Internship and Employment opportunities!

Tweet

Do you need an internship?

We offer internships for current students: Check it out on our Learning Opportunities page.  All the details are in the flyer, also available here:

2016 Internship Flier

Our Internship structure is very fluid so that it may be fitted to the individual student's needs and goals.  You may request a whole farm internship or a focused one on Vegetables or Livestock.

General schedule:
Vegetables: 1 harvest day (Mon/Tues or Friday), 1 Market day (Wed. or Sat.), and 1 general work day.  Minimum 20 hours per week, unpaid.  Hours beyond 20 will be paid but are not guaranteed.

Livestock: 1 Market day (Wed. or Sat.), 1-2 general work days.  16-20 hours per week, unpaid.  Hours beyond 20 will be paid but may not be livestock related.

Whole Farm: Same as vegetable requirement.

To apply, we request that you send us an updated resume and cover letter detailing your goals and how you think our internship could contribute to attaining that goal.

Do you need employment?

We will be hiring part time laborers for vegetables and possibly for ad-hoc livestock fencing work from May through October.

To apply for employment opportunities send us your updated resume and cover letter.  We want to know your employment needs and how you think employment with Omache Farm can further your goals.

Never written a resume or cover letter?  WSU Students can head over to the Academic Success and Career center on campus for assistance.  We are not as familiar with UI's resources but are certain they have something similar.

Requirements:
*Hours, especially harvest, will be early.
*You will need reliable transportation to our farm which is about 10 miles south of Pullman and just 11.7 miles from Beasley coliseum.
*You will be working daily with your hands and back.  Must be able to routinely lift and carry 50 lbs

*NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED - be willing to learn!

Extra Special 7-hour Leg of Lamb

Tweet

Extra Special 7-hour Leg of Lamb

http://www.princetoneats.org/extra-special-7-hour-leg-of-lamb

Since I need to learn how to cook lamb  I thought I’d begin with the sirloin end of a leg of lamb which is the upper end near the hip joint.  Most of ours weight between 1.5 and 2 lbs and all of them are bone-in.  The bones make it challenging to de-bone but because it is the sirloin, it is more tender than the shank end of the leg.  Because our lambs tend to be lean and have a light fat cover, we still recommend a moist cooking method such as roasting with liquid in the pan.  I’ve found a recipe that promises both simplicity and mouth-watering goodness.

Extra Special 7-hour Leg of Lamb

by Chef Alex Levine, Whole Earth Center

http://www.princetoneats.org/extra-special-7-hour-leg-of-lamb

Ingredients:

1 bone-in leg of lamb roast, half or whole.  There should be some fat on the roast.

Olive oil for browning the leg
1 large onion, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 carrot, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 celery, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
1 cup white or red wine, per your preference
1 ½ cups crushed or diced canned tomatoes (or fresh if in season!)
A couple of teaspoons of herbs: some combination of thyme, oregano, rosemary, fresh or dried, or perhaps some Herbes de Provence.
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions:

1. Remove lamb from refrigerator, uncover, and let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack positioned to fit the lamb.
3. In a large casserole that can go into the oven, heat up a little olive oil. Sprinkle the lamb with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and brown from all sides. Remove lamb from the pan to a platter and add the onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Cook over medium-low heat until the vegetables start to soften.
4. Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to remove any leftover brown flavorful bits. Mix in herbs and tomato product.  Return the lamb to the roasting pan with any pan juices. Cover the pan.
5. Cover the casserole and place in the oven. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees, and roast for 3-4 hours.
6. Remove pan from oven and increase oven temperature to 450. Transfer lamb to a plate and cover to keep warm.  Remove the vegetables from the casserole with a slotted spoon and reserve them for the sauce. Strain cooking liquid into a fat separator or glass measuring cup; spoon off any fat that rises to the surface and discard.
7. Spread a bit of olive oil on the bottom of your casserole, and return roast, uncovered to the hot oven.
8. Make the sauce: combine the cooking liquid and reserved vegetables in a small saucepan and purée.  Add a tablespoon of butter or heavy cream, if that’s the sort of cook you are.  Keep sauce warm.
9. When the lamb is crisped up and – if there’s a layer of fat on it – sizzling, remove it from the oven. Carve lamb and arrange slices on a large warm platter. Drizzle with sauce before serving, or serve the sauce on the side.
10. If the whole carving thing is too elegant, place the meat, right in its casserole, on a trivet on the middle of the table, and have your family or guests remove hunks of meat from the roast with a pair of tongs.  Yes, it’s that tender.

