Dropstone Farms » death and nomming

Planning for next year

Lauren — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 20:38:55 +0000

We’re likely going to be making some changes to the poultry business for the 2011 growing season. We didn’t make enough money last season to pay ourselves — we did cover feed costs, which is better than the year before, and we also covered most materials and some gas. But if we really want to support ourselves farming — which we do! — we need to make some changes.

One of the options we’re considering is not growing for sale at all. This is displeasing because we really like being able to provide delicious food for people. It’s rewarding to meet folks and hear that people are happy with what we’re doing.

Another option is to raise prices and continue selling as we did last year. This addresses the issue of making sure to pay ourselves, but not the stress of not knowing if we’ll sell all the birds, as well as the up-front cost of ~2 tons of organic feed, which we put on a credit card.

We also discussed growing just for ourselves and friends. As we started exploring that idea, we quickly realized it’s definitely not clear how/where we would draw the line of “friends.” We have become friendly with more than a few of our existing customers, and it would be hard to tell everyone no just because we didn’t know you before we started selling, or whatever.

Now we’re exploring another idea — changing our sales model up a bit and making it more like a CSA. We’d still do 3-4 batches of birds during the summer — probably June, July, August, September. Customers would sign up early in the year — possibly sometime this month — for their birds for the rest of the year. We’d ask a bigger deposit than the $5 per bird last year, maybe something more like $20 per bird, and we’d ask for it up front at the time of the order. We’d then place our orders based on how many birds had been sold (including a certain percentage to budget for loss, etc.). We would probably market this just to existing customers (blog readers and mailing list) and whatever word-of-mouth you all would do for us.

There are some significant pros to this model for us. We wouldn’t have to use a credit card for feed. We wouldn’t have to market at all. Any stress about not knowing whether we’d make enough to cover our costs would be taken care of, since we’d only order as many chicks as we have orders for. We’d have a group of invested shareholders who we could consult to help us make decisions like how long we should let the birds grow, or whether we should use a more expensive, but Washington-grown organic feed instead of the Canadian organic we have used in the past. It’s emotionally easier to struggle through a bad day in the field when we know we have customers who are tangibly invested in that specific batch of birds.

But there are cons as well. We wouldn’t meet new folks. It’s hard to turn people away when they get orders in too late, and that would still happen in this model. It’s a bigger commitment for us — we don’t have the easy out of giving up partway through the season if we get tired or if other work takes over! And from a food justice standpoint, it is frustrating to limit our audience so much; we’d rather connect more people to the delicious nutritious food even if they haven’t already made farmer connections (for whatever reason), instead of it only being accessible to people who already have access to it. (Maybe we can figure out a buy-one-give-one thing like Toms Shoes!)

So, we’re asking you for your feedback and ideas, particularly on the topics of raising our prices and the CSA model. We’ve built a little survey that’s completely anonymous and that will help us get some ideas about what factors you think about when deciding what/where/how to buy. It also has some room to let us know what you think about the CSA-ish model. If you have seen this work before, or have any ideas or thoughts or concerns about it, we’d love to hear from you. You can also comment here, though not as anonymously.

So please take our little survey and tell us what you think!

Cure Your Belly Fat Now! Making Lardo.

garth — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 04:25:22 +0000

That’s not actually true, it’s back fat. However, I once saw one of those godawful women’s magazines at a grocery store and, after reading the headline “Cure your belly fat now!,” was honestly confused that they weren’t talking about bacon.

As I alluded to earlier, there’s a little over a pound of fatback curing in the fridge right now in anticipation of joining my mocetta (goat prosciutto, roughly) that’s hanging in the Harry Potter closet under the stairs.

First, let’s check in on the mocetta. It’s been hanging for 11 days and is definitely looking more like prosciutto that rotten meat.

As you can see, I was in the middle of doing knife maintenance and sharpening.

There was a bit of white mold turning to blue green on it so I performed a little surgery.

The nice thing about the bad mold was that I got to check on the progress of the drying. It seems to be moving along nicely. It’s distinctly firmer and the cured texture goes about a centimeter into the ham. It turning into food instead of rotting meat!

After a few more days (okay, a week), I checked back in on it and the “wound” seems to have healed itself and the ham is drying as intended with no more blue mold.

Moving on to the lardo.

First of all, it’s fat. Pure fat (almost) which has been salted and dried. I’m not sure if I’ve had it before but I hear good things and have a lot of fat back. Now, I’ve been served pork belly confit* (Yeah, that was these guys). And it was fantastic. Not cured though.

I started with Michael Rulman’s recipe from the book Charcuterie but, as ever, fiddled with it. Juniper berries were added and white pepper substituted for 1/4 of the black pepper.

