Poultry- with varying degrees of fertilization

 While the weather was less than spring-y, the poultry still did their thing.  January 8 we found 10 healthy ducklings.  The younger breeding stock are all fully matured now so I can't tell if it was Big Mama who hatched the first successful batch of the year or not.  Whoever it was, she did well.

 Then February 13, we welcomed another batch of 12.  We gave 1 to a friend, one mysteriously died after a few days but the remaining 10 were moved to a dilapidated chicken pen outside once they outgrew the rabbit pen in the porch.

 I secured the pen's sides from escapees, but it had to reliable roof.  I put the top portion of Angel's dog house (that she refuses to use) inside which gave them good shelter and protection.

Once the batch from Jan 8 were big enough to not be trampled by goats, I moved them into the pasture.  They kept slipping through the fence and getting chased by Angel so I left the pen the had vacated empty for a few days so that midnight escapees could be sheltered from the perpetual-herder until she had appropriately trained them to stay in the pasture.

One day I came home to find that a roving goat had eaten the last of our collard greens, baby duck carcasses littering the yard and a completely vacant pen.  It took a while to piece together the events that must have transpired.  What is now assumed is that the ducks discovered  a small hole in the pen.  That hole may have been created by a curious puppy nose as it does dent inward.  The ducks, never missing an opportunity to play follow-the-leader, ALL squeezed through the hole into the wide world they were unprepared for.  Angel then herded them into the pasture... and some over the rainbow bridge.  In the end, 5 babies were dead and 5 were retrieved alive and well from the pasture.

I had high hopes for a nest of 15 that another duck was sitting on.  Then a cold snap came through at the beginning of March.  The next time I checked the nest it was down to 6 eggs.  Mama ducks know if the baby within has died and they remove it from the nest.  A few days later 3 of those eggs were partially hatched, all dead and the mother had moved on.  I think the cold was too much for them, despite their mother's vigilance all the way to the end.  I have found no other nests at this time, but there are ample hiding places out there and they usually do a fabulous job of hiding them from me.

Back in the first week of September a shipment of chicks arrived. Remember the snake attack?  Well those that survived the rat snake all reached maturity and we were anxiously waiting for our first eggs.  Early in the morning of January 18, I was awoken by the most distressing sound- Cock-A-Doodle-DOOOOOO!!!  Out of nowhere.  No pubescent crackles to indicate a rooster had found its way into our pen of carefully sexed pullets.  It was very surprising!  It would not be so distressing if not for the fact that our neighbors are quite close to us.  And we'd like to think that we are NOT the reason that it just so happens that every single house that borders our property line is for sale.  So we had to deal with the rooster promptly.  Now I see that when they give you a "free rare breed chick" with every order, you can most certainly guarantee that bird is a rooster.  Next time I'll say, no thanks to the "free offer".

January 30th the first eggs started coming.  We have 14 Red Stars and 3 Americaunas along with 11 Golden Nuggets that are still cranking enough to keep feeding them.

We have an abundance of eggs right now, but I'm freezing our excess for the lean times of winter.  I beat together about 8 eggs as if they were to be scrambled and pour them into an ice cube tray.  For our size ice cubes, 2 cubes = 1 egg.  The thawed consistency is not quite the same so we don't use them for scrambled eggs, but they work in smoothies, baking or quiche.

Miscellaneous

 One long post about several completely unrelated topics. 

My hero knew about some wild elderberry trees and snagged me a pile of berries.  The girl child and I sat in front of  a movie and tediously picked them off the stems and I made some syrup for eating or for helping any sickies get better this winter.  Yummy stuff!

 Meet my new soap bazookas.  2" PVC with a cap at 1 end.  Little bit difficult to fill with no extra hands around.  (Correction... no extra hands around that would actually hold it still).  My main concern was how I was going to get the soap out.  I planned to make a plunger of some kind, but I ended up not needing to.  First of all, it takes at least a week for soap to set in these things.  So I poured it and left it in a corner for a good long while (I'm good at that).  Then I stuck them in the freezer for a day.  Then I pulled them out, let them thaw some (because of interruptions not because I know its necessary- it may not be) and they literally just slowly slid out.  It was great!  So now I have nice round bars that look a lot nicer than my lopsided cuts from a casserole dish.

