This has always been one of my favorite commentaries from a writer about his work. This passage has stuck with me and often lifted me up.

I had wanted to use this passage as the dedication since we first purchased The Rev Soup Farm –as a commentary on my own work, because I haven’t thought of any way to say it better.

The devout environmental and sustainable approach we are taking with this farm and with our lives and all the choices we have made every day leading up to this point with all of our success and failures are done for the love of Man and in praise of God and I too would be a damn fool if they weren’t.

-Kipling

Up this morning at 2am. Another attack on the birds of the farm. I had heard the Guineas chirping while in a half sleep but since I had just finished my renovations to their pen I thought little of it. The pen is of stretched Chicken wire. There were holes but I patched them, the fence was weak in a few places and that is how we lost the chickens a few weeks back so I took 4 foot 4*4 thick gauge wire fencing and lined the entire structure with it burying it 12 inches into the ground with logs and broken glass to deter an attempt to dig under. Not satisfied I lined the exterior base with rail road ties which I then attached the chicken wire to from within side.

I did not wake up for the Guineas as I knew there would be predators that would cause them to chirp, I just had faith that they were safe in this fortified pen. Moments later I heard the three remaining ducks (of 11) begin to quack and I was up and outside immediately. I shined my flashlight and was able to see a small set of eyes and small gray body across the pond and then it was gone.

Our first attacks were dogs and there is little to do but to fortify your enclosures. This one was wild. I walked out with my flashlight to check on the ducks, gone. I walked down to the Guinea pen. The first Guinea I saw was lying in the straw wide eyed and blinking at me. As I walked around I began to see more Guineas lying in the straw which was unusual because they typically sleep in their house. I then began to see blood, feathers, bodiless wings, headless bodies. It looked like half a dozen were dead, the rest will probably die of stress or cold by this morning.

I went back to bed but could not sleep. At 4am I heard frantic duck calls and this time I got my gun. Again when I shined the light across the water I saw a small set of eyes. It was hard to make out the creature, it was so small –a rat or young possum maybe, a young raccoon possibly? I couldn’t tell, which one of those could cause so much damage? It would have to be small enough to fit inside a 3-4 inch diameter hole, there could be no larger holes in the Guinea pen if at all.

I aimed but could not get a shot off in time. I then sat on the steps of our porch and prayed about it all. I am tired of having animals killed on my watch and we have just begun this attempt at farming. In the dark, after some time I heard the ducks squawk again and I fired blindly in that direction, if I hit the duck at least it would be on my terms. I shined the light and walked to the other side of the pond. A duck gurgled in the brush as I passed, I think she wanted to let me know she was there. I moved on to find the others. When I got to the other side I looked back at the duck yard and house and saw one of the Khaki Cambles standing by the gate of the fence.

I walked back to her and she just stood there and would not move no matter how close I got. I spoke to her in a low voice in an attempt to sooth her and then I backed away and stood by in the dark with my gun and flashlight ready. At about 5am she began to call and slowly the others identified their hidden spaces along the ponds grasses. One of the ducks was across the pond and could not figure out how to cross as our ducks have not yet realized that they can swim (In fact the ducks never learned to swim or go into their house which is why this keeps happening and it frustrates me that I can not teach them these things).

It was a charming and clumsily elegant sight as the first duck walked from the gate to the other side of the pond to lead the other duck back and I watched as their two docile frames bobbled towards me in the faintest morning light. They both stood by the gate and we all waited for few moments until the other duck began to call to be led in. She was also across the pond but more directly and the other ducks did not seem to want to venture so far.

As the morning let more light out on the scene I felt that the threat had left us and laid down my gun to see if I could help this last duck. I walked slowly over to her speaking softly in a low voice, “hey duck, good duck.” As I got right to her she moved away from me a bit in the wrong direction and so I stopped but kept speaking. She stopped and then as I backed to the side of the narrow path still speaking softly she began to walk towards me. Once she passed I was able to walk her back to the others. They quite truly all began to quack loudly together and walk around and in between each other when they were rejoined. I left them then after opening the gate. At this point they can do as they like, they have earned it and until they begin to use the house or swim there is little I can do to insure their safety.

