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?

Work day

Big work day at the farm: fixing drip hose, tilling the rest of the plot, mowing grass, planting potatoes, kale, lettuce, and broccoli.  And writing very short blog posts!  

 

March Employee of the Month!

Iron Fish Farms is heavily invested in staff appreciation.  That's why we are pleased to announce our March employee of the month!  Everyone around the farm has been jockeying for this revered slot.  It was a difficult decision, but one Iron Fish Staff member simply stood out.

We are pleased to honor Yoshi.   Yoshi is a two week old Rhode Island Red chicken.  She joined the Iron Fish staff just a day or two after hatching and has really hit the ground running.  When our chicks were introduced to worms, Yoshi took to it like a chicken to a junebug (almost literally) and while some of her flockmates were still staring at the squirming worms with weary suspicion, Yoshi knew just what to do.

Yoshi was named by our nephew Asher.  The Yoshi of SuperMario (according to Wikipedia --I know, I am so hip) "has a long, sticky tongue that he uses to eat almost anything, even things much larger than himself" and can lay eggs!  Yoshi plans to get into laying eggs in four or five months, but for now says she just wants to focus on "being a normal chick".

Upon hearing of this honor, Yoshi said, "I'm really just your average chicken.  You could say I was at the right place at the right time.  I saw the worm, he was wriggling, and I did what had to be done."

In recognition of this honor, Yoshi will be given a lifetime supply of chicken food and worms, and enjoy a premium roosting spot on the chicken log throughout the month of March.

Garden Nemesis: The Squash Vine Borer

Here's a little water cooler gossip.   You know who I don't like?   Squash Vine Borers!  SV Borers are actually moths that lay their larvae near squash plants.  When the larvae hatch, they burrow into the center of  the squash vine, where they will consume the plant from the inside.  Since this destroys the plant's water and delivery structure, the plant will ultimately die.

A squash vine borer that reaped havoc on my
Ohio squash plants.  I battled them every season.

If your once-prolific squash plant suddenly stops producing fruit, this could be an early sign of a squash vine borer infestation.  Search the stems for a deposit that looks like little bits of sawdust leaking out of the plant.  This is the borer's waste, which gets pushed out behind it as it makes its way through the plant.

Borers always seemed to hit my squash crops by August and while my methods to combat them extended the season a bit, I ultimately seemed to loose the battle.  The methods of control I tried included covering the squash vines with foil so the borers can't get in.  Perhaps this would have worked better if I'd been more aggressive about it....but squash plants grow quickly and besides, I always felt like that made my garden look like I was attempting to communicate with alien life forms via my garden gourds.   I once tried using netting to keep the moths out.  This meant I had to q-tip pollinate my squash, and they ultimately still got infected...most likely because they were planted near to a previous infestation and the larvae can hide out and over-season in the soil and come up when the soil warms.

Wikipedia Image of the borer in moth form.

The last line of defense is to do a little garden surgery at the infected area.  Take a sharp knife to cut into the vine until you find the borer, and then extract it.  Don't stop at just when you find one, as there are often multiple borers in one hole.  You can add diatomaceous earth (DE), (an organic-approved pest control that consists of a type of naturally occurring sedimentary rock that dries out the insects that come into contact with it) to the infected spot in case you missed something.  DE will affect good insects too like earthworms and bees, so I use it judiciously at the infection point and never near the flowers that will attract pollinators.  You can then bury the cut area in well-composted soil and hopefully it will put out new roots in that section.  If the vine is long I try to pre-emptively look for sections to bury so that my vine has multiple areas to pull water from.  It will put out roots from any of its vine joints.

                                        

                                                Icicle Radish (Photo from gardening.about.com)

One VERY exciting thing I learned about at the 2013 South Carolina Organic Growers Conference, which Ches and I attended last week, was that the Icicle Radish will repel squash vine borers.  We got a pack of seeds and plan to put them around our squash.  Their seasons for radishes and squash aren't the same, so most of these radishes will just sit as deterrent crops and be allowed to go to seed rather than being harvested.  

