Eating: Yours & Mine

I try my absolute darnedest to not let this evolve into a food blog.

There is no need for another diary of what I ate, beautiful pictures of freshly prepared meals dancing with sunlight, or how to recipes. I have nothing against these blogs, in fact I enjoy them significantly. This is where I find aesthetic inspiration for a new ingredient, or that just perfect dish, cookie, tart, preserve, pickle or home brew in my imagination that someone else has, undoubtedly, already created. My favorites, Darcy over at the Garden of Eden, The Traveler's Lunchbox & Delicious Days. I love the pretty pictures, the recipe and the personal narrative all in one place. I don't want to do this, mostly because there is no way I can do it as well as others. And I don't think anyone wants to hear my shopping list or eating list for the week.

But sometimes, just sometimes, there is so much goodness in family, food and celebrations that it's too hard to resist sharing all the good things we're going to eat. This is not to say that overwhelming abundance occurs only once a year. In our tiny household of two cooks and a dog we tend to eat like royalty, albeit on a peasants budget. but I'll spare you all the stories about pickled beets, rendered duck fat and the dynamo pickled relish inspired by Miss Polly. To me, sharing these stories feels too much like writing in my middle-school diary for all to see. Regardless, we just wrote a list, and it looks something like this...

Friday - Caviar & Oysters
Saturday - Duck & Scallops
Sunday - Standing Rib Roast
Monday - Leftovers
Tuesday - Buffalo Burgers
Wednesday - Chicken

Friends, this is triple the amount of meat I eat in one year (ok, maybe not so if you include cured meats) packed into less than one week. And these meaty labels are just placeholders to whole, entire, actual meals. I haven't been clued into the recipe pile yet, so I don't know what we are actually cooking, but do far I have heard dishes such as stuffed cabbage, lettuce wraps, molded marzipan cookies, homemade bagels, latkes, brussels sprouts and homemade honey dinner rolls bandied about the house and the car ride to the grocery store.

I will say this, as our family carpool scurries out of the house. The caviar and oysters on the list tonight is a cooking class. The daughter of a family friend invited my mom and I to join her and her mom for a cooking class highlighting oysters and caviar. I am not sure what cooking is involved, but if it means shucking and snacking (and possibly savoring some fermented sweets) I couldn't say no. More to come after the "class"...

Young Farmers & DIY Crafters

What do the eager, fresh faced young farmers of today have in common with the clever artists of the DIY craft movement? Everything. 

I've been ruminating on this topic for the past few weeks, spurred by my enrollment in the pasture-based dairy and livestock business planning class and an overdose of DIY holiday arts and crafts. Somehow, from the outside, the idea of being a farmer or crafter is very appealing, and attracts a certain type of person (myself included, on both fronts) - but doesn't always live up to the expectations when you cut to the nitty-gritty of running a small business.

I began noticing the similarities after Thanksgiving, when we headed to Milwaukee for the annual Art vs Craft extravaganza. This craft show is hailed as the end all be all of craft fairs and holiday gift hot spots for people who appreciate local, handmade, crafty home wares, jewelry, posters and letterpress stationery...you get the picture. Housed in a humdrum, beige conference-center-like space at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, this event was teeming with your trusty craftacular favorites: woodcut prints of vegetables, letterpress stationery, scrap fabric goodness, jewelry made from typewriter keys, clever handscreened t-shirts, and much much more. Tables and tables full of unique displays, one-of-a-kind handcrafted projects and eager artisans promoting, selling, hawking and highlighting their wares. There is sometimes a certain desperation. I've made all this pretty stuff. I know you like it. Please like it enough to buy it.

This was no small event either. It was just us and over 3,300 other lovers of crafty goodness who visited this one day craft fair. How's that for a big show of support for small, local artisans? And this is not only a Milwaukee phenomenon, there is a surge of crafty love across the country. There's the Renegade Craft Fair in various locations, Crafty Wonderland in Portland, and the vast internet craft fair on Etsy...just to name a very small sliver of the action. Professional crafters and their DIY counterparts alike (kind of like farmers and their corresponding home-gardeners) are a culture all their own.  

