Winter CSA is around the corner!

Happy Fall! All of Dolly and Gus’s puppies are doing great in their new homes! We miss them!

We are enjoying the bounty as we finish with summer crops and get the winter greens going in the greenhouses and get the storage crops harvested and in storage for winter! It’s a bountiful time of year! We have all the chickens off pasture and into the freezer for winter shares as well! That was a big job and we were so thankful for good weather and big chickens! They grow better in good weather and it’s been such nice weather for farming lately!

Speaking of that it’s time to sign up for Winter CSA! We will automatically renew your current subscription and send your bill next week so we can then offer openings to new customers after that. Please let us know as soon as possible if you wish to change your options.

The milk shares are still sold out, but feel free to remind us if you are on the waiting list as there should be some openings in November.

Eating locally and organically takes commitment and we appreciate your commitment to this community! We love watching the exchange of friendships and food ideas among you as you choose your weekly shares. So many have been converted to okra this year! ;) What a blessing! Feel free to share any great recipe ideas you have and we’ll pass it along!

Blessings,

Your Farmers

What is the hardest thing about certified Organic?

Some of the farmers got away for a quick hiking trip!

Well we had our inspection last week and as we were getting all the things done I was thinking to myself…..what is the hardest part of what we do? Is it the long hours of harvesting when the weather isn’t cooperating and it’s raining a ton, but the we have to get things ready for CSA anyway? Is it the homeschool lesson that takes extra time because someone isn’t “getting it” and it makes the chores start later and bedtime becomes late? Is it the loads of pests that want to eat our crops, and we don’t want to poison ourselves or our soil to kill them so we either hand squish them or spend hours covering the crop with row cover and stapling it to the ground? Is it the time spent studying when a pest or disease does take an entire crop and we don’t want to make the same mistake twice? Is it the planning of what to plant where and when? NOPE, it’s the record keeping about everything that gets planted when where and how and what gets applied to the soil to nourish it in between and after crops, then how much we harvested. Yes the actually farming is a joy and the records are not so much!

However the inspector so carefully goes over everything with us and he really made us feel like we are all on this team that is trying to do better each year. To be better farmers and better record keepers! Thank you for being on this journey with us. Thanks for allowing us to feed you and your loved ones.

We have been loving the summer veggies and look forward to more of the fall ones soon. We have told most of you about the amazing roasted okra and garlic recipe, but we tried a new one from our favorite Aunt Beverly. It’s called Kadai Bhindi and is very easy and delicious. We served it with rice and our favorite sesame ham recipe. We have been so busy harvesting and planting for winter we can’t wait to share all this food with you!

Dates to remember:

October meat pick up dates are Saturday the 2nd and Thursday the 6th.

October 14th and 16th are the last pick up of the summer season. the following week we are open for milk and egg pick up only. Winter CSA will resume October 28th and 30th.

We will begin the sign up process for our Winter CSA at the end of the week, so stayed tuned!

Our turkey order form is open online, don’t miss out on a fresh turkey! The best you will ever eat!

Have a blessed week!

Oh the bounty of August!

Cheese cake yum!

I won’t act surprised to see that July is past, I know where it went! We were caring for puppies, pulling weeds, harvesting loads of veggies, canning extra veggies began, we birthed calves, and tended to sick cows, we sheared some sheep, we planted seeds for fall veggies, we tended to scraped knees and bee stings, we had some tomato fights in the garden with the rotten ones (probably most of you didn’t know we did that!), we dreamed of winter for a few moments and we experienced God’s love each and every sweaty day! We hope July was as full of blessings for you too!

And now August is here! The bounty is here and it’s great! We have tomatoes for canning upon request. We have extra pork and beef if anyone wants to pre order some, just send an email. We have store hours every week from 2-5 Thursday and Saturday. We’ve said goodbye to most of our puppies, but have 2 available still and one that is getting picked up in a few weeks. We are enjoying “Maggie” for this extra time!

We have been making some bucket pickles with our extra cucumbers, rotel with the tomatoes, peppers and onions and I just love making blackberry cobbler!

This month our herbal shares are: Blackberry Oat Face Mask and Ginger Honey, Enjoy! (Store in the fridge.)

Fermented Shares: Blackberry Kombucha and fermented jalapenos, Yum!

We enjoy connecting with some of you each week! We hope your summer has been filled with sweet days making memories. These days are busy with all the young ones, but we sure have fun and we hope you are having a great summer too!

Blessings,

The Bakers

June meat week is here!

