On the Farm for the Holidays
Oklahoma Family Farms
On Christmas night, a new moon will set over the state of Oklahoma. Leading up to the 25th, the moon is waxing to her fullest and brightest during Advent, then she wanes to a quiet, “silent” night. A midnight sky filled only with stars if we are lucky, but this is Oklahoma, after all. All farmers are at the mercy of what the sky brings or doesn’t bring. This night we sleep under that blanket of stars, hopefully happy, content, and peaceful.
Sleep comes to the farmer and ranchers as it does every night, and the day begins just the same; early to bed and early to rise no matter the day, even if it’s a holiday.
Thanksgiving, there are still cattle and chickens to feed and fence posts to mend, along with turkeys to truss and pies to bake. Christmas Day is no different from the morning sun, offering her greeting of “Hail, gentle shepherd,” as the rancher tends to sheep and the farmer to his sprouting seeds. But before the start of this particular day, there might be extra coffee brewed in the pot and Mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls to be baked. Family and friends have arrived the day before, and the farm is awake with hope and cheer…and chores.
On the three farms we spotlight here, holidays look different, farm to farm. On one, there is a break for lunch of roast turkey, glazed ham, and deviled eggs for Thanksgiving; Pumpkin Swiss rolls and Daddy’s grandmother’s chocolate meringue pie adorn the table too. Christmas, there is a dinner of slow-smoked prime beef for the rancher, corn pudding, and freshly baked rolls with shiny buttery tops. At another, Old Ukrainian family recipes of cabbage rolls for the vegetable farmer followed with a blueberry pie from the previous summer’s harvest. At a third, all their work winds down for the day to spend Christmas night putting together large puzzles with the grandkids and gazing at their stockings speckled with homemade charms.
These are the stories of three Oklahoma families and the devotion they put into the family and the farm. How they live and work every day, and for our interest, how they celebrate the holidays.
Ruzycki Farms
In 1913, before the start of the first World War, seventeen-year-old Walter Ruzycki left his home country of Ukraine, seeking a better future. That future started with an eighty-acre plot of farmland in Jones, Oklahoma, that remains in the Ruzycki family today. Four generations later, after serving in the United States Navy, Michael Ruzycki set his sights and future back home in Jones.
“My great-grandfather’s land passed down to my grandfather. He and my grandmother, who is now 94 years old, kept it as a dairy farm, and they also had vegetables; I basically lived there during the summers. Back then, I didn’t really appreciate or understand the importance of the farm until after I came back home,” said Michael.
Michael’s grandfather had just passed away after arriving back in Jones, and he asked his grandmother if he could continue working the vegetable gardens, partly to help out his grandmother and partly because he was hungry.
“I was starting my own life and realized I didn’t have the food that I wanted and grew up on. My grandmother said, ‘you have to grow it,’ so that’s where it started.”
From farming out of necessity to inheriting the acreages he and his brother grew up on from their father, Michael and his brother ultimately split their father’s land in half. On his half of the land, Michael’s dream of farming his own land took hold. Clearing brush and the remains of their family home was the first step. What came next was reconnecting with high school classmate, Emily. The two discovered they had the same entrepreneurial spirit and the love of growing vegetables. Their business dreams connected and within time, so did their love.
“People did not take us seriously when we started farming. We were young, and Michael had a twelve-inch high mohawk,” Emily Ruzycki laughs with Michael. “This June will be twelve years that we have been farming and also our anniversary. We were married in the middle of our first garden.”
When it comes to the holidays for the Ruzyckis, planning the next season is not the only thing keeping this family farm busy. Homemade Thanksgiving pies are a delight Emily takes on when the farm beds are wintering and Michael is sprouting seeds. Slow cooking apples and pumpkins from the farm, for her fruit-butters, are also a real treat during the season. The aromas of holiday spices mixed with caramelized fruit create holiday memories this family cherishes and their customers crave.
“There is always something to do with the farm… even during the holidays,” Michael smiles. “And thankfully, Emily picks up where I left off. We make a great team.”
This emphasizes what Emily told me at the beginning of this interview, “No one realizes the women of the farm, the farmer’s wives, hold it all together. They’d [the farmers] be lost without us.” For a woman who believed in Santa Claus until she was eighteen years old (true story according to Emily), I have full confidence in this farmer’s wife’s dedication to her farm and to her farmer.
Emily’s Butternut Squash and Bacon Soup is a favorite holiday dish on Ruzycki Farms. The butternut squash, of course, courtesy of the land they work.
Real Ranch Grassfed
Paul Morrison is a fourth-generation cattle rancher. Having spent a good part of his life working and managing the Morrison family ranch in Santa Margarita, California, Paul and wife, Shari, set their eyes on Oklahoma. More specifically, two thousand acres of wideopen pasture in the Southeast Oklahoma town of Roff. At Real Ranch Grassfed, they were going to raise cattle and sheep (lamb) the way they wanted to, “no grain, no hormones, ever!”.
“We ended up moving from California to Oklahoma in 2004, and it was incredible how it all came together.” Shari explains, “We put three different properties together. With Paul’s experience in ranching and bringing in purebred Black Angus, it wasn’t until five years later that we started the retail end of the ranch.”