Perusing the tables and tables of inspired crafts, I felt an enormous parallel between these homespun crafters and the wave of new and young farmers taking over the nation. A growing movement of young, motivated, creative, idealistic folks desiring to create their own path in life. And to meet them, a paying consumer base making deliberate purchasing decisions to support the small, the local and the handmade. Sounds like the enormous, and still growing, support for small, local farmers, no? 

Maybe you are catching my drift here. Without referencing the 2007 Census of Ag or the 2010 Census of Craftiness (which I just made up), there has been a growth in both of these industries in the past handful of years.

The parallels between the craft and young farmer populations are significant. These are groups of younger folks drawn to a self-designed lifestyle cultivating seeds and soil or thread and needle into a fulfilling meaning for each twenty four hour day. Energetic self-starters (I hate that term) desiring to engage with the world on their own terms, motivated to carve a niche outside of the existing system. No daily desk routine, no working for someone else, a willingness to live without a steady paycheck and with a certain uncertainty. All with a vision of molding natural resources and personal skills into a sustaining income stream, and with a life-encompassing passion. Read more from last week's NPR piece on attendees at the Stone Barns Center's Young Farmers Conference for an accurate picture on the farmer side. Sure, these are generalizations, but I can say this because I've been there, and I want to be there again - this time on the farm, not in the studio.

From the outside, the lifestyle of the professional crafter and farmer seem appealing - somehow simple and idealistic. You are your own boss, your life is in your hands, it's all about the art of growing or making and you dedicate your time to being lost in your art. Mornings in a heavy flannel shirt, coffee in hand, soaking in the panorama of the fields. Mornings straight to the studio, coffee in hand, to immerse yourself in the creative process. Yes, both are wonderfully sumptuous visions - and also rarely true. 

This is because the truth behind both of these endeavors is that they are small businesses. And the bottom line about a small business is that it has a bottom line. And for the individual who wants to be the solo-act in a small crafty or farm-based business that means being a jack-of-all-trades and dedicating a significant amount of time to actually running the business. There is little to find creative or pleasing in administer the sinister and often forgotten aspects of running a business, like dealing with credit card processing companies, keeping the books, paying taxes, advertising and promotion, insurance, food safety regulations (well, that one's not pertinent to crafters), permits and on and on and on. It can quite quickly put you back behind a desk and away from the things you truly love.

And that seems to be the biggest piece that new farmers miss, and maybe crafters too. The big difference between these two parties is that farming (depending on how you do it) requires a hefty up front investment in either land, equipment or operating costs and it takes a bit longer to raise a pig and get it to market than it does to make an adorable note card on a vintage letterpress and sell it on Etsy. Many going into this field ignore, forget or are oblivious to the fact that farming is more than a lifestyle, it's a business. And a business, especially one as complex as a farm, requires lots and lots and lots of planning. The USDA is throwing money at agencies and non-profits to provide business planning classes for new and young farmers. The classes, which are wide spread and easily accessible in person or online are a wonderful resource, but ultimately only effective if students actually write a business plan...which requires research, sitting behind a desk, running lost of numbers, playing with Excel and feeling a bit disheartened to see a bottom line that is not profitable, at least for a while. But that's what the planning is for. Planning is not sexy, it's not the same as being in the fields, planting tender transplants, creating new designs or perfecting your craft - but it's important. Very, very important.

So here's a toast to the new farmers and crafters that are creating local economies and personal economic opportunities. Thanks for being brave enough to go it alone and create beauty and tastiness and self-fulfillment. Just don't forget about the less-palatable stuff along the way.

On our end, we're preparing as much as possible for our venture-to-be. Business planning, time working for other people, being smart about investments, networking, conferencing and researching - a lot. It's hard to balance the impatience of wanting to farm now, especially during these winter months away from Dreamfarm, and finding a contentedness in where I am now. I guess patience, and planning, are key!

