Every Day is Earth Day for Farmers

I was feeling a little guilty that I hadn't planned some sort of special Earth Day service project as a family today, but I realized that we live Earth Day every single day around here.

While spending Earth Day picking up trash or planting trees definitely makes a positive difference in the health of our planet and are for sure important, raising animals the way we do and buying local foods on a regular basis makes a HUGE impact as well!

Here are a few ways buying local, and especially purchasing locally raised grass-fed and pastured meats helps create a healthier planet:

• Rotationally grazed pastures can sequester as much carbon as forest land. Sometimes you’ll hear that livestock negatively impact the atmosphere with their ahem “toots”, but the reality is that properly managed livestock raised on forage have a POSITIVE impact on the environment by helping to keep the carbon sequestration cycle of grasses moving.

• Pasture land protects fresh water resources by reducing erosion of topsoil. Bare soil is extremely prone to water or wind erosion when it isn’t continually covered with growing plants. Topsoil is absolutely essential to growing any crops, whether it’s grain crops or pasture forages. It’s estimated that if we continue to lose topsoil at the same rate we have been for the last 10 years that we will not have enough topsoil to feed ourselves in only 60 years. We have to make changes now, there’s no more time to wait.

• Buying local decreases the amount of fossil fuels needed to transport food products around the world. There is no reason to ship in beef from South America when we have plenty being raised in our own communities. The amount of travelling food does before it hits grocery store shelves is absolutely crazy.

• When you purchase locally it encourages the continued growth of small grass-based farms like ours. As demand increases for grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, more and more farms like ours will begin popping up to meet the demand. We would love to see many more farms like ours feeding our communities!

Thank you for being part of our mission to not only feed our community high quality food, but also to leave our little piece of the world even healthier than we found it.

Happy Earth Day!

~ Dana

The Bigger Impact of Buying Local

I've shared pretty openly about how shopping from our farm has directly impacted our family, but what you may not see is just how many other local families and businesses your food dollars benefit when you shop with us.

The positive impact our community is huge, and the more our farm has grown we've been able to help many other businesses grow and expand right along with us!

- Our baby chicks and turkey poults are hatched by a family owned hatchery in Cincinnati. Not only do they provide healthy chicks for us, but we don't have to rely on shipping them through the mail - we can go pick them up the day they hatch.

- We purchase our non-GMO feed from a local Amish family. Mark has been mixing the feed for our animals for the past 6 years. We've watched him go from operating out of one small pole building by himself to adding his brother full-time to the business, hiring office staff, a delivery driver, and having to build multiple new buildings to keep up with demand.

- Our feed maker purchases the non-GMO grains for our feeds locally. By purchasing feed from him, we are also supporting other area farmers.

- Our hay is raised by and purchased from local farmers.

- We purchase our basic supplies like new heat lamps for the brooder, buckets, shavings, etc. from a locally owned feed store.

- The piglets we raise into finished hogs are purchased from local farmers. We have a few farms we support to get as many pigs as we need.

- Our beef animals are bred, born and raised without ever leaving our county. We have a farmer friend who owns a herd of grass-fed Angus cattle. He cares for the Mama cows, bull and baby calves, then once the calves are weaning age, we purchase them.

- When it comes time for processing, all 4 processors we use for poultry, beef and pork are local family owned operations.

- Even the custom labels we have put on our chicken products are designed and sold by a family business in Cincinnati!

- Our fencing and building project materials are purchased from locally owned businesses, and we hired local building and concrete crews to help with our barn.

- When we need tires (seriously, there are so many tires around here) or mechanic work done, we have wonderful local businesses who know us and take great care of us.

- Those amazing photos you see of our family and farm were taken by local photographers - either Hollie from Holden Photography or Anna from Anamedia.

- Our soaps and tallow balms are made with Twisted Violet Homestead in Hillsboro and Butterhide in Jackson, both women owned small businesses.

- The chai tea, canned goods and kombucha you see in our store are made by Red Holler Homestead in Chillicothe and Fair Ridge Farms in Hillsboro, both local crafters who share our vision for a sustainable local food system.

- Our taxes are done by a local accountant, we bank locally, we use local lenders when we've needed financing, and we partner with other local small businesses for our needs whenever possible.

- The dollars we earn by selling our products allow us to purchase food we don’t produce for ourselves from other local farms.

I've probably even missed some of the directions your dollars move out into the community after purchasing from us, but I hope this helps you see just how big of an impact you're making! 

One of these days I'll go even bigger picture into the price of farm land, supply and demand plus pressure from developers and foreign investors, but that's probably a little much for this post. :)

Thank you for being a part of what we're doing. We are so incredibly grateful for your support, and allowing us to support the growth of so many other small businesses in our community too.

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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 Food System Is Broken

As I write this we are a couple months into the COVID-19 pandemic in this country.

Along with fears about the actual virus itself, this entire situation has brought to light many of the weaknesses in our centralized industrial food system and has many people concerned about food shortages - especially meat, eggs, and dairy.

Over time, our food system has been structured to produce cheap, efficient food. To do this, the supply chains have ended up being essentially monopolies that control the entire process. 85% of the beef in our country is processed, distributed, owned by 4 major companies. 85%!

This means when any part of their huge system goes down, it disrupts the entire supply chain from the farm to the grocery store and everywhere in between. Right now the beef packers are paying farmers below the break even cost for their animals, while still importing cheap beef raised overseas, and significantly raising prices for consumers at the grocery store.

We are seeing shortages on grocery store shelves because of COVID-19 outbreaks in these huge processing plants. It’s not from people hoarding meat, it’s not because there isn’t enough meat.

This backlog is causing empty grocery store shelves, and farmers having to destroy fully grown animals that could be feeding people. Those pictures of piles of dead hogs and the stories about how they are “humanely” euthanizing entire barns of hogs and chickens by shutting off the ventilation system and letting them suffocate and overheat to death? Sorry to be gruesome, but that’s not fake news. That’s really happening.

