week 41: making it work

this week on the little dream farm

Oct 15, 2023

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t begin this week’s Farm Note with a big fat THANK YOU to those of you who read, liked, commented on, and shared last week’s Week 40 Farm Note.

It took me three weeks to get the guts to write about the situation and then once I felt comfortable sharing it I wondered how it might come across—plenty of us are dealing with hard, messy stuff at the moment so rather than sit here and whine and vent my feelings I was hoping maybe just to talk about this tough thing I’m currently navigating and the ways in which I’m trying to find the good in the situation.

Thank you to those of you who met me with such grace by sharing your story or experiences or offering encouragement or calling, emailing, texting, and messaging to check in. I can’t say enough how much that has meant to me this week, and it has made me feel better—lighter—about the situation. Everything will be just fine and it’ll all work out somehow, some way.

If you didn’t get a chance to read it, you can do that by clicking here.

As for this week, we spent the majority of it healing sick animals. For those of you who’ve been hanging out with us on Instagram, you know that we’ve been nursing Molly-Max back to good health following an abscess in his front right hoof and helping one of our hens, Miss Opal, with some crop issues.

Now Max—that old boy sure didn’t give us an inch this week, keeping us on our toes with having to constantly innovate how to get 8 giant pills into him two times every day for ten days. We tried treats. We tried horse cookies. We tried food. We tried this banana-oat-blueberry cake mash, and between all of that we managed to complete the very last dose of meds on Saturday morning.

Maxy is walking and looking the best he’s been all week, so I know he must be feeling so much better.

Our vet told us back when she was first treating Molly-Max that his feet are “shot” as she put it. Too many years of not getting regular hoof trimmings. Too many years of probably one abscess after the next that never was treated to heal.

Laminitis—something many horses suffer from when they graze too much green grass and essentially eat too much sugar, affects donkeys the same way, too. Once they develop laminitis it can be managed but they’re more likely to have ongoing problems.

Our vet said it isn’t even worth doing X-rays of Molly-Max’s hooves because she knows exactly what she’ll see—bone degeneration and lots of damage that cannot be undone. So, she encouraged us to keep his hooves trimmed regularly and be on the lookout for him limping from time to time. She told us to expect that he’d likely develop abscesses more frequently, but thankfully we went more than a year without him having one so we feel like we’re doing something right!

Poor old guy…we were told Maxy is about 20-25 years old (donkeys typically live into their mid-20s or 30s but can live well into their 40s!) so our biggest goal is to keep him happy, healthy, and keep those feeties comfortable so he can live out his days happy and hopefully pain free.

Now as for Opal, our hen who currently has what was impacted crop that then turned to sour crop. Boy have we had a time trying to help her! Thankfully she’s the most willing and wonderful patient and she’s so easy to treat, give medicine to, she willingly takes water and food, and has been such a champ for having to be cooped up in a cage the past two weeks.

When the over-the-counter medication we were using wasn’t doing a thing, I got desperate for another way. So I called around and begged a bunch of vets to write me a script for a stronger anti-fungal medication I could pick up at the pharmacy. Thankfully, a nearby vet that we’ve taken some of our cats to was willing to help me out and we’re three days into a seven-day treatment that seems to be going okay.

Sadly, we’ve failed to save any of our hens from sour crop thus far. It’s a very common thing in chickens and I know we’re not alone because not one day goes by in the chicken Facebook groups I’m in that someone isn’t begging and pleading for help to save their poor chicken from sour crop.

It’s so hard to get the right balance of managing the yeast in the crop while also not starving the hen at the same time. We’ve tried nearly every method we’ve come across—asked poultry and avian veterinarians, people who’ve kept chickens all their lives, neighbors and friends of ours, and I always seek help in our chicken Facebook groups. We’re hoping this time is different for sweet Opal, and we’ve been keeping good notes of everything that has worked thus far. So, wish us luck as we continue to navigate helping her—we just want so badly to get her back to being a sweet little chicken again and roaming with her girlie friends!

Chris and I had planned to take several days off this past week for a series of New England day trips to see fall foliage. Sadly we had to cancel all those plans, and instead we both still took the day off on Friday and relaxed together at home, we worked in the garden this weekend, took care of some chores, and focused on Maxy and Opal.

I’ll leave you this week with a special treat!

Last year we were at our farmer’s house for a winter market they host each year. We got to talking to this woman about how she always makes Shepherd’s Pie with brisket, which sounded so good! Chris and I kept talking about wanting to make it and never got around to it—until this weekend!

So, today I have for you the most divine recipe for Brisket Shepherd’s Pie. You maybe could get away with calling it Cottage Pie or Brisket Cottage Pie, since it’s beef and not lamb, but you get the gist. Without further delay, here you have it, friends!

Brisket Shepherd’s Pie

For this recipe I made it over two days to simplify things but you certainly could do it all in a day if you begin early enough! I started on day one by cooking the brisket in the slow cooker and then on the second day I made the filling and mashed potatoes and assembled and baked.