Pens to Pasture ~ Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm

Do you peruse the newsletter delivered with your weekly CSA share or subscribe to the e-mail list of your favorite farmers at your local market? I do, and I savor them. So many of my friends and family also love the stories their farmers share...it seemed like a good time to share these stories more widely. Farming provides abundant fodder for writing and consumers provide a natural audience...and hence the perfect environment for brief, well-articulated pieces highlighting the thoughts and daily life of farmers. At Pens to Pastures: Fodder from the Field we celebrate the agricultural life, the hard work of farmers and the grace and openness with which they share it all through writing. Dig in, enjoy and be sure to share the writings of your farmers by sending an e-mail here.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm
Robin & Gigi
Harris, MN
www.nittygrittydirtfarm.blogspot.com & www.nittygrittygoods.blogspot.com


It's obvious there are thoughtful and creative women behind Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm from the name alone. The words and pictures on the farm blog only make this clearer. In this case, the crispness of the words speak for themselves, and I especially admire the stillness conveyed in this short end of season message - a brief pause to relish before the cycle begins again. There is plenty more to read and see at both the farm and wool blogs mentioned above, just be sure to scroll to the bottom of the blog to access the archive.

December 9, 2011

Happy winter, holiday and solstice season to all of you from Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm.

We have had a pleasant time with the long fall getting pens ready for the animals, lights hung for the poultry, heated buckets set up for winter watering and round hay bales moved for feeding the sheep and putting up wood for the woodstove.  The feeders are hung for the wild birds and Robin made a batch of suet, a mix of lard, peanut butter and bird seed for the woodpeckers and flickers and an occasional cardinal. 

It seems quiet at mealtime with just the two of us but before we know it, our first two interns will arrive in time for lambing and goat kidding.  Soon after that, we will be pulling out the equipment for collection maple sap, and setting up the cooker to turn it into syrup.  In the meantime, we are still milking one goat, Novel who is giving us a very rich quart of milk a day, just enough for milk on granola, in our coffee and Gigi's favorite - goat milk white russians.  

The seed catalogs have begun to arrive with colorful pictures of mouth watering varieties.  The fields are not completely covered in snow yet but we are hopeful for a deep snowfall over the next few months to help provide much needed moisture for next spring, (not to mention good cross country skiing).  
We wish you joy in this holiday season in what ever way you celebrate.  Blessings to you all.

Robin and Gigi 

Below is the membership form for the 2012 season. 

We are reducing the number of shares so sign up early.

Pens to Pasture ~ Grateful Growers

When friends and family began raving about and forwarding to me the weekly CSA newsletters and farm updates sent from their farmers, I paid attention. I also laughed (and even teared up) at these genuine writings intimately describing all it takes to grow our food. It didn't take long to realize that these stories must be shared with a wider audience. So...welcome to Pens to Pasture: Fodder from the Field where each week we feature one farm and the stories they share with their customers through CSA newsletters, blog stories and e-mail updates. We celebrate the agricultural life, the hard work of farmers and the grace and openness with which they share it all through writing. Dig in, enjoy and be sure to share the writings of your farmers by sending an e-mail here.


Grateful Growers
Natalie and Cassie
Eastern Lincoln County, North Carolina
www.ggfarm.com


The slogan on Natalie and Cassie's website is Real Food, Real Farmers, and that tagline sums them up pretty well. Not only do they run a successful small hog farm, mobile (delicious) food cart and brick and mortar restaurant (both called the Harvest Moon Grille), these women are racking up the awards. With a focus on sustainably raised Tamworth hogs, processed for farmers' market and restaurants, Grateful Growers developed an early name for themselves. Their reputation is well deserved, but not just for the food they create, but for the community too. These women are "passionate about creating a sense of community" around food, and do an outstanding job of education and educating customers and creating a true sense of community around their food and the local food movement. They are persistent and devoted too! Earlier this year their bright orange mobile food truck was stolen, and with great gusto they plugged on, purchased a new truck (the blue moon), and created even more opportunities to sell their delicious foods.

Much of the weekly newsletter announces the location of the mobile Harvest Moon Grille, farmers' market offerings and latest news from the full-on restaurant. But what I savor most is the What's up on the Farm? section toward the end. These brief sections provide a clear, concise snapshot of life on the farm and the trials and tribulations of raising animals and working with nature. Enjoy these passages from a recent and past Grateful Growers e-newsletter, and thank them for putting pen to paper to share their stories. Visit the Grateful Growers website for more stories, to see the list of incredible awards they keep winning and learn more about their vision of food and community.