Providing Oklahoma families with healthier meat options was a priority when considering their retail end of the ranch. This means the Black Angus cattle [this year adding purebred Red Angus to the herd] and the St. Croix-Katahdin sheep graze on pesticide-free and herbicide-free pasture land. No added hormones and no antibiotics are used. Now, this is not how a lot of meat-producing ranchers choose to run their operations, considering the cost and labor, but it is what the Morrisons feel is right for them. And the response has been wonderful.
You would think that maintaining the two thousand acre ranch, four hundred head of cattle, and four hundred head of sheep, would require a sizable workforce. Not at all, in fact, it is Paul and Shari who do the majority of the work, along with their children who help out whenever they can.
“When the girls were younger, they’d help us out on the ranch.” Shari tells me while showing a family photo of Paul and Shari’s three daughters working on the ranch in California. “This is our youngest. She was around eight years old then. She’s driving the farm truck, and the two oldest are throwing out feed for the cattle.”
Family is important to the Morrisons and a reason why Real Ranch does not participate in any farmers’ markets. Having their customers order beef and lamb online through the ranch’s website is the perfect option for them. This allows them to spend more time with their daughters (two live in Oklahoma and one back in California, along with their husbands and seven grandchildren).
Shari explains, “After the Oklahoma Co-Op stopped operating, I was able to make up those lost customers with new ones through our website order. Once a month and sometimes more, I load up our trailer and drive to Oklahoma City and Edmond with customers’ orders.”
And when it comes to holidays, especially on Thanksgiving, you can guarantee there is no turkey on the table. Come on, they’re a beef and lamb ranch!
Shari laughs, “No, no turkey. Partly because my parents had a small turkey farm. Not the smart free-range wild turkeys, but the regular ‘look up at the rain and drown’ kind. We usually serve beef tri-tip and sometimes ham.”
Family farms are essential for every community. They are stewards of the land and keepers of the environment. They thrive, decline, and push forward, with every law maker’s decision, despite weather patterns, and according to consumers’ consuming fashion. Farmers and ranchers supply our restaurants, fill our farmer’s markets, and fulfill every co-op and grocery store that they fought to secure. They are a part of our holiday dinner table, as they are any other day, and for that, we should all be thankful. Supporting the independent farmer is essential to every community, and I would argue the physical health of any country.
Christmas night, we will have a new moon and be on our way to a new year. Let us take that fresh slate in 2020 and make a more conscious effort to support these local growers and producers, especially those of us not living in rural areas. You are not only supporting a farmer, but you are also supporting a family. Plus, if I’m honest, it all just tastes a whole lot better.
The Farm on Fish Market
Just off state highway 39 in Wanette, Oklahoma, you will find Fishmarket Road. To locals, the road is referred to as “12 Mile Road,” running twelve miles east of Lexington to west of Asher. When Mike and Beth Henson purchased the eighty acres of land off Fishmarket Road in Wanette, there was no road sign, not until Mike and Beth made the county put one up. The Hensons were going into the farming business, and their place would be called The Farm On Fishmarket.
Driving up to the Henson’s beautiful ranch style home and seeing long beds of newly planted strawberries, lettuces, (and what seems like) miles of blackberry trellises, you would have never guessed that The Farm On Fishmarket is only five years old.
“There was a bunch of old buildings out there and a nasty old house that we got rid of. So everything that you see, except for the farm silo and well-house, we built,” Mike says proudly.
Next comes the most critical question of “why farming?” Before answering, Mike and Beth start to laugh alongside their son, Jason, and his wife, Ally, as well as their daughter, Jeni, and her husband, Chris, plus their three daughters. Lots of laughter!
“After forty years in the corporate world, namely the oil and gas industry, you’re sometimes forced to retire sooner than you expected,” Beth responds. “We wanted to do something different and something along the lines of hospitality, so here we are.”
Through trial and error, a lot of research, and building connections with other farmers, the Hensons brought the farm to life. Beth wanted berries, and over the last couple of years, the farm has been producing some of the most vibrant, delicious berries in the state, mostly strawberries and blackberries. The vast rows of individual strawberry plants and trellised blackberries are a sight to see. With a potential haul of 15,000 pounds of strawberries, it is easy to see the work and dedication this family has put into their farm.
Sure, there are also a variety of leafy greens from butterhead lettuce and spinach to red oak leaf that grows year-round, but there’s something else “The Farm” is known for: eggs!
Large to jumbo sized chicken eggs are carefully packaged with handwritten labels designating the hen who laid them. “Laid By: THELMA” paired with “Laid By: LOUISE” have been two of my favorites. Making the packaging even sweeter, one of the granddaughters helps with writing in the hen’s name.
Holidays do not slow this family farm down. In between maintaining the fall plantings and harvest, there is also plenty of family time. A giant jigsaw puzzle that everyone works on begins around this time of year. And Beth makes sure a unique little charm is sewn on to each of her granddaughters’ Christmas stockings.
What was once a yearly tradition for family and neighbors before “The Farm,” now incorporates berries from “The Farm”. Homemade cinnamon rolls were always made and handed out as gifts to family and neighbors. Now that The Farm has berries, they are incorporated into those unique gifts. Customers can also order them through the The Farm’s website for pick up at the various Farmer’s Markets the Hensons frequent. Follow “The Farm On Fishmarket” on social media to keep up with all of their happenings!
As always, however you celebrate and however you eat, I wish you great joy, health, and happy food memories this holiday season. Cheers!
