100% Pasture Raised Angus Beef, coming right up!

8 families: 1 cow begins!

I am the luckiest girl in the world right now. My boss has a 100% pasture raised Black Angus cow for me that's ready in a month! Wohoo!!!! Just in time for burgers on the grill. My freezer was getting super low on beef and I'm really happy to pick back up with some amazing grass fed beef again.

So we now have beef shares available.

8 families: 1 cow is our way of splitting up the whole beef into manageable portions that will fit into regular sized freezers and give you access to some locally grown, lean, pasture raised beef. The beef will be ready in a month and I'll bring it back here to the park and split it up equally between 8 shares. Each beef share will have a representative sample of the whole cow including some roasts, stew meat, burgers, soup bones, and steaks.

Shares are reserved when payment is received and spots do fill up fast. I'm not sure when I'm going to have another beef ready so let me know if you want in.

What the heck and I doing behing a computer on this beautiful day. I've got to get out and get planting! We're so far behind. What a totally weird spring, but CSA members --- prepare for a super bountiful fruit harvest this year. The plums actually made it and the apples and pears didn't get nipped with that frost either. Wow. I've got gooseberry plants to get in the ground now and potatoes and beans and cucumbers and tomato plants and and and......

Hope everyone is having a wonderful spring. I'm dancing around thinking about sunshine and fresh beef and a very happy growing season this year. Wohoo!

love the dandelions

So it's been a lazy Sunday after a very enjoyable, but busy Saturday. I uncovered the carrots to see how many sprouted, kicked a couple chickens out of the greenhouse as they love laying eggs in there all the sudden, and went back to bed after waking up at 6am to put the sheep in out of the rain. It's raining again.... What a crazy spring where not much is in the ground yet. And I just looked at the calendar and it's MAY 1st!!!!!!

Whoa. Goodbye April showers, right. Right?

I had a fun time at the plant sale yesterday. I really enjoy my customers and I continually am amazed at the variety of really cool people around here that come out. I guess I just forget that sometimes as I'm either staring at sheep with Jason or in my own little world at the vineyard with the only human interaction being at the grocery store with people buying mass quantities of tv dinners standing under fluorescent lights. Feels really detached to me so it's nice to see people coming out and trying to grow their own food and get back into contact with the dirt. Kudos, Massillon.... & Canton & Akron too.

Anyway, I've got a nice list of flowers for the Mother's day plant sale next Saturday. I'm drinking some nice herbal tea with local honey in it right now and contemplating trying some buckwheat recipes. I have some mushrooms sprouting from a maple log in the orchard that are really enjoying this weather. Everything else is a bit tired of it though.
I don't mind it. It's spring time in Ohio. The dandelions are up and are beautiful as always. Everything is starting to grow, the apple blossoms are bursting, and I think I can finally say winter is over, I hope.

I'm grabbing my digger and planting up some sweet peas and calendula now and seeing what the sheep are up to.  Tshirt weather!

plum blooms.

 This has got to be one of the latest that the plums have bloomed in years. It's the end of April already. They usually burst the first warm weekend in March and then get frosted or I try to cover them with sheets or put heaters under them only for them to get frosted anyway. So we might have a plum harvest this year. These are the Japanese plums with the light delicate flavor... which of course makes them marginally hardy. The hardy American prune plums bloom much later, but I don't think are as quite deliciously sweet.

And lambing season is now officially done. Every ewe had a successful lamb this year. Wohoo! 100% A plus ladies! And they are all healthy and growing like weeds. Which of course means either selling them now or putting up more fencing. 14 lambs total this year!!!!

I'm sketching out my new meat share plan called 8 families, 1 cow. If you're interested, just let me know. I'm super excited to try out new types of cows for the best flavor and the grass is greening up really well... although it is still quite wet. Nothing like a big animal on soft ground to make ankle breaking holes. Maybe I should just stick to sheep - they aerate the soil while fertilizing. My grass is always the first to green up in the spring. Must be all the poop. :)

I've been potting up my fruits for the first plant sale. It's going to be light to start out with the first Saturday, threat of frost is still pretty prevalent. Just the hardy herbs and small fruits including cranberries, blueberries, strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, and thornfree blackberries.
The next Saturday, May 7th is going to be a mothers day plant sale with blooming baskets, annuals, herbs, and some heirloom tomatoes.
May 14th is going to be the big plant sale with all the veggies. It's about the date of the last frost in the area so we'll have everything from squash to peppers to herbs to edible flowers. We'll have the baby lambs out and some peeps too for the kids to play with. I also found a local organic farm that makes flour for all those bread bakers out there. Let me know if there's a particular type you like and I'll make sure I have it.

