While I am neglecting my farm to fork responsibilities you have the chance this fall for a REAL Farm to Fork experience at the Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance Harvest Dinner on September 14th.  Whether you are looking for a cool date night, want wonderful local food prepared with care and attention to detail by talented chefs, or are looking for a chance to rub shoulders with the local farmers who feed us, the Harvest Dinner is the place to be!

As my Dad and the other farmers traveled from place to place doing the big, shared work projects like haying and silage, the wives would always put on the big spread for lunch.  In the 70s there wasn’t many arenas where women competed – except in the kitchen.  Title IX was a few years away and most women were relegated to pink collar jobs.  But, in the domestic domain it was full-contact homemaking!  Just like the Amish women at barn-raising events, the tables would be groaning under the weight of baked goods and breads, mashed potatoes, gravy, roast beef…and dessert!  Cobblers, cakes, and PIES!

Now, my Dad was a bit of a joker and he liked to egg people on.  So, when they were having lunch at Charlie’s and Marion was feeding them he would say things like, “Well, you know, at Hank’s last week we had apple and lemon meringue pie!”  Sure enough, the next day Marion would produce, apple, lemon meringue AND cherry (with ice cream!)  It is a wonder they ever got any work done given the amount they ate, but they were also doing hard physical labor and could justify the big meals.

At our house we typically feed the helpers who work with us on hay deliveries.  Sometimes we have 3-4 of them on busy days so dinner is a big, sit down affair.  On Saturday we do a big farm breakfast for everyone who shows up by 8:30 in the morning.  Last week we had eggs, sausage gravy, fried potatoes, toast and jam.  I do this as a carry-over from the tradition when I was growing up.  And the crew is always grateful which provides a reward for the work of cooking for them.  While I don’t have other farm wives to contend with in a contest of pie-baking skills I need to be careful because occasionally a mom will ask “So, what did you feed them this week?” in a my-kid-seems-to-like-your-cooking-a-bit-too-much tone of voice.  But the fact remains, I like to cook for an appreciative audience.  The other night we had one of our former helpers who was home to visit family for the 4th call and say that he was coming over to help us for a couple hours for old time’s sake and the last thing he told my husband was  ”….and I will stay for supper!”  Game on!

I cracked a jar and had some with steak on Sunday night and ate the leftovers for breakfast this morning.  I am thinking they would be divine with an antipasto plate.  Time for some fresh mozzarella!  Now, there are lots of variations on the web – but when canning it is important to use tested recipes from approved sources.  If it is an extension publication, published by the USDA or shows up in the Ball Blue Book you are good to go.  If your recipe is from a blog, just say “Whoa!”  It is crucial to have proper acidity and processing method and time for home-canned goods to be safe for your family.

Here is my recipe for Marinated Whole Mushrooms (from “So Easy to Preserve” from the University of Georgia)

• 5 pounds small whole mushrooms
• 1/2 cup bottled lemon juice
• 2 cups olive or salad oil (I used olive)
• 2 1/2 cups white vinegar (5%)
• 1 TBSP dried oregano
• 1 TBSP dried basil
• 1 TBSP salt (canning and pickling salt!)
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/4 cup diced pimiento
• 2 cloves of garlic, cut into quarters
• 25 black peppercorns

As a farmer there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done.  My life right now is a testament to this true principle.  My garden is sad, they lawn is long and there are untidy little piles of stuff all over the place needing to be picked up.  Tonight as I was doing chores in the fading light I was grateful for the long day and the extra time to put chickens to bed and milk the girls.  Dad was in much the same boat much of the time.  Robbing time where he could get it to accomplish the many tasks needing attention.  Hay making, tractor repair, cattle chores, fence building, cutting firewood for winter…and so on.  As spring turned to summer the lengthening days provided precious minutes to get a few more things done in daylight.

As a child my summer days were unconstrained by the responsibilities of adulthood and my chores were quickly accomplished leaving endless hours to play with friends, ride horseback, swim in the river, and all of the other ways farm kids find to spend long summer days.  Summer nights were the best … we picked beans and peas in the cool of the mornings and spent warm summer nights snapping and shelling around the big round kitchen table watching reruns on TV and drinking lemonade.   When we were making hay we would haul bales into late into the evening, picking them up by the truck headlights.   At the end of a long hot day the cool of the evening was welcome respite.  Mom would bring dessert out at end of the day and we would sit on the tailgate of the pick-up eating pie and ice cream by the light of the moon.

