In the midst of most family farms, is a house called the home place. When you layer that with the appreciation of food, family and hospitality that runs so deep in western Kentucky, you get the Peery House at Springhill Farms! And in this episode, we talk to three generations of the family about changes unfolding over the years at their home place.

Growing up it was home for Jerry Peery. While growing 65 years of corn, soybeans, wheat and more, he also grew the farm’s footprint adding acres as others moved away or stopped farming. Now he’s working with his grandson Jonathan to take over the operation for future generations.

Kristia Peery Reynolds learned to bake in the house as her grandmom showed her the secrets of perfect mixtures and beautiful decorations.

As the house sat vacant, the family considered options for it. Ultimately, it got a renovation that would make it easy for the family and others to stay in touch with the heritage. The Peery House is now a bed and breakfast, with a commercial kitchen for Kristia’s baking business. (Like Sugarwater Manor but so different too!

We talk about the farm’s history, the decision to make changes and what guests can expect when visiting a working farm in Western Kentucky!

Soils, Grain & Oilseeds

One of the benefits of having a bed and breakfast on the farm, is having a chance to talk with people who may not have had the chance to grow up in a rural area. In fact, the Peery family enjoys having a chance to answer questions and even show guests around a bit or put them up in a tractor’s buddy seat.

I was lucky enough to get a tour of the farm with Jerry & Jonathan talking about the various ways they keep a focus on soil health and the environment. And the timing of the tour was perfect because canola/rapeseed was in full bloom (Lesley Rae Kelly talks about canola in a past episode). This was a bit different than canola and is more aptly called rapeseed. Jonathan tells me it is a fairly new version that can be used for industrial purposes including biofuels. This is the second year the family grew it so they are paying close attention as you’ll see in the video, still learning some of the ins and outs of it.

Hospitality & Air BnB

Another change in the last several years was converting the family’s home place to a getaway for guests. The house was renovated and yet, reminds me of all the best memories of being home with family. From the family photos and antiques, to the snacks left for guests, you really can’t help but feel welcome.

I may never recover from leaving the house with A DOZEN CUPCAKES! Some of the great old favorites like Kristia’s grandmom’s strawberry cake recipe and new ones like maple bacon or bourbon pecan topping! I had to share about them on the Grounded by the Farm Instagram channel.

 

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Find The Peery House online

• The Peery House on Air BnB
• The Peery House on Instagram
• The Peery House on Facebook

The post How One Family’s Home Place Showcases a Heritage of Hospitality appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

When it comes time to choose cooking oil, there are lots of choices. Canola oil is the easy choice for Lesley Rae Kelly and lots of other Canadians. See canola is uniquely Canadian as is Lesley! Her family grows canola on their farm and she loves the crop so much she created a blog called High Heels and Canola Fields.

Farming with Family

While her family has been farming wheat and barley for decades prior, The early 1990s provided the opportunity to try something new. Better crop rotation and a number of other factors made canola the perfect choice. They have been growing the oil seed crop ever since. Decades later it is the crop that Lesley connects to most deeply.

Lesley’s story doesn’t follow a straight line. She grew up on the farm but left for her education and worked in corporate marketing a while. Then as her  mom and dad decided to retire, Lesley and her husband decided to join her brother on the farm. The trio has even acquired their first property as farm owners.

Lesley’s marketing and communications background, project management and even experience managing people is really useful on the farm. And her willingness to help wherever needed has meant Lesley ends up driving equipment some times, and she definitely entertained us as she learned some of the ropes.

Working with five grown individuals, who are also family members, has been  an amazing opportunity to work outdoors with the people you Lesley loves, but – it’s taken a variety of conversations, many direct and sometimes uncomfortable to find the experience that propels the farm today. While Lesley is learning more about the equipment and physical processes on the farm, her focus is currently on the land and farm strategies that help structure the processes on the farm.

Tell Me About Canola

Canola is an oilseed like soybeans, sesame seeds and others. But it is a striking vision with beautiful blooms that are numerous and totally light up the prairies mid-season. Just look at this photo.

Canola was derived from a common crop in Europe called rapeseed. In fact, Farmer Tom in the UK grows some! Canadian scientists worked with rapeseed in the 1960s and 70s trying to improve it, the resulting product was canola. The changes they made not only improved the health qualities but eliminating some of the less desirable fats. As a result of this, more than 20 million acres of canola fields have been created and are currently being harvested in Canada by approximately 40,000 farmers..