The magnolias are coming out, the hyacinth are joining the daffodils in bloom and the 10 day forecast isn't showing any cold snaps below freezing any time soon. On the down side, it's been raining hard and the ground is totally soaked so the only thing I have coming up are some peas we put in a couple of months ago and last winters crop of spinach, kale, and lettuce is coming back. I hope things dry out for a big planting weekend. I'm sick of tripping over the hundred pounds of seed potatoes in my living room. Let's get this planting party started.

My first truck

I've always been a sensible car girl. In high school, I found this beautiful little silver Buick Skyhawk from a little old lady that drove it 2 miles a week to the store and back and that's it. Funny to find a car that's 10 years old with only 30,000 miles on it, but it got me the 250 miles to college and back for holidays and summers quite well, until it started deciding to slowly die. After an hour stretch of highway driving, any stop would make it sputter out and die, refusing to start for the next 15-20 minutes, much to the dismay of those behind me on the toll turnpike. I learned that if I just slow down and throw the exact change out the window as I crept by, I could delay the stall until after I was through the toll booth and just sit on the shoulder for awhile while the little Buick bird would cool off.
When that beauty finally kicked the bucket, I got a nice sensible green Honda and beat the crap out of it. Road trips were no worry for my little four door and although everything else broke like the power locks, the windshield wipers, odometer, a few of the windows, and the kicker- the speedometer stopped working (I was in a constant state of non-speeding just to be safe)  it drove just fine to North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Michigan... anywhere I wanted to go. Until one trip gave it a jolt and an out of town mechanic deemed it doomed.

I was quite devastated as it's pretty well right when you have no money in your account that something like this happens. So I hopped on craigslist with my $600 out of my account looking for something cheap. Note, I just said something cheap, not something reliable or fuel efficient, not taking into account that my commute to work is 70 miles per day.
It seemed logical then that instead of hauling one bale of hay at a time in the backseat of my Honda while my hay fever allergies made misty eyed driving nearly impossible, I should just purchase a truck. That would also eliminate those funny looks when purchasing animals only to shove them into the backseat and drive away really fast, hoping they would stop ramming the windows once we got on the road. Or the overwhelming laughter when going through a drive through with a dog in the front and two sheep in the back. And what can you really get with $600 anyway.

In true Janee fashion, I bought the first truck I looked at. I needed something to drive to work the next day. Little did I know that the vehicle I purchased was from someone with a drug problem who was really good at lying. I took me a week to hunt him down to get the title and the ignition key didn't really work, but the truck was advertised as having AC that blows ice cold and heat that really works. Approaching winter, I found out that for certain one of those was not true at all... unless he meant to say that the heat blows ice cold.
But I had a truck and I picked up feed and bought every cheap goat and chicken I could find on craigslist because now it wouldn't stink up my car for a week.
Shortly after my happy purchase I had to take a trip up to the other side of Michigan and was still in the honeymoon phase of truck ownership and decided that it was the right vehicle for the job.

I had a flashback to my little Buick stalling at the toll booth because as I pulled my truck up to get my toll ticket in a snow storm, the window got stuck down.
Window down, no heat. Awesome.
But it wasn't until I got to the other side of Michigan that the brakes stopped working. Downshifting in a city SUCKS!!!!! The shoes on the back were super rusted and would either be in the -nonstopping- position or the -deadstopped- position. And my drivers side door was either stuck open or stuck shut. I pried the window into a manageable position to keep the snow at least 50% off of me and I bought a blanket at Meijer to try to stave off the cold. By this time, chicken shit in the backseat and hay fever sounded really nice.

After I got home, whiteknuckled the whole way, I got the brakes fixed and got the drivers side door and window bolted shut. I got in on the passenger side and all was well, except that v6 engine was sucking me dry and the bed was so rusted out that only the bedliner was holding it together, which meant I could haul absolutely nothing with it. I'm not saying that I didn't try, but every time I did, the rusted out back shocks would pinch my wires and cause my brake lights, headlights, radio, and/or turn signals to short out. Yeah, quite a peach... but according to the craigslist post the AC blows ice cold! Yeah, not even that worked.