I can remember Dad calling me while I was in college.  I had a summer research position and wasn’t home for haying or to help work the cattle or get them ready for fair.  My days were far away from farming, spending hours in the library, hanging out with the other grad students.  He and I chatted for a few minutes and then he said, “Longest day of the year today!” and brought me back to warm summer nights on the farm.

There are days that challenge my commitment to farming.  Like today.  Cold, wet, slushy, rainy, soggy…sick cows, muddy pastures, backed up storm drains in the milking area, I am tired and feel sick….it goes on and on.

So, as an antidote to all the woes of the world I made soup.

We had a hog butchered at Home Meats in Shelton.  They do an old-fashioned slow cure on their hams and bacon.  Very tasty indeed.  We had the ham for dinner earlier in the week and all that was left was a meaty bone.  I tossed it in the crock pot this morning with a pound of white beans, a chopped onion, a couple bay leaves, 3 quarts of water and about 1/2 cup of pan drippings from roasting the ham.  Pan drippings are my secret ingredient any time I need to give a soup or gravy a boost.  Intense, smoky and salty, the pan drippings  are strained and defatted and stored in a ziplock bag in the freezer.  It is so salty that it doesn’t really freeze properly, just getting firm but not solid.  A couple tablespoons adds life to potato-corn chowder, or gives an added layer of flavor to sausage gravy.   #2 son is always saying, “Everything is a little better with some pig on it!” and I think he might be right.

This afternoon when the beans were cooked I tossed in a couple potatoes, peeled and diced and half-a-dozen carrots, sliced up.   I stripped the remaining meat from the bone, chopped it up, tossed it in the pot and gave it a couple turns of the peppermill.

When we got in from doing chores this afternoon, chilled and soaked to the bone, it really hit the spot.  It will be even better tomorrow but for tonight it was good enough!

Instead we have to battle for space with boots, recycling and camping gear.  The garage where most of this will go hasn’t gotten built and so rather than clutter up the (unfinished) basement further it lives on the porch.  The little freezer on the porch has 200# of veal in it, and during the summer it is handy for chilling fryers.  There are two more freezers in the basement…along with the canning pantry.  The garbage can isn’t full of garbage – it just happens to be convenient to store the chicken feed in a garbage pan near the porch because the layers live in a coop not far from the porch.  And, unlike Martha Stewart’s architecturally designed coop at Turkey Hill, mine is covered with a blue tarp.  Did you honestly expect anything else?

Here’s my point, to a suburban housewife this could cause quite an alarm!  If she were to discover it in October, the mystery would have been solved eventually by remembering that she had that cute little Martha Stewart harvest display on her porch that the kids were playing on.  You know the one that required way too much money a trip to that store in town where they have all of the cute farm-y stuff?  And now she has all of these “squares” of straw that she just doesn’t know what she is going to do with, composting farmer’s dream.  But no!  This is the dead of winter folks, not harvest time.  She quickly would have jumped to conclusions and ultimately she would have it pinned on a rat or varmint that has gotten into the house and tracked all of this filth in.  Que an exterminator.

Not in my house, straw and mud on the floor.  Completely normal.  And the vacuum is actually a permanent fixture in our living room and entryway that we use…

A LOT!

Chicken feet.  A two gallon bag of them in the freezer, in fact there’s more than one right next to the 20 lbs of lard that needs to be rendered.  Now, THAT would cause most to squirm.  I could get a shirt that reads, “I eat chicken’s feet”.  Really what I do with them is boil them down for stock, wonderful gelatinous and thick stock for soups and stews.  Would you believe that my kids use them as back-scratchers on processing day?  yep…farm punks.

Completely normal and delicious.  Not my kids, the feet.

Muddy boots, cases of fruits and vegetables, 5 gallon compost buckets, irrigation fittings, zip ties, pocket knifes, pliers, and work gloves on the counters, mason jars, duct tape, an outside refrigerator full of pickles…this is ALL completely normal here.

Now, just to back me up let me tell you what I have found in my farm girlfriends’ houses.  And mind you, it is a seasonal thing.  Fixtures change due to the time of year.  For instance, it is calving season and milking season for one of my farm girls.  No doubt, she is rounding up as many gallon jars as she can.  They are littering her kitchen and taking over the shelving in her pantry.  And how about that piece of latex tubing that hangs from her kitchen window, right over her sink?  Forget the cutsie stuff hanging in the windows, tubing it is!  And on her window seal…. never mind.  In another farm girl’s kitchen there is no doubt seed packets, soaking pea seeds, etc…it’s planting time!  And finally, I can only imagine what litters most farm girl’s kitchen tables right now…trays and trays of tiny vegetable seedlings.

