Author Archives: jericacadman

Becoming an Eggspert Isn’t Easy

This Egg-ing Thing is Tough!

We’ve been raising laying chickens for going on 9 years now, and we find that the more we learn, the more there is to learn!

Early Lessons in Raising Eggs on Pasture

For example, one of the early lessons we learned is if you suddenly switch feeds on your hens, their bodies panic and they quit laying eggs and start making new feathers (aka molting) in case there’s going to be an extended food shortage.

Or if you buy baby hens (we call them pullets) with springtime as the target date for starting to lay, you’ll have eggs up to your ears, especially if it’s a mild spring. The thing is… so does everyone else—you can hardly GIVE an egg away! But by August when the weather turns really hot, there will be nothing!

So, learning from that experience one year, the next year you buy a batch of hens, aiming to have at peak production by July. Well, forget having eggs at Thanksgiving from those chickens! And they may or may not turn back on until springtime, so a backup plan is pretty necessary.

But it takes almost 6 months to get a chicken to laying age, and even the first few weeks of that, the eggs are teeeeny tiny as the hen’s system gears up to produce real, normal-size eggs.

Yep. In our extreme climate here in Texas, egg production is really unpredictable. No one can say what the weather will be up to 6 months down the road. Whether it will be a harsh, brutal winter or a mild one. A scorching, dry summer, or a lush, cool one. And for hens raised on pasture, it makes a big difference. And sometimes, here in Texas, those weather patterns come closer together than a body can reckon with!

She’s not getting older… she’s getting bigger!

Another interesting phenomenon is egg size as it relates to hen age. In general, during a hen’s life cycle, her eggs will gradually get larger as she gets older and puts on weight (it’s actually because her ovary—she only has one active one—grows larger as she ages). But there are seasonal effects, too. In winter, the hens tend to eat more feed to produce more body heat, and so their eggs will be larger. In the dead of summer, they drink a lot more water but eat less feed, so they will still lay large eggs, but fewer of them. In spring and fall, when there’s lots of grass and bugs to nibble, the eggs will tend to be smaller. Take a snapshot at any given time of year and of any given batch of hens, and you’ll see a wide variety in distribution of egg size.

Crazy, huh? Even crazier when you’re a direct-to-consumer farm and all the eggs you’ve got to sell are the ones your chickens are laying. To say it another way, if your hens are only laying very small or very large eggs… that’s all there is!

How does this all compare to a commercial egg operation?

A typical commercial egg farm might have around 7 million hens. They could collect 5,000,000 eggs or more PER DAY during the peak season. To put this into perspective… it would take us 57 years to produce as many eggs as they can produce at just one farm in one day!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being big, of course, but to do really-pasture-raised at that scale would be pretty doggone difficult. Theoretically it *could* be done. But most of us who are really-pasture-raising our hens are MUCH smaller operations.

It’s not that the giant egg farms don’t have to deal with these seasonal issues, although keeping the hens indoors can help keep the temperature and lighting much more uniform throughout the year (for better or worse…). I’m sure their hens still produce pullet-size eggs for a time, and some eggs are weird shapes, and some eggs are double-yolker jumbos and some have stains on the shells… But supermarket-shopping consumers never see these anomalies and extremes of production, so it seems as though they must never occur.

The reality is… when you’re THAT BIG, you have access to a wider variety of markets. If your eggs are too small or too big, you can sell to the liquid egg/dried egg/processed food market. If your eggs are not Grade A (like if the shells are misshapen or have stains), you can sell to institutions like cafeterias, delis, restaurants, food distributors, etc. If your eggs have cracks, there are special markets for salvaging those. Those of us who sell direct really can only sell premium eggs in common sizes. It’s really hard to sell pullet-size and jumbo-size to the average customer.

If you’re a small fry like us, but bigger than just a backyard farm, you produce too many “weird” eggs to eat yourself, especially during those transition phases, which are amplified when the hens are having to deal with real weather patterns. So you have to come up with strategies to try to balance things. But sometimes nature is unpredictable, and there are LOTS of factors that affect outcomes.

Pickled Eggs!

We’re in that sort of a pickle right now, as you can tell from our online farm store. The older batch of hens is going through a molt, so though they’d be laying larger eggs right now, they’re taking a break for the summer.

The younger recruits are stuck in pullet/small phase! So we have lots of eggs… but they’re all tiny!

Nine years of egg production, and we still feel like rookies. Ha! Just goes to show you that farming is like parenting. You don’t know how to do it until after it’s over. 😛

What’s an SGR Fan to do?

