North Mountain Pastures is looking for farm/food processing apprentices.  We are a grass-based farm in Perry County, PA, raising poultry, lamb, and pork, marketing our products through a meat CSA and two DC farmer’s markets.  We also make fermented vegetables from organic produce for sale to our customers.

We’re in the process of setting up a USDA-inspected butcher shop a mile from our farm to process traditional dry-cured meats for sale.  We will be making several kinds of bacon, prosciutto, salami, and other cured meats with only Himalayan sea salt and organic spices.

Apprentices will be responsible for 35-40 hours a week of farm, marketing, and processing duties.  These will include, but are not limited to feeding and moving animals on pasture, maintaining and improving infrastructure, washing eggs, helping with CSA deliveries, going to farmer’s market in DC, making fermented vegetables, making cured meats, and learning about food processing and HACCP requirements.

Apprentices will receive room and board, with their own bedroom in an apartment with a full kitchen above the processing facility.  All food will be provided, with most of it coming from our farm or neighboring farms.  As a requirement, the apprentice will develop a product that conforms to our farm philosophy, write a business plan for the product, and process and sell the product to our customers.  We provide the facilities and markets, the apprentice provides the ideas and labor, and all profits go to the apprentice.

This is a new program, and apprentices should be aware that they will be a part of developing this program with us as young business owners.  The timeframe for the apprenticeship is Aug 2010-July 2011.  Please contact Brooks at 717-497-3496 or brooks@northmountainpastures.com for more information.   

Longacre Leadership Program

Announcing the next CSA Season

Spring is now in full swing and with it comes constant events, projects, and excitement on the farm.  We’ve had baby kid goats being born all last week, and all 6 were girls (is this a sign that we are meant to have a dairy??)  Another batch of 500 chicks arrived in the mail through the post office, which is where our son Kaj thinks baby chicks come from. It’s hay cutting time, pig shelter building time, pasture-chicken house fixing time, and milking time.  Every day it seems there is an array of absolutely necessary things that must be done but in reality cannot possibly be done in the 14 hour window of daylight we now have.  So thank goodness for Luke, our not-so-new intern! You may have met him at the CSA drop-offs.   He has been on the farm since mid April to help us through our growing season, at least until Thanksgiving.  He moved here from Washington D.C., leaving his job as an immigration attorney to grow some food and explore his deep interest in farming. 

A lot of the activity on the farm this time of year is getting things cleaned up and organized for the summer camp for teenagers on our farm every summer called Longacre Leadership.  The camp has been here with teenagers participating in farming activities for over 35 summers, and now we get to be part of introducing them to pasture-based farming.  In addition to the farm, they make biodiesel, learn carpentry, learn horsemanship, and participate in various arts such as theater, ceramics, and stained glass. 

The vegetable CSA season is just starting, and many of you have gotten your first shares.  What an exciting thing for the local eater, to know there is a steady flow of fresh and varying veggies on the way.  We have been talking about the fact that our “seasons” really aren’t season in the sense of being seasonal the way a veggie CSA is.  On grass-based livestock farm there are seasons for growing, and we only raise chickens from April through November.  However , since our meat is delivered frozen, in a sense it is in season throughout the year.  So for our CSA, “season” is just a way of describing a period of time that we will be delivering.  Maybe we should call it a CSA “Program”, or a CSA “session”.  

Regardless of semantics, we are going into our next season starting immediately after the current season ends.  The next season will run from July through November, 2010.  We will be delivering to all of the same dropoff locations in the Harrisburg, Hershey, Carlisle area as well as a new one in Takoma Park MD, outside of Washington DC where we have started selling at a farmer’s market.  There are many new options to choose from in the coming season.  We will now be offering an Everything Share that also includes lamb, along with chicken, beef, and pork.  The sizes for the everything share are different too, to accommodate varying family sizes and frequency of meat eating. 

Below is a description of the share types for July-November 2010. We will include an order form with your next CSA delivery, or you can order online starting now.  Deadline to sign up is June 30.

