What’s a Morel? Pure Deliciousness

Every person is unique, but there are times in life, at least for me, when it becomes particularly apparent that my life just isn’t like everyone else’s. Every time I try to explain morel mushrooms to people who haven’t heard of them turns out to be one of those times. Hunting and eating morel mushrooms is something that most people I knew growing up did. It wasn’t until college that I realized that this wasn’t a mainstream thing. Each conversation goes something like this:

Me: “My parents found some mushrooms last weekend, I wish I could make it home to eat some this time of year.”

Friend: “Mushrooms? What are you talking about?”

Me: “Morel mushrooms. They’re so good.”

After getting no response, or furthur questions, I elaborate.

Me: “They’re these spongy looking mushrooms that grow in the woods. You find them in the spring after it’s rained and the ground has warmed up.”

Friend: blank stare or “and you eat them? How do you know they’re safe?”

Me: “If you know they’re morels, they’re safe. You rinse them and soak them in salt water to kill the bugs and then you bread them and fry them.”

Usually by the time I get to “kill the bugs” they’ve decided this seems like a bad idea, and I realize my life isn’t normal because I still think it’s a great idea.

I hadn’t eaten any of these mushrooms in probably 10 years or so. Finding the time to go hunting is often a challenge, and you can purchase them, but I can’t begin to bring myself to pay $40/lb for something I can find in the woods. Morels are pretty unique because despite their popularity, no one has been able to successfully grow them in a farm setting. It’s still completely up to mother nature to produce them, and it requires a lot of luck but very little know-how to find them. This year, the first day I saw pictures of friends’ finding them on Facebook, I made the effort. The first hunt was unsuccessful, but the next morning we checked another area and found about a dozen small grey morels.

Fresh morels just picked from the timber in one of our pastures.

A dozen isn’t many, but it’s enough for a side dish for two people, so I was satisfied. I took them home, rinsed them, sliced them in half an let them soak for a couple of days in a bowl of salt water in the fridge.

If you’re trying them out for the first time, or typically use a different preparation, here’s a tutorial of my family’s time-tested everyone-approved method:

What You’ll Need:

Morel mushrooms

Flour

Oil or Shortening

Salt

Soak in salt water, bread with flour, fry in oil – it’s that easy!

Recipe:

This one is about as easy as it gets. Let’s go with 5 steps…

Step 1: Rinse the mushrooms and set them on a paper towel.

Step 2: Coat them in flour while heating oil or shortening in a skillet.

Step 3: Fry them on medium heat until golden brown. I like them a little crispy.

Step 4: Place fried mushrooms on a paper towel to absorb oil and lightly salt.

Step 5: Enjoy!! (warning: they will be hot immediately after being fried)

Lightly salt and serve! They were crisp and delicious, and EXACTLY like I remembered!

Eating food you find in the woods may be a little unconvential, but for us, this treat is well worth going against the grain.

Workin’ It

We’ve been having quite a bit of moisture lately, and we’re not complaining after last year’s drought, in fact – we’re still in a mild drought. However, it’s May now, and we didn’t start working ground until the week before last. Last year, we started working ground in March, and we were planting in April. We feel like we’re pretty far behind, even though last year felt early…go figure.

What does working ground mean?

Working ground is a generalized term farmers use to describe the many processes that break apart and/or turn over the soil. We typically use two pieces of equipment to do this – a disc and a cultivator. The disc has sharp blades that penetrate the soil about 6” or so and turn the soil over, breaking up stubble from last year’s crop and any weeds or grass that have started growing (the weeds have a big head-start on the crops this year). The cultivator doesn’t go quite as deep or disturb the soil as much and leaves a much more even surface when it’s finished, but it can’t be used in very hard ground or thick weeds without first using another implement, such as a disc. Working ground loosens the soil to make it easier for our planter to deposit seed and for the roots of this year’s crop to grow.

Discing our first field. You can clearly see where the ground has been worked.