Y’all hang in there with us. And buy a few extra eggs to make up for the smallness. The small ones are big on taste! 🙂

How to substitute small eggs in recipes

Small eggs are ¾ the size of larges. The easy way to say that is that for every 3 large eggs called for, use 4 smalls. Or you can just multiply the number of larges times 1.5, and that’s the number of smalls you need. Pullet eggs or “peewees” are 5/8 the size of larges. They’re just a smidge bigger than half a large egg. Most recipes are not so finicky that you can’t just pretend that 2 pullet eggs equal 1 large egg. If you get into some huge volume recipe like a soufflé or custard, I’d suggest using the 5/8 (5 larges = 8 pullets) conversion. But if you’re making soufflés and custards… you probably don’t need me to explain this. 😉

The Right Knife

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The Right Knife

There’s nothing more challenging than cooking in someone else’s kitchen! You don’t know where anything is, and you often lack specialized cooking equipment that you’ve come to love and depend on. But the worst, once you’ve experienced cooking with good knives, is cooking with bad knives!

Do you have bad knives?

I house-sat for about a week many years ago, and the memory of that experience that stands out most prominently in my mind, is how very dull and flimsy the knives were! I don’t even know what I was trying to cook, but it was miserable!

And today it occurs to me… what if that’s you? What if you don’t even know how fun cooking can be because you have to fight with knives so poor that you can’t tell which end is the sharp one! I hope that’s not you, but in case it is, don’t run out and buy a $600 set of knives. I’ll share my own bare-bones favorites and you can begin building your collection one great knife at a time.

I must mention that I’m no chef, and a lot of my knowledge is accidental or gathered the hard way, but if my advice, amateur as it is, helps you get back in the kitchen making healthier food for your family, I have succeeded!

You don’t need all the knives.

I could probably narrow it down to 4 knives if I really had to, but my favorites are these 7, and each for a very specific reason.

I thought it might be useful for me to tell you about each one, starting at the left:

The Paring Knife

This little beauty is nice because it has a short, agile blade great for efficiently carving out the seeds and hulls of fruit or bruised veggies. My favorite feature of this particular knife is the ergonomic handle. It’s got a nice fat part that sits in your palm, then a narrower part that helps you keep a great grip on the knife. And it’s all one piece of stainless steel and will never deteriorate in the dishwasher!

The Multipurpose Knife

This black-handled knife would probably also fall under Paring Knife category, and although it doesn’t have the fancy contoured handle, I love it because the blade is long and not too thick, so that cutting things like cheese and apples is easy. But the size of the knife is still small enough to be very easy to handle when doing more intricate cutting. Be careful when shopping for knives that the wedge of the knife isn’t too thick that cutting becomes a chore. This one has a nice thin blade that is still very stiff.

How Steep is Your Wedge?

I thought I’d share this cute little illustration to make this point a little clearer. If you and your friend are headed someplace fun together, steep ramps are going to much more difficult to go up than shallow ramps. The knife is really a wedge tool, and the shallower the wedge, the easier the work is to do (though if you’re going somewhere, it will take longer, but that’s a discussion for another place…). Like my drawing? 🙂

The same principle is true in a knife. It’s a lot more work for you to force a steep-wedged knife through a hunk of cheese or squash or whatever than to use a very thin knife. However, the thinner the blade, the less rigid/stiff/strong it will be, and so cutting very hard things like raw pumpkin can be dangerous with a very thin blade because the blade can warp or even permanently bend and cause injury to you or your pumpkin! Choose wedge thickness carefully!

Edited to add: I just ran this by my physics-expert hubby (who was actually my tutor in college… I’m more of a “chemical” engineer, you know!). He said my example is just a little too oversimplified. The work done by the knife really has more to do with the normal force and the modulus of elasticity of the food, such as cheese, as well as friction…. LOL I know. He’s perfect. All you other perfect physics engineers out there just overlook my explanations to the laymen like myself out there. 🙂 😛

The (Sharp) Serrated Knife

I only have a couple of Cutco knives, and the one I like best is this serrated knife. It’s wonderful for difficult-to-start things like tomatoes and other very soft fruits (yes, tomatoes are technically a fruit!). I also like to use it for things that have tough outsides, like onions and pineapple. I don’t care for serrated knives much in general, but this one gets well-used because the edges hold their sharpness very well. It’s no good to buy a cheap serrated knife that you can never sharpen. You also want to look for serrated knives that have balanced serrations. Not like this steak knife which is asymmetrical and will actually tend to cut on a curve:

The Professional Boning Knife

This is one of my very most favorite knives, but (pretty much) all I use it for is slicing raw meat. If you’d like to get into quartering chickens or cubing steaks/roasts for stews and fajitas, etc, this is the kind of knife you need.

