It is the mission of Roberts’ Farm to respect God’s creation by upholding principles that allow us to:

1. promote the benefits of nutrient dense foods by raising animals and growing produce naturally, the way He intended;

2. be good stewards of His harvest by preserving and sharing our bounty;

3. And witness to others God’s hand in our endeavors.

 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.  This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15:1-8

As we were preparing for this newsletter, we read the above verses.  Looking back, we can see evidence of how we have been “pruned” in 2009.  In January, we disconnected our satellite TV.  We wanted to redirect some of our money from something that pulled us away from time with God to something that would bring us closer to Him.  After the initial week of being without it, we started to find other ways of using our time.  We still watch movies and TV series (from when TV still had a shred of moral responsibility), like Little House on the Prairie.  (And the boys do still see some satellite TV next door, at my parents’ house…)  We have enjoyed listening to the radio for our sports.  We listened to many of the Indians’ games outside by a campfire last summer, which was relaxing & fun! 

The radio has also been a major help in our walk with Christ.  We have found great programs through Moody Radio.  It was a particular blessing for Dawn and I this summer.  In August, the ELCA church hierarchy decided to dismiss what the bible says and replace it with what the “world” says.  This caused Dawn and I to question our affiliation with the ELCA and really think about what was important to us in our Christian walk.  After much study and prayer, we left our church in October.  This was a very sad time for us.  We left many people we love and care for, but we could no longer worship in a church denomination who chose to depart from biblical teachings.  So, our family, along with about 40 or so like-minded friends, have formed a group that meets on Sunday mornings, and worships & studies the Bible together.  It has been an eye-opening & wonderful experience.  In fact, the whole situation, from start to finish, has demonstrated how God works good out of things that are perceived to be bad at the time.  Throughout 2010 we will be hosting a weekly Bible study at our house. Anyone is invited to join us.  It’s so easy to become discouraged with our world.  BUT, THERE IS HOPE!   God is still in control.  It’s been exciting to me to “chart” our walk with Him, and look forward to posting some of my journal entries to our future “blog”.  Be sure to check out our website periodically to see what’s new!

Michael and Paul enjoyed playing baseball again last spring.  They were on the same team in 2009, which was great for us parents!  I helped coach and really enjoyed being able to be with both boys.  Having them on the same team presents challenges, too.  It sparks competition, and since this was Paul’s first year on kid pitch and Michael’s second, Paul was a bit discouraged.  This year they will be on separate teams again, so I think Paul will have a little more fun.  Paul loves playing outfield and even got to pitch a little in the spring.  Michael also played fall baseball.  He really enjoys catching.

At the end of June, after baseball was over, Dawn and I were left alone on the farm for 10 days.  My parents and sister took the boys on a trip to see my brother in Nebraska.  They spent 4 days in Nebraska and then they all traveled to northern Minnesota to visit some friends.  Our friends live on a lake, so the boys got to fish and swim as much as they wanted.  They ended their trip in Minneapolis and got to see where I spent the early years of my life.  They also went to the Mall of America.  Needless to say, we were very happy to have them back.  It was very quiet, but very lonely.

Some of you may know of the tree house saga that I have been wrapped up in since 2007.  I embarked on a mission to build the boys a tree house Christmas 2007.  After starting and stopping at least a dozen times, re-designing several times, and just plain giving up, I finally got the foundation done early last summer.  I hope to finish it this summer, so at least they will enjoy it for a year or two!

Probably the most monumental “pruning” in our lives last year, besides our leaving the ELCA, was beginning to homeschool the boys.  Dawn and I started to feel that God was leading us to begin homeschooling about mid-way through the 2008-2009 school year.  We continued to pray, and by the end of that school year, we were convinced of our path.  With the help of our brother-in-law, Matt, we found a Christian based curriculum (My Father’s World), purchased it, and started teaching the end of August.  The whole experience has been a blessing to all of us.  Dawn does the bulk of the teaching: bible, english, reading, spelling, social studies, science, and geography.  I do the math, science experiments, nature walks, and practical implementation of what they are learning. 