USDA is now working on creating protocols for farmers to destroy ready to process beef steers “humanely”, while the packers are still importing cheap beef from overseas.

There’s been an outcry to just donate the meat or wait until there’s processing space instead of destroying animals. Because our food system has consolidated so much in the name of cheap meat and efficiency, it’s put a lot of our local butchers out of business. They just don’t exist anymore to process these animals. It’s also not an option to for farms to hold the animals longer until the backlog gets caught up. They’ll be too large for the facilities to handle, plus there will be a backlog of baby pigs being euthanized because there’s nowhere for them to go.

Our food system is a mess. While I don’t pretend to have all the answers to this complicated issue, I do know without a doubt that fixing this needs to involve decentralizing meat production, bringing back local and regional systems, creating opportunities for more small to mid-scale processors, and if not stopping the import of meat from overseas completely at least labeling it so as consumers we can make the decision for ourselves what we want to eat.

One positive in all of this is there’s been a huge surge in buying locally raised meat, eggs and dairy lately, which is amazing! Our farm sold through inventory that would have lasted us months in just weeks. We are getting nearly constant messages from families and local businesses who are struggling to source their meat from their usual channels. We love that we get to serve our community this way. We are truly living our purpose! Small farms all over the country are stepping up to the challenge of keeping our communities fed and I’ve never been more proud to be part of this group.

One conversation we along with many of our other farming friends are having right now is - how much do we invest in scaling up moving forward? Will customers stick with us even when things go back to “normal” and there’s convenient cheap meat on the grocery store shelves? Will this system ever go back to “normal”? There are so many unknowns.

Thankfully we are in a position to scale up chicken and turkey production fairly quickly, but beef and pork take longer. Finished grass-fed beef steers take 2+ years to finish, pastured hogs take 6+ months, turkeys a little over 3 months, but thankfully chickens only take 6 weeks!

Even though I know it’s alarming to see shelves bare, we and other local farms are doing our best to step up and feed our communities. We have the capacity, it just takes time to create the needed infrastructure and raise the animals.

The one thing we want to ask of you is that even if you can’t source 100% of your families meat, eggs or milk from local farms, please support them as much as possible. I know it’s cliche, but where we spend our dollars now shapes the food system of our future.

When dollars flow through local farms, they support local processors and businesses. This leads to expansion and more local processors being created to keep up with demand, which opens up more opportunities for farmers like us to raise and process more animals.

By diverting dollars away from the industrial food system we keep dollars local and reinvested in our communities.

Part of our struggle in this moment to scale beef or pork production quickly is that we can’t get processing slots. Our usual processor who can typically get as many animals as we need in with a month or two notice is booked out 6+ months. I had to make processing appointments for pigs that aren’t even born yet to make sure the spots were there when we needed them.

We aren’t sure what to expect in the next year and beyond, but we are here to serve you as best we can.

Thank you for supporting our farm and other local farms like us! I can see change happening and I’m looking forward to the positive things that will come out of the pandemic tragedy. I hope one of them is more food security, a stronger local food system, and stronger communities.

~ Dana

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Bringing Back the Victory Garden

Bringing Back the Victory Garden!

Have you ever heard the history of Victory Gardens?

I had never heard of them until I took a pastured poultry course at a northern Ohio farm a few years ago. They had what they called a “victory garden” and when I went home I had to google it to find out what exactly that meant.

The condensed history of the Victory Garden - these were gardens grown during World War I and especially during WWII when food was scarce. A lot of the canned goods being produced were shipped overseas to troops, food supplies were being rationed, and the government encouraged anyone who could to grow and preserve some of their own foods to take the pressure off the public food supply. It was also a morale booster since it gave families something to work on and everyone felt like they had a part in feeding themselves, helping to support their country, and feeding the troops overseas.

At that time, 40% of the nations vegetables were being produced by home gardeners! They even encouraged people to have their own backyard chickens instead of creating zoning regulations to prohibit it. There were information books, plans for what and how much to grow for a family, and they had the coolest promotion posters! Seriously, if you have a minute to do a google search on Victory Gardens, the pictures of their posters are amazing.

I think I partly fell in love with this idea because my Grandfather was a WWII veteran. He just passed away a few weeks ago at 94 years old. He was a radioman in a B-24 bomber and flew over 20 missions. Our family has always had a special interest in WWII history and a special appreciation for the people like my Grandfather who truly risked everything to give us the opportunities we have today.

A few years ago I had the chance to take a short flight in a B-17 with my Grandfather. It was such a powerful moment in my life because as we were taking off I let myself feel what these young men must have been feeling - as that airplane left the ground knowing they were going to be in danger, understanding that each mission they flew decreased the chances they would make it back home alive, knowing that many many of their friends didn’t.

We took a short 20 minute flight and I was hot and airsick. My Grandfather said he flew over 20 missions that lasted hours.

At the time I’m writing this blog post our country is at war with COVID-19. In most of our lifetimes, this is the first time we’ve really felt uncertain about what life will look like tomorrow, next week, or next year. Everything changed in the blink of an eye. The things we took for granted like grocery store shelves full of endless supplies of food, the opportunity to work and support our families, abundance, freedom, travel, security, the ability to buy whatever we wanted from Amazon and have it delivered in 2 days - some of that is gone now.

But I also feel a deep sense of pride watching our communities and our country come together. I’m choosing to see the positives of what’s happening despite my fear and I have zero doubts our country will recover and our communities will be stronger because of this experience.

While our specialty here at our farm is raising forage, livestock and eggs, this year we will be expanding our vegetable and fruit growing areas and raising our own Victory Garden. I hope that it will not only feed our family, but that we can share the surplus with our neighbors and community.

As a farmer, I’ve been very aware of the food security issues this has caused across the country. I think that we all need to take back some control over our own access to food. In the last couple weeks we’ve seen grocery store shelves cleared and the global food system struggling to shift resources to keep up with demand. In any major weather event, disease, war, etc. it’s easy for these supply chains to be cut off and food doesn’t get where it’s needed.

