Wordless Wednesday: First Snow on the Farm

Snowy sunrise through the trees.

Winter wonderland on the farm

The calves eating their breakfast

Born to Pharm Video

I am through the roof excited to share this video with you today!!

I've been wanting to create a video that explains what Born to Pharm is and also highlight what Adam and I are trying to accomplish with our blog. The video project finally got crossed off my to-do list this summer!

Adam's cousins, Austin and Carey Bickford, came out to the farm one evening in June and we did some filming around the farm and they stayed and had dinner with us as well. It was a perfect night to enjoy the weather, the sunset, and just being out in the country!

Austin and his brother own a media production company, BicMedia, he was able to bring the professional cameras out, set them up, and got so many cool shots of the farm!  Austin and his brother were able to take several hours of footage and edit it down to just a few minutes. In this short amount of time they were able to tell our story and showcase what we are trying to accomplish with our blog. We are so happy with the final product and we hope you enjoy watching it!

Born to Pharm 2013 from BicMedia on Vimeo.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Austin and Carey for taking the time to come out to the farm and put this awesome video together!  We appreciate all of your hard work on this project and we couldn't be happier with it!!

You can find BicMedia on Facebook, Vimeo, or visit their website to learn more about their company or to see more of their videos.

Wordless Wednesday: Summer Sunsets

The summer sunsets have been absolutely gorgeous on the farm the past few weeks.

"K-State Sunset"
One of my favorites from the past few weeks.

"Wagon Wheel"

"The calm after the storm"

"Shimmering Wheat"
Sunset on a wheat field near the Missouri River, another favorite.

Sunset at Kauffman Stadium from Friday night. 

Easy Barbecued Pork Spare Ribs

This past week  I was looking through the freezer and noticed we had a few packages of pork spare ribs we needed to use up. I found a recipe on Pinterest that looked pretty easy and simple and I thought I would try it out. The final product was delicious and I'm excited to share this recipe with you!

The original recipe can be found at the Mmm is for Mommy blog, and she adapted it from the book America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution. This blogger did an excellent job of explaining all the steps and she also has a few other rib recipes I would like to try, such as her slow cooker honey garlic and ginger spare rib recipe and the 2-hour whiskey dijon BBQ ribs recipe.  If I get a chance to try these I'll be sure to let you know how they turned out.

For the Easy Barbecued Pork Spare Ribs recipe I used two packages of ribs, each package contained four sections of ribs. This amount could feed four adults easily. The nice thing about this recipe is that you can use any BBQ sauce you want and this allows you to cater to your family's specific tastes. For this recipe I used Famous Daves Sweet and Zesty sauce because it is what we had on hand.

Ingredients: 
3 Tbsp. of sweet paprika (I used normal paprika)
2 Tbsp. light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (I didn't have any cayenne pepper, so I skipped this ingredient)
Salt and pepper to taste (about 1 tsp. each)
6 pounds pork spare ribs- leave the membrane on the ribs to help hold them together.
3 Cups of the barbecue sauce of your choice
Vegetable oil spray

Directions:
In a small bowl, mix together paprika, brown sugar, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper. Rub this mixture all over both sides of your ribs. Arrange the ribs in the slow cooker by standing them up against the wall of the stoneware pot, thicker side down and meaty side against the pot. Pour the barbecue sauce over the ribs, cover and cook for 6-8 hours on low.

I was at work all day when I made this recipe and I was going to be away from home for 10 hours, so I turned the crock pot on warm for 5 hours then had Adam turn it to low when he stopped in to grab lunch that day.  The ribs cooked on low for an additional four hours.  This seemed to work fine, but if you around home while cooking the ribs I would recommend cooking them for 6 hours on low. When you cook them as long as I did in the crock pot the meat really shrinks down from the bone.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together to make the dry rub.

Rub the ribs with the dry ingredients.

Arrange the ribs in the crock pot by standing them up against the wall
of the crock pot, thicker side down and meaty side against the pot. 

Drizzle the three cups of BBQ sauce over the ribs. 

Once the ribs have cooked for this amount of time, there is one last step that makes the ribs taste fantastic.  For this step you will transfer the ribs from the crock pot to a broiler pan or a pyrex pan lined with foil with a baking cooling rack set on top of it. Be careful while doing this because the ribs are very tender and they will pull off of the bone easily. Place the ribs bone side up on the rack.  Set the broiler pan with the ribs to the side. Skim any fat that has risen to the top of the juice in the crock pot and strain all of the remaining juices from the crock pot through a mesh strainer into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and allow to simmer and then reduce the heat by a third.  Allow the sauce to simmer for approximately 15 minutes. Turn your oven to the broil setting and make sure there is an oven rack about 10 inches below the broiler element. When the broiler is preheated, brush the ribs with sauce and broil for 3 to 4 minutes. Take the ribs out and very carefully flip them over, brush with the sauce and broil again, meat side up for approximately 9 minutes, taking the ribs out once or twice to baste with more sauce. Serve any remaining sauce on the side with the ribs.

