Happy almost 4th of July!

Mrs. Ping Pong Polka Dot, had the best “fireworks” hair on the farm. Sadly we lost her to a possum earlier this summer, but we have some other fuzzy pet chickens growing and will be out in a few weeks!

Sorry for the radio silence! We have had some technical difficulties with the blog, but are hoping things are working now. We also have had so many babies born! Not the farmer baby just, 6 weeks or so to go for that! But we had Bernese Mountain Dog puppies this week! Dolly had a small and sweet litter of 5 puppies! They can’t wait to be petted by you in a few weeks. Right now they are enjoying the AC in the house and are tiny little bundles with their eyes closed still.

We have been enjoying the rhubarb in these brownies! Wow, what a treat with a glass of raw milk! And on a healthier note one farm-ily member recommended we make tzatziki with the cucumbers, garlic and dill. I can’t believe I’ve never had this or made this before! We made some homemade pita bread to go with it and just rolled it thin and over baked it a little to make it crispy. It was delicious and refreshing!

The onions are starting to bulb and we are enjoying the “new onions” and fresh garlic. Both items should be stored in the fridge since we haven’t “cured” them yet. We have the huge garlic harvest in the greenhouse curing now. The onion haul will be in a few weeks when we will pull all the onions at once and get them stored for use from now until next year. The large harvests are always a big job, instead of the things that get harvested a little at a time. It sure gives a sense of accomplishment and a sore back!

Holiday CSA hours:

Remember next week is meat week, pick up will on Thursday the 2nd (delivery of meat will also be that day) and Saturday the 4th. If you cannot make it on the Saturday pick up please let us know if you want to 1) pick up Thursday instead or 2) have us bag for you and you can pick up the following week. If you want curbside delivery at 5PM either of those days or you want your items bagged for cabin pick up PLEASE make sure to fill out the online meat pack form no later than TUESDAY.

We are excitedly watching the tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse coming along, it won’t be long now! The squash has been thriving and soon we will be flooded with it so get out your squash recipes! Try relish, squash pickles are a family favorite and of course grilled squash can’t be beat!

Have a lovely 4th of July, we hope you enjoy some family, friends and great food! Things may be different this year and we all resist change, but finding joy each day is easy if you allow yourself to!

Blessings,

Your Farm-ily

Lots of rain!

Obviously we have a lot of fun in the rain! Some of the vegetables don’t like the rain, but we needed it.

This week hopefully you are enjoying all of the meat that you picked up, along with all of the veggies! We did have some new things last week, like Radicchio, here is a recipe for it.

Recently one of our favorite things to make has been sesame ham. It started as sesame chicken, but when I did it with a ham roast it turned out really well! This is how I do it: Cut up ham into 1/2 inch cubes, then put into Instant Pot with some sesame oil, and brown on all sides. While meat is browning, mix up the sauce: 1 cup honey, 1 cup liquid aminos, 1/2 cup water, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp red chili flakes {or a pinch of cayenne} and 2 fresh garlic cloves {you can also finely chopped garlic scapes!} Wisk to combine. Then add sauce to Instant Pot and select manual high pressure for 4 minuets. While it is cooking mix up 2 tbs of corn starch in a 1/2 cup of cool water. Release pressure and add corn starch mixture, let that sit and it should thicken right up. If it doesn’t then you need to add some more corn starch and water. We serve this over brown rice, topped with sesame seeds, and a salad. This a great meal to come into on a day that we’ve been out harvesting in a heat index of over 100 degrees! Sweaty Farmers like this meal, we hope you do too!

Last week the herbal shares were: chick weed salve and turmeric honey. The salve is great for bug bites, burns and any skin ailment. The honey can be used in tea or for cooking, it’s great and so good for you!

New this week in the farm store is cheese, sour cream and cream cheese. It’s for sale to anyone (the butter in the is a herd share product so only available to herd share members). The cheese is from a dairy in the Shenandoah Valley, they are a grass fed dairy. We also got some local, organic einkorn wheat berries that we freshly ground for you. The best way to keep nutrients intact once it’s ground is to keep in the freezer. Our breads this week are made with it. It’s a lovely flour to work with.

We love serving you all as we strive to be good stewards of the land, and in turn eat great food!

