Greetings and Happy New Year from Dancing Hen Farm.
Winter on the farm is a time for reflection, planning and rejuvenating. Life slows a bit, and our main farm chores
involve keeping farm animals warm and watered.
Water to our greenhouses and barn are shut off in the winter, to avoid
frozen pipes. This means we do the 10
gallon challenge several times during the day.
Those of you who have visited our farm know that our house sits down
hill from the barn. At least twice a day,
we haul 5 gallon buckets of warm water from the house to the barn to assure the
chickens have water to drink. Hauling these
buckets of water uphill over ice and snow is a definite workout and a
challenge!
The seed catalogs have arrived! Those of you who are closer to Don's and my
age may remember the excitement the Sears Wish Book brought each year. I can remember spending hours paging
through this catalog! Well, seed catalogs are the farm version of
the Sears Wish Book. We page through
them until they are dog eared! We make
lists of what we dream of growing, narrow those lists down to what we will grow
and finally come up with a list of seeds we need to order.
Speaking of seed orders.
We are always looking for feedback from our farm members and
friends. If anyone has suggestions on
items they would like to see us grow more or less of, please drop us and email.
Our buying club is open again this week. Orders need to be placed on line by Thursday
(1/15) morning at 5 am. We continue to
offer storage crops and new this week, are limited amounts of kale and brussel
sprouts from our friends at Landisdale Farm.
We have a good supply of eggs, chicken and pork available as well. One change to the buying club order
sheet. All meat (chicken and pork) will
show a total price of .01. Once we know
the exact weight of your selected cuts, we will update the price to reflect the
accurate total price.
With a chill in the air and a slower pace on farm, Don and I
spend lots of time in the kitchen creating comfort food. At least once a week we slow roast a
chicken. We stretch this one chicken
into 3 meals. Meal one is, of course,
chicken dinner, complete with mashed potatoes and sauted kale or frozen green
beans. Next we use any leftover meat for
lunch time sandwiches, either cold or warm, as pulled chicken. And finally we cook down the carcass to make
broth for soup. Farmer Don's favorite
soup is very simple (broth, cheese tortellini and greens).
I have given this recipe before, but another farm favorite
is sausage, kale and potatoes. These
three ingredients really complement each other and this is a real "go
to" meal for us. We tend to use our
loose sausage in the recipe. Here is a
link to the actual recipe (https://thegardencsa.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/kale-with-sausage-and-garlic-roasted-potatoes/
). However this is a really easy dish to
make without the recipe. Simply roasted
potatoes and garlic in a hot (400 - 425) oven until slightly browned and cooked
through. Meanwhile brown the sausage in
a dutch oven. When the sausage is cooked
through, add a bit of broth to the pan with the kale. Put a lid on the pan and allow the kale to
steam. Stir the potatoes into the kale
and sausage and enjoy! If you have any
of this dish leftover, it is fabulous stirred into scrambled eggs.
A quick word on emails.
Some of you will be receiving multiple copies of this newsletter (and
some future newsletters). I apologize
for this. This is occurring because you
are both a csa member and a buying club member.
We are still taking memberships for our 2015 CSA. Thanks to everyone who has already signed
up!!! If you have questions about our
CSA (or our buying club), please email us at the farm.
Stay warm!
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