Our CSA required upfront payment for our portion, commonly called a share. Later, when the growing season was underway and harvests were in we all met at our pickup location and were each given a basket of fresh food that was reserved for us, to last us the week. It came directly from the farm and was grown specifically for us.

Joining a CSA is the perfect way to take the middleman out of sourcing your family’s food, reducing the carbon footprint of your groceries, plus it supports local farms and your community economically speaking. You’ll also enjoy fresher foods from your CSA farmer than you’ll typically see in grocery stores.

One thing about CSA’s that is different than going to the grocery store and just choosing your produce is that most CSA’s do not give you the option to pick and choose what you take home for that week. It’s not because the farmer wants to be a control freak, it is because produce is seasonal and grows best at certain times in the growing season. Most of you know this already but it really tends to hit home when you bring home a basket of produce that has unfamiliar items in it and you aren’t sure if you’ll like them or how you are supposed to prepare them.

For us in our fist CSA experience, it was arugula. Lots of salad greens are typical in the early season and we just kept getting arugula. It wasn’t something we liked to eat in a salad and it was kind of hard to come up with ways to use arugula and other uncommon items that came in our baskets. Unfortunately, as consumers we’ve become accustomed to just eating a select few common produce items (tomatoes, onion, potato, etc.) and it’s not particularly beneficial for our health to eat such a limited variety of produce items. As I mentioned, our CSA eating experience pushed us to expand our produce horizons, this was a good thing though it was hard at the time.

When you join a CSA think of it as more than just stocking the refrigerator with produce… Think of it as an adventure in local, seasonal eating and local community.

As a CSA member you are becoming more connected to the land that grows your food, the land is sustaining you with freshly picked goods, you are helping a local farmer who in turn helps the community by supplying local food and you are investing in food options for future generations. What’s not to love about that?

To find out about our farm’s current CSA membership opportunities and to sign up click here: https://www.ryderfamilyfarm.com/southern-illinois-produce-csa/

The post What is a CSA all about? Do I want to join? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Here is a glimpse of what flying solo for our early morning chores looks like:

The alarm sounds for me at 6am. I’ve got to feed Miss Everly and oversee her dressing and getting off to school. Grayson wakes shortly after I rouse Everly at 6:20am.

Everly had a rough day at school with a friend the day before so we special have plans for Everly to write the friend a feelings note this morning. Everly eats, dresses, works on her note and we head out the door by 7:15am to wait for the school bus.

While we wait, we release the chickens from their locked up chicken coop, visit with the chicks a bit, swing on the tree swing and then the bus rolls up and she climbs aboard.

Once Everly is on the bus, Grayson helps me to feed the adult chickens, 15 of them. Then I set him of the deck to watch the chickens eat while I head over to the turkey tractor to feed them. This job requires two hands and lot of bending over.

I also have to release Snowball, Everly’s cattle dog puppy, from her kennel and put her on her tether, also not a good job with a baby in your arms. Snowball likes to try to eat the poultry or chase & jump on the kids and we don’t even know what she’d try doing to the goats… She’s still got lots of obedience training to master and she’s still very young, so she’s not free to roam the homestead just yet-Her drama is a post for another day ;P

Once I get snowball on her tether and manage to get out of her “tether tangling range”-(cause she will wrap your legs in the tether and hurt you very badly), then I can move on to my next task.

The goat enclosure is near the baby chicks so I head on down to say good morning to them and bring Poptart up to the garage for her morning milking. Poptart always tries to eat the chicken food so I’ve got to lead her directly to the milking stand without becoming distracted along the way.

It’s close to 7:35 am now, Grayson is still sitting, watching chickens eat. After the chickens eat they take turns queuing up to lay eggs in the garage. You see they made this little nest underneath a chair with some lose/ discarded hay near the goat’s hay stacks. They refuse every nesting box we make for them. We just let them continue using their makeshift nest because their permanent coop/ nesting boxes aren’t finished yet. Plus it is sure convenient to collect eggs without having to go beyond the garage.

I begin milking Poptart while the egg laying procession continues. Once milking is complete and I’ve ushered Poptart out of the garage and off the deck it’s close to 8 am. Grayson is now leaking through his cloth diaper and wants to nurse and go back to bed. Adalyn is still asleep. Once I get Grayson dry, fed and sleeping I might have some quiet time with my coffee before Adalyn wakes and I’ve got to feed and occupy her.

All I’ve got left to do morning chore wise is to water and move the turkeys, clean and refill goat waterers, fill hay feeders and release Clay, our goat buck, from his pen so he can free range for the day. Oh and I better collect all the laid eggs so our other dog, Dixie doesn’t come in and eat them.

The post All before 8am on a farm… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

I’ve never felt inclined to make butter myself. Yet I LOVE me some raw butter and as of late it’s been pretty hard to come by… and it so good for you.

The most healthful raw butter is a springtime commodity in the milking world.

Cows fed on rapidly growing spring grass produce milk that contains high levels of beta carotene and five times the amount of CLA, an essential fatty acid that has a strong anti-cancer properties. 

The beta-carotene in grass-fed raw dairy is most evident in butter that is a rich deep yellow color.  Grain-fed cows produce a butter that looks white.

Some of you also know that raw butter is a nutritional powerhouse according to Weston A. Price and his work, it is a source of “Factor X”. The “Price Factor X”  (now believed to be vitamin K₂) is only found in raw grass-fed milk butterfat, fish eggs, and the organs and fats of animals. It is how you can heal cavities with nutrition.

