I love knowing where my food comes from. I like it even more when I know it comes from my state, region, or bioregion, and from a small family farm.
Where will my food come from?
In late 2002, when my husband and I first contemplated a move from Ohio to Arizona, I thought we’d have to get all of our food from California. I imagined a higher food bill and lack of contact with the people raising my food. I thought I’d have to give up eating locally grown produce and grassfed meats. I thought I’d be eating all anonymous food.
I was wrong….and that was a good thing! I found year round farmers’ markets in Phoenix and more grassfed meat suppliers than I previously had in Ohio.
Photo credit right: Brown's Orchard
Although some of the farmers’ markets fill in with produce from California, Washington, and Oregon when their supplies run low or they don’t have certain foodstuffs, I do have access to some locally grown veggies and fruits throughout the year. Some of it is organically grown and some of it is chemical free, though not certified, which doesn’t bother me. In many cases it costs less than organic produce sold in natural foods stores and supermarkets.
Eating grass in Arizona
In the case of grassfed meat, I have access to beef, lamb, bison, chicken, turkey, and sometimes pork here in Arizona. Thanks to irrigation and selection of the right kinds of grass, farmers are finding their livestock can thrive in the desert. This also costs less than grassfed meat sold at Whole Foods and other natural foods supermarkets. When you cut out the middle man, it usually costs less and you have the pleasure of talking to the people who raise the meat, telling them how much you like it, getting cooking tips, and seeing picture of their farms or taking farm tours. I love it.
Brown’s Orchard
A couple of months ago I met the owners of Brown’s Orchard at the Old town Farmers Market in downtown Scottsdale. The first trees were planted in their orchards in 1963. Ten years ago they abandoned use of chemicals, fungicides, and herbicides. They have 5 varieties of pears and 12 varieties of apples, two of my favorite fruits. You can picnic under the fruit trees, pick apples and pears, sip fresh unpasteurized, unfiltered apple cider (hard to find nowadays!), and relax.
Photo credit right: Brown's Orchard
Their You-Pick-It option is available Thursday through Sunday, 8 am to 5 pm, August through mid November or the first frost. If you don’t want to pick fruit, they have a selection of fruit for sale in their cold storage rooms. Perfect for making apple sauce, fruit roll ups, or dried apple chips. I have recipes for these in The Garden of Eating: A Produce-Dominated Diet & Cookbook.
Photo credit right: Brown's Orchard
Lambs on pasture
If you’ve been reading my blog you know about the benefits of grassfed meat. Grassfed meat contains more vitamin, minerals, and antioxidants than organic (grain-fed) meat and reduces the risk of e-coli to undetectable levels. This makes it safer to consume grassfed meat rare or raw, which is how I like it, unless I’m making a stew which requires long slow cooking to render the meat rare.
The lambs raised on Brown’s Orchard are beyond organic. Although they’re not certified organic, they don’t use chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics or genetically engineered plants on their orchard. They employ a rotational pasture system that makes the pasture, the fruit trees, and the lambs healthier than what you’d find on most industrial organic farms. For more on this, check out Jo Robinson's book, Pasture Perfect (formerly titled Why Grassfed is Best).
They don’t give the lambs grain, which ensures a healthier meat that’s. Organically raised meat usually comes from animals fed organic grain, which is free of pesticides and herbicides, but it’s still grain, which is not a natural food for ruminant animals.
These lucky heart healthy lambs are not only raised on pasture all year round. They get to graze the 36-acre orchard eating their fill of windfall fruits from June to November. The trees feed the lambs while the lambs fertilize the soil, the way Joe Saliton, the father of the grassfed meat movement, does it on Polyface Farm. The lambs get plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and exercise and they’re never confined in a barn or feed lot.
How does it taste?
Deeeeeeeeelicious! I love lamb and this particular variety didn't dissapoint me. I took home two tiny lamb loin chops, which looked more like riblets to me.
I seasoned them with finely ground sea salt and pepper and seared them in a little bit of bacon fat in a cast iron skillet (coconut oil, ghee, clarified butter, or palm shortening would also work), cover the skillet and cooked them a few minutes on each side to medium-rare. I used the press test and knife rather than a timer.
Since the chops were so small I served them with a couple of fried eggs, my usual side of leafy green or mixed vegetables and fruit. This is my kind of breakfast, paleo diet perfect. That’s broccoli and icicle radish in the picture.
The fried eggs might look funny with a generous sprinkle of ground black pepper, turmeric, and sea veggie flakes, but they taste great to me that way. Eating meat and veggies might sound strange for breakfast but to hunter-gatherers, the typical American morning meal of toast with jam, granola (candied grain) with milk, french toast, panckes, waffles, or doughnuts would seem equally if not more strange. It's all a matter of perspective!
Lamb lover’s options
At Brown’s orchard you can buy Leg of lamb, lamb chops (rib, loin, and sirloin), rack of lamb, shoulder roast, shanks, ground lamb, liver, heart, kidney, and tongue. If you don't know what to do with these cuts, especially liver and other organ meats, subscribe to my blog. I plan to post more recipes using the cuts most people shy away from.
You can pick up lamb at the Brown's Farm or visit them at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market at 1st & McKinley, from 8 am to 1 pm, at the Old Town Farmers’ Market in Scottsdale (check web site for hours), or on Sundays in Tucson at St. Philip's Plaza Farmers Market at River & Campbell from 9am to 1pm.
For Printable Coupons & Directions to the farm, click here.
Great job on your blog. Beautiful photo selection.
"Eating meat and veggies might sound strange for breakfast but to hunter-gatherers, the typical American morning meal of toast with jam, granola (candied grain) with milk, french toast, panckes, waffles, or doughnuts would seem equally if not more strange."
No doubt, they wouldn't even recognize most of those things as food!
Don
Posted by: Don Matesz | May 27, 2009 at 02:43 PM