Although our recent weather patterns make Spring seem far away, the lambs and pigs are coming on April 15th. That's only nine weeks! Sixty-three days! There's so much to do before they get here like buy fencing and troughs, rearrange the barn, make a grazing plan and put together events.
I feel lucky to be a part of such a supportive community in New Paltz and the Hudson Valley. Four Legs Farm is not possible without you. To get over the initial hump of buying fencing I'm offering the Little Share until the animals arrive in April. It is 7 lbs of meat - lamb and pork together - for $100. Like the other shares you'll get an assortment of chops, sausages and other cuts along with a package of bones or fat from the Adventure Pack. They will be available at any of the four drop-offs - Poughkeepsie Farm Project, Phillies Bridge Farm, Huguenot Street Farm or here at Four Legs Farm this fall. I'm planning a farm day in early May and can't wait for you all to meet the lambs and pigs! I'll have those dates for you soon.
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Last week I visited my lamb guy in Dutchess County. The babies and mommas both looked good. It was fun to have the bottle-fed babies run up to me and start sucking on my knee. They are not entirely clear on what is a bottle and just bet that anything attached to a person might be a bottle of milk or at the very least get them some attention. The lambs in this picture are a couple of weeks old and I will get lambs when they are about ten weeks old, by then they'll be about 45 lbs. Some of the lambs I met will be my lambs - so exciting!
I wasn't kidding about being able to use lard in almost anything. Here I've got polenta, a beet-carrot brownie, collard greens and lentils. There is a lot of olive oil bandied about in these recipes. So silly. Side note: beet-carrot brownies are super easy. I buy brownie mix, puree carrots and beets and mix them all together. If the batter isn't wet enough I add a little milk. You can play with the proportions - I like mine pretty root veg heavy. They cook a little differently than regular brownies and can take a little longer - keep an eye on them. Here I'm just reheating the brownie in lard for funzies. It's really winter, the farm feels like it's sleeping. I feel like I haven't even really gotten to know the farm yet because I haven't lived with daily chores here. I'm both happy to have this time to plan and kind of miss having animals. I poked around the barn today just to start thinking about how I want things set up. My lambs and pigs will both get quarantined in the barn for two weeks. This is for biosecurity reasons so they're not pooping out on pasture right away in case they're sick. I'm pretty sure they used to milk cows in this barn. As you might've guessed, pigs have a lot of fat. That is kind of the point. When my pork comes back from the slaughterhouse, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with a whole bunch of fat. I'm doing a little experimenting. This is chunks of fatback (AKA back fat) after I cut the skin off of them. This is whipped lardo. You run raw fatback through a food processor with a little salt, vineagar and herbs until it gets creamy. You're supposed to use a little garlic too, but I had run out. It came out like super fancy butter, but piggier. I rendered the rest of the fatback into lard. The yellower stuff is the cleaner lard. The brownish liquid is the lard I strained from the cracklin's all the way on the left. Cracklin's are the crispy bits left over when all the fat has melted.
You can use lard pretty much anywhere you'd use butter or oil normally. Except salad dressing, that'd be gross. While I'm waiting for my animals to arrive in April, I've decided to fill up my kitchen with food. It’s perfect in the winter because it makes the whole house feel cozy. Stock is definitely one of my favorite things. Any stock - beef, pork, chicken. The best are made from chicken feet and pig trotters because they have all of that fabulous connective tissue that makes the final product velvety. But all you really need are bones. I don’t really believe in recipes as anything other than serving suggestions, but these folks do a great job on stock recipes. I love using stock to get rid of any of the less-than prime vegetables hanging out in my fridge. You can really put whatever you have in the pot - here I had half a box of baby kale that was getting elderly. As you can imagine beets turn the whole thing pink in a not-always-pleasant way. Cabbage can be a little bitter. I made one batch of stock with a bunch of parsnips and the whole thing turned out so sweet, it was lovely. If I’m cooking a big meal I’ll set aside some of the scraps for the stock pot - kale stems, turnip greens or carrot shavings. Leave onion skins on and quarter them. I’ve made the mistake of shoving more things in the stock pot than I needed to and it really just doesn’t do your surface area to ingredient ratio any justice. I like to let it boil for three hours make sure all of the vegetables are entirely spent. Stock is great for making rice, lentils, anything savory that requires liquid really. I love just drinking it straight. In the Hudson Valley, there are farmers’ markets and veggie CSAs all over the place, but buying livestock is a little trickier. I’m only buying feeder lambs and pigs - babies that have been weaned from their mothers - and I will be raising them to market weight. This is partly because I’m not able to invest in winter housing and partly because I have off-farm work year-round. My hope is to keep things simple by sacrificing control over the genetics of my animals for a little sanity. It is really hard to find feeder pigs in this area - I talked to at least five people before I was able to get a hold of a pig breeder. Most farmers in the Hudson Valley have some pigs on the side and either keep some breeding stock or buy a few pigs here and there from other people with small pig enterprises. I am buying 24 pigs all at once ( an average litter is 8-10 pigs) that are close enough in age so that I don’t have older pigs beating up on little pigs. This means that I really need three sows farrowing (giving birth) within a week of each other to meet my needs. The farm I'm buying from is big enough to have pigs farrowing frequently. My pig lady loves her pigs so much - I feel very lucky to have found her. Most people don’t sell feeder lambs possibly because lamb is less popular in this part of the world and probably because they are ruminants that like to be on pasture and require a little more management. Pigs are easier to have as a side enterprise because you can tuck them in any corner of your farm you want tilled up and they eat more grain and less grass. The sheep farmer I’m buying lambs from usually grows them out himself and sells the meat at farmers’ markets. By buying live animals from him while they’re young he has fewer animals to manage on grass and does not have to put out the resources to get those animals processed and sold. My lamb guy generously offered to loan me a donkey, he will be a guardian animal for my flock. I hear coyotes yowling almost every night and I will certainly sleep better knowing the lambs aren’t out there by themselves. This is one of those things that make having my own farm feel real. At this point I feel like I think I know what I want but I’ve never purchased animals before and these two big purchases dictate a lot about how my final product will turn out. It's an adventure! |
AuthorLeanna at Four Legs Farm Archives
July 2017
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