Grading garlic

It's coming soon....

Cleaning, grading & weighing garlic.

Curing Garlic

The barn is repaired!

 

The old crumbling limestone foundation is removed and replaced with a concrete foundation, back wall jacked up and rebuilt, new roof, reinforced infrastructure, cables strung from gable to gable to pull the whole thing back together, the missing boards replaced, bird entries covered with screens, new barn doors (on salvaged track) and the garlic drying racks are permanently installed. 



 New boards (they sure stick out against the red siding).  Also fixed is the hinged window

 

View from inside the barn, the door is built from tin extras from the shop building

 

 

The photo above shows the exterior on the hill top side.  Our barn is known as a banked barn, it refers to the back half being buried in the hillside.  This photo shows the new foundation sill and the new red siding which is where the wooden siding was cut and removed to allow Bill access to the sill.  After rebuilding the sill, he replaced the mostly rotten siding/boards with extra metal siding from the shop (bright red in this photo).  Since this is also the soil splatter area (and the back where no one sees it, the metal siding on the bottom makes a lot of sense).

Also shown here is the new white sliding door. 

 

 

Inside the barn, Bill is installing the garlic drying racks.  These are now a permanent fixture in the barn.  They are 12 feet tall.

 

And the 2013 garlic harvest is in! 

 

Final 2012 tomatoes

In anticipation of a busy garlic harvest season, I am making a big pan of chard lasagna on Sunday to freeze for quick late night meals.  So today the last of the 2012 tomatoes went into the slow cooker to make the sauce...

Wheel hoe

The Valley Oak Wheel Hoe may be the single greatest hand tool that we use on the farm these days.  The blade/hoop attachment slices easily and cleanly through the invasives that we are continually fighting like thistle, burdock and curly dock.  This is a fun tool to use:  no bending or kneeling and it's gratifying to slice through a thick thistle plant and root! 

 

This photo shows the end of a garlic bed that wasn't fully planted with garlic.  I first cleared it with the wheel hoe blade attachment and then attached the 3 tine cultivator which allowed me to clear the "trash" from the bed and then loosened the soil.  I then put in some beet seeds.

Wheel Hoe - made in the USA.  Ours was purchased through the

great folks at Green Heron Tools 

 

 

 Chard in the foreground, kale in the back.  Buckwheat cover to the right.  The buckwheat is really taking it's time this spring to get going.  Some of the weeds are getting ahead of the buckwheat so the smother benefits might be minimal. 

Today, right out the front door on the county road at our church-house was a young turkey. 

Barn Roof v2

No work done on Wed but today the "front" of the barn roof was finished.  Crew starts the opposite side tomorrow.

Thurs, Jun 6th

Getting a new barn roof

Bill has done a lot of work on the old barn.  The garlic harvest is going in the barn this year (not the shop unlike the previous year since we doubled the planting quantity) so we are under pressure to get the foundation repaired, the building jacked up, a new roof and repairs to the barn board siding.

This week brings the new roof.

Sun, June 2nd

 

Monday, June 3rd

 

Tuesday, June 4th (roofers got rained out at midday)



Garlic - and canning season (Pickled Green Garlic)

The garlic is looking good.  Although we are weeks behind where it was maturity-wise last year at this time.  We've completed our first pass at weeding the beds. 

All tomatoes are transplanted.  Varieties this year are Hillbilly Potato Leaf, Illini Star, Blonkopfchen, Green Zebra, Martino Romano, Dester and Kellogg's Breakfast. (Our forever thanks to Penny at Wishful Acres for introducing us to Kellogg's Breakfast!)

Kale, Swiss Chard and a couple of pepper varieties are also transplanted.  Pepper varieties transplanted are Georgia Flame, Beaver Dam, Lipstick and Alma Paprika.

Memorial Day saw summer canning start again. 

Our first batch of pickled green garlic.

Iowa White Spread Asparagus Pizza

A springtime pizza featuring the gorgeous La Quercia Iowa White Spread, caramelized pear, asparagus and WI Sheep Dairy Cooperative Pecorino, and small amount of cubed mozzarella.

