Spring 2019

Early spring grazing on Eight Mile Creek Farm

Available from the Farm:

Microgreens,  Chard,  Kale,  Collards,  Baby Bok Choy

Free Range Pastured Eggs,  Grass Fed Beef,  Pork,  Chicken

All Certified Organic

Spring growth under the row covers inside the high tunnels

Apple-Walnut Chard Salad

1/2 Tbsp honey

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

3 Tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

4 cup shredded Swiss chard

2 medium apples, thinly sliced

1/2 small onion, thinly sliced

1 stalk celery, thinly sliced

1/2 cup toasted walnuts, chopped

Whisk together first 5 ingredients.  Toss remaining ingredients in except the walnuts.  Transfer the salad to a serving bowl, sprinkle walnuts on top and serve.

from anediblemosaic.com

Sheep or Pigs?

Answer: Pigs!  These are a rare, Hungarian pig, called Mangalitsa.  They had almost become extinct back in the 1970/1980’s, when the pork industry focused on raising lean pork as “the other white meat.”  Also, these pigs grow slower than “conventional” or hybrid pigs and have smaller litters, so larger farms stayed away from them for these reasons as well.   Currently, small, family farms are resurrecting the breed, as more people are becoming aware of the “good fats.”  Mangalitsa pigs have a very high good fat content.

Spring and Babies.  These piglets are also heritage breed pigs.

No more hopeful sign of new beginnings and springtime than babies!

Microgreen Salad with Lime Vinaigrette

1 bag microgreens

2 Tbsp lime juice

1/8 tsp dry mustard

1/4 tsp salt

4 Tbsp olive oil

sea salt to taste

ground pepper to taste

Whisk all ingredients for dressing and pour over microgreeens. Serve.

adapted from everydaydishes.com

A Poem on Hope

It is hard to have hope.  It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality of the future, which surely will surprise us, and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

anymore than by wishing.  But stop dithering.  The young ask the old to hope.  What will you tell them?

Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned.

Hope

then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth.

It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land

and your work.  Be still and listen to the voices that belong

to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.

The world is no better than its places.  Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people continue in them.  When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens.

Wendell Berry

Spring and Hope