How about

a little Halloween sneak preview...



Actually, this is part of Olivia's costume. But Rafe gave us a good laugh with it the other night!

If you give a boy a camera...

you're going to get a photo essay on a manure spreader.



Rafe just now realized that our manure spreader is a (very old) John Deere.



He never realized it before because it's so old that the John Deere green is faded out.



He is so excited. I blame my brother for this unnatural attraction to green.



I was quite intrigued by Rafe's choice of shots here. Interesting that he took all "macro" type shots, but not one of the whole spreader.



You'll have to go here to see it in action.



The old Deere still gets the job done, though. 24 loads hauled this past weekend.



I just may have to hand the camera over to him more often. He can take over until my blogging slump ends.

Did I say "pumpkin pictures coming tomorrow?" I guess I did, didn't I.


Pick a peck of pumpkins

My blogging mojo seems to have gone missing. But I've been doing this long enough to know that it will be back at some point. You just gotta roll with it.


Rafe stands sits guard over our haul of carving pumpkins

I just feel like I've got nothing new to blog about. It's another fall season, with all the same things that go on every fall. But when you think about it, that's a good thing. Because so many times, when there's something to blog about around here, it's bad news.


Cousins

But everything around here is good right now. We still have a litter of 6 piglets. The stocker calves are looking like they're going to be mighty good eating real soon. The first of the butcher hogs went to the locker yesterday.

The only bad news was the snow yesterday. As I said to my friend Ann, "Now this is just plain mean."


3 years ago:

Fall tree

It's all who you know

2 years ago:

Obscene

Still life

1 year ago:

It's National Pork Month, after all

Beans, beans, the magical fruit

Sidekick

Last weekend was our annual trip to the local pumpkin farm. The traditional wagon ride was brought to us by these two:



Notice how the one on the right is Mr. Serious? But the one on the left played the part of the funny sidekick.



The more I clicked away with the camera, the more he hammed it up.



Actual pumpkin pictures coming tomorrow...


3 years ago:

The boy and his piglets

New chicks on the block

Pig tiller

Prepping Rafe to go into the pharmacy

2 years ago:

Weanling

Cowgirl

Steam floats off a partially composted mix...

1 year ago:

Oink

Pigtails

It's National Pork Month, after all

Culling

Even the weeds in the garden are pretty in autumn

There's been a harvest of a different sort around here this week - culling of some of our breeding stock. Monday we sent Mr. Bull, Missus Hamilton, and 2 unnamed black cows to the Waverly Sale Barn.

Mr. Bull had been moving pretty slowly the past couple of months. We're crossing our fingers that he got his job done this summer. We haven't noticed anybody looking like they're in heat, but we'll have the vet out to check and be sure. Missus Hamilton was our oldest cow. This year she had a stillborn calf with physical birth defects. It was time to let her go. The 2 black cows we've had a couple of years and just haven't been impressed with any of their calves.

The plan now is to keep our eye out for bred cows with calves at their side this fall, or to buy some weaned stockers this fall and buy bred cows over the winter. We'll see how things shake out.

Then this morning Matt & Madeline took the open sow to the hog buyer. The other one will go in another month or so, after her litter is weaned. We've already arranged for 3 new gilts, a 3/4 Berk-1/4 Duroc cross. They'll be bred to farrow in April. We won't pick them up until right before farrowing so winter pig chores will be a little lighter this year, which will be nice. Ollie gets to stay :)




2 years ago:

So far

1 year ago:

Quick update

Taking care of business

Some of the calves lounging on a beautiful fall afternoon

Our farmers market season is officially done! Charles City has another Saturday left and Mason City has three Friday's left, but last Friday we sold out of every last scrap of beef, pork & poultry we have. That was kind of cool :) I still can't quite believe we did 600 broilers this year, and could have sold more if we'd had them.

On that note, we've had a lot of farmers market customers say to us, "What am I going to do for meat once the farmers market is done?" So we've decided to try winter deliveries to both Mason City & Charles City.

The way this will work, we will email everyone on Monday the week of the delivery letting them know when the delivery will be and what we have available. Anyone interested in ordering will need to email us back an order by 3:00 Wednesday. We will package the orders and email back a confirmation & amount due. Then we'll have a designated meeting place and time in each town when everyone can show up & pick up their orders.

I'll probably send out inital emails in November, polling interested people on the best meeting places & times for this. Deliveries will begin in December and continue into April. So please email sugarcreekfarm (at) osage (dot) net if you're interested in being on our delivery information list.

This is something new for us, and I'm really excited about it. I'm hoping that this will eventually (like maybe next year) develop into a meat CSA program. We'll see!

