Tag: Working Horses

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All season I have asked for recipes and they are now rolling in.  Here are two more recipes contributed by CSA members.

Hi Martha,

Today’s pick-up had all the ingredients for one of my favourite salads ever, so I thought I would share the recipe.   Bread salad may sound strange but it is so good!

Panzanella

1 baguette, a dense artisan style loaf works best

1/2 cup olive oil

3 Tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper to taste

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 cucumber, peeled, halved (seeded if necessary) and cut into bite sized pieces.

3 cups tomato, chopped

1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped.

Whisk oil, vinegar, sugar salt and pepper together in a large salad bowl.

Add onion to dressing and let sit while you prepare the rest of the salad. … it softens the bite of onion and adds a nice taste to the dressing.

Slice baguette lengthwise into quarters (you should have 4 long pieces), brush with oil an grill until toasted on all sides.  Remove, cool, cut into bite-sized chunks.

Add tomato, cucumber, basil and bread.  Toss and serve.

* We usually serve with grilled boneless skinless chicken breast that have marinated for about 2 hours  in …. 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 white wine, 2 Tbsp each fresh rosemary and thyme, 1 minced clove of garlic, 2 tsp mustard, 2 tsp sugar.

Cheers,

Sheena

Hi Ken and Martha;

Martha today I was telling you about my recipe for kale chips. My friend Susan Varro modified a recipe she had into this, so I pass on credit to her. It’s absolutely fabulous – my children go nuts for these, so if they pass the kid test, they are a-ok! It’s called Cashew “Cheese” because the nutritional yeast and cashews, along with the salt, create a great flavour that sort of mimics a cheese taste – which is great for ‘chips’!
Cashew “Cheese” for Kale Chips:
1 red bell pepper, roasted and skin removed.

1 cup unsalted cashews, soaked for at least 1 hour

1 lemon, juiced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 cloves garlic

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp sea salt or to taste.

Blend until consistency of yogourt. Massage onto kale leaves.  It should be covered like a light salad dressing.  Bake at 175 degrees for approx 3 hours, until crispy.

When cool, keep in an airtight container for up to a few days.

 

The paste recipe is easily doubled, and can keep in the fridge for a few days. It also freezes well. It is a great idea to double the batch and freeze the leftovers so that the next time you have kale, you have the paste easily available – just defrost and spread. 🙂

Give it a try! I will attempt to bring some for you next time I come down to the farm (in a few weeks).

Cheers,

Brianne Curry

 

 

 

 

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We have received two recipes from CSA members to be shared.  The first is from Vicci Coughlin:

Hi Martha:

This is a recipe I made today after picking up at the farm.  It was actually the fresh thyme that inspired me and the tomatoes of course.
Fresh Tomato Tart:
(The same filling can be used to top a pizza crust.)
I use pie pastry for this, but the original recipe calls for a short crust with butter.
Pastry:
1 cup plain all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup chilled butter cut into 1/2 inch chunks.
3 tablespoons ice water.
Filling:
6 oz. goat cheese plus 2 tablespoons cream or milk.
2 CSA tomatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp. minced fresh thyme
1 tsp good olive oil.
Method:
To make the pastry, stir together the flour and salt and cut the butter into the flour until butter is the size of a pea.  Add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time turning after each addition. Gather crumbly dough into a ball wrap and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 F.
On floured board, roll dough into a round and transfer to 9 inch pie plate.
In a small bowl, using a fork, mash the cheese together with the milk or cream and spread mixture evenly over bottom of pastry.
Cover with tomato slices in a tightly packed single layer. Sprinkle with pepper, thyme and olive oil.Bake until creust is lightly golden and the tomatoes have collapsed, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let stand for 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
The second recipe is from Jason and Bonnie Wietzel:

BBQ Corn with Herb Butter

Serves 4-6

1/3 cup Orchard Hill Farm fresh basil, rosemary, chives & oregano, chop finely

1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon himalayan salt or table salt

8 ears of Orchard Hill Farm fresh corn on the cob

– Mix the herbs, butter & salt by hand or in a food processor

– Take the ears of corn, remove a couple outside layers of husks on each cob, fold back the remaining husks and remove the corn silk

– Spread the butter mixture over the corn kernels and rewrap the husks around the cob

– To BBQ – put on med heat, grill till husks are a bit charred and the kernels are tender, turn often for about 15-20 min

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Lisa Foal Sitting

The summer is flying by! We are grateful for the rain last night – it will save us another round of irrigation. The hot weather is bringing on our heat loving crops like eggplant, tomatoes and sweet corn. Unfortunately, the raccoons have been making a mess in the corn patch, despite the electric fence barrier. Ken put up our heavy duty fencer last night and we hope that will discourage them! We harvested our garlic this week and it is hanging up to cure. Yesterday Ken took off our early planted oats – the horses will be happy about that throughout the year. Our two foals Eli and Wendell are doing well. Their mothers went back to work this week so that we could have two teams of three horses working to plow the 2012 garden area. Lisa was employed foal sitting in a little improvised outdoor stall – the ‘playpen’ – near the field so the mothers could nurse the foals without having to come all the way up to the barn. It would take a full time photographer to keep up with all the photographs we could take every day. Let alone getting it together to share them with everyone! We’re a small farm, but a busy one that feeds many.