From left to right, juniper berries, bay leaves, peppercorns, and basic cure #1

And now the meat. The recipe calls for fatback or, you know, the fat from the back of the pig. This may sounds obvious, but butchery terminology is rarely so straightforward. The boston butt, for example, comes from the part of the back directly over the front legs. What this implies about bostonians is unclear.

The pink that you see is muscle that came along when the fat was removed. The other side has little bits of stubble that remains from the process of scraping the pig. Pig, not carcass, is a deliberate word choice. It’s a carcass once it’s gutted or skinned, as I see it. Since scraping is the first step after killing and bleeding, I still see it as a pig.

Scraping is cool though. The pig doesn’t get skinned or plucked like sheep, goats, and poultry (the only animals I have firsthand experience with). Instead, the pig is scalded, or immersed or exposed to water around 145F and the hair and outer layer of skin is scraped off in an unpleasant and time-consuming manner. Basically, you skritch skritch skritch every inch of the pig’s skin with a knife or a pastry scraper or even a hog scraper if you’re well equipped.

The scraping process inevitably leaves a little bit of the hair behind. Like pinfeathers on broilers, this has resulted in a drive toward lighter-colored animals to satisfy consumer and producer demand for a blemish-free product. Like white poultry, the lack of pigmentation makes the animal less hardy in the sun. When I get pigs, I’m thinking a breed like the large black hog. Mmmm, hardy.

Due to misremembering the recipe, I was looking forward to posting this with pictures of the lardo leaving the fridge and being hung. Fortunately, I re-read the recipe and it’s got another three days. (Less botulism means more years to eat food!) I’m going with Ruhlman’s minimum this time as my stuff has been turning out saltier than ideal.

In other news, I’ve come into possession of a 5.5 pound leg of ram from a mature, adult ram who, until yesterday, displayed a bad attitude toward children. During the butchering, the meat smelled intensely of the flavor of lamb. He was also tremendously fatty with much more marbling than other lambs/goats I’ve and the meats has a deep red color. Much of the odor faded while he hung, which is why one hangs meat, I guess.

I am a bit bereft of recipe ideas for the leg. Suggestions? I’d like to find something to highlight the powerful flavor and muscle development in the same way that coq au vin is best with a gamy old rooster.

Thoughts?

Quick and Easy Cassoulet!

garth — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 05:44:19 +0000

This was the title of course offered down the street from us by the local parks and rec department. The joke, of course, is that we’d just ordered 15 muscovy ducks with the express purpose of making our own cassoulet. I now provide you with the timeline of the Official Dropstone Farms, LLC Quick and Easy Cassoulet.

1) Order ducklings. This saves you the tiresome labor of maintaining your own breeding stock.

2) Brood the ducklings on pasture and move them daily. Now you’ve got fewer slugs to deal with. Win.

3) Clean and process all 17 ducks in the pouring rain over the course of two days. Skip cumbersome hand-plucking by using a mechanical plucker and a labor-saving rotary scalder. Compost the leftover bits and use them to grow vegetables.

4) Reserve a pig from a neighboring farmer. Order it already butchered. Easy.

5) Grind, season, and stuff sausage. Use an electric meat grinder and mechanical stuffer. No sense putting in too much unnecessary labor, right?

6) Bone out a duck carcass and, after making prosciutto, render the fat and confit some duck legs.

7) Acquire two baby goats, deal with them for six months, butcher them at home (again composting), salt the hides, hang them for a few days, break down the carcasses with a broken meat saw, and bone out one loin roast.

8) Oh, just go pull a random hunk of pork out of the freezer! No sense getting carried away.

9) Let an entirely awesome farmer grow the beans for you.

10) Cut up and brown the sausage, pork, and goat.

11) Add beans, seasoning, and wine. Simmer on the woodstove for a day or so.

12) Add duck confit, home grown and preserved, natch. Home grown and home canned tomatoes. Season with some dried home grown chiles and cover with breadcrumbs.

12.5) Take advantage of the downtime to put some lardo on to cure. No sense not putting some more meat in storage.

13) Bake at 375F for twenty minutes. Stir in browned top layer and bake at 350F for another 45 minutes or so.

14) Eat. Collapse. Half-heartedly write blog post with promise of images coming soon. Also more about that lardo.

Because I’m out of freezer space, that’s why.

garth — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:08:11 +0000

Well, not really. As Lauren posted earlier, we’re doing fairly well at reducing the contents of our still-very-full chest freezers. And, with the departure (ascension? transfiguration?) of orange and blue I’ve renewed my interest in curing my own charcuterie. And it turns out there’s a blog challenge underway.

