Fresh direct-market citrus

Citrus is a natural winter-seasonal treat for many folks. Growing up, my family got big boxes shipped directly from Florida through our church, and the oranges and grapefruits were always so much better than what we could get in the store. I'd fallen out of the habit of thinking about this option, until this winter when we started talking about researching direct-market citrus growers from whom we could order directly, getting better products and letting the grower keep more of the profit.

Coincidentally, I received a promotional email from Localharvest promoting various member growers and their winter specials. I can't remember the last time I acted on a promotional email, but after some quick research we decided this was just what we were looking for. We ordered a full bushel mix of Honeybell oranges and Ruby Red Grapefruit. I don't even know what citrus goes for in a store, as we almost never buy it, but the price (including shipping) worked out to about a dollar a fruit. This seemed reasonable to us to support a more sustainable grower (by their claims) than store fruit was likely to be, assuming the fruit was actually good.

The order went in just before the big, damaging freeze down in Florida, so we figured it would be a while before it came through as all the growers were scrambling to harvest or protect their crops. The box finally did come, delivered right to our door, packed with oranges and grapefruits.

And oh...my...are these good. The oranges are thin-skinned, seedy, and rather messy to eat by hand, but wonderfully juicy and sweet. They'd be great juiced, though so far we haven't bothered as they're good enough out-of-hand. The grapefruit are just amazing. The best grapefruit I can remember eating, a perfect balance of sweet and sour. These were well worth the price, and it's nice to know that the money went almost all to the grower, rather than being diluted through a long chain of middlemen. Scurvy, begone.

A visit to Stoney Acres sheep dairy

On the way home from a recent quick trip to visit Joanna's parents in Arkansas, we fulfilled a long-time wish by arranging to visit Stoney Acres sheep dairy. Founded 13 years ago deep in the Missouri Ozarks, it was the first sheep dairy in the state, blazing a number of trails for small direct-market dairies to follow.

image linked from Stoney Acres website

Rick was pleased to have visitors and spent over an hour showing us around and answering questions. Their operation is simple and efficient; milking around 50 ewes who are kept on rotated pasture. The photo above shows their entire dairy infrastructure; the gambrel-roofed left side of the barn houses a small milking parlor that holds six ewes at a time, while the simple right side houses their cheese room, aging coolers, washing stations, and sales table.

It was fascinating to see a truly compact and efficient setup like this in which they have found many effective, legal shortcuts and cost-saving measures to keep things simple. They milk into metal cans, but freeze the milk so they don't need a bulk tank (thus saving expense and cleaning needs). Both goat and sheep milk freeze well, and can be used after thawing for cheese-making. Their cheese-making area is a single stainless-steel table with associated sink, on which they make a few wheels of small-batch cheeses at a time. All the cheese is aged raw-milk, saving the need for a pasteurizer (another source of expense and cleaning needs). A restaurant-style steel cooler ages and stores the raw cheese, which by FDA rules is legal to sell after 60 days. On the other side of the room, a simple water heater and sink take care of sanitary needs. And that's all they need.

Rick gave us a history of the dairy, which includes lots of conversations with the state dairy authorities to educate and convince them of his methods. This was the first sheep dairy in the state, and required some work to even be approved. Practices like freezing the milk needed work, too, as no one here had heard of that despite it being common practice elsewhere. Regardless, it was his opinion that the authorities had been and were pleasant to work with, and he didn't find the regulations, testing, or other requirements particularly onerous.

He did have some funny/disturbing stories to tell about Federal authorities, including the Homeland Security folks who showed up and insisted on taking 200lb of cheese for contamination testing (apparently worried about bioterrorism). When he protested that this was more than his entire stock on hand, they eventually agreed to only take 75lb. Even though they paid for the cheese, this still wiped out his inventory and kept him from making sales and deliveries for a while. I don't think he ever got an answer from their tests.

Another interesting and useful aspect of the visit related to their pastures. When the dairy was first established, much of the land now in pasture was abandoned and grown up in cedars (an extremely familiar concept to us). As we're doing now, he simply got to work clearing the cedars, cutting the stumps off at the ground, and letting the remnant seed bank take over. Now, over a decade later, he has wide-ranging, beautiful pastures of mixed grasses. It was a great look into the future for us, as this is exactly what we're working to achieve here.

