Terra Farma Meat CSA November 2021
In your share this month:
- Lamb Stew Meat
- Ground Beef
- Guanciale (Jowl Bacon)
- Beef steak or short ribs
- Chicken
- Italian Sausage
- BONUS – Leaf Lard
Welcome to the November share, particularly to those who are trying our CSA for the first time! We have one more month remaining in the fall season and then exciting news for the January-April spring season (sorry Winter, but since our CSA has only three “seasons” you were the odd one out) as we are adding capacity with 20 new shares and a new pickup location in Woodstock. The latter site is at the home of 47th Avenue Farm and our pickups there will coincide with their veggie CSA pickups. Existing members received an email with renewal instructions and new members can sign up through our online store. Please share with your friends as we hope to fill all those slots by the end of the year.
On the Farm
When we last saw most of you, we were just about ready to go on a little vacation, our first in 5 years! We went to Wallowa Lake in far NE Oregon during the last week of October and it was just perfect. One of my favorite trees is the mountain larch, which is a deciduous conifer, and they were at the peak of their fall color, along with all the aspens, cottonwoods, and wild sumac. Dramatic clouds and mixed sunshine only added to the beauty, plus, since it was the “off-season,” there were virtually no tourists to be seen. We rented a small cabin with views of the mountains, and I think every other cabin in the area was empty, making it ultra-peaceful. Huge thanks to our friends and volunteers who cared for the animals while we were gone!
With the turkeys being processed this weekend, the last of the seasonal chores is finally crossed off the list, allowing things to slow down a tiny bit for winter. It never fully stops, though, as there are still the daily tasks of milking, feeding all the ruminants, pigs, and laying hens, collecting eggs, and responding to weather conditions in what looks like might be an active winter. But new animals will still be arriving, though, with our next batch of layer chicks coming on Monday, then in a couple of weeks we will be picking up a 6-month-old steer from some friends who bought property that came with animals but not the proper facilities to care for them. Then our first newborns of the year will come in January with a new crop of lambs!
Featured Items
Lamb stew meat – We are excited to finally have this back in your share! For a recipe, I’m going to refer you back to the one we shared a year ago that was created by cookbook author Heather Arndt Anderson specifically for us and Umi Organic Noodles: https://www.umiorganic.com/recipe-blog/2020/12/13/cumin-lamb-sesame-noodles Trust us, it’s amazing!
Guanciale – We’ve offered this a couple of times, but if this is your first experience with it, you may not even know what it is. On the package, it’s called jowl bacon, and that’s exactly what it is – bacon made from the cheeks of a pig. It’s a item that can be very difficult to find, but that’s one of our goals with the CSA, to produce not only the highest quality meats, but also to share some lesser known cuts.
Guanciale is most associated with a dish called Pasta Carbonara, which you can prepare by simply adding a mixture of egg yolk and grated Italian cheese to cooked spaghetti, with a little reserved water, and finish with guanciale fried in its own fat. For more detailed directions, with photos, go to: https://www.finedininglovers.com/recipes/main-course/pasta-carbonara
Italian Sausage – We included this for November just because it works so well with Thanksgiving Stuffing!
Leaf Lard – What is leaf lard, you might ask? There are two main types of fat on a pig: back fat, which is exactly as it sounds, it’s the layer of fat directly under the skin, and leaf fat, which is internal fat, mostly around the kidneys. Lard is the product that results after pork fat has been rendered down, and leaf lard, with its softer texture is famous for its role in making the best tasting pie crusts. You are getting 6 ounces, which is enough to use in this tried and true recipe from the food network: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/amy-thielen/leaf-lard-crust-2364036#reviewsTop
Thank You, and Happy Thanksgiving!