Alternative Method (Margaret’s)

Does your crock pot come apart into a base and a ceramic and glass lidded crock?  Perfect!  (If not, use an appropriately sized casserole and foil as described in the recipe and transfer between oven and pre-heated crock-pot quickly.)  Use the crock as your casserole dish.  The lid substitutes for the foil cover.  After the initial roasting, move the crockpot out of the oven and onto it’s regular base.  Set it to high and come back in about 4 hours or when it is nearly as done as you like it.  In our case and as most recommend, keep lamb somewhere between rare and medium done-ness.  When you are close to that point, pick back up with the recipe by getting your oven heated to 450 and leave the lid off.

Lambs Finally!

Tweet

Lambs are HERE!  Did I say that already?  Oh well, there were a handful showing up last week but this week seems to be THE week for dropping little lambs.  We’ve even had a rather amazing group of them!

            Jacobs, being a smaller, heritage breed of sheep, are not known for having more than one lamb each season.  They can, however ewes who regularly drop twins are comparatively rare.  Larger, more commercialized breeds of sheep, such as Rambouillet or Suffolks have twins and even triplets as a matter of routine.

            One of our lovely Jacobs, gave birth to not just twins but triplets on Sunday!  Two little girls and a little boy, all with plenty of spots.  One of the girls, the tiniest of the three, we decided to make into a bottle lamb.  If we still had our barn or another place where we can pen them up and keep a much closer eye on mama and babies, I would have loved to allow her to keep all three for a few days to see if she really could raise all three.  In the interest of the welfare of the smallest lamb, she is now living in our house and for the most part, is relatively quiet as long as she has company.  Whether it is one of us, the children or the dogs, she doesn’t much care.  So far she has been eating enthusiastically and growing well for starting out at only three pounds or so at birth.  Her siblings are outside with their mother and also doing well.

            All of the lambs are growing fast and stretching their springs.  One of the older rambouillets has already made it to 16 pounds! Granted, they usually weigh in at around 8lbs at birth so far.  They are adorable to watch spring around the pasture playing while their mothers rest or eat.  Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to take some photos before next week’s newsletter!

Now Offering...

Tweet

Home Delivery!

From now through the first Thursday in May, Omache Farm is offering home delivery of our farm fresh products!  Order right here, from our website and receive your order right at home!

We are fortunate enough this spring to have product to sell.  Unfortunately, there aren't any markets already set up in the early spring before most vegetable growers have produce.  We decided to trial another new program.  Hopefully with your enthusiastic support and patronage, we'll find the time and effort worthwhile.

If this works out, we'll likely offer a very similar program over the course of next winter.  Who knows what'll happen... perhaps someday there'll be coolers on lots of front stoops awaiting the Farmer, much like there were coolers awaiting the Milk Man...

How it Works:

And on with life we go...

Tweet

Firstly, a huge thank you to all the folks who helped us out in the wake of our barn fire!  Many of our neighbors dropped off anywhere from a few bales to a pretty good sized stack to help us through the short term and we've been sent many names and numbers of folks who may have hay for sale.  Others have sent money towards a hay fund or offered to pay balances for CSAs that aren't due until March to help keep us liquid while getting ourselves put back together.

The folks at Wilson Banner Ranch rallied the whole clan and then some with about 120 bales of straw in about 5 trucks to come up the evening after our barn burned to construct some straw bale and cattle panel hoophouses to shelter our homeless sheep and piglets!

We are ever so grateful for all of the family and friends who have offered their help and assistance during this time.

But alas, life continues to move forward, whether you're sick, your barn burns down or your creek floods itself to nearly-record levels because of a single day melt of a foot and a half of snow.  (no worries, the piggies didn't have to swim... but I do think they were starting to consider building themselves a boat...)

This Weekend, February 15th, Omache Farm will be at Artfully Yours Bakery on Main Street in downtown Pullman for another mid-winter sale.  We will be there between 11 am and 2 pm along with Wilson Banner Ranch!