We picked his brain about all sorts of sheep-dairy-related points, as this is something we very much want to expand into someday. There are many cheeses that can only be made authentically with sheep's milk, including some like feta that need to be mixed with other milk (like goat, in feta's case). We want to keep both sheep and goats down the road, having started with goats primarily because we had a friendly nearby goat dairy to learn from. If we'd settled near Stoney Acres, we'd have gone the other direction. As it was, we had to resist the urge to buy a few sheep he had for sale and stuff them into the trunk for the ride home.

As regards the cheese, he didn't have much stock left as they were in the process of lambing and hadn't made cheese for a while. However, we were able to sample small amounts of feta, gouda, lambert (a mild aged cheese, their base standard), and something called nibblers, which was lambert seasoned with some form of purchased garlic/Italian dressing. The nibblers weren't our style, but we liked the basic lambert a lot. Rick noted that they had started out making sharper and stronger cheeses, but no one in their area liked or bought them, so they transitioned to milder cheeses (nibblers are their best seller). Today they sell in stores from Arkansas and southern Missouri, direct off the farm, and online.

This was a fascinating, educational, and entertaining visit. They're off the beaten path, but are very happy to host visitors any time of year. Anyone passing through their area (Competition, MO, southeast of Lebanon) would do well to arrange a tour and buy some cheese. Rick is very friendly, loves to talk and tell stories, and seems to relish company on his otherwise fairly isolated farm. Our deep thanks for his hospitality and willingness to share ideas and experiences.

Developing our seed order

Our annual seed order is always a long and complicated task, as we attempt to balance a wide variety of factors and plans. Considerations include short- and long-term crop rotations, market plans and demands, efficient use of growing space, compatibility of varieties (either interplanted or in succession), up-front cost & expected profits, labor demands and timing, input/resource needs, cover-cropping plans, and so on.

There are also many variables with the order itself, including balancing cost & reliability from various suppliers, availability of varieties overall, availability as certified organic seed, shipping costs, efficiency of ordering, and so on.

Preparing the seed order is a major step in the development of the farm plan for 2010. We set ourselves a deadline of January 15 for this, to ensure that it wasn't put off, and to help ensure availability of varieties that can be in short supply. The growth in small farms, and gardening, has been outstripping the existing network of seed growers in the past few years, and shortages are an increasing reality. This is especially true for certified organic seed and heirloom seed, our two primary foci. Indeed, by NOP regulations, we have to use certified seed unless we can document that the desired variety cannot be found certified. Establishing this documentation takes a fair amount of time for a farm that grows hundreds of varieties and a high percentage of heirlooms.

The process gets more complex every year as the farm grows, especially this year as we're expanding our growing space nearly 3x. Joanna is the primary seed-planner, and she has spent many, many hours surrounded by seed catalogs, reference books, and scrap paper. We find it easier for one person to do most of the planning with consultation of the other as needed; it's more efficient and minimizes conflicts. So I work on my own projects while being available for questions and discussions, while also taking on certain subsets of the order (such as cover crops & animal feeds).

When we're nearly finished, we sit down together in front of the computer and go through everything, revisiting the various factors going into each choice and confirming amounts and sources. Then it's time to submit each order to the various seed companies, some of which have excellent online interfaces while others are brutally obnoxious (this, too, affects our purchasing plans). And, of course, we always find that someone is already out of something, and have to scramble repeatedly to find another acceptable source or alter our plans.

We hit our deadline exactly this year, sending in the last order by the end of the day, January 15. Of course, we're not truly done, because there will be a few more small orders later in the year to take care of changes or forgotten items, or to get items that aren't available until other seasons. But fundamentally the wheels are in motion for 2010, and we're already preparing to start the first onions indoors within a few weeks.

Response from Belinda Harris

I recieved a very nice response from Missouri State Rep Belinda Harris to my recent letter about dairy issues. She gave me permission to reprint it here:

Thank you for your email. I like to know that there are people like you in Missouri. Last year my bill did include other dairy products but it was opposed by the Farm Bureau, State Milk Board, Dairy Farmers of America so I downsized it to raw milk and cream. See below the bill I filed in 2009.

I am still interested in allowing the small farmer to sell directly from the farm any product. I am exploring another bill that addresses all products off the farm and direct sell to consumers. I also know of a person that sells her own cheeses and she has a small operation, I will find out how she does what she does.

Rep. Belinda Harris

Here is the original wording she used, that was successfully stymied by the above-mentioned groups:

an individual may purchase and have delivered to [him for his] such individual for such individual's own use [raw milk or cream] dairy products from a farm. Any person selling dairy products under this exception shall be exempt from the requirement to obtain a permit under sections 196.931 to 196.959, or any rules promulgated thereunder. Any rule or portion of a rule promulgated under the authority of section 196.939 or this chapter shall not be enforced in a manner inconsistent with the provisions of this section. For purposes of this section, "dairy products" include but are not limited to raw milk, skim milk, butter, cream, sour cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese, kefir, and yogurt.

