All of our hams that we sell and use ourselves are uncured. Meaning this is a fresh piece of meat with no nitrates/nitrites, colors, or harmful preservatives added. I have been having a great time experimenting with a lot of recipes. Thankfully my family hasn’t minded being my guniea pigs! HA! This ham roast was incredibly easy and had great flavor, but don’t expect it to taste like those processed hams you get at the store. It has it’s own unique sweet and spicy.

Ingredients:

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp. cloves

2 tsp. salt

¼ cup maple syrup

Directions: Thaw your ham roast (something I forget to do too often!). Combine your seasonings and rub them all over the roast. Place the roast in a pan and cover it with aluminum foil. I like to use my glass baking dish. Bake at 325 degrees for 3 ½ hours. After this time baste the roast with the maple syrup (I started with about 1 tablespoon in a bowl so I didn’t waste any precious syrup), stick it back in the oven uncovered, and continue basting it every 10 to 15 minutes. Once the temperature reaches 170 degrees your roast is ready to eat. This usually takes another 45 minutes to an hour. We paired this with fresh lettuce salad, cooked carrots, and fresh sourdough bread. Yum! If you try this recipe, we would love for you to share your thoughts in the comments.

One of our goals on our beyond organic farm is to be transparent in everything we do. I no longer trust labels, and I believe there is a lot of fraud and lies in the organic/natural farming industry. As part of our transparent farming practices, we really encourage farm visits and welcome them any day, but Sunday. Anyone is welcome to see anything they want and we are happy to answer any questions about our farming practices. You may want to watch this video first though as part of our transparency. You can click the link here.

I shared eight things I wish people would have told me when I was in high school in a recent presentation. I will be sharing number three today.

•  Get as much free knowledge as you can.

Rather than spending a lot of money to learn a new skill, first we go to the library or the internet to learn as much as we can for free. Yes, there is a lot of bad information out there (just try running your chickens in your garden and you will see what I mean!), but there is a lot of good as well. After doing some research, if it still interests us, we start by counting the cost. Then if it makes sense financially, we start experimenting on a small scale (okay maybe that’s what we should do at least). If this new skill requires special equipment or tools, I will start by looking at Facebook Market Place or Craigslist and often find a good deal on what we are searching for. Sometimes it makes more sense to buy these items new. It may take some money to buy a tool or supplies, but if we have counted the savings, we will know if it’s worth it. If we like doing something, then we may want to invest some money into learning more about it, or more importantly how to become more efficient at it, because let’s be honest, you get what you pay for. If we start doing this new skill and don’t enjoy it, we aren’t out much.

Not many people want to talk about this, but let’s be real, you can spend a lot of money learning a new skill.  Too often what happens is we are encouraged to get educated before we even know if we really like doing something. When we get done and put that education to practice, we may find that we don’t enjoy doing what we thought we would love, or even worse, maybe there’s no way to create an income with this education. Then we get done and we often don’t get to do what we want because we have become a slave under a mountain of debt.

We have a lot of improvements to make on our farm as we strive to be as regenerative as possible, but thankfully each year is getting better.  After 7 inches of rain fell on our farm a week ago, some of the areas turned to quicksand-like muck. We were so thankful to be using a bale grazing program that we implemented a few years ago, because this helped our animals to have areas to lay or stand out of the mud. What may look like a waste to some, has actually allowed us to improve our soil and keep our animals more comfortable.

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and those few be well-tried before you give them confidence.”

Continue reading “Protecting Against Cancer” →

I shared eight things I wish people would have told me when I was in high school in a recent presentation. I will be sharing number two today.

Our family has really enjoyed the book Heinrich to Henry by a local author named Marie Kramer as told by Henry Cramer. This is a true story about a German who immigrated to America after World War 2. I have felt very led to share this quote from the book. “We in America enjoy unparalleled freedoms. People here complain that the governments is slowly eroding these freedoms. It is not true. The people, rather, are giving away their freedoms by taking hand-outs from the government. By similar methods, Hitler bought the freedom away from his people. The communists continue to be oppressive. They take everything from everyone and promise each a fair share in the redistribution. But it doesn’t happen that way, and people lose their incentive to work if they can’t enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

When I contacted our local senator requesting more freedom for us meat providers that were having trouble getting our animals into a USDA processing plant, I received this predesignated reply generated by a software program about how the government had given money to all these different needs. I wish I could share the email, but I cleaned out my email and it must have been trashed. Since you can’t reply to these emails, I started the process a few more times trying to explain that we were not asking for a handout, we were simply asking for freedom to sell our product in a way that we know is equally safe. We believe that many of the rules in place are not about food safety, but about certain groups controlling the market. I didn’t hear back, but I have been diligently praying and trying to be a nuisance to our representatives, and thankfully, I’m not the only one. Tomorrow I will share some exciting news that I heard yesterday. Imagine the possibilities if we actually had a free market where two consenting, informed adults could trade? Do you believe we have a free market?

Continue reading “A LOT Has Changed Since Our First . . .” →