Potatoes

This year is the first that we have grown potatoes. It was fun and we had a lot of success.

March

May

June

"Alright boys. Start digging."

Nice haul

We have had luck storing the potatoes in paper bags. They are in the bottom of the pantry where it is fairly cool and dark. Every other week or so I check for any moisture condensation or any of the white cottony fungus but so far so good. After about a month, we've got about half of them left and they are fine.

Winter Brocolli

M-I planted some brocolli and cabbage in October. The cabbage didn't do much, be we got a decent little harvest of brocolli, even though it was frozen several times.

Making Meat

M- Well the time finally came for our steer. We fed him grain for 60 days leading up the fateful day. Our friends Walt, Josh, James, and Jamie all came to help. It took a 5 people 10 hours or so to process the meat far enough to get it to fit in the fridges, then it took me another day of wrapping before freezing everything. Katie ground several pounds and made fresh burgers for lunch. We continued with the beef theme for dinner and had grilled beef ribs. The kids REALLY enjoyed their ribs. We aged the remaining 3-400 lbs of beef for two weeks and the had the tenderloins for Christmas dinner. All in all, raising the steer and getting all the meat in the freezer was a lot of work, but well worth the effort!

Apples

M- Our apple trees didn't produce much this year, 4 apples if I recall exactly, so we picked up this 50 lb bag of apples for $8 from a roadside stand. We made applesauce, apple pies, apple cobler, and ate tons of fresh apples. The animals sure enjoyed the peels and cores!

In the Kitchen

We've gotten lots of different things off the farm this year. Here is just a few examples of the more interesting things we've done.

Garden produce

Pickles

Bacon!

Bamboo shoots

Goat curry with bamboo shoots

Home Brew

Siphoning into the bottling bucket

This was a Pilsner. Pretty good. Some were more carbonated than others because I failed to mix the priming sugar in well. Otherwise a big success. At about 70c a bottle it was a pretty good deal too.

'Mater sandwiches!

Nothing like the first tomato sandwich of the year!