The final kick in the pants, the finishing blow wasn't with the intermittent lights that would work when the felt like it or not being able to use the drivers side window or having to crawl over the seat through the passenger door or not being able to actually put anything in the bed... nope, I could deal with all that kinda. But the final kick in the pants was when the bumper rusted off so much that my license plate fell off somewhere along the way.
Oh crap. I was not going to pay for new tags and new plates for this heap of junk.
So back to craigslist I went, only I didn't post that the AC blows ice cold or that the heat actually works or that the muffler isn't rusted off. I told the truth and posted it for parts, which there are still some ok parts even though the engine kinda leaks oil and I'm not sure where from, but maybe someone would want the... um, I don't know, windshield wipers. Those still worked, kinda. I threw it up there for cheap with no lies and my phone blew up with calls. Are these people crazy?! Seriously this truck is a heap of junk. Within less than an hour, I had a guy out here salivating over this super cheap truck and his only question was "does it run" to which I was like yeah, it runs but.......................................... long list of problems. That didn't phase him. He wanted to take it home right away.
But I couldn't find the title. This is officially the truck from hell. I can't wait to get rid of it.

So moral of the story is, you get what you pay for with a truck. And poor people always get shit on. That too. If you don't have money for a decent car, you'll end up with even less money after purchasing a cheap car. 18 mpg = my 70 mile per day commute would take almost 4 gallons of gas. Times 5 days a week is 20 gallons of gas per week. Even when it was cheap at say $3.25 a gallon, I was spending at least $65 in gas just to get to work. Not to mention the environmentalist voice was quietly whispering ---nooooooooo-- every time I started it up. For that small of a truck, it should not be that much of a gas hog.

Oh Chevy, what have you done.

 Car/truck shopping again. I did loooove having a truck when it actually worked, and I hear back in the 80s, Toyota made a 28mpg little truck. Or Volkswagon made a 45 mpg diesel little truck.
Until then, I swear I'm going to save up more money before I make a purchase.

Barren Ewe.... not so barren

Spring lambing is in full swing now and our cute little black and white Jacob ram has brought amazingly cute little spots into our flock.

This morning I got quite a surprise from my first ewe I ever got, who I thought was barren because I've had her for years with a few different rams and she's never given me a lamb. Well, this morning, she gave me quite a shock as she looked to be giving birth. I thought -no way, she's just faking it- but lo and behold, an hour later I found the most long, lanky, leggy lamb shivering beside her as she cleaned it off and encouraged it to milk. Well I'll be. I just had to threaten her with the potential auction future she had in store unless she began earning her weight in feed.

Lambs are born and immediately after all the labor of, well, labor, the lamb stands up right away and starts looking for it's first meal. Geez, having kids is tough.

Now I've got two sets of twins from my Icelandic crosses (here's a nice family photo) and two single lambs from two other mothers. Four more ewes that haven't had lambs yet to go and one goat left this year. Babies are all cute, happy, healthy and just starting to play and jump around.

Ordering my meat bird chicks today. I've got several orders for heritage breed turkeys in already along with some quail in a brooder and also some slow grown meat birds as well. Should be interesting to see what's in my crock pot this fall.

I'm still having one heck of a time securing a beef cow. They're so expensive! Good for the farmers, bad for the people like me trying to buy them. Oh well, corn prices are on the rise... it's going to be a weird year.

Second greenhouse is almost up. Recycled sliding glass doors form three walls and now I'm just looking for some windows and a door to finish out the front. I'm hunting down some materials to make the tables and after this cold snap of 19 degree nights, I'm ready to move into April. I have hundreds of Ginkgo trees just starting to bud out. The sap has not been running yet for the final maple syrup boil, but I still check the trees quite regularly. My house still reeks of fish emulsion, but at least the little seedlings look happy to get some food... even if it makes me lose my appetite.

In other good news, my most recent foster dog, Ruby, just found a new home. Go Ruby! Wohoo! They really seem to like her and I'm glad, as we struggled through the kennel cough she came here with, and the affinity for playing in the road. I'm both sad to see her go and happy that her new family will give her plenty of love and attention, which is what she really needs. I'm also happy to report that no chickens were harmed in the training of this dog. :)

Let's go spring! I'm ready for April!