It seems these days you hear a lot about no-till technology, but it’s not the status quo for our farm. No-till offers some conservation benefits. When ground is not worked, the root structures of the previous year’s crop help keep the soil in place. The no-till process also saves time and fuel with fewer steps to plant a crop. The technology requires specialized planting equipment, though, to break through the tougher ground and deposit the seed. It also requires a no-till applicator for applying anhydrous amonia, a very common method of adding nitrogen (fertilizer) to the soil. Generally, no-till also requires more herbicide use because weeds are able to develop stronger roots that might otherwise have been disturbed or destroyed by tillage.

We do occasionally no-till, but there are several reasons we don’t regularly employ this technology. For one, we don’t have the specialized equipment required. We did modify our planter this year in the hopes of reducing tillage, but it’s still not ready for planting into thick ground cover. Our drill on the other hand cannot be modified, and we also can’t afford to upgrade to a no-till capable model at the moment. The same goes for our anhydrous applicator. We also haul manure as fertilizer. We have it readily available, and it’s natural and great for the soil, but it has to be worked into the ground. Finally, there is typically a reduction in yield when no-till technology is employed, especially the first few years. We don’t sell many crops, but we are trying to feed our cows with a limited supply of land. With the type and size of our operation, going 100% no-till just doesn’t make sense.

An anhydrous ammonia tank. This is how we add nitrogen (which corn needs to grow) to our soil.

Two weeks ago we finally had a little dry weather and got in the field to start working ground. We used the disc on a couple of fields, and just the field cultivator on another, and we’ve applied anhydrous to all three. Yesterday we even got 15 acres of corn planted, but we’ll be waiting several more days to continue as we expect rain and snow and will have to wait for it to dry out again. We still have manure to haul, more ground to work, and more fertilizer to apply before we can finish our planting. We’re off to a late start, but we’ll be going full-speed-ahead at every dry opportunity. What a different a year makes.

Let’s See What You’re Made Of!

In our introductory post (over a year ago), I mentioned that we would be making improvements to our house. At the time, there were just two things standing in our way. First, we needed to own the house, and then it needed new windows. We officially bought the house last April, and now, almost a year later – we’re finally getting windows!!

Windows were the first step for two reasons. 1 – They’re expensive, and 2 – we didn’t feel qualified to install them ourselves. To save our budget, and potential rework on other things, we felt that we had to get them out of the way first.

Our house is old. The first two rooms were built in 1883. Over the next 100 years or so it was expanded from 2 rooms to 7 through various additions and remodels. Most if not all of this work was done by the people who owned and occupied the house. We believe the basement was even hand-dug by David’s grandpa.

The windows that were in the house were of different ages and styles, but all were single pane, and several were actually cracked. It’s already so much warmer, and so much quieter, and they’re not quite done sealing everything up! Probably the most interesting thing about the process so far, though, is finding out what our walls are actually made of. The windows aren’t the only thing that were different room-to-room.

All three of these wall sections occur in the same room (our kitchen). Two of them are actually in the same wall!

The kitchen contains three different interior wall types. The first is 1/2″ plywood directly over wood studs covered in wallpaper. The second is tongue-and-groove board similar to wood siding, covered with 1/4″ plywood, covered with wallpaper. And in the same wall, the 3rd is wood lath and plaster covered in wallpaper. The kitchen was the second-to-last addition and likely the wall type along that wall changes at the break between the previous addition and the main part of the kitchen. This wall was also completely lacking insulation, so that explains the extreme temperature differential between the kitchen and the remainder of the house.

The first two walls are in our bedroom, part of the original two-room house. And the third is in the living room, the most recent portion of the house (still very old, but post-basement).

We knew the walls in our bedroom were plaster, but we had assumed that the plaster was supported by wood lath, like that in the kitchen. We were surprised to find that instead, the main support was provided by sheet rock. The first photo shows sheet rock covered by what looks like masonry cement covered by plaster. The second is actually 1/2″ plywood covered by sheet rock covered by plaster. The second location was once the front door and was converted to a window after David’s grandparents grew tired of people knocking on the door at their bedroom. The other window on the same wall matched the first photo.

