Just Checking In

Hey There !

Dave from McElhoes Family Farm/Belmont here.

After last week's long (and probably pointless) missive, I thought I would just send you a quick update and get out of your inbox.

Still no rain and not even any dew as my bare feet crunch across the pastures.

I am planning on processing the next batch of Old Fashioned Country Chickens in the next week or so. They are not as large as we would have hoped, and so I am stretching out our schedule to allow them more time to grow. (Oy, what a year!)

The extra time should translate into extra flavor, that's a bonus, but it also means additional costs. The good news is I WILL NOT be increasing prices for you. I know my chickens are not cheap food, good food really isn't, but I just cannot bear to pass that on to you. If you are buying my chickens you already appreciate our efforts to feed them and grow them in the healthiest, tastiest and most humane way we know how. I refuse to cheapen that. I am going to revisit some of my systems for next year to try to get more efficient.

The Gourmet Country Chickens will be ready a couple of weeks after that, and the limited number of lambs are looking to be ready toward the end of next month.

Tomatoes and summer squashes are largely done for the year in the farm stand, but we have a decent little crop of large bell peppers still available, and frying peppers will be there by the time you read this. (Trying to go pick here in a moment.) We still have garlic, both Uncle Louie's and Music. Other stuff is serendipitous.

I'll leave you with a recipe from a blog I have followed since blogs were a new thing. It is not a fancy recipe, but the family featured in the blog make me a little homesick, as I grew up in a similar, old fashioned way. I imagine we will be eating something similar in the next few days. Here is a recipe for Baked Whole Chicken from an Appalachian family I admire.

Hope to see you back here next week.

Thanks for Listening,

Dave