Rejoicing in blessings, and blessings to you,

Madison for The Bakers

June is here! Time to stock up on meat!

Carrot Hugs!

We have some excitement here! Our favorite cow (we say that a lot) had her calf yesterday! He’s a huge boy, she’s never had a heifer. Maybe one day! Her name is Fawn and are thinking of calling the calf Peanut. Any suggestions?? We have finally decided to name the last heifer Tansy! The three babies are in the calf paddock by the rabbit barn so please stop and say hello!

The next exciting thing is the farm children are starting their own family garden. In their “spare” time they want to garden, this amazes me! I’m glad we like what we do and so do they! Gracie’s carrots (shown above) are so sweet we can’t stand it! Let’s see what she grows next. I think some flowers are going in first. And we just came back from the butcher last week with a huge amount of pork and lots of sausage choices.

The meat pick up will be this Thursday and Saturday from 2-5 PM. We will have two lines again for selecting your veggies and meat so everyone spread out and enjoy the fresh farm air! If you need curbside delivery for your items please schedule it ahead of time and we will do that between 5:00-5:15 both days. If you plan to do CURBSIDE ONLY see the meat order form for making your meat choices. Please fill out the extras form if you wish to order any extra farm goodies (by Wednesday please). We also now have butter in the cabin freezer for cow share members. Have a look and see what is new! We have raw cheese from a local grass fed dairy arriving next week so try some out!

We are loving the greens and we are so busy we are using them at so many meals. We try and keep a few days meat thawed in the fridge for quick and easy meals. We have BBQ with pork shoulder and coleslaw on the menu this week, and had a great salad with the napa cabbage as well. I love to do a chicken in the instant pot, pick the meat and refrigerate for using on salad later. Then I add water to the bones and make some broth too! OH and sausage on the grill has been a staple lately, with some squash and garlic scapes. We should be flooded with squash soon!

Enjoy your local eats!

Blessings,

The Bakers

It's warming up!

Happy Hens!

Wow I am loving this weather! We hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day, full of sunshine, good food and good times! This week is flying by as we are still super busy with getting the summer crops in and you won’t believe that in the next two weeks we will begin seeding the fall brassicas. That means broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and more! it even amazes me each year how long these things take. Oh and next week we will be seeding our winter squash and pumpkins! It’s fun to think of fall when it’s so hot out! But I’m enjoying the heat and so are the crops. The greens will start to slow down and the squash and cucumbers will begin thriving. Tomatoes are around the corner and peppers and eggplants won’t be too far behind. Summer food is so fun! Well the change of season is what I like really. I love all local food.

As we get to the bottom of our storage onions the garlic scapes come on board to flavor our foods. It’s amazing how eating seasonally works that way. Surely the different veggies have different vitamins and minerals that we need at different seasons. We made a shepherds pie last week with pok choi instead of green beans. We loved it! And we have been chopping up napa cabbage small and making salad topped with cooked chicken, cheese and hard boiled eggs. It’s a fun and easy and refreshing dinner! Perfect for these warmer days.

Enjoy your food and the sunshine!

Blessings,

The Baker

So many greens!

Good Morning!

One of our farm-ily members told me that traditionally women in the south don’t get osteoporosis because they eat so many greens (collards in particular). So folks, eat up and enjoy the good nutrition! We have so many choices of greens this week! Pak choi, napa cabbage, pea shoots, salad, collards, mustard greens, chard, garlic scapes, green onions, not to mention kimchi, sweet potatoes, onions, beets and more! Our 12 year old farmer girl raises the pea shoots, she loves growing them. Our favorite way to use them is in salad, on sandwiches and also lightly sauteed and in a quiche.

Our favorite dressing for the napa salad we make is: 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup Raw apple cider vinegar, 1-2 TBS peanut butter, 1 TBS raw honey and 1 tsp sesame oil (if I have it, or I just skip it). I love to finely chop the napa cabbage, shred some carrots and chop some green onions. I usually serve this with cold cooked chicken chopped and some sunflower seeds. Toss it all together and you have a perfect easy meal! The pak choi is wonderful in stir fries with some shredded beef roast and rice!

