One of our customers dropped by last week to let me know he was putting on a crawfish boil at the Beerded Lady in Garner. He was looking for some of our sausage to use in his cooking and made sure to invite us to attend as well. I had only recently visited the Beerded Lady for the first time the week before. It had been like a surprise family reunion for me, as I ran into all kinds of people that I knew and hadn’t seen in too long. I don’t really drink beer so the beer aspect wasn’t appealing but seeing more of my old friends and supporting my customer’s crawfish boil were both great reasons to stop by.
SWMBO had to go out of town suddenly so alone I went to the Beerded Lady and found this.
Hot out of the pot crawfish and goodies
I can’t eat the potatoes and corn, but the crawfish and sausage I could dive into. As I arrived, I heard the announcement that the sausages were limited, to only get one if you hadn’t had one yet. That made me feel good because it was our sausage that was in demand. Bad that they didn’t have enough, but I’d rather be in demand than have people unhappy with our product.
The food was delicious and once again I ran into people that I knew and hadn’t seen in forever. I also made some new friends, ran into some more customers, and overall had a large time. I ended up hanging out for a few hours and picking up some goodies for some friends of mine to deliver (Shh, it is a surprise).
If you haven’t been to the Beerded Lady, I suggest you take the time to visit. Even if you are not a beer drinker, it’s a really nice place run by nice people. They also have cider, wine, and mead for sale so there are more choices than just beer. It’s a great addition to Garner.
This year, one of my favorite instructors, Tim Carrick, was teaching checkering. You’ll note that the link doesn’t go to his website, or Facebook page, or anything he’s created on the internet. Tim eschews computers and all of his business is word of mouth. When I talked to him last year, and again this year, he is 18 months behind on work, with zero advertising!
Since I know I need to learn checkering, and Tim was teaching it, I signed up for the class. Tim had joked that on day one of class, he’d have 10 students, day two would be 6, and by the last day he’d have a couple left. Checkering is hard. I always enjoy learning from Tim so I knew I’d make it to the end. Well, the day before the end, I had to leave a day early to go get goodies for the farm store.
A gunstock checking cradle
Checkering is the process of filing lines into a wood or metal in a method that creates a pattern. The purpose is to give something that would otherwise be slick a nice grip.
My checkering tools, layout guides, etc.
It also can be very beautiful when done by an artist, which I am not. Since I don’t plan on making stocks anytime soon, cutting in checkering isn’t high on my list of skills needed. But since I do plan on repairing stocks, that means I need to be able to recreate a checkering pattern so that I can make the repaired stock look as good as new. Tim is a master at fixing stocks and I learned a ton from him last time. When I say fixing stocks, I mean going from a stock that is literally shattered into pieces and ending up with something that looks brand new. He routinely works on $50,000+ guns. He knows his stuff.
Luckily, I have a stock from one of my guns that needed the checkering replaced where a previous owner had decided to sand the wood down and then shellac the stock with some horrible finish. I’d already taken the stock all the way down to bare wood and refinished it. Now it just needed to be checkered and I could put the gun back to together and then sell it which would get one gun out of here and money in my pocket instead, which I have much more room for.
But before I could jump right into working on a stock, I had to learn the basics first.
My first decent checkering pattern
This is as simple as it gets. It’s also harder than it looks. This is about 1/2 days worth of work, and it’s not finished! Each line has to be filed or cut about 10 passes, each direction. And with every stroke, it’s hard not to mess it up. If you do mess it up, add more time for trying to fix your mistake before you move on. For Tim, this is about 30 minutes worth of work but we were learning so cut us some slack!
Once I’d gotten good enough that I could cut these patterns with some consistency, it was time to move on to checkering an actual stock.
Browning Citori forend on a custom mandrel
As with a lot of work, you can’t do any actual work till you make the jig to hold the work. This is a piece of pine, custom cut and sanded to be a press fit inside the shotgun forend. Then it is drilled to accept the checkering cradle, which itself is a customized clamp. Before you spend the eight hours it takes to checker this thing, you have to spend another hour making the mandrel and the clamp. Ever wonder why checkering is expensive?
Same forend beginning the process of checkering
Once everything is prepped properly, it’s time to do the layout and the checkering. Checkering is the final process on the repair of this shotgun. I have a day in just refinishing the stock. Not the count the days spent overhauling the gun to get it back to better than new specs. When it’s done, this shotgun will be better than new, and it’s only taken me two years to get it that way! 🙂 You never actually work on your own stuff.
The stock, showing the remnants of the old checkering still visible
Here you can see the old checkering I was working off of. You can also see where I’ve outlined the new checkering pattern. This is just the beginning.
Cutting in the new checkering pattern
This is several hours into the job. It’s also about where I stopped. I had to leave early to get home and pick up stuff for the farm store. So this forend is now laying on my bench waiting for me to have time to finish it. Maybe next year I’ll finally get this thing done. I already have other people’s work starting to come in so as always, paying customers first.
