Wishful Acres Farm blog

Redwork fabric Apron

2012-01-26T15:34:00.001-06:00

Newest apron creation: a full length women's sized apron crafted with redwork-pattered fabric. I wanted to pick up the redwork and highlight it, so I created a red top at the neck, matching red pocket, and red neck and waist ties.

I've always loved the look of redwork and was thrilled when I came across this fabric! :-)

My January world: numbers numbers numbers

2012-01-22T17:49:00.001-06:00

My world for the past 6 weeks. The farm accounting bookwork. So glad I'm almost done with this!

Colorful lentils - delicious & nutritious in a 5 bean chili!

2012-01-21T16:34:00.001-06:00

Many colors of lentils! A friend of mine purchased a large supply of lentils from an Indian grocery store near the big city. I asked her to grab me some lentils.

I had only eaten the regular, unsplit, brown lentils previously. I was so happy to see these beautiful multi-colored varieties of lentils. Today, they are making a nice addition to my 5 bean chili.

I was surprised when I glanced at the nutrition label... these are loaded with calcium! The tiny white & red lentils pictured have 25% and 30% of the daily recommended intake of calcium. And they taste good to boot... especially in an Indian curry dish, or in this case... a Midwestern beer brat & beef stock-based 5 bean chili with our farm grown onion, garlic, our frozen sweet peppers, and our farm raised & canned tomatoes!

Lentils are a legume, related to peas & beans. Yum!

Thank you inventor of frost-free farm hydrant!

2012-01-20T08:50:00.001-06:00

Thank you, dear inventor of the frost-free farm hydrant. I bow before you in gratitude this morn.

Planting schedule

2012-01-19T18:52:00.001-06:00

yep, you guessed it... still wading through the neverending piles of paperwork! Farm accounting is actually an enjoyable process for me, but so time-consuming. I started the tax work, income statements, receipts, expenses, etc... back in early December, right after the last CSA shares went out to members and my time freed up. Still at it!

So, it was becoming a bit monotonous... I started a new paperwork project last week. A detailed planting schedule. This is such a necessary tool when running a CSA, or even just for farmers market sales.

The planting schedule spans one entire notebook. Week by week, from late February through November. Each week, what seeds need to be sown in flats for seedling production, which seeds need to be sown directly in the field, which transplants need to go in the ground. To ensure a constant supply of head lettuce, loose leaf lettuce, green onions, green beans, beets, longer brocolli harvest, earlier fall rutabaga... whatever the goal is, it's all being planned out now.

WOW, this will ease my mind so much & make the season a little less hectic

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planting schedule

2012-01-19T18:44:00.001-06:00

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Recipe: Buffalo Chicken sandwich (the local foods way!)

2012-01-18T12:24:00.001-06:00

Recipe: Buffalo Chicken Sandwich. I made mine open-faced.

-bread or roll
-2 green onions (I harvested them from our hoophouses in January!)
-1/2 to 1 cup cooked shredded chicken (I used leftover meat from one of our farm stewing chickens cooked a couple days ago)
-1 spoonful hot sauce of choice
-cheese of choice (I used bleu made in a nearby cheese factory)
-optional: cream-based salad dressing of your choice (such as ranch)

Layer ingredients on sandwich. Eat cold or warm in oven.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Winter roast with storage vegetables

2012-01-18T11:31:00.001-06:00

Roast ready to put on top of the woodstove to simmer for a few hours! Oh wow, all these delicious vegetables were grown here on our farm, I just pulled them out of our root cellar. Yum!

-1 grass fed beef roast
-3 cups chicken or beef stock
-5 potatoes
-2 rutabaga
-5 carrots
-1 yellow onion
-1 red onion
-a few garlic cloves
-salt & pepper

You can simmer in a crockpot, on your stovetop, or even a woodstove!

Enjoy!

Another vintage fabric apron

2012-01-17T15:07:00.001-06:00

Another vintage fabric, hand embroidered apron finished.

This one was also created from an antique table runner. One half was damaged (not by Me! oh forbid! ;-), it probably happened to the vintage piece many years ago... I purchased it that way.)

Because of the damage, my plan to make this a full apron had to be tailored back to a half apron. Rolling with the punches!

What a productive day!

Aprons created from antique fabric - love it!