Sugar vs ????

LAMBS!!!!! LAMBS!

Despite the March mud and snow storms, our little Olive gave birth to twins. Beautiful little lambs that were born from our sweet Olive, who we bottle fed a few years ago to make the sweetest ewe that would just hop into my car, happy to go for rides. The father was one of our lambs from last year, the first lamb that was born here, actually. I like crossing different breeds of sheep and selecting out the ones that don't require chemical wormers and grow big and fat on pasture with low maintenance. I found it by crossing a Jacob with an Icelandic. And then last year I got a Painted Desert ram and crossed that in there and then crossed that with Olive... who I got from a little amish lady with unknown parentage, but she's happy and healthy and has been a great ewe for us.

So I will spare you all the genetics of coloration as I still have no idea how it works, but we got a beautiful little white girl lamb and this amazingly spotted, panda looking girl lamb. So cute! Thanks Marty for the picture.

In other news, I just let out a very happy sigh a few days ago. The pork fiasco has officially ended. Sigh of relief. No more pigs, just a freezer full of chops, hams, and pork steaks. Oh, and plenty of lard because those pigs were HUGE by the time I happily said goodbye to them.
So now we're having roasts from our own cow, bacon from our own pigs, and life is pretty good. I still have a few meat share lose ends to tie up, but overall for the first year I think it turned out alright. Meat share members - any feedback would be helpful, good or bad. I'm still debating on doing it again this year. Eh, we'll see.

Anyway, I've been having a terrible personal struggle as of late. Fact is, I love sweet things. I am quite ashamed at my affection for soda so I've been trying to kick the habit.

I started by just avoiding things with corn syrup. Notably because despite those "sugar is sugar" ads touting "corn sugar" as being the same as regular sugar, it is not. It's high fructose corn syrup where fructose is processed differently than real sugar and interferes with copper metabolism, causing our connective tissues and collagens to not form correctly. This leads to flabby, soft bellies, weak arteries, fragile bones, high cholesterol, fatty liver disease, and heart attacks. Mmm, want a coke?

So Pepsi now makes a product with "real sugar" now. Great, right? Actually, their "real sugar" doesn't actually have to come from a sugar cane, but rather a sugar beet... and more probable than not, a GMO sugar beet.
Sugar is sugar though, right? So I probably shouldn't have looked into what GMOs really are and what they do inside our systems. It's about 80% of the soybeans produced and put in our food supply (not labeled, of course) and all that delicious high fructose corn syrup, yup, that's most likely genetically modified. And here in America, we don't have GMO labeling.... yet.

Here is a good article on GMOs.

So I'm starting to feel a bit paranoid. I have a sweet tooth. Sugar is out. Corn syrup is definitely out. And I'm not about ready to start putting aspartame in everything to trick my brain into thinking something is sweet. AGH!

It's about this time that I'm hanging my head low, sick of reading the packages on the foods I used to eat because they are "generally recognized as safe" (can a company put out a product and be innocent until proven guilty if it doesn't even test to see if it's safe?) and I'm starting to feel like there's nothing good. So I go to work with my mind just reeling about what to do when my boss pulls me aside to show me his maple syrup boiling system.
It's awesome. Right about now, the sap is running and he's got milk jugs on a stand of maple trees next to his field. He collects twice a day when the sap is running and puts it into kegs where he then boils it outside, evaporating the water away to leave only the most delicious, sweet syrup. Not genetically modified! Yes!

I thought it was odd that he put maple syrup in his coffee, but that's what I'm drinking right now and I love it! I've been having maple syrup teas like crazy and I feel a million times better. Who knew a tree could be so sweet and I'm not supporting any corporation, except maybe the small company that made his sap boiler.

I'm happy now. I don't miss soda except for once and awhile at a gas station when the bright colored cans promise happier times, but that thought is fleeting and I'm quite happy with my maple tea because I know exactly what's in it.
I want to take a jar of syrup everywhere with me now. I'm looking forward to maple syrup lemonade in the heat of summer and watermelon maple smoothies (or daiquiris) and maybe some maple ginger rootbeer. Maybe I'll make some maple butter cookies. Mmm, I smell an entire cookbook coming soon. Recipes welcome. :)

Butcher Date

New date with the butcher - Saturday Feb 12th.

