i miss combining

It is always at this time of year that my thoughts return to fall. There is a certain light, a smell, a feeling about fall that I have experienced almost my entire life. It is because the fall means combine time!

It is a stressful time, but an extremely satisfying time. It is a time full of hope and angst. Scratchy, itching collars. Swollen, bleeding knuckles. But soon after it is done I miss it greatly. After the excitement of Christmas my mind floats back to sun filled days of early October and the sounds and smells of harvest time. I am not quite sure why I look back more than I look forward. I guess I have just always appreciated harvest time more than any other time of year. It is simply my favorite.

alberta avenue farmers market

I was down at the market last night to check things out and to do a prisoner exchange with Avenue Homesteader...she had cash and I had flour. It was a perfect chance to see the market first hand. To see the vendors present and what kind of customers would come through the door. I have to say how impressed I was, especially at the customer base. It was a fairly steady stream of clients coming through the door and all of them had their recycled shopping bags with them, a sign of market pros. Everyone seemed to be leaving with their bags full and the vendors were busy. 

I was especially happy though to see The Queen of Tarts herself behind one of the tables. Linda, with her infectious smile, was happily plugging away at a consistent lineup at her table. Her breads were beautifully displayed and it was as if you were standing at the table of a market vendor somewhere in Europe. Gorgeous, dark Rye breads, crusty and light. Batons and Baguettes. 

The only thing better than looking at the table of royal breads was on the way home when I couldn't resist the smell any longer. The crunch of breaking open one of her Miches' and feeling the tender moist bread give way under my fingers. Then the taste. Pure bread Nirvana. If there is a place that good wheat goes when it dies, it is Queen of Tarts breads. I simply cannot wait for her bakery to open on 104th street.

more snow and flour deliveries

As I type it is snowing yet again. I do not know what the total accumulation has been so far this winter, but it is enough. Walking through the fields is nearly impossible and it is usual to sink up to my hips when I break through a crusted drift. The piles around the farm are over 6 feet tall from where the tractor has been pushing. The old snow blade is taking an absolute beating and has broken and bent several times and in several places. I need to spend an afternoon with the welder to get it back into shape.

The flour sales are going strong and we are getting calls daily...we thank all of you who are ordering flour very much for your support. We are still going through some growing pains for the delivery of the products. We recognize that we want to make it as easy as possible for people to purchase from us, but it is difficult to make special trips for one little bag of flour. We are working on a few solutions including a regular weekly drop-off spot in St. Albert. Of course for those of you who order larger amounts of around 60 pounds or more it is worthwhile for us to deliver in a more timely basis somewhere closer to home. 

Just please bear with us and we will establish a pattern for our customers that everyone can live with. We are in Stony Plain monthly at a minimum and St. Albert 3 times a week at a minimum. We are also in East Edmonton each Tuesday. We are in South Edmonton once a month. Of course, like I said earlier, if you have a larger order we can make special trips and include other farm business in our travels. 

Please make your order as early as possible to allow us the time to mill your flour and package and then have time to deliver it to your most convenient pick up spot. 

grain products available now!

For the first time we are offering home delivery and/or mail order grain products. Check out our Grain Products page for the details. The prices are basically retail, but include delivery within Edmonton on orders over 60lbs. Just get some friends and family together to order and it doesn't take much. Smaller orders can simply be mailed to you for the additional cost of postage or perhaps a meeting can occur in town when we are there on other business.

As I type this, there is a wonderful smell of fresh baked bread coming from the kitchen. Nothing bakes like freshly milled flour.

Cheers!

blizzard '11

This past weekend we had one heck of a blizzard. It was the kind of storm that I remember happening all the time as a kid, but not in the past decade at least have we had something like this. We got about 30-40 cm of snow in 2 days and a howling wind. The drifts out in the middle of our field are hip-high and the overall average of snow is about knee-high. Walking is very difficult.Our hay bales are stacked in the middle of the field where I was worried the tractor would not be able to make it. We have an IH 766 and I left the duals on for added traction and weight. Still though, I have been stuck more than once in the past couple of days trying to dig ourselves out.

