Author Archives: Sylvia Burgos Toftness

About Sylvia Burgos Toftness

A Latina baby boomer from the tenements of the South Bronx, I now raise 100% grass-fed beef in west-central Wisconsin with my husband Dave. We believe more people will choose to farm and eat healthful foods if they know the connections between what we eat and how it's grown. That's why we invite you to walk the fields with us; hear from experts on my Saturday morning show, Deep Roots Radio; share our adventures on my blog, From the Bronx to the Barn; and buy our sustainably-grown beef. We farm with a tiny carbon hoofprint (R) so that you can enjoy great-tasting grass-fed beef that's high in nutrition while helping to restore our environment.

Dec. 3, 9-9:30AM CT. Live, why bees matter

We’ve heard about it again and again: the bees are dying off, whole hives collapsing or just disappearing. Recent news stories told us the transplants we buy at local greenhouses contain pesticides that’ll kill bees. And we know that without bees and other pollinators some of our favorite foods will simply not grow. At all!

Join me and co-host Dave Corbett as we chat with Erin Rupp, executive director and founder of Pollinate Minnesota. What do bees do in winter? And how do they communicate with one another? And just what do they mean to the veggies and fruits eat?

What: Deep Roots Radio interview with Erin Rupp, Pollinate Minnesota ED/founder
When: Saturday, Dec. 3, 2016, 9:00-9:30AM Central Time
Where: WPCA RADIO, 93.1FM and streamed live on www.wpcaradio.org
Why: Many fruits and vegetables depend on pollinators, like bees, to carry pollen from plant to plant so that fruit and seeds will grow. No bees, no fruit! Learn how Pollinate Minnesota is working to protect and encourage these critical workers in our food system.

Sylvia

The holidays are coming! The holidays are coming! Got your skills & gift ideas in hand?

I can’t believe it – Thanksgiving is next week!! It’s the kick off of the who-can-make-the-most-memorable-meal-and-still-look-totally-relaxed season.
And as if that weren’t enough, each of us tends to think back (dare I say, compare) to wonderful get-together’s of years past. (How is it that the quality of Grandma’s cooking rises a few inches every year?)
And then there’s the gift giving craze. Heaven help us!

Well, here are two or three fun things to consider as you rev up for the next 40 days of food and festivity:
– Learn to bake hearth breads. Join with a handful of friends for a fun- and flour-filled afternoon. Yup, you can do it in your home oven. You can learn about breads based on mild French Sourdough or poolish (the starter used for making focaccia, pizza and ciabatta, just to name a few). Bread classes are: Nov. 19, Dec. 10, or Dec.17. For info and to register for one of these dates, click here.
– Prepare Grass-fed beef & other pastured meats. Class demonstrates two very different approaches to preparing pastured meats for great taste and high nutrition: low & slow, AND fast. It’s not rocket science, but these approaches put lean and flavorful qualities of pastured meats center stage. Class Dec. 3. For information and to register, click here.
– Gift a class to friend or family.
– Schedule a private class for a handful of friends. Just call to arrange, 651-238-8525
– Ready for unexpected visitors? Want to start your meal with a bang? Or gathering snacks for the big game? Order 100% grass-fed beef summer sausage now. Eat guilt-free! Our summer sausage does not include added artificial nitrates and nitrites.
– Tie a bow around the summer sausage and it’s a gift!

Ben Hewitt on 21st Century homesteading for a meaningful, healthful life on 40 acres or in a 400-sq ft apartment

Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Ben Hewitt on 21st Century homesteading for a meaningful, healthful life on 40 acres or in a 400-sq ft apartment
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Author, homesteader Ben Hewitt

Author, homesteader Ben Hewitt

I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat with author and modern-day homesteader Ben Hewitt. An engaging storyteller, Ben pulls you right into his books and their characters. His most recent publication is The Nourishing Homestead: One Back-to-the-land Family’s Plan for Cultivating Soil, Skills and Spirit. Ben, his wife Penny and their two sons grow 90% of their foods and build their lives on 40 acres in Vermont.
What they’ve learned over the years “is readily transferable to any place — whether you live on 4 acres, 40 acres or in a 400-square-foot studio apartment.

On November 10, 2016, Hewitt be in Amery, Wisconsin to share a great meal, and to describe his experiences and ideas about the tie between growing your food and quality of life, environmental consciousness and rebuilding local community.

He’s also written:
– The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food
– Making Supper Safe: One Man’s Quest to Learn the Truth about Food Safety
– Home Grown: The Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling and Reconnecting with the Natural World

Enjoy a local organic dinner, and conversation with Ben Hewitt
Nov. 10, 2015, 6:00-9:00PM
Farm Table Restaurant, Amery, WI
For tickets, www.hungryturtle.net

Frost on the pumpkin means baking and cooking classes at Bull Brook Keep

What better way to warm up your kitchen – and light up the faces of family and friends – than with the aromas and flavors of freshly baked artisan breads, and luscious grass-fed beef, lamb, pastured pork or pasture-raised chicken?!

