The only thing a farm efficiently produces is manure. You can rely on it, every day! Each cow, steer or heifer defecates 8 to 12 times per day. One pig produces the same amount of waste as three people, each and every day. Farms produce a lot of manure!
On our sustainable Farm we know animal health is linked to the health of our soil. We manage our soil’s health because we have learned that it pays us back with each crop of hay we harvest. It grows healthy pasture-land for all our animals. They are healthy because our soil is healthy.
Manure is the most important step of our healthy, sustainable, and organic soil management program at Dragonfly Garden Farm. We spread a wonderful, composted combination of pig, chicken, duck, goose, turkey and cattle manure. Our manure is ALWAYS composted, this ensure the best nutrients are available to our soil.
I look at our soil and how we farm day to day and I appreciate the positive impact composted manure has on our land. This manure feeds our soil, which grows our hay and pasture.
Then the hay and pasture feed our animals and they produce a wonderful bi-product, manure, waste, or if you don’t mind the term, shit. We have built a sustainable healthy process out of composted manure.
Making something positive out of something negative I think is the most valuable lesson in life. You all know the antidote, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. With my head and heart completely smitten with farming, I often look at our farm and its natural cycles to see how they apply to life. I had an epiphany about how I need to turn the manure that sometimes happens in my life into something positive, something that feeds my soul.
I thought, if I had a space in my brain where I could set that manure that life generates and let it rest and break-down, maybe I could make something good out of it. You know the manure I am referring to, the negative voice in your head, critical words or actions from others, expectations or judgements. That angry feeling you get when someone cuts you off on your way to work or the injustice you feel about multi-national corporations who cheat humanity for the all mighty dollar. I call that mental manure; it sits in steaming piles in your brain and holds you back and makes you feel like life stinks!
Well, I decided to give it a little space in my brain and I called it the Mental Manure Pile. If it smells like manure, feels like it or looks like it, instead of letting it sit there and steam, I add it to the Mental Manure Pile. THEN I let it go. My farming experience has taught me that in time it will age, heat-up and turn into something healthy and healing. It will become positive and feed my soul, just like our composted manure feeds our soil.
When something really stinky lands in my head and it takes up a lot of time, space and energy, I can speed up the process. Just like the manure pile on our farm, we speed up the composting process by turning the manure pile, this makes it heat up and compost faster.
I do this with my mental manure pile by saying a prayer, the prayer I think each person knows. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” This seems to do the trick and it turns that big steaming pile that life sometimes brings into a positive energy that feeds my soul and makes my perspective positive once again.
Shit happens so when it does, put it on the mental manure pile. You reap what you sow!
Thank you to “Free Recipes for Chicken” for the following;
Apple Brandy Chicken
4 Chicken Breasts Salt and Pepper 8 Oz Sliced Mushrooms 2 Tsps Olive Oil 2 Tsps Butter 1/3 C Apple Brandy (such as Apple Jack or Calvados) 4 Green Onions, chopped 1/2 C Whipping Cream or Heavy Cream 1 Tsp Fresh Thyme 1/4 tsp Dried ThymeFlatten chicken; place chicken breast halves between pieces of plastic wrap and gently pound until thinned out and uniform in size. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
In a large heavy skillet, heat olive oil and butter over medium heat. Add chicken breasts. Cook for about 5 minutes, until browned, then turn.
Add mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes longer. Add green onions and apple brandy and cook for another minute, until chicken is cooked through and mushrooms are tender. Add cream and thyme; simmer until thickened. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.
Send us your favorite chicken, beef, pork, duck, goose or turkey recipe and we’ll post it so everyone can enjoy!
Take Care and care about whats on your fork, we do!
July brings the start of our meat CSA. From July to December, we deliver our grass-fed, organically raised meat to many locations in southwestern Ontario. Mike and I are the only full time farm laborers for our entire operation, so it will be one, or both of us that you meet when you get your Meat Share.
We are the owner’s and only full time employees at Dragonfly Garden Farm, so if it is broke, we fix it, if it’s dirty, sick, hungry, thirsty, outdated, weedy, or ready to harvest we clean, heal, feed, water, update, pick and harvest it!
We have a few helpers in the spring and summer to keep up with wood and cleaning animal housing. Whenever we do a new big project, we sometimes have a few fellas in to help. We are thankful for all the help and support we receive!
For us, getting in the truck and making our way to the “city” means a big change. First, we need to stay clean. Most jobs on the farm require you to get dirty. Very little of the work we do here allows you to go out in public after you do it!
