Dropstone Farms

A while back, I emailed in response to a post over at (not so) Urban Hennery about needing folks to share a cow with, not expecting much response, since her post was a few weeks old at that point. But she replied almost immediately to say that they had three folks, and would love a fourth as that would let everyone get a quarter of a steer for cheaper than if there were just two. The beef would be coming from On the Lamb Farm in Arlington, where it seems like they got livestock because they loved training herding dogs so much. (Look at all the good dogs!) Laura at Urban Hennery knew and liked the butcher, Del Fox Custom Meats in Stanwood.

So we sent off our deposit to Laura, who was collecting all the checks and coordinating with the farm. She also coordinated with the butcher, sending them all our forms that we filled out with preferences like how many steaks per package, do we want various forms of roast left intact or ground, do we want stew meat and soup bones … (answers: 2; intact, as we can grind them ourselves; yes and yes). It was very nice to have her wrangling all that information. A few weeks later she forwarded an email from the farm, saying the steer, no longer a steer but now a beef, had gone off to the butcher, where it would hang for a while, then get chopped up and frozen and be ready for pickup. At this point we panicked a bit as we realized we needed to get a new freezer sooner rather than later, so, thanks to the many parental types who have provided us with Lowe’s gift cards over the last year!

Yesterday morning, packed up and headed off to Stanwood to the butcher. It was quite easy, it turned out; someone wheeled out some trays with my name on them, we dumped a whole bunch of packages into coolers, paid them for the butchering, and drove off.

On the way back to I-5, we stopped at a cute farmstand, Mossyback Farm, where we stocked up on eggs raised by their friends and neighbors (”the free-range-est ones you’ve got, please,” when she asked which ones we wanted), some Rainier cherries, and some other staples.

Then freezer pickup at Lowe’s in Lynnwood, about which the less said, the better. Places like that wear me out.

Beef stats roundup time!
Cost: $150 deposit + $218 more after weighing + $95 for the butcher = $463 total
Hanging weight of a side: 297lbs and we got half so ~150lbs (with bones and all), so about $3 per pound of hanging weight
I don’t know the total weight of the butchered meat, but the receipt says:

• T-bone steaks: 4
• Sirloin steaks: 3
• Top round: 3
• Flank steaks: 1
• Pot roast: 3
• Rump roast: 1
• Sirloin tip roast: 1
• Boneless crossrib roast: 1
• Stew meat: 5
• Short ribs: 2
• Brisket: 1

And then there’s a big stamp that says “BOTTOM ROUND.” Not sure what that means. And the receipt doesn’t mention the at-least-2 packages of soup bones we got, too. AND there is probably about 30 pounds of ground beef. Which, combined with some green onions from the garden and some fresh market garlic, and topped with sharp cheddar, fresh market garlic scapes, and home garden lettuce, made an excellent burger last night.

So yeah, I think we’ll be doing this again in the future. I’ll put out a call when it’s time.

In the meantime, please share ideas for ground beef, other than burgers! Shepherd’s pie and spaghetti sauce are in our repertoire, but we welcome recipes for those and anything else you’ve got.

9 Comments »

So I got up this morning and went to put water on for tea. The water came out slowly and then petered out entirely. Our kitchen faucet has been troublesome so I assumed it was a localized problem and went to wash my hands. That faucet was also broken. So I went under the house and found out that, sure enough, the pressure on our pump is at zero PSI. I reset the fuses and verified that the house has electricity (Yes, it has electricity. You should have realized that by the fact that, golly, the dang lights are on. However, this was at 5:30 Monday morning so cognitive limitations should be recognized.) and that the pump is plugged in.

So we’re without running water and the plants are going unwatered. If pump doesn’t get fixed we can water the ducks out of the rainbarrels but I don’t know if we’ll get enough water pressure to activate the laser soaker line (PEW PEW PEW!). So we’re home waiting for the repair guy to show up. My fingers are crossed that it will be a ‘Stupid homeowner! You accidentally turned it off. That’ll be $200!” situation rather than a “Welcome to the Joys of homeownership! That’ll be $6,000, please!” situation.