But you also need a good knife steel, the big fat thing over at the far right, which is used to realign the tiny metal molecules at the edge of the blade, causing it to keep the sharpest cutting edge possible. Raw meat, and especially skin and gristle, are very difficult to cut through with a less-than-sharp knife, and you end up sawing and ripping more than actually cutting, which is hard work and results in ugly workmanship and frustration. I use the steel to refresh my blade every time I prepare to cut. It’s well worth the investment, but DO NOT use it on a serrated knife!

The Bread Knife

If you are into homemade bread at all, you need a great bread knife. Again, a poor-quality knife results in ripping instead of cutting, and a short-bladed knife won’t be able to reach all the way through a large loaf of bread, leaving you to have to cut from two ends, which will likely lead to goofy-looking slices. A very sharp knife with good even serrations is a joy to the baker. Since homemade bread (hopefully) doesn’t have all those nasty dough conditioning chemicals that store-bought bread does, it will be more crumbly and less tough than commercial bread, and you’ll need a knife that lends itself to not destroying the bread’s delicate texture. I like a serrated bread knife because it starts into the hard crust more easily than a smooth-sided blade.

The Chef’s Knife

These last two knives are both technically chef’s knives, but as you can see, are shaped a bit different and have different beneficial characteristics. I like the stouter, silver-handled knife for these two reasons: it has the ergonomic handle, and the stouter blade gives me more leverage when chopping through hard vegetables like raw sweet potatoes. It’s also very broad and makes mincing nuts or onions easy work since they can’t “jump” over my blade as I’m working through a pile of food.

The black-handled knife has a longer, narrower blade that gives a bit more control for precision cutting and room to work. The long blade is handy for chopping things lengthwise like carrots, or really large things like cabbage. Both have “dimples” (I’m sure there’s some correct technical knife term, but I don’t know what it is) along the blade to help keep the food from sticking to the side of the blade as you slice through it.

Which is the BEST knife?

So there is Jerica’s simplified version of choosing good knives for the home cook. If I had to pick just one knife to take to a desert island… with an otherwise fully-equipped kitchen of course, haha… I would probably choose the multipurpose paring knife and sharpening steel. It’s my favorite knife because of the blade size, and I can do just about anything with it in a pinch. Hope you enjoyed this article! If you’d like notice of more stuff like this, please sign up for our newsletter! Happy cooking!

A Farm Adventure for Everyone

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There’s a really neat opportunity coming up next weekend here at the ranch. We’re hosting another one of our fun farm tours… but there’s more!

Last month, we had around 30 guests come visit with us to hear about our journey back to health from autoimmune disease using food as medicine. Every tour is different, and during the last one, our visitors got to pet the farm kitties, take a guess at which chickens were roosters (it’s harder than you might think!), and experience up-close a live cow moooooove. Our younger attendees got to participate in a fun little farm scavenger hunt as well, learning to identify fences, farm animals, and more. We always have a great time showing off the ranch and answering people’s questions about real food and farm life, etc.

We’re doing it all over again next week, and you are invited!

The consumer tour is $5 per person, ages 4 and up (littles are invited, too, of course, but they attend free).

I know it seems impossible that anything could be better than coming to an SGR farm tour… 😉 😉

But even better than that… we’re extending the opportunity to farmers in the area who want to see a real working pastured poultry farm. The American Pastured Poultry Association will be in attendance, and anyone who wishes to attend under that umbrella is invited to stick around afterward for an on-farm luncheon featuring Shady Grove Ranch meats (catered by locally-owned Central Perks of Marshall, TX), and a roundtable discussion of all things pastured poultry.

The cost to attend the full APPPA event is $20 for APPPA members, $25 for non-members. You’re welcome to attend even if you’re not a farmer but are interested in learning more about what makes Pastured Poultry Producers tick. They are a cool group of folks, I assure you!

Whichever hat you choose to wear for the day, be sure you pay for ONLY ONE! But BOTH require advance ticket purchase. Sign up for the consumer tour, which ends at noon, or the APPPA w orkshop, which includes lunch and ends at 4.

Pick a hat, any hat…. But only pick 1!

Saturday, May 26 starting at 10am

Consumer Tour (ends at noon) $5 per person over age 3. Buy Tickets Here.

APPPA Workshop (includes lunch and ends at 4) $20 for members $25 for non-members. Buy Tickets Here.

We’re excited to be hosting this event and we sure hope to see you there!

2018 Turkey Season

Turkey Season Begins in 2018

It’s that time again—farmers have to talk turkey really early in the game because there are so many steps to raising a delicious Really-Pasture-Raised bird, and we raise a limited number each year and want to make sure you get the bird you want for your special holiday occasion. We raise turkeys for folks in the Ark-La-Tex who appreciate the quality of a truly pasture-raised bird and wish to invest in their health and a cleaner means of raising food.

