Recipe: Orange Braised Lamb Shanks

Oranges are always a big part of Christmas around here. Daniel's aunt and uncle live in Florida so fresh Florida citrus is always an expected and greatly appreciated Christmas gift.

Before Daniel wolfed down all of the oranges, I stole one for this recipe.  It was a big hit around here with scarcely a drop of sauce left for the house's mouses. 

I served the lamb shanks with freshly baked buttermilk biscuits with blackberry jam.

Orange Braised Lamb Shanks

• 4 lamb shanks (you can get away with 2 of you're feeding less)
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 large or 2 small onions-coarsely chopped
• 1/2 bottle of white wine (I always pick the bottle with the most amusing label)
• 1 1/2 cup water or lamb broth
• Juice and zest of one Orange
• 3 small cinnamon sticks
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• a dash each of nutmeg, cloves and allspice or a generous dash of your fav. pumpkin pie seasoning

   Pre-heat oven to 325. Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Heat butter in a large dutch oven on the stovetop.  Add chopped onion.  Just before onion is browned add the lamb shanks and brown on all sides.  Once the lamb is browned, add wine. Scrape any bits from the pan.  Add water, half of the orange juice and most of the zest.  Add cinnamon sticks and other spices.  Bring to a boil and stir.

 Transfer to the oven and cook, covered, for 2 hours.  The lamb should be tender and falling off the bone.  Remove the pot from the oven and put the lamb in a warm place.  Boil the sauce to reduce by half.  Add the remaining orange juice and zest.  Serve by pouring the sauce over the lamb shanks.  

That's the way that the world goes round

           Time is strange.  Lately it has moved so fast that I can't remember when I last posted on the farm blog.  Since then, we've butchered turkeys, set fence posts, hauled cattle and sheep to the butcher, held a sheep dog trial, witnessed the birth of another litter of piglets and a new bull calf by our milk cow Bailyn (my milking muscles are slowly getting back and shape).  My milking muscles are out of shape because one day in early October, I went out to milk Bailyn and the milk was bright yellow.  Colostrum.  I had a suspicion Bailyn was pregnant because of how she looked and I hadn't seen her in heat, but I didn't know for sure. Any rate, she was pregnant. I stopped milking her when I saw that colostrum so that she could save it all for her calf.  My hands feel like it was a year ago that I last milked Bailyn, but it's only been 2 months.
       On the opposite end of the time spectrum, butchering turkeys took an eternity.  We don't have processing equipment, so I made a scalder (seemed like a good idea, but the water heater element and thermostat in a barrel cut in half didn't work out as I planned, so we had to use propane) and we hand plucked the turkeys. 77 of them. Bad idea. I had some help from Emily, her brother and a friend, but there came a point on Monday evening when I still had about 35 turkeys left to butcher and my help had left or gone to bed.  So I didn't get to sleep.  I hadn't pulled an all-nighter in a while.  Forgot how that goes.  Time slows and slows.  Especially a task as monotonous as butchering turkeys. Cut, bleed-out, scald, pluck, cool down, gut, ice bath, repeat until our orders are met. Time crawled.  If there had been a clock, I would have fallen asleep watching the hands crawl by or the feathers pile up.  But that all seems like a year ago now.
      I guess it's like Navin said to Marie in the Jerk (especially the part about one day spilling into the next), "I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days and the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days and the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half."
     Wise words from a wise man.  Any rate, all we can do is enjoy the unusual ride that is time, that is life.  Like tonight when we were frying chicken.  Somebody thought we could use our small cast iron pan.  When we put the chicken in, the oil spilled over.  Emily asked if she should worry if I thought the burner might catch on fire.  I said, "don't worry."  Ate those words.
      Fire leapt up around that cast iron pan.  I went to the cupboard looking for baking soda and Emily shouted, "flour!"  We doused the burner in flour, opened the kitchen door, cranked a fan on high, and laughed.  Then we ate a delicious fried chicken dinner.  Stove was old anyway.

 

Bird Herding

        

         I've learned a lot over the past few years about how to work livestock from Emily. She instinctually knows where to be and where the animals want to go. "Watch their heads!" "Step into them!" She shouts out commands a mile a minute and I try to keep up.

