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Tomatopalooza

We love tomato season. All things are great during the season of red ripe, mellow yellow and orange blossom heirl00m tomatoes. This week we had company for dinner and all I had to do is reference our newsletter for recipes, throw two of our organic free range broilers on the grill, open a bottle of wine and get to work.

The arugula/heirloom tomato salad with dijon vinaigrette was fantastic. The arugula is extremely strong in the hot weather, but the mustard, red wine vinegar, salt and big slice of cherokee purple heirloom tomato mellowed out the intensity of the arugula.

Roasted baby squash with a parsley, caper, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice gremolata (is that how gremolata is used, who knows, I call it sauce) tossed on after roasting is the BEST. The squash is cut in quarter sized pieces, tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted on 475 for 30 minutes and then tossed in the gremolata!

Our chickens are delicious on the grill. We preheat the grill by turning all four burners on high and getting it as hot as possible, then put the whole chicken in the middle of the grill, turn off the two middle burners, close the lid and let it cook for 90 minutes. There is something about the skin of the chickens that makes the grilling experience so wonderful. Our chickens are killed and put in bags to be frozen. There is absolutely nothing added.

In commercial poultry processing, phosphates are added to the meat to break down the muscle fibers, with the goal of making the meat more tender. A commercially processed chicken is horrid on the grill. The skin tears very easily, leaking juice on the grill flame and totally drying out the chicken. Our chickens have a strong skin so when we put them on the grill and sear the skin, it holds all the juice inside, which you can actually see bubbling as the chicken is grilling. We love our chickens!

Another batch of chicks is coming mid-August so we can have enough for our Field to Fork dinner on September 18 plus have enough for our family for the winter. We can rip through about 75 whole chickens in a year! This year we are raising a holstein steer and broilers for our freezer.

Homegrown Interview

http://www.qac.org/default.aspx?pageid=74&template=3&toplevel=34

What are you waiting for?

Can we get a tomato? Can we? Is it too much to ask for just one ripe tomato? Our entire tomato patch is laden with lovely green tomatoes, all holding their breath for some unknown reason and then on the count of three they are going to jump out from behind their leaves, yell "SUPRISE" and we will have 13 tons, literally, of ripe tomatoes. People are screaming for tomatoes. For the past two weeks I have had the audacity to HOPE that we would have tomatoes ready for CSA pick up. After pickup the emails begin "um, I didn't get any tomatoes". "Okay, okay, sorry" I reply. I was HOPING that we would have ripe tomatoes, but they did not oblige this week. I shake my head in wonder.

It gives me the same feeling in my head as when I let the horses into their stalls for evening feed and the first thing they do is urinate. Waiting to come into their stalls, they shift their weight from side to side, cross their legs, dance around a little, act edgy and overall, act as if they have been travelling in a car for 7 hours and REALLY need to use the restroom, but there is a line. The line is me. I am too slow for them. They have been holding it for many, many hours and they are tired of waiting. Once they get into their stalls they sigh with relief and let loose with what must be 35 gallons of fluid. It just doesn't make sense.

So, back to tomatoes. The standard sequence of events would be that the tomatoes at the bottom of the plant would begin ripening, then as we harvest, the next layer up the plant would ripen. If you look closely at the picture, you can see there are blossoms on the top of the plant, so it is still making more tomatoes. Historically, the tomato will still grow until late into the season, making blossoms and tomatoes until first frost.

Yesterday we began on Twitter, so you can check us out: Homesteadmd

Editorial notes: For anyone who read "Birth of a Farm" you will notice a TON of spelling errors. The entire post was written on my Blackberry while waiting in line the day I created the blog. Being new to blogging I can't figure out how to edit it, so you'll have to suffer with the spelling mistakes!

Field to Fork Dinner

4th Annual
Field to Fork Dinner
Homestead Farm, Millington, Marylandfeaturing Chef Brennan Keegan
of 208 Talbot (St. Michaels, MD)
(http://whatsupmag.com/dining/restaurant-reviews/08-12-23/208_Talbot_Review.aspx)

Saturday, July 10 - Dinner on the Farm4 course meal with pouring and discussion of locally produced wines to complement our courses

Luke and Alison Howard, the owners of Homestead Farm, will be giving a Farm Tour at 6:00 to people coming to the dinner who are interested in finding out about the farm and its workings.

Guest of Honor: Lucie Snodgrass, author of Dishing Up Maryland
Lucie will be available to sign copies of her book prior to dinner. Copies of Dishing Up Maryland will also be available for purchase at the dinner. Please let us know if you plan to purchase a copy at the dinner so we can reserve one for you. (Washington Post review: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042001254.htm)

Dinner will begin at 6:30.
Dinner limited to 100 people. Please reserve early!

First Course: Mixed Sliced Tomatoes, Fines Herbes Salad Brown Butter, Balsamic, Gros Sel
Second Course: Barbequed Half Chicken “al mattone”, Gremolata
Grilled Lamb Sausages, Aioli, Smoked Tomato Puree
Side Courses: Summer Squash, Pinenuts, Anchovy Butter
Charred Eggplant Puree, Sweet and Sour Grilled Onions
Cucumbers, Mint & Yogurt
Dessert Course: Seasonal Berries with Creme
Advance Reservations and Payment Requested by Thursday, July 8th
Pay for your ticket at http://www.freshorganicvegetables.com/

Veggie Pa--looza

Whew! This hot weather has brought on the veggies. The squash went from teensy three leaved plants to mammoth in three short days and the fruit was quick to follow. It's always so refreshing to change seasons from spring greens to actual vegetables that can be diced, roasted, marinated, whatever you can think of.

Sunday I got around to getting my share box out of the walk in cooler and getting it organized in the fridge. I took two hours to wash and prepare the vegetables, make two salads and eat lunch. Both salads were made up inventions. The first was a sliced zucchini, summer squash, Sungold cherry tomatoes, garlic, onions, feta cheese, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and basil. I robbed the newly transplanted and suffering terribly, basil plants in the garden for a few leaves. They don't seem to have minded the reduce work load of not having to feed four more leaves. The next salad is called turnip/carrot - basic but very, very good. As the title says, it's shredded Hakerui Salad Turnips and baby carrots with a soy, chili dressing from the Moosewood cookbook. It is also good.

Yesterday the ram came home to the farm all wrapped in paper, ready for the freezer. Our local butcher shop processed him into ground lamb, breakfast lamb sausage and spicy Italian sausage.
We will use the sausage at our 4th Annual Field to Fork Dinner on July 10, here at the farm.

Our other meat for the Field to Fork Dinner is going to be chicken. The batch of broilers will be ready for processing at the end of the week. They are pretty funny running around, playing Big Fighting Rooster with each other and then getting distracted by a passing bug, ending the play fighting. The broilers have three teeny little hen chicks as roommates, which is quite the combination. The hens came from a neighbor who hatches pretty darn cute little chicks and we ended up with an Archana (sp?) and two "mutts", as she calls them. The Mutt Sisters hang out in a flock of three and the only speed they have is motorcycle-legs mode and stop. They are no contest for the hefty, thunder thighed broiler chickens whose only weapon is a mean glare. The Mutt Sisters motorcycle around the big chickens with amazing speed, chasing bugs and darting for shelter before the big chickens try to steal their bugs.