All posts by Mercy Hill Farm

Don & Karen Perkins
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Food For Thought: How Eating Good Food Can Make You Feel Better

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If you only listen to your heart, you will oft times end up pigging out on french fries with cheese sauce. (Am I right?) After a while, somebody else will be listening to your heart – your cardiologist. Next time you’re hungry, stop and listen to your head a minute. So yeah, a great big juicy steak grilled to perfection and smothered in butter might sound really good to your limbic region, but engage your frontal lobe and consider what it will do to your abdominal and posterior regions. Is that 10 minutes of pleasure worth all the work you will need to do over the next couple days/weeks get your diet back in balance again?

I ate a salad today for lunch. Fresh salad is loaded with vitamins, fiber, antioxidants and very little fat. It wasn’t my first choice, but when I took a moment to consider my future I remembered that I’d probably be much happier long term than if I just ate a big steak. (not that I eat steak anymore anyway but you get the idea.) After I ate I was delighted to experience that light, energetic aura that slow burning carbs give you, for many hours. It was Wow.

Eat well. Dream big. Live like you mean it!

Mercy Hill Farm

 

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Winter Roasted Veggie Soup Recipe

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Here on the farm we’ve gotten over 18 inches of snow in the last 48 hours. It makes a warm fire seem that much more cozy as we stare out the window at the fluffy abundance still coming down. On a day like this, hot savory soup is just the ticket to warm your weary bones after a few hours of moving snow around.

My niece Sara has shared a great veggie soup recipe recently on her Pomegranate Chronicles blog: Winter Roasted Veggie Soup. Now if we can just find those rutabagas…

Winter Roasted Veggie Soup

(A very nice side to this would be a thick slice of Rustic Irish Soda Bread with a dollop of whipped butter!)

Thanks Sara!

Farming, Local Food

Griffin Gets to See Where Eggs REALLY Come From

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One of our most favorite things here on the farm is when we get wee visitors. Yesterday we had a visit from Griffin, a curious and vivacious young family member from the seacoast who was very excited to check out the chickens up close and personal.

Because the hens have gotten used to the idea that anytime someone enters the coop, they are in for a treat, they were equally excited to meet Griffin, hoping he had some goodies to share.

Oh sure, some of the girls kept on working, pumping out those eggs. It’s their job after all.

But curiosity got the best of the majority. You never know. A scrap of stale bread, a melon rind, an apple core, sometimes even some cracked corn!

Ahh. Fruit of the Chicken. This is what it’s all about eh?

So we put a few dozen out to share with our friends.

and we make a little quiche for lunch; test the quality, you know.

And then it’s back to the gall darned knitting, because it’s so cold out there the snowmen are begging to be brought in at night!

Thanks for coming up Griffin, and for bringing your Ma (who snapped these great photos.) Come back soon. You’ll really get a kick out of the baby pigs here at the farm come April!

Farming, Local Food

Colors Other Than White Please

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We like snow. We wouldn’t live in NH if we didn’t. In fact, I don’t know how I’d do with a brown Christmas, but now even we are beginning to pine for spring!

The sweet smell of the earth with it’s green leaves reaching for the sun, the bright blossoms flirting with all the bees and butterflies.


So February finds us with one hand on the wood stove damper and the other on a seed catalog, glancing out the window now and then, looking at the thermometer impatiently hoping for a warming trend.

Thanks for the snowy cover and all that we know it does for our fields, but now we are ready for sowing and stopping to smell the roses and harvesting the yields!

Farming, Local Food

How to Make a Big Sticky Gooey Mess

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First you start pulling frames full of honey that the bees have capped out of the bee boxes. This isn’t so bad.

 

then you start to find some that were not so cleanly separated from the walls once you pulled them out. Lick fingers, wipe on pants.

Then you cut the wax caps from the honeycomb, exposing the honey-filled cells.  Some falls on the floor, you step in it, you track it around the house.

Put the frames in the centrifugical honey flinging device. Turn the handle faster and faster until you and everything in the room is thoroughly coated.

Shower really good and give the frames back to the bees for refilling. mmmm. Honey!

 

 

Farming, Local Food

Coming Soon: MercyHill Farm Country Store

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There’s still thirty inches of snow covering the growing beds here at the farm, but now that Christmas and New Year’s Eve have passed, we’re hankering for a fresh garden salad!

We’ve decided to raise piglets again this year. They are lots of fun, and great landscapers. Pigs are herd animals, so we’ll raise one for us, and a few others for friends. OINK!

Rustic obelisks will make it easier to grow climbing beans.

The girls have done a fine job keeping us in eggs this winter. People love our fresh eggs!

and in a few months, we will hire on some new gals to bolster our egg production.

Meanwhile, we’re working out the details with our friends: Lakes Region Eat Local to pool together the best local food in one place this summer, making it available to you in a convenient, fun, country atmosphere: Mercy Hill Farm Country Store in Wolfeboro, NH.

Subscribe to our blog (see the button at the top right hand side of this page) to hear regular reports, fun news, interesting local food stories and get wholesome recipes from friends who also love good fresh local food.

Come on springtime!