One of my favorite conversations that I have at market is when customers ask what to do with our microgreens. The answer starts with "you can use them on a salad, or a sandwich instead of lettuce..." but there are so many MORE things that can be done with these flavorful little powerhouses of nutrients.
Since our microgreens are part of the Cedar Valley Farms Winter CSA, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to showcase some recipes using our microgreens.
The first winter CSA box has a pack of China Rose radish shoots - essentially, the very immature greens from a radish plan...
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From the Farm
Shearing Day
Shearing day is so exciting... since it happens only once per year, there is a lot of planning and preparation that goes into the day.
We've learned that the best way to prepare fleece is actually by preparing the pasture and their living areas first. A week or so ahead of time, we started raking loose hay, limiting access to the dirt piles that they love to roll around in... and then finally by hand picking "stuff" from their fleece.
Fuzzy Butt Alpacas from Berea, KY is the company we use for shearing. Don & his crew take such good care of the animals. We started the day with our p...
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Snow!
Although snow is not uncommon in KY, it is still infrequent enough that it provides a lot of excitement for all of us! The alpacas love the snow!
As does our Oreo
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Monarchs and Milkweed Moths
So much of life on the farm is routine... up in the mornings to feed, water, and scoop - and in the evenings to repeat the same. But it seems as though there's always something new to find and discover.
Two years ago, I read about the plight of the monarch butterfly, and how their numbers were declining. I planted a patch of milkweed and installed a butterfly house (which will be available for sale in the spring from the online store!) to see if I would be able to attract them.
Last summer, I remember laughing at the fact I intentionally planted weeds as a flower garden - and I also re...
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Where are all the pictures?
I love having the farm all over social media - and it's fun being able to use so many different outlets to share S&B with everyone. No matter the day, there is always something new and exciting to me.
Just to let you know: if you're interested in seeing more photos, please be sure to "like" our Facebook page, or follow us on Instagram and Twitter! The links are all in the green toolbar at the top of the page, right hand side .
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Rainy days on the farm
My niece and nephew came down to spend this weekend with their grandparents, and now that S&B is around there are usually farm activities planned for them. Unfortunately, this weekend there was also a lot of rain. Playing with the animals isn't as much fun when you're dodging raindrops and mud puddles.
But just like rain doesn't stop the chores on the farm, it sure didn't stop them from farm activities! They learned about Camelids when they made camelid cookies.
And their baking adventure didn't stop there! They also made some homemade dog treats for Patu and Sharna!
One...
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Tuesday
Tuesday was one of those days for us at the farm that didn’t go at all as planned. We took off work for one reason: to pick up Beate! Our friends at Eagle Bend have been working to get her bred, and she finally was confirmed pregnant on Thursday last week. She’s about 2 months along (due summer next year), and we were so excited to finally take her home.
Well, Tuesday was hot. And the farm truck doesn’t have air conditioning. And Eagle Bend is almost 3 hours away. So, by the time we got home I was just miserable. We developed a plan that I was going to get a bucket of water for Beat...
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Permaculture
Have you heard of permaculture? It’s a cultural movement, that has its roots in “older” practices. We’ve unintentionally accepted so many of the standard practices of permaculture because they just make good sense.
Though we most certainly don’t fall in the “doomsdayers” category, we appreciate and understand how people would want to take steps toward self-efficiency. This year, we made a point to introduce our sheep to the apples from the trees that have been on the farm for many years. That way, come winter, they will be able to enjoy the added nutrition that we’ve stocked away for th...
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Eggs eggs and more eggs
The chickens are such a fun addition to S&B. Though their main job is to assist with pasture maintenance by following after the sheep with pasture rotation, they've also been the first source of income as well as true entertainment.
Over the past 6 months, I've seen a lot of eggs. This was our first egg:
This is a picture my first customer sent me - she was so excited to get farm fresh brown eggs, she immediately cooked it for dinner and sent me a picture:
This was the most eggs my girls laid in one day:
I had 5 eggs per day for several days in a row - and was overwhe...
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Kaizen!
A few weeks ago, I was really struggling with the way chores at the farm were being handled. It seemed like we were spending more time taking stuff from one field to the next than we were actually doing the chores at hand. So guess what we did?
We had ourselves a good ol’ Kaizen event.
When we first set up the farm, to be honest, a lot of it was guessing what we would be needing and where. Water? Hay storage? Grain storage? Everything was outside and sort of close to the final locations – but as time went on, we learned that some of our choices weren’t the most ideal. Now with sev...
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