The driveway of course was drifted over and I spent 8 hours in 3 days just plowing snow to be able to function around the farm. Luckily, I was able to get the tractor to the bales and push some snow around enough to have the traction to feed the cows. I was pretty tense trying to imagine what I would do if I couldn't get the tractor out there. I suppose that is the downside of round bales...I am completely dependent on the tractor to be able to feed cows. With small squares, it wouldn't matter the weather.

Shouldn't be driving in this, but I had to. Going slow.

Anyways, we are finally dug out and now the temps are falling hard. Lows around minus 30 degrees tonight and the next few nights. Cows don't seem to mind though. See my old post from last year. Minus 30 is just ok to them!

One note about the straw bale house is that it is SO COMFORTABLE! I mean I simply cannot get over how efficient it is. We have the Heat Recovery Ventilator running fairly constant to keep the moisture down and still the little woodstove easily keeps up with the interior temperature. This morning, I got the stove going from last night's coals and within 10 minutes the entire house was closing in on 20 degrees. I shut the dampers down on the stove and it will simmer away all day keeping things toasty. It looks like it will be sunny today too, so the passive solar heat will add up quickly in the concrete floors. By later this afternoon, around supper, it is my guess that we'll have to crack a window to cool things down a bit. This is what we've done quite a few days now until we get accustomed to how to properly control the heat.

rye pancakes

I am the self-proclaimed King of Pancakes. I mean I adore pancakes and I make them all the time. Now that we are living in a house and are together again I will go back to my tradition of making pancakes or crepes at least once per weekend and usually twice. Sometimes we even have pancakes for supper mid-week. Over the years, I have perfected pancake recipes and cooking methods so that I get perfect hotcakes every time...light and fluffy golden brown.

This past week we milled a batch of rye flour for a customer and I had a bunch left over so I decided to try making rye pancakes and rye crepes. They turned out tremendous! Cindy said that they were the best pancakes she had ever eaten. We have never made pancakes out of rye before and I have never heard of them up until now. So, I present to you, in their world premiere...the Rye Pancake!

They taste different from a regular wheat pancake...a little nutty flavoured perhaps. Definitely more of rich, grain taste. They are not dark or heavily textured as Rye Bread is, on the contrary they are very light and fragile. Fully cooked, theysimply melt on the tongue drenched in buttery sweetness. You can see in the photo

 that the batter has a light colour, with little flecks of darkness that is purely rye.

The rye grain does not contain the protein and gluten of a wheat so the rye pancake does not fluff up as much as the wheat will. Still though they were light and fluffy enough and the complete opposite of chewy. Simply delightful.





My recipe is simple but I do it with feel instead of measuring cups and it doesn't need to be precise anyway.

1 cup of flour
1 tsp of baking powder
1 egg (very important...keep the egg count low for pancakes)
1-2 cups milk
pinch of salt
2 tbsp of sugar

I mix the dry ingredients together and then add the wet. The final pancake product is determined by the thickness of your batter. A thicker batter will puff up and have a great degree of volume while the opposite is true of a thin batter. It should be thicker than runny crepe batter, but thinner than muffin batter. You can see in the picture what a perfect pancake batter looks like.

Cooking a thick pancake batter is a little trickier than thin. The heat should be medium to medium-high. Too high and the outside will burn and the inside will still be runny. Keeping the heat lower is better than too high. Take your time making pancakes. True gourmet pancakes take time, like all great food. I mean these are not common, ordinary griddle cakes!

Merry Christmas all over again!

Today is Christmas day all over again! The Ukrainian Christmas celebration began last night at the sighting of the first star in the evening sky. This represents the trek of the Wisemen. I think that in itself is such a wonderful tradition.

The Christmas feast then begins with 12 meatless dishes that represent the 12 disciples. The first dish is Kutia (Kutya), a sweet pudding made with boiled wheat berries, honey and poppy seeds. We sell quite a bit of wheat prior to the holiday season for this purpose. It is very tasty, but as with most dishes, there is good Kutia and there is bad Kutia. Here's a good article on the dish There are myriad variations for preparing Kutia so I think it is one of those dishes that falls under the category of "add whatever you like" similar to the old English puddings.