I made a whole wheat pizza crust.  Heated oven to 500 degrees and put baking stone on the top rack.  Turn broiler on for ~10 mins once oven is heated and prior to baking pizza.  (Cook's Illustrated tip! - it really heats up the stone.)

After rolling out the crust and another slight rise (I make rectangular pizzas - fits better on the peel, the stone, and the cooling rack).  Baked empty crust for 3-4 mins; just enough to 'toughen up' the crust.  Remove and let cool.

I spread the Iowa White spread, pear, asparagus and shaved Pecorino and a small amount (approx. 1/4 cup) of small cubes of mozzarella.  Bake until golden.  It was spectacular.

And for Susan - here's a photo of the barn cats.

 

 

How to make a goat shoulder

In preparation for raising our own food, I'm embracing the challenge of cooking the cuts of our intended livestock.  At the Platteville winter market last week, lo and behold, I found goat for sale!  Raised locally by a mother/daughter team in Potosi, Glasson Valley shows and raises Boer goats.  I purchased a goat shoulder.

I liked the method of Popartichoke so I based our prep on her method - plus we just happened to have homemade harissa in the fridge.  (As a side note, I found Popartichoke in searching for goat recipes - a lot of good stuff and recipes on that blog, definitely worth checking out!)

Harissa rub on the goat cut - let rest for a couple of hours in the fridge

 

 

 

 



 

 Mirepoix ingredients, browned

 

 Ready to go in the oven

 

 

 After a couple of hours. 

 

 

 Browned and tender

 

 

 Resting - note the whole garlic bulb!

 

 Mixing the mirepoix

Recipe for Goat Shoulder  *Dutch oven is a necessity for this dish!
(Recipe adapted from Popartichoke)

Rub
3 T salt
generous grinds of black pepper
1 1/2 t. oregano
1 t. chopped rosemary
1 t. olive oil
2 T. Harissa (homemade)
1 1/2 t. cumin
1 t. turmeric
2 lb goat shoulder

Rub mixture on goat.  Let rest in fridge for at least 2 hours (or overnight).  Remove at least 1 hour before preparation.

Mirepoix
2 carrots, diced
1 large onion, diced
~1/2 C dicked celeraic
sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 to 2 bulbs (whole bulbs, not cloves) of garlic.  Remove cloves and clean from 1 bulb.  Cut off the top 1/4-1/3 of the remaining whole bulb (as if you were going to roast it, and include the entire bulb in the mixture in the dutch oven.  Again, gotta give credit to Megg at Popartichoke, here - I love this idea!  
1 to 3 bay leaves
1.5 to 2 C of red wine (or more)  :)
2 C chicken stock
1 C water

Preheat oven to 250.

In dutch oven on the stovetop, brown veggies in batches in the grease leftover from your morning pancetta breakfast omelet (No?  your breakfast didn't include pancetta?  sorry, it was delicious!) or sunflower oil.  Start with carrots and celeriac and brown slightly.  Remove and brown onion slightly.  Remove.

Turn dutch oven to high.  Brown the goat.  Really get in there and brown it - don't be shy.  Get all of the sides and edges.  When turning, scrape any rub that falls off from bottom of pan and save on a plate.  Remove once browned.  Turn off stovetop heat.   Deglaze dutch oven with some red wine.  Add veggies.  Add goat, the rub that fell off during cooking and liquids.

Cover and put in oven for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, remove cover, flip meat, increase heat to 300, and cook for another 45-60 mins.

When meat is tender and falling from the bones, remove from oven.  Remove the meat from the dutch oven and cover on a plate.  If you can find the bay leaves, remove them and the whole garlic bulb.  Using your stick blender, combine the mirepoix ingredients until a gravy forms. 

Serve with couscous or rice.

3 Flat Acres is interviewed by CRAFT!

We were recently interviewed by CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training).  See our interview here: 
Interview with 3 Flat Acres

2013 Garlic Crop is in

My garlic popping station

During my week of vacation from my day off-farm job, we planted next year's garlic crop.  We doubled the amount that we planted last year:  ~4800 to ~10,000.  That is 22 100 ft beds; each bed has 3 rows.  It's a lot of garlic!  And of course it rained almost all week but we planted anyway - thankful for rain gear! 

a bit hard to see, but the wooden stakes are the variety markers

The new addition to the house is moving along.