 Here are a couple kids picking wild grapes.  We have a whole mess of nice, big, juicy, cultivated grapes to pick and they opted to pick the wild ones.  The next day the other 2 kids (unpictured) decided to shove said grapes up their noses.  I bulb syringe got them out, but not without some kicking and flailing and one boy being quite certain he was not coming out of that situation alive.  Now you can understand why the addition of 1 more toddler boy has completely wiped out every thought of spare time I ever thought I had.

And just a post to say I love my dog.  Angel has been accompanying me on morning runs while its dark and creepy.  She alerted me to a stray dog up ahead where I would have run straight into it before knowing there was something needing to be avoided.  And she's gotten to where she simply trots beside me instead of crossing back and forth in front of me in her drive to explore.  And the really funny part is when she comes home she's too tired to chase the goats to the milking table in the morning.  She just flops and lets them walk.  She's a great dog.

And something that has no picture as of yet, eggplant.  Last year I had big beautiful plants and no fruit.  So this year I tried a few more varieties... meaning I have about a dozen different plants.  And they are all going gangbusters this year!  I can't give away all my eggplant!  I've made eggplant parmesian, eggplant balls, eggplant lasagna, stirfried eggplant, battered and fried eggplant, every eggplant anything I can think of.  There are worse problems to have, but I wish I had okra to through in there too.  But Dulci has figured out how to easily escape the pasture and ate my garden down to nubs.  She's now clad with a cow bell and housed with Copper and his 7' fence.  Its time for her to be bred anyway, but we'll have to do some major fence overhaul before letting her back with the others.

And I think this catches me up on the main goings-on.  We're starting our homeschool year next week so it may be the last post until that somewhat new endeavor finds its groove again too. 

Daisy Roast

I don't have a picture of our fabulous dinner last night, but I do have another picture of that fancy shmancy meat grinder again.  Husbandman's favorite feature on this baby is the sausage stuffer.  When we slaughtered Button, we processed all her meat into sausage because she was older and would probably have a fairly strong flavor.  We really enjoy the sausage (made from only meat, onions, garlic, salt and herbs) but we had no way of making links so its just ground and in 1 pound packages.  Husbandman picked up some hog casing because he was a mite nervous about saving the casing from his own slaughter-subject (though he really does it all very well).  And when we were searching for our own meat grinder, a sausage stuffer attachment was a must. 

A couple months ago we decided we were overwintering just way too many animals.  With the acquisition of Zuma, Esperanza and Nina were unnecessary as breeding ewes.  Zuma has had twins each time and her size (hopefully coupled with the rapid growth rate of the khatadin in Valentino) would produce more lamb than we would need in a year.  We traded Nina with a friend who raises grass-fed beef.  She ended up becoming a wedding feast which I think is a fine fate for an animal who has to die anyway.  Esperanza was almost 2 years old so we made her into sausage like Button.  Very very yummy sausage.  Some in links and some ground in packages.  Daisy, being less than a year old and true "lamb" we processed into roasts.  I roasted a shoulder cut in the crock pot last night with garlic and rosemary.  Absolutely superb.  Fall off the bone tender.  Great flavor.  Kids gobbled it up.  Couple that with a nice pile of garden fresh greens and we had ourselves a very fine meal.

Picking Up Speed

The title of this post is not referring to any new drug use, though I'm sure that would be momentarily helpful.  No, instead I'm seeing our fall whizzing toward us at break-neck speed and I'm scrambling to be ready when in slams into my hot summer pace.

Not that summer has been lazy.  Just still working on summer stuff, that's all.

Sometime in July and August (see, I told you I was behind), I finished picking the last of our grapes.  Got about 10 gallons this year.  I fired up the canner to make jelly, but instead of creating a sauna inside, Husbandman set me up reeeeaaaallll nice.  And you have to read the rest of the post in a true southern drawl to get the full effect.

We recently acqured a large 2-burner gas stove, mainly for this very pupose but also for any pesky hurricanes that take out our power for any length of time.  This burner easily held my water bath canner and my pot of grape jelly.  I also did watermelon rind jelly since everything was fired up and crankin'.  And I had a nice shadey spot to work while still keeping an eye on the rugrats in the pool or swing set.  Everyone was happy... until a wet bottom found its way onto my Countryside magazine while I was up stirring the brew.  Anyway, about half my grape jelly turned out just fine.  The other half and the watermelon stuff didn't set so at some point I'll reopen those jars and try again.  More pectin, more sugar, more cooking and stirring.  One day I'll learn how to get it right the first time around.