Having a strong local food system helps to solve these issues. The food is here already, and small farms and businesses can quickly adapt to marketplace changes. Farms that were selling to mainly restaurants and schools quickly switched gears to fill individual customers freezers. Farms that were already selling direct to consumer made some quick changes to how customers accessed their products and kept on rolling. Our area has farmers raising meat, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, and more.

I know our farm and others have seen huge demand for our products in the last couple weeks. We are doing the best we can to keep up, scale up, and keep everyone fed. The struggle for us is going to be - will this continue? Our greatest fear is investing in growing more products only to be left behind when the grocery store shelves are full and more convenient to shop from.

We want to feed you. We want to be here for our community in the good times and in the uncertain times, but this means we need the support of our communities more than just when the grocery store shelves are empty.

I want to encourage and challenge you to continue supporting your local farms even when we go back to “normal” and to do what you can to take back some control over your food security. There’s still plenty of time to start your own Victory Garden!

While this entire situation is tragic, I hope it changes us for the better. I hope we remember to value the time we get to spend with friends and family, the food on our plates, unlimited supplies of toilet paper, and the luxury of peace and security more than we did before.

Our country and my grandparents went through harder times, we can do this. They were a level of brave and selfless most of us can’t fathom. Let’s come together and prove to those who risked or gave their lives for us that we are a country and a people who were worth fighting for. Stop hoarding the toilet paper, go wash your hands, give your elderly neighbor a call to check on them, and let’s take care of each other.

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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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Love Your Farm

For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of owning land. I’ve never been into big fancy houses, expensive vehicles, clothes, jewelry, etc. Jesse and I have never even had cable or satellite TV in our adult lives.

Even before we knew this little farm thing would become our purpose in life, we knew we wanted land and we’ve worked towards that dream for the last 10 years. In September 2018 we purchased our 45 acres and have slowly been loving it back into the beautiful and productive farm we know it can be.

I saw this essay posted on Facebook before we had ever even found our farm, and after buying this place I thought of it again and just had to find it and share. I also want to make sure this essay is preserved. Even after quite a bit of time on the Google, I was not able to find it posted anywhere else.

Part of our excitement and challenge right now is learning this new piece of ground so we can make plans for how to utilize it all to the best of it’s capabilities.

We are learning where water flows, which areas the soil needs the most help, where there are plants or trees we want to save, and where we should lay out fence lines, buildings and gardens.

My impatient self wants it all to be perfect now, but we have a lifetime to continue making improvements here. And it will probably take that long!

I love this farm. I love watching it’s transformation, I love watching my babies, family and friends enjoy it, I love it for raising delicious healthy food for our family and yours, and I love knowing that this is my little piece of heaven on earth to tend.

Love Your Farm

Love your farm. Every farmer should not only love his work as the artist loves his work, but in this spirit , too, every farmer should love his farm itself as he would love a favorite horse or dog.

He should know every rod of the ground, should know just what each acre is best adapted to, should feel a joy and pride in having every hill and valley look its best, and he should be as much ashamed to have a field scarred with gullies as he would to have a beautiful colt marked with lashes; as much ashamed to have a piece of ground worn out from ill treatment as to have a horse gaunt and bony from neglect; as much hurt from seeing his acres sick from wretched management as he would be to see his cows half-starving from the same cause.

Love your ground - that piece of God’s creation which you hold in fee simple. Fatten its poorer parts as carefully as you would an ailing collie. Heal the washed, torn places in the hillsides as you would the barb scars on your pony. Feed with legumes and soiling crops and fertilizers the barren and gullied patch that needs special attention; nurse it back to life and beauty and fruitfulness.

Make a meadow of the bottom that is inclined to wash; watch it and care for it until the kindly root-masses heal every gaping wound and in one unbroken surface the “tides of grass break into foam of flowers” upon the outer edges.

Don’t forget even the forest lands. See that every acre of woodland has enough trees on it to make it profitable: “a good stand” of the timber crop as well as of every other crop. Have an eye for the beautiful in laying off the cleared fields - a tree here and there, but no wretched beggar’s coat mixture of little patches and little rents; rather broad fields fully tended and of nearly uniform fertility as possible, making of your growing crops, as it were, a beautiful garment, whole and unbroken, to clothe the fruitful acres God has given you to keep and tend.

And so again we say, love your farm. Make it a place of beauty, a place of joyous fruitfulness, an example for your neighbors, a heritage for your children! Make improvements on it that will last beyond your day.

Make an ample yard about it with all the old-fashioned flowers that your grandmother knew; set a great orchard near it, bearing many manner of fruits; lay off roads and walks leading to it and keep them up; plant hedges along the approaches, and flowering bulbs and shrubs - crape myrtle and spirea and privet and roses - so that your grandchildren will someday speak of their grandsire, who cared enough for the beautiful and loved the farm well enough to have for them this abiding glory of tree and shrub and flower.

Name the farm, too; treasure up its history; preserve the traditions of all the romance and adventure and humor and pathos that are in any way connected with it; and if some of the young folks must leave it, let them look back to it with happy memories of beauty and worthy ideals and of well ordered industry.

Love your farm. If you cannot be proud of it now, begin today to make it a thing you can be proud of.

Much dignity has come to you in that you are owner and caretaker for a part of God’s footstool; show yourself worthy of that dignity. Watch earnestly over every acre. Let no day go by that you do not add something of comeliness and potential fertility to its fields.

And finally, leave some spot beneath the shade of some giant tree where at last, “like as a shock of corn cometh in his season,” you can lay down your weary body, leaving the world a little better for your having lived in it, and earning the approval of the Great Father (Who made the care of the fields and gardens the first task given man): “Well done thou good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of Thy Lord.”

-Clarence Poe

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Delicious, Fudgy, Processed Sugar Free - Paleo Brownies

It’s no secret - I love baked goods. Except oatmeal raisin cookies. I also did not have a pleasant fruit cake experience so it’s a no go on those, but other than that I’m a pretty equal opportunity baked good eater.

When I have a little extra free time to play around in the kitchen I like to try and “healthify” some of our favorite baked goods.