In 2009, our goal was to have a big garden so we could can and freeze enough produce so we could have, say, tomato sauce four times a week, every week if we wanted to.  We figured out how much of each plant we would need to meet our goal.  Then we figured out how much space all those plants would take.  Then we decided to invest in a drip irrigation watering system to make sure we would have enough produce.  We rented a large roto-tiller and worked up a garden area that was about 280 feet long and 60 feet wide!  Most of our plants were from heirloom seed started by us or one of our customers (THANKS, SUSY!).  It seemed to us that everything was in place for us to have the best producing garden we have ever had.  Well, first, the bigger the garden the more weeding there is.  Weeding takes A LOT of time and labor.  Dawn, Michael, Paul, my mom Cora, and I kept up pretty good until July.  Next, there was this airborne tomato virus that infected ALL of our plants.  From 80 tomato plants we got about 20 quarts of sauce and juice.  Our green and yellow beans did very well this year, but picking beans is very labor intensive.  We could have picked 20 pounds of beans every day from July until September, but we just didn’t have the hours or the determination to do it.  So, this is our plan for 2010.  We are going to have a small garden, that we can handle labor wise and weeding wise.  There isn’t much we can do about disease, but at least if it hits again, we won’t be out as much.

As we mentioned last year, we wanted to try leaving our calves WITH their moms this year.  That didn’t work for us!  What DID work, was a “kiwi feeding system”, a 55 gallon drum with 15 nipples staggered around it with tubes in the barrels to go down to the fresh milk we poured in after each milking.  Nothing cuter than a bunch of calves drinking around ONE BIG BOTTLE!

2009 ANIMAL UPDATE:

Dairy Cows - milked 15 at peak, milked for 36 weeks; Made about 350 pounds of butter in 2009; Bottled about 40 gal/wk for ourselves & herdshare customers

Calves - 23 calves (14 heifers, 9 bulls)

Chickens - 125 egglayers laid around 1100 dozen eggs in 2009

150 Meat Chickens (averaged 4 pounds each)

50 Turkeys (biggest about 19 pounds)

Grass-fed Beef-  butchered 8 beef for 2009, raising 17 for 2010!

For ordering/pricing details, call us or download forms from our website.

THANKS!

A PEEK INTO OUR KITCHEN…

2009 has been a very busy one in our kitchen!  This Spring, we purchased an Excalibur Food Dehydrator.  We had read a lot about the health benefits of drying fruits & vegetables, and how much less space it took to store the end product.  And this dehydrator is MADE IN THE USA!  We have not been disappointed.  We have enjoyed dried strawberries, beef jerky, croutons from our sourdough bread, and it has been awesome as a yogurt incubator!  We are looking forward to experimenting more with it in 2010.

From a farmer friend in Kansas, we learned the secret to freezing milk.  WHAT A BLESSING THAT HAS BEEN!  The “secret” was to not allow the cream to separate from the milk before it freezes solid.  That means once we put the cold milk in the freezer, every hour we had to shake the jugs until totally frozen.  At first this was a bit difficult to accomplish, but with the aid of timers and alarms to remind us, it just became part of that day’s routine.  Because of Ken’s help and advice, we and our dairy herdshare customers are enjoying thawed frozen milk MINUS the “thick pulp” we experienced last year.  THANK YOU KEN KING!  Ken also advised us on the health benefits of direct-set yogurt.  This greatly reduced my weekly labor of yogurt-making, because you take warm, fresh milk, whisk in your maple syrup & vanilla (optional), whisk in the yogurt starter, and incubate at 101° for 24 hours.  It is not as thick as heated yogurt, but is healthier for you because it hasn’t been exposed to the high heat.  We made an average of 8 quarts of yogurt (plain & vanilla) each week this summer.

