Hot Off The Haywire

You're So Sixy - Amanda Forman

Sometimes you meet people unexpectedly, but then you think, "man I'm glad good fortune has smiled on me today" and that was my thought when I had the opportunity to meet Amanda Forman for the first time. Amanda is one of those people that has a natural magnetic attraction, a person that stands out in the crowd, a person that you know will do well at whatever they set their mind to do.

Amanda is a very vocal champion of all things sustainable as it pertains to agriculture and local, Oklahoma grown foods. She heads up the Tulsa Green Drinks events which meet each month to network and share ideas about creating a more sustainable Tulsa. She's an every Saturday shopper at the Cherry Street Market, and puts her money where her mouth is with her support of our local farmers. I had the chance to ask her a few questions at the market this week, and here is what she had to say:

 

 

Amanda's love of sustainably produced foods is evident in the time and effort she spends to promote all of us that try to provide safe, healthy food at reasonable prices. I think she gets it honestly, as her mom Susan (who I'll have on here shortly) is another great supporter of locally produced foods. Take a look at her website and make time to attend one of her Tulsa Green Drinks events. You'll get to hear some very interesting speakers and meet other like-minded folks that realize that growing the quality of food you want is born not of seeking profit, but of a love of the land, and the knowledge that how we treat our soil and our livestock now will ultimately impact not only our children, but all the generations that follow.

 If you run into Amanda at the market, let her know you appreciate all the effort she put into this noble cause. I sure appreciate it.

Thanks for reading!

Pork & Greens 

Lost City Knits

There's a really cool blog out there called Lost City Knits that comes from two folks that I really admire and respect for their passion about what they do, Denise Bell and Chris Dykes. I just had the opportunity to check their blog out, and it's really cool. The different colors of yarn that they produce are amazing. You can see the passion I'm talking about in those colors. Bravo!

They also produce lavender products under the Clear Creek Lavender moniker, so check that out as well. You can find them at the Cherry Street Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings, so if you love to knit, I don't know where you could find more beautiful yarn. (I wish my grandmoma was still alive to see those colors)  

Thanks for reading, and look their blog over. You won't be disappointed!

Pork & Greens

Farm Fodder - Page 9

Had flashbacks to my boyhood days in Georgia with all the humidity in the air. Today's the first day this year that I worked up one of those sweats that actually sloshes around in your boots. You can always tell it's summer by the stillness in the air, the noisy buzz of insects, and the color of the sky. The crisp, clear, dark blue of fall and spring is replaced with that lighter, moisture laden blue, a blue that just looks hot.

The hot, humid weather has has the pigs heading for the wallows where they remain from about 9:00 am until dusk. You can tell the temperature is rising by the decrease in feed intake by the pigs. I'm like that too, when it's hot I don't feel like eating much either. I got a shot of Twiggs and a few of her pigs chilling in their wallow here:

At the market Saturday, and through the Oklahoma Food Coop, we'll have two new products. The first is our Italian Cotto Salami, a sausage made famous in the Piedmont region of Italy. It's a great addition to sandwiches, subs, or panninis. The second is our Shaved Sandwich Ham, thin, succulent slices of our heritage pork that is killer on sanwiches, chopped for salads, or as a topping for pizzas. We'll have all our other products as well, and Memorial Day is definitely time to break the grill out. (After you've given a well deserved thanks to all the brave men and women that have, and continue to serve our country)

The vegetables are rocking and rolling in the hot, steamy air, and it won't be long before they start making their appearance at the market. I took a few photos for examples that you can see here, like these bell peppers:

and these cucumbers:

and the sweet corn that has recovered nicely for the most part:

and last but not least, my 4th of July pie pumpkins:

At the market Saturday we'll have cabbage, red and white turnips, snow peas, green beans, squash, zucchini, and a yellow zucchini called Meteor. We'll also have a few cucumbers as they are just starting to produce. Next week we should have our first cherry tomatoes.

Thanks for reading, and come see us Saturday. We'll have the grill fired up as well!

Pork & Greens

You're So Sixy - Merry Schepers

One of the things that makes the blood, sweat, and tears of farming worth all the effort is the people you meet along the way, and you even develop a soft spot for certain customers, and for me, Merry Schepers and Katrina Bogdon are two of those. (We'll get Katrina on here later)

Merry's not only a dedicated, hard core shopper at the markets, but she's quite the talent in the kitchen as well, and we're hoping she might venture into the vendor ranks before long. She makes a mean pickled okra, and her pickled onion relish is awesome. She's also an avid home gardener and has a flock of egg laying chickens with a hen house she built that Norm Abrams of "This Old House" would be proud of.  Merry is also a talented soap maker, and you can find many of her creative products here.  Anyhoo, here's our brief chat with Merry:

 

 

One other thing, Merry makes a "hard" mustard, but I've told her I don't know if I need tongs or a shot glass to partake     since she hasn't brought me any yet! If you bump in to her at the market you'll know who she is - a mighty fine gal in our opinion! Also, thanks to Katrina for the stellar (and short notice) camera work.

