Hi Everyone!

Great news! The Piggery had it’s first round of summer babies this week! Our current count is 27 baby pigs with several more sows birthing in the next week. We put pictures and a video up at our website for you to see. Here’s the link:

http://www.thepiggery.net/archives/23

We’ve also added some new recipes to the site for your convenience. Feel free to poke around the site!

In other good news, we have a deli case that we’ll be unveiling at market in two weeks. We’re so excited! We think this will be really helpful for our clients!! You will be able to see all the cuts and sausages and we’ll be able to wrap each order on site to your specification. We’re also increasing production in July so we’ll have more fresh cuts for everyone.

Brad and Heather will be away for the weekend for a family event ( their only planned absence for the summer), but the booths on Saturday and Sunday will still be open for business.

Here’s where The Piggery will be selling this week:

Saturday 10-2pm: Red Feet Wine Market ( across from Ithaca Farmers’ Market on Rt13)
Sunday 10-3pm: Ithaca Farmers’ Market
Wednesday 4-7: Trumansburg Farmers’ Market ( next to Post Office on Rt 96)

Here’s our menu for the week. If you’d like to pre-order anything, just send us an email and we’ll be happy to package the order and have it ready for you.

Fresh French Cut Pork Chops: $10/lb
Fresh St. Louis Style Ribs ( usually 3- 4 lbs) - $6/lb
Fresh Rib Tips - $8/lb
Fresh Tenderloin -$16/lb

Kielbasa Sausage - $9/lb
Bratwurst Sausage - $9/lb
Hot Italian Sausage - $9/lb

Terrine ( back by popular demand!) - $7/half lb

Lard - $3.50/jar

We’ve had a few production issues with the pate this week and plan to have it back for sale by next weekend! Thanks to all our pate junkies for their patience!!

The Piggery goods are fresh, never frozen. All of our pigs are pasture raised and fed organic grains from a nearby mill. No pesticides, hormones, or antibiotics are ever used on our farm. All products are handcrafted by us in our solar/wind powered commercial kitchen in Trumansburg. We love giving tours - we hope you’ll come out for a visit sometime!!!

Thanks again for your support and patronage!

It’s that time! We’ve gotten our first lot of fresh marjoram from Kingbird Farm for the year. We put it in this week’s batch of kielbasa and, wow, what a difference. We had been using the dried stuff, which was OK, but this is way better. So for the rest of the marjoram season, the kielbasa has gotten a major upgrade.

This is a very easy and delicious one pot meal featuring our kielbasa. It also uses lambsquarters, one of the most aggressive garden weeds that makes a delicious cooked green much like spinach. You could substitute spinach or any other cooked green for the lambsquarters.

What you’ll need:

• Kielbasa
• Pasta - in this case I used spaghetti, but Little Ithaca’s Linguini, available at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market, would work great
• Lambsquarters - Lambsquarters have followed me around the country wherever I’ve gardened. They are at their prime in June. I pull the whole plants and pluck the leaves to cook with.
• Butter Hillcrest Dairy in Moravia makes a delicious local butter.
• Vinegar Cherry Knoll makes a fantastic cherry vinegar available at the Ithaca Farmer’s market
• salt

Start by boiling your pasta.

While that is cooking, prep your lambsquarters by plucking the leaves from the stems. Then brown your kielbasa. You can brown them them in links or remove them from the casings and brown them loose, crumbling them into good size chunks with a wooden spoon. When the kielbasa is done remove it from the heat. Deglaze the pan with a good splash of vinegar. Add the lambsquarter leaves and steam them until they soften, three minutes or so. Toss the lambsquarters with the pasta. Season with salt and butter to taste. Serve with the kielbasa and grated parmesan.

When Pigsalad, our Gloucester Old Spot sow, failed to show up for breakfast we knew something was up. She didn’t turn up on our initial search and there were sausages to be made. Presumably, she’d had the litter we’d been expecting, but she’d have to figure things out herself until we had the time to find her. At any rate, with our management system we’re really only spectators. Our job is really to “Ooh” and “Aah”. So we let her go for a couple of days and I went looking again after the Sunday Farmer’s Market.

I turned her up fairly quickly on my second search. She had made a nest in a clear area near the end of one of the hedgerows and had four of the most ridiculously cute piglets I’ve seen. I called Heather and said, “Oh my god, Pigsalad had Chunk babies! You have no idea how cute they are.”

Heather said, “Oh come on, I’ve seen plenty of piglets. How cute can they be?” She can be so wrong sometimes.

