Making Nutrient-Dense Bone Broth

Nothing warms body and soul on a cold, rainy day like a good bowl of soup.  The best broth makes the best soup and, as it turns out, confers health benefits as well.

In ages past, soups and stews were a mainstay in many people’s diets.  The wealthy would begin their lavish meals with a rich bowl of it, while peasants would content themselves with broth made from inexpensive bones.  In both cases, they were providing themselves with a bowl full of the nutrients that are often lacking in our diets today.

Bone broth, that is, soup stock created by simmering meat bones for several hours, is loaded with health promoting substances—especially gelatin.  Gelatin, the substance that creates the “Jello Jiggle”, aids digestion by soothing the mucosal lining of the digestive tract.  A healed digestive tract goes a long way in treating and preventing allergic responses like eczema, asthma, and allergies.

Studies going back to the early 20th century found a link between gelatin consumption and an increase in blood calcium levels, resulting in the building up of bones.  In Japan, a more recent study showed similar successes in mice artificially given an osteoporotic-like condition.  In that study, mice given dietary gelatin had significantly higher bone mineral density as compared to the mice not fed gelatin.

How does one make such a nutrient-rich food?  Begin by covering bones with water and a splash of vinegar and letting them sit for an hour.  Then bring the water to a boil and skim.  Cover and allow to simmer overnight or, at least, several hours.  Our favorite length of time is 18 hours for chicken bones and 24 hours for beef, lamb, pork, and veal bones.  This can be made more doable by using a crock pot on the low setting.  Check the pot periodically and add more water, if necessary. 

Of course, you can always add roughly chopped vegetables to the broth as it simmers and, for its mineral boost, a handful of fresh parsley leaves at the end.  Some also like to roast the red meat bones in the oven before simmering them (350F until browned).  These additional steps should be viewed as optional, however, and not required in order to enjoy the health benefits of good bone broth.

Once your broth is done simmering, allow it to cool, then remove the bones and any other ingredients that you added.  You can either use your broth right away or refrigerate or freeze it for future use.  In addition to forming the base for soups, bone broth can also be used to make sauces or to cook rice or other grains.  It can also simply be enjoyed sipped from a coffee cup.

At Morning Star Family Farm in Hartford, WI, we carry bones from our organic-fed, pasture-raised animals so that health-conscious customers like you can obtain the necessary ingredients to produce highest quality bone broth.  It is one more way that we provide a link from our farm to your table.

For more information, visit http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/why-broth-is-beautiful-essential-roles-for-proline-glycine-and-gelatin/.

Support Local CSAs Because 'Good Food is the Best Health Insurance'

Eating locally grown food benefits everyone by supporting not only local farmers but the local economy as well.  But eating local often isn’t as easy as picking up conventionally grown groceries at the nearby box store.  What if there were a convenient way to obtain local meats and produce?  Enter the CSA model.

Vegetables grow both in the field and
hoophouse at Pinehold Gardens in Oak Creek

 CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Begun in the mid-1980s, CSAs started with a vision of sharing both the risks and benefits of farming with the farms’ customers.  The original idea still lives on—shareholders pay one flat rate to the farmer, usually before the season begins, then receive a box of homegrown farm products on a regular basis throughout the growing season.  While until recently produce CSAs have been the norm, you can now find farmers offering other products through the CSA model.  

At Morning Star Family Farm in Hartford, Wisconsin, we offer a Meat CSA, providing our customers with a monthly mixed box of our own organic-fed, pasture-raised meats.  With several pickup locations in the greater Milwaukee area, it is a great way to enjoy a variety of our tasty products.

Multi-species grazing at Morning Star Family Farm
decreases pest problems and
increases the productivity of the pasture

According to David Kozlowski of Pinehold Gardens, a farm in Oak Creek that has offered a produce CSA since 1995, “CSAs help reconnect families with the food they need and want.  It is fresher and tastier, but it is also healthier.  Good food is the best health insurance.”

Other benefits to the customer include getting first dibs on the best of the produce from the farm.  Those freshly picked veggies or frozen meats are delivered to one or more urban locations making pickup a breeze.  Customers get a taste of all of the offerings of a local farm without needing to carve out time to attend a farmers’ market or drive to a local coop.

Tomatoes growing at Pinehold Gardens
in Oak Creek, Wisconsin

Of course, the farmer benefits, too.  The cash flow from selling shares before the season starts allows him to buy feed, seeds, and soil amendments, make equipment repairs, and so on.  Kozlowski adds, “It is a sustainable business model for farms, helping farms weather circumstances that would otherwise drive them out of farming.”  

Looking to provide our customers with the ultimate in local home cooking, Morning Star Family Farm has recently teamed up with Pinehold Gardens to offer a weekly Produce CSA box and a monthly Meat CSA box, available for pickup in Oak Creek beginning in July 2015.  Signups have already begun and will continue until the shares are sold out.  You can learn more about Pinehold Gardens’ Produce CSA at their website, www.pineholdgardens.com.  More information about our Meat CSA can be found at www.morningstarfamilyfarm.net/meat-csa.html.  