2012-01-17T14:14:00.001-06:00

Dead of winter= sewing time! My newest apron creation is here, I will take it to farmers market next season to sell. I adore vintage fabrics. This mother / daughter apron set was created from 1 antique hand-embroidered linen table runner. I cut it in 2 pieces (I can't tell you how nervewracking it is for me to cut (sob) these antique fabrics).

I then created a half apron with a ruffled edge for the 'mother apron', and a full apron for the 'daughter' apron.

It's probably going to be hard to see the hand embroidered flower pattern in this picture, but it's pink, green, and white.

I think they're darling!

Organic grass fed beef - let's get the freezers cleared!

2012-01-17T08:52:00.000-06:00

We still have frozen grass-fed ground beef, steaks, liver, and soup bones available. The beef is raised on a nearby certified organic farm. We're currently sold out of roasts & stew meat... let's get the ground beef & steaks sold so we can fill the freezers with another whole cow worth of meat!

Prices & cuts are listed on our web site: http://www.wishfulacresfarm.com/Beef_For_Sale.html

Butternut Squash Pie

2012-01-12T17:49:00.002-06:00

Butternut Squash Pie

1 medium butternut squash or 2 small butternut squash
1 (12 ounce) can evaporated milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice
1 9-inch deep dish pie crust

Directions:

1

Pierce the squash with a knife in several places, and place in a baking dish in a 350 degree oven.
2

Bake until the squash is tender and easily pierced with a knife (about 1 hour) ALLOW TO COOL COMPLETELY.
3

Cut the squash in half, and remove the seeds.
4

Scoop out about 2 cups of the pulp and place in your blender or food processor.
5

Add all remaining ingredients and blend until smooth.
6

Pour into prepared pie crust.
7

Bake 45-50 minutes or until the center is nearly set, and the pie is starting to slightly pull away from the edges of the pan.
8

Cool on a wire rack.

Wishful Acres January Newsletter

2012-01-12T10:26:00.002-06:00

Happy January to you all! Here at Wishful Acres Farm, we've been enjoying this mild winter weather and hope you have as well.

Have the winter blues? Help banish them with some free-range eggs from Wishful Acres Farm! Free-range eggs like those raised on our farm are highly valued by chefs as well as nutritionists. Why? They are loaded with more vitamins & healthy fats than any eggs you will find in a grocery store (plus they taste out of this world!). Here are the statistics on free-range chicken eggs compared with conventional eggs, courtesy of Mother Earth News magazine:
1/3 less cholesterol• 1/4 less saturated fat• 2/3 more vitamin A• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E• 7 times more beta carotene

Our eggs are super fresh and will remain good for at least 6 weeks. The cost is $3 per dozen. Why not make a trip to our farm, buy a bunch at once and be set for 6 weeks? You can contact me to place an order by calling my cell phone at 815-990-2380 or emailing me at wishfulacres@gmail.com. If you don't wish to make a trip to our farm for pickup, we can deliver to your Freeport home for a modest $3 fee no matter how large or small the order.
There are huge plans in store for our farm in 2012, which marks our 3rd year growing for you!

In addition to the organic vegetables, fruits, herbs, and eggs you've come to expect, we're greatly expanding our CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture). I've been working out the details for this year's CSA, and will be announcing some great additions & changes very soon. One new change: we'll be offering a Friday evening CSA pickup at our farm that will feature a "trade" table, so you can exchange some things in your CSA share if you'd prefer a different vegetable. Additionally, we'll be creating a CSA share pickup option at the Freeport Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, and our home delivery service will continue with a few changes (it will probably be on Saturdays instead of Fridays, and there will be a small fee for the home delivery service). I hope the additional pickup options and trade table will be of benefit to our CSA members, and also I'm adding a HUGE amount of new vegetable varieties this year - you'll see even greater variety in the 2012 CSA. We hope you'll join us for the 2012 CSA program, where healthy eating is made easy! You can learn more about our CSA program by visiting the CSA page on our web site: http://www.wishfulacresfarm.com/CSA.html .

We'll also be adding meat chickens, turkeys, and we're even thinking of raising a few pigs to provide pork for sale. As with the other meat animals we plan to raise this year, our pigs would also have access to the outdoors rather than being confined indoors their entire lives like grocery store meat. Raising animals in a humane way is very important to us (not to mention the meat is so much more delicious). What do you think? Pastured pork, anyone?

