One of my major flaws is a fanatical fondness for anything containing sugar (sweet tooth courtesy of my Gramps). While I am pretty good at avoiding processed sweet things (except frosted animal crackers), quality desserts are a staple dietary contribution at my house, right up there with water and cheese.

An over abundant recipe collection roams my counter tops, getting wet, crinkled and covered in food splatters. Lately I have been trying different seasonal desserts from various recipe sources and have yet to hit a dud. So here is my latest sweet concoction, from Martha Stewart's cute little food publication: 

Peaches with cornmeal shortcakes

Cornmeal shortcakes
1 1/2 cups flour, plus more for dusting
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter
1 cup buttermilk, plus more for brushing

Homemade whipped cream - I had no idea how simple making my own whipped cream is, knowledge can be dangerous!
1 cup cold heavy cream
2 tablespoons confectioners sugar

Fruity filling
1 1/2 pounds peaches, halved, pitted and cut into 1/4 inch slices (5 cups)
5 ounces blueberries (3/4 cups)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt and granulated sugar. Using the large holes in a cheese grater, grate butter into flour mixture, mixing and breaking it into even smaller pieces with your fingers. With a fork, stir in buttermilk until dough just comes together. Lightly flour a rolling pin and work surface (I usually roll dough out between 2 sheets of wax paper, less of a mess) and roll out dough into a 3/4 inch thick rectangle. Cut into 6 squares (or rectangles).

Place dough squares 3 inches apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Brush tops with buttermilk and sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake until shortcakes are golden and puffed, 17 to 20 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack. (Store shortcakes tightly wrapped in plastic, up to 2 days).

In a medium mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, beat cream and confectioners' sugar on high until stiff peaks form, about 3 minutes. Cut shortcakes in half horizontally. Divide peaches among bottom halves, top with whipped cream and blueberries and sandwich with top half.

Then put on a pretty plate, take a picture for your blog and chow down!

I feel like I started my shiny new GRIT blog without properly introducing myself. So, here is a bit of how a dirt-hating city dweller got to the point of writing about chasing sheep around the countryside on the weekends. 

I grew up at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills, not exactly rural America but more country than city. I always was an “indoor girl” with the desire to avoid sweat and grimy hands. For many years my family had virtually no water to take care of our ¾ acre, so hauling heavy buckets from the house and weeding star-thistle were much avoided summer-time tasks.  

Like most little girls I eventually grew up, however reluctantly. I survived high school, went to college and landed in nearby Sacramento, the City of Trees, doing accounting work. I got my Certified Public Accountant license as soon as I could … and then realized staring into the cold glow of a computer screen for a living was not my idea of living. 

I spent a couple of vocationally discontented years treading water in my jobs until one day last December the mention of a goat hit me straight in the heart. My boyfriend kept talking about wanting goats; he even brought a book home from the city library. Out of the blue, a passion for all things agriculture and food related was awakened in me. 

As soon as this passion was exposed, I acted on it. I found a flexible internship with local shepherd, Dan of Flying Mule Farms, which I started in February 2011. At the time I figured sheep were close enough to goats; I just wanted to start getting comfortable working with livestock. I now spend most Saturdays working with Dan, the sheep and at the farmer’s market selling grass fed lamb and beef. The weirdest part – I am now proud of getting sweaty and dirty!  

I really enjoy working with sheep; they are the highlight of my week. I sit in an office during the week and daydream about farming. As of now I would like to open a sheep dairy … no easy task for someone with no land, no sheep and little money. My preferred bridge to having my own dairy is to intern at someone else’s dairy; plans and hopes for that are currently in the works. I am also recently engaged, so throw in a little wedding planning and you have a pretty good idea of my life today.

I have been blogging since March here, so if you would like to check out any of my previous posts, I invite you to it.  For the most part the two blogs will be identical from here on out.

Thanks for reading! I welcome feedback and advice.