This morning we had a new bull calf on the farm. Miguel texted me that we had a new bull calf but I was heading South to Sanford and he was heading North to the market so nobody was able to do anything right away.
When I got back, I had some pigs to castrate (that’s another story) so they had to come first. Then I headed down to find our new little calf and get him tagged and castrated. It’s important to get the calf first thing because they are so easy to catch when they are first born. After a day or so, you can’t just walk up on them anymore and tagging them gets to be a lot more trouble.
So into the tall grass I went looking for this new calf. In the process of looking for the calf born today, I found the calf born yesterday. He hadn’t been tagged or banded yet though so I hopped off the Gator and got him all fixed up. But that meant I still needed to find the newest calf. After walking for about 10 minutes, I took the Gator and started making laps. Another 15 minutes of looking and I still hadn’t found him. That’s when Miguel arrived and told me he was in the protected area, behind the electric wire where nobody goes. Sure enough, he was right there so we popped in an ear tag and put on a quick band.
#71, still wobbly but looking good.
I thought we were done but Miguel reminded me the calf needed to be with mom, not behind the wire. He got himself into this mess, why do I have to get him out? Oh right, I’m the farmer.
So I picked him up and carried him all the way to the other end of the paddock and put him down at mom’s feet. She was glad to see him and started immediately cleaning him up and letting him try to nurse. Curious is one of our best moms so hopefully she’ll have him frolicking about by tomorrow. We’ll keep an eye on him. In the meantime, that’s two new calves in two days. It’s definitely calving season around here.
When we opened to the public officially back in December, we started a program with Groupon to do a little advertising. I think it’s safe to say that we blew the doors off this place once the word got out and we’ve been playing catch up ever since. I threw all the kids and the wife at the store, with no training, trying to keep up with demand and we’ve held on, just barely.
In February, we changed the deal with Groupon to greatly reduce the number of Groupons we were selling and bring some normalcy back to our world. Because Groupons are good for four months from the date of purchase, the last of the Groupons from that initial batch will be coming through on June 15th. That means that we will be reducing our new customer traffic significantly and THAT means that for all of you existing customers who are used to us being out of stuff all the time, well that should be ending shortly. Once June 15th rolls through, we will be concentrating on taking care of our existing customers and trying to better stock for our routine folks.
What our freezers should look like
We are still taking (and very grateful for) new customers and we always REALLY appreciate referrals to your friends, but hopefully we’ll be at a more sustainable volume level and you can feel comfortable that we have your product on the shelf when you stop by.
Except ribeyes. Goodness you folks sure do love a ribeye steak. Those will still be filled from the pre-order list in the store.
#65 had her first calf this morning. A cute little girl who received an ear tag of #70. Vicente found her when he was moving the cows and after Miguel letting me know I popped down there to get an ear tag in her. We were sure if she was born Sunday afternoon or Monday morning but when I walked up to her, it was obvious she’d just been born. Her umbilical cord was still pink and fresh, not even beginning to dry up. She also had no fight or flight in her, she just hung out and let me check her over and pop in a quick ear tag. Mom was right there making sure she was ok, of course.
#70, just born on Memorial day.
Happy Memorial day, little cow. Welcome to the farm.
Yesterday we had a new little calf born on the farm. #45, our newest mom, had her first calf.
#68, just born on the farm.
This calf was especially neat because we got to see her mom just born, almost two years ago, in the video here.
#45 is the daughter of Uno (#1) and Benjamin. She’s been a perfect cow in every way and now she’s given us a perfect little calf who is as well a female.
We’ve only kept records for a few years, so it’s neat to be able to start tracing our cows blood lines back through the generations.
Nobody has cooked, or eaten, as much of our product as we have. We’ve grilled, baked, broiled, sauteed, and crock potted our meats. Heck, we’ve even eaten it raw (steak tartare anyone?) Having had our products every way that you can, I can say that cooking method definitely matter. I usually try and catch new customers before they leave and explain to them how they should cook their new purchase, especially the beef. Grass fed, grass finished beef cooks differently than store bought beef. (I don’t subscribe to all the tips on that link, btw. But most are good). Since I can’t catch everyone, I thought I’d type up my suggestions.
The first thing to know is what kind of meat are you buying. With only so many ribeyes to go around, odds are you’ll be buying a cut of meat you don’t normally get. You need to understand that “eating high on the hog” means that you’re getting the more tender cuts of meat. It also means they are less flavorful. That’s why tenderloin, an expensive and almost flavorless cut of tender meat, is always wrapped in bacon, or marinated in Italian dressing. Recipes are trying to add flavor to the flavorless, tender meat. On the other side of the tenderness scale, the French have perfected the art of taking the cheap cuts of meat and turning them into delicacies. And finding, along of the way, that these less expensive cuts of meat hold the best potential for amazing flavor. Shanks, jowls, brisket. These are all cuts that many American cooks fear but as any Texan will tell you about brisket, they are often the best part of the animal.