The law as it stands just covers raw milk or cream. What an economic and entreprenurial boon the original wording would have been to start-up, part-time, small-scale dairies in Missouri! Alas, we're too afraid of giving people the right to support their neighbors and make their own choices about food.

It is encouraging that she's still interested in helping find ways to support direct-market farms. I sent her this piece, too, as a basic law that could help. Nothing may come of this, but we're grateful to have an elected representative (even if she's not ours) who thinks like this.

Shares!

I've been reading and enjoying Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend", described on the jacket as "a satiric masterpiece about the allure and peril of money". I would certainly agree. This passage in particular struck me as being quite relevant to the roots of our current economic woes, and the disconnect between financial elites and the rest of the population:

As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Share. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Directors in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything! Sufficient answer to all; Shares. O might Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium, to cry out night and day, "Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us!"

I don't take this as a literal rant against all investment. Indeed, many Americans are involved in investments in their more basic and useful forms, whether through retirement accounts, inheritances such as life insurance, or more. The passage above is an indictment of a culture in which money and influence are created from thin air, without the achievement of anything tangibly useful or productive. That, to me, is at the root of many of our current troubles. When work, value, and reward are no longer linked, we end up with a culture in which the most useful and valuable work has little return, while the most frothy and speculative endeavors carry rewards far beyond their actual value. We're all trapped in this system, and few have the courage or ability to completely check out (hands up all those who don't want a retirement account), but who knows how to keep the system rational and relevant to those who are irrevocably tied to it?

Off-topic for this blog, perhaps, but we can't help notice that of all the things we could choose to do with our lives, gifts, and intelligence, farming is one of the least rewarding in terms of financial and legal stability. I suspect we'd be far better off, from a coldly rational point of view, spending our days studying business magazines and market reports, and making a killing on eTrade. And that fact reveals much about the nature of our system today.

Oh, and this cartoon from the Washington Post's fantastic Tom Toles nails it, too:

Can't pay with cheese, either!

As recently noted, we're looking to hire some part-time help in 2010 to allow the continued expansion of the farm, and intend to pay in farm products rather than cash. We had hoped to offer compensation not only in produce, but in cheese or yogurt as well, as another way to turn our small dairying work into useful results, since we're forbidden from selling any of it.

I put in a call to the Missouri State Milk Board last week, with several intentions. I wanted to clarify once and for all that I couldn't make any kind of sales of our cheese or yogurt without having a full-scale commercial facility, and I wanted to ask whether we were allowed to compensate farm employees with those products. Sure enough, the answer was quite clear that we're criminals if we sell our cheese to anyone, and the fellow I talked to implied that it was even illegal for us to give it away in many cases, especially if the gift reached the general public. For example, I can give it to our neighbors for home use, but if I give it to them to take to a church potluck, that's distribution and we're in trouble. For the same reason, we can't give it to our employees as compensation, because it's not an otherwise saleable product. We can give it to them as friends, out of the goodness of our hearts, but not as employers, in thanks for a job well done. Even if they helped take care of the animals and saw how the cheese was produced? Nope, came the answer, it's dangerous.

By the way, if you want a quick headache, go read through the stacks of regulations and guidelines for dairying. Then never complain about the price of milk, cheese, cream, or butter again, from any source.

So in conclusion, by direct communication with those in charge, we can pay our employees in raw milk, but not in cheese. What an absurd system.

A letter to MO Rep Belinda Harris

Missouri State Representative Belinda Harris has been working to protect and support raw milk issues in the state, most recently speaking at a meeting of the Missouri State Milk Board, noting that products like raw milk allow small and start-up farms a way into business that might otherwise be too expensive. It's worth pointing out that even the Board's own data, as presented in a chart on their front page, clearly show that dairy in Missouri is rapidly declining. Yet our officials seem to be circling the wagons to protect a shrinking and narrow field, instead of opening up to new and innovative ways to connect consumers and farmers.

