This weekend Todd and I were talking about how we so wish that there was a way we make a living with our little farm. Selling eggs, raising Heritage Breeds for preservation, fostering the eat and buy local movement, it should be worth something right?

It is…

The payoff comes in the message. It is a message of hope that yes, everyone can bridge the disconnect we have with our food, our communities and our world as a whole. I try not preach at my readers, I really do. And I try to keep my personal views somewhat contained. You don’t find talk of religion and politics here, they are important of course. But we are here to share our experiences with the hope that others might find them interesting enough to try for themselves. I am going to break with tradition a bit and share something with you today. I know my readers know that I fully support buying from local food producers. And that includes meat. We eat meat if I “know” the meat. That means that I personally have met the farmer, visited the farm and met the animals in their care. I still struggle at times with it because animals and I have a thing…I just tend to “get them” in way others don’t. Luckily for me I have met others like me in my life and I am personable enough in my social life that I can fend off that “crazy animal lady” stereotype.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I have been struggling lately with myself. I keep wondering “why?” Even my parents think my views are silly. Can you imagine how hard it is to be the person I am and have your own family disrespect it SO much that it seems every conversation is an intentional slap to my face? They won’t even eat the eggs we produce. Go figure…Then this morning I pop onto facebook (yes, I know…me on facebook, isn’t that funny?!?!?) and a local group, The Binghamton Animal Alliance is showing a screening of “Peaceable Kingdom, The Journey Home”. This is a film I have been following due to its subject matter…ethics in farming.

I am going to embed the video here for you. It isn’t a PETA propaganda laced film, it is a beautifully produced documentary of the reality of where our meat comes from. It isn’t meant to shock or scare you, but rather give you a glimpse inside a world we rarely see. It is the glimpse inside that world that makes my believe what I do and why we are trying to live our lives here at the farm in the way we do. The movie is about an hour long, I really hope that you’ll stop to watch at least some of it, and it has Spanish subtitles. I welcome your feedback as well.

Let me preface this by saying, we don’t eat like this all the time. If we did we would all weigh 800 lbs. But sometimes you just need old fashioned, fat laden, comfort food. Actually this whole weekend has been that way…you can really tell when I am under the weather! So with a major sinus infection and wicked cold I headed into the kitchen last night and made a huge casserole size chicken pot pie. And then this morning, with the rain pouring down and my head still pounding…I made biscuits, scrambled duck eggs and bacon. Sounds normal enough, except the biscuits are made with home-churned butter made with organic heavy cream and the eggs are our own organics from our heritage breed ducks. The bacon, oh…the bacon…is the gorgeous organic bacon form Kingbird Farm.

Since I know not everyone is lucky like me (grin) and has adorable little duckies just popping out eggs right and left, or access to the amazing bacon…the very least I can do is share a recipe for some simple, out of this world biscuits.

I use freshly made butter, but feel free to use regular ol’ store bought butter if that is what you have.

Ingredients:

2-1/2 cups self rising flour (if you can find organic…use it)
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 to 1 cup cold milk-full fat
1/2 cup ice cold butter cut into cubes

Preheat your oven to 450 and gather up a mixing bowl, spatula, cookie sheet and your wet and dry ingredients. Now comes the fun part…Please excuse my photos, like I said, it’s pouring outside and the light is low at best.

Place your dry ingredients in your mixing bowl and whisk to combine. Then add the butter, and with your fingers, just rub the butter into the flour. You will have big chinks, little chunks and medium chunks. See the image above? There is a reason for this, you want nice little chunks of butter because that is what gives you that nice flaky, tender layered biscuit. Let’s move on…

Now add 3/4 cups of the milk to the bowl. Reserve the other quarter of a cup for right now. Grab your spatula (and recommend a silicone spatula for biscuits to stave off that stuck on glue that biscuit dough is)

Mix until just combined…it will be lumpy and that’s ok. If it is super dry add a bit more of your milk until you get something that looks like the shaggy mess above. Again…DO NOT go crazy mixing! We aren’t trying to make hockey pucks, we are shooting for biscuits so put the spatula down and walk away…you heard me…put it down…now.

There should be a picture here but I was all alone and I really did not want to cover my beloved little Canon Rebel in biscuit goo so read on…

Dump your mix onto a well floured surface and, with floured hands, gather the dough together gently. Give it 3-5 turns in the flour until it comes together into a soft dough. pat or foll it out to about 1/2 inches think and then cut out your biscuits using a floured biscuit cutter or a a glass (that’s what I use).

Now place the biscuits onto your cookie sheet and place them in the oven. See the butter glistening in the photo? mmmmmm……flaky goodness coming our way.

After about 10-12 minutes grab them out of the oven and this is what you’ll see….

Big, huge, glorious, bursting with butter flavored flaky, yummy biscuits. The whole thing takes minutes to do and tastes SO MUCH better than those hard, tough flat things that come from a box.

And here we have our plate of day-glo yellow organic duck eggs, biscuits and organic bacon…no fancy plating here folks…it’s Sunday breakfast on the farm!

Have a wonderful Sunday and do something delicious!

Colleen