March Flooding!

Well, we had some dry weather, thankfully! We got several garden beds prepped for spring onions, potatoes and cabbage, broccoli, kale and lettuce! Then boy did the rain come! Lyme Kiln was flooded, but has since gone down. We have been so excited to be home and enjoying time with sweet Baby Farmer that time is flying by! Now it's time to really get going in the garden. We have tons of baby plants started in the greenhouse and itching to get in the garden. We have just about emptied the greenhouse and refilled it again.

The first batch of meat chickens is doing so well in their brooder, when the grass first greens up they will head out to pasture! The farm cycle is always moving! Lately I've been in a pattern of using my veggies in my favorite ways. It's fun to do creative things, too. My favorite way to use turnips is with carrots and a couple potatoes, boiled and then mashed with lots of homemade butter, cream and salt! I love to make kraut with cabbage, radishes and apples. There is no wrong way to eat potatoes! We have been doing hash browns again recently after forgetting them for awhile. Great with white or sweet potatoes! Great ideas for using extra milk are found here.

Our cow Libby had a little heifer last week. She is doing great and I think her name is officially Lilli-Pop! Look for her around the rabbit barn once this rain stops. We still have only 4 baby goats and waiting for three more mama goats to kid. Baby bunnies are popping out everywhere! One more calf is coming soon. We love to see if it's a girl or boy!

I'll be teaching a mini herbal class in Waterford this April, 25th. The details about signing up can be found here. It's a short version of the weekend long class in July.

Remember to sign up soon for Summer CSA so we can save a space for you!

Blessings,

Your Farmers

March Mud

We are so glad to be getting back to normal around here! The farmer baby and I are so glad to be home from the hospital and back to work! We were helping the goats have babies in this freezing weather! We had two sets of twins (one was very small and didn't make it). We had to put them in the greenhouse to keep warm since even the barn was too cold! Thankfully they didn't eat all the seedlings we have started for Summer CSA!

We have two calves expected in the next month so keep an eye out for them. We have tons of baby bunnies so make sure to request a visit with them once the weather warms up. The first batch of meat chicks also arrived in the freezing weather. 400 of them our thriving under heat lamps!

I've been missing seeing you all at the pick ups, but I'll be back starting in April. The farm children have enjoyed serving you and visiting! Thanks again for all the prayers and support during our trial.

The farm is thriving despite some March Mud. We have tons of seedlings started in the greenhouse and are planting more each week! OH the wonderful things we can grow, I can't wait for tomatoes, peppers and eggplants! Not to mention summer squash! Stay tuned as we will be opening Summer CSA sign up very soon. I am a little behind schedule thanks to our unplanned week in the hospital!

This week enjoy the cabbage! Whew was I glad to see that. One meal some one brought us was cabbage rolls and it really nourished my body and gave me energy! Try this recipe. You can also make kraut like this! The root vegetables are all great used in this Irish Coddle, I also add a splash of vinegar with the broth when making this. We have been enjoying roasted chicken pulled sandwiches for an easy make ahead meal. We roast a whole chicken and cool to room temperature, then pull the meat and chop it. Then its in the fridge and ready to use for a quick meal.

This months herbal share is a tincture for allergy relief (also good for congestion). You need to keep it in a dark place until at least the first of April, but longer is fine. Then strain the herbs out with an old tee shirt or cheese cloth and compost them. It's Mullein and Marshmallow. Then the liquid left is a tincture that will last for years. Use 1/2 tsp as needed. Also enjoy our favorite roller bottle blend and some yummy tea!

Fermented shares are: Kombucha elderberry gummies and fermented cranberry honey. The gummies should be refridgerated and used within two weeks. The honey can be fermented longer on the counter (just leave the lid slightly off to keep air from building up). When you are satisfied with the taste then firmly cap and place in fridge. It's got great health benefits and is yummy on pork, or rice or mixed with cream cheese as a spread.

Blessings,

The Bakers

January fun!

Well, we enjoyed the snow, and not so much the mud, but that freezing weather it was a doozy! I'm sure there is more to come so I'll just be thankful that it didn't last too long! We have some greens growing that are experimental right now in the green house. We have never had head lettuce last this long into the winter with outside temps in the single digits or below. This is exciting to us farmers! We carefully selected varieties known for winter hardiness and they are working out great for us! Hopefully you are enjoying them too!

