Waterberry Holiday Salad

This a wonderful salad for anytime, but the cranberries and toasted pecans make it a perfect salad to serve this time of year. It's quick and easy but impressive enough to serve at a dinner party. Our soft buttery lettuce is perfect in this salad but, if you're not lucky enough to live near our farm, you can use any Bib or mescaline salad mix.

Bib Salad with Cranberries, Toasted Pecans, and Gorgonzola Cheese

serves 4
1 head Waterberry lettuce, coarsely torn
1/3 cup pecans, toasted and chopped
3 ounces Gorgonzola cheese crumbled
1/3 cup (or as many as you like) dried cranberries
Mound lettuce onto 4 plates, top with pecans and Gorgonzola cheese. Drizzle with you favorite balsamic vinaigrette.
Enjoy!

Strawberries will be here soon

The berries are beginning to flower! We'll have our wonderful herbicide free berries very soon. We hope to have our first harvest in time for Christmas. Check back soon!

Give Waterberry Preserves this Christmas

Lots of preserving has been going on at Waterberry over the last few weeks. We've made all kinds of chutneys, relishes, jams, and preserves.

Pictured here left to right: Cranberry, Pear, and Lemon, Jam, Pear,Apricot,Pineapple, Preserves, and Waterberry Strawberry Preserves

We've had lots of people asking to buy the jams and preserves for Christmas gifts. All of our preserves, jams, chutneys etc., are in bottled in 8 ounce jars and cost $5.00. The strawberries, pears, and figs are all grown on our farm.

Here is a list of all our preserves:

Fig Chutney

Cranberry, Pear, and Lemon Jam

Cranberry Rum Relish

Pear, Pineapple, Apricot Preserves

Waterberry Strawberry Preserves

To order e-mail: waterberryhydrofarm@yahoo.com or call 334-886-2454

Look for Waterberry Lettuce at the Butcher's Block in Dothan

Look for Waterberry butterhead lettuce at the newly established Butcher's Block in Dothan. Located at 561 Westgate Parkway, the Butcher's Block specializes in high quality fresh cut meat, imported cheeses and fresh produce. The Butcher's Block shares our passion for providing our area with fresh, local, high quailty, herbicide and pesticide free, produce.
Drop in today and pick up a steak and a head of our fresh from the farm lettuce!

All things Fall

Fall has arrived! Here at the farm we have all the signs cool crisp mornings, squirrels busily gathering nuts, leaves beginning to fall, and we are planting our Spring strawberries 6000 to be exact! More about the strawberries later right now let's talk fall.

Nothing will put in the Fall mood faster than these Pumpkin Spice Pancakes with Apple Butter. Whip up a batch, grab a cup of coffee and meet us on the porch for a Fabulously Fall Breakfast
Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

Ingredients:

2C all purpose flour

2Tbs brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 C milk

1/2 C pumpkin puree

2 eggs

2 Tbs butter, melted

In a large mixing bowl combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder and spices. In another bowl combine milk, eggs, pumpkin, butter and vanilla. Stir combined wet ingredients into dry ingredients until moistened. Scoop batter by 1/4 cup fulls onto prepared hot griddle sprayed with cooking spray. When bubbles begin to form, flip the pancake over. Cook until golden. Serve with a drizzle of pure maple syrup a dollop of apple butter and walnuts or pecans.

So delicious! Sit back relax and take in the sights, scents and falvors of Fall!

Farmer's Table

So everyone has been asking "When is the next farm dinner?" and I am pleased to let you know that it will be October 11.
We have been enjoying cooler days with much less humidity and we hope by then we will have cool fall evenings.
This will be our Fall Harvest Dinner spotlighting all our favorite fall foods and flavors.

