• Aprés Vin– Producers of pure varietal grape-seed oils, flours & soaps have kindly donated 20 bars of their Lavender Merlot and Lemongrass Chardonnay soaps to help sooth tired cooks hands. These soaps are among their new line of soaps. So new, they haven’t even had a chance to post them on their website yet!
• Rancho Gordo Heirloom Beans– Purveyors of heirloom beans, dried corn, dried chilies, grains, rice and herbs & spices. Steve Sando has kindly donated 5 lbs of runner cannellini beans for our Cassoulet.
• Put your company here!

Technorati Tags: Duckfest 2010, apres vin, grapeseed oil, rancho gordo, beans, cassoulet, duck, cooking, food, sponsorship, products, cooking lessons, kate hill

UPDATE: 12/12/09–SOLD OUT!

Ring in the end of one decade and the beginning of another on Podchef Island! Come to see, touch and taste Gascony right here in Puget Sound as “The Queen of Gascony”, Kate Hill,  brings her Camp Confit to America.

Join us for a festive start to the New Year with a three-day  weekend of good food and fat ducks at my Shaw Island farm. Three days/two nights of good food, conviviality, duck butchery and confit-making. Come and learn the little secrets of French farm-wives and time-honored traditional recipes for preparing and preserving confit de canard, terrine de foie naturale and le Grand Cassoulet.

Jan 1st–Friday is New Year’s Day:

• Arrive on Shaw Island by Ferry, where we will meet you and bring you to the guest house of the Nun’s at Our Lady of the Rock Priory where you will be staying while your here. The join Kate and I at my Kitchen Garden Headquarters for a traditional French, super-authentique, Camp Cassoulet class & feast. We will be pairing red wine and armagnac with cassoulet–what a perfect way to start a new decade!

Jan 2nd Saturday:

• Morning: Duck Butchery- I will lead a how-to workshop on Duck Butchery. A primer for the professional or home chef, come to the farm to learn humane slaughter methods, plucking, eviscerating & processing. This course is for beginners, chefs & cooks who want to know where their food from the farm up.

• Lunch: Kate and I will prepare a winter pique-nique of found and foraged foods to  share the diversity of my Island farm and Kitchen Garden Headquarters.

• Afternoon: Traditional French Confit Making Part 1- The importance of proximity becomes apparent as we work with the fresh carcasses, removing the natural fat livers, learning the meat cuts, then trimming and rendering the fat while learning the nuances of salting and seasoning. Fatted Ducks are larger and meatier than roasting ducks. Preserving meat by poaching in fat (confit) is the perfect way to showcase that flavor as well as store at room temperature.

• Dinner: We will learn from Kate how the French dine as we grill the duck carcasses and eat with our fingers- a Gascon version of BBQ ribs called a carcassade!

Jan. 3rd Sunday:

• Morning: Cooking and preserving Confit Part 2- We begin the confit process, cooking the duck to perfection in a slow and patient process. No rushing allowed: stir, stir, rest. When cooked, we will preserve the tender meat for pantry storage with its translucent golden fat in glass jars.

• Podchef Island Lunch Feast of rillettes, pates, terrines and sausage.

• Afternoon: departure for the mainland with a basket of Ducky Delights in hand.

Cost:

Duckfest 2010- $495 per person 3 days/2 nights (accommodation available- request information)

If you cannot attend the whole 3 days, consider just coming for the special New Year’s Day Camp Cassoulet feast & dinner–only $125 (accomodation extra).

For more information and reservations write us here!

Technorati Tags: ducks, rouen ducks, cuisine of gascony, french cooking foie gras, cassoulet, canard, confit, new years, kate hill, kitchen at camont

Part Two begins on October 31st, after the carcass has hung for a few days. This course ia all about sustainable pork production, pig rearing, & Home Butchery techniques. We will also cover Bacon Curing & Simple Charcuterie.

After a brief tour of the pig park and talk on raising pigs, we will return to the kitchen where I will demonstrate how to cut up a half-pig, pointing out the many options and cuts along the way. We can also discuss cooking methods and recipes as we come to each cut.

Once the belly is freed from the carcass I will discuss & show how I made dry-cured bacon for both long-term traditional non-refrigerated storage and the more common sweet bacon we are all familiar with. Afterward we will adjourn to sample a selection of rustic, farmhouse porky delights made with the whole beast.