I have been very pleased with the cucumbers that we have been harvesting from our hoop houses. We moved the slicing cucumber plants into the hoop houses this year because so many years the slicing cucumbers that we planted outside died off early from Downy Mildew. The hoophouses protect the plants from infection and keeps the plants bearing longer. Last year we tried a few varieties and chose “Tasty Green” as the one that did the best under our conditions.
Lisa and Grahame Riding up from the Field

We continue to appreciate the efforts of our apprentices. Ryan Brennen has finished his sojourn here at Orchard Hill and Tara Smedbol will be joining us later this week for the remainder of the season. We have just had a visit from Ava Richardson, who was an apprentice here in 2003. She was visiting with her husband from Japan. Ava has been working in Japan teaching for the past three years and is hoping to return to Canada with her husband and take up farming again. We received a letter this week from Anna McFaul, who was an apprentice here in 2008 and 2009. Anna is travelling for a year and is in New Zealand enjoying all the fruit that they grow there. We regularly receive emails from past apprentices who are fondly remembering their time here, a high number of whom are now farming themselves. It’s curious to have so many fledglings fly out of our ‘nest’ here on the farm. When we see them years later, I want to know if they’re eating properly, looking healthy, found a good mate…we have a vibrant family of past apprentices.

Three Generations in the Kitchen

Our daughter, Ellen, is visiting from Portland, Oregon until the end of August and we are extremely happy to have her home for a longer visit than usual. Her husband will be joining her for a week on Saturday. They are thinking of possibly moving to Ontario next year. Ellen has been busy in the kitchen doing preserving and helping to feed the crowd that gathers around our table for meals. It’s also great to have her experienced hand in the field…she and I started the CSA on our farm in 1997 to help fund her university education!

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Ryan with Wendell and Gwen

Gwen had her Suffolk Punch foal ready to greet us on Tuesday morning! A beautiful stud colt with a white diamond on his forehead. Ryan will be leaving our farm this week and was hoping the foal would be born before he departed.  Ryan is off to start medical school and has enjoyed being part of our farm team getting in on the ground level of good health which begins with healthy food produced in a sustainable manor.  We wish him well and although we will miss him we are sure that he will be an excellent doctor.

Andy with Wendell and Gwen

The heat and dry weather have been a challenge and we are irrigating the main garden for the second time this week.  It is interesting how things balance out. Ken says that the average rain fall over the year remains fairly constant so that when we have a very wet spring we are likely to have a dry spell in the summer to balance it out…We hope it doesn’t last too long, but are glad that we have the ability to irrigate the garden.

We have new Tamworth pigs to help jump start the composting of the horse manure. They also enjoy the extra produce on CSA pick up days.

Tamworth Composting Pigs

Getting Combine Ready for Wheat Harvest

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Gena and Foal

Gena had a beautiful Suffolk Punch stud colt on Monday morning. We are all enjoying having a foal around again after a break of a few years.  He seems healthy and strong. In the picture he is less than a day old and already “up and at ’em”!

 

We have had a bumper crop of strawberries. The CSA members have enjoyed picking extra berries on pick-up days. We dug our first carrots today and hope to have broccoli soon. It is nice to have the garden growing well and savor the flavours of the season as they change.

Last week we did manage to get the footings poured for the new greenhouse thanks to the efforts of the apprentices and our son, Grayden, and his friend, Race, who came for the week to jump start the project. Now even if we don’t have time to work on it again until fall the frost sensitive work is done!

Future Greenhouse Construction Begins!

 

 

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Plowing Bee
Last Saturday we had a Plowing Bee at the farm. Teamsters showed up from far and wide to help us plow a four acre field. We had ten teams plowing at one time. It was a lot of fun for all concerned. Our apprentices enjoyed the chance to try out the walking plow. Some CSA members made it down to the field to see the fun.

Spring Barn Kitten
A stray cat showed up at the barn this spring. She was very thin and shy. We began feeding her and the thin cat started getting a big tummy! We now have four very cute kittens at the barn. They are timid, but the apprentices are taming them.

Foxglove cut flowers for CSA
Our CSA flowers are coming along. For a number of years I have tried to grow Foxglove for the CSA Cut Flower Garden and this year it finally worked out.

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We have been challenged this season to choose our start date. I can’t remember a spring when it has been so cool that we haven’t enjoyed our first asparagus by this time in the season. We did manage to squeak in a second seeding of early vegetables yesterday and uncovered our first planting. Lisa introduced us to a method of gathering up the row cover like a big crocheted braid. It will hopefully make the relaying easier. I was delighted to see a good germination of peas, spinach, carrots, beets, radish and mesclun. The row cover really makes a difference. Ken was even able to cultivate with the draft horses and his riding single row cultivator. It rained again last night so it is good to have the second batch of early seeding done! We are later than usual with our strawberry and potato planting, but hopefully we will be able plant strawberries tomorrow and potatoes the beginning of next week.

