April 2014 Newsletter

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Shannon

Dear Friends;

The sun has begun to inch its way toward my side of the mountain, but it has been a long time in coming. Thus, I've had plenty of time to sit at my desk in the early hours and write articles and collect news that might be of interest to you. Here are the latest stories:

 

A Celebration of the Casserole: In my ongoing efforts to promote frugal eating that still generates a fair return for grassfed farmers, I've posted this piece singing the praises of an often-overlooked kitchen art: The Casserole. In addition to talking about its history and how it melds with the ideals of frugal and ecologically sustainable grassfed cuisine, I've given basic instructions for making a casserole from whatever ingredients you have on hand. I've also included a few recipes. Of course, if you are looking for more recipes, you can always check out Long Way on a Little, the newest cookbook.

Farm Bill 101: While I know some of you would prefer that I stick to writing recipes, as I've often said, you can't write about food without talking about the sticky politics and controversial issues surrounding it. This piece is no exception. Farm Bill 101 tells the story of a visit I made recently to a local agricultural college classroom, where apathy toward the Farm Bill was mixed with hatred toward one of the largest beneficiaries of Farm Bill dollars: welfare recipients. Naturally, I couldn't help but offer a few opinions on the subject…

 

And finally, I wanted to share with you some information passed along to me from Brian Snyder, Executive Director of PASA. Two weeks ago, the FSMA Action Center was launched on the website of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC). This is an effort to respond, and to generate responses from farmers and farm supporters, to the proposed new regulations under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The official comment period closes on May 16, so your voices need to be heard. Please, take some time to check in at this site, then make your concerns known.

Okay, that's all the Grassfed Cooking News for this month! I hope you are all well, that the winter was kind to you, and that your bodies are refreshed for another growing season!

 

Happy Spring,

Shannon Hayes, Grassfed Cooking.com, Sap Bush Hollow Farm

www.GrassfedCooking.com

www.sapbush.com

www.ShannonHayes.info

 

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Farm Bill 101

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Shannon
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I was invited recently to sit in on animal science class at a college about 10 miles away from my house that has a strong agriculture program. This week, the class was discussing the farm bill, and the students were supposed to be exploring what it meant to them.

The discussion was led by my friend Paula, who recently made the choice to return to school and get an agricultural degree. She talked about some of the major points of the farm bill, about how the direct commodity subsidies feed agribusiness, but how small farms, such as Sap Bush Hollow, derive very little (if any) direct benefit. She talked about how, because the Farm Bill didn't pass in 2012, there was a temporary extension on it as part of the fiscal cliff package. The subsidies that aid corn syrup processors and ethanol blenders stayed in place. The programs that benefited small producers, such as new farmers, minority farmers, healthy food markets, renewable energy and sustainable farming efforts, were suspended. The classroom remained quiet. Passive. Disinterested.

Paula attempted to shake them up. Guys! This is about you! About us! About what we’re here for! The room stayed quiet.

She moved on to the next controversial part of the Farm Bill – Food and Nutrition Assistance, which encompasses SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), formerly known as Food Stamps. Several students began to shift in their seats. Paula put forward some numbers about the amount of money allocated to SNAP. The classroom began to writhe. Tongues clucked. I heard hissing. Paula then mentioned how many people were dependent on SNAP (in 2011, one out of every seven people in this country was getting some form of food and nutrition assistance). And with that, save for a few quiet exceptions, the classroom sprung to life:

Welfare mothers!

They're using food stamps to buy cigarettes!

I'm not paying for lazy people!

Users!

They just waste that money!

Wow. So many golden educational opportunities….where to begin?

Let's start with …

The meaning of hypocrisy: From the dictionary: The semblance of having desirable or publicly approved attitudes, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually possess. It seems increasingly popular, in these hard economic times, to toss around accusations about who is draining the public resources. And the people who get public funds most directly under the umbrella term of welfare are the first ones to get pelted with stones. Yet anyone who has driven by the farmers market on their way to buy $1.99/lb pork chops at the grocery store, when the local farmer can't produce them for less than $11, is dipping from the same pot that holds the food stamps. The farm bill encourages factory farming by making sure feed can be purchased for less than the price of growing it, giving factory farms billions of dollars in cost discounts every year. A portion of this savings gets passed along to the American grocery-shopping public in the form of artificially cheap food that<i/> real farmers (those of us who have to pay for the true costs of production) </i>simply cannot compete with. <i/>Anyone </i>who shops at a conventional grocery store for factory farmed meat or processed foods is taking a government handout, not just the welfare mothers.

The meaning of irony:From the dictionary: A figure of speech in which the words express a meaning that is often the direct opposite of the intended meaning. The first farm bill was enacted on the heels of the Great Depression, with the goal of supporting America's farmers and ranchers. That's still the intent. Yet today, farm bill commodity subsidy payments have contributed to such an unequal distribution of market share between corporate and family-scale agriculture, the only way many small farmers could benefit from the farm bill is through the very nutritional assistance programs that these young agriculturists were spurning. There’s no shortage of small farmers who qualify for any number of “welfare” programs.

The meaning of self-defeating behavior: From the dictionary: behavior serving to frustrate, thwart, etc., one's own intention. Here was a group of students training to be farmers and food processors. Many of them will likely want to open their own farming- related businesses some day; or they will return to family farms to pick up where their parents and grandparents left off. Some of them, unable to sustain themselves financially among the land and livestock that nourish their spirits, will have to go and work for agribusiness. If the current economy is any indication, many of them will find themselves with college debt, low wage jobs, and in need of food.

Any way you slice the pie, the Farm Bill impacts these students, either because it sponsors (or fails to sponsor) programs that might help them get started on the land or in a food-related enterprise; or because the policies of the bill greatly benefit agribusiness, thus making it tougher and tougher for family-scale farms to compete; or because it results in a proliferation of processed crappy foods that pollute our bodies as well as our soil and water; or because it provides a food benefit that a number of them will likely need in the near future. These kids need to understand the Farm Bill. It can help them and it can hurt them. But the only reaction they could muster was venom toward any human being who might have need of food assistance, thus the only action many of them might take would be to cheer if the food and nutrition assistance programs were cut. They're hurting themselves with their own apathy and venom.

For that matter, apathy and venom hurt all of us. The food problems, the farm problems, and the poverty issues, effect all of us. Propaganda infuses our daily lives, encouraging us to hate those in need, to judge them as irresponsible leaches on society. This hatred has become a cancer in our culture, poisoning us from the inside, making students like the ones in this classroom, who should be keenly concerned about our nation's food policy, content to see it fail, rather than reformed, and to see more people go hungry. By fixating on the notion that a fellow human in need is threatening to their well-being, these students are playing an active role in promoting the very social inequality that impairs their own futures. As social epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have shown, no matter which side of the balance we fall on, whether rich or poor, the more inequality there is in our culture, the greater our rates of anxiety, depression, and countless other social problems from crime to illness — for everyone. *

…Which leads me to the final, and most important, educational opportunity…

The meaning of compassion: From the dictionary: A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another's suffering or misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the pain or remove its cause.In truth, I suspect that the venom that came forth from these young people's mouths wasn't truly their own. They probably learned it from someone else. Most of them were too young to have come by such opinions honestly. And I can only assume that the source of such venom came from people in their lives who are truly fearful, who worry that the resources they need to survive will be commandeered for someone else's benefit.