I registered farmer girl and "Thumper" for the county fair last week.  Now we get to figure out the proper positioning and handling of a rabbit, not to mention getting her tattooed. (The bunny, not the girl).  A friend suggested waltzing into our local tattoo parlor, "Bad Azz Tattoo" with our fur ball and suggested a nice barb wire tat around the bicep.  Tempting... but we're obligated to letters and numbers in the left ear.  Later today, we're moving Thumper and Dumplin (because farm boy 1 won't be left out) into the porch for easier access for practicing.  And I also get to make matching outfits for the girl and her bunny.  Not really sure how, or why I'm happy about that, or even what possessed me to think of entering her into that contest, but I did.  And ya know, the smile on her face will be worth it, I'm sure.  The girl, not the bunny.  Not sure the bunny will be too thrilled on the notion.

We slaughtered our first ducks on Saturday.  We're having a rough go.  We started with 10 around Easter.  One died we think from internal injuries suffered at the paw of Angel.  Another turned sick-looking a while later and died.  Another just a couple weeks ago started limping and went quite lame.  He was one we slaughtered and by Saturday he was down to nothing.  He must have been starving for a week and a half, unable to walk enough to eat and drink.  Another had a large cyst/tumor thing on its face.  We culled them both and one is due for the oven momentarily.  The other (the skinny one) will be made into soup on a fine autumn day.  And now, yet another is acting lame.   We now have 1 good male, 4 females and a lame male.  Good for breeding stock which is what we wanted, but I'm nervous whatever has happened already will end up happening to our last remaining drake.  Unless its male competition that's doing it.

Nina is unwittingly enjoying her last meal.  I called a friend on a whim to see if he was interested in swapping a sheep for some beef.  He is, but wants it in meat form, minus the hoof.  So, sweet Nina is leaving us.  I haven't broken it to the girl child yet, but I don't think it will be a huge issue.  She's more keen on Daisy now anyway because Daisy is smaller.  She's never taken slaughtering real hard.  My mom was over while we killed the ducks and she expected a traumatic reaction from her granddaughter.  To her surprise, farm girl very bluntly and calmly explained the whole process to her and ended with, "And that's yummy MEAT!"  Yes, she's our sweet little carnivore.

We have re-acquired Doby.  You may remember Helen's baby... who had a baby... and we sold to some friends to get them started in dairying?  Well, they've decided farm-livin' is not exactly the life for them.  At least not with a triple digit heat index that go on for months at a time.  So we have her back and we're happy.  She's so sweet.  The farm girl is learning to milk on her (she's the only one who doesn't protest).  We initially only wanted 3 total dairy goats, but we're going to run with it.  4 isn't too different.  Especially since we decided to only keep Zuma and Valentino for breeding sheep.

We put Dulci in with Copper a week or so ago since its about time for her heats to start.  And sure enough, she got him all riled up. (Don't forget that southern drawl).  She escaped on Saturday while we were gone.  We put her in with the rest of the ladies until we could fix the fence.  Sunday Husbandman could tell she was in heat and Copper was just beside himself.  So we put her back in despite the fact that the fence wasn't shored up.  Sunday night she was out again and we put her in with the ladies.  Monday morning Copper was out... and he had circumcized himself in his escapades.  We put them both together and immediately went to fence fixing... at 7:30am.  At this Husbandman remarked that "we watch more goat sex before breakfast than most people see in a lifetime."  And yes, bloody and injured though it be, Copper took his one and only job very seriously and did it thoroughly job right before our very eyes.  The kids were inside watching a dinosaur documentary just in case you were concerned for their innocense.  He's calmed significantly today, but I have not ventured close enough to get a full accounting of his injury.  The bleeding has stopped and he's acting normal so I'll probably just let him be.  I mean, I do know the injury was, um, flushed.