As is typical, I’m both ahead of and behind in the game. My duck prosciutto was finished before it was supposed to be and next month’s isn’t started yet. Oh well. Orange’s leg is curing in the Harry Potter closet under the stairs, delicately suspended about a huge pile of musical instruments, so that puts me ahead of the game, maybe. Except that’s not what’s supposed to be curing right now. Now as in my youth, I suck at following along with the class.

Home-grown duck home-cured in the guest room. The knife is my souvenir Portuguese lamb butchering knife.The recipes is from Ruhlman's book Charcuterie.

The prosciutto turned out well. Perhaps a bit too salty but it’s supposed to be that way, right? Also, I don’t know if the white stuff is mold or or salt. Research time.

The mocetta (goat ham) is curing under the stairs. This is day four.

This is the hind leg of one of our goats. He’s curing according to Hank’s recipe for Mocetta or goat prosciutto. Well, except for the fact that I forgot the bay. Twice. It cured in the fridge for a total of three weeks and will need to hang for 2-6 months. I suspect it’ll be on the longer side of things because it’s pretty humid here. There’s a gob of white on the bottom left that I think is fat, but I’ve got my eye on it.

When I get around to it, I’ll hang some lardo in there as well because I finally managed to subdivide the fatback from our latest big. It’s inconvenient to work with a single bag containing all the fat from a pig. I did the same with the five(!) livers from the previous pig. No, the pig did not have five livers, the other customers did want their livers so I was forced to save them. And then toss them in a ziplock and freeze them into an undifferentiated mass of offal. Note to self: don’t do that. Also, make paté.

On the upside, seems like other charcuterizers on the internets have to build complicated temperature and humidity management systems. I checked out our unheated guest room/office/library and found it have perfect conditions for curing meat, right down to starting at a lower temperature and becoming slightly warmer as it cures. It is becoming clear to my why subsistence farmers have traditionally butchered in the fall/winter. And that I like my Cascadian climate.

If you look closely you can make out an ATA flight case for a Sho~Bud Superpro pedal steel guitar.Yes, I do have strange hobbies.

Goat lasagne (Dark Days ’10-’11)

Lauren — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:40:05 +0000

This is more like what I had hoped my first Dark Days post would be like. I pulled out all the stops — OK most of the stops — for this one. They won’t all be this bad-ass …

Today I watched Garth and our friend L.S. take apart the goats that we slaughtered last weekend. I helped a bit, but our kitchen is mostly a two-person kitchen, and I was working from home, so I mostly stuck my head over into the kitchen to look occasionally — and I forgot to take pictures, unfortunately. Still getting used to having a working camera again!

Somehow the idea of goat lasagne had come into my head a few days back, and it stuck around and wouldn’t leave, so that is what I did. I started from the most excellent Hank Shaw’s venison lasagne recipe, figuring that if it suits venison, it might suit goat … ?

I followed the recipe relatively closely actually, which is unusual for me. I didn’t use parsley, as it died in Snowpocalpyse 2010, but I did use some homegrown frozen pesto in the ricotta instead. I also made the ricotta from scratch — and then was confused when I went to read the recipe and saw that he called for “1 container ricotta.” Hank fail! I don’t know how much one container is! I think he is usually very attentive to substitutions and “if you are making from scratch” instructions … I laughed. (Subsequent googling and Amazon-Fresh-ing showed that it is about 15oz.)

Homegrown frozen pesto in a jar! Thawing.

Ricotta, draining

Lasagne in progress

In any case, my ingredient list looked more like this:

1 lb ground beef from a Kitsap cow
~1lb fresh ground goat scraps from processing
1 chopped local onion
1 head local garlic
1 quart local home-canned diced tomatoes
1 half-pint homegrown tomato juice concentrate
1 baggie of ~8 homegrown slow-roasted then frozen sauce tomatoes
1 quart water
several glugs red wine (French)
several pinches homegrown fennel seeds
I totally forgot the sugar
several spoonsful of homegrown frozen basil pesto
two ice cubes of homegrown frozen oregano
the ricotta that you get out of 1 gallon of whole milk
the amount of mozzarella that can be grated before I get bored and tired (~3/4 lb?)
some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
6 fresh homemade lasagna noodles
salt & pepper.

I followed Hank’s steps more or less, and they worked well. For the doing-everything-from-scratch-all-at-once part, plus how to make lasagne with fresh noodles as opposed to dried-in-a-box, I consulted friends Anne & Ryan’s chard lasagne recipe.

This is a LOT of food though — here’s how much we ate:

Delicious lasagne is delicious and filling!