Jesse usually tells me they are “just ok”, then proceeds to eat 3/4 of a pan of whatever it is. Eliza is all about a sweet treat so I don’t think she even tastes it long enough to know it’s a healthier version of anything. I’m with Eliza, I have liked most of the experiments.

These paleo brownies were my latest attempt at a healthier version of one of our favorites. They are super dense, fudgy, chocolately, and have no processed sugar. Well, I take that back, there is a little bit of sugar in there - I added a couple tablespoons of whatever the Simple Truth dark chocolate chunks are from Kroger. If you’re a strict paleo eater - leave out or substitute whatever you’re comfortable with!

I really liked these, so hopefully you do too!

Paleo Brownies

Adapted from a recipe I found on realfoodwithjessica.com

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup cocoa powder

3/4 cup raw honey - I used Pap’s Hilltop Honey

2 Grass Powered pastured eggs - room temperature

1/4 cup coconut flour

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp espresso powder - might leave this out if the tiny humans will be eating these. Trust me.

Dash of sea salt

1-2 Tablespoons dark chocolate chunks - unsweetened chocolate would make them actually paleo!

Baking Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Either grease a baking sheet or line with parchment paper and then spray. I used a 6”x9” pan so the brownies would be thicker, but you could also use a typical 9”x9” pan or even go crazy and make brownie bites in a regular or mini muffin pan. Keep in mind these brownies won’t really “poof” much.

2. In a medium saucepan, melt the coconut oil and add the cocoa powder. Whisk it together so it doesn’t have lumps.

3. Remove from heat and add the honey. Once it’s mixed in, add the eggs and vanilla.

4. Add in the coconut flour, salt and espresso powder. Mix until it’s all smooth then add the chocolate chunks.

5. Side note - if you mess up the order in any of this, just go with it. They’ll still be great.

6. Bake for about 20-25 minutes for a 6”x9” pan, but probably only about 15-20 minutes if you’re using a bigger pan or muffin tin. You’ll be able to tell they’re done because the middle goes from shiny goo to looking just a tiny bit poofed and more solid. I know that’s vague, but you’ve got this.

7. Try not to burn your tongue tasting them straight from the oven. If there’s anything left at the end of the day, stick them in the fridge to last longer.

The next recipe I want to try is a paleo pumpkin bread. It looks SO GOOD. Will let you know one we experiment with it!

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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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Homemade For the Holidays - Mimmie Noodles

My Mimmie was such a cool lady. Not a day that goes by I don’t wish she was sitting in my rocking chair with a great grand baby on each knee or on the other end of the phone line laughing at all the stories I could tell her about my life now.

One particularly fun memory I have of her was right after she bought a new mini van. She loaded up my sister and I plus our cousins and took a trip to town. On the way home, out of nowhere, she announces “lets see what this thing can do!”, floors the gas pedal and we go flying down a little back road.

I mean, it was a mini van so we couldn’t possibly have gained speed that quickly, but it felt really fast! 

The railroad tracks were quickly approaching, we were all plastered to the seat backs screaming and Mimmie was just laughing! She eventually slammed on the brakes at the last minute and we made it home safely. We all tripped over each other trying to get in the house first to tell Pappap we almost ramped the railroad tracks Dukes of Hazard style.

Along with being the coolest and most fun Grandmother ever, Mimmie was an amazing cook and loved feeding anyone and everyone.

Big holiday dinners with Mimmie were AH-MAZING! We had the turkey, usually a ham, all the usual sides, 10 kinds of cookies and pies, but our absolute favorite thing she made was her homemade noodles. Our family still calls them “Mimmie Noodles”. 

All of us kids would find reasons to sneak through the kitchen and steal a few noodles off the counter before they made it into the pot. She let us snag a few, but then would start swatting at us with her spatula to save enough for dinner.

Oh and if anything ever went wrong in the kitchen her usual curse words were “oh spatula!” A solid 75% of my memories of her she had flour covering most of her body too. Oh how I miss her! 

I don’t know why, but noodle making was one activity I never helped her with. After she passed away I realized I had no idea how to make them! Thankfully my Mom and Aunt took good notes.

Turns out it’s fairly simple - eggs, flour and salt is all it takes! The actual “recipe” she used involved adding enough flour til it had the right feel plus a hand of salt, but I’ve tried to recreate the recipe with some actual measurements.

Mimmie Noodles

2 Eggs (Grass Powered pastured eggs make the best noodles!) :)

2 Cups Flour

1 tsp Salt

Ok, now keep in mind these measurements are very approximate, but this should get you pretty close!

1. Add flour and salt to a mixing bowl - whisk together

2. Make a little hole in the middle of the flour and add in the eggs. Use your finger, or a whisk if you’re not into playing with your food, to scramble up the eggs a little bit then combine the flour mixture and eggs.

3. Mix until the dough holds together. You’ll have to get your hands into the dough for this step! If it’s super sticky, add a tablespoon or so of flour at a time until it comes together and isn’t sticking to your hands. Sometimes you’ll need to add a teaspoon or so of water at a time to help it hold together better. I know it sounds complicated, but I promise once you start working with the dough you’ll know what it needs!

4. I’ve never owned a pasta maker, but if you have one it can be rolled through it. We roll them out by hand Little House on the Prairie style!

   • Add a little flour to your counter where you plan to roll, plus a little on the rolling pin and dusted over the top of your noodle dough. Roll out the dough fairly thick if you want dumpling style noodles, or thinner if you want dainty little noodles. ThIn noodles do dry out better if you’re planning to store them, but otherwise it doesn’t matter at all!

5. There are 2 methods of cutting the noodles:

   • One option is once the dough is rolled out, you can use a pizza cutter or knife to cut long strips of noodles. If you fail at cutting straight lines like I do - the next technique might work best.

   • Option two is to carefully roll the dough into a log (make sure you lightly flour the top so it doesn’t stick to itself), use sharp knife to cut slices, then shake out the noodles so they don’t stick to themselves as they dry.