Place the ribs on a broiler pan. 

Strain the juice from the crock pot into a
saucepan by using a mesh strainer.

  

Bring the sauce to a boil and then reduce the heat
and let simmer for 15 minutes. 

Brush the ribs with the sauce and broil. 

There you have it! A fantastic lip-smacking summer recipe that will have your guests coming back for more!

I Conquered the Hill.......and the Mountain!

I know it's been a little bit since I've written an update post. This semester was crazy busy with school and organizations. Just ask Adam, I was hardly home and when I was it seemed like we were always going in different directions.

So just what have we been up to in the past 4-5 months? Well Adam made it through another calving season despite the cold weather and snow and they are almost done with planting for this season. I made it through my last semester of classes in pharmacy school and I can now say I'm 4/5 of a pharmacist! Woohooo!

I hope to catch you up with all the details in future posts, but right now this entry is about conquering the hill and a mountain in the past two weeks.

Believe it or not running a half marathon was the second most challenging thing I did in the past two weeks.  Allow me to explain.

This past Saturday I ran the Hospital Hill Half Marathon. Run is word that I like to use loosely here, because my pace was turtle speed at times. You see, I signed up for this half marathon back in February. I thought I would have ample time to train and maybe even improve on my time from the last half I ran. Well my best laid plan for training worked as well as a snail trying to juggle. School got in the way the majority of the time, but the weather was also a big factor this spring. It was warmer in January than it was in March and I hate running in the cold! Anyway, my training never made it past five miles, and I probably ran that distance over a month ago. Are you starting to see the predicament I got myself into?  I seriously considered just going to the expo, picking up my race packet and not running the 13.1 miles. I could still go to the race and cheer on my brother's fiance, but at that point I didn't even think I could run the 5K in a decent time.

So it's the day before the race and I go to the expo to pick up my race packet and everything is fun and exciting. This was also the 40th anniversary of the Hospital Hill run, so it was a big year for the race.  I'm kind of getting excited to run and starting to think, maybe I can do this.

My future sister-in-law, Kari, is a runner as well. Granted she is much more talented at running than I am. We met up before the race and chatted for a little bit, then got in our respective groups to start the race. The race started and I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, trying to maintain a steady pace. It was an absolutely awesome day for a run. There was cloud cover and it was cool. We couldn't of had a better day for a race. I was thankful the weather was on my side that day, because that was one of the few things I had going for me.

Kari and I before the race.

As I'm running through the city that I've become so familiar with over the past three years I realize the first big hill is coming up. It's the hill in front of Children's Mercy Hospital and it is a doozy. I made  it up that one and kept on going. The turn for the 5K was coming up and I seriously considered hanging a right and calling it a day, but something told me to keep going. I'm running down the street I drove down everyday to get to school and I can feel that ache in my knees starting.    I just pushed the thought of slowing down to the back of my mind and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'm coming up on the turn for the 10K, and once again I seriously considered turning here and calling it a day. For some stupid reason I didn't turn and just kept on getting farther and farther away from the starting line.

We get to mile five and the pain in my knees is getting worse and the balls of my feet are starting to blister. I walked at the water stations, but at this point I took a breather and walked up the Rockhill Road hill. I just kept chugging along, then about mile 7 I noticed the runner in front of me didn't have her running partner anymore. I caught up to her and started a conversation and it turned out she lived in Manhattan and was going to vet school at K-State and we knew some of the same people! How crazy is that! So we ran with each other for the last half of the race and talked about school and what we wanted to do once we graduated. We get to the last three miles of the race and I honestly don't know how I managed to make it this far, but I'm now determined to finish despite the fact my knees were on fire and my feet were blistering.

I had to walk the last 2.5 miles because the pain was so intense. I jogged the last downhill half mile and crossed the finish line with the encouragement of the runners beside me.  I looked back at the finish line and think, "Holy crap, how the heck did I just run 13.1 miles?"  Somehow, someway I conquered the hill and earned the medal at the end of the race. My time wasn't horrible considering I didn't train for this race. It was only 10 minutes slower than the half marathon I trained for last last year.  I finished with a time of 2:48:52.

Every muscle in my body ached and I couldn't wait to get home and relax. Even though I regretted running the race at the time, looking back I'm glad I did it and pushed myself to my limits.