Why Shady Grove Ranch Turkey?

It’s important to Know Your Farmer when it comes to meats, and specifically turkeys, because even “organic” and “pasture-raised” birds from the store may not actually be raised the way you want and expect them to be.

Why? The short story is that these terms are either very loosely defined/enforced, or don’t prohibit common industry practices such as arsenic-feeding, use of bleach and artificial flavor enhancers during processing, or even allowing the birds to actually go outside on actual live, vegetative turf (instead of a manure-laden yard at best, or no outdoor access at worst!).

Here at Shady Grove Ranch, we strive to keep our birds on living, healthy, green pasture by rotating them frequently to new grass, and we’re committed to using feed that is not genetically-modified and doesn’t contain soy, arsenic (yes, they really do that), antibiotics, or other nasty stuff. It takes more time and effort and infrastructure, but our customers agree that it sure makes for some delightful turkey that we feel good about raising and eating and feeding to our kiddos!

Is the Turkey Tasty?

Our turkeys come frozen and ready-to-thaw-and-cook and include the giblets (don’t forget to take them out before cooking!). We get great feedback on the flavor and tenderness of our turkeys. Some folks brine them. Some folks don’t. They are delicious and moist either way, but please note that our birds cook about 25% faster than conventional birds, so keep an eye on that internal temperature! Some customers use the “drumstick wiggle” method to decide if it’s done. I like to judge both the temperature and the color of the juices flowing out of the thigh.

Consider Stocking Up on Turkey

We only raise turkeys once a year, so if you’d like to cook outside the box, feel free to reserve more than one turkey! We had quite a few folks last year get 2 or 3 or as many as 11 to stock the freezer (just make sure you have a really big freezer)! They really love our turkey!

Local Turkey Delivery

Delivery to any of our routine drops in November is FREE! We will contact you closer to when the turkeys are ready to confirm your pickup location. Alternatively, you may pick up at the farm by appointment any time after turkeys are processed in mid-October.

All turkeys must be paid for in full by Thanksgiving and picked up by Christmas or the deposit is forfeited and someone else will eat your turkey! Please be diligent to communicate your pick up plans, as we have limited freezer space to store abandoned birds.

Proposed November Pickup Dates and Locations

(subject to change, but unlikely to do so)

Tyler: Thursday, November 1
Longview: Thursday, November 8
Marshall: Thursday, November 8
Shreveport: Saturday, November 3 or Saturday, November 17
On-Farm in Jefferson by appointment Mon-Sat.

Thanksgiving day is November 22!

What’s next?

Claim your birdie with a paid $30 deposit (one per bird). And of course you’re welcome to claim as many as you like!

Why do we require a deposit? Turkeys take a lot of capital up front to raise… AND, unlike beef, pork, chicken, and eggs (which are also high-capital, ha!), turkeys are a highly seasonal item that is hard to sell after the holidays. We try to raise just enough that we have a few extras for those stragglers that find out about us just before Thanksgiving, but we prefer to spend the summer raising these special birds that we know have a spot reserved on your holiday table.

Deposits received after May 1 will lock in pricing at $5.50/lb and secure your spot on the list. Spots are limited so jump on board early!

How to Place a Deposit on Your Turkey

Hop over to our Turkey Deposits page to purchase your turkey deposit.

Important! By paying your $30 per-bird deposit, you understand that the final price is based on the actual weight of the turkey you receive, and the $30 goes toward that balance, but DOES NOT cover the purchase of the turkey in full. For example, if you sign up for a “Small” Turkey, you may receive a 15 pound turkey. The total cost at $5.50/lb is $82.50. Your deposit paid $30 of that, so the balance due upon pickup is $52.50.

Individual turkey weights can vary as much as 5 pounds or more. We do our best to harvest the birds when they are at the target weight, but there are many uncontrollable factors!

If you require a specific size, please let us know when you order and again when we contact you for pickup arrangements, and we will try to accommodate you. However, please understand that we raise a group of unsexed birds (boys grow bigger than girls), naturally, and outdoors, and we cannot control the final size distribution. We have occasionally had to adjust the size brackets slightly to adjust for variation in size outcomes. We appreciate your understanding the nature of small-scale, natural farming and look forward to serving you this holiday season!

Meet Baby Daniel Luther!

Meet the Newest Farmer-baby!

The day finally arrived when we got to meet our newest farmer baby! Late, as usual (all 4 of our other babies were way overdue when they were born!), so when baby #5’s due date came along and there was still no sign of baby… we decided to have a little fun and let our readers guess his actual birthdate for a chance to win some meat money.