6. If you’ve planned ahead, it’s best to leave the noodles to lay out on the counter to dry for about an hour before cooking. It’s also totally fine to just plop them right in a pot of simmering stock! They just tend stick together in the pot without some drying time.

7. To cook the noodles - drop into a pot of simmering chicken or beef stock in handfuls. If you drop a bunch at a time, they usually stick together so add in small amounts and keep stirring!

8. Cook until noodles start to float and aren’t doughy when you take a bite. How long that takes will depend on the thickness of your noodles, so you’re just going to have to wing it and trust me that you can’t mess this up and it’ll be fine!

My family likes to serve them over mashed potatoes. Is that normal? I have no idea if other families carb load that heavily, but that’s our holiday meal style!

These are also delicious tossed into chicken noodle or vegetable beef soup, and can be frozen then cooked for a quick meal another day! If you’re planning to freeze the noodles, let them dry on the counter until they are slightly crisp and won’t stick to each other before putting them in a bag or container.

They can also be fully dried and kept in the pantry, but that’s not something I’ve tried yet so can’t teach you that method!

My sister and her husband are coming to visit this weekend for “Thanksmas” and I am so excited to be in the kitchen with her, my Mom and my little girls making noodles! I predict it will look like the flour bag exploded…. Mimmie would be proud!

Does your family have favorite holiday meal recipes or memories? I would love to hear them!

Hope you enjoy a wonderful holiday season surrounding by family, friends and delicious food!

~ Dana

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Grilled Pastured Pork Chops with Potatoes & Veggies

Every once in awhile I knock dinner out of the park - this meal was one of those times!

I happened to be hanging out on Pinterest one day last week while waiting in line at the BMV and thought this recipe looked worth trying. Plus, I had all the ingredients on hand and if I do the prep work I can usually get Jesse to be the grill master - another win! He really is better at the grilling - it truly is a win for us all when I don't burn everything to a crisp. 

Heritage Breed hogs like the ones we raise are known to have super flavorful juicy chops compared to bland conventionally raised grocery store varieties, so they are tasty on their own with some just some salt and pepper added. Using this marinade made them even more amazing though. 

I may or not have been gnawing the leftover bits of meat off the bone so not a morsel was wasted - they were that good!

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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The Gift of Sloppy Joes, Soup and Cookie Dough Balls is Always Appreciated

Quick story. 

Picture it... I've been home for maybe 2 days with tiny little newborn E baby. I had spent 30 hours in labor, another 2+ days in the hospital, Jesse and I had minimal amounts of sleep and I don't even remember eating anything besides the breakfast sandwich I demanded basically minutes after giving birth because I was so hangry. 

My friend Andrea texts and says she is bringing over dinner. She walks in a little while later and I threw the baby at her (kidding, it was only a gentle toss), so I could check out the food situation. 

I will never forget how delicious that sloppy joe sandwich and cucumber pasta salad tasted. She even made a big batch of both so I had leftovers for days. Seriously, it is top 10 on the list of best meals I have ever eaten in my life. 

It completely recharged me when I needed it most and made me realize just how much a homemade, hot meal can change someones day. 

Since then my gift giving strategy for friends or family having babies, dealing with illness, grandparents or single friends that may not have the time or motivation to cook real meals for themselves has been to feed them.

Soup is a super easy thing to cook a big pot of, then dish out into smaller containers to either deliver fresh or freeze for later.

If I'm taking soup to a family, I package in a container big enough to feed everyone.

If I'm taking soup to a grandparent, new Mom for lunches, or single friend, I use smaller single serve containers so they aren't forced to thaw out a huge batch of soup.

Vegetable Beef Soup and Chicken and Noodles or Chicken and Rice are my absolute favorites!

I've included the recipe for Vegetable Beef Soup below to get you started!

Vegetable Beef Soup

• 2+ cups Cooked and Shredded Grass-Fed Beef Roast (great way to use up leftovers!!!)

• 4ish Cups of Beef Broth (1 box if you're using store bought)

• 1 can diced tomatoes

• 1 Bag Frozen Mixed Vegetables (the peas, green beans, corn and carrots kind)

• 2 medium potatoes, diced

• Around 2 cups of Egg Noodles - the homemade kind, the frozen kind, or the bagged kind you find in the pasta aisle. Add more, less, or none depending on your feelings about noodles!

• Salt and Pepper

Add your broth to a giant pot. Add your shredded beef, any of the goopy broth stuff leftover from cooking the roast, tomatoes and bag of veggies. Let it come to a gentle boil, then add your potatoes and noodles. Let boil gently until your potatoes and noodles are cooked. Add salt and pepper to taste. Boom - Delicious Soup. 

Do you notice a theme that none of my recipes have exact measurements? Just trust the process, you can't mess this up.

If you're panicking, use the power of Pinterest for a more exact recipe.

Fill a bowl for yourself since you worked super hard at putting things into the pot and stirring. Enjoy your soup while you wait for the rest to cool a bit.

Next step is to ladle into containers then freeze! 

I don't know about you, but I would so much rather create Christmas gifts in my own kitchen than be forced to shop. There are people, I have to wait in lines, I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeon so I better stop there....

But really, sometimes the best gift we can give is something as simple as a great meal.

We can hook you up with a tasty beef roast, bones to make broth, and eggs to make homemade noodles, then head to the grocery store for veggies at a weird hour of the day to avoid a bunch of people, then spend some time cooking Christmas gifts in your own kitchen!

You can also just buy the broth and noodles at the store, but don't skimp on the roast! :)

Also, if you show up with soup AND a bag of frozen homemade cookie dough balls that they can pop into the oven for fresh warm cookies anytime they want, you will be their new hero. Just throwing that out there. 

Happy Cooking and Soup Delivering!

Dana

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The Beauty of Ground Beef

I'm pretty sure the words "beauty" and "ground beef" have probably never been put together into the same blog post heading. We are making waves people!

But really, let's talk about ground beef. It's not a glamourous cut of meat. It's not like a nice thick cut steak or pork chop that even before its cooked is beautiful, or at least to us it is! What it does have going for it, is it's delicious and has an extreme amount of versatility.