I guess its worth mentioning that this Christmas date is not limited to Ukrainian culture, but anyone who traditionally follows the old Julian Calendar. Greece was the last country to adopt the modern Gregorian Calendar in 1924. The Julian calendar continues to fall behind the Gregorian by a full day approximately every 100 years. on Monday, March 15, 2100 the Julian calendar will be exactly 2 weeks behind at March 1.

Merry Christmas!

we're moved in!

Yayyy...finally moved in and together as a family. And right before Christmas too. The place is a disaster because we moved in without the interior being finished. Cindy is busy now painting the closets so we can install some closet organizers and get stuff out of bags and off the floor. Everything works for the most part. We are still having some problems with the Rinnai hot water system. The vent/air intake pipe continues to freeze up at night and shuts down. It is a good thing that we are in a straw bale house. It is in the minus 20's lately and the house can go the entire day without the hot water heating the in-floor system and the house will only drop a few degrees without the wood stove going. With the wood stove, the house is just too hot. We bought a very small Vermont Castings stove and the salesman kept warning us that it would be too small for our 1300 square foot house...wrong! During the day though, the sun hits the black plastic vent pipe and melts the accumulated frost for the H2O heater...sometime during late afternoon I can turn the thermostat on and it will run long enough to heat the slab back up to room temp. I think the problem is that lately it has been unusually humid outside. It is minus 20 or worse and the humidity is still up around or over 80%! That is quite unusual for us...typically it is very dry during our winters.

It is good to know though that the Rinnai heater runs long enough to run a bath or use domestic hot water even when the vent is frosted. I haven't figured out a solution to the problem, but we'll investigate further once we get a little more settled. In the meantime it is completely livable.

straw bale house update

Here is what has occurred over the past couple weeks. The interior stucco final coat was applied. It did not turn out as we had hoped to be honest. We had always wanted a smooth final coat. When the stuccoer showed up he did not know how to apply a smooth final coat! We had not done our research...oh well. The colour turned out nice, but there is a rough finish that we will have to live with or fix one way or another. Delaying the stucco application was simply not an option that we wanted to entertain.

The next step in interior finishing also did not go as expected...bad week for things to go wrong. We wanted a polished concrete floor with stain. When the concrete guy showed up he informed us that the slab was too uneven for him to grind and polish. At least he did not have a concrete grinder that was big enough to do the job. Instead we simply applied a concrete stain to the existing slab and we will take our time figuring out exactly what we want to achieve with our floors. Tile? Move out and allow a company to come in and grind later? Options to consider this winter. The pictures show the floors that haven't been mopped or cleaned in any way. You are seeing water stains and drywall dust. They look pretty good actually.

The girl wanted a red floor so red is what she got! I like it. Now she wants purple walls...ok.

For the past two days the cabinet installers were on-site. Now, finally something that looks exactly as we had hoped. Kitchen FX out of Edmonton did a wonderful job making and installing our cabinets. A couple doors were not quite ready and the raised panel for the island are still left to complete. The granite slab counter top will be ready sometime in the early new year.

Still to come this week is drywall taping and mudding along with the electrical final switching and plugging and the plumbing final connections. 

Kevin Kossowan's video compilation

Kevin Kossowan was asked to speak at the Slow Food AGM and made a wonderful decision to present a compilation video from all of the farmers that he has interviewed this year. I was told that it received a standing ovation and I am not surprised considering Kevin's talents as a documentarian (is that a word? it should be). The Video

how to prepare grass-fed beef

It occurs to me that now that I have delivered most of our beef for 2010 that I did not include any instructions for preparing this beef. I guess I took it for granted that everybody knows how to cook beef. But our beef isn't just any old beef from the grocery store. It is gourmet beef.