Where all the cuts of beef come from
Basically, the higher up the animal, the more expensive and the more tender the cut. That’s because the less the animal uses the muscle, the more tender and the more bland. That’s part of the reason that feedlot beef is more tender. The animals sit around and eat and do little else. By knowing where on the animal your cut comes from, you can have an idea of how to cook it. Tough cuts need a braise (like a crock pot) or some other method of preserving tenderness.
For roasts, generally the crock pot is my friend. SWMBO does most of the cooking and she uses our various roasts interchangeably from one recipe to the next. If it’s a big four pound roast, she has no qualms about trimming it down or cutting it up to make it into what she wants. Not the most cost effective method but the meals are awesome so I’m not complaining. For roasts, just follow your usual recipe. If you are cooking them in the oven, remember that grass fed, grass finished beef is going to cook faster than you expect.
Osso Bucco is one of my favorite cuts. Technically it’s beef shank, sliced into 1″ thick slices. It costs the same as hamburger per pound and it’s wonderful in the crock pot. All that connective tissue breaks down and makes beef broth, which your vegetables soak up as it percolates all day in the crock pot. Just sear the osso bucco on both sides before you start, (remember the mallaird reaction from earlier, it’s your friend.) The meat shreds after cooking easily because of the way the cut is made. You pop out the one bone for Fido and serve. A $10 meal including vegetables that feeds the entire family.
For hamburger, I have to give a nod to our resident chef Drew. His hamburger recipe makes for a stellar hamburger. If you don’t want to do all that he suggests, make patties with room temperature burger meat. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and garlic and grill. Simple burgers that taste awesome.
For Boston Butt, I again turn to Drew’s recipe. If you are in our store, you can also pick up SWMBO’s crock pot recipe to accomplish the same thing. Her BBQ is no muss, no fuss, and tastes awesome.
Lastly, I need to tell you about sous vide cooking. Drew turned me onto it after about a year of harassing me to try it, finally just loaning me his unit and shooing me away to go cook. After one meal, I had one on order from Amazon. It’s pretty much impossible to overcook using sous vide and I can really dial in the doneness that I want, down to the single degree.
Our meat aquarium
After a swim in our meat aquarium (what we call it) I simply sear the meat (mallaird again) and serve. Cook times can vary by hours with no change in doneness which really makes this more like crock pot cooking. This means that I can still get my work done and pop into the kitchen at the end of the day to finish up and serve a great meal, looking every bit the hero that I am.
I get this question a lot. Usually it’s in the form of a statement about how pigs are super smart. Pigs are pretty good at being pigs. Beyond that, not so much. This is a myth perpetuated by Hollywood with movies like, Babe and Charlottes Web.
Pigs are anthropomorphized and made to be much smarter than they are. In reality, pigs can be cute and funny, but I wouldn’t have them do my taxes.
While pigs don’t have a lot going on upstairs besides what it takes to be a pig, dogs are pretty doggone smart. Not our dogs. No, they are as dumb at a box of turnips. The big dog, Cotton, doesn’t really know her name, or how to sit, or roll over. But she does know to stay with the kids, and to protect them from anything that she deems to be abnormal. She also makes sure that no predators enter, or at least stay, on the farm. Sometimes Cotton decides that something that is completely normal isn’t supposed to be there. In that case she bites whoever that is. Once it was Miguel, once it was a deputy Sheriff. She’s never vicious and she loves children so we keep her on patrol because her good far outweighs her flaws.
The little dog, Ruby, as much as it pains me to say, is actually smarter than Cotton. She knows her name. She can sit on command with nary a word spoken. I taught her, in a fit of boredom when the entire family was at the beach, in about 2 minutes. And she’s retained it so far the rest of her life. The problem with Ruby is that she’s neurotic. As in, not remotely functional, neurotic. Ruby is much like Dave Barry’s Zippy, the emergency backup dog. Little, useless, and annoying. She is, however, smarter than a pig so she has that going for her. But that’s about it.
I point out all this information about our dogs, to bring our farming/blogging mentor, Walter Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm, into the conversation. His dogs not only sit, stay, retrieve, etc. They also talk. Yes, I said talk. Walter has his dogs up to about six word sentences with a combination of sign language and verbal communication. How? I have no idea. I’m going with the assumption that Walter is smarter than I am and it flows from there. Perhaps it is a breeding thing. I don’t know. But with the improvement in our gene pool by marrying SWMBO, I hope to see our breed improve in the next generation.
Two of my three wonderful kids. I didn’t have a handy picture of our emergency backup kid, Wildflower.
Thanks again to Lucy, we are now adding this coming Saturday the 21st as a day when we will be open, despite my being off the farm that day.
Lucy and Crystal will be working the store on Saturday and they will be doing pickup appointments only. That means no tours are available.
When you select your provider on our booking application, select Lucy Deaton for Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday of this week. The rest of the choices will be blocked off but all of her times will appear.
Except ribeyes. Goodness you folks sure do love a ribeye steak. Those will still be filled from the pre-order list in the store.
