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

It's raining, It's pouring.......

As our two year old says "It's raining, it's pouring the mail man is snoring!" We can't correct it for now because it's just too cute! Well the greens in the garden are happy, but we have never had such a rainy season before! Thank you all for coming out to the farm week after week to pick up in the rain! It's a blessing to us to see you each week and have your support! We are also thankful that so many vegetables thrive despite the abnormal growing conditions. I guess that is why it's helpful to grow varieties that are good under organic production. We spend a lot of time in the winter deciding what to grow based on what sounds, looks and tastes amazing, but what will also actually grow here!Soon we'll starting seeing mustard greens and asian greens again, so get ready! The sweet potatoes are also starting to come in. We don't usually harvest them until the last week of October. However last year they were a bit too big and the total harvest was over 1,200 pounds! So we started digging some this week to keep and eye on them. The small, new ones are great to cut and roast as is, no peeling needed! They will get sweeter and bigger as the season goes on. They don't like to be cold at all so keep them on the counter, not in the fridge.We are still making plans for our fall festival, but are looking forward to seeing everyone the 20th of October 10-5pm. We will be making apple butter and doing farm tours!Have a great week and be safe, there is bound to be flooding out there!Blessings,The Bakers

What kind of poppers do we have this week?

Special invitation to to our "Friends and Farm-ily" and anyone who is interested in seeing the farm! We will be having a fun farm open house and Apple Butter Festival October 20th from 10-5pm. Come meet the baby calves, bunnies and our mini horse who finally has a name.....Juniper! More details for the farm day coming soon, but mark your calendars and plan to come enjoy some time on the farm! It marks the final pick up for Summer 2018 Season. November 1st is the start of Winter CSA, details for that coming soon as well.Well if jalapenos poppers are your style, I promise Passion Poppers will be! They are a kiwi berry grown in the US. We love getting them from a farm in PA every year (hope to have our own growing eventually). We are sharing them with you this week in the CSA. As the box states you let them ripen on the counter until they begin to look a little wrinkly and then pop them in your mouth! They are delicious and you won't want to share! We hope you love them as much as we do!I have some awesome recipes to share this week. We were beginning to think we had used every possible way to enjoy eggplant, but since it's been so abundant this year we had to find one more way. A "farm-ily" member mentioned eggplant moussaka so we had to try it! You won't be disappointed. And it freezes well for a last minute meal later on.We are still enjoying peppers and sad to see the tomatoes go so early this year. But the different weather patterns make some things thrive and others struggle. So it was no bumper tomato year, but there was plenty of other veggies to be thankful for. My new favorite pepper recipe is this casserole! You can add any sauteed veggie to it as well as peppers. We serve it over rice for a nice vegetarian dinner (or add ground beef or sausage). When even the 4 year old devours it, I know it's a winner! He loves vegetables, but only raw....not a huge fan of cooked ones yet.It's time for winter squash!!! Best way to eat acorn squash. Spaghetti squash is my second favorite and here is a great way to prepare it. I love it served like pasta with pesto on it. Butternut will be here soon!Enjoy!The Bakers

Fall is around the corner

We are awaiting the cooler weather and so is the garden! The summer crops are still pumping, like eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and green beans. We are having a slow okra season, but hope for a bumper crop soon. Some of you are cheering and some are groaning, I hear you! I love okra any way I use it but I find first time okra fans like this post might help. I love it just plain roasted with butter and garlic and salt, you know me....I don't usually use a recipe, but here is one if you need some guidelines (but skip the bad oil and double the butter).The Squash is back after two successions were mysteriously killed buy some weather issue or bug we couldn't determine. Potatoes, garlic , onions are abundant and sweet potatoes will be harvested in the next month. Which brings me to the mystery green this week.....did anyone know what it was?Sweet potato greens are a wonderful treat and full of vitamins and minerals! Here are some fun ideas for using it.Farm baby updates, we have two precious calves doing great on their nurse cow mama Elise. She had suffered an abscess on her leg and wasn't able to do the long walk back and forth to the pasture we rotate. As we needed her nearby for treatment and nursing back to health we decided a more gentle way to handle her full bag of milk was to let two calves nurse her. She has taken to them splendidly and is healing nicely. She will begin to put weight back on now that she is healing. Next farm baby expected is a baby Baker, due date December 31st!For canning and freezing ideas look here and here. We love to make double when we cook and freeze for a busy day.Don't forget meat pick up from 2-4 this Thursday in the cabin or during regular pick up hours at your dropsite!Keep your eyes open for a special invitation to a fall farm visit we are planning!Blessings,The Bakers

Jalapeno Fun!

If summer isn't tasty enough I just discovered the joy of jalapeno's! Sure I have made poppers before and being a little bit afraid of spicy things I mostly like watching the kids enjoying them, and tentatively eat some. One customer told me he eats raw jalapeno poppers, I am for sure not that brave. However it would be so good for you! For some reason yesterday I decided to add some to our scalloped potatoes thinking that the long baking time would moderate the heat. Boy was I right and the flavor was unbeatable! I just used this recipe and added sliced jalapenos and cooked pork bbq to make it a whole meal. We loved it! Try it out, we don't pack hot peppers in delivery shares, but they are always available at the csa pick up and in the cabin store. The keep a really long time, too!If you haven't tried the fennel yet, this is a great way to enjoy it! And if you don't have goats or bunnies to serve the tops too try some of these great ideas! We love this seldom seen vegetable!We had the first of the three calves born on Monday night! Look at facebook or instagram soon for pictures of her. The littlest farm boy has claimed her as his and named her Blossom. She will be on display near the cabin soon, but right now she is up in the newborn stall in the barn getting lots of little farmer snuggles. She did take a walk with them yesterday and came to the kitchen to visit me! What a silly surprise. We also had a neighbor's donkey get loose and come visit our donkey, he too came up the back porch steps for a visit! Life on the farm!!!OH, and this weekend we are going to try grilling a whole chicken. I plan to rub our bacon rub under the skin and cut the chicken in half along the backbone and splay it open (spatchcock style). We have a charcoal grill so I'll get the coals going and then spread them out to either side and cook it over indirect heat for about an hour. I'll let you know how it goes!Enjoy your week and your lovingly raised goodies from the Bakers!