Last chance for 2019 CSA pricing, CSA Day Celebration!

Hello friends,

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Though we have always raised all our food with beyond organic standards, we have had our vegetables and fruit CERTIFIED ORGANIC!

Today is National CSA Day, what a great way to celebrate offering last years pricing for a few more days! We will be advertising this weekend at the Loudoun Grown Expo in Purcellville, so come on by if you want to know more about how our CSA shares work. If you are already a member and want to sign up again for this Summer please let me know by Sunday to receive last years pricing! We love growing food for you! At the expo we will also have our herbal products available. Here at Day Spring we strive to eat our way to good health by consuming lots of whole foods, no soy, no GMO’s and no chemicals. When illness does strike we try and heal our selves with herbs and other natural support. We will have our last batch of the year of elderberry syrup and shrub at the expo and the cabin! OH and we will be giving away samples of elderberry gummies, while supplies last!

There is seriously so much excitement around the farm, it’s hard to keep up! We got our first batch of chicks this week, they are so cute and warm and cozy in their greenhouse! The children love them, it never gets old! We took some pigs to the processor yesterday and are always thankful for a safe trip and happy, healthy piggies!

Delivery update: We hope to have a drop site in Purcellville this season, so please let us know if you are interested in picking up there! We need 10 families to sign up to make it work. We will continue with our broadlands drop site as well. And farm pick up is Thursday and Saturday as usual!

IMPORTANT DATES: LAST CSA of Winter is April 16th for deliver and 18th for farm pick up. Then we take one week off and resume again April 30th and May 2nd with meat pick up both of those days. Also for the March meat pick up the meat won’t be back from the processor until Friday the 6th. If you would like more variety in pork please come Saturday instead. If you need to come Thursday please let us know and we’ll make an appointment to help you. You may also give us a list of desired items for this pick up and we will pack it and leave it the following Thursday. Sorry, scheduling the butcher isn’t always easy! But we can’t wait for our full line of sausages again! And Pork chops!

We hope you have had a great week and enjoyed some snow flurries today!

Blessings,

The Bakers

I think the one in the back is practicing flying!

CSA Sign up time!

Well folks, we have many great weeks left in our Winter CSA, but the time has come to start signing up for the Summer CSA! We always know when that time is, based on when we plant our peppers, eggplants and first batch of outdoor tomato seedlings! Why? Well because this week we planted them in faith that we would know how many families we would be feeding this summer. It takes a lot of planning and some good guessing! So if you are wanting to join us or stay on board with us this year for some great summer eats, click here to sign up. Or send me an email with questions or requests. We’d love to grow for you! We have already heard from some of you and you are on the list, thank you! Thank you for shopping locally and supporting a sustainable farm growing in harmony with nature!

We planted lots of snacking peppers, you know the orange and yellow ones that everyone loves? We also planted a few less eggplants than normal, HA HA! We planted a few more varieties, but decided to grow a few less this year. MOST of us love eggplants, and this time of year I am very hungry for some eggplant Parmesan, or ratatouille, but we found we had a few too many last year. That is how we plan for each year! We watch what you loved the year before and make notes about what to do more or less of. We did plant more tomatoes than normal.It seems each year the tomato crop is hit harder by bugs or disease so we planted more this year to make up for the losses. Planting summer veggies always makes me hungry for them! YUM!

We have had some wild adventures with the cows lately, if our night sounded exciting a few weeks ago, then you’ll have to ask Maddie next time your at the CSA tent about chasing the cows through the woods one evening! What happens is they are like a group of teenagers. The cows are that is. Right now we have both of our lead cows on maternity leave. Rosemary is always the boss and Fawn is second in command. They are both due this spring so are not making milk right now to prepare for their birth. The other gals don’t know who is in charge. Lolipop is a family favorite and she is a good girl as long as her older sister Fawn or good friend Rosemary is here to keep her inline. Since they are not, she has decided to boss the show and keeps leading the other girls on romps around the farm. NOT fun for the farmers, especially when the farmer boys are away and the girls have to chase them alone. Anyway, all is well that ends well!

This week shares have Beets, Carrots and White sweet potatoes, lettuce (those sunny days made some huge growth on the lettuce) and napa cabbage and mustards. Enjoy! We are roasting the roots all together for a delicious side dish. The mustards when great alongside our sloppy joes and mashed sweet potatoes. One little farmer said “can I put salad dressings on this?” and we said sure! I guess they like oil and vinegar on anything green! Even cooked greens!