December 2, 2011

What's up on the Farm?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    

Did you miss me (or at least, the newsletter)?  It's been a wild couple of weeks.  We had a great time at the restaurant serving an amazing Thanksgiving dinner (if you missed it this year, be sure to make it next time - great food and you get to enjoy visiting with your family and not having to wash dishes!).  I'll admit it was nice to be home from markets last Saturday, but I can assure you it was not all leisure.  We had a firewood splitting party and the gang who joined me also helped with the always spontaneous "fence mending" and accompanying pig relocation projects.  We had a great time creating a mighty pile of wood and afterward, enjoyed an amazing dinner that Julia brought with her.  Big thanks to Dr. Bob, Amy and Julia for their wonderful company and hard work!

Our neighbors are stringing Christmas lights.  We are stringing heatlamps.  Again, it's time to break out the hundreds of feet of extension cord and the little orbs of warmth for our litters of new piglets.  There are four huts full of them, cuties that they are, all snuggled together under in the straw beneath the glowing lamp.  Just when we catch a break on the electric bill because the freezers aren't working so hard, we get to spend up because of the heatlamps.  Small price to pay, though.  The extra warmth can make the difference between life and death on a real cold night for a very young piglet (who has no body fat to keep him/her warm).  Beyond helping with the odds for survival, pigs who have the supplemental warmth also tend to grow out more efficiently.  Like so many other things, we'll tolerate the web of cords (and the bills) for our little ones.

See you here at the Moon and the Markets!
Natalie, Cassie + Jeremy

 June 2011

What's up on the Farm?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sheep have settled in to their new home at our place nicely. We brought home 4 young ewes (females), which we will keep for breeding. They are almost 3 months old and are incredibly cute. We named them Marilyn, Madelyn (for my mom and her twin, whose birthday it was on the day we got the sheep), Esther (for Cassie’s mom), and Annie (for Charles + Lamar’s daughter, who was among the first customers at our cart and introduced us to her very cool parents). We also brought home 3 rams (boys with their “package” intact) that we’ve named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. They are about a year old and will hang out at our place for several more weeks to bulk up before they are featured at the restaurant.

 Because sheep aren't as destructive as pigs, we have put the ewes in our side yard, fenced off by an "electric net".  We wanted them close by to keep an eye on them, and because we are farm nerds, we sit on the deck and watch them instead of TV.  They are also taking care of the grass, so we don't have to mow.   We put the boys out back near the henhouse and they have been devouring the patches of clover back in what we formerly called "the poultry pasture".  With the very cool electric nets, we will move the sheep all over the property to simultaneously nourish them and maintain the grass.

Sunday evening we had a bad storm here, resulting in a bunch of busted up trees and lost power. We were so fortunate that no buildings or the house were damaged. We were also blessed that our neighbor Del and our friend Bess came to our place that evening and checked in on things, since we were up at Charles’ having a lovely evening. They were relieved to find that all the animals were okay and not running all over the neighborhood. A large limb fell on the power line feeding our barn meter, meaning we had no power to our well or to the walk-in freezer.  They called the power company who had somebody out to fix it quickly, so the animals had water and we didn't lose any meat. The tops of several huge trees were broken out, so much of the week has been devoted to cleaning up.  The top of a giant oak fell onto Del's tractor (parked at my place), but caused only cosmetic damage.  I carefully cut the limbs away from it, drove it out from under the mess, then used the tractor to pull the limb away from the tree to cut it up.  As a kind of poetic justice, the wood is now in a pile at Del's, awaiting use for this winter's heating. So, this week can be summed up into "chainsaws + sheep".  Lots more of both to be happening for weeks to come.   

Off to the garden to weed and harvest onions. We hope to see you at the markets and/or the restaurant this weekend!

Natalie, Cassie + Jeremy

 

7-Up, Saltines & War Wonton Soup

Do you have vivid food memories associated with your childhood?

For me it’s grandma’s potato dumplings and cabbage with kielbasa on Christmas Eve, a homemade Polish tradition. There’s dad’s letter-shaped, weekend-morning pancakes poured carefully into the electric countertop griddle with the classic early 80s motif on the lid. And then there were the regular dinner rotations: taco night, beef stroganoff, chicken casserole... Always with a green salad of iceberg lettuce, carrots and bottles and bottles and bottles of half empty salad dressings to choose from, served from the same polished wooden salad bowl. And there were the months when mom was determined we each put a heaping tablespoon of ground wheat bran on top of our cold breakfast cereal. Talk about an effective way to ruin a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios.