All completely odd to most, but completely normal to a farm girl.  How odd is your house?

Poulsbo's Washington Tractor brought TWO lusty green tractors to the Expo...and look at that no-till drill!

Wipe up the drool and let’s get back to the projects!

Community Supported Agriculture-  It is CSA time, what doesn’t turn you on about fresh veggies grown right here in Kitsap County?  There’s nothing greater than true love and a homegrown tomato.  We will be developing a one pager list of local CSA’s.

Farm to Table – Cascade Harvest Coalition, WSU Kitsap Small Farms, and the Kitsap Food Chain project are teaming up to bring a Farm to Table.  This is an event for our local farmers, chefs, schools, distributors, etc. to gather, gain some wisdom, share some food, and then speed date with one another in search of the perfect fit.  Romantic, eh?

Good Gut Health – Nothing sexy about guts, however a gut out of balance leads to disastrous results.  Two workshops in the series, these are the first food preservation workshops of the year to be held at the dearly- loved Haselwood YMCA.  March 3, 1-3 (Vegetable Ferments) and March 10, 1-3 (fermented drinks – non alcoholic).  Pre-Registering is required!

Kitsap’s Horses for Clean Water project – Collect, Cover, Compost – Manure Management- Looking out for number one, and taking care of number two… we have failed to nail down the perfect title, but basically it is a steamy story that aims to reach out to the owners of the 8,000 horses in Kitsap.  The Puget Sound is in trouble – take care of your poo!  Coming to a 4-H club near you!

Diane’s love life is shaping up, too.  She is all sorts of twitterpated over the No-Till Drill project she is in charge of.  Farmers reducing their carbon footprint is hot!  Of course every Thursday night she is out on the town teaching the ever popular, Cultivating Success – Ag Entrepreneurship class.  This session is pretty full – 40 attendees!  That’s more people learning how to bring us more LOCAL FOOD!

Okay, that is enough of the Farmer Love Story, the roosters are signaling chore time.  Want more?  Though our blog postings are erratic, you can get your daily dose of all things farm girl at our Facebook page, “WSU Kitsap Small Farms”.

Beef and Barley, Tomato-Pumpkin, Kale and Sausage…from amazing chefs crafted with local ingredients…Rolls and yummy desserts…AND a day filled with opportunities to learn about developing a value-added food product, growing flowers for profit, implementing conservation tillage on your farm, or improving marketing and production for your farm.

What more could you ask for?

Well, let me tell you…there is going to be farm machinery, mason bees, chicken pluckers, books, feed and seed….and the new Kitsap County Conservation Tillage Program no-till drill!

The vendors for this year’s West Sound Small Farm’s Expo include:

• Farmland Feed and Pet
• Washington Tractor
• Scratch and Peck Feed
• Kitsap Conservation District
• House of Bees
• Kitsap Poultry Growers Cooperative
• Poulsbo Junction Insurance
• Pheasant Field Farms
• Kitsap Food Chain
• Poulsbo Acupuncture and Wellness Clinic
• Washington Department of Agriculture
• US Department of Agriculture
• Kitsap Farmers Markets
• Mason Kitsap Farm Bureau
• Kiwi Fencing
• Cascade Harvest Coalition
• Liberty Bay Books
• Trillium Press

If you weed, feed, raise, sow, plow, grow, dig, till (or not!), compost, spread, plant, brew, ferment, harvest, preserve, bake, cook or EAT there is something for you at the West Sound Small Farms Expo.

Register online at http://county.wsu.edu/kitsap/

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/feb/02/wine-producers-campaign-for-truth-in-labeling/

If you stick around for the Beer and Wine tasting after the expo you can be assured that ALL of the vintners, brewers and cheesemakers are LOCAL. In fact, with the exception of a bit of the Cougar Gold Cheese we will be serving, all libations will pass the 100 mile test! The Beer and Wine tasting will be from 4:30-6:00 and is $12. Can’t make the expo but still want to come taste our local best? We will have tickets at the door!

Westsound Small Farms Expo
February 11th
Olympic College Campus, Bremerton, WA
Info online at http://county.wsu.edu/kitsap/agriculture/Pages/default.aspx