I started to do some research into such clinics last fall but got cold feet about spending even the greatly reduced amount of money (think $65-75 for a spay vs $200ish). BUT as of this Spring, Fluffy has survived a full year at the farm and so I feel that perhaps she is not too prone to playing chicken with cars or cows either one. Or, she is really good at winning. *shrug*

I have to admit, we weren’t the best prepared, and we had some adventures just getting Fluffy into her broken, destined for the dump, duct taped together, cat carrier

If it was not for a clinic such as this, Fluffy most definitely would not have gotten spayed and I am grateful that these clinics exist. I highly encourage you to take the cat(s) hanging out around your farm or in your neighborhood in to participate in the program and help keep Iowa’s kitty population under control.






Following is a list of vet clinics/organizations that have held feral cat spay/neuter in the past:
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​The Anita Vet Clinic
Atlantic Animal Health Center
Harlan Veterinary Services
AMVC
Western Iowa's Feral and Homeless Cat Program
​
Thanks for reading!
Emily
Brun Ko Farm

These girls are looking Sassy again! They spent Thanksgiving through New Year’s molting. Molting is kind of like hitting the reset button for chickens. After a while, a chicken’s feathers become worn out and lose their insulation abilities as well as their aerodynamic properties. When chickens molt, they shed their feathers and regrow new ones. Chickens usually molt when the days become short which seems like bad time of year to me. I mean, brrr! But who am I to question mother nature??

The regrowing of feathers requires a lot of protein, so the chickens also stop laying eggs during this time so all of their protein intake can go towards feather production!

Just this past week, our hens have begun to lay eggs for us again. I collected 2 yesterday! Slowly but surely!

Emily

​

NP and I have always enjoyed lamb, at least in the few rare opportunities that we've had it. However, when we bought our first butcher lamb last year, I had never cooked lamb before. I started out with lamb chops and seasoned them with garlic and rosemary. It was good and I stuck with these same seasonings (which are favorites of mine anyway) as I experimented with other cuts of lamb. Now that I've tried a few things, I am starting to branch out and experiment more. So, last weekend, I tried this braised lamb shank recipe and it was a hit! Even with the one year old 'food critic'!! So I thought I'd share it with you :)

Your finished lamb shanks will be fall apart tender! I served these with steamed carrots and purple waffle fries but serving over mashed potatoes would be amazing! My family just isn't really into purple mashed potatoes and purple taters are the only thing I had on hand at the time so I opted for waffle fries. Will plan better and serve with mashed potatoes next time!

Enjoy!
​Emily

Ingredients

• 4lbs lamb shanks
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil , separated
• 2 garlic cloves , minced
• 1 onion, chopped (white, brown, yellow)
• 1 carrot , finely chopped (optional, but recommended)
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3.5 cups beef broth (I used 4 beef bouillon cubes + 3.5 cups water)
• 3 cups merlot (Note 2)
• 5 sprigs fresh thyme or 2 tsp dried thyme
• 3 dried bay leaves
• 4 stalks fresh parsley 

Instructions

1. Season shanks with salt and pepper.
2. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a skillet over high heat. Add 2 lamb shanks and cook, turning, until browned. Place browned shank in the crockpot then repeat with remaining lamb.
3. Turn heat down to medium. Add remaining 1 tbsp oil, garlic, onion, and carrot. Sauté for 5 minutes until onion is softened.
4. Add flour. Mix into onion mixture.
5. Add remaining ingredients. Mix together - don't worry about the lumps, they will dissolve while cooking.
6. Pour over the lamb in the crock pot. The meat should be mostly submerged. Turn crock pot on low and cook for 8 hours. If you don't have room for all of the liquid in your skillet, don't worry. Just add what you can and add the rest to the crockpot.
7. Remove lamb into a bowl.
8. Optional: Strain sauce into a bowl. Use spoon to press into onion etc to squeeze out all the flavourful liquid. Pour sauce into a sauce pan
9. Increase heat to medium high and reduce liquid by half or until it thickens to a syrup consistency - this step is optional but totally worth it! There will be quite a bit of juices left over, so you can make just a portion of them into sauce if you want. *Your juices will reduce down by about half so spoon out however much you think you might want as a finished product and then double it.*
10. Return lamb shanks and juices pooled in the bowl into sauce to reheat, then serve with creamy mashed potato, garnished with parsley.

I prepared and Nathan served samples of this recipe at Produce in the Park this past week! This was super easy to prepare and delicious to eat. Stew meat is one of my most favorite cuts because it is versatile and easy to prepare! Special thanks to Rolling Acres Farm for providing the parsley for this recipe!
​
Roasted herbed Beef Tips
Serves:6
INGREDIENTS

• 2 pounds stew meat
• 1 cup fresh parsley, chopped
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup water
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• Non-stick cooking spray

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Add all ingredients, except the beef, to a mixing bowl and whisk together.
2. Pour the mixture into a large Ziploc bag.
3. Add the beef and massage the bag to ensure all of the beef is covered by the marinade mixture.
4. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
5. Remove the beef from the refrigerator and allow to sit at room temperature. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
6. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper to catch the grease, and position a wire cooking rack on top. Lightly spray the cooling rack with non-stick cooking spray.
7. Position the cubes of beef onto the wire cooking rack, leaving a little space.
8. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately.