We are living in times when the worry about resources, be they financial or ecological, are very real. And the Farm Bill, for all its inconsistencies and controversies, represents our nation's policies on these fears. As we seek to create a workable Farm Bill and a workable life, we cannot forget that the uncertainty of our neighbors will affect our own well-being. If we are going to be truly resilient, then we must be compassionate about the suffering of those who are around us, and we must seek ways, both through policy and through our daily individual actions, that will help to rectify this suffering. That is simply part of being a community. And if we lose that, then we agree to a life of depredation for all, and happiness for none, where only a few will survive, and no one truly thrives. But if we can embrace compassion, then it becomes the foundation for true community resilience; where being a caring citizen and neighbor fuel a way of life where everyone has good, clean healthy food; where they come by it honestly; and where young agricultural students are able to plan a future where they can produce it freely and joyfully.

 

*For those of you interested in learning more about how inequality contributes to widespread social problems across the classes, I recommend Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson’s book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, Bloomsbury Press (2011).

 

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A Celebration of the Casserole

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Shannon

The  following excerpt is taken from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously.

When I was in graduate school, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview school food service directors from around New York State. My most memorable conversation was with 70 year old Rosie, one of my own favorite lunch ladies who I’d seen daily during my years as a student at Cobleskill Central School. Rosie’s institutional memory was long. She’d learned to cook in the 1930s and ‘40s, and she recounted the lunches she prepared for students during the 1940s and ‘50s, made from whatever ingredients the local farmers had brought by the cafeteria that week. “We cooked from scratch from what we got,” she explained, “soups, stews, casseroles,” and with that, she stopped abruptly. “Kids, today, they don’t even know what a casserole is.”

A budding home cook at the time, I dared not admit to my own ignorance. I knew nothing about casseroles, except that they were something thrown together with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, as described in countless jokes about Midwestern church ladies. But Rosie was right: the casserole, once a cornerstone in American cookery, was slowly being forgotten.

We take the name casserole from the French word used to describe the style of baking dish the meal requires, but casseroles can be found in cuisines throughout the world, including Moroccan tagines, Osso Bucco, Thai curries, coq au vin, and chili con carne. Many casseroles were traditionally poverty food, which explains why they became so popular in the United States during the Great Depression. They were a way, according to The American Woman’s Cookbook“to use leftovers in attractive, palatable combinations, to cook tough meats tender, and to prepare vegetables in an almost unlimited variety of ways.”

The introduction of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Condensed Soup in 1934 coincided with the casserole’s rise in the 1950’s, the Golden Era of consumption. Casserole recipes featuring condensed canned soup (essentially a rue base) became instrumental in a movement to free housewives from the perceived drudgery of the kitchen, and to help clear the runway for our modern industrialized food system.

Once our multinational food corporations came up with even more industrialized and processed food products, the lowly casserole lost her cultural foothold. But I think she deserves a comeback.

To have a truly sustainable cuisine, we must do more than learn to properly cook a pork roast, grill a grassfed steak or find a recipe for kohlrabi and rutabagas. We need to learn to be less wasteful with our food, to be thrifty and resourceful, and to make use of every ounce of nutrition our local bounty offers. And here is where the humble casserole shows her truest glory. Casseroles extend servings of our grassfed meats, they make use of whatever vegetables we might have from our local farmers, and best of all, they incorporate meat and vegetable into a sauce made highly nutritious with mineral-rich, digestible and delicious homemade stock.

Adelle Davis simplifies the process for turning any remaining fridge forage into a feast with this most essential culinary caveat:

“Casserole dishes must depend upon the ingredients you have on hand.” That said, the remaining steps to assembling a casserole are very simple.

Prepare any cream sauce, brown sauce (gravy) or tomato sauce (preferably using bone broth as the base)
2. Add vegetables and leftover meat and a starch (optional)brbr
3. Top with crumbs (or nuts) and/or cheese and/or mashed potatoesbrbr
4. Bake

ppBelow are two recipes for simple casseroles. Remember Adelle Davis’ principles as you approach them, for nearly every ingredient can be substituted with something else. The leftover chicken could be leftover turkey, the beef could be lamb or pork. The vegetables can be what you have on hand, the cheddar can be substituted with parmesan and vice versa (or with something else entirely….or left out all together), perhaps add some bacon or olives if you have them on hand. Work with what you have. What I have written is just a suggestion – a little something to make Rosie proud.

Sources:

Berolzheimer, Ruth. (1944). The American Woman’s Cookbook. The Blakiston Co. Philadelphia.

Davis, Adelle. (1947). Let’s Cook it Right. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. New York.

Shepherd’s Pie

This recipe is taken from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously.

This one is a favorite in our house. It is simple, comforting, nourishing, flavorful, and we all clamor for the leftovers.

Serves 6

For the mashed-potato topping:

2 pounds coarsely chopped potatoes

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

½ cup whole milk or cream

1 clove garlic, minced

½ teaspoon coarse salt

½ teaspoon ground pepper

For the filling:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, lard, or olive oil, plus more, if needed

2 medium onions, diced

4 medium carrots, diced

2 cups green beans, coarsely chopped

1 cup corn (or peas, or a combination of both)

2 pounds ground beef

1½ teaspoons coarse salt, plus more to taste

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, plus more to taste

1/3 cup all-purpose flour (or 3 tablespoons arrowroot whisked into 3 tablespoons ice water)

1 quart meat broth

4 ounces freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Put the potatoes in a pot of water to cover and bring to a boil. Cook until tender and drain off all the water. Alternatively, put the potatoes in a pressure cooker with 8 ounces of water and cook for 7 minutes at 15 psi. Allow the pressure to subside using the natural release method, following the manufacturer’s directions. Strain off the water.

Put the potatoes in a large bowl. Add the butter, milk, garlic, salt, pepper, and smash thoroughly, until smooth. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350º F.

Place a large ovenproof casserole over medium heat, Add the butter and onions, carrots, green beans and any other vegetables you choose. Sauté until the onions are clear and the vegetables crisp-tender, about 7 minutes. Remove all to a separate bowl.

Crumble the ground beef and add to the casserole, season with the salt and pepper (add more fat to the pot if needed), and sauté until browned. Sprinkle in the flour, and slowly stir in the broth. (If using arrowroot and water, add it now.)Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring often, and then reduce it to a simmer and cook until thickened. Return the vegetables to the casserole, stir well, and taste for salt and pepper.

Remove the casserole from the heat. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top, sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese and bake until the surface of the potato topping is lightly browned, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Chicken (or turkey) Divan

This recipe is taken from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously.

This dish was always one of my personal “comfort foods.” I remember my mom preparing it for us when we were kids. It was a one-dish dinner, so we were able to balance our bowls in our laps and sit beside the woodstove while we ate. Unlike typical Divan recipes, there is not a can of cream of mushroom soup anywhere to be found!