[At this point, the guy from the well and pump company shows up...]

Aaannnndddd… the control box that lives inside the well was broken. $180 job. It turns out that there’s moisture inside a well that’ll kill a control box if you mount it there instead of, say, inside the house. The upside is that I got to see inside our well which is brick-lined and hand dug down to the water table at ~35′. It’s very cool. The technician told us that you can see stars in the midday sky from the bottom of a well. Lauren will post the pictures of the well if they come out. I reckon this will move “install hand pump” further up the list of priorities.

No Comments »

As I undertake the Great Mowing of 2008 my scythe and I are traveling the entire untilled and unwooded portions of our lot. I hadn’t realized how much I’d let my movements be hemmed in by the paths we’d tromped in the 3 feet (or so) of grass. So, as I was swish-snapping* along, I found myself under an apple tree along the edge of the property in a lovely cool, kind-of enclosed feeling space. It turns out that the tree made a cozy little room underneath it. How cool is that?

I took lauren out to show her the new “room” I’d discovered and she declared that we will come to this space to pick blackberries and apples and set up a table and eat dinner. I have no disagreement with this plan. I love that there are little nooks and crannies that I haven’t found yet. I also love that, trees being what they are, the nooks and crannies are going to keep changing. Plants are awesome.

*It turns out that, if you’re mowing with a scythe, every so often the general swishiness of the sound will be interrupted by a *snap* that sounds exactly like an electrical arc. I don’t know if grass has static electricity stored up or what, but I do know that hay burns down barns**, so I’m not putting anything past those sneaky-assed cover crops.

**Yes, it’s a footnote in a footnote, but I wanted to call your attention to the fact that Auburn University appears to have the URL “aces.edu,” which is at least four kinds of awesome.

No Comments »

Like many, I have a weakness for spending entirely too much money on tools* and equipment because, in my apparently vivid imagination, it seems like the next tool will be the ones that solves all of my problems. Sometimes I’m right. Sometimes I’m wrong. Let’s talk about those instances in which a tool performs so well and is so useful that one is foolish not to have it.

Things that are awesome:

• The Broadfork
• Drip Irrigation
• 3-Tine Cultivator
• Hoop Houses
• Chicken Crate
• Garden Cart
• The Scythe

The Broadfork

This is a tool that jams into the soil and, when you lean on it, aerates and fluffs the soil. Minimal tillers feel that this is an adequate alternative to double-digging or tilling. I’m not convinced that the broadfork replaces digging and tilling, but it allows one to aerate 8-10″ below the soil you’ve dug as well as punch through a plow/tiller pan. This is good. And, if you’re tearing up sod or uncultivated ground, the broadfork will tear up the thatch and make digging or tilling easier. I love it. Not cheap, but not easily manufactured or omitted.

Drip Irrigation

So I went to Bainbridge Gardens to investigate drip hoses for our squashes and tom. Why? Because I’m lazy and wanted to water by flipping a switch in addition to keeping sensitive leaves dry. An extremely helpful employee named Steve spent about an hour with me explaining the ins-and-outs of a low-flow irrigation system and showed me how to assemble everything and decide where I needed to run lines. I spent $54 on hoses and fittings and irrigated 40′ of tomatoes, 10′ of cucumbers, and 10′ of assorted squashes. And had spare parts left over. Why didn’t I do this earlier?

Hoop Houses

What do you get when you combine $15 worth of PVC Pipe, $4 worth of plastic sheeting, and some plastic clips? Awesome tomatoes, that’s what. It’s been a cold, raining spring, but our tomatoes are coming along well. The hoop house keeps the hot weather crops several degrees above the ambient temperature, which isn’t far from what an unheated greenhouse would do.