We are still taking orders for December beef, in either quarters or bundles. Bundles are an 1/8th of a beef - about 50 pounds packaged - in the full variety of cuts. The difference between quarters & bundles (besides the quantity of meat) is that quarters can be custom cut any way you like, and you pay the processing yourself. Bundles come in the same cuts we have done for farmers market, and the price includes the processing. Email us to reserve one (or more) of those if you're interested.

Another new thing we're going to try this year is the Des Moines downtown winter farmers markets. These will be on Saturday November 22 and Saturday December 20. So please look us up there if you're in the area! We'll be bringing a full selection of our beef & pork cuts.

I think that's all the business I've got for now. We're enjoying this brief respite between the end of farmers market and the beginning of fall butchering, which begins in just a couple of weeks!


1 year ago:

Adventures in horseback riding

Splendour

The tree was calling me today, calling me to come out and take its picture before it totally drops its orangey red robe.

I happily obliged.




3 years ago:

Another installment

Chicken, or dust bunny?

Spuds

Photo Friday : Conspicuous

2 years ago:

Louisa

1 year ago:

Apple picking

How to Cook : German Pork Chops

Can you tell it's fall? Two food posts in one week! My family's tummies are so happy.

I know I've mentioned this before, but one of my go-to cookbooks is the More-with-Less Cookbook. If the cookbook police came around and demanded I give up all my cookbooks but one, this one would be on the short list. That's how much I love it. Today's recipe comes from that cookbook.

Last weekend we harvested the rest of our potatoes, so I've been revisiting all of my favorite potato comfort foods. This recipe combines potatoes and pork chops, cooked in one pan, for a simple but tasty dish that works for Sunday dinner or a weeknight supper.

You can vary the recipe according to the number of people you're serving. Basically, you'll need one pork chop and one medium-sized potato per person. I used 6 of each tonight. Thinly slice the potatoes and layer in a 9x13 cake pan. Season with salt, pepper, and caraway seed. Lay the pork chops on top of the potatoes, and season them the same way.



As an aside...how many of you have one of these:



I think we may have got this as a wedding present, 16 years ago. And it's still one of my favorite kitchen tools. It makes quick work of slicing potatoes, or shredding massive amounts of zucchini.

Anyhoo.

Next dump a can of sauerkraut on top of the chops, and season with still more caraway seeds. You just can't have too many of those little buggers. The sauerkraut I used was actually a sauerkraut relish I had leftover from a bratwurst cookout. It was languishing in the refrigerator, crying out to be used up and put out of its misery already. But you can just use a regular ol' jar of sauerkraut.



Add 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water, depending on how many chops & potatoes you've used. Cover with foil and stick it in the oven.

Then go watch 12 games of volleyball.

The recipe instructs to bake at 350 degrees for an hour. Since I knew I was going to be gone a few hours, I baked them at 325 degrees for 2-1/2 hours. Gotta love a recipe with that kind of flexibility! Either way, remove the foil and bake 15 minutes more to brown the chops a bit.



German Pork Chops
adapted from the More-with-Less Cookbook

6 pork chops
6 medium potatoes, peeled & sliced
1 can sauerkraut

Layer potato slices in 9x13 cake pan. Season with salt, pepper, and caraway seeds. Lay pork chops over potatoes. Season again with salt, pepper, and caraway seeds. Layer sauerkraut over chops, and season again with caraway seeds. Add 1/5 cup water. Cover pan with foil, and bake at 350 degrees for an hour. Remove foil and bake 15 minutes longer.

For dessert, we were treated to an apple pie made from scratch by Olivia! She attended a 4-H pie-baking workshop after school today, and her very first attempt was quite delicious. Her grandma Lola would be so proud!




3 years ago:

Up, up and away

1 year ago:

"family time"

Let's review

In the comments on yesterday's post, Lisa & Angie both asked about why we've decided to get different gilts, and what we're going to get. So I put together this review of what we've been through with the gilts we have...

May 2006: we buy 3 Chester White gilts

August 2006: we buy our Berk boar, Ollie

March 2007: Gilt #1 farrows, is a bad mother, and loses the entire litter

April 2007: Gilt #2 farrows. 11 piglets born alive, she lays on 5 right away.

April 2007: We decide to cull the first gilt.

April 2007: Gilt #3 farrows. 10 born alive. She lays on 7, steps on 1.

late spring 2007: We buy 9 feeder pigs off my brother to make up for all of our own pigs we've lost.

late fall 2007: By the time these 2 litters are butchered in the fall we lose 4 more pigs. I don't remember if we lost them pre- or post-weaning. Regardless, we butcher 5 pigs. 5 pigs out of 21 born alive. We are quite sad.

