The bunny has been busy! The Easter Bunny visited us this week and helped us prepare for Breakfast. From sweeping the floors to stuffing the goody bags, the bunny helped us get all ready for Easter!

We'll be serving up our breakfast on Sunday, March 25 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. We hope to see you at the farm for our third Breakfast with the Easter Bunny! For more information, check out our event website.

Have a lovely Easter season, all!

Our slow-smoked buffet, which features Texan-BBQ-style pulled pork, brisket, and sausage, is our most popular option when clients are selecting their menu for their event. It's not only unique to our venue, but it's an absolute feast: 3 meats, 2 sides, cornbread, and all the trimmings. We have had such a positive response to this menu that we figured, hey, let's do an event to showcase these delicious options.

And the Good Ol' Pig Gig was born. 

Now, if you just want to eat, check out our website here, go to our Facebook event (linked below), and check out our menu (click below). But after you're done working up an appetite, scroll down to learn a little behind-the-scenes information on the magic behind the meal. 

As always with our business, smoking meats is a family affair. Kyle's cousin Eric is the go-to guy when you want this type of food. Eric started out as a little backyard business with a little smoker, doing some small events and parties around town. He then got crafty and bought himself a refrigerator that he converted into a smoker, welding on a spot to make the fire and catch the grease and drilling in vent holes throughout. That worked well for awhile, but today we keep him busy enough that he graduated to trailer-smoker setup pictured below. He can cook up to 18 briskets at one time in this baby!

​On days we serve this menu, Eric and his crew start around 6 a.m. to fire up the smoker using a mixture of oak and apple wood chips.

After the fire is going, the cooking process begins. 

First, there's PREP. Eric and the gang take a large brisket, sausage links, ribs, or pulled pork and begin prepping by trimming up the cut to remove excess fat. Then they season with a super-special-secret mix of herbs and spices developed over years of cooking and smoking. Each different type of meat takes a different type of herb/spice blend. And into the smoker it goes. 

After the prep, there's the really good stuff: the SMOKE. Meats stay in the smoker for 4-5 hours (the brisket takes the longest, the ribs a little less time, and rounding out the race are the pulled pork and sausage, which take the least amount of time). The smoke until they get that gorgeous, flavorful smoke ring 'round the outside. 

After their time is up, the meats are taken out, wrapped in aluminum foil to keep in moisture and popped right back in the smoker for a few more hours to finish cooking. In all, they stay in the smoker for 7-8 hours, so if you plan to make this for Christmas dinner, set your alarm to EARLY.

Finally, we EAT. Once the meats have finished smoking, they are cut to order, shredded, or otherwise prepared to hit your plate. And we and our guests usually make quick work of food that has taken so long to bring to the table. 

We're excited for you all dig in and have a good time at our first rib-and-barbecue event. We hope to see you there!

It's a bit later than I promised, but we did finish off the interior of the barn, and it's served as the backdrop for a variety of events in the last two years. Not only is the interior gorgeous (in our opinion), but it has a lot of meaning to the Vesperman Farms family. 

The stone, boards, and beams all came from a barn that blew down on the property in 2012 with those high winds (check out the damage below!). We make fun of Kyle and his dad for being superstar packrats, but it was great that they kept this material, as it made for some of the most unique and stunning parts of the barn's overall vibe. 

The tin and a many of the other barn boards also came from another family building: a barn that Kyle helped take down on his aunt and uncle's farm. We did have to find a wholesaler for a few of the boards—there was quite a bit of real estate to cover in the space!

Unique for our type of venue are indoor, fully finished restroom facilities. We carried over the rustic theme for the tiling and countertop finishes and even used some of the barn boards for the mirror frames.

Finishing the barn took about four months, from the start of the year to just before our first event in the barn: Breakfast with the Easter Bunny in April 2016. It was great to see people's reactions to the space, and it's even more fun for us to tell the story of how it came to be. 

From old barns to new, Vesperman Farms continues to keep their history alive, and we are excited to be able to share it with all of you. The lights are still on at this Century Farm.