It was bound to happen. The beautiful insanity that is tomato season on a small farm. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones. We’re eating them with breakfast and we’re eating them with dinner. Plenty of preserving happening, too.
This year, it’s passata, diced tomatoes and roast tomatoes in the vacola preserving jars. Experiments are afoot for lacto-fermented tomato sauce also. Read More
Last Spring Nick gave a Tedx talk about stewarding our most available nutrients to grow food for our communities in a closed-loop system. Yes, he was talking about humanure. And during said talk, Nick had a healthy, humanure-grown cumquat tree on stage with him.
During the talk, some of the cumquats from this tree were passed around the audience and munched on, to illustrate the point that when processed safely in a biological system, humanure can contribute hugely to the fertility of the soil that grows great fruit trees. Read More
This week marked a big step for us at Milkwood Farm, as we got the chance to follow-through on the stewardship of our pastured pigs by taking them all the way to the plate.
In the spirit of honoring both life and death, we wanted to make the most of our pigs, and learn how to process every single part of them so that nothing need be wasted. An intense two days of learning and considering what it means to be a part of the full cycle of life.
* A note that this post contains pictures of recently dispatched pigs in the process of becoming nourishing food. If this isn’t your thing, please check out our many other posts and resources. Read More
As promised, here is Rose’s nitrate-free, home made way of making bacon from scratch.
I say ‘way’ rather than ‘recipe’ because it’s still in development in terms of quantities. But if you too are a tinkerer rather than a straight-up recipe follower, then come on down and join us in the glorious land of home made, DIY, no nasties, bacony goodness. Read More
Yes, I do realise that is a big call, because potato salads can get pretty good. Whether it was the combo of 100% home-grown veggies or the home-made ricotta on top, i don’t care. This is the most rocking potato salad I’ve tasted.
And created by Rose Newberry, who we’re lucky enough to have at Milkwood Farm cooking for students and crew in the summer months… Read More
I just wanted to flag something at this point in Milkwood Farm’s development, regarding food. You know, those beautiful shots we share of honeycomb on sourdough scones, home-cured bacon and fresh rainbow radishes. They look nice, don’t they? and they are. They really are.
Feeding crew and students amazing food, grown and cooked with love, is a huge priority for us here – for reasons of ethics, health and because we want to walk the walk on clean food, not just talk about it. But there is a flipside, as we’re discovering… Read More
The red cabbage sauerkraut that Rose made recently is a beautiful thing, and we’re consuming it daily. It’s sour and it’s crunchy, and it’s complimenting many a meal here at the farm this spring, from potato curries through to our first home-grown roast pork dinner last weekend… here’s the last of the good stuff, moved out of the crockpot and into a jar in the fridge. What’s next for the crockpot? Hmm. Anyone tried Cima di Rapa ferments?
This year in the market garden Michael has sown lots of silverbeet and rainbow chard, because it’s such a versatile and hardy green. However silverbeet are poly-embryonic, which means that multiple plants will sprout from the one seed.
So to prevent crowding and to be able to regulate the final size of the plant, silverbeet can be ‘thinned’, so you end up with just one silverbeet per planting. Thinning can be done at various stages of the growing cycle, but Michael decided to pick/thin the chard at micro greens stage, which means the beginning of mass salads of loveliness at Milkwood Farm. Read More
How to make the most of the late brassica harvest? Sauerkraut! Fermented cabbage is a hard thing not to love. It’s spicy and it’s sour and it looks beautiful too, especially made with your own red cabbages.
The cabbage harvest was not what we’d hoped for, with lots of half-headed cabbages that were obviously perfect for… something. So when in doubt, sauerkraut. Because ferment takes any vegetable and makes it better. Read More
Yes, you heard that right. Croissants made on sourdough starter (ie no yeast), using white spelt flour. It’s possible! And what is more, they’re ridiculously delish.
Rose made these at Milkwood Farm during a quiet week recently, and they were all things that croissants should be, but better. Especially with plum jam… home-made heaven. Read More
