Join Podchef, Neal Foley, at Claddagh Farms on March 18th in welcoming Kate Hill and French Farmer/Butcher/Charcutier Dominique Chapolard from Gascony for a full day, intense, butchery & charcuterie workshop. Kate, an American living in Gascony for the last 20+ years, teaches cooking classes from her home at Camont. Dominique and his butcher brothers raise and process 8-10 pigs a week, 52 weeks a year, and sell the meat & farm-produced Charcuterie at numerous markets.

“In Gascony where Chapolard farms and Hill teaches at her 18th century Kitchen-at-Camont, good pork, duck, lamb and beef provide the backbone of classic charcuterie. Kate and Dominique are bringing their savoir-faire and love for this good Gascon food on tour to America with Cochon & Charcuterie: a workshop from Gascony to demonstrate the intricate art of butchering traditional French pork cuts for the preparation of authentic charcuterie. Professionals, cooks, food lovers and Charcutepalooza’ers will learn the basics of traditional French seam butchery and authentic charcuterie from these two passionate teachers and their welcoming hosts”.

This fabulous experience is not to be missed. Kate & Dominique will be bringing French tradition and practical experience to our farm here in the US.

In the morning, Dominique will demonstrate seam-butchery–cutting meat along the natural muscle seams, rather than across them with a band-saw–as he shows us how to make premium French cuts of porc. He will be breaking down one of my mature, year old, pasture raised, milk & barley fed pigs. Then, after a short, informal & informational lunch, Kate, Dominique and I will help you learn about traditional French charcuterie using whole muscle cuts, salt and pepper. We will be sharing techniques and recipes with you for terrines, patés, ventrèche, poitrine salée, coppa, jambon and filet sec, etc. In the time allowed we will try to touch on the four corners of charcuterie: the cooked, the salted, the cured and the dried. At the end of our busy day, we will sample some of what we created and there will be a brief question answer period about the cycle of life–Seed to Sausage. For those of you staying in the area–I suggest The Belfast Harbor Inn–we can continue the conversation over dinner in Belfast.

Additionally, for those of you interested, there are a limited number of spaces available for the 17th of March to participate in a traditional on-farm slaughter. We will kill, scald and scrap a pig in the morning, and after a quick lunch Podchef will lead you through processing the offal into paté, traditional Gascon Boudin Noir, & Gascon Offal Brochettes. Your hard work and efforts will form the basis of the following day’s tasting lunch.

(For official Charcutepalooza participants there will be a discount code for a 10% discount–ask for verification & code immediately!)

PS due to the nature of this workshop–a pig has to die & two people have to travel across the Atlantic and the States–the fee for the classes is NON-REFUNDABLE.

Technorati Tags: charcuterie, charcutepalooza, pigs, hogs, meat, livestock, agriculture, farming, food, cooking

Just in time for the holidays, I am happy to announce Gift Certificates! Now you or your loved ones can buy a friend, family member or yourself the extra-special treat of learning at one of our workshops or courses at Claddagh Farms. Simply click the button below, specify the amount and let PayPal do the rest. When we get notification of a purchase we will create a voucher for the amount of your gift and email you a copy to print out to present. The recipient can then apply that voucher towards the cost of one of our courses at a time which works for them. More than one gift certificate can be redeemed for each course.

Technorati Tags: claddagh farms, gift certificate, porkshop, duckfest, workshops, cookery, cooking classes, meat, farming, agriculture, food

I am happy to announce the addition of a new culinary lifestyle seminar to our offerings–a Winter Food Week. Click the link to find out more and check this out:

Technorati Tags: podchef, workshops, charcuterie, food, farming, agriculture, cheesemaking, butchery, slaughter, pigs, pork, rabbit

I am proud to announce our second Duckfest! Kate Hill returns with me to cook all things French Duck here on Claddagh Farm. Join us in December for an exciting & intensive hands-on experience. You can find out more here: Duckfest

Technorati Tags: duckfest, claddagh farm, kate hill, podchef, cooking, food, farming, agriculture, ducks, rouen ducks, poultry, cassoulet, confit

We’re busy getting settled into a new site, so bear with us as we work out the kinks. We’re also getting settled into a new farm in a new state.