Serves 6

1 pound lightly steamed broccoli, asparagus or green beans

2-3 cups diced cooked leftover chicken or turkey

1 cup shredded cheddar, Parmesan, or Gruyere, or a combination

6 tablespoons butter

6 tablespoons almond flour (or another flour of your choosing)

2 cups meat broth

2 teaspoons lemon juice

½ cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sherry

Coarse salt and ground black pepper, to taste

2 eggs

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

½ cup coarsely ground walnuts (or breadcrumbs)

1 tablespoon dried parsley

Preheat oven to 350° F. Lightly grease a 9-by-13-inch baking dish and arrange the vegetables on the bottom. Top with the chicken and then the cheese.

Melt 4 tablespoons butter in a medium saucepan. Whisk in the flour, and cook, whisking constantly, until it browns, about 1 minute. Slowly whisk in the broth, followed by the lemon juice. Simmer 10 minutes and stir in the cream and sherry. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Break the eggs into a bowl, add the mustard, and beat until smooth. Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle 1 cup of the hot sauce into the eggs to temper them. Add them to the remaining sauce, mix well, and pour it over the chicken and vegetables.

Heat the remaining butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the ground walnuts and parsley, then sprinkle over the top of the casserole. Bake until heated through and the nuts are lightly browned, about 30 minutes.

Shannon Hayes works with her family raising grassfed meats in Upstate New York. She is the author of four books, including The Grassfed Gourmet, The Farmer and the Grill, Radical Homemakers.  Her latest book is Long Way on Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously.

 

Sources:

Berolzheimer, Ruth. (1944). The American Woman’s Cookbook. The Blakiston Co. Philadelphia.

Davis, Adelle. (1947). Let’s Cook it Right. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. New York.

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Health Lessons from a Local Diet

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Shannon


For nearly 20 years now, I’ve been fully immersed in the local food movement, investigating and promoting the ways that it helps to heal the earth, build community resilience, improve local relationships, enable healthier partnerships between humans and livestock, and improve our well-being.

That last attribute has been an interesting sticking point for our family over the past few years. Essentially, since I am nearing 40, I grew up in the local food movement. If it is supposed to promote good health, how is it that the members of my family still developed illnesses that were exacerbated by food intolerances…even though the foods we were eating were local, raw, sprouted, free of GMOs, and the like?

I will admit that, back about 10 years ago, in the height of my hubris surrounding local and sustainable foods, I didn’t really consider that illness could afflict me or my family, so long as we held the moral high ground with our diet. After all, we had the necessary nutrients, the rights enzymes, and none of the toxic poisons.

But life didn’t unfold that way. Each of us still developed our afflictions, from wandering eyes, to cavities, to type I diabetes, to neurological and digestive issues. We’re all happy and active and loving our lives, in spite of our personal travails. And along our healing journey, we’ve figured out that not all local foods agree with our bodies. That doesn’t, in my opinion, suggest that all local foods that don’t happen to sit particularly well with my family should be eliminated from everyone’s diet. Nor does it mean that we can’t satisfy our nutritional needs locally. There’s still plenty around here to eat. It just means we need to exercise care, and pay attention to what we eat and how our bodies respond.

This has been a powerful lesson for me with my work. It has helped me to develop compassion for all the other well-meaning souls who are trying to find their ways on the sustainable path while heeding their own dietary restrictions. In spite of this, I received a sharp letter from a reader last week, expressing anger that I should publicly admit that certain sainted local foods don’t agree with me. Apparently, as local food advocates, my family is supposed to be secretive about our afflictions. We’re supposed to let people believe that our health is perfect. By carrying on that image, if my readers or customers suffer illness, they should believe that the problem must be with them…perhaps they have made grave nutritional errors. Perhaps it was something their mothers did wrong while raising them. By carrying on this rouse, I would be teaching “As long as you adhere to a perfect local diet, then nothing should ever go wrong for you or your children.” Balderdash.

We are more than our food. We are mind and spirit, as well as body. When anything in the body-mind-spirit trinity is out of balance, illness can begin, no matter what you eat. And illness is one of our great teachers.. Addressing it requires attention to all three parts of this trinity, and it can result in deep joy, tremendous learning, powerful spiritual growth, and profound healing…even if we never technically shed the illness. I am like everyone else, learning my lessons, and constantly attending to my own balance in order to achieve my highest purpose. And like everyone else, my balance gets disrupted on my journey. That’s part of the adventure of life. As a writer and local food advocate, I’d feel dishonest if I attempted to hide these experiences.

As each of us learns to balance our body, mind and spirit, not all of us can eat dairy, even if it is raw, even if it is full-fat, even if it is organic, even if it is local. Not all of us can feast on every vegetable and fruit, even if they are heirloom varieties from open-pollinated seeds. Not all of us can live free of animal products, even if the vegetables are biodynamic, even if the tofu is local and properly fermented. Not all of us can eat grains, even if they are whole grains, even if they are sprouted, even if they are not genetically modified, even if they were grown next door. Not all of us can tolerate meat, even if it is grass fed, even if the farmer who sold it to us is a saint. All of these are good foods. All of these will play an important part in sustainable, locally-based food systems. But they don’t all work for everybody at all times.

As the local food movement expands, we must learn to exercise compassion as each of us works to balance the body, mind and spirit. We need to deepen our understanding of illness and well-being, and accept that self-recrimination and blame are simply not conducive to the healing process. If the local food movement matures successfully, there will be ample diversity in the dietary options, enabling all of us to have our constantly shifting nutritional needs met as life brings her many lessons to each of our imperfect souls.

Shannon Hayes works with her family raising grassfed meat on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York. She is the author of The Grassfed Gourmet, Farmer and the Grill, Radial Homemakers, and most recently, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. This article appeared on Grassfed Cooking.com.

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March 2013 Newsletter

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Shannon

Dear Friends;

Many of us who keep chickens have noticed a sudden surge in production over the past weeks, and we look forward to the Easter holiday as an opportunity to catch up with the bountiful inventory. In light of this, today’s story tackles two popular Easter myths that need de-bunking: first, that fresh local eggs will not peel properly when boiled; and second, that brown eggs won’t take Easter egg dyes. While putting together Long Way on a Little, I conducted a number of experiments to prove or disprove these myths, and I think you will be happy with the findings! You can find a link to the full story here, or you can read the text-only version below.

In other news, I have been continuing my experiments with the world of E-books, and I am excited to announce that E-books can now be purchased directly from me at either of my websites, GrassfedCooking.com, or ShannonHayes.info. Due to my agreements with major players in the book business, I’m not able to price-match if you find these ebooks someplace else for less (and yes, in certain cases, you can ). But I can offer you something better: the reminder that your direct purchase supports the little guy (or gal, in this case), that it helps me to keep my work independent, and that it gives me the financial flexibility to allow you access to these blog posts & essays, which you are permitted to copy and distribute off my websites (and with no advertising popping up in your face…isn’t that refreshing?). We have just finished formatting The Grassfed Gourmet as an ebook (scroll down the page if you click the preceeding link), and we are making it available at a special introductory price, for $9.99. You can buy it as a mobi file (for those of you who have Kindle devices), or as an epub file (for those of you who have ipads or other electronic readers). The transaction is quick, simple and secure. For those of you carrying mobile devices and e-readers to your farmers’ markets, this can be a convenient on-hand reference for making selections and advising customers. I hope you enjoy it!