        Last week I put my herding skills to use in two unusual situations, both involving birds.

             

       Herding birds? Is that like herding cats? 

      

     Wednesday on my way to feed the pigs, I crested the hill above pig village and saw a group of 20 wild turkeys intermingling with our gang of 20 extreme free ranging turkeys who had recently decided that life was better down in the woods by the pigs. This was free ranging gone too far. Action was needed before this gang went feral.

     

     I strode back to the barn and grabbed our lunge whip. I knew the turkeys respected this whip. When they were but young poults, I'd let them out of their safe home in the barn into the yard for grazing during the day (back when the days were long, remember?) and herd them back home at dusk. 

    
The whip worked again last Wednesday. I walked back down the hill to the nearly wild gang of 20 and started lightly smacking the ground behind them. After 10 minutes of walking and whipping the pasture, I had the birds back in the barnyard with their domestic, unadventurous friends (the rest of our turkey flock).

      


My bird herding adventures weren't finished for the week...

      Emily and I were finishing up our coffee on Sunday morning when we heard the call of a Carolina Wren.  Her call sounded crisp and beautiful, so clear that I thought she might be in the house.  Turns out she was.

          We went upstairs, a dusty place where we rarely go, and our friend was frantically trying to find a way out. We opened a window and stood back.  Our friend flew around the room, even into the window above the opening, but not out. Desperate, she flew right at me and squeezed between  the door frame and me. At that point, Emily kicked into livestock working mode.

        
         We followed the bird through two rooms, into a hallway and herded her back into the room with the open window.  Once there, we gave her no way to go but out the window. 

      
     Emily always preaches that when working animals you have to make every way but the way you want an animal to go very difficult. I couldn't imagine that you could herd something as small as a wren, but as usual Emily was right and the wren found her freedom. We returned to breakfast and our Sunday.

Sunday afternoon

         Our new group of Cheviots was due for a health check and hoof trimming (standard sheep spa treatment) yesterday afternoon.  Normally, catching, checking eye color and hoof trimming is a sweaty, exhausting task, but Sunday was the dictionary definition of a fall day. I couldn't se a cloud from Cumberland to Amherst and the air was crisp and cool enough that we hardly broke a sweat. 

        

         

We also had lots of help from Case, our working Border Collie, and Sadie, our new barn kitten.                                                                                                                      

Case makes working sheep possible. Or at least sane. He gathers the flock and holds them in place so we can examine them.  

        

Sadie kept appearing from around the corner of the barn.  Fearless kitten that she is, she'd walk right up to the suspicious Cheviots who did not know what to make of this tiny black, furry thing. One of the ewes' eyes got wide and her ears perked up when Sadie approached her. I thought she was going to stomp at Sadie (a sheep's way of saying, "back off!").  Maybe Sadie has a future in herding?

       

Spare Ribs

I've always thought of ribs as a messy food resigned to being eaten outdoors on a hot day or away from home at a BBQ place.  In my mind they were always too sticky to be at home food if you were eating inside.

My opinion on spare ribs changed yesterday.  We were rushing to get out the door to head to Richmond.  Me for a court case and Daniel for the Fall Line Farms and Local Roots Co-op delivery drop offs.

I was inside gathering the orders and placing them in coolers and Daniel was outside doing chores.
I couldn't find the exact size spare ribs one order called for so I grabbed a slightly bigger pack and threw it in the cooler.  When Daniel came back in the incorrect pack of ribs was buried at the bottom of the cooler.  He knew where the correct pack was so we grabbed that, threw it on top and planned to get the incorrect size back in the freezer.

Our time in Richmond took longer than we had planned and by the time we got back home the wrong ribs were thawed.  Not wanting it to go to waste and not having anything else thawed for dinner I made ribs that could be enjoyed inside on a rainy night without a big sticky mess.

Well, we did it.  We had ribs, sweet potatoes and collards and only went through one napkin each.

