A Winged Elm Farm Scrapbook, With Soup!

What Your Well-shod Farmer Is Wearing

On the farm I wear my steel-capped wellingtons 80% of the time.

Daily footwear

Daily footwear

For muck, and high wet grass and sheer ease to put on they can’t be beat. When working in the woods or going for a walk to check on the cattle, I reach for my Timberland work boots. And for fine warm afternoons in the garden, Birkenstocks are ideal.

I Got Your Polar Vortex Soup, Right Here

During one of our single digit nights I fixed this Scotch broth. A perfectly simple soup made better by using the “odd bits”.

2lbs. lamb neck or soup bones

2 tbsp. barley

½ cup of finely chopped carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, celery and parsley

Use a large Dutch oven and fill with two quarts of water. Add meat and bring to a boil, skim off any scum. Add barley, salt and pepper. Reduce to simmer, partially covered for an hour.

Add veggies, partially cover. Cook for one more hour. Remove the meat and let cool. Separate the meat from the bones. Add meat to soup. Season and serve.

The wind is up, the brush pile is large, give me some matches

An elderly neighbor stepped out his back door two weeks ago on a fine wild fire 016blustery day and burned his brush pile, then burned a couple of acres of his in-laws. Then to keep the fun rolling his fire burned another few acres of an adjoining property before being stopped just shy of a house. Having been stymied in that direction it took off and burned six acres of our winter pastures before our volunteer fire department in South Roane County arrived and put out the fire.