Hot Off The Haywire

Digging In

Forebodings. You can feel it in the changing wind, the hint of moisture in the air, the stiffness in the bones. Bad anticipations are in those winds. Like Londoners waiting on the blitz, all you can do is hunker down and dig in. The coming assault dredges up memories of the previous assault, an assault that left us without power for 10 days. The Iceman cometh.

We're more prepared this time, or so we think. A new rick of firewood, generator filled and tested, candles, matches, flashlights, batteries, and, most important of all, a trip into the attic to the stash of books bought but never read. Good news is we have gas for cooking and the fireplace. Bad news is we're on the outer edge of the grid, meaning first to lose power, last to get it restored. More bad news is how this throws the monkey wrench in the garden timetable. It's hard to plan the work and then work the plan with a layer of ice covering the ground. Oh well, though the course may change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea. (Ten Years Gone by Led Zeppelin)

Livestock are double fed, and their huts are strawed up. The last ice storm caused the electric fence to sag to the ground from the weight, so that's to be expected again.

I'm just waiting to exchange this:

 

for this:

Hopefully the Iceman has lost his way, but if he shows up here, stay safe and stay warm!

Pork & Greens

Super Bowl (of chorizo chili, maybe?)

The biggest game, or party, or both, is right around the corner and we've got some suggestions for giving your snacking table a little uniqueness, as it's not often people are served rare breed, clover grazed pork!

For starting the party off right, we have two wonderful and simple-to-fix recipes. The first, our Super (hot) Balls, are made with our breakfast sausage or chorizo, (depending on how spicy you like your food) and cheese, and are a great appetizer and the easiest to prepare if time is a constraint. The second, our Slow Cooked Sweet Mustard Brats are absolutely out of this world! This is my favorite way to cook our brats that doesn't involve a bun and a grill. (If mustard isn't your thing, you can substitute your favorite BBQ sauce in place of the mustard sauce)

For what you would consider a second course entree, we have two more delicious recipes. These involve a little more prep time, but what else is there to do before the game except watch commercials? (Although I have to admit, we love watching the new commercials  ) The first recipe, our German Sausage Chowder is made with our popular German loop, potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. Authentically German, it's a stick-to-your-bones kind of dish, and goes great with your favorite lager. Our next recipe is for those who like a little kick to their food, our Black Bean Chorizo Chili! This recipe will certainly spice up the party, but have your favorite beverages within arms length, because it is packing some heat!

We consider our Stuffed Pizza Burgers our "piece de resistance" and will require breaking out the grill to serve up this primero dish. Made with our Italian sausage, this recipe combines the best of both worlds, American burgers and Italian cuisine. If you've never had an Italian sausage burger you definitely need to give this a try.

We hope you'll enjoy these new recipes, and we think they'll be the hit at a Super Bowl party or at your dinner table any night. We've got all these new recipes listed with our older ones for future reference.

Pork & Greens

Feel It...

You can feel it coming, a primordial sensing of newness, birth, and rebirth. You can feel it through the soles of your boots, ground changing from hard and frozen to soft and pliable. You can feel it in the splash of green in the fields, the clover trying to shake off it's dormancy. You can feel it when the wind comes at you from a different direction, the southern winds. The winds of change. You can feel it when the sun's rays add warmth to your skin, even if it's ever so brief. You can feel it in the day's length growing longer, if ever so slowly. You can feel it when you see the vee formations of geese on their northern heading, a heading as sure and true as any man made navigation system. You can feel it in the increase in activity at the farm. Planning activity, buying activity, building activity, discing activity, and a host of other activities. Even when you know that winter hasn't lost it's grip, that it can, and probably will, squeeze you again, all your senses are telling you something, all the feelings reaching the same conclusion. Spring is near.

Things are definitely heating up here at the farm. We've been building raised beds that will hold all of our root crops, but the recent rain has slowed progress. We hope to have a little "how to" on building raised beds up on the blog soon, as they are ideal if you have limited space but want to try your hand at growing something. We've also started seeding our early transplant crops like lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. Here's a photo of a couple of our transplant trays:

We plan on sending out an e-mail this coming Monday with what pork we have available, and we'll have some new recipes up on the blog in time for planning some snackables for Super Bowl parties. Eating and football works for me!  Thanks for reading!

Pork & Greens

Farmer's Bane

Dastardly. Seeds of sorrow. Roots of all evil. The bane of farmers and gardeners everywhere. Johnson grass. Pervasive and invasive, like the hordes of Ghengis Khan, nothing can cloud your horizon like the sight of this weed sprouting in your garden.

Perennial weed superstar, Johnson grass scoffs at how slow other weed grasses like bermuda invade and take over new ground. Fast growth, no, make that overnite six inches taller growth, and spreading by rhizomes are the arrows in it's quiver. With each plant producing up to 5000 seeds, bare ground is soon covered and then overwhelmed, leaving you to fight a war that never ends. The problem with trying to grow a garden with Johnson grass around is that every time you till the soil you chop the Johnson grass roots into smaller and more numerous pieces, and each of these pieces sprouts more grass, so you're actually producing more weeds while you think you're getting rid of all the weeds.