To enjoy your grass-fed, heritage breed beef to its fullest you need to cook it low and slow. It is best enjoyed when it is cooked to medium rare at most. If you enjoy your steaks well-done, you will need to prepare it a little differently prior to grilling. Try marinating your steaks in milk or other favorite marinate. Of course if you enjoy your steak medium rare, as I do, just sprinkle a little salt and pepper and gently place it on your wood fired grill...mmmm. Propane will work too, but not as nice as wood!

The exception to this rule is for your roasts. Grass-fed beef loves slow cookers! Pick your favorite recipe and put your roast in the cooker and let the aroma waft through the house all day...you will love how this beef just falls apart and melts in your mouth.

Not sure how to tell if your beef is medium or well-done? Try this easy trick. Touch your thumb to each of your four remaining fingers and feel how hard the thumb muscle is. Compare the feel of your muscle to the feel of the meat cooking. Thumb to forefinger is rare. Thumb to pinky is well-done. This way you don't need to prick the meat and dry it out as it cooks...slick!

beef update

Cindy picked up the boxes of frozen beef today from Cardiff Meats and Sausage. Tonight the two of us split up the beef into shares of 50lbs each. Each 50 lb share is filled with approximately the same cuts and amounts. I was trained as a retail meat cutter many years ago so I am familiar with the cuts and their corresponding culinary value. We made sure to include about the same cuts of stew, burger, round cuts and rib cuts in each share. Tomorrow we will be phoning those of you who have ordered beef to arrange the deliveries this week! Enjoy!

GMO problem...again

An article from a UK paper. GM gene loose in environment
Just another example of what happens when we allow our governing bodies to decide what is best for us. Those agencies are lobbied by ultra large corporations and decisions are made that are best for the corporation...not the people.

First there was round-up ready canola growing wild in Minnesota. Now we have pesticides leaching into the ecosystem...not from spraying though...from plant residue. "The insecticide is the product of a bacterial gene inserted into GM maize and other cereal crops to protect them against insects..."

It frustrates me to no end when I see research like this come to light. This is the tip of the sword when it comes to ecological damage that will occur when companies like Monsanto are allowed to control policies in our government. GMO will continue to grow in our food chain because company led research says it is ok. When will we have had enough of this intrusion? 

beef is ready

For our customers who bought a share of the steer for 2010 you will be happy to hear that the beef is ready! I will be picking up the beef sometime this week from Cardiff Meat and Sausage, possibly today, and then I will be contacting each of you to arrange to meet for delivery!

I am excited to taste this beef this year. We have been out of beef for some time now and my mouth is watering for the smell and taste of a roast in the slow cooker. There is nothing better than spending the day out working in the cold and coming in the house tired and chilled. To smell the wood stove and feel the warmth hitting me as I take off the insulated coveralls. Then there is the smell of the slow cooker. Comforting and familiar.

Of course for all of the above to happen I need to have a house! Still working on it. Almost finished with the ceiling. We installed pine tongue-and-groove ceiling throughout the house, and in the bathroom...cedar. It looks great. Tomorrow the propane will be installed to the house and perhaps the plumber will have the in-floor heating completed. Right now we have our little wood stove installed but without insulation in the attic and a gaping hole in the ceiling in the mechanical room, it just barely keeps up. We have already purchased the insulation and received a free blower rental from Home Depot with that purchase. Once the ceiling is complete, we can go ahead and blow in the insulation. Then the heat will be rockin in the house.

steer processing

Well, we have slaughtered our one and only steer for 2010. Everything went smoothly and the sides of beef are now hanging in the cooler at Cardiff Meats and Sausage. The beef will be cut and wrapped sometime around the 18th of November. I didn't take any footage of the slaughter process. It is something that I may consider in the future, but for me the whole process has a lot to do with respect for the animal and is not something that makes me want to stop to take pictures.

This is how we move cows around Gold Forest Farms. When I said "prodding" in the video I didn't mean electric prod! I meant that I sometimes have to go and give them a little push with my hands or shoo the more wild ones to just get them moving. Once they move, they almost always just follow along with me calling once in a while.

