Cheddar Jalapeno Brat Burgers - Summer may be over, but you can still enjoy a burger. These brat-burgers are a pork based burger patty intended to bake in the oven as well as finish on the grill. We suggest using a resting rack to bake the burgers off of the sheet tray so they don't stick.

We start with our pasture raised heritage pork and then fold in thick chunks of Middlefield Cheese Grassfed Smoked Cheddar cheese and a pinch of chopped jalapenos. They aren't hot. Nothing like the smoked chorizo brat links.

To keep the burgers tender and juicy, we cut back the fat and omit the water and substitute in heavy whipping cream. This provides a one-of-a-kind texture that will have you coming back for seconds.

Usually $11 per 1.00# package - on sale for $8.00 this week.

Honey Puffed Corn - This quality, organic cereal from Stutzman Farms is on sale this week. This is great with milk for a quick breakfast or blended with some granola and yogurt for a hardy snack.

For those of you who have gone on the farm tours in years past, you may remember Monroe's homemade "puffer." It's like a heavy steel cannon for cereal. The device is heated and once a certain pressure is achieved, a safety valve releases excess air blowing a whistle, just in time for the lid to blast open and cereal to be blown into a cage. The finished product is tossed with honey while warm and then packaged.

Yogurt Promotion - One day I remember telling someone that we needed a local yogurt. The next day, Brandi Schlauch called me. She was starting a farmstead (on farm) yogurt operation in western Holmes County. That was 10 years ago and now Velvet View yogurt is a staple at Fresh Fork.

Brandi and her family have been in the diary business for generations, mostly milking Holsteins and selling genetics from their red Holstein herd. But the price of fluid milk had been volatile and hasn't gone up much over the last 30 years. They needed an operation that let them control their farm income.

Yogurt was a great solution. It adds value to the product and extends the shelf life. Brandi's yogurt studio is just 17 feet from the milking parlor. Warm milk, right from the udders, is pumped over to the yogurt operation where it is pasteurized then cultures added to create the lacto-fermentation that makes it yogurt.

My favorite product is the Original - thin and tangy, it is a great substitute for buttermilk in pancakes, biscuits, and even to brine chicken for fried chicken. It is also great in a smoothie.

The customer favorite is their thicker, hardier yogurt -the strained Greek Yogurt. This is an excellent choice for snacking with fruit or granola.

Both are outstanding products and we are proud to have been carrying their product from day 1. If you haven't tried these, please use this week's promotion as a chance to enjoy.

Also, consider the Original in cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving.

Below - the Schlauch family, circa about 10 years ago when we started working with them. Today, the boy on the left is the VVF delivery driver and married! Makes me feel old.

Last week, I was talking with Chef Adam on our way to one of the video shoots for the Thanksgiving Beer Dinner. We drove by a field just north of Coshocton. I almost pulled over.

As I swerved, Adam asked with chuckle, "Was it a blonde or brunette." I laughed back, 'Neither. Cover crop.'

I wasn't sure what it was. It was planted in nice, tidy rows and looked almost like peas from the road. Then again, it could have been tillage radishes, but those are usually broadcast (thrown on the field) as opposed to being "drilled" in neat rows.

Adam asked me a few questions and we started talking about late season cover crops. For me, I'm extremely limited on land. Sometimes the decisions I make would not be practical for other farmers.

This fall I had a 5 acre field that badly needed reseeded. In fact, I reseeded it this past April, but then had a week of hard rain. The soil "crusted over" and the tender seedlings couldn't break through. I ended up with a "nurse crop of weeds," as I disguised it.

I badly wanted to turn it over in September and reseed it, but I needed something to move the turkeys through quickly. For 3 or 4 weeks, the turkeys pecked at the weeds and their seeds. It was then October and getting into November before I had time to do something with it.

At that point, I was too late to plant a permanent pasture of various grasses and legumes. I needed those to establish by 4 to 6 weeks before a hard frost and freeze killed them off. I started thinking about my options.

Option 1: Plant it in the spring. Mow hay in June, maybe graze it by August. This is what most farmers would do.

Option 2: Plant a winter rye (cereal rye) for a grain crop around 4th of July, then plant sorghum.

I thought more about my costs. If I take Option 1, I still have no pasture until late summer 2022. If I take Option 2, I at least have something, but how do I use it. I don't have the equipment to harvest wheat and 5 acres is hardly worth any contract harvester to come in for.

I talked with the seed salesman more, and I came up with a different solution. Instead of planting the rye at 30 lbs per acre, I'd plant at 120# per acre. That would give me a blanket of rye so thick that it would never mature to seed head. It would essentially be a lawn, but an annual one (only lasts one year).

I decided to plant the rye at 120# per acre and my plan is to cut hay off of it in early May, weather permitting, or graze it and make hay from other excess grass. I can then plow the field up, plant a permanent pasture, take a hay cutting in July, then graze by late August.

This is my plan, we'll see what happens.

We are really close to sold out. It is impossible to count the turkeys in the field while they are moving around. We tried several times now and can't get an accurate number.

Until we start harvesting on Friday, we will be taking a waitlist for turkeys.

If more turkeys are available, we will send out an email on Saturday this weekend.

**If you placed a Thanksgiving order already, you should have received an additional confirmation email from us yesterday. Please review. If you thought you placed an order and did not receive an email yesterday, you can reach out to us to check in on the status of an order because we may not actually have an order for you.**

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