Friday's Favorite Farm Recipe

Suzy, this week's recipe contributor, in a kindred farm mom.  We wave to each other every day - often two or three times a day - as we meet each other delivering kids to and from school, church, and 4H activities.  Suzy is a dairy farm wife and the mother of four very busy kids. 

Dairy farm wives are amazing ladies.  If you don't know a dairy farm wife you need to meet one.  She (Meaning any dairy farm wife I have met) is busy working in the barn or at least helping out her husband in the barn or wherever necessary, keeping the kids going to all of their activities, and doing record and book keeping because dairy farming adds another dimension to accountability.  She is also one of the best cooks in the county. And, she does all of this without a set schedule because when you work with animals and they are your livelihood the animals take priority over having supper every evening at 6:30.  This pretty much sums up Suzy but then I also need to add in the three off the farm part time jobs!  Yes, Suzy is busy but I don't think she would have it any other way.

Suzy grew up on a farm that included beef, hogs and poultry.  When she married Scott she was introduced into the life of a dairy farmer.  Suzy says it took a little getting used to but dairy farming is a great way of life.  Suzy and Scott like the fact that their kids are learning to be responsible for another life.  The kids know that they need to do their chores because the cows and calves are relying on them.  If the chores aren't done or aren't done properly the animals may not produce well or even get sick.  Suzy and Scott also like the fact that their kids understand where their food comes from and can appreciate how it gets from the farm to the table.

Suzy & Scott's oldest daughter setting up her Register Holstein
heifer at the Clayton County Fair.

All four of the kids are budding cooks.  The oldest has a couple of Iowa State Fair blue ribbons under his belt for a tea ring and a peach pie, next in line can make a mean batch of potato rolls, the youngest son can make an angel food cake to die for and the youngest daughter has mastered a very good apple cake.  Suzy says that every one of her kids is going to know how to cook before they leave home!

Suzy with three of her budding cooks.

Suzy let the kids pick out the recipe to put on this blog.  Apparently it wasn't a very difficult decision - The Hamburger Soup won hands down.

Hamburger Soup
    1 lb Hamburger
    1/2 cup chopped Onion
    2 cups Tomato juice
    2 cups Water
    1 cup diced Carrots
    1 cup cubed Potatoes
    1 cup diced Celery
    1/4 cup Rice
    2 Beef bouillon cubes
    Salt & Pepper to taste

Brown hamburger with onion.  Transfer to stock pot and add rest of ingredients.  Simmer for 1 hour or until vegetable are tender.  If using minute rice, wait to add near end of cooking.  This recipe can be adjusted to suit - adding more or less of the vegetables or different kinds of vegetables.  I (Suzy) use my canned whole tomatoes instead of juice.  This makes a thicker soup and one we are able to eat out of homemade bread bowls. 

The neat thing about this recipe is that when Suzy makes this the hamburger, onion, tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots all come from Suzy and Scott's farm. 

Now I would be happy with the homemade soup but nooooo Suzy goes the extra mile and makes homemade bread bowls.  This is what puts Suzy to the next level of cooking that I can only admire from afar. :-)

Bread Bowls
     2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry Yeast
     2 1/2 cups warm water (110F or 45C)
     2 teaspoons Salt
     2 tablespoons Vegetable oil
     7 cups all-purpose Flour
     1 tablespoon Cornmeal
     1 Egg white
     1 tablespoon Water

1.  In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water.  Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2.  Add salt, oil, and 4 cups flour to the yeast; beat well.  Stir in the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well with an electric mixer at medium speed after each addition.
3.  When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a light floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 6 minutes.  Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil.  Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 40 minutes. 
4.  Punch dough down and divide into 8 equal portions.  Shape each portion into a 4 inch round loaf.  Place loaves on lightly greased baking sheets sprinkled with cornmeal.  Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from drafts, until doubled in bulk, about 35 minutes.
5.  Preheat oven to 400F (200 C).  In a small bowl beat together egg white and 1 tablespoon water; lightly brush the loaves with half of this egg wash.
6.  Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.  Brush remaining egg mixture and bake 10 to 15 minutes more or until golden.  Cool on wire racks.
7.  To make bowls:  Cut a 1/2 inch thick slice from top of each loaf; scoop out centers, leaving 3/4 inch thick shells.  Fill bread bowls with hot soup and serve immediately. 

