Creekside Natural Farm, Minooka, IL – Blog

Garlic Scape Pesto Recipe

1/2 cup garlic scapes, finely chopped

1 T fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup olive oil

3 cups grated Parmesan cheese (use real cheese – not Kraft in a can)

Salt to taste (optional)

Fresh cracked pepper

Put garlic scapes and lemon juice a food processor with the steel blade, and process until scapes are finely chopped. With food processor running, add oil through the feed tube and process less than 30 seconds. Remove lid, add half of Parmesan cheese and process until well mixed less than 10-20 seconds or use the pulse to mix the pesto, then add the rest of cheese and Pepper. Process until all the pesto is mixed well.

We will have tickets available for the Joliet Area Community Hospice Garden Walk.  The garden walk is on June 23rd from 9 am till 4 pm and is a fundraiser for Hospice.  Our farm will be part of this years garden walk. We will be selling the tickets at the Minooka farmers market this week and next week and will also have them available at the farm.

Ticket price is $10.00

Whole Chicken

Our pasture raised, organic chickens are ready! We will have them in the freezer until their sold out.

After about 2 weeks in the brooder room under heat lamps, our chickens are raised  outside in the pasture.  We move their shelter to fresh grass every day.  They are fed only certified organic high protien feed. No GMO grains! They are processed at Central Illinois Poultry Processing – the only certified inspected poultry processor in the state. They are packaged in heavy plastic and vacuum sealed – ready for the freezer.

The price will be $4.00 per lb for whole chickens and .55 cents extra per bird (not per lb) for cut up chickens.  We do not include the necks, liver & gizzards so you are not paying for that. You are also not paying for added water.

Since the chickens are kept in the freezer,  you can only purchase them when we are home.  If you would like to purchase chicken, you can either call 815-467-5259 pr e-mail pam@creeksidenaturalfarm.com to make arrangements.

My aunt brought us 2 Arkansas barn kittens. Meet Tiger and Blackie – Not too original – I know.  They don’t care for Baron and we want them to think of the barn as home so we are starting them out in a crate.

We picked, washed and spun lots of lettuce this morning (before things heated up!). It’s in 1 gallon bags in the cooler for $4.00 per bag.

We are selling our extra heirloom tomato plants in the vegetable stand. They are growing in organic mix and are in a 4″ pot for $2.00 each. Each plant is labeled with the variety name – Arkansas Traveler, Box Car Willy, Master Caruso, Ana Asa, Cherokee Purple, Royal Hillbilly, Sun Gold cherry & Black Cherry are some of the varieties.

We have opened the stand and there are egggs in the cooler!

 These eggs come from our hens that eat certified organic feed (no GMO’s and no animal bi-products) and whatever they find in their large pasture. Our hens are Certified Humane Raised and Handled.

Eggs are $4.00 per dozen and you can leave your payment in the drop-box in the vegetable stand if we are not around.

Due to the increase in the price of Certified Organic chicken feed we will be increasing the price of our eggs to $4.00 per dozen effective this week. Although Organic feed is more than double the price of non-organic, it’s important to us (and we believe to our customers) to continue to use feed that was grown with no insecticide, herbicide or synthetic fertilizers and does not contain Genetically Modified grains.

Spring is here at Creekside Natural Farm, and we’re busy prepping fields, planting, and enjoying all of the great flowers and flowering trees that are springing up, so we thought we would share the view!

Hyacinth near the water garden

Tulip near the water garden

We have a new stone grinder (100% made in America!) that will give us the capability to grind our own heirloom corn meal as well as grinding feed for the chickens.

If you have a request for a vegetable that we did not offer last year, please let us know. We are currently ordering our seed for the coming season.

Libby, I ordered the speckled butterbeans and purple hull peas for you (and me).

Today was moving day for the baby hens (and Rudy). They moved from the brooder room to a larger stall in the barn. They will stay there until they are large enough to move in with the adult hens.  Rudy is the black chick in the picture. He came as a free “exotic” chick with our last batch of meat birds. We chose the name because he would push through the much larger broiler chickens to get to the food.

We have a very limited amount of stone ground (by us) heirloom corn meal available for sale. The variety is Northstein Dent and it was grown with organic seed purchased from Johnny’s Selected Seed. It is naturally sweet and you may need to adjust your cornbread recipe if you don’t like it too sweet.

This is part of the description in their seed catalog:

” A favorite for sweet, delicious cornmeal for baking.  While not high yielding, Nothstine’s flavor is enough reason to grow it. We began with 50 seeds of this classic Northern Michigan heirloom in 1975.”

We are selling it in 1 & 1/2 lb bags for $5.00

Our laying hens are officially Certified Humanely raised and handled!

Here is what our inspector Kimberly wrote:

“This is a very nice, well maintained small farm managed by very conscientious people.  The birds are in very good condition in a beautiful environment.  They are cared for very well and this inspector would be proud to have this producer on the Certified Humane program.

2 of the alpacas we will be getting in March from Heritage farm. The white girl is Freedom and the brown girl is Belle.  Freedom is a maiden about 18 months old (she has not been bred) and Bell is 7 years old and has a male cria who will come with her. He is also dark brown. We will also be getting 2 more white females who look just like Freedom and another fawn colored male cria so the other baby won’t be lonely!

I picked what will be the last of the lettuce for this season. The cold – cold temps coming tonight will most likely be the end of it. It will be in the cooler.

Whole Chicken

We took the chickens to be processed today. If you pre-ordered, they will be available starting tomorrow. Please call to let us know what time you will be picking them up since they are in our freezer. 

 We also have some available for sale even if you didn’t pre-order. They are $3.75 per lb for whole chickens and an additional .55 cents per chicken for cut-up. They were pasture raised and fed all organic feed. No GMO grain and no pesticides or herbicides on their food or pasture.

We have pears in the stand. They are in bags of 2 lbs each for $4.00.

Beets

This morning I picked some really nice beets. They will be bagged and in the cooler. We are selling them without the tops because the chickens love the tops!

Also picked lettuce, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers. Still have sweet potatoes, garlic and peppers in the stand too.

Finally getting a chance to update! The sweet potatoes have been dug, cured and are in the stand! Very yummy and no pesticides! We also have lettuce (even better than the spring lettuce!). We are picking Sungold and Black Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini from the hoop house.  We still have some heirloom tomatoes that were not affected by the frost, some beautiful eggplant that was covered before the frost, several types of  peppers and green tomatoes for those who like to fry them. There are also several mums for sale.