There’s actually a lot going on in the phrase “Pigsalad had Chunk babies”, both from an historical context and from the context of our farm. We currently have two boars, a Tamworth-Berkshire cross named Krull and a purebred mulefoot named Chunk. Both of them had “access” to Pigsalad during her heat cycle and we had no idea who the father of her piglets would be. Which is why I specified that she had Chunk babies and not just any old babies. I knew it as soon as I saw the piglets, although I had to wait until I saw their single, uncloven “mulefoot” hooves to be sure.

When I saw the hooves I knew that I was looking at some very unique piglets. Their father was of a breed of nearly extinct American homesteader’s hogs descended from unspecialized feral stock originally introduced by the Spanish. Their mother was of a breed of “improved” English hogs of mixed Northern European and Chinese bloodlines that is rare in England and almost unheard of here. Talk about unlikely bedfellows.

We think this bodes well for the little guys. The most robust pigs often come from crosses of distantly related stock. I don’t think the parents could be much more distant. I can say this: so far they sure are cute. White coats are dominant in pig genetics, so purebred white breeds of pigs should have all white piglets. Interestingly, although Pigsalad is mostly white (Old Spots are largely white with a few black spots), the Salad Chunks (that’s what we’re calling them now) are all black with white boots. One or two have white noses and one has a white tip on it’s tail. For whatever reason, mulefoot black wins out over Old Spot white. They have mulefoot hooves, which is also a dominant trait. They have full flop ears that don’t cover their eyes. Cute!

Mexican Chorizo is absolutely one of my favorite foods. Tangy, spicy, meaty, aromatic and absolutely delicious. Easy to prepare. And versatile enough to be used for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Many of these recipes rely on hot corn tortillas. Store bought tortillas can be prepared by heating a heavy pan or flat griddle on high until they’re nearly smoking. Add the tortillas, let them cook for about ten seconds - they should soften and brown slightly. Flip them, cook for ten more seconds. Flip them a third and last time. Cook for ten more seconds. If the pan is the right heat, they will puff up a little on this third flip and they are done. If the tortillas are turning hard and black in spots instead of a nice light brown, the pan is too hot. Of course, you can always substitute flour tortillas but that’s lame. FYI, the best corn tortillas I’ve found in Ithaca are in Wegman’s on the end of one of the aisles in the back of the store in their own area. I’m not sure of the brand, but they come in package sizes between like 20 and 100 tortillas. They feel very soft.

The recipes also rely on crema fresca. This is basically freshly soured cream that can be found on the table of nearly every taqueria in Mexico, usually in one of those red plastic ketchup bottles you sometimes see at hot dog stands. American “sour cream” is made from a mixture of cream and milk, which gives it a much stiffer texture that I find unappealing. I make my own substitute for crema fresca by whisking a little sour cream into heavy cream a little at a time until the texture is thick enough not to run, but thin enough that it can be drizzled on with a spoon.

Chorizo con Huevos

For a quick breakfast, cook a little chorizo in a pan, maybe one link per person. Scramble in an egg or three and cook until the egg sets. Serve with hot corn tortillas, crema fresca and fresh pico de gallo. Heaven.

Chorizo Taco

Put chorizo onto hot tortilla. Top with finely shredded green cabbage, chopped white onions and cilantro and crema fresca. Serve with grilled scallions. Take a bite and dream of Baja.

Chorizo Y Paps

Cube potatoes quite small - maybe half an inch cubes. I like to use new potatoes or waxy fingerlings for this rather than a starchy baking potato. “Salt potatoes” work. Boil the potatoes in salted water until a fork will pierce them easily but before they’re mushy.

Meanwhile, cook some chorizo. Remove the chorizo from the pot and add the potatoes. Fry to brown them up. You may or may not have to add some lard or cooking oil. When they’re browned to your liking add back the chorizo, warm it up and …. serve with hot tortillas, cilantro and onion and crema fresca.

Chorizo “Nachos”

Preheat an oven to 350 or so. Put some commercial tortilla chips into a stainless steel bowl and heat them in the oven untill they’re warm and crispy, stirring occasionally. Cook some chorizo. Pour the tortillas onto a platter, crumble the chorizo over it and drizzle with crema frasca. You can also add diced onions, cilantro and scallions. You can even add fresh tomatoes if it’s tomato season!

Taco Salad

We serve this as a large dinner salad.

Make a creamy dressing out of crema fresca by adding a splash of vinegar, salt and a finely chopped chipotle or two from a can of chipotles en adobo. If it tastes kind of thin, add more salt. We usually make a pint or more, since this can be saved and used as a tortilla dip.

Cook some chorizo. Meanwhile, shred some lettuce into large bowls or onto dinner plates.

Assemble the salad by topping the lettuce with crumbled tortilla chips, creamy dressing, chorizo, diced scallions, onions and cilantro, in that order. (Heather would suggest adding the chorizo before the chips and dressing. She is dead wrong;) The chorizo looks nicest near the top.)