We had 10 correct guesses for the date out of 110 responses (keep reading to find out the winner of the drawing for $25 worth of farm goodies!). Just for kicks, we also asked if you thought girl or boy, and 69 of you said girl, but only 42 thought boy. Surprise! Tevka remains the only girl, right smack in the middle of 4 strong brothers!

Meet Daniel Luther Cadman, born on March 10 at 7:15 a.m., weighing 8’13” and measuring 21” long. He was born at home under the care of Midwife Sarah Friberg with Beautiful Blessings Midwifery.

The four older children are delighted to have a new baby brother!

It was a bit of a whirlwind weekend, and we had to miss my youngest brother’s wedding and postpone our Shreveport drop, but we are so glad baby arrived safely and were very pleased to have a quiet Sunday to rest and rejoice with family over the gift of baby Daniel. Special thanks to the Rueggs, who helped get the word out to our gracious Shreveport folks that had planned to pick up Saturday morning. And of course, special thanks to grandparents who help us in so many ways through these times.

We are tired, but very happy, which is a good way to be! 🙂

The Winning Guess!

Our winner for the drawing for $25 worth of farm goodies is … Teresa Spears! Congrats, Teresa, and GOOD GUESS! 🙂

It might be a little tacky, but it’s just so fun!

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One of the most special things about living this particular type of farm life is being able to be connected with our customers on a personal level. You share in a lot of the fun, the heartache, the struggles, and the joys of what we do in order to raise good, clean food for folks in the Ark-La-Tex.

Many of you have been following our work from the very beginning, and part of that journey has been to watch our kiddos grow up and become more and more involved with the farm. Every other year, we had a newborn baby at farmers market, and every other winter, my baby belly would be hiding under my coveralls and farm jacket! God has truly blessed us with sweet children to raise up on the farm!

Well, most of you know we’re expecting again, and baby #5 (aka Future Farm Hand) should be landing any day now! In fact, I’m officially due TODAY, but if this baby follows the pattern of all 4 of the other ones, it may very well be another week and a half before he/she actually arrives!

So we thought we’d have some fun, even if it is a little silly, since so many folks keep asking if baby has arrived yet. How about a fun little contest to see who can guess the actual birthdate? We’ll draw a name from among all the folks that guess the correct date, and one clever winner will get $25 worth of farm store credit to use with their next order. Remember—we still don’t ship! So if you’re not local but still want to play and you happen to win, you can pass your credit on to someone you know in our area, or we’ll just draw another name.

We set the contest up as a survey (don’t worry—the results only come to us), so click on this link to cast your vote for what day baby will arrive. Then watch Facebook and our email newsletter for the official announcement, and we’ll contact the winner after we do the drawing!

We appreciate your prayers for a safe and complication-free delivery. We are looking forward to meeting this precious new person!

Egg Processing with the Whole Family

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I’m not sure what people envision exactly, when they think about the modern farm family’s daily farming tasks. It varies widely from farm to farm, of course, but for us, one task that we do very frequently together is collect and process eggs from our mobile-pastured hens. It’s a little more complicated than just scooping up a few “cackleberries” and putting them into cartons to sell. Because we really want to raise the hens on living pasture, it is imperative that the hens get moved to new ground often so they don’t kill the vegetation in their old paddock. Not to mention the intense manure build-up that happens when you leave any animal in one place for too long!

So we move the hens a couple of times a week, which means their house moves, too. Which means we have to travel to wherever their house happens to be to collect said eggs. But there are, oh, roughly 700 chickens laying in the ballpark of 500 eggs per day, which then have to be transported from the “wilderness” back to our nice, clean, dry egg-processing room. So that’s what we do each day at the end of the day after the chickens have finished their work and are preparing to settle in for the night.

Unfortunately the hens don’t always get the memo that customers like clean, uncracked eggs with pretty little brown (or green!) shells. On rainy days (which have been in abundance this spring!), we tend to see a lot of mud tracked in from the field. I guess the hens didn’t learn to wipe their little dirty birdie feet.

So we do our best to field-sort the eggs into clean/dirty/cracked baskets, and then haul them back to the egg room for further inspection, cleaning, and packaging. Our jobs are further complicated by state requirements that we sort the eggs by size and “grade” (the size of the little air cell inside the egg). So after egg collection is when the real fun begins!

If you’ve been following our farm adventure recently, you know we have 4 young kiddos (oldest is 7!), with another on the way any day now, and we love to get them involved in what we’re doing… being that iconic farm-schooling family and all 😉 So the kids help us process eggs a few times per week, which, to my surprise, has been one of my greatest sources of pride and excitement about raising these little people into skilled, thoughtful, hardworking bigger people. My mommy-heart just swells with pride as I watch them grow in independence and self-confidence. You could liken it to polishing silver or something–it’s hard and takes a long time and a lot of elbow grease, but boy, is it gorgeous when it really starts to shine!