Original Shares– Beef and Chicken: about 55% beef and 45% chicken:

• Full share: 20 lbs/month- approx. 11 lbs. of beef and 9 lbs. of chicken (2 whole)
• Half share: 10 lbs/month- approx. 5.5 lbs. of beef and 4.5 lbs. of chicken (1 whole)
• Quarter share: 5 lbs/month- approx. 3 lbs. of beef and 2 lbs. of chicken (halves or pieces)

Pork Included shares– Beef, Chicken, and Pork:  about 45% chicken, 27.5% pork, and 27.5% beef:

• Full Pork Included share: 20 lbs/month- approx. 6 lbs of pork, 6 lbs of beef, and 8 lbs of chicken (2 whole)
• Half Pork Included share: 10 lbs/month- approx. 3 lbs of pork, 3 lbs of beef, and 4 lbs of chicken (1 whole)

Everything Shares- Beef, Chicken, Pork, and Lamb: about 25% each chicken, beef, pork, lamb:

• Full everything share: 20 lbs/month- approx. 5 lbs of beef, 5 lbs of pork, 5 lbs of lamb, and 5 lbs of chicken (1 large whole)
• Medium everything share: 12 lbs/month- approx. 3 lbs of beef, 3 lbs of pork, 2 lbs of lamb, and 4 lbs chicken (1 whole)
• Small everything share: 8 lbs/month- approx. 2 lbs beef, 2 lbs pork, 2 lbs lamb, and 2 lbs chicken (1/2 whole)

Chicken Only shares - three chickens a month, averaging about 4 lbs each.  These chickens are always whole, unless noted otherwise.

Prices and Payment:

We are asking for full payment before your first delivery. 

These are five share options to choose from:

Happy Meat Eating!

Anna, Brooks, and Matt

Brown, crispy skin

Pretty much a no-brainer. All you need to do to get this delicious and beautiful covering is to cook the bird until the skin gets crispy. What you want to avoid is over-crisp, aka burnt.  You can either start the roast on a higher temperature (450-500 F) or finish up with a quick broil to brown. Usually, a long slow cooking achieves the perfect skin.  Seasoning helps with look and flavor too. If you’ve brined your turkey, make sure to rinse it off! Then add a wee bit more salt to the skin, and fresh ground black pepper.  Any other herbs are best put inside the cavity, in the brine, or under the skin so they don’t burn.

Juicy meat

Brining is key to getting the meat to absorb and hold liquid. See Brooks’s last post for instructions.  The other trick is to get the whole turkey to cook without the breast meat getting all dried out. One way to do this is to actually roast the turkey upside down. This way the dark meat, which takes longer to cook, is closer to the top of your oven and absorbs more heat, while the breast stays in the cooking juices and retains moisture.  One of our customers told me tonight that he read in Cooks Illustrated about the ultimate method for even cooking, which is a variation on the upside down technique. It involves starting the turkey upside down (breast down), then turning it to one side, and then the other. 

Another way to keep in some moisture is to put foil over the breast.  We learned this from Alton Brown’s show on the cooking channel.  The turkey comes out really nice by just covering the breast with a triangular folded piece of foil after briefly browning the skin and roasting on a low temperature.  You could achieve the same result by using strips of bacon instead of foil.

Even Cooking

Cooking the turkey upside down helps to even out the cooking of the white versus dark meat. Also, roasting the turkey withOUT stuffing lets it cook more thoroughly in less time.  It is best to just put your stuffing in a separate casserole dish and baste it with drippings from the turkey.  The cavity of the turkey is the perfect spot for “aromatics” – apples, onions, sage, cinnamon stick, garlic, etc.  If you do want to stuff your turkey with a bread or meat stuffing, expect to add at least another hour of cooking time. In a 350 degree oven here are the rough cooking times:

Weight of bird           Roasting time (unstuffed)              Roasting time (stuffed)

10-18 lbs                               3-3.5 hours                                 4-4.5 hours

15-22 lbs                               3.5-4 hours                                 4.5-5 hours

22-24 lbs                               4-4.5 hours                                 5-5.5 hours

24-29 lbs                               4.5-5 hours                                 5.5-6.25 hours

 Use a meat thermometer! That is the most reliable way to get your turkey cooked perfectly. Take the turkey out when the thickest part of the thigh is at 165 degrees F. Remove from the oven and let sit for 20-30 minutes with a loose foil covering to rest before carving.

Giblets?

What do you do with your giblets?