Other Squash Vine Borer deterrent ideas are most welcome!  I am hoping they just aren't as bad in North Carolina as they were in Ohio.  Also, with significantly more land, we will finally be able to truly adopt a crop rotation system which should help alleviate perennial squash moth visitations.

Chicken Update

We have chickens!!!  The ability to house animals has been a something I've looked forward to and even thought about as a balancer to some of the sacrifices of rural life (e.g. no longer living across the street from a giant grocery store).

I had originally assumed we would order from one of the larger hatcheries, but as we did our research we learned that at many hatcheries the demand for hens so outweighs the demand for male chicks that males are often disposed of shortly after hatching.  This did not match sync with our vision of being stewards of the land and animals, so we started looking into local options thinking that smaller scale operations were likely better equipped to handle this challenge.

The chicks traveled home in a small post office box.

We learned that a neighbor just down the road from us hatches chicks, and had Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpington's hatching this month.  The chicks are be "straight run", meaning we'll get a mix of male and female chicks.  We're not set up to house roosters, but our neighbor has offered to buy the roosters back from us after a few months when the sex becomes apparent.

The brooder the chicks came from.  The hatchers said that they usually leave them in the
brooder for about 12 hours after they hatch, until their feathers become soft and poofy

The chicks spent their first night in a large storage tupperware under a heat lamp.  I had purchased cedar chips to use as their bedding but then read in the backyardchickens.com forums that cedar shavings have an oil in the wood that is poison to chickens.  Last night we had enough of the shavings we were sent home with to get by.  So, today I'll be marching back to the store to return my giant bag of cedar shavings for pine shavings which appear to be the bedding of choice.

Buying chicks looks like serious business in this photo.  Definitely the photographer was not referring to the chickens as "chicki-doos" at this moment. 

We have friends, cousins, nieces and nephews who are up to the task of helping us name the chicks.   Names to date include, "Chickie Nikki", "Beauregard", "Clucky" and "Nugget".  Which just goes to show that chickens are the original creativity muse....right?!?  We have 16 more chickies to name, and are open to suggestions.

Welcome Guests!

We have some new visitors in our guest room --real free-loaders who seem mostly interested in our free water provisions.  We have most of our tomato varieties in starter soil.  Tomatoes probably win the prize for the most discussed seeds before finally choosing our varieties.  The verdict: Slicers and Beefsteaks:  Mortgage Lifters, Black Krims, Brandywines, Martino's Roma, Cherokee Purples and Ace 55s.  Cherry Tomatoes:  Yellow Pear, Red Pear,& Black Cherry.  I have a predilection toward "black" tomatoes - I love their smokey flavor.

There are so many more.  If you have a favorite variety, please share!

 

We Have a Farm!!!

“A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm -- it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism.”
~ Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front


We are ecstatic to be leasing land from Ayrshire Farms, the FIRST ever certified organic farm in North Carolina!  They have been farming organically in North Carolina for over 30 years and they have a few plots that they make available for lease.

About our Plot: - We have seven very long rows surrounded by deer fencing.  We'll be growing squash, sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes, okra(!), peas, shelling beans, beets, radishes, microgreens, melons and more!  The soil-building benefits of organic farming are so apparent at Ayrshire.  When I first saw the red, red, RED, soil of eastern North Carolina I remember telling Ches I felt like I could scoop up a handful of soil and spin a nice pot.   As you can see from the photos, the Ayrshire soil is a brown, loamy tilth.  Eventually we will be buying our own land, so we plan to learn all we can from Ayrshire's owner, Daryl Walker, to learn how she and the Ayrshire founder Bill Dow built this vibrant place (Follow the Bill Dow link for his contribution to an oral history project about the Ayrshire farm's origins).

Spring is just around the corner (the first day of spring is March 20th!).  This weekend are hoping the ground will be dry enough to till our plots and direct seed sugar snap peas.  We couldn't be happier than to be partnering with Ayrshire Farms!  Stay tuned for more updates as the season unfolds.