The third photo was the only predictable wall type. The living room, back bedroom and office all have wood-paneling on the walls, and the openings revealed exactly what we anticipated – that the paneling was placed directly on the wall studs.

The windows look great so far. Now we’re ready to dive into more home improvement projects, and it’s nice to know what the walls we’ll be working with are actually made of!

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It’s a Heifer! And a Bull?

Wednesday evening cow number 976 had a calf. It was a heifer. The calf was pretty small, which is generally a good thing because its easier on the cow. But this time it had us puzzled; 976 was 5 days overdue, and it’s unusual for an overdue calf to be that small. The cow was up and had cleaned the calf off, so we moved her to a hut, fed her colostrum and covered her in straw to help her keep warm. Fifteen minutes later I walked by the barn, and 976 had delivered a second calf. This one was a bull.

We were disappointed for several reasons. We never like for a cow to have twin calves because it’s tough on her. On top of that, when the twin calves are different genders, often the heifer is a freemartin. This means she has received testosterone through a shared blood stream and is infertile. A freemartin heifer appears to have the reproductive parts of a female, but she grows and behaves more like a steer (castrated bull). Not all mixed twin heifers are freemartins, though. It depends on when the embryo divides. Since we couldn’t see that, we needed another way to assess the situation.

We were aware that there were indicators that could predict if the heifer was fertile, but in the past we had just raised them and waited to find out. This is where the awesomeness that is twitter comes in. We asked a couple of friends who we thought might have experience with this, and within minutes we had a free and easy check to try. The explanation that follows isn’t dinner-table conversation for most people (it is here..), but I think it’s worth sharing.

A blood test tube we normally use for pregnancy tests.

If the heifer is a freemartin it’s likely that the length of her reproductive parts would be reduced, so we used a small blood test tube (blunt with rounded edges, so it won’t puncture or tear anything) with AI lube on it and inserted into her vulva and applied gentle pressure to see how far it would go. The tube stopped at about 2 1/4″. Based on the guidance we were given, anything over 2″ means it’s worth raising her and trying to breed her. If the tube had stopped only an inch or so in, the odds of her breeding would be very low, and we would most likely sell her as a calf. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that.

The twins, bull on the left, heifer on the right.

We had a beef farmer stop earlier that evening looking for a bull calf to put on a cow who had lost her calf. We didn’t have one at the time, but he was still interested a few hours later. After we fed the bull it’s colostrum that night and in the morning, we sold him to that farmer. The heifer is a lot smaller than another calf born the same day, but hopefully she’ll start catching up soon. We’ll find out for sure if she’s fertile in 12-14 months.

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National Ag Day: Why do we farm?

Today is National Agriculture Day. I often write about what we do as a part of agriculture, but today I want to talk about why we do it. Michele Payn-Knoper wrote this post about taking the time to explain the personal nature of farming.

I’ve said too many times that farming is hard, that it’s so hard that many people aren’t willing to do it. I’m certainly not saying farming is the only difficult job out there. Engineering is hard, too, trust me. But as an engineer, I’ve never had to get up at 2 AM and go out in a cold rain to check on anything. As a farmer, I have.

So, if farming is so hard – why do we do it?

It’s a difficult question to answer – and one I’ve asked myself a million times. After all, when I met David, I wasn’t a farmer. It’s difficult to explain a decision like ours to someone who hasn’t farmed. There are certainly easier ways to make a more comfortable living. I admit that at times I needed a little convincing, but the process that convinced me didn’t include lists of pros and cons and logical reasons.

The process of buying the farm was very stressful. If we had given up and moved closer to my job, our lives would most likely be easier. But it wouldn’t be right. We talked about it, a lot. The thought of someone else milking our cows, of not seeing our calves grow up and have calves, of my husband putting on a tie every morning – it was heartbreaking. The more we worked side by side, I just knew. I understood what David always seemed sure of.