I wish you a glorious Easter holiday, and a joyous spring.
Best wishes,
Shannon Hayes

Farm-Fresh Pasture-Raised Easter Eggs

By Shannon Hayes

Growing up on the farm, I always had mixed feelings about Easter. The chocolate was certainly great, and I truly enjoyed sitting around the table in my grandmother’s kitchen dyeing Easter eggs, and I looked forward to the egg hunt the next morning. But after that, it was all downhill, as I would stare at those loathsome cartons of store-bought hard-boiled eggs on the long ride home, dreading their appearance in my lunch and on the breakfast table for the next week.

My Grandmother was right about a lot of things, but the store-bought Easter egg was not one of them. Like many folks, she insisted on buying white eggs from the supermarket for Easter, in spite of the abundance of brown eggs our hens were showering us with as the light changed and the length of the days increased. She argued that the white eggs took the dye better, and since supermarket eggs weren’t fresh, they’d peel easier upon hard-boiling.

“Buy the yucky eggs because they’re not fresh” isn’t an especially tempting selling point for a celebratory food. Yet many people still agree with that notion today, and eschew farm-fresh pasture-raised eggs every Easter, in favor of the bleach white industrial orbs with those flavorless, insipid yolks.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. First of all, brown eggs take Easter egg dyes just as beautifully. The hue is slightly earthier, and the flecks and natural color variations among the farm eggs make the finished craft a glorious feast for the eyes. Our home experiments have revealed that both the commercial Easter eggs dyes and the natural dyes made with household ingredients such as red wine, cranberries, blueberries, turmeric, paprika or beets will both work with brown eggs (although many pasture farmers also sell naturally colored or pale eggs from different breeds of chickens). Bob and I occasionally make a few pysanky eggs with the girls as well (those elaborately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs), and we’ve come to prefer the rich tones of the brown eggs for these in-depth projects.

When it comes to eating Easter eggs, it is true that slightly older eggs will peel easier than eggs that are fresh from the chicken, but that can mean your eggs need not be more than a week old, as opposed to several weeks or even months old (which is what you’ll find in the grocery store). In a pinch, I’ve even successfully boiled fresh eggs. The trick is to know how to boil a fresh pasture-raised egg properly, so that it will peel without falling apart and taste delicious, bursting with the flavor of a bright-yellow, creamy yolk, surrounded by a soft and yielding egg white. I spent a lot of time working with my food editor, southern food guru Damon Lee Fowler, experimenting with farm fresh eggs when I wrote Long Way on a Little, and here is the method that we found works best:

 

  1. Cover your eggs with one inch of water, put the lid on the pot, and bring to a full boil, then lower the heat and simmer for one minute.
  2. Turn off the heat and allow the eggs to rest for 8-10 minutes for gas and induction cooktops, and 4-5 minutes for electric cooktops.
  3. Drain off the water, then crack each egg and hold it under cold running water. Put them in a bowl of cold water for five minutes, then drain them off and refrigerate them for 12-24 hours before peeling. This added chill time makes all the difference when peeling your eggs the next day.

So go forth happily into this year’s Easter holidays. Celebrate joyously with your family, taking the time to savor delicious, fresh, pasture-raised eggs from your local farmer. And for those of you who’d like to make something truly tasty with the leftover boiled eggs, here’s my favorite recipe for devilled eggs, which always draws forth a bounty of complements. The secret? Homemade mayonnaise, made from our fresh, pasture-raised eggs, of course!

 

Deviled Eggs

(This recipe is taken from Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, by Shannon Hayes).

 

2 dozen hard-boiled eggs

1 batch mayonnaise (see recipe below)

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Smoked paprika, for garnish

Remove the yolks from the whites. Set the whites on a platter, cut-side up, and add the yolks to a bowl. Mash the yolks thoroughly with a fork. Add the mayonnaise and mustard and mix well. Spoon this back into the cavities of the egg whites, sprinkle with smoked paprika, and chill 1-2 hours before serving.

 

Mayonnaise

(This recipe is taken from Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, by Shannon Hayes).

Makes 1 cup

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon mustard

1 teaspoon fine salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 cup olive oil

Place the egg yolk in a shallow bowl and whisk until it lightens to a lovely lemon yellow. Whisk in the mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar and lemon juice.

And now for the magical part: You must drizzle the oil into the egg mixture extremely slowly, whisking it all the while. To be exact on just how slow, set a timer for four minutes. During that 4-minute period, you should whisk in no more than ¼ cup of the oil. After that initial period, you can drizzle in the remaining ¾ cup a bit faster (about two or three times that initial rate), whisking steadily the entire time. Use immediately or store covered in the refrigerator for up to two days.

 

Have some savvy about farm-fresh eggs? Feel free to drop me a line and share your wisdom at feedback@shannonhayes.info.

Shannon Hayes works with her family raising grassfed livestock on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York. She is the author of Long Way on a Little, An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously; Radical Homemakers, The Grassfed Gourmet and The Farmer and the Grill. She is the host of GrassfedCooking.com, and blogs daily at ShannonHayes.info.

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Farm-Fresh, Pasture-Raised Easter Eggs

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Shannon

By Shannon Hayes

Growing up on the farm, I always had mixed feelings about Easter.  The chocolate was certainly great, and I truly enjoyed sitting around the table in my grandmother’s kitchen dyeing Easter eggs, and I looked forward to the egg hunt the next morning.  But after that, it was all downhill, as I would stare at those loathsome cartons of store-bought hard-boiled eggs on the long ride home, dreading their appearance in my lunch and on the breakfast table for the next week.

My Grandmother was right about a lot of things, but the store-bought Easter egg was not one of them.  Like many folks, she insisted on buying white eggs from the supermarket for Easter, in spite of the abundance of brown eggs our hens were showering us with as the light changed and the length of the days increased.  She argued that the white eggs took the dye better, and since supermarket eggs weren’t fresh, they’d peel easier upon hard-boiling.

“Buy the yucky eggs because they’re not fresh” isn’t an especially tempting selling point for a celebratory food.  Yet many people still agree with that notion today, and eschew farm-fresh pasture-raised eggs every Easter, in favor of the bleach white industrial orbs with those flavorless, insipid yolks.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.   First of all, brown eggs take Easter egg dyes just as beautifully.  The hue is slightly earthier, and the flecks and natural color variations among the farm eggs make the finished craft a glorious feast for the eyes.  Our home experiments have revealed that both the commercial Easter eggs dyes and the natural dyes made with household ingredients such as red wine, cranberries, blueberries, turmeric, paprika or beets will both work with brown eggs (although many pasture farmers also sell naturally colored or pale eggs from different breeds of chickens).  Bob and I occasionally make a few pysanky eggs with the girls as well (those elaborately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs), and we’ve come to prefer the rich tones of the brown eggs for these in-depth projects.