One of the strangest facts about canola is that it’s directly related to something few would think would even be in the same family of vegetables — broccoli, kale, and all those others! While the bitter taste has been removed by plant breeding, what remains is what canola looks like as it grows. Are those baby cabbages? Nope! Those are canola plants preparing to bolt (grow tall)!. While the flavor and initial growth stages are remarkable, what is often seen (but never taken as canola plants) is the beautiful yellow fields it generates as it grows. Appearing as waving fields of yellow wonder, the canola fields are truly a sight to behold during the months of July when flying over Western Canada. Have you ever seen them? No problem! Be sure to visit Lesley’s Instagram profile to see the beauty of this Canadian staple with your own eyes!

Are you familiar with the growth stages of canola? Find out more now by visiting the Canola Encyclopedia when it’s time to “bolt” on over to find the answers!

If you’ve ever seen plants pressed to extract oil, it’s an amazing process. Oil yields, depending on the type of plant vary, but the canola plant can yield up to 40% when being pressed! That’s a lot of magic out of a seed  so small. Be sure to check out an amazing look at the pressing process to learn more about how processors are currently churning out more than 200 tons of canola oil per day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzRiRQzTWd0

Did you know that canola oil has a lighter taste and – has a lower smoke point? This makes it the perfect addition to cooking for the whole family no matter what you’re serving up!
Learn more about “smoke point” and why canola oil is a great choice when it’s time to chow down!

Tired of the same old salad dressing? Why not try substituting canola oil? It’s built for it, has a lighter taste and makes new flavors available inside of any recipe! Lesley swears by it and tells us a bit of lemon gets it done!

Focusing on Mental Health

While it’s something that’s been thought about over the decades, only recently has the focus of mental health and farming been presented as something vital.

Inside this episode, Lesley share a variety of factors that helped her family that continues to propel her effort and the future of being healthy mental in the farming industry. Her on-going efforts to advance awareness when it comes to farmers’ mental health is the focus of the Do More Ag Foundation.

When it’s all said and done, amplifying a family’s ability to communicate is incredibly vital in today’s challenging times. The process of having conversations, not unlike the one that we have with Lesley inside this episode of Grounded By The Farm, continues to build a foundation of healthy conversation that fosters hope, love and awareness of what people are feeling around you to better everyone involved.

Lesley talks about a full range of topics in her podcast, the What The Farm Podcast she cohosts with Rob Sharkey of The Shark Farmer. Be sure to tune in and interact regularly with her to learn more about what’s going on, and to help foster farming efforts!

The post Canola and Canada Are Inextricably Connected, Farmer Lesley Rae Kelly Tells Us Why & More appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

It seems like avocado recipes were a good way to follow up the tour of an avocado farm and the interview with a farmer sharing tips on how to find the perfect avocado. Not only did I have a box of avocados at the house, I have friends who write about food all the time!

Avocados Recipes & Hard Avocados

Who hasn’t run to the grocery store and bought avocados wanting to make guacamole or something immediately. As Mimi Avocado told us in the podcast, avocados give us a chance to grow as people as we work on being more patient. She gives you a lot of tips on what to do with hard avocados (and what crack pot ideas she’s heard that simply do not work) on her site. She has another post that gives you all the tips on handling avocados at home and how to tell whether an avocado is ripe or not.

Making Guacamole

You can’t mention avocados without a lot of minds going straight to guacamole and chips! I can still remember my first visit to San Diego and sitting in Old Town enjoying it so much that i had absolutely no room for dinner! But there isn’t just one way to make guacamole and people get some questions, so I have a few guacamole recipes I want to share. I love that Mimi has so many to choose from but also have some other farmers who love guacamole too. Several great avocado recipes here!

A Good, Basic, Easy Guacamole

My friend Jent in Indiana shares a good recipe for fresh guacamole on her site Farm Wife Feeds that sounds really familiar to me. She says her daughter is the guac pro and every time they make it they munch it all up!

Making a Big Batch of Guacamole

Mimi’s story of how she met her husband and was captivated by his big bowl of guacamole for a potluck makes me smile. But seriously, making a guacamole for a crowd isn’t that easy unless you know how to get a lot of avocados at peak all at once!