Social Hour

Artisan Cheese and Bread

Chutney

Dinner

Sweet Potato Ravioli with Local Greens and Applewood Smoked Bacon

Harvest Beet Salad with Pears and Spiced Pecans

Glazed Autumn Vegetables

Brussel sprouts, turnips, carrots and parsnips

Pork on Pork

Pork shoulder and belly(bacon cut) simmered in a rich Bourbon Sauce with Creamy Grits

Harvest Pie Table

back by popular demand

Selection of our favorite pies for Fall

$65 per person

As always seats are limited so reserve yours early, no reservations will be held without payment. Call Waterberry Farm @ 334-886-2454 or e-mail waterberryhydrofarm@yahoo.com

This will probably be the last week we have figs. sigh. Oh well there's plenty going on at Waterberry right now. The Kieffer pears are just beginning. Kieffer pears are old pear variety that grows everywhere here in the Southeastern U.S. It's a very hard pear that is best picked green and allowed to ripen after picked. Although these pears aren't good to just eat, they are great canned. Because they are a hard pear they make wonderful preserves and pies. This week, for market, we used our pears to make Pear, Pineapple,and Apricot preserves. Stop by our booth at the 84 west Farmers Market to pick up a jar. Get there early and you just might get one of the last pints of our figs! We'll also have pesto and sun-dried tomatoes. Of course we'll have plenty of our hydroponically grown butterhead lettuce. See you at the market!

Farmers Market

This past week at the Farmers Market we featured fresh figs and our homemade fig chutney. They were a real hit. We sold all we had in about an hour and a half!
We are at the 84 West Farmers Market on Thursday's from 3-6pm (many times we sell out by 5pm) Get there early to get the best selection! Check back later for a list of what we'll be selling this Thursday.

Summer perfection

So I can see that great minds think alike, with summer in full swing and tomatoes at their peak I can't think of a better lunch than a tomato sandwich. Although I do like the classic tomato and mayo my all time favorite has an Italian twist.
Start with a nice hunk of sourdough, next add some fresh pesto, then fresh mozzarella, top with garden fresh tomatoes some fresh ground black pepper and sea salt finish with a drizzle of balsamic. Enjoy all the summer flavors at their best.

Figs ripe for the picking

You say tomato, I say... summer!

Summertime, summertime, sum, sum, summertime... Warning: A really good ripe tomato may make you want to break out into song. What could be more summery and delicious than a red ripe juicy tomato? This year, dad planted a heirloom variety of tomatoes in the hydroponic system. Wow, the taste is amazing. They taste and smell like, well, a tomato! The heirloom varieties are not high bred to produce a uniform size and shape. So they often look less than perfect than grocery store tomatoes but taste so much better. The variety, combined with the fact that the tomato is allowed to ripen on the vine, is what we think make our tomatoes so tasty! (And of course, no herbicides or pesticides were used on these babies.)

They taste so good, in fact, that I prefer to just slice them, and put them on bread with some mayo and maybe just a sprinkle of sea salt. Nothing fancy but one of the best things you'll ever eat! You can taste the hot summer sun in every juicy delicious bite!

Farmer's Table Summer Solstice

Here is a little more about the farm dinner we hosted last Saturday. We held it outside, on our family farm. When we decided to hold one of our farm dinner's in the summer, we knew that we'd be tempting Mother Nature. Here in south Alabama in the summer, you never know what the weather will do. Tropical storms, 100 degree temps, 99% humidity...you get the idea. So the week before our dinner we watched the weather, held our breath, and said more than a few prayer's, that the weather would participate. As the week-end neared we had a 50% chance of scattered showers in the forecast. Around here that means it may rain at your house but half a mile away the sun may be shinning. Would it rain or not? It was any ones guess. Our back-up plan was to put all the tables on the wrap around porch of my parent's house.
With our guests arriving at 5:30, at about 4:00 we decided to go ahead and set up outside. It would be nearly impossible to move everything if it did start to rain. Lots more prayer's were said!
At 5:30 our 22 diner's began to arrive. We had a table with various cheeses, homemade cherry chutney, and a tomato, basil, and garlic salsa, for them to munch on while they mingled. Our famous mint tea and a strawberry lemon-aid were on offer to drink.
Just before we planned to have everyone sit down for dinner, Splat! Some fat raindrops began to fall! NO! was the collective cry, and God listened. The rain stopped, the clouds right above us parted and opened to a patch of blue sky. The dinner was wonderful, featuring fresh local ingredients, with as many as possible coming from our farm. Here's what was on the menu:

Farmer’s Table Menu
Summer Solstice


Artesian Cheese Table


Grilled Flank Steak with Portabella Mushrooms
Grilled Alabama Shrimp Skewers

Blue Cheese Potato Salad with Apple wood Smoked Bacon
Grilled Slocomb Corn on the Cob with Basil Butter
Summer Grilled Vegetables with Picnic Vinaigrette
Waterberry Farm Green Salad with Purple Radish and White French Dressing



Blue Ribbon Dessert Table

Fried peach hand pies

For dessert, we had a friendly competition. Mom, my sister, a family friend and I, all made fruit desserts. Then we let the guest tell us their favorite. Everyone had a great time tasting and retasting all the desserts, but we never did come up with a clear winner. Maybe that's because all the choices were delicious. We had quite the spread. There was old fashioned apple pie with sour cream topping, a mixed berry crisp, freshly fried peach hand pies, mini blueberry tarts, rhubarb cake, cherry cobbler and strawberry and blueberry ice cream. With choices like those it's no wonder we never could pick a winner!

About 45 minutes after dessert was served, everyone was still sitting around the table talking. All of a sudden the rain started to fall lightly. Perfect timing! It was a truly wonderful evening.
If you didn't make it to this dinner, we plan to host another dinner this fall. We'll post the date and menu for that dinner in late summer so you can make plans to join us!
The pictures in this post were taken by Angela Davidson

Farmer's Table Summer Solstice

We hosted our summer solstice dinner last night on the farm. It was the perfect welcome to the summer season. Here's a sneak peek from last night's dinner.

Sweet Basil Pesto

With Summer in full swing here in Alabama the beautiful produce is starting to fill our markets. There is never a better time to eat Fresh and Healthy than in the summer so much goodness to choose from. My favorite thing to grow and eat is basil, it's just not quite summer until you have nice fresh basil. This weekend I harvested my basil and OH MY I had a ton! So when life give you basil you make pesto of course.



Pesto is a sauce that originates in the city of Genoa in the Liguria region of northern Italy (pesto alla genovese). The name comes from pestâ "to pound, to crush", from the Latin root pestle (traditionally made with mortar and pestle), in reference to the crushed herbs and garlic in the sauce. Pesto is traditionally used on pasta but I love to use it on everything from pizza to sandwiches.

Sweet Basil Pesto
servings: Makes about 1 1/3 cups.

Ingredients

3 large garlic cloves
1/2 cup pine nuts - i used almonds because I had them on hand
2 oz Parmigiano-Reggiano, coarsely grated (2/3 cup)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 cups loosely packed fresh basil
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preparation

• With food processor running, drop in garlic and finely chop.


• Stop motor and add nuts, cheese, salt, pepper, and basil, then process until finely chopped. With motor running, add oil, blending until incorporated.
  

Pesto keeps, its surface covered with plastic wrap, chilled, 1 week and is easily frozen to enjoy all winter

Chicken Pesto Pizza with sun dried tomatoes, olives and mushrooms
Angel Hair with Fresh Pesto and Sauteed Garlic Shrimp click for recipe

Rhubarb in the South!?!

Yes, you can grow rhubarb in lower Alabama! Typically, rhubarb is a cool weather plant and hates the hot humid summers we get here in the South. However, it has been thriving in our hydroponics system. Look at these lovely stalks!

Rhubarb and strawberries are a marriage made in food heaven and we just happen to have both right now! So naturally we've been cooking up some wonderful desserts.
I made a rhubarb strawberry clafoutis. Clafouti, pronounced kla,foo,Tee, is a french counrty dessert with a custard like batter baked over fresh fruit. Traditionally the French make clafoutis using fresh cherries. We don't have any cherries, (which also hate our hot humid summers) but we've got plenty beautiful rhubarb and strawberries.

