We learned some lessons the hard way last year, so we’re going to be making a few adjustments this year. First of all, we’ll have more turkeys to offer. After Chris Hastings took one of our birds to the Martha Stewart show last year, it seemed like everyone in the country wanted one for their own table.

Secondly, we’ll be starting the birds a whole two months earlier this year. Last year the turkeys ended up weighing between 9 and 15 lbs at the end of 6 months. This year we hope to significantly increase that number, so we can all enjoy a Thanksgiving-sized portion of turkey at the table.

Some things will stay the same, however. Our birds will again be raised on pasture, with supplemental feed from Faithway Feeds out of Alabama. All of our poultry feed on the farm comes from Faithway, not just because it’s an Alabama company, but also because it provides a high-quality product with no medications or animal bi-products. The birds will be free-ranging, although we do hope to not find them on our roof this year.

We will also be processing ourselves, providing the absolute freshest turkey you can find to our customers.

We will also be maintaining our price of $5/lb, despite a significant increase in our feed costs. We hope to offset that cost by raising a bigger bird and offering more birds for sale this year.

The best way to get one of our turkeys for your Thanksgiving meal is to pre-order. Deposits of $20 will be subtracted from the final cost of your bird, and must be received along with the order form (found here) by May 31st. You can email us your order form, or mail it along with your deposit to this address:

Randle Farms
9215 Lee Road 54
Auburn, AL 36830

Checks should be made payable to Randle Farms. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

We’ve recently opened sign-ups for the spring/summer meat share, which has prompted a few questions from our customers. I’m going to attempt to answer some of those questions here, in hopes of clearing things up for this go round and in the future.  I want to address some common questions about our Community Supported Agriculture shares that I’ve picked up on in my experience.

When are shares available?
We give a in-depth explanation of the programs during each sign-up and on the CSA page of our website, so I won’t be too detailed. But generally, our meat share is offered from March – June and July – October. Vegetable shares are offered April – July and September – November. Our vegetable shares are a little less predictable, as they are more susceptible to extreme weather fluctuations. The season sometimes ends a week or two early, or has to start a week or two behind. There’s just no way to predict that from year to year, or even month to month.

How are the shares picked up?
Pick up dates are specified on the sign-up email we send out at the beginning of each season. Vegetable shares are picked up once a week, while meat shares are picked up once a month. Both shares offer two dates for each pick up that customers can choose from. Vegetable shares do offer an in-town pick up option, while meat shares must be picked up on-farm.

What happens if someone misses a pick-up?
If you don’t pick up your share on the specified dates or make alternate arrangements, you forfeit your share. We don’t offer refunds for forfeited shares. Our thought is that you start the season off knowing when the date of each pick-up, so you have plenty of time to put it on your calendar. And if you’ve already paid for the food, why would you not come pick it up? We harvest vegetables before each pick up, and they do not keep for long, so it’s important that you get them on time. Each pick-up requires us to set aside an entire day harvesting, dividing, printing recipes, and waiting on customers. For vegetable shares, that means we set aside two whole days of our week specifically for handing out shares (not counting the rest of the week, which is also directly devoted to getting those shares ready). We ask our shareholders to set aside about 30 minutes to pick those shares up.

How much is in a share?
Meat shares divide pretty evenly, as we can determine the exact number of animals to be harvested for the season. The exact distribution changes year to year, and the updated list can be found on our CSA page. That’s a total amount, so you’ll get that amount divided over four months. No, you will not receive 4 chickens, 2 rabbits, 16 lbs of ground meat, and 12 lbs of prime cuts every month. One month’s pick-up might look like this: 1 whole chicken, 1 package patty pork sausage, 2 packages ground beef, 4 steaks. Per suggestion of our shareholders, we’re going to try harder to provide a meal’s worth of prime cuts in a month, instead of sticking to 3 lbs/month. That means some months you might receive 4 – 5 lbs, for a total of 16 lbs by the end of the share.

Vegetable shares are a little harder to determine. They roughly provide a family-sized portion of each harvested crop, although as former shareholders can attest, sometimes you might get more squash than you bargained for. We plant a variety of crops suited to our region, and multiple varieties of each of those crops. Staples of the spring/summer include lettuces, tomatoes, eggplants, squash, kohlrabi, cucumbers, melons, herbs, flowers. Staples of the fall/winter include winter squash, lettuces, sweet potatoes, cabbages, collard greens, broccoli, cauliflower. We experiment with different crops every year, so there’s always something different.

