Natural Harvest

Here at home, we made up an Italian Sausage recipe to season the one pound packages that we get we when get a whole (or half) a pig back from the processor. 

After playing around, I came up with a recipe that the whole family enjoyed.

I use it in lots of ways - in casseroles, for sandwiches, in meatballs and spaghetti sauce, on pizza or as patties for sausage  at breakfast.

Simply thaw out one pound of Bear Creek Acres ground pork and add:

      1 teaspoon salt                                  3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

3/4 teaspoon black pepper            1/4  to 1/2 teaspoon ground redpepper

                                1/2 tsp of ground fennel

In fact, I was using it so often I made a batch that was about  X 12 size in my little food processor, mixed it well, and put it in a big jar. By my calculations, about 3 1/2 teaspoons of the mix should be about right for a pound of meat.  Caution, shake the jar before each use. The salt seems to settle to the bottom.

Most Rangers are familiar with Fraboni’s Sausage. They’ve been an Iron Range tradition for more than 65 years.  Our family has always especially enjoyed their Italian sausage.  We got to wondering if maybe, just maybe, they’d be willing to make some sausage for us – using our meat, their recipe, and put our logo on it.   I called over to their meat plant and talked to Don Johnson, the chief sausage maker.  It turns out that they do a lot of custom meat work, and they’d be happy to do some work for us.  I quickly called Ann at Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virginia and asked her to take a chance on us and buy some. She graciously said, “Yes”.

Don’s been making sausage for many, many years, and he gave me a primer in the science behind sausage making.  It seems that fat content is critical to sausage flavor. He normally deals with meat from the big packing houses where everything is very  precise, and that this makes his sausage consistent from one batch to the next. He explained that the meat we’ll bring him from our processor in Cannon Falls will not be the exact same type of product he normally works with and that the consistency may vary a bit. I know that folks who eat locally grown, small farm raised meat expect slight variations. I seems to me that slight variations is how you know your meat came from a small farm rather than a cookie cutter factory farm.

A month ago we brought some hogs to Lorentz Meat in Cannon Falls, MN for processing. We got the call that our meat was ready, so off Shannon and I went to southern MN.   Some of the meat was destined for Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virginia  - and it’s a good thing, too because they’ve been out of bacon for a while! Now they are all stocked up. Some was destined for our farm to be sold from here and at Farmer’s Markets – and it’s a good thing because we were out of chops and ribs! And now some went to Fraboni’s in Hibbing.

I can’t wait to taste the sausage. As soon as Don calls to say the sausage is ready we’ll bring it to Natural Harvest Food Co-op (did you know you don’t have to be a member to shop there?) I hope you’ll watch for it. They’ll be carrying both Italian and Breakfast sausage.  If you buy some, please let us know what you think. Click Contact US at the top or bottom of the page and give us some feedback!

I was a little nervous when I first went into Natural Harvest Food Co-op in Virgina.  After all, I’m pretty mainstream. I mean, I eat meat…a lot of it. I hate tofu.  I enjoy Fritos…sometimes too many.  But I needed to buy rennet to make cheese and so gingerly I entered the store. I tried to be unobtrusive. I tried to look like the kind of person who would never eat a Dorito. But you know what? No one cared what I eat. All the folks there are very live and let live. What a jewel of a store.  So clean, brightly lit and welcoming. The workers are friendly and knowledgeable – and most importantly not judgmental. No one tried to evangelize or brainwash me into becoming a tofu-toting vegetarian.   The stock is not just organic stuff and granola. There is a wonderful supply of hard to find ethnic items and a full line of wine, pop and beer making supplies. There are potato chips and pop along with hard to find health food items.  There is local milk, different kinds of fun cheeses, and unusual frozen convenience foods. 

My favorite spot is on the back wall. There are shelves full of jars of bulk spices. At the Wycoffs, we eat out very seldom. I make big suppers nearly every night. Even my kids love to cook, and we use a lot of spices.  Natural Harvest sells a lot of items you can’t get at a super market – like ground fennel (which I use in my Italian sausage recipe) and dried red and green bell peppers.  All you do is choose the jar, grab a clean scoop from the clearly labeled “clean scoop” basket, take a plastic bag, fill with as little or as much as you want, place the dirty scoop in the clearly labeled “dirty scoop” basket, write the PLU number from the jar on your twistie tie and that’s it! You aren’t paying for a jar and you aren’t making garbage – except for the baggie. Best of all, you can buy just a couple tablespoons of something. I am slowing replacing all my old spices with items from there.  The curry powder they sell, along with the dried mixed vegetables, is yummy in rice.

My personal policy has become to buy something I’ve never tried before each time I go.  Maybe it’s a trail mix with carob in it (turns out it’s surprisingly good!), or quinoa –  a grain that I served cold with some chopped celery, tomatoes, green onions, and a simple vinaigrette dressing on top. It was good for us - and really, really tasty and easy to make. It went really well with hamburgers. The really great thing is you just hold something up to an employee and say, “what do I do with this?” and they are happy to help.

It’s not just diehard organic and natural foodies who shop there. Some people with food allergies can only find the items they need at that store, and there are soaps and shampoos for people with chemical allergies. But most of the customers I saw are just trying to eat a diet without so many chemicals and hormones and other scary stuff.  And maybe they want their diet to reflect some of their personal morals, and they want to feel good about what they eat. Sure there are a lot of people who do all their shopping at Natural Harvest – it is after all, a complete market. But a lot of customers are just like me – making changes in our diet here and there.