Bean Soup with Lemon Paprika Oil

Usually by January's end I've made dozens of bean soups. This year however, we had yet to enjoy our first until this weekend. It has been a winter of erily mild weather. This past Saturday it was close to 60f and Scrapple and I went to the farmers market half dressed in tee-shirts. Finally though, on Sunday, the temperature dropped enough to cook one up. Bean soups are best for cold days when you just want to snuggle up under a quilt next to a fire. They're hearty and filling, warming and comforting and one of my favorite winter staples. A pot simmering on a Sunday afternoon makes the kitchen a cozy spot to read or write and the meal practically cooks itself. If you have less time at home in the evening, you can speed up the process by putting the beans in water to soak in the morning and letting them sit for the day. If you do this, you can cut the cook time down to 30-45 minutes. Be sure to test the beans for doneness. 

 

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Farm To-Do!

Talk to state Vet about bringing animals in from out of state - DONE!A little over 6 months ago, Scrapple suggested we consolidate all of our lists and notes and make one definitive Farm To-Do List. We share it on Google Docs so it's always easy to access and edit (and share the edits when we're not in the same place at the same time). 

The to-do list can get a little overwhelming at times (from today through the end of February is 6 pages, each line being a task) and so we broke it down into month-by-month priorities to make the mountain of tasks a little more approachable. This has definitely worked, but as our moving date grows near and I get more and more excited, it has been increasingly difficult for me to focus on just one task and hammer it out. This is basically because all the things I need to do this month are ridiculously fun! 

Here's a quick overview of the biggies for January:

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To Pasteurize Or Not To Pasteurize...

fiorello, pecorino, cheese, italy, pasteurization, raw milk cheeseFiorello Checking The Temp - Porta Dei ParchiUntil recently, Scrapple and I had been focused on the idea of producing aged raw milk cheeses. It made sense to make the most of the delicious and nutrient rich milk our pastured cows would produce and it fit with our ideals and vision for Little Seed.

I say "until recently" because, well, we've started to consider the option of pasteurization for a small percentage of our cheesemaking milk supply. Why? 

Originally we had planned on working with cow's milk exclusively. Now that we've found our farm and come to know the land our animals will be grazing, we've realized that it would be best to have goats as well as cows. There's a lot of acreage on our farm that, while currently not grazeable by cows, would be browsing paradise for goats. We love the idea of working with goats to improve the land and now we'll have the chance.  

We hadn't really thought about goat's milk until about 2 months ago. I really love the idea of developing some mixed milk cheeses. A tomme, a blue, or even a cheddar could be really interesting, and for the first few weeks I mostly thought about creating those cheeses. That was before I started my internship a month ago in the subterranean caves of a cheese shop (joy!).

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