Week 3 Winter CSA

Welcome winter! Wait it’s still fall…..but the weather is fooling us. We’ve been battening down the hatches here to keep the greens happy. And the cows, pigs, horses, turkeys, chickens, donkey, dogs, cats…and the humans! All the winter clothes have come out of storage early this year!

We are also watching the turkeys size up and start looking yummy! I’m looking forward to saving a few for winter meals. We had the BEST dinner the other night! Farmer Sean saw how busy we were making wreaths and came to the rescue by making stir fry with eggplant, peppers, carrots, onions, scrambled eggs, sausage and rice. We used the instant pot for some fast rice….brown rice and broth in only 30 minutes is amazing! And he found a recipe for a brown sauce that used broth and liquid aminos. What a treat!

This week we are enjoying potatoes, kale, kohlrabi, two types of lettuce, butternut squash (tis the season), and full shares got beets and carrots! We have had lots of butternut soup, it’s so nice with apples and onions and even adding sausage! Roasted beets and carrots are also popular around here. Tonight’s menu is sloppy joes, oven fried potatoes and salad. We just brown ground beef and sausage with some diced peppers and onions and add ketchup and mustard. Yum! Then we cut the potatoes and toss with melted lard to evenly coat them and roast in the oven for 45-60 minutes at 350. To spruce up salad this time of year, we peel and dice kohlrabi, add some dried fruit and make a homemade vinaigrette.

We had a nice trip to Dolly Sods, WVA a few weeks ago and enjoyed this view! We hope to go back in the spring. Enjoy your week!

Blessings,

Your farmers

November is here

Well with the chill in the air, we are so glad digging sweet potatoes is behind us! We also got all our 1,500 strawberry plugs planted last week. A little late, but so glad it’s done. They are as I write being tucked under row cover by the other farmers so they will be snug tonight when it dips into the 20’s! The season is certainly changing around here. We harvested 80 Fraser Fir trees on Monday from our family farm in Monterey, VA. We have begun to make wreaths with them. It’s fun to think about Christmas this far ahead! We make most of our wreaths closer to Thanksgiving, but one of our whole clients decorates for a shopping mall and they want them early! So the barn loft has been converted into the wreath makers shop and that’s where you will find the “elves” or farmers working these chilly days!

This week our shares have lettuce, arugula, kale, sweet potatoes, butternut, eggplant and peppers, oh and kohlrabi for the full share members. The arugula doesn’t hold well, so I recommend gently sauteing it and putting it in quiche soon. The kale is awesome and sweet this time of year. I find myself wanting chicken pot pie a lot and my solution to no green beans this time of year is fun! I take the ribs of the kohlrabi or kale leaves and cut them about 3/4 in long and boil for a few minutes. Then I use them in a pot pie recipe in place of green beans. The kohlrabi also makes great low carb “potatoes” inside the pie. Delish, local, seasonal and not in the least wasteful! The sweet potatoes have been tried so many ways and we are loving them all! I use the white ones in soup as regular potatoes and it adds a nice sweetness.

Our favorite hot coco recipe is going to be dug out of the recipe box this weekend to use with our lovely raw milk. I’ll share it again soon. I’m to the bottom of the cheese freezer as well, so maybe we will start making some cheese again and share some of our favorites with you. If you have extra milk, the easiest thing to do is make some yogurt.

We have been enjoying our new ginger beer operation and waiting for our kombucha to get up and going again. The ginger beer is yummy and good in different ways! I hope you enjoyed it in your fermented shares. We also sent out a fun herbal share this month. Elderberry tincture, not yummy like syrup, but very effective and full of medicine! Take 1/2-1 tsp daily or as needed (like every hour or two if illness is coming on). The lotion bars are great this time of year with dry hands being a problem. The pumpkin pie tea, is my favorite when it’s cold outside, drink up! YUM!

We hope you all enjoy and can’t wait to see you around the farm! OH, and it’s almost too late to order a Thanksgiving turkey, but there are a few spots left. Send us an email if you’d like to reserve one!

Blessings,

The Bakers

Any Guesses on our Sweet Potato Harvest?

We have grown 2,000 sweet potato slips for 3 or 4 years in a row now and have been happy with our results every year. We plant organic slips in May and eat some greens from them in August when other greens aren’t thriving and then in October we dig a few to see how they are sizing up. Mostly to get a taste of those nice roots that we’ve been missing! Around mid October we get serious and set aside a day or two to cut all the vines and move them and then begin the digging. We cure them in a heated room at 90 degrees for two weeks and then store them and enjoy all winter!

