June 29, 2015

Things are looking up. We have food to eat this week, quite a lot actually. Rob had to pick up our food shares this week by himself. I had to be at a horse show with Tristan, which was fun but exhausting. Six kids and six ponies all had to be cleaned up, kitted out, hauled to the show, and then watched carefully once there for impending disasters. It just about killed me. I wasn't even the one in charge. I was just helping. Anyway, he picked everything up for us. This week we got the flour! I was so excited. This was also a meat week and we were given six pounds of pork, and six pounds of beef! I really had no hope that we would get the meat, so I was pleasantly surprised.  Evidently they forgot, or just plain didn't know about the previous three pounds of beef we got before. I'm not telling them. So in all this glorious meat we had two pounds of hamburger, short ribs, two more of the yummy steaks, two pork chops, a good size piece of pork shoulder, a package of breakfast sausage, a pound of ground pork and a pound of bacon. This is supposed to last us a month. We are also due to get two broiler chickens next week. Because we have a good supply of meat already in our freezer this seemly small amount does not worry me, I think it might be too little for most families, but I don't know how much meat the average family of three would eat each week.

For our dairy share we received one block of cheddar, one blue cheese and a small 6 oz. tub of cultured butter. Cultured butter has a slightly yogurt taste to it because the cream is left to mature before it is made into butter, while I don't love it, the butter was well made. It is waxy in texture, not greasy.  I did not ask for butter and once again our order was messed up -- I had asked for two cheddars -- but I am so pleased with the quality of Brookfords dairy products that I didn't really care. I can tell you though I will not drink their raw milk until I get a look at their milk room and bulk tank. I also will ask them for a look at their milk counts. Milk counts are the test results for bacteria, somatic cell count and coli form counts in the milk. These test results tell you how clean the milk is. New Hampshire has different standards for raw milk than milk that will be pasteurized. Basically raw milk is held to the same counts as pasteurized milk after it has been pasteurized, but milk going to a plant to be pasteurized can be "dirtier" because they are going to boil the living daylights out of it. Constant vigilance and having very high standards of cleanliness, is the only way to do it.

So on to the veggies. Lettuce again this week, two bags of spinach, a bunch of Swiss chard, garlic scapes, a ridiculous sized bag of dill and cilantro, which yes, was actually in a bag this time. A bunch of basil (not in a bag, therefore wilted), four zucchini and a quart of very ripe and somewhat fuzzy strawberries. The strawberries I saved by picking out the moldy ones and blitzing the remainder of the good ones in the food processor to make a base for strawberry ice cream.

The flour that we have been waiting for was a three pound bag of whole wheat pastry flour and a three pound bag of whole wheat bread flour. I made my hamburger roll recipe with the pastry flour on Friday night. The rolls came out ok for using all whole wheat, they were a bit crumbly but had a nice nutty flavor. We had cheeseburgers with The CSA’s cheddar cheese, lettuce and their hamburger. I even made mayonnaise this week which I love on burgers. So we actually ate one whole meal from the CSA. Cool.

When Rob went in to pick up our box at the store, the owner was there. He had a very interesting conversation with her about Brookfield Farm and their CSA. She said she has been trying to get out of being a distribution place for the CSA for a while now. This is due to the farm constantly messing up orders and her constantly getting yelled at by unhappy customers. She also has a problem with them returning phone calls, they simply don’t. This week she had ordered a case of eggs and only received one dozen, so the CSA is out of luck and so are her customers that buy their eggs there. We got the dozen eggs only because Rob was the first one to pick up. I feel sorry for the customers that have signed on for this CSA and I feel sorry for the farm itself, I want this type of agriculture to succeed, but farmers must also be good business people or have the smarts to hire a good manager when they get in over their head.