Hello, I am Michelle. I love to garden and take care of my animals on the farm. When I have down time, I love to craft and brew up a pot of good tea. I'm always looking for frugal ideas and love being self-sufficient.
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Deadlines for current customers ordering for the week are:
Bandera, Hondo, Castroville, Farm, San Antonio Alamo Heights, San Antonio 16/1604 Drops – Wednesday morning
Boerne – Friday Morning
Buy a box when you want. Each box is Farmer’s pick on what is in season. Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, on a schedule, or randomly! No extra costs or fees. Try one out today – we guarantee you will love it.
Half box
$22 – 6 items
Will feed an individual for 1 week
Example:
1 Head romaine
1 Head Butter lettuce
3-4 small squash
1 bunch beets
1 bunch carrots
3-4 tomatoes
Half Box pictured below:
Full Box $33 – 8-10 items
Will feed 3-4 people or a couple every other week
Example:
1 Lettuce head – Romaine
1 lettuce head – Bibb
1 lettuce head – Red Butter
1/2 lb. Catskill Brussels sprouts
1 bundle Red Russian kale
1 bundle Dinosaur kale
1/2 lb. Bloomsdale spinach
1/2 lb. Beefsteak tomatoes
1 small head of Red Express cabbage
1 large head of Round Dutch cabbage
This is a crockpot meal – excellent for those cold wintery days. In Texas, our coldest down here is maybe in the 20s. Last night it got down to 50 – and has been in the 70s during the day – in November! Overall, the Fall has been wet/warm. Predicting a wet Winter.
Anyways – my biological clock must have pre-prepped for this cold snap because I was in a mood for some good hearty mock “baked beans” and pulled pork sandwiches. I always just “wing” meals – so there isn’t a vey specific recipe – but it came out excellent!
Recipe:
Ingredients:
1.5 lbs Pork meat (boneless)
1 – 18oz Sweet Baby Ray’s Hickory and Brown Sugar BBQ Sauce
1.5 cups beef broth
2 cups water
Red beans (uncooked)
Green onion (we used 4 immature red onions from the garden- greens and all)
Directions:
In a crockpot, put a pork piece in the bottom. Add 3/4 to the whole container of sauce on top of the meat (depending on taste).
Slice onions and add in (use as many as you want for taste). Add beef broth and water. Add as many red beans as you like – but make sure to leave enough liquid space for their expansion once cooked.
Set to high and cook until beans are tender and pork comes apart easily. Check on water levels and add water if necessary; 6-8 hours cook time. Once to the tenderness of your liking, take out pork and pull apart. Make into sandwiches with mayo and pour sauce from the pot onto the sandwich. Eat beans as the side dish. OR – eat together for a mock “baked beans and pork”!
Made this homemade adapted recipe from mostly Farmer’s Market ingredients (and some of our garden ingredients) served over a bed of white rice! Very adaptable to whatever veggie/meat/broth combo that is in season at your local farmer’s market. Recipe:
This bread is so moist and is a favorite at the farmer’s market. We always sell out of this bread. All of the flavors make you want to have more than one slice!
It is super easy to make and fast – that’s why they call them “quick breads”.
Ingredients:
2 eggs (farm fresh eggs make the bread yellower than store bought eggs)
1 cup sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp grated lemon zest
5 tbsp melted butter
1.5 cups flour (plus extra to coat berries)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp vinegar
1/2 cup blueberries*
1/2 cup raspberries*
* you can add a little more to make it moist, but not too much to where the loaf won’t form.
How to make:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine eggs, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest, and melted butter in a mixer with a paddle attachment until combined. (You can also make it without one) Turn off mixer.
In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
In a liquid measuring cup, measure out milk and then put in the vinegar – let sit until it has a lumpy consistency. Before VinegarAfter Vinegar
Turn back on mixer and alternate pouring in flour mixture and milk mixture until combined. Turn off mixer.
In the old flour bowl, put berries together and add flour to coat. Take bowl off mixer and mix in berries by hand.
Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake 45-50 minutes or until it doesn’t jiggle when moved and toothpick comes out clean. The top will also become a light brown color.
Let cool on baking rack for 15 minutes in the pan and then take out of pan and cool for another 15 minutes or until it is cool enough to cut without it falling apart. Makes one yummy loaf.
Lemon French toast is a breakfast favorite around here – it is light and fluffy and so flavorful that your mouth just can’t get enough! Here is my recipe from our table to yours!
