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!

Chick Knives

We’re looking forward to another good week at the farm. Saturday we hosted a tour group and KMOS TV. The guys gave a tour of the produce fields and greenhouse then ended in the winery. It’s always good to have visitors at the farm! Here’s a pic of the group in the greenhouse, with Joan in the foreground.

You may be wondering why on earth there is a picture of a dirty pinkish red box knife posted. Weird I know. This little gem actually belongs to me. Or I should say, DID belong to me. We’ve seen many good times together. Ripping up carpet, breaking down boxes and believe it or not, it works great as a can opener as needed in the past couple of weeks, thanks to the breakdown of a certain Kitchen aid can opener….anyway, that’s another story.

I believe Fahrmeier Farms might want to buy stock in the Husky Brand as Bret has lost several within the last few months which leads me to this particular picture. My girly knife is now turned into a “manly” all purpose tool. Its new purpose is cutting black plastic and drip tape in the field along with other farm tasks and I christened it Saturday morning. I’m taking bets that it will never be in my full possession again. The funny thing is that I made fun of the fact that I had a chick knife and now I’m coping with the fact that I will never have sole custody of it again.

Gotta Love Missouri Weather!

Well, this week has started off with a real bang. Our place was covered in a blanket of fresh white stuff over the weekend along with the rest of the surrounding area. The joys of living on top of a hill are 1.) North winds...awesomely bad on a snowy day and 2.) having a driveway that looks like a freshly iced cake from those north winds.

This artwork is of Bret's truck as he attempted to make it out of the drive. I'll title this- "I should've listened to my wife and driven in the field" 

His words were, "I didn't think it would be that bad!" I did the proper thing and watched and laughed from the comfort of our living room.

Brandon came to the rescue with the tractor and dug him out and they were off and on with the rest of their day.

Here is a pic of the first of 12 high tunnels going up this week. It's spring prep time for the vegetables and every break in the weather has to be taken advantage of. The process of covering the high tunnels is long and exhausting. Especially when you have to wade through mud to get the task complete. It's a good thing the end product is well worth the work it takes. And is a welcomed sign of warmer weather on it's way.

And We're Back...

Ok, the blog hiatus is now over along with the cameraman’s. Bret and I have finally gotten moved into our home. Moved is the key word- settled is another part of the story. Boxes are stacked, cabinets are not even close to being full and the walls are still naked. But that’s ok. We have to start somewhere. And I’ll take the disorganization for now. Especially since our landlords were nice enough to put some new flooring in AND replace that awful pink toilet…may it rest in peace!

Now, onto the real business at hand here- We’ve had many inquiries about our CSA program which we are growing more excited about. The vegetable plants are looking healthy and the flowers are starting to bud. What a relief to see some green with a few patches of color mixed in.

Remember that rogue tomato I told you about a few weeks ago? Well here it is! She’s almost ready to pick and looking mighty delicious in all of its tomato glory. There’s probably going to be a fight over who gets a bigger bite of the little guy!

Also, here is a pick of the tomato’s we grafted a couple weeks ago. They are looking strong and their graft clips are falling right off. This means two things. 1.) We are going to have strong heirloom tomato plants that will hopefully produce lots of yummy varieties and 2.) We didn’t kill them!!!! That was the part I was most afraid of as this whole grafting thing is very new to me. So far we're running in the high 80% success rate of survival. But I don't want to jinx it...