The Fastest & Easiest Guacamole

Sometimes, you have a ripe avocado ready to go but maybe you don’t have all the other fresh ingredients? Mimi says the fastest & easiest guacamole which includes simply salsa and a season salt, fresh cilantro takes it up a notch. Some times she even adds proteins to it to make a heartier snack like these smoked ham guacamole bites.

Avocado Toast

I’m going to start by admitting I’m not a great cook but I love certain foods and learn to prepare those at the very least. Making avocado toast has brightened several days during quarantine.

While having the perfectly ripe avocado is the most important piece, I am also a bit of a bread fanatic. Many friends and family are busily tending a sour dough starter and baking bread, I love bread fresh from the over but admittedly, I’m not a regular baker. I love that I can get sour dough from my local grocery via Instacart. My options range from St. Louis’ own Companion Bakery or from Izzo’s in San Francisco.

I didn’t have any fresh cilantro, which I love with avocado, so I used just a little cilantro-flavored cotton seed oil. It was awesome!

Mimi Avocado tells us how they make avocado toast and it sounds like they do ALL THE THINGS since they have acres of avocado trees I toured in their back and side yards. She uses mashed avocado sometimes, slices the avocado others. And she talks about a range of toppings that go well with avocado. Since a friend is going to the seafood market today and dropping by a few things, I may have to try out some new ideas myself based on Mimi’s inspiration!

Avocado Frittata for Breakfast

My friend Jenny, met her true love and moved from California to North Dakota. Although she loves the prairie, she misses some of the local produce that was always so incredibly accessible. Of course, grocery stores and home delivery can cover most of us wherever we are. She talks about all of that and more as she provides a recipe for the avocado and tomato frittata that looks awesome and rounds out our avocado recipes nicely!

The post Five Avocado Recipes You Really Need to Check Out appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

The search for the perfect avocado is a search many of us have been on. But avocado farmers like Mimi Holtz, who is known simply as Mimi Avocado online, know what to look for and what impacts the tasty goodness we all crave. Listen as she shares favorite recipes, some of the everyday ways the Holtz family enjoys avocados, insight on how the crop is grown and tips for delighting kids. 

Selling Produce Direct

The family started a business called California Avocados Direct several years ago and it has found a real niche for itself — her son Ben keeps this building and daughter Maryanne is working with customer service. I’ve ordered several times over the years and recording and editing this episode certainly made me crave the perfect avocado so I have a box on my table now! Because they have so many different varieties, and different varieties are ready at different times of year, they have subscribers who get boxes monthly. I hadn’t realized the fit avocados have for people with celiac disease or vegans/vegetarians using them as a staple in diets. But those groups alongside avocado enthusiasts like me love getting the best flavor possible. And really…. the farm employees picked & boxed avocados for me on Monday and they made it from Southern California to my front porch in St. Louis Wednesday by lunchtime!

The farm also grows tangerines and sells them by the box. And Mimi pointed out that with the process so well established for years on those crops & so many people staying home, they are now packing produce from other farmers too. They quickly adapted to source and pack potatoes, onion, celery, various fruits, nuts and more that was available. The boxes have been getting rave reviews on Facebook and how cool to know it could be could potentially be reducing some of the waste some farmers are suffering.

Varieties of Avocados They Grow

One of the reasons the Holtz family can do year-round direct avocado business, is Ed Holtz has kept tending and planting different varieties of the fruit throughout the decades he’s been in Escondido.

Mimi points out that most Americans are familiar with the Haas avocado — one with a bumpy, thick skin that ships well. The variety did such a good job with production and throughout the supply chain, that the US market moved largely to Haas variety decades ago. And that success has led to more Haas avocados being planted in Mexico and other countries who supply US consumers with fruit.

But the family has always enjoyed the different flavors and textures of various varieties. And different varieties ripen at different times of year too. Mimi explains that April is peak season for the fuerte variety and I have to agree with her… the flavor of fuertes is so much richer than what I’ve gotten from grocery stores. The box above is of fuerte avocados and you can see the skin is smooth, it’s also really thin. They also grow Bacon avocados (they don’t taste like bacon but everything goes well with bacon!), Reed avocados which are big & round like cannonballs, Nabal, Gwens and more. In fact, when I was there in October, Ed gave me a few Mexicola avocados that were new to the farm. They had a really deep purple skin (you can see they sort of look like eggplants) and the skin was really thin which was notable once I cut the avocado. I did a short video at the time if you would like to see.

