Farmer Monte's Journal

The Scoop from the Farm

  • Home
  • Featured Articles
  • All Articles
  • Visit Our Store
  • Recipe Ideas

Archives for July 2015

Cooking Tricks

July 31, 2015 by monte

424820_296829447044034_313935411_n

I cannot help it, I just have food on my mind like crazy this time of year. So much freshness on both the fruits and veggies side, it is just incredible. With that, I would like to take this newsletter to share with you some tips and tricks that I have learned over the years from chefs and farmers. I also encourage you to jump on our Facebook page and share your food tricks with our members. Personally, I am not a huge Facebook advocate, but I have seen it do pretty cool things with connecting people to new recipes/ideas.

First up on the chopping block, the poor eggplant. Do you know in the produce world that eggplant’s brother is the tomato? Talk about living in the shadow of a sibling. I don’t think anyone wants to be brothers with the tomato.

Anyway, I have always had a hard time with eggplant because you have to cook it. Well, I found a fun way to use up the eggplant and actually really enjoy it. What you do is fire up your grill and when it is super hot, throw the eggplant skin and all on there. Char the heck out of it on one side. Rotate and repeat until the whole eggplant is just a charred mess. Remove and let cool.

When you can handle it without burning your tender paws, peel away charred skin and place in a bowl. Use a potato smasher or stick blender to mash the poor eggplant. Add some salt, olive oil, minced garlic, green chile or whatever else you feel like throwing in there for flavor. Keep mixing it until it is a chunky spread consistency. Eat as a dip with fresh veggies, crackers, or spread on a sandwich/wrap. Easy and amazing smokey flavor you will love.

Stay with me here on the grill. Cast iron skillet! If you do not have one of these, you need to get one. They work great obviously on the stove top, but they are much better on the grill. Use the cast iron directly on the grill top to oven roast potatoes, onions, beets, or other stuff that you want to roast without firing up your oven in the kitchen.

Steaks. This has taken some time to get down, but here is a cheat sheet for you to remember.
1. Never grill cold steaks. Always allow the meat to sit out and get to room temperature. When the steak is room temp, it will cook more evenly and not leave you frustrated. 2. Hot n cover. The best steak restaurants do NOT grill the meat. They place the steaks in a very hot 450-500 degree oven (or hotter) and sear the meat as it “oven” cooks it. You NEED a lid for your grill. That is what creates the “oven” effect for your grill.

3. Turn them only once. Flipping a steak back and forth just gets the juices all dizzy and you end up drying out the meat. Resist the urge to flip it. Flip it once and when you do, move it to a new place on the grill where it will sear. 4. Rubs not marinades. A local chef taught me this. Rubs will season the meat without drowning out the flavor of the meat. If you are buying cheap meats, marinade it so you can trick yourself into thinking it was a good piece of meat. But if you are buying meats from us, let the meat speak for itself. Salt, pepper, and red chile powder is my favorite. Simple and let’s the flavor stay in the meat.

Quick no fail recipe with our sirloin steaks. Bring steaks to room temp. Bring covered grill to 450 degrees. Rub steaks with salt/pepper (chile if you like). Place steaks on grill, cover, start timer. For medium rare (my fav) turn the steaks at 2:30 seconds. Cover grill for another 2:30 seconds. Remove from heat and let rest for 10 minutes before serving. For medium, do the same but increase cook time to 2:45 per side. For well done, same but 3:00 per side. Try this out and you will feel like a pro on grill.

The last of my 2 pesos from the kitchen this week is tomatoes and fruit. Refrigeration is one of the most amazing things to ever happen to produce. But…with that said, you do not want to eat some things cold. Refrigeration locks up the activity of a fruit. It is like it makes the fruit dormant. So please refrigerate the fruit to give it shelf life, but let them get room temp before eating them. I like to take the strawberries I want for breakfast out the night before. Takes some planning, but so worth it for the flavor.
Happy munching, Farmer Monte

Filed Under: Featured, Newsletter

Summer Check-Up

July 24, 2015 by monte

11083597_875442799182693_1303912679902005012_nAs the summer chugs on here, I have a laundry list of things that I would like to share with you this week. So let’s start with some financial prepayment option. A reminder that we are running our Prepayment option for the next month. Pretty simple setup, prepay $1,000 to your farm account and we will add a $100 bonus to your account as a thank you for your support.

Many years ago we bid adios to the old school CSA model of having to pay for an entire season up front. It actually is easier for us to budget as well as for you to budget not having all the income for the year at one time. With that said, it helps us in our planning to know how many people we need to feed. And the prepayment options offers us a little snapshot of how much food we will need to grow. Email for more info.

From the field. Things are looking good despite all the heavy rains. More weeding than usual, but we will dig out of it. Late July is always an interesting time for me to wrap my mind around. You see, in farming you have to be planting your cool season plants during the hottest time of the year. And conversely, you have to plant your tomatoes in January. You cannot miss these planting windows or you will miss the window to plant them in the fields and get a crop. So we are busy getting lettuce, greens, and other cool season crops into the greenhouse and ready for a transplant by mid-August.