This week is a busy one with the good weather finally here. We are super busy getting all the heat loving plants in the ground. The strawberries are starting to ripen and they are oh so sweet! Once they are in abundance they will be in your shares. For now they are for sale. Farmer Tommy sure enjoys raising them for you! And his little helpers enjoying helping to harvest them, they get paid in berries!

Things are rolling so I better get back to it! Weeds are not standing still right now and need to be tended to! The potato patch is looking better than ever and got it’s first cultivation with our BSC 2 wheeled tractor and then hilling. Squash is coming along in the greenhouse, we got our first taste last night and soon there will be plenty to go around!

Blessings,

The Baker Team

Happy Mother's Day!!

We hope all of you, have a lovely weekend and special day Sunday! We are praying the Lord’s joy to be your strength each day. Whether or not you get to celebrate in the way you would choose, please enjoy your day and count your blessings, they are many!

Well if things weren’t weird enough, we have really cold weather past our usual frost date! But it keeps us on our toes! After we all got in bed last night and I heard the wind howl I remembered two areas of garden that weren’t covered in frost blankets. The baby lettuce and the pak choi and napa cabbage! So the guys sweetly got up and dressed and went to care for the crops! They returned singing (and waking me up) at 11:30! The napa cabbage and pak choi was being munched on by some bugs (it’s a good way to know your produce is organic…..if there are some bug wholes in it!) so we had uncovered it to get some sunshine and wind on it and forgot to recover! The baby lettuce is just in a different area and we had overlooked it. So it all got tucked into bed a little late, but in time to be safe from the freeze.

We have another group of chicks in the brooder and they are snug and cozy. The grass is growing great and we have lots to be thankful for! The baby calves are getting bigger each day. I am so thankful for a few sunny days. The squash in the green house is growing so slowly with the lack of sunshine, but before long it will be coming along faster than we can all eat it! We trellised cucumbers in the greenhouse yesterday and can’t wait for them!

We made some amazing meals with week. We sauteed the ramps, mushrooms, and collards in some butter and it was so wonderful and flavorful! Last night we used our instant pot sesame chicken recipe, but used a ham roast instead and added powdered ginger and it was awesome! Nice and filling on a cold evening. Of course the pak choi on the side was super, just sauteed with a little butter, we served it all over rice. The napa cabbage will be our dinner tonight along with some cooked chicken. I like to make an asian dressing and toss it all together like slaw. I love easy meals that are full of whole foods.

The herbal shares last week were some herbal teas, one of which called Smile Tea, is a family favorite. It’s similar to our herbal calcium, but has hibiscus in it. It’s great for hormone health, bones and just has so many vitamins and minerals in it! Also a good cough syrup is always good to have on hand, if you haven’t used it yet then just put it in the freezer. I have a section of my freezer for herbal goodies so when sickness does strike I don’t have to start making things, I just dig around and pull out what I have stored.

Enjoy, Be Well and God Bless,

Your Farmers

April Showers bring May flowers, and muddy farmers and lots of great veggies and meat!

Sesame chicken with a side salad! Wow, it was great!

We feel pretty blessed around here with all the good food, fresh air, rain and good “farm-ily” members! Well there are more blessings, but I can’t count them all. There is too much of a good thing, I hope the rain slows down next week so we can get some garden beds prepared! We have exciting things going on the the cow barn! We got our first bulk tank to chill the milk faster! It’s a big expense that we have been saving for. It will help farmer Tommy be able to more efficiently bottle the milk. A big part of keeping raw milk fresh is to get it as cold as possible quickly, which this tank does for us! Small tanks are hard to come by since most dairies are huge operations and need tanks that are hundreds of gallons. We were able to find a company that makes small ones up north and we purchased a 60 gallon tank that is a perfect fit for our needs! Very exciting!

Speaking of exciting, the Summer CSA begins this Thursday! If you are a member you should have gotten a boring but necessary email last week about all the details of the changes concerning pick up during the current situation. Thank you for reading it so we may better serve you. We look forward to returning to normal, but are so happy to be able to serve you in the current times too. See you Thursday the 30th and Saturday the 2nd for our first meat pick up and (all other shares) of the new season! Both days 2-5 Pm, with curbside available at 5 PM (please schedule with us by Wednesday for that service). We are also extending our “extras” order until tomorrow (Wednesday) this week. If you need anything extra like broth then you may either shop the cabin or fill out an extra order form on the website under the products heading.

