Grill chops over medium high heat for approximately 5 to 7 minutes per side until internal temp reaches 145 degrees. Don't overcook or chops could dry out! 

Grill Potatoes & Veggies

The perfect side dish to go with your marinated pork chops! 

Ingredients

• About 6 medium potatoes cut into 1 inch chunks

• 1 onion sliced thin

• 1 pound (about 2 cups) fresh or frozen green beans

• 2 cloves garlic (can use powdered garlic or garlic salt instead)

• 4+ tablespoons butter

• Few dashes of Worchestershire Sauce

• Salt/Pepper

If you want to switch it up a bit, you can also add any combination of sliced zucchini or yellow squash, sweet potatoes, sliced peppers - we have even used cabbage and it's always delicious! 

Instructions

1. Lay out a big piece of aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray or coat with butter/coconut oil

2. Spread potatoes, onions and green beans on the foil. Add salt, pepper, garlic then mix together and gather into the middle of the foil, somewhat in a line long ways across the foil. Leave a few inches on each end - you'll need enough room around the outside to seal up the foil into a packet. 

3. Add a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce then place pats of butter across the top. Don't be shy about adding butter, 4 tablespoons is a minimum here! 

4. Seal up the foil packet and carefully transfer to the grill. Place on a side with low heat. Direct heat will burn the bottom layer. 

5. Allow to cook for approximately 45 minutes or until potatoes are soft. Try not to pierce the foil bag and limit opening the bag to check if potatoes are done - keeping the hot steam in keeps them cooking faster! 

My method to pull this meal together was to start marinating the pork chops while completing the prep work and starting to cook the grill potatoes. The last 20 minutes or so of cooking the potatoes we added the chops to the grill so both were ready to eat around the same time. 

Hope you enjoy this meal as much as we do! 

~ Dana

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Potato Chorizo Soup

If you've been part of this farm community for awhile you know I'm in an in-between stage of life still working a full-time day job while we build the farm operation. 

It has its positives and negatives, but for today I'll focus on the good parts. Steady income is a plus, health insurance is important, and I haven't had to buy a jacket for myself in about 5 years. 

My job can require quite a few nights of overnight travel. It's hard to leave the family and farm, but my coworkers are some of my favorite people ever so we make even the most boring meetings fun-ish. Once in awhile we also eat some truly spectacular food. 

On my latest trip we spent a few days in French Lick, Indiana. If I'm being completely honest, most of the food was terrible, but Sunday evening we had dinner at the hotel steakhouse and it was AMAZING.

We enjoyed a fancy meal while one member of our team educated us all on bitcoin, another provided way too many details about breeding basset hounds, 1/2 of us realized we haven't been doing our mileage reports correctly, and all tried to make sure we didn't use each other's silverware. 

Don't laugh, but my menu choices were roasted brussel sprouts with pancetta, crab cakes, and potato chorizo soup. The Brussels and crab cakes were good, I was a nice person and shared them around the table, but this soup was perfection and I was a bit more stingy about sharing! 

It was just a hint of spicy and creamy perfection and had potatoes and veggies.... I carefully analyzed it because I knew I would need to recreate it at home. 

I think I succeeded and Jesse proclaimed it was his second favorite soup beat out only by chicken and rice. It got a little spicy for my typically adventurous 3 year old, or at least that was her excuse when she begged for a bowl of black beans for dinner instead. Yes, she's weird. 

Ok so here's my recreation of the steakhouse soup. I’ve seen recipes that include corn too, which I think would also be delicious! 

Potato Chorizo Soup

• 1 pound Grass Powered Pastured Chorizo

• 4 cups chicken or beef broth

• 1 cup heavy cream

• 3 tablespoons butter

• About 4 potatoes

• 1 bell pepper

• 1 onion

• 1-2 carrots

• 2 cloves garlic

• Salt, white pepper, powdered mustard or whatever other seasoning sounds good!

Dice potatoes, pepper, onion and carrots and garlic. Melt butter in the bottom of a Dutch oven or other heavy bottomed pan then sauté potatoes, peppers, onion and carrots. Add more butter or olive oil if needed. Once they are softened, add garlic for the last couple minutes. 

Add thawed chorizo and break apart as it cooks. 

Once Chorizo is cooked, add broth and any other dry seasonings. Allow to simmer about 15 minutes. A few minutes before serving, add heavy cream. 

It’s amazing straight from the pot, but you could also top with sour cream, corn chips, fresh herbs, maybe even shredded or crumbled cheese. 

I baked a loaf of quick crusty bread to go with it - perfection. 

Hope this soup warms you on a chilly winter evening! 

Dana

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