If you had asked me months ago where I would be heading into the July 4th weekend, I might have said, almost boastfully, but certainly optimistically….”done with haying and starting up workshops….” However, the reality behind that isn’t as bright.

While many things are ahead in New England this year, our hay crop is not. The weeds, on the other hand, are rampant. Nevertheless, there’s lots of work going on, and we’re busy trying to bring our neglected fields back into shape.  We are also coming to grip with the lack of outbuildings and the fact that this farm has been fallow for over 3 years. That means bugs, weeds, sapplings and everything Mother Nature does to reclaim a place has gone on here unchecked.  It turning out to be a bigger project than I imagined.

Meanwhile, several new structures have been built to house the poultry out on pasture–part of the reclimation process. A willow nursery and gardens have been hammered in and the orchards a yielding fruit despite being unkempt and a withering frost late in May.

We are still waiting to get a flock of sheep on the place, but we were fortunate enough to finds a sweet Jersey and Guernsey to get our dairying program up and running. Milly–the Jersey–is currently being milked and we are eagerly awaiting Hazel’s calf in a few weeks. I’m barking mad on a good day, but I must say that I am totally besotted with my darling girls. And while they do tend to tie me down twice a day, I can’t imagine life without them at this point, as they make my cheese experiments and the food for the ducks and pigs all possible.

Speaking of which, we fell into 6 piglets soon after we moved here, adn although not what we would have chosen, we are grateful to have the little squealers. After a rough start–we got them at 3 weeks old–they are going strong now. They are finally getting the hang of being out on pasture and have only this week discovered what mud is for….

Likewise, the ducks are finally thriving now that they are out on pasture. We had a very rough start with them this year and lost more than I care to think about. All part of the learning curve I guess….

If you want to see some more photos of the farm, check out the Flickr set for Claddagh Farms.

Technorati Tags: Maine, farming, agriculture, Claddagh Farms, podchef, moving, livestock

This Autumn & Winter I am proud to announce a series of workshops on food & farming skills. These have been all summer in the making and I am really excited to be able to host these events for you.

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.

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. 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.

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

It has been a while since I have posted anything about the polytunnel on this site. Since I first put it up there have been many changes and seasons. This latest video shows how I’ve restored it over the winter.

Technorati Tags: polytunnel, gardening, farming, agriculture, horticulture, grow your own, hoop house, greenhouse

This year, the apple harvest was late. I don’t think I’ve ever made cider as late as November before. But, it was a bumper harvest.

Not only did we get a huge crop from our 5 small trees in our own orchard–probably one hundred and fifty pounds of Cider Apple varieties, among which were some Kingston Blacks and Cox’s Orange Pippins. But we managed to get several hundred pounds of apples from various neighbor’s orchards and abandoned orchards which date back to the 1890′s.

This weekend I fired up the Cider Press and made something like 18 gallons of cider. 10 are fermenting in another part of the house right now. We also managed to put up 22 quarts of applesauce, several pints of apple butter, and 22 loaves of a Norman-Style Rustic Apple & Rye hearth bread.

Was it a lot of work? Yes. But worth every minute of it because we have now stored an amazing amount of fruit up for the winter–all of which cost us only our time. In addition to picking out apples for the apple sauce, apple bread, apple butter and cider, I also sorted out the most unblemished and undamaged fruit to keep for as long as possible for fresh eating. My goal is to not have to buy any apples until at least January when the cold weather makes it impossible to keep fruit in the shed due to freezing.

Technorati Tags: apples, cider, orchards, fruit preservation, food preservation, canning, eat the seasons, local food

Just an announcement–the website was hacked and some malicious code has been running. Hopefully, this has been corrected, and hopefully it did not effect you. It did take some time to figure out, and I am not 100% sure it is all fixed yet. Meanwhile, I have also updated the website software, so if you notice anything out of the ordinary, please let me know.