Sweet Land Farm

09/30/2020

The weather is sure turning cooler! Yesterday we collected all sorts of beautifully colored leaves and dipped them in beeswax; any denial I was in about summer being over is now gone. Given the cool weather and rain outside, it might not seem like ice cream weather.

BUT, let's not forget about the unsurpassed harmony of apple pie and homemade ice cream!! For an even simpler (and I actually think it was as good or better as an apple pie!) way to get flaky crust and roasted apples, google: smitten kitchen simplest apple tart. The crust was super easy to make and I didn't even add the glaze after baking; just buttered the crust and sprinkled a little sugar and popped it in the oven. Add a scoop of raw milk vanilla ice cream and you will be energetically welcoming autumn!

If you get a weekly raw cream share or two, this is sure to be a favorite way to enjoy a pint! The wonderful thing about homemade ice cream is that it is almost a meal unto itself- quality protein (a gram for each ounce of milk!), nurturing fats, all essential amino acids, enzymes and probiotics!

ENJOY!

09/17/2020

BACK TO SCHOOL season is here! Time to boost your immune system.

Luckily, that is an easy pour! Over the next few days I’ll be highlighting a few ways raw milk can easily bring nutrition to your table.

Here’s one thing you’ll find loads of in your raw milk: PROBIOTICS!

Did you know that at least 70% of your immune system depends on the health of your gut!?

As a living food, raw milk is rich in beneficial bacteria. These bacteria are crucial to good health; in fact, beneficial bacteria are so critical to human health that you cannot live without them!!

Probiotics are responsible for stimulating and training your immune system to function correctly. By consuming foods rich in beneficial bacteria – like raw or cultured dairy products and naturally fermented foods – you can help to optimize the levels of beneficial bacteria present in your gut. These bacterial allies are destroyed by pasteurization and are absent in all pasteurized milk.

When I realized how much beneficial bacteria was in our raw milk, I quit buying expensive probiotics and just increased the amount of milk and cultured dairy our family was eating... and actually saved money!

In our home, we offer milk as a snack, and at mealtimes (which helps to make meals go farther too!).

If you want to supercharge your probiotics, find a cultured dairy product you enjoy, like raw milk yogurt or raw milk kefir.

(You can enjoy raw milk yogurt and kefir grains through our herdshare program).

Our favorite breakfast is a big bowl of yogurt topped with a few berries and some granola. Its so quick and easy and starts the day of with a lot nutritional goodness. I have not however solved the dilemma of how to stop the fighting over the cream top on our yogurt! We try to divide it up as fairly as possible. ;)

Robby drinks kefir for a meal or two each day. We’ve been working through various healing protocols and his body thrives on the loads of probiotics and the easy digestibility of the kefir.

Some folks are smoothie fans and make raw yogurt or kefir smoothies each morning.

How do you like your probiotics?!

09/05/2020

Lila turned 7 this week!

It was a great, full day. We’d planned for a raspberry cake but had some fun unexpected birthday surprises, and our cake making time disappeared.

A book we’ve really enjoyed, A Fine Desert has a recipe that was super quick and thanks to our modern conveniences was and oh so tasty. The book begins with a family in the 1700's and moves through several families to a modern day family and shows how each family would have made the same dessert, blackberry fool. In an engaging way it shows how each family would store their cream, whip it, get berries etc.

Thanks to my sister’s little raspberry farm in Tennessee , we had beautiful raspberries on hand so we made raspberry fool.

After the first bite, Lila declared, “this is EVEN BETTER than cake!!”

If you’re looking for a recipe that is super easy and might just be better than cake, swipe to see the recipe at the end. All you'll need is:
- raw cream
- berries
- a little sweetener (maple syrup worked great)
- vanilla extract

Tag us in your pics and let me know how you like it! Was it really better than cake!?

P.s. a note on whipping cream with our a2 heavy raw cream- if you’re whipping on a high speed, it generally whips in under a minute! Go too long and you’ll start to get butter. If that happens and you notice golden chunks instead of a cohesive whipped cream, just add a couple splashes of milk and gently whip it in. You can also add a little milk if it’s just too thick and you’d like it more “peak like”. Enjoy!!

08/28/2020

08/25/2020

Lila calls this, “daddy’s stinger”. 😂⠀⠀
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In reality it’s a milking stool you can wear! But it does look pretty funny to see him walk around with it. ⠀⠀
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This little seat has gotten many many hours of helpful use sitting next to cows. Even though we don’t milk in a flat barn anymore, it’s still useful even when you’re not milking! ⠀⠀
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Today it’s helping Robby get a trailer hitch on a different vehicle so we can move fridges to pick up spots and keep the tasty milk, cream and yogurt flowing far and wide! ⠀⠀
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So if you see a new fridge at your pick up spot, I hope the mental image of “the stinger” pops into your head! 😂 @ Sweet Land Farm

08/25/2020

Lila calls this, “daddy’s stinger”. 😂⠀
⠀
In reality it’s a milking stool you can wear! But it does look pretty funny to see him walk around with it. ⠀
⠀
This little seat has gotten many many hours of helpful use sitting next to cows. Even though we don’t milk in a flat barn anymore, it’s still useful even when you’re not milking! ⠀
⠀
Today it’s helping Robby get a trailer hitch on a different vehicle so we can move fridges to pick up spots and keep the tasty milk, cream and yogurt flowing far and wide! ⠀
⠀
So if you see a new fridge at your pick up spot, I hope the mental image of “the stinger” pops into your head! 😂

08/25/2020

Lila calls this, “daddy’s stinger”. 😂

In reality it’s a milking stool you can wear! But it does look pretty funny to see him walk around with it.

This little seat has gotten many many hours of helpful use sitting next to cows. Even though we don’t milk in a flat barn anymore, it’s still useful even when you’re not milking!

Today it’s helping Robby get a trailer hitch on a different vehicle so we can move fridges to pick up spots and keep the tasty milk, cream and yogurt flowing far and wide!

So if you see a new fridge at your pick up spot, I hope the mental image of “the stinger” pops into your head! 😂

08/21/2020

Some days are really hard. You keep working on the endless pile of things that has to get done. It seems like even after a long day you are making little progress as the stack of priorities gets added to each day.

And THEN, you get an email like this, reminding you that your work is valued and appreciated and savored by the spoonful. Thanks for this note April, and thank you to all you other kind folks who've taken the time throughout the years to express your enthusiasm and gratitude. It means a lot to us, truly.

08/12/2020

A couple weeks ago our herd got a little bigger! ⠀
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Since we had a small group of cows all from the same place, we wanted to go for a theme and thought through different groups of female names. Lila and I (almost 7 now!) have been enjoying the L.M. Montgomery books this summer. Together, we have read and loved Anne of Green Gables, Rainbow Valley and Chronicles of Avonlea ... and they are chocked full of perfect cow names! ⠀
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We of course have an Anne and Dianna, but we've also got a Rachel Lynd,⠀
Josie Pie⠀
Cordelia⠀
Una⠀
Lucy Maud⠀
and Charlotta the Fourth! ⠀
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It is also fitting that the books were written by a (likely not related ;) Montgomery as the farm we lease is the Montgomery family farm! So Lila, Rosemary and I went out with a clipboard and a list of the names we thought would make good cow names and sat in the field for a bit, watching the girls and determining which personalities suited each cow best. Some of the cows were very obvious and Lila would say, "oh mom, that's definitely Josie Pie!!" It was a great memory and I'm grateful for moments like these where our reading world and cow world combine. ⠀
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If you notice your milk and cream is even tastier and even more golden, it's thanks to these pretty ladies! @ Sweet Land Farm