OUR CSA START DATES:

TUESDAY – MAY 17
SATURDAY – MAY 21

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Transplanting head lettuce and Pac Choi into hoop house
Cultivating the garden with four Suffolk Punches

Welcome to Ryan, our fourth apprentice, who arrived at the beginning of the week.  Monday morning we woke to the sound of flapping plastic and realized that our fourth hoop house, that we had just covered with plastic, had come loose in the wind and ripped off during the night!  What a disappointment.   While Ken and Andy were busy getting ground worked up to plant the early seeds in the outside garden and the oat ground ready to plant, the other apprentices retro fitted the hoop house for plastic reassembly. They put a bottom board down and used U-Bolts to attach it to the hoops then moved one of the ends in by one hoop width. Now we can have enough plastic to re-attach it to the ends and use battens to wrap the side plastic and screw them to  the wooden bottom boards.  Our CSA members can think of  all this effort when they eat their first mesclun – grown in the hoop house.

This week we also took one of our big pigs to be butchered and made into sausage to sell to CSA members. The hens are cranking out about 70 eggs a day so if anyone wants to make the pilgrimage to the farm they can stock up on eggs and sausage for Easter.

We also managed to get the early garden planted and covered with row cover and three of our four oat fields worked up and planted. Now all we need is some warm weather!

On Thursday, we started our three day April Draft Horse Workshop. Participants from Ontario and Quebec as well as three of our new apprentices took the course together. To begin they do some line exercises driving “George the Trike”. Caesar takes on a supervisory job during the workshops and especially enjoys accompanying on the wagon rides.  So life continues to be full and busy here at Orchard Hill. As we gear up for the season ahead.

Driving George the trike
Ryan Hanging up the Trace
Shannon Driving Gwen
Richard Driving Gena

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We have decided not to have a “mini”  farm market on December 11. With the colder weather and shorter days the chickens’ egg production has dropped off and the outdoor produce is frozen.  Thanks to everyone who came out and in October and November. We were happy to be able to sell our egg surplus and the garden produce that kept on giving.  It was a gentler end to the season and Caesar certainly was happy  to see everyone.  We would be happy to sell flour and  eggs here at the farm in the “off” season. Just contact us ahead of time to make sure we are home and the flour is ground and the chickens are laying.

We are moving ahead with our greenhouse renovations.  Hopefully, all the warmer weather isn’t behind us and we will be able to get the cement work done soon.  We are waiting rather impatiently to rent a back hoe for digging a big hole to bury rocks in for a passive solar heat storage.  It will keep us busy for some time. Everyone always asks what we do in our “off” season and it seems that this is our big project for this winter.

Our three older Suffolk Punch mares Jasmin, Gena and Gwen have all been “checked in foal”.  We hope to breed the two younger mares Buttons and Sassy in the spring. Gena is due the end of June and Jasmin and Gwen are due the end of July. It will be fun to have some young draft horses around the farm again.  We had Chester hooked up with Gwen recently and they went very well together all things considered. Perhaps we will be able to work Chester when the mares are on maternity leave next summer.

We hope that everyone has a Happy Solstice/Christmas Season and extend our best wishes for the New Year.

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Buttons and Gwen at IPM in St. Thomas, Ontario

Ken has spent the week at the International Plowing match in St. Thomas.  It is taking place only about 5 km from the farm and seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.  He has been plowing with Buttons and Gwen.  Elwyn McGuire has also been plowing at the match with our older team Jasmin and Gena.  Our apprentices have been a great help with the horses as well.  Friday is the last day of the the four day plowing competition and then it will be back to the real farm work for everyone. It has been a lot of fun and a good chance to show everyone our calm, steady Suffolk horses.  Suffolks are a rare breed and it is unusual for them to be out in public.  We have been happy to see some of our CSA members who have stopped by to visit at the match!

Our squash harvest has provided a bounty of beautiful squash to share with our members. The mountain of squash is gradually going down in our front yard.  It is good that they store well.  An excellent website that explains about the different varieties of squash has hints on cooking and lincs to recipes is: whatscookingamerica.net/squash.htm

We expect to be digging the remainder of our potato crop next week and will have a bounty to divide up for our final weeks of the CSA.  We are really pleased with our first sweet potato crop.  We gave our first sweet potatoes on Tuesday and have quite a few more.  The fresh dug potatoes are not as sweet as the ones that have been cured. We are attempting to cure some in our greenhouses to give in the final week. We are new to growing sweet potatoes and are learning as we go.

Orchard Hill Farm CSA Fall Potluck will be held October 3rd from 2-4 pm

Bring: food to share, plates, cutlery, cups and lawn chairs.

Last pick-up dates:

Tuesday, October 5

Saturday, October 9