Easy turkey dinner

Turkey is definitely our favorite poultry, heritage turkey that is... Not the store bought commercial ones that taste like cardboard and look like a mishappen beast from outer space... A real turkey. It is delicious, has texture, aroma, and super healthy.

But isn't cooking a heritage turkey hard?

Nope!

Here is an example:



1 heritage little sprouts turkey
10 organic bay leaves
Tablespoon Redmond realsalt
Water

Just pop the frozen turkey into the roasting pan, fill the bottom 3/4 with cold water, float the bay leaves, sprinkle with salt. Set the oven to 300 and close the roasting pan.

Wait, about 8 hours.

If necessary, refill the water to keep it at least half full.

When done, you can (if you want) remove the top and roast at 400 to brown the top of the meat. To brown more just remove some of the delicious broth first. (But done let it get totally dry!)

For even more flavor, drop a few organic carrots and onions into the water with the frozen turkey.

It really is that easy. You get absolutely delicious turkey broth, and soft yet textured turkey meat.

posted from Bloggeroid

More chicken and turkey parts in the store!

We spent the afternoon processing some more chickens and turkeys. The first batch is already just about sold out! But don't worry... If you missed ordering, there should be enough now to last the 2 weeks for the next order.

Customers in Medford, Jacksonville, Central point, eagle point areas can still order for delivery tomorrow!

What is available? Here is a quick rundown:

Heritage chickens and turkeys -these are not at all like the store bought chicken like products, and not even like the "meat chickens" raised by most farms. These are just plain ole chickens like Grandma's day. They are small ( average 3 to 4 lbs each) but the meat is so flavorful and nutritious, plus the bones make the best bone broth possible. This is especially true of the turkeys. Our favorite is to roast a turkey low and slow on a smoker or oven, pull off the meat, then cook the bones for the best turkey bone broth you ever tasted!

Heads and feet - primarily used for stocks. Just boil a head or two with a few feet, maybe add some onion and black pepper cons, a little salt... Strain and yum! It makes a very light but highly nutritious stock that you can't buy on the store. The flavor is amazingly smooth and subtle, but it packs a mighty punch of nutrition!

Gizzards and heart - organ meats..
Super nutrition! These are best simmered for several hours with a little onion and bay leaf, then strain the liquid for chicken stock and chop the meat up small. You can then add the nutrition of organ meats to almost any meat dish and no one knows it is there!

Necks-. These are the magical component of plain ole chicken stock. Just boil the necks in a little water for a few hours (don't boil dry!) And strain. Sometimes it is possible to pull some meat off, but either way this is drinkable chicken broth.

As usual, all of these products are :
Soy free
Heritage breed
Pasture raised
Organically and nongmo fed
Humanely treated and processed


Head into the online store now to reserve your selection!
https://csa.farmigo.com/store/littlesproutsfarm

posted from Bloggeroid

Chickens and turkey available now!

We finally have both whole chicken and whole turkey in the online store ready for ordering just in time for this coming delivery. And not just whole chicken and turkey, but also all the extras like necks (for the best stock in the world) gizzards, liver, hearts, heads, and feet. Brose through the online store to pick out what you would like for this week.

What to use everything for?

Head and feet make very healthy stock... Just boil, maybe a few onions, garlic and peppercorns.

Gizzards and hearts are great for inclusion in any dish to add super healthy organ meats without overwhelming flavor. I like these in dressing!

Liver.... The most popular organ we offer. Chicken and turkey liver often disappears as fast as we can get it into the store.

The chickens are sold by the bird and weigh in about 2.5 to 3.5 lbs. Heritage chickens are slimmer, tastier, and healthier than conventional ( highly breed for profit) birds. The meat is an equal balance of white and dark and actually has texture like meat should. The bones make excellent bone broth.

The turkeys are sold by the nearest half pound. These weigh in between 6 and 9 lbs. Just like the chickens, equal light and dark meat, excellent flavor and texture. If you have not tried heritage turkey, you have a pleasant surprise waiting! These birds are a totally unique culinary experience.