The goat meat seems to go through a phase while cooking where it smells REALLY BAD, and I feel really unhappy and I panic that I won’t be able to eat the meal and I shouldn’t continue to spend time and home-canned produce on it, etc. But then the meat passes out of that phase, and I feel better, and am not sad anymore.

In this case, the goat meat went really well with the flavorful sauce and the ground beef, and added a sort of depth (“funk,” says Garth) to the sauce that helped to balance the cheesy-gooey goodness of the lasagne.

Ingredients roundup!
Homegrown: goat (thank you, goat!!), some of the tomatoes, garlic, basil, oregano, fennel seeds
Grown by people we know: onion, beef
Homemade from local sources: Fresh Breeze milk for ricotta, the canned tomatoes
Homemade from non-local, organic sources: flour for pasta (organic from Utah)
The usual unknown exemptions: salt, pepper, French red wine, olive oil, Parm, white wine vinegar for ricotta. Also the mozzarella, which was not even organic :(

This is the first time I’ve made lasagne! It was a success according to everyone involved (except the goat).

Sold out!

Lauren — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:15:22 +0000

Wow, that was fast. After the last batch of 75 didn’t all sell, I was thinking we’d have to do at least two days at market. But one day plus some excellent word-of-mouth plus everyone stocking up for the winter means we are sold out already.

If you want to get on the waiting list, you can fill out the form as usual (see below). Otherwise please click here to sign up on our mailing list to get notified of the first batch in the spring! At this point we’re thinking probably May.

If you missed out, we have some recommendations for chickens available at markets in Seattle. Let us know if you are looking.

Thanks, everyone, for your support. We are happy to be part of the agriculture and deliciousness community.

Chicken pusher

Lauren — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:10:58 +0000

I was at the market last weekend hawking chickens, which is always fun, but there are still plenty left. Order now and spread the word to family and friends!

Details here: http://www.dropstonefarms.com/2010/08/chickens-round-3-pickup-august-21-23

Order here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-3

Skip the deposit, since the mail probably wouldn’t get to us in time.

Chicken errata

Lauren — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:10:29 +0000

Our second batch of chickens for this year went smoothly last weekend. It was a small batch and we had some enthusiastic helpers. I even had enough energy to go to the show (the New Pornographers) that I had tickets to in Seattle that same night!

Two things that may or may not have happened:

A bag of chicken kidneys was set aside for one of our more adventurous helpers. This may have been handed out to a customer instead of a bag of giblets! Our giblets baggies include heart, liver, and gizzard, and not usually kidneys. In any case it isn’t meant to be just kidneys. Apologies if you received this! Please feel free to enjoy them or bring them back to me (probably put them in the freezer at this point) and you can get extra giblets next time.
I thought I counted three birds with limbs damaged in processing — one broken wing and two broken legs. We put them in to chill with the others, intending to mark the packaging to indicate that they were damaged. After the birds were all packaged up, though, we found only one broken wing and one broken leg indicated on the bagged birds. But I might have counted wrong and there may not have been 2 broken legs. So, there may or may not have been a chicken with a broken leg that was distributed like a whole one. If you got this broken chicken unknowingly, let us know and we’ll hook you up with a discount next time.

We’re getting some good feedback, which is really gratifying — thanks to all our customers! We love to hear from you and we’d like to hear the constructive criticism as well as the “OMG nom”s and the delicious recipes.

We’ll be at market at least once for this next batch of chickens, as well as taking signups online as usual (form’s not ready yet, but it’ll be soon). We may also have a signup sheet at the farm stand on Day Road. Stay tuned for more info.

Chickens, round 2

Lauren — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:44:54 +0000

Our first batch of chickens this year went pretty well. We didn’t lose very many of them, and they had a good and uneventful life. Processing went smoothly too, once we resolved three different electrical issues (wrong extension cord = another trip to Lumberman’s; tankless hot water heater not working = trip home for a bucket with a spigot; fuses blowing at the house = trips back and forth to flip the breakers).

That batch of 75 birds all got claimed by existing customers, blog readers, or via word-of-mouth, so that was nice too — less work for us to market them!

Coming up soon here we have another smaller batch. These guys are the ones that the raccoons got into when they were still at home, so the flock is small. We will take reservations for about 35 chickens, then a waiting list beyond that. Eight are already claimed, so get your name in soon if you want chickens! They will be ready on July 31.

Sign up for this batch here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-2. Don’t forget that the WSDA requires you to pick them up from us within 48 hours of processing — so you’ll need to be around on the 31st or Aug 1-2 for pickup.