An added benefit of the high deer fencing...if we get tired
of weeding we can lock ourselves in until we're finished.

Comments Section has been fixed

Thank you to anyone who has left a comment.  We learned recently that our comments section wasn't working, so I apologize if you never got a response.  Unfortunately early comments disappeared somewhere into the internetesphere.  The problem should now be fixed and we look forward to any future comments!

Choosing Seeds

Ches and I have chosen most of our seeds from the lovely Seed Savers Exchange.  It was hard to narrow down our choices, and with Seed Savers there are always the neat, unusual items that can be hard to resist.  We have a selection of heirloom seed tomatoes  summer and fall squashes, lettuces, radishes, okra (yum!), peppers and more.  February is the month I find myself most missing fresh-from-the-garden produce.  I keep switching which seed I am most excited about, but I think for today it is Ground Cherries.  They are actually a type of tomato that grows in a husk and has a sweet flavor.  I have never grown them myself but always buy them at the Farmer's Market and I am told they are prolific plants that will thrive and takeover wherever you put them!

We knew we wanted to buy most of our seeds from Seed Savers because they already had most of what we wanted, but shortly after placing the order I was extra glad went with them after reading the article "The Four Steps Required to Keep Monsanto OUT of Your Garden".  I had not realized some of the names Monsanto seed was being sold under, or that they were buying up heirloom seed names!  Highly recommended reading for those who swap spring fashion magazines for spring seed catalogs!

The Seed Assortment!  

What's the matter...chicken?

Okay, first let me get it out of my system and tell a couple of chicken jokes:

Why did the chicken cross the road, roll in the dirt, and cross the road again?
 Because he was a dirty double-crosser.

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?
To prove to the armadillo that it could be done.

I'm sure there are much better one's out there.  If you have a good chicken joke please share it in the comments!

This is a cool mobile chicken coop from Rooster Hen Farms

One of the first purchases Iron Fish Farms will be making this spring is our first set of laying hens.  We want to keep them in mobile coops (probably starting out with triangular coops that can be pulled forward to fresh grass each day).  We'll be building our coop, so aesthetically it will likely be function over form.  I want them to have access to fresh grass each day, for it to be light enough for me to move it myself, and for the coop to provide good protection at night.

Down the road I could see graduating to a mobile chicken tractor like they use at Polyface Farms.  They run the chickens 3 days behind their cattle rotation, just as fly larva are hatching from the cow patties.  It keeps the chickens happy, the flies down, and helps continually build soil.

The big question now is what kind of chicken to get?  I have heard good things about Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, and Barred Rocks.  I think all three are pretty birds, and I've read that they have calm natures.

Column 1:  Silkie, Buff Orpington, and Barred Rock 
Column 2: Frizzle Bantam
Column 3: Golden Polish and Rhode Island Reds*

*Chicken photos from: thefeaturedcreature.com, fowlvisions.com, & wikimedia.org


I'm excited!  Your chicken-related jokes, comments, breed info, and haiku's are all welcome in the comments section!

Where have All the Farmers Gone?

I will wash the dishes while you go have a beer 
Where is my Marlboro man 
Where is his shiny gun 
Where is my lonely ranger 
Where have all the cowboys gone 
Yippee yo, yippee yeah

The Paula Cole song, Where have all the Cowboys Gone? has been inextricably lodged in my mind as I've thought about this post.  I have to admit I didn't know much more of the song than its eponymous chorus.  When I took a deeper look at the lyrics, I had to laugh that the archaic cowboy isn't so much gone as he has set down his beer to help with the dishes and accepted that smoking causes cancer.  He has evolved.

I hope we will someday be able to say the say when we ask ourselves, "Where have all the farmers gone?"  that they have similarly evolved --not necessarily still looking like the farmers of children's books yet all the better adapted to meet the modern needs of their environment.