And as always, all these products are fed organic, soy free, nongmo feeds, plus pasture raised, naturally bred, humanely treated, and heritage breed.

Products will be in the online store by Sunday night and stay listed until sold out. And as usual.. any subscriptions will he filled first.

Enjoy!

posted from Bloggeroid

New Favorite Recipe: Turkey Dressing

This Christmas dinner we tried something new, and it worked out unbelievably wonderfully, so we would like to share this with you.

We very very rarely touch breads, but Christmas dinner is one time where we will splurge a little... with dressing. But the turkeys we made were smoked long and slow, so doing the stuffing inside the birds is next to impossible. The question then is how do you get that stuffed turkey taste from dressing made in the oven?

It is actually quite easy... fat! The realization came from thinking "what gives dressing cooked inside the bird that amazing flavor?". The main difference is, dressing inside the bird soaks up all the fat that renders out while cooking, fat from skin and suck. Based on that, I came up with the following recipe and it was nothing short of AMAZING.

Broth - make your own by boiling some giblets (hearts, gizzards, livers, etc) in a small amount of water with a few peppercorns, a quartered onion, and a pinch of salt. The amount is roughly 2 cups per box of bread crumbs, but check the dressing box for recommend proportions.

Fat - remove all the fat possible from inside the turkey. A heritage turkey properly raised will have about a handful of orange or deep yellow fat inside the body cavity and around the neck area. pull all that you can out and put in a small pot to render slow on the stovetop. If there is not enough rendered fat for the amount of dressing desired, add sticks of grass fed butter to it. Again, use the dressing box as a guide, but use about 50% more total fat then they suggest.

Veggies - my favorite is equal parts onion, carrot, celery. Chopped to quarter inch or so pieces

Garlic - Peel an entire head of garlic and mince it up with a knife

Stuffing mix - we use 1/3 wheat dressing, 2/3 corn dressing

Now your ready to build... First mix the chopped veggies and garlic to the dry dressing mix. Gently mix this together in a large bowl by slowly flipping.  Then add the liquid broth slowly as you continue flipping gently. Be gentle as to not break up the bread any more than necessary.  When it is all uniform and the moisture is pretty much all soaked in (about 10 to 15 minutes) then add the liquid  fat, preferably warm. Again, flip slowly to coat all evenly without breaking the bread apart.

Now just shovel this into a flat glass baking dish and cover with foil. Then into a hot oven at 350 degrees for about half an hour.  Check, it should be bubbly at the bottom. If so, remove the foil and continue baking another half hour or so, until the top is brown and a little crispy.

There you go! The best dressing ever, made in the oven, taste like it comes from a bird.

NOTE: do NOT try this with a storebought turkey. They wont have enough fat, and what they do have is not healthy anyway due to raising and feeding.  This will only work with a heritage turkey raised where it can get access to lots of bugs.

Turkey flock growing

the turkey hatching is going ok. There is about 55 turkey hatched now, with only a couple more coming. This batch had a lower hatch rate, probably because the weather back when they were laid left the eggs dirtier than normal. But its not too bad. Almost 50% live birds. The next batch is in the incubator and I suspect we will see more like an 80% hatch rate.

There is one white turkey again! Hope its a female!

Time to get another indoor brooding bucket. These little guys are crowded with so many arriving at once. They will stay inside for a good week before moving to the outdoor brooder this time of year.

posted from Bloggeroid

First 14 Turkeys arrive!

Here are the first 14 turkeys hatched out and happy for this year.

Aren't They just so cute!!!!

As of this morning, there are a total of 51 hatched and healthy.

After about a week inside, they will be moved to our outside brooder for the next stage...

First 150 turkeys in the oven!

Finally, after 3 years of skipping thanksgiving, we put the first 150 or so turkeys into the incubator! There is room for about 40 more, and then we will have a pause while waiting for replacement parts for the third incubator.