Well friends, the season is certainly changing! The planting frenzy hasn’t finished and the weeds have certainly arrived! Along with the cicadas! We had fun hunting them yesterday and found 136! (Update: we stopped counting!) The chickens LOVE eating them, though I wouldn’t try them personally.

We know it’s been a long week when we sit down to write the blog and it still says “week 4 ’, well now it’s week 5 already and time for the second meat pick up! We are so thankful for our local small butchers during a time when meat shortages and price increases could be around the corner again. It is taking more planning to schedule our butcher dates now, but we are thankful for the hands that process our animals for our community.

Last week our community lost a great man, and loving husband and father of 5 small children. If you feel led to help the Parowski family please support them here. We can arrange delivery to them if anyone wants to offer meals on Thursdays.

We have some great ideas for fast easy meals lately! We’ve been doing hamburgers with chopped ramps and garlic scapes. We usually skip the bun, but not the potatoes! Yesterday I had a lot of garden work to help the farmers with so I ran some potatoes through the slicer on the food processer and layered them with some plops of butter, a few cups of milk, salt and topped with herbs and some shredded cheese. I left them in the oven at 400 for about an hour and we came in a sautéed squash and called it a really good dinner for some tired farmers! For lunch we had a nice taco pie with a salad on the side. This time of year we really need easy but satisfying food!

We will be offering cheese cake, sugar cookies, rhubarb galette and maybe more this week! The cucumbers and squash are coming on strong now and the onions and garlic are right around the corner! Even a few tomatoes are ready! Wow, this time of year is so exciting!

Now for the best news yet…..the puppies are here! We’ve been busy taking care of them. What a blessing! The children have so much fun snuggling them! They will be outside for visiting in a few weeks! We love having the “farm-ily” help socialize them!

Blessings,

The Bakers

Summer CSA start up!

The grass is back and the cows are out of their winter housing and back on pasture! They are so happy and so are we to begin our Summer CSA this week! We have a few remaining spots for our meat and veggie CSA and it begins Thursday April 29th and Saturday May 2nd 2-5 both days! (Sign up here.) You can add on a milk share, egg share, fermented share and herbal shares! We are also open those days if anyone wants to see what’s for sale in the cabin beyond what is in the CSA. We always fill shares first, but oftentimes we have extra for sale. Don’t forget our lamb is available in the store.

We look forward to the spring eating, lots of green still, but green tomatoes are on the way! We will have cucumbers before too long. Remember spring potatoes and onions must be kept in the fridge or they will sprout. We’ve been busy harvesting chickens this week, it was warm and lovely weather. It’s a fun way to have us all working together. It passes so quickly, but we are tired by the end!

Here is a tasty mustard greens (or any green will work) recipe.

Blessings,

The Bakers

Adding to the flock!

Farm baby meets the other babies!

We have been adding heritage breeds to our flock of chickens. Why? The main breed we keep is a commercial breed meant for laying large amounts of eggs over a year or two and not being super winter hardy. We love them for what they do for us, which is make a lot of eggs and eat our grass and bugs! They aren’t as pretty as the heritage breeds with fancy feathers and they don’t weigh very much so they aren’t great for eating. Though they do make nutritious soup and broth. The heritage breeds are more dual purpose, they don’t lay as many eggs, but they are heavier bodied (the breeds we chose) so they are a good all purpose chicken. The roosters are nice big birds that make a good Sunday supper! But for now they are just super cute!

This week we added some greens to the shares……beet greens! Super nutritious and full of vitamins and minerals. We enjoy these greens sautéed with some onions, also in your shares this week! Full shares have the last of the bak choi for a little while. More baby choi coming along soon! Oh and the tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse! Oh yay! We can’t wait for summer. What patience we have learned by gardening. It takes so long to care for something before you can eat it! :)

Remember this is the second to last pick up for winter CSA! Look for your invoices to be coming soon for the next season. We’ve been so busy planting we haven’t had time for the computer work! Enjoy your goodies!

Blessings,

The Farmers

The photos below were taken by Farmer Grace along the power line nearby where the fire started a few weeks ago. The slice of tree that she held in front of the camera is from a cedar tree that was on fire and got cut down to keep the sparks from spreading. I love the focus of the first one. It’s on the slice of wood and the perspective is only inches in front of her. The background, which is the bigger picture is blurry. The second picture is the opposite. Isn’t it funny how perspective changes everything? We were made in the image of God, but not all knowing like Him. We can choose which perspective to see from, but we can’t see from every angle. In troubling times it’s so helpful to rely on His knowledge and perspective and just trust Him.