When it comes to eating Easter eggs, it is true that slightly older eggs will peel easier than eggs that are fresh from the chicken, but that can mean your eggs need not be more than a week old, as opposed to several weeks or even months old (which is what you’ll find in the grocery store).  In a pinch, I’ve even successfully boiled fresh eggs.  The trick is to know how to boil a fresh pasture-raised egg properly, so that it will peel without falling apart and taste delicious, bursting with the flavor of a bright-yellow, creamy yolk, surrounded by a soft and yielding egg white.  I spent a lot of time working with my food editor, southern food guru Damon Lee Fowler, experimenting with farm fresh eggs when I wrote Long Way on a Little, and here is the method that we found works best:

 

  1.  Cover your eggs with one inch of water, put the lid on the pot, and bring to a full boil, then lower the heat and simmer for one minute.
  2. Turn off the heat and allow the eggs to rest for 8-10 minutes for gas and induction cooktops, and 4-5 minutes for electric cooktops.
  3. Drain off the water, then crack each egg and hold it under cold running water.  Put them in a bowl of cold water for five minutes, then drain them off and refrigerate them for 12-24 hours before peeling.  This added chill time makes all the difference when peeling your eggs the next day.

So go forth happily into this year’s Easter holidays.  Celebrate joyously with your family, taking the time to savor delicious, fresh, pasture-raised eggs from your local farmer.  And for those of you who’d like to make something truly tasty with the leftover boiled eggs, here’s my favorite recipe for devilled eggs, which always draws forth a bounty of complements. The secret?  Homemade mayonnaise, made from our fresh, pasture-raised eggs, of course!

 

Deviled Eggs

(This recipe is taken from Long Way on a Little:  An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, by Shannon Hayes).

 

2 dozen hard-boiled eggs

1 batch mayonnaise (see recipe below)

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Smoked paprika, for garnish

Remove the yolks from the whites.  Set the whites on a platter, cut-side up, and add the yolks to a bowl.  Mash the yolks thoroughly with a fork.  Add the mayonnaise and mustard and mix well.  Spoon this back into the cavities of the egg whites, sprinkle with smoked paprika, and chill 1-2 hours before serving.

 

Mayonnaise

(This recipe is taken from Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, by Shannon Hayes).

Makes 1 cup

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon mustard

1 teaspoon fine salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 cup olive oil

Place the egg yolk in a shallow bowl and whisk until it lightens to a lovely lemon yellow.  Whisk in the mustard, salt, pepper, vinegar and lemon juice.

And now for the magical part:  You must drizzle the oil into the egg mixture extremely slowly, whisking it all the while.  To be exact on just how slow, set a timer for four minutes.  During that 4-minute period, you should whisk in no more than ¼ cup of the oil.  After that initial period, you can drizzle in the remaining ¾ cup a bit faster (about two or three times that initial rate), whisking steadily the entire time.  Use immediately or store covered in the refrigerator for up to two days.

 

Have some savvy about farm-fresh eggs?  Feel free to drop me a line and share your wisdom at feedback@shannonhayes.info.

 Shannon Hayes works with her family raising grassfed livestock on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York.  She is the author of Long Way on a Little, An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously; Radical Homemakers, The Grassfed Gourmet and The Farmer and the Grill.  She is the host of GrassfedCooking.com, and blogs daily at ShannonHayes.info.

Posted in Cooking Tips and Recipes | Leave a comment

Asking For Help

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Shannon

Bob and I acted as though it were completely natural when Sara and Raymond, friends of ours with a CSA about 30 minutes from here, wrote about a month ago and asked us if we’d assist them with a barn-raising at the beginning of March. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
Continue reading →

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February Newsletter

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Shannon

Dear Friends;

The temperature is a “balmy” 14 degrees as I write to you this morning, and I am rejoicing in the bounty of cold weather we’ve had this year, hoping it will kill off some of the ticks and fleas that plague the farm dogs!

I’m sending this month’s Grassfed Cooking Newsletter out early, because Feb 6 is the cut-off day for the full-day workshop I’ll be teaching at NOFA-VT on stretching your meat dollars. Based on the culinary premises outlined in Long Way on a Little, we’ll be starting at 9am with a cup of warming bone broth, then launching into a day where we learn about making everything from bone broth to head cheese, pate to chapstick, steak to stew. For those of you who can get to the Northeast for this event on February 15th, I strongly urge you to do so. For those of you who have to miss it, well, there’s always the book itself…

…And if you are thinking about getting a copy of Long Way on a Little for a loved one for Valentines’ Day, you can use coupon code LWL10 to get a $10 discount off your order (this coupon code will also work for bulk purchases, for those of you who need to stock your farm stores).

In the meantime, let’s move on to this month’s Grassfed Cooking Story, Farming Across the Generations. All of us who are working on the land are aware that the multi-generational part of farming is one of it’s greatest draws…when it works. And sadly, in these hard times, it doesn’t always go as we hope. This month’s piece explores the phenomenon, and talks about some of the things we’ve done at Sap Bush Hollow that have kept it a multi-generational farm. I’ve pasted the full story below, or you can read it online .

I hope you are all enjoying a cold, restful winter that restores your pastures, nourishes your souls, and offers hours of fun with your loved ones.

Best wishes,
Shannon Hayes

FARMING ACROSS THE GENERATIONS
by Shannon Hayes

If there’s a romantic image that tugs at our heart strings as much as the thought of homegrown tomatoes, it’s the multi-generational family farm. In a culture that has spurned the union of the generations — that frowns upon the thirty-something living in his parents’ basement, mocks the new family who moves in with Grandma, offers condolence to the empty nesters who take in an aging parent, builds television sitcoms about the interpersonal conflicts between married couples and the in-laws, and peddles financial products to discourage elders from ever being a “burden,” the family farm has been America’s great exception to the now-expected independent nuclear unit. Farms proudly advertise the number of generations who have lived on the same land; signs are hung on the side of barns to commemorate the 100th continuous year of business within the same family; awards are handed out, stories written, legends passed down within rural communities celebrating the differences from father to son, mother to daughter.

And in an era when the rest of the country is discovering that breaking ourselves into nuclear units is coming at an ecological, financial and emotional cost, the multi-generational family farm feels like the last cultural example we can turn to as a reminder of what might make for a viable future, whether the multiple generations are in the city, the suburbs, or on the land.

But this week I heard three painful stories about the tensions among the agrarian generations. One young family, indebted over $500,000 in an effort to take over the family farm, is being crippled from making sustainable changes on the land by both excessive financial burdens, and a lack of physical and emotional support from the older generation. Another family with children, who’d invested several years in building an organic enterprise on the family farm and buying out the parents, is finally abandoning their dreams and is trying to find land elsewhere, because the intergenerational conflicts were insurmountable. And a third couple, who moved back to take over the family farm a few years ago, has just moved out again, their efforts at reviving the land having met too much resistance. Their marriage is on the cusp of breaking up, too.