This past week I was reminded of a different kind of food memory from childhood: sick day food.

I never minded being sick as a kid. In our house, being sick meant a day of special attention (an extra story or an super secure tuck-in at night), maybe the tiny television from the kitchen temporarily perched on my dresser, but mostly it meant 7-Up, Saltine crackers and war wonton soup. I, gratefully, never suffered any serious ailments as a kid, so I saw my few sick days as sort of special

There was the 7-Up, the first line of defense again sick day woes. Sometimes it was ginger ale, or even Hansen’s Fruit Sodas, but there was always a straw. On occasion there was even a flexi-straw, bent at a kind ninety degree angle toward my mouth. No matter the ailment, this was always a soothing balm, although mostly reserved for upset stomachs and sore throats. We didn’t drink much soda as kids (they rot your teeth, did you hear?), and I have a vague memory we were only allowed ‘clear’ or orange sodas – but that’s beside the point. It was a treat, and those effervescent, sugary bubbles always managed to do bring a bit of peace.

The Saltines were reserved for upset tummies, the first solid food when ready and able to eat again. The perfect combination of salt, crunch, blandness and dissolve-in-your-mouth texture. I remember the Volvo station wagon would make special trips to the store if someone was under the weather and the house was empty of these miracle crackers. To this day, I only eat them when I’m recovering from a rough stomach.

Then there is the war wonton soup. This is harder to explain, although on second thought it’s the same as chicken noodle soup – just from another culture. The cure-all war wonton soup was picked up from Jade East, the ‘hole in the wall’ Chinese restaurant between mom’s Pasadena Freeway freeway off ramp and home, the final stretch. Not just the average sick day food, growing up war wonton soup seemed to be mom’s cure-all.

Takeout orders were presented from behind the counter in cut-down cardboard boxes, the sides just tall enough to prevent the white waxed cardboard boxes of rice with the thin metal handles and the plastic containers of soup from knocking over and spilling on the car ride home. I only remember picking up those boxes once or twice, and we never ate in. The restaurant had an odd layout, and I still have the image of four heat-from-above buffet trays casting an orange-red light from the middle of the room. What I remember most was the short-sided box sitting in mom’s trunk, and how the smell permeated the whole car.

It’s nearly impossible to find any thing nearly as good as the Jade East war wonton variety in Charlotte, New Haven, Jamaica Plain, Portland, Madison or any of the places where I’ve been in dire need of this remedy. The liquid broth was watery, but flavorful, and one serving would fill the special big bowls reserved for this purpose alone. The broth was swimming with ‘fresh’ snow peas, carrot coins, bean sprouts, hearts of palm, water chestnuts, baby corns, slivers of white onion, scallion rings and bok choy - not to mention the thin ‘pork’ slices, uniformly brown around the edge and pink in the middle. And then there were the wontons; my reasoning always involved eating all the vegetables first in order to save these gems for last. They were ghostlike characters floating in the remaining broth, the thinnest rice noodle wrapped around an undistinguishable yet delicious meatball of pork or chicken or shrimp and onions…almost melting in your mouth.

Undoubtedly unconventional, this tonic soothed my stomach, refreshed my appetite and made everything better. So this past week, when I was struck with an out-of-nowhere stomach bug and finally regained my appetite…there was one thing, and one thing only, I wanted…war wonton soup.

Ok, and maybe I wanted my mom to come tuck me into bed too.

Pens to Pasture ~ Slow Hand Farm

When friends and family began raving about and forwarding to me the weekly CSA newsletters and farm updates sent from their farmers, I paid attention. I also laughed (and even teared up) at these genuine writings intimately describing all it takes to grow our food. It didn't take long to realize that these stories must be shared with a wider audience. So...welcome to Pens to Pasture: Fodder from the Field where each week we feature one farm and the stories they share with their customers through CSA newsletters, blog stories and e-mail updates. We celebrate the agricultural life, the hard work of farmers and the grace and openness with which they share it all through writing. Dig in, enjoy and be sure to share the writings of your farmers by sending an e-mail here.