How do you determine your cost?
I will venture to say that this is the most frustrating part of what we do. First of all, I should point out that what you pay at our farm is indeed the true cost of food. We aren’t paying for our Cadillacs with your meat shares. At the beginning of the year, we add up our inputs, which include everything from fertilizers and feed to irrigation, transportation, and electricity. When gas and corn increase, we have to increase our prices to cover that cost. The difference between our ground beef prices and Winn-Dixie’s is that you’re paying for it all upfront: minus the corn subsidies, minus the back-room deals with politicians, minus the fillers/additives/hormones/who-knows-whats, and minus the hospital bill at the end of a life of eating worthless junk. Believe me, when you add all that stuff in, you’re paying alot more for the other stuff than you’re paying with us. Then after we’ve covered our cost, we add in a salary for ourselves. Say, 1/4 minimum wage. And that’s what you pay.

How is the cost of a share divided?
For a vegetable share, you get, in theory, about $35 worth of produce each week. In reality, you get about $30 worth at the beginning, $35 worth around week 3, and by week 6 you’re probably getting closer to $45 worth each week. If you purchased the same amount directly from our store front, you’d most likely end up spending more. If you purchased the same product from a grocery store…. well, the truth is, you can’t find locally, sustainably grown products around here. You might find organic products from CA, or conventionally grown products from TN, but you’re not going to find both, not of the entire variety of produce that we offer, and certainly not for the price.

In a meat share, we start at the beginning of the season by setting a share price for chicken, rabbit, ground meats, and prime cuts. In a meat share, you pay $4.50/lb for chicken (same as the store front price), $20/piece for rabbit (rarely available from store front), $9/lb for ground meats (an average of beef, lamb, and sausage retail prices), and $12/lb for prime cuts (an average of lamb and beef retail prices).

The perk of both the vegetable and meat shares is that you are guaranteed the best and hardest to get items we sell, including prime steaks, rabbit, tomatoes, and lettuces. We don’t have enough quantity to sell alot of these things through the store front, but can produce just enough to provide through shares. We also give our shareholders first dibs on farm dinner reservations and other events throughout the year.

What if we get something we don’t know how to cook?
We give out recipes for those harder to use items. We also have a broad selection of recipes on our website.

Can I substitute items in the share?
We have no issue working with folks with food allergies.  But part of the point of a farm share is learning how to use the whole harvest, being creative and resourceful in following seasonal production. We encourage shareholders to find new recipes, and share their favorites with the entire community.

Do you have a question about our shares? We’d love to answer it for you.

Chris will be preparing his take on the traditional Southern Thanksgiving, but it sounds alot better than any Thanksgiving meal I’ve had:

“Chris will make his Randle Farms Heritage Breed Turkey with 13 Mile Oyster Dressing & Giblet Gravy, as well as a Chef’s Garden Heirloom Cauliflower Gratin with Roasted Chestnuts & Parmesan Cream.”

Humble beginnings: from the roof of our house to the bright lights

We’re so excited to be working with Chef Hastings. He’s not only a world-renowned chef, but he and his wife Idie have made a serious commitment to supporting local foods in their restaurant and in their spare time. It’s been a joy getting to know him over the last few months.

Of course, I must also mention that I’m personally thrilled that something that I watched grow up in my backyard will be in the presence of Martha Stewart. I’ll be completely honest and admit that I’m a huge fan, and that I requested a Martha Stewart magazine subscription for Christmas, and that her cookbook is one of my most prized possessions.

I should also mention that the folks at her show have spent a great deal of time talking to me and asking great questions about what we do, not to mention studying our website in great detail. They’ve been easy to work with, and the whole experience has really been a pleasure.

But before I go on and on about my feelings for Martha, here’s the television schedule for the Martha Stewart Show. Chris will appear on the 23rd; expect a more detailed episode description as the date gets closer. To check your local listings, here’s your Hallmark Channel airtime finder. And just in case you aren’t aware of all the “Good Things” Martha offers on her website, check out her Whole Living page: it’s basically Mother Earth News, Martha style. What could be better??

And the next time you’re in Birmingham, stop by Hot and Hot Fish Club. Chris and Idie Hastings offer one of the premier dining experiences in Alabama, and it shouldn’t be missed.

Tables set for dinner

David Bancroft of Amsterdam Cafe in Auburn enlisted as our chef for the evening, and helped us iron out all the details of serving a meal to a large group. After all, it was mostly his idea, anyway. David spent quite a bit of time leading up to the evening going over what we had to offer, figuring out how to combine those ingredients, and preparing the meal.