David’s veiw from the tractor while planting corn

I believe farming is something inside of us. Its a love for all things living and (for us at least) a faith that God will provide what we need. We love the good times – the newborn calves, the high milk tests, the yields that exceed expectations. The struggles, though, are what make those good times great.

The weather and our prices are two of the things we depend on most, and two of the things we have the least control over. Last year, our first year as owner/operators, neither was favorable. The past year has no doubt made us stronger. It has made us appreciate the things that do go right. If farming was easy, it wouldn’t be so rewarding.

View from the chopper.

We enjoy the challenge of doing more with less and finding new ways to do old things to make our cows and our farm better than they were before. And I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again – we take pride in continuing a tradition that started in our families over 100 years ago. Farming is truly in the cloth from which we were cut.

If its so hard, why do we farm? We farm for our families, for our cows, for our land, for all those who need something to eat and drink, and for us. We farm because it’s who we are.

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard…is what makes it great.” – Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own

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The Pulse of Milking

Our pulsators are something we rely on every day, twice a day, like so many things at the dairy. When everything’s working correctly we can forget how vital things like this are to our operation. Two weeks ago half of our pulsators quit working, and we got a brutal reminder of just how important they are.

What is a pulsator?

The pulsators are really what makes the milking units work. You can have all the suction in the world, but without a pulsator, you don’t get milk. The vacuum pump provides the suction to the milking units while the pulsators cause the shell liners to move in and out, basically squeezing then releasing on the cow’s teats.

If you’ve seen someone milk by hand you know they don’t just pull and hold, you have to pull and squeeze and release and pull and squeeze again. That’s what the pulsators do using differential pressures on the inside and outside of the liners. They also alternate so that two teats are squeezed and two are released at all times. Our pulsators are fairly loud, so you can clearly hear them switching back and forth. I guess they provide the rhythm for milking.

Here’s a short video with clips of a couple of cows milking. With our (new) clear shells, you can actually see the black liner squeeze and release. You can also hear the rhythm of pulsators and see the milk flow alternate between teats.

When the electrical box for the pulsators on one side of the barn quit, we were able to get both sides wired through one box so we could get by. They didn’t have quite enough juice, though, so a few units wouldn’t work correctly, and it really slowed things down. We milked with disabled pulsators for three days before we were able to get them fixed (it was a weekend, of course). After that experience, we’re a little more grateful for things like our pulsators and vacuum pump that really make our lives easier when they work twice a day every day.

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Bring on the Mud

We had about two feet of snow at the end of February, and last week it was over 40 degrees for several consecutive days, melting all but the tallest piles of snow. Then, on Saturday, it rained all day long. We were sitting on the couch on Sunday night, and I said to David, “Any ideas what I can blog about?” His response was “All I can think about is mud.”

To say it is muddy is an understatement. We do our best to keep everything clean and dry, but this time of year it’s nearly impossible. Every calf group has some type of shelter, a structure with a roof, to keep them dry, but our cows and calves eat outside. They have free access to the exterior of their shelters at all times. Because of this, despite our best efforts, they get muddy. They really don’t seem to mind, but boy they are a mess. And muddy cows and calves result in muddy farmers.

The muddy road through the barnyard.

This weekend I bedded down all of the huts and groups. We use a bale shredder to bed down the milk cows, but the tractor won’t fit in our calf pens.  Bedding down calves means bending over into buildings whose roofs are lower than your height and breaking apart and spreading out straw bales to give the calves something warm and dry to lay on.

In the end, the person doing this is generally a little sore and completely covered in straw. To give you a visual: I had my phone in a pocket on the inside of my vest, and I have a case that covers the charging port, and when I went to charge my phone, I had to remove a piece of straw from inside the closure over that port. I can’t explain how that happened. Bedding down calves isn’t anyone’s favorite job, but its important to keep things as clean as possible, and the calves are always appreciative.