Yum!  Thank you Suzy for sharing these recipes with us.

Suzy's youngest trying to give my #3 son pointers before showing
his kiddie calf at the Clayton County Fair.  Gosh, 4H is great.

We All Fit In

Here is a video about Common Ground volunteers and our thoughts about the food we grow.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/pksPNPNlp9Y

Enjoy!

Friday's Favorite Farm Recipe

This week's recipe contributor is a brand new farm wife.  But, Emily is definitely not new to farm life!  In August, Emily married Derk who is a cattleman and our farm employee.

Emily with her favorite bucket calf.

Emily grew up on a dairy farm so she is no stranger to taking care of cows and calves.  Emily and Derk have a registered Angus cow/calf herd, they grow corn and soybeans, and Emily also raises bottle/bucket calves.  Did I mention that Emily also works off the farm as a dental assistant?  By far Emily's passion is taking care of their cows.  Emily is a very caring person
so I can see where the cow herd would be her favorite part of farming.

Mixing up milk for the bucket calves.

One of Emily's favorite things to do is ride the Gator with Cowboy, the dog, in the passengers seat.  Derk says those two go all over the farm together. 

Emily mentioned that she looks forward to the day when she and Derk are raising their children on the farm.  Derk, I think that is a hint.

Derk & Emily checking on the calves.

Emily's recipe came to her via her wedding shower.  It's a great recipe to mix up in the morning and then come home to.




Creamy Ranch Potatoes

    2 1/2 lbs small red potatoes quartered
    8 oz. sour cream
    1 (.4 oz) package Buttermilk Ranch mix
    1 (10.75 oz) can cream of mushroom soup
    1/2 cup water
Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker and mix well.  Cook on high for 3 1/2 hours or on low for 8 to 10 hours.  Yields 6 servings

Don't click away quite yet! 

I asked Emily and Derk if they wouldn't mind sharing one of their wedding pictures with us.  They had the neatest wedding pictures taken on the farm!
Thank you for sharing.

And, we can't forget Cowboy - he is the official calf milk taste tester. 

Great For You?

 Walmart has announced that it will be helping it's customers decide whether a food is healthy with a new addition to it's products labels.  A little green person doing jumping jacks over the words Great For You is being added to food labels that Walmart deems healthy.  My first cynical thought was, "yah, I have a tough time deciding which is healthier snow peas or that super sized package of Snickers." My second thought was - the dumbing down of the America - we now need stores to inform us which products to buy.  I set aside this topic yesterday and decided I needed to sleep on it before addressing the little green person.

After a great nights sleep here are my thoughts on the Walmart Great For You campaign.

In the Walmart news release I have read about the new Great For You icon Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability at Walmart says, "Walmart moms are telling us they want to make healthier choices for their families, but need help deciphering all the claims and information displayed on products."  Walmart's willingness to help it's customers make important decisions seems very altruistic at first glance, however, shoppers already have all the information they need on the food label.  By mandate most foods are already labeled with the Nutrition Facts Panel under the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990.  All a Walmart customer needs to do is turn the box or can around and take a look at the Nutrition Facts Panel to determine if a food is a healthy choice.  We don't need a special rating system to tell us that fruits, vegetables, and lean meats are good for us!  I'm insulted that Walmart doesn't consider me or any other customer smart enough to read a label already present. 

Walmart does show it's criteria for selecting foods that have received the Great For You seal as well as a list of the products considered great for you at it's website. This list includes canned vegetables with no salt added, low fat milk, canned fruit in juice, and canned chunk breast of chicken and canned tuna packed in water.   I don't consider chunks of cooked chicken injected with salt water as being my best choice for protein.  Not a single fresh pork, beef or poultry cut is listed.  Pork and beef are nutrient dense products.  Both of these offer protein and other essential nutrients such iron, vitamin B12, and niacin.

