Hello all,
HAPPY NEW YEAR! From our family to yours, we hope you have a blessed and amazing 2021! We also want to say THANK YOU for all the support you have given our small family ranch in 2020. What a way to start the new year, with an ice storm! 2021, put down your beer. We won’t hold it for you.
Ranch Happenings: Boris is back with his ladies and is enjoying that. We anticipate baby piglets sometime in late March to early April. The newly acquired pigs are loving their pasture and we have even processed a few. We will be picking 2-3 Gilts from this group to keep as SOW’s. We hope our new boar will arrive in the next couple weeks: we are very excited about him. The “teenagers”, the pretty red ones, are finally moved to a pen where they have access to the outside. Betty’s one living baby (from early fall) is thriving along with the teenagers so we will call that a bittersweet win. Betty is also getting more comfortable with us humans and getting along with Boris and Pofey. We couldn’t just give up on her without trying and she seems happy now.
The chickens have finally started laying consistently, so we do not anticipate any more egg shortages. Come this spring we will be moving the egg laying chickens to more of a chicken hoop house further back from the house. This will allow us to increase our number of birds, and allow the birds to be on the ground even when they put themselves away at sunset. Not to mention, make clean up a lot easier, which would make Niko much happier. Niko likes destruction as much if not more than construction so eventually that big white building up closer to the house will probably come down and make way for more trees.
Just this morning as we’re writing this our flag pole out front snapped from the ice and wind so there’s the first item on the Spring to do list. Tree branches are down everywhere as well. We hope everyone stayed in on this beautiful January 1st.
Starting in February we have increased our number of slots with the butcher so we don’t run into any issues of meat delay like we did a couple months back. Please be patient with us as we work through January and February.
The chicken patties have been extremely popular and we anticipate having more of them for the February CSA packages: thank you all for your patience.
Watch our Facebook page for the Ready Set Meals. We have started back up making hot and ready to eat dinners. Prices range from $30-$60 for a family of four.
We will start this back up with our first offering being FULL SLAB of Fall off the bone BABY BACK RIBS (2-3 pound slab), 16 ounces of COLE SLAW and CORN BREAD for $60.00. Please email your order to info@happyliferanch.com by Thursday, 2021, January 14 for Saturday, 2021, January 16 pick-up between 3PM – 5PM.
DOG FOOD: Raw dog food has gotten very popular and we now have a short waiting list of people that want to add it to the CSA they receive. Dog Food pricing: Beef- $7.25/lb. Boar- $5.25/lb. Turkey- $5.25/lb
Veggie CSA: Gus helped Andy build up a burm of sorts in front of their hoop house since it’s close to the road and almost immediately a car attempted to crash through it. Thank goodness for heavy machinery! We will start signups for the Veggie CSA in February.
As always, we appreciate your support so much. Eat well, stay well.
Recipes:
Chicken Cacciatore Melissa’s mom’s recipe
This is hearty and super easy. This can be done in in about an hour or so or in an instant pot or crock pot. For instant or crock, you could brown chicken the day before and refrigerate.
We typically clean out the veggie drawer with this recipe so anything goes really.
3 ½-4 lb whole cut up chicken, ¼ cup flour, good dash of salt and pepper, 2 Tbsp of olive oil, 2 Tbsp butter, 1 large onion coarsely chopped, 1-2 large bell peppers-green is best only because of the color, cut into wide strips, ½ lb (or 3-we love mushrooms) sliced mushrooms (totally optional), 1 can or 4-5 chopped tomatoes. If you freeze the leftovers in the fall, those are perfect., 1 small can of tomato paste for thickness, 1 cup of red wine or really any leftover wine…leftover wine??? What’s that?, 1 tsp dried Thyme, 2 tsp dried rosemary or a small fresh bunch, 2 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp dried basil, 4 cloves of garlic minced + 2 TSP of granulated/powdered or until you can’t breathe from the fabulous smell, grated Parmesan/Romano cheese, 1 lb pasta of your choice. We dig linguini for this thick gravy
*Dust chicken parts in flour and pan fry with salt and pepper on all sides in oil and butter
Saute all your veggies in the butter and olive oil then throw them into a big stock pot or insta/crock along with all other ingredients including the chicken. Bring to a low boil and then simmer for about an hour or on low for up to 8 hours.
Pour gravy over cooked pasta and your favorite piece of chicken.
YiaYia’s breakfast skillet Gus’s mom’s recipe
3 farm fresh eggs
2-3 ounces feta cheese
One medium potato diced
HUGE handful of spinach (totally optional, still amazing without)
Enough olive oil to have a little extra depth in pan over potatoes
Salt and pepper
*Fry potatoes in a skillet until soft, maybe 3-5 minutes then add spinach and saute until it softens. Scramble eggs in a bowl and crumble feta right over egg. Pour mixture into the potatoes and watch old school magic happen. You can scramble it all around or attempt a flip after about 3 minutes of cooking.
Let us know what y’all think.
Thank you for supporting our small family ranch,
Gus, Melissa, Niko, Nina Athanasopoulos