And since I may not get blogging again for another month, let me comment on the state of our bee hives.  We suspect that both of our hives swarmed and that we checked one hive at just the wrong time and caused the new queen to fly off in fear.  So we put a frame of eggs (we think) and larvae from the other hive into the queenless hive.  And next week is the moment of truth.  Hopefully they're doing their thing.
I've got radishes, squash, and mustard greens ready to go in the ground.  The jelly melon is finally producing... like mad.  Picked our first one today just to determine how to know when its ripe.  We've got a busy week lined up with not a stitch of gardening in it so next week will have to border on insanity. 

Especially since the kiddie pool bit it this weekend.  That marks the official end of summer.

A Day of Firsts

I'm exhausted.  But what a great day.

Some friends came over to help us with a hive inspection (we were also moving the entire hive stand set-up).  In one hive, we had a considerable amount of honey in the super.  For reference sake, we have 8-frame hive boxes.  We have 2 deep boxes and 1 shallow super per hive.  In this one hive, as I said, the honey was calling us.  Also, the bees had drawn the comb rather helter-skelter.  We're not sure why.  They're bottom boxes look great.  But we decided to harvest honey for the first time from 4 shallow frames of honey and replace them with 4 empty frames. 

Each of us took a sting.  Our friend got his very first sting right on the nose (his veil fell against his face).  Husbandman took one to the hand (no gloves) and I had one crawl up my pant leg and get me on the leg just as I was walking away with their honey.  But other than that, and given that none of us really knew what we were doing too well, I'd say it went rather well.

Then came the fun part.  In the future, we'll likely use a honey extractor so we don't have to destroy the comb, but this round given the state of the comb, we just cut it right out of the frames.  We put it all into our big stainless steel milking pot.  And I got to squeeze.

After I got it all squeezed out, we set a jar in a bowl and our milk funnel into the jar.  We set a piece of cheese cloth into the funnel and filtered the honey.

 The chunks of wax we'll melt in the sun and filter through cheese cloth.  Maybe mix it with some goat milk for soap???

 From those 4 frames, we ended up with just shy of a gallon of honey.  Its a bit thin, but experts say to set the capped frames in a dehumidified room for a few days before extracting.  Bees can't bring the water content down in Florida humidity.  We skipped this step.  We're fine with runny-ish honey.  In China, it was water thin... but then again, it really is precious little more than water at their own doing.

Our next adventure of the day dealt with this new toy... a Nutrimill grain mill!  I've been wanting an electric grain mill for years.  I finally got to order one and it arrived late this week.  I already had some wheat berries given that I used to occasionally pull out the hand-crank mill and let Husbandman crank it shirtless for my own amusement, but it really didn't produce fine enough flour for nice breads.  But today, Husbandman stayed fully clothed, the kids ran to a bedroom and shut the door against the noise and I listened to the hum of nutrition bursting from tiny little grains.

 A couple hours later (and a bit of our own honey in the recipe), I had these beauties.  It tastes good.  I'm a bit of a novice to the various types of wheat and all the recipes so I have lots of reading to do, but I'm sure the nice folks at Bread Beckers will be happy to supply me with all my knowledge and material needs.

Here are the boys, licking the dregs of honey from a bowl lid with a slice of freshly baked bread in hand.  Though the meal was light on veggies, I thought bread, honey and fresh goat milk made for a mighty fine supper.  They thought so too.

The Life and Times of a Zucchini

Zucchini plants are kind of a flash in the pan, at least for us.  I planted them by seed in late January or early February, got them in the ground a few weeks later and started harvest maybe in mid April.  And I'll probably give them another week before I rip them out.  Powdery mildew got pretty bad a couple weeks ago.  I didn't even try to do anything for it because I knew the pickleworm would be moving in and devouring all my squash.  In other years I've held them back a bit with bagging and Sevin, but this year... well, I don't think I have it in me to bag and Sevin will kill my bees.  So I'm resigned to losing my squash a bit sooner than usual.  But here's what I've done with it all:

1)  I pick the nice sized ones for a meal the day they will be eaten.

2) If they get a little bigger, I pick them for pickles and store them in the fridge for a week  or so.

3) If I miss them until they're monstrous, I shred them through the food processor and freeze them in 2 cups quantities for breads and muffins.

So I've got about 6 bags frozen, about 2 gallons of pickles canned, but the okra and beans aren't quite ready to take over daily veggie requirements just yet.  Pickleworms haven't found my cucumbers yet so maybe they'll float us for a bit longer.