The death of these animals fills me with horror and rage. It gauls me to no end that these birds have died, and more will, while I try to learn how to do a little farming.  And for what? So I can kill and eat them myself – the most natural thing in the world. It is strange but I feel as though there is a sacred bond you develop with the animals you are going to kill for human food. I don’t fully understand it all yet but I know for certain that an intrusion to this bond is an utter violation.

In this scenario it is the farm infrastructure that is the band – the fencing, the sheds, the barns and animal housing, the Poison Ivy-less trees and wood line, the yellow jacket hive-less pasture (I have battled two this month).

It has been a hard two months, so much digging for posts and fencing, so many cuts from wire and brush, so many mosquito bites from just being out in it all and the inevitable poison Ivy attacks from a Berserker attempt at removal. I am unable to move my body at the end of these days I dedicate to farm work and yet the animals themselves are almost really no part of it at all.

Some fresh grain in the morning for the Chickens, fresh water always twice a day, and then maybe some new bedding from time to time. For the ducks it is the same, they are messier and so I must change their water more often, always twice a day sometimes three. The baby Guineas are pretty simple, check the temperature, adjust the lighting if necessary. Fresh food, fresh water, twice a day at least. It is really not much.

And yet when friends come to visit the farm it is the animals that they really want to see. Heck I can’t even blame them for this – it is the animals that I really want to show them. I don’t know what it is about the front man that makes him just so darn appealing to us all.

I have tried to talk about the genius of the band, “Look at that tree line, it used to be a mess of wild grape vines and poison ivy, see how clean and nice it is now?” As the words come out I lose interest myself. “Look at these fence posts for the garden, I cut each ten foot cedar from the woods, dragged it down here with my bare hands and then dug four foot holes with a rickety old post hole digger for each of the twenty posts” And yet looking at them, they are just a few sticks in the ground.

Today, I dug a trench the 128 yard length of our north fence and attached hog wire to it with obstinate little fence staple nails. I have already completed the 70 yards of the south fence. I got half the fencing up today and will finish it tomorrow, after all we now have 5 sheep arriving on Sunday.

And I already know that when folks see our sheep the 200 yards of hog wire lining that keeps them safe and contained will go unnoticed. The fence that has my entire body bent over right now in arthritic type pain: the beautiful and noble fence that will stand for many years proud and sturdy and useful like the talented band secure in the integrity of their hard earned skill, a something that will stay with them always as the front man fades, is found out, or overdoses and dies.

In this scenario he is eaten. But the band will play for many more to come.

In fact I am happy to say that we have one of the best teams I have ever assembled working at the two Soups right now. John has taken over everything and now I am mostly troubleshooting, keeping the books right and helping develop recipes in the kitchen.

We have been happy to be working with a new farmer in the Esmont area, Larry Goff. If you have had anything with a tomato, squash, cucumber, green bean, eggplant, melon or corn in it recently it has been from his farm. We continue to enjoy produce from our long time favorite farms as well: Roundabout, Timbercreek, Appalachian Star, Randy’s, Polyface and others.

As for the Rev Soup farm…

I finished putting 10 foot posts around the third of an acre plot that I will be wintering the pigs on and then planting in produce next Spring. Next for that will be to install the electric fence to keep deer and varmints out and the pigs in.

I have just finished building our Duck House (with much help from my father) and will need to paint, roof and fence it over the weekend. This could not have come at a better time as we are growing out of space to keep the ducks we have been raising since July 1st. The 27 Chickens and 9 Ducks are living in the hen pen that the former property owners constructed out of Cedars from the wooded acre. We had 11 Ducks but there were some holes in the hen pen that I had not noticed to fix and the fox got two. I have mended the fencing and surrounded it in Coyote pee which seems to be working fine.