Callie

Farming requires a great deal of flexibility as I have mentioned before. A farmer can't get too attached to a place, way of doing things or a particular outcome because inevitably something uncontrollable will change everything, and adjustments have to be made, sometimes very quickly.

I saw this illustrated again this weekend when I met up with Dan. We drove to Highland Farm, a tree farm in Colfax. Dan, along with Allen, the owner of the farm and Roger, the UC Davis livestock extension agent, assessed the property and vegetation to see if it would support 300 ewes through breeding season.

Dan had planned to have these ewes much closer to his home farm on an irrigated pasture. He discovered however, that the pasture was not going to be able to support his ewes, much less enable them to gain weight through breeding, so he had to find an alternative pretty quickly.

Highland Farm it was; Dan is friends with the owners and had previously been interested in grazing their property. After a bumpy tour up and down the ridge and about ten million 'begger's lice' later the three men decided there was enough vegetation and variety to support the ewes at least for a couple months though maybe not through the entire breeding season. I could see being forced to be flexible is not so bad if you have good friends who are willing to feed your sheep! Actually it works out well for Highland Farm as well. Instead of having to manually remove brush that is a fire hazard, the sheep will clean it up.

As I mentioned, we are preparing for breeding season. When breeding ewes, most producers want the animals to be on a rising plane of nutrition (gaining weight) because this increases the likelihood of twins. This management technique is called "flushing" and is the reason Dan keeps his ewes on rough feed (like star thistle) most of the summer. It is desirable for the ewes lose some weight during the summer because they are not producing milk for lambs and they are not breeding or pregnant. But in preparation for breeding, which will begin October 1st, they need to be on feed that will allow them to start putting weight back on (but not too much weight, a fat ewe doesn't breed well).

The management of the ewes is opposed to the lambs, who have been on lush pasture since they were weaned in May/June. For the lambs going to market, the idea is to get them gaining as much weight as possible as fast a possible, so they can be finished and sold at the market as they are a Dan's main source of income. It turns out to be a constant test of flexibility, keeping all the sheep on the right kind of feed during different times of the year, a difficult task for someone with nearly 500 sheep who only owns 3 acres of land!

And a final note, Matt's market lamb is doing well, he weighed 76 lbs at last weigh in and is gaining about a 1/4 lb per day!  And my ewe lamb has been separated from the market lambs, she gets to stick around and probably bred next year.

I was recently discussing the idea of revisiting with a friend; particularly revisiting a conversation or experience you had with someone if you were less than satisfied with the outcome. Kind of an obvious idea but one I had not thoughtfully considered before. This weekend (as I manned the farmer's market stall on my own) I was afforded the opportunity to revisit an experience I had with a teacher in high school.

One of my favorite teachers at Del Oro High School was Mrs. Millholen, a funny and vibrant art teacher. I liked her so much I signed up to be a teacher's assistant (TA) for her once I reached my junior year. That year I also had a fun group of friends and quickly found I was more interested in spending time with them than being a good TA. I pretty much failed in my duties to Mrs. Millholen, was graded accordingly and have carried around a fair amount of guilt surrounding this whole experience.

Well, on Saturday, Mrs. Millholen walked by my market stall and I recognized her right away. We caught up a little (she thought it was pretty funny that I am interested in going from a CPA to a farmer). I was debating with myself whether to mention my past failings but then took a chance and apologized to her for being such a bad TA. She thought this was pretty funny too, as she didn't have any recollection of it, and here I was dragging around this load of guilt all these years. She hugged me and granted me her forgivness.

None of this was really for her, it was my therapy. With the new knowledge that revisiting is an option, I was able unpack my baggage and heal an old pain. What an unexpected gift to find at the farmer's market!

And speaking of revisiting - when there are sheep out on grazing contracts, you have to revisit them every day, to make sure they are in good health, have enough to eat and have plenty of water in the summer time. So again on my own (I think Dan was testing my confidence and skills!), I made the rounds in the county, fed guard dogs and revisited the sheep to conclude a very satisfying day.