The Spring is our favorite time of year around the farm.

Things begin to come alive. Grasses become greener. Wildflowers sprout forth. You can feel the warmth of the sun pressed up against your face.

Today felt like our first real glimpse of Spring. It was almost poetic around here. The animals seemed a little giddy.

But, then again, so did I.

I snapped this photo of the chickens meandering through the pastures. You can see the cows in the background (way back there) up on top of the hill.

We follow our cows with our chickens. The chickens go behind the cows and help clean up the pastures and break up the manure.

They also help when the flies get back as it gets warmer because they eat the fly larvae out of the cow manure.

In other news, we recently purchased a small herd of Spanish Goats.

The purpose of these goats will be for natural pasture renovation and parasite control.

Goats won't compete with the cows for grasses since goats are browsers and cows are grazers. The goats eat things that cows won't eat.

It is quite a sight looking out into the pasture seeing the goats romping around. 

The goats won't let us get too close to them yet. We aren't use to our animals keeping their distance from us. But, in due time I'm sure the goats will come around as well.

The girls can't hardly stand this though. They've made many trips out to the pasture that the goats are in with many coaxing efforts to end in,"They just aren't ready yet."

They have taken a liking to the dogs though. The ranch that they came from worked them with dogs. We can't wait to see what kind of goat wrangler Max will end up being.

We had a momma sow farrow the sweetest litter of piglets to date. She had some very uniquely colored piglets. Some where speckled and one of them was brown. We don't have one single brown pig on this farm, but little one.

The sow is doing quite well at being a first time momma. She is young and this is her first litter of piglets. But, we've been impressed with her so far. She had a total of 10 and hasn't lost any yet.

Losing piglets tends to be just part of the game sometimes. We've had tremendous success with huge litters of pigs. The average loss is usually 1 to 2 piglets per litter- sometimes none, sometimes more. Most of the time, they are stepped on by the sows or crushed by them when they lay down to nurse.

Today, we were outside playing in the yard. I heard the loudest piglet squeal coming from the barn. Instantly, I rushed over to the barn (common protocol) because I knew the owner of the squeal was in a very precarious position.

When I arrived, I saw the little piglet half under the sow and pinned up against the fence. I made the sow stand up and quit nursing the piglets. I'm just glad that she kindly obliged and didn't give me any resistance.

The little guy was up and running in no time.

And I felt like I had bonded with the piglet over saving his week old life.

This particular potato soup is definitely not low-cal, but we aren't affraid of butter around here- especially grass-fed golden butter. Yum Yum!

"Nourishing" is the best way to describe this soup and it's most definitely a crowd pleaser.

Who knew soup could be this simple?

Potato & Ham Soup

8 potatoes- peeled and cut into chunks

1 to 2 lbs of Yonder Way Farm's Ham Steak- thawed and cubed

1 whole Onion- chopped

4 tbsp of Stryk's Dairy grass-fed raw butter

water (refer to recipe for how much)

1 cup raw milk from Stryk's

1/4 cup of raw milk sour cream from Stryk's

1 tbsp dried chives

Sea Salt & Pepper

Place your cubed ham steak in a pot to brown with butter and onions on medium heat. Once the meat is browned, add potatoes, chives, salt, pepper, and enough water in the pot to cover the potatoes. Simmer on medium high heat and bring to a nice rolling boil. Boil potatoes until tender. Add raw milk and sour cream and simmer for about 5 more minutes until all of the flavors marry together. Enjoy!

Farmer Jason has already taken him on errands with him and has high hopes that he will be a good working farm dog.

Max is quite fond of farm life and has received a total of 3 baths since he's been here- for a week.

On one occasion, he was sprayed by a tom cat. Can we say GROSS???

On another occasion, he discovered mud.

On the last occasion, he decided to eat pig poop.

I feel like I have a newborn living in this house all over again. Puppies are hard work. But, oh so fun!

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 TIMES more Omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 TIMES more Vitamin E
• 7 TIMES more beta carotene

We get a lot of questions about how to cook grass-fed meats- especially beef.

The truth is that cooking grass-fed beef is entirely different. When we first began cooking our meats from the first wave of meats that came back from the processor, I was a little disappointed in the tenderness in the beef. Okay....really disappointed.

But, I was treating our wonderfully raised grass-fed grass-finished beef as I would corn-fed feedlot beef.

Once I figured out the cooking technique, I fell in love with our beef (and pork and chicken for that matter). The flavors are rich, the broths are thick, and the texture is just as it should be.

I found this article on Kelly the Kitchen Kop (wonderful site full of great info) to be extremely helpful with a lot of good information and tips on how to cook grass-fed beef.

5 Ways to Achieve Grass-fed Beef Cooking Nirvana 

Click on the link above to go to an amazing article chock full of cooking techniques. And then, be sure to subscribe to Kelly's blog. You'll be thrilled you did!