Three-Tine Cultivator

I call it “The Skritcher.” Lauren keeps telling me that no-one knows what that means, but now that I’ve written this it’ll clearly enter the lexicon at large. Why do I like this tool? Have you ever looked at a bed that you wanted to plant and asked for an easy way to fluff up the soil, mix in compost and fertilizer, and kill whichever tiny weeds have taken root? This is how. Plus it breaks up dirt clods. And you can use it to shake the dirt off a wad of thatch prior to using it as an enormous atlatl for hucking the aforementioned thatch at the dogs.

Chicken Crate!

It’s just awesome! You fill it with chickens and carry them from their coop to their pen. I showed my mom and she said, “Oh, just like in Egypt!” This is also notable because the wooden, handmade crate from the Amish supply company costs $40 less than the ugly plastic crate from FarmTek.

The Garden Cart

I’ve written about this before. It’s still great. The only thing it needs is a bottle opener mounted to it somehow. It’ll get there.

The Scythe

I am a lazy lawnmower. As a result, the grass is about three feet high. One cannot really deal with this with a reel mower. And I’ve spent the past 3-4 weekends in the equipment shed with battery chargers, starter fluid, and carb cleaner trying to get the string trimmer and riding lawnmower that came with the house running. As the kids on the internets say, FAIL. So I borrowed an electric mower and an electric string trimmer from my Mom and her husband. There have been a couple weekends of grinding away at the grass and, in fairness, some progress has been made. And I like that you can only use an electric tool for a half-hour or so before the battery dies.. I like breaks.

However, I wasn’t getting anywhere and the grass threatened to engulf us all. So I finally broke down and ordered a scythe from Lee Valley Tools. It arrived Friday afternoon and, dang, why did I wait so long?

The scythe is not like the one that hung in my grandfather’s garage as a child. (Actually, I expect it’s still there…) It’s of European manufacture and, blade and all, weighs less than five pounds. As far as performance goes, it’s faster and easier than a string trimmer. Not as even as a mower, but if I cared about that my grass wouldn’t be three feet high in the first place. I’m so pleased with the performance of the scythe on grass that I’m going to spring for a brush blade (scroll down) for hacking up blackberries.

Oh yeah, the name of the company is awesome too.

*(I do have to say that the hammer I linked to *is* entirely worth the money. You’ve never felt a 3.5# hammer that feels so light, makes my elbow so happy, or pushes so much metal around. If you don’t blacksmith, you don’t care of course. I just love my hammer is all.)

4 Comments »

UPS confirms it.



Delivery from Lowes, in the hay shed.

No Comments »

When Garth and I were first starting to learn to cook (which was conveniently right about the same time we were starting to be together), we ate a lot of mustard greens, which we both liked a great deal. Full of character and a little bit bitey, but easy to cook and good with any number of proteins and starches. But then we started to learn how to shop, too, and we stopped getting groceries at Fred Meyer and started getting them at the farmers’ markets and at Pike Place, (which is of course also a farmers’ market), or at Whole Foods as a last resort, and so we lost track of mustard greens. Apparently not many folks are growing them around here, and/or not many folks are growing them organically nation-wide.

So finding mustard green seeds in our preferred seed catalog, Territorial, was very exciting to both of us. I wasn’t very careful when I scattered them, and didn’t really scatter so much as pour directly onto the ground, apparently, as they represent the largest green lump here:

And tonight the green lump is smaller by at least 50-75 plants:



(Note our totally sweet wire harvest basket from the ever-awesome Path to Freedom and their new Urban Homestead journal! Note also the dirt still on the roots, which are still on the plants.)

My thinning accomplished approximately nothing, though, at least visually, though I failed to take a picture due to some pretty serious rain today. That will have to come later. But the end product was delicious sautéed greens with garlic, on brown rice, with quick pan-fried halibut cheeks from the market yesterday.

No Comments »