I know I'm hitting this hard lately, but wanted to share the letter I sent recently to Belinda Harris, because I think it relates a larger point that is often forgotten in the fight over just raw milk:

Dear Representative Harris,

My wife and I run a small, certified organic vegetable farm in northern Boone County, selling at farmers markets and to local restaurants. We also keep dairy goats for our own home use, and regularly make cheese and yogurt, though we do not drink the milk raw. I also spent 2009 working one day a week at a local goat dairy to gain more experience in full-time dairy management. I have noticed your efforts in the past to support legal raw milk in Missouri, and was prompted by the latest round of news to write you.

While we do not drink our own raw milk, because we think there are some dangers associated with it (and prefer cheese & yogurt anyway), we are adamantly in support of farmers' right to sell it and consumers' right to buy it. We do not feel the government has the right to prohibit a willing transaction between adults when there is no harm beyond those conducting the transaction. We also feel that the dangers of raw milk are really no worse than raw meat or fish, which are legal to sell and consume in Missouri (think sushi restaurants and rare steaks). A customer can legally order a bloody rare steak in a restaurant with no knowledge of how the meat was raised, butchered, handled, or prepared in the kitchen, with only a simple government warning on the menu that meat should be ordered well-done for safety reasons (the same is true for sushi). Yet the same customer is told that raw milk is inherently dangerous, even when purchased from a known farm with known methods. This is thoroughly illogical; why can't the same warning labels used on meat and fish be used on milk, and give customers and farmers the same rights as diners and chefs?

I also want to call your attention to another, usually overlooked, aspect of this debate. While raw milk sales are currently legal in Missouri, that's all you can do as a small farm. We are forbidden from selling pasteurized milk, yogurt, cheese, or other milk products without having a full-scale certified dairy operation. This, despite the fact that making yogurt and many forms of cheese inherently pasteurizes the milk (through heating), while others can be aged sufficiently to eliminate pathogens (per FDA standards) thus rendering the final product safer than the raw version. I have a long waiting list of people who have begged to purchase the cheese we make in our home, yet are always denied because we insist on following the law, however absurd. I can give my cheese away, but the second my neighbor gives me money for it, I become a criminal and a threat to public health. This is absurd.

I noticed that you have argued for raw milk sales as a way to support and grow small farms. I agree. However, I believe this needs to be taken a step farther. I would like to see legal changes to allow small and part-time producers like myself to make and sell dairy products direct to the final consumer without needing inspection or certification, just as the raw milk law is written now. This is the way small farms operated for generations in America, and centuries in Europe, without killing off the population. This has been proposed in several other states (I believe Maryland and Vermont), as a way of encouraging small producers and farmers to get a start in the business; it could easily be written to enact further restrictions as the businesses grow to a size or distribution model where inspection and regulation is more relevant.

In the meantime, small farms like are forced into a set of unappetizing choices if we wish to make all or part of our living from dairy animals. We can sell the most (relatively) dangerous of all dairy products, raw milk, but nothing else. We can sell nothing at all. We can go black-market and attempt not to get caught selling perfectly safe cheese and yogurt to the many customers who want it (I'm quite sure this happens regularly). Or we can invest massive amounts of time and money building fully certified dairy facilities which are not practical at our scale, especially for part-timers or those just getting started. None of these are appealing or beneficial to Missourians or our rural economy, and some force honest people to not make a living or make it illegally.

In conclusion, I thank you for your support and advocacy for small farmers and dairies, but please consider the overall situation in small Missouri dairy and not just raw milk. Please help us make a living selling cheese to willing consumers who know our farm and our methods better than the government does. Please help remove the label of criminal and public health threat from those of us living and farming in the ways of our ancestors and those who built this state and country.

Respectfully,

Eric Reuter Chert Hollow Farm, LLC

Employment opportunities this summer

2010 will be another significant expansion for us, and we'll be looking to hire some help. Unfortunately, we don't think our budget can accommodate cash wages, even at minimum wage. We're not keen on internships or volunteer labor, because both IRS and labor laws are pretty strict on the proper ways to do these. While many small farms either ignore these laws or remain blissfully ignorant of them, we refuse to put the farm in jeopardy by playing fast and loose with the law, however odd (same reason we don't sell cheese). We also want a setup that FEELS like a job, such that those involved take it seriously, and so we don't abuse them.

We do have a potential option to pursue. IRS rules allow farms to compensate workers with non-cash wages consisting of farm products, and such wages are not subject to all the withholding that creates so much paperwork headache. The worker is still responsible for paying income tax on the cash equivalent value of the wages as income, but it saves hassle on both ends. Also, it allows us to pay in currency we do have on hand.