I have lined a third of the inside of the main paddock area with hog wire fencing to keep the neighborhood dogs out and all our critters in. We will be day ranging our chickens in this area. We will also be planting heirloom apples for cider making, berry patches for selling and jam making and we are considering either sheep or Dexter cows for this area as well.

I dug the fence into the ground about 4 inches deep. Everyone keeps saying go 6 inches but digging this rock filled, hard baked clay earth is terribly difficult. I have 200 yards of fence to put up total just for this area, it is slow going. One of my major experiments here will be to see just how fertile I can make this pasture with the day range chicken and cow rotation system.

This weekend we will also assemble the 10*12 hoop house that we will soon convert into the day range layaway for the Chickens.

Every book we looked into gives the main rule of having your shelters completed before buying your animals. We have done completely the opposite of this. I have to say though, if I did not have the pressure of fast growing fowl on me I am not certain that I would have gotten these things done. I enjoy the pressure and the race.

I will post more later and follow my wife’s advise in not making these things too long. I have never been so busy in my life. Saturday through Tuesday is Rev Soup work time in the mornings after feeding all of the animals and then farm time for the rest of those days until I cannot move anymore. Wednesday through Friday is a total dedication to The Wine Guild (my other business) except in the evenings and mornings when I feed the animals. In the spaces I am still raising Alston who is almost two years old and putting out Rev Soup fires (literally! Though it was not really a fire).

Ah, who then can
we turn to? Not Angels: not men,
and the resourceful animals see clearly
that we are not really at home
in our interpreted world. -Rilke

If you have not yet read Rilke’s Duino Elegies I strongly recommend it. The link will do but the translations vary so widely that an off one can ruin the sense of what he is doing. The quote above from the first elegy has been with me for a long time. It stays with me, how could it not?

As I have spent my first few weeks working on the new house in Esmont I have had time to reflect on the many reasons my wife and I are making this move. We are still getting the house ready, it has been a lot of work and money and a lot more to go before we are actually in there on the 1st of July. Beyond the house, there are the 30 or so chickens and 10 ducks that are set to arrive at the end of this month and I have much to do to prepare for them. Getting the pasture and paddock ready has had its own challenges not the least of which has been an epic case of poison ivy; the grounds are rife with it (enter the pigs).

Everything had to be right for this move. I have waited a long time to find a home and land that meets the standards of my lunatic romanticisms. Though I reckon myself a practical minded person I can not help but try to make the practical fall in line with the ideal. In this instance I am talking about the material make up of things.

I see the world around us often as an “interpreted world.” We are surrounded by the artificial. Whatever that may mean for me, right now, that takes on a very material meaning. Our houses are plastic, our clothes are often as well; our food…well you know that old story. Little by little I attempt to get back to what I understand as real, perhaps authentic.

In my daily life, and for reasons too long to explain here, this has meant putting on the habit of not buying anything made in China, anything made of plastic or synthetic materials. I loathe composite metals, particle boards, anything made to be cheap, temporary or veneer. It is not easy as almost everything has gone the way of the cheap, temporary and veneer and I am not a fanatic about this method, if I have to bend I bend. I am satisfied with making my road a slow road, I want these changes to be permanent.

The house in Esmont has a thick walled slate foundation. The walls in the house are sheet rock on the surface but through a cut in one of them I have seen that the original walls of rough cut tongue and grove oak planks are directly beneath, a solid and real material. The floors are not the original 1903 wood floors but I hope that they are under the hard wood floors that have been laid sometime since. The siding is wood slat, the roof is steel. The rafters in the attic are thick cut rough oak or some other hard wood in beautiful condition.

This house is a house that I can understand. It is made of materials I understand, not the plastic wrappings and the vinyl sidings and the PVC and the who knows what I have lived in my whole life. This is a house of solid things, of real things where I intend to establish a life of solid and real things: plant, animal, water, air, man (fire).

