Turnip Recipes

Our farm harvest right now is turnip-tastic, and I have to admit, I have never given much thought to turnips until we began harvesting them.  It turns out I LOVE turnips!  They have a great, savory flavor and are easy to cook.  I am even getting a taste for wilted turnip greens!

Try these recipes - or leave your own favorite turnip recipe in the comments.

Roasted Turnips
Ingredients:
turnips, olive oil, Salt & Pepper, Herbs (optional)
Preparation:  Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut the heads of the turnips (save them for wilted greens, or young turnip leaves can be added raw to salad mix --the high calcium content in turnips will make more developed leaves bitter).  Small turnips can be used whole, or slice turnips into bite sized pieces.  Toss the turnips in your olive oil and add salt, pepper, and fresh herbs according to your taste.  Place in the oven and check about every 30 minutes until tender.  Cooking time will depend on the size of your slices. Enjoy!

Wilted Turnip Greens

Turnip Greens are a great source of calcium, lutein, and folate. 
Ingredients:  turnip greens, 1 TBS soy sauce, 1 TSP Sugar, Salt & Pepper, Herbs (optional)
Preparation: Chop turnip greens into aproximately 1 inch pieces, cover in water with two tablespoons of soy sauce and a teaspoon of sugar (the sugar cuts any bitterness in the turnip greens).  Allow to boil about 10 minutes.  Drain excess water or reserve for broth.  Enjoy!

Turnips & Couscous
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked couscous; 3 turnips; 3 cloves garlic; 1/2 onion, chopped; olive oil; chopped; parsely, chopped; oregano, chopped; 7-8 leaves of Kale, chopped; salt and pepper to taste
Preparation: Cook couscous according to instructions.  In a separate pan, heat olive oil, then add galic and onion when the oil is ready to sizzle.  Cook until yellow, then add turnips, cook for 10 minutes, add Kale and cook additional 10 minutes or until desired Kale texture is achieved.  Stir in the Couscous and herbs and mix well.  Enjoy!

May Employee of the Month - the Cicada

 While Ches and I (and several of the chickens) were really hoping to make Employee of the Month for May, it quickly became apparent that this was not in the cards for us.  The cicadas had simply out-shined us.

While our farm is in Pittsboro, our chickens live in our yard in northern Guilford county.  It turns out that the line where the 17 year cicadas emerge falls somewhere in between the two areas.  At home, there are cicadas in every spider web, dozens --probably hundreds--of cicadas dripping from every tree.  And at Iron Fish Farms/Ayrshire, we have not seen a single cicada.  According to this cicada map, we fall right on the northern line of the cicada emergence, which then stretches all the way to Rhode Island.

These 17 year cicadas are a subset of cicada called the Magicicada, which emerge every 13-17 years.  Each group is called a Brood, and our brood is on the 17 year cycle.  It will not be seen again until 2027.  

A theory for why cicadas only emerge after the passage of a certain number of years is that this was a survival adaptation called predator saturation.  That is, even though the cicadas are easy prey, there are just too many of them for predators to eat them all.

The chickens have done their part to challenge this philosophy.  They have quickly evolved the brood amongst whom only a handful of chickens had the gumption to eat a worm, and now swallow 2-3 inch long cicadas in about two seconds.  Ironically, the windfall of insect protein has caused many of the chickens to lose their taste for worms.  I recently watch a worm wriggle the long way out of the chicken coop, clearly spotted by several of the chickens.  Our chicks are only about 3 months old.  In their world, we will always have an endless supply of cicadas.  Why waste time on worms?  Sadly, the cicada mating season will be over by the end of June, and our chickens and their decedents will have a 16 year cicada drought to endure before we should see this many emerge again.

Chatham Mills 5/5

Chilly day at the market, but lots of great people still coming out.  For sale today: radishes, herbs, lettuce, azaleas and soap :0)

 

Rogue Chicken

Last week I began my Wednesday morning in my pajamas banging a  snow shovel against the trees in a bamboo patch, thus securing a firm victory in establishing us as "that family" in our new neighborhood.

But, as begins so many stories my parents, and now Ches, have heard, "I can explain."

Building the coop with my dad

When our 21 chickens turned two weeks old we moved them from their giant tupperware container/brooder in our living room to the shed in our backyard.  My parents were visiting and since farming has skipped a generation in my family, I figured the fewer chickens in our general living quarters, the better the impression. So, we partitioned a corner of the shed, layed down pine shavings, added a heat lamp and some roosting logs, establishing a fine temporary living space for the chickens.  That weekend my parents helped me build the bottom half of the coop, 4' by 8' space sealed in with chicken wire, but we wanted to get some supplies from our local Habitat for Humanity Re-Home store to inexpensively finish off the enclosed 2nd level where we would keep the brooder boxes.

Thus began my morning tradition of transporting chickens. Whenever the weather was nice, I would load the chickens back into a tuperware container and carry them from the shed to their open-air coop to get some fresh air and sun. This was typically accomplished with minimal fanfare...until last Wednesday when one of the chickens ran out of the shed into the grass. I wasn't too concerned as this had happened before and the site of the wide open world usually left the chickens sitting meekly a foot or two from the shed until I came to collect them. But this day, this chicken, perhaps emboldened by having spent several sunny days outdoors in the safety of her coop, went rogue, and b-lined it for the row of bamboo shoots (mixed with blackberry thorns) that stood 20 feet from the shed. I thought she might quickly regret leaving behind her other chicken mates, so I waited for her to return on her own. She stood 3 feet into the woods, unrepentant. I put food and water at the trees lining, hoping to draw her out, and even placed one of the more docile chickens nearby to see if she would join it. She didn't, and the other chicken began to cry at the indignity of being used as bate for its prodigal cousin.

So, I finished transporting the other chickens and then made my way into the bamboo patch, which just drove the chicken further in.  It was approaching my time to leave for work and I was beginning to face the possibility of having to leave the chicken behind.  As a last ditch effort, I grabbed a snow shovel from the shed and began beating it against the trees, hoping to convince the chicken that the woods was not the safe space it thought it was.  Sure enough, the chicken panicked and ran not just out of the woods, but all the way back into its coop.

Long story short....guess who's finishing the chicken coop this week?