It’s that time of year again – when the perfect way to spend an evening is cuddled up by the fire with a good book and a great beverage. Oh yeah, it’s also (all things) pumpkin spice season too! If you’re anything like us, that beverage often contains bourbon. We’re always trying to come up with new and tasty combinations. We really think this bourbon apple cider cocktail is perfect for the fall, plus it is incredibly easy and quick to whip up. The recipe below is for one cocktail but it can easily be expanded to as many beverages as you need. (Think a pitcher full for you and your friends on football Sunday).
In a rocks glass, combine bourbon, apple cider, ginger beer and soda water. Add a dash of bitters and a dash of pumpkin spice. Top glass with ice and stir. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.
Recipe Notes
If you don't have any pumpkin spice, then nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger or allspice will work as a substitute.
We’re super excited to announce that Archie’s Acres LLC has finally opened a store on the online craft market, Etsy! (The link to our store is shared at the end of this post)
As our last blog post mentioned, the process for selling canned salsa, giardineria, bourbon pears etc online will take a bit, but in the meantime we have a variety of bath/shower products, dried herbs, honey and crafts for sale! You know, in case you’re looking for Christmas gifts…
We will be adding new products regularly. We have 3 new products waiting in the wings as I type this that will be added this week! (They just need to be tested (by us) then proven to be excellent (also, by us).
Maybe you’ve wondered why we don’t have an online store yet. And why we aren’t selling our awesome canned products yet. Well it’s not because we don’t want to, it’s because we can’t. Yet.
If you follow our Instagram feed, you’ve probably noticed that we love to can our produce and have really gotten adventurous with our recipes. It’s funny how so much changes in a year. A year ago I found the idea of canning to be terrifying. Terrifying for it’s tediousness, it’s time-consuming steps and, oh yeah, that whole botulism food poisoning thing. It took some internal cheerleading but we took the initial plunge into the world of canning and it turned out to be a ton of fun! We’ve more than got the hang of it and we love it! We’re always on a search for new and fun canning ideas, we’ll can pretty much anything at this point.
Guinness Stout Jelly.
Many of our friends and customers ask about purchasing our canned goods. And after some quick research we learned that we had a ton of paperwork to do before we could even think about selling our products online. (Well, that’s not true, we think about selling our products all the time. Ha)
Our dried red pepper flakes.
Rules, Rules, Rules!
The Illinois Cottage Food law allows us to sell some canned goods directly to customers at farmer’s markets, but that is it. Online sales or sales to retailers are strictly prohibited. So our friends and family have been really benefiting from all these rules. Haha.
Our peach habanero hot sauce.Our vanilla bourbon pears.Homemade Chicago style giardiniera.
Next up, hot sauces, giardaneria, Bloody Mary mix, bourbon pears, salsa verde etc…has to go through and pass a rigorous process before it’s ever sold.
All our recipes must be be pH tested by an accredited lab and then submitted to a “process authority” with the pH test results. This person reviews the recipe, test results and steps we detail for producing the canned good and sends back to us an “official” process. We then register that process with the FDA. Each product and each variation of that product (change in container size, container closure, recipe adjustment, change in commercial kitchen location, etc.) MUST go through all these steps.
Safety is important to us
The process is very involved. But it makes sense, farms and businesses need to be required to prove that they’re doing things the healthy and clean way. People can become very sick or even die. So we get it. And appreciate the process. We just want it to move a little quicker so we can share our delicious goodies! We’re shooting for early January. Obviously, the timeline isn’t completely up to us. We will create an Etsy store and also list our products in the Shop page of our website. Stay tuned!
Hello from Archie’s Acres. We know it’s been a while since we’ve posted but we’ve been busy preparing the garden and our critters for winter!
The first order of business was to remove all remaining produce from all plants before the first frost, which was about 3 weeks ago. We still had a surprising amount of peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, zucchini and cucumbers which was a pleasant surprise!
