Here's the awesome corned beef recipe I promised. I'm posting it now, without pictures, in case any of you need to cook yours tomorrow (as I do). I'll try to get some shots while I make mine tomorrow and add them to this post later!
Corned Beef and Cabbage
2 medium onions, cut into quarters or eighths
1 corned beef brisket
1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon pickling spice
1 medium-sized cabbage, cut into wedges
Scatter the onions over the bottom of a crock pot/slow cooker. Place the brisket, fat side up, on top of the onions. Mix the juice, brown sugar, and spices together. Pour them over the brisket. Cook on low for 10-12 hours. Add the cabbage wedges during the last hour of cooking (or sooner if you like yours less crispy).
I used to boil my corned beef the way my mom always did, but it would almost always come out tough. Since I've been using this recipe, my corned beef always comes out moist and delicious! Happy St. Patrick's Day!
That's how the saying goes, right? Maybe not, but I believe it to be true. Nobody wants to find livestock eating their way through a prized flower bed, and leaving stinky presents all over the lawn. Being next to a modestly busy road, there is always the possibility of animals getting into traffic and hurting themselves, or in the case of a 1500 pound steer, hurting others.
Of even higher concern to me though is predatory animals coming on to my property. Foxes, weasels, skunks, dogs, and coyotes are a constant threat to chickens and lambs. Even just being frightened or chased by another animal can cause hens to stop laying or molt, meat birds to die of fright or stop eating, and tie a lamb's insides in knots. Some farmers keep sheep dogs or other protective breeds to guard their livestock, but these animals can be expensive to keep, they can't be everywhere on the farm at once, and they can be a cause of more mortality than they prevent. What's the solution? Good fence.
The common fence these days is high tensile steel or aluminum wire. It may be electrified, and there can be anywhere from one to ten strands that present a formidable barrier to most livestock and many predators. It is very cost effective because the poles can be spaced farther apart than traditional fencing, and it is pretty easy and quick to put up. Electrified wires present an added psychological barrier, discouraging any animal from coming near the fence. The problems with wire is that small predators and livestock can get through or under even an electrified fence. Also, the electrified wires can be shorted out by heavy grass, fallen branches, or broken insulators.
So, what's better than wire? Welded wire field fence! This stuff is impressive; the wires are closer together on the bottom to keep chickens and lambs in, and small predators and dogs out. If a steer were to run into this fence, it would simply bounce off. Running along the top is a strand of electrified high tensile to keep anybody from leaning on the top of it.
Okay, now that I knew what I wanted, I had to find somebody to install it, because it is a massive job for one person to do. I ended up picking Carson Martin from Melodie Ranch Fencing, and he shows up with this contraption:
Watching this process in action was mesmerizing. A fence post is placed inside the yellow post hammer and is willed into the ground by the hammering force of the machine. Most posts were driven in under 15 seconds. Hydraulic steering on the wheels and on the post hammer kept everything straight and even. Even the horses were pros, knowing exactly how far ahead to move with very little input from Carson. They placed almost 2000 feet of posts in under 5 hours, only stopping because they ran out of materials. I love well designed and useful machines, and this is going to be one of my all-time favorites. Here's a video of it in action:
So, here's the finished product. They did a very nice job, even put up my gates for me.
This fenced field has about six acres inside and will be my multi-species pasture for chickens, lambs, and at least for right now, steers. To help me develop a rotational grazing plan, I screen-captured the satellite image of our property, then overlaid it with our fence and building plans in Google drawings.
South Field Fencing
The black lines show where the permanent field fence is; the purple lines will be semi-permanent handling fences around the barn; the red dotted lines are temporary electric fence alleyways. These areas allow us to move our animals between the barn and pastures securely. Water and minerals will also be available in the center of the red circle in the middle of the field. The dotted turquoise lines illustrate how the pasture rotation electric fencing will be laid out, only 3 strands at a time working around the field from center like the hands of a clock. The fence is actually poly rope with thin metal conductors braided in it, and each rope is on a reel so that it can be wound up and moved very quickly. The key to raising animals on grass is to move them every few days to a new section of fresh grass so that they do not overgraze or over trample any one area.
In a few years we will probably fence in the other pasture, as finances permit. For now we have lots of low tensile electric fencing we could put out there if we want the cows to graze it, but that won't keep sheep in very well.
We are less than two weeks away from St. Patrick's Day - it's time to start preparing the corned beef!
Last year was the first time I "corned" my own beef using a brisket from our own grass-fed beef. It was amazing! Not only did we get all the healthy goodness of grass-fed beef, but my own corned beef was nitrate, nitrite, and phosphate free! Yesterday, I started this year's corned beef. It's actually pretty easy to do. Here's the recipe I use:
1 (3-5 pound) beef brisket (grass-fed, of course!)
2 quarts water
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
6 teaspoons pickling spice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 quarts of ice cubes
Put the brisket in a large (one to two gallon, depending on the size of your brisket) sealing freezer bag and set the freezer bag inside a baking dish or bowl.