Mike was our official butter maker, and my part was the weighing & rolling.  We made almost 350 pounds of butter!  That’s more than double last year’s amount!  We use an electric churn, and will probably use two in 2010.  All our butter is cultured with our plain yogurt and salted with sea salt.  It is fun to watch the butter change colors throughout the seasons—bright yellow in the spring and fall, and more of a dull yellow during the hot, summer weeks.  We did make ricotta & mozzarella cheese again this year for our family and some of our herdshare owners.  I hope to get on more of a regular schedule for making that in 2010...we all love cheese, so it disappears rather quickly!  Another addition to our dairy product line has been ICE CREAM!  We have a friend who has an ice cream freezer run by a  “hit-or-miss” engine that can make 4 gallons of ice cream at a time.  He uses our milk, cream, eggs, dehydrated cane juice, and his “secret recipe” to create an AWESOME raw, preservative-free, natural vanilla ice cream.  It was such a blessing to find him—THANKS, KEITH!

Early Summer, we purchased some kefir grains and a kombucha SCOBY [Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast].  I learned kefir grains FLOURISH in our milk, and was able to pass them on to others, freeze some, and share some with the chickens!  I hope to experiment with some kefir cheeses in 2010.  [Kefir is a microbial rich food which contains strains of beneficial yeast and bacteria that give it natural, antibiotic properties.]  Mike’s project was the kombucha tea.  It was a once a week task, and we all enjoyed it!  He made it for most of the summer.  The hardest part was finding the organic black tea bags at a local store close to home!  Because of that, we discontinued making it this fall. We hope to restart some time in 2010.  [Kombucha tea is a fermented beverage that can provide our bodies with additional glucuronic acid which can aid our body’s natural cleasing process, boost our immune system, and is said to fight against cancer and other degenerative diseases.  It has a fizzy, acidic, and slightly sweet taste...delicious and refreshing on a hot day!]  We’re always happy to share our extra grains or SCOBYs with anyone who would like to try their own batches at home.

We are continuing to try and eliminate processed foods from our diet.  Lunch meat was a difficult one to give up, but we have perfected a recipe for homemade salami with our own ground beef, and that has helped a lot.  We have also enjoyed making our own beef jerky (from ground beef) which, when sliced thinly, has been a great alternative to pepperoni.  Every once in awhile we will also smoke a turkey or chicken and slice it for lunch meat.  It definitely takes more time to prepare these, but for our family, it has definitely been worth the effort!

Another experiment we did in 2009 was to try and NOT use our microwave.  We are happy to report success to that effort, and are looking forward to removing it in 2010. 

We’re now making all our own beef and chicken broths.  Before, I would make broth a little at a time—which usually meant a couple quarts at most, and I would freeze it for a future use.  It usually wasn’t enough for an entire next recipe, so I’d buy some.  Since my freezer was FULL of chicken necks and backs and beef bones WAITING to be made into broth, I finally decided to just get them all out and make broth in two 18-quart roasters for a week and see how much I got...WOW.  What a blessing that was!  My yield was about 12 quarts per roaster, and we made 8 roasterfulls in 2009!  Mike’s Mom is our “official canner”, and graciously tackled that part for us.  So, after that, I decided I would no longer freeze any more “broth parts”.  That means, the week after chicken butchering day is slotted to make roasters full of broth.  How fun it was to also be able to use our own carrots, celery, and onions!  We did the same thing with our beef bones when we brought home a load of beef from the butcher shop.  It’s awesome having shelves of broth!  One of Michael’s favorite breakfasts is “whey soup” which is 2 cups of broth to 1 cup of whey plus some alphabet egg noodles and sea salt.  [Whey is a byproduct from making cheese or draining yogurt or kefir.  It contains a lot of minerals which also aid in digestion.  We keep and freeze all our whey.  Some we freeze in 1 cup portions which is perfect to add to soup recipes to increase the healthiness of the broths.  Whey is also used in the lacto-fermentation process which we experimented in this year as well—tried pickles & sour kraut and they were GREAT!  We also cook our rice and de-gas our beans in whey.]

