Salt Fork Farms

Hi everyone,

This is our first blog/winter market announcement.  The week has been full of activities.  We brought in our old hens for processing on Monday.  Seth, Carolyn and I caught birds in the moonlight on Sunday, and then Jeff Croix and I drove the birds up to Greene, IA for butchering.  We left at 2:45 am, arrived at 5:12 am, and unloaded birds from 5:25 to 6:30 am.  We were relieved to have that done.  The next day, I had to drive up to Greene again to pick up the birds.  Thankfully, Eve and Milo decided to join me!  Family trip to Martzahn’s Poultry Farm!  Again, very thankful and relieved to complete the raising of our chickens.  Every day is filled with worry about the lives of these birds.  When raising chickens outside, something is bound to happen to some of them, and it does, so we are grateful to reach some form of completion when it comes.

After returning from the trip, I readied the farm for the big storm approaching.  Baton down the hatches.  Rain and snow coming…  While prepping the chicken area for the weather, I noticed that an animal had gotten caught up in the chicken netting that we had rolled up from the night before when we had finished with the old hens’ area.  Upon closer inspection, I realized the animal was still alive.  It was a Great Horned Owl!  More on the owl in a future blog.  Suffice it to say that the owl was alive and is now at the raptor center.  Just another day on the farm.  Everything loves to kill chickens.

The snow came and went and now the wind and the cold are settling in.  The garden is covered and we are hoping for a harvest of the following items:

celery, chard, radishes, carrots, beets, arugula, mustards, komatsuna, and leeks.  we should also have garlic and onions.  not to mention boilers, stew hens, feet, and eggs!

We look forward to seeing you at Deluxe on Saturday!  9-12

Take care,

Eric

As the summer come to an end I’ve been trying to think of other topics that might be interesting. Things such as, why do we keep roosters in with the hens? I’ll cover that in the next few weeks. If there are burning questions you have, feel free to comment. We will also have a quest blogger, Chad Zahrt. We are hoping he will share his take on participating in the farm, cooking delicious food, or whatever else he wants to share with you all.

Today I am taking you a bit off topic. Our friend Jennifer Wilson recently had a book published, Running Away to Home. After recognizing the need to focus on what was truly important Jennifer, and her husband Jim, moved their two kids to Croatia for a year. Croatia? Yes. Croatia. That’s all I’m going to tell you. You have to read the book. It’s a great, inspiring, quick read.

As we do love food around here, I am going to share an interview Jennifer did highlighting the FOOD!

The Iowa City Farmers’ Market has come to an end. Moving forward Salt Fork Farms will be having a Winter Market at Deluxe Bakery in Iowa City.  If you are on our email list, great! If you want to be on our email list, please send us a note and we will add you! Details as why you will need to be on the list are below.

As far as our products go, hopefully we can provide you with some relief to the challenge of food choices that come with the Iowa winter.  Here is a brief summary of how things are going to go (subject to change):

Where:          Our winter market will take place at Deluxe Bakery.  Out of consideration for the regular business of the bakery, please park on either Summit St. or Sheridan St.
When:           We will hold this market from 9-12 on Saturdays, unless otherwise notified.
How:            We will send out an email notification of what products are available each Monday.  We will take orders after the notice goes out until Friday at noon.
What:           Items available for pre-ordering include broiler chickens, stew hens, chicken feet, and eggs (as available).  Orders will be honored in the order I receive them through email.
What not:       We will not take pre-orders for produce (which we may have until winter really sets in).  You will be notified of what we have each week, but it is too complicated to track produce orders at this time.  Produce will be offered on a first come, first serve basis during market hours.
Other:          This is the first time we will be holding this market at Deluxe.  We are really excited to partner with the bakery, and we want all Salt Fork customers to recognize, celebrate and respect the normal functioning of the bakery as we infiltrate their space.

With that, we will have the following come this saturday:
Broiler chickens
chicken feet
Eggs– large, medium, extra large, small
radishes
celery
beets
carrots
onions
garlic
arugula
mustard greens
chard
kale
chiles
leeks

Thanks and we hope this will be a great new experiment for everyone!

Here’s a picture of Milo in his Halloween Costume. He went as Whitey. 

