Last year when I booked this school, I gave about 3-4 tours per week and most of our tours were on the weekend. This school is taught Monday through Friday, so it didn’t seem like that big of a deal when I booked it. Miguel and Vicente can run the farm and I’m only gone during the day on weekdays so no big deal.
Then this place exploded. Now we give 3-4 tours per day on the weekdays and are slammed on Saturdays. But I’ve already paid for this school and signed up. Nothing to do but to get it over with so beginning next Tuesday, May 10th, I will be closing the store. We will be open on Saturday’s, which is still our busiest day and we’ve yet to run out of pickup appointments on a Saturday so everyone should be able to get in. I’m going to have to skip school some to go and pick up inventory from our other farmers one day each week and I’ll figure out how to get that done. But that means any extra time I’d have to run back and meet someone is already taken by my driving all over NC picking up goodies.
If you absolutely have to get in here during the week, during the next three weeks, email me and let me know and I will try to get the girls/the wife/Spork to meet you and get you taken care of. It’s our intention to make sure you are taken care of but please understand I won’t be my normal responsive self for the next three weeks. After May 27th, things are back to normal and I’ll be here my normal six days per week to meet you.
It’s Saturday, and we have cookies in the store. It may be cool and misty outside, but it’s bright and smells like warm chocolate chips in here. We still have spots in the schedule for tours and for pickups, a rarity on a Saturday. Swing by and stock up on goodies for the week.
The new soap display the girls put together this morning
Speaking of goodies, the girls have taken some time to redo our displays this morning.
Something I’ve been working on a while has finally come to pass.
This week I picked up a full order of yogurt from Cindy at Carolina Farmhouse Dairy. They have a herd of Jersey cows and use all of their milk to make awesome yogurt. We tried a few samples a few weeks ago and gave some out to our customers. All the responses were stellar. Cindy makes yogurt very simply and uses only Organic ingredients. She is also Animal Welfare Approved on her farm so you know her cows are treated right. We are stocking her 6oz, single serving jars in her full range of flavors like strawberry, lemon, coconut, vanilla, blueberry, and vananna (vanilla and banana).
A sample of some of our yogurts
Also this week, we finally were able to get some cheese in the store. SWMBO was very happy and is already munching away on the first one she stole from the store. We partnered with Chapel Hill Creamery to stock their cheese and couldn’t be happier.
One of our cheeses from Chapel Hill Creamery
I first visited Chapel Hill Creamery years ago when they were part of CFSA’s farm tour. This was back before we’d started managing our farm for soil health and we were still trying to get started on having lush pastures. I walked into Chapel Hill’s operation and was simply blown away at the quality of their pastures. I bought a bit of product from them then for our own use and loved it, but they were all the way over in Chapel Hill so there wasn’t much chance of getting any more. This was all before we had a store on our farm so I’m very happy to come full circle and now stock their products on our shelves.
I’m really looking forward to spring meals with some fruit and veggies and fresh Chapel Hill Creamery mozzarella cheese along with a glass of wine. And then tomatoes get here and it’s plates of this!
Tomatoes warm from the garden, fresh mozzarella, salt, pepper, and olive oil
Outside, pretty day, pride in a job well done. It’s pretty nice.
I also thought I’d have my kids right there, everybody happy, clean, enjoying the good life. Some days it is like that.
But some days, it seems it’s more like this.
Messy office, paperwork out the wazoo, and somebody needs attention all the time. That is what farming is like. It’s an amazing amount of paperwork while trying to keep something cute alive.
People told me I’d get bored after I left corporate America. Bored? That’s crazy. Poor, they should have said I’d get poor. That one is a much easier guess. No chance on bored.
a person with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth who seeks to associate with social superiors and dislikes people or activities regarded as lower-class.
a person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.
“a musical snob”
I’m not happy about it.
I’m someone who eats with people making seven figures for dinner, then eats off the taco truck for lunch with a bunch of Mexicans the next day. Although I usually prefer the taco, I’m comfortable having both meals and value both relationships. I don’t distinguish people by their social class, their political affiliation, their color. I take everyone as they come. But now I’m a snob, and it’s all Drew’s fault.
See Drew has been putting his recipes on our blog for a few weeks now. Darling Wifey decided she would start cooking Drew’s recipes to make sure he wasn’t putting on airs. I reluctantly tried Drew’s first recipe, chorizo and mussels and this was the result.
So last week, we had the opportunity to go to Ocracoke on a home schooling field trip. I got to tag along because Miguel and Vicente were here to keep things under control (thanks guys!). It also afforded me a chance to get off the farm, do some long range planning, get my to do list in order, that kind of thing. We ate breakfast and lunch in the house we rented because it’s cheaper. But SWMBO decided we’d go out to dinner. The first night was a rush job and we picked a touristy place because they had crab legs, and that’s what Wildflower wanted. The food was “meh” but whatever. The last night there, I picked the place. A local had recommended it and it was indeed the best place on the island. As we peruse the menu, I see a shrimp purloo on the menu.
Shrimp purloo
Chorizo, bacon, shrimp. This is like that thing Drew did! I’ll get that!
Everybody’s food comes out and there are lots of happy sounds as everybody chows down. The wife even compliments me, in front of her mother, about how I always pick the best restaurants. Compliments in front of the mother in law are hard won prizes for us husbands. I’m ecstatic.