September 2007: the first fall litter is born. She has 10, lays on 1, leaving 9. One dies post-weaning, so we wean (and eventually butcher) 8. We are ecstatic.

October 2007: the second fall litter is born. She has 12, lays on 3, leaving 9. She weans (and we eventually butcher) all 9. We are beyond ecstatic.

Spring 2008: 17 pigs butchered out of 22 born alive. We hope we've turned the corner with these sows.

April 15 2008: first spring litter. 8 born alive.

April 18 2008: lost 2.

April 19 2008: lost 5.

April 27, 2008: second spring litter. 7 born alive. Loses 2 within a week.

October 2008: We'll butcher 6 at the end of this month. 6 pigs, out of 15 born alive. We are quite sad.

And that catches us up to yesterday's post. 1 sow with a small litter, 1 sow not even bred after 4 months with Ollie. These sows are going down the road, a.s.a.p. We'll probably also buy some feeder pigs from my brother again, to make up for getting only 1 litter this fall.

So...through a friend of a customer at the farmers market we've made the acquaintance of a hog breeder. His farm, and his hog facilities, are closer to what we have here than the breeder we bought the Chesters from (they came from a confinement setup.) He recommended we get away from white pig breeds. It's been a while since I talked to him, but if I remember right he's doing Berk x Hamp crosses and Berk x Duroc crosses. We're going to buy bred gilts that will farrow next spring. Not sure yet if we'll buy 2 or 3.

Maybe we should have booted these sows sooner? Maybe we should give them another chance? Maybe we're expecting too much of any sow, to farrow and wean and raise a litter in rather crude conditions? What would you do? And what breeds would you recommend we look at for our next gilts?

Why is it

that our fall farrowings go better than our spring farrowings? Friday night, with a low somewhere about 31 degrees, one sow farrowed and has a nice litter of 6.

However the other sow seemed to be in standing heat this morning...which means that we've fed her for all these months...for nothing. My brother's going to come and preg check her this week.

These sows are going, as soon as the piglets are weaned! We'll start again with completely different gilts.


3 years ago:

The boy, he likes honey

We must eat them to save them

Brrr!

2 years ago:

111

Fret, fretted, will fret

Survey says...

How to Cook : Swiss Steak

We had our first frost last night, but haven't yet succumbed to turning on the heat in our house. But I love this time of year when I can run the oven, the crockpot, the stovetop, and whatever other heat-generating appliance my heart desires! So when Becky left a comment the other day, asking for a round steak recipe, I said right out loud, "Thank you! Now I know what to make for supper!" And I immediately dug out my trusty crockpot.

This recipe fits the lazy-cooking-from-scratch style I love so much. It comes together in a hurry (I fixed it during my lunch break), and cooks away while you go off and watch 12 games of volleyball.

Round steak usually comes as a largish slab, with ribbons of fat around the edges and sometimes through the middle. It's a cut of meat where it's easy to cut that fat away if you wish. We only have top round cuts made (the bottom round gets ground in with the hamburger, making it leaner) and we always have the locker tenderize ours.



Start with 2 to 3 pounds of steak, and cut it into individual serving sizes. Then mix flour, salt and pepper together and coat the steak pieces with the flour mixture.



Plop it into a pan of melted butter and brown each piece on both sides. Then transfer to your crockpot.



The recipe calls for a can of cream-of-mushroom soup. I didn't happen to have any on hand, but do you know how easy it is to make your own? Just melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, and whisk in 3 tablespoons of flour until smooth. Then whisk in 1 cup of milk and heat until the mixture is thickened and bubbly. Then dump in a can of mushrooms.

To either the canned or scratch version of your soup, add 1-1/3 cups of beef broth (or 1-1/3 cups water + 1/2 T. beef boullion granules), a couple cloves of minced garlic and a chopped onion. Mix all together until blended and then pour over the round steak in the crockpot. Cook on low 8 hours or high 4 hours.



Serve the meat and the sauce over pasta. I usually use egg noodles, but I happened to have these curly things in the cupboard and they worked just dandy.



Yum! Hot, beefy, creamy goodness!

Swiss Steak

2 to 3 pounds round steak
3/4 cup flour
1 t. pepper
1/4 t. salt
2 T. butter
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1-1/3 c. beef broth
1 onion, chopped, 2 cloves garlic, minced

Trim fat from steak and cut into individually-sized pieces. Mix flour, salt and pepper in a shallow pan. Coat steak pieces in flour mixture. Brown steak pieces in melted butter. Transfer to crockpot. Combine remaining ingredients and pour over steak. Cover and cook on low 8 hours or high 4 hours, or until meat is tender and cooked through.


2 years ago:

Happy October!

Nerve wracking

1 year ago:

Saving the world