 Slick, man, Johnson grass is so evil slick. Large and red tinted, the roots do have their achilles though - pigs. Pigs love roots and seem to have a special affinity for Johnson grass roots. One of the added benefits we're seeing from rotating our pigs through our garden plots is a reduction in the amount of Johnson grass on the farm, and eventually we want to get all of it off our land. Conquer it, defeat it, take no quarter, but do it chemically free. The alternatives to fighting this garden killer are mowing before seed is produced, or digging the grass out and burning it, both ways are labor intensive, which is the reason so many people turn to products like round-up. We let the pigs do the work for us, which keeps the chemicals away, a win-win in our book. Here's some more info on Johnson grass if you're interested.

We made a short video of the pigs today, as it was absolutely beautiful for this time of year:

We'll be sending out an e-mail update in the next few days. Thanks for reading!

Pork & Greens 
 

When The Levee Breaks...

...mama you got to move...Not a levee of concrete or stone, but a metaphysical levee, one designed to hold your reservoir of movement and energy. Built every fall, the reservoir slowly filling at first, and then, as the ground cools, as the sky puts on it's winter shroud, as market season ends, as the levee is completed, the trickle becomes a stream. No ordinary stream, but a stream of energy, supplied by many tributaries, growing larger as each flow adds it's measure, starting to put pressure on the levee walls.

Heat energy, motion energy, day length energy, work energy, all stocked and stored tight, swirling within the walls, building towards the tipping point you know is coming, as sure as any law of thermodynamics. Simple laws, but so beautiful in their simplicity, energy produces the work, work produces more energy. Building through the winter-kill months, the pressure mounts, the first fissures come, small and insignificant at first, like the seed of a maple, but once the roots take, even the seed would be in awe of the tree it produced.

First fissures are hardly ever noticed. Planning the garden, buying seed, attending annual market meetings, sharpening and servicing the tools of our trade seem mundane, but, like putting the key in the ignition, it takes something simple to turn your engine over. Suddenly your electrons seem a little more electric, the reason returns to your purpose like the wind returns to a sail. Movement in fits and starts, but the movement is good, and like a steady headwind, builds your momentum, puts you back on your course.

Fissures soon form cracks. Starting transplant cracks. Making raised bed cracks. Laying out irrigation cracks. Pruning fruit tree cracks. Seeding cole crop cracks. So many different cracks that the wall you built up last fall is starting to crumble, the stored energy finally finding it's escape, knowing the final crack that will lay your levee low, harvesting, is not far off, and also knowing that the energy release feels good, the way a hot sun feels good to your skin after a long, cold winter.

Inertia is being broken by the outflow, new profits are being made, not monetary profits, but profits of knowledge, like knowing that standing still profits you nothing. Knowing that in movement there is life, that the energy initiates the movement and the movement produces more energy, a cycle so beautiful yet so simple, as simple as knowing that you can't just stand there, when your levee breaks, mama you got to move.

Pork & Greens

Two-below, Miss-its-nippy

Burrrr street! Brass monkey cold. A different globe's being warmed, cold. The ground will break your plow point, cold. Make a farmer wish he was an office dweller, cold. Well, not quite that cold.

Yesterday, while doing the "shiver me timbers" shuffle down to the water shut-off valve, (which is right beside the road) a neighbor slowed down, cracked her window about a quarter of an inch, an hollered out, "how do you keep them little piggies feet from freezing off with all that snow around?" With synapse firing slowed to a near standstill by the cold, I hollered back "I make them change their socks twice a day!" Expecting the middle finger, the message must have been lost in transmission, or translation, both a result of the fierce wind and the itty-bitty crack of her window. She started laughing a great big ole laugh, I just didn't know if it was at me or with me.

Actually, it's the beau-coup amounts of straw that keep the pigs from freezing. The more the better. Straw is as important to outdoor pig production as refrigerator loads of antibiotics are to indoor pig production. In these parts there are two main types of straw available, wheat and oat straw. Wheat straw is to oat straw what lead is to gold, in other words, if you can find oat straw, buy up all you can. Oat straw is more absorbant, and it's a thicker and cleaner straw than wheat. The problem is, you're as likely to strike gold as you are to find a source of oat straw this time of year.

All that being said, any type of bedding is better than no bedding at all, so hay, shavings, sawdust, or even old newspapers can be used in a crunch. The main thing is getting something between the cold ground and the animals, especially if you have young ones.

 We normally put a foot deep layer in the huts for cold weather, and a three or four inch layer for warmer weather. Between being ground up by the sow's hooves, or being eaten as roughage, we add a little straw every four days or so. Here's a little video action about straw in our huts:

 

With actual low temperatures expected to be below zero (   ruh rhroo, Shaggy) by Thursday, we'll put a big load of straw in the huts tomorrow. This Febuary, a farming neighbor is going in halves with me to grow five acres of oats on his land. I'll supply the seed and labor to get it all sown, and he'll harvest and bail it next summer. Not a bad deal on my end, as good oat straw is hard to find.

We'll be sending out an e-mail fairly soon with new order and pick-up info on our pork products. Thanks for reading!

Pork & Greens