We had a spectacular view of Manhattan and reveled in the vibe of passionate food vendors and the crowds that gather to taste their wares.

Eric and I arrived early and he set up the booth, rolling into the “park” with the coolers and grill for Vermont lemonade, farm fresh egg, sausage and arugula gorditas, and butternut squash donuts.

Tanner was there to help with set-up and beverages, and Jerome arrived a bit later to grill.

The scene was hip and busy, with lots of people arriving to check out what everyone had to offer.

It’s a great opportunity to share what goes on in the food world, be it at a farm in Vermont, or a small commercial kitchen in Brooklyn.

A fun market experience!

~ Natalie

We thought we’d kick off the weekend with a fun, kid-friendly recipe to celebrate St. Patty’s Day. Just keep in mind that baking soda and vinegar will work wonders on a food-coloring-stained child and clothing.

INGREDIENTS 

4 Eric’s Eggs

1 – 12 oz. ham steak

Cabot butter (for greasing skillets)

Green food coloring

1 small cat wearing a hat (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Grease two skillets. Turn heat on low-medium.  Put ham steak in one skillet and brown both sides. The ham is pre-cooked so there’s no need to really cook it through, browning the sides and heating it up just gives it a better flavor.

Crack eggs into two bowls, separating yolks into one bowl and whites into another. An easy way to separate eggs is to crack the egg with one hand into the other and let the white slip through your fingers while gently keeping the yolk in your palm.

Put 6-8 drops of food coloring and water in with the whites and whisk until fully combined. Pour whites (now green) into second skillet and drop yolks, evenly spaced, on top. Watch for the whites to solidify (usually no more than two minutes). Slide a wide spatula under the eggs and flip gently. Count to 10 and plate the eggs and ham. Salt & pepper to taste.

** Recipe adapted from The Joy of Pasta by Joe Famularo & Louise Imperiale

INGREDIENTS
4 Eric’s Eggs

1 1/2 tbs olive oil

3 cups of flour – some people recommend semolina but we find all-purpose works just fine

1 tbs warm water

1 tsp salt

GET COOKING 
Clean your counter – the cat was probably on it while you were at work, searching for the source of bacon scent.

Put your flour in a mixing bowl with the salt and mix. Form a deep well in the flour and crack the eggs into the well. Add the water and oil. Use a fork to slowly whisk together the the ingredients until the dough begins to form.

The mixing process is easiest when you slowly whisk bits of the flour into the eggs by pulling the flour from the sides of the well into the center insteadof just trying to mix the contents in the bowl together all at once.

When you can no longer mix the dough with your fork – it may be in several chunks – tip it out onto your (clean) floured work space. Knead the dough, adding a bit of flour here or there if it’s too sticky, until it’s smooth and elastic. Typically 11 minutes seems to do it.  We recommend setting a timer so you make sure you get all that kneading done … we tend to feel like our dough is ready after about 5 minutes but that extra time really does help to ensure the pasta isn’t tough.

Divide the dough into two even balls and cover them with a damp dish towel or some plastic wrap and let the dough rest for 15 minutes.  Get a pot of water boiling on the stove.

Flour your work surface again and roll the dough out into a very thin, even sheet. Roll your dough up like a yoga mat and use a sharp knife to cut thin strips. Unroll the  pasta and place it directly into the boiling water – make sure you put all noodles in at once otherwise they’ll cook unevenly. Cook time will vary based on how thick your noodles are but make sure to keep an eye on ‘em because fresh pasta cooks much faster than dried.

Drain pasta and serve with pesto made from last seasons’ basil or another delicious sauce!

* Typically we take the second half of the dough, roll it out, cut it up, and place the unrolled noodles into small, freezer-safe, single-serving containers. You can store the uncooked pasta in the freezer for a while and cook it up for a quick, homemade meal, mid-week. Noodles should be placed into the boiling water while still frozen. 

Maple Soufflé

INGREDIENTS
2 eggs
1/3 cup maple syrup (I use Vermont Grade A Medium Amber)

DIRECTIONS
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.  Separate egg whites and yolks.

In a small bowl, whisk together the two egg yolks and maple syrup until evenly distributed.

In a stainless steel bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Fold the maple syrup mixture into the whipped egg whites.  Pour into 4 ramekins and place ramekins on a baking sheet.

Place baking sheet in the oven and immediately turn temperature to 375 degrees. Bake for 10 minutes, or until puffed up and browned.

Serve immediately. There will be a little pool of syrup in the bottom of the ramekin to spoon over the souffle as you go –  delicious!

Eggs need to be collected every 30-45 minutes so they don’t freeze and crack

Many years ago I had the great fortune of serving an agriculture apprenticeship with family friend Elliot Coleman. Elliot purchased his farm from Scott and Helen Nearing, authors of the homesteading classic Living The Good Life. When I arrived in Haborside, Maine, Scott Nearing was long gone but Helen was my neighbor for those eight months. On the weekends, I would stack wood for her and she would pay me in books. Scott often talked and wrote about the school of hard knocks, where he claimed to have received his PhD.