Ground beef sometimes gets a bad rap for being "unhealthy". Truth is, it's all about the source and how that animal was raised. Grocery store grain-fed ground "beef" that's actually full of fillers and lots of fat is unhealthy. Locally raised, grass-fed ground beef is lean, full of nutrition, flavor, and isn't the villain grocery store ground beef is.  

Side note - even "organic" grocery store beef was raised in a feedlot eating corn which was likely raised in China which means it's extremely UNlikely the corn was actually organically grown. Same with any organic meat in the grocery store. Don't get me started on the "free-range" label you see on grocery store chicken and eggs. Trust me.... it doesn't mean what you think. That's a post for another day. 

Ok, sorry, off my soap box and back to ground beef. 

Each steer only has so many steaks, which is unfortunate because steak is amazing and my child would definitely eat it every night for dinner. We will usually get some roasts (unless the butcher misreads our cut instructions and grinds them all into burger.... yes, this happened and I'm still sad), there are a few specialty cuts we can do, but the majority of the meat that comes back to us is ground beef. Eating locally, seasonally and being sure to utilize all parts of the animal means we embrace the beauty of ground beef and use it often!

Which is actually pretty easy. Along with chicken breast, it's one of my top go-to's when I have no dinner plan. So many meals start with ground beef, diced onion, bell pepper and garlic in a cast iron skillet. Start there and build your meal with what you have on hand! 

Check out an earlier blog post on Ground Beef Cabbage Skillet which would be perfect to make right now since you can get all the veggies at the Farmers Market in season.

Here's a list of go-to meals I make throughout the year using ground beef. There are so many uses for ground beef besides making burgers! Again, these are not fancy meals (that's not my style at this stage of life) but they are quick, easy and toddler approved.

• Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

• Skillet Lasagna

• Tacos with Homemade Seasoning - we love to really load up tacos with black beans, sautéed onions and peppers, fresh tomatoes, cilantro, corn, avocados.

• Quesadillas - perfect for using up leftover taco meat!

• Korean Beef with Rice and Broccoli

• Spanish Rice

• Meatloaf with Hidden Veggies - make extras and freeze before baking for an easy meal another night!

• Ground Beef Stroganoff

• Shepherds Pie

• Chili Soup - freeze after cooking and heat up when you need an extra quick dinner!

• Stuffed Peppers

I didn't try to write out recipes for all of these in this blog post... I thought that might get a bit too long winded. My recommendation would be to do a quick Google or Pinterest search if one of these recipes inspires you (that's my usual place for finding new recipes!) If you have any trouble let me know and I would be happy to talk you through my mostly made up from memory ways of making each of these dishes!

If you have a favorite ground beef recipe please share! Let's make dinner time easier for us all!

Dana

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Farmers Market Meal Plans

As a family, we do our best to eat locally produced foods as much as possible. Summer is the easiest time of year to make this happen! We've discussed my failure at meal planning in prior blog posts, but I actually spent some time thinking through a couple meals I want to cook next week! Most ingredients are available from farmers market vendors and can easily be adapted based on what your family likes. Thought I would share in case they inspire meal ideas for you too!

One of the easiest meat cuts for me to plan around is boneless skinless chicken breast. When in doubt, I start thawing a package of chicken breast and make up a meal as I go! I try to avoid defrosting in the microwave, so if I forget to thaw overnight in the fridge I put the package in a large bowl of cool water or cover with water in the sink for about an hour. 

These meals are definitely nothing fancy, but include lots of veggies readily available at the farmers market this time of year and are quick and easy for weeknight meals. 

MEAL #1 CHICKEN KABOBS

No fancy instructions here.... dice up chicken breast, a large onion, bell peppers and alternate on a skewer. Add salt, pepper, maybe some garlic salt, whatever spices you're feeling and grill until interior of chicken pieces reach 165 degrees. If you're feeling super inspired add some mushrooms, pineapple, whatever else you can spear! Sometimes I'll sprinkle teriyaki or BBQ sauce over the top when they are almost done cooking... this is one of those meals you can't mess up! 

MEAL #2 Zoodles in Tomato Sauce or Alfredo

If you don't own a spriralizer to turn zucchini into noodles, it's a must have!!! Plan on about 1 to 1.5 zukes for each person you're feeding and make sure they are small enough to fit through the spiralizer. 

Start by making your zucchini noodles, add salt and let them drain in a colander. Next, dice chicken breast, onion, green peppers, garlic, mushrooms, a yellow squash, whatever you want to add into your sauce! Saute in a skillet with olive oil until chicken is done and veggies are softened. 

Remove veggies and chicken from the skillet and add in zucchini noodles. Saute for 5-10 minutes or until the noodles soften and the water they release evaporates. 

Add veggies and chicken back to skillet. Add your tomato or alfredo sauce (can be freshly made from scratch, home canned, or store bought) - you won't find me judging your sauce choices! If you need to get really sneaky with your veggies, add them to the food processor and mix them all into the sauce.... the picky ones will never even know they are eating a mushroom. 

Top with parmesan, serve with a salad or garlic bread!

What are some of your go-to recipes that use what's available at the farmers market this time of year? I'm always looking for new meal ideas! 

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Chicken Sausage Tortilla "Stoup"

If anyone were to look at the cell phone call records for my Mom, Sister and I they would see that we talk to each other a ridiculous number of minutes each day. There are days my sister and I have already chatted for 1/2 an hour before she goes into work at 7am. In full disclosure she's in central time zone - she knows better than to expect me to be conversational before 6:30am! I don't even know what we talk about most of the time, but food, awesome things we have cooked, and trying to figure out what to make for dinner that day are definitely common topics! 

When I mentioned to my Mom earlier this evening I was planning to use Sweet Italian chicken sausage in a chicken tortilla soup for dinner, I could hear the hesitation in her voice. My Mama is an AMAZING cook, but she is mostly a 'play it safe' recipe follower. Since I am definitely NOT all about accurate measurements, recipes or rule following, I tend to stress her out with my cooking adventures! It almost always turns out edible, right Mom?!