Honey Baked Spare Ribs

1 or 2 racks of Tuckahoe Pastured Pork Spare Ribs
1 tbs Salt
1 tbs Pepper
1 tbs Paprika
2 tbs Brown Sugar
2 tbs Honey
1 Onion Sliced

Pre-heat oven to 325 F

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a small bowl.  Cut the ribs into serving size portions and lay flat in a single layer in a baking dish.  Sprinkle both sides of the ribs with the dry rub.  Don't go too heavy.  This is just a sprinkle not a coating.  Drizzle honey on both sides of the ribs. Lay onion slices across the ribs.

Cover with foil and bake 1 1/2 hours.

If you have plenty of time, consider lowering the heat to 200 F and baking for 3-4 hours.

Grass

We can say we're sheep farmers, pig farmers or cattle farmers, but we are, above all, GRASS farmers.  Without grass we wouldn't be anywhere.

Because we're grass farmers our #1 priority is the health of our grass.  Our sheep, cattle and pigs are very important to us, too, but if we don't treat the grass right we can't possibly be treating our animals right.

Cattle on short grass not ours

There is so much talk today about raising animals the way their wild ancestors would have lived.  We agree 100%, but so many times we see animals raised as nature intended on sub-par grass.  We could be wrong, but we're pretty sure the species of the past didn't overgraze their rangeland or spend their days in ankle deep or lower grass.

 Quality meat comes from quality grass and mature forage.  Mature grasses balance the animals' guts because they offer a balance of protein and energy.  The highest energy is the closest to the sun..the tips of the grass.  If you watch a cow go through a mature pasture she'll eat the tips of the tallest grasses first.

So many pastures are lacking in tall, mature grasses and in turn are low in energy.  Energy puts weight on an animal which leads to the intramuscular fat and marbling that so many folks believe is only available in grain fed meats.

Guess what? Marbling, tenderness and amazing taste isn't just found in grain fed animals.  Properly raised grass-fed meats beat a grain fed or poorly finished grass fed cut of meat any day.

Case in point: we went to a family wedding last weekend.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The family had pulled out all the stops to throw an extravagant affair.  For dinner we were served a beautiful looking filet Mignon.  Well, looks can be deceiving.  It lacked the flavor and texture we expect from our beef.

 Properly raised grass-fed and finished meats take more time, effort and energy than just "turning the cows out to pasture", but we think it's worth it and think you'll agree, too.       

Piglets!

           Annie and Tigger came to our farm late this summer from Landon Farm in Madison County.  Madison County always looks beautiful.  In July when we were burning up in Cumberland and the pasture about crunched under foot, Madison looked as green as April.

          Jennifer took us to her barn where the two sows sat happily munching Alfalfa hay in a stall with Rorsarch.  Jennifer thought that Rorsarch bred both sows about June 10th.

Annie~August 2012

           Jennifer thought right.  At least with Annie.  She had 6 spotty piglets on Tuesday October 2nd.  Three months, three weeks and three days to the day Jennifer saw Annie bred.  Breeding Annie must have exhausted Rorsarch, because Tigger decided to wait another week before she had 5 spotty piglets yesterday.

          Building farrowing huts for the sows proved nerve racking.  Would old hay bale feeders, zip ties, a tarp and lots of hay be enough of a home for piglets?  Doesn't conventional wisdom say a piglet needs 90 temperatures?

        Turns out these piglets are hardy creatures.  Annie and Tigger are both Ossabaw Island/Berkshire crosses.  Ossabaw Island Hogs were turned out by the  Spaniards on one of the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia (Ossabaw Island) when they were exploring the Americas.  The hogs were left to fend for themselves .

        Given their history, I shouldn't have been surprised when the  piglets were running around the day they were born.  By three days old they were venturing outside and running around with mom.  Our 8" logs placed to keep the piglets inside are no match for these piglets.  They have been scampering over top since then.

           They did look thankful to be snuggled up next to (and sometimes on top of) mom when it was rainy and cold on Sunday.
      
          Take a look at the piglets:

Annie's Piglets...notice the escape hatch Annie has created in the back of the hut

Hello

Curious piglets creep closer

Vampire markings and Pumpkin coloring, perfect for Halloween

Mom! Let's get her

Nursing piglets are happy piglets

       As much as we like our adult pigs we knew we'd have to like the the piglets, but until they came we had no idea how much we'd love them.   They are cute, funny and adventurous...a little like all the other baby animals rolled into one.  Well, maybe not quite since they aren't fuzzy, but they're cute enough they don't need fuzzy.  