Omache Farm will have Lamb and PORK! (no bacon yet.  Sad, i know!)
Wilson Banner Ranch has promised pears and apples, honey and fresh eggs.  Yum!

Come on over, say hi to some of your local farmers, snag yourself some pork and apples and enjoy something gluten and allergen free from Artfully Yours with your neighbor!

Winter Stuff Pickup

Tweet

We have our first pickup scheduled for our Winter Stuff folks!

What am I talking about? visit our Winter Retail page...

Tuesday November 26, 2013 from 3-6pm.

With Pork, Lamb, Eggs, produce, gourds, wool and farm crafts, there is quite a bit to choose from for November!

Wilson Banner Ranch will also be taking orders for Tuesday pickup this week.  They are offering butternut squash, Banana winter squash, more pie pumpkins and eggs, mix and match boxes of pears and apples and of course their famous apple cider!

If you have yet to sign up for our Winter Stuff email list so you too can order fresh, local food and other farm products from your local farmer, email us at OmacheFarm@gmail.com to get on the list.

Hurry!  Ordering for this week's pickup closes at 10am Tuesday morning!

Baby lambs!

Tweet

Surprise Surprise!  not one but TWO new little lambs on the 3rd and 4th of July!

Can you find them both?

YouTube video

It's Lamb Time!

Tweet
Surprise!  Apparently summer wasn't too hot because here they come!  Earlier than ever!

So far, we have 3 ewe lambs (one set of twins! yay!) and two goat kids (one of each).

Let the adorableness ensue!
Pictures:

Internship Opportunity!

Omache Farm has an opening for an Intern for the 2012 season!

Do you want to REALLY see what happens on a small, diversified vegetable and livestock farm on the Palouse?  Do you want to have the opportunity to learn about EVERYTHING from planning to planting to caring to harvesting?  And from birth to shearing to rotating to finishing?  From planning to doing to recording and back? See what it's really like from the OTHER SIDE of the Farmer's Market table?

Check out our Information here:  Internship Opportunity

Have we scared you away yet?  No?  Then shoot us an email or call us.  Let's Talk.

Split Eyelids

Well, we got our first three lambs but apparently their Mamas were early birds.

There are more ewes that are almost there and they are definitely looking ready to drop.  We're learning to be able to tell which ewes are going to drop lambs next but it's certainly not an exact science.  Not only do their udders start to "bag up," they start to slow down and look like they are tired of lugging around that huge thing so many call "cute", just like humans do.

If you've ever been pregnant or the partner to someone pregnant, I'm sure you remember the feeling and the look.

The third cutie born was a little ewe lamb.  Her only issue is that she has a split eyelid.

It is a bit difficult to discern from this photo but if you look carefully, at the uppermost point of her eyelid, you'll notice a small triangular jog where it should be a smooth curve.  This particular example is a moderate split.  Sometimes all you'll be able to see is an unusual tuft of fur in that same location.

The gene for this deformation is connected to the polycerate gene a.k.a. the multiple horn gene.  Essentially when the hornbuds split in utero, the split extends through the eyelid and is not totally knit together.  The reason for this gene being bad is that the split can lead to less than ideal protection of the eye itself which in turn could result in partial or total blindness in the affected eye.  This defect is also highly heritable.

On the good side highly heritable genes are relatively easy to find.  I can discern pretty quickly which individual has the gene and thus which animal must be designated as a "terminal" sire or dam.  That means that all the offspring from that animal will be meat animals and not considered when determining which lambs to keep for the breeding flock.  While each individual case may or may not be a big deal to the individual animal, having the gene in one's flock knowingly poses, I feel, an animal welfare issue.  In keeping an animal with the split eye gene or with a split eyelid, you are knowingly exposing that animal's offspring to the risk of bodily harm and pain.  If possible, the good shepherd will work to eliminate this gene from their flock for the good of the flock.

Lambs are HERE!

We'd like to welcome our first two little lambs!

Born just about noon, the two little guys are our of Eira and weighed about 6 and 7 lbs.

Everyone was up and about and nursing well and Mama was doing her job well. (Kashme, our dog, could tell you that!)

HannaMae Saved the Lamb

About a month ago, we had a surprise lamb in late May.  He came from a yearling ewe that we had previously thought had lost her lamb.  Just like her mother, Penny gave no signs of being pregnant and dropped her first lamb with nothing more than the bleat of a baby to announce it's own arrival.