Now for the fun food we’ve been eating lately! I took a beef chuck roast frozen and put in the instant pot for 75 minutes with salt and 2 cups of water. We then shredded it and added chopped onions, about a cup of ketchup, 3 TBS molasses, some salt and garlic powder and had the BEST BBQ we’ve had in a while. We also used some carrots and cabbage to make a slaw and it too was so yummy. I love making extra so we can have it at a second meal with no work!

We also keep making this great instant pot sesame chicken recipe that Maddie found. Ask her about it at pick up, she’s sure to share the details. Over some rice with a nice side salad, is the perfect quick dinner that makes you feel like you’ve been out to eat! I’m looking forward to trying a members recipe for collards tonight. She says: ”Favorite collard recipe: creamed collards (like creamed spinach). I chop the stems and sautée in fat, then cut the leaves into ribbons and add. Grate in a small potato and season with salt, pepper. Once cooked lower heat and add cream and a little nutmeg. Let thicken and serve!”

We’ve had a lot of extra milk lately with the girls going back to pasture and off of hay. We’ve been making butter, cheese and LOTS of ice cream. I found a great way to make ice cream with milk instead of just cream. You make pudding first and then churn it. It’s creamier and just needs a little extra sweetener as the pudding is less sweet when it freezes. We still haven’t named the little Brown Swiss heifer, so we will have to decide soon! She did get de-horned over the weekend and was very brave! Well the vet did a nerve block, so she didn’t have to be brave, she couldn’t feel it. We don’t like de-horning the calves, but it’s the only way to have our children or ourselves around them in the milk barn when they are older! So we do it when they are young and it’s an easier procedure.

Well folks, we are headed into a big harvest day tomorrow so we better get some dinner and sleep! We look forward to seeing lots of you this week!

Blessings,

Your farmers

Last veggie pick up of the "winter csa"

It’s always exciting to find the first slithery garden friends of the year! We prefer the SMALL ones and the large ones can stay hidden!

We love growing year round, it is a comfort to know we will have food and we love providing it for our farm members! Next week is our “week off” from veggies to prepare for the next season. We will not be vacationing, we will be harvesting our first batch of chickens for the year! It will be great to have a quiet time to do that instead of fitting it into our busy days. Good planning or just coincidence, maybe!

We have a lovely smell coming out of the greenhouse right now…..our lemon trees are blooming! We have two small trees, but they make so many great smelling blooms! When it gets above a certain temperature a large fan kicks on to cool it off. I was walking past that end one day when the fan came on, I stood there and took a minute to “smell the lemons”! Just as I deeply inhaled and felt myself relaxing while enjoying the intense smell……the farmer was inside watering the baby plants waiting to go into the field. He is constantly playful……so he aimed the watering wand at the fan (from the inside and unbeknownst to me). At which point the fan sprayed water all over me!!!!!

We have been enjoying the greens a lot! Lots of people always talk about how important greens are and I believe this time of year (not to mention during the pandemic) it’s even more important to get those vital nutrients from our food. It’s funny how these vegetables thrive just at the time when we need them, in the spring! I’m sure God had that planned, it’s no accident.This weeks shares have beets with tops (I used them in a stir fry for lunch), also a baby greens salad mix, a braising mix (mustards, kale and beet greens-great also for stir fry), cabbage (plus full shares got some kimchi), white sweet potatoes, and turnips! Enjoy!

We enjoy the constant change on the farm, though at times it’s hard to keep track of it all. We just bred our cow Ducklegs and hope that she will take and will have another January calf next year! We are doing our planning about when we want babies to arrive so our milk supply is constant. It’s an ongoing process and we enjoy the challenge it is to keep it on schedule! Not to mention Thanksgiving turkeys, they have been ordered for several months now and we look forward to meeting those cute babies in July!

Be well and stay tuned for details concerning our new pick up systems for the Summer CSA and complying with health and safety standards. Remember it begins April 30th and May 2nd 2-5 PM.

Blessings,

The Bakers