Part of the fun of eating seasonally, locally, based on what meat we have in the freezer, and living far from the grocery store is coming up with meals using what we have on hand. So far, I basically fail at meal planning so I've gotten pretty good at keeping pantry staples stocked so I can throw things together into a meal. 

I found a winner with this recipe tonight! E baby proclaimed multiple times "good stoup mama!" as she stuffed food in her mouth. And no, that's not a typo. Soup is "stoup" in Eliza language. It's pretty adorable and I hope she never stops. She called strawberries "streebies" for the longest time and I am so so sad she has grown out of it! 

Chicken Sausage Tortilla "Stoup"

• 1+ pounds Chicken Sausage (Sweet Italian, Chipotle or Tomato Basil would all be delish!)

• 1 onion chopped

• 1-2 cups of bell peppers chopped

• 2 cloves of garlic chopped

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 box or about 4 cups of chicken broth

• 1 can of black beans, rinsed

• 1 can of corn, drained

• 1 can of diced tomatoes with chiles or 2 fresh tomatoes and a hot pepper, diced

• Handful of cilantro, chopped

• salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, chili powder, cumin, tumeric (or a couple tablespoons of taco seasoning) to taste

• Splash or two of lime juice

• Avocado, shredded cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips or strips, slices jalapenos, etc. as toppings

Add chicken sausage, onion, peppers and garlic along with 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a dutch oven or large soup pot. Crumble chicken sausage into small pieces with burner on medium heat until cooked through. Add remaining ingredients and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. Taste test and add spices until you're happy with it. Start with a 1/2 teaspoon or so of each and add from there. Toss in a couple splashes of lime juice and that's it! Top with whatever sounds good and enjoy!

I think this would also be good served with rice, or with rice cooked in the soup.... might try that next time! 

The face of dinner approval.

0 points for presentation, but 10 points in taste category!

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Land of the Free Because of the Brave

I recently met a farm family who immigrated to the United States from Belgium. Even though they haven't lived here long, their farm operation is quite large and includes multiple family members and employees. It’s impressive!

The Dad asked if I farmed and when I told him about my small grass-based livestock operation, I thought "he must think I am so silly." What he actually said was incredibly supportive. It also came with a lesson in how lucky I am to be able to do what I love.

"That is great. You live in America so you can do so if you wish." I didn't fully understand his response until later after he told the story of why he and his family left Belgium for the United States.

Until 2015, the Belgian government only allowed farmers to produce a certain quantity of product. They could not grow their farm operation unless the government increased their quota. This farm family was barely able to produce enough to be profitable and support their family, let alone allow opportunities for the next generation to join the operation. 

So they sold out, took a huge risk, and moved the entire family to the United States. Now multiple generations work side by side on the same farm with hopes the operation will continue to be passed on to future generations.

When we started our farm, I never gave a second thought that I needed government approval (other than the crazy number of inspections, permits, etc.) or that anything other than my own lack of knowledge, work ethic or ingenuity would limit how far I could expand. I took for granted the freedom we have.

We truly live in the greatest country in the world, and it's because so many brave men and women have fought for us. Many lost their lives to allow us these freedoms.

Each Memorial Day I am particularly mindful of this sacrifice and how lucky I am to live and be raising my family in a country where we have the freedom to chase our dreams and be as successful in life as we choose to be.

As we observe Memorial Day weekend, I encourage you to take a moment to remember those who lost their lives to provide the freedoms we enjoy. Our lives would be much different without their sacrifice.

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What's Cooking? Beef Roast Edition

In my opinion, the beef roast is a seriously underappreciated cut of meat. Even way back in the day when I have no idea how we ever survived, Jesse and I both could make a decent roast. 

When we first started making the shift to eating grass-fed beef, all I ever heard was how there was no fat, it was stringy, tough, lacked taste, enter all other misconceptions out there about grass-fed beef. So not true! A lean grass-fed roast has excellent flavor without ending up with a pile of fat and a little beef after cooking. It's one of our favorite meals, especially our 2-year-old, Eliza. The kid can eat an impressive amount of beef. 

Not only are beef roasts super delicious, they are incredibly quick to prep and toss in the oven or slow cooker.

Option #1 - Crockpot Roast

This roast is perfect for the crazy Wednesday when life is slightly out of control, you have nothing prepared or thawed and are already late for work. This happens more than I would like to admit. 

Step 1 - run to freezer and pull out roast

Step 2 - take roast out of package and put in slow cooker. Make sure to pull off the thin little paper wrapper. Don't ask why I remind you of this. 

Step 3 - add salt and pepper

Step 4 - cover the roast about 2/3 of the way up with water or beef broth. See rant below about store bought beef broth.

Step 5 - set the slow cooker on low and let it do it's thing for about 10 hours

If you're feeling extra ambitious or have a few minutes to spare, you can add in carrots, onions, potatoes, garlic. If not, make mashed potatoes and a vegetable at dinner time and enjoy! 

Option #2 - Oven Cooked Roast

This roast is a perfect option for a Sunday dinner when you have a little more time to enjoy cooking. It's still not a whole lot more involved, but the couple extra steps make this option a bit more "fancy" than a Crockpot Roast. Plus, the side dishes cook at the same time.

Less time cooking and fewer dirty dishes... a win-win in my book. You will need to plan ahead and let the roast thaw in the fridge for a day or two before cooking. 

Step 1 - using a dutch oven, add a few tablespoons of oil (I typically use lard or butter) and let it heat up. I set the burner on medium. 

Step 2 - take your thawed roast out of the package, pat dry with paper towels, rub salt and pepper onto all surfaces. Course salt is best, but use what you've got on hand. 

Step 3 - once the dutch oven is hot, sear the roast just long enough to make a nice crust, about 2 minutes per side. Don't forget to use tongs and hold the roast up to sear the sides! Or don't. It really will be fine either way. 