To jazz up a winter salad I love to add nuts and dried fruits. Today we had chopped lettuce, shredded cheese, raisins, candied walnuts and a sour cream and honey dressing. Here is another great salad to try. We also have been enjoying roasted garlic to keep germs away from us as we enjoy our sweet newborn! Really try this, it's amazing how mellow and sweet it becomes, even our two year old loves it as a side dish! Enjoy the potatoes, carrots and turnips mashed or roasted! Or try this instant pot potato soup that a "farm-ily" member recommended, I can't wait to try it! And if you have a celeriac hanging out in the fridge still, chop it up and use it like celery. The beautiful cabbage this week is Minuet, a napa cabbage. It can be used raw or just like any other cabbage. This stir fry sounds great, I think we will try it this week!

We look forward to seeing you at the meat pick up, February is around the corner! We have tons of pork we just picked up and all our normal chicken and beef too! This recipe was also recommend and I can't wait to try it with our chicken, it's instant pot Butter Chicken. We have been enjoying the cheeseburger soup we made and froze before baby arrived. So stock up on ground beef and try it! Remember pick up for meat at the farm is Feb. 2nd from 3-5 and Feb. 7th 2-4.

We are happy that all the puppies, new calf and baby farmer are thriving despite the cold weather! The puppies are snug in the heated area of the barn and the youngest calf has a barn stall all to himself so he's staying warm and dry. The other animals are doing well and are comfortable with shelter and good food, but we'll all enjoy when this cold rain is over. And the baby farmer and I are enjoying our 'stay-cation' while the other farmers do all the work!

Enjoy your week and farm goodness!

Blessings,

The Bakers

January Yum

We are still waiting on our little farmer baby! This one wants to be well done! We hope you all have started off the new year with health! We are enjoying our mild weather and looking forward to some snow this weekend!

In this weeks share we have kale ( to our delight this is from the garden and there is still more in the greenhouse!) Just a fun farmer fact that this strong veggie can be grown outdoors without protection this time of year! We also have lettuce (from the greenhouse). I love a good salad this time of year. We like to add some cheese and dried fruit and nuts with a nice oil and vinegar dressings. And Parsley, Potatoes, Carrots, and Beets! We will be enjoying some roasted veggies for sure and this potato recipe. Who doesn't like potatoes and butter?

Sorry for the substitute last week, I am a little out of touch with the outdoor production so I heard you got mustard instead of carrots! We all need more greens this time of year though! We got this recipe from a "farm-ily" member and she substitutes any greens that come in the share to make this Zuppa Toscano Soup. I can't wait to try it!

My broken ankle is finally healed for the most part and I'm getting around the farm again. We enjoyed a walk today to check on the next batch of piggies in their winter house. They were so fun to play with! They were frolicking and playing with us! I love happy pigs! There were also some other expectant mothers to check on. We have a cow due next week, Lolipop, and our gaurdian dog Ruth is due today! So there will be no shortage of cuties soon! I was hoping to be first, but the animals might beat me to having their babies! The farmer girls have a birthing stall set up in the barn and are ready to be midwives for the puppy birth.

We hope you have a lovely week and enjoy the produce! We enjoyed growing and packing it for you!

Blessings,

The Baker Family

Celeriac? Autumn Crown? Parsnip?

Are these names new to you? Don't worry, they are delicious! We are several weeks into the winter CSA and it's so exciting to me that there is so much variety! This is our 3rd season with winter production and I am still amazed at all the wonderful goodies to eat. Eating local in the winter is so good for us, the veggies are packed full of the nutrients and minerals we need when we are missing good sunshine and fresh air. Most of them are dense and delicious, but sometimes scary to prepare the first time! 

So let's talk about the veggies, if you got some weird looking rough, white/green roots then you got some celeriac. It's got a flavor like celery and texture of turnip. We have a few favorites with this one.....this soup is great although I use chicken broth instead of veggie broth, but either way is great, and we also love to just stir fry whatever is in the swap bin after CSA pick up! This calls for all sorts of winter veggies (including celeriac and parsnips-the white carrot looking thing)! The Autumn crown that went out last week is a great winter squash. We made pumpkin pie with it and also pumpkin smoothies. It can be used like butternut.