Eliminating high fructose corn syrup is yet another task we continued to take on in 2009.  We have been amazed at how many foods contain it...from salad dressings, to ketchup, to store bought bread, to sports drinks!  We have found that Newman’s Own Ranch Dressing, Heintz Organic Ketchup, some Snapple drinks, and some Boylan Soda do not contain HFCS.  So, if we can’t make it ourselves, we buy those for a special treat.  I have converted to only using olive oil and organic balsamic vinegar for salad dressing, and I LOVE it.  Mike and the boys will occasionally join me, but haven’t seemed to enjoy it as much as I do… 

Something else new for us in 2009 has been the daily baking of sourdough bread.  One of our customers (THANKS, CHERIE!) gave us a cup of her sourdough starter, and I have been making and baking everyday since!  Once I got the process down, it really wasn’t hard to fit it into our daily routine.  So, each day I feed my starter and make 2 round loaves of bread.  What we don’t eat, I freeze.  Mike’s Mom has been experimenting with pizza crusts and biscuits.  I’d be happy to share my starter and recipe with anyone who’d like to try their own breadmaking at home!  [The fermentation of a “natural leaven” vs. brewers yeast results in a bread that is more digestible, tastier, and spoils less easily.]  We’re hopeful we can also experiment with grinding our own flour in 2010...

This fall, we added cod liver oil to our diet.  We decided to try Green Pasture’s Blue Ice Fermented Cod Liver Oil.  We bought the capsules so there is no “fishy” taste!  (Figured it would be easier to get the boys to try it in this form first…)  There is much to read out there about the benefits of cod liver oil, and we highly recommend beginning with the Weston A. Price Foundation.  There are significant price breaks in shipping fees for large orders, so if anyone would like to join in on our ordering, we’d be happy to coordinate that.

So, when you combine all-of-the-above, along with our raw dairy, pasture raised poultry and eggs, organically raised produce, and grass-fed beef, what do you get?  GOOD HEALTH!  Another year of no doctor visits, stat-care, vaccines, or antibiotics FOR ANY OF US.  We’ve had some runny noses and a couple fevers, but nothing that lasted more than 24 hours.  For the most part, we’ve been able to avoid even taking acetaminaphen and ibuprofen, too!   Our food/cooking journey has been a lot of work, but is now becoming the “new normal”, and we are SO THANKFUL for the wonderful results.  We pray others will be inspired by our testimony and join us in the journey to consuming nourishing, whole foods—like our ancestors used to eat.  CHEERS! 

BEES

Something brand new to our farm this year are honeybees.  Our good friends are avid beekeepers (THANKS, BROOKS & JEN!) and helped to set us up with a hive full of bees in the spring.  What a fantastic learning experience this has been.  Honeybees are an amazing creature.  The bees come in a screen covered box in the spring.  There are probably 10,000 bees in the box plus one queen in a small box, inside the big box.  The queen is in her own cage, so the other bees can get used to her scent and not kill her.  When you get the “package” of bees, you take off the lid to the box and shake the bees out of the box into your hive.  It’s awesome!  Most people, including us, would have thought that the bees would instantly attack anyone fool enough to shake 10,000 bees out of a box into another one.  However, the bees could care less.  They just want a home and a queen to serve.  After you shake out the bees, you hang the queen in her cage in with the rest of the bees.  Over the next week, the bees will eat away a candy plug that keeps the queen in the cage.  Then she starts laying eggs and the hive starts to function.  I enjoyed taking a few minutes out of the hot summer days to sit and watch the bees doing their work.  You can see the worker bees coming back to the hive with pollen on their legs.  It is amazing how many different colors of pollen there are!  We would encourage all of you to read about honeybees.  You’ll be amazed at how complex a creature they are.

MICHAEL & PAUL’S EGG BUSINESS

Unfortunately, the chickens didn’t cooperate with CONSISTENT egglaying in 2009.  They continue to challenge us!  Main problem is they eat more than they give us, which is the reason for the rate increase as of 2-1-10.  Mike has been experimenting with feed, in hopes of creating more of a margin of practicality in raising them, so we’ll give them another year to see if it works…All-in-all, the boys did a fine job of collecting, washing, crating, tracking, & scheduling the eggs.  We assisted, but the bulk of the work was done by them.  They were able to learn some basic accounting skills, and for 2010, they’re learning about budgeting, which will hopefully be another lifelong skill acquired.  For 2010, they have decided to sponsor a child in Colombia with a scholarship to attend school at Colegio Peniel.  They have also enjoyed saving and spending some of their profits on favorite things like baseball cards and Legos!  We thank our egg customers for your patience during the “strikes” and pray 2010 is an egg stable year!

