Blog - Page 27 of 40 - Five Feline Farm

Our Manifesto-Natural, Simple and Reclaimed

Here at the Farm we are about three things: natural, simple, and reclaimed. These tenets are the overarching guide for all our Farm endeavors. Most of these manifest in food. Growing, preserving, buying, selling, cooking, and of course eating food. But it’s also a lifestyle.

First an explanation of the name. Five Feline Farm is not a cat rescue. The name is an homage to the five charter cats who moved with us to the five and a half acres we call home. It is also a glimpse of our sense of humor. Who names a market farm Five Feline Farm only to explain ourselves over and over? Wait until you find out what we name our products.

I digress.

Back to our focus on food.

Natural and Simple

So much of our food supply is heavily processed, loaded with ingredients that sound more like a chemistry lesson than a food label. I can only conjecture that the rise of these artificial ingredients is correlated to the rise of disease and lack of well-being in our society.

We strive to use whole ingredients wherever possible. Not only whole but a direct connection to the source. Our vegetables come from our farm or local (within 100 miles) sources. Sometimes this is difficult and exceptions must be made. We can’t grow coffee in Central Illinois but we certainly drink it.

In addition to the gardens, we are beekeepers. Our honeybee colonies provide enough honey for our own use, some to sell and wax for value added products. The more we learn about the benefits of honey, the bigger a proponent we become. Honey is an all natural, non-spoiling food that can also promote healing.

You may call it recycling or repurposing. Whatever the nomenclature, it is a way of life. Even the farm we live on is reclaimed land. The property had been left to it’s own devices. Covered in wild grape vines and multiflora rose. Smattered with old appliances, rusty fencing and dilapidated buildings. Think ancient outhouse, rodent infested outbuilding, termite and dry rot compromised barn.

In the midst of these horrors we found treasures.

Wild blackberry and raspberry brambles for food. A vacated basement transformed to a goldfish pond. Garden art from a rusty iron drill press. Barn wood graces the fireplace mantel in the house, logs form garden bed edging.

Acres of open land perfect for a house, gardens, orchard and apiary.

Reclaiming happens in the kitchen too. No, we don’t forage in dumpsters, but we do make every effort not to waste. Leftovers are creatively combined into new dishes and branded “New Leavin’s”. If something can’t be used, into the compost piles it goes. Enriching the soil for next year’s crop.

As we reclaim the land, we reclaim ourselves.

There are outlets to try new things and expand our abilities. We often learn by trial and error. Like the hoop house dismantled by prairie winds rivaling a nor’easter.

Follow along as we share what we learn. You may decide to implement a few things for yourself.

2015 in Review

Greetings from Five Feline Farm.

Most people take a moment to reflect on the past year when the calendar passes from one year to the next. We evaluate our history and plan for our future. Often this takes the form of New Year’s Resolutions. Instead we are focusing on goals.

But, first the year in review.

Five Feline Farm moved from a hobby farm to a registered small business in 2015. April found us setting up the legal paperwork, opening a checking account, obtaining a tax id number, and registering with the county clerk.

Huge steps.

Our first major business venture was the 18th Street Farmer’s Market.

Almost every Saturday morning from May through October found us in a parking lot, gathering with others to sell our wares. Out of twenty-one weeks, we missed four. Not bad for first timers. You might say we don’t give up easily.

We learned so much at the Farmer’s Market. What would sell, how to price, how to package, what the competition would be like. We started out knowing almost nothing. But we learned fast. There were surprises at the market. Who knew simple catnip toys would sell so well? Each vendor brought a unique presence to the market in their products and their personalities. Too many lessons to count from them.

Goosenest Prairie Gift Shop at Lincoln Log Cabin Historical Site is carrying our BEEk balm now and is interested in some of our other products. BEEk balm and other products are also available at our online store.

Additional garden space was established this year. Our production for 2016 should be at least double what we saw last year.

Two groups from Eastern Illinois University toured the Farm and we hosted a private tour. It is so much fun to share the things we’ve learned wth others.

One of the highlights for the year was attending the Mother Earth News Fair in Topeka. This event packs enough knowledge into two days of workshops that by the end we are simultaneously exhilarated and exhausted. A bonus was the blogger lunch with some of the editorial staff at Mother Earth News and Grit.

We lost another of our beloved charter felines, Phantom Joseph. It was hard to say goodbye.

Another highlight was participating in the Honeybee Festival in Paris, IL, an opportunity to branch out into another community. We even got to meet Gene Killion, a huge name in the beekeeping world.