Slow Hand Farm ~ Portland, OR 

Josh & Kji

Community Supported Agriculture on a Small Scale

www.slowhandfarm.com

I'm so honored to share the words (and vegetable pictures) of Slow Hand Farm, mostly because Josh taught me almost everything I know about growing vegetables when I was an apprentice at Sauvie Island Organics in Portland, Oregon. Beyond the actual growing of vegetables, Josh keenly demonstrated the importance of crop planning, record keeping and a good Excel spreadsheet - three cheers and eternal gratitude for that! I also remember many conversations with Josh, around the long lunch table, that ended up in that farm's CSA newsletter. (More on that to come!)

Stats from the SHF website. Wow.

In 2009 Josh broke ground on his own venture, Slow Hand Farm, to focus on hand-scale production; small and affordable CSA shares and special varieties. Slow Hand Farm is very special, in large part because Josh can tell you almost anything you want to know about each variety and each individual produce item harvested from the .2 acres of land they cultivate. This (very) small farm is also special because it offers single-person sized shares filled with the farmers' favorite varieties in spring, summer, fall and winter subscriptions. It's the ultimate make-your-own-perfect-CSA-share. 

Slow Hand Farm communicates with members through a weekly blog post, and their attention to detail shows. You are welcome and encouraged to read much, much more about Small Hand Farm at the blog or Facebook page. Extra savory are all the lovely pictures of the share and the farm - you'll be amazed at the magic they cultivate in a tiny space! Below are two recent CSA posts hinting at the beginning of winter...

P.S. Josh is a jack-of-all-trades, engineer extraordinaire and farming genius. If you like to geek out on small scale farming practices (like, the important details) or farm images, check out his other site.

- - -

Monday, November 14, 2011
Soup Share

It occurs to me that there are some nice opportunities for soup in the share today, especially if you have some good dry beans to toss in, and maybe a bit of stale bread.  You might want to look for a recipe for ribollita, one of my favorite fall meals.

Today's share has a bit of kale, chard, carrot, celery and garlic in it.  This is not at all what I planned for last fall when I was looking at what would go in the share today, but it's still a nice mix and it reflects everything that has happened in the season up to this point and my best judgement this morning about what I need to keep around for shares in the following weeks, and what would be best this week in the shares.  At this point in the year most everything we have for the shares for the next two months or so is more or less ready.  It's not just a matter of harvesting what is "ripe," it also has to do with guessing what will hold in the ground longer, what won't get eaten by voles or deer, what will survive impending frosts, and what would be a nice combination, giving a bit of variety from week to week

The chard and celery won't hold on much longer due to their sensitivity to freezing so I wanted to give those two out today.  The kale is from a bed that hasn't been cleaned up in a while, and it seemed like some more greens would be nice in the share.  The carrots have finally started to get a little size and the voles are starting to move in so I'm trying to thin them out, give a little more space and assess the damage. I don't plan for garlic in the fall shares, but this is leftover from what we saved for seed and I figured it should get eaten.

Next week is Thanksgiving so we'll take a week off from harvesting.  I'm taking some of this afternoon, and likely many to come, starting to look at the plan for next season.

Posted by Slow Hand Farm at 3:04 PM 

Thursday, November 17, 2011
Thanksgiving Holiday

Today's share is basically the same as Mondays so no new photo or talk of the vegetables.  Next week is Thanksgiving and we're taking the entire week off from harvests.  It's also supposed to be cold, like freezing cold, this weekend.  I've been anticipating that, which is why the chard and celery was in the share this week.  Those two crops will likely freeze out this weekend.  Even so, we covered the celery with row cover, and lots of the rest of the crops as well.  I'm hoping that the cover will stay on (it has a nasty tendency to blow off).  I'm also hoping that the newfound protection the voles are feeling under that nice white blanket won't encourage them too much and that they'll leave a bit for us when we get back to harvesting.  They've already taken out a number of the celeriac, root parsley, and radicchio.  Our trapping campaign is woefully inadequate right now, we'll have to get on that.  In the meantime, hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving, we'll be back in action on November 28.
Posted by Slow Hand Farm at 2:34 PM

How Turkeys Become Turkeys

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the celebration and expression of gratitude: for family, farmers and all the goodness in the world. I'm also partial to a good pumpkin pie and even the cranberry jelly that comes out of a can. The turkey, however, I can do without. That changed a bit when I harvested this main course for the first time. 