If you're interested in pickling those excess zucchinis, this is my grandmother's recipe:

 I slice the zucchini somewhat thinly, but not so much that it folds easily.  And lest you think I actually have the patience and ability to do such a feat with a knife, view the handy dandy device I inherited from my grandma.

 This baby is adjustable to any thickness and makes it quite easy to slice away beautifully.  After everything is sliced, soak the zucchini in very salty water for 3-6 hours.  I use about a quarter cup of salt to a gallon of water.

 Then mix 2 cups white vinegar, 2 cups sugar, 1 Tbsp pickling spice and 1 tsp tumeric in a pot and bring to boil.  Take an empty, hot, sterilized jar and pack it tightly with zucchini slices.  Pour hot vinegar mixture over the top.  Poke the zucchini around with a butterknife or chopstick to get air bubbles out.  Leave a half inch headspace.  Cover and return to the canner for 5 minutes.  I'll use several batches of the vinegar mix to get through the amount of zucchini pictured, but you can't really know exactly how much you'll need so just make it one batch at a time.

These were my favorite pickles that my grandma would make.  She would bring down several jars just for me when she'd come visit us from Minnesota.  Except she cut her zucchini with a french fry cutter and died the brine dark green.  So the pickles were perfectly square and emerald green.  I've adapted it for both health and consumption purposes.  No one needs dies in their diet and the flat slices make them quite nice on sandwiches.

And my favorite zucchini baked goods recipes are:

Zucchini Brownies (no really, they're good):
1/2 cup coconut oil (or other vegetable oil)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

In a large bowl mix together the oil, sugar, and vanilla until well blended.  Combine flour, cocoa baking soda and salt; stir into the sugar mixture.  Fold in zucchini and walnuts.  Spread evenly into a greased and floured 9x13" pan.  Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Frosting: Melt together 6 Tbsp cocoa and 1/4 cup butter and allow to cool.  Blend together 2 cups powdered sugar, 1/4 cup milk and 1/2 tsp vanilla.  Stir in cocoa mixture.  Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares.

For Zucchini bread:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tso baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/4 cup oil

Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg.  In another bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients.  Stir into the dry mixture.  Pour into greased bread pan and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes.

Butter!

The second attempt at butter making went much better than the first.  This time we realized that having the cream quite cold is imperative.  Without that, melted butter looks a whole lot like cream.  So, again, Saturday morning, we separated Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning's milkings, 3.5 gallons.  We got about 2.5 pints of cream.  Separating goes better with the milk warm so after separating we stuck it back in the fridge.  We intended to get to making butter later that day, but we had a busy weekend so Monday night I finally had a chance to tackle it. 

 So the cream got put into the blender.  Within minutes it was butter.  It took some coaxing as the whipped cream would create a pocket where the blades were turning and you'd have to keep pushing the cream back onto the blades.  Then it would get to where it would basically stop mixing (a big blob that doesn't blend) and then it would start mixing again where the big blob is broken up into slightly smaller blobs bobbing around in butter milk.  That's where we'd stop blending.

 Then we poured off the buttermilk, put the butter into a bowl and began the washing process.  Its better to get the butter back into the fridge to chill again before washing.  Also wash with ice cold water.  So, with cold butter and cold water, pour some water onto the butter and mix it up.  The water will get cloudy with buttermilk residue.  Pour off the water and wash again, repeating until the water runs fairly clear.  Then stick the butter back into the fridge.

Once its cold again, its time to press all that excess water out of the butter.  I tried several methods, but the most effective I found was to press the butter blob around on a piece of cheesecloth.  The cheesecloth absorbs the water but doesn't stick to the butter.  Then salt it and mix it using the same method.  The recipe says 1/2 tsp per pound of butter.  I mixed it in using the cheesecloth press method again.  Then I lined the butter mold with wax paper, pressed the butter into the mold, molded the butter and viola, the finished product.

So, yes, this was a lot of work for half a pound of butter.  But I think we'll still be doing it again.

Butter?