Ingredients:
Any slices of bread: use any bread you please! Try out new things – pictured is our homemade buckwheat wheat white bread that didn’t rise – we usually use a cinnamon raisin for this that we buy from Beyond Bread Bakery from the local farmer’s market in Bandera, TX.
2 eggs – fresh are best!
1/4 cup milk – fresh raw organic is best!
1 lemon – zested and juiced
Cinnamon sugar***
1 tbsp butter
Powdered sugar (can exclude)
Preparation:
Heat a skillet on medium heat and add 1 tbsp butter to the pan. Heat until butter is melted. While melting, mix eggs, milk, lemon zest, and lemon juice into a bowl.
Once butter is melted and starting to turn brown, dip a slice of bread into bowl mixture on both sides and place into pan. Cook to desired doneness. Flip to other side and top with cinnamon sugar.
Flip onto opposite side onto a plate and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Top with desired amount of butter. Continue to repeat process until done with the amount of pieces of bread of your choosing. If running out of egg mixture, make more. If having leftover egg mixture, add salt and pepper and make scrambled eggs!
Once all finished, plate and sprinkle powdered sugar through a sieve onto your French toast. dd on toppings of choice including berries or syrup. Best served with bacon or sausage and a cold glass of milk! Yum!
Whenever we take the plants or the foreign objects to the market, people always ask “What is it???”
Well it is a loofah plant that produces loofahs. “What is a loofah” you ask? Well you know those sponge looking things you use in the shower to scrub off dead skin? That’s a loofah! AND they grow on a plant!
The plant is a vining plant – loves the heat – and has properties like a gourd. There are beautiful yellow flowers and long gourd type things that come down that look like cucumbers.
They water like squash, but are pretty hardy to hot weather. They don’t require too much water.
Once they dry on the vine, they turn out to be a shell.
Then you peel off the shell through the membranes and underneith is the loofah.
Shake it to one end and the seeds are in the inside!
You then have seeds for next year and a scrubby loofah for the shower! You can do all sorts of arts/crafts with it including putting soap in the middle.
And that ladies and gentlemen is what a loofah is!
I love sunflowers so much. To me, they symbolize the start of Summer and the harvest of Fall. The bright yellow to orange or red color always lights up people’s faces at the market. Some like to grow and keep them in the garden, others like to cut them for fresh flowers. We do both!
This year we had close to 100 sunflowers in the garden. It will be the third year of drying, saving, and planting our own seeds from the original seeds. Seed saving is so easy and your initial investment of the first seeds is the only money you would spend. The joy of saving is that you also can not predict what will come of your seeds. Sometimes they cross-pollinate and become a whole different variety. You can notice that the flower color you planted is not the same color the next year- or one year the flower is huge and the next it has lots of little ones. This year we had a new variety that made the flower a neon yellow color when the year before they were all dark yellow. Sometimes some of your seeds just won’t produce. You never know what you’re going to get!
It is super easy to save seeds. Below are the steps with pictures:
First, you should select your Sunflowers from your garden. Once your flowers have sprung from the ground and delighted your days, they will become almost wilted. They will loose their flowers and pollen holders and droop over on the stalk. This is when the oportune time is to start drying your seeds. Some people leave them on the plant to dry, but usually pests and birds get to them before you can harvest!
When you look at your flowers, make sure you can see the seeds – undeveloped seeds will not produce and the seed head will get moldy. They should look like the two pictures below:
Has the pollen pockets still on, wilted petals.Two different drying lengths – one on left is less dry.
The birds got to this one:
Once you select your seed heads, cut off to where you have some of the stalk left. Take your cutting tool or your fingers and strip off the pollen buds:
The end result should look like this:
Take a rack or tie strings to the cut ends and hang heads to dry. Once dry, the green part of the head should be brown and crackly like the one on the top right on the rack.
Use a screen (we used an old window screen) for drying the actual seeds.
To take the seeds out of the head, break apart the head into sections and then rub your finger along the seeds so they pop out of their little holders. Make sure you have the screen underneath!
This is what it should look like after! Make sure you spread the seeds out evenly. Lay the seeds in a dry safe place for about two weeks. Test out the germination rate once dry to see if your seeds are good. You can take about 20-30 containers with one seed each and whatever comes up, divide that by your containers and that will be your germination rate!
The Betsy Blue Farm 