Have a lovely week!

Your Farmers

What if this were snow?

Only three puppies available still! We are thrilled with the lovely homes they will be going to!

That is what farmer Sean always says when it rains a lot in the winter! Though I am not sure I would want to see how much snow this would equal, so I’ll just take the rain and mud. The animals don’t mind the rain, so I guess we shouldn’t either. We are happy to be harvesting out of the green house since it doesn’t rain in there! We have a lamb special announcement! Our friends at New Asbury Farm have wonderful, pasture raised lamb supplemented with non GMO grains. They are doing a box sale of lamb cuts. Here is an example box: 2 Leg steaks, 2 Stew meat, 1 hot Italian (links) Value $56, sale price is $50. For a list of what boxes are available just reply to this email! The boxes can be picked up in the cabin after you order them. We can also take special orders for Easter cuts. Just email your questions.

The pigs are looking huge and ready for harvest. We will be back in stock with all our great sausages from our favorite butcher for March. However, it won’t be ready for the Thursday pick up so if you have special sausage requests then please come Saturday instead next month. We will still do Thursday pick up and have the regular sausages available, but no chops or special sausage. Just thinking ahead, but we will remind you again closer to March.

We tried a new recipe this week and I hope you have some napa cabbage left (if not we will be harvesting it again soon). We just chopped and sauteed it with onions. Then I had left over sloppy joe that I placed into a greased pyrex with the cabbage and topped with left over mashed sweet potatoes and mozzarella cheese. It was like a shepherds pie! It was a huge hit! We love recreating our favorite dishes with the veggies we have on hand. Eating local takes a creative cook sometimes, but it’s awesome!

In your bags this week are cabbage, spinach, sweet and spicy lettuce mix, carrots, sweet potatoes and rutabaga! We love to roast the rutabagas like potatoes, chopped and rolled in lard with salt and herbs. Or use with carrots in a great pot roast with your beef roast or stew cubes. I just brown the meat, add some flour and a few cups of broth, then chopped veggies and put in the instant pot for about an hour. Yum!

We hope everyone has a happy Valentine’s Day, we will be taking the children ice skating! They are excited, they also went last week and are excited to practice again.

Blessings,

The Farmers

What a fun night!

We had the pet chicken come for a visit the other morning!

We were settled down by the fire with dinner on the stove. Mama and her littles were gathered around playing and reading and waiting on the larger ones to come in for dinner when she got the call……Farmer Sean and the big girls were off fetching some rabbits from a friend and Tommy was milking the cows. It was cold, dark and starting to rain. And for the 7th time that week, our naughty cow was loose and at the neighbor’s house. So we bundled as quickly as possible with a 5 year old, 3 year old and 1 year old! Just as we got to the barn to ask Tommy how we could help, he informed me that two of the dairy cows had taken off in the wrong direction and were “at large”. Ok, so it just got more interesting! Too bad the border collie pup isn’t useful yet.

The only logical thing was for Tommy to head out to look for cows and for me and the littles to put away milk and clean up from milking. Ok, perfect, Tommy and Cadi (the border collie) headed out for their part in the cold dark night. Keeping a small person out of trouble while finishing the milking is exciting to say the least. In the end the two escapees from the dairy herd were not far away and the gentle (though naughty) giant cow at the neighbors came home obediently, She took one looks at Cadi’s unhappy look and figured she’d better listen. And other than Farmer Johnny trying to eat the baby seedlings in the warm room in the barn, we all survived! Thankfully dinner was ready and waiting when we all made it in the door!

Never a dull moment here! Your shares for this week include white sweet potatoes, white potatoes, cabbage, mustard greens, arugula, and lettuce. We are going to peel, chop and roast our sweet potatoes this week. The regular potatoes are on the menu for mashed potatoes with salad and sloppy Joe;s this week! We make our with some ground beef and sausage, ketchup and homemade mustard. YUM! Growing up I thought sloppy Joe’s were some unhealthy, gross thing. Now made with healthy ingredients I love serving them to my family! They are so yummy! Instead of buns we just put it on mashed sweet or regular potatoes.

The mustard greens are great in any stir fry recipe. And we are happy the cabbage finally formed heads! Weird weather sometimes makes harvest unpredictable. I love to make steamed cabbage, but there are so many ways to use it. The arugula is a nice spicey green, great with creamy dressings. We are also enjoying lots of roasts lately. I made a beef roast just by flouring both sides, browning it and then putting a quart of broth in with salt and pepper and simmer all day on the stove. During the last half hour i put in carrots and potatoes. We had unplanned guests that we invited for dinner and just added extra veggies. It worked out perfectly!

