Final Winter Farm Share Week 15 – what’s next?

I can’t believe we’ve been living off a farm share for one year and blogging about the experience monthly! Final Winter Farm Share Week 15 results! What an amazing twelve months of farm share experience.

When I began this journey, I never thought I’d do it for a full year. It seemed so overwhelming. I thought I would learn to hate it. Not just because it’s a consistent amount of work each week, but by adding in the photographs, organization and writing about it, I thought I might be biting off more than I could chew, figuratively and literally. But, as with all lifestyle changes, we evolve and make it our own, as well as become faster at everything because of the consistency. It’s now an appendage. A part of me that won’t be easy to change. It would be more like removing a limb or a piece of myself if I have to stop.

We celebrated the last week by adding some extras not included in our final Vegetarian Pilot Winter share. I’m especially excited about the Asparagus which is gorgeous! We also decided to try some Grass-fed beef for stew, Italian Sausage and Cider. We really enjoyed the Breakfast sausages that we added in a previous week, so we want to try some other products. Thanks for Fresh Fork Market farmers, affiliates and staff for a wonderful year!

It has been such a great experience that we committed to continue with Summer Farm Share for 2016 starting in June. Last year we experimented with the Vegan Summer share, then switched to the Vegetarian Summer share midway through because we liked the eggs and cheese included in that share. This year we’re starting off with the Vegetarian Summer share and may switch to the Omnivore Summer Share if we’re feeling overwhelmed with too many veggies. I like the idea that we can change our mind as we go along.

Week 15 our small Vegetarian Pilot final winter farm share included (featured photo at the top of this post is full vegetarian share)…

Lettuce – 2 rooted
Apples – 6
Ramp Linguine from Ohio City Pasta
Peaches – Quart
Eggs – 1 dozen
Ramp and Spring Potatoes soup – Quart
Heirloom Tomato Sauce – 1 pint, added 1 pint (love this sauce!)

My half of the Vegetarian Pilot small winter share Week 15 (above photo) and what’s left since Wednesday, May 4…

Lettuce – each family took one rooted lettuce – we got the green this time
Apples – 3 these are gone along with previous weeks’ apples, shared with the grandchildren and in a fruit salad
Ramp Linguine from Ohio City Pasta -We split this so it’s enough for 2 meals for 2 people for each family.
Peaches – Quart – we’ll split this during a card playing night
Eggs – 1/2 dozen
Ramp and Spring Potatoes soup – Quart – we’ll also split this during our card playing night. We have Sloppy Joe mix saved to go with it.
Heirloom Tomato Sauce – 1 pint (love this sauce!) We paid for an extra jar so we’d each end up with a quart of sauce since we were already saving 1 quart to share. Since it came in pint size jars this time, I kept the quart jar from a previous week and my parents got the 2 pint sized jars.

I couldn’t resist these beautiful bundles of asparagus. We bought 3 bundles to split between the 2 families. Aren’t they gorgeous?

In addition to the Asparagus, we also purchased Cider for my dad, Italian sausage for both families and grass fed beef for stew for us.

RESULTS…

I’ve been in “freezer use up” mode, so every couple days I go digging in our 5 foot chest freezer to see what we have to work with. I had a great time making a Pork Butt roast in the slow cooker following most of the recipe at The Kitchen. What I really like about that recipe is that it made a great roast and veggies for a few nights, plus we had enough roast to shred to put into the freezer for shredded barbecue pork another night. That was only 1/4 of the Pork Butt roast I purchased on sale last fall, so I’m looking forward to making it every month to use up the 3 other small roasts. That’s the first time I’ve tried Pork Butt, which is actually the shoulder. It comes out moist and quite delicious within 5 hours on high in the slow cooker.

Cost Savings…

It’s really amazing how far food goes when there’s only two of us. We usually share it with our grandkids or their parents, so meat goes a very long way for us since we add so many vegetables.

For example, I’ve been buying turkey breast cutlets which usually come with three good size portions. Mr. Carnivore and I split one piece between us and then we have enough for 2 more meals. That comes down to a cost of $2 per meal, or $1 per person. Add in our veggies, a potato and dessert and I might spend $5 per meal.

Sharing the Love of Food and great conversation…

We like to go out to eat with friends and family so saving on what we spend at home gives us enough extra to be able to go out every week. We almost always use coupons when we go out to dinner, being huge fans of the Entertainment books for our area. Last week we spent a day in Hanoverton, Ohio, and had lunch at this lovely tavern. I’ll share pictures and more information here at the blog, because I’m pretty sure Mr. Carnivore and I will be going back there for our 24th anniversary this month. We used our lunch coupons, but we still have dinner coupons that will entice us to go back.

I had the best Butternut Squash Ravioli in a Sage cream sauce with chicken at The Spread Eagle Tavern and Inn. The presentation was beautiful as well and we quite enjoyed my parents’ friends’ camaraderie with the delicious food.

A New Year of Summer Farm Share begins the first week of June! Until then, I’ll be using up what I’ve been stockpiling over here. Follow more Food related topics here.

What has your fork or spoon been up to?

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