Pork & Greens

Wanna See My Bloomers?

As promised, I took some video of the red clover blooming in our spring grazing paddock. The recent torrential rains have set the clover to blooming stronger than I've ever seen it so far. This is good news for the ledger balance, as we won't have to purchase any seed for next year, and good news for the pigs because clover is an excellent source of protein, and they really like it as well. This video really doesn't do justice to the beauty, a real purple haze, that greets the eye at first view. Anyway, here's the short take:

 

 

On a different note, we've been on Facebook for a while now and you can view our homepage wall here. Our posts on Typepad are linked to the homepage, so if you hit the "I like" button on our blog posts it'll show up on Facebook, and vice versus. Pretty cool! (Well, if you like our posts, and so far there's not a "dumpster" button)   Thanks for reading, and viewing!

Pork & Greens

Farm Fodder - Page 8

Another busy week at the farm. We took four more pigs to the butcher on Monday, and just got finished packing all the orders for the Oklahoma Food Coop delivery day tomorrow, and the process of getting ready for the market begins tonight. 

In New Pork City, the pigs are packing on the pounds, and Jethro (our Spot boar) has done his duty and rebred both Geez and Myfoot. Speaking of those two gals, their pigs are really no different than us in some aspects. For instance, we have our campfires to gather around, the English have their Maypole, and the pigs their Silo of Milo:

 The red clover is bloomimg in the spring grazing paddock and is absolutely beautiful. I'm going to try and get some more video before friday and post it up here, so check back in if you get a chance. Perk and Twiggy's pigs are growing mighty fine and getting rambunctious, especially at nursing time, and I'm sure Perk & Twiggs wish the pigs would drink CapriSuns like normal children:

At the market we'll have all of our products except our Andouille sausage that sold out last week. We're going to be introducing two new products in two weeks. First, we're going to have one pound rolls of Italian salami, which is a great addition to sandwiches, especially with home grown tomatoes on the horizon. Second, in line with the salami, we're going to have shaved ham in one pound packages that also makes an awesome sub or pannini.

The garden is thriving with all the recent rain, and summer vegetables will be here before you know it. Our sweet corn crop has recovered for the most part, and summer favorites are starting to take off. For instance, our red and yellow cherry tomatoes are setting fruit:

and our Kansas melons are just starting to set fruit:

Although we're growing three other varieties of melons (Hale's Best, Iroquois, and Twice As Nice) I'm partial to these Kansas melons because they're all from seed I saved from last year's crop. I saved seed from the fastest growing and largest melon producing vine in our garden, and I'm interested to see if we have a more productive crop this year.

You definitely won't have to wait until Thanksgiving to have some homemade pumpkin pie, as our crop already has pumpkins the size of large golf balls on the vines:

At the market we're getting to the "tweener" point in what's available. We'll have broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, summer squash, zucchini, red and white turnips, and a few pints of snow peas (the raccoons got almost all the seed). We may have a few heads of lettuce, but most of it went to seed with the unusually warm weather we had a while ago. Carrots are getting close, and we should have some cucumbers and yellow zucchini by the next market.

Saturday is supposed to be a beautiful, warm day and we'll have the grill fired up for cooking dawgs, so come on out to the market and see us. Thanks for reading!

Pork & Greens

You're So Sixy - Suzi Cline

I always hate it when I try to get some point across, and the point ends up making me look like a jackarse that flea bitten mules would be embarrassed to associate with. Let me explain.

I wanted to start a video series called Your So Sixy, with the "Sixy" referring to the number of questions I would ask so as to keep the videos as short as possible. I wanted to interview shoppers at the farmers market so people can put names to faces and learn a little something about them (me included), because in the world we inhabit these days we all pass each other like ships in the night, which is really unfortunate in my opinion, because we are herd creatures by nature, but technology is slowly eroding the interaction that binds us together.

So here comes the jackarse part. My first interviewee was Suzi Cline, who I repeatedly called Karen, until she was kind enough to let me know her name was Suzi. So my whole point of introducing people and letting others know a little something about them needs to start with moi. In my defense, I've never been very good with names, and Suzi is really lucky that I didn't call her Kalvin. 