Lovely crispy crust

Lovely crispy crust

Yes, you can bake hearth breads in your home oven and with your busy schedule. Get your hands in dough and learn how to use time, temperature and hydration (the amount of water in the dough) to bend the baking process to fit your schedule.
Each class is limited to 4-6 students. Beverages, samples and hearty lunch provided. Cost: $48.50/student (plus small credit card fee).

  • Classes based on poolish (a bubbly, batter-like yeast starter used to make focaccia, ciabatta and pizza), Oct. 29 or Dec. 10. For details.
  • Classes based on French Sourdough (a mild, versatile country bread), Nov. 19, or Dec. 17. For details.

    • Cooking Grass-fed Beef, and pastured Pork and Chicken
    Pastured meats tend to be lean, which is why it’s so important to cook them properly. You don’t want to dry out your roast, or toughen a steak. In our meat cooking class, we’ll look at two approaches for great taste, tenderness and high nutrition: low and slow, and fast using a pressure cooker to make delicious short ribs or beef stew, fall-apart chicken or bone broth, to name just a few dishes.

    5-7-hr flamed-brandy chuck roast

    5-7-hr flamed-brandy chuck roast

    Each class is limited to 4-6 students. Beverages, samples and a hearty, meaty lunch provided. Cost: $49.25/student (plus small credit card fee).

  • Cook delicious pastured meats fast & slow, Nov.1, 1-5PM, for details.
  • li>Cook delicious pastured meats fast & slow, Dec. 3, 11AM-3PM, for details.

    • How long has it been??? What’s happening on this city-girl’s farm.

    What happened?? Where did the summer go?
    Well, if your life’s anything like mine, your Monday-Friday went to work and family. And your weekends, if you planned well and were able to add a dash of good luck, were spent doing lots of chores. You know – the laundry, food shopping, buying school supplies, banking, and repairing this-and-that. Hopefully you took some time for coffee with friends, and maybe dinner out with your sweetie.

    A few 2016 calves

    A few 2016 calves

    The growing season started with the arrival of our spring calves. All our new little BueLingos were born out on our pastures and unassisted. This season also required that we up our game and manage our pastures for a slightly larger herd. This summer’s frequent rains helped keep the much-needed grass growing.
    We began harvesting in July, and will take our final two beeves to the custom USDA processor in a month or so. (Those two animals will go exclusively for ground beef and summer sausage.)
    Today, we get ready for an annual right-of-passage – tagging every calf, and castrating the bull calves. Once castrated, the male calves are called steers, and they’ll graze for two years to harvest age and condition. Until that time, all the cattle will enjoy the best of care: 365 days a year on grassy fields, sunshine and fresh air, a 100% grass diet, and the company and calm of their herd. It makes for contented, healthy cattle, and, ultimately, great-tasting and highly nutritious beef.
    And that’s the heart of it: health and happiness – for the the cows, the land, and for you and me.
    We all benefit from farming and living with a tiny carbon hoof print (TM)*, truly sustainable farming.
    Thank you for visiting the farm and sharing the story of your food journey. I really enjoyed making frequent deliveries in Amery, Polk and St. Croix counties, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.
    I look forward to meeting you. Please visit. And until then, enjoy the cooling fall weather.
    Sylvia

    *tiny carbon hoofprint is a US registered trademark belonging to Bull Brook Keep.

    Our Variety Packages are SOLD OUT for 2016. Ground beef and Summer Sausage still available.

    Thanks to all our Bull Brook Keep customers for a great season. It was great to meet you on the farm or when making deliveries.

    The demand for our 100% grass-fed beef continues to grow, and we are now sold out of our variety packages for this year.

    However, we have ground beef and summer sausage available, and I recommend ordering sooner than later. Click here to order online.

    If you’re interested in 100% grass-fed beef for next year, please check back. You can find out about our variety packages by clicking here. We’ll reopen our web store in May 2017.

    Have a great fall season! And know you’re always welcome to visit the farm. Whether you’ve purchased beef from us or not, we’d love to walk the pastures with you, introduce you to our herd, and hear about your journey into good food.

    Sylvia & Dave

    Storm drops cow on farm? Feeling a bit at Oz.

    Squinting, I picked up my phone to check the time: 5:15AM. Why was I awake? Then I remembered last night’s storm: lightning, rolling thunder and walls of rain driven by high winds – gusts that tore tree branches ripped up my tomato plants.
    The little bull calf must have been frightened. He’d been left in the field after I moved the rest of the herd across the driveway and to a fresh paddock. Darn calf. It just wouldn’t stay by its moma. It kept running around me and double-backing to the old field. Crazy kid.
    5:15AM. Sunday morning and the cows were mooing like crazy. The unhappy moma bellowed the lead, and the rest of the cows provided boistrous backup.
    I pulled on my patched jeans, a tattered black t-shirt and an over-sized white shirt (to keep off bugs), and headed out to find the calf and coax it in with the rest of the herd. Correction: I would try to coax it back to its mom.
    (Herding a calf and herding cats have a lot in common.)
    Wearing my shin-high Muck boots, I was half-way across the wet field when I noticed a strange white patch moving within a shadowy stand of poplars. It bobbed about five feet above the grass. What was that? The little bull calf only reaches my waist, so it wasn’t him. Not only that, but all my cattle – BueLingos – have either black or red faces.