It took a little "creative repair" to get these incubators back in service. I didnt think soon enough ahead to order necessary parts to bring them out of storage and into service. But hey, duct tape, some fish line tubing, some careful patches and they are working!

At this point we are on target to get about 100 to 120 turkeys for thanksgiving. When we are more sure of the hatch rate we will start taking deposits for thanksgiving turkeys.

The best news is, this starts our year round fresh turkey! Plus all the add on like that delicious turkey stock, organs, bone broth.. yum!

posted from Bloggeroid

Little Sprouts Heritage Thanksgiving Turkeys are coming for 2016!

FINALLY!!!!

This year.. after a long wait and many many requests... we are set up for thanksgiving turkeys this year! Remember those? mmm... heritage breed, pasture raised, soy free, organically fed REAL turkeys!

For one reason or another, the last 2 years we have missed the window to get started.. but this year we made it! this week we finished the "egg coop" where they will stay for a short time while we collect the eggs, then off to the incubators, the brooders, the pasture and finally... your thanksgiving table!

If all goes well, we are set to produce somewhere between 400 and 800 turkeys by thanksgiving this year.

You will be able to make a deposit to reserve yours pretty soon, keep watching here to get first notice... and remember, we have sold out every year so far. So if you want one of these birds... reserve early!

This year the egg coop in the the old melon / pumpkin garden area (which was the original pig pen). We built a nice coop form a few fence panels, old metal portable structure, leftover covers from the structure, some orange netting, a few 2x6s, some old dog houses, and lots of straw!

Tonight we just connected the lights to bring them up to laying stage... which should be within 2 to 4 weeks. Remember the requirements about lighting birds to lay eggs... target is 14 hours of daylight, but no more change than 2 hours per day every 2 weeks, and only start the morning instead of extending the evening. If  you have any questions about this process, feel free to contact us.

We are VERY excited to be bringing turkeys back this year!

A bit dark, but here is the finished structure. Yes its WET here in oregon! but the 6 to 8 inches of straw gives a nice warm cozy bedding. In the background you can see a few of the pigs checking out all the comotion.

Here's the inside accommodations, with 31 breeding turkeys settling in. In the back the roosts are under the sunroof, while the front is the quiet nesting area for the ladies when they get ready.  

Private accommodations for the sitting moms. Well, most actually prefer a group room. there will be 2 to 4 turkeys sitting in each box. 

Unexpected visitors

These guys just wandered onto our farm today.  2 toms and 2 hens.  Absolutely beautiful birds!   We are looking for the proper owners to return them to.

First turkeys in incubator

Turkey season is upon us ! Well... The starts anyway. We collected all the Turkey eggs we could find (some from under sitting turkeys) and placed them all in the incubator. Right at 200 eggs total in the first batch. It is likely a lot of these first eggs won't hatch though, so we'd be happy with a hundred from this first batch.

After a week we will candle them and remove any that aren't maturing to make room for there second batch.

Turkeys on the way!

Thanksgiving turkey harvest 2013

We had a fabulous thanksgiving season.  Even though the harvest was smaller than we wanted (dye to incubator problems back in sprung)  it worked out well.  This year we had plenty of volunteer help on processing day,  do overall it was a pleasant and not totally exhausting few days. 

We thank everyone who showed up to help!

Here's some memories of this year's event...

Kaelyn watching the dunking into the scalder

She decided to try her hand it dunking a bird!

She's doing it!

Even her dunking partner Keitley is impressed

Todd's son learns about the plucker

Here is the table crew... Hannah, Marissa, April, and Keitley

The knives cant be sharp enough! Sharpen early, sharpen often!

Grandma making the rounds back and forth from the kitchen

Hunter moving furniture !

Todd wrestles with a turkey ready for the cones

Made it!

Todd shows his boy the realities of farm life

Daniel working the plucker... why is this man smiling?

Keitley and Hanna working at the table

April learning to process a turkey, Marissa is an old pro!