2010 steer

For our customers who have ordered beef...or a share of a cow, this is the 2010 steer. He has been a healthy and vigorous animal throughout his life. 

what am I building?

Here is the Answer!



first correct guess wins a prize...

It is 82.5" long and 27.5" across and about 24" high.

october 27 straw bale house update

Stucco complete...interior framing complete...tomorrow the plumbing starts, electrical continues and the steel roofing starts. Still about a month away from move-in date.

The final coat of stucco still needs to be applied to the interior. The exterior final coat will go on next spring.

still harvesting and a house update

The grain harvest continues. We have been having good weather lately, but with such a heavy oat crop I have been slow to finish the field. I have about 2 hours left to combine and would have finished on Sunday if it hadn't of rained just a sprinkle...enough to stop me for the night. Yesterday, I spent the day helping with the stucco on the straw bale house. We are now finished with the scratch and brown coats of stucco on the interior of the house. The windows and doors and some interior framing will go on this week along with the stucco on the exterior. Lot's happening.

from local farms

I would like to thank Kevin Kossowan for his feature on our little farm on his blog and his series called "From Local Farms". Kevin is an extremely interesting man and I believe deeply in what he is trying to do with his blog. Thanks again Kevin for allowing me to introduce myself via your series!

From Local Farms - Gold Forest

FROM LOCAL FARMS - Gold Forest Grains from Kevin Kossowan on Vimeo.

finally harvesting!

The weather over the past week was pretty good up until today. Last weekend it finally became dry enough for us to be able to do some combining. Starting to harvest on Sept. 26th is one of the latest starts we've ever had. Dad tells the story of not turning a wheel until the first of Oct. one year, but I must have been too young to remember. Here you can see us harvesting our certified organic yellow peas. These peas will be used for human consumption...pea soup! or for animal feed. I will have to spend a little effort trying to market them after harvest is over. These are the peas that Pea Butter is made from.

watering the cattle

For right now, this is how we have been watering our Galloway cattle. We go through about a tank every three days more or less depending on the weather. We have installed a frost-free hydrant, but until the pressure tank is hooked up and the plumbing completed we continue to haul water.

A quick straw-bale house update

We were planning on having a stucco party this coming weekend. People are just so darn busy these days and we were afraid that we were not going to have enough people so we have gone ahead and hired a professional stucco guy. This has greatly alleviated our stress about this particular process. It just never really seemed right to me to ask our friends and family to come help with the stucco. Everybody has their own lives to live and I couldn't help but feel intrusive.

Thanks to those who did offer to help though!! If anyone is still interested in coming for a visit to see how things are done, by all means drop me an e-mail and I can give you directions to the farm. I realize that there are some people who would like to see a straw-bale house being built. If we can accommodate those people without impacting our schedule or adding to our already insane pace then we will!

The stucco wire is currently being installed by our straw bale contractors. Hopefully we will be stuccoing this weekend!

rain and rainwater harvest

We have not had a sunny day yet this September. It has been just a little ridiculous actually. It will stop raining just long enough to get at least a little dry and then it showers again for a few hours. Day after day of gloomy, wet, damp misery. At least that is the way I am looking at things right now while the harvest waits to be started. I ended up buying another swather last week. It is an old Versatile 400 that is in nice shape. So, while we wait for things to dry up, the work on the house continues.

Late last week we installed our cistern behind the house. We purchased a large tank (4100 gallons) and we will use it for our domestic water needs. We will also use this tank as a catchment for rainwater from the steel roofs of the house, the garage and the shop. The rainwater will go through a filter and first-flush system before it enters the tank. From there the water will enter the house and go through our distiller for drinking and cooking. It will go through an ordinary filter element for the other household uses like laundry and bathing. From time to time we will likely need to fill the cistern with city water from the nearby filling station.

As you can see, the hole for the tank was huge! That is an 8' ladder leaning up against the wall of the trench. It was interesting to see the different layers of soil that extends that deep underground. That black patch to the left of the ladder is actually a very small deposit of coal. We also unearthed some big pieces of granite that are quite beautiful. We will use those for some landscaping accents here and there.