Unless we sell out more quickly than I expect, I’ll be down at the farmers’ market next week (the 24th) taking reservations and meeting new customers. You can bring deposits to me there, if you like.

As always, thanks for your support!

First batch of chickens – reserve now for early July pickup!

Lauren — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 05:47:47 +0000

** UPDATE! 7/22 **
While most of the details here are still correct, this batch of chickens is long gone. We’re now accepting orders for the second batch. Sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-2.
This batch will be ready July 31. The rest of the logistics as described below still apply.

We are now accepting reservations for our first batch of chickens! Sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-1.

We are aiming for these chickens to be ready the second weekend of July, the 10th-11th. They are pastured this year at Day Road/Suyematsu Farm, home of Laughing Crow Farm, the Bainbridge Island Winery, and more. For now, we will take reservations for approximately 60 birds out of a flock of 75. We opened signups to our notification list subscribers first, so there are about 25 left unclaimed. (Subscribe here for priority notification next time!)

For your reference when ordering, we will have at least two more batches of 60-75 birds, approximately 4 weeks apart. So you can expect to be able to order more in about a month.

The cost will be $5 per pound total, with a $5 deposit per bird, to be paid when you reserve them, to cover initial feed costs. This deposit will be deducted from your total when you pick them up.

Most of the details are the same as last year:

We are raising a breed of chickens that is developed from French and Amish heritage breeds: “Freedom Rangers” from JM Hatchery.
The chickens are fed Certified Organic grains grown in Canada, and the pasture is untreated.
The WSDA permit that applies to farms of our size requires that the end consumer (you) pick up the birds on farm within 48 hours of processing. If you can’t make it in person, you can have someone else pick them up for you.
Orders will be allocated first-come, first-served. We will take reservations for fewer chickens than we have in each batch, in case of flock loss. This batch consists of 75 chickens, so we’ll take orders for 55 to start with, and keep a waiting list after that. Folks on the waiting list are likely to be able to get chickens.
In the unfortunate, and (we hope) unlikely case of significant flock loss, the last to sign up will be the first to have their deposits refunded and their orders canceled, and our sincere apologies — and priority ordering on the next batch.
We will also likely have “factory seconds” available for less — as a result of errors in processing, these may have broken wings or legs, or need to be skinned, or otherwise be cosmetically damaged but perfectly safe and delicious. Please let us know if you would like to be on the list for these!

More info about our chickens and the ordering process is available on our About our Freedom Ranger Chickens (formerly called Colored Range chickens) page.

New this year: Your order will not be considered finalized until we receive a deposit from you! You can send a check for $5 per bird to the address listed on the signup form. If you prefer to pay with cash, or in person, or via trade, or some other alternative arrangement, let us know and we can work it out.

Reserve your chickens here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-1

Please feel free to let interested friends & family know. And as always, please contact us with any questions, comments, concerns, or ideas, or just to say hi — we love to hear from you!

Pigs

Lauren — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:08:00 +0000

While working from home this afternoon, I realized that since it’s dark when I get home on weeknights, today was my last chance to go meet our pig — they are scheduled to meet Farmer George, the butcher, sometime on Saturday. So we called up Rolling Bay Farm, got directions and went on by to scritch their backs. (I wanted to pat their heads but she said that was not a very good idea.)

They seemed happy and came up to the gate to say hi. We got a stick and scritched backs while they all jostled for places by the fence (including one or more who seemed to be trying to eat the fence). They wiggled their noses through the fence at us and I was surprised to note it was hard to restrain myself from touching them! I kept looking at their soft-looking pink noses and wanting to poke them, just a tiny bit, but then remembering how much I like having fingertips.

laurenipsum’s Pigs photoset
www.flickr.com

Next time I see these pigs they will be all cut and wrapped and ready for the freezer or smoker. Thanks, pigs! Thanks, farmers Adrienne and Mark!

Dark Days week 6: Solstice

Lauren — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:10:58 +0000

I was home not-quite-sick-but-not-great on Monday, the solstice, so we built a big fire in the fireplace and did our Solstice stockings at noon instead of after work as planned. And we cooked all day, which is what really makes it a holiday, I think.

Our pretty Blue Slate hen turkey met an untimely end back in October, about four weeks ahead of schedule, when she got over the fence into the neighbor dogs’ yard. Poor girl. They didn’t kill her, but we had to. Wanting to make the best of it, we were able to salvage about 3/4 of the meat, only discarding the portions with puncture wounds and bleeding.