The afternoon that Penny dropped her lamb, Jason moved the sheep, as planned, into a pasture that encompassed a section of the creek running through the farm.  We have a small bridge spanning the creek but as the creek is not very wide, it is common for the sheep to simply hop the creek to get where they're going.

Being a first-time mom, Penny had yet to learn what her baby could and could not yet do.  While Penny had no problem hopping the creek, her toddling lamb still wasn't quite strong enough and ended up hopping into the creek instead.

HannaMae watched Penny's lamb try to follow it's mother and when she saw the lamb fall into the creek, she ran to her Papa who she knew could save the lamb.  After a moment of translating "the lamb is bubbling!" into "the lamb is in the creek!"  Jason took off for the creek.  He threw himself on the ground and pulled the lamb from the water.  a moment of inspection determined the lamb to be fine and he gently tossed the lamb across he creek to his mother.

The lamb had indeed been bubbling, being able to only get his nose above the water about half of his jumps.  Being spring the water in the creek easily runs several feet deep and had HannaMae not seen the lamb, he may have very well been lost.

Three cheers for HannaMae!  Who still will begin telling you some version of how she saved the lamb whenever she gets the chance!

Stuffed Lamb

This Recipe comes from a book in my personal collection called "Over the Open Fire" by Pamela Alford with Johnny Nix.  This cookbook is for cooking over an open fire, usualy with cast iron however they also list how the recipes would be done in a kitchen and I always add notes to recipes I provide.

"Stuffed Rack of Lamb"

Notes: use cookware similarly sized and scaled to the amount of meat you are working with.  Also, any other cut of meat that you could stuff works as well, adjust cooking times and temperatures appropriately.  shoulder roasts, legs work well, as do chops: just cut from the side for stuffing.

Serving Size: 8
14" deep Cast Iron Dutch Oven
10" Skillet

Stuffed Rack
1 rack of lamb
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbs fresh parsley
3 tbs olive oil
1/4 cup onion, minced
3 tbsp butter

Basting Sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp dry mustard
1/4 cup deli mustard
1/2 cup ketchup
4 tsp lemon juice
1 tbs water
1/4 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ginger, ground
1 tbs soy sauce

Instructions
With a knife sharpener from a knife block, poke a large hole all the way through the rack of lamb.  combine garlic, parsley, olive oil, butter and onion to make a paste.  stuff the paste into the hole in the lamb, as much as possible!    Stand rack bones up on a meat trivet and bake at 400' for 20 minutes.  mix the basting ingredients and bring to a boil.  reduce the oven ehat to 350' and baste every 20 minutes.  Total roasting time is approximately 1 hour 20 minutes, depending on the size of the rack.

Notes: For cuts like roasts or legs, I would monitor for doneness starting at about 40 minutes.  For chops, 20-30 minutes.  It may be a good idea, for chops especially, to consider marinating in the basting sauce after cutting for the stuffing but prior to stuffing and roasting.

Happy Eating!

Lambs 2011

Hooray!  Our first two lambs arrived this weekend!  We don't know which of our two rams are the sire this year because life got a little too crazy last fall and we didn't do separate breeding pastures.  So any that I wish to register with the JSBA this year can't be any higher than FF (Foundation Flock).  Not a terrible loss since the ones we bought last spring are all there anyways.  Next year we will do some more testing as far as what the ram's genes look like, Abe especially.

But, so far it looks like we've got good genes on at least the ewe's side!

#1 comes from one of our newly-bought ewes.  Her four horns are gorgeously set and she's nicely spotted.  Her little ram lamb is also.  He also has 3-4 horn buds as far as I can tell as yet.


 #2 came from a Khatadin-Jacob crossed ewe lamb.    Except for the eye split in one of his left eyes, he's also very nice looking as far as the Jacob genes are concerned.  In fact, the only reason I might know him to be 1/4 Khatadin would be if he was polled!  I'm not sure where the gene causing the eye split came from: mama, grandma, Abe or Tierny.  My most likely suspect I think may be from his mother's dam but I don't know who that is anymore.  No matter what, he sure is cute!

Well, I expect to post more lamb updates this week!  I'll be going to go check on them again later tonight because there was one yearling who was showing signs of labor earlier. 

So Far, so good!  *knock on wood!*