Technorati Tags: food, farmer’s markets, omnivore, declaration of rights, food safety, consumers, food laws, trust

Technorati Tags: France, Gascony, travel, Camont, Kate Hill, Cheese, Beef, Markets, Charcuterie, Dominique Chapolard, Butchery, Farming

Technorati Tags: pigs, pork, hogs, livestock, meat, food, farming, agriculture, charcuterie, charcutepalooza

During sunny weather he was let out into the corral or tethered in the shade, on the lawn behind the farmhouse. We tried running him with the sheep in a small yard, but they got too rambunctious and it was like wooly tumbleweeds had been scattered across the barnyard with the Tasmanian Devil doing the scattering. We didn’t try that again‚Ķ.¬† Meanwhile, the months passed, the weather turned colder and Maple’s days of sunning himself in his paddock or the yard were numbered. Due to a heavy schedule of workshops, winter weather and other livestock butchery, and partly because I liked the little monster‚ĶMaple’s day of deliverance kept getting delayed.

Finally, the the time was right. The weather was fantastic all week. Sunny & cold‚Äîin the mid-teens. Perhaps a little too cold for this sort of work, but as the day progressed, the work and sun warmed us to the point of almost feeling hot. Because Maple had grown into such a big boy‚Äîat least 600lbs by rough estimate‚ÄîI had my friend John come over to help me. John is a veteran farmer and had dressed out moose by himself, so I knew he would be the right hand at the right time. At the appointed hour John came to the farm and we proceeded with the task at hand. Perhaps because I had been sitting in the kitchen over analyzing my emotions, or perhaps because I had drunk umpteen mugs of coffee, when I climbed up on the barn stairs to get a better shot at Maple I found it hard to draw a beed on the exact spot on his forehead where I knew a clean shot would render him senseless without any suspicion on his part. Maple in his part was excited to see me by shy about John, a stranger. When I squeezed the trigger and heard the bark of the .22Mag I watched John head to the gate to open it and begin the bleeding‚Ķ.but‚Ķ.nothing had happened. Maple stood there unfazed. Gazing at us with his goofy, love-sick calf look. I had completely missed him!! He probably flinched, I probably flinched and the shot went completely over the top of him. Without another second’s pause, and not on the stairs any more, I drew my beed and dropped the calf. It was quick. Painless. And my heart could stop pounding. John leapt in, opened the gate and slit the jugular veins so we could get a good bleed out.

It was all the two of us could do to drag Maple to the barn door so we could hook him to the tractor to lift up for good blood drainage and so we could get the skinning, eviscerating and quartering done. Initially I wasn’t planning on quartering the carcass. In my eyes, Maple was still the little calf I’d carried down from the field on a bright, sunny summer day. Instead, his hanging weight was more than two of us could carry half of. I never did weigh it properly, but I reckon there was over 400lbs of meat. Once quartered, we hung the carcass up in my cold-storage room and sat down to a much needed cup of coffee and lunch. I left the meat sit for a day because it was so cold. Normally veal isn’t aged because it has so little fat. I knew I didn’t want to let it hang any longer than necessary. Two days later I began a three day process of cutting it.

Now, normally, a butcher can breakdown several carcasses in one day. This job is made easier by standardized cuts and the use of a band-saw. But I don’t have a band-saw‚Äîprobably wouldn’t use one even if I did‚Äîand I didn’t want standardized cuts. The cuts of a veal carcass lay somewhere between those of a full grown beef and lamb. They also vary on US cuts, UK cuts and French cuts‚Äîas do most carcass cuts. Because veal is valued more in the UK and France as a culinary item, there are more recipes, variations and dishes one can make. In the US you can have chops, cutlets and shin, or Osso Bucco. Occasionally in the market you can find stew meat, but rarely outside of the restaurant world can you find any more cuts other than ground veal. This is because commonly most of the cuts not valued in the US are ground.