As for fresh vegetables, alas the strong 30-50 pmh winds we had the first couple days of January tore the plastic off most of our low hoophouse tunnels. During those 2 days of high winds, when the plastic was blowing off the low hoophouses, temperatures plummeted in the single digits. Goodbye, lettuce. So long, tatsoi and arugula. Adios, mustard and turnip greens. But what a fun and educational growing season it was, and next year we'll take even greater measures to keep the plastic intact and protecting our crops. The spinach was hardy enough to survive, but we've reached the time of year when the short day length has stunted growth. There won't be any extra spinach to sell again until spring, when day length grows and the vegetables grow along with it! My goal is to provide fresh vegetables year-round (yes, in our cold corner of Northwest Illinois).

Another plan on the books for 2012 is the on-farm store. The yellow mobile home on our farm is now halfway renovated. This will provide the location for our on-farm store, where the Friday evening CSA shares can be collected, and other products such as meat, eggs, and organic vegetables will be available for purchase.

So, if you'd like to purchase some of our delicious eggs please give me a call at 815-990-2380 or email me at wishfulacres@gmail.com.
To learn more about the 2012 CSA, visit http://www.wishfulacresfarm.com/CSA.html .

Hope to talk to you soon,

Penny

Yes. 60 degrees!!!

2012-01-11T14:46:00.001-06:00

Yep, you are reading that correctly... 60 degrees! Oh my goodness, it feels like April. This is wonderful, however shortlived it may be, as we are supposed to receive 4 inches of snow by tomorrow night.
I think I can say with almost 100% accuracy that this is a record high temperature for this January day!

Anyone raising pigs?

2012-01-10T14:08:00.000-06:00

.
We're expanding the livestock area of our farm in 2012. A lot! We'll be raising meat chickens & turkeys, in addition to our current flock of laying chickens.

So... one area I'm starting to think of, and read about.... pastured pork. Anyone out there raising hogs? From what I'm reading, they'll fit well with our current farm operation. And I know one thing... we all love pork in this house! And lard... :-)

We'll be raising them outdoors, on pasture if possible, but definitely outdoors with a shelter. No confinement on this farm!!! :-)

I had begun my research actually thinking of raising goats. But, the more I read & learned, the more I realized goats just aren't a good fit for us right now. Pigs, however, just may be....

Accounting, Expenses. Income. My life the past month!

2012-01-08T17:53:00.000-06:00

The past month has seen me up to my elbows in paperwork!

It's that time of year. Accounting. Doing the farm books. Sorting through the farm receipts. Adding expenses, adding up income. Sorting the income & expenses into different sectors: egg sales, CSA, farmers market, produce..... on and on and on.

So far, there are some interesting numbers coming out, although not too surprising.

To the woman who yelled at me and stalked off this summer at farmers' market when she discovered I was charging $3 per dozen for my big, brown, free-range Eggs..... I would like her to know that I made no profit whatsoever on egg sales. None. I basically broke even on egg sales, because I had to pay for chicken feed, waterers, the chickens themselves, brooder lamps, more chicken feed, straw, fencing for their outdoor run, more fencing when a tree fell on our original chicken run, and did I mention chicken feed (we do feed our chickens all of our kitchen and garden scraps, plus some pasture for those who fly over the fence, but darn those birds eat more than you can believe and must have a lot of grain or feed in order to lay eggs). And that of course doesn't include any money for our labor costs (meaning we're not paying ourselves anything for taking care of the chickens). I'd like to pass this info on to the people who freak out when told my price of $3 per dozen.... just saying! :-)

So, yes, as I had been told by other sustainable farmers, there is no money in eggs. I'll keep doing it as a service to our customers and because we ourselves love the delicious eggs from our well-treated hens (and really you can't pay me money to eat supermarket eggs).

I have a feeling I'll still be deep in the paperwork for the next few weeks, although I can see a light at the end of the tunnel now!

Harvesting in January!

2012-01-06T15:06:00.002-06:00

Harvesting green onions! Spinach, & Asian greens next!

Hoophouse endcaps on!