A portion of our last harvest for the season
The produce that didn’t make the cut for humans were given to the chickens and the goats, so everybody on the farm won. Especially the chickens.
Then we had to remove all remnants of the tomato and pepper plants. Leaving them around would invite disease to the soil that would effect our productivity next year. It’s a tedious job, but the reward is being able to have a big bonfire with all the dried plants. So that’s fun!
In the next week or so, we will then spread compost and chicken manure onto the garden before the first snow to help rejuvenate the soil. Our current chicken coop setup is basically that of a giant litter box. We filled the entire interior of our coop with sand and ag-lime (aka crushed limestone). This allowed us to scoop out chicken droppings with a manure form (think giant cat litter scoop) to collect for fertilizer. It’s working wonderfully.
As for the critters, we moved and re-positioned the goats’ and Tilly’s
The goats were not very helpful while we were trying to move their shelter
shelter to face the south east in order to protect them from the harsh winter winds from the west and the north. And we covered their favorite hangout area with pine chips to create a barrier between the cold ground and their feet and we put a fancy new coat on Tilly!
Tilly looks fabulous in her new coat
Winter Coop Preparations
We’ve been collecting all fallen leaves and shuttling them into the coop. We’ll also add grass clippings, pine savings and shredded paper. We’re aiming to get about 3-4 inches of material covering the entire coop floor. It’s called the “deep litter method” and worked well for us last year. Basically, the deep layer of organic material absorbs the chicken dropping and slowly composts throughout the winter. The material on the floor provides some insulation from the cold ground, and as it breaks down (composts) it releases some heat into the coop. Added bonus – in the spring, we have great fertilizer waiting for us when we clean out the coop. So far we only have about an inch deep layer throughout; a few of our large maple trees are stubbornly holding onto their leaves. We’re really hoping they drop them before the first snow or we may have some damaged trees!
So as you can see, we’ve been busy! As this season winds down, I promise to post more. I mean, what else am I going to do with all the free time we have? 😉
Fall seems to finally be here and we’re happy to have it! Tomorrow will be our last farmer’s market of the year, which is just in time since the cool evening temps and dwindling day light have our garden winding down for the year. Stop by and see us at Rockford City Market tomorrow evening.
It really is hard to believe the season is over already, and what a great season it’s been! The relaxed pace of the Rockford market allowed us to work out display, setup and marketing kinks that we wouldn’t have had time to learn in a Chicago market. And we met some great local farmers who had booths near us who shared some great growing and selling advice. All in all, the Rockford City Market was the perfect 1st time market for us.
Great Lessons for the Road Ahead
We both agree that our first year of farmer’s market participation has been a great success. We learned so much from the farmers/vendors we met, and the customers taught us through their purchases what we should be growing more of. Plus, the garden itself taught us endless lessons about farming. We figured out what produce to focus most of our attention on in the future (people LOVE beets!). Some plants didn’t make the cut for next year, like broccoli and cauliflower; they take up too much space and extremely hot weather sends them to seed if you don’t happen to be standing next to them to cut them at that exact moment. Designer heirloom tomatoes – 25% are all color and no taste, so we’ve kicked out the ones that are strictly pretty. We want color AND taste! And people love snap peas and colorful carrots! I’ve heard that every farmer says this but, we mean it, we can’t wait to plant our garden next year! It’s going to be awesome!!!
Other highlights from this past summer is that we’ve mastered the art of packing up our car in less than 5 minutes at the end of the market. We have figured out a market display that gets a lot of attention from customers. (Mainly because we have pictures of the chickens, goats, Tilly and Archie all over the place.) And most importantly, we had fun! We make the Rockford City Market a “date night” where we just have fun and enjoy the live music while hanging in our booth.
Thank you to all our customers, friends and family who came to visit our booth this summer! We’ll see you again next year!
We told you last week about all the creative ways we used the pears and apples coming out of our orchard. But now we’re focusing on our ripening hops. We have Chinook, Cascade and Centennial varieties reaching maturity.