Which makes for a very nice Valentines day for me. I can't wait to get them gone. I can't wait for some hams.
I'm trying to look at the positive side of this experience. I got worried that maybe they were getting too old, but I found that this is the best timing for some really good bacon. They're very large and will probably have to get half hams to get them in any oven or roaster.

My favorite thing about raising pigs is delicious hamsteaks. Oh man.... breakfast, lunch or dinner, these things are amazing. It's just the right size to throw in a pan for some ham and eggs or put on a delicious ham panini with artichoke spread and fresh spinach with a ripe tomato, or thrown on the grill just until it gets those nice grill lines and put on the side of some fresh grilled veggies. Holdays and Sunday dinners are reserved for the big hams, but the ham steak makes every day dinners divine.

For all you meat share members out there salivating, it takes about 3 weeks for the smoked meats to be ready so as soon as I know it's ready, I'll let you all know. I wasn't too worried about freezer space with two cows as I quickly passed that on, but I am worried that I won't have enough freezer space for 4 giant pigs! To be sure, I'll pass it along as soon as I get it.

And it kinda worked out well having the meat share end in the winter time. I can't imagine having this much meat on a warm fall day and shuffling around to get it distributed as fast as possible. I really enjoyed spreading out the different cuts on frozen tables outside. It gave me something to do in the cold winter months.
I really need to work on my math though as I wondered why most farmers sell their beef by hanging weight - which is before the bones and fat are removed. Once you get down to it, a cow isn't as big as you might think, especially with 10 hungry meat share families. Lesson learned - hanging weight does not equal how much meat you get. Oh, and cows don't have nearly as many steaks as they should.

My morning is going well, I got a real stock trailer dropped off and the pigs are loading and unloading themselves with ease and coaxing of day old cherry pies and a warm bed of straw. I'm feeling much more at ease than three weeks ago, muscles are relaxing and sleep is back to normal... only one nightmare about pigs this week, which is really good. I almost checked myself into a mental ward after a terrifying night where I dreamed the pigs were downstairs in my house snorting and eating the walls, only to find that it was just a load snoring dog in real life. I kicked the dog off the bed and the pig dreams stopped.

I am starting to feel like I am almost caught up from last year. Almost. I still have my first batch of chickens going to replace the last years disaster.

So now I'm looking at this year fresh and here's some things I'd like to do --

Plant Sale - I had so much fun selling veggies to other locals who appreciate heirlooms and growing your own food. I'm starting in April with every Saturday open for a couple hours to sell veggie starts, herbs, unique small fruits, and free gardening advice. Open April to end of May

Local Honey and Maple Syrup - Along with selling plants, I found some honey and syrup from other local farms that I'll offer for sale. I sure as heck don't have the time to keep bees, even though I'd really like to, but I still love local honey. And I hate looking on the back of "pancake syrup" to see that it's all high fructose corn syrup (GMO) and a bunch of other chemicals. Nothing compares to the real thing and it's quite an Ohio pride item. We sure can't grow sugar cane, but we do have sugar maples!

Organic Grains - I'll be offering some locally grown, organic grains too for all you bread bakers out there. I think I'll start pretty basic with wheat and rye, but special orders are always welcome!

Smaller CSA - We're scaling back our CSA a little this year just to give our members extra attention. We only have a few spots left so email me if you want on the list. Spots are reserved by payment on first come, first serve. I've ordered tons of seeds this year, but I've come to terms with my work garden not producing as much as I'd have hoped last year and I'm adjusting our signups accordingly.

Meat Share? - I'm still debating on doing the meat share again. I loved my members this year and I would not have gotten my first cow if it hadn't been for the meat share. I learned a lot and might make some adjustments and offer it again in 2011. The pastured beef is really good and I want another cow this year as my freezer is almost empty already. As soon as I iron out the details and make a plan, I'll let you all know.

If anyone would like to stop out and help, we could always use an extra hand. I just keep thinking - in a month, we'll have another greenhouse up and the smell of mud will be so fresh under the melting compacted ice. Spring kids and lambs should be on their way soon and in no time, I'll be out putting up more fences, planting more strawberries, pruning the apple trees, and playing in the dirt. Let me know if you want in on any of this fun, ;)