2012-01-06T10:58:00.001-06:00

Must say, we sure didn't think we'd be able to work on this project in January! Highs in the upper 40s! I think we will have this hoophouse done soon. Whoop whoop!! Joy!

2012 Farm Plans

2011-12-31T09:07:00.000-06:00

Winter is downtime here on the farm, no field work to speak of except for an occasional harvest of vegetables from under the protected low tunnel hoops. We still have the laying hens to care for, firewood to split and haul, outbuildings to work on, and the main farmhouse is still being worked on slowly as well. But, there is much more time for office-type work... the farm's accounting books are slowly being worked through, seed orders are made, and plans are being made for our 2012 year. What will it look like? I'm asking myself that a lot.

My greatest goal for 2012 is to expand our CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture). 2011 was our first year for the CSA, and I loved the format and believe our CSA members enjoyed it as well. I'd like to cut back on my farmers market participation - this takes so much time to prepare for, 6 hours spent on attendance that could be used for farmwork, and there are so many unknowns.... how much to harvest, will it be a well-attended week or not (many weeks I actually lose money by attending), and more. I'd like instead to focus on the CSA and open an on-farm store (we're currently renovating one of the mobile homes that are located on our farm for this purpose). I have no idea yet when the on-farm store will be open (perhaps just weekends? Or perhaps weekday mornings as well?) - we'll need to make sure we're home on the farm during the open hours, but other than that we'll be able to work outdoors on farmwork in between customers.

What else? Oh yes, chicken and turkey meat. This is a BIG part of our plans for 2012 - we'll be offering our farm-raised poultry for sale. I'm currently in the process of applying for a USDA on-farm poultry processing exemption. So, we'll be able to butcher our own poultry for sale on our farm (unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to take this meat to farmers market since it was butchered on our own farm, but I can sell it directly on the farm).

I hope to have better, stronger seedlings this year due to our hoophouse being finished. This will allow me to raise many of the seedlings outside in this passive-solar heated "greenhouse", rather than raising them indoors under lights.

And lastly, I hope to take on more interns / apprentices this year. We have 2 mobile homes on the farm that were used as rentals by past farm owners. They are in various states of disrepair (our farm was purchased last winter as a foreclosure, and it wasn't in good shape), but we have 1 of the mobile homes about halfway renovated and we will have it completed by spring. This will house our farm store, and my husband's beer homebrewing setup, and we'll also leave 1-2 bedrooms plus the bathroom for interns.

What are your plans for 2012? Hopefully they involve eating more local foods - they taste so much better!
.

Hoophouse end caps being built

2011-12-29T09:58:00.001-06:00

Building end caps for the hoop house (unheated plastic covered greenhouse). What beautiful weather we're having, highs in upper 30s, no snow cover. Perfect to work on a project like this, beats doing it in February!

Doll death blamed on 4 yr old boy

2011-12-26T16:34:00.001-06:00

This Fireman "action figure" was gifted to my 4 year old last night by my in-laws. Less than 24 hours later, here is what's left of the poor doll. Lol, here is a fine example of men and their nurturing abilities! Poor doll never stood a chance in this house full of boys... :-)

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Custard pie

2011-12-22T15:42:00.001-06:00

Along with the pot pie, I made a custard pie with our farm-raised eggs and milk from a nearby farm. Topped with nutmeg. So easy, even for me... I don't like to bake!!!

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Pot pie pulled from the oven...

2011-12-22T15:40:00.001-06:00

Just pulled this pot pie from the oven. Made entirely from scratch with our farm's root vegetables. Whole wheat lard crust. Hope it tastes as good as it smells!

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News flash: chickens think owner crazy report strange substance on ground.

2011-12-18T06:58:00.001-06:00

Can you almost hear what our flock of young chickens are thinking upon seeing their 1st snowfall? I'm guessing it's something like this: "What is wrong with the ground?Is this woman CRAZY? She thinks we're going to step outside onto THAT? Nope!".
So, alas, our laying hens (2 flocks of 50) are no longer free-range, but rather cooped for winter. At least it's by their own choice!
Maybe they'll get used to the snow... :-)

Beautiful snowfall...

2011-12-17T08:08:00.001-06:00

The first real snowfall of the year, and how breathtaking it is. This view from a window of our farmhouse looks more like a painting hanging on a wall!

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