The space for the Porkshop is limited to 15 participants for each day. Book early! Lunch is included. Cost $75/ day or $125 if you book both days.
Extra meals & Accomodation options are available upon request for those wishing to come early, stay late or remain on the island for the week. Please contact for details.

Here are some scenes from previous Porkshops and some of what you might expect to see on our October 27th & 31st, 2009 Porkshop days. Find out about our other workshops  here.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Podchef’s Gastrocast | Create Your Badge

Technorati Tags: porkshop, kitchen garden company, podchef, cooking, food, meat, pigs, pork, butchery, slaughter, farming

Technorati Tags: poultry, chickens, butchery, slaughter, workshop, kitchen garden company, podchef, meat, food, farming

Update: October 10th has been canceled due to lack of interest.

We’re going to kick things off simply on October 10th with a Poultry Processing Workshop. Come to the farm to learn humane chicken slaughter methods, plucking, eviscerating & processing. This course will be great for beginners, chefs & cooks who want to know where there food comes from. A variety of topics will be covered in this one day course & and a light lunch will be served.

Next, on October 17th, I will be hosting a rabbit processing & sausage making workshop. Come and learn about keeping rabbits for meat, processing rabbit & turning them into common cuts or sausage. We will also be discussing sausage

making techniques & making sausages. This is a one day workshop & a light lunch will be offered. You will also get to bring home some fresh rabbit or any sausages you make.
Cost: $45

At the end of October we will be offering a two day split workshop on all things Pig & Pork. Our annual Porkshop is the culmination of an almost year long project each Autumn of raising Artisanal Pastured Pork. Join me on October 27th for Part One as I kill, scald, de-hair & process our annual pig using traditional on-farm techniques. This is a one day Hands-On Workshop including making blood sausage, paté & headcheese. A light lunch & snacks will be served. For those spending the night before, a simple breakfast will be available the morning of.

Part Two begins on October 31st, after the carcass has hung for a few days. This course ia all about sustainable pork production, pig rearing, & Home Butchery techniques. We will also cover Bacon Curing & Simple Charcuterie.

After a brief tour of the pig park and talk on raising pigs, we will return to the kitchen where I will demonstrate how to cut up a half-pig, pointing out the many options and cuts along the way. We can also discuss cooking methods and recipes as we come to each cut.

Once the belly is freed from the carcass I will discuss & show how I made dry-cured bacon for both long-term traditional non-refrigerated storage and the more common sweet bacon we are all familiar with. Afterward we will adjourn to sample a selection of rustic, farmhouse porky delights made with the whole beast.

The space for the Porkshop is limited to 15 participants for each day. Book early! Lunch is included. Cost $75/ day or $125 if you book both days.
Extra meals & Accomodation options are available upon request for those wishing to come early, stay late or remain on the island for the week. Please contact for details.

Finally, to cap off the production year and to ring in the New Year right–a New Year’s Duckfest! Join us on the farm from January 1st to 3rd, 2010 for a very special event.

Chef Kate Hill will be joining me in “kitchen studio” for three days of Duck! Kate is a renown authority on duck cookery, especially Duck Confit & Cassoulet. On New Year’s day we will meet & cook a fabulous authentic Cassoulet. This is slow food at its finest. The ingredients will be sourced locally & we will be cooking with my own farm-raised Rouen Ducks.

Although just ducklings now, by New Years these beauties will be ready for cooking, having lived an Autumn on local grains, garden bounty and as authentic a French diet for ducks as I can follow here in the Pacific Northwest. I can’t wait!

On the 2nd & 3rd we will be exploring, with Kate, the wonders of the duck, including how to make Confit, use duck fat, and talk about the ducks themselves, the Rouen breed and how to process them. I am sure it will be a food filled extravaganza to ring in the New Year right!

Details to follow–UPDATE: Look here for full details

For more information on any of these workshops please contact me via email (podchef at gmail dot com) or via Twitter–@podchef From there we can make further arrangements & discuss details.