There was a lot of laughter, a few tears, much hard work and occasionally some rest in 2015.

It was a good year.

2016 will be even better.

Tabasco Hellcat Sauce

Every year at the end of the growing season, we pull the pepper plants from the garden and pick the last of the peppers. (Admit it, you just heard a childhood sing-song about picking pickled peppers, didn’t you?) Sweet green bell to fiery hot Rooster Spur and Fatali pack the bucket.

Now what?

Some years find us making roasted hot pepper jelly. (More about that in another post.) Delicious, but not a diet staple. Chopped, sliced and halved peppers fill a shelf in the freezer.

But there must be something else to do with all these peppers.

A couple of years ago I made a hot pepper vinegar similar to the ubiquitous bottles at Steak N Shake. Essentially this is sport peppers packed into a bottle, filled with a brined vinegar and allowed to steep. Store in the fridge and shake on fries, fried potatoes, or even homemade chili mac.

We also use a lot of Tabasco sauce, Frank’s Red Hot and Sriracha. Why not make our own version?

I looked at several recipes on line and none of those really suited me. My goal is to use as many of our own ingredients as possible, but also to have a master recipe that can be altered depending on what ingredients are available.

Here’s what I came up with:

Master Recipe

1 cup chili peppers, finely chopped (leave seeds and ribs for more heat, remove to tone down the Scoville Units)

1 cup vinegar

1/2 tsp salt or to taste

Sauté vegetables on high heat for 2-3 minutes, then add vinegar and salt. Simmer for 20 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, then puree. If using a stick blender as I did, you can do this process while the sauce is still warm. if you need to transfer it to a blender, let it cool to room temperature.

Strain/press the sauce through a fine sieve into a jar. Cap, label and refrigerate.

Variations

Add any additional vegetables or seasonings you have on hand. Try tomatoes, carrots, garlic, onion, fruit, zest, herbs, or something sweet such as sugar or honey.

The one I made added 2 cups of diced tomatoes and a cup of chopped garlic to the above master recipe. It has some nice lingering heat and great flavor but doesn’t completely set your mouth on fire. Tabasco Hellcat seemed a fitting name.

Next up will be a jalapeño sauce. And, some shaker bottles.

To soothe your lips after all this hot sauce, try some BEEk balm available in our on-line store.

It’s Time For Potato Soup!

Many of our followers on Facebook have noticed a trend that I really like to use up leftovers and create something new. This helps keep the tiredness out of just reheating the same old thing with the added benefit of using up bits and pieces of things that otherwise would otherwise grow some colorful hair.

A recent weekend was no exception.

Sunday lunch was a great example of revitalized ingredients. There is no rule against adding other things. It is kind of like the TV show Chopped except the mystery ingredients are whatever bits of leftovers are in the refrigerator.

So the ingredient list looked like this: salami, a variety of peppers, some potatoes too tiny to use otherwise, a few ends of bacon, and some swiss cheese fondue.

What to do?

My original lunch plan was potato soup. But why make plain potato soup when you can jazz it up?

Scrub the potatoes and boil with skins on in salted water until tender.

Render the bacon and salami bits in a saucepan over medium heat. Add in finely diced garlic and the peppers. The pepper selection consisted of couple poblanos, a sweet red cherry popper, a green bell, one jalapeño and a rooster spur. To mellow the heat some, seed and de-rib the hot peppers. Continue to sauté until the vegetables are tender, then add butter and flour, about a tablespoon of each should do.

This is a good place to acknowledge that there are no measurements for ingredients. I often cook this way and it is almost required when you are using up bits of leftovers. So what if your potato soup has 1/4 cup more peppers than mine? Or no peppers at all. Use what you like and what you happen to find.

Back to the soup.

Cook and stir until the flour is lightly browned. Add a half cup of milk or so and cook until thick. Continue to add milk slowly until you have the consistency you like. At this point, I added in the fondue and stirred until melted. This made a very flavorful base but just adding grated cheese makes a tasty soup as well. I added a bit more grated cheese; a bit of gruyere, manchego and fontina. Stirring until all of the cheeses were melted, the potatoes were added last. Gently heat, at a simmer until everything is heated through.

Serve in low wide bowls with a topping of more grated cheese.

This is a flavorful, hearty and warming soup on a blustery day. Plus it uses up bits of things from the fridge that otherwise would go to waste.

There you have it. One way we use up leftovers to create something new.

While you’re here, check out our new store and pick up our own brand of lip balm: BEEk balm.