We grew hops – now what?
The first step is to cut down the bines. They climb 14+ feet up ropes that we attached to our garage. Then we take each hop cone off the bine and lay it out on a screen to dry for 3 days. A few times a day, we fluff and move the hops on the screen to make sure they dry evenly. Bonus – our hands smell like hops!
You don’t want to let them dry for longer than that because the longer they are out, the more they oxidize (and lose their hoppy goodness).
We’ve been weighing out the hops and packing them into vacuum-sealed bags to freeze for use in future batches of home-brewed beer. But we’ve also been grinding them up and using them to scent our homemade candles! We have a cascade hop scented candle that is out of this world! If you love the smell of fresh hops, you’ll love it! In the next few weeks, we plan to have some of our candles available on our Shop page. They’d make great Christmas gifts for any beer lover!
Our plan is to add a few plants every year until we have enough for ourselves and to share with other beer brewing nerds. Eventually maybe we’ll even sell to some of the great craft breweries in the area.
It is harvest time here at Archie’s Acres since our pears and apples are all ready this week. And like most plants on this farm, when they’re ready we have to be ready to pick them. This farm is filled with hungry opportunists looking for a quick meal. And our orchard is DELICIOUS!!
This orchard came with the farm so we’re not entirely sure what kind of pears and apples we have. Our guess, based on their soft, sweetness is that they are Bartlett pears. Since they all went ripe on Saturday we’ve been frantically trying to eat, use or preserve them.
We made a cider.
And Pear Apple Sauce!
And the chickens get the mushy ones!
It’s a win win win!
We’ve identified 2 varieties of trees in our orchard as Golden Delicious and Jonathan apples. The Golden Delicious apples are great for snacking. While the Jonathan apples are perfect for pies since they’re quite tart. We have 2 other varieties of apples that we’re still not 100% sure about. We’re using them for apple sauce, pies and the pear apple hard cider that we made yesterday!!
Hard cider ready for fermentation
This is our first go at hard cider and we can’t wait to try it!! If it works, we’ll be sure to share the recipe with everyone.
We’ll be at the Rockford City Market today. Please note the hours have changed and the market closes at 7:30 now; it’s too dark for it to stay open until 8:30.
Also, if you’re interested in participating in our CSA next year (farm fresh goodies delivered 1 or 2x/month), please complete the short form on our Shop page so we can tailor next year’s seed order.
Life has been great lately at Archie’s Acres and we have some fun updates from the farm.
Weather is slightly more cooperative
We’re happy to report that the rains have finally given us some time to dry out. That said, we still get a little rain almost daily, but the 1-4 inch torrential rainstorms have slowed and the plants are finally looking and feeling healthy. Aaaaaand because of that it’s been a real tomato and pepper party over here!
Which leads me to happily announce that we have begun selling produce to The Log Cabin Restaurant in Galena, IL! How exciting is that?! It’s such an honor! We’re over the moon about it!
Farmer’s markets are fun!
Farmers market life has been great. We’re enjoying our time at the Rockford City Market every 2nd and 4th Friday and we’re loving our guest vendor spots at the Glenwood Sunday Market in Chicago! The next time we’ll be at the Glenwood Sunday Market is September 24th. We meet so many amazing people at these events and we love being able to learn from the vendors and local farmers around us.
It’s great when friends stop by to see us at the market! Bernie and Nancy it was so good to see you!
Exciting development for next year
We’ve also decided to begin a CSA program starting next Spring! For anyone unfamiliar, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Members sign up to receive a box containing fresh, organic, seasonal goodies from our farm. Once or twice a month (depending on your preference), we will deliver it to a convenient pick-up location.
We’ve created a form in the “Shop” section of our website where you can add your information and we’ll email you when we finalize plans. In the meantime, we’d still like to share our chicken and quail eggs with people after the Farmers Market season is over. But that’s all a work-in-progress.