So here's our proposed model. We would like to hire 3 or 4 part-time people, each for about 4 hours a week. At minimum wage, that equals about the cash value of a typical full CSA share. So our employees would be spending one morning or afternoon per week on a regular schedule working on the farm in exchange for pay in the form of truly farm-fresh produce.

We don't want any given person to work more than four hours, because then the produce-pay becomes more than they can likely use, and we would have to pay them in other ways. Plus this keeps us from being too reliant on one person and it keeps any one person from getting too bored with repetitive tasks. Overall, more people will have the opportunity to come out and enjoy some weekly farm work.

The work days would primarily be focused on weekdays; we don't really need help on weekends. We definitely would like to find one or two people who can work on Friday (in preparation for market). Other days are fairly flexible. We anticipate needing help as early as April or May, and the work arrangement could extend into October or November. (We wouldn't necessarily rule out someone on an academic schedule, though.)

Paying in produce might have some kinks that we have to work out, especially in terms of assigning value to items. We often have an abundance of "seconds": produce items that aren't don't meet the market standards of perfection but are nonetheless edible, nutritious, and delicious. (We eat largely seconds, so we should know.) Employees would certainly be encouraged to make as much use of seconds as possible, but with a reasonable balance of "firsts" and possibly some special items that we grow for ourselves but don't normally sell. Of course, the employees would get plenty of choice on what to take any given week, creating more flexibility than many CSAs, and would also likely have the option to "save up" their pay to get larger amounts of produce in canning/freezing quantities if desired.

We're curious if any readers have thoughts on this model. Are you interested? Know someone who would be? Think it's crazy? Know of a legal or regulatory hurdle that we've missed that might throw a wrench into the whole thing? Post a comment or email us with feedback. We want this arrangement to be fair to all sides, as well as legal and practical.

Missouri River ice & farm purchases

Monday was a rare day away from the farm. We'd been contacted by a grower over in Saline County, about an hour west of here, who was cutting back and wanting to sell some extra supplies, and thought we might be interested. So we headed over there, taking advantage of the trip to check on the status of the Missouri River in a few locations, given the recent deep freeze.

It was a beautiful sunny day, just below freezing, and the ice was thoroughly active on the river. The current was too strong for a solid surface, but there was very little water showing through a thick coat of ice chunks, all jostling and churning as they moved downstream. The sound was mesmerizing, just a constant hiss as the floes slid along. The view above was taken from the Katy Trail east of Rocheport, as was the video below.

We also got views of the river in Boonville and Glasgow, each with the same thick sheet of floes moving with a strong current. At Boonville, a sheet of solid ice filled the low-velocity zone below a wing dike, and the ice flow patterns were especially interesting near the edge of the solid ice

as the remaining current squeezed around it. See photo & video below. The sound in this case is mostly bridge traffic; the largest floes are a couple meters across.

Yes, we're scientists at heart; we find natural features & patterns like this endlessly fascinating. Without other commitments, we could easily have stayed in either location for hours, studying how each floe interacted with others, how they had formed, and how the currents shifted.

As for the actual purpose of the trip, we did indeed find much of interest. Five good market tables, two tents, another hanging scale, five large foam coolers for transporting produce, lots of metal sawhorses for setting up packing tables, and more. Much better price than buying new, and getting things used just fundamentally fits our principles of minimizing waste & expenditures. These are all things we're going to need as we significantly increase our growing capacity & market presence next year.

It was a worthwhile trip for the supplies alone, and having a beautiful day to check in on the river and enjoy a nice drive through rural Missouri (we saw at least 30 hawks of many types) was just a bonus. We love this life.

Brutal cold

It's been well below freezing all week, and another strong winter storm hitting Wednesday through Thursday dropped 5" of snow and brought truly Arctic air over us. We had forecast highs for Friday and Saturday around 5F, with lows well below zero and strong winds pushing the wind chill below -20. Seeing this coming, we went down to do some extra weather-proofing on the animal housing. We have lots of old used sheets which we use for frost protection in milder seasons; these were now wrapped around the sheds and stapled/tied in place as an extra layer of draft protection given the various chinks in the walls. The chicken shed in particular looks like a Hooverville mansion, though it's sobering to remember that a significant portion of the world's population would consider this an upgrade in housing.

Water doesn't stay liquid long at these temperatures, so we simply shuttle buckets back and forth from the house, where the ice melts enough to be dumped and refilled. This may sound uncomfortable, but overall I don't think I spend any more time outside doing basic animal chores than a commuter walking to and from a car at home and work as well as running errands like shopping. So I figure it's a wash, since I can come back in to a hot wood stove.