Turkey week has arrived!

This is the biggest week for little sprouts. Thanksgiving is when we sell the most birds in a single day for all year. Busy busy. Fortunately this year we have plenty of help on the way....

But of course the weather changes dramatically overnight... From unseasonably warm and dry to frigid and wet. The mercury hit below 20 the last two nights. That always makes it fun standing outside in the cold with constantly running water.

So this year I decided to light the scalder the night before so I don't have to deal with frozen hoses while rushing to fill the scaler to get it heating. But.... Alas by the time we got home from deliveries the hoses were already frozen. In my zeal to break up the ice I did a bad thing... Pulled the spigot right out of the ground! Pipit broke under 8 inches of mud, water and ice. Hmmmm

So there I am, in the dark cold of 28 degrees standing ankle deep in need and ice digging down to the pipe, thankful for the shop vac!  Took some work and half frozen hands but... Finally cape the pipe.

The scalder is full... Heating up overnight... And with dawn comes preparation. Even an exciting new method and tool we will be trying...

So here we go into a week of intense turkey processing.... Mostly ready... All that is needed is some rest....

Turkey eggs and poults available now

We are pleased to announce that Little Sprouts Farm is now reselling our own third and fourth generation Narragansett turkey as poults or eggs for hatching.  We have often been asked to provide these, and finally have enough production where it makes sense.

The eggs are fertilized and fresh, and should present a 70 to 90 percent hatch rate.

The poults are within a week old (we will schedule the timing if none are available).

Our birds were originally purchased from a reputable hatchery 4 years ago, and we have raised one generation per year without repurchasing. the benefit to this is that our birds are genetically predisposed to be hardy in the southern oregon weather conditions. Each generation has shown  deeper hardiness than the one before.  these birds have been raised through generations of open pasture, foraging  supplemented with soy free and certified non-gmo feed.

Narragansett are the largest of the heritage breeds, and we think the tastiest. They are great natural foragers and have a very calm disposition. You can expect them to take 6 to 9 months to reach market weight, and then provide a very flavorful and healthy heritage meat with equal balance of light and dark meat.

If you wish to raise your own turkeys for Thanksgiving or Christmas  or just for year round fun ... we encourage you to try our birds.  We can provide advice on housing, raising, and processing also.

You can find details in our online store: http://www.farmigo.com/store/littlesproutsfarm

Information about the breed: http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/narragansett.html

Excelerite Minerals Available Now

We are pleased to announce that Little Sprouts is now a re-seller of  Excelerite Rare Earth Minerals.  We will be using these minerals ourselves as well as stocking them in smaller packages for resell  through farm pickup or home deliveries.

Excelerite is the brand of rare earth minerals from US RareEarth Minerals. It is produced from an ancient evaporated lake bed in Panaca Nevada. Many scientists consider this lake bed to be the world's richest source of micro, macro, and nano nutrients.

Excelerite is provided in two forms, agriculture  and livestock. the only difference is that the AG type is filtered to remove some unneeded silica and has a slightly higher price.  the mineral content otherwise is the same.

You can read more about his amazing product at their website: http://us-rem.com/

Why minerals? Minerals, especially ancient sea and lake minerals, contain the building blocks that make life work. Everything improves in the presence of abundant minerals in the proper balance, both pant and animal. In fact, life is not truly possible without minerals! Unfortunately much of the worlds soil and therefore foods are depleted of minerals through years of abuse and use. Remineralizing with excelerite restore the soil to its healthy natural state, providing benefits to the ecology (life) of the soil itself and any plants grown in it.

For livestock (poultry, hogs, sheep, etc) these minerals in livestock form are added to their feed to give them the boost that is not contained in their feed and world.  This gives an immediate benefit to all livestock in a number of ways.