Ingredients:

Beef Brisket (I didn’t happen to see the size of ours but figure you’re looking for something that is 3-5 lbs.)
1 qt. Beef broth (I religiously use Pacific Foods Beef Bone Broth—it’s the best!)
2-3 tbsp. Avocado oil (for searing the meat and cooking the onions/mushrooms, use what you’d like but I typically use Avocado oil)
1 yellow onion, diced
1 pint mushrooms, chopped
1 small bag frozen peas and carrots
4 medium/large russet potatoes
2-3 tbsp. Flour (I use King Arthur gluten free bread flour)
1-2 tbsp. White cooking wine
1-3 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2-4 tbsp. Tomato Paste
1/2 cup Half n’ half (or cream or milk, for the potatoes…I use half n’ half)
6 tbsp butter (adjust depending on how you like your mashed potatoes)
salt and pepper
garlic powder to taste
onion powder to taste
thyme to taste

Instructions:

Allow the brisket to come to temperature outside the refrigerator, about 1 hour. Leave the fatty side on.
Set the crockpot to low and pour in about a cup of beef broth into the bottom of the crockpot and place the lid. Meanwhile, season the fully-thawed brisket heavily with salt and pepper on both sides. In a sturdy pan, heat avocado oil or cooking oil and sear the brisket on both sides, about 5-6 minutes each side.
Place the brisket in the crockpot set to low with the fatty side facing down. Cover and cook for 5.5 hours (you’ll have to adjust this depending on the size brisket you get). At 5.5 hours take two forks and see if the meat is tender enough to pull apart. If not, replace the lid and set another half hour. I cooked this one for 6 hours, turned the crockpot off, and then allowed it to sit in there for another half hour. You’ll know it’s done when two forks allows you to easily pull it apart.
Note: You don’t necessarily get better brisket from cooking it longer, so say, 8-10 hours won’t do you any good. You’re looking for fall-apart tender as your sign of doneness.
Once the brisket is ready, remove and place on a cutting board, trim away the fat you don’t want (we left quite a bit of it on because, yum!) and continue shredding with two forks until fully shredded. Place in a container to refrigerate if making this over two days.
For the sauce/juice left in the crockpot - you can either stir it into the filling for the Shepherd’s Pie (add it when you are developing the gravy/sauce, see Step 6, or keep it and use it to make rice—thank me later!).
For the filling, start by heating avocado oil or your choice of cooking oil in a pan. Add the diced onion and chopped mushrooms and cook on medium until translucent. Add a big splash of white cooking wine to the pan and continue stirring until the wine cooks down. Next add 1-3 tablespoons of flour, sifting in one tablespoon at a time with the spoon and stirring in completely to avoid big lumps. Stir in about 2-3 cups of beef broth, adding one cup at a time and mixing well to incorporate with the flour and create a gravy.
Over low-medium heat, add the shredded brisket to the pan and stir to combine. Then add the bag of frozen peas and carrots (no need to thaw), as much as you’d like of the small bag (we used the whole small bag). Stir to combine.
Add 2-3 tablespoons of tomato paste, 2-3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and thyme to taste, and then stir to combine everything well. I added the Worcestershire sauce and spices a little at a time and taste tested until I got it to my exact liking. I highly recommend doing this to get it just right! Once the filling is complete, turn off the heat and cover to keep warm.
For the potatoes, peel and slice potatoes into quarters and add to a pot of boiling water with a little salt. Cook until done all the way through, about 15-18 minutes. Drain the water from the pot and add salt, pepper, butter, and half and half. Mash until desired consistency—I use a hand mixer on high for this and blended until totally smooth.
Take the warm filling and add to a baking dish. With the mashed potatoes, using a large spoon and starting from the outside working in, spoon the mashed potatoes over top of the filling, taking care to make sure it totally covers the filling and the outer edges of the baking dish. Do this until the filling is all completely covered. Fluff with a fork to create ridges in the mash, or leave it as is for a flatter top.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes. If your baking dish is very full, add a baking sheet below the dish in case it bubbles over. Once the topping is browned, broil on LOW for 5-8 minutes, checking constantly to avoid burning the topping. I turned it around halfway between the broil cycle in the oven to ensure an even broiling.
Remove from oven, allow it to cool, and enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

This was such a delicious, hearty, incredibly yummy meal and we are going to be enjoying the leftovers for the next few days! Many of the recipes I looked at called for a Guinness in the brisket (which we were going to do but I totally forgot to add it!), and cheddar cheese in the potato topping with Parmesan on top at the end, which I skipped. I found that this really simple, classic, incredibly flavorful version was absolutely heavenly without the extras.

Do me a favor, would you?! If you make it this week, please be sure to share a photo and tag us on IG or shoot me a message and let me know what you thought! Dozens of people asked me for this recipe when I shared it on Saturday in our IG Stories, so I can’t wait to see y’all make it and enjoy it, too.

From all of us, both in good health and those of us trying really hard to get better here on the farm, we hope you have a wonderful Sunday and a beautiful week ahead!!

Catch you next week, same time same place!