Sorry, no pictures.  But trust me when I say this has been an adventure.  A month or so ago, a friend encouraged us to actually spend money on something moderately frivolous.  Truth be told, we're total and complete tightwads so this is something that takes a bit of arm twisting.  We were thinking of the 2 gallons/day of milk we'd be getting with both Dulci and Helen in milk, our nice tax non-return (which I find ridiculous that we should get paid that much money merely for having kids) and decided it was time for a cream separator.

Now let me give some information here.  Unlike cow's milk, goat's milk does not naturally separate.  You can wait all week and not get more than a teaspoon of cream rising to the top of a quart of milk.  Centrifuge is the only way to really get goat cream. 

It arrived on Tuesday afternoon so Wednesday I was chomping at the bit to use it.  6 hours post-milking I had a half pint of cream, a very sore arm and shoulder, and an ENORMOUS mess.  It was a disaster.  I decided separating was not something for me to do alone.

This morning, after chores, Superhusbandman cranked while I poured.  We still splattered milk all over the kitchen.  We separated about 1.5 gallons and put the pint of cream in the blender.  And blended.  And blended.  And blended.  And got cream.

And now its late and we're due to be leaving soon to pick up our bees (another post for another day) so let me just say that another 5 hours of separating and blending and we still only have cream, but are hopeful for another go at butter. 

But not today.

No More Seminoles

 I will never grow Seminole pumpkins again.  Well, never say never, but not when this is so readily available after Halloween.

 To detail the last couple weeks, I posted on facebook that I was scouting for unwanted pumpkins.  A friend who is a receptionist at a local Methodist church responded that I could clean up whatever was left after they closed their pumpkin patch after Halloween.  A few days later I was called to get some that were about to go bad.  I came home with 10-12 pumpkins and immediately processed them into pumpkin butter (which I canned) and puree (which I froze) and a few were only fit for animals.  I questioned how many pumpkins would be usable to human consumption so when another patch closed 2 days sooner than my friend's patch, I went out and filled the car full.  There were all kinds of people there cashing in on free pumpkins and still, the 1 acre field seemed an endless sea of orange.  I had snagged another 20 pumpkins.  15 of which I brought inside and began to process.

 The Monday following Halloween, my friend said I could come and get whatever I wanted, as many trailer loads as I cared to take.  Whoa.  I showed up and was astounded at the number of left over pumpkins.  I could have loaded the car and trailer 4 or 5 times over.  I began to get a little worried because I told my friend I would take everything that was left, never having ANY clue it would be this many.  I also felt really bad because it was a fund raiser for the youth group and I was concerned that they were in the negative on this deal.  As we were loading up... and I say we because the kids were all helping.  The older 2 were pleased as punch to carry over the small "baby pumpkins" and the littlest was happy to climb the biggest ones and wave at passing cars.  So, as we were loading up, the pastor came out and explained that this is a mission project of the United Methodist churches (hence why all 3 pumpkin patches in the area were connected to Methodist churches).  They have a mission with the Navajo Indians raising pumpkins.  The churches then sell the pumpkins for them, returning 75% of the proceeds to the Indians and keeping 25% for the church.  There's no capital needed.  No one's "loosing" by so many pumpkins going unsold.  Its a great system.  And I walked away with LOTS of free pumpkins! 

As you can see, the animals are happy.  I smash open a few each day.  The bigger ones for the sheep and goats and the small ones for the chickens.  Not much gets left behind.  I'm also making lots of pumpkin butter, puree and soup.  In fact, yesterday we were at the Fall Jamboree at the Pioneer Art Settlement and learned about Timucuan Indians.  They would cook stews a such inside the pumpkin.  So we did that for dinner.  We used a big pumpkin and a couple little ones for the kids.

For future reference, the smaller pumpkins work better for such things.  The soup never heated in the big pumpkin, but did great in the small ones.  Its a fun variation on something... well... that could get quite old this winter!

Pumpkin Curry Soup: pumpkin puree, coconut milk, curry powder, salt.  All to taste.  Its a made up recipe and I'm not sure about amounts.

Pumpkin Bisque: pumpkin puree, chicken broth, onion, cumin, salt, cream.  Again, work it to taste.

Pumpkin Butter: Pumpkin puree (or raw pumpkin in chunks), sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Set it cooking in the crock pot until it cooks down and is somewhat thick.  I added some orange juice to acidify it more and further reduce the risk of botulism.  USDA (after hundreds of years of people canning it) has recently decided pumpkin butter should not be canned because its not acidic enough.  Hence the addition of orange juice in my own recipe.