We love going to the city and meeting our customers. However, when our customers and fellow foodies make their way out to the farm we really get excited. Nothing thrills us more than to tromp around the farm with those who share the same passions as we do in regards to knowing where your food comes from.

I was amazed at how many foodies came out to the farm despite the rain and mud. Rubber boots abound and warm smiles were plenty as we endured the cold wind together.

I stumbled upon a wonderful blog, Stetted, that you must check out. The author had a really nice blog post about the Slow Food Austin tour with wonderful photos of the tour.

Below, is the blog post. Enjoy!

Yonder Way Farm Tour: Stetted

Posted on January 16, 2010

So I’m not among the “in” crowd of Austin food bloggers.

To be honest I didn’t know there was one until I started following Austin Farm to Table’s tweets and saw all her tweets about amazing meals she had with other food bloggers. Color me jealous! But through her I’ve learned about some great things, among them the Slow Food Austin farm tours.

As soon as I saw the blurb on the Slow Food Austin site, I wanted to sign up.

SFA is launching our farm tours with a bang – come with us on January 16 to meet Jason Kramer of Yonder Way Farm, an ambitious and exciting operation along the lines of Joel Salatin’s pastured salad bar beef farm, Polyface. Jason raises pastured pork, beef, poultry and eggs, and is completing construction of an on-farm commercial kitchen from which he plans to serve barbecued pork, sausages and other eatables. In the best farming tradition of cooperation, Jason also offers organic produce and milk from two other neighboring farms.

If Joel Salatin or Polyface sound familiar, that’s because he and his farm are featured prominently in Food, Inc. , and he is also in Fresh. (Both of these are worth seeing, by the way. Food, Inc. is currently available on Netflix Instant.)

Of course I completely didn’t take into account that this tour would be right in the middle of my cleanse. Oops. But having been caffeine, alcohol, gluten, meat, dairy, and sugar free for two weeks, I figured I would be OK if I took the day off.

Saturday morning I dressed in my tromping boots, jeans, and layered shirts, grabbed my camera and notebook, and headed out to Brenham, 90 minutes from Austin. We’ve been having some cold weather topped with rain for three days, and even with all my preparation I was a bit chilly. Thankfully, waiting for us at the farm was some amazing coffee roasted by Independence Coffee, which is located just up the road from Yonder Way.

Once everyone had arrived, Farmer Jason Kramer told us a little bit about his farm. It’s hard to believe, but four short years ago Jason didn’t know anything about farming. Now he runs a 113-acre farm with 1,100 chickens, 80 cows, and 40 pigs. All the animals are raised without the use of chemicals of any kind, and they are never fed corn. The animals graze on the land, rotated through different areas of the farm.

There were chickens wandering all over, and they are super friendly. Apparently that is a trait of Red Sexling chickens, which make up most of Yonder Way’s flock. Jason told us that he also has some Americana chickens, but is phasing them out. If you’re wondering about the roosters - yep, Jason pretty much bets on all the eggs being fertilized.

These are some of the portable shelters for the chickens. They’re made with recycled fiberglass and are mounted on wheels for easy transport. The chickens follow behind the cows about 3 days apart, to help, erm, clean up. The chickens are supplemented with organic feed, but get much of their food from the ground. The chickens above are some of the younger layers. “Some of these guys don’t even know what’s coming out of their hind ends yet,” Jason joked. Among this group the eggs are found all over.

These are the more experienced layers and their portable egg house. The chickens just hop inside when they need to lay (or sleep) and chill in the grass the rest of the time.

Did you know that for a store-bought egg to be considered organic free-range, the chicken only needs to have access to the outdoors? It doesn’t mean they actually go outside. Jason’s chickens are always outside. His chicken’s eggs are healthier than the standard egg, too. According to Mother Earth News, pastured eggs have more beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, and omega-3s, and less cholesterol and saturated fat.

Jason said that all the sows are either pregnant or nursing right now. It was hard to get a picture of them, but you might be able to see a piglet in the upper right of the above picture. Apparently pigs are pretty hands-off when it comes to giving birth, although he did have to get rid of one pig that rolled over on her piglets and crushed them. We did see one of the pigs come in from the woods to get some water to drink, so they have plenty of roaming space as well. Also, having the chickens be able to enter the pig enclosure helps with the smell. I don’t remember smelling anything bad at the farm, just crisp fresh air.

After we saw the chickens and sows, it was already time for lunch. The Kramers and their friends and family served us a delicious lunch of apricot-glazed pulled pork, cold broccoli salad, and simple beans (also with pork). I am already wishing I had the recipes for all of it!

After we ate we were able to see the processing room for the chickens. They are working on getting organic certification for chicken processing, and hope to have organic processing for beef and pork in six months. Once they do this, they will be the only certified organic meat processor in the entire state of Texas. This is huge, considering what a big meat-producing state Texas is.

