Pick up your Meat Share: Archway Farm: starting Thursday, March 30th, open daily 9a - 7p
Dear Shareholders:
We are excited to have cured and smoked all our hams in house this year. It’s a fairly involved process that has taken us a while to scale up. We inject and brine the hams for 5-8 days, and then dry and smoke them using applewood chunks. And now that Easter is upon us we can take a break from hams until Christmas rolls around.
The snow has mostly melted and we are looking forward to seeing things start to grow again. I expect we’ll be spending a lot of time in April getting fields ready, to hopefully start getting animals out towards the end of the month.
Mark (for Wyatt, Maggie, Dima, Leo, & Alona)
Special Items in This Months Shares
(depending on size and meats you selected)
Smoked Ham: From the rear leg (or ham) of the pig, these are brined and then smoked in house. These hams are all pre-cooked, so the goal is to reheat all the way through without drying out too much. We recommend baking at 325 until the internal temperature reaches at least 145. Depending on the size this typically takes 1-2 hours.
Cilantro Lime Chicken Sausage: we’ve made this chicken sausage recipe for a couple years now and feel like the flavors go well with the lighter chicken sausage.
Stew Mutton: It’s mutton because it comes from Five Sigma ewes that are a little older than traditional lambs. We find the taste to be practically the same as lamb.
Recipe of the Month
How To Make A Glaze For Ham
from Spend With Pennies
A ham glaze needs a few different parts:
- Sweet: The caramelization of the sugars is what adds the sticky exterior we love so much. This can be in the form of brown sugar, honey, jam etc.
- Tangy: Orange juice, pineapple juice, cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar all add great flavor!
- Spices: Garlic, cloves/cinnamon, mustard, rosemary
Simply stir the ingredients together. While some recipes have you boil/thicken the glaze, I don’t find it necessary. You certainly can do that if you’d like a thicker glaze but I find adding a couple of coats of glaze adds just enough without being too thick or sweet.
When Do You Glaze a Ham? About 20-30 minutes before the ham is done (any sooner and you can risk burning the sugars in the glaze). Generously apply the glaze t