I do not mean this to be a criticism of any other life style. These are my conclusions, or rather a hypothesis at the most. After all what is organic farming? For me it is a theory of ‘getting back to.’ An attempt to live more in tune with the existing order, or at least an attempt to find out just what that would look like.

As for me, I now have a ‘real’ house and some ‘real’ land, my work will bring it together and the outcome will enable me to continue our ‘real’ food business at Rev Soup. I suppose it is all my personal way of trying to feel at home in our interpreted world. Ezra Pound said, “Make it new.” Perhaps that is what his generation needed at that time and place. I say, make it authentic. There will always be new.

Zach has taken his husbandry a further step though and implemented practices unique to Timbercreek making his beef my selection for the Autumn and Winter Beef needs at Rev Soup. First and foremost is Zachs insistence on Organic feed (Especially with Timbercreek chicken this makes a huge difference; we are serving them every week these days at The Soup and they are the best chickens I have ever tasted regardless of all the organic, sustainable stuff). And although I am a firm believer in grass fed, I feel strongly that some grain must play into the Beef equation to balance the beneficial qualities with the flavorful ones.

I will say it here and now to all the grass fed fanatics, ‘Beef is also about flavor.’ By this I do not mean to say that grassfed beef does not have good flavor, it does. I have had incredibly delicious grassfed beef. What I mean to say is that if flavor were your only goal than you would not use grassfed just as if a healthful oneness with the world were your only goal you would only use grassfed. My goal is both, though I lean towards the ‘healthful oneness with the world’ side of things for the beef I bring into Rev Soup.

However, if I were running a steak house I may think more about the flavor side of the equation. The difference is that at Rev Soup most of the beef is used in braises, stews and ground up for chili. An articulate oneness of flavor is not as essential in stew as it is for a perfectly cooked steak –a medium that I hold with great reverence. That is to say, flavorwise I can afford to think more about the beneficial health qualities of the beef I use at Rev Soup.

As a side note, the cow is coming along just perfectly, right now he is completely grass ranged and is benefiting from that system, in perfect health, though I imagine a bit hot these days. We will introduce some grain into his diet closer to September and I will keep you all abreast of developments.

Today, Lisa and I went down to the farm to do some detail cleaning and general yard keep up. In the long delay between when we thought the closing would occur and when it actually did the lawn had grown into a rather desperate length of shag and I knew that mowing the 3 or so exposed acres would be one of my first duties upon ownership.

The sellers of this property were kind enough to include the commercial John Deere stand/walk behind mower in the transfer of the house. I had never used one of these things before, it is huge, I was afraid. But determined to be bigger than the new tasks that will confront me with this land I was ready to learn and mow away. Thanks be to You Tube for having an educational video for using the exact model mower that I now had.

I have always hated mowing. My whole life it has been something that I abhor. The gas and oil, the loud, always breaking down machine, the noise, the numb vibration hands, the clumps of matted sickly grass, the allergies, the smell, the bother. When Lisa and I moved into our Starr Hill home in downtown Charlottesville I was glad to be gifted a rotary push mower from one of our neighbors. This was different, no gas or noise no stinking matted grass. Of course our yard was a 20 by 20 plot and easy to mow without power machines. After years of living in Starr Hill and sculpting our back yard into a pleasant flow of garden, flower beds and neat patch of grass I was doing all of the yard work by hand, mowing with my small rotary and edging with a pair of garden shears.

Today I mowed 3 acres with a loud, vibrating, helicopter sounding machine. I had to take 3 breaks, it was a beast. When I got home and began musing on the experience I remembered how Robert Frost spoke often of mowing. He was fond of the process as a quite interaction with the land. I looked up ‘A tuft of Flowers’ one of my favorite poems and read about his fondness for mowing and the harmony of men working the land and then I found this one by Frost:

Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

So that was it, no machines, just the soft whisper of the scythe. Perhaps someone will make the buzz and whir of the mechanized mower poetic one day but it will not be a poetics that I kin to.