So, I found myself with several cut guides and recipes breaking down each quarter slightly differently. I have eaten plenty of veal, but had actually been steering clear of it for a long time, based on the grounds that I didn’t care for the treatment of veal calves. Veal has earned a very bad name for itself in the past few decades. This is largely due to the fact that the calves are fed a poor diet and live short miserable lives in order to make sure their flesh remains as white as possible. They are frequently pulled from their mother the moment they are born and spend their lives chained to a hutch where they cannot get any exercise. Because their immune system has been compromised by not getting any of their mother’s essential collostrum, they are fed antibiotics and other drugs regularly so they don’t scour (get diarrhea) and they are isolated from other calves so they do not make each other ill.¬† This is, to my mind, in direct opposition to being humane and creating good quality meat.

Several years ago I stumbled on the British idea of raising humanely treated, more mature Ros?© Veal. These veal calves are older, spend their life among their fellows, drink real milk and eat hay. They are also raised free in airy pens big enough to move around in and open to the outdoors but sheltered from the weather. To my mind this is far more humane and provides the calves with the best quality of life possible for what it is. This in turn makes for a better flavored, although darker pink‚Äîhence ros?©‚Äìmeat. In the US raising calves to this standard has been slow to catch on. In fact, I believe in most areas no one has even heard of it. Until I produced my own, I had never eaten Ros?© Veal. I am now¬† even more of an advocate than before.

And so, as I broke down the carcass I explored different muscle groups, a great many cuts and created many specifically for future recipes. I also went beyond just ground veal, cutlets and chops. The other night we ate a stuffed breast of veal which was amazing. I also have whole flanks waiting for stuffing and braising and rolled shoulders ready to create something special with. I also played around with making some Wiesswurst sausages using ground pork, veal & herbs. I want to use these cuts and ingredients to help people learn that veal can be sustainable, humane, profitable for the farmer who sells them direct to the public, and delicious‚Äîeven if it ins’t the endemic, sickly white veal that everyone has come to believe is the norm. For that, let’s try and substitute rabbit‚Ķ‚Ķ

Technorati Tags: veal, ros?© veal, meat, humane, slaughter, carcass, food, farming, agriculture, dairy, cattle, livestock, cows, calves, cooking, butchery

Not only are we continuing the harvest and getting ready to process our first crop of Claddagh Farm rabbits, but we are entering Workshop season….

To kick things off I will be offering a Porkshop–a pork slaughter & butchery workshop mid-late November. Following hot on the heals of that will be our 2nd Annual Duckfest.

The day after Duckfest ends I am offering a unique and unparalleled chance for 6 people to work & cook here on the farm with a Winter Food Week. Then Sometime towards the end of December or early January I am hoping to host a Nose To Tail Veal Meal featuring Maple….

If you are at all interested in attending any of these events or require more information, don’t hesitate to contact me– podchef at gmail dot com. These things tend to book up fast, do don’t delay.

Technorati Tags: workshops, classes, cooking school, culinary education, farm stays, haycation, food, cooking, farming, agriculture, pigs, ducks, rabbits, veal

I really haven’t had much to do with the bees other than watching them nectar at the various plants on the farm, and occasionally viewing Ed work with them. Things have been so busy on the farm this summer I didn’t actually have much time to think of the bees at all. However, I began to notice them a bit more the last time I mowed around their hives….there seemed to be SO many of them. Ed had diligently added extra deeps and honey frames to the initial hives we set up in the spring and now there were bees aplenty.

And so came Sunday. Ed showed up, we donned our bee suits and I took photos while Ed gathered up the honey frames. On first opening the hives we didn’t know what to expect, but the air was rich with the scent of pollen and honey fanned by the wings of thousands of bees. Once into the frames we saw the true story. Our bees had indeed been very busy. Not only had they filled their deeps with foundation and honey for the year, but they had almost filled every frame in the honey chamber…not bad for two first year hives on a formerly abandoned farm!

All in all Ed gathered and spun out almost 25 pounds of honey! Just under 10 quarts. We split the proceeds 50/50 and I packaged up some of mine for gifts and sampled some honeycomb spread over toast. I still cannot get over how floral it all is! I’m already excited about next year. But, I know…., first we have to get through the winter…..