You usually have to shower, or at least make sure you have no poop on you before leaving the farm! And we always have to change our boots. So getting in the truck, staying clean, knowing where you are going, being prepared and able to multi-task is part of an “On The Road” day for us.
The best part of being on the road is meeting our new CSA Customers each year. We are fortunate to be able to continue to grow our business, so each year we have a few more new customers to share our goods and farm philosophy with!
The second best thing is spending time in with my husband where we are not yelling over loud equipment to get a job done, or trying to finish the hay in separate tractors until 10pm at night before the rain falls!
The third best thing is getting a coffee, from a store, in a paper cup, that is a big deal! After that, looking out the window and seeing the different towns and cities where our customers live is interesting.
Being off the farm for a day, and into a new landscape makes me miss the view of our pasture fields, rolling hills, maple trees and our animals. It helps me to see that all the work needed to operate our farm isn’t work at all! It’s a way to express our passion for local, healthy and sustainable food. A day away is fun and adventuresome, but coming back to the farm feels like home for my soul. It’s where I live!
Roast Beef in a Crock-Pot is easy and a great way to make a simple meat that fills you up and gets you some left overs for sandwiches tomorrow!
In a Crock Pot put in;
2 cups water 1 Dragonfly Garden Farm Roast Beef – I like a cross rib or rump roast (frozen is fine) 1 onion – chopped 2 carrots – chopped 2 celery stalks – chopped 1 tsp minced garlic (powdered works too!) 1 cup frozen beef stock or left over gravy from the last Beef Roast you had 1 tsp Watkin ALL NATURAL Beef Seasoning, (we sell it as the farm if you want to try it) A Shake of Salt & PepperTurn on your crook pot, I use low but I find my crock pot can be a little hot. I leave it on all day from 8am until 6pm. It cooks slow and steady and your roast beef is well-done and falls apart, which is lovely.
Make up some gravy from the drippins, around 4pm, dig us some early potatoes from the garden and pop them in the oven or a pot on the stove. Then pick some peas or beans from the garden and cook them up and you have a farm fresh supper for this time if year!
Take Care, and care about what’s on on your fork!
We do!
Cindy & Mike Wilhelm
Well, item # 87 has been safely crossed off my Life’s To Do List. I now have a Dragonfly tattoo. It felt good to make progress on my Life List, or Bucket List, one less thing I need to do before I die.
Here it is. 
A one of a kind, designed just for me, dragonfly tattoo. It sits on my thigh, forever as a promise to my husband, this farm and myself. Now since this is a website about our farm, I’ll tell you that part, but the promise to my husband and myself, well, that I’ll keep to myself.
The Dragonfly is a symbol we choose for our Farm because we felt in order to be a successful new farm business in today’s agricultural climate, we needed to be agile, determined and unique, much like a Dragonfly.
Dragonflies are skilled flyers, and no other insect or bird has the same maneuverability. They take risks and adapt to almost any environment. Dragonflies are always on the go and they spend much of their life in transition to become something beautiful, graceful and free. Proving that with skill, determination and the ability to adapt, you are free to gracefully fly.
This tattoo is a reminder of why we started farming and the reasons it was so important to us. I never want to loose that original feeling of excitement, mixed with shear terror when we took that first step and bought a Farm. And I never want to forget the feeling of opportunity I felt six years ago and still feel today about where this farm business can lead us. The options are endless; we are at the mercy of fate to see just what parts of our farm will develop the fastest.
I never want to feel like we are stagnate or that we did not appreciate the value in these opportunities. So this tattoo is also a reminder to be thankful for the opportunities, the possibilities and the future of our farm.
I want to live eahc day on this farm so I can be sure in 20 years, when I look back on our farming experiences, that I made an impact. That I changed a little corner of the world and made it a better place. That with each step I take living my dreams and goals as a farmer, my work stands as an example to other people to drop out of the rat race and into a duck or pig race, and become a farmer.
In total my List is complied of 116 things that I check off as they arrive, in the order they should arrive in and at just the perfect time! Completing the list before I conk out will sure to be an exciting and eventful experience.
Right now, it feels great knowing that # 87 is done, even though it did NOT feel great getting it! It hurt like no other hurt I have experienced before in my whole life! But, I am proud to wear it!
Take Care,
Cindy
A great sandwich, that will fill you up like a whole meal!
Thaw a package or two of Dragonfly Garden Farm’s Minute Steaks. These are thin steaks that have been put through a manual tenderizer.
