It's Definitely Spring

Spring.  How long I have awaited you!  Ok, so our first winter in Tennessee only lasted about 2 months, but we were really hoping for a bit warmer winter weather.  Then the weather couldn't make up its mind what season it was.  But now, spring weather is officially here to stay.  How do I know? Chicks, mud, and grass.

First, the chicks.  Yes, we have been incubating eggs and hatching chicks for several months, but that's not "natural".  Natural is broody hens in the barn...

...and under the rabbit cages.  (Personally, I wouldn't have chosen to make my nest in manure with the chance of more manure falling on top of me, but hey, I'm not a chicken.)

Spring is being suprised by a hen (who you thought had died) and her 8 new chicks and being able to watch her feed your first completely free-range chicks.  Never seen free-range chicks forage? Go ahead and watch the video...

It wouldn't be spring without getting the truck stuck in the mud and pulling it out with the tractor.

And it wouldn't be spring without having green grass once again.  Grass so tall only the riding lawn mower could finally find the lasso Matt looked so hard for the day Hairy Larry escaped. (Miss that story?  See "One of THOSE Weeks", April 10, 2011).  Grass alive with little, teeny, tiny black snakes.  Grass that proves the grass really is greener on the other side.

Have a Happy Easter and enjoy some Spring!!!
 

Mmm, Mmm, Good Home Recipes

I am not one for following recipes.  In fact, when I try to follow a recipe, dishes do not turn out.  (This isn't usually a problem, except when it comes to chocolate chip cookies...it's a good thing I love chocolate chip cookie dough!)  Over the years I have come to adapt and am now "a great cook" according to my husband, who was afraid when we got married that he would have to sneak fast food the rest of his life just to keep from losing weight.  The following are some of what I have made lately.  Please feel free to try any dish.  Most are simple and quick.  Also feel free to play around with my dish guidelines (I hesitate to call them "recipes" as I do not actually measure while I am cooking and these really are just guidelines).  Starting with our favorite:

GOAT CHEESE STUFFED CHICKEN BREAST

 This dish looks difficult to make, but it really simple and can be made in about 30-45 minutes, less if you already have goat cheese made.  (We do not keep it around and I usually make up a small batch just for this.)  I would also like to note a cold stuffed chicken breast makes for a great "sandwich" in the car on the way to work the next morning! 
Brown 1/4 pound sausage.  Mix with 1 1/2 cups crumbled goat cheese and 2 Tablespoon parsley.  Cut a slit into 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  Stuff with goat cheese mixture.  Slightly beat an egg.  Roll each chicken breast in the beaten egg then roll in cornbread (or corn muffin) mix.  Fry in vegetable oil for 5 minutes on each side on medium-high heat.  The chicken will turn out crispier if left uncovered, but I usually cover the pan to reduce the mess.

SIMPLE CROCKPOT PORK ROAST

If this isn't quick and simple, I don't know what is!
 Take a roughly 3 pound pork roast and place it in a crockpot.  Add a 1 pound bag of baby carrots.  Add 3 or 4 potatoes, cut into about 1 inch chunks.  Add about 4 cups water.  Let set on low heat all day till you get home from work (about 9 hours) then set to warm while you do chores (about another 1 1/2 hours).  If you don't have chores, enjoy right after work!

CROCKPOT BEANS WITH SALT PORK

In case you have guessed by now, my crockpot and I have become great friends since I started both working full time and building up the farm with Matt.  It's a convenient way to make quick but healthy meals when all of us are busy during the week...no excuses for a McDonalds or Pizza Hut stop here, much to Isaac's dismay! 
The evening before, quick soak a pound of dried great northern beans by boiling them in a medium pan full of water for approximately one minute.  Dump the beans and hot water into the crockpot and allow to sit overnight.  The next morning you can dump the water and add fresh (to reduce the likelihood of gas) or you can retain the same water (which I do when I am really in a hurry with no adverse affects).  Add about 1 cup of salt pork, cut into 3 or 4 pieces.  Add a few dashes of garlic powder if you'd like (and have time).  Set on low and forget about it till you get home from work (about 9 hours).  Set to warm after work if you are rushing out to chores or just enjoy.  Tastes great with some corn bread!