Let me stop my complaining for a minute, though, because I’m not really complaining. Last year we went months without mud, and drought is far more difficult to deal with. So as the rain came down on Saturday, no one complained. We changed our wet clothes at noon and went back out and got our dry clothes wet without a word. We’re extremely thankful for the rain that will hopefully turn into ground moisture to help our crops and pastures grow so that our cows will have something to eat.

Because of last year’s drought, we’ve had to buy a lot more feed than normal. And because of last year’s drought, feed is hard to find and expensive. We hope to grow more feed ourselves this year and need to buy less next year. And we hope that what we do need to buy won’t cost quite so much. Given all that, bring on the mud.

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Farm Stories

After our snow day a couple of weeks ago, I sent a photo of our heifers walking along the lake to my manager at my off-farm engineering job. He included it in his weekly email to our department. A week later as I was getting ready to leave my office, filling up my water bottle before I headed home, a manager of a different department passed me and said “I saw a picture of your cows”.

He took a few steps, then stopped and asked me about the cows. He told me the story of his dad who used to haul milk, back when it was stored in cans. When he was a baby, his mother would ride along to open gates, and he would go too. He finished with something like “anyway, they love to tell that story.”

I’m really glad that he took the time to stop and tell me, and for some reason it really got me thinking. This isn’t the type of conversation that I normally encounter at work, and I have a lot of time to think during my 50 mile commute. Maybe this is something that should have been obvious, but finally it hit me: Farming is nostalgic to people who aren’t farmers.

There are some who felt the much-discussed Dodge Super Bowl ad didn’t accurately portray modern farming or modern farmers. However, most farmers I know loved it. Yes, farming has changed since Paul Harvey gave that speech in 1978, but maybe farmers aren’t so different. When the speech was given, farming innovation wasn’t new.

Bulk tank storage and the milk machine were already commonplace at that time. In fact, the milk barn we use today was already standing. Farmers have been looking for ways to improve efficiency, to do more with less, since long before 1978. However, I think many of us still cling to the values of our predecessors: honesty, integrity, and hard work. Farmers are nostalgic about farming, too.

Minnesota farmer Tim Zweber recently wrote this story about an old manure spreader that sits by their shop. And an Illinois farm wife wrote this post reminiscing about an old barn. I don’t think farmers are the only ones who enjoy these stories.

This was my great-grandparents farm in Illinois. The barns and house are gone now, but photos like this one help us remember and reminisce.

When we’re looking for the link between food and farm, maybe the nostalgia is where we connect. Maybe these farm stories are our common bond with those who left their farming roots behind. Just because we’re moving forward doesn’t mean we can’t look back.

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It’s Finally March!!

 

March has begun. For some of you this may mean spring, but there are still several inches of snow on the ground here. I’m ready for spring, but that’s not what has me excited. And for those of you wondering, this post isn’t about farming. David and I are both big college basketball fans, and March means NCAA basketball at it’s finest!

 

My parents raised me right, as an Illini fan, and in my time at Illinois I grew to truly cherish basketball season, and especially March. I refuse to believe there is any post season event in any sport better than the NCAA tournament and ultimately the Final Four. I got the opportunity to attend the Final Four in 2005 when my Illini were the number one number one seed. Unfortunately we lost the title game, but it was still one of the best events I’ve ever experienced.

 

My friend Tiffany and I at the 2005 Final Four. I apologize for the picture quality – this photo was originally taken with a disposable camera.

 

If you’re questioning my level of basketball crazy, let me elaborate. I was a member of Orange Krush at Illinois. Orange Krush isn’t just a student section. To be a member you have to raise money for the Orange Krush Foundation, which has donated well over 1 million dollars to various charities over the last several years. I was an All American Member, which means I raised $3 per 3-point-shot, that’s about $750 a year. This status gave me preference for floor seats, but no seats were guaranteed. If you wanted the best seats, you had to get there first. The doors opened an hour before the game. To get floor seats you generally needed to be there at least two hours before that. For big games it was often more like six hours. My seats were usually front row right next to the opposing team’s bench. I actually purchased my first Cahartt coat to keep warm while waiting outside for basketball games – remember, this was Illinois in December through February. Anyone can wait outside when it’s 70…CLICK HERE to view a great video about the Orange Krush.  You can see me in my college days around 0:41.