We had a rubbed kale salad last week and some rubbed chard salad this week and boy to those greens pack a lot of nutrition! My kids were really going for them. I don't use a recipe for the rubbed greens, but I like to chop them and massage on olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a tiny bit of maple syrup. The massage helps relax the greens and make them more like lettuce to chew on. OH and a special treat from another local farm was the mushrooms.....we love them sauteed with onions and rosemary. Mushrooms have lots of selenium which is a mineral lots of us lack.

I have been doing more bone broth since my little slip off a fence three weeks ago. My broken ankle is healing well and I hope to be back in good shape before my due date of New Year's Eve! This time of year I like to add fermented cod liver oil back into our diet because of the lack of sunshine. I have also read that it's great for broken bones so I have doubled my intake of that for the next few weeks. We made more elderberry syrup to have in the freezer so let us know if you'd like some or help yourself to it in the cabin freezer. It lasts a few weeks in the fridge or 6 months in the freezer. We are doing this daily so prevent another cold or any illness from entering the house before the farm baby arrives!

Well we hope you are enjoying the goodies. Please pray for all the animals in this rain, it's quite difficult to keep everyone warm and dry, but I'm glad it's not snow this time! Coffee, our cow that had twins (we named them Cream and Sugar) had to be dried off (not milked this season) because her delivery was too hard. So her twins are with another mama cow (Elise) who very sweetly adopted them. We are thankful we didn't loose her, but will be tight on milk for about 6 weeks. So please make sure to always have your jars here on the scheduled fill up day for you or we won't be able to fill your milk.

Blessings,

The Bakers

Winter Goodies

We hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! We enjoyed our sweet potato and pumpkin pie (with raw ice cream and whipped cream), grandma's cranberry relish, fresh turkey, roasted root medley ( we added bacon to the top and wow!), sausage stuffing and salad and mashed potatoes and gravy. Yum, I could eat it all over again! Maybe when my fractured ankle heals up we'll do thanksgiving dinner again, but I guess it will be Christmas by then.We had our first ever twin calves born to our cow, Coffee. It is rare and exciting, however not the best scenario. The cow is having a hard time, but the calves are doing fine. We have grafted them onto our nurse cow and when Coffee regains her strength we will be milking her for our members. Right now she is getting lots of TLC and her milk is slow to come in. But, it was sure a surprise and exciting! Watching her navigate both of them was amazing. If having twin people is challenging, twin animals were hysterical. Since they can walk at birth she had quite the time keeping up with them running off in two different directions! But with 4 teats she didn't have trouble nursing two at a time. We took them off her the third day when she started to go down hill. It takes a lot of calcium to grow two babies and her stores were low. We have been supplementing her with oral calcium and making sure she has plenty of molasses and good food to eat.We are loving kohlrabi in soups and stews along with potatoes, kale, onions and more. The roots are so nice to roast or put in stew, or even a stir fry. Although I'm off my feet and not cooking I am enjoying the things the farm girls are putting together and just grateful for nourishing food to eat. They have been making lovely soups and the last for days.There will be small turkeys along with the chicken as an option at pick up this time. If you haven't made broth from pastured turkeys before, don't miss out. This is so tasty for making soups! My favorite soup this week as been cheeseburger soup with ground beef.Herbals this month are: Cold Buster Tincture (shelf stable for years): take 1/4 tsp every hour for warding off cold or cough symptoms (half that much for children) and Elderberry syrup (REFRIGERATE and use in a few months): take tsp daily for immune support or as needed during a cold. EX. tsp every hour. I am using doterra oils to help my pain management since being pregnant I don't want to take pain meds. The Comfrey is still green in the garden and adding the leaves to smoothies not only helps knit my bones back together, but provides immediate pain relief. After my fractured ribs when I was 10 weeks pregnant, I learned lots of herbal tricks for pain relief and bone healing while pregnant. Not a skill I ever needed before, but thankful there is info out there to help. Bone broth also does wonders for broken bones so I'm filling up on that.Enjoy and be well!Blessings,The Bakers

Snow before Thanksgiving!?!?!