I know my generation can be a nuisance. We want everything instantly. We grew up with little to no training in financial literacy. We learned that controlling expenses wasn’t as critical as earning a big paycheck. And when the big paycheck never showed up, we were sold a bill of goods that we could afford more debt than was realistic. At the same time, we’re questioning how hard we want to work. We don’t ubiquitously buy into the idea that logging 80-100 hours of labor in a week is the best way to take care of family. And to add to matters, we’re expressing a lot of annoyance at the detritus bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents: depleting fossil fuel reserves, excess carbon in the atmosphere, polluted water, environmental toxins, lost topsoil, nutrient-deficient foods, and the chronic illnesses that ensue from these things.

At the same time, the older generations have their burdens, too. The 401Ks that seemed so cushy a few years back aren’t quite so robust. The vision of “golden years” spent golfing and playing tennis in sunny Florida have been replaced by fears over medical expenses and the humiliating prospect of lost independence. It’s hard to be generous with grown children when you feel insecure yourself. ….Especially when those kids enter the scene with crazy ideas about changing how the farm is managed, questioning the lifetime decisions of the elders; or they contrive new-fangled business plans for ventures that seem risky.

I moved back to my family’s farm in 1996, at the age of 22. While I spent a few years in graduate school, I came home every weekend and summer, and have been an active part of the business since that time. In the 17 years I’ve been involved with Sap Bush Hollow, I fell in love with a man, convinced him to move here to start a life together, began a family, and bit by bit have grown more deeply into the family business. Bob and I realized early on that my parents were too young and vibrant for us to simply “step in and take over,” and our different skill sets and personalities have required that we find unusual ways to blend with the family business. Some of our livelihood from the farm comes from actual labor, some of it comes from our own entrepreneurial ventures. We don’t live in the same house as my parents, which has its benefits and drawbacks.

It isn’t all butterflies and rainbows here, that’s for certain. We have arguments, we storm off, hang up on each other and occasionally sit down and have some good cries. But after nearly 20 years, we’re still here, still working together on this business; still in agreement that this family farm offers the best possible life for all of us. Along the way, there’ve been a few lessons and practices that have really made a big difference in the viability of our intergenerational cooperation:

1. The stated goal of the business. Posted on the wall of the farm office is a piece of paper, typed up maybe 25 years ago. Mom and Dad wrote it to express their goals and dreams. And the number one goal at the top of the page reads: We want to create a business that one or both of our children would want to run. It’s not saying that the kids have to take it over. It’s just saying that the quality of the venture needs to reflect the needs and desires of the next generation. Thus, every decision they make on that farm gets tested against this top goal. As the next generation, I have a sense of security that my thoughts and ideas matter, that Bob’s and my quality of life is critical to the success of Sap Bush Hollow.

2. No one “owns” the land. I remember the day a neighboring farmer drove into the barnyard to talk to Mom and Dad about the financial potential of signing a lease to allow hydro-fracking on our land. Dad shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t help him. “It’s not my land,” he said.
“Isn’t your name on the deed?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He pointed to Saoirse and Ula, then about 5 and 2, who were tumbling across the front field. “It’s not mine. It’s theirs.”
And that’s the tone around here. None of us owns it. It is forever owned by the next generation. Whoever has their name on the deed is a temporary steward. Thus, while Mom and Dad are counting on the farm to sustain them as part of their retirement, the land is not a source of retirement income. It is a resource for each successive generation. When Mom and Dad made a choice to buy a farm, they weren’t buying a retirement asset. They were securing a resource for the family and its subsequent generations.
For Bob and me, this means we’ll never “own” the land, either. We derive benefit from the resources it offers, and it is our job to bridge to the next generation, and to help make sure Mom and Dad will be able to be comfortable in their retirement, without having to sell that land.

3. Avoid debt. Keeping the farm in the family is a lot easier when the bank doesn’t have a lien on the property. At Sap Bush Hollow, we’ve been masters at diversifying our income with small ventures that are not capital-intensive, which keeps us in control of the money and out of debt. And all of us are pretty skilled at living on the cheap. One of the many benefits is that there is a lot less stress between the generations. Interestingly, since thrift and frugality is a defining quality of our family culture, we find it easy to be generous and trusting with each other. No one worries about someone else wasting money.

4. The most important “product” is the next generation. There is an agreement across the family that Saoirse and Ula are number one. This means that homeschool is not squeezed into the interstices between loading cattle and chasing pigs. The teaching space and time is sacred. Family meals are of paramount importance. Adequate rest to allow for a calm, happy family life is critical. And their safety matters above all else. As the parents, this makes Bob’s and my job a lot easier. We don’t feel as though our fidelity to the family business is questioned when we need to honor our commitments to our children. The person who leaves farm work to prepare the daily meal, teach the kids, or maintain the home is as valuable as the one making hay.

We didn’t start out in our family venture knowing all these rules for success. Over the years, we’ve grown into them, and a lot of the lessons were learned the hard way, through emotionally trying experience. I’d be a fool to suggest that these were the only keys to success, and I’d be even more of a fool to argue that, because of these attributes, our farm will be “sustainable.” No one ever really knows the answer to that question. All I can say is that, for 17 years, life has been good. So good, in fact, that I can say I am happy where I am, and that everyone in the Sap Bush Hollow family seems to share the daily intentions to continue the quality of life we have.

Certainly, these words cannot salve the pain of those three farm families I mentioned earlier. What’s done is done. We’ve entered an era that asks us to un-learn the last 60 years of cultural conditioning, and to reclaim wisdom from generations that are nearly gone. It isn’t easy, and our lessons are hard-won. But hopefully we will hold onto the re-discovered wisdom this time, pass it along to our children, and enable each successive generation to grow up comfortable walking sustainably on this earth.

Posted in Newsletter | Leave a comment

Farming Across the Generations

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Shannon

If there’s a romantic image that tugs at our heart strings as much as the thought of homegrown tomatoes, it’s the multi-generational family farm. In a culture that has spurned the union of the generations — that frowns upon the thirty-something living in his parents’ basement, mocks the new family who moves in with Grandma, offers condolence to the empty nesters who take in an aging parent, builds television sitcoms about the interpersonal conflicts between married couples and the in-laws, and peddles financial products to discourage elders from ever being a “burden,” the family farm has been America’s great exception to the now-expected independent nuclear unit. Farms proudly advertise the number of generations who have lived on the same land; signs are hung on the side of barns to commemorate the 100th continuous year of business within the same family; awards are handed out, stories written, legends passed down within rural communities celebrating the differences from father to son, mother to daughter.

And in an era when the rest of the country is discovering that breaking ourselves into nuclear units is coming at an ecological, financial and emotional cost, the multi-generational family farm feels like the last cultural example we can turn to as a reminder of what might make for a viable future, whether the multiple generations are in the city, the suburbs, or on the land.

But this week I heard three painful stories about the tensions among the agrarian generations. One young family, indebted over $500,000 in an effort to take over the family farm, is being crippled from making sustainable changes on the land by both excessive financial burdens, and a lack of physical and emotional support from the older generation. Another family with children, who’d invested several years in building an organic enterprise on the family farm and buying out the parents, is finally abandoning their dreams and is trying to find land elsewhere, because the intergenerational conflicts were insurmountable. And a third couple, who moved back to take over the family farm a few years ago, has just moved out again, their efforts at reviving the land having met too much resistance. Their marriage is on the cusp of breaking up, too.

