Thursday, 23 February 2012
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Stew Recipe and fall 2011 pictures
We received the following recipe from one of our longest customers off the Sunshine Coast.
We enjoyed it very much  and think it is a really good  fit for this cold and dark time of the year.
Together with a glass of tasty red wine it will lighten your mood:
Hi, Gigi and Rainer
Your pork stew meat is wonderful.  I did some looking for recipes lately and
ended up adapting a recipe I found on the internet.  We have tried this
twice now and  find it very tasty.  I thought you might like to have it in
case somebody else might be looking for a recipe.

Pork Stew Recipe (for Big Bear pork stew meat)

Add some oil for browning stuff, to the bottom of a metal stew pot
Brown the following:
1 large onion, sliced 
2 stalks celery, chopped 
2 packages Big Bear pork stew meat
Add herbs: a handful each of fresh fennel, oregano, thyme.  (Or a couple of
teaspoons each, if you use dried herbs)
Mix everything in the pot and turn up the heat.  Add enough apple juice or
cranberry juice (1-2 cups) to safely simmer the mixture in, so it doesn't
get dry and burn.   Once it boils, turn it down to a simmer and let it cook
for 45 minutes or until the pork has become somewhat tender.  Then add to
it:
1 big squash, seeded and peeled, cut into chunks the same
size as the pork pieces
¾ cup chopped up green or red pepper 
1 green apple chopped up
Juice of half a lemon, and
The leftover rind of the half lemon, cut into very small
chunks.

Simmer this for another 45 minutes or so, adding more apple or cranberry
juice if needed.  We eat it without more carbohydrates but you could have it
with mashed potatoes or rice.  It is very healthy with all the vegetables
and also it's an interesting mixture of sweet and tart.
 


And because some of you wondered in the latest emails whether we were now sitting at home and are stoking the fire to keep warm I thought we tell you a little bit about our daily chores.
In July/August of 2010 we disked a very rough 20 acres field which grew poor forage and seeded it to grain.
Then in spring of 2011 we grazed it with our yearlings from May to June.
After that we let it grow again and ripen.The next picture is taken in September.
 
 
Then we put the feeder pigs in this field (see picture below).
You can see one of the 2 huts and the 2 self feeders in the background and how the pigs worked the grain down. When they are finished with this field, they will have consumed approximately 6 to 8 tons of additional feed (besides the standing grain and what they find while rooting). 80% of this comes out at the back end (dung) and is a wonderful fertilizer. Because it is spread over such a big area there is no smell, no nutrient wash out and no contaminating of ground water.
Moving the cows to a new pasture
We had a curious little visitor while building an electric fence around the new hay stack
Luckily Florian had some time to help me with replacing the sprockets and tracks on the loader, which failed -of course- in a very awkward place.
  
Here we are just releasing the feeder pigs from the trailer to their new home, the grain field behind the cabin on top of the hill
Gigi moves the horses to a new pasture. Here you can see how much residue we leave to protect the soil and all the little critters living there from sun, wind and cold.
 

A well deserved break with good friends, who helped us with some fencing. And a flat tire - of course - 8 km away from home!
 


The Forestry Mulcher and the trail I opened up with it: before and after
 

In summer -when it was still too wet for haying- we already started with the selective logging of some over mature aspen to create more grazing under the canopy of trees. This creates a way more resilient pasture than a big open field, because it is protected from wind and sun and fertilized narurally by the leaves of the brush and trees in fall. There is also a proven beneficial relationship between the mycorhiza of the fungus associated with tree roots and the ones associated with the grass roots, a wonderful win-win situation.The mycelium only extends for about 100m. It is important to keep the openings small. 
 

 
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