And the barn cats are doing nicely.  They are great companions while working.

Oscar on top of the straw bales

Cabbage!

Our cabbage experiment - direct seeded in the field - worked pretty well.  Next year I'll go back to transplanting seedlings, but since we were moving year during seedling starting time we put them straight into the field. 

We are dreaming of homemade kraut.

House Update

The house construction is moving along.  The basement and crawl space walls have been repaired, tuck pointed and/or re-poured and all have been sprayed with structural foam.  The basement floor has also been repoured - after Bill and some helpers dug down an additional 10" in the basement and hauled it up and out.  Tomorrow brings a crew of carpenters to help Bill pull off the old roof, reframe and prepare for the new roof.  This week also brings the excavator to dig the foundation for the addition (a/k/a the new house where we will live) - we hope the foundation will be poured early next week.

 The gray is the exterior foam which is structural.  The yellow are interior foundation walls which only need insulating

Interior shot.  The space where the ladder is going down will be the commercial kitchen (at grade) and a basement underneath

Labor Day found us seeding cover crops.  Bill cultivated with the tractor on Fields 1, 2, 4, 9 and 11.  I followed behind with the hand seeder.  1 and 2 got white clover while 4, 9, and 11 got a mixture of peas, oats, vetch, winter rye, and crimson clover; which will be tilled in next spring.  Fields 1 and 2 will be replanted with garlic in - yikes - 6 weeks.

The drought has claimed a fair number of our orchard trees, planted this spring.  We anticipate a 50% survival rate.

The barn cats are settling in nicely. 

All 4 sleeping

(Left to right:  Sylvia, Mr. White, Oscar, Thomas)



Organic pest control

This post is for Susan.  :)

National Organic Program (NOP) standards state that producers must use management practices for pest control.

When our inspector asked us how we plan to control pests, Bill and I asked, "are barn cats allowed?"  She said absolutely.

We don't have an issue with an overload of barn pests - although we don't have any feed supplied in our barn to draw them yet - when our neighbor's cat (who is a skilled mouser) had a litter we thought it would be a good time to get some kittens.  We took the whole litter:  3 males, 1 female.  We had them neutered/spayed and vaccinated under the "barn cat sterilization program" at the local animal hospital.

 Clockwise from upper left hand corner

Sylvia

Mr. White (we are watching Breaking Bad right now. 

This cat has professor-like patches on his elbows.)

Thomas

Oscar

Sylvia and Oscar both see a barn swallow swooping by

Mr. White - paws crossed, doesn't care

Thomas - well (can you tell ?) he's the alpha

They are 7 months old, friendly, and enjoyable to have around.  3 Flat Acres first official animals!

Harvest is curing

The garlic harvest is in and curing. The 100 degree heat and the rock hard soil slowed us down but we got it in.

We anticipate having our sales page activated by mid-August.

Hanging in bunches of 10 bulbs

The drying racks are 12' tall and each have six 5' bars

5000 bulbs m/l

New website is up!

Soon our garlic varieties will be for sale!

www.3flatacres.com

Harvesting

The garlic harvest has begun. The soil is rock hard due to Wisconsin's drought situation so the digging is challenging. We've gotten the Asiastics and one of the Porcelain varieties hanging to cure. We are curing this year in the shop due to the barn still being under construction.

Bill devised a drying/curing system with untreated wood and conduit. The bundles are hung with hemp twine.

A visit to Mecca

We visited the Twin Cities last weekend. In planning out our route, I discovered we could drive through Decorah, Iowa. Lovers of heirloom plants will know what is in Decorah. Mecca!!! a/k/a Seed Savers Exchange!

Our visit was short - less than 1 hour, but it was so inspiring.

We are planning another visit - it's only 2 hours away from SW Wisc to spend the day hiking the trails, viewing the heritage breeds and perhaps fishing the trout streams.