Our plans for this Farm are to harmonize our husbandry with the specific requirements of this particular land. We have a lot to learn and a lot of work to do and we hope to get as many suggestions and points of advice from the vast amount of small farmers in this area who have gone before us and who have already solved many of the problems.

My goal is for the total symbiotic farm interrelationship. I am not sure if that’s the way to say that but you get the idea. The goal is to faze out the mower in lieu of sheep and goat, duck and rabbit and chicken. I will still need to mow and edge I suppose but I have already eyed the scythe for sale over at Martin Hardware, the big one with the large blade and the small one for detail work. I am still young, I have the energy to start this process and hell, Frost did it and he was no burly day laborer.

It will be a season or so until I can get the softer process going so until then its pull the cord and hold on tight. The next process will be to determine how best to plow.

What began it all was a trip my father and I made to Tuscany. I had been lucky enough to find us fantastic lodgings directly on the Tignanello vineyard of the Antanori estate. It was a great space and cheap at the time. The only draw back was that it was somewhere in a remote part of the Chianti hills away from almost anywhere; like dropping an Italian off at a cabin near the Blue Ridge Parkway and saying good luck. No one was really even there to get us set up in our lodgings and when we arrived it was dinner time and we were hungry.

We did find a person who spoke a little English to match my total absence of Italian, he gave us our key and some rough directions to a restaurant down a few unkempt and rocky Chianti back roads. This was one of the few restaurants that have changed my life. We ate there almost every night for the week we stayed in Italy but it wasn’t until the last night that I reluctantly tried the Beefsteak Florentine.

I had never thought of the Italians for beef and had ordered literally everything else on the menu at that restaurant except the beef thinking that it was something that they put on there to satisfy the American tourists who had to have their steak. I was not going to be thought of as a tourist. But the waiter insisted and so I tried it and that steak has since become my Holy Grail. Surely these Italians had reached into Plato’s realm of Forms, grabbed that steak and put it on my plate. I have attempted to recreate it ever since.

The lessons of this steak were thus: 1, A well grilled steak can taste better than any gourmet, haute-cuisine preparation in existence. 2, I will never marinate a steak of any kind ever again. 3, Type of cow and method of meat handling are now the most important things in the world. 4, Grilling is Art.

Since that experience I have put in countless grill hours on almost every kind of meat. I have three different types of grills and have spent considerable time considering the science of their operation. I gained more weight and have raised my cholesterol quite badly in my research on cattle types and handling from grass fed to grain, tasting and revisiting so many steaks. I have rotted a feasts worth of meat in an attempt to get my head around aging. And I buy cow for my restaurant in primal parts to cut it down myself so that I can learn where the steaks are and how they are cut and what goes into the process. This is my meat resume in short and I will not quit until I can put that Beefsteak Florentine on my own plate with consistency, until I find my Grail.

The first aspect of any good steak is the quality of the animal it comes from. Oakhill Farm raises only acorn fed, Tamworth breed pigs. I purchased a rack of pork short loin and hung it in our cooler for some time for if I have derived any hypothesis from my studies in meat it is that aging may be the most important aspect of transcendent flavor in a steak, even when that steak is pork. Beyond that, the most important detail to these cuts was that the fat and skin had been left on presenting a intrigue and a challenge to the meat perfectionist and I began to ask myself as soon as I saw it, how to cook these babies so as to best utilize that hunk of fat and rind.

This style of leaving the fat on is becoming a trend so look out for it. Lisa and I saw some gourmet catalog over the holidays offering a pork roast from some heritage breed with a two inch chunk of fat and the rind left on for a considerable price. You can get it locally for much cheaper.