After also checking Julia, Bittman, and some butchery books we have around, I consulted the one with the best photos — The River Cottage Meat Book — for info on breaking down a bird, since it’s not something I’m very good at. I’m the Evisceratrix, but a carver I am not. At the same time, also in the Meat book, I noticed the author suggested using turkey legs to make coq au vin rather than a, well, coq. So when I bagged up Poor Girl, I set aside the legs, thighs and drumsticks still connected, in their own bag, ready to be coqauvinified.

We started by cubing and frying Garth’s home-cured bacon, made of Skagit River Ranch pork belly. Removed that from the pan and added one chopped shallot, organically grown by Alvarez Farm just outside of the 150 mile range, over near Yakima. Removed the shallot and then pan fried the turkey legs, separated into thighs and drumsticks, which we’d lightly rolled in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

And then! We have hit a milestone in our cooking lives! We added a quarter cup of vermouth (it called for brandy, but we had none) and lit it on fire, on purpose! It was neat. Whoosh! Then chicken and vermouth were removed, and wine went in to deglaze, and then some stock. The whole mess — bacon, shallot, and turkey legs, plus chopped homegrown carrot, thyme, rosemary, parsley, and market bay leaves, and homegrown and -canned tomatoes went in to the pan. At that point it just simmered in a 250° oven until the turkey was fally aparty — a couple of hours at least. Then we put it back on the burner, removed all the solids from the broth, and added some butter and a couple pinches of flour and whisked to make a thick, delicious gravy.

I also made some quick oven fries from Yukon Golds grown by farmer Laura at the Soup Garden here on Bainbridge — just toss the cut potatoes with some oil, salt, pepper, and minced garlic (Laughing Crow, as usual). If the fries are accompanying burgers or something less rich and flavorful than coq au vin, I often also add ground cumin and cayenne. I cook them at about 425° until the fattest fry is cooked all the way through.

Coq au vin and oven fries, garnished with homegrown parsley, and served with island-grown and -produced wine, made for a fantastic Solstice meal and celebration of the past year and the year to come with the returning light.

Homegrown: turkey, carrots, tomatoes, parsley, rosemary, thyme
Bainbridge Island farms & market: garlic, potatoes, bay, drinking wine
Local-ish: shallot (Alvarez)
Organic: butter (Organic Valley)
Unknown: the usual (salt pepper oil), cooking wine (from somewhere in France), vermouth

Dark Days Week 1: Roast duck, pan-roasted potatoes with leeks, and sautéed kale with garlic

Lauren — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:56:32 +0000

So we grew some ducks starting in August, and since the day we placed the order I have been talking about how I have never cooked duck. Today I started learning to cook duck.

This engaged most (but not all) of our cast iron pans. Potatoes & leeks in the front; kale with garlic; duck. Also, I need to learn to use my shiny new camera, so I can stop using my tiny, crappy point&shoot. Also, pictures of shiny things (like potatoes in duck fat) are hard.

Went with simplicity today; though duck is not on most folks’ regular rotation, we have several to last us the winter and we figured now is the time to learn about it. We roasted it very simply with just salt and pepper. I used a baster to suck up the duck fat to pan-roast the homegrown Swedish Peanut (we think) potatoes with farmers’ market leeks, and to sauté the homegrown Lacinato and Red Russian kale with homegrown garlic (variety lost to history). All the preparation methods were simple, easy, and comforting. The potatoes turned out to be fantastic, and the kale too, though a bit greasy (I didn’t want it to burn to I put too much fat). The duck was very tasty, though a bit overcooked (my fault).

Conclusion: Yum.

Homegrown: duck; potatoes; garlic; kale.
Local: leeks (Peresphone Farms, Indianola)
Regional (150-mile): wine (Snoqualmie Vineyards)
Origin unknown: salt, pepper as usual.

Lessons: I overcooked the duck a bit. Live and learn. Also, we might not like duck skin — handy, as is a BIG pain to pluck them. If we can skin them in the future instead of plucking, that would be nice. Don’t put so much fat on the kale (I do this when I’m cooking with olive oil too).

On broilers, or, Thank you, chickens

Lauren — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:36:40 +0000

So, we really dropped the ball on keeping everyone updated on the broiler chickens via the website. We really intended to, but it turned out that 150 chickens took up kind of a lot of time. So, here’s a retrospective of their lives …

The chickens (affectionately known as nuggets) moved to pasture the last weekend of September, just before the TWL Harvest Fair. Thousands of people attend the Harvest Fair so the chickens had a busy first day, and it seemed we prompted a lot of family conversations about where meat comes from (which I think is good). From there, we moved the tractors the hill towards the top, then over towards the orchard, then back down into some extra-delicious juicy green grass, then sideways towards the cropland area — basically in a big rectangle to avoid some trees and some really hilly areas.