This year we decided to be wise and set aside two full days for this project…..then on the second day we realized it would take at least another whole day to finish, so we plodded along. Each root gets turned over with a plow or shovel, then gently wiped by hand and left to dry for a few hours, then picked up by hand and placed in a box and carried by hand to our storage room. These babies are grown and harvested with a lot of love and hand work. So as the rain prediction grew stronger and the night went on we had dinner and put the farmer children to bed. Farmer Sean and I headed back out with headlamps to finish the harvest and not ruin the potatoes. As it started to sprinkle a little past midnight we were hauling in the last of them! We pulled out the tarps we use for weed and erosion control and covered as much of the bare dirt as we could so as to lesson the amount of damage to the earth with the rain coming. We were happy to see the next morning that it worked and the lovely soil was well protected! Now, a few long days later have turned our sweet potato field into lovely garden beds ready for our garlic to be planted this week. By the end we harvested 4,400 pounds of sweet potatoes!!!!

Big projects feel so good to finish! Friends came by and offered a hand at popping all the garlic so the cloves are ready to go in later today! Speaking of other big projects, we have had a week to regroup, spend a fun day off the farm and are ready to roll with the winter CSA. It begins tomorrow! We have changed the farm store hours for pick up on meat weeks to 2-5 both Saturday and Thursday to make it easier. We are open for sales of any kind in the farm store then as well, so if you aren’t a member and want some thing please come on by!

We will be enjoying lots of sweet potato recipes, but here is the first soup we are going to try:

4 large sweet potatoes(2 1/2 pounds), cut in half

  • cooking oil

  • 2 tablespoons butter

  • 1 cup finely diced yellow onion (about 1 medium onion)

  • 1/2 cup finely diced celery, (about 2 celery stalks)

  • 3 garlic cloves

  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano

  • 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

  • 3 cups chicken broth from the farm store

  • 14 ounces milk

  • Additional salt and black pepper to taste

Begin by roasting the sweet potatoes. Preheat oven to 400-degrees F. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment. Coat sweet potato halves with oil. Place down on lined baking sheet. Roast for 30 minutes at 400-degrees F. Discard peels. Transfer to a bowl and thoroughly mash. Or use your favorite instant pot recipe to cook them for a faster method!

  1. While sweet potatoes are roasting, heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add butter and allow to melt. Add diced onion and celery; cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Grate garlic cloves directly into pan. Sprinkle in dried oregano, ground ginger, ground cumin, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring constantly for 1 minute.

  2. Stir in stock and milk. Bring to a low simmer; continue to simmer on low heat until potatoes are ready.

  3. Whisk in mashed sweet potatoes until combined. Salt and pepper to taste. For a smoother consistency, carefully transfer soup to a food processor or use an immersion blender!

Enjoy and we’ll see you at the cabin!

Fall Farm Tour 2019

As we begin to wrap up the summer 2019 CSA season we want to invite all our members (and any friends you want to bring) , to come see what is growing here! Really anyone interested in the farm is welcome to come see what we are all about! Come meet the piggies, cows, rabbits, horses, chickens and see the NEW huge hoop house we just finished building! FARM TOUR this weekend from 10-4 Saturday and Sunday! Come on out ya’ll!

We are excited to share the farm with you! We will be teaching a winter tincture class each day at 3 PM and doing tours all day. We will have lots of fun things to see and pet! We will have chili for sale from 11-2pm both days and the Baker girls baked goods as well. The farm store will be stocked up with goodies and CSA pick up will go on as usual.

This is the last pick up for the Summer shares and next week we are closed (except for members getting milk and egg shares). The Winter CSA will begin on October 31st and November 2nd (depending on which day you are scheduled to pick up). We look forward to growing for you all! What a wonderful community we have!

We hope you are all enjoying the cool weather, the animals and the winter greens sure are! It’s time to say goodbye to the warm season things like peppers, eggplant and okra….until next year!

Man is it hot!?!