Ingredients:

1 cup cleaned rhubarb, cut in small sticks
6 oz strawberries
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp sour cream
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar for the rhubarb
1/4 cup cornstarch
3 Tbsp all purpose flour
1 teaspoon light rum (or vanilla)
1/4 cup blanched almonds (optional)
Confectioner’s sugar, to sprinkle

Method:

Place the rhubarb in a colander and sprinkle with 1/4 cup sugar. Let rest for 1 hour so that it releases some juice.
Preheat your oven at 400 F. Butter an oven safe baking dish or pie pan.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar. Add the cornstarch and flour and mix together.
Mix the sour cream in with the milk and slowly add the milk to batter.
Arrange the fruit, in a buttered oven safe dish, and pour the batter over and sprinkle nuts over top.
Cook for about 30 to 35 min, or until golden in color. Remove from the oven and let cool a little before eating. Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar. Best when eaten while still warm. Enjoy!

Perfectly Pink

Looking for perfect pink lemonade this Memorial Day? Look no further, made with fresh lemons and strawberries this is the perfectly pink summer cooler.



11/2 C granulated Sugar

1 C coarsely chopped fresh Waterberry Farm strawberries

Zest of 2 lemons, peel off with vegetable peeler avoiding the white pith

2 C Fresh lemon juice

Combine the sugar and strawberries with 2 cups water in a medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil over med-high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the berries begin to release their color and soften slightly, about 3 min. Stir in the lemon zest. Let cool completely

Strain the cooled syrup through a fine sieve set over a pitcher or bowl, pressing lightly on the berries to extract most of the syrup. Discard the solids

Add the fresh lemon juice and 2 1/2 cups cold water to the syrup stir until well blended.

The lemonade can be served immediately over ice or refrigerated for up to two days.

Ahhh Enjoy Summer!

taken from Fine Cooking

Eat Wild

Looking for clean, natural food right here in Alabama? Yes you have to look a little but it is out there.
Of course Waterberry Farm can take care of all your produce needs but what about grass fed beef, free range chickens and dariy products? Alabama has more and more farms going green visit the Eat Wild web site to find a farm close to you. http://www.eatwild.com/products/alabama.html

Support Local Food

Why Eat Wild?

Back to Pasture.
Since the late 1990s, a growing number of ranchers have stopped sending their animals to the feedlots to be fattened on grain, soy and other supplements. Instead, they are keeping their animals home on the range where they forage on pasture, their native diet. These new-age ranchers do not treat their livestock with hormones or feed them growth-promoting additives. As a result, the animals grow at a natural pace. For these reasons and more, grass-fed animals live low-stress lives and are so healthy there is no reason to treat them with antibiotics or other drugs.
More Nutritious.
A major benefit of raising animals on pasture is that their products are healthier for you. For example, compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, bison, lamb and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,”

Farmer's Table

Summer Solstice Dinner

June 21, 2008

$60 per person

Social 5:30

Artesian Cheese Table

Prosciutto Wrapped Grilled Figs with Mint Creama

Dinner 6:30

Grilled Flank Steak with Portabella Mushrooms

Grilled Gulf Shrimp Skewers

Blue Cheese Potato Salad with Applewood Smoked Bacon

Grilled Corn on the Cob with Basil Butter

Summer Ratatouille Proviencale

Waterberry Farm Salad of Lettuces

Blue Ribbon Pie Table

assortment of summer pies or cobblers made by different bakers,

you vote for the winning pie!

*Seats limited reserve yours today!

call 886-2454 or e-mail

waterberryhydrofarms@yahoo.com

More from the Farmer's Table

It has been a few weeks since our first Farmer's Table but I still wanted to share some more pictures.

If you missed out on this dinner don't fret another one is coming up soon.
June 21 will be our Summer Solstice Barbecue, come back soon for more details and menu

We got our first snap peas of the year at the farm this week. I think the best way to eat these peas is to steam them until they turn bright green , about 3 minutes, then top with a sprinkle of sea salt. Sometime I'll put a little butter on the top and let it melt over the warm peas. That's also very good although the butter isn't really necessary. Cooking them isn't even necessary. These peas taste great raw. Just snap the top of the pea off, pull off string like part that holds the pod together, and eat!