SATURDAY MORNING SAUSAGE GRAVY

Matt LOVES biscuits and gravy, so I try to make a batch whenever we have the extra milk and the extra time.
Take 1 quart milk (we now use goat milk, but I used to make it the same way with cow milk) and heat over medium heat.  While the milk is warming, brown 1/2 pound gravy...you can use up to a pound if you like your gravy meaty.  When the milk gets good and hot, begin to whisk constantly and add flour, a little at a time, until milk starts to thicken...about 1 cup, give or take a little because I just keep the bag of flour next to the stove and keep adding small amounts by hand, which I recommend you do, too!  Once the gravy is thickening, add the browned sausage (and a little of the melted fat for extra taste, if you like), and salt to taste.  Serve over your favorite biscuits, homemade or store bought.  ***For a great variation, and my personal favorite gravy, skip the sausage and add bacon fat at that point.  We freeze bacon fat in ice cube trays and I add 3 or 4 cubes of bacon fat to the milk gravy.  Mmmmmm.  (Don't let my nutrition professors find out about THAT recommendation!)

If you have a favorite dish using farm fresh ingredients, please share...

One of THOSE Weeks

We've all had them, days or weeks where nothing goes right.  This past week was like that for us, with last Saturday being the worst.

I woke up and went out to feed the animals, only to discover a water leak had soaked the entire feed room.  Most of the feed was salvagable, but we lost about 50 pounds of chicken layer feed, 50 pounds of corn, and about 20 pounds of animal feed.  We also fed about 250 pounds of (wet) chopped corn over Saturday and Sunday...we usually use about 50 pounds per day.  The animals thought it was a great treat.  I think they were disappointed to be put back on regular rations.

While we were getting that mess cleaned up, the mule ("Hairy Larry") was watching our comings and goings.  He must have been devising a plan because he timed it just right that as the gate swung open, he ran past.  He hung out in the yard for awhile.  He even walked back to the barn once, walking back out before we could get to the door.  I guess he wanted to get to explore like all the other animals that have escaped during their time here, because before long he ran past us and trotted off down the center of the road.  At that point all I could think was how pretty he looked, like a lone mule on parade.  Seriously, if YOUR mule were headed off by himself, you would have to think something like that or you would start crying!  I hopped in the van and found him about a half mile from home in someone else's pasture.  I parked in the ditch and yelled for him.  He looked at me and actually took a few steps towards me, but then he must have decided the grass really IS greener in other pastures, because he turned around and started eating again.  I told Matt I had found Hairy Larry.  He went to grab the lasso...and it was missing.  The last time he had seen it was the last time the pigs escaped.  We spent almost an hour looking for it with no luck.  He finally created a make-shift lasso out of rope and we took off on the 4-wheeler to the last pasture I had seen Hairy Larry in.  Only he wasn't there.  We rode around through people's yards (if it was your yard, we really are sorry, we would rather have been anywhere but there, I promise), stopping occassionally to stand up on the 4-wheeler or crawl through weeds to get a better look at what would always turn out to be a cow.  We finally were headed home when I saw him.  We spent about another hour running him in circles...and flipping the 4-wheeler on top of ourselves...until we finally trapped him in some stranger's barn.  (There was a car in the carport, and I did knock on the door with no answer, so again, we are sorry for trespassing.)

With Hairy Larry safely in our own barn, we headed off to take Isaac to get his eyes checked.  Sure enough, he needed glasses.  We tried to get lunch while we waited for his glasses to be ready; we really wanted to try the new Chinese restaurant.  We were told it has a buffet.  It didn't.  Then the van started making strange, loud noises...and I needed to drive to Illinois the next day.  I called around and ended up renting a car from Avis.  (Which actually turned out to be a good deal, because it was so much more efficient on gas that the cost of the rental plus gas was cheaper than what we usually spend on gas.)  Back home again, we moved around some chickens and I got a huge scratch on my face from a chicken I wasn't even trying to catch.  