We went to that same school this winter, where we majored in sub zero egg farming with a minor in humility. Chickens as it turns out are deceptively simple, 90% of what you need to know for good egg production can be whittled down to four subjects; light, ventilation, water and feed.  As we learned this winter despite this simple equation, a lot can go wrong.

- Lighting- for good egg production chickens need a minimum of fifteen hours per day of light. Last fall we were busy with a large squash harvest, while we simultaneously tried to build a permanent winter facility for the chickens. Like most projects, this was over budget and took much longer than anticipated. To maintain good egg production, you should introduce artificial lighting sometime around September 1st. Our birds never got additional lighting until mid-November.

- Water- one of the hard lessons we learned is that chickens need lots and lots of  water for good egg production, much more than we realized. Funny thing about water, it freezes. Keeping 2500 chickens well watered when the temperature is negative fifteen, proved to be a bigger challenge than we expected.

- Feed- we try to keep a constant supply of feed for the chickens. Some time in mid-December as we were hitting our stride with winter egg production, we received a bad batch of grain. This really messed things up. Our grain company was very responsive, and quickly replaced the bad batch, but production went to almost zero. It’s really hard to get chickens to start laying eggs again, and nearly impossible during the dark days of winter.

- Ventilation- The new greenhouses we built for the chickens are long and narrow. When the sides are rolled up, they are great because ventilation is excellent. However when it’s sub zero, the sides need to be down, and we quickly learned that condensation was going to be a problem. Cold and damp is a bad environment for the birds. We switched from dry shavings to hay and have been much more diligent when it comes to bedding down the houses. Not only is this a cleaner environment but it also cuts down on ammonia orders.

When things are going well optimal production is around 100 dozen eggs per day. During the low points of this winter, egg production dipped to 10 dozen eggs per day. So yeah we got our butts kicked. But we learned a whole lot, and we’re confident next winter will go much more smoothly.

While we’d sure love to do everything, and have certainly tried in the past, we’re trying to really focus our resources this year to make sure we truly excel in all of our endeavors. With this in mind and although it’s been a really difficult realization, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best to suspend our CSA program for the 2013 season. Not to worry though – there’s still plenty of fresh food to go around!

If you live in the Burlington area, we encourage you to consider joining the Intervale Food Hub. If you’re in the Boston area we’d recommend joining either Farmers To You or Graze Delivered. All three organizations run fantastic programs and source a lot of their products from our farm – so you’ll still be able to enjoy a little RFM in your diet!

The girls look ready to make it happen!

Also there are still some really cool things that you can look forward to:

-We hope to grow Eric’s Eggs into a regional egg brand. This is a super exciting opportunity that only really comes around once a career. We are attempting to develop a multi-farm model, that can be replicated on a neighboring dairy farm. By doing so we will be able to increase supply, diversify on farm incomes, fertilize the land, support our community by creating local jobs and deliver a superior product. Sounds good right?

Can you believe this can be made into a doughnut?!

-We’ve been cooking up a storm at the markets and recently, received a grant from the state to install a commercial kitchen on the farm. This will allow us to prep for markets, produce value-added products, host on-farm dinners and finally get that doughnut business on solid footing (if you haven’t had a chance to taste Barbara’s butternut doughnuts, you’re in for a treat!)

As always we thank you for your support. Please visit the web site for frequent blog posts and follow the farm on Facebook. It’s going to be a great year and we can’t wait to share it with you!

Good morning and Happy Sunday! Wondering what to do with this grey day? Weekend mornings like this one are perfect for prepping meals that will last all week. One of our favorites is guest-blogger, Megan’s, crustless quiche.

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My essentials for Sunday morning quiche-prep include a ruffled apron with hens on it (seems fitting), some Susan Tedeschi tunes, and a curious fat-cat called Finn. Although you’ll only put 2/3 of the ham steak in your quiche, if you have a fuzzy sous-chef like me, you’ll need the other third to keep your companion busy while you cook.

Ingredients

• 1/2 dozen Eric’s Eggs, beaten
• 1 cup Cabot shredded, extra sharp, cheddar cheese
• 1 1/2 broccoli crowns, chopped
• 2/3 12 oz. ham steak, cubed
• 8-10 Crimini mushroom, sliced
• 1 cup 2% milk
• Fine-ground black pepper

Get Cooking
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 5 small pie tins or (1) 8-9″ pie tin and set aside.

Crack six Eric’s Eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat until yolks and whites are fully combined. Add one cup of milk and give the mixture another quick stir. Feed the cat.

Add cheese, broccoli, mushrooms, and ham to the eggs and milk. Sprinkle in a pinch (or three) of pepper. Stir until all ingredients are coated in egg.

Pour mixture into greased pie tins. Pop in the oven for 40ish minutes. Serve immediately or let cool completely, cover, and refrigerate. Quiche is delicious reheated throughout the week for a healthy, on-the-run breakfast!

This bluebird afternoon, the lingering snow cover, and some great tunes have us feeling hopeful and energized as we enter 2013 and start working on our “Rockville Resolutions.”

