Cook Out Time!

Bret and I love lots of things but two of our very favorites is cooking and spending time with our family and friends. When we get to combine the two it’s even better! Over the past four days we’ve had dinner with the Fahrmeier family 3 times, at two of these dinner’s I brought a salad that was literally a brain child made on the fly using the fresh ingredients that we had in our fridge. It was a hit with our family so I thought I would share it with you.
The items are simple but good and it’s an easy recipe to adapt to make your own also. After careful thought about the quantities of the items used (because I usually don’t measure things out when cooking) here is the recipe for what I’ll call the “On the Fly Asparagus Salad”. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! What I like most about it is that it’s using some things that we already have growing on the farm!


“On the Fly Asparagus Salad”

1 lb. Fresh Asparagus break stalks in 2 and blanch until bright green

8 cups Red Leaf Lettuce or your favorite spring mix salad blend

1 half of a Red Onion thin sliced

3 cups Cherry Tomatoes, halved

1 small container of Feta Cheese

Dressing:

¾ cup Olive Oil

¼ cup White Vinegar

1 tblsp. Dijon Mustard

1 tblsp. Minced Garlic

Small handful of minced basil (rosemary and terragon will be good)

Salt and Pepper to taste
How to:

With a wire whisk mix all ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl until fully blended and set aside. Place Asparagus, Lettuce, Onion and Tomatoes in your favorite salad bowl and toss together. Take dressing and pour over salad and toss again. Once all ingredients are coated, top with the feta cheese and serve!

It truly is simple but so tasty. We enjoyed it last night with beef kabobs and a black bean salad.

We're lucky...

Oh farm life! Our crop is flourishing after the rain and all of our high tunnels are repaired after the strong early thunderstorms too. Something else we haven't mentioned is the animals that live on our farm. We tend to take forgranted how lucky we are to have some many wonderful things surrounding us on a daily basis that a lot of people don't have the chance to see.

For example, last week we had a couple guests from the Netherlands tour our farm. Our daily surroundings is something they have never really gotten to experience before. At the time we laughed but then it made me think of how truely fortunate we are here in good ol Lafayette County Missouri! Below are some pics Bret took today while driving around the farm. The animals are enjoying the sunshine as much as we are!

The babies and their mama's are playing in the sun. Notice the one on the left standing on it's back legs to get the first taste of greenery from the tree. These crazy goats will eat ANYTHING!!!

Holy cow...the girls are drying out and soaking up the sun. Wonder if they think the skyline is as pretty as we do?

Here is the view from our back step at the house. This rainbow is going directly over the top of the family farm. It started as a double rainbow but our camera skills weren't fast enough to catch it though. We admired the site for a couple moments then headed back into our house then turned to get one last peak and it was gone! We're hoping the pot of gold is hiding over one of the hills!

School Tours

We love having visitors to the farm. It's important to us to educate as many people that we can about agriculture and where their food comes from. A part of our mission to do that is to host kids from Kansas City area schools. While on the tours the kids get to plant veggies and flowers and get the chance to have a real farm experience. As you can see Ron really likes interacting with the kids too...He probably won't admit it but he's a big softy! Especially when it come's to little one's and dogs. Below he's showing some youngsters how to plant cilantro, one of our favorite herbs!

And so it begins...

We've been having so much darn fun on the farm we can hardly stand it recently. We mean that...kind of...and there's really no need to even say we've been busy because that would an understatement and misrepresentation of the word. Ok, enough with the big words. We seriously have lots and lots of pictures of our progress that must be posted. Photos of the high tunnels, Ron tilling the soil, prepping the vegetable beds, the asparagus field being burned and our puppy Stella showing her Alpha Gamma Rho pride. With that said, stay tuned and we'll stay excited because we get to wake up and do it all over again tomorrow. The end product is worth the work!