Enjoy the cold rainy days because the plants really do want some winter, even if we are ready to skip it! Blessings,

Your Farmers

Meat week is coming!

Farmer boy enjoys his CSA share before mom even cooks it!

Wow, where did January go? Well, this Saturday is meat pick up as well as next Thursday. So it’s time to stock up! We have been enjoying bone broth to help with the winter illness and it’s kept most of us healthy this winter. Along with lots of ginger and garlic! We’ve been adding it to the broth when we make it. So don’t forget to get some beef bones and use the bones from your whole chickens! Broth is so easy and nutrient dense. We just simmer a pot of bones, water, splash of vinegar and sea salt (adding whatever veggies or peelings you have leftover) all night after we eat chicken and then strain the next day. Then it’s soup time!

Have trouble getting your children (or husband) to drink broth? Two easy ways to get more into your picky folks (besides soup) is by replacing half the water with broth when you make rice and also who doesn’t like oriental food? We make this awesome brown sauce to serve over rice, any meat and pretty much any stir fried veggies. In the summer we use summer squash and onions and lately we’ve been loving the asian greens (tat soi, napa cabbage or mustard greens) in this dish. For the sauce I just take a whole head of garlic and peel and chop it, I fry it in some butter for a few minutes and then add 4 cups chicken broth, 1/2 cup liquid aminos or soy sauce, 1/4 cup maple syrup and I combine a 1/2 cup broth and 4 TBS corn starch. Just simmer until thick. Then just doctor it up as you need with more soy sauce. Adding orange juice can be fun, but then you need to use arrowroot powder instead and don’t boil as it doesn’t like to thicken when boiled. It’s been voted a favorite this winter in our kitchen. I plan to make french onion soup soon too as it’s a farmer favorite too!

Farm life is bubbling with puppies and the new calf is out in the field to be seen now. We named her Mercy. The puppies are growing by leaps and bounds and just started eating puppy food. Wow if I thought toddlers were messy eaters! Young puppies eat like little piglets, only worse! So after their first meal they had their first baths. We have baby peppers and tomatoes growing in the safety of the barn with grow lights. Only a little winter left folks, well that is what it feels like anyway. Maybe February will be colder, but it feels like spring is coming!

Farmer Johnny had his first birthday and he loves time spent in the green house! We have just seeded more carrots and we have greens getting ready to replace a whole 100 foot bed of greens that we have all enjoyed this winter! We sure love the new green house! What a huge blessing! OH and this week we are sending out beets, white sweet potatoes, lettuce mix, asian greens, kale and WONDERFUL cabbage kohlrabi ginger kraut. Farmer Sean made it and maybe he’ll take over the fermented shares as it’s the best we ever made! Enjoy on sausage sandwiches, or alongside anything! Today we made buns and shaped loose sausage into hotdog shapes and had the kraut on top! It was a huge hit! My new favorite way to eat the white sweet potatoes is by making scalloped potatoes with them. The sweet and salty mix is great!

See you soon!

Blessings,

The farm mama

Elderberry buds

Baby bunnies learning to eat their greens!

One of our winter activities is pruning the elderberry to make more plants. This year we have a huge one that was planted by our local birds right in our front window. It’s actually been there for 3 years and I’ve been meaning to move it. Not it’s huge and can’t be moved so we have made it all into cuttings to enlarge our elderberry orchard and also to have cuttings and potted plants to sell in the spring! We usually do this around the end of February, but this year the poor plant thinks spring has come already! It doesn’t realize it’s only January. So we got our pruners out yesterday and started chopping! It’s good timing since I am fighting a cold and need some elderberry syrup! I’ll be making a batch of that later today with the berries we have in the freezer.

Have you ever made your own syrup? It’s not hard and I should have been taking some already to prevent the cold, but I hadn’t made enough last month. I like to freeze my berries on the clusters and then once frozen they can be shaken into a huge bowl to make the berries fall off and discard the stems. When making syrup I cover the berries in water and heat, bringing to a simmer for about an hour. Or you can do this in your instant pot. I also like to put ginger, cinnamon, and cloves in with it for a more powerful syrup. Oranges or lemons are a nice addition too. When I am satisfied that the herbal properties are extracted I strain the herbs out and add raw honey to the liquid. And there you go, a nice cold and flu prevention syrup! It keeps in the freezer for a year or the fridge for a few weeks. But remember, it doesn’t do you good in the bottle, so drink up!

