Time: 10 am – 4 pm
Vendor List:
Buck Naked Farm – Lathe Demonstration
*Parking $5, No Dogs Allowed,No Smoking, we encourage carpooling & to come later in the day*
New in the Store
Great news after much demand we are now carrying two new items in our store.
Beef Tallow
1/2 Pint- $7
Pint – $10
Quart- $15
Lard
1/2 Pint- $7
Pint – $10
Quart- $15
Our New Store Hours are Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2-6 pm & Saturday from 9-5. On Saturdays we offer free group walking tours. Please go visit https://ninjacowfarm.com/tours-2/ to schedule your tour today.
Pieces & Parts & Goats Milk
Dog, cats, ferrets & Soap Crafters, what do they all have in common?
Pork!!!
Dan surprised Jeanette & I today with our special request for
Tails, Fat Back( what you use for lard), Liver, Heart , & Feet are now all in stock in .
Prices
Tails- $4.50 per pound- Not only a great for pets but also great for stews and veggies.
Fat Back $4 per pound if you want lard or to make your own soap this fat is gold.
Liver-$4 per pound liverwurst, Scrapple or liver pudding you know you want to make your own this summer to go with all those fresh garden veggies. We have a few books in the store to steal some recipes out of for these dishes
Heart- $2.99 per pound great for adventurous eaters (slice and cook like a steak) or for pets
Feet- $2.50 per pound. These are my secret ingredient to so many dishes. I smoke them then add them to beans, collards and pork bone broth. Oh yes, pork broth should be its own magical food group.
Ears-$4 per pound. Not just a great dog treat, these are also my favorite bar food. I braise these till tender (280 F in a dutch oven for 2 hours) then slice and fry.
Neck Bone-$4 per pound try a new flavor of bone broth. If you love beans this will add an extra depth of flavor to them.
Finally Raw Goats Milk ($5 per 1/2 gallon) is back in the store on Fridays and Saturdays. The supply will be limited. Please let Lucy know by Monday if you need an order. Several of the area veterinarians in the area have suggested this for orphaned pets or pets going through medical issues such as Chemo or on raw food diets. Please check with your own veterinarians to see if this is right for you.
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Whole Duck Now Available
Lucy here on the actual non- recipe part of the blog. We’re still having some internet issues here on the farm. The store is open tomorrow 2-6 p.m. & Satuday from 8-5. Erin & Crystal will be running the store while Dan gives tours. SWMBO & I will be off picking up our kiddos and hosing them down after a full week of sleep away camp.
Ninja Cow Farm has a wonderful new product in stock. DUCK!!! Seriously, we now have Duck thanks to Blue Whistler Farm over in Bahama, NC. Blue Whistler is a wife and husband owned 5 acre farm. It may not seem like much land, they work it and are producing some great products.
Last year I was introduced to Amy at Blue Whistler Farm. I followed her for a while, light facebook stalking in truth. What drew me to her was the amount she loved and cared for her animals while they were on the farm. How she is able to provide with love and care yet realize this is a business and you must follow the rules of it to be successful.
She has tried several animals on her 5 acre farm. Amy shares her triumphs and successes along the way. Now we can share her ducks with you. Blue Whistler Ducks are pastured raised, while receiving conventional feed rations.
As you can see though they stay in the pasture not in a closed in cage on a factory farm. Amy is hoping this winter to bring us Duck by the cut as well. Blue Whistler ducks are currently sold whole in our store for $8.45lb. Drop by and see us for a new flavor on your table.
You can’t have any. Hands off!
About a week ago, I posted that we had a new cut of pork in the freezer. It was just a little note at the end of a beef update. The cut of pork showed up and looked like this.
I wasn’t really sure what it was. Lucy had attended the Women in Meat Conference and she and Brooke (Hi Brooke) from the processor had some sort of pow wow on new cuts Lucy wanted to bring in. I kinda tuned out of the conversation so I really didn’t know what she ordered.
So I’m unloading the truck and these things are in the box. Boston butt steaks. Looks cool, no idea what it is. Stick them in the freezer somewhere and worry about it later.