In a large stockpot, combine the water, salt, brown sugar, pickling spice, and ginger. Cook over high heat until the salt and sugar dissolve. Remove the pot from the heat and add the ice cubes.
Once the mixture has cooled, carefully ladle the brine mixture into the freezer bag. Seal the bag and place the bag (inside the baking dish) in the fridge. Refrigerate for about ten days, turning the meat once a day to ensure that the brisket is completely covered in brine.
The brisket I used was very long and thin, so I cut it in half and put each half in a separate one-gallon bag. Grass-fed beef is very lean. You can see the thin strip of fat along my brisket in the picture above. I did not (and will not) trim any fat from it.
When I first looked into making my own brine for corned beef, I noticed that a lot of recipes called for using saltpeter. Saltpeter is just another name for potassium nitrate. Potassium nitrate is what gives corned beef that red color. Because this recipe does not have nitrates in it, I was afraid the meat would look gray. However, my corned beef came out looking great!
A note about the pickling spice: I purchased my pickling spice from a bulk foods store, and the spices it contained were not listed. I could recognize mustard seed, cinnamon stick pieces, black peppercorns, bay leaves, and cloves, among other spices.
I'll share my favorite recipe for cooking the perfect corned beef soon!
We're writing this blog to be a chronicle of our farming adventures, musings, techniques and interesting topics related to sustainable grass based farming, healthy food, and self sufficient living. We want to raise beef, chicken, eggs and are considering lamb too. We'll talk about the art of pasture rotation, the challenges of grass finishing livestock and about herd management and care. We try to live naturally without chemicals in our food or home so we'll write about tips and tricks we discover along the way. We garden, raise three boys, and like getting out into nature so there will be some of that too. We're also foodies, so there will be plenty of pictures and recipes of our creations.
This is a panoramic picture of most of the farm right now.
Lots O' Grass
What's missing? Fence, barn, animals? If you guessed all of the above, you'd be correct. We have a silo and a chicken coop, everything else needs to be built from scratch. We'd like to try and document the process in the hopes that it is informative or inspiring to others who would like to travel this road with us. We welcome your comments and questions, and look forward to the task ahead.
As the north east coast woke up to 3 feet of snow, central PA was spared all but a sprinkle of snow and ice. Heading back to the conference I was able to reflect on what I learned on day one. I had read several books on rotational grazing but the concept of letting the grass fully recover, 20 to 60 days in non drought conditions is necessary to build biomass in the soil, did not really click until now. The animals need to be moved off the clipped grass before it starts to regrow, within 2 to 3 days. They shouldn't return until the grass is at least 12 inches long again. The top of the grass is reflective of the root depth, so the longer it grows the more energy it can store for regrowth and to weather drought. When animals are grazed quickly across a pasture in spring they bite the tastiest grasses and leave the unpalatable and weeds. When grass is bit it tries to reproduce itself from the root at the soil line, sending out tendrils that become new plants. Animal damage to these tendrils will defeat this form of reproduction. Let the weeds and undesirables go to seed before mowing the entire pasture, they will have used their energy to produce that seed, but the good grasses will have already reproduced. Cut hay 4 to 6 inches off the ground for faster recovery. Go into winter with good grass cover for faster spring start-up.
So on day two I learned some more things. Learn to read your land so you can utilize it most efficiently. Grey plants are a sign of poor soil, or brittle land. Conscientious debt that will build your business is ultimately more productive than no debt. Crowd-source, find investors, use Kickstarter for specific projects. A detailed grazing plan is the only way to maximize your greatest resource, grass. If you know in what pastures you have been, you can plot where you will go next. Get a weather station with a rain gauge and record weather data on the grazing plan so that you can make predictions about how the weather will affect your farm.
So I have a lot to process now. I met a lot of smart people I need to remember the names of the next time I see them. I have a grazing plan to layout, I think I'll create a spreadsheet. I have three more books to read. I have much to do, better get to it.
Today I went to my first PASA (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture) conference, and it was eye opening! I had no idea that there were so many people in the area that had the same crazy notions about food and farming as I do. The atmosphere was unlike any conference I have been to (and I have been to a lot over the years), flannel was the predominant fabric and patchouli drifted about the hallways; people smiled and were genuinely interested in meeting you, as knowledge flowed freely in an open exchange of ideas. I went to workshops on farm planning, business models, and rotational grazing. Some things I learned:
Find your niche; what sets your farms products apart from conventional products or other farms products?
Industrial agriculture does not pay for the damage it does to our planet and people. Sustainable ag repairs our environment, a service that benefits everyone, but we currently do not get adequately compensated for our efforts. Hopefully someday we will.
If you love what you do, it's okay that you may never get rich doing it.
It was a great day, with so much information and inspiration. But I think I'll have to properly digest it all later because right now, my brain is full.
