Amuse Bouche

Meat CSA all the cool kids are doing it

So there I was leaning against the wall of Clear Flour bakery, waiting to pick up my Stillman Farm meat CSA share that I split with Christine from work and listening to my meat farmer chat about having everyone to the farm in June to 'see what our share does all day and meet the animals'.  He finally wraps up the conversation by asking the woman ahead of me in the queue her name. 

She says, 'Well my name is Tami, but I am picking up for Karen W'. 

So being the general tactful person I am, I blurt out, 'Hey, aren't you Food on the Food?' 

Tami looks both ways and at her adored farmer before answering the crazy stalker lady with bed head standing behind her. 

"Yes."

Thrusting out my hand, "I'm Jo, Amuse Bouche!" 

God I am an idiot.   I'm just so damn tactful I am and from my loud front presence one would never know I am actually shy under the surface.  NO.  REALLY!  I tried very hard not to terrorize her adorable son who was hiding behind her afraid of this very loud crazy woman.

It was great to finally meet someone in person that I had been reading for the last year.  We chatted for a few minutes and she introduced me to a woman and her husband that she had seduced into driving up from the Cape to get involved with the CSA share as well.  See, meet your farmer, buy a CSA share, all the cool kids are doing it.

After we parted I headed off with husband to Whole Foods in Brookline and we spotted a Kentucky license plate to add onto our license plate bingo board (It's almost full now, just missing maybe 5 states and Hawaii which I doubt we will ever see in my lifetime).  Kentucky has eluded us for 2 years!  Don't those people ever leave home?  Mississippi, we're looking for you too - and Arkansas while your at it.

Tucked inside that meat share, by the way, is a gorgeous chunk of smoked ham.. b-a-b-y.  Easter dinner, I think your fate has been decided!

Seriously, how much fun can one have on a Sunday?

Big Ox Farm: From Seed to Plate

Yesterday I ventured out West on rte 2A a bit to Concord to meet Peter Merrill, farmer and jack of all trades, at his new place Big Ox Farm.

Peter, along with his wife Meg are former graduates of The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Peter went on to work in the kitchens at Sel de La Terre for a few years before he decided that he would like to actually be outdoors occasionally and work during the day instead of at night - ah the life of a baker.  He chose a local farm school program to attend and after finishing the course he looked around to see how he could start out with very little capitol, but a lot of love for what he does.

The 30 acre farm resides on protected lands that are part of the Minuteman National Parks and as such he must follow some very strict rules about how the land is used.  Since they consider the soil from 18" down to be the 'architectural shelf' and everything must remain as it was in 1775, they can't dig in fence posts or lay irrigation lines.  He has to really think outside the traditional farming methods in order to house, feed and raise his heritage breed cattle, pigs and poultry on 27 acres and raise produce on the other 3 acres.

We met him at the first fenced in area you see above.  Those lovely sheep (SHEEP!!) are part of a UMASS Amherst research project that is being tested to see if using sheep to graze off and kill invasive species of plants such us purple loosestrife,  bittersweet and other plants is a viable option.  The sheep are corralled behind solar powered electric fencing that is moved to a new spot every few weeks.  Once they clear an area, and boy do they clear an area, the fences are easily relocated and then they wait to see if the plants die off completely or return to the area.

The sheep are a Border Leicester and Dorset cross.  He said that sheep are generally easy to care for and you really only need to worry about worms and fly strike.  Peter shears, does their hooves and provides all required shots himself.  He said it takes about 3 hours to do the hooves of about 30 sheep. 

After we chatted at length about the sheep, we headed across the street to see his tractor and the produce field. 

Several of us had already read his website which goes on at length about all the troubles he has had with this tractor and we started grilling him on why he keeps it around.  The tractor is a 1953 Ford Jubilee, created by Ford to celebrate their 50th anniversary, why a car company built a tractor as a celebration none of us were sure. Peter told us that one thing that kills most farmers in their first year or two is borrowing too much money to pay for loads of specialized equipment.  The tractor, he said,  was free.  It had a tree growing up through the middle of it, but that didn't deter Peter.  He's good with his hands and knows a few things about engines so he rebuilt it top to bottom.  The lovely double sink he found over on the side of the field is resting on the disc harrow one of only two tools he uses to cultivate the 3 acre field, the other is a plow. Also sitting in the double sink is his ox yoke.  He said he was going to try and convince the ox to come over to the field, but he's rather ornery and tends to do things when and the way he chooses.

In this field he mostly grows baby lettuce, mustard greens, kale, green beans, radish and beets.  All of this produce is sold back to Sel De La Terre and T.W. Food in Cambridge as well as the lamb, pork and chicken after a meeting with his abattoir, Blood Farm in Groton.

Next we met my favourite residents, although not for long, they are set to be dispatched in a few weeks time, Matilda and Sadie.  They only have names because Peter thought he was going to keep them and use Matilda as breed stock, but she had three chances and none of them worked out.  He said it is easier to purchase 10 piglets at a time from Codman farms and then he can plan their arrival date and the number of piglets far easier than wondering when a pregnant sow would drop and how many would arrive.  These lovely and smart pigs are Tamworth.  Tamworth are a heritage breed of pig that was set for extinction when their numbers dropped to around 200 several years ago.  Since then, farmers have realised how valuable these pigs are because they have one interesting feature.  They don't sunburn.  This means Peter can leave these guys out in the fields to roam free eat bugs and worms and roots, rut around the produce fields after he has let things go to seed and they don't need shelter.  When we arrived these guys were both laying over on the other side of the field next to their water.  All Peter had to do was yell "hey piggies" and those two girls got up and ran over.  What were they after?  Ear scratches.

