albemarle, nc

Month: November 2017

Market Stuff for Thanksgiving!

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The only crop left in the fields is the last of the cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. Everything else is tilled and ready for cover crops.

I don’t come to the market right after Thanksgiving but I’ll be there this Saturday with:

The last of my baby turmeric and ginger, which is more like…tweener age than baby now haha. Cauliflower, broccoli, red & gold beets, red cabbage and 2 green savoys, arugula, beet greens, curly & red kale, chard, sweet potatoes, and pecans that were just shelled Wednesday. No eggs.

We are all stocked up on beef cuts so I’ll have our 100% grass fed & grass finished, Animal Welfare Approved Angus beef in these cuts: ground, stew, philly steak, cube steak, ribeyes, NY Strip, filet, sirloin steak, flat iron, flank, skirt, short ribs, brisket, should roast with or without a marrow bone, boneless chuck roast, sirloin tip roast, eye of round roasts, liver, bags of soup bones.

We have hot dogs (skinny and quarter pounder), sliced corned beef, sliced pastrami and sliced bologna made from our 100% grass fed Angus beef, no added nitrates or nitrites. We are almost out of quarter pound hot dogs and bologna.

Ground beef special – Buy 5, Get 1 free.

Bulk pricing on our beef: quarters, halves and wholes – $3.50 lb hang weight plus the cost of processing.

Do you want to hear about my big pecan adventure? Of course not. Look away then.

I haven’t brought pecans to the market before, and so this year I thought, you know this might actually be a low maintenance crop that requires minimal work and expense, and sell really well. It only takes around 20 minutes to fill a 3 gallon bucket using the Nut Wizard 🙂 and I can get them shelled for 50 cents a pound, bag them up and take them to the market. Easy Peasy!

WROOOONG. Soooo wroooong.

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Nut Wizardry in action!

20 minutes to fill up a bucket? WRONG. Once you go through and pick out the extra stuff that the Wizard picks up, plus taking off all the hulls that are still stuck on – not the shells, mind you, the hulls OUTSIDE the shells – you only have half a bucket. So it ends up taking almost an hour to get a full bucket of shell-able pecans.

50 cents a pound for shelling? WROOOONG. It’s an hour and a half drive, plus an hour and a half to shell them at which point it was 12:30 so then I have to stop for lunch or else the Carl part of Carlea Farms who was nice enough to drive would be trapped in the vehicle with a very hangry person for the next hour and a half. We left at 9 am + got home at 3 pm = 6 hour tour.

Adding to that, when you arrive with 72 lbs of pecans in the shell and then leave with only 21 lbs of edible shelled pecans, the 50 cents somehow multiplies into millions of dollars. The math is right, people. And where is the cents symbol on this keyboard?

So now all that’s left to do is bag the nuts. Gah! Wrong again! 🙂 you still need to go through them to get out the bits of shells, the nuts damaged by stink bugs (is there nothing they won’t ruin?), shriveled ones, etc. That took 2 more hours. I didn’t finish.

I’m only halfway done nut wizarding so I’ll be doing it all over again, and this time I am prepared for the realities of life.

I did still have enough life force left to make fresh Cinnamon vanilla pecan milk  for our smoothies and granola fruit bowls. Nom. Turns out I like it in my coffee too.

I also had a garlic planting FAIL; if you are a faithful garlic customer of mine you might need to see what you’re in store for next spring haha 🙂

See you guys tomorrow or if you don’t make it, have a wonderful Thanksgiving week and I’ll be giving thanks for you, my super awesome customers!! <3

 

Market Stuff for November 4.

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The spinach is spun 🙂

I’ll be at the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market tomorrow with:

white cauliflower, red & green cabbage, baby turmeric and ginger, horseradish root, swiss chard, beet greens, arugula, spinach, Red Russian kale, potatoes, and sweet potatoes – and Carlea Farms’ organic fed soy-free pastured eggs.

A delicious soup recipe to try, if you’re in the mood – Cheesy Vegan Cauliflower Potato Soup.  The only reason it’s vegan is because they use nutritional yeast instead of cheese so it’s super easy to make it non-vegan by using real cheese (duh). I just happen to have a jumbo size nutritional yeast to use up because my sister’s boyfriend went drunk shopping on Amazon bahaha.   I made a double batch. Shane loved it too. We topped it with chopped avocado and Dean’s microgreens and of course I added hot sauce and crushed red pepper.

I’ll have our 100% grass fed & grass finished, Animal Welfare Approved Angus beef in these cuts: ground, stew, philly steak, cube steak, ribeyes, NY Strip, brisket, eye of round roasts, liver, osso bucco, bags of soup bones.

We have hot dogs (skinny and quarter pounder), sliced corned beef, sliced pastrami and sliced bologna made from our 100% grass fed Angus beef, no added nitrates or nitrites. We are almost out of quarter pound hot dogs and bologna.

Ground beef special – Buy 5, Get 1 free.

Bulk pricing on our beef: quarters, halves and wholes – $3.50 lb hang weight plus the cost of processing.

I’m not sure if I’ll be at the market next week. I think I would only have the greens and the last turmeric. I might skip because I’ll have beets and carrots coming in soon, and curly kale and maybe pecans  – anyone know where I can have them shelled? I know of a place in Shelby but I’d like to find somewhere closer. I think I’m about to the end of white potatoes, and we are almost out of hot dogs and bologna too.

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We have beef coming back from the processor next week so we’ll be all stocked up on roasts and stuff the next time I come and we’re making an order for hot dogs and beer brats from Weeping Radish but that won’t be back very soon I don’t think.

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Blowing out the combine to put it up for the season. The mask is for the dust. It’s a giant blower that you pull with a truck, pretty sure it could blow your skin off. He used to just wear those cheap paper masks like you get at Lowe’s, then he’d be blowing his nose and  coughing up stuff for days so I’m glad he’s wearing one that actually does something now.

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so pretty!

See you tomorrow!!

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