Mr. Frank gives tour of farm

Gus Clark of Fine Wine and Beer by Gus in Opelika hand-picked six of his best wines to accompany the meal. David brought his special roast from Mama Mocha’s Coffee Roastery in Auburn. Reba Williams, whose breads can be found at Amsterdam Cafe and the farm during the summers, prepared white bread. Flour for the pasta was provided by Oakview Farms Granary  in Wetumpka.

The evening began with a tour of the farm. Mr. Frank and Zach talked about the history of the farm, the crops being grown, and guests got the opportunity to ask questions. The tour was followed by a quick introduction of the family, David and his wife, and then David introduced the menu. Then we all sat down together to dine in candlelight, in view of the pastures and garden beds that produced our meal.

Sous chef Ryan Odom, Chef David Bancroft, and Anne

The focus of the evening was relationships. That is, after all, what distinguishes our food from industrial food. We celebrated the relationships of the producer and the consumer, knowing that it is our customers’ support and enthusiasm that gives us the strength to go to work when it’s 15 degrees or 115 degrees outside.

We celebrated the relationship of those of us who eat to what we eat, in caring about how our food is produced, what goes into it, and the welfare of the animals on the farm.

Sitting down to eat

Finally, we celebrated the relationship that is the cornerstone of everything we do, and is also probably the most overlooked: the relationship between the producer, the consumer, and the food on the table to the soil underneath us. Because it’s the soil that absorbs the nutrients that our animals deposit and makes those nutrients available again to the plants. It’s the soil that collects the rainwater and harbors the insects and microorganisms and fungi that are essential to all life. It’s where we’ve built our homes. It’s where our children will play. And while it’s true that you can grow a tasty chicken on a concrete slab and a pretty strawberry in a plastic tube, to do so is to deny our most fundamental connection with the world around us.

So our family invited everyone to the farm to share in an experience our family probably takes for granted: sharing a meal together on the soil it came from, knowing exactly what brought it to the table.

THE MENU

• Garden Salad with Marinated Oven Dried Tomatoes, Cucumber, Peppers,  Feta
• Creamy Acorn Squash Bisque with Roasted Elephant Garlic
• Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan-Praline Crust
• Braised Collard Greens with House-cured Pork Belly
• Lamb Lasagna with Canned Tomatoes and Garden Basil
• Rabbit Cassoulet
• Pecan Smoked Tamworth Hog, Persimmon Barbecue Sauce, Reba’s White Bread
• Cinnamon-Sweet Potato Bread Pudding with Rum Caramel Sauce

• Mrs. Pat’s Blueberry Cobbler  

  

  Dining by candlelight

The first Harvest Dinner on the farm was a huge hit! Chef David Bancroft of Amsterdam Cafe prepared a feast, Gus Clark paired wines, and the all the food came straight from our farm. We’ll be adding pictures to the website soon. Also, I’ve talked David into sharing some of his recipes, so be looking for them on the website!

We’ve had alot of interest in our turkeys as we get closer to the holidays. Our turkeys will be ready on Monday, Nov. 22, from 3pm – 6pm. All who pre-ordered turkeys can pick them up at this time. We will have a very few available for sale at that time also. Giblets (neck, liver, gizzard, and heart) will be included. They will be $5.00/lb, and will
weigh around 10 – 15 lbs. WE WILL NOT BE TAKING ANY MORE ORDERS FOR TURKEYS. They will be sold first come first serve, and we do not expect them to last long. If you’re interested in getting one, plan to come early. We will not have another set available for Christmas, so if you’d like to purchase one for that holiday, go ahead and get it now. If you do happen to miss out this year, you’ll have the opportunity to pre-order next year in the spring. And if you’d really like to serve Randle Farms on your holiday table, we’ll also have chicken, lamb, and beef available.

We do hope you’ll make a trip out to see us this month. To see what’s available before you come, visit http://randlefarms.com/available.html. We look forward to seeing you around the farm!

The video below presents the fundamental problems with the Organic Certification program, using egg production as an example.

Poultry flock on early summer pasture

These pictures are from our own pastured poultry production. (Click them for a larger image.)We use moveable houses which allow us to rotate birds through pasture as they exhaust the resources of an area. We use poultry netting around the perimeter of our smaller birds, but allow our laying ducks and hens roam freely. Our turkeys, who have a remarkable capacity for flight, also take the liberty to roam with the sheep daily.

Turkeys and sheep grazing together.

Learn more about our poultry flocks on our website. It’s definitely a far cry from factory production.

A fresh tomato is something to spend the winter dreaming about. I’m so eager to have that first bite that usually the first fruit on the plant never ripens; I eat fried green tomatoes instead. But there’s no reason to go completely tomato-less through the winter months. Our tomato-loving ancestors invented lots of ways to avoid this, and the best one is canning.