Technorati Tags: bees, beekeeping, pollination, farming, agriculture, food, honey

It took me most of the morning, and some time after lunch to tramp through the woods and damp underbrush to log and record the location of over 100 apple trees around our farm. It was a rough Spring for apples this year. It was very warm and mild so the trees began blossoming and then we got a morning of freezing temperatures. This didn’t kill all the fruit tree blossoms, but by some accounts it wiped out upwards of 50% of the fruit crop. That seems to be born out by trees on the farm as well….

I kept to trees mainly on the edgesour land, along the fence rows. These are horribly shaded by the forest grown in around them. It is hard to determin the age of many of the trees. It is obvious that some were planted specifically and are very old–the farm was settled prior to the 1840 date of the current house…. Other trees appear to be seedlings. At least two rows of trees in small orchards were planted at some point between 1939 and 1966 when very detailed aerial photos of the farm were taken. Two larger orchards also appear to be missing in the 1939 photo, but the trees seem to tell a different story. I need to ask a fella who worked here in the early 40′s about this when he drops in next time.

Both of these larger orchards I didn’t even bother delving into. I am pretty sure they will bring the total number of trees well over 150. I also haven’t recorded any of the other fruit trees on the farm, the peach, the plums, the wild cherries and the domesticated ones. Nor am I sure all of the trees I logged today are apples….while many did have sparse fruit on them, many did not. These could be–I hope so–pears which the frost killed the blossoms of in the spring.

Additionally, after sampling a great any of the apples, I haven’t found many which are edible when ripe. As of this week, many of them are falling from the trees as well. Part of this is due to their unpruned status. It has been a great many years since any of these trees thought about as the valuable commodity they are. Also, because almost all of the trees are full-sized, it means they’re difficult to prune and that their fruit can often be 20ft high. I’m not going to let this discourage me. I want to save and rehabilitate as many of these trees as I can. I am sure they were planted here for a reason. Was it for eating, storage, cider or as someone recently suggested to me, vinegar. Apparently before chain supermarkets or grocery stores of any kind farmers often made apple vinegar in bulk in this area to sell or trade with and for farm use. These all sound like great options to me.¬† It will surely take some time to get these apples out into the open and prunes into some sort of healthy bearing state. I am hoping to find the quantity, qualty & flavor of the apples greatly improved. At very least I will have plenty of applewood for smoking meats and apples to finish the pigs on.

This article suggests it might be better to just plant new trees instead of rehabilitating old ones and waiting the three years it will take to bring them into some sort of order. But I’d rather not loose the history or the varieties planted here on the farm. As of yet I have no idea which kinds of apples are here. I will wait they yeild better fruit before trying to identify.

Technorati Tags: farming, fruit, apples, cider, trees, pruning, orchards, food

By all accounts Hazel was overdue when she had Maple. In fact, I was beginning to panic a bit, because her udder was horribly distended. I began to worry, so a few days before she actually had her calf, I began to milk Hazel to relieve some of the pressure on her udder. This was not an option I took lightly, as the first milk which a cow produces is the all important colostrum–an essential food which a calf needs to have within hours of being born, in order to gain immunity to diseases and share it’s mother’s antibodies. Nevertheless, I began to milk Hazel, and freeze her colostrum for later use. It was also my hope that the process of milking might stimulate Hazel to go into labor. It worked.

A few days after I began milking, Hazel had her calf out on pasture mid-morning. The girl’s found Maple on a regular check of what Hazel was up to and reported back to me, duly excited…. By the time I arrived, Hazel had cleaned up her boy and he was already on his feet trying to nurse–unsuccessfully. He was coated in flies, so I carried him down to the barn to get out of the scorching sun. Hazel seem to be so relieved to be unburdened, she began to graze heartily and had to be coaxed down to the barn with grain and a lead rope.

Despite milkings and frequent udder massages, Hazel’s udder was still swollen. I decided to call in a vet. Unfortunately none were prepared to come to the farm. However, on speaking to one retired large-animal vet, he happened to mention making up some dandelion tea to give Hazel as a diuretic to help relieve her Edema. Sounded good to me. The girl’s and I picked bunches of dandelion greens and steeped them in hot water until we had a rich tea. I meanwhile milked Hazel out and fed her calf some colostrum from a bottle.