After cutting the loin into steaks I let them sit on my kitchen counter propped up so that they could get air to all sides for the entire day before grilling. My kitchen is quite cold in the winter, about 50 degrees, and presents a wonderful environment for counter aging a steak. With the weather lately I have been holding around 60-65 which is ok by me also. This method truly improves all meat by allowing it to dry, by letting the meat come to a better beginning temperature for grilling and it does fake a little of the process that aging brings to the flavor of meat. Personally I have counter aged for days before eating some meats but this is how I have found the exact line between flavor and rot. Some may worry about leaving pork out all day like this. I suppose legally I should not suggest the method just in case someone has a bad go of it yet I feel confidant that the food born bacteria we have all come to associate with pork and even chicken is more a product of mass handling meats than it is of the meats themselves. I would never recommend this technique for any cut of meat purchased from a conventional grocery store. I only work with local meats from the farmer themselves and recommend the philosophy of spending more money on better meat and eating less of it to balance the cost.

I did rub the chops down with a touch of good olive oil to preserve the color by preventing oxidation. I am still battling with the debate on when to season. Some say to season early, other say to season only just before cooking. The proponents of late seasoning think that if you add the salt too early it will leach precious juices from the meat. The early seasoning school think that by salting the meat hours before cooking you will allow the salt to penetrate deep into the meat causing better flavor. I have not made up my mind but I err on the side of late seasoning and did not put salt and pepper on my cuts until just before grilling.

I used a small Weber grill, hard wood charcoal and lit it with a chimney style charcoal lighter so as to avoid fluid flavors. Hard wood charcoal burns hotter than briquettes and in the right hands can be better for steak grilling when you want to achieve the perfect crust or sear. In the wrong hands it can burn a steak without cooking it and it was a tough call with these babies because the fat content was so high. My theory for these pork chops was to crisp the rind fat and render the internal marbling so as to achieve a simultaneous crispy sear whilst tricking the fat marbling into melting slowly out and thereby braising the meat surrounding it.

Once the charcoal was all burning red I dumped them on to one side of the grill leaving the other side with almost no heat. I placed the grill top over them to get hot and went inside to season the meat. By season I only mean salt and pepper, if you have a steak that is worth a damn at all you will not want to confuse it with any other flavors. Salting meat is important and I will always get down really close to the meat and sprinkle on the salt with my fingers watching to be sure that every bit of the surface is covered evenly and that any big chunks of fat get extra salt. Extra salt on the fat is a theory of mine that as the fat melts and braises the surrounding meat it will taste even better if it is fully flavored itself, also I want the fat to render and salt is an aid in that. I then pepper, carefully and evenly.

The other problem with high fat content is that dripping fat can cause your charcoal to flame up which can not only cause burning but introduces rather nasty flavors. To achieve perfection with any fatty steak would be to slowly render the fat while crisping it like the fat on a duck breast, a crunchy and delicious part of the whole, not something to be discarded as is typically the plight of meat fat on plate.

The steaks hit the grill. I placed them on the cold side with the rinds closest to the fire, just over the edge of where the fire began. They sizzled perfectly. The beauty of a Weber grill is that its particular shape circulates the heat so that the cold side of my fire was still quite hot but with dry, indirect heat. The meat was cooking but the fat was sizzling and rendering. After a while it became apparent that my method had worked. The fat marbling began to sizzle from top to bottom and was dripping evenly out of the meat on the cold side braising it, in a manner, just as I had wanted. The half inch of fat and rind were sizzling nicely and evenly, not burning but browning and shrinking.

The next problem in a steak is the debate over flipping. Most people say flip once and I have often found this to be the absolute rule but many times I have had to flip a few times and every now and then it works to the favor of the perfectly grilled steak. Turning the steak once or twice on the same side is considered necessary both for beautiful grill mark cross hatches and for even cooking. These Pork chops were an inch and a half thick and they required every turn in the book to achieve their perfection. I left them on the first side for a good long time shifting twice to expose the entire length of the rind fat to the high heat and that is when it happened.