Technorati Tags: workshops, porkshop, smallholding, cooking classes, cooking lessons, farming, education, butchery, skills, slaughter, rabbit, pork, chicken, hogs, pigs, ducks, confit, kate hill, casssoulet, new years

Technorati Tags: madrona, carrie oliver, The Herb Farm, foraging, podchef, bark, ingredients, food, cooking, harvesting

Technorati Tags: gardening, salad, vegetables, farming, soil, planting, seeds, podchef, wiggly wigglers

Pigs, unwittingly, it seems are the perfect vessels for mixing the different strains of influenza virus. Human flu virus, avian flu virus genotypes and two swine types have mutated together over time to create dangerous situation. What is worse is that like any flu, the swine flu attacks pigs or humans with weakened immune systems. That can mean all the pigs and some of the human workers in modern, intensive pork factories. Because of this potential, pigs in most modern pig farms are regularly dosed with SIV (swine influenza virus) vaccines.

But let me stress, it’s not the pigs, the pork or the farmers who raise and produce it that are to blame for the Swine Flu that is currently going around. However, the pork industry itself must bear some of the blame in how it has come to treat pork, pigs and farmers.  Currently, the pork industry is in major butt-covering mode. Smithfield meats–the largest producer of pork products in the world–may be directly implicated in the outbreak, but is denying any connection. They, however,  have a history of manipulating the facts, and controversy sticks to them like stink on a hog. The National Pork Producers Council is stressing that pork is fine to eat, that this has nothing to do with American pigs, pork or the food chain. But the problem, I think, goes beyond the issues of this epidemic or even the swine flu itself.

The problem as I see it is one of image. Pigs have always been seen as dirty, disease ridden animals. Both the Jewish & Muslim faiths forbid eating their flesh, and many people have extrapolated that out into an appallingly shallow belief system. More recently the expansion of large hog CAFOs (confined animal feeding operation) has caused public outcry. Often, the worst of these dirty, smelly farms have been the source of pollution, illness and Animal Welfare concern. Despite what the industry wants us to believe, the modern swine farm is no where fit for man or beast. However, we have to separate out the producer and product from the industry.

In the 80’s the nature of pork production changed. The small family farms which raised quality pork from healthy pigs began to be pushed out of operation in favor of the more intensive CAFOs. These larger, so called “efficient” integrated systems claim to produce more pork for less money with less resources. However, this also meant less profit for the farmers actually raising the pigs. The independent nature of the industry changed to become more one of indentured servitude where the meat packing corporations held contracts with hog farmers on increasingly tightening margins. In order to raise so many pigs so intensively farming practices had to change.

The bottom line is the type and quality of the meat suffered at the expense of farms, farmers, and the environment. Most modern day pork is watery, pallid and flavorless. It is bland and often ends up dry when cooked because of lack of internal fat. The prescription to brine the meat before cooking it is only a palliative to mask the base problem–this meat has no character. In reality, the pigs are raised so quickly on such a strict diet they have little chance to lay up any marbling of fat–something readily valued in beef. As consumers began eating more meat, they valued the flavor & quality less than the price. Production methods adapted to this least cost mentality.

In this whole thing, I think the farmers and the pigs are the victims–victims of an industry gone mad and a diet out of control. Never did anyone say–Stop! Why don’t we make more money by raising less pork? No, the high production, “economy of scale” took over and producers had to raise more and more pigs on tighter margins in order to break even. This has put the farmers in a pinch. They have gone along with how the industry wanted the hogs raised, and how the consumers were told they should have their meat–lean and cheap. The flaw in this being that while the meat is lean, it often is not healthy.  In pastured, more naturally raised, pork, the fat contains more Omega 3’s, Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA’s), Vitamin E, D and Beta Carotene. Fat is where the flavor is, so this meat, more naturally layered through the muscle, contains more flavor than a quickly raised counterpart. In order to help achieve lean pork, the industry uses an additive called Paylean which has been linked to cancer. Likewise, and as has been seen recently, the industry regularly treats its animals with vaccines to keep them healthy. This is like telling all office workers they will have to be vaccinated month to keep their jobs because they work in cubicles. If the pigs were raise in an healthy atmosphere this would not be necessary. The very fact that the animals are kept in confinement means they will continue to be sick. Has factory farming created a perfect storm for a pandemic?

Given that there are a few bad apples, etc. I do not blame the farmers for much of this. They are hard working individuals with a love of agriculture or they wouldn’t be in the job. They are trying to do their best with what they have to work with. We all can get caught up in our own paradigm. So much so we fail to see beyond out own noses often. I am certainly guilty of that. However, I do think there are industry practices which pig farmers need to question the benefit and efficacy of–gestation crates. Manure Lagoons. Absolute confinement. As humans we can adapt and get used to anything. As pigs, they have no choice. But that doesn’t mean it is right, nor does it mean it is acceptable. I have been in good and bad hog confinement operations. They are noisy, smelly, and repulsive at best. I would not want to work in one. I couldn’t imagine reeking inside and out like one. I  love to work with my pigs. They are clean, don’t smell, and are healthy and content. I happily spend time with them during feeding or just to visit. My confinement hog friends generally can’t stand being with their pigs too long.