With the frozen puree, have pumpkin soups, breads, muffins, pies etc all you want until next fall.  No pumpkin shortage here!

So what have I done with my lush and blossoming seminole pumpkin plants?  I pulled one and fed it to the sheep and will plant more lettuce and greens in its place.  Pumpkins take up way too much room, are too susceptible to disease and take too long to produce to grow our own when these are going to be available, likely every year.  I could never grow this many pumpkins.  Its nice to know I don't have to.

Still Going

Recent weeks have been busy.  The kind of busy where I pause momentarily to pray the dinner blessing with my family, wolf a few bites and keep working, the day's work always draping over into tomorrow as well.  I rose bright and early this morning to see Husbandman off to conquer his Professional Engineer licensing exam.  8 hours of testing sandwiched with 2 hours of driving and almost 2 hours of testing protocol and instructions.  He'll be gone for about 14 hours today and come home blitzed.  His dinner request?  Ice cream.  And I just might comply.  :-)

The garden has been doing great.  I get to pick lettuce or greens a few times a week.  Some fruit is set on the tomatoes.  Even have a cucumber on the vine.  I planted an exorbitant amount of collard greens and swiss chard.  Most is still quite small.  I also am trying again on onions, this time in pots.  I put about 8 little seedlings in a 3 gallon pot filled with compost.  I intend to keep them going a long time and hope they bulb out.  Other attempts at onions were thwarted by them taking too long to grow that, come late spring, I had to rip them out to put in something else.  The pots will remedy that hopefully.  I also decided that I flat out need more garden space.  Husbandman and I took a stroll figuring out where it could go.  We decided on a place and I've been watching the winter shade... which is far too encroaching.  It would be fine in the spring but its already almost entirely shaded most of the day and we're 2 months from the solstice. Back to the drawing board.  This is where homesteading gets creative.

Given the previous post, this coming weekend, the one where Husbandman will be wallowing in brain fog, is basically our only chance to work on partition fencing in the pasture.  I desperately want to get some grass seed down during the next rain, but not until we have the pasture split so I can keep the animals off the tender grasses.  We have a long fence down the middle, most of the way down.  We intend to fence a common area that includes the barn, the turkey hutch and the main gate.  Then leave openings to the 2 paddocks with a single gate between them.  Move the gate from one paddock to the other while the herd is feeding in the common area and the move is complete.  I definitely think we can complete it in a day, but Husbandman is desperate for a free moment.  And his back is bothering him.  And the budget is a bit tight to be buying a big roll of fencing.  I don't know how much to press the issue and how much to just sit back and let it get done in January instead.

Today's job is canning, canning and more canning.  I have a friend at a church with a pumpkin patch and I've collected a few that were starting to go bad.  I salvaged much of them and have pumpkin puree in the freezer and pumpkin butter in the crock pot to can.  I also have 40lbs of pears that I purchased to process.  I've been waiting for the promise of cooler weather to steam up my kitchen with the canner.  Today holds that promise.  And if it doesn't deliver, then I get to sweat.  Its got to get done today.  May be getting a lot more pumpkins this weekend and I gotta be ready!

We're still waiting for Dulcinea to show signs of kidding.  I had her due last week and she's not at all bagged up, nor even that big.  So much for using sores on her hips to determine pregnancy.  And we were too slow in doing something with our buck and Helen is now pregnant.  She delivered in January of '10, September of '10 and will again in March of '11.  This is way too hard on her body.  I'm very upset by it but I never expected her to go into heat 4 weeks after delivering when she was still giving almost a gallon of milk a day.  I feel horrible about it.  We've decided to get rid of Copper and hold on to Willy (who we haven't been able to sell despite our attempts).  If Dulci has a buck, we'll keep her's who would have greater genetic diversity from the rest of the herd.  This would buy us some time to get our bachelor pad completed before immediately impregnating Dulci as well.  I just hope we can move Copper without him ending up on a table.