We're certainly burning through our wood supply under these conditions, and I have to hope we get a decent warm spell at some point this winter. That's quite common here, but so far it's been a Northern winter without end. Still, the house stays above 60 with some work, and it gives us time to work on all the indoor/office tasks that are needed by the time spring arrives.

Recipe: Sinigang (Filipino hot/sour soup)

Here's a very nice winter soup that's easy to make, with an excellent hot & sour flavor. My version is loosely based on a recipe from The Filipino-American Kitchen, by Jennifer Aranas; I use tamarind and calamansi as the souring agents instead of vinegar along with some other changes. This is a pretty adaptable dish as long as you get the basics right. Compare also to this online recipe.

ABOUT THE INGREDIENTS

The necessary ingredients are calamansi juice, which you can get in frozen packets, and tamarind. This can be gotten in various forms; for this soup I used a Filipino salted tamarind candy whose name I forget. It comes in sleeves with little pods of tamarind flesh around the seed; I'm not fond of them outright, but they work great as little self-contained bouillon cubes in a recipe like this. When the soup is done, the flesh has melted away and you just need to keep an eye out for the seed (or remove it beforehand). Below are the calamansi packets I use (1/2oz each) and the tamarind candies. Both are available at Meechu's. I also added some thin Mung bean noodles for texture.

If you can't get these items, lime juice is a decent substitute for calamansi and mild vinegar (like rice vinegar) can replace the tamarind. You'll have to play around with quantities.

MAKING THE SOUP

Most of the quantities are approximate; taste as it simmers to get the flavor right for your preference. I like it pretty hot and sour; if you're not sure, hold back a bit on the pepper and tamarind until you see how it develops. Add rice vinegar if it's not sour enough.

2 quarts poultry or vegetable broth

1 decent-sized chunk ginger, grated

1 medium-strength Thai chili, minced

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2-1lb tomatoes, diced small
2-3T soy sauce

2 (1/2oz)packets calamansi juice

2 tamarind candies, about dice-sized

1/2lb daikon radish, sliced thin or grated

Hefty handful mung bean noodles or similar thin noodles

dash of dried basil

black pepper to taste

Heat broth to a simmer. Add all ingredients except daikon & noodles, and simmer for as long as you want to combine the flavors (at least an hour). You want a decent burn from the pepper and a strong but not curdling sourness.

When you're about 15 minutes from eating, add the daikon and any other vegetables or greens you want. Don't overdo it; this should be a thin, brothy soup rather than a stew. Soak the noodles in warm water for 5 minutes, then drain & add to soup and cook another ten. After ladling into bowls, sprinkle dried basil & black pepper on top for a dash of flavor and color.

Let me know if you try this and what you thought. Alternatve versions could include seafood (shrimp or mild fish), in which case you should replace some of the soy sauce with fish sauce and, or regular meats like pork.

Making Lumpiang (Filipino egg rolls)

So as long as I'm talking up Filipino food, here's a nice example, which I don't make often enough. Lumpiang is a fairly generic term for various types of egg-roll-ish dishes, usually followed by a modifier describing just what it is.

The roll above (left open for photography) uses a very easy-to-make flour-based wrapper, using a recipe from Moosewood Sundays. It's not quite as authentic, but easier to make and stronger. Plus it doesn't use cornstarch. Any sort of equivalent wrapper can be used. The ingredients are simply egg, flour, water, and salt; I cook them on a cast-iron crepe pan and each one takes about 30 seconds.

Fillings are quite variable. In this case, it's finely chopped goat meat (very traditional) sauteed with garlic, then simmered for a long time with cashews, sweet potatoes, sunchokes (a good stand-in for water chestnuts), and calamansi juice. That filling is topped with shredded daikon radish and shelled edamame.

So far we have a fairly typical egg roll from many different cuisines (other than the calamansi). It's the sauce that marks this one as Filipino. I use an adobo-type sauce, relying on the basic combination of soy sauce, sugar, rice vinegar, black pepper, and garlic. These are simmered slowly and thickened with flour or cornstarch, then either poured into the roll or the wrapped roll dipped into the sauce. There are lots of possible sauces, but this one is lovely. And any leftover sauce is perfect flavoring for fried rice the next day.

I have this tagged as a winter recipe, as most of the ingredients are non-seasonal or easily stored (like edamame). We make these any time of year, though, with whatever fresh ingredients are on hand and a variety of dipping sauces to keep things interesting.

