Dropstone Farms

Oh no, I just found this post that I wrote last Tuesday (so, still late for week 9) and thought I published, but apparently didn’t! It was late already so I guess a week and two days late isn’t any different from just two days late.

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We were out of town this weekend, in Reno to visit family. Reno’s always a bit hard for me as I have apparently-arbitrary criteria for the meat I’ll eat, and it’s always seemed to be not a terribly diverse town, food-wise. But this time, formerly-vegetarian friend Phoebe came over from Davis to hang out, and took us to the enjoyable Pneumatic Diner. While there, I asked the staff about the food co-op I’d heard existed. We got directions and headed over to try to figure out what to make for dinner for my dad’s household.

After wandering — pacing is more like it, really, given the store’s teensy layout — for a while, we ended up with the localest versions we could find of: potatoes; leeks; garlic; kale; carrots. I don’t know what was from Nevada and what from California, but I opted to bypass the versions with the purple big-organic plastic labels, and get the ones with no labels … somehow that makes me think that it’s more like what I’m looking for (I may be a sucker). We also snagged a nice-looking steak from a Nevada rancher, and some locally-bagged (i.e. not Earthbound) baby greens, and some little chunks of parmigiano imported by a California company, Cowgirl Creamery.

The whole grocery bag full turned into a delicious soup, except the greens and parm of course, which were a nice salad. Even the resident kid liked the “green thing” (the kale, which I had let him know he might not like, and that that was OK with me).

Anyway, I was pretty proud of with how we ended up, as well as with Reno’s apparently growing local food scene. Go, co-ops, go!

We also had a field trip to a farm, on which more to come later.

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Still no pictures, as my small camera is full and I am still too scared of the new big fancy camera.

We have been talking for years about making meat loaf, which Garth remembers fondly from his childhood. But his mom used the recipe from the back of the Quaker Oats box, and I wanted to do something a bit closer to home. I looked around a bit for recommendations, then mostly made it up as I went along, using what was on hand. I did have to compromise a bit though as he was not willing to give up the ketchup on top.

The mostly-local part: the loaf.

I caramelized some onions for a long time in butter (organic, co-op, non-local). When they were nice and brown I put a bottle of Pike Pale Ale, brewed at Pike Brewing, and let it sit on low heat for a while, just barely simmering, then dumped in the remains of a freezer bag of home-ground bread crumbs so they could get moist before mixing, to keep them from drying out the meat loaf.
While that was happening, I grated a giant carrot from the garden in the food processor, as well as a few cloves of garlic. I removed two Skagit River Ranch sausages from their casing and put them in a bowl with two pounds of ground beef from our cow. The beef is pretty lean so I also melted a spoonful of home-rendered lard from a local pig.
I carefully mixed everything together in a big bowl, stirring with a spatula instead of kneading with my hands, as I read that kneading dries it out also. I also added two little eggs from our hens as a binder.

Onion, garlic: Laughing Crow Farm, Bainbridge Island
Beer: Pike Brewing, Seattle
Eggs, carrot, thyme: the yard
Ground beef: from our quarter cow, raised by On the Lamb Farm in Arlington
Pork Italian sausage: Skagit River Ranch
Lard: home-rendered from a pig grown on Bainbridge Island
Bread crumbs: the last of several months’ worth of home-ground crumbs from both home-grown and store-bought bread, kept in the freezer

On a silpat-lined sheet pan (with edges!) I shaped it into one small loaf of about 1/3 of the meat, for dinner, and one large loaf, composed of the rest of the meat, for future sandwiches. Following Alton’s instructions, I put it all in the oven at 325° and set the timer for 10 minutes.

The not-local-at-all part: the glaze.
In my favorite tiny cast iron pan, I mixed the following:
Ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sriracha, and I don’t even remember what other things, all from jars of indeterminate origin. Oh, and a little bit of local honey from Pike Place Market.

Alton said to brush the glaze on after it had been cooking for ten minutes, so I did. I did it again a little while later when I checked on the temperature. The little loaf hit temp first, of course, so we took it out and served it up while we waited for the big one to finish.

My verdict: Yum! Not dry at all — plenty soft and flavorful.
Garth’s verdict: “Not much like my childhood meatloaf. It was better. It tasted like food.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come between him and his ketchup, though.

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I missed a Dark Days meal this week — not because we weren’t eating delicious local food, just that there was no one big meal, and we were out of town for the weekend. We’re out this weekend too (and the next, ack) but I may write up a generic soup (”Piles part 2″) if I get a chance.

By the end of the month we’ll have a half a pig! I look forward to tasty pork recipes coming up.

(like posole!)

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… another “part 1″ because we eat piles so much, I am pretty sure they’ll come up again.

Looking for something easy early last week, I fell back on the category of meals that we call “piles.” Food piles generally consist of leftover meat if there is any, whatever veggies are available, and one of the following:

• Potatoes — a potato pile is a hash (sometimes served with a fried egg on top)
• Rice — a pile on rice is stir fry
• Eggs — a pile built in a cast iron pan easily turns into a frittata or faux-frittata
• Pasta — a pile tossed with pasta is a variant of carbonara (we often do the thing with the raw egg on the hot pasta)
• Stock — a pile built in a stock pot becomes soup.