The reality is that in Swine Flu the CAFO has met its Waterloo. Intensive pork production needs to end. Society needs to eat less meat on the whole, and what we do eat needs to be of better quality. We need to have more respect for the animals we eat as food. We need a more sustainable method of rearing livestock. The large-scale Agribusiness model is a danger. We need to offer our support to local, sustainable, small-scale producers. Farmers who aren’t afraid to open their practices up to public scrutiny. Farmers in our communities we can know and trust. We need to support farmers who treat their animals right, with their welfare and well-being firmly in mind, who value the product they raise. As consumers we need to demand these higher welfare systems and demand better quality meat. Meat with flavor and balance. We also had better expect to pay more for such meat, to help support the farmers who raise it and keep them and their livestock healthy. Perhaps if the farmers could make more profit from fewer pigs they would be more likely to lower stocking densities and relax the use of additives and drugs. Above all we need to not panic about this so-called Swine Flu Pandemic. We need to keep calm and not get confused by the 24 hour news. We need to stay healthy and get informed and we need to eat properly–which is to say, a balanced diet which includes pork, preferably from a local, sustainable, get-to-know-your-neighbor kind of source.

Technorati Tags: CAFO, swine flu, swineflu, smithfield, pork, pigs, hogs, virus, influenza, pork production, farms, farmers

Perhaps this is why I find industrialized agriculture such an anathema. To me, it is so unsustainable, so unsupportable, and so unprofitable–remember, I make a profit on my agricultural endeavors without subsidy–that I have a hard time being objective about it. Perhaps this is also why I defend small scale agriculture, like I practice, so vehemently against those who view Industrialized Agribusiness as the only way to go. We are equally wrong in some regards. While Agribusiness does its best to hide behind walls of obfuscation I am all too open about how I farm. In blog posts and videos I open myself up to criticism and show how I raise pork. While the other side also is open to criticism, the way they react to it is more like a rattlesnake disturbed from basking in the sun, than anyone who is open for debate and a mutual learning experience.

And so, I weighed in on a supposed attack against Sustainable Agriculture–Free-Range Pork rearing in particular–when perhaps I should have waited for the dust to settle. Certainly, a number of great writers picked the piece apart far better than I did, all for valid reasons I think. Here is a run down of links to articles which I have read:

• Grist
• Livable Future
• Marion Nestle
• Civil Eats

My friend, Carrie Oliver, has a very balanced view on the issue. This week,however,  the author of the inflammatory piece, James McWiliams, has offered a rebuttal of sorts. While a further, more open, discussion of the topic is welcome, he might have saved some trouble by stating a few things in the first piece like, he is a vegetarian and doesn’t feel animals should be killed for meat and that he is a friend of sustainable agriculture seeking to improve it by pointing out its flaws…Ya. Sure. To me, any Devil’s Advocate in the realm of sustainable eco-agriculture is welcome as long as they can further the discussion by offering some experiential solutions to the problems they present. But here is where I still have my doubts. Saying you are among the choir of supporters of Sustainable Agriculture is one thing, but actions speak louder than words…. This latest controversy isn’t the first of its kind Professor McWilliams has been entangled in. It would seem that a campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) is being launched against Sustainable and Eco-Agriculture from all sides. To what extent Mr. McWilliams is involved in this, time will tell. With an upcoming book being published, with the sensationalist title, “Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly” the good professor has a lot of work to do to show he is firmly on the side of advancing Sustainable, Local, Seasonal, enviornmentally friendly agriculture. His previous mis-representation of the facts surrounding Organic Agriculuture and soil toxicity are the sort of help and support the cause can do without.

While my own writing and style may be filled with the problems of the overly enthusiastic, cult-like, religiosity of my beliefs I try to develop my view point from experience and practice. I openly admit I have no academic credentials to hide behind. I’m the one in the choir singly loudly, and ever so off key.