Favorite Ways to Enjoy the Perfect Avocado

While I tend to eat out several times a week and travel a lot, I have been home and cooking. I told Mimi about making lots of avocado toast and slicing some up for chicken tortilla soup recently. She has a million ways to use them!

“Well, we sliced them on top of scrambled eggs or with an omelet. You know we buy those bacon bits at Costco and put them into the scrambled eggs with a little onion maybe. And then slice avocados on top with a little cheese.” Mimi explains. “We always have tortillas in the refrigerator so that we could make a burrito or a taco or quesadilla and then, you know put slices of avocado on top or we mash the avocado and do different kinds of guacamole. You don’t have to have, you know, the traditional guacamole. You could just grate onion into mashed avocado and try that or add a little crab meat if you happen to have a can of crab in the pantry or some in your refrigerator.”

I love that she also cuts shapes out in avocados! It certainly brings a smile to your face to have a heart sitting atop a bowl of soup or salad and she sends a clear stay home message with an avocado house.

 

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More on Avocados in the Podcast

Listen to the episode to learn more about avocados including:

• How to store avocados at home
  
• Understanding avocado trees growth & care
  
• How long do trees produce?
  
• Food safety
  
• Pruning and picking

Links Mentioned in this Episode

• A video tour of the perfect avocado farm (this is my adjective, I’m sure Mimi & Ed would laugh and say not perfect but always working to be better)
• Mimi Avocado’s blog (includes great recipe, farm stories, etc)
• Website where the Holtz family sells avocados & other fruits & vegetables direct  

The post Getting the Perfect Avocado For Our Kitchens & The Farm appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Join me as I tour an avocado farm. This video was shot in late October as we looked at young fruit on the tree. Those same avocados are being picked and packed as we publish the tour because April is when California’s avocado season gets underway offering great flavor!

Our host was a woman known in social media circles as Mimi Avocado. Mimi showed me around as her husband, son and others were busily working to care for the trees on the farm outside of San Diego, California.

Hope you enjoy learning about growing avocados from a farm family who proudly grows them. You can even order some to be delivered from this farm directly to your door via CaliforniaAvocadosDirect.com.

Young Avocado Trees

First up on the avocado farm tour for us was young avocado trees. The family plants trees regularly as they want to maintain the productivity. As we looked at a nursery field of newly planted trees, Mimi pointed out how the shiny leaves are a good sign they are healthy and getting enough water, etc. Young trees will produce blooms and try to grow fruit but for a couple of years they have growing to do before they can really contribute to yield so the farm has a routine for replacing trees that allows them to keep producing year after year.

What Avocado Flowers Look Like

Once trees get taller, more leaves and branches, the fruit (both blooms and the avocado that will ultimately be picked) grow in the sun. It’s really different from a lot of other tree nuts (including our beloved pecans) and fruit trees in that it has blooms on it for one year while fruit is also ready to be picked. That tropical nature is pretty cool. The blooms have a bright yellow to them while avocados can be a bit camouflaged in all the greens of the tree.

But dang there were lots of them!

Caring for Mature Trees

Mimi explained that pruning is a part of the regular care of trees and it serves a couple great purposes. It helps clear out any limbs that may have broken, etc that could pose safety concerns to pickers. And it also means the tree will need less water. It is so interesting that along with pruning them, sometimes they cut avocado trees down to the trunk and let them start regrowing.

I love that avocado trees are always shedding leaves and putting on new ones though I’m not sure I’d love it if I had one in my yard. It is kind of convenient to have all the leaves on my trees drop in just a couple of week period.

More on Avocados!

The new podcast episode with Mimi talking all things avocado will be coming out tomorrow so check it out in your favorite podcast app or come back and listen to it here.

Mimi has a fantastic website mimiavocado.com with lots of information about avocados — recipes for all the avocado dishes you can imagine, some glances around the ranch/farm, and based on a conversation I had she may have put this one together on how to freeze avocados — I also find chopping them up and putting them (airtight) in the fridge makes avocado toast so dang easy for days!

You can join me in ordering avocados from the farm via californiaavocadosdirect.com.

And you may enjoy a few photos and video from the first avocado farm tour I ever took — it was at Mimi’s years ago!

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