Feeling possessive of our potatoes*, since our crop basically failed this year, we have been eating less hash and more of other types of piles. This week I was inspired to make pasta, so pasta-pile it was.

I made homemade pasta with homegrown eggs (thanks ducks) and organic wheat from Utah, following local food friend Anne’s recipe more or less (I haven’t used olive oil, but I intend to try).

While the pasta dough was resting, I peeled and cubed a medium-sized delicata squash that we grew. I sautéed it in olive oil (not organic) at medium-high heat to get some nice caramelization on the cubes. Towards the end I sprinkled some organic sugar on them to see what would happen, and it made an even nicer brown crispy sweet crust on the cubes. Non-local, but so tasty! I removed the squash cubes from the pan and set them aside.

A quick (because it was COLD out there!!) check outside revealed that our homegrown kale was either uncovered so frozen, or covered so under a sheet of frozen plastic — so, figuring that frozen kale is frozen kale, we grabbed some we’d blanched and frozen this summer when our market boothmates, Terra Bella Farm, had surplus. I added the chopped kale to some chopped market leek from Persephone Farms (Indianola, just off the island) in the same pan I used for the squash.

As the veggies were sautéeing, I boiled the pasta and dug around in the fridge to find some smoked peppered salmon I bought at my favorite fishmonger, Pure Food Fish at Pike Place Market. I don’t know how local the fish is, though it is surely Pacific salmon. I should’ve asked, but it was the end of the day and frantic, and I was trying to catch a ferry …

I suppose I also could have left the smoked salmon out of this dish, but when the pasta was done and I tossed it all together, the soft, smoky, peppery salmon turned out to go really well with the sweet squash and leek and the toothy kale and pasta.

Homegrown: eggs, delicata
Bainbridge Island Farmers’ Market: leeks, kale
Seattle market(s): Smoked salmon
Organic, non-local: wheat, sugar
Unknown: olive oil, salt, spices on the salmon. And the parmigiano cheese obviously, but we just can’t manage to give it up.

* We have since secured plenty of storage potatoes from other farmers, and are feeling well-armed now.

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There are like a half-dozen almost-completed saved draft posts that are now hopelessly out of date. And so it is time yet again for what is now apparently our monthly (ugh) catchup post.

We have been going to the Bainbridge Island Farmers’ Market pretty regularly, Saturdays 9am-1pm. Last week we finally had a sign with our name, and two local folks recognized us from our twitter, so that was nice. We’ve been selling plums and figs, as well as whatever small amount of squash, cukes, herbs, etc we have on hand. The fruit sells well and is a good draw for our boothmates, the friendly ladies of Terra Bella Farm. I’m working on getting them to get a website.

The nuggets have come and gone and are very tasty. It took us about 4 hours to process the 25 birds with just one helper and a plucking machine. This is probably because it took me some time to hit my stride with eviscerating, but I did eventually and I was moving through them pretty quickly. I expect the next session to go yet faster.

… and that next session will be the week ending October 30, as we have ordered 150 chicks that will arrive next week and be ready to process and sell that week. We’ll have a signup form ready soon, so if you’re interested in fresh, local, organic chickens, watch this space!

We went to see Food, Inc. last night at the Firehouse Theater in Kingston, which is brilliantly also a video rental place, and which was enjoyable. The movie itself was nothing new for us but I’m so glad to see it out in the world making people talk and think. Plus, that Joel Salatin can gut a chicken FAST. I took notes.

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Every day I think “Oh I’ll blog about this interesting thing tonight,” or I take a picture and fully intend to post it, and every day I do not manage to do so. Tons is going on here and even though I am now taking vacation from work on Fridays to stay home and work on the farm, we’re still going nonstop. We are fully deployed at the Old New Farm and the New New Farm and are hoping to be at market for the first time this weekend with some plums we happened to find on a spare tree at the Old New Farm.

Tired.

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… but we got to stretch two days’ worth of work out over three days, and a good thing too — it was too hot to work outside between 12 and 4ish every day this weekend, so we got to take breaks and drink gins and tonic and read our books. But all the same, we got a lot done and of course there is a lot left to do. We are at least six weeks behind the season, I feel like, which is especially sad since it has been super sunny and warm here for about that long.

The various (50+) squashes and pumpkins just got in the ground at Johnson Farm on Friday and Saturday. They have been living in the greenhouse in gallon pots. Many of them have several blossoms. I don’t know if that’s good (yay fruits) or bad (plant growth is now stunted?).

Today we cleared out our bolted radishes, chicken-pecked and side-shoot-producing broccoli, and crowded lettuces (destined for lettuce kraut) finally, and fertilized, composted, and got 21 tomatoes, also in gallon pots, into the ground at home. There are probably 80+ plants waiting to go in at Johnson Farm and at our New New Farm (which Garth has referenced but we haven’t yet introduced properly — that’s on my list). Tomatillos and eggplants and peppers are in the same boat.

I shall stop now lest I fall asleep at the keyboard, but suffice it to say, we are feeling pleased and optimistic with FINALLY making progress … and there is more to come.

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