I know my generation can be a nuisance. We want everything instantly. We grew up with little to no training in financial literacy. We learned that controlling expenses wasn’t as critical as earning a big paycheck. And when the big paycheck never showed up, we were sold a bill of goods that we could afford more debt than was realistic. At the same time, we’re questioning how hard we want to work. We don’t ubiquitously buy into the idea that logging 80-100 hours of labor in a week is the best way to take care of family. And to add to matters, we’re expressing a lot of annoyance at the detritus bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents: depleting fossil fuel reserves, excess carbon in the atmosphere, polluted water, environmental toxins, lost topsoil, nutrient-deficient foods, and the chronic illnesses that ensue from these things.

At the same time, the older generations have their burdens, too. The 401Ks that seemed so cushy a few years back aren’t quite so robust. The vision of “golden years” spent golfing and playing tennis in sunny Florida have been replaced by fears over medical expenses and the humiliating prospect of lost independence. It’s hard to be generous with grown children when you feel insecure yourself. ….Especially when those kids enter the scene with crazy ideas about changing how the farm is managed, questioning the lifetime decisions of the elders; or they contrive new-fangled business plans for ventures that seem risky.

I moved back to my family’s farm in 1996, at the age of 22. While I spent a few years in graduate school, I came home every weekend and summer, and have been an active part of the business since that time. In the 17 years I’ve been involved with Sap Bush Hollow, I fell in love with a man, convinced him to move here to start a life together, began a family, and bit by bit have grown more deeply into the family business. Bob and I realized early on that my parents were too young and vibrant for us to simply “step in and take over,” and our different skill sets and personalities have required that we find unusual ways to blend with the family business. Some of our livelihood from the farm comes from actual labor, some of it comes from our own entrepreneurial ventures. We don’t live in the same house as my parents, which has its benefits and drawbacks.

It isn’t all butterflies and rainbows here, that’s for certain. We have arguments, we storm off, hang up on each other and occasionally sit down and have some good cries. But after nearly 20 years, we’re still here, still working together on this business; still in agreement that this family farm offers the best possible life for all of us. Along the way, there’ve been a few lessons and practices that have really made a big difference in the viability of our intergenerational cooperation:

1. The stated goal of the business. Posted on the wall of the farm office is a piece of paper, typed up maybe 25 years ago. Mom and Dad wrote it to express their goals and dreams. And the number one goal at the top of the page reads: We want to create a business that one or both of our children would want to run. It’s not saying that the kids have to take it over. It’s just saying that the quality of the venture needs to reflect the needs and desires of the next generation. Thus, every decision they make on that farm gets tested against this top goal. As the next generation, I have a sense of security that my thoughts and ideas matter, that Bob’s and my quality of life is critical to the success of Sap Bush Hollow.

2. No one “owns” the land. I remember the day a neighboring farmer drove into the barnyard to talk to Mom and Dad about the financial potential of signing a lease to allow hydro-fracking on our land. Dad shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t help him. “It’s not my land,” he said.
“Isn’t your name on the deed?”
“Doesn’t matter.” He pointed to Saoirse and Ula, then about 5 and 2, who were tumbling across the front field. “It’s not mine. It’s theirs.”
And that’s the tone around here. None of us owns it. It is forever owned by the next generation. Whoever has their name on the deed is a temporary steward. Thus, while Mom and Dad are counting on the farm to sustain them as part of their retirement, the land is not a source of retirement income. It is a resource for each successive generation. When Mom and Dad made a choice to buy a farm, they weren’t buying a retirement asset. They were securing a resource for the family and its subsequent generations.
For Bob and me, this means we’ll never “own” the land, either. We derive benefit from the resources it offers, and it is our job to bridge to the next generation, and to help make sure Mom and Dad will be able to be comfortable in their retirement, without having to sell that land.

3. Avoid debt. Keeping the farm in the family is a lot easier when the bank doesn’t have a lien on the property. At Sap Bush Hollow, we’ve been masters at diversifying our income with small ventures that are not capital-intensive, which keeps us in control of the money and out of debt. And all of us are pretty skilled at living on the cheap. One of the many benefits is that there is a lot less stress between the generations. Interestingly, since thrift and frugality is a defining quality of our family culture, we find it easy to be generous and trusting with each other. No one worries about someone else wasting money.

4. The most important “product” is the next generation. There is an agreement across the family that Saoirse and Ula are number one. This means that homeschool is not squeezed into the interstices between loading cattle and chasing pigs. The teaching space and time is sacred. Family meals are of paramount importance. Adequate rest to allow for a calm, happy family life is critical. And their safety matters above all else. As the parents, this makes Bob’s and my job a lot easier. We don’t feel as though our fidelity to the family business is questioned when we need to honor our commitments to our children. The person who leaves farm work to prepare the daily meal, teach the kids, or maintain the home is as valuable as the one making hay.

We didn’t start out in our family venture knowing all these rules for success. Over the years, we’ve grown into them, and a lot of the lessons were learned the hard way, through emotionally trying experience. I’d be a fool to suggest that these were the only keys to success, and I’d be even more of a fool to argue that, because of these attributes, our farm will be “sustainable.” No one ever really knows the answer to that question. All I can say is that, for 17 years, life has been good. So good, in fact, that I can say I am happy where I am, and that everyone in the Sap Bush Hollow family seems to share the daily intentions to continue the quality of life we have.

Certainly, these words cannot salve the pain of those three farm families I mentioned earlier. What’s done is done. We’ve entered an era that asks us to un-learn the last 60 years of cultural conditioning, and to reclaim wisdom from generations that are nearly gone. It isn’t easy, and our lessons are hard-won. But hopefully we will hold onto the re-discovered wisdom this time, pass it along to our children, and enable each successive generation to grow up comfortable walking sustainably on this earth.

Posted in Commentaries and Essays | Leave a comment

January Newsletter

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Shannon

Dear Friends;

I’m delighted to be writing to you with lots and lots of snow outside my window, replenishing our ground water for the coming growing season, and giving me ample reason to stay indoors near my kitchen….which leads me to the topic of this month’s story, Getting Saucy: Stretching Your Meat Budget with Gravies and Reductions.  With the slow down in cash flow during the winter months, I find that increasing the richness of my dishes helps to stretch them farther. This month’s article will help you do just that in your own kitchen. The story appears in entirety below, or you can read it online here.