I had only let myself consider the possibility for a moment so as not to get too worked up only to let myself down with failure but it was actually happening. The rind began to bubble and puff and the fat behind it melted out and crisped. I was grilling the skin of this steak into an attached pork crackling, I knew then that this was going to be a perfect steak. Perhaps if you are not from the South you will not fully understand the glory of what was happening here. Those delicious crispy snacks that you can buy like potato chips at almost any store down here, pork rinds; this is what I was achieving on the grill, on my steak, right in front of me. I really don’t have the words now to convey how cool this is, but it is awesome.

This then became the challenge; to get the steak perfectly cooked (I like pork like this at about medium/rare to medium), with a perfectly seared crust on the meat, a nice rendering and crunch to the fat and a fully puffed pork rind on the edge. And I hit it! Once the rind was fully puffed, the meat had already acquired a beautiful crust and coloring on both sides, I had avoided fat flames though they were beginning to rise from the grills bottom where the fat had been collecting. I checked doneness again by pushing my finger into the meat, a technique that I am finally getting to be handy with. I could tell that I was on the shy side of medium and so I knew that I had cook time to spare. I used this time by flipping the steaks on to the direct heat and sealing the deal by gaining a crispier sear, a few moments on each side and than quickly onto a plate to let the steaks carry cook into a perfect doneness.

The flavor was incredible. Everything had come together perfectly. I cut off a piece of the puffed rind and tried it, perfect! Crisp and crunchy, a gourmet pork rind with just a little melted salty fat on it like a sauce, delicious. The meat itself had two textures as I believe this was a loin chop. The fatty meat towards the narrow part of the chop was the highlight for me. The fat had all but melted into the meat making it flavorful while giving it the texture of beef tenderloin. The fat itself was clean, not waxy and had a great flavor and mouth feel. The loin medallion in the center of the chop was more cooked than the other parts as it had almost no fat content whatever, I’d say on the far side of medium. It highlighted the true quality of this animal. Pork at this temperature can begin to get a grainy texture but this meat maintained a perfect moistness and firm meaty bite as though it were a medium rare NY strip. You could see the difference by looking at it, each cut revealing perfect strands of thick in tact meat fiber, not the sometimes stringy or often grainy appearance that conventional pork can get. It was a perfect Pork Chop Steak experience. Thank you Oakhill Farm.

The 5 acres we have to work with present some interesting challenges. The majority of the property is on a slight hill that may be too much for produce cultivation because of erosion issues. There is about a half acres of woods that is about half cedar and a half acre pond on the land as well. Although these land features present challenges they are also the draw for us to this land. We are excited to have three separate ecosystems to be working with no matter how small.

Beyond this I have already come to an agreement with one of our neighbors to lease an additional acre of completely flat land to work for produce.

So this is what we have to work with and from this I hope to establish the Revolutionary Soup Farm. The idea will be to grow food directly for the restaurant. The farm will be cultivated organically though I have no intentions of seeking organic certification. Beyond that I intend to work to make this farm self sustaining and as low impact for the environment as possible.

I will be following the lead of farms I know and love as much as I can. Having never cultivated the earth on this level before I will need all the help I can get. I will also be raising some animals, Chickens because they are so useful for eggs, Guinea Fowl to help keep the bugs down and act as guards against intruders, Ducks for eggs and meat, Goats for meat, milk and pasture maintenance and Pigs to turn the field up and keep the woods clean of unwanted growth.

I will post my progress along the way and look forward to your replies and advice.

This is a new chapter for Rev Soup and will become an integrated system that has been a goal of mine for quite some time.

Thank you all for your support.

Oh and the freshly Roasted Polyface chickens have just come out of the oven so we’re ready to make our 90’s club sandwich. In addition to the chicken it features bacon, cheddar, avocado, lettuce, tomato, onions & house sauce on a kaiser roll. Mmmmmm.