With everything written about so far, it only seems natural for us to also take a look at the chemicals in products that have contact to our skin.  UGGHHH.  We’ve begun the process of phasing out all commercial lotions, soaps, shampoos, dishsoap, & laundry detergent.  Believe it or not, lye soap is a perfect substitute for ALL of those things!  So far, we have been very pleased with the results.  We have a long way to go, but we ARE PROGRESSING!

PLANS FOR 2010...

· New and improved logo, website, and blog (THANKS, BRIAN!)

· More fence and waterline to put in

· Adding kefir and ice cream to our dairy herdshares

· Perhaps the addition of a walk-in freezer ?

· Honey for sale from our bees ?

· Weekly bible studies—just call us first to find out when the next one is!

FOODS TO AVOID:

· Artificial sweeteners like Nutra Sweet & Equal (anything with Aspartame)

· Soy anything (except ink!)

· Homogenized, lowfat or skim milk products

· Refined sugars & white flour

· Most commercial liquid vegetable oils

· Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils

· Extruded cereal grains like in flakes, shapes, rice cakes, etc.

· Genetically Modified Seeds (GMO’s) & products made from those seeds

· Iodized salt

· High Fructose Corn Syrup

· Monosodium Glutomate (MSG)

· Processed foods

· Margarine

· Anything with Fluoride in it

FOODS FOR GOOD HEALTH:

· Natural sweeteners like raw honey, maple syrup & sugar, molasses, dehydrated cane sugar juices

· Clean, whole, raw milk products from grass-fed cows

· Cod liver oil

· Brown rice, whole grain flours without additives

· Sourdough or sprouted breads

· Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, & palm oil

· Meat (& fat) from animals allowed to graze

· Unrefined sea salt

· Lacto-fermented vegetables & beverages

· Fresh eggs from pastured poultry

· Fresh, unsprayed, local fruits & vegetables

Snapshot of ...ROBERTS’ FARM LIBRARY (as of 1-12-10)

COOKBOOKS:

The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook by, Shannon Hayes

Pasture Perfect by, Jo Robinson

Nourishing Traditions by, Sally Fallon

Whole Foods For The Whole Family by, La Leche League International

BOOKS:

The Raw Truth About Milk by, William Campbell Douglas, MD

You Can Farm, Salad Bar Beef, Pastured Poultry Profits, Family Friendly Farming, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal by, Joel Salatin

Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens by, Gail Damerow

Storey’s Guide to Raising Turkeys by, Leonard S. Mercia

Grassfed To Finish & Farm Fresh by, Allan Nation

Management Intensive Grazing by, Jim Gerrish

Make Your Small Farm Profitable by, Ron Macher

How To Direct Market Your Beef by, Jan Holder

From The Fryer To The Fuel Tank by Joshua Tickell

Growing Great Garlic by, Ron L. Engeland

Alternative Treatments for Ruminant Animals by, Paul Dettloff, DVM

DVD’s:

“The Future of Food”

“Sweet Misery:  A Poisoned World” (about aspartame & artificial sweeteners)

“The Great Global Warming Swindle”

“Apocalypse?  No!  Why Global Warming is not a Global Crisis”

PUBLICATIONS:

The Stockman Grass Farmer (monthly magazines)

The Douglas Report (monthly reports)

Wise Traditions (quarterly magazines)

Weston A. Price Foundation fliers:  Cod Liver Oil, Myths & Truths About Cholestrol, How To Protect Yourself Against Cancer With Food, Soy Alert, All About Trans Fats, Got Butter?, A Campaign For Real Milk, Cow-Share Programs

Farmer-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (information & applications)

Home School Legal Defense Association (information & application)

PROUD MEMBERS OF:

· Weston A. Price Foundation—www.westonaprice.org & www.realmilk.com—202-363-4394

· Farmer-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund—www.farmtoconsumer.org—703-208-3276

· Home School Legal Defense Association—www.hslda.org—540-338-5600

· Constitution Party of Ohio—www.cpofohio.org—740-368-0008

· Canton Connections to Whole Food and Nutritional Healing—www.wholefood.meetup.com

· www.localharvest.org