By the time we got back to our starting point, about 6 weeks later, and looked at the path up the hill that we had already grazed, we realized that the grass where the chickens had been (scratching, pooping, scratching, eating, pooping) was greener, thicker, and taller than the paths we had left between the tractors. Part of the reason we do chickens in tractors — aside from the extremely important fact that it’s the most humane, safest way for the chickens to spend their lives — is the soil improvement that comes with rotating poultry through a pasture. It was really gratifying to see it in practice. We were able to re-graze them on the land they had already passed through because the soil and grass had improved so much.

One of the first times we moved them, shortly after the Harvest Fair, I noticed one chicken with some sort of morsel that he had just found, and everyone else was chasing him around to try to get it. Kids at the Harvest Fair had been running around with balloons and I heard several of them pop, so I went in to chase him around to try to get it, too, to verify that it wasn’t balloon. It was a little salamander or newt. I felt sorry for the little guy but he was already beyond help, so I left the birds to finish their game of keep-away.

Never let anyone tell you chickens are naturally vegetarian. If you see “vegetarian” on the egg carton, you know those hens were never outside.

It only took a couple of days for them to realize that when we started pulling the tractors forward, instead of running away from us (towards the back), they should run forward to the nice fresh grass that we were dragging them towards. Chickens love grass.

We lost a few of them here and there, a couple for reasons we could identify (ate too much) and a couple we couldn’t. We had one bad day when the biggest tractor blew down the hill and ran over a couple of guys partway, leaving them pinned under the end — one was gimpy but still getting around OK enough to not let us catch him easily, so we left him; the other had a broken wing and a pretty mangled leg. He was big enough to keep so we processed him and were able to keep all the meat except the bad leg and wing. Poor guy.

This weekend we processed everyone who was left, minus the one little girl who was too small and cute to process, who we will keep until she gets bigger or starts laying. We had lots of helpers (though many novices — not like we’re experts!) and we processed all day Saturday and Sunday. By midday on Saturday we got into a rhythm and everyone was pretty comfortable doing all the jobs, so we were able to take breaks and work in shifts and move around between stations for some variety. It was great to see customers again — lots of people were really excited — and to hear about how folks are going to cook them. Lots of barbecue and roasting (my favorite), and some folks with Romertopfs, plus some recipes that might get me eating liver yet … breaded and fried; sauteed; pâté …

It certainly doesn’t make for a good day, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s a day of completeness. It’s thanksgiving all the time on the farm.

Thank you, chickens.

Seriously, this is just getting ridiculous.

Lauren — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:33:48 +0000

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.

Things that are new!

Lauren — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:01:06 +0000

Here are some things that are new this year!

Blueberries are … berrying, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

This year we are allowed to let our blueberries set fruit. We won’t get much, but I’m excited!

The Wyandottes are learning about the world, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Our Wyandottes are fifteen weeks old, and all grown up! They are starting to venture out of the coop when we open it up to let them out. They have discovered they love the grass and the sun.

Crimson-flowered fava beans!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

I sprouted these beans in a dish of water, which worked beautifully, and then I waited too long to plant them and I didn’t think any of them came up. I was sad. But then I noticed these lovely flowers! I know the replacement beans we got didn’t have beautiful red flowers, so I was very happy to know that I hadn’t killed the first batch.

Chive blossoms with honeybee, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

The chives overwintered, though I thought they hadn’t, and now they have beautiful purple blooms that the bees love.

This week we got the first batches of chicks and turkey poults (babies) that we will raise for meat and ultimately slaughter. They are awful cute but I am fairly confident that we will be able to dispatch them when it comes time.

Faceplant turkey faceplants, and narcissist turkey examines self in mirror, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

The turkeys, pictured here on their first day home, are so funny. The yellowish one in the front has learned about reflections!

Our first batch of meat chickens arrived on Friday, and Garth took this lovely video of the box before opening it. Starring: Ruby dog; box of peepers.

SQUEAMISH VEGETARIANS may not want to proceed — there are some non-graphic, at-a-distance pictures of chicken slaughter day below.

Laura at (not so) Urban Hennery raises a flock of chicks a couple times a year, and before ordering chicks she puts out a call to interested folks who can claim a few chicks. The deal is, you pay some deposit money for feed, and then you come help out on slaughter day too, and at the end pay a total for average weight minus the deposit you paid. It works pretty well. Slaughter day was this weekend, and pictures are below.

Kimberly, Jessi, and Megera at the eviscerating table, with Laura instructing and Garth lurking in the background, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

This weekend, we went up to Arlington to help slaughter some chickens that were raised by Laura. I did a lot of gutting, but I took a break to take a photo.