Am I leaving anything out?  Probably.  Last weekend was a HORRIBLE weekend.  But you know what, it can always be worse.  And things always get better!!!

When Projects Fail...and Succeed

When just about all projects on the farm are created and built on-site, it is only inevitable that something is going to fail.  It is also inevitable "Murphy's Law" will take effect and the failure will come at the absolute worse time.  Well, we beat Murphy this go-round!  Matt created some new brooders for our sebrights, who have a problem on dying in the brooder in the barn and of making the whole house smell like chicken when kept in the brooder in the livingroom. 

The temperature in the brooder held steady all weekend, so Matt put all our sebright chicks into them Sunday night.  Monday I came home from work and just happened to glance into the sunroom and towards the brooder.  It appeared all the chicks were piled on one end, so I went to check it out.  The sunroom was HOT (it has been cold and rainy all weekend).  The brooder was literally dripping condensation like rain.  And half the sebrights were dead.  The other half were hanging on for dear life.  They were all soaked, much like a newly hatched chick.  They also all had large air-pocket looking bubbles coming off their chests, with larger bubbles on the dead chicks.  I moved the live chicks back into the brooder in the livingroom, where we have lost a couple more but the rest seem to be drying out and pulling through.  Sebrights are hard to raise.  I am considering raising our price from $8-10/chick to $800-1,000 per chick!!! 

Even though the new brooder may not have gotten the job done, the new moveable rabbit coops sure did.  We moved our two bred blue does into a moveable coop as an experiment to see how well the coops prevented predators and how their litters hold up raised on pasture.  Well, a dog got to the coop and completely demolished it, but the rabbits were safe, trapped in their nest boxes by the smashed wiring.  One was missing a little fur on the back of her kneck and they were both wet from the rain, but they got moved back to the barn and both are healthy and happy, ready to relive the tale to their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandrabbits.

RIP Sebrights Lost in the Sunroom Scare of '11

The Best Mouser Around

When one thinks of a great "mouser", one usually thinks of this:

Ok, so maybe he doesn't look like anything special in THIS picture, but the fact is Mackeral is one of the best mouse-catchers I have ever seen.  We have never lived anywhere and had a problem with mice in the house, even if we started out with a mouse problem or lived in the country.  He is also hours of entertainment because he doesn't just catch, kill, and eat the mouse (or worse, leave them for us to find).  No, he catches a mouse then plays with it, sometimes for hours, before finally eating it.  A bit sadistic on our parts?  Probably.  We should feel sorry for the poor, half-dead mouse, and I honestly usually do, but it is still interesting to watch...especially since we don't have cable or satellite!

Like I said, we have never had a problem with mice in the house, but since it has gotten warmer finding a mouse in a feed bucket, and holes in feed bags, has become an almost daily occurance.  We usually find  the cat and lead it to the trapped mouse.  The problem has gotten so bad we have considered getting a couple of barn cats.  This morning there was yet another mouse.  I had my camera with me so I pulled it out for a picture.  I was going to write a blog entry about the mouse problem and good, organic ways to deal with mice.  Then the Welsummer showed up...

Out of nowhere, this Welsummer jumps into the feed bucket and starts chasing the mouse.  I think, "Cool, I'm going to get this on video!"  I had just started to turn it on when, BAM, the chicken picks up the mouse and tries to eat it whole, "snake-style".  I start screaming, "Oh my gosh, the chicken is eating the mouse!!!" and really wishing the video would have been on.  It turns out the mouse didn't quite go down whole, so I was able to get some proof:

Forget the barn cats, we'll just make sure to keep a few barn chickens! 