1. Gravy – simmer the giblets in water for an hour or so (best to add the liver for only the last 20 minutes), then remove the meat from this broth. Reduce a little, add turkey drippings and thickener of your choice. Season to taste.  The old fashioned giblet gravy includes chopped pieces of meat from the neck, liver, heart, and gizzards.
2. Stuffing – follow above directions for gravy, but use both the liquid and meat from the cooked giblets combined with bread crumbs, celery, onions, and spices for a traditional stuffing.
3. Soup – When your turkey meat is all carved off of the carcass, throw the bones into a pot of water along with the giblets and simmer all day to make stock. Then either discard the giblets, or take the meat and cut it into bits and put back in the soup with your other leftover turkey and vegetables.
4. Give them to the dog. Not the best option for thrift and enjoyment, but you will have  a happy dog.

What’s your favorite way to cook the turkey?

-Anna

But I'm a recently converted salt snob, and over the last couple years I've developed a huge appreciation for what it can do to meats.  It all started when Anna came home with a little bag of chunky pink Himalayan sea salt from a bulk food store.  We've eaten Celtic sea salt for the trace minerals over the years, but this would be our first truly “exotic” salt.  Our popcorn suddenly tasted euphoric, and even steamed kale took on a whole new flavor.  Once we connected the new complexity in flavor with the Himalayan salt, we were sold.  And whenever someone asks where it's from, we get to say, “...Himalaya?”

Himalaya

All this to say that meat responds wonderfully to salt.  In On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee explains that, “traditionally, meats are immersed in a brine containing 3-6% salt by weight for anywhere from a few hours to two days (depending on thickness).  They come out noticeably juicier.”  Juicy, pasture-raised turkeys for the great American holiday.  Give thanks for salt!

But how??  I can hear you asking.  The salt acts on the meat in two ways.  It dissolves parts of the proteins that make up the meat, effectively tenderizing the meat itself.  Interestingly, the result of the salt-protein interaction is a greater water holding capacity in the meat.  The muscle is, in effect, a water holding tank.  This means the brine is really salty, and as it's breaking down the cellular barriers on the outside of the meat, it’s also pushing water into the muscle.  This also increases the absorption of any other flavor compounds you choose to put in the brine, such as spices, herbs, wine, stock or cider.

Whew.  So, to put it simply, the flavors in your brine will end up in the meat, along with some salt and some water.  The point about good salt above implies that all the goodies in the Himalayan or Celtic salt, like minerals and things that taste good, will also end up in the meat.  I prefer these salts to table salt, but at least use a salt without additives, like kosher salt for your brine.

Brining your Turkey

Find a container into which your turkey will fit – it may take something as big as a 5-gallon bucket.  Clean the container thoroughly, and disinfect it with white vinegar if you’re unsure.  Decide what flavors you'd like infused into your turkey – they'll be subtle.  Some old standbys are white wine, bourbon, and spices.  The most common spices you'll find in brining recipes are black peppers, cloves, cinnamon, and herbs like rosemary, thyme, and sage – that most Thanksgiving of herbs.

3-6% salt translates to ½ cup per gallon up to 1 cup per gallon.  Your grandma might tell you to put a potato in to test your brine – you can cure meat when the potato floats!  In any case, heat about 2 gallons of liquid – water, stock, wine, or any mix – on the stove.  Pour in about 1 ½ cups of salt, and if you like it a touch sweet, half as much raw sugar.  Then throw in a handful of black peppers, some cloves, and some sage as it heats up.  Let it boil slowly for a minute or two, and then turn off the heat.  Throw in a couple of trays of ice cubes to cool it down quickly.  Put your turkey in the bucket, and pour the brine over it when it’s nice and cool.

If you’re squeamish about bacteria, keep ice cubes floating in your brine.  But remember, “People have been salting and curing animal flesh for millennia – at least ten of them,” as chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall says.  Besides drying things on rocks, it’s the original method of food preservation.  So I’d set the bucket outside, in the garage or any cool spot, which is usually easy to find in November.  Let the turkey salt for a day or even just the night before or a few hours if you’re short on time.  It will continue to take on flavor for a couple of days.  Take it out the morning you roast it, and be sure to rinse it with fresh, cold water before you pop it in the oven!

Stay tuned for a recipe from Anna this Friday on roasting your bird.  The brine can be used for anything from beef roasts to whole chickens, so feel free to experiment, salt is cheap! 

-Brooks