Our raw butter source has always been an Amish farmer, the same one we get our pork from. Our Amish farmer knows to make loads of butter in the spring, in fact, he only makes it in the spring! He then freezes it and sells it off to those interested in it. Sadly, he has been out of butter since the fall. Gasp!

We are swimming in raw milk right now because I’ve started a dairy detox to see if it helps Grayson’s newly developed symptoms and Everly is possibly reacting to dairy also. However, we have a gallon of raw milk coming to us each week via our cow share… so I’m exploring dairy preservation techniques!

We are making greek yogurt with the raw milk but are still swimming in it so I gave butter making a try this week. Butter is made from the cream that sits at the top of your raw, undisturbed milk. Skimming cream is easy and doesn’t require any fancy equipment! Keep your milk in a wide mouthed container and when you see the cream separated at the top (it will separate in the fridge or on the counter if it is undisturbed) just use a ladle and scoop the cream off the top.

Put your skimmed cream in a food processor. You can also try a blender or mixer. I started out trying my experiment in a blender and wasn’t too impressed and I hear the mixer can result in a messy process.

Return the butter solids to your bowl and press the chunks together with a wooden spoon, you’ll notice more liquid coming from the solids, more buttermilk. Pour off the liquid periodically. Keep doing this until your butter is liquid free.

Some folks say you should ice wash the butter next, so it keeps longer. I didn’t do this with mine. I’m not concerned will how long it will keep. We eat raw butter like mad!

Now you can enjoy your fresh raw butter or you can wrap it and freeze it for later use. Pretty easy huh?

About that buttermilk… It’s not at all waste! Sure you can use it in recipes that call for buttermilk but you can also use it for anything that calls for plain ole milk. I tried it with this basic pancake recipe and they didn’t taste any different.

So there you have it, homemade butter making is easy and not really all that wasteful. Plus, it’s a great way to stock up on raw butter while not letting your precious raw milk go to waste.

 

The post Butter, oh butter appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Last night was the worst of the storms. We had a crazy night with power flickering, lightening flashing and thunder shaking the house. Everly was startled many times by the lights and sounds of the storm before we crawled in to bed.

Once we were both in the bedroom and trying to sleep she calmed right down though. She’s a pretty good night sleeper, even in crazy storms!

We were pretty motivated to get more of the garage under control this weekend too. We hauled in my boxes of cow kitchen decor and unpacked those.

I have quite the collection of cow stuff as you can see. The collection has been growing for almost 10 years.  I even found this cute cow drawer pull in the collection and installed it on one of our cabinets, now I’ve gotta find some more cute cow drawer pulls for the whole kitchen. I love cows, LOL!

Anyway, I’ve had a few spare moments this morning to get all the contest entries in one place so I could draw a winner. I am still getting the hang of this contest thing.

Updated Sept 10th 2009:

There were a total of 54 entries to the contest and number 43 is the contest winner number 43 never contacted me so I’ll be drawing a new winner. She’ll have 72 hours to claim her prize by emailing me her contact info.

Oh, and I’ve launched another contest: Read about it here.

The post Almost 3 inches of rain and a contest winner to announce… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

The idea of the webcast was that Peter Walsh and several panelists would present organizational tips for the home, for kids and for the classroom while allowing viewers to submit questions via twitter that the panelists would answer.

N isn’t the most organized person in the world so I was stoked to get some organizational tips from the webcast. They presented lots of good info and many good reminders about organization. Here are a few:

TIPS FOR HOME
1) Find the Vision you have for a Space
2) Make Organization a Family Value
3) Use the Right Tools for Great Organization

TIPS FOR ORGANIZING YOUR CHILD
1) Show that you Value Organization
2) Establish Clear Limits and Routines
3) Always ‘Finish the Cycle’ (Complete a Task)

TIPS FOR THE CLASSROOM
1) Establish Clear Routines
2) Involve Kids with Classroom Organization
3) Use Words, Pictures and Color to help Organize

Just before the webcast we received this surprise box of adorable cupcake themed school supplies courtesy of OfficeMax. The school supplies are adorable and were a fun gift, unfortunately we can’t really use them.

I decided it would be fun to host a giveaway here on the blog so I could pass these cute school supplies on to a lucky reader who can put them to good use. So here are the giveaway details: This giveaway is now closed.

Prize: Back-to-school supplies from Scoolio-Von-Hoolio (includes binders, mini notebook, drawstring backsack, notebook, 2 pocket folder, composition books, pencil set and pencil box)

To enter: Leave a comment on this post with your best organizational tip (this is a mandatory step). Once you have commented with your organizational tip you can make the following optional extra entries. For the extra entries be sure to use the form to enter each of your extra entries or they wont count.

• Comment on any of my other posts (besides this one), tell me which one. Unlimited entries.
• Follow me on twitter, leave me your username. 1 extra entry.
• Tweet the giveaway, leave me the link to your tweet. 1 extra entry per day.
• Follow this blog publicly via friend connect, leave me your username. 1 extra entry.
• Follow this blog on facebook, leave me your facebook name. 1 extra entry.
• Use another media sharing tool (stumble, technorati, digg etc), tell me what you did to share. 1 extra entry per sharing tool.

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Eligibility: This contest is open to those with a US mailing address (unless you are willing to pay for shipping costs to ship out of the USA) and will close on August 31st 2009 at midnight.

The winner will be announced here on the blog. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the announcement of the contest winner!

The winner will have 72 hours following the announcement to contact me and claim their winnings. If the winner fails to contact me within the 72 hour period they forfeit winnings and another winner will be selected and posted here on the blog.

Random.org will be used to draw the winner.

The post Back to school with Scoolio-Von-Hoolio and OfficeMax giveaway. Get Organized Today! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.