Hi Everyone!

It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you over the last couple of months!  Many of you have come out to the farm to visit, and we’ve really enjoyed that!

We’ve got some changes coming up that I wanted to make you aware of.  We are loving including The Granary Store items in our farm offerings!  Because we’re going to be moving our farm to Polk County soon, we have come up with some changes that will make the transition easier on everyone.

First, we won’t be able to offer the “free home delivery” option any longer.  Our homebase is going to be further west, and it is quite a drive to the previous “free” areas.  However, if you check www.VineyardFarms.com, you can find all our regular drop off locations!  There is most likely a drop off location that’s very close to you!

Secondly, beginning in June, we won’t be offering the 2.5 and 5 pound grain options any longer.  We have found that we can offer lower prices and be more efficient if we sell in bulk.  This will also help with our organization and speed of delivery!  We will be updating the website to reflect these changes.

If you’d like to come out and visit, and see all of our inventory, please let me know!  You can always reach me at (404) 610-1540.

Thank you so much for your continued support of our Vineyard Farms and The Granary Store!

Hi Everyone!  I am Anna, the new owner of The Granary, and I am SUPER excited to meet all of you!

I would love for all of you to come by my farm in Powder Springs, GA and meet me in person!  You can still place your orders on this site, and your order will come directly to me!  I will continue to drop off your orders as you are accustomed to.  Please give me at call at 404-610-1540 with any questions!

We are having a sale through this Saturday!  If you spend $50 in orders, you will get 10% off your total!

Thank you for your business, and if you want to come see our farm and pick your order up here, just let me know!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Starting today, The Granary will have a new “home” and a new owner!  My sweet friend, Anna Vaagen, owner of Vineyard Farms in Powder Springs, will be carrying on the vision of The Granary; to provide and promote healthful food.  She has a passion for all “fruits of the farm”.  Anna and her ever-patient husband relocated from the ‘burbs to their acreage a few years ago to start homesteading.  See her note below, and then give her a call to meet her and her animal friends.

I thank every one of you who have supported and encouraged me these past few years as I have endeavored to develop this business.  It has been a joy to meet and talk with you; you have made it all worthwhile!  Thank you so much.

Esther

Vineyard Farms is a family farm in Cobb County. We began in August of 2010, and have grown dramatically in the last year. Our family consists of two parents, four children, and over 100 sweet farm animals! We have cows that know their names, boars that like their bellies scratched, turkeys that rock in rocking chairs, and a mini donkey that thinks he’s a lap dog! There is never a dull day out here! Vineyard Farms sells raw milk, eggs from pasture-roaming chickens, raw wildflower honey, handmade soaps and lip balms, raw goat’s milk, and grass fed-grass finished beef! Vineyard Farms, once customers of The Granary, are so excited because we will now be the proud new Owners of The Granary! We would love to welcome all customers of The Granary to visit our farm. We are so excited to get to know all of you! As a token of our appreciation to each and every one of you, and in an effort to get to know you all, we are reserving one of our famous beeswax lip balms for each of you! To set a time to visit, simply call Anna at (404) 610-1540. We will be working closely with our friend Esther to meet all of your requests and needs, and to make this transition a seamless one! We feel very blessed to enter into this new relationship with you, and hope that it is a long lasting one! 

Gwinnett customers~I am coming your way on Thursday, February 16th!  Put in your order, and specify “Gwinnett delivery”.  We will meet at 11:00 in the McDonald’s parking lot at Exit 109 off of I-85 north. Feel free to call me at 404-889-4331 if you have any questions.

My friend, Mel, asked me for some Ezekiel flour so she could make Ezekiel bread with her sweet daughter, Hannah.  I realized that even though I have been selling Ezekiel mix for quite some time, I had never actually made Ezekiel bread for myself!  So, I thought I would try it, and see why so many people are lovers of this bread.

Take 2 and 2/3 cups of Ezekiel mix and run it through your grain mill so that it becomes flour.  If you already have Ezekiel flour, measure out 4 cups.  Set this aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together 2 cups of warm water, 1/4 cup of oil, 1/2 cup of honey, and 1 Tablespoon instant yeast.