Meanwhile, I wanted to let you know about a few things of particular interest to graziers and grassfed enthusiasts:

Attention E-Book Lovers! I’m pleased to announce that, at last, we’ve gotten Long Way on a Little formatted as an e-book. It is BEAUTIFUL! The pictures come through wonderfully on both color and black and white devices. You can find it through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo websites. Hopefully it will soon also be loaded up to the iTunes store, as well. It is easily searchable, and is a great way to take an otherwise rather heavy book along with you for reading, or for using as a quick reference with your customers at the farmers’ market. My next project will be to get The Grassfed Gourmet formatted as an e-book…hopefully I’ll have more news on that in the coming weeks. And now for some other announcements…

On January 18th I’ll be spending the whole day at the Wisconsin GrassWorks Grazing Conference at the Patriot Center in Wausau, WI. In addition to delivering the morning keynote, I’ll be doing a program on value-adding with pastured and grassfed animal fats. We’ll be talking about history and lore, how to cook with them, how to render, and even how to make soaps, salves, lip balm and candles. If you can’t attend, all this information is available in Long Way on a Little, the new cookbook, but if you can attend, so much the better! And finally…

On February 15th, I’ll be at the NOFA, VT Winter Conference, where I’ll be delivering a full day workshop on nose-to-tail cooking. We’ll be doing everything from prepping broth and braising beef, to grilling steaks, learning how to render fat and make salves and soaps, even making head cheese and pate. Space is limited for this venue, and we are anticipating selling out, so I encourage anyone who is going to be in the area to contact the folks at NOFA-VT as soon as possible to learn more details. For those of you who cannot attend, the content is based on the new book (Long Way on a Little), so you could always read along!  For those of you who can make it, remember to dress for the weather (we’ll be going outside to grill NO MATTER WHAT), and bring your appetite!

Okay, that’s enough news for a snowy morning! I hope you are all warm and cozy, that plenty of rain and snow is falling on your fields, and that you are finding lots of time to rest and restore for the coming season.

Happy New Year!

Shannon Hayes

Getting Saucy: Stretching Your Meat Budget With Gravies and Reductions

By Shannon Hayes


I’m not sure where it all started. Maybe it was back during the Norman Conquest. But no matter how you look at, in spite of their relative cooperation and neighborliness since the Crimean war, the French and the English still have a major long- running dispute: the best way to dress a piece of meat. The French would ladle on a reduction. The English would smother it in gravy. Happily, here in North America, we’ve got the culinary benefit of the cultural melting pot (and saucepan), and we can enjoy both.

And right now, as we are all seeking ways to stretch our food dollars while keeping our families as sated and well-nourished as possible, learning the art of making a good gravy and a good reduction is well worth the effort. Gravies and reductions, as described here, are not made from expensive wines or canned store-bought meat broth. They aren’t even made from water (although it can certainly be done if you are in a jam). They are made from your pan drippings and a jar of homemade broth that you keep in your refrigerator.

In Long Way on a Little, I talk about the economic importance of broth and describe fully how to make your own, but for now, let’s consider the budgetary value of incorporating that broth into properly made gravies and reductions…

To stretch our food dollars as far and as sustainably as possible, we typically stuff ourselves with cheap high-carb foods from the grocery store. Instead, we should be making use of the meat and vegetables available to us locally, either in our own backyards or at our farmers’ markets. These foods are fresher, more nutritious and tasty, lower in carbohydrates, less demanding on our bodies’ digestive system, and they will fuel us most efficiently. However, these foods can also cost more; as such, it is imperative that they be used to their fullest nutritional capacity. If you discard the leaves and stalks of your broccoli and cauliflower and eat only the florets; crack your pasture-raised eggs into a pan and get rid of the shells; peel your local onions and then discard the skins; peel and trim carrots and toss the ends and peels into the compost; or if you nibble your pork chops but throw away the bones, roast your chicken then throw out the carcass, or trim and discard fat from steaks, you are, in essence, driving up the cost of your food.

All of that food waste can be saved up in a phenomenal nutritional bank account by simmering each week’s trim and scrap food into a batch of broth (learn how here). The broth captures all the vitamins and minerals these “wastes” have to offer, and saves them in a form of liquid gold that can enhance the nutrient density of your subsequent meals. It can be made into soup, drunk plain with breakfast, or it can be used as a reduction or made into gravy that maximizes the nutritional glory of your local, grassfed and pastured meats, while minimizing the portion size. Gravies and reductions use the pan drippings and incorporate them into a sauce (here, with the use of homemade broth). The result is more calories from healthful animal fats, rich with omega fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes from the broth, all blended into a tasty elixir that enhances the flavor of your meats and helps satiate your family with smaller portions.
Whether you prefer the French reduction or the English gravy, you’ll be able to satisfy more tummies with something truly tasty. I’ve provided below a recipe for each, but for now, let’s explore the differences.

Reduction: This French method for dressing up a piece of meat is accomplished by removing the meat, then placing the empty roasting pan over medium heat. Once the drippings are bubbling, they are blended with a liquid, typically either wine or broth (here we’ll use broth), then allowed to simmer uncovered until reduced in volume, typically by half. During this time, the liquids most prone to evaporation are pushed out of the sauce, leaving a super-concentrated liquor that is then thickened with a pat of butter. Reductions can be spooned over steaks, roasts, and chops of any kind. As MFK Fisher reminds us in How to Cook a Wolf, they can also be tossed with fresh greens, making for a hearty and more nourishing salad.

Gravy: The English response to the French reduction, the most noteworthy difference between gravy and a reduction is the use of flour to make a roux paste, resulting in a thicker, comparatively coarse sauce. The flavor is less intense than a reduction, but it is redolent of home-grown comfort food, and takes about half the time to prepare. If made with potato flour instead of wheat flour, the meaty flavors will not be quite as over-ridden with the “cereal” taste from wheat.

It is worth memorizing the simple steps for both sauces, as they can help turn any over-cooked piece of meat into something spectacular, they can stretch the number of nutrient-dense portions you can serve out, and they’re just plain yummy. And remember: once dinner is over, don’t throw the leftovers out! Leftover reductions and gravies can be re-warmed and spooned over re-heated meats, they can be the base for a soup (see Refrigerator Soup in Long Way on a Little), or they can simply be added to next week’s broth pot along with all your other food scraps.

Here are a few recipes to get you started, taken from Long Way on a Little:

Shallot Dijon Reduction
(works for any roast meat or poultry)

Fat and pan drippings from any cooked roast
2 tablespoons minced shallot
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 cups meat broth
4 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper, to taste

Set the roasting pan, containing the drippings, over direct medium heat. Heat the pan drippings until they are bubbling. Add the shallots and Dijon mustard. Continue cooking, stirring and scraping, until the shallots are clear and the browned bits from the pan are mixed into the paste with the mustard and pan juices. Add the broth and continue to simmer unitl the sauce is reduced by half. Add the butter, one tablespoon at a time, stirring well after each addition. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Drizzle the reduction over the meat and serve.
Pan Gravy for Roasted Meat and Poultry

Fat and pan juices from the roast, separated with a fat separator
2 tablespoons unsalted butter or lard
¼ cup flour (potato flour or all-purpose flour will work)
2 cups meat broth
Coarse salt and ground black pepper

Remove the roast to a warm platter, pouring the fat from the roasting juices back into the roasting pan. Add the butter or lard to the roasting pan and set it on the stove top over medium heat. Once it melts and bubbles, whisk in the flour to make a roux. Continue to whisk 1-2 minutes longer, until the paste has browned. Slowly whick in the pan juices and broth, and allow the mixture to come to a boil. Reduce the heat and allow the gravy to simmer for 5-10 minutes, until it thickens to your preferred consistency (remembering that it will thicken further on its own when it comes to the table). Stir often to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Season to taste with salt and pepper before serving.

Shannon Hayes is the host of grassfedcooking.com and is the author of four books, the most recent being Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York.

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