Technorati Tags: sustainability, eco-agriculture, James McWilliams, Free-Range Pork, pasture raised disease

If first impressions are correct, then, James E. Mc. Williams inhabits this bubble. His latest Op-Ed piece for  the NY Times, “Free-Range Trichinosis ” reeks of the sort of fear-mongering that bubble dwelling Mysophobes spout through the clean room intercom. It certainly doesn’t pass as the sort of scholarly, well thought out piece that a history professor at Texas State University at San Marcos should be putting his name to. Or is there another reason Mr. Williams wrote this piece of Pork Industry propaganda?

We have to ask this question, because the absence of any reference to where he gets his facts discredits the information from the outset. In fact, many of the statements are purely ludicrous. Either Professor Williams is suffering from some sort of mental trauma, or he is purposefully corrupting the facts to sway his audience against Sustainable Agriculture and the pastured, free-range meat movement. Why would he do this?

Let’s explore some of the mis-information…
The premise of the article is that free-range pork contains far more pathogens and disease causing organisms than its confined, factory counterpart. If that weren’t enough to raise eyebrows, the good professor goes on to mis-cite findings from the Journal of Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. Only he forgets to state that the study was ordered by the National Pork Board and he purposefully misleads readers into thinking the study involved 600 free-range pigs from three states, instead of 324 free-range pigs and 292 confinement-pigs:

The study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that brought these findings to light last year sampled more than 600 pigs in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. It discovered not only higher rates of salmonella in free-range pigs (54 percent versus 39 percent) but also greater levels of the pathogen toxoplasma (6.8 percent versus 1.1 percent) and, most alarming, two free-range pigs that carried the parasite trichina (as opposed to zero for confined pigs). For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.

This paragraph really contains the crux of the issue. How and when was the salmonella measured? Before or after slaughter? Is it not possible that poor slaughter techniques led to the higher salmonella count? Properly handled, as it should be, raw meat is no more harmful than wiping one’s own arse. Are we supposed to stop that as well? Again, we are supposed to be shocked that two out of 600 pigs carried the parasite responsible for trichinosis. However, the statement is misleading.The report is specific in that those two pigs only tested positive for carrying antibodies linked to exposure to trichinosis, not the actual parasite itself.
At the end of the above quote we are regaled with, “For many years, the pork industry has been assuring cooks that a little pink in the pork is fine. Trichinosis, which can be deadly, was assumed to be history.” Obviously, McWilliams doesn’t cook or know anything about what he is writing about–trichinosis dies at 137ºF when the meat is still too raw to be appealing. Perhaps he prefers to use the Center for Disease Control’s guidelines for cooking pork–170ºF–which would mean the meat would be so overcooked and dry as to be almost inedible. In fact, “a little pink in the pork” can be achieved by stopping cooking at 145ºF and letting the meat carry-over cook until it reaches 150ºF, which is medium. Plenty safe to eat. Especially if the pork has been frozen below 10ºF for any amount of time–another method for killing the trichina cyst which the Professor forgets to mention…

As a producer of carefully raised, quality, farm-slaughtered free-range, pastured pork I find this sort of obfuscation of the facts to be annoying to say the least. The fact that it comes from someone who should know better and spouts off in a major public forum is reprehensible.  This sort of shilling for Agribusiness does not help the issues we are facing–the end of cheap petroleum, the awakening of the public to the abuse of livestock and the lack of nutrition in industrial raised foods, and the growing need to find energy efficient, local solutions to feeding ourselves–a hedge against the day the industrial production of food fails completely; either through lack of safety controls or by being “too big to fail”. The deliberate confusion of the different terms, “free-range”, “pastured”, “natural” by industrial Agribusiness is one more tactic to demean and belittle those of us who are out there working hard to make sure local, quality food has a future and that the livestock gene pool remains diverse.

McWilliam’s, the author of the forthcoming “Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly”, also states “The long history of animal husbandry has been a fervent quest toward intensified control.” Who says so? Why? How has a long history of animal husbandry led to this? Only a select group of people have sought this. The rest of us have quietly resisted the trend towards this because we could see the writing on the wall. The confinement pork industry is running scared. They are using whatever means they can to maintain their control over the market. I fear it is only going to get worse. In the coming months, I think we should turn such standard thinking on itshead and ask instead, “How can locavores eat responsibly, when the future of food is endangered”?

Technorati Tags: free-range pigs, pastured pork, confinement pork, trichinosis, salmonella, Op-Ed, James E. McWilliams