Normally one must drench a cow–that is, force liquid into her with a bottle and tube–to make sure she gets the medicine she needs. I, however, decided to allow Hazel to choose the amount of dandelion tea she wanted and put it in a bucket instead. We also began feeding her comfrey & dandelion greens as well–both are diuretics, and comfrey greens have the added benefit of being high in calcium, which should help stave off Milk Fever.

Now, several days later, Hazel’s udder is largely back to normal. Maple will continue to drink from his mother for a few more days. And Hazel is starting to conform, once again, to the routine of twice daily milkings….Her edema, the calf nursing and her post-partum condition aren’t creating ideal milk flow, but were still getting a few gallons per day–most of which is going to the pigs right now until the colostrum is cleared away, and any blood from the trauma of the edema dissipates.

And what of Maple’s future? Maple was unfortunate to be born a dariy bull-calf. There isn’t much use for dairy bulls, and what’s more is they can be dangerous and unruly. If Maple was born on most farms, around the world, he would already be dead. It’s too costly and time-consuming for commercial dairies to raise bull-calves. They are put down immediately. Some farms sell their calves off to large veal concerns, where they spend thier lives chained to a shelter and are fed a mixture of artificial milk replacer and antibiotic. Not so, Maple.

Maple will still be made into veal, here on the farm. The reality is, in addition to being born a bull calf, he is also a diary bull–they just don’t gain like beef cattle. He would need to be raised to 2 years old before having enough meat on him to justify the cost of raising him and processing. That would mean I would need to carry him over two winters. Winter feed is expensive. I would never break-even on the deal–even if we were keeping his meat for ourselves.

No, I feel, the best option this year for a calf, like Maple, is to raise him with love & care and enjoy humanely raised, organically produced veal ourselves. He can be raised on his mother’s milk, and when he’s old enough, have all the skimmed milk he wants. He can graze outside in the sun during the summer–and be free to roam the barn in the fall. His meat won’t be the pale, milky white of what many consider the best veal–little do they stop to consider the horrid condition such calves are raised in. Maple’s meat will be full of flavor, texture and have a Ros?© hue to it–hence the British term Ros?© Veal. I am fine with that. I know I will give Maple the best, albeit short, life he can possibly have. He won’t need any unnecesary medications or growth promoters. He will be raise naturally on Organic principles and spend his life and death here on the farm where he was born. He will also be honored during many dinners eaten here on the farm. To many, this may sound horrid, cruel or unkind. I don’t know how anyone can possibly see it as that. I offer Maple the same love and respect I do all my livestock–both in life and death. He will be butchered with as little waste as possible.

Am I cold? Am I unfeeling? No. I am a realist who, in these uncertain times, is prepared to do what is best for my livestock, my family, and the cause of good dining.

Technorati Tags: veal, dairy, cows, calf, Hazel, Maple, farming, agriculture, food, cooking, meat

On the morning of a mad September day I hatched out a scheme to raise a flock of ducks with the express purpose of getting some fellow cooks together to learn how to slaughter, butcher & cook said ducks, to make the traditional French winter dish, Cassoulet. Hence was born Duckfest 2010.

What makes this idea even more madcap is that I pulled in my longtime internet friend, Kate Hill, who I had only ever met once–briefly–in a crowded room. Doubly amazing is that she agreed to the plan which brought her from Gascony, by way of Boston, for this New Year’s Day adventure.

And so I launched into an investigation of raising ducks to a standard rarely seen in the US. Not only did I choose a breed which is less than common here, but I also chose to raise them in a slow and natural manner. The Rouen duck is a large slow maturing duck, currently on the watch list for possible extinction, with only around 5000 breeding ducks in existence in the US. To me they seemed the perfect duck for such an experiment.

This was a chancy move on my part, with a little under 4 months from the time the ducklings arrived till the time of Duckfest. To be truthful I cut it close. The ducks we harvested could have been much larger. Rouen ducks usually take 6 to 8 months to reach full maturity and their adult weight of up to 10 pounds. Nevertheless, the birds have been the easiest ducks to care for that I have raised.