As we grilled Peter with questions about Matilda's weight, 600 pounds, and how much she would yield in meat, about 400 pounds as well as her age, about 8 months the lovely Matilda dropped down for a nap.

We left her snoozing and went to look at the chickens in Peter's cobbled together range coop. 

Most of the residents had been dispatched the day before, but he saved a few to show us how the range coop works and to talk to us about how he raises them.  The chickens are a Cornish and Leghorn cross.  Later he would like to raise heritage breeds as well as ducks and geese, but right now he is trying to not take on too much.  Remember this is a two man band running this operation and he works part time at B&R artisan bread, Sel de la Terre's baking outpost in Framingham as well!  The coop moves along a bit every day by lifting the side up and placing an old two wheeler underneath, Peter then hauls it over a bit to find some fresh grass and bugs and all the chickens made little noises of excitement when they were relocated.

I'm already plotting how many chicks I can ask Peter to raise for me. 

Everything here is raised eating from the local environment, he uses very little feed to supplement any of the livestocks diet.  Sadly I had to leave to meet a friend in Concord centre so I missed going over to the other fields to see the cattle and that ornery ox, but I'll be back.  Peter says come by anytime, this is public land and part of a public park system, I'm sure he'd be pretty happy to show you around.

Big Ox Farm
955 Lexington Road, Concord MA

Yankee Farmer's market, LLC

On a trek up to Vermont his past weekend we spied a little advertisement in the Guide to New Hampshire Products and Services that we picked up in the rest area for a Buffalo farm & store.
Since we have recently become enamored with Buffalo and the fact that not only is it a leaner more healthy red meat alternative, but damn.....it tastes really yummy.

I have been making burgers all summer that are half ground beef and half buffalo.  At first I didn't tell his husbandliness that I was trying to sneak something new into his finicky dining repertoire.  Because if he knew something was different he would have done his usual 5 year strop routine and told me he didn't like it.  Actually he would have said in his Northern Brit accent, 'I don't fancy that'.  Fancy?  Who says fancy anymore?

The first time that I decided to make the duplicitous burgers I made sure he was out of the room while I mixed up the meats.  All I add to my burgers is salt, more salt than you think, and pepper and the, it would be a sin to omit it, condiment Worcestershire sauce. 

I called him upstairs just minutes before it came off the grill and placed it on his usual bun of choice with just red onion, cause he's minimalist in his burger accouterments.  Me, I waffle between Miracle Whip (Don't make that face! You never knew how good it could be until you try it and it blends in with all the burger juicy goodness on the bun...mmmmm) or sweet pepper relish with my red onion and a slice of my cheese fetish of the moment.

He took one bite, and then another, and then the food sigh came, then the mmmm.  When he was finished he smacked his lips and said, 'That was an exceptionally good burger!'.  Whereupon I grinned maliciously and spilled my secret about buffalo.  We haven't looked back since. Another recipe that we made first in school and that I repeat at home occasionally is for a buffalo shoulder steak marinated in red wine, juniper berries, jalapeno and onions, amongst other ingredients, and then grilled like a flank steak until just cooked on the outside and still pink within.  It is then sliced thin across the grain and the strained marinade is reduced to make a sauce.

So having now pulled husband over to the dark side I'm ready to try out new ways to cook buffalo meat.

We pulled off route 89 on to route 103 East and a few miles later we spied the sign for Yankee Farmer's market.  It's up a sharp right and up a steep hill that winds back to reveal the barn store and a fenced in pen.

The shop is clean and well stocked.  The meat case is full of frozen items and a sign board above lists prices. They have everything from ground buffalo to back and short ribs, top sirloin steak, strip steak, tenderloin and even buffalo hot dogs.  They also carry some venison items as well as ostrich items from a farm in S. Dartmouth, MA, which I hope will be a field trip for another day. Since we didn't know that we would be buying anything that needed to be kept we didn't bring along a cooler.  No problem, owner Brain Farmer packed our items the same as he would for shipping via next day air.  A small Styrofoam cooler was packed and an ice pack tossed in, he taped it all shut and even 12 hours later when we finally returned home all of the items were still frozen solid.

After we paid up and he was walking the item out to our car he said we could go up the hill and see the buffalo if we wished.  At the top in the pen there were about 6 of his herd milling about.  he also leases land at other local farms to keep his herd grazing. I reached into the 5 gallon bucket and tossed an apple in to the pen.  Two of them wandered over for sweet snacks.

No factory farming here.  I fed the buffalo and tried to scratch their foreheads, a few weeks from now I will be turning that package of stew meat I bought into a lovely buffalo bourguignonne.  It's a nice experience to see where your food will be coming from and to realise that if we all make the effort we can seek out and support these smaller farms.

Foliage season is fast approaching and I encourage anyone in the area to stop in and visit Yankee Farmer's market. Oh, and give the big guy an apple for me.