During this past year we enjoyed a number of highlights such as:

• Rockville Market Farm Friday Night Dinners which included a phenomenal clambake featuring sweet corn, potatoes, Andouille sausage, and salad fixings straight from the farm
• 408,000 (34K dozen) Eric’s Eggs sold since the first of the year!

This coming year, we know for sure that Eric’s Eggs will expand (perhaps considerably), that we will continue our RMF Friday Night Dinner Series and that our Rockville Market Farm CSA will continue for it’s fourth year (although, we’re still working on the details). We’re also going to be putting more of a focus on this blog as a means of offering farm updates, recipe suggestions, CSA news, and insight into what makes Rockville Market Farm such a special endeavor.

Our chickens hunkered down for winter

Sounds great, right? But you’re probably thinking, “What are Eric and his team doing now?” Those chickens must be neck deep in snow and surely nothing can grow in sub-zero temps!” We’ve heard it before – when we tell folks that we farm, one of the first questions we get is “what do you do during the winter…in Vermont?!”

While we love the thought of a winter off, it’s not really a reality. The truth is, the farm is going year-round and since we have less employees during the winter, we’re as busy as ever. We have two sources of winter income: our peeled butternut business and Eric’s Eggs. Of the two, “arctic egg farming ” is certainly the more challenging endeavor. Keeping 2000+ chickens watered, fed, and happy and collecting eggs in sub-zero weather is a real challenge.

Our butternut peeling, by contrast, happens in a well-insulated barn with radiant heat in the floor. It’s nice indoor work where we can listen to music (Spotify rules!), drink tea, and eat whatever treat Keenann has prepared that day. Some of our recent favorites are pumpkin pie, doughnuts, and muffins. We sell the butternut in 25# food-service bags as well as 20 oz. retail packages. It’s super rewarding to deliver to over fifteen restaurants and sample the huge variety of uses for butternut. One of our favorites is the creative “Sasquash” beer at American Flatbread.

In addition to farm work we are busy putting the finishing touches on our 2013 business plan. It sure is an exciting time to be farming. We never could have imagined 18 years ago when we started that there would be so much enthusiasm!

As always – thank you so very much for your support and interest in our farm.

It’s been a busy and exciting couple of weeks on the farm. We attended the Boston Local Food Festival last week, which was a blast. We are making prepations for our first ever on-farm dinner. We will be partnering with “Misery Loves Company” for a nose to tail style dinner, Sunday October 23rd. If you’re interested in attending contact us and we’ll get you the information (it’s going to be special). Last week was our first frost of the growing season, we had a long day bringing in the winter squash. This is the backbone of our winter business. The crop was good in size and fruit set but the quality is low. We simply had too much mouisture. In between all of this we’ve been busy building yet another greenhouse, cleaning up after a rough season and planning for next year. We feel like a boxer whose gone fifeen very tough rounds, gotta love farming (and we do!!).

Sunrise photos from Natalie:

Our intrepid farm photographer visited the farm early Tuesday morning and took some great photos:

In our rather short farming career (16 years) we’ve not seen anything like the last two weeks. An earthquake, a tropical storm, pounding rains, zero heat and no sun. It has affected us, but nothing like what’s happening to neighboring farms. The flooding from Irene devasted area farms and in at least two cases physically altered them in a very negative way. The government has ruled that all food from flooded farm’s must be tilled under (we did not flood). The Burlington Free Press wrote a good article which you can read here. This is a fairly controversial ruling and a tough call to make. The problem is what’s upstream??  We know of  two farms that had a total of eight tractors under water for at least 24 hours. That’s a lot of undesirable fluids in the water. Add in sewage, toxins and a zillion other factors and we don’t disagree with the ruling. It has however affected us because we work with neighboring farms to procure root crops for our shares. Flood plain farms don’t have rocks, we do. Carrots especially are challenging for us, so we either buy them or swap crops with partner farms. Given that these farms are out of business it means we will not have sufficient product for a winter share and that our fall boxes will be a little redundant, for which we apologize. The good new is that we are in business. We have plenty of produce for the next seven weeks and we have some big plans for next year.

Farm update:

-Emmett, the Maremma livestock guard dog continues to grow at an amazing clip. He and Molly the Maremma have struck up a very nice friendship after a slightly rough getting to know each other period.

-We are harvesting winter squash. Which is a little affected by the bad weather, but overall we’d consider it to be a better than average crop.

-We are busy building our number 7 greenhouse, a 34′x96′ top vented Rimol greenhouse

-We ate our first raspberries out of our two Haygrove field tunnels. These plants will be in full production next year and we’ll be in the raspberry business.

-We will be adding 500 more laying hens this week. Eric’s Eggs have been selling out daily!!

-We have an amazing event planned for late October. The details are still being hashed out, but we know enough to say that we will be serving a “nose-to-tail” style dinner, on farm, prepared by the amazingly talented duo known as Misery Loves Company.

Photos from Natalie Stultz:

Arugula from field to wash tub.

Eric stocking up the goods at the market.

We served 114 gorditas last market, one of the many satisfied customers!

Farmer Lou at the Burlington Market

One of our mobile chicken houses

Keenann digging potatoes