Brownies and a Big Bus

Running a little behind the times with this post, but I wanted to put in a journal entry about this past weekend.  About a week ago, Mike told me that Trevor from Fresh Fork was putting together a farm tour for their CSA members and our farm was one of the stops.  "When is this tour?" I asked.  "This Sunday." said Mike.  Oh great.  Now I have to get the farm spruced up and looking good in short notice.  Thursday it rained.  Friday is premarket day plus I had a pre-wedding reception/pig roast that I needed to stop by Friday evening.  Saturday morning both Mike and I had to work.  So Saturday afternoon and a little on Sunday morning, I finally got around to picking up all the accumulated "stuff" around the barns, mowing 1/2 of the lawn and weed whacking around the buildings. 

Since lawn mowing is good for thinking, I decided that I wanted to have a little thank you for everyone who came for the tour on Sunday.  Plus I wanted to promote the farm a bit.  What I came up with was that I would make some whole wheat brownies made with wheat grown on our farm.  Last year we raised soft red winter wheat.  Most went to the feed mill, but we held some back and then this year after it dried, we took some of the wheat to an Amish man that has a commercial grinder and he ground it into wheat flour.  Soft red winter wheat is low protein flour so it makes what is known as pastry flour.  Not good for making bread, but works great in brownies (and the pancakes I make with it are pretty yummy too!).  I also like using this flour because I prefer to use whole wheat flours whenever I can.

Now somewhere along the way Saturday evening, my brain disconnected.  I usually cut brownies in an 8"X8" pan into thirds which = 9 brownies.  I decided that might be a little large for an afternoon snack after lunch so I divided the pans into fourths which somehow my brain managed to translate into 12 brownies per pan.  Therefore I would need 5 pans of 12 brownies to make enough for 51 people.  It wasn't until after I pulled the 5th pan out of the oven that I came to the realization that I had made 5 pans of 16 or 80 brownies.  I sadly broke the news to Mike that I made too many brownies and we would have to eat the extras.  He was so so sad.  *grin*

I've had a few requests for the recipe so here it is.  I actually took several different recipes and combined them into one, changed this, changed that and this is what I came up with.

Whole Wheat Brownies

Ingredients

1/2 cup melted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Lightly grease an 8"X8" pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
   
   
2. Combine melted butter, sugar and brown sugar.  Mix thoroughly. (I use an electric mixer here. You want the mixture nice and smooth.)


3. Stir in cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and vanilla. (Again I use an electric mixer for this step and then I throw it away.  OK, just kidding about throwing it way, but I hand mix everything after this step.)


4. Add eggs.  Stir until well mixed and smooth, but do not over beat.


5. Add flour.  Again, stir until moistened, but do not over beat.


6. Fold in chocolate chips


7. Bake approximately 25-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with wet fudgy crumbs.


8. Some people think these taste even better the next day after the whole wheat flour has time to absorb some of the moisture, but I like them any time, any way.

Sunday afternoon the tour bus rolled in around 3:30-4pm.  It's not everyday that a tour bus comes and parks in your driveway.  OK, I guess I am amused by small things, but I thought having a big bus parked in the driveway was cool. 

Mike walked everyone back to the fields for the tour of the 20 acre "garden".  I may be biased, but I think Mike is a great farmer.  He absolutely loves what he does and is very passionate about it.  He got to talk about why we have not chosen to go the organic route.  What it comes down to in a nutshell is that some vegetables will need to be sprayed for fungus or insects every once in awhile in order to save a crop.  Most vegetables never get sprayed with anything at all, but some will need it from time to time.  Just because something is natural doesn't mean it is safe.  Because we work in the fields and eat the vegetables ourselves, we want to use the safest chemicals possible.  That might be a natural product that is approved for organic use, but it might not be.  Mike showed the effects of downy mildew on the cantaloupe crop.  All dead.  We did get some harvested and sold before the fungus hit and killed the plants, but there is probably $1000 dollars of melons rotting in the field.  Downy mildew used to be a fungus that didn't appear until late in the growing season when the spores would come up from the southern states.  That was until farmers in Canada started putting up lots of greenhouses to grow vine crops.  In the spring they open up the greenhouses and the wind carries all the fungal spores south and so now we have to deal with downy mildew from the very start of the season.        

Mike did a great job talking about what we do and what challenges farmers face.   Challenges ranging from the weather to government regulation.  This is a subject I will be more vocal about on future blogs.  I loved how he talked about how farmers need to be able to let things roll off their backs.  A fungus kills all your melons.  Oh well.  A late freeze kills all your tomato plants.  Oh well.  It's too wet or too cold.  Oh well.  I spent most of the tour trying to distract Molly the crazy Brittany from getting in the way plus I was feeling a little under the weather from day 1 of the attack of the head cold.  I felt bad about not being more chipper and talkative, but that is how it goes when the virus strikes.

I hope everyone who visited our farm learned something about us and how and why we do things our way.  I know they had started their day at 8am and still had 2 more stops to make.  Bless their hearts.  Actually, I would have loved to have been on the tour with them.  I love seeing how other people do things and learn about farming methods for crops and animals we don't raise ourselves.