And some more photos 🙂
Category: Uncategorized
Our spring building projects! The first three photos are of the timber frame structure we built to shelter the future bread oven. The oven is now our highest priority. The foundation is going to be built in the next few days. The last photo is our in-progress chicken/turkey brooder. All it needs are walls, a door and some electrical wiring.
Barley: Canada’s latest ancient grain gaining recognition
Barley: Canada’s latest ancient grain gaining recognition
We already eat barley in soups, stews and as sides like salad or risotto. It is delicious, very filling and healthy! This article quotes a local farmer George Wright from Castor River Farm. He grows barley close to Ottawa and sells it locally too.
We finally made blood sausage with the blood we froze from the pig slaughter earlier in the fall! We made a morcilla-style sausage. This Spanish version has pork shoulder meat added to it and the blood acts more like a binder instead of being the main event. We cooked them up for breakfast the next day. Very delicious!
What a great business idea! If only more people would make their own stock though and buy their bones straight from the farmer.
‘“A small farm has to be creative in how they manage their resources.”
Meet Rachael Mamane, the founder of Brooklyn Bouillon, the first sustainable and traceable small-batch artisan stock company based in Brooklyn, NY. Rachael is on a personal mission to help small farmers. A few years ago, when she was working for the greenmarkets in New York City, she had the idea to help meat farmers generate extra income by creating a line of stocks from their unwanted “waste”, such as discarded bones. It was an opportunity no one had seized on. Rachael noticed that none of the local farm stands offered a high-quality stock to home cooks on a consistent basis; a skill she had a knack for, cooking whole animals nose-to-tail throughout her life. So, she approached a few small farms with the idea, tested out a number of stock recipes using their raw materials, and in 2010, Brooklyn Bouillon was born.”
Elizabeth!
(Source: http://vimeo.com/)
http://vimeo.com/60613771
A short film about a cheese-making dairy farm in BC. I went to culinary school with John Gattey, one half of Fed By Hand. The other half is his brother David Gattey. They have decided to mesh their two passions-food and film-making. A very touching and informative film. I’m looking forward to seeing their next episode. There is nothing cooler than seeing a herd of cows put out onto pasture for the first time in the spring!
Our first episode! Filmed on-site at The Farmhouse Natural Cheeses in Aggasiz, British Columbia, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to George and Debra. They are two vital parts to an equation that produces some of the best cheeses I’ve ever tasted (their cloth-bound cheddar and Alpine Gold are standouts). The milk from the herd which George keeps happy and healthy travels barely 100 feet to the cheese-making facility where Debra takes over. They are one of the only cheesemaking operations in BC, that I know of, where this is the case, and it shines through in their product. We hope you enjoy their story.
(Source: http://vimeo.com/)
The animal and plant life coming from all the death and destruction humans created in Chernobyl is amazing! It seems to show that just the presence of humans in numbers and concentration as great as we are in cities is more detrimental to nature as is a nuclear explosion. Take away the humans and all other life thrives! This is just part 1 of 5.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Not the best photo, but this was delicious homemade split pea soup. Homemade chicken stock, homemade ham from the pig slaughter this fall, and homemade crackers with local flour from Castor River Farm. The ham we made was from the back leg, brined for about ten days in a mixture of salt, brown sugar, beer, bay leaves, juniper berries and black pepper. We then hung it in our garage for a few weeks before soaking it, boiling it and baking it. We ate the ham for weeks before using the last of the meat and the bone to make this soup. Best pea soup we’ve ever had! Take that Habitant!