It is getting colder.  That’s obvious.  Days are getting shorter too; daylight savings is a little over a week away and the sun will be going down by 5:30!  A bit of a mental shock.  On the farm, we are getting ready for life during the Iowa winter.  This is pretty important as you never know how much snow will fall or how hard the wind will drift it or if the power will stay on.  You have to prepare.  We have already been covering tender vegetables with row cover fabric to protect them from night time frosts.  The high tunnel is buttoned up tight, ready for the inevitable freeze to come.  We have been cleaning beds of the old summer plants that have withered and dried to a woody, twisted stem.  Peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin vines, old bean plants: all torn out by the roots–the fibrous parts thrown in a heap to be burned once dried (perhaps at winter solstice) and the soft rotten fruit dumped atop the compost pile to slowly decompose for next year’s garden.  The stakes and cages and trellises gathered and organized and put away.  We will use the fence posts from the tomato planting to erect a snow fence to our west, as well as our chicken transport coops to build a wall against the snow and wind.  Strawberries, raspberries and garlic are covered with straw mulch and we have planted Jerusalem artichoke tubers as a new crop for next year.  Indeed it is a transitional time.

However, we mustn’t forget we have one more farmers’ market to go!  We will be there with eggs, chicken, chicken feet, chard, kale, collards, arugula, tatsoi, cilantro, beets, radishes, carrots, mustard greens, celery, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, garlic, onions, and potatoes.  We hope to see you there.

We will be signing people up for our customer list in order to conduct our winter market.  For those of you unfamiliar, we run a winter market from the time the Iowa City market ends until it starts up again in the spring.  This year we will hold the market at Deluxe Bakery.  It will run on Saturdays from 9-noon to start (we may adjust this as business dictates).  The basic idea is that we will be there with whatever we have to sell.  Those on our list will receive an availability announcement at the beginning of the week.  Orders for said items will follow until that Friday at noon, or until items sell out.  We come to Deluxe, you come to Deluxe, and an exchange is made!  We will hope to promote this market more in the near future.  There is a possibility that we will have extra inventory to sell each week and we will try to bring this for those of you who just stumble in.

So, even though the darkness and cold and death of winter is coming, there is still something to look forward to!  Hope to see you Saturday and beyond!!

-Eric

I’m always amazed at how fast the summer goes by. It seems like the market just started, but now here we are with just two markets left. Next week we will update you on how we will be handling the winter market. It will be a bit different this year, and we are still working out the details. Stay tuned.

Things continue to move along on the Farm. Maple is getting used to her new home, and allowing us to add butter and cheese making to our regular routine. Eric and Seth covered the gardens tonight. They spent much of yesterday and this morning getting the greenhouse ready for the winter. Soon we will be taking in the older hens to be processed.Which means we will have stew hens and more feet! Many of you have questioned what to do with feet. Add them to the bones you will be using to make stock. I’m sure there are other things you can use the feet for, but that is really all we use them for around here.

Even as the market is coming to a close, we still have some amazing things for you all. This week we will have arugula, kale, collards, chard, onions, garlic, potatoes, peepers, eggplant, radishes, celery, tomatoes, eggs, chicken and chicken feet.

I’ve made mention of Life B.E. before. My life before Eric (B.E.) was pretty different. I divided my time between DSM and Iowa City. Cooking and baking were not something I did very often, if at all. One of the first times Eric cooked for me I volunteered to clean up. Two things stood out to me. The first was when Eric told me any thing that was not edible was to be put in the compost.

“Compost?” I thought. People really compost? My friends Brian and Michelle were known to compost, but I didn’t think anyone else actually did that.

The other thing I remember, as I was putting food away, Eric told me, “Don’t throw anything out. I’ll use it.” This confused me. As someone who didn’t know how to cook, the idea of recycling a meal was so foreign. It still amazes me when Eric whips something up for dinner and tells me, “I used the beans and rice we had last night and made this egg dish.” To many of you this may mean nothing, but to me it was a new world.

I am just now to the point that I am willing to try to make things without worrying about failing. I am learning to enjoy failing so I can try again. But the thing that I really like, it’s that Milo will know how to cook. Even at 16 months, he wants to help. In the last few weeks Milo has been helping with the dishes, and helping make eggs. While it is easier for him to help with scrambled eggs, poached are his favorite. It really cracks me up on Saturday mornings when Milo comes to me and says, “Milo cook!” I give him a bowl, a whisk and a spatula and he pretends like he is making something. The best is when he brings you the spatula and says, “mama eat!” I know I sound like a dopey parent, but really, I’m so glad Milo will know this from the beginning of his life.

What about you all? Have you all always loved food and cooking? Is there something you recently learned how to cook or bake that has changed your life? Do you try to instill a love, knowledge and reverence for food in your family?