Post race photo. 

It has almost been a week since I ran the half and my feet still hurt and I know I won't be running for awhile so my body can heal. The moral of the story is: put in the time to train for a race like this. I would like to run this race again next year and have adequate training under my belt so I can see how much my time improved.

Believe it or not running this half marathon was the second most physically challenging thing I did in a weeks time. The first involves the country of Peru and a really tall mountain.

Once I finished up finals this year I got packed up and left on a plane to travel to Peru for a medical missions trip with the United Planet organization. Eleven of us went on this trip and we had a great time! We were there for eight days and did a lot of work in the clinics and got explore the city of Cusco, Peru. I hope to write future posts about the work we did there, but for now the rest of this post is about conquering a mountain.

While we were in Peru our coordinators planned a weekend excursion to Machu Picchu.  This was the part of the trip that everyone was excited about and once we were there it was just absolutely spectacular! If you ever get the chance to go to Peru I highly recommend spending a weekend going through Machu Picchu.The Incan ruins are a sight to see and it is truly amazing and difficult to fathom how this civilization built these massives structures without modern mechanization. Machu Picchu is considered one of the seven wonders of the world because it is a site the Spanish did not find during their conquest, and therefore it was not destroyed by the Spanish Conquistadors.

Machu Picchu with the Wayna Picchu mountain
in the background. This is the mountain we climbed. 

Part of our excursion to Machu Picchu included the option to climb the mountain that you see in the background of all the MaPi pictures. They only allow 400 people to climb this mountain a day and tickets are already sold out through the end of June. Our group decided to go ahead and go for it. We were here, we might as well just do it. The mountain looked pretty daunting from the MaPi grounds, but it looked even more tough to tackle once we were at the base. Our ticket allowed us to enter the trail at 10AM, we stood in line and we had to check in at this little hut and write down our start time. We all got through the check in and did a team huddle to kick this adventure off.

Our group gearing up to conquer this mountain.
Pictured from left to right: Megan, me, Brett, Bethany,
Rachel, Stephanie, and Jordan.
Photo credit: Jordan Gard

We were are all excited to climb this mountain and we took off pretty quick. We all kinda forgot that we were at a higher altitude than what we were used to in Kansas. So we were all huffing and puffing pretty quick and had to take several breather breaks to catch our breath and just look out at the view, which was extraordinary.  We also soon learned that this mountain climb would get the nickname, "stairmaster on an overdose of steroids." We climbed a lot of steps that day and it would be interesting to know just how many stairs there are to get to the top.

Some of the stairs on our journey to the top. Brett,
Jordan and Bethany were our leads as we made our way.

Stephanie and Rachel were my mountain climbing partners. 

We continued to climb and we start to see the first group of people come back down the mountain. We ask them how much further do we have to go and some of them said, "15 minutes and some said 30 minutes." So we knew we were maybe close to half way to the top. Our legs were already on fire from all of the stairs, but we kept pushing onward. We made it to a lookout point and took some time to take in the amazing view.

Looking down on the Machu Picchu ruins. Yeah, we were pretty high up at this point. 

UMKC School of Pharmacy Class of 2014 on top of Wayna Picchu!
(L-R) Jordan, Stephanie, me, Rachel, Sara, and Brett 

A 360 degree view from Wayna Picchu. 

We were almost to the top of the mountain and we had the option to start our decent or continue a little further and say we made it to the very top of this mountain. It was unanimous to go ahead and climb to the very top. We get to a point in the mountain where we have to climb through a tunnel for a little bit, then to get to the very top we have to climb a ladder and at the top there are three large rocks we can stand or sit on. We didn't stay at the top too long because there was a swarm of gnats that kept buzzing around us and made it difficult to enjoy the view. 

Getting ready to crawl through the tunnel to get to the top of Wayna Picchu.

We did it! We made it to the VERY top of the mountain!
You can see how little Machu Picchu looks in the background. 

Now that we were at the top of the mountain, we only had one place to go.....down.  I'll have to say going down was the worse than climbing up. On the trek down you could see how high you are and the precarious situations we had somehow managed to get ourselves into. We took our time with each step down, because the steps were hardly large enough to hold our feet.  Keeping three points of contact was essential for us to prevent a mental breakdown and freaking out from the steepness of the steps. 

The girls making their way down the mountain.
You can see just how steep the steps were.
Pictured: Stephanie, Sara, and Amy.

The sign that is almost at the top of the mountain. It said the altitude was
2,693 meters, which is 8,833 feet. Yikes, that is a ways up there!

Another view of the steep stairs on the way down. 

We all made it back to the bottom and we conquered that giant mountain
in the background! Our whole hike took two hours.