Critters everywhere
Tilly thinks the bed is meant for her
Our farm pets are doing well. Moose is growing by the literal second! He’s as big as Archie right now and he’s not even 4 months old! He’s fitting in with the goats and Tilly very well.
On that note, Tilly is a diva. She demands treats and pets and she regularly steals Moose’s dog bed. She shouts at us from the pasture every time she sees us. It’s hard to believe that she’s only 4 months old (born April 21st) because she’s such a presence on the farm already that we can’t imagine life without her!
Another hen has hatched a couple of babies in the last week. She has 2 beautiful little chicks and she’s momming like a champ! Just today I watched her teach her babies about the automatic waterer that we have setup in front of their coop. It was really sweet to watch.
How is it August already?!! This summer has flown by and farm life has been hectic for us lately! Not surprisingly, so much has happened since the last time we blogged that I need to do a top 10 list to catch up.
1. Chickens
Two of our hens successfully hatched 8 chicks of their own. They were both 1st time moms so for the first week they actually hung out together and co-parented the babies together. We weren’t sure how the new moms were going to keep the other chickens from pecking the babies to death, but after seeing what they did to Archie when he accidentally walked to close to the babies, it became very clear that these are hardcore, protective mammas. It. Was. Awesome!! The babies are over a month old now, they are traveling in their little pack of 8 and are free ranging and roosting together. It’s very cute and we’re proud of their moms.
5 of the babies venturing to the garden for treats (aka split/damaged tomatoes)
2. Quail
Our quail have finally started laying! These little birds are laying machines! We have 14 girls and although it took longer than the usual 2 months for them to get going, they are now finally getting around to providing us some sell-able farmers market eggs.
Quail egg size vs our chicken eggs
3. Swimming pool
The giant black walnut tree fell on our pool. We spent hours and hours digging up a spot for the pool, had our neighbor bring his skid loader over to help move earth and sand around, and set up the pool (it was NOT an hour long process as advertised). We used it every hot day for about 3 weeks, and then the first of many nasty storms came through and blew the tree onto our pool and our upper garden. Fun times.
Well it was fun while it lasted – at least the tiki torches survived
4. Stormy weather
Storm rolling toward the farm
On that note… the storms throughout the month of July really hurt our town, our garden and our driveway. Our town declared a state of emergency after half of it was under 3+ feet of water; many homes were damaged and destroyed. Many farmers around us had to claim total losses of their corn and soybean crops because of it. It wouldn’t stop raining. We got 11 inches of rain in one weekend! Our gravel driveway was badly damaged; we would cart rocks and gravel to fill in the deep ditches channeled out by the constant running water from the top of the hill, but then it would rain again and the rocks and gravel would wash away and we would have to start over. Our tomato and pepper plants are strained from the all the rain as well.
Pearl City, IL – yes, that’s the main street
5. New goats
We have 3 new goats to the herd! Their names are Lefty, Willie and Bobby. They are siblings of Pancho. We invited Pancho’s parents to our pig roast back in June and they saw Pancho’s new home and asked if we’d take the other 3. How great is that?! The 4 goats and Tilly are now one solid, happy herd.
Our cute, happy herd
6. Another new addition
And since we now have a little herd, we had to get a little herd protector! Meet Moose, our new livestock guard pup!
Moose is so cute
He’s a Karakachan; we got him at 11 weeks and he’s the biggest sweetheart. Neither of us had ever heard of this breed before, but after doing a little research, it turns out this breed is amazing. They are massive, Bulgarian shepherds. Bred to stay up all night, they are loyal and protective. Moose will be well over 100lbs.
Moose and his new pals
7. Kittens are the cutest
The kittens are now 5 months old. They are the sweetest, nicest, cuddliest little fur balls and they run this place. They hang out and mouse in the chicken coop, a couple of them sleep on the front porch at night, sometimes they sleep in the garage. I’ve never felt better about the mouse population around here than I do right now. We’re so happy to have such a productive little crew!
