Herbs galore!

I need to get some more batteries for my camera, but I went walking through the herb field last night and was astonished at how well the herbs look. They are nice and bushy big and green! Except for the purple basil :) that is dark purple! They look amazing.

We will be bringing herb bunches to market this weekend. Otsiningo and Ithaca Market.

We got our tea bags in the mail yesterday so today I will be working on putting our first sets of tea bags together. Is there any specific types of teas you would like to see?

We also purchased our Iced tea dispenser as well hoping it arrives before market Saturday at Otsiningo. Today I am mixing some Lemongrass, Rosemary and Thyme tea together to make sure that that is the tea we want to serve! We had a customer one of our first years down at Downtown Binghamton Farmer's Market buy a Lemongrass plant from us. When she came back the next week she informed us that she made Lemongrass Thyme tea and that it was delicious. I was searching for a good recipe online yesterday and found one for Lemongrass, Rosemary, Thyme tea. I am very excited to try it. If it comes out well we will be bringing it to Otsiningo Farmer's Market this weekend!

We will also have more fruit this weekend. We will definitely have Methley plums from Cornell University Orchards.

Methley Plums

Also, Otsiningo Farmer's Market extended their pruchasing distances and now have included PA. So we are hoping to get PA peaches, watermelon, cantaloupe and some other goodies. It is not definite yet, but hopefully the variety is expanding.

I had this whole post thought out and ready to type last night. Then this morning I woke up with a blank slate and couldn't remember what I was going to post!

Market this week was great! We sold out of Sweet Corn again. It lasted us a little bit longer than last saturday. We managed to get enough of the other stuff so that we didn't sell out until market ended.

This week word is we will possibly have PA peaches, cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, and Methley plums. As well as all the stuff we had last week! 

I ordered our first set of tea bags. I am excited to start putting the teas together. We are thinking of bringing our very own herbal Iced tea to market.

The herbs are starting to come on pretty strong. We are planning on having herb bunches at market this weekend! I have been preparing the dried herbs to get ready to go in the shaker containers when they arrive.

We might be getting some much needed rain today! Thank goodness! The field is soooo dry and we use our well and mom and dad's well to water the field. It is definitely starting to take it's toll trying to pump out all that water! Hopefully things start to cool down a little and we get some rain!

YELLOW PLUMS!



This is  what they look like just as they are getting to
the point where they are ripe and ready to eat!



Today is the day we normally make all of our calls to the people we normally buy stuff from. We were going to call Cornell University Orchards to see if the plums were ready yet. But they beat us to it.

As of right now we will be getting the first of many fruits of the season from Cornell Orchards. The Early Yellow Japanese Plum. For those of you that have not had these before, they are amazing. They are sweet and juicy.

The very first year we got them, I was pregnant with Eric Jr. I started eating them and continued to eat them throughout the entire market. They were sooooo good!

The plum is actually called a Shiro plum.

Tasty Tuesday- Chicken Paprikash

This is what it looks like, just served over noodles.
We like to use spiral noodles with it.

Bela, my father-in-law is Hungarian. He makes this dish (Chicken Paprikash.) This is not the recipe he uses. He does not have a specific recipe he just makes it but I think this recipe that I found is pretty close except for he does it on the stove in a pressure cooker. This recipe (from CD Kitchen online) calls for a slow cooker. Either way, it's one of those things where I know that I will never be able to make it the same as he does, but I can tell you it is amazingly delicious. I get very excited and jittery like a child on christmas morning when he makes it!

Either way, this is a varied recipe of a great dish. It is very inexpensive. And I chose this for this week because our next set of meat birds are going to the butcher on Thursday. Which means you could plan to have this this weekend and come buy one of our chickens to make it! : )

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Chicken Paprikash

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp paprika (I recommend the actual Hungarian paprika, it has more flavor to it then your generic paprika.)
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup canned chicken broth
1 lb of chicken, cut into thighs, legs, breast)
1 tbsp flour
1/2 cup sour cream
Sprial noodles

In a nonstick skillet, saute onion and garlic for 5 minutes. Stir in paprika, salt and pepper, cook 30 seconds more. Spoon mixture into a slow cooker; add broth.

Add chicken pieces to slow cooker. Cover and let simmer for 5-6 hours.

Stir together flour and sour cream in a cup, stir into chicken mixture. Cover and cook on low until the mixture is thick and hot, about 10 minutes more.

Serve over cooked spiral noodles.

Serves about 4.

