Dropstone Farms » seasonal

Closure

Lauren — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 03:11:50 +0000

We’re eating the last of the stir fry made with the last of the year’s eggplants, and making basil with the almost-last of the basil (the last-last will go into green sauce (more or less like this). Thanks, summer (such as it was). Up next is a leek, kale, squash, and smoked salmon pasta dish — hello, fall.

First canning of the year!

Lauren — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 03:52:42 +0000

Three quarts of pickled asparagus, one with extra spicy.

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.

Dark Days Challenge: Prelude

Lauren — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:49:11 +0000

After at least one (maybe two?) years of thinking about it, and deciding it would be too hard, and wishing I had done it, I’ve finally signed up for Laura at Urban Hennery’s Dark Days Challenge. From November 15 – March 31, eat one meal a week that’s as SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical) as possible, then blog it. Laura will round them up weekly and we can all see what everyone else is eating, and get inspiration from each other. It’s extra hard in the winter, though it helps if you have been busy preserving all winter. We didn’t can nearly as much as I had hoped — it was a tough season in many ways, but we’re almost through — but there’s a lot of good stuff in the freezer and much still in the ground, plus our two easily-accessible year-round farmers’ markets to supply what we didn’t manage to grow ourselves (Brussels sprouts, parsnips).

Anyway — join us in the Dark Days Challenge! Sign up here, and let me know so we can commiserate in, like, February.

Diagonal dinner (halibut cheek with asparagus, garlic scapes, and fresh garden peas)

Lauren — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:04:18 +0000

Diagonal dinner (halibut cheek with asparagus, garlic scapes, and fresh garden peas), originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

In a hot pan with bacon grease, started before the fish went on, went minced shallot and sliced asparagus and garlic scapes. We put the fat asparagus stalk segments in first, to get more cooking time than the skinnier ones, the flower buds, and the scapes. Partway through I decided it should have peas so I ran out to pick several pods, which I dumped straight into the pan as I shelled them.

Halibut cheeks went into another pan with melted butter. We worked from this recipe for the ‘but cheeks, lightly breading them with flour with salt, pepper, a bit of cayenne, and paprika. These cheeks were HUGE and took longer to cook than that recipe; I only bought three at the fishmonger today, and we only ate the two smaller ones, one each. The other will make fish tacos for both of us. HUGE. For reference, we often cook up 6+ normal-sized cheeks to make tacos — they are usually much, much smaller.

After frying and removing the cheeks, I deglazed their pan with some vermouth, lemon juice, and water mixed together, reduced a bit, combined that with the veggies in their pan, and plated (I’m like Iron Chef!).

All in all, a very successful meal. We are happy to have more than one way to cook ‘but cheeks now — previously we have exclusively grilled and served as fresh soft tacos.

Happy Solstice!

Lauren — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:36:41 +0000

I couldn’t wait for the last holiday, but this one snuck up on me and I didn’t even prepare a holiday meal. All the same, we ate well, with ribeye steaks (we are using up the last of our cow from last year, in preparation for the new cow in a couple of weeks), and garlic scapes and spring onions, both from farmers at Pike Place Market, on the grill, as well as our current standard of plenty of salad with sliced radishes and fresh shelling peas.

I feel some stress about the fact that the year has peaked today; the garden is way behind and we are still not sure if we will do meat birds for sale and we have lots of lettuce but the tomatoes are still in pots in the greenhouse and and and … But we are doing OK. We are raising turkeys and a flock of 25 chickens for ourselves and our neighbors to eat, so we will be supplied with chicken for the winter. In spring I made a little spreadsheet to do the planting math for me, and it tells me that I still have 60-90 days of good growing season. So here’s hoping that the downhill side of summer is good and we have squash after all.

On redundancy

Lauren — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:27:56 +0000

The peas are coming in, and the mustard greens are flowering and covered with honeybees, and the beans are coming up, and the 100+ tomatoes have been potted up and are just waiting for ground to go into, and yet I haven’t been taking pictures. I took pictures of peas last year! This year’s pictures would be basically identical. Maybe I should take them anyway. I guess if we stopped talking about things that reoccur seasonally, we would run out of things to talk about very quickly. I love the cyclical nature of the farm, but it sure does make me a boring conversation partner.