I give Walmart credit for it's creativity.  Walmarts private label is called Great Value.  The new seal is called Great For You.  What a great tie together!  To be fair I should say that all grocery stores have the same goal - to sell food and make money.  Grocery stores typically make more money with their own private label foods so it makes sense that Walmart would spot light it's own products.  Walmarts press release does say that this new seal will be available to national brand products.  However, do you really think the HyVees, Krogers, and Piggley Wiggleys of the world want a Walmart icon on the cans Green Giant LeSueur Peas they sell? 

Thanks Walmart but no thanks.  I will continue to read the Nutrition Facts Panel supplied by the FDA and make quality buying decisions to fit my family's needs.

Friday's Favorite Farm Recipe

This week I would spot light one of my mother in-law's recipes.  Jan's raisin cream pie is very popular in Carroll County.  People have been known to come to church dinners just for this pie.  Jan grew up in town but married a farmer.  Jan and Joe's farm over the years has included beef cow/calf herds, hogs, sheep, corn, soybeans, and alfalfa.  Because of the diversity of their farm I think Jan can say she has done it all.  Today, they still raise red Angus cattle as well as corn and soybeans.

Today, Jan and Joe farm with their younger son Jeff.  But, when things get hectic in the fall Jan can be found in the auger cart tractor taking loads of corn to the trucks. 

Grandma Jan with 3 of her 13 grand kids. 

Raisin Cream Pie
   1 cup Raisins cooked in 1 1/2 cups water
   1/2 cup Sugar
   2 Tblsp Vinegar
   Lump of Butter (For us lesser humans that is 1 tablespoon)
   Yolks of 3 Eggs
   3/4 cup Carnation Milk

Cook sugar, vinegar, butter, egg yolks and evaporated milk together until thick stirring constantly.  Add cooked raisins and water to cooked mixture.  Add 1 teaspoon Vanilla and sprinkle Cinnamon (about 1/4 tsp) in mixture.  Pour into a baked pie crust.  Beat remaining egg whites with 1/4 teaspoon Cream of Tarter and 3 to 4 tablespoons of sugar.  Beat egg whites till peeked and place over cooked mixture.  Bake in over at 350 F for 15 minutes until meringue is lightly browned.

Soil Sampling

 One of my favorite fall activities is soil sampling.  Soil sampling is the process of collecting samples of soil from a field. The soil is then sent to a lab where the soil is tested for such things as nutrient levels, soil ph, cation exchange capacities.  The results are sent back to us and we determine if we need to add any soil amendments such as lime or possibly fertilizer. 

My soil probe. 

Pulling soil cores while Joe watches.

Pulling the soil cores is a simple process.  What I like about soil sampling is the fact that I get to do a post harvest survey of the fields.  I look at the corn stalks left after the combine has gone through.  I look to see is the stalks are small and spindly or thick, if the stalks are firm or if the stalks have been cannibalized by the plant during the growing.  It's an agronomy nerds heaven.  We also look to see if  there was a good late season plant stand.  Once corn gets above shoulder high in the summer it's tough to get across a field to do a thorough inspection.  But, in a Mule after harvest we can still check to see what was there and start making plans for next year. 

Self portrait

On our farm we do grid soil sampling.  We grid our farms on 2 acre grids - so that means we take a soil sample every two acres.  An acre is about the size of a football field.  We use GPS equipment to record where we take the samples so we can replicate the sampling process in 4 to 5 years.  My parents started grid soil sampling in 1993 so some of our farms have been grid sampled 4 times.  With the sampling history along with our combine yield monitor maps we can take care of different parts of fields independently of each other.

When I first started out as an agronomist many, many years ago, we did composit soil sampling.  We would take several soil probes from a field and mix it all together for a sample.  We usually divided a field into 20 acre increments but it was tough replicating this sampling process because of the variability of the soils in such a large area.  Today, with grid sampling we take one core from the center of the grid point and then 10 more cores about 10 paces out from the center.  This gives us a representative sample of that point. 

I'm not poohooing composit soil sampling - we still use it in certain situations on our farm.  However, GPS equipment is a great tool to use for gathering information on our land. 

Soil cores taken out of the probe.

 

Joe playing  plotting sampling points with our
Mesa - GPS equipment.