Sweet Corn And Raccoons

After I posted in the last post about us not having sweet corn soon. Friday we went to pick up our cherries from Iron Kettle Farm (we store stuff in their coolers), when we got there we saw they were selling sweet corn! We went to talk to Jen and she told us that she would find out if we could get some for Saturday's market. They told us it was early corn yet so it was still a little small but it was good. They said they could get 35 dozen for us. We jumped on the offer.

We took it to market on Saturday and sold out within the first 1 1/2 hours. We were supposed to set aside some for us to eat for dinner and for mom and dad to eat as well. After we were out we realized that we did not set any aside for ourselves or mom and dad. oops! Things were so hectic and crazy saturday.

To those of you loyal customers that came after 11, we are going to try to have more stuff so that you can get some. Sorry that we ran out so early.

For those of you that were around to know that Eric Jr got sick at market, he is doing well. Not sure if it was a virus or just heat exhaustion. He is fine now back to his normal self.



This is not our picture but aren't they cute!



We have a lovely family of raccoons that have made their home right outside of our egg layers chicken coop! The other night the dogs started barking and going crazy and I couldn't see anything out there but I heard these little cries. I thought it might have been a kitten or something outside. Eric went out and looked with the flashlight but found nothing.  Then last night as he was locking the chicken coop up, he saw 3 little baby raccoons (which were adorably cute) in the tree next to the coop. We had seen an adult across the street where our meat birds are, but we haven't seen that one since. But something has been getting into feeders and even in the greenhouse feed bins. They are going for the sunflower seeds.

We set up the live trap tonight to hopefully see if we could catch them and get them out of here. There is lots of State land surrounding us so hopefully if we can catch them we can release them somewhere where they won't come back!

We are nervous with them being around because our very first set of meat birds that we had, 2 raccoons claimed quite a few of our birds. We have the next set of meat birds that are still only 2-3 weeks old, we hope they do not find them and try to get to them. They have walked past them going into the greenhouse if they go in the front entrance. Luckily there are no signs of them trying to get to the little ones but we will not be safe until they are gone!

BLUEBERRIES

Yes you read right. We will have Blueberries at Otsiningo Park Farmer's Market this Saturday! We talked to Terry from Cherry Knoll Farm which is where we get our Blueberries from and he told us we would be able to get some. We are confirming the amount today, and we will go pick them up tomorrow.

We just got back from Syracuse Regional Market where we picked up what will probably be our last batch of Cherries for the season. We will have them at market as well!

I would also like to let you know that we will not be at Ithaca Farmer's Market this weekend. We are still running a little low on meat, so we figured we would let Mom and Dad have the weekend off! : )  Which Dad is happy about because there is a Women's Soccer game on TV!

Yesterday we spent all day in the field. Which rarely ever happens because it is either too sunny and I don't want the kids out there all day or it is raining or the kids are just not cooperating! But yesterday everything seemed to line up to where Eric and I could both get work done in the field!

Of course we went through and had to water everything because mother nature ran out of rain because she used too much earlier in the season. But as I was going through watering I noticed that we have a TON of Tomatoes growing out there! Our Grape tomatoes look good and have a few tomatoes started on them. The Brandywine (heirloom) tomatoes look the best as of right now.

There is two things that 90% of the customers we have ask for during the summer:

1) When will we have Sweet Corn? We spoke with Iron Kettle Farm yesterday and that is who we have almost always got our corn from and they said another 2-3 weeks. Germination has been tough on Corn and there are a lot of farmer's having a tough time with it. We shall see how it progresses though.

2) When will we have tomatoes? Well generally we get some early tomatoes from Leola, PA. But Otsiningo Farmer's Market made the rule that any purchased fruit or vegetable can not be further than 100 miles away. So that ends that. We are still looking though.

But WE planted a TON of tomatoes so that we would have enough to take to Ithaca Farmer's Market and Otsiningo. Like I said we have a ton out there. The tomatoes are still a little small, but they're getting there! I can't wait to have a nice juicy tomato sandwich!

TRIVIA THURSDAY

How old does a rabbit have to be before you can start breeding her? The buck has to be of this age as well before he starts to breed.

Send your answers to crosscreekfarmfamily@yahoo.com by friday at 9 pm to recieve a $1.00 off coupon to the our stand at the farmer's market or our stand at the house. It will be valid for 1 month.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

 Now that I bragged about my photo taking improving. I was trying to get a good picture of the next set of meat chickens and their pen. I was trying to hurry because the battery was dieing and the kids were inside sleeping and Eric wasn't home. So here it is:

I never posted a picture of our rabbit cages that we purchased awhile ago.