Anyway, I thought I’d take you on a fun photo tour of the Egg Room with the kids. Enjoy!

The first stage (after sorting) is washing the dirties. Axl works hard to keep his “hopper” full and helps alert us when a bundle of washed eggs emerge from the machine, ready to be transported to the next stage…

…then someone tall comes over and loads up the clean eggs from the conveyor and sets them in front of the fan to dry for a bit. Momma and Dadda usually tag-team this job. It’s a pretty fast-paced one because Axl is getting so good at loading up his egg-hopper!

The next stage is checking for cracks and anomalies. Shevi is great at focusing on the job and making sure he gets eyes on every side of every egg. He’s now better at spotting cracks than I am!

In fact, he’s so good at the concentration element of his task, that when I kept pestering him to look at the camera, he finally said, “Hold on! I have to finish checking all the eggs!” Oh right. Great job, kiddo! Gotta love that 7-year-old cheesy smile! 😉

After the eggs get checked for cracks, they are individually weighed (by our handy-dandy 70-year-old all-steel grading machine!) and sorted by size. A human (in this case, me!) then does one last visual check and packs them into cartons by size.

Each carton is labeled and dated and then moved to refrigeration. That’s a lot of eggs! Good work, chickens!

You may be wondering about the other half of our children–the youngest half. Yep, they’ve been with us the whole time. Their job is to keep each other and the farm dog, Toby, company on the “front porch” of our little egg room.

We hope you enjoy eating the eggs as much as we enjoy producing them! Thanks for supporting real, family farms!

Winter Babies & Farm Fun

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Late Winter Update

It seems like it gets busier at the farm every year! I suppose I should consider the fact that we’re growing, both in our farming ventures and in our family size, so of course it follows that we ought to be busier! In fact, we’re counting down the days until Cad-baby #5 arrives! I’m officially due in about 3 weeks, so it won’t be long! Unless this baby follows the pattern and comes 10 days late like all his/her siblings, ha! We’ll definitely keep you posted!

Tevka practicing her silly faces!

Calving Season Begins

Speaking of babies, it’s certainly that time of year! As our local fans know, it’s been a particularly brutal winter this year. It got down to 8 degrees here in January, which is certainly a record for us! Matt has been diligent doing his cow-midwife duties, but thankfully no one has had trouble calving so far this season, in spite of the fact that most of the mommas so far have been heifers (first-timers).

Newborn calf being cared for by momma!

We did lose one calf, sadly. She just got too cold with all the wind and rain. We tried to warm her and bottle feed her, but she was too weak to recover.

Doing our best to warm this unfortunate little heifer calf.

An Unusual Chore

On a lighter note, I just wanted to share this next photo that shows the wide variety of daily tasks a farmer might encounter. We have a small clowder of cats to help with mouse and mole control. They add joy to our lives with their silly antics. Sassy, here, decided to get a better view of the farm, but couldn’t figure out how to get down on her own! Matt, being a softie at heart, and being very tall as well, attempted a rescue, but Sassy wouldn’t have it. She eventually found her way down, but it made for a sweet picture!

Matt tries to rescue Sassy from the roof!

New Puppies!

Meeka (the Pyrenees guardian dog) had puppies in early January, and they are doing great! They have begun exploring outside their nest and will be ready for new homes within a couple of weeks. We will be rehoming 3 of them, so let us know if you want more information! Their parents (Zeke and Meeka) are fabulous guardians for any type of livestock (we use them mostly for poultry), and we are excited to have a little from a set of parents so well-suited to their jobs.

Meet Meeka, a young female Pyrenees who just became a mom!

Here is Zeke, a faithful guardian of farm poultry!

Meet Snowball, a future farm guardian!

Farm Store Construction Progress

Most of Matt’s time these days is spent fixing stuff, coordinating production schedules, and working on the farm store! It’s really coming along now that the weather is warming up and days are getting longer. The wood is all being harvested from the farm. Many of our big pine trees were damaged during the drought in 2011 and are dying, but they are perfectly salvageable for the giant columns and beams we need for construction. It’s pretty exciting to see things coming together out there! We don’t have an opening date scheduled yet because it’s hard to predict progress rate with such a dynamic task load otherwise, but our hope is to open it sometime in early summer.

Every good felled tree needs a little climbing!

[Naturally I don’t have any photos of the actual store construction… but you can visit our YouTube channel to watch some cool videos of Matt’s mad engineering skills as he figures out how to work with really huge beams made from really heavy trees!]

A New Toy… I mean, Tool!

