A New Addition to the Farm

From time to time I write about my husband's parent's family farm, Heritage Homestead.  I received an email 2 days ago letting us know that one of their horses, Jill, a gorgeous Black Percheron, gave birth to a healthy colt.  Isn't he just beautiful?  His name is Mandela.  Look at that adorable face! 

We hear that Jill is a great mommy. She looks after him with a watchful eye.  I love this photo, he is so tiny compared to his mommy!

Look at those long legs, he's going to grow up to be a large draft horse.  All the horses on the farm are working horses, they have chores just like the humans.  They pull plows and other farm machinery to work the fields.  In exchange, the horses get lots of love, hay, and treats!

We can't wait to meet him!  Too cute!

Mmmm Bacon!

Let me start out by saying I Love Bacon.  It's not a secret.  That salty, smoked flavor.  Dear I say, I also dream about it.  I've always been one of those people that like salty things.  However, I didn't know what I was missing until I tasted the bacon from our pig.  Oh my, is it good.  You see, the supermarket bacon that I always bought really does not compare to the taste and flavor of this farm raised bacon.  I always found supermarket bacon to be sub-par, fatty, and when cooked, disappeared into almost nothing because all the fat was cooked off.

The bacon from the farm was thickly sliced, and when I cooked the bacon, the bacon pieces did not dwindle to nothingness.  Nope, the pieces cooked up perfectly with lots of substance to it.

What did I make with our first batch of bacon?  A BL without the T.  I had no tomatoes and the hubs doesn't care for fresh tomatoes so I made a bacon, lettuce, and mayo on toasted wheat bread.  Oooh, sooooo good!

Knowing Where Your Food Comes From

Vegetarians... Look away, this post is about a lot of pork meat! On the family farm, they raise pigs for family consumption. The main reason they raise pigs is because they were concerned with where their food comes from. When they raise their own pork, they can ensure the animals are raised ethically and organically. The pigs have a good life, they have an indoor and outdoor pen where they can roam as they please, and they eat organic feed and organic farm raised vegetables such as pumpkin, squash, corn, fruit and greens.  This makes a large difference in the taste of the meat.  The meat has lots of nutrients because of what the pigs eat, and it has less fat content.    The fat that the pig does have, the lard, is also used to cook with since it's full of nutrients.  My husband and I recently saw the movie Food Inc. and it really was an eye opener.  We've been thinking a lot about where our food comes from, how it's raised, and how safe it is to eat.  It's the main reason why we've started our vegetable garden and is the reason we bought a pig to be raised on the family farm.  My husband teasingly named him "Yummy" and it was!  Yummy was brought to the butcher in December, and we split the pork meat with the farm.  My mother-in-law cooked a smoked ham for our first dinner.  It was cooked in the woodstove.  Oh, my, the taste was YUMMY.

As we were eating dinner, my husband exclaimed, "everything on this plate was grown or raised on the farm!"  On the plate next to the smoked ham were sides of dilly beans, pickled beets, and roasted root vegetables of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and turnips.  The hubs and I thought this was so fantastic, to have everything on our plate come from the farm.  My in-laws were amused by our excitement because this is an everyday occurrence for them.  Most of their meals come from the farm!

We brought back two large boxes of pork meat.  The farmer (hub's dad) said Yummy was about 275 pounds when he was brought to the butcher.  "A good size" he said, although "250 pounds" is preferred, because that is the perfect meat to fat ratio for a pig.  Can you believe these two boxes only contain half of the pig?  So much meat, totally amazing!  One box contained smoke ham, ham hocks, ribs and pork chops.

The other box was filled with smoked bacon and italian and hot sausage.  Totally drooling!

 

We bought this freezer chest on sale at Lowe's to store all the meat.  This was a good investment for us, since we plan to store veggies and fruit that we grow in the garden in here too!

The freezer chest has these nice hanging baskets in it so it's easy to organize.  The two sausages and bacon got their own basket!

I'm already dreaming about what dishes I can make with these beauties!

Lots of thick cut smoked bacon!  Just heaven!

Bottom of the freezer is holding all the smoked hams, pork chops and ribs!  I'm not sure how long this meat will last us, but I am so looking forward to cooking with it!  We figured out the cost for the pork meat was about $3.00 per pound.  The price was factored by the cost of the pig, the cost of the feed and veggies, and the cost of the butchering.  $3.00 / per pound for us is a good price, because we've seen organic pork in our supermarket for $5.98 a pound!  To be honest though, knowing how this pork was raised makes it priceless!

Feeding the Chickens

When we are at the family farm, I love to be in the barn and be around the farm animals. Here I am in the chicken coop helping with feeding them and giving them fresh warm water. Being that it's -10F out, they need warm water twice a day because the water freezes pretty quickly despite being in the barn. The barn is not heated, but it's a completely covered structure so they are out of the wind and snow. It's still pretty cold in there.