It was a relief to make it back to the bottom of the mountain. Our legs were dead and had no more "up" left in them. Climbing this mountain was one of the most physically and emotionally challenging things I have ever done, and it is awesome that we were able to push ourselves beyond our comfort zones and conquer the mountain!

If you ever think you can't do something, just push that thought to the back of your mind and keep putting one foot in front of the other.  If I can conquer the hill and the mountain in a weeks time you can do anything you set your mind to!

More Peru stories and adventures will be posted in the near future, I can't wait to tell you all about it!

Have a fantastic weekend! 

Thank a Farmer and We, In Turn, Thank You, the Consumer.

I read a blog post not too long ago that really made me think. Not just the type of thinking where you sit for a few seconds and say, "well that was interesting." No, this was something more than that.  The post made me question what I had been doing on social media to promote agriculture and really reflect on the message I was sending.   The person who wrote this post was Jenny Dewey. 

Jenny Dewey is a pretty inspiring person, if you haven't checked out her blog yet, you need to head over to j.l.d. photograph and do so. Seriously. Do it now.  

Ok now that you're back and you've seen first hand all of the amazing photos she's taken and the awesome blog posts she's written you can understand why she's inspiring, absolutely adorable, and  a mover and a shaker when it comes to agvocacy. Jenny wrote a post back in March titled, "How do you Celebrate National Agriculture Day....?"  Her post really made me think. The type of thinking that makes you stop everything you're doing and assess the situation. Her post was published on Ag Day when a majority of the ag community was sharing posts of why everyone should be thanking a farmer. Jenny did something that went against the grain on Ag Day.  She questioned why we were telling people to "thank a farmer."  Yes, farmers and ranchers work hard to produce the food that feeds the world, but a lot of other people work very hard at their jobs everyday and they aren't out there on social media asking for thanks. So why were people in agriculture doing this? 

I don't know the reasoning behind why the hashtag #thankafarmer started, but I'm sure the intent behind it wasn't to tell a group of people what to do. I think it was started to bring attention to where food comes from and all the work that goes into getting it to our tables. I'll be the first to admit that I'm guilty of using the hashtag, #thankafarmer.  I never really questioned why I chose to use it.  In my mind I was highlighting the work being done to produce a crop and the struggles that go along with that. I was never actually intentionally seeking out thanks and praise for what we do in production agriculture. If you've ever met a farmer, you know they aren't out there actively seeking recognition and praise for what they do. The motto is usually, "work hard and stay humble." 

So you may be wondering why I'm discussing this topic on the blog today.  Well it's because I saw a video last night that brought all of the above points back to the forefront of my brain. The country singer and Kansas native, James Wesley, has a song out titled, "Thank a Farmer."  While watching the video I swelled up with pride and I was humbled by the fact this country artist chose to write and release a song dedicated to farmers. 

I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that they like to receive thanks and recognition for all of their hard work. It's awesome when someone comes up to Adam or I and offers their thanks and praise, especially after we've been able to teach someone about our operation and about the things we do on a daily basis. However, when someone has to ask for the thanks, then this is when the appreciation loses its value.  Farming is our life and our career.  We chose this life because we love it and we can't imagine doing anything else.  Yes, being involved in production agriculture is difficult, challenging, and a lot of hard work, but we feel strongly that there are many other careers out there where thanks and appreciation should be offered before thanking a farmer.

So today I'm proposing that we all take a little time to thank all of the people who are involved in offering us the goods, services, and freedoms we get to enjoy on a daily basis. Thank a police officer, a nurse, a teacher, a custodian, a firefighter, members of our armed services, a doctor, a truck driver, a construction worker, a cook, a housekeeper, a babysitter, an administrative assistant, a fellow co-worker, a dentist, a grocery store checker, a mentor, a mechanic.... the list goes on. If we all take a little time each day to truly thank the people in our lives for what they do, then I think the world will be a better place. 

With all this talk of thanking a farmer a point was brought up in Jenny's blog comments that we as farmers should be thanking you, the consumer. I'm a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due and I want to take this opportunity to thank YOU for purchasing the products we produce.  If it wasn't for you we wouldn't be able to be out here doing what we love each and every day. So, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for buying the products we put so much time and effort in to making. 

#rxchat

Today's the day for #rxchat!!!!!

I'm soooooo excited to finally get this project off the ground!

The idea for this project came about from my participation in @agchat on Tuesday evenings. I've only been able to join in the conversation a few times, but I've often gone back and looked over everyone's answers to the questions submitted on the topic after the conversation was over. #agchat has allowed me to connect with several ag tweeps across the country and I thought, "why couldn't I do this for pharmacy?"