From your garden: Fall in New Mexico is the Best time for planting perennial plants without a doubt. Warm days and mild nights make for a nice welcoming committee as plants hit the ground. The spring is too manic and windy with crazy temperature swings. We just do not see those in the fall. So, get your pencils out and think about any new plants/trees your casa might need. Plants will be established by the winter and then take off next spring.

From the (pig) pen. When I was a little tike (and less hairy), my family would get a cow share from a rancher near Chama. We would then fill the freezer in the fall for a winter full of food and basketball games. This filling of the freezer was a norm. It was just what we did.

But over the years, 24 hour box stores have made getting meats so available that now many people shop for meats in their PJs. The thought of that alone probably makes some cave(wo)man roll over in their grave. Now I am not saying we all need to go back to hunting like our favorite ancestor, Kerflapjack, but I think we are missing an opportunity to have a great food experience.

Sure this filling of the freezer was/is not as convenient as wearing slippers to shop for meat, but it made our family be more creative in planning our meals. And with creativity comes the opportunity for family interaction and fun. Just like the CSA pushes your comfort levels with produce (what the heck is a sweet turnip?), I am seeing that we can begin to do this more with meats.

Quick example, roasts. I can admit that I have not cooked many roasts in my life. Recently, I pushed my comfort boundary and decided to try one. Not in the slow cooker, but on the grill which I had never done. I was nervous that I would make beef jerky. But I didn’t. It was amazing. Dry rub, on the grill at 220 degrees for a couple hours, thinly sliced with green chile sauce on fresh bread. Tough to beat.

So here is where I see some new offerings coming your way. This late summer and fall, I want to put some “rancher packs” together so that you can get amazing value on the highest quality meats around. If you can use your freezer instead of us having to use our freezer, then there is money to be saved for you. And as I mentioned, I think there is an experience to bring back to the kitchen.

Farmer Monte

Filed Under: Newsletter

Soaked Farm

July 10, 2015 by monte

11666217_940350246025281_5763816539055309726_nFirst off this wet morning, members’ feedback on leasing land. I got a few emails that brought up the issue of how we get leased land certified Organic. It is an important question and one that I left out of the newsletter last week. Honestly, I think that I left it out because I take it for granted. Currently, all of the land that we own and lease, we have certified Organic. And this will not change moving forward. We are dedicated to this.

We act as stewards of the land on all of our fields whether they are owned or leased. We do not treat our leased land as rented mules and our owned fields with baby gloves. All of our dirt gets the same TLC of cover crops, Organic fish fertilizers, and crop rotation. We do this because it is good for the land, but also because when you take care of the land, the land takes care of you and your crops.

Sometimes I hear people say “But you’re Organic, I thought that meant you do not use fertilizers??” This could not be further from the truth. We just use ground up fish and kelp and not powders from a warehouse.

Farming by its nature is a mining activity. It is not very sexy to think of it like that, but we mine vitamins, water, and nutrients from our fields every harvest. When you stand next to a pallet of tomatoes, you realize the nutrients that we are sending from our fields to your kitchen. Those nutrients must be returned to the soil or the system would collapse.

Now on to the rains and the farm. Without fail, whenever the rains come to town, I have folks ask me if I am so happy for the rains? And my answer is probably not what they expect—no, I am not all that happy with getting monsoons on the farm. Before you yell at me, let me explain why this is the case.

Our farm/your farm is not a dryland farm. The family farm in North Dakota is a dryland farm. “Wait Farmer M., what the heck is a dryland farm? You’re losing me dude.” Oh yes, dryland means that the farm has no supplemental irrigation. Whatever Mother Nature gives you from the sky is all you get. For better or for worse.

On our farm, we have irrigation wells to water the crops. We do not rely on rain for irrigation. When our plants need a drink, we turn on the well and water them. So what does the rain do then if it does not water crops?

Well, it creates mud and gets the plants wet and you know what plants hate? Getting wet. Fungi and bacteria need moisture to thrive. Most plant pathogens are either a fungus or a bacteria (or a gopher). So when your plants get too wet, you keep your eyes peeled for sick plants. And that is where we are at now. The rains have wreaked havoc on our summer squash and are making carrot harvests feel more like we are harvesting rice.

Thankfully all of our tomatoes are in protective greenhouses to keep this water off their backs. If it was not for these greenhouses I would think that we would lose our whole tomato crop. My outdoor tomatoes at my house look like heck from all the moisture. So if your garden does too, this is why.

With all of that said, the rains are great at cooling off the earth like a giant swamp cooler. So our fall plantings of lettuce, roots, etc will be almost a month earlier than a typical hot dry summer. That is the lemonade we are trying to make at least.

The rains are also wonderful for quenching a dry earth. The Southwest needs it and so I take my own issues of our waterlogged farm with a grain of salt. I mean after all we signed up to farm, no one forces us to do it. And all of the weather craziness keeps Mother Nature mysterious. Which is another thing that I love about it. Never a dull moment.

So that is a nutshell of how the rains are affecting your farm. All in all I think we are in a pretty good place, but definitely not all roses. We are getting some thorns too.

Farmer Monte

Filed Under: Newsletter

Sign up for our newsletter!

Featured Video

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014

Copyright © 2022 · Farmer Monte 2016 based on Genesis (News Pro) on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in