The soil phosphorus levels on a farm from 2007 and then 2011

On the maps above the yellow areas show where the phosphorus levels were low in 2007.  Our agronomy inputs suppliers have fertilizer spreaders that take the soil prescriptions written for a field and apply the specific fertilizer only where it is needed.   On the map from 2007 you can see that the phos levels have come up in the previous low areas and are stable in the rest of field.  This makes economic as well environmental sense.

Friday's Favorite Farm Recipe

Iowa had it's 15 minutes of fame in December and January leading up to the Caucus.  Some of the media attention was good while some left a lot to be desired.  I'm here today to set the record straight - Iowans do not eat Jello at every meal.  I will admit that I slip a Jello salad into the lunch boxes every so often in the fall and my boys do know how to slurp jigglers with the best of them.  However, it is not considered another food group!  So, I'm starting what will hopefully be a weekly blog entry of favorite recipes from the farm.  Some of the best cooks I know are farm wives or farmers. 

The first recipe I'm highlighting is from my mom, Judy.  Some of my earliest memories are of riding on the floor of the combine coloring and taking naps while Mom combined.  Mom always said that combining was the easiest job in the fall.  It beat having to hook up and unhook grain wagons and take them to the bin site to unload. 

After Joe and I moved back to Iowa, Mom retired from the combine and Dad moved into the combine.  Now Mom is the chief cook and runner.  Mom knows where most John Deere and Case IH parts depots are from Minneapolis to Moline.  In the spring and the fall Mom is pretty much on call at all hours to get parts and necessities.  One spring she took off to get a part for our Hagie sprayer 9:30 at night and got back home at 2:00 am and the repair man had the sprayer running by 5:30am.  Judy had one very thankful son-in-law.  Another spring she did a 10 hour road trip for me to get more product to keep our soybean seed treater running over a weekend.  I consider Mom of the oil that keeps everything running smoothly in our family farming operation.  It may not be the most glamorous job but it is one of the most important.

Babushka and Grandpa with their grandsons

This recipe is one of Mom's fall comfort foods.  She takes this casserole to the field as it travels well over the corn stalks and the guys like it.

Chicken Rice Casserole
    5 cups cubed cooked chicken
    2 cans Cream of Mushroom soup
    2 cans sliced Water Chestnuts
    2 cups cooked rice
    3 cups diced Celery
    1/2 cup Mayonnaise
    Dash of Lemon Juice
    1/4 cup melted Butter
    1 can sliced Mushrooms
    1 4 oz jar Pimento
    Salt & Pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients and put in a greased 9 X 13 inch pan and sprinkle with crushed buttered corn flakes.  Bake 1 hour at 325F or until heated through.

Wednesday Wonderings

Our farm year ends January 31st.  January is definately not my favorite month.  I'm an agronomist by training not an accountant so my mind wonders off task quite easily.  So, while I continue to work on year end book work here are some of my passing thoughts.

Last week #1 son brought in this egg from the hen house.

It may not look big in #1's hand but check it out in the carton with other Extra Large eggs.

It was a double yoker.

All of our chickens are laying quite large eggs right now.  Usually in the winter the eggs get a little smaller but not this year.   We aren't sure why this is but the hens have been spending more time outside than they typically do in the winter and the hen house has been warmer that usual as well. 

All I know is that I feel really sorry for one of these hens because laying that egg had to hurt!

Merry Christmas!

To my Russian, Romanian, and Ukrainian Eastern Orthodox readers -

Merry Christmas!



Christmas for the Eastern Orthodox Christians started when the first star appeared last night.  The Russian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, with Christmas falling on January 7.  The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.  It was later replaced by the Gregorian calendar in 1582. 

Christmas is preceded by forty days of Lent when people do not eat meat or dairy products.  The Christmas Lent finishes on Christmas Eve as the first star appears in the sky.  The star symbolizes the one seen above Bethlehem when Christ was born. 

The first meal on Christmas Eve is traditionally a 12 course meal filled with symbolism.  Some day I would like to try to do the whole meal but until then we will enjoy the mushroom soup and maybe one other course and talk about the fact that in Russia Christmas is being celebrated today. 



Happy New Years!

     “Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way.”  Dr. Seuss