In your share

• Guinea Fowl or Chicken
• Korean-style Short Ribs
• Ground Beef
• Breakfast Sausage
• Pork Chops
• Bacon

Farm tour and potluck

As mentioned in our recent email, we are so excited to invite you to the farm for a tour and potluck meal on Saturday June 3^rd. We are going to wait a bit to settle on a time, we’ll determine it about a week in advance once we get an idea of the weather forecast for the day. If it is going to be a hot one, we’ll do it in the late afternoon/early evening to take advantage of the rapid cooling we get out here. But if it will be a normal spring day, we’ll aim for mid-day/early afternoon. This is just for members and their families (we are also starting a separate non-member farm tour program as well for the general public), and once we settle on a time, we will send out a sign-up form, so we know how many people to expect.

On the Farm

I almost don’t even know where to begin, but I’ll start with the new animal additions: 12 piglets, 6 baby goats, 4 lambs, 200 broiler chicks, 80 layer chicks, 20 baby rabbits, and 12 ducklings (so far, they are still hatching in the incubator). Soon to arrive will be the turkeys, and more of them than we’ve ever raised in the past. Normally we do about 60-70 turkeys per year, which is never enough to meet demand, so this year we have decided to up that to 100 Thanksgiving birds.

On the ground, our two-decade long path of revitalizing our soil is paying off in the quantity and quality of the forage we have available for our animals. As a grass farmer, when I drive around the countryside, I am always looking at how other people’s fields look and how those fields are managed. This spring, the contrast between our fields and almost every other piece of pasture I’ve seen this year has never been so stark. We have so much grass here our animals can’t graze it fast enough before the plants want to set seed, while most other cattle, goat, and sheep fields are so overgrazed that all the forage is stunted and the farmers are having to spend money buying hay, when all they had to do was invest just 30 minutes a day to bunch their animals together and move them frequently to give them all the grass they would need. When you come out for the farm tour, you will see our system in action.

Now that we have shown how well this system can work, other people are noticing and we are now working with four other farms to help them improve their pastures: one in Washougal, two through the mentorship program of the Oregon Pasture Network (in Sandy and Bandon), and one in Hot Springs, North Carolina through the nationwide mentorship program of the Food Animal Concerns Trust. I am so excited that others are seeing the potential of management intensive rotational grazing, and I hope we can really grow this movement. If you want to see an inspiring video, look up the Ted Talk from Allan Savory.

Recipe

Galbi – Korean-Style Short Ribs adapted from The New York Times

Ingredients

• 2-3 pounds short ribs, cut in ½-inch slices across the bones
• ⅓ cup soy sauce
• ⅓ cup brown sugar
• ⅓ cup rice wine
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne or gochujang
• 1 medium onion, peeled and quartered; or an equivalent amount of scallions or leeks
• 8 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 1-inch chunk of ginger, peeled
• 2 teaspoons sesame seeds
• Lettuce leaves
• Sliced red or green hot pepper, optional
• Ssamjang (spicy Korean soybean paste), for dipping, optional
• Steamed rice, optional

PREPARATION

1. Step 1

Rinse short ribs in cold water, pat dry and place in a wide shallow bowl. In another bowl, mix together soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine, sesame oil, black pepper and cayenne.

2. Step 2

Put onion, garlic, and ginger in the work bowl of a food processor. Grind ingredients to a smooth purée, then add to soy sauce mixture. Add sesame seeds. Thin with ¼ cup water. Pour marinade over short ribs and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight. Bring to room temperature, drain and discard marinade.

3. Step 3

Cook short ribs on a hot grill or under the broiler for 2 to 3 minutes per side, until nicely browned but juicy. Pile grilled meat on a platter and serve immediately with lettuce leaves on the side. Accompany with sliced hot peppers, ssamjang and steamed rice, if desired.