Morningwood Farm Urban Homestead

06/27/2025

Mmmmm yardbird eggs and homemade salsa verde! All that canning is paying off!

06/25/2025

So I left the homestead in the capable hands of my menfolk and I am happy to report all is alive and well! 2 Weeks away and the critters survived!

So this time of year is my favorite because all the recipes I want to try out for next years market get developed now! Buying of seed for September planting and getting to focus on myself and the homestead! Oh yeah, and a double root canal.. Yuck.

Luffa is planted. Roselle is planted. Sweet potato is planted. (It planted itself). The Purple Possum Passionfruit is going bananas! SO MUCH FRUIT....... If you are local and want a cutting, message me! You want to try some fruits? Message me. My neighbors are growing weary of my free fruits.

Let's hope the hurricane season is much calmer this year. New generator needs to get warmed up for the season. Propane tanks topped off. Broke generator needs to get fixed. Part is on the desk with all the other things left undone. For emergency water, we don't buy endless flats of bottled water. We have a 5 gallon 10 bottle system and the trusty Berkey water purifier. We have 50 gallons of purified water available at any time without adding more plastic trash to the landfill. Have a few bottles that need refilling too.

The other fun part of this time of year is hatching!! The chicken babies we hatched at school are so cute. I have a customer who is trying to preserve the genetics of her current flock so I have had batches of eggs incubating for her. Now that I am home I have 3 dozen quail eggs in as well.

Stay tuned! And as always, if you need any elderberry syrups or my other products, I am just a text message away!

06/06/2025

Next round of eggs set for my customer! 12 fresh laid chicken eggs incubating. I offer incubation services of any feathered creature from quail to goose. Every hatch starts with a sanitized incubator and eggs from different customers never share space with another customers eggs. Pics of the last batch of eggs as well, for the cuteness!

06/02/2025

Best part of summer break. Real breakfasts! Poached yard bird eggs on sautéed peppers, eggplant, tomato and onions with homemade salsa verde, all from ingredients grown at Strawberry Passion Organics farm and pickled okra from Grandpa G’s.

06/01/2025

Let Summer break begin! Fresh yard bird eggs, tomatoes from the farm and fresh made tomatillo and green tomato salsa.

Moved a customers newly hatch birds to the brooder and the Silkies say HEY! A month old, hatched in my first grade classrooms.

05/31/2025

And just like that, the market season is over. We had a great time with all of our friends, family, and amazing customers. Farmer Jerry and his family are the best and we can’t wait to come back in October to do it all again. The trailer is packed and ready to be brought back to the house and the remaining product left unsold is headed for the closet.

Was that being said, if you need any products, I am merely a text message away with a pick up in the 33617 area code. 

Produced by Leon SchlesingerReleased by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc

05/31/2025

Something about picking in the rain! Box number 3! Lots of tomatoes for sauce. Eggplant, thyme, Thai basil and black eyed peas.

05/26/2025

May is the gardens last hurrah in Florida! In this case, the farm is having it's last breath before the months of rest. That means EVERYTHING is ready to be harvested and Farmer Jerry is having a fabulous sale on everything on the farm! $20 and you fill the box with whatever your heart desires. Already did 2 boxes last week. Let's see what is left this next weekend. Maybe another in my future.

Canning in May is coming to a close as well as we prepare for the crap weather of rain in the front yard, sunshine in the back and a tornado a block over. Hubby notified me that the deep freeze had 2 inches of ice build up. All the good meat is gone and all that is lingering are all the "dead bodies" left to process........ So I have been cooking and canning like a mad woman since April, purging all the carcasses, rendering tallow and schmaltz, making stock, making meals ready to go, pickling, cutting and canning till I am cross-eyed. Oh yeah. The day job doesn't wrap up till the end of May, so I am busy writing IEP's, finishing up testing, packing up my work area for hibernation, oh yeah, and I need a root canal. Plus a trip out of state for family once work is over....... I'll rest when I am dead.
So here is a scorecard of what I canned this month.....
1Q, 3P and 6 HP of Tomatillo/Green Tomato Salsa Verde, done 3 ways (50/50, All Tomatillo and heat levels)
5P Eggplant Caponata
3HP Mixed Pepper Cowboy Candy plus 1P&3HP of leftover syrup
3HP Xtra hot Banana Peppers
4HP regular Banana Peppers
5HP Pickled Pepper Relish
10P Black-eyed peas with smoked turkey meat
3P Black-eyed peas with smoked pork tenderloin, tomato and okra
12P Pickled Okra, done 3 ways
2P Pickled green tomatoes, done 2 ways
4Q of chicken stock (One was the meat bird with leftover meat in the jar)
1P and 2HP Tinga (sauce for chicken)
4oz and 8oz jar of roasted serrano and jalapeno peppers in EVOO
4oz jar of Cherry Bomb peppers in EVOO
About 12oz of meat bird schmaltz
About 1Q of fully rendered tallow

As promised, pics of the experience and everything I ended up with. I am tired.

05/26/2025

April was the month of the cow..... I went on an experiment to find a rocking birria recipe (semi-fail) and make an epic amount of beef stock. I had bought a bunch of beef bones from the local slaughterhouse, some fat for tallow and I had a bag of bits from trimming up roasts and steak in the freezer. The Strawberry onions were on closeout at the farm, so it's time to make and jar up French Onion soup! I also thawed out some oxtail I had in the freezer and used that with the stock to make Island Oxtail with Green Seasoning, recipe from my Trini customer! I know I ended up with about 6 gallons of stock that was divided up into quarts of plain stock, quarts of French Onion soup, pints of the birria and pints of the Oxtail with Green Seasoning. I didn't take too many pictures as I was moving too fast, but it all came out fabulous. Cracked open a jar of the oxtail and poured over mashed potatoes. PURE comfort food....

The birria recipe didn't come out tasting like it does in our local bodega, but what I did create and jar up was this wonderful sauce that tasted very much like a Spanish dish we had at a tapas restaurant many years ago. Rabo de Toro. Looking back, they are both made very similar, but the birria is heavy on the chile's and the Rabo is more brothy. Birria is Mexican, but it makes sense.

I promise to do better for my May canning post!

05/20/2025

05/17/2025

Well, the growing season is slowly coming to an end and we only have two more weekends of market and of course the freeze dryer is out of commission!  So this year we’re gonna be doing a lot more canning and a lot less freeze drying. The farm ran a fill a box for $20 special and 15 pounds of okra for five dollars so you can only imagine what I’m up to.

My haul

4 1/2 pounds of freshly shelled Black Eyed Peas
3 pounds of eggplant
2 1/2 pounds of carrots
2 pounds of cherry tomatoes
1 1/2 pounds of jalapeños
1 pound of Serano peppers
2 pounds of banana peppers
2 1/2 pounds of sweet bell pepper babies
1/2 pound assorted herbs
Six cherry bomb peppers
3 1/2 pounds of yellow squash
3 medium onions
1 cacuzzo squash
8 pounds of green tomatoes
6 pounds of tomatillos
3 1/2 pounds of bell peppers
15 pounds of okra

$55

All organic from Strawberry Passion/ Passion Organics Farms, LLC.
They’re doing the same special next weekend as well!

02/16/2025

Get quail. It makes more sense.

When the reality hits them of how truly expensive chickens are! Mine are anyways! The feed, vitamins, shelter, but I don’t do it for eggs. That is just an added benefit. I love each bird I have and it’s so worth it ❤️