We’ll want to bread them so get a dry bowl and wet bowl situation happening. This works for anything you bread, and I learned it while working as a cook to pay my way through college.
In the dry bowl, put in some wheat free all purpose flour, wheat free bread crumbs, chipotle spice, paprika, chili powder, garlic powder and cayenne pepper, and salt and pepper to taste. If you like it hot, use a lot, not so much heat, add in just a little less.
In the wet bowl, beat two eggs, add in a little milk and beat again. Put the Minute steaks in this mixture to soak. Milk acts as a tenderizer and will loosen up the grain of the beef.
While it is sitting in it’s milk and egg bath, get the deep fryer hot, or a put some oil a big pot and heat it up. I use a combination of peanut and sunflower oils as neither are genetically modified yet! A safer choice, get organic if you can, then you can be sure they are NOT GMO’d.
While the oil is heating, keep an eye on it, while you clean some lettuce, slice some sharp cheddar cheese and some fresh tomato. Mix up a little Mayo, horseradish, a lot of minced garlic and chipotle spice into a sauce for your sandwich. This is the BEST part!
I use wheat free hamburger buns, but if you can eat wheat, use whatever you like! But they are nice slightly toasted, so pop then in the oven for a few minutes, melt the sharp cheddar cheese on if you like!
Once the oil is ready, you can bread your steak and fry it up in the oil. So, go back to your wet bowl and dry bowl situation, apply the same logic with your hands, one wet and one dry. The wet hand should always go in the wet bowl, the dry hand into the dry bowl ONLY! This will avoid a huge mess and you won’t have that large clump of breading on your hands that takes 4 days to get out from under your fingernails!
Fry the breaded Minute steak until it floats; be sure to flip it over so both sides brown up. Take it out, dry off the fat and assemble your sandwich.
Starting at the bottom, I do bun, cheese, sauce, chicken fried minute steak, tomato, salt & pepper, lettuce, sauce bun. Dig in, it is spicy and yummy and a whole meal in it’s self! ….But this spicy Mayo is a great for dipping homemade sweet potato fries, the oil is already hot, why not?
Good Luck and Take Care,
Cindy
Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. While this is happening, get your big old roasting pan, pop in a package or two of Dragonfly Garden Farm’s pastured Pork Side Ribs. Each package of ribs contains two racks, but I always put on more because you can make a pulled pork sandwiches with the leftovers! This will be enough to serve 4 very hungry people.
Add to the roasting Pan;
Dragonfly Garden Farm Pastured Pork Side Ribs (or Riblets or both!) 1 large onion – chopped up 1 500ml Jar – Dundalk BBQ Sauce (we sell it, it is fantastic, made by one of our favorite customers!) 500ml of Water – use the Dundalk Sauce Jar, to be sure you get all the yummy goodness out! ½ cup Dragonfly Honey made on the farm by our Pretty Bee’s 1 tsp. minced garlic Salt & Pepper 1 Tblsp. PaprikaCover with Aluminum Foil, then put the lid on and roast at 350 degrees for about 4 hours. After 2 hours, take off the aluminum foil, but leave the lid on, baste and cook for another hour. Check them again, baste, the sauce should start to get thicker and gooey. If there is a lot of fat, drain it off.
During the last hour, keep an eye on it, the sauce will thicken quickly and burn if you are not careful. Once the sauce has thickened, take the pan out of the oven, the meat should fall off the bones.
I serve on a big platter, along with baked beans, rice and corn. It’s a yummy, finger licking meal!
Take Care and care about what’s on your fork,we do!
Good Luck
Cindy
This is a quick easy meal that you can put into the oven and then leave the kitchen to check email, pay bills, update your web site or just relax. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a 9″ x 13″ place;
1lb of Dragonfly Garden Farm frozen Farmer’s Sausage – Plain or Garlic 4 or 5 pealed white, red or sweet potatoes – I like a mixture ¼ cup of water and a quick drizzle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil Salt & Pepper to taste (I use fresh ground, I swear it tastes better!) Add a sprinkle of Chipotle & Paprika if you want to spice it up a little!There is lots of room in the pan if you want to add another pound of sausage and spuds for more than 4 people. Add another 30 minutes of cooking time for another package of sausage.
Pop it in the hot oven, go finish what you were doing for a half hour. Take the pan out of the oven, poke a fork many times into the sausages, this lets all the yummy drippings out so they wander over to see the potatoes. Turn everything over, and put it back into the oven. This is when I make a salad or put some frozen veggies on to cook.