According to a 2011 NPR interview with the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture the average age of the American farmer is now 57 and the US "had a 30 percent increase in the number of farmers over the age of 75 and a 20 percent decrease in the number of farmers under the age of 25".  Documentaries like Food, Inc.  have powerfully documented some of the cultural shifts that underpin this declining demographic.  Many family farms have transitioned from being small, independent businesses where a farmer was free to pursue his entrepreneurial spirit to mono-crop operations that are often in debt to mega-food manufacturers.  

However, amidst these grim numbers are more hopeful stats on the diversifying nature of farmers.  According to Farm Aid, the number of  farms managed by women rose 13% between 1997 and 2002, and roughly 1 in 10 farms is run by a woman.  Also, the average age of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm is 43 --indicating that younger farmers are taking on innovative, sustainable farming methods.

At Iron Fish Farms, we look forward to joining the leagues of other farmers who are helping the modern cowboy to re-emerge...  Yippee yo, yippee yeah!

Farm Tours

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.
                                                       ~ Wendell Berry

When I first met Ches in 2010, I was an avid gardener, but I did not yet envision myself as a future farmer’s wife.  In addition to the fun but more standard milestones of courtship, such as getting to know Ches—and  later his wonderful family—our dating can also be marked by my growing familiarity with a farmer’s lexicon.  I now know the difference between a sal, a swine and a hog and between a lamb, a sheep and a ewe.  I use words like brewer hens and fence post driver.  I’ve been introduced to a world of vocabulary and knowledge that was once common knowledge and has now become arcane in a world where many of us may go a month without eating anything that was produced within an hour of where it was consumed.

I feel a great sense of responsibility to learn everything I can before acquiring animals that will depend upon us for their sustenance.  In addition to devouring books from Joel Salatin, Michael Pollen, and Willie Allen and every food documentary Netflix could offer, one of the most valuable things we have done is attend farm tours with local producers.

Not to sound overly Portlandia a ‘la “Is it Local?” (A must watch if you haven’t seen it!), but it is amazing how open local farms often are about allowing customers to learn about and even visit their farms.  As farmer’s markets have regained popularity and I found myself buying more and more of my food from local producers, I have been struck by how many farmers are quick to invite customers to visit their farm.  Many, many local farmers have blogs about their farm.  While a blog does serve an underlying marketing purpose, as I read them they so clearly go beyond simple marketing and speak instead to a passion for sustainable agriculture and its potential to heal our soil and address food shortages in places where there is not enough to go around and nutrition deficits in places where there is too much.

The three tenors of Osage Creamery

My first farm tour was at Osage Creamery in Pataskala, Ohio.  I make handmade soaps and was delighted to track down this local farm where Ches purchased me a ¼ goat share, allowing me to buy raw goat milk whenever I wished.  We went in the spring and were greeted by a league of young goats (hence the adorable goat photos!).

A mama goat at Osage Creamery

Later, we were invited to Up the Lane Grass Fed Beef Farm (check out their wonderful and resource-rich blog at upthelanefarm.wordpress.com), suppliers of the best beef I’ve ever had and is owned by a wonderfully friendly couple.  Their website has an open invitation to visitors:

Consider visiting the farm.  We have a standing Open House most Sundays.  You are welcome to come out and walk the pastures a little, meet the herd.  

At Up the Lane on a perfectly picturesque day

We did indeed visit the herd.  By this time having our own farm was beginning to feel more plausible, so we discussed everything from grass varieties and types of fencing to the farming lifestyle.  It has always amazed me how much rotational grazing can heal depleted soil, so a highlight for me was visiting a paddock that had been in their rotation for several seasons and feeling how buoyant and healthy the soil was compared to patches that had not been worked yet.

At Iron Fish Farms we hope to begin selling at our first farmers market this spring.  I hope we will have opportunities to pay forward the generosity of these farmers who have shared their time and knowledge.  I personally believe that demand for sustainably raised, local foods will continue to grow.  I look forward to the opportunity to extend an invitation to come on out and meet the herd at Iron Fish Farms!