We are watching the snow pile up and the turkey's are hiding in their shelters wondering what this weird white stuff is! We have not had snow in November in the 10 years we've been raising turkeys. We are hoping it clears up by Saturday when we harvest them!Delivery Changes for next week: All deliveries will be made Tuesday the 20th same time and places.Pick up Changes for next week: NO Thursday pick up, instead Tuesday from 2-6 along with our turkey pick up OPEN HOUSE. We will have pies, cranberry relish and apple butter for sale then as well. Saturday will be normal pick up times. If you need to pick up Tuesday and you are normally scheduled for Saturday please let us know (milk will not be ready early, but veggies can be.)We hope you enjoyed the Kohlrabi last week, we added our tops and peeled, chopped bulbs to some great soup. Along with some barley and the other roots from the csa bags we were able to keep the same soup going for several meals. My favorite other meal was this rabbit stew (with bok choi instead of celery). It was so great! I will be making it again soon.We love pumpkin pie, but we had to try sweet potato pie with the amazingly large one that the little farmer boy harvested. It made 4 pies! It was so great, and didn't require scooping seeds and dealing with peels. This site has tons of great sweet potato recipes including the pie. However the farmer says we still need pumpkin pie, too, so that is my snowy day task! We have sent pie pumpkins out this week so you have plenty of time to prepare the pumpkin before Thanksgiving! I like to make my puree and freeze it for quick pie making.This week we are also sending mushrooms (from another local farm), onions, kale, sweet potatoes, rosemary.....get your thanksgiving recipes ready! Next week there should be cabbage, arugula, beets, carrots, butternut squash and salad greens. We hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving and please know that you are one of the blessings we will be counting! Thanks for supporting our family farm!Blessings,The Bakers

November recipes!

We started off November with the "littles" in the house having their first cold in about 9 months. It's joyfully not making it's way through everyone. We are helping the youngsters to feel better by giving them this month's herbal Cold Care Syrup. It is made with hibiscus, astragalus, red clover and calendula (honey and water as well). We give them 1/2 - 1 tsp each hour and it's full of great immune boosting properties as well as being perfect for runny noses! Adults would take 1-2 tsp every hour. There is also a great herbal tea in this month's herbal share called 'Relax Tea", it's made with holy basil, rose petals, and spearmint. It's great for rainy afternoons and evenings! I love it with some raw honey and raw cream from our Jersey cows. Remember to hydrate with tons of water or herbal tea when you are sick. Especially Garlic Lemonade!This is one way of doing it, but we usually make it like tea and use real lemons. We simmer for awhile on stove and then add the honey.We have been healing the little ones and keeping the rest of the family healthy by eating lots of soups made with our bone broth. New to making broth, don't worry it's super easy! Try this recipe. If I want chicken broth, I just do the same thing, but use a whole frozen chicken or a few carcasses left over from roasted chicken. Broth and bones are available in the cabin. Having broth in the freezer is a great way to cook up a quick meal by chopping some of your veggie shares and adding rice and ground beef. My favorite way to cook is with no recipe, but good wholesome ingredients.My favorite chili ingredient is, guess what??? Chocolate! Don't believe me? Try this recipe and see what your family thinks. I just use some canned Rotel from this summer and I skip the corn, but it's a good guide for how much chocolate to use! Super Yum! We also love making chicken chili, or white chili, with our whole chickens, this is a great recipe. Oh and I don't use chocolate in the white chili!Mustard greens this time of year are so potent and lovely! We like to saute and add to quiche with some of our sausage. I have skipped a crust for so long I forget it usually has one! We just mix everything together and pour into a greased pyrex and bake at 350 for almost an hour. (You must pre cook the sausage and I prefer to pre cook the greens as well.) The Bok Choi is wonderful in a stir fry, but I have also been adding it to soups for extra vitamins and minerals.I'm super into cooking these days, but there is always fun farm news as well.....The children have been taking care of a goat with a neck injury. It's nice to have sweet helpers and sweet animals. We think a goat got her head stuck in the fence and one of her friends may have butted her! The vet helped determine what her treatment plan is and some physical therapy is part of it! Her name is Dotted Nugget and she is a very sweet patient. Hopefully she will heal soon, as her neck is very sore! The turkeys are growing nicely and looking tasty! The pet rabbits have had some babies that will be ready for new homes in time for Christmas! Everything else is going smoothly and we are preparing the farm for winter!Enjoy your shares!Blessings,The Bakers