In talking to Lucy later, she informs me these are cut wrong and aren’t what she asked for. Go figure. I explained that this is what happens when we go out of the norm. Now we have 20 packs of these things that we’ll have to do something with but oh well, it’s ok. When you are a farmer, your mistakes taste like bacon!
Last night, SWMBO finally got around to cooking our first batch of these butt steak thingies. That’s how it is at our house. Something getting old? Something out of date? Something with damaged packaging? The farmer gets the stuff nobody wants, not the ribeyes.
Not knowing what else to do with these weird cuts, she just cooked them the way we do our pork chops, along with some peas from a bag and a bottle of vino (for the sauce and the chef!) She plated the steak thingies about 10 minutes after walking in the door and pushed one in front of me.
“They looked good. Hmm, they cut good, kinda tender like a porter house or a ribeye. They seem to have great marbling… if I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a steak….”
So I took a bite, and another. Good Lord these things are awesome! I didn’t really taste the pork flavor, they tasted more like a steak than a pork product. They were tender, juicy, flavorful. SWMBO said she tasted the pork and she’s probably right but I don’t care. They were awesome!
I ate mine. Then I gnawed the bone. Then the kids wandered off to play. I ate theirs. Then I was eyeing the one that was for lunch later but I decided to behave.
So we’ve got like 12 packs of these things I think. I’ll have to look when I steal them all and hide them from everyone so they don’t get sold. I think this is my new favorite thing! The only problem is, I’m not in the store today so hopefully nobody will know about our secret new cut till I get back home and can hide them from customers.
Nobody reads this blog, right? I’m safe.
Last call for turkeys for 2016
I’ve been slack on letting you know we are getting turkeys for Thanksgiving. I posted about it in late August and then have completely ignored it since then. I guess there was a hurricane in the middle. And we had some other farm craziness to tend to.
Fortunately Lucy has done a good job of telling people when they are in the store so we still have a good number of pre-orders but now is the time if you want to get on the list to let us know. The window will be closing before too long so if you want a turkey, you need to get by and put a deposit on one. 
The turkeys are $6.25 per pound and will range between 15 and 20 pounds. Deposits are $40.
Parmesan Pork Chops
You’re probably going “Lucy knows it’s chicken parmesan, right?”. Yes I do know, when a craving hits & there is a chicken breast shortage hits (now remedied), you substitute. In this case I used Pork Chops from the NCF farm store coming in at $9.50 lb. It makes for a good fall meal on these still cooling off nights.
In my pictures you will notice the bone & extra fat. Don’t do what I did and leave those on. My crew was startled to find they couldn’t cut their meat under layers of sauce and cheese, from now on I will use my noodle a bit better and remove the extra fat as well as the bone.
There is no parmesan cheese in Parmesan dishes. Why?? The dish is named for the area it is from in France. Also I do not add my seasoning to the breading. I season the meat after egging. I’ve found that this adds a bit more flavor to my fried dishes. And please make sure to let the meat come to room temperature before frying. Cold meat in a fryer = burnt breading
Ingredients
- 4 NCF bone in pork chops
- 2 cups bread crumbs
- 2 eggs whisked
- 3 tbsp Italian Herbs Seasoning
- 1 cup Olive Oil
- Salt & pepper
- 8oz jar of Marinara (I prefer Nello’s)
- 8 Slices Provolone or Mozzarella Cheese
- 1/2 lb cooked pasta prepared to packages instructions
Directions
- Preheat Oven to 350 degrees
- Dip Pork Chop in Egg
- Season Pork Chops with Salt Pepper and Italian Seasoning
- Cover Pork chop in breading (let rest 5 min before frying)
- In a heavy bottom pan heat Olive Oil to shimmering state
- Cooking 3-4 minutes on each side
- In a oven safe casserole add pasta cover lightly with marinara
- Lay Pork Chops on pasta, cover lightly with sauce then lay cheese across the top.
- Bake until cheese is bubbling, rest meat, & serve
Shh, it’s a secret
I couldn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure if the processor would have our cows ready on time. But I got the call (after multiple attempts to get an answer this week) that our cows are ready as of this morning.