Continue to bake the sausage for another 30 minutes until it is cooked through, cut it open there should be no pink, and check to be sure the potatoes are not “woody”. Where I come from, if the potatoes are not cooked all the way through, we say, “the potatoes are woody”!
I cook mine for a little longer, because I like the sausage and potatoes to be a little crispy.
Serve with the cooked veggie or salad or both and enjoy! A yummy quick supper for any day of the week!
Oh, cook extra and try a sausage sandwich for lunch the next day. Slice it about ½ inch thick, right out of the fridge, and put it on fresh bread, with some butter and a little mustard, and enjoy! It tastes fantastic, one of my dad’s all time favorites!
Take Care and care about what’s on your fork, we do!
Good Luck,
Cindy
Weekends are busy, but if you can steal away 30 minutes at 1pm, to toss a whole chicken or two in the oven, you will have an excellent meal at 6 o’clock when everyone is hungery for supper.
First, turn the oven onto 400 degrees to pre-heat then run to the freezer and grab a chicken or two. I usually do one and a half for four people because then I have an easy meal later in the week and enough leftover chicken for sandwiches, and the oven is on anyway, so why not!
Don’t thaw the chicken, just take it out of the package and place it in roasting pan breasts down, it stays moister with the breasts in the water. I put a little butter on the breasts so it doesn’t stick to the pan.
Most chickens are 4 to 6 pounds, but just remember the rule of 20 minutes of cooking time per pound of chicken, plus one hour because you are not thawing the bird. So a 6-pound frozen chicken will take 3 hours to cook in a hot oven plus an hour to prepare (de-bone and make gravy)
So the frozen chicken or two is in the roasting pan, add;
1 – Inch of water Small onion – cut into large chunks 1 cup organic chicken Stock* 5 or 6 baby carrots 5 or 6 celery sticks** 1 tblsp minced garlic 1 parsnip if you have it or a handful or frozen turnip chunks, if not, no biggy! 1 tsp. sage ½ tsp. tyme ½ tsp. rosemary Salt & PepperI like those spices, for a nice mild roast chicken, but kick it up with cumin and tarragon if you like. I do, and other times, add in some tomato paste, basil and oregano for a more Italian flavor.
* – I always have leftover chicken gravy or stock in the freezer. At the end of every roast chicken meal, I put it in 8 oz. plastic cups, freeze it, pop it out and store in large ziplock bags. It always comes in handy and you are not adding extra “stuff” to your food that you didn’t grow or know where it comes from.
** – I always have clean and cut celery sticks, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli in a bowl in the fridge. If it is clean, cut and ready to dip, the veggies get eaten, if not, you never know they are in your fridge.
Put the lid on, I will use a smaller pan and aluminum foil if I need more space in the oven to cook pies or dessert later, but both work. After the first hour, turn the oven down to 350 degrees. I check the chicken once over the three hours of cooking time, just to make sure it is not getting too crispy on the top. I aways cook my chicken until it is tender and falls off the bone. It is how we like it best.
Once it is done, check with a thermometer, never serve or eat undercooked chicken!
To de-bone the bird, I set the roasting pan on the stove top, get out two big plates, one for meat and one for bones and gunk. As I pull each piece out of the pan, I put it on the right plate, meat for meat and bones and gunk to the bone and gunk plate. Once the pan is empty, except for some small pieces and the veggies and herbs you added to roast it, scrape any pieces off the side or bottom. Drain the drippings into a bowl.
I thicken my gravy with a rue. Put the roasting pan on medium heat on the stove top, melt 1 tblsp or two of butter, add 1 or 2 tblsp of flour, depends on the amount of liquid you have. I us an all-purpose wheat-free flour, and it does the trick.
Once the rue changes from a white paste to a warm beige paste, empty the drippings bowl back into the roasting pan. I also add the water from the potatoes (because you need to have mashed potatoes so you can pour gravy all over them), and cooked veggies, usually from my garden and super yummy! So, now you have NOT lost any nutrients from your veggie water; you don’t just send it down the drain!
So NOW you have some healthy liquid to make into gravy. Add in the fact that you are eating a pastured chicken, that ate all kinds of grasses; that makes the fat and drippings in the pan almost medicinal! Mmmmm gravy.
Serve hot, with love and you will enjoy an easy roast chicken dinner! Keep the bones for soup, I usually pop them right into the crock pot before supper, or we wrap them in newspaper to throw them out. The newspaper stops them from smelling in the garbage when it’s hot out side or attracting predaters to your garbage bag when you set it out for collection.
Take Care and care about what’s on your fork, we do!
Good Luck,
Cindy