This Saturday we will have arugula, radishes, chard, kale, collards, peppers, eggplant, onions, garlic, chicken, chicken feet, and eggs. I know many of you were disappointed we ran out of chicken so quick last Saturday. We are only able to physically transport so many chickens. Eric is going to work on bringing more to the Farmers’ Market this week.

Happy Wednesday! Enjoy the rest of your week!

~eve

It was a beautiful day today. We were able to spend the afternoon with a number of good friends and family. We have a business partner and incredible friend, Chad, who has somehow talked his father into mowing our lawn for us each week. In addition to this, his father-Ken, has also begun the process of chopping down any dead or diseased tree we have on the property. It is just amazing, and we feel incredibly grateful for this act of kindness.

To thank Ken, we had his whole family, and some of ours, out to the farm today. This is one of those meals I’ve told you about, where everything comes from the farm. Eric, Seth and Chad made fried chicken (I just typed in friend chicken by accident :/) along with mashed potatoes and gravy. We had apple sauce made from apples that came from our neighbor Jeanne’s farm. We added some broccoli into the mix, and it was delicious.

It was a truly beautiful day.

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I love this time of year. Canning, fall crops of surprising greens, and planting garlic.

Actually, I love Iowa, and I especially love Iowa during the Fall. I have never understood those people, who are transplants, who complain about Iowa. I’m pretty sure I give them a look of “what are you talking about??” Last Sunday I was so giddy as Milo and I drove up Highway 1 and he could see a combine in action. The grain wagon was right there ready for a grain deposit. We stopped and watched for a while. Just as I am writing this I heard a tractor roll down the road. You know that the means folk, night time harvesting is near.

But really, I think I love the late Fall afternoons, when you get to see things like this:

Or this:

These are just views from our driveway. As we walk down the road it gets more and more amazing. Really, how can you not love this??

In other news, we did get a milk cow, which we are very excited about. Through a series of miscommunications she has a name, Maple. She is big and sweet. She loves to follow you around the pasture and then sneak up for an ear rub. Milo is very brave while being held, and likes to moo in a low voice at her. Of course, as she gets closer he gets more nervous. Tonight he was able to watch her being milked for the first time. He was very patient and quiet, and even sat in a milking chair for a good 2 minutes. Maple has never been hand milked and it is a learning curve for both she and Eric. Eric ties a rope around her waist to calm some of her jumpy nerves.

Hopefully Milo will be milking by next year.

This week at the market we will have CHICKEN! Hurray! It’s back! We also have chicken feet. See you Saturday!

We have been so grateful for the beautiful weather as fall begins. We’ve had the right amount of rain, sun and wind. This past Saturday was beautiful. Eric, Milo and I were able to take a nice walk through the gardens and look at the fall crops that are coming up.

After walking through the gardens, Milo and I were able to help with the chicken chores.

Milo loves to help feed the chickens.

Totally off topic, Milo will be going as a rooster for Halloween. Here’s the inspiration for his costume, Whitey.

Today we had two round bales of hay delivered. We will use these to cover the strawberry beds and garlic. We will also plant Jerusalem artichokes this fall. This is a new one for us, and we will see how it goes this spring.

We also will be taking the last round of broilers in to be processed on Tuesday, October 4th. Which means we will have birds for sale at the Market on October 8th!

This week at the Market we will have eggs, potatoes, onions, garlic, winter squash, arugula, eggplant, chiles, chard, and kale.

The Culinary Ride was a great success last Sunday. Eric, Seth, Ken, Carolyn and Katie spend much of the week getting the farm ready for visitors. Eric spent a good portion of the week getting things ready to make green chili with beans and pork shoulder, along with corn bread. Thankfully, he documented it. First he got the peppers ready.

Oh, who am I kidding. I have no idea what he did next. It involved A LOT of pots and dishes. After this, he started to get the pork shoulder ready.

After this, Eric did some magical work and yummy meat was had after 10 hours. Sunday morning, before the ride, I did help, kind of. I watched lovingly as he made the cornbread. At least I’ve taught Milo to say “yeah, papa!!” (clap, clap, clap) as Eric is cooking and while he is enjoying the outcome.

The day was a lot of fun. Milo was so excited and enjoyed everyone so much. He even got a bike ride in.

Which was followed by a dance off.

This Saturday we will have eggs (small, medium, large and x-large), peppers, eggplant, broccoli, arugula, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and winter squash.