The farm has mostly hens, and 2 roosters.  In total, there's about 50 or so chickens in the coop.  The chickens are free range, they have a little doorway at the bottom of the coop for them to go outside to get fresh air and roam around the farm.  However, being that it's so cold, they mostly stay inside during the winter.  They eat only organic feed and organic vegetables.  Their egg production is less in the winter, but they still produce enough eggs for the family to eat all winter long.  None will be sold.  Eggs are sold starting spring, and they are so delicious.  100% organic and free-range chicken eggs are like no other!  So rich with flavor!

Here's a photo of the nesting box.  The hens take turns using the nesting boxes to lay their eggs.  Sometimes the hens are impatient and lay their eggs on the perching areas.  Hey, when you gotta lay, you gotta lay!

Sweet! But oh...Rotten!

When we were up visiting the family farm, the one thing that we noticed is how close the community is. When one farmer needs help, neighbors do not hesitate to help out.  We found out that one of farmers that my father-in-law is friends with had a tragic fire in his barn and all of his livestock perished.  This is really sad since this is his livelihood.  My father-in-law decided to give him 2 of his pigs that he's been raising on the farm to help him start over.  I thought that was pretty awesome.

The brown pig in the photo is a pig that my husband and I purchased to be raised on the family farm.  He's been raised on 100% organic feed and organic vegetables grown on the farm.  I got a lot of flack when friends and other family heard that we are raising a pig to later be our consumption, and that my husband named him "Yummy"...but to be honest, I rather know that my pork was raised ethically and organically.  He gets an outdoor pen to run around in and a stall in the barn to sleep in.  I can't say for sure how the plastic wrapped pork that I buy at the supermarket was treated or what they ate.  Since my father-in-law gave his other two pigs away, we decided to share the brown pig with my in-laws.  It's the least we could do for raising Yummy for us.

When we were at the farm, one of their neighbors dropped off a gigantic watermelon for us to take home.  How nice is that??  They heard that we were visiting and they dropped it off!  So sweet. 

I couldn't wait to try it.  It was sweet and delicious!

As I continued cutting the watermelon, I noticed that the bottom half of it was all rotten!  Oh no!!!  It was a wet mess.  I managed to salvage half of the watermelon that wasn't rotted.  Everything else that was inedible went into our compost so nothing went to waste. 

I'm in Love

When we were up at the family farm, they had to make a delivery of produce to one of their client's.  I tagged along because they told me that there was a good farmer's market along the way. Upstate New York is renowned for many things, among them is Maple Syrup.  I had to get my hands on some good New York Maple Syrup to bring home.  At the farmer's market, there were two vendors that were selling syrup.  Note to self, scan the tables before buying because I ended up buying syrup that was more expensive at one vendor than the other one was selling.  Oh well.

The other thing that I was looking to buy was some local honey.  Luckily, there was a vendor also selling honey, so I picked up a big jar of amber colored honey.  Oooh, I can't wait to try it in my mint tea.

When you are in NY State, you can't be in a farmer's market without at least one vendor selling NY Apples!  I didn't buy any because we recently had gone apple picking.

At the farmer's market, there was a vendor selling garden markers.  Aren't these cool?  I'm so cheap frugal, so I couldn't justify spending $3-$6 on one marker.  I would have needed a whole bunch of these for the garden, so the cost would totally add up.  Maybe I can make my own?

My mother-in-law saw another farmer vendor there she knew and we went up to her booth to talk to her.  She is a cattle farmer, and was selling cuts of packaged beef.  She had with her these two Labrador Retrievers and I instantly FELL IN LOVE.  They were so adorable!  Look at that paw!

Completely sweet and soft.  She said they were for sale for $50 each.  Do you think my husband would find out if I tried to sneak her home?  Awwww.

A Giant Rhubarb

The family farm is growing lots of different crops.  Here is a shot of the fields.  Most of the crops are growing past the second fence in the back field.  The farm sells most of the crops at 2 different farmers markets and directly to their client list. 

There are rows of corn.  I found out that the pigs love to eat these, stalk, husk and corn!

And pumpkins!  This one was gorgeous! 

There was also white pumpkins! I've never seen these before, they are so unique!

Long Island Squash, if you have never eaten these, they are delicious! It reminds me of pumpkin but milder.

And my favorite, Acorn Squash.  These aren't ripe yet.  This is by far my favorite type of squash.  Cut it in half, drizzle EVOO, salt and pepper and roast in oven.  Yummy.

The coolest plants on the farm were these giant rhubarb plants. Wow, they were enormous!