This is where the chickens, well, die. They are put head first into these funnels and the jugular is cut, so the chicken bleeds out, passes out, and dies. In factory chicken processing the head is just lopped off, which is why your store-bought chicken generally has blood-filled arteries running through it. Letting the chickens bleed out makes for tastier chicken, and it takes less than a minute. Bleeding a chicken is “kinda like steeping a tea bag,” Jason said. After that, they go into the scalder, then into the defeathering tank.

Jason said this machine can defeather 4 chickens in 30 seconds. Then they go off to the next room to be cut up. Yonder Way’s facility can process up to 700 chickens a day, if they had enough workers. That’s a pretty impressive number for a small-scale farm!

Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to see the rest of the pigs, or the cows. We were all so interested in hearing what Jason had to say that we ran out of time! And, of course, we were interested in getting some of the products the farm has to offer. Included in our tour fee was a sample pack - half a chicken, a pound of ground beef, and a pound of pork sausage. We also were able to buy off their order sheet. Unfortunately they were out of flank steak (fajita meat) and oxtail, both of which I really wanted. They did have pork jowl, but not cured, so technically not guanciale. (Yes, those Namu Sprouts are still eluding me.) In theory I could cure them at home, but my husband already thinks my foodie habits are half-crazy, and hanging strips of pork in our fridge wouldn’t help my case of sanity. Anyway, I went with pork shoulder and beef short ribs. Of course, I’m already plotting what to do with everything.

Jason and his wife Lynsey (and their helpers) were wonderful, informative hosts, and it was a real pleasure to hear what they had to say about farming. You can really tell they are passionate about what they are doing. I know many people who love their jobs, but I’ve never seen anyone been as animated discussing their work as Jason was. This farm is happy. No wonder half of us are tempted to spend a week working on the farm for free.

I’m going to end with what could be Yonder Way’s entire farm philosophy, as Jason said it:

“Animals know themselves better than you do. Put them in their environment and let them go to work.”

I have found that investing in a good enameled cast iron French oven with a self-basting lid (like this one) to be invaluable in roasting chicken, pork, and beef.

Chicken, 4-5 lbs

1 cup of water

½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Salt, Pepper, Garlic

Use a thawed chicken. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Pour water in the bottom of the pot. Coat your chicken with 1/2 cup of olive oil making sure to rub some of the oil in the chest cavity of the chicken as well. After the chicken is coated well with olive oil, rub the seasonings on the skin. Place lid on your pot and roast in the oven on 275 degrees for about 3 to 4 hours- check on chicken every hour or so and baste with the broth in the bottom of the pot. Cook until chicken has nice golden skin and the internal temperature has reached 170 degrees F. Let chicken rest for about 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

You can get really creative with this basic recipe. Ingredients and flavor combinations that would be wonderful to add would be….

Place veggies like carrots, celery, onions, and red potatoes in the roasting pan with your chicken.

Slice a lemon in half and place the lemon with some rosemary sprigs in the chest cavity.

Slice an onion in half and place that in the chest cavity.

Try adding honey on the skin for a sweet crispy flavor.

Spice it up by slicing a lime in half and stuff the chest cavity with lime and cilantro. Coat the skin with Mexican-flavored seasonings.

The possibilities are endless.

Enjoy!

We are so thrilled that our new egg layers have started laying as of recently. We are collecting more and more eggs each and every day. A month ago we were getting about ***36 eggs a day. That number has now increased to about 200 eggs per day and is steadily going up.

We still have a ways to go to get to where all of our hens are laying again and all of our new hens are laying, but we have eggs once again to offer our customers.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. When you do things the natural way, its hard to predict the outcome a lot of times.

Enjoy a recent photo I took of our egg bounty.

***correction: post originally said 36 dozen.

We'd like to invite you to join us on Facebook. We will be posting there pretty regularly.

To go directly to the Yonder Way Farm Facebook page, CLICK HERE.

Upon sunset, you would be able to visibly see an amazing process that takes place every single day like clockwork. Our hens make their way up the ladder one by one to roost for the night. They find their spot nestled within the shelter of the coop. We close up the coop nightly to protect them from night’s predators that are out and about. Just one attack from any predator could potentially be devastating for our flock. The eggs are then collected to ensure the freshest and cleanest eggs around.

Upon sunrise, the farmers make their way out to the large metal coop and move the coop to a new area of fresh grass. This process is to make sure that our hens have fresh green grass to play around and hunt in for the day. It’s also a way for us to naturally fertilize our pastures with a daily dose of chicken manure on various parts of our pasture.

This methodical process is all done to make certain that our eggs are high in omega-3 fatty acids, lower in fat, and lower in cholesterol. Our hens are raised in the most humane and respectful way possible. Studies have been done to prove that hens raised on pasture lay eggs superior in nutrition compared to factory-raised hens.

One thing is for certain; you cannot imitate a chicken raised on grass. Happy hens mean healthy eggs.