Having eaten several meals with steamed peas, today I thought I'd give them a try in some pasta. I decided to make a spaghetti with peas, pesto, and toasted pine nuts.
Ingredients
Serves 6
1 pound of spaghetti
6 oz cleaned snap peas
one small clove garlic, chopped finely
1/3 cup pesto
2 TBS olive oil
toasted pine nut
freshly shredded Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
Bring a large pot (3 quart) of salted water to a boil. Drop the cleaned peas (snapped the tops off) in the pasta water and blanch them quickly. Take them out as soon as they turn bright green about 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon remove peas from the boiling water and place in a bowl of ice water. This will stop the cooking process and keep the peas crisp. Place the spaghetti in the boiling water and cook according to the package. Reserve some of the pasta water. In a large skillet heat the olive oil, add the peas, pesto and garlic. Saute about 1 minute, them add the pasta and about a 1/4-1/2 cup of the pasta water. Cook until the water is mostly evaporated about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Top with the toasted pine nuts and the shredded Parmesan cheese.

First Farmer's Table

Saturday evening we hosted the first "Farmer's Table" dinner on the farm. The idea behind having dinners at the farm was to give people in our area a chance to make a connection with the food they eat. We intentionally kept the group fairly small for this first dinner. We ended up with 18 guests. It was the perfect size for our first event.
The evening started at 5pm with a tour of the strawberry greenhouse. Mom and Dad (Harold and Carol) gave the tour answering any questions about the farm and our growing methods.
The group made their way down the field to where we had the tables laid out. A variety of cheeses, bread, and olives awaited the guests, giving everyone a chance to meet and mingle.

Then it was time for dinner. Having a Culinary Institute of America trained chef in the family makes all this possible! Pamela, one of the five daughters, graduated from the CIA in 1996. During that time she did her externship under Frank Stitt at The Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, Alabama. She created the menu for the evening around fresh, local ingredients using as much as possible from our farm.

Joe, picking the chef's brain.

The food was fantastic. As we were eating dinner, the sun set and the full moon rose over the greenhouse. We couldn't have ordered a more perfect evening. Thank-you to all of our guests for coming out and being a part of the first, of what we hope will be many more, Farmer's Table dinners.

The Farmer's Table Menu

Georgia Fresh Corn and Leek Soup
with Apple Wood Smoked Bacon Lardoons


Waterberry Farm Butter Head Lettuces
with Strawberries, Mandarin Oranges, and Spicy Pecans



Handmade Fettuccine
with Asparagus, Shitake Mushrooms, and Tarragon



Grilled Gulf Red Snapper
with Fava Bean, Pea Tendril, Rice Pilaf




Waterberry Farm Fresh Strawberries Three Ways

Chocolate Hazelnut Covered Strawberries
Toasted Pound Cake with Lemon Cream and Strawberries
Panna Cotta with Balsamic Glazed Strawberries

Time to go home, grab your lantern and walk back up the field!

In the news..

Our farm was featured in The Dothan Eagle, our local news paper, today. Check it out here.

Quick Strawberry Preserves

This is a quick old fashioned recipe for strawberry preserves that uses no pectin. Making preserves is a great way to use up extra, less than perfect, or even frozen berries. These preserves really capture the strawberry flavor without being overly sweet. They bear little resemblance to the high fructose corn syrup variety found in the supermarket. Once you try these preserves, you'll never want the grocery store preserves again!

This recipe only makes about three cups of preserves, so I skip the canning and just use it fresh. However, it does freeze well if you wanted to make more at one time.

Ingredients

3 1-pint baskets (about 6 cups) fresh strawberries, hulled. Frozen strawberries will also work.
2 cups sugar
Lemon juice from one lemon

Method

Place hulled strawberries in heavy large saucepan and mash coarsely. Cook strawberries over medium heat until beginning to thicken, stirring frequently, about 6 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Add 2 cups sugar and stir until dissolved. Increase heat to medium and boil gently until mixture thickens and mounds on spoon, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes.

Skim any foam that rises to the top. You can skip this step, but your preserves will be much nicer looking without the foam.

Remove saucepan from heat. Stir in the lemon juice. Cool. (Preserves can be prepared 1 week ahead. Refrigerate in airtight container.)Makes about 3 cups.

Serve the preserves over ice cream, on pancakes or muffins, spread between the layers of a cake, mixed into yogurt...