I should have posted these before last week. These are the white currant bushes. We took our only batch of white currants to Ithaca Farmer's Market last Saturday!

And I will leave you with a gorgeous sunset over the greenhouse! I love the country! Just another reason I love being in the middle of nowhere!

Coriander

This year when we were finding out that our dried herbs were going to be a hit, I immediately started thinking of combinations and new herbs that we could do. I was thinking of all the herbs that we grew and thinking if we dried all of them and if not could we. We dry everything except for Cilantro and Chives.

I had read up on the chives and everything I read said that they needed to be freeze dried. I figured that was out of the question. But I did come across one article that stated the person had used a dehydrator. Well needless to say I was intrigued and wanted to try it. I got my dehydrator prepped and ready and began dehydrating! The entire house smelled of an onion smell! I was getting very excited thinking it was working. After they seemed dry enough I took them out of the dehydrator and prepped them and put them in a jar to save until packaging. Which is what I normally do with new herbs to make sure that they will hold up and how they will react. I am very glad that I did this because after a few weeks, they started to turn brown. They were not rotting, they were just loosing their color and scent, which also means they were loosing their flavor. So I decided that was something that we were not going to do.

Cilantro on the other hand. I had never even thought to harvest the coriander off of it. I really thought this was going to be a long, tedious process. Eric and I started researching and figuring out if this was something that we could do. It was much easier than we had thought. Basically we do nothing until the plant starts to look like it is dieing.  That sounds easy!



This is the stage we are at right now.
This is not my photo, just one off the internet.



I had some Cilantro potted plants that I had let go to seed at the stand on purpose so I could closely watch the process. I was checking them pretty often and saw that they had flowered, I was getting excited. I then didn't check them in a few days and when I checked them I believe on Thursday of last week I saw all these little green coriander balls where the flowers had fallen off! So...first step complete. Next step is going to be the seeds turning purple. I will let you know when that happens.

God knows I can never get pictures on here much anymore so I am not going to promise, but I will try to get some pictures on here tomorrow for wordless Wednesday and show you what I am talking about.

Like I said before, I really have taken a new interest in this. I am looking closer at the different stages of herbs and their properties. This is just another exciting learning moment for me!

Tasty Tuesday- Refrigerator Zucchini Pickles

In honor of our zucchini being ready, I figured I would share a recipe that fascinated us. One of our very first markets was the Johnson City Farmer's Market at the Oakdale Mall. Now it was an ok market, lot of fun people watching and learned alot from some of the older customers we had. It was a great time.

One day this lady came to us that had bought from us before and started talking about zucchini pickles. Now anyone who knows Eric Sr, knows he does not like vegetables cooked. Well some he does but not many. Anyways, we thought they were going to be really nasty. She brought them in the next week for us to try. And to our amazement they were incredible.

Of course I lost the recipe, I don't remember the ladies name and have no clue where to find it. But I found this recipe on a Cooks.com recipe search and this sounds kinda like it. I am hoping to try to make this within the next couple days.

REFRIGERATOR ZUCCHINI PICKLES

5-6 Zucchini sliced or cubed

4 sliced onions

4 cups Sugar

2 cups vinegar
1 cup water

1/2 cup pickling salt

1 tsp Tumeric
1 1/2 tsp celery seed
1 1/2 tsp mustard seed
5 heads of dill

Boil the sugar, vinegar, water, salt and spices 5 minutes. Let cool. Pour over zucchini, onions, and dill. Store in gallon glass or plastic jar in refrigerator. Keeps until its' gone!

Behind

I guess I got a little behind on this blog!

Things on the farm have been busy! We got Cherries last week for market and for the farmstand at the house. Of course we are out of them right now but we will more than likely be getting more on Thursday.

We picked our first zucchini and yellow squash and put it on the stand at the house yesterday. Granted it was only 2 yellow squash, 2 zucchini, and 2 costata zucchini. There are a ton more growing over there though. Which means I am almost 100% positive that we will have squash and zucchini at market this weekend.

The rest of the plants in the field are looking great. The deer have still been nibbling on some plants here and there. We have lots of tiny acorn squash growing. The beans have flowers and there are some tiny sunshine squash started out there even though the deer ate those plants down to almost nothing.

I will try to play catch-up here within the next couple days. Hopefully! I have a lot more herb planting to do because I don't want the plants to go to waste that we did not sell, but we shall see! I hope to be caught up by the end of the week. We shall see!

Oh yeah- and we will probably have blueberries not this weekend but next possibly! Keep checking back!