Sugar Creek Farm ~ Osage, IA

What do you do when you send the rest of the family to the fair to watch the demolition derby, and find yourself with an evening at home all to yourself?

Please tell me you venture out into your garden, pick various and sundry vegetables, and then line them all up for a family portrait.

No? Well, don’t I feel a little weird now.

I love the alien look of the kohlrabi.

Lovely, lovely cucumbers that I plan to slice up and have with onions and dressing. The recipe comes from an old church cookbook and includes the instructions “dressing can be reused up to three times before throwing out.” Indeed.

Broccoli. Nom, nom.

And yes, I even love that overachiever of garden vegetables, the zucchini.

I’m hoping I’ve guessed at the ripeness of this watermelon correctly.

A peck of to-be-pickled peppers.

It was a nice surprise to find so many things in the garden tonight, hanging on in the midst of this awful drought!

Garden of August past

Wow. Just, wow. Seventeen. About to be a senior in high school. College visits. Trying to figure out a major. Wow.

A full slate of extracurricular’s – volleyball, wrestling cheerleader, track, chorus, band, 4-H. A part-time job waitressing. Inducted into National Honor Society last year. We couldn’t be more proud.

She is still that happy, funny girl she’s always been. Still hugs everybody. Still loves to sing, and sing, and sing.

Letting go of the reins has been a process, but not nearly as awful as I imagined it would be. It’s to her credit that it’s been easier than expected. Even though I wish I could somehow keep her here with us forever, I’m also really excited to see where life takes her. I think it’s going to be good.

But thank goodness I have these to look back on…

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Happy One-Seven, Maddog.

Love,
Yo Mama

For all of you that have been asking, this Friday we’ll be back at the North Iowa farmers market in Mason City and we’ll have chickens with us!!

And on Saturday we’ll be at a new event, the North Iowa Herb Fest in Clear Lake. Should be a fun day! You can find more information about the Herb Fest here: http://www.facebook.com/events/114187955388931/

If you can’t make either of these, just give us a call at the farm and we can make arrangements for you to stop out and get chickens (and anything else you need for summer grilling!)

Please click on “2012 Farmers Market schedule” above to see when & where you can find us this summer!

We’re starting the farmers market season today! We’ll be at the North Iowa Farmers Market from 3-6 in the Mason City KMart parking lot.

Tomorrow we’ll be at the Osage Farmers Market from 9-11 in the Plaza parking lot on east Main Street.

Looking forward to seeing our farmers market customers again!

Our final Mason City delivery date before farmers market begins will be Wednesday, April 11th. 6:30 p.m., KMart parking lot. Please call in orders to 641.732.4915 or email sugarcreekfarm@osage.net. We will take orders until Tuesday, April 10th by noon, but for guaranteed availability of cuts please have orders to us by Friday, April 6th. We WILL have pork chops back in stock for this delivery!

Our next Mason City delivery will be Wednesday February 29th! Please email orders to sugarcreekfarm@osage.net or call orders in to 641.732.4915 by Thursday February 23rd. (We’ll still take orders up until Tuesday the 28th, but if we’re out of something we won’t be able to restock it for you for this delivery.)

Usual delivery setup – 6:30 p.m. in the southwest corner of the KMart parking lot.

Come see us and all the other great Wellness Expo exhibitors at the Cedar River Complex in Osage, noon until 7:00 today! $2 admission. Door prizes include gift certificates from Sugar Creek Farm!

I wasn’t expecting to like this soup. Which, I know. Why would you make a soup you weren’t expecting to like? But it was one of those things… I wanted soup, I wanted pork and vegetables in it, but I wasn’t hungry for this one on this particular day.

So I certainly wasn’t expecting to be blown away by this soup. And the bonus? You just chop stuff up and throw it in the crockpot. Which makes it perfect for my Sunday modus operandi, which is to get a big vat of soup going after church and then spend as much of the rest of the day as possible doing nothing.

Pork and Vegetable Soup II
1 2-3 pound Sugar Creek Farm pork shoulder roast, trimmed and cubed
2 cups sliced carrots
1 cup diced celery
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium head cabbage, chopped
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
4 cups chicken broth
1 t. crushed red pepper
1 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
28 oz. diced tomatoes, undrained

Mix all ingredients in large slow cooker. (You may have to let the cabbage cook down a while before you can stir everything… my crockpot was completely full by the time I got everything in it.) Cover and cook on low heat 8 hours, medium 6 hours, or high 4 hours, or until pork and vegetables are tender.

You can find all of our recipes here!

Tonight the snow is falling and the wind chill’s at zero. But yesterday it was 53 degrees. 53 degrees! On January 10th in Iowa! So I did something I haven’t done in a really long time – grabbed my camera and took a little walk around the farm on my lunch break.

Some of the calves were hanging out in the shed, some were outside lounging around in the sun.

We’re down to a small flock of chickens. I keep wanting to start some more, but the kids always have my garage occupied with pigs at the time I’d want to be brooding chicks. But the chickens I still have are such a pretty mix. That black and white rooster front left came to live with us after my cousin’s daughter caught him in one of those scrambles at the county fair. Before we figured out he was a rooster, we named him after her. So his name is still “Elsie Rooster”. I love that rooster. And my cousin’s other daughter caught the gold hen front right. So her name is Molly. I love that hen, too.

This rooster was hatched right here on the farm. He was surveying his kingdom from the top of the straw bales that insulate our well pit.

The pigs were all sacked out for a nap.

They gave me a look, but went back to their nap after realizing I didn’t have anything to eat with me. (Thankfully they didn’t see me as something to eat.)

I definitely need to get back into the routine of my noon walkabouts…