As we tried to create momentum around Duckfest, I tweeted a Daily Duckling photo on Twitter to keep interest aroused and share with everyone how the ducks were growing. This soon become more a labor of love than I could have ever imagined. Almost everyday as I fed and took care of the ducks I would shoot off some photos with my iPhone, trying to capture their quirky, odd, and addictive behavior. Of course, the real danger in doing this is in bonding too closely with the ducks, and not wishing to “do the deed” when the time came. But, by keeping the object of the exercise in focus I soon began worrying whether they were going to be large enough? Would there be enough fat for making Confit? In fact, even after I had slaughtered five of them I had nightmares that they would be like chickens with little or no fat on them, or have no meat to speak of. After all I was taking them for use at 4 months instead of 6, or 8….

I realize now, I needn’t have worried. I instinctively knew what I was doing, how I was raising them and why. I could have relaxed and trusted my instincts. In order to raise these ducks in as natural away as possible, in the limited amount of space I had to give over to duck rearing, I moved the ducks around between spaces allowing them to graze, in addition to giving them a home-mixed feed of alfalfa, barley, cracked corn, sour milk & the poultry layer crumbles I use. They spent a month cleaning up the slugs and remaining vegetables and herbs in the polytunnel. After that, I moved them back to a smaller pen outside their house for fattening up. By letting them out of the house everyday–we have too many predators: mink, raccoon, otters, and eagles, to leave them out all the time–they could exercise, in a limited space, and have access to water for grooming. They were fed inside the house on a gruel of cracked corn cooked in whey or sour milk. A month of this regimen left their fat and flesh sweet and tender.

And so came the date–January 1st, 2010. Or, actually a few days before when I had to slaughter and prepare 5 of the ducks so they would be ready to Confit for our kick-off New Year’s Day Cassoulet. The chance to work with the ducks a few days before Duckfest gave me an opportunity to brush off my rusty duck processing skills and to work through the best way to present how to work with the ducks we were going to be using immediately. I also had four rabbits to process the same day, and I will unequivocally say that I much prefer dressing out rabbits than duck. However, once a few tricks were remembered the whole thing went quite well. On the Saturday of Duckfest, Kate and I were able to walk all the participants through the experience and process without a hitch. I am really proud of everyone who attended for getting in there and not missing a chance to participate fully, from slitting the ducks throats to plucking and gutting.

While the ducks weren’t full sized, they were still a respectable 4-5 pounds dressed, which is more than I could have hoped for, given the time frame. Unfortunately they were just undergoing a molt from their adolescent plumage to their adult feathers and colorings, so there were a great deal more feathers to pluck…. Still they cleaned up respectably. Especially after we gave them a Brazilian Wax treatment–painting & peeling poultry wax off helps remove the pin feathers and guard hairs which are otherwise almost impossible to remove any other way than singing.

What we were left with was some amazing naturally raised ducks with fantastic flavored meat. The perfect vehicle for learning about simple flavors and traditional French methods of working with duck. Kate Hill guided everyone through the breakdown of the carcasses and the use of the resulting meat with such clarity and ease that I am confident that everyone who attended walked away with the skill and confidence to work with duck in the future.

As for me, I still have 25 ducks to raise for a little while longer for another project. Many people have asked if I would raise ducks again, if I would raise Rouen ducks again and if I would host another Duckfest again? Too all of which I answer a resounding “Oui, avec plaisir!”

Like most things I enter into–farming, pigs, ducks–I stumble onto them almost by accident and discover that with enough hard work and patience I can find them infinitely rewarding in numerous ways. As always, my challenge now is to find ways to do it better and easier, both for myself and the ducks. I will also consider staggering batches of ducks so I am not trying to raise 40 of the same age all at once. I also plan on studying better ways to deliver their water so we both don’t get so wet.

Be sure to check out the fantastic photos shot by the participants of Duckfest here.

Technorati Tags: duckfest 2010, ducks, poultry, waterfowl, livestock, farming, agriculture, meat, food, cooking, podchef, Kate Hill, gascony, confit, cassoulet

One of the reasons I go to the trouble of slaughtering my own pig, is so I can scald and scrape it on-farm, in the traditional manner. This is easier for me to do where I live and far less stressful for the animals, then hauling them to a mainland slaughterhouse. It is awfully hard work and I was very grateful this year to have the help of my daughter Oona, an intern, Danielle from a neighboring farm, and a Porkshop 09 participant, Greg, to help with the physically demanding scraping. It is a real challenge and learning opportunity for all–including me, each time I do it.