I have always remarked that it is neat to be in an industry where the whole family is really involved, and so many of you regularly ask after the children, so of course, I wanted to share a little about them as well. The kiddos were excited about a new tool we purchased to help efficientize egg packaging a bit. It’s nothing fancy—just a date label gun, but it sure beats the wet-ink stamp pad and hand-cut stickers we were using before! At least a few times a week, all the kids help collect the eggs. Well… baby Matthew usually practices “driving” the ATV. But it won’t be long before he’s out there with his own little egg collection basket!

The “old” system was labor-intensive, messy, and the kids couldn’t do it alone!

Such a simple machine… and yet so life-changing!

The new date stickers–ink, cut, and attach, all in one motion!

They even stick on noses!

Success!

Matthew Jr. practicing his driving while the other kids help Dadda collect eggs.

Order Easter Ham early this year!

Just an early reminder: Easter falls really early this year (April 1!), so if you’re looking for a special centerpiece meat or some real farm eggs, be sure to nab them during our March deliveries. Smoked hams (quarters, halves, and wholes) are available to order now. We’re well-stocked on eggs, particularly larger sizes (better value per ounce!). And we have some yummy lamb cuts if you want to try something different this Easter.

Try one of our delightful smoked hams this Easter. So simple and so clean-tasting!

That’s our update for now! Thanks for your support and encouragement. We really work for a fabulous group of folks and it is our pleasure to provide you with the high-quality food you need and expect.

Hope to see you soon!

3 Simple Ways to Eat Healthier in the New Year

Three Simple Ways to Eat Healthier in the New Year

Now’s the time, right? You’re sick of sweets and ready and motivated to eat better. Don’t get overwhelmed by the elaborate meal plans and complicated recipes one sees “out there” these days. Don’t go crazy trashing everything in your pantry and fridge and leaving the family hungry and tempted to grab a pizza on the way home.

Instead, gently move toward a better way of eating healthy foods regularly. And if you’re anything like me, if you’re going to do something regularly, it has to be pretty simple.

Here are 3 really simple (and delicious!) ways to eat healthier in 2018:

Eat real food for breakfast.
Make bone broth.
Use your crockpot wisely.

Eat Real Food for Breakfast

I wrote last month about a perfect breakfast food: Smoked Ham Steak. I called it this not because there’s nothing “healthier” out there that a person could eat for breakfast, but because sometimes something really tasty but still really good for you, all the while being really easy to incorporate in a fast-paced lifestyle… those criteria are what make a good food great. If “healthy food” requires so much work, planning, and supplemental ingredients that we end up saving it for when we “have time”… that’s just not sustainable, and we’re going to fall right back into the processed-food rut. Why? Because it’s easier.

But I’m convinced that homemade food doesn’t have to be difficult. I DO think it’s best to approach it with baby-steps, and that’s why I’m writing this article.

So now that the holidays are behind us and the last of the Christmas cookies, candies, and pie are eaten up, we’re all thinking about how much we want to start our new year out making good food choices and instituting new, healthier routines. May I just remind you to be sure that they are doable routines?

Here’s a very doable breakfast item that I would encourage you to incorporate at least once a week. It’s done in less than 10 minutes with no extra ingredients required. And it’s on sale this month, just in time for our January deliveries! Add Ham Steak to the menu!

Make Bone Broth

I can’t tell you how many food bloggers and recipe sites I’ve come across that just make broth too complicated, and they intimidate perfectly capable people out of making this nourishing and delicious food.

There is no “right way” to do broth. But a definite wrong way to do it is not to do it at all! Now you have no reason not too—we’ve got chicken soup bones back in stock, and beef soup bones are on sale for half price this month. Read my Broth Tutorial to learn how very simple and no-nonsense broth-making actually is.

So what do you do with this broth? Well, one really easy way to use it during cold weather, is to make soup! The simplest soup I know of is French Onion Soup. Are you ready for the recipe? It’s a 3-liner: Thinly slice a large yellow onion, then sauté it in a saucepan over medium heat in a few tablespoons of butter or lard. Once the onions are soft and translucent (about 5 minutes), pour in 2-4 cups of prepared homemade beef broth. Add salt and pepper to taste. That’s it! You will not believe how delicious and simple this is. Go for it!

Use Your Crock-pot Wisely

What do I mean by wisely? Well, for one, you’ll need to thaw the meat the night before you set this up, so add that to your evening routine. That’s probably the hardest part of this healthy-eating strategy! But I’ve even been known to cook a partially frozen roast if I forget to take it out the day before. The texture will be nicer if the meat can be allowed to do a slow thaw, but in a pinch, frozen works, too. For mostly-frozen roasts, just plan for some extra cook time, and add a touch of liquid at the beginning of cooking.