Canning gets a bad rap with that whole botulism thing, and most people today are afraid to try canning for fear of killing their entire family with a casserole. Canning is a science, and there are certain rules you have to follow. But we act as if humans have always prepared food in stainless steel commercial kitchens with the Food and Drug Administration to protect them from their own stupidity. The fact is, folks have been canning for a long, long time, using common sense and tradition to guide them. Common sense says that if the green beans smell rather unappetizing, don’t eat them. Tradition says that if the neighbor decided to eat the smelly green beans anyway and he ended up in bad shape, it’s safe to say you should avoid smelly green beans in the future. The dangers of canning were figured out long before the word botulism existed and long before the idea of the FDA. So why now, when the science of the entire process is understood, when our kitchens are air-conditioned and cloroxed and all of our utensils are cleaned with boiling water by machines, do we get scared away from canning?

Most of us have been separated from preserving our own foods by at least one generation. In my family, it was my grandmothers who first decided that the Piggly Wiggly store was a fine alternative to spending your summer preparing for winter. Certainly great things came from those innovations and those men and women, freed for the first time in history from planning their lives around food. But in respect to the art of canning (and in many other areas that have by-in-large degraded our food systems), this did major damage. This break in tradition caused a lack of familiarity in our generation, so even though we have the means to safely preserve food and the knowledge available to us, we’re afraid.

And those of us who have rediscovered fresh foods grown on real farms are faced with yet another delimna: 400 lbs of fresh, beautiful tomatoes in July and sickly Piggly Wiggly tomatoes the rest of the year.

Hear the good news of canning! It’s safe, it’s fun, it’s uncomplicated, economical, sustainable, and most importantly, it saves you from 8 months with no tomatoes. Or squash. Or whatever you don’t want to eat another bite of now, but you’ll dream about all winter.

I’ll be using this blog to guide anybody who wants to try their hand at canning, and to write about my own experiences as a pseudo-first generation canner. Perhaps if this generates some interest, we can get a canning group together on the farm. Let me know what you think!

2 cups squash–cooked and drained
2 cups corn bread crumbs
3 eggs
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onions chopped
1 stick butter
Black pepper to taste

Mix. Put in pyrex casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

- Charlotte Ward

Ingredients

 
2 small zucchini                        
2 small yellow squash
1 medium onion                           
2 eggs, beaten
salt, pepper, and dried oregano to taste           
10 butter crackers, coarsely crumbled
½  cup grated longhorn or mild cheddar cheese
 

Directions

Grate the squash and chop the onion. Saute together in 3 tbsp olive oil until onion is golden. Remove from heat and fold in beaten eggs and seasonings. Place in a buttered casserole. Mix crumbs and cheese and sprinkle over the top of the squash mixture. Bake at 325o until eggs are set and topping is slightly browned.

Ingredients

1 bunch of squash blossoms (about 1 dozen)
A small log of good goat cheese – at room temperature (soft)
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1 1/2 – 2 tsp Rancho Gordo chile powder (enough that you can just see it when you stir it in)
1 tsp fine sea salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups buttermilk (if you don’t have any, some whole milk and a couple of teaspoons of vinegar or lemon juice will create the same reaction – it’s the acid.)
1 small bottle of vegetable oil (enough to fill a 2-2.5 qt pot about 2/3 full)

Directions

Mix together the flour, chile powder, baking powder, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Pour the buttermilk into another bowl.

Prepare a plate with several layers of paper towels for blotting. In a heavy small pot, heat your vegetable oil until a thermometer reads 375 degrees. In the meantime, stuff the blossoms. Using your fingers – gently poke a wad of goat cheese down into the center of each one and press together.

When the oil is hot, dip the flowers one by one into the buttermilk, and dredge them thoroughly in the flower, pressing down to work the flour into the petals. Shake once lightly, and then dunk the blossom back into the buttermilk. Drop the blossom into the flour and dredge once more, making sure all of the moist areas are well coated. Do NOT shake. Lay the blossom gently in the hot oil. It should begin to sizzle madly – but if it browns quickly, the oil might be a bit too hot.

Allow room for them to swim a bit – you don’t want to overcrowd the pot, or the oil will cool off. (I actually have a few too many in the pot above.) When they’re starting to brown – flip them over to keep it even. When they are nice and brown all over, remove them with tongs to the paper towels. Drain for a few minutes, then place on fresh paper towels on a different plate for serving.

Use the same method for frying the squash fruit, just cut into 1/4″ slices.