This week we are munching on comfort foods, we did hand cut steak fries last night with potatoes. We just massaged lard onto them and salted them and roasted at 400 until crisp. What a treat! We are also going to have some cubed sweet potatoes done the same for this evening. Nice warming foods for cold days! We make hamburgers with ground beef and ground pork sausage mixed to go along with our fries. We usually skip the buns and serve with salad and kraut and finish with a cookie! I figure no bun means room for cookies! We also are having mustard greens sauteed with onions and sausage tomorrow night. Oh and the greenhouse mix! It’s mainly arugula and so mild this time of year! Super yummy with feta cheese on top and we made some crispy sunflower seeds. Sorry I didn’t measure, but I took some butter a little honey, cinnamon, salt and just stirred the seeds over medium heat until crisp. What a fun salad topping!

Enjoy your week!

Blessings,

The Bakers

Wintery Mix!

We are battening down the hatches here because the mama farmer doesn’t like to be cold!!!!! So all the animals have extra bedding and hay and I’m going to hibernate while everyone else does chores! Just kidding, but I am happy to be cooking and doing indoor jobs! At the least the room in the barn that we do our seeding in is heated. I did turn the heat up a little, I hope the wood choppers don’t mind!

We are up to our ears in puppy snuggles, they are opening their eyes and are super cute! The calf is romping around in the barn and doing great. We still haven’t named her, but we love snuggling her. When it gets a bit warmer she’ll move to a hutch closer to the cabin for all to enjoy! For now, she’s loving the barn life!

OK, let’s talk soup for a minute. I have been cranking out the soup lately. My new best creation is Chicken Thai soup. I think I made a different one a few weeks ago, but my new one is yum! I just cooked a frozen chicken in the instant pot (for quick easy prep), pulled the meat and chopped it. Then I add the bones to some broth I had going on the stove already to keep the broth going! I took some broth from the last batch and chopped my Tat Soi (it’s the green bouquet type of veggie from this week) and some thinly sliced carrots, diced onions and mushrooms, chopped fresh ginger and garlic and a little fish sauce. No measuring necessary, just wing it! It was a hit! We added rice noodles to the second batch to pretend we were at a restaurant!

Pick up tomorrow may be a little slippery so we will be putting CSA out by 10 AM incase the weather holds off and you want to come early. If you can’t make it here we will put the shares in the fridge for pick up anytime next week. If you won’t be coming to pick up your shares, please let us know so we can donate your produce to someone else.

Enjoy!

Blessings,

The Bakers

Iron lady, Indigo Apple, Mountain Magic, Cherokee Purple.......

Here is Cuddles two years ago with our Bernese Babies, she helped raise them and loved them!

Did anyone guess what we are doing this week? Ordering seeds! Those are just a few of the tomato varieties we plant. We thought about cutting down the variety this year and decided that is too boring so the list goes on! So if any CSA members have something they are dying to try, let us know and maybe we can fit it into the planting schedule! This month we will start seeds for our greenhouse peppers, tomatoes and lots of greens for spring. Then February comes and I cannot begin to list everything that gets planted that month. It’s a busy one! All those baby plants to tend to again, we can’t wait! Baby plants are like any baby thing, they are cute! And have such promise for things to come!

Speaking of things to come…..Dolly’s second litter has arrived! We have 11 precious baby Bernese Mountiain babies! They are so sweet and Dolly is being a super mom! They came at a nice time as we just said goodbye to our old faithful golden retriever, “Cuddles.” She went to sleep Saturday and didn’t wake up again. We enjoyed taking her on a trail ride on Christmas Eve with the horses. The puppies are a welcome distraction!

This week in your shares you will find lettuce (oh glorious lettuce!), mustard greens, spinach, and roots galore! We made an awesome spinach dip this weekend with homemade cream cheese, ranch mix, chopped onions and instead of spinach we used mustard greens that we boiled and drained first. We also are enjoying salad nightly. We make our own dressing and use a super simple recipe: 1 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar and 1/2 cup maple syrup. So simple and so good, not to mention good for you!

We have also been roasting chickens and making chicken pot pie and chicken fried rice. Then we boil the bones and make great broth!

Enjoy!

Blessings,

Your Farmers