A typical August Produce CSA box 
from Pinehold Gardens

Either way you will find what Kozlowski says is true, “When you belong to a CSA, you have committed to not only helping to build an important local foodshed by supporting small local farms, but you have made the decision to control the freshness, quality, and taste of the food you and your family eats.”

Elderberry Syrup's Many Benefits

Winter sure came fast this year and, with it, an early cold and flu season.  There is a folk remedy making a recent comeback that may make this year’s sniffles the easiest to conquer yet.  Dating back to Roman times, elderberry syrup has traditionally been used to improve health and promote longevity.  Over the past ten years, various studies have been undertaken to explore these benefits; their findings show great promise. 

 

Ripe elderberries ready for harvest.

Native to Wisconsin, elderberries contain very high levels of the antioxidant, anthocyanin, giving elderberries an oxygen radical absorbance capacity score double that of blueberries.  When absorbed into the blood vessels’ inner membranes, anthocyanin decreases inflammation, improving circulation and decreasing heart disease and stroke risk.

Perhaps elderberry’s most well-known attribute is its ability to ward off viruses.  This comes through the action of a potent antiviral component, antivirin, which affects the properties of viruses, preventing them from entering cells in order to replicate. Add to that more naturally-occurring Vitamin C than oranges, and elderberry syrup defeats the common cold with a one-two punch.

While many Americans are first learning of elderberry’s benefits, people around the globe have been enjoying the effects of elderberry extract for decades.  Because of its immune-stimulating effects, Israeli hospitals use elderberry syrup in treating cancer and AIDS patients.  Studies in Austria revealed that elderberry extract reduced oxidation of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.  When elderberry syrup was given to patients during a 1993 outbreak of H1N1 flu virus in Panama, 90% were symptom-free within 2-3 days.

The recommended dose for elderberry syrup when treating flu symptoms, and the one commonly used in studies, is one tablespoon four times per day for 3-5 days.  Children can also benefit from taking elderberry syrup; their recommended dose is one tablespoon twice daily for three days.  The syrup can be taken straight from a spoon, mixed with hot water to make a tea, or even blended into smoothies. 

At Morning Star Family Farm in Hartford, Wisconsin, we not only grow elderberries without chemicals, pesticides, or herbicides, we also handcraft our own elderberry syrup.  Available at the farm and at limited local stores, our syrup is as delicious as it is immune-stimulating.  It is one more way we provide a link from our farm to your table.

Merry Christmas!

The Christmas season is fast approaching.  During this special time of the year we seek to prepare our hearts to celebrate the beautiful feast.  Often, however, we find ourselves distracted by other obligations.  If it isn’t shopping for the perfect gift for a loved one, it is time spent fretting about the special meals that must be prepared.  

Here are some suggestions to help keep Christmas preparations from taking over.

1. Delegate.  If you are hosting a big dinner this year, start asking the other families you have invited to bring a dessert or side dish.  Your bachelor brother doesn’t cook?  That’s alright; ask him to bring a package of dinner rolls or a bottle of wine.

2. Try one-stop shopping.  No, not at the big box store.  Bring a little extra meaning to your gifts this year and support local artisans at the same time.  The Milwaukee County Winter Farmers’ Market is held at the Mitchell Park Domes every Saturday from November until April.  With selections ranging from freshly made cheeses to seasonal flavors of kombucha and all points in between, you are sure to find something for everyone on your list.  While you are there, be sure to pick up something special for Christmas dinner.  How about a leg of lamb this year, or maybe a more traditional, but still locally grown, ham? 

3. Stop and savor the season.  Fix some hot cocoa, turn on a little Christmas music, and enjoy the Christmas lights with someone you love.  Spend time with those old friends you haven’t seen for a while.  Above all, remember to celebrate the real reason for the season and share the love of the Christ Child with one and all.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Morning Star Family Farm.

NuGenesis: Beacon of Hope in a Nutritional Wasteland

You are what you eat.  That old adage gets a lot of press these days, as a new generation discovers the truth of the statement.   Every morsel we eat truly is assimilated into our bodies and helps to determine our level of health or disease.  Take trans fats as one example.  Famous for their presence in most fast foods, trans fats are those bad fats that are formed when otherwise good fats are heated excessively or are hydrogenated and changed on a molecular level.  When we eat these trans fats, our bodies, trusting as they are, believe that they are food and use them to build our cell membranes, the outer covering present on each of our cells. 