*Beef & oregano provided by Brun Ko Farm ~ Parsley & Garlic provided by Rolling Acres Farm*

Enjoy!
Emily
Brun Ko Farm

Some of you may have seen my live video of Allan planting our pasture a few days ago. If not, you can find it at the end of this post ;)

Long story short: I AM SO EXCITED to finally have seed in the ground! AND these rains couldn’t have come at a better time! I can't thank Allan enough for taking the time to help us out on such a beautiful day.

On Saturday we seeded 10 acres of pasture. Once this pasture is established, it will be the bulk of the feed for Abby & the steers from here on out.

In addition to the excitement of getting the seed planted, I also geeked out over the planter itself.  Our neighbor did the planting for us with his no till drill. I’d never seen one up close before and I thought it was pretty neat to see how it worked!

In the pictures you can see, NP and Allan filling the seed hoppers. Did you know that there are TWO compartments? The compartments can be set to 2 different seeding rates. One compartment drills the seeds into the ground and the other broadcasts the seeds over top. This turned out to be particularly useful because we had thought that we would have to broadcast seed the ladino clover by hand after the main grass mixture was planted. As it turned out, the planter took care of both types of seeds at the same time! Talk about slick!

The whole 'no till' thing was pretty cool too. Basically the planter has discs that cut open the ground, the seed travels from the hopper down the little black tubes and gets deposited into the furrow. Finally, another disc located a little further back, turns the soil over which then covers the seed. And Voila! 400lbs of seed planted over 10 acres in a matter of a couple of hours.

Honestly, I could go on for quite a while about things like what all is in the seed mix & why & what we will do in the future to further establish a good stand. But I think each of those topics deserves their own post so watch for more on that later!

Enjoy!
Emily
​Brun Ko Farm

I have finally delved into the world of bone broth! I was having guests over for lunch this past weekend and so I took that as an opportunity to test my new skills ;) I planned to make barley beef soup but didn't have barley *facepalm* sooo, I ended up making a 'non-traditional' vegetable beef soup that turned out to be a crowd pleaser. But that's another story!

Back to the bone broth.

There are plenty of recipes out there for bone broth. I don't claim to have much new to add in that category but it can seem intimidating so I'm hoping that by sharing my experiences, I will inspire YOU to give something new a try too :)

Making bone broth was honestly super simple! I started by roasting my soup bones in the oven because I read that doing so would enhance the flavor. I can't give you a comparison since this is the only way I've ever done it but it sure didn't hurt anything! I just put 4 pounds of thawed soup bones on a cookie sheet, sprinkled salt and pepper on all sides, and roasted them at 425F for 30 minutes. After I roasted the soup bones, I tossed them in the crock pot along with 8 cups of water (enough to cover the bones), 4 or 5 cloves of garlic and a couple of carrots. Some recipes get pretty involved but this was simple and it worked for me! Basically, I think you can toss about anything you want in as far as vegetables or vegetable scraps go.

I cooked all of this on low for 10 hours and then strained it. I just used a colander. You might want to line the colander with cheesecloth if you are using smaller vegetable scraps. This is also when I removed the meat from the bones. To be honest, the meat fell right off and I just used a fork to break it up into smaller pieces for the stew. The amount of meat on soup bones seems to vary quite a bit. The bones themselves make excellent broth. And that's all that most people are looking for. If you end up with particularly meaty bones, it's a nice bonus though. Especially if you're making soup!

Enjoy!
Emily
Brun Ko Farm

P.S. skip on over to our Beef Products page to check out our sale running 4/8/18-4/13/18 :)

Sometimes farming is like riding a roller coaster. And this weekend was certainly an emotional rollercoaster. We had a not so good thing happen. One of the hardest things to face on a farm actually. We had to put down one of our steers.

One evening, NP noticed that one of the steers had scours. Nothing too concerning given the weather and recent pen change. However, definitely something to keep an eye on. The next evening at chore time, we were shocked to see one of the steers laying flat out with a distended belly. We couldn't convince him to get up and based on that and several other factors, I made the decision to put him down. However, when we went back to do so, he was up and eating. Although still terrible looking, I was encouraged by the fact that he was eating. I decided to give him a chance and called the vet first thing the next morning. The vet quickly determined that the steer had developed water belly, aka a blockage caused by bladder stones. There is a surgery that can sometimes help (not cure but temporarily help) this problem, our steer wasn't a candidate due to age and advanced state of the problem so in the end we still had to put him down.

While this outcome was hard to deal with, it was a relief to know that this calf did not have something contagious and after talking to the vet and doing some further research, it seems that this was a fluke thing and largely out of our control. However, we are now armed with knowledge of early signs and will be adjusting some of our management practices just in case.
​
Having a good vet that you can trust is so important and we are grateful for the knowledgeable vets at AMVC in Audubon. I appreciate that they not only care for our animals but also take the time to answer my (sometimes extensive) questions.

I'm not about to tell anyone to 'enjoy every moment' because some things just stink. The ups and downs of farm life can be hard BUT we learn from the bad days and they make the good days that much sweeter. I think the good days are still worth it.

Respectfully,
Emily 
Brun Ko Farm