Romans 12:2 - And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

April Showers bring May VEGGIES!

Soon this will all be harvested and replanted in squash, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant! Summer is in the works around here!

Available Just in Time for Easter Day Spring Farm Lamb!

Leg of Lamb, Rack of Lamb, Lamb Chops, Sausage, and Loin Roast and Lamb Bones

Reply to this email for prices and availability.

Also beef bulk boxes are available again.

This is a quick update to remind you that tomorrow is April 1st! No fools around here! It’s meat week! Thursday 2-5 and Saturday 2-5, remember your veggies won’t be bagged this week either, but they will be available during the meat pick up times “market” style. So we look forward to seeing you and catching up! We hope your spring is going great and that you are enjoying good health, remember to eat your greens ;) OH and don’t forget to eat some LIVER! But that’s a health lesson for another day!

We have been out in the rain planting potatoes, trying to beat the rain! We didn’t quite get them all in before the rain was coming down too hard. The rest of the potatoes will have to go in another day. We had a great lunch to come in to after the hard work in the rain. We enjoyed cheeseburger pie and sweet potato wedges and salad. Yum!

Now the Baker girls are getting going on the cheesecakes, breads and cookies for sale tomorrow and Saturday. We like to have a treat once in awhile to keep things exciting!

I do have a great sweet potato tip for you (from our dear “Aunt Beverly”) : If you freeze your sweet potatoes before you bake them (works only for baking a whole one), they have the most amazing texture once baked. It’s like mashed potatoes. That is because freezing breaks down the cell walls, so you want to bake them straight from the freezer, otherwise they will turn mushy and not nice! It takes about 2 hours to freeze a potato, then bake as normal.

Blessings,

The Baker Team

What do greens tell us?

Sometimes no news is good news and sometimes it isn’t! I can’t say we’ve been quiet over here from good or bad, BUT it has been lively! We’ve had two forest fires at the camp next to us, which caused power outages. During milking time and with all the baby chicks and the incubator needing heat, that made for some interesting extra work. Thankfully there were no buildings lost and no one hurt. There have been so many vegetables to plant we can’t seem to stay on top of it, but that is just the time of year! We had a wild time helping some other farmers load some wild cows (nice we aren’t the only ones that have wild animals occasionally). The butcher dates are so hard to come by we are doing the best we can to plan for it. Anyway, all that is not to complain, we love our work and enjoy it even though we are beginning to feel some extra burden with the current happenings. We are grateful for the animals and seeds and all the people we rely on to do what we do! On to the good stuff:

Well, it is a little later than St. Patrick’s day, but happy late one anyway! It’s greens week for sure around here! We are celebrating the warm weather by eating lots of greens! Actually what happens when the weather changes is that the greens that have been slowing growing all winter long in the greenhouse suddenly wake up and take off! It’s like watching a little person gingerly try and walk, only to wake one day and start running. Or hearing them babble and realize they are telling big stories! But when that happens with greens, they want to bolt. That means send up flowers to make seeds. The longer days tell them it’s time to reproduce or die! So when that happens it’s time to stock up and eat lots of greens! We’ve been using the napa cabbage for stir fry, salad and soups (just not on hot days like this one)!

So if you need helping with your veggie ID this week:
You got cliantro, napa cabbage, collards, kale, lettuce, mustard greens and potatoes for good measure! When I saw those shares getting put together and felt how heavy they were, I was amazed at how healthy everyone will be after they eat this weeks bounty! I believe that God makes the things we need grow when we need them. Spring greens are great for detoxing and also contain lots of vit. c and K, two things we need to boost our immune system after a long winter! The greens are also great for bone strength, which we all need. Also we tend to eat heavier foods in the winter and the spring greens help flush our systems.

So, if you need helping encouraging your children or other not so enthusiastic loved ones that they need greens…..just make them taste great! We love our go to salad dressing: 1 part honey or maple syrup, 1 part vinegar, 2 parts olive oil and shake. Or to make it creamy just add a handful of walnuts and process in the food processor. So yum and and so easy, most of these greens can be eaten raw, but you can also stir fry them with a nice peanut sauce and rice and stew cubes and there is a simple dinner or lunch! When using the tougher greens like cabbage or collards I like my trusty recipe of sautéing in butter or lard, and some salt, pepper and raw avc.

Many Blessings! Your busy farmers!

PS Don’t forget the April meat week is coming up! NEXT Thursday and Saturday!