The guys are plucking chickens, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

While we were gutting and finishing up, the guys were plucking and queuing up birds for us.

Phew! We’ve been busy.

2009 Senate Bill 5350 (Special permit provisions for poultry slaughter, preparation, and care) passes!

garth — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:31:28 +0000

Good news, everyone! Senate Bill 5350 passed in Washington state. What does this mean? Simple. Previously, it was legal to process chickens on-farm and sell them directly to customers on the farm premises without hiring a WSDA approved slaughterhouse. Thanks to the passage of this bill, the exemption is now extended to all poultry. This is great news for people that want to buy a turkey or a duck directly from a farmer. From talking to the friends and family for whom we’re raising a test batch of six turkeys this year, I can tell you that there are a tremendous number of people who want to buy poultry raised cleanly and humanely on a small farm and who are willing to pay extra for it. Prior to this, there was no way for us to legally sell farm-slaughtered non-chicken poultry to people. Frustrating.

This is a great, common sense piece of legislation because, if small-scale chicken operations don’t require WSDA inspection, why should other poultry? Conversely, if other small poultry require inspection, why don’t chickens? It’s just inconsistent. The only reason I can think of is that, when the legislation granting the exemption was originally written, they simply overlooked other meat birds. This has now been corrected. Our regulatory apparatus for food is seriously and epically flawed–I won’t argue that–but this is yet another example of how I’m seeing our state-level regulatory bodies doing a great job of improving things.

So, if you want a turkey or a duck or a goose for the holidays, let us know. We’ll see if we can raise one (humanely, happily, cleanly, and deliciously) for you. It’s legal now!

On a similar note, I posted another rant about regulations here at the Civil Eats food policy blog. I’m kind of pleased with it so I’ve reproduced it below.

“As a farmer and an eater, I believe very strongly in regulation. I just believe in good regulation.

Despite the poorly written and ill-conceived regulation that are coming out at the (usually) federal level, there are some bright spots in food safety. One example with which I’m familiar is the Washington State Department of Agriculture who, from the ground up, are coming up with some very sane regulations that both ensure safety more effectively (in my opinion) and are more small-farm-friendly than the cumbersome and prescriptive regulations that we love to complain about.

For example, at a Tilth Producers conference a couple of years ago I attended a session on small dairy certification hosted by a farmer and a representative of the WSDA. The farmer indicated that one of the challenges of certification in Washington is that the regulations specify *results*, not methods. It’s left to the farmer to figure out how to meet sanitation goals, not how to pay for the specified equipment. As an eater, I don’t care how far the domestic animals are from my greens, I care that the result of the handling is food free of contamination. A small farmer can spare the attention to detail to manage handling as intensively as a small farmer must manage production.

An example of WSDA’s sane approach to regulation is that, when a farmer found the requirement for a commercial dishwasher too onerous, he was able to demonstrate to the local inspector that a consumer model dishwasher offered the same results as the commercial dishwasher at a fraction of the cost. Thus, the inspector was (rightly) satisfied, the farmer was able to produce dairy at the appropriate scale, and the consumer was assured of a clean and wholesome product thanks to the active, critical, and results-oriented involvement of the agency as well as the diligence of the farmer in researching the problem instead of being forced to focus on regulations.”

Remember folks, good government matters and small changes can make a very big difference on the local level.

In Which Birds Become Food

garth — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:06:22 +0000

So in response to Monday’s semi-cryptic post, the full story is that Monday I went over to Shannon’s (of Red Barn Farm) place and helped her process the batch of birds from which we’d purchased a half-dozen a few weeks before. I emailed to see if we could help with the processing and the answer was an enthusiastic yes. So I took a few days off and, with a certain amount of trepidation, drove over to the peninsula to dispatch some birds.

We set up a processing line under the guidance of Nikki of Pheasant Fields Farm. Nikki also supplied a mess of equipment and a neato keano eviscerating table. Eviscerating tables are awesome. It’s just a seamless stainless steel table with a hole in the middle you can use to wash away… let’s go with “material.” My contribution was enthusiasm and a Granton boning knife.

The transition from animal to food was surprisingly quick, I’m relieved to say. Processing chickens is an unpleasant and pretty distasteful chore, but it does not entail either cruelty or untoward angst.

Some things that I’d recommend for processing chickens:

1) Wear rubber boots. There is a lot of water sloshing around.
2) Bring more ice than you think you’ll need.
3) Bring more cutting boards than you think you’ll need.
4) Sharp knives. More humane, less work, safer.
5) Bring pliers for plucking feathers. The plucker won’t get everything.