Why do I go to the trouble? Why bother? Because I believe it is valuable to preserve traditions, and I have put so much effort into raising my animals I hate to see waste. Normally, when a butcher skins an animal a high percent of lard is lost with the hide. On my pigs, which have a nice 1 inch layer, this is a crime. By preserving the skin on the pig until it is chilled and the lard firmed up, nothing is lost. I also prefer to leave my hams whole and cured in a brine and smoked in a traditional way and I like to leave the rind on my bacon and pork roasts for crackling–for all of this, the skin is essential.

In addition to all of this, this year I have done one more thing with the rind. Something I would never have considered doing before–I put it in sausages. In order to make the Duckfest 2010 as authentic as possible here on my farm in the Pacific Northwest I am making traditional French sausages out of self-produced ingredients. Cassoulets usually use two sausages in them, in addition to pork rind, and duck confit. Two of the more common sausages are the Saucisse de Toulouse and the Saucisse de Couenne. This second sausage is made up from pork rind, back fat and lean shoulder meat.

And so I found myself on Saturday morning, while preparing a range of sausage fillings, boiling up pork rind in a well seasoned chicken stock to make it more supple before grinding it. After it had chilled, I cut it into large chunks and ran it through my grinder alternately with the back fat and some shoulder meat. What I got was a sticky forcemeat, unlike any other I have dealt with. I then mixed in the other ingredients as suggested by Kate Hill, my accomplice in the Duckfest, via twitter:

@Podchef Saucisse de Couenne: cook the rind in a well-seasoned bouillon for 2 hours. when cool (cold) run through grinder.

@Podchef add lean pork and leaf lard to match weight of rind. season w/parsley, chives, clove, thyme, bay, coarse salt & pepper.

@Podchef place loosely in casings, tie. grill or poach to cook. or use in extra special #cassoulet!

I was a little confused as to the exact ratio, so another exchange a short while later:

RT @KatedeCamont: @Podchef Saucisse de Couenne<–do you know what size these are? Savelloy? banger?

@Podchef fat little boys. shorter than long. they plump and crack apart with gummy goodness. each butcher makes them differently. 4-5 inch.

@KatedeCamont Kate thank 4 Saucisse de Couenne recette..I think I’ve got it figured out. Equal amts of pork, rind & back fat, right?

@Podchef more like half rind and 1/4 fat, 1/4 pork meat. well season since the cooked rind is more about mouthfeel then taste. #pork

Here, then, is the recipe as I concocted it from what I had on hand:

• 960g Pork Rind–cleaned, hair singed off, boiled 2hour in richly seasoned stock
• 400g backfat
• 600g lean meat/shoulder-I cut back on fatback due to fatty nature of the shoulder I was using.
• 8g white pepper
• 30g salt
• 1 bunch fresh Italian parsley
• 1tsp ground clove
• 3 fresh bay leaves
• 1 bunch chives
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• Slosh of Cognac

After grinding the 3 meats together the first time, I mixed in the remaining ingredients–leaving the herbs fairly chunky–and then reground everything. It was only after the second grinding that I felt things were a bit gummy, so I sloshed in the Cognac to loosen it all up a bit.

I then filled some hog-middles, a slightly larger casing than is used for bangers, and left the filling fairly loose in them to allow the rind some room to expand during cooking–the sausages are pictured above. I tied off the links in approximately 4 inch lengths. I now have them in my outdoor airy meat cupboard for a few days–the weather has turned perfectly cold and damp for this–so the sausages can lose the moisture acquired from soaking the casings and to allow the flavors to mingle. Once they have tightened up a bit I will be trying one.

Here is a “Year in Pigs” slideshow to get you from the winers I bought in February to the above forcemeat:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Technorati Tags: duckfest2010, porkshop09, podchef, pigs, pork, meat, butchery, livestock, farming, animals, cooking, food, charcuterie, sausages, French food, cassoulet, Kate Hill