Well guess what? Now I'm doing this for pharmacy!

The first ever #rxchat will take place on Twitter Today!! I've had this idea for a few months to create a pharmacy chat on Twitter where pharmacists, physicians, patients, and anyone else who wants to join the conversation can answer questions about specified topic related to the pharmacy profession.

 

If you're on Twitter be sure to follow @rxchat and to use the hashtag #rxchat in the search column to see the tweets and updates from the conversation.

Here's all the info:

The Twitter #rxchat will take place Today, April 11th from 4-5pm CST. The chat will allow participants to share their views on the questions asked and allow students, faculty, and pharmacy professionals to network, and connect with each other. The topic for the chat will be "the role of social media in the pharmacy profession." There will be a series of approximately ten questions asked over the course of the hour. If you have any questions you would like to submit for the chat please send them in a Direct Message to @rxchat

 

I hope to see you join the conversation this afternoon! Wish me luck as I jump in with both feet and moderate my first Twitter chat! I'll let you know how it goes! 

A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Kelly M. Rivard,  Brandi Buzzard Frobose, and my General Medicine I preceptor, Eric Wombwell, for all of their help and guidance with this project!  You guys are awesome and I couldn't of done this without your encouragement! 

See you on Twitter at 4pm! 

 

Philly Cheese Steak Stuffed Peppers

Happy Monday! 

I know everyone is still on a high from the Superbowl and the awesome pro-Ag commercials from Ram Trucks and Budweiser. If you missed them you can catch them here. So with all that excitement you probably haven't thought about what your're going to make for dinner yet. 

Well your'e in luck because I've got an awesome recipe for you today!

Last weekend I had my family over for dinner and I tried out a new recipe on them. I had been wanting to try this stuffed pepper recipe I saw on Pinterest, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  The Philly cheese steak stuffed peppers were a big hit with Adam and my family! I'll definitely be adding this one to the favorites list and making it again!

Recipe from: Spark Recipes

Minutes to prepare: 20

Minutes to cook: 20 

Servings: 4 

Ingredients: 

2 green bell peppers 

8 slices of provolone cheese 

1 medium onion chopped

1 cup diced bella mushrooms

8oz of roast beef

2 Tbs. of unsalted butter

2 Tbs. of olive oil

3 cloves of garlic 

Dash of salt to taste

Dash of black pepper to taste 

Instructions: 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice peppers in half lengthwise, remove ribs and seeds. Spray with PAM and roast in the oven for 15 minutes. 

Slice onions and mushrooms. Sautee over medium heat with butter, olive oil, minced garlic, and a little salt and pepper. Sautee until onions and mushrooms are nice and caramelized, about 25-30 minutes. 

Slice roast beef into thin strips and add to the mushroom/onion mixture. Allow to cook for 5-10 minutes. 

Line the inside of each pepper with a slice of provolone cheese. 

When the meat mixture is done cooking, drain in colander lined with a paper towel to get rid of excess water and oil. Fill each pepper with the meat mixture until they are nearly overflowing. 

Top each pepper with a slice of provolone cheese. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is golden brown. 

Nutritional Information: 

Servings per Recipe: 4 

Amount per serving: Calories: 429.8, Total Fat: 30.6g, Cholesterol: 84.7g, Sodium: 619.8g, Total Carbs: 10.2g, Dietary Fiber: 2.2g, Protein: 31.3g 

This recipe does have a little more fat, cholesterol, and sodium than what I usually like to have in one serving. However, you can reduce theses amounts by making a few modifications such as using  light olive oil, and purchasing low sodium provolone cheese and roast beef. You can also only use one slice of provolone cheese per pepper to cut down the above numbers as well. 

All the ingredients. 

Slice the peppers in half lengthwise. 

Place them in a pan after you have removed the seeds and spray
with Pam. 

I hate chopping onions, my eyes were watering the whole time!

Slicing up the mushrooms. 

Line the peppers with a slice of provolone cheese. 

Sauteeing the mushrooms and onions. 

Slicing up the roast beef, I just purchased a pound of the roast beef
from the deli counter at the grocery store.

Cooking it all together. 

Filling the peppers with the meat mixture. 

Topping with another slice of provolone cheese. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes and enjoy!

Now what you've all been waiting for, the announcement of the winner of the giveaway! Thank you to everyone who entered, we had a total of 55 entries! So without further adieu the winner of the $25 Dally Designs gift card is........

Congratulations, Becky! Enjoy your gift card and you'll have to share with us what you purchased! Thank you again to everyone who entered for a chance to win the gift certificate, and to Dally Designs for pairing up with me for this giveaway.