In honor of our dear friend the turkey, and in appreciation of those who raise them and prepare them for our tables, I present to you the annual romp through the slaughterhouse. I always feel that knowing the origins of my food increases its taste and my appreciation for it. This piece was originally featured in the Slow Food Tufts blog in 2009. I enjoy revisiting it every year, and I hope you will too.

Warmest wishes to you and yours on the national holiday of gorging and appreciation. May your turkey be juicy, your mashed potatoes buttery and your revelry savory.

- - -

Waking at 5 am, I dug my favorite farming clothes out from under the bed. I missed the early mornings, dirty hands and exhaustion from physical labor and looked forward to the long day of work ahead. This used to be my every day routine, pre-dawn mornings and perpetually dirty work clothes, when I spent my days on a farm in Portland, Oregon. Since going back to graduate school in Boston, mornings start later and the farming clothes are tucked out of site, undoubtedly a bit lonely.

Today began with a three-hour drive south to a diversified farm in the Hudson River Valley of New York. It was a long haul to visit Sara, one of my dearest friends, and some soon-to-be Thanksgiving turkeys. I was off to help harvest and process 150, seven month old Broad Breasted Whites that spent most of their turkey lives foraging on pasture. “Harvest” and “process” are, of course, pleasant euphemisms for slaughter, the last stage of raising livestock and getting it to market.

 As many Americans were in the pre-Thanksgiving frenzy of buying frozen turkeys at the store, my excitement peaked knowing I would experience this process from a new perspective. Today's turkeys would not come from the aisles of a grocery, but from the wet, slippery tiled floor and food-grade surfaced walls of a small-scaled poultry processing facility. All the birds were scheduled to be slaughtered and readied for market largely by hand that day, all pre-purchased by those willing to trek to the farm to pick up a turkey from its source. And for myself, I was just grateful to place one more puzzle piece into the landscape of skills needed to raise food and successfully market it as a small farmer.

On the walk from my car to the barn I felt that familiar mix of excitement and nervousness roiling in the bottom of my belly. I was in an unfamiliar place about to embark upon a new, and quite messy, expedition. My step was quickened by that first-day-of-school anticipation, the squawk of the geese in the pasture and the glow of the early morning autumn sun warming me through my wool sweater. Being at once totally present, and looking forward to the day poultry processing would become part of my own routine, I opened the heavy door and stepped in to the small facility. Before the door could close, I was immediately instructed to change into a pair of sanitary rubber boots for slaughterhouse use only, lined up by the door.

“So, what made you want to come here and do this?” one of the farm crew asked as I walked toward him down the white-walled hall.

My answer was simple: I want to gain all the firsthand experience I can because one day I plan to raise poultry on my own.

I had a few weeks  to mentally prepare for this adventure between accepting the invitation and my three-hour early morning drive to these rolling hills. I spent the time recognizing my immense excitement at participating in harvest and learning a bevy of new skills about small-scale poultry processing. Not only did it feel like an important step to gain poultry production knowledge, but also a huge step toward a deeper understanding about what it takes to produce the food I eat. Tempering my overt enthusiasm was the awareness that turkey harvest unavoidably included killing a living animal. I believe strongly that animals are an important part of the nutrient cycle of the farm, and of our food system. So for me, I concluded that if I’m going to eat the meat, it should be humanely raised using sustainable practices and that I should be able to kill it…or at least be intimately aware of how it ends up on my plate. But at my core, I was just inexplicably excited to experience a part of the food system in this way.

I knew, roughly, what to expect inside the small slaughterhouse: the large cones that would hold the birds upside-down as their necks were cut, the hot water scald to loosen tough feathers for plucking and the stainless steel work tables for manual tasks. Not to mention the infamous plucker: the stainless steel cylinder lined with rubber fingers that quickly pull feathers from the birds as they spin around and around in the basin. Then evisceration…the process of removing the turkey guts by hand. I’ll call them guts because before that day all I thought of inside a bird was a mish-mash of intestines and the mysterious ‘giblets’. This last step of the process was the biggest mystery, and I was thrilled to become intimately familiar with the internal organs of a turkey.