Step 4 - Once it’s seared, nestle that delicious roast into the dutch oven and cover about 3/4 of the roast in beef broth (either homemade or store bought - see rant below), water will also work, and add carrots, onions, potatoes, garlic, or whatever else you have on hand. Don't have all those? Just toss in what you do have. You can't screw this up, I promise. Adding a few splashes of dry red wine also adds great flavor!

Step 5 - let the roast cook at around 300 degrees for around 3 hours or until it's nice and tender. The timing will depend on the size of your roast and whether your oven temp is accurate. Mine is a guessing game.

Note - Don't be afraid to adapt or even leave things out of this recipe. I live 25ish minutes from the closest grocery store so for the most part if I'm missing some spice or ingredient the recipe calls for in small amounts, I just skip it and move on. Don't be scared! It will still be awesome.

Ok, short rant on store bought broth. A lot of store bought beef broth has "Caramel Color" as one of it's ingredients, even organic brands. As a person with sensitives to artificial colors, flavor, sweeteners, etc. this is super annoying. So if you're weird about that ingredient like I am, be sure to check the labels and avoid those brands. Rant over.

If you're interested in making your own beef broth, this is my highly non-complex recipe.

Roast your beef bones, sliced shank, beef for boiling, whatever cut you're using in the oven until they are browned. I toss everything in a slow cooker, cover with filtered water, add whatever veggies you have on hand, and let it hang out cooking on low until I have time to strain and package it. Sometimes that's overnight, sometimes it's a couple days.

I don't usually can broth, I just let it cool then put 2-4 cups in freezer bags and keep frozen until I need them. I would also recommend freezing some in ice cube trays for when you only need a small amount, but I haven't made that happen yet. You'll find me bashing a giant chunk of frozen beef broth against the counter to break off a few bits. It works, but it's not pretty. 

Leftover roast can be used on sandwiches, in vegetable beef stew, in tacos, or frozen for later. This is an easy way to cook once then have lots of options for new meals throughout the week!

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Happy Cooking Friends,

Dana

Ground Beef and Cabbage Skillet

As I mentioned in my last post, Jesse and I had fairly minimal cooking skills up until the last few years. Thankfully we have been able to find and create some great quick, one pot meals to replace the Hamburger Helper! We also purchased new furniture and the camo couch was forced to live in the "man cave". I may or may not have taken over that space as my home office a short time later.... Poor Jesse. 

Ground Beef Cabbage Skillet is one of our go-to recipes because it's quick, easy and basically impossible to screw up. I'm not much of a recipe follower... mainly because I get bored with the tedious details of exact measurements, hate dirtying 10 measuring spoons, and have discovered for the most part, exact measurements in dishes like this don't matter! 

Here's my recipe:

• 1 pound ground beef (obviously I recommend our grass-fed Scottish Highland beef)

• 1/2 head of cabbage

• 1 onion

• 1-2 peppers, any color would be great. Add a couple hot peppers if that's your thing!

• 1-2 cloves of garlic

• 2-3 chopped tomatoes or a can of diced tomatoes

• 1 can of tomato sauce or 1-2 small cans tomato paste.

• Salt and Black Pepper

The best thing about this recipe is that it's super flexible. Don't have any peppers, garlic or tomatoes? Leave any or all of those out and it will still turn out just fine. Want to experiment with additional spices or ingredients, go for it! This is easy to customize.

If you're on the fence about whether you even like cabbage - give this a chance. Cabbage is not my favorite, but I love this dish! 

Step 1 - brown ground beef in a skillet (I prefer cast iron). Add diced onions and peppers so they soften as the beef cooks. If there's any extra fat, drain it off. 

Step 2 - Add diced garlic and cabbage. Allow to cook for just a couple minutes then add tomato sauce or paste along with salt and pepper. Start with one can of paste then if you need more tomato flavor, add the second. If using tomato paste, you'll need to add about 1/3 cup of water. 

Step 3 - Stir everything together and cover with a lid. Allow to cook for around 20-25 minutes to allow cabbage to soften. Stir once in awhile and if it's starting to stick add around 1/4 cup of water. How much water you'll need to add depends on the veggies included. Tomatoes and peppers give off lots of liquid, so watch closely if you've left them out! 

Step 4 - if there's any extra liquid left, simmer for a few minutes with the lid off.

You're ready to eat! It's delicious on its own, with a dollop of sour cream or some shredded cheese. Leftovers are excellent reheated the next day.

Tastes better than it looks in photos!

Have any ideas for other ingredients that would make it even better?? 

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Enjoy!

Dana

Hamburger Helper in the Singlewide

When Jesse and I first met, he invited me over for dinner at his place. He was a 20 year old bachelor so my expectations were not high. We ate Hamburger Helper and green beans in the romantic setting of his singlewide trailer in rural Highland County. I think we also watched the hunting channel sitting on his camouflage couch. I wish I was joking. Anyway.... I laugh at this memory, but honestly my cooking skills weren't much better.  

Second date - the Highland County Fair!

We've come a long way since our days in the singlewide! I still hesitate to share with you what our meals around here are really like. I feel like there's a lot of pressure when you're a farmer selling a high quality product to be some sort of gourmet cook. The truth is - we eat well, but it's nothing fancy!

Jesse and I both work off farm jobs in addition to our family and farm responsibilities, so we are just normal working parents in survival mode most days. I love to cook a huge feast (especially with my Mama and Sister in the kitchen with me), but 99% of the time that just isn't practical. By 6pm the toddler is circling us, and if food isn't in her belly by 6:30 there's some serious drama happening. To avoid hangry toddler mode and still have enough time for evening chores, we create simple meals with high quality, locally grown ingredients. 

We hope you will join us on our journey to drama free dinners! Meals are built around our pasture-raised meats and as much locally grown produce as possible. We focus on real food for real people requiring minimal effort, no weird spices or ingredients you'll only use once, using foods you can feel good about feeding your family. If we can make the change from Hamburger Helper to cooking with real foods, so can you! 

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From our kitchen to yours, Happy Cooking!

Dana