Coyote Ridge FarmsWelcome To Our Rural Blog

I just had to show this off.  The other day, Carol made this beautiful, peach pie… from scratch.

Carol's peach pie

The pie looked good before it went into the oven, but it looked even better baked.

Not long after lunch today, I got started on the label for Carol’s Pickle Bread.  As many of you know, she has a small contract for her Pickle Bread.  The bread is going into CSA boxes for Farms of Plenty, of Randall, MN.  Now that Carol is done (or nearly done) baking the loaves, she thought it would be nice to have a label to go onto each of the bags of bread.

This is what I came up with.  It’s simple, yet nice looking… I think.

Carol's New Bread Label

I was able to match the label to the header graphic of her blog (RuralBlogger.com).  Again, it’s not fancy, but Carol likes it.

Carol and I attended a grass-fed beef workshop in Glenwood, MN today.  It was sponsored  by the Land Stewardship Project.  The focus was how to stay profitable raising grass-fed beef, figuring the cost of pasture and some of the do’s and don’t(s) of rotational grazing.  The class was intensive and we learned much.  We took off for the class at 8:30 am this morning and returned back to the farm around 5 pm.  It was a long day.

We weren’t home for long before Carol received a call.  The gentleman who called Carol identified himself as Al, of the Farm Of Plenty CSA, in the Randall/Little Falls, MN area.  To make a long story short, we are happy to say that Carol had entered into an agreement with Farm Of Plenty to be their baker for a couple of the CSA drop-offs. If you are in the northern MN, St Cloud or Metro area, we encourage you to check out their website and consider joining their CSA.

Carol was nice enough to bake another 1½lb loaf of this delicious bread.  I had to show it off.  It’s her Dill Pickle Bread.  Isn’t it beautiful?

Here is Carol's gorgeous loaf of pickle bread.

If you are interested in trying this incredible bread, contact Carol on Facebook or give her a call at 320.220.3235.  I have talked her into baking and selling this style of bread.  She’s figured out her cost of time and supplies for 1-2 loaves.  I’m sure, once the bread catches on and she can bake a few loaves at a time, the cost will go down.  At this time she is OK with selling the bread at $4/loaf or 2 loaves for $6.50.  Remember, these are 1.5 lb loaves.  We will ship (all costs are extra).

A few days ago, on our last snow day, Carol and Madison decided to turn an otherwise “stay inside and do nothing day” into another day of kitchen creativity.  The girls decided to try baked sugar doughnuts.  The snow storm that moved in had prompted our local school officials to cancel school… that’s why Madison was home.  The weather was brutality cold, with a windchill of -45°F.  As many of you on Facebook know, the doughnuts turned out great.  I mentioned that I would post the recipe… so here it is.

These Doughnuts are not deep fried and full of calories and fat – but baked in your oven and definitely delicious.  They taste like those fluffy raised doughnuts one buys from a bakery.

The girls have been very creative in the kitchen today.

First prepared was the ground beef for jerky later. Daughter Madison mixed a 1½ lb. batch for pepperoni jerky. It’ll set in the fridge for a few hours, so the cure, seasonings and beef become well blended. Then tonight, we’ll put it in the food dehydrator. We have one of those little Jerky-Works guns, which makes things easier. It looks like a small chalking-gun. You simply fill it with seasoned meat and pull the trigger to make uniform ribbons on the dehydrator trays. By morning, we’ll have perfectly dried beef jerky. The ground beef we use is from Farmer Mike, of Fresh-Ayr Organic Farms. It is some of the best ground beef we’ve ever eaten… both Carol and I highly recommend Mike’s Ayrshire beef. Fresh-Ayr Farms is located near Kerkhoven, MN.

I’m not sure how or why she tried making bagels, but last night she did. They turned out pretty good, too.  I was not familiar with the bagel making process, so it was a bit odd to observe.  To be honest, I had no idea. I guess I just thought of a bagel as a poor quality doughnut.  lol

Here are freshly prepped bagel dough things

The 2nd step is to boil the bagels, 2 at a time

After 90 sec of boiling, they drain/rest

Carol has mentioned that the process of making bagels were easier than she thought.  The dough was mixed in her bread machine.  It is something she will be making again.

Here are the bagels right after they came out of the oven