Quickly, the door to the small processing room swung open to expose five farmers, gloved and aproned like disorganized surgeons, along with large tubs filled with ice and cooling turkeys. I waved a hello to Sara, as there are no hugs when covered in turkey, and introduced myself to the rest of the crew. Sara was disassembling turkeys as they landed in a pile after spinning out of the plucker. At this stage they remained whole birds, featherless and pink, but missing heads and feet. Sara’s job, and later mine, was to remove the oil gland, trachea, crop and neck. The necks were collected in a bucket of ice and then each bird hung one at a time on a rack for evisceration.

Two very skilled and quick moving livestock apprentices took on this task as I watched with awe and jealousy. First, a sharp knife cut a circle around the vent of the hanging bird. Then the intestines were gently escorted out of the bird and onto the stainless steel table below, ultimately into a barrel to be composted. Internal organs were then removed. The sponge-like lungs headed to the compost, but the liver, gizzard and heart were sorted into buckets of ice. They would later be packed into bags with the necks and stuffed into the cavity of the birds, the infamous giblets. I tried my hand at this, and at first it was the equivalent of playing Operation, blindfolded. But slowly I became familiar by touch -rough, slippery, tough and squishy- with these distinct organs inside a still-warm bird.

OK, this is the point where you may say, “Stop! Please! Too much information!” The point of these precise details is not for the gross-out factor or to open debate about the ethics of eating animals. But for those of us who believe in good, clean, fair food: this is it. This is small-scale production that treats animals, farmers and environment fairly. And the more we understand exactly what it takes to raise this kind of food, the easier it is to support farmers, growers and producers who share these values. Each of us may value a different part of the process, but the power is in the knowing.

After half the turkeys were resting in ice baths, we got to the task of cleaning out the gizzards so they could join the other giblets. Turkeys do not have teeth, so the gizzard is an internal organ, a secondary stomach, that mashes up ingested food. It looking something like a round oyster or mussel covered with a smooth layer of muscle.  The external squeezing of the muscle grinds ingested food with grit: rough non-food matter that’s pecked up by the turkeys and stored in the gizzard for this purpose. Little did I know that each gizzard gets cut open, grit cleaned out by hand, and the rough lining peeled out before it joins forces with the rest of the giblets.

We stood around the processing room, the floor slippery with melting ice and turkey mess, chatting as we worked our way through the icy buckets of fist-sized gizzards. Sharing small, sharp knives each gizzard was cut open like a clam, exposing the gritty contents of the turkey’s stomach and an edge of yellow lining. This is delicate, detailed work when compared to the previous hours of the day, but rewarding. I slowly opened my first gizzard, almost like unwrapping a small gift, to find a collection of pebbles, short pieces of straw and small bits that looked eerily like sea glass. I paused, not quite believing what I saw. Maybe there was something about turkey digestion that I just didn’t understand.

Sea glass?

I glanced around the room; every other gizzard was full of the frosted glass too. Everyone in the room was noticing this treasure at the same time. Jovial accusations and laughter sparked up in the circle around me and I caught only snippets of conversation.

“It just appeared out of nowhere,” the newest apprentice spoke quietly amidst the teasing.

“Middle of the pasture…”

“…and there went another windshield,” spilled out of the livestock manager’s mouth.

Through the rapid-fire banter of the crew and the jovial finger pointing, the best I could piece together was this: Someone drove the farm truck quickly through the turkey pasture, and the remnants of an old farm building suddenly appeared on the horizon. There was not enough time to avoid hitting the structure. A collision ensued and the windshield busted, leaving a sparkly pool of safety auto glass on the grass, irresistible to the curious turkeys. For all these turkeys knew, this was the best looking meal they would ever eat. This unusual ‘grit’ was then burnished into the equivalent of sea glass in the gizzard of every single turkey, helping to grind food from that day forward. Not to worry, the glass didn’t harm the turkeys, as the thick lining inside the gizzard serves to protect the bird in just this situation. Despite it all, I was awestruck as all the pieces came together.

It was amazing to see such odd and unexpected contents in the belly of the beast. More importantly, it served as a very direct reminder of the connection between what we put into the animals that will become our food and where it all ends up…be it the gizzard of a turkey, fresh produce, our air or water.

I left the farm that day exhausted, content, dirty and empowered. I was more steadfast than ever to make educated choices about the source of my food, proud to learn a new skill and determined to honor the gibblets of my next Thanksgiving turkey.