For this New Year's Eve meal, I paired the lumpiang with a pot of caldereta, a meat stew delicious over rice, but they're quite sufficient on their own.

Meechu's Filipino Market

As long as I'm on a food tear this week, I want to highlight a really neat shop we discovered recently. Meechu's Filipino Market is tucked into a shopping center on the north side of Columbia, along Vandiver east of Rangeline. We noticed it driving by one day, and executed an immediate U-turn to go back.

For those who didn't know, both my parents grew up in the Philippines, and my father's side is now one of (if not THE) longest-continuous-residence American families in the country, having been there since the beginning of the last century. I was raised on lots of Filipino cooking, stories, culture, and so on, in the manner of many second-generation immigrants, though both parents are ethnically American. My mother in particular grew up in the rural southern Philippines and absorbed a great deal of culture and cuisine which she passed on to me. So I've always done a fair bit of Filipino cooking, ever since I was away at college, homesick for real food and making simple batches of pancit in a ratty dorm-basement kitchen.

Many of the ingredients needed for Filipino cuisine can be found or approximated from typical Asian groceries, and I've muddled my way through just fine in all the states I've lived in. But when I walked into Meechu's, I immediately told Joanna it smelled like home. They have a kitchen in the back, making fresh pandesal (soft rolls) and fresh desserts like cassava pie and halo-halo. The store is stocked with specialties not found in other Asian stores, and it just felt & smelled right. The owner is very friendly (as are most Filipinos) and immediately wanted to know my life story when I started asking about obscure ingredients. Right away I gathered a small crowd, with another young man really excited to meet a new second-generation person (his parents are Filipino but he's raised here with perfect English). I called my mother as soon as I got home and shared stories, including asking what I could send her from here that she couldn't get back in NY (answer: Polvoron, little flour-milk candies that were always a Christmas treat when she could get them).

My best find so far was a package of frozen calamansi juice. Calamansis are a unique Filipino fruit, like a small lime but with a wonderful taste. They're very hard to get here, especially of decent quality. My mother has a small calamansi tree in a pot that she has babied for decades to get a few fresh fruits each year. The frozen juice was pure, with no additives or other impurities, and has about as good taste as you would hope for. It's been adding the right (and missing) flavor to many dishes for the past few weeks.

So swing by Meechu's if you're feeling adventurous. Filipino food is unique and wonderful, and you pretty much have to make it yourself in this country. It's worth a try.

Buying food in bulk

While we produce much our own food year-round, we certainly can't produce all of it. Rice, flour, sugar, butter, spices, noodles, and other basic staples aren't in our realm, and need to be purchased. We've moved further and further into purchasing these items in bulk, along with many toiletries, which saves money, time, and packaging. It also helps us remain independent from shopping trips, as we always have lots of an item on hand.

Our favorite bulk ordering location is Hy-Vee. Through the Health Market department, we can order almost anything else we need in large quantities, getting a 10% discount from retail. This saves us meaningful money, and Sara there is very professional and helpful. We had tried several other outlets, but were not pleased with the quality of the customer service or the products. We gave up each after a few rounds. Hy-Vee is far preferable to us (at least the Broadway location; we haven't used the newer stores).

Our standard purchases include laundry & dish detergent, coconut milk, soy sauce, raisins, nuts, rice, flour, and so on. It's worth looking into for anyone trying to save money or be more efficient in their shopping. Rather than a weekly trip, once every few months we make an order and show up a week later to pick up our shopping cart full of boxes. Everything is already tallied on a printed order sheet with a single bar code; one swipe of the cashier's unit and we're rung up and paid. The time saved alone makes it worthwhile, much less the money and bother. The look on the cashier's face is usually priceless as well; clearly planning ahead is a concept foreign to modern culture.

It does blow a hole in the monthly budget, and that needs to be planned for. We view it as a kind of import-CSA; every so often we pay a lot, then save up the next few months for the next round. Overall, you're not paying any more than you would otherwise (less, with the discount), and you have the items always on hand, rather than having to think about weekly shopping lists.

Winter food supplies

We made it through December without touching almost any of our preserved food supplies. We had stashes of fresh winter tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, radishes, cabbages, cooking & salad greens, carrots, radishes, turnips, soup beans & cowpeas, onions & garlic, and more to dip into throughout the fall and early winter. The only frozen or canned item we've used in any quantity is meat and a few jars of pickles, and we still have most of our meat stash left. At the start of January, we still have some of these "fresh" items remaining, but will finally start to dip into the rest.

