Onions and Cheese and Soup

It is officially soup time here at Mule Shoe Farm. This year, we kicked off soup season with one of our favorites: French Onion Soup. For such a simple soup, it sticks to your ribs and just completely warms you up on this cold days.

The ingredients are deceptively simple: onions, beef stock, butter, old bread and cheese.

Slice 1 or 2 large onions into rings and saute over low heat in a stick of butter.

Then add your beef stock. I use a 3 gallon stockpot and add enough water to make it about two-thirds full of soup.

You can make stock using bouillon and water which is somewhat salty or you can spend an extra dollar and buy a jar of reduced beef stock. The reduced stock makes a huge difference in the more delicious direction.

Bring the soup to a boil and reduce heat to low. Simmer for however long you want or don't simmer at all. Turn your oven to Broil and let it heat up. This is when you can simmer the soup.

Ladle soup into oven safe bowls. place a large slice of brown bread and a slice of cheese. Any cheese from cheddar to provolone to Swiss will do. But you want the stuff that will melt. Not the commodity cheese for this meal.

Place the bowls on a large cookie sheet and carefully slide them into the oven. Check on the bowls every so often to see the status of the melted cheese. If you just want it melted then it's only a minute or so. I like mine with a little brownness on the cheese. Some days that takes 5-7 minutes.

GET THE POTHOLDERS. I have to remind myself. The cookie sheet will be HOT!!!!

Carefully slide the cookie sheet out of the oven and place it on the counter to cool.

Allow the bowls to cool to a temperature you can handle and then serve the soup. It should be very warm but not scalding hot.

This is a soup that you will end up eating with a fork and spoon. And you will be astonished at how filling it really is. Make sure you have plenty of cold water available to drink with this soup.

And now we will have a Martha Stewart moment...

Watering House Plants

Find out what to do about the chlorine in your tap water when you need to water your houseplants -->

What a Mug!

I had a close encounter with Sevin Dust.

My friend, who will always remain nameless, may possibly been using the stuff off-label which I know is a huge OSHA no-no. "If it works, use it" is a small farm mantra. No, I'm not turning over a chemical leaf. My friend is not particularly chemical oriented either. She prefers the natural approach. So here's what happened.

She received, in barter, three pygmie goats with livestock lice. The lice were included free of charge. I'm not totally sure if there's a difference between livestock lice and human lice. Not sure I want to find out through unplanned experimentation, either.

The Sevin Dust treatment is meant to eradicate the lice problem. My job was to catch and contain the small goats. While my friend dusted them. Needless to say, I knew I was going to get Sevin dust on me and on my clothes. Not only was it windy, but I was holding goats.

The appropriate pesticide management practices if I remember correctly from my Master Gardener classes is to remove those clothes and wash them by themselves and to take a shower as soon as the job was finished. Which is what I did ASAP because that Sevin dust smell was in my nostrils and the taste was in my mouth. Friendship . . .

Anyway, the Sevin dust treatment sparked a conversation about animal management practices. When my friend's children, asked about how the goats came to have livestock lice, the discussion began. These goats had been raised on a larger farm where livestock was kept close together. Lice will flourish in unclean environments and multiply in close quarters. Worms came up, also. I mentioned that my goats and chickens don't have those problems and my friend observed that hers really didn't either. We decided it came down to animal management practices.

Here's where pasture rotation and pasture size to animal population ratios are important. By rotating grazing animals through your pastures - larger to smaller and ending up with poultry, like chickens, ducks or geese, you control your insect populations. Chickens love to eat ticks, lice, grubs, whatever: grass, fly larvae and other things left in the manure of the larger animals. By rotating pastures between grazing animals, you also strengthen the roots of the grass and make it healthier. Take care to avoid overgrazing and overuse.

Overgrazing occurs when too many animals stay in too small a pasture area for too long. There are three factors at play: number of animals, size of pasture, length of stay. These factors are tied to each other. A larger number of animals means a larger size pasture for the same length of stay. A longer stay can be managed by less animals with more space for each animal. Lower animal density means several things: lower rates of disease and less feed costs. If you do not have enough space for your grazing animals to get enough forage by themselves, then you are supplementing their feed. Period. Buying feed costs money and brings in nutrients from elsewhere. It also uses more energy in the form of transportation gasoline, production and manufacture.

Animal/pasture management can apply to pets, like dogs, too. Dogs generally need quite a bit more space then we allow them. While we probably always buy dog food, we can pay attentiont ot their outdoor spaces. If your dog pen or fenced in dog run becomes muddy quickly, then you know that the space is not big enough for your dog. Enlarge and move the space to allow your lawn to regenerate. This is why invisible fence is important. An invisible fence will give your dog fairly free roaming capabilities without the stagnant views of a fence. Dogs also tend to pace less when they are not fenced in with a visible barrier. That mean less wear and tear on the lawn.