    BueLingo calves

    BueLingo calves


    The white patch kept approaching.
    I stopped cold. Was that a man in our field? The white patch loomed closer. When it stepped out of the trees, I saw it for what it was – a white-faced Hereford cow. What in the world? Where did this thing come from? And how did it get into our fenced-off field?
    As I was mulling this over, I also spotted our errant calf. Both he and the hiefer (young female) were standing across the driveway from the rest of the herd. They were separated by 30 feet of gravel driveway and two lines of electric fence. So all this noise wasn’t just about the calf, it was also about the strange cow.
    I yelled at Dave (he was on the deck enjoying a first cup of coffee), to let him know about the visitor left by last night’s storm.
    Dave responded with his usual, “What in the world?”
    Visiting Hereford heifer

    Visiting Hereford heifer

    We guessed this young Hereford was spooked by last night’s pyrotechnics, wandered over from the neighboring farm, and found (or made) a breach in our perimeter fence.
    We took a breath. Seeing that both the Hereford and our little Buelingo were safe, the first order of business was finding the hole in our fence line.
    I searched for an hour before church services. Nothing. Dave and I resumed our inspection after brunch. Nada. Our theory: the heifer is a jumper.
    If you’ve never seen it, it’s a sight that stops you in your tracks – a 1000-lb bovine easily clearing a 5-ft fence. Breath-taking.
    OK. The heifer is safe. The little bull is safe, if temporarily separated from its dam. Our fence line is intact.
    Next step: knock on a few doors and find out if any of our neighbors is missing a heifer wearing an ear-tag marked #1.
    It took us just a couple of tries. The worried owner lives just across a main road from our farm. She’d been frantic when she discovered her pretty red heifer missing this morning. Mystery solved, but the issue’s far from resolved.
    Getting the Hereford back to her farm may take a bit of time even though her pasture is just 1/4-mile from us. It could take two days or two weeks to have her join with our herd, calmly move through rotational paddock changes, and finally make it back up to our corral. Once in the corral, we would get her into a hauler, and make the minute-long drive back to her home farm.
    BREAKING NEWS: Just got a call from the Hereford’s owner. Seems the heifer jumped fences, trotted along the busy county road, turned into her home driveway and jumped back into her own field.
    Theory proven. Issue resolved.
    Just checked my phone. Storms forecast for Thursday.

    Chinese herbs, acupuncture, spinal manipulation for dogs, cats & livestock. Live, June 11, 9-9:30AM CT

    Jody_team_07What: Deep Roots Radio interview with Dr. Jody Bearman, lead in the all-woman, holistic practice called Anshen Veterinary Acupuncture, LLC., in Madison, Wisconsin.
    When: Saturday, June 11, 2016, 9:00-9:30 AM Central Time
    Where: Broadcast and streamed live from the studios of WPCA Radio 93.1FM and www.wpcaradio.org on the Internet.
    Why: Dr. Jody, and her associates, use Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, spinal manipulations and other approaches to address illness and disease and to promote wellness in dogs, cats, goats, horses and other livestock. Why? How effective are they?

    That’s what we’ll talk about on the show tomorrow morning. I hope you’ll tune in.

    Sylvia

    Extra! Extra! Get your free Deep Roots Radio podcast here!

    Miss an episode of Deep Roots Radio? Here’s a bunch of them – conversations with some of the most interesting farmers, ranchers, reporters, writers, cooks, scientists, policymakers and thought leaders. Download and listen whenever you like, or click and listen online.
    Enjoy!!

    Saturdays, 9:00-9:30AM CT on wpcaradio.org

    Saturdays, 9:00-9:30AM CT on wpcaradio.org

    Ya gotta have heart!!

    Americans love their flame grilled steaks, simmering pot roasts, and juicy burgers. But what about the rest of that 100% grass-fed steer? What do you do with the heart, liver, tongue, oxtail, shank bones and other lesser known cuts? Today, we’ll focus on the heart because it can become a favorite.
    The heart of a full-grown beef steer can weight four or five pounds.It’s the most lean cut of meat in the cow. It’s also a muscle that’s worked constantly since conception. Lack of fat and constant use can make any muscle tough if not cooked correctly. Fortunately, there’s a great recipe and approach that makes for a luscious stew of tender morsals.
    I adapted this recipe from Jennifer McLagan’s “Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal.” I’ve tapped the unique cooking powers of a stove-top pressure cooker to yield tender beef and a savory sauce. It’s a hearty meal when served over hot rice and with a side of steamed carrots. I washed my dinner down with home-brewed kombucha.

    Moroccan beef heart stew with brown rice and home-fermented kimchi.

    Moroccan beef heart stew with brown rice and home-fermented kimchi.

    Here’s a recipe for a 4 lb. heart. If you have a cut of heart that’s smaller, simply reduce the other ingredients proportionally. Or, you can make the full recipe for the sauce – it’s delicious on eggs, polenta, rice or baked potatoes. Here’s the recipe:
    Braised Heart