I take a bite of my purloo and it’s good. I mean, the broth is kind of watery, not rich like Drew’s, but good. And the shrimp is kind of bland, not like the briney bite of Drew’s mussels. But it’s good. Well, the bacon tastes odd. Not like our bacon, but I’m used to that. And it’s still bacon so that’s good. This chorizo is weird. It’s hard and flavorless, more like beef jerky. No bite like our chorizo, just a blank puck of meat. And the rice is kinda watered down, not like the rich broth and fresh bread SWMBO had. I mean, it’s good… but not as good as is if had our ingredients in it. I resist the sudden urge to go to the kitchen and explain to the chef that he’d really have something if he sourced his ingredients from us instead of US Foods.
I related this story to a couple of people. Then I added in how I don’t order pork chops when I go out anymore because I’m always disappointed they don’t taste like ours. And steaks taste funny now if I order one when we are out, either like cardboard or with some off flavor. And my kids won’t even eat store bought bacon anymore, even if I cook it at home. They know the difference. In fact Spork related a story of a sleep over just this past weekend where they served him bacon. He politely DECLINED TO EAT because it was store bought. He didn’t decline to the eat the bacon, he didn’t eat at all!
We’ve become food snobs, me especially. Not snobs of a certain restaurant, or a certain style of cooking. No, we’re snobs that if it we or one of our partner farms didn’t raise it, then it’s inferior. As I related all this, exasperated over what has happened, they all had the same reaction.
“Of course you have. You can’t compare your food to what you get anywhere else.”
“But, but, I’m not a snob! I..”
“Shh, it’s ok. Now go make more cows and don’t worry about it.”
I’m working on the cows but I’m still worried about it. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?
This is an article on reducing food waste in America. Having read it, I don’t see anything that’s really actionable. Most charity organizations I know are already reaching out to anyone who would donate pretty much anything. Farmer’s would donate their products, but they aren’t going to spend the labor to do the work for the charities. It’s hard enough farming without having to spend extra time hauling produce for free or sorting out produce for their benefit. I didn’t see anything in these government programs that addressed the reality of the problem so once again, a feel good government program goes nowhere.
Meanwhile, in 2015 we have handled on our farm roughly 7 million pounds of produce in a year that would have otherwise gone in the landfill. In addition, we recycle 16,000 pounds of cardboard per month (192,000 pounds per year), two truckloads of pallets per month, and 1/2 of a truckload of plastic totes per month. All of this material would have otherwise gone into the landfill and prior to our involvement, that’s exactly where it was going. We do all this without government grants, programs, or assistance. We do it because it makes the best darn pork I’ve ever tasted and so far, that’s reason enough.
Maybe I should be applying for a grant instead. But for now I’m going to eat some bacon and call it done.
I debated long and hard about how to handle this new part of our website. Should it be a whole separate website with a different domain? Should it be a sub-domain? Or should it simply be part of what we do now? In the end, this was all about supporting our farming operation so we added it right onto our farming website.
If you look on our menu bar, you’ll see that we have gunsmithing as a link now. What is the world is gunsmithing doing on a cute, fuzzy, cuddly, hippie farm’s website? Well, I addressed that in this post.
Suffice to say that nobody makes it as a small farmer on just the farming income. You have to have an off farm job to supplement your farming habit. I don’t want to go off farm, and I’m pretty good at working on stuff. Especially guns. And I can work on guns before the sun comes up, or after it goes down. Or I can work on them between customer visits.
This doesn’t mean we aren’t a hippie farm anymore. Just a hippie farm with some street cred. If you have an interest, go over to the gunsmithing link where you can see what we’ve done and what will be coming. If you don’t like guns, just pass this one by and we’ll be back to fuzzy critters in no time. Or read Drew’s latest post, it made me drool!
As I’ve said many times before, fat isn’t the problem. The government’s insistence that we eat less fat has done nothing but wreck our collective health.
One more nail is being driven into the coffin of fat being bad for you, but most of us still believe what we’ve been told over the past 60 years.
In order to keep the kids as my first priority (and stay out of trouble with SWMBO) I blocked my entire day today for this kid shindig. However now that we are here at the actual event, the schedule has been firmed up and I am free to get out to the store late this afternoon. I’ve setup the schedule for no tours, pickups only. And it’s only from 4pm onwards. But if you want to swing by and pickup some meat today, you can book an appointment for late today. If you didn’t see, we have everything back in stock, including beef.
If you are one of the three and 1/2 pages of folks who had pre-orders, your orders have been pulled and are ready for you. If you’d like to stop by and grab them, just book a slot this afternoon and swing by. I haven’t updated the chalk board yet in the store. I hope to do it before we open but don’t freak out if everything is still marked as out of stock. We do indeed have beef on hand. Here is the picture proof.
The beef freezer, finally happy again
After all the pre-orders were pulled, we had 1 pack of ribeyes left. Those are first come, first serve. We do still have some strip steaks left, and filets I think. We also have flat iron steaks in this time which nobody pre-ordered so we have plenty of them.
Along with pork, chicken, dairy. Pretty much everything, including some items I haven’t even told you about yet (that’s another post.)
This cow had a hot weight of 710 pounds! That’s as heavy as we’ve ever finished one so I can’t weight to see what this beef tastes like. We had a 61% yield which I believe is also the best we’ve ever done so this cow was well and truly finished. The ones behind this one are only getting better so we should have great beef for the summer.
I’ll be pulling all of the pre-orders this afternoon, which means that a lot of what just came in will be going right back out but we are back in business on beef. As a reminder we are closed tomorrow for a party for my kids. If you need to get something, send me an email and I’ll try and find a time to get you in. Probably first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll be open on Monday afternoon for folks wanting to get by, then next week is pretty much already booked. Next Saturday we are still in good shape for appointments though.