Black raspberries, a local superfood,
growing at Morning Star Family Farm

Cell membranes are a very important part of our cells, because it is through the cell membrane that nutrients enter the cell and waste products are removed.  Replacing good, functional cell membranes with ones made from trans fats is a little like replacing our city garbage men with crash dummies.  They might look a little like the real thing, but there won’t be any garbage removed any time soon.  Can you imagine the pile of trash that would pile up if the garbage men stopped coming around?  It wouldn’t take long before all of garbage would build up and lead to the spread of disease.  This concept works in a similar fashion at the cellular level; leave waste products inside of cells and people start feeling sluggish and become more prone to autoimmune diseases and cancer. 

Educating the next generation of
eaters is one of NuGenesis' objectives.

If just one aspect of our standard American diets, trans fats, is so bad for us, what else lurks out there that we need to avoid?  More importantly, what superfoods can we eat in order to help reverse the effects of the junk we may have taken into our bodies leading up to this point?  Enter NuGenesis, a non-profit organization based in Oconomowoc dedicated to educating the public on how to choose, grow, and cook whole foods.  From their website: “Founded in 2010 by three-time cancer survivor Kathy Bero, NuGenesis helps you prevent disease, support your body through a chronic illness and prevent recurrence through the food you choose to eat.”  At Morning Star Family Farm, we are proud to have been a part of the 2014 NuGenesis Harvest for Your Health.  We encourage you to learn more about NuGenesis and consider supporting their mission of education about superfoods that come from our farm to your table.

Read more at: www.nugenesis.com and www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/the-skinny-on-fats/

Discovering Kombucha

There is a refreshing drink out there that has been enjoying a surge of popularity among the health-conscious crowd.  It is kombucha.  A fermented, non-alcoholic tea, kombucha provides detoxifying benefits while quenching thirst. However, the drink hasn't always been well known.

As the story goes, there were two industrial towns in Russia on opposite sides of the same polluted river.  One town had a cancer rate significantly higher than the general population, while the other town did not.  Medical researchers were sent to interview residents of the two towns in an attempt to identify what lifestyle or diet choices may have caused such a variance.  

When the researchers entered the homes on the low-cancer side of the river, they often saw multiple odd-looking jars in the kitchen.  Upon inquiry, they learned that these jars were filled with kombucha, a drink which had been passed down by their ancestors and which was drunk on a daily basis by the residents of the town.

Rich in probiotics and enzymes,
our Kombucha is also
a delicious, refreshing drink

After hearing this story, our family began brewing kombucha for our own consumption.  Imagine our surprise that something with health benefits actually tastes good!  That was over a decade ago.   Now we produce kombucha for sale to our customers.  

Kombucha Soda is a healthy alternative
to regular soda.  Try Root Beer,
Ginger Beer, or Rye Kvass Kombucha Soda

We begin our kombucha with filtered water, organic tea, and organic cane sugar; then we add kombucha from a previous batch and a ‘scoby’, a patty of good bacteria and yeasts that will culture the tea.  When the fermentation is complete, most of the sugar and tea components, including caffeine, will have been consumed by the culture, leaving behind what is now called kombucha tea.  In the case of our flavored kombucha drinks, it is at this point that we add ingredients like organic ginger and strawberries, plus a touch of raw local honey, creating a taste sensation worth exploring.

Visit us at the market or at the farm
to give our kombucha drinks a try.

Our kombucha is available in several flavors at our farm, Good Harvest Market in Waukesha, and Health Hut in Brookfield, as well as at several local farmers’ markets.  Give it a try.  We think you’ll be as happy to discover kombucha as we were. 

Dog Days on the Farm

The dog days of summer are upon us, with hot, humid days and breezeless nights.  That term, dog days, is intriguing and, for me, brings about images of dogs, panting in the August heat.  Why did this uncomfortable season get linked with our canine friends?  It is during the summer months that our dog works the hardest here at Morning Star Family Farm. 

  

In conventional livestock farming, especially for chicken and pork production, keeping animals indoors 24/7 is standard procedure.  Among other things, this practice provides protection of the animals from predators.  When following the pasture-based model, as we do, decreasing predator pressure is a full-time job.  Who better than a dog to meet the challenge?

Rex is our resident guard dog.  While not a professionally trained livestock guardian dog, he still works hard to keep predators in the woods and out of our pastures.  Born on a farm and raised around the many species of livestock that we have, Rex has a keen sense of friend and foe when it comes to animals.  In addition, his very presence and scent helps to keep potential problem animals at bay.

 So, if dogs are so helpful, why do the hottest days of summer seem to be blamed on them?  According to Wikipedia, it has little to do with animals at all.  Apparently, the phrase “dog days of summer” has its origin in ancient times, in the nighttime sky.  Sirius, the dog star, would rise during the same time that weather would turn sultry.  Changes in the heavens have affected this correlation, but the name has stuck. 

This is good news for Rex and all of the other hardworking guard dogs out there, as it means that they are off the hook and free to go about their business of protecting livestock.  That is Rex’s part in helping us to get tasty, local foods from our farm to your table.