8. Scourge of the garden and orchard
Ugh, the Japanese beetles are here! We lucked out last summer, clearly. This summer they are here in swarms. They’ve eaten all of our sweet corn and have devastated our cherry and plum trees in the orchard. I hate them!! We were not anticipating they would be this bad, so next year we’ll be better prepared and ready to pounce. Just another farm life lesson for us.
9. Rooster separation
We had to build a bachelor pad for the surplus of roosters we had running around the farm. At one point we had 10 roosters and 40 hens, and it was horrible. As soon as the young ones hit chicken puberty it was a stressful free for all. The hens were looking beat up and they weren’t laying as much; we were down to getting 6 eggs a day! It was a mess. So we built the boys their own little coop and run, because without females around, boys will actually happily coexist with each other. Otherwise a few of them would fight to the death and we love them too much to have that happen. Eventually we’ll set up a separate breeding coop so we can pair one rooster with a few hens to get all sorts of fun egg colors.
10. Farmer’s markets
And finally, to wrap up this last month+, our farmer’s market game is pretty solid. We are figuring things out slowly but surely and are able to fill a booth with veggies, herbs, eggs and other things from our garden! How cool is that?! Hanna and I have been able to keep our giant garden alive and thriving, even though we seem to make every mistake possible and kinda have the worst luck. But we’re doing it and it’s awesome! And I’m already looking forward to being even better next year!
Farmer’s Market bound!
11. Bonus update
And yeah, and Archie is still an awesome little bear.
It has been a very busy couple of months on Archie’s Acres. We’ve begun working farmer’s markets and we’ve adopted/rescued a few new residents. We’re so happy to be able to give them happy homes. Also, sadly, we had to say goodbye to our head rooster, Nacho, who died last week.
Nacho was the head rooster on this farm. RIP
Nacho was a huge loss. Our hens have been staying close to the coop ever since; however, we’re hopeful that one of Nacho’s two sons will step up to protect the flock.
Farm life is an emotional roller coaster most weeks.
Meet Poncho!
He is our new 2-3 year old Nigerian Dwarf goat rescue. He’s a nice, friendly and well behaved guy. We adopted him from a couple in Monroe, WI who had too many wethered males in their herd. (By the way, wethered means fixed.) He was their favorite and didn’t want to see him become someone’s food. So we were happy to take him! He will join Tilly as a landscape specialist.
Poncho.
He and Tilly became fast friends, Tilly was sooo happy not to be an only child. She hated being in the pasture alone so she hung out with the chickens, and for a time, thought she was a chicken. She even went under the house to cool off on hot days, like a chicken….
Tilly thinks she’s a chicken.
Meet Betty White
Betty White came from our neighbor ( a few miles away) who is a goat farmer. She didn’t become a mom this past season so he informed us that the herd would see her as a drain on the herd and would most likely beat her to death this winter, so we gladly took her. We named her Betty White because she’s a feisty old broad who doesn’t take any lip from anyone. She’ll be an excellent addition to our tiny herd.
Betty White
These 2 goats have joined Tilly in the our 3.5 acre fenced pasture and will work as landscape specialists. I think we’re all very excited about this!
We are excited to announce that we could be at a farmer’s market near you!!
Our farmer’s market booth!
Currently we are participating in the Rockford City Market every 2nd and 4th Friday of each month. And this Sunday, July 2nd, we will be doing the Glenwood Sunday Market on the North side of Chicago in Rogers Park. We’ve enjoyed the process of having a booth at a farmer’s market. It has been fun and we’re very excited to be a part of these wonderful events. Being able to provide people with organic produce and tasty eggs is extremely rewarding. Stay tuned for more farmers market announcements! We’ll try to keep our calendar in the “Shop” tab of the website up to date so keep checking.
We’ll also announce our market schedules on Instagram @archiesacres and Facebook @archiesacres