But I think a bigger issue than remembering-to-thaw-the-meat is when people assume that recipes have to be super-elaborate to be tasty. Again, if a mile-long list of ingredients is holding you back from real home cooking, you’re doing something wrong. You don’t need exotic spices to make a good meal. When you use good meats, their flavor is brought out by a good sea salt and appropriate cooking time. That’s all you really need.

My favorite way to make a crockpot roast is to take either a beef chuck roast or a pork shoulder roast and place it at the bottom of the crock. Sprinkle it with salt, then add whatever veggies you like: potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, garlic. You can even mix it up and use rutabaga, turnips, cabbage, peppers, or sauerkraut! If you prefer a soupier roast, add a little homemade broth or water. You could even add beer or wine! I do not usually add any liquid, as the roast will produce plenty of liquid on its own. Fit the lid on snugly, then turn it on low and cook for 6-8 hours.

That’s it!

Don’t add cans of cola or cream-of-chemical soup. You don’t need Italian seasoning mix or meat tenderizer powder (MSG, anyone?). Just let the meat be delicious because of the clean way it was raised.

Recap!

Eat real food for breakfast.
Make bone broth.
Use your crockpot wisely.

I hope these 3 strategies will help you include more real food in the coming year. Happy, Healthy Eating!

–Jerica

The Perfect Breakfast Food

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The Perfect Breakfast Food

What’s the perfect breakfast food, according to your farmers?

Is it a smoothie full of hidden organ meats, freeze-dried berries from Mt. Everest, and a dozen types of organic greens? (My crunchy self is giggling over this one!)

Is it a powdered mix that serves itself up all hot and caffeinated as a one-pot wonder?

Is it the sweetly encrusted donut that is the only thing you can face at that hour of the morning before your coffee has kicked in? Hey, some breakfast is better than none, right?

Is it a 16-course gourmet meal complete with locally-grown edible superfood flowers, homemade bread with freshly-churned butter, biscuits, pancakes, a tall glass of fresh raw milk, and a plate full of farm-raised eggs, bacon, sausage, and ham?

Well… My husband would probably nod his head vigorously to this last option, and I’ll give you a hint that it’s the closest thing to what I envision as the perfect breakfast food for the fast-paced family on the go. But not the whole 9-yards. Just that last little 3-letter word.

Ham.

But not just any ham.

Real, smoked, pasture-raised, chemical-free, deliciously natural ham. Just sweet and salty enough to be nice and hammy but not overwhelming in any particular direction, and of course plenty smoky. The best part is that it’s sliced thin enough to thaw quickly and cook even more quickly with little effort (choices include ½” or ¾” thick).

Just warm your skillet, maybe toss a tablespoon of butter or lard on unless you’re using cast iron, and lay the ham steak gently down. Warm over medium heat until steaming, then flip and repeat, a few minutes per side. Voila! Done. Breakfast. The perfect breakfast.

What’s so perfect about pasture-raised ham?

Well, it’s sweet enough to face in the wee morning hours. Lightly salted so you don’t have to guess on seasoning. Nice and smoky. And our favorite feature: Ready to heat and eat.

And even if that’s all you eat for breakfast, you’re probably going to have one happy tummy all the way to lunch, not to mention you hardly had to do anything to prepare breakfast, and there might be enough left over for tomorrow or to carry with you for lunch! But you can get fancy, too, and cook some eggs or biscuits or hashbrowns or whatever you like, and have a delicious country-style farmer breakfast. Toss the bone into a freezer bag and save it to add to your stockpot next time you make broth to get even more value from this humble but lovely little cut.

So why am I telling you about ham steak when you’re busy stuffing Christmas stockings and trying to keep the baby from climbing the tree (at least that’s what happening at our house…)?

Because I have been pondering a renewed vision for helping folks get healthy by getting back in the kitchen, eating the right things, instead of feeling overwhelmed by daily decisions, the last of which ends up being what’s for breakfast/lunch/dinner. Maybe you just need a few good, but brainless, decisions to help you along your way. Enter pasture-raised ham for breakfast. Sure, doll it up with some scrambled eggs and fresh fruit if you like and are able. But the point is, even if all you eat for breakfast is a chunk of SGR ham, at least you are eating something filling and real. Ham steaks also make a pretty convenient quick-dinner idea, whether you do breakfast for dinner or chop it up for soup or eat it on a sandwich. It even goes great as a centerpiece meat alongside mashed potatoes or rice!

Ham is a cut we produce a lot of because, well, the rear-end of a piggy is pretty large! We finally found a smokehouse that will do an all-natural cure for us, so we are excited to officially introduce this delicious and convenient cut of pork! Check out all our delicious and clean smoked products here.