Many folks think of winter as the "hungry" time for households like us; it's actually spring. Lots of items will store into the new year, but won't last until March. Yet it's not until April or even May when substantial new produce begins to be available again, so we have to plan our food stores to last that long. This is why we're so glad to have made it into January without touching our preserved stock. We've also stopped milking now, meaning the fresh cheese and yogurt is gone, and we'll have to be more stingy with our purchased milk.

Here's an overall look at what we have put up for the remainder of winter through spring, everything grown/butchered/made by us, except for the fruits, which were picked locally in season, and some of the canned tomatoes, which we purchased fresh from a friend to supplement our poor harvest.


IN THE CHEST FREEZER:


Broth (duck, venison, goat, chicken)
Fruit (blueberries, strawberries, peaches, raspberries, elderberries)
Prepared (various chutneys, soups, relishes, and more)
Vegetables (peas, corn, edamame, green beans, okra, zucchini, roasted tomatoes, greens)
Meat (Venison, goat, chicken, venison sausage)



CANNED/PICKLED
Applesauce
Tomatoes Tomato juice
Sauerkraut
Tomatillos
Pickled okra
Cucumber pickles
Dilly beans

JAMS/PRESERVES
Peach butter
Strawberry jam
Apple butter
Blueberry jam
Raspberry/apple jam

DRIED
Apple rings
Cherry tomatoes
Sauce tomatoes
Onions
Green peppers
Mustard greens
Scallions
Strawberries

And, of course, there are still dried beans, cornmeal, garlic, and the like. But we're pretty happy with this diversity of farm- or locally-sourced food put up for the rest of the non-growing season. We do use a variety of storable purchased items like noodles, flour, rice, spices, and so on, but the base and bulk of our diet throughout the winter is our own food. The supplies above make for wonderfully tasty and variable menus for months, and we're pretty independent from a store in any given week.

Beautiful moon

If anyone besides ourselves happened to be outside early Saturday evening, in the near-single-digit temperatures, they would have seen a beautiful sight.

We had popped over to a friend's place who had asked us to check on their animals that night. Driving home around 7:30, we topped a rise headed eastbound and beheld a near-full moon just inching above the horizon. Huge, oblong, glowing deep orange, it was the sort of moon one normally associates with crisp fall evenings. Yet here it was, practically throbbing with color, over the icy fields of January with perfectly arranged threads of cloud streaking its surface. We caught several more glimpses as we curved up, down, and around the hilly terrain near home, culminating with a complete view hanging over our valley as we carefully descended the icy hill into the farm. At this point the color was gone, drained into the pale glow of a frozen winter night, though still beautiful.

I love moments like these, the brief and memorable glimpses of something rare in the world. We get these often on the farm, moments that you might try hard to find yet never achieve, but are waiting to be found if you're outside enough and aware enough to catch them when they appear. We always wish we had a good camera handy, but sometimes plain memory is enough. The memory of topping that first hill and letting out a gasp of simple wonder, then sharing it between us on a quiet ride home. The memory of understanding how to appreciate something simple.

New Year's Goals

One of the joys of farming, I've found, is that old calendar quirks actually begin to matter again. For example, the New Year starting in January was always just annoying on an academic schedule, but it feels very accurate in a farm setting. So even though the date is still arbitrary, here's a look at what we hope to accomplish in the coming growing year.

We're going to be nearly tripling the amount of bed space growing products for sale, and will likely be hiring or arranging regular help to accomplish that. We expect to double our income from 2009, and be a reliable supplier to our restaurant contacts as well as at market. As always, we'll be trying new products and testing consumer interest in them, as well as responding to the feedback we've gotten from the past year. We won't be offering a CSA, though it's likely we'll start doing so in 2011. We'll have the farm officially set up for agritourism, allowing individuals or groups to take pre-arranged, guided tours for a fair cost. We'll be at the farmers market every Saturday from April through November, hopefully in a consistent location.

Most importantly, we have every intention of continuing to love what we do. Even when we're tired, hot, annoyed, sore, or otherwise feeling the downside of our choices, we'll remind ourselves of how fortunate we are to have the freedom to pursue this dream, and to work at a business that is important, effective, and worthwhile. We'll try to take just enough time off to stay sane, and continue to enjoy all the little quirks and details of a daily life that is so intertwined with our location and goals. We'll feed ourselves exceedingly well on farm-raised products and be grateful that we can. And we'll enjoy continuing to share our products, lives, and thoughts with all those who take an interest online and in the real world. Happy New Year to you all.