Let this mixture sit for 4 to 5 minutes.  It will get nice and foamy and smell “yeasty”, and will look like this:

Add your Ezekiel flour and 1 teaspoon of salt.  Mix with a wooden spoon.  This will make a batter, similar in texture to a banana bread or muffin batter.

Spray a 10″ x 4″ pan with oil and dump the batter into the pan.  While you are doing this, you can pop your oven on for 2 minutes so it is warm (don’t forget to turn it off!).

Place the pan in the warm (not hot!) oven, and let rise until the batter is about a half-inch from the top of the pan.  This only took 20 minutes in my oven.

Take the loaf OUT, and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Bake the loaf for 35-50 minutes.  This was, honestly, the only tricky part about making this bread.  It is a little hard to judge when the loaf is done, because the texture is so different from “traditional” yeast bread.  My loaf became nice and brown quite quickly, so halfway through, I lowered my oven down to 325 so the top wouldn’t burn.  After about 30 minutes of baking, check the loaf with a toothpick or knife.  You want it to be “done” inside; not gooey.  I think in all, I baked mine for about 45 minutes.

Done!  This is totally the easiest bread in the world to make!  No kneading, rising (much), rolling, shaping, etc.  And, so few ingredients.  The texture is different from a traditional raised yeast bread; more cake-like and spongy.  It tastes delicious; the honey flavor is quite pronounced.  Make sure you use a honey variety that you like!  My son and husband gobbled the Ezekiel bread up with enthusiasm, and it was wonderful the next morning toasted for breakfast.

    We now carry organic dried mango slices and natural dried apricots.  Look for them in our store under “Sweet Stuff”.

Click on “Store: Kitchen Ware” to view these new silicone products.

  I made these rolls last night right before dinner, and they turned out so soft and warm and wonderful!  Sometimes my bread turns out “just ok”, but for some reason, these were GREAT!  So, I will tell you exactly what I did, and, hopefully, you can replicate it!

Put one cup of very warm water and one cup of buttermilk in the bowl of your mixer (fitted with dough hooks).  Add: 1/3 cup oil, 1/3 cup honey, 1 Tablespoon instant yeast, and 1 Tablespoon dough enhancer.

Run mixer for a few seconds.  Turn off and add 3 or 4 cups of freshly milled hard white wheat flour, 2 handfuls (yes! handfuls!) of rolled oats, and 1 Tablespoon salt.  Turn mixer on lowest setting, and let run while you add spoonfuls of flour.  Stop adding flour when the dough cleanly pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Set a timer for 6 minutes and let the mixer run, kneading the dough.  Meanwhile, turn your oven on and let it heat up for 2 minutes.  Then, turn it OFF.  Spray a baking stone with spray.

After the six minutes, turn off mixer, and dump dough onto your counter.  You don’t need to add any flour to your counter.  Break off pieces of dough a little bigger than a golf ball.  Roll into a ball, and place on baking stone.  This recipe should make about 18 rolls.  After all rolls are formed, put the stone in the warm oven and cover with a cloth (a dish towel will do!).

Let rise.  How long? Hmm.  I think I let these rise about a half hour, but just take a peek at the rolls every once in a while.  They should increase in size and start to smell a little yeasty.

Take stone out of oven.  Preheat to 350 degrees.  Bake for 15 minutes or so.  They should get nice and brown on top.  Oh  my goodness!  These were good!!

We have had several requests from new customers for freshly milled flour from whole grains.  We understand that the purchase of a home mill is a huge step financially!  If you have the desire to bake with whole grains, but don’t yet own a mill, you may want to try some flour so you can “experiment” and see what it is like to add whole grain nutrition to your diet.  Our milled flour is listed under “Grains, Beans, and Seeds” in the Store.

This recipe calls for brown rice syrup, which is a wonderful natural sweetener that is assimilated more slowly by your body than other sweeteners.  If you don’t have rice syrup available, you may substitute pure maple syrup and get a wonderful result.

Combine in  bowl:  3 mashed ripe bananas,

1/3  cup oil,

1/2 cup brown rice syrup (or pure maple syrup),

2 teaspoons vanilla.

Add  2 1/4 cups freshly milled  flour,

2 ¼ teaspoons baking powder and ¼ teaspoon salt.

Stir well by hand.   Add 1/3 cup milk.   FILL greased muffin cups with batter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  Makes 8-9 muffins.