 

I also paid enough attention to the teams that when David bought me a piece of the Assembly Hall court as a 2011 Christmas gift, I recognized the game the photo it was framed with was from. It was a “break game” (over the holidays) from the 2005-2006 season against Iowa. We let Iowa make a comeback near the end, but came away with the “W”. The break games didn’t follow the same ticketing/seating procedures, and I had managed to get tickets for my parents as a gift. I actually found myself and my parents in the photo sitting (well, standing…) on the sideline. It’s maybe the best gift I’ve ever received, even though he had no idea.

 

The top picture is the one I was able to spot my family and I in. The other two are what clued me into which game this was. The orange at bottom center is a piece of that floor that gave me so many memories.

 

Since meeting David, I’ve also adopted the Kansas State Wildcats as my local favorite team. We actually have a K-State/Illini room that serves as an office, where that picture and piece of the hardwood hang. As you can imagine, this has been an especially fun season since K-State hired Illinois’ former coach, Bruce Weber, who was in Champaign during my tenure. I actually met him several times, and as most who know me know, I think very highly of him as a person and a coach. I was thrilled when K-State hired him because it felt like I got to “keep him” as “my coach”. Now both of our teams are doing well and look to be headed to the tourney.

 

My friends and I were at the park practicing for our concrete canoe competition. Coach Weber was there speaking at a charity event. He was the reigning National Coach of the Year, and it was the day after the team’s first practice of the new season, but he graciously said hello and posed for this photo, again taken with a disposable camera.

 

Don’t be surprised if we set a TV up in the milk barn during the first two rounds. It’s March; anything goes!

 

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A Calf Is Born

Pregnant cows and heifers within 2-3 weeks of their due date live in the pasture closest to the dairy. When it’s raining or extremely cold, we’ll bring the pregnant ladies into the barn next to the house, for their comfort and ours. Most of the time, though, they’re better off with more space where they can go off on their own and calve in peace. In this pasture “off on their own” is still easily visible to us. We keep a close eye on them and get involved when necessary. It’s better for the cow, if she can, to deliver the calf unassisted.

This heifer calf was born just before sunrise on February 3rd.

After a calf is born, the mother (dam) needs to get up to clean the calf off. Often this is where we come in, reminding her she needs to get up. We will also check the calf and make sure its airways are clear of mucus. We typically leave the pair together until the calf is cleaned off, and usually until it can walk. It will start trying to stand within the first hour, and usually the calf can walk within 2 hours of its birth.  Check out my first video of the calf in the first 2 hours of it’s life, trying to stand and taking it’s first steps (set to great music: Stoney Larue – “Travelin’ Kind”).

We then bring both the cow and calf in from the pasture. The calf gets her very own cozy hut, bedded with straw in the winter or sand in the summer. The cow heads to the barn, where we milk her for the first time. Her milk this first time is actually colostrum, a thicker version of milk with tons of good stuff meant just for her calf. (Read about cows freshening here.)

The heifer’s colostrum in the stainless steel bucket. The calf will drink this for it’s first two feedings.

We collect the colostrum in a stainless steel bucket and feed it to the calf by bottle. We feed 2 quarts at its first feeding and save 2 quarts for its second feeding. We also give the calf a probiotic to help its immune system get started. Finally, we give the calf an ear tag with its number, and sometimes it’s name. (Read about our naming practices here.)

Number 1205. The “BLVR” on it’s tag stands for Boliver, the name of her sire (dad). Her dam (mom) is number 1108.

Related articles from other blogs:

• Twin calves on the dairy farm.
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