BBQ Sauce and kicking off the summer!

Happy Memorial Day!

The official weekend to kick off the summer season has arrived! And it’s raining and cool.  Oh well, this IS New England.  I guess we expect it.

A weekend to enjoy a precious, extra day off of work, to honor the men and women who have fought and sacrificed so much for their fellow Americans and their country. To celebrate with parades and poems and poppy’s.  To hang our flags, buntings and decorate with red, white and blue.

To take time out of our busy, and sometimes self-absorbed lives, and remember.  Remember where we came from, and how far we have come and WHO got us here.

Here at the farm, we will be taking advantage of the long weekend by getting some unfinished projects done.  Fencing!!!

We are in the process of fencing in two of our fields in order to get ready for the lambs we will be acquiring.  I am so excited!! The upper field is almost finished and we should be able to move the lambs in soon!  This will be our first experience with lambs.

A customer of mine has a small flock of sheep.  A small-sized, cross-breed that have a good temperament.  They are in need of a field to borrow in order to allow their field to grow back in.  Sheep eat grass all the way down to the ground, so if you aren’t able to rotate fields; after time, the sheep will eat the field down and their will no longer be any grass.  That’s where we come in.  We will house their entire flock of sheep for a month or so.  In return, we get lambs!

Last weekend we also acquired a pair of white, Pekin ducks.  We already have 12 Khaki Campbell ducks, that we keep for eggs.  So when a friend of a customer was looking for a home for her “pet” ducks, we took them home and added them to our flock.

The poor ducks! “Donald” and “Daisy” had been exclusively hand raised and had never seen chickens or ducks before.  They were terrified of the chickens and didn’t know what to think of the other ducks.  They did, however, love the pond and spent their first day here swimming, or following me around.  Adorable! It’s been a week and they are settling in nicely.  Except, “Donald” is a “Debra”!

I recently have been trying new barbecue sauce recipes.  I don’t like to buy pre-made sauces or dressings because they always contain unnecessary ingredients and lots have high fructose corn syrup or canola oil, which we avoid like the plague. The only problem with most homemade bbq sauce recipes is that they all call for a ketchup base, and I am not a fan.

Recently I found one that I really like.  Here is the recipe:

Barbecue Sauce

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 onion, chopped fine

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tbsp. chili powder

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp. mustard

1/3 c honey

1 c tomato sauce

2 tbsp. liquid smoke

1tsp sea salt

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

dash fresh ground pepper

1.Cook onion and garlic in oil until tender.

2. Add remaining ingredients, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 30 minutes.

3.Enjoy!  Refrigerate leftovers for no more than a week.

Summer, here we come!