We encourage you to try this amazing product and see for yourself how ancient minerals can boost health, vitality, fertility, and production.

you can find Excelerite in our online store: http://www.farmigo.com/store/littlesproutsfarm

Turkeys - Not The Brightest Bulb in the Box

I love turkeys, really I do. They are fascinating creatures and exhibit a good amount of intelligence for foraging, hunting, raising young, nesting, all the essentials of life. There is just one area that turkeys don't seem to understand at all... Fences.  Generation after generation of turkeys shows this same blind spot of intelligence.  Take a Look at this picture:

You will notice, this is NOT a complete pen. the back side is totally wide open.  Even so, the front edge of the fence panels shows that these girls have spent all night and all day walking slowly back and forth, attempting to find an opening. Not to mention that the fencing is only 2 feet tall, and they could at any moment hop right over.  

But no, turkeys don't understand fences at all. not over, not around, nothing except an apparent desire to blast their way through the largest opening they can find.. even if they don't find it for DAYS.  It is entirely possible that these girls could, without help, starve to death or die of thirst, only feet away from food and water, because they don't realize they could go around nor hop over.

Here's a short video of the girls pacing back and forth, patiently waiting for a hole to appear in the fence they have walked past hundreds of times.

Do not worry, after the video, we showed them how to escape the fence :)

Ready to pick out a turkey?

Here is today's hatching of thanksgiving turkeys.... care to pick out yours early?

Incubators warmed and running!

Two incubators up and running. The left is about 3/4 full of turkey eggs, the right hold the starts of our next chicken flock.  That's about 70 turkeys and 140 chickens.  There will be a few more rounds of each, before the season is done and another incubator in on the way to add to the mix.

As you can see we use the brisnea incubators. These have done well for us with precise temp control, ventilation, humidity control and turning. We decided to go with multiple small ones instead of less larger ones, for redundancy. Things always break and we didn't want time "put all of our eggs in one incubator". We need about two more but these guys aren't cheap so we just add one every year. By summer we will hatch close to a thousand birds.

First turkey eggs in the incubator

Its finally time! The first 45 eggs or so are in the incubator, launching the 2013 turkey season. We are a big late this year, but still within time to offer delicious traditional turkeys for thanksgiving.

The exciting part is this... after thanksgiving it doesn't end this year! We are set up to continue producing and selling turkeys every 2 to 3 months ... year round! Yes.... fresh heritage soy free pastured turkey. All year! We are. Very excited!

Very soon we will start taking deposits for turkeys for thanksgiving. Last year we sold out in early november so reserve yours early!

Turkey Battle!

These guys are just so fun to watch. We let the turkeys out for an afternoon of sunshine and of course the toms gather up and try to see who's top turkey.

Getting ready for winter breeding

Lots of changes around here this week! Let's recap:
Processed a few more turkeys, all toms not needed for breeding. These toms look excellent! All consistently large with good fat content. We have a few more to go before we retire the processing equipment for the winter. Some turkeys will be available for sale through the winter as frozen.
To facilitate processing we finally put a real shelter over the equipment creating a mostly closed area. Even have a little propane camp heater to warm up by! This makes the experience much more comfortable. I remember three years ago learning how to do this on a card table in the freezing rain. How far we have come!
The turkey numbers are now small enough to fill only one turkey breeder coop. That frees up another coop. We have split the next chicken flock into his and hers living quarters. These chickens were getting much too big to all fit in one! There are 270 or so birds total. Now the hens can mature into laying hens and the boys can fatten up for heritage meat chickens using our soy free broiler chicken ration. These will be our first meat chickens for sale.
We also moved the ducks into the old pig pen. They are easier to protect from predators here, and mostly will stop escaping the pasture and ruining our back yard! Ducks wreck havoc on lawn grass! The smaller area can be lighted so egg production will climb again. Also this area is destined to be next years garden so what the ducks leave behind will be gold to the plants!
Next steps are adding lighting to turkey coop, chicken coop, and duck pen to get egg production going. Also we still need to design some laying boxes for these new pens and get the solar winch rebuilt and working.
Never a dull moment!