Oh, and forget "snake-style".  My 9-year-old son just informed me owls eat their food whole like that, so it was "owl-style".  He also patted me on the head and gave me a "that's so cute" kind of look before walking away smiling to himself.  And here I was hoping I could claim to be smarter than him for at least a couple more years!!!

Spring Cleaning and Rabbit Moving Day

I was really expecting rain today.  Why?  I had the day off work with plans to rake leaves, scoop manure, and just do some general cleaning around the farm.  The morning started off good.  The wind didn't start until AFTER the leaves were burning...good-bye nap, hello extra leaf patrol!  The house remained unburned until the piles died down to almost nothing and I could move on to manure scooping.  I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted, but I will be able to work on it a little more tomorrow.  It does always amaze me how much one can get done with no children around!

Matt was so impressed by how much I got done, he got into project mode as well.  He put some finishing touches on the moveable rabbit coops and we moved our first two bred does out.  We are experimenting with the youngest blue does.  We usually butcher the blues since they are not recognized by the ARBA, but I insisted we keep a few out of a litter last fall so we could use them to make sure nothing can get into (or out of) the coops.  Look how happy they look in their new home.

And look how happy Matt looks to finally have them there!

You can see the bottom of the coop has wood slats, which is because rabbits do not like to eat greens that are crushed, which walking directly on them will do.  The slats also help prevent rabbit-dug holes where the coops have been.  A win-win for us and the rabbits!  The coop has two nest boxes (one for each rabbit), a water bottle, and a feeder for pellet supplementation. 

Now it is time to take a shower to get this smoke-smell off of me and get to bed so I can be back hard-at-it tomorrow! 

Quick Rooster and Wine Trip

A couple of weeks ago the only Welsummer rooster we had left came to an early demise.  We have since been on the search for one already of breeding age, which is easier said than done.  Matt was able to find a trio via CraigsList.  We agreed to meet the seller at a swap meet being held at Columbia Farm Supply in Columbia, TN.  (We learned while we were there Columbia, TN is the ancesteral home of James K Polk, 11th president of the United States.)  The swap was average size for what we have experienced in Tennessee, which is pretty small.  There were a few goats, a few rabbits, a couple of calves, a miniature donkey, a lot of chickens, and several other types of birds (pigeons, quail, peacocks, ducks).  There was also a woman dressed up in a cow costume and a large, stuffed horse the kids could sit on (see below).  We ended up just buying two roosters because one wasn't quite up to standard but we are happy we can be back in production with the Welsummers.

 
We had seen a couple of wineries on the way to the swap meet.  As you may know from following my blog, we love to stop and wine taste.  The first winery on the way home was Keg Springs Winery.  We turned on the road the sign pointed us to and drove.  And drove.  And drove.  There were no more signs, despite several other roads we came across.  No indication we were headed in the right direction.  No indication of how much farther we were going to have to drive.  We finally turned around and decided to give the next winery a chance.  The next winery was Amber Falls Winery & Cellars. 

This winery was also a bit of a drive off the main road, but the way was well marked.  We pulled up to a property full of grape vines (which are more typically not that visible as you pull up) and a guest house.  We drove through the property to the wine tasting room/shop.  It was a nice little winery.  The wine was good, but a little too "woody" for our taste.  We were told the barrels they use are neutral so they add oak to the red wine to add the flavor.  Sometimes I can taste the barrel in a good bottle of whiskey, but I have never tasted it that strong in a wine.  Of course, this is the same state Jack Daniels is from, so maybe the wood taste is extra popular here.  One of the reds they make is called Meriwether Lewis.  The famous explorer died and was buried in the county, so they were asked to make a wine to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death.  (Who knew so much history would be involved in purchasing a couple of Welsummer roosters?!?!)  Our favorites were the Ruby Trillium, a sweet red wine, and Cranberry Caress, a grape wine flavored with cranberry juice.

After the winery it was back home, were we gave a tour of our farm to the farmer who had given Matt and a friend of his a couple of steers for doing some work with her goats.  All in all, it was a nice way to spend a Saturday with the family.