We just got back from a wonderful weekend away with friends at their farm. It's always refreshing to enjoy their fellowship! We got to help with their hay harvest and attend a great program called Family Days on the Farm. We learned about organic orcharding, Lyme disease and some other great natural healing ideas. We are off and running again now and ready for fall planting! Isn't crazy that we think so far ahead?In the past month we have harvested our second batch of meat chickens, and started our batches of Thanksgiving turkeys! Tomorrow our next batch of meat chickens arrive and then the countdown to fall and winter really begin. Weeks of preparing to have lots of good things to eat this winter. We also had help from our friends little boy during our last chicken harvest. It was his first time experiencing it and watching his face as he pondered what was happening was amazing. At first he looked curious, then dismayed and then after being prompted by our eldest Tommy about whether or not he liked eating chicken, he triumphantly announced YES! And began to help! We take for granted that our children know and appreciate where there food comes from and how it gets to the table. Thank you to all who take the time to educate your families about this. We all love to eat and it makes sense that we should understand how that happens.We have some great veggies coming out of the garden right now! Peppers, Eggplants, Tomatoes, Okra, Rutabagas, Beets, Garlic, Onions, Potatoes, Green Beans, HOT peppers, Squash, Cucumbers, and more! Here is a fun idea for using lots of them! We have also been pickling our okra and cucumbers and look forward to enjoying them this winter!This week is meat pick up already for August, Thursday 2-4 and Saturday 3-5. Looking forward to seeing you then!Blessings,The Bakers

Week 4 CSA

Well, the saying goes "make hay while the sun shines"......so farmer Tommy cut down two fields of hay Tuesday and we prayed for the weather to hold! Today Maddie raked the hay (for the first time) with the small tractor and hay rake. After about 2 hours (enough time for it to dry sufficiently) Tommy came along behind her and started baling! The sun was blazing and things were going great so the rest of us started setting up for CSA as happy as any farmer can be! The feeling of harvesting 40 acres of hay is really like walking on water or something amazing! About 1/3 of the way into CSA we heard thunder and began to pray. The Bible says, God works all things for the good of those that love him, but in this case His plan was for half the hay to get rained on! That wasn't quite what we had hoped for, but we are so thankful to have half the hay nicely baled and safe! The rest will have to dry out and get raked 2 more times to dry again and then can get baled. The downside is some of the nutrients are leached out into the ground....think about making tea. When the rain pours over the dry hay the good qualities leach out instead of staying locked inside the stems. So the animals will have to eat a little more of it next winter to be nourished. But that's how it goes sometimes! It was quite a joy to have the hay be all down by our two biggest farmer children! Everyone else happily pitched in to help with extra chores so we could get it all done.The garden is taking off! Squash and cucumbers are coming on strong this week! Collard greens galore! I found this great post for using a whole chicken in case you are running out of ideas! We can't wait to try this collards recipe! Don't forget to use the greens on top of your beets for cooking as well!Well we hope you enjoy everything and Remember the Meat pick up dates for JUNE are coming up! Saturday June 1st 3 to 5 pm and Thursday June 6th 2 to 4 pm! Delivery for meat is June 6th.

Week 2 Summer 2019 CSA

We are enjoying seeing all the returning members and meeting the new "farm-ily" members! Thank you for being part of our farm! We have tons of great greens being harvested right now. Bok choi, Napa cabbage, chives, lettuce, radishes, and we still have some sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions. This time of year the roots all know it's been winter so please keep them in cold storage (your fridge) or they will try sprouting! To keep your greens fresh and perky you will need to keep them in plastic bags in your fridge. There are some great reusable produce bags available if you want to cut down on plastic.We have been super busy preparing for 2019 Farm tour (mark your calendars)! May 18-19th from 10-4pm both days. We look forward to doing a tour and showing you how we grow things without chemicals! The garden is looking amazing. As we were weeding the garlic and onions last evening a snake was also at work searching for mice and voles that damage our produce. I'm thankful for his help, but wish we worked different shifts!We have two new baby goats! Last night I was harvesting red clover for teas and tinctures and heard a new voice from the goat field behind the barn. Sure enough, Heidi had two new kids! Watch instagram or facebook for pictures of them! We all got them moved into the barn stall and set up with fresh water, feed and hay. The first time mother had all the right instincts to clean her babies and get them nursing. Birth is always amazing and enjoyed here on the farm!The walk in freezer was giving us trouble during the first part of the week. We had wonderful friends offer their chest freezer to help, but it would have taken 10 or more to fit all the meat! So we found some nice professionals that came and spent 10 hours trying to find the problem. We are back in good shape now and are thankful! There is a lot of yummy meat in there to protect! Whew!Our quick meals this week have been sauteed bok choi, onions and ground beef. Another fun one is chopped napa cabbage, shredded roots like beets or carrots, chopped cooked chicken, all massaged with dressing of choice and topped with chopped almonds. We are looking forward to some grilled pork chops for Mother's Day!Happy Mother's Day!The Bakers

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