Introducing LARD

OK We recently gave lard in our meat shares. Since lard has really disappeared from most Northern American's kitchens, many people don't know what to do with lard or even why they might want to do ANYTHING with it. I rendered the leaf lard from the most recent pigs that we slaughtered. Leaf lard is the fat around the kidneys and is the finest type of pork fat. This is probably the best kind of lard to use for pastries. Anyway, here are two articles that might inspire you to try lard for food you saute or fry or for pastry-type things:

Food and Wine article

Slate article

Enjoy!

Grafting Tomatoes: Off with Their Heads!

We grow lots of lovely heirloom tomatoes in our summer greenhouses (they are really the same greenhouses as our “winter greenhouses” it is just the season that is the difference). These old fashioned tomatoes have great flavor but they do not usually produce as well as the hybridized varieties. Over the last several years many commercial tomato growers that we know have started grafting their favorite tomato varieties onto a very hardy and vigorously growing tomato root stock. It seems fancy and high fallutin’ but it is really kinda fun. First you proclaim “Off with their heads!” as you see here in this photo to the left.

Then you connect the "head" of the plant that produced the fruit that you love onto the stem of the vigorous root ( you cut off that head too, but just tossed it unceremoniously into the compost bucket). These funny little plastic clips keep the two pieces together as they heal and fuse. It certainly takes more time to create these seedlings, but we think it is worth it. We have a very good success rate with our grafts.

We have to pamper the newly grafted plants for 4 or 5 days. We make a dark little place for them and put plastic domes over the trays to keep the humidity really high. In a few weeks they will be ready to plant into a larger pot and soon after that they will go to their final destination in one of our greenhouses.

Winter Harvesting and Planning for Next Year

Getting ready for the last winter markets. Here is Russ washing sorting washed carrots. It is cold, wet work. Still, Russ is smiling... I think. Last growing season we had lots of rust fly damage so we have a greater percentage of 2^nd quality carrots than ever before. This season we will be trying a special type of row cover over the carrots as they grow. Typically a row cover will keep a crop warmer while excluding flying insects. In mid-summer, that extra heat may suppress germination and crop growth so we have been hesitant to use it. We learned about a light weight netting that would have the same effect of keeping out pests but would not heat up the soil and crop. Hopefully that will do the trick. Our carrots really keep their sweet crisp flavor into the spring so they are very popular. Many people even love our seconds cause we sell them at a lower price and they still taste yummy... just require a little more work to prepare. Still, we would rather have fewer 2nds and more beauties!

We also have our winter greenhouses from which we get to harvest greens! Here is our new apprentice, Ruth Ann, harvesting spinach for our winter CSA members and a March farmers’ market. The spinach is incredibly tasty and sweet when grown over the cold winter months. Next year we plan to have spinach over more of the winter months. We will also be growing more cold hardy greens that we can harvest in December and others that will survive and begin growing again in February. All of these greenhouses have no supplemental heat… just the sun! We do have row covers in the greenhouses that go over the plants when the temperatures go below freezing (why am I writing that in passive tense as if it just happens automatically!... we put them on when it is cold and take them off again when it is sunny and warm). You can see the white row covers behind Ruth Ann.

A bushel of green spinach contrasts with the white winter snow...... a basket of hope! Ahhh how poetic... or something!

MORE piglet photos

From the top: Randy's piglets enjoying the warm sunny day. Randy's babes beginning to be curious and peeking out of their house... one became afraid and quickly turned to run back in.
Flo's six piglets at a day old... 3 pink and 3 black with spots. Can you count them all?

Spring Babies

Baby Piglets! Flo and Randy have both recently had their spring litters. Randy, of course, picked one of the coldest nights in February but had 7 cute black and white babies. Flo just farrowed on Wednesday and had three pink piglets and 3 black piglets. Happily the weather is warming. We just need to worry about flooding.