Missing Willow Farm

Yesterday was my last day of milking for 2011.  Yay!  It’s been twice a day since April, I actually feel like we could get away for a few days if we wanted to.  Goats are seasonal breeders, they need to be dried off to assure they can get pregnant again in the Fall for Spring kids and then we’ll have milk for 2012.   Mina, Bella and Hermione gave me two and a half quarts this morning.  That’s also yesterday’s batch of chevre drained and ready to be salted.  Today’s my birthday and also our 24th wedding anniversary.  And marks one year since our wonderful daughter Tracy decided I needed a blog for my birthday so it’s a blog anniversary, too.  Happy days and thank you again, Tracy!

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Pumpkin vines run really far.  I planted six seeds the first week of June, and the vines ran outside of our invisible deer fence enclosure.  Someone told us that deer will stomp a pumpkin to get at the flesh so my husband extended the enclosure for protection.  It’s fortressed, we’ll see if it lasts until Halloween!

Careful inspection should reveal something that doesn’t belong in our garden.  I’m sure one of our kids will get it…

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My friend Lora, who’s my farmers’ market space partner, designed a cake for our friend’s lamb camping weekend.  It featured a coconut cake with a layer of home made lime curd and a layer of home made lemon curd.  And coconut cream.  And magical fairy dust.  Just kidding about the coconut cream.  😉  It was the best cake ever.  A lime in the coconut cake.  She designed the topper in polymer clay (so artsy and talented).  She won a Food Network cake decorating challenge.  For real.  She’s amazing and generous and bakes amazing things.  Come to the market on Friday morning and you can find out for yourself.  She left at 9AM this morning, she sold out that fast!

Mother and daughter CoCo and Elsie relaxing in the afternoon sun.  Elsie’s the only 2011 kid we kept.  She’s a beauty!

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We slaughtered one of our turkeys last weekend to take to our friend’s chef getaway.  It dressed out at 17 pounds.  Yikes!  Can you imagine what size they’ll be at Thanksgiving?!  We started way too early.  I suppose we’ll have to slaughter early and buy yet another freezer to store them in.   Anyhoo… we asked Sean Brock to smoke it for us.  Sean was the winner of the “Next Great Chef” episode of the “Food Network Challenge”, is going to be on “Iron Chef America”, won the James Beard “Best Chef Southeast” award in 2010 and his restaurant Husk was just named “Best New Restaurant in America” by Bon Appetit magazine two weeks ago.  Not bad, eh!?   And he’s the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.  Sean had a mesquite rub mixed up, it included bourbon smoked black pepper.  I wonder why I haven’t seen that at WalMart?  After rubbing it inside and out with olive oil, the rub was slathered on.  It spent about 3 hours in the smoker.  I think it lasted less than ten minutes after carving.  Without a doubt, the best turkey I’ve ever tasted.  We’re going to try it ourselves. Why not, we got a lesson from the best!

Jessica, our belty cow, greets us in the morning, eats sweet feed from a bucket, socializes with the herd for a bit, then disappears into the woods.  If you’re not over here by 8AM, you’ll never see her.  I’ve been leading her closer and closer to the barn when I feed her because winter’s coming and she needs to know it can provide shelter.

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Freezer day is a big day on our farm.  We put up 25 broilers and one mean rooster.  Actually, it took us two days, we’re not set up for mass processing yet.  Jenna loves to ‘help’ keep an eye on things.   I guess she knows that chickens aren’t supposed to be in the driveway so she watches them very carefully.   You may notice she creeps up closer and closer on them.  We call her off every so often but she knows just how close she wants to be near them and self adjusts.

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Chefs have the most interesting food-related tattoos.  These are just a few I noticed last weekend, I should go on a search at next year’s event.  There was even a tattoo artist on hand doing lamb-related tattoos.  I passed.  My tattoos are decidedly not food related.  😉

Grandma used to prepare a leg of lamb with mint jelly.  I liked the lamb but the mint jelly was gross so I never ever thought to look for cuts of lamb in the grocery store to prepare for my family.  I think the green jelly haunted me.  When we first moved here, I wanted to purchase local beef but didn’t know anyone who raised cattle.  I did an internet search and all that came up was a local lamb producer.  I decided to try some chops and ground lamb and it was delicious.  We bought 3 sheep from him to start our own flock and he’s now a very good friend.  He throws an annual event for his customers and friends, we had lamb prepared every which way.   Whole roasted on a spit, lamb tenderloin tartare, smoked mutton, lamb meatball and pate sandwiches with pickled vegetables, lamb charcuterie, lamb hot dogs, lamb sausage pizza (with my goat cheese), lamb pastrami and bacon reubens, lamb tacos.  And these are just the dishes I got photos of.  It was a fantastic weekend of wonderful food.  I’m full.  And next time you’re out to dinner… try the lamb.   🙂