Today around 11 am

               After we fed, watered and moved the pigs I walked away from the woods towards the hair sheep.  As usual they lazed under their grove of maple and sweetgum trees.  I looked them over and everyone seemed normal, so I turned and crossed west through the damp fescue towards the cisterns.
            No sheep were grazing near the cisterns so I headed up to the cedar grove where the wool sheep usually sleep the middle of the day away.  A young persimmon tree hung heavy with its sweet orange fruit and stopped me to eat.  A light mist drifted to the ground while I ruminated on a persimmon and that particular moment in time.
          The farm was still.  Ready for longer nights and a slower pace.  I thought maybe I should take nature's lead and curl up under a tree.  Instead I ate a couple more persimmons (I'm not the only creature on the farm enjoying these morsels of fall as I've seen the dairy cows slurping them off the pasture and the pigs gobble them up when they get the chance) and kept walking towards the wool sheep.  A few cheviots jumped up when I approached, but a raised head was the most  I got from the rest of the flock, except for one cotswold cross lamb who made me laugh when she shot out from under the old corn crib when I passed by.  She'd gotten herself covered in burrs.  Not just the seed, but the whole plant.  Seedhead, leaf, vine and all.  She looked like she was in costume for "Midsummer Night's Dream."
          After a few minutes of jockeying a small group of sheep back and forth against the fence, I caught the thespian lamb and took her costume off her.  She ran away happily to her cedar grove and I walked towards the house to do my book keeping  (not as happily).

Look What the Wind Blew In

At the farmers' markets on Saturday it was pretty warm; a typical summer day.  I was glad I was dressed in layers because by 11am it was in the mid-80's and I had stripped down to a t-shirt and jeans.  It was clearly still summer in Virginia.  By Noon, I was convinced the weather man was a liar.  There was no way it was going to be cool and fall-like on Sunday.

After we finished with the markets, Daniel and I headed to Tuckahoe to check on the new heifer calves before heading back to Cartersville.  By the time we left Tuckahoe, my jeans were rolled up and my shoes were off.  I clearly had not dressed appropriately for Summer's last hurrah.  Before we made it home, I was already thinking that I should plan on shorts for Sunday.

 Fall this year came in on the coattails of a crisp equinoxal breeze. Overnight, while the world was fast asleep, Autumn  made her debut.  Like the belle of the ball, she had stolen the show.  With her, she brought cool crisp air, un-cloudy skies, and a longing for hearty fall comfort foods and a fire in the woodstove.

 I again packed away my shorts and, instead, donned a warm sweater and a pair of boots I hadn't worn since early spring. We dusted off the stock pot, I dug up my lamb chili recipe and we let the pot simmer on the stove until we were done with the cattle.  And then, we ate, drank and laughed. Fall has finally arrived. 

Lamb Chili:

1 lb ground lamb. 

1 medium onion, chopped

A bit of salt and pepper

1 can black beans

1 can pinto beans

1 can kidney beans

1 can diced tomatoes (or fresh diced tomatoes if you can still get your hands on some)

2 large cans of tomato juice

1 tbs chili powder (more if you like it spicier) 

1 tbs brown sugar. 

Brown lamb and onion in a large stock pot with a bit of salt and pepper. 

Add beans, tomato juice, tomatoes, chili powder and brown sugar.  Stir.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and allow to simmer....at least 20 minutes (we usually do several hours) 

 

Snickers

Before I jumped off the high when I was a kid, a friend's older sister gave me some advice.  She told me to walk to the end of the board, close my eyes, think of my favorite candy and then jump.  After I willed myself up the ladder, I drug my heels to the edge of the board, closed my eyes and thought, "Skittles."

I spent the rest of the day racing up the ladder and careening off the high dive.  The advice my friend's sister gave me has held true throughout my life. The anticipation and expectations we create in our heads before a new experience are often the hardest part of that experience.

As a livestock farmer, you hardly see a day pass without something happening that you haven't seen before.

Today, I closed my eyes, sat down at the computer screen and thought, "Snickers."