I’m on the way now to go pick up two cows worth of beef and to stuff our freezer to the gills. I will be back, and unloaded, before Lucy opens today at 2pm. That means ribeyes, NY strips, eye round roasts, etc. All the goodies will be in stock this afternoon and tomorrow.
We are open 2-6 today, and 8-5 tomorrow. No appointment needed! Stop by and get some fresh beef!
Of course, we are fully stocked on pork, chicken, dairy, etc. as well so we have all the goodies for you.
Today is the day!
While we are open for regular customers today from 8am – 5pm, however starting at 1pm we will also be part of the 10th annual CFSA farm tour.
This is our first year being on the farm tour so we have little idea of what to expect but we have all hands on deck should we be so fortunate as to have a large crowd.
Today SWMBO and Spork will be giving tours on the quarter hour showing new visitors the farm, seeing the baby pigs and chickens. The usual stuff.
Erin, our resident milk maid, will be out by our girls Betsy and Hedi to explain to people how we go about milking our cows, what we do with the milk, etc.
Jennifer Howard from Buck Naked Farm will be here with not only her encyclopedic knowledge of bees, but an observation hive as well so you can see the bees hard at work up close and personal.
Jason “Abe Froman” (extra points if you know what that name is from) will be manning the grill, cooking up samples of our bratwurst and chorizo sausages, whetting your appetite before you head into the store where you’ll find Lucy, Dagny, and Myla helping everyone with their shopping.
Of course the bakery is already hot this morning, making up batches of fresh chocolate chip cookies for today. Make sure to grab yours when you come in.
You can purchase your ticket for the farm tour at the first farm you visit (which should be us, of course!) The tickets are $30 per car so it’s one price for all farms, and all your friends who can ride along. You can see as many of the 25 farms over the weekend as you can get to. I could usually get about 3-4 per day if I tried hard but I usually ended up staying at a favorite farm too long and only hit 2-3. You can buy your tickets from CFSA as well, right here.
Short ribs with asian flavor
Flavors from Asia, they’re complex by nature. You bite in and instantly go “How did they do this”? Umami is a word in Asian Cuisine used to describe the savory taste. Short ribs have a bounty of Umami.
The ribs come in packs ranging from 1 lb- 2 lbs at $8.99 a lbs. With ribs you want 1 lbs per person due to the removal of bone. While this recipe is for 5 lbs I typically use 2-3 lbs of the ribs. When doing this freeze part of your unused marinade for later use.
The secret to short ribs is the cooking time. Once again we are going to using that trusty dutch oven and set the oven at 280F. The length of time will vary on the density of meat, towards the end check every 30 minutes. You’re not just checking for fall off the bone you also want the connective tissue broken down enough to bite through easily.
Short Ribs with Asian Flavor
- 1 large Fuji apple
- 1 large Asian pear
- 1 ¼ cup soy sauce
- ¾ cup sugar
- 1 red onion, roughly chopped
- 4 green onions, chopped (optional)
- 1 tbsp ginger, grated
- 3 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)
- ¼ cup sesame oil
- 5 lbs Short ribs
- Enough water to cover ribs
- Green Onions, chopped (garnish)
Cooking Method
- Preheat oven to 280F
- For the marinade: Grate garlic, ginger, apple and pear into a large bowl, making sure to catch all of their juices.
- Add the soy sauce, sugar, onions, sesame seeds, and sesame oil, mixing thoroughly.
- Place short ribs to the bowl, use tongs to ensure all of the ribs are coated with the marinade.
- Refrigerate the meat & marinade for at least 12-24 hours before cooking. (The longer you marinate the meat, the better it flavor!)
- Remove from refrigerator 1 hour before cooking.
- In a Dutch oven place ribs & 1-2 cups of the marinade. Place in oven with the lid on 280 until tender 6-7 hrs.
- Remove and let sit for 10 minutes before removing ribs and breaking down the meat.
- While the meat cooks simmer the remaining marinade till syrupy & pour over finished ribs or serve beside them.
- Serve over rice or steamed vegetables.