Anyway, Suzi is a longtime supporter of the local farmers' markets and the Oklahoma Food Coop, and I thought she's a great shopper to start the series with, so without further ado, here's Suzi:

 

 

If you run into her at the market sometime you'll be able to put a name to her, and maybe get to know her as a fellow shopper and supporter of our local farmers. We think she's awesome and we think you will too, and see, I learned something about her I didn't know and wouldn't have expected, and that is she doesn't have much time to read, and I just assumed she was an avid reader. I guess we all know what assume stands for.

I had hoped to get a second interview with Merry Schwepers (sp) - see, there I go again, but she flew the coop before I could get to her, so Merry, if you read this before next weekend, I need you front and center Saturday morning. I also want to thank Kat Conrad for the steady camera work, I mean my tripod moves around more than her hand did. Nice job.

Thanks for watching, and we hope to get lots of you guys on here before the market season ends!

Pork & Greens

Farm Fodder - Page 7

Well, we survived the near hurricane force winds without too much damage. My corn took a hit that you can see in this video:

 

 

But otherwise, the vegetables faired good considering. At the market this week we'll have lettuces, red and white turnips, broccoli, zucchini, squash, collards, and radishes. Most of these vegetables are almost gone, so get em while you can. We should have some cabbage and cauliflower by next Saturday, and maybe some carrots as well.

We got several things planted this week, like melons, watermelons, and winter/summer squash that replaced some of the plants done in by vine borers. (they've been bad this year) We're planting beans in the spots where we had lettuce as soon as it's harvested.

In Porklahoma, we've decided to not bring the dawg cart this weekend, as the chance of rain is somewhere around 80 percent. Hopefully we can have some decent weather the following weekend. We got Geez and Myfoot's pigs weaned and they're doing outstanding getting up on feed:

 After out next load of pigs goes to the butcher we'll move the remaining pigs from the first group into a sacrifice lot, and then we'll turn Geez & Myfoot's pigs into the spring grazing paddock.

 We picked up four pigs worth of products this week, so we'll be stocked up for the market. We'll also have Green Pepper & Onion Brat Dawgs, and those dudes are awesome. Come see us, and I plan on videoing our first customer questionnaire since I should have plenty of time since I won't be grilling.

Thanks for reading, and we'll see you tommorrow!

Pork & Greens

Moma

One day you wake up and realize how precious were the days you had on this earth with the woman who bore you in labor, and then loved and nutured you into adulthood. On this Mother's day we remember the love and affection freely given and hold you in our thoughts always. Rest in peace, moma.

Stephen

Farm Fodder - Page 6

A mite warm today, at least that's what my skin is telling me, but perfect weather for planting watermelons. Now that the Brookside market is open the harvesting season is in full swing and "busy" becomes a description lacking teeth. Mayhem might be a more appropriate term, but it's mayhem on a schedule, ripe with calendar books, notes, stickys, self to self voice mail messages, cardboard tops left in the steering wheel, and anything else that can keep something from being forgotten. Ah, the tranquil and serene life of the farmer.

In the province of vegetable town things are really rounding into form with all the nice (and warm) weather we've been having. Here's a shot of the queens of the garden, or as we say in Jaw-ja, waughtermailons:    

We're growing four types this year. The yellow flesh Moon & Stars, the red flesh Moon & Stars, a new one for us this year that we're really excited about called Orangeglo, and the seedless Snack Pack melon we grew last year. What's your favorite variety of watermelon?

We've got the Diva cucumbers (Diva will make you a buliva) off to a good start and a trellis just waiting to be climbed and loaded down with sweet, smooth skinned cukes:

the sweet peppers are starting to grow in this heat, and we'll have to add another run of weave before long:

At the market Saturday we'll have radishes, both red and white turnips, half pound sacks of spinach, four or five types of lettuce, and a few squash and zucchini. Carrots should be ready soon, and we may have a cucumber or two by next week as well.

In Pigsburg, the little ones aren't so little any more as you can see in this shot of Geez and Myfoot's pigs:

Now tell me those girls aren't masters of milk production!

Perk & Twigg's pigs are getting in the rambunctious stage, and I hear them hitting the electric wire (or more appropriately the wire hitting them) after another round of chase the pig with the turnip:

At the market we'll have all the assorted products, and we'll also be grilling the dawgs. This is Jackie's last weekend before heading to Japan, so y'all wish her a safe trip. Kat Conrad, who'll be filling in for Jackie while she's gone, will be in the booth with us this weekend so stop by and say hello.

 I'm thinking about doing a video questionnaire with the customers each week. One customer gets 6 questions in a minute, but I need some good questions to ask, and they don't have to pertain to the market. Suggestions? 

That's another wrap on Fodder news, and thanks for reading!

Pork & Greens