Yesterday, a friend with a tree business dropped off about a dozen HUGE oak logs.  MUSHROOMS!  I'll slice these logs in half, drill holes in the flat sides and pack them with innoculated sawdust (that I have yet to order... add that to the to-do list) and set them in that once-completely-useless shadey section.  What logs we don't use for mushrooms, I'll chop and store for next year's firewood.  It was alive just yesterday so its perfect for mushrooms but not so great for the immediate winter.  Sharpen the axe, I found my new workout regime!

The girl child is up now.  Its just a matter of time before the boys follow.  Then I can really start my day.  My seemingly never-ending day.  At least I'm not taking a never-ending test.  God bless my superhero.  I'll add pictures later.

Jelly... well, Almost

Its 4:30am and I'm blogging.  Signs of an addict?  Maybe.

Yesterday was a fun day.  After being crazy busy all week, Friday afternoon was a nice time to be able to just cross a few things off the to-do list.  We were beginning to have raisins forming on our muscadine vines so the cute little farm girl and I decided to pick them clean and make some grape jelly.  Last week we processed about 3 gallons of grapes into syrup.  We had almost 3 gallons left on the vine for this week.  And some beauty berries were looking luscious and ripe.  So we had an all out jelly fest.  Unfortunately, none of the jelly set, but I now know why and can add the pointers as I go. 

The pots on the left are grapes.  The big pot on the right is the canner.  The jug I'm holding is filled with beauty berries.  I washed the grapes, put them in the pots (they all wouldn't fit in 1), added some water and let them cook down while we picked the beauty berries.  Once the grapes were cooked, they mashed very easily with a potato masher.  From there the instructions all say to separate the juice from the pulp through cheese cloth.  I tried that... it doesn't work.  The cheese cloth gets awfully plugged up and it makes a horrible mess.  Instead, I poured it 3-4 cups at a time into a colander over a pot.  I stirred the juice in the colander to keep it from plugging then dumped the pulp into a bucket for the goats.  I got very few seeds in the juice and was able to strain those out very easily. 

The goats enjoyed their sweet treat.

With the grape juice separated, I followed the recipe in the sure-jell package for concord grapes except that I didn't add the water.  I figured I had already done so to get them to cook down enough to squish them.  The problem here is that the recipes I've read since all say to not do more that 6 cups of juice at a time.  I think I was doing 16-17 cups.  Then the next problem was that it took forever to get it to boil.  I had someone coming over for a "farm tour" and so neglected the proper cook time.  I didn't think it would matter.  It did.  In fact, if you cook it long enough you can actually make jelly without pectin.  I had been wondering just how they made jellies back before the time of Sure-Jell... well, that's how.  This seems like a great recipe and the one I will be using next year.  Also in this picture are the beauty berries cooking down.  This recipe is one we had in the Florida's Wild Edibles handbook.  You cook the berries down (which removes all the color from them and puts it in the juice!), 3 cups of the resulting infusion, 5 cups sugar, 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1 pack of pectin.  Again, I was tripling this recipe.  I ended up 3 cups short on the sugar and figured it would be close enough.  Wrong again.  Live and learn.  The chickens really enjoyed the cooked beauty berries though!

So now that I have 18 pints of syrup, I'll probably be making pancakes this morning.  Especially since I already made muscadine syrup with the last batch of grapes.  I'm learning.  God bless my grandmother who took all these secrets to her grave.  I gleaned from her what I could as I was growing up, but frankly she wasn't much for teaching anyway.  I've inherited all her canning equipment, antique meat grinder, even her treadle sewing machine, but learning to use these handy gizmos is all up to me and the internet.  And I usually don't consult the internet until a problem arises.  The good news is, if I really want to, I can open up all these jars and try it again.  That's online too.  We'll see.  Husbandman is going to be gone all day with our newly constructed trailer helping some dear friends move.  I've got a mess of weeds to pull and a turkey pen to make pasture-ready.  I may have time this evening to play with it all... just 3 pints at a time. 

Lemongrass Tea

We stay hydrated through the summer with some yummy homegrown iced tea.

Here's about half of our herb garden (pineapples, oregano, okinawa spinach, mint, green onions, aloe and a gardenia are in this section)

Here's the lemongrass. This stuff grows like a weed. A single plant is PLENTY for all the lemongrass we can drink. I'm planning on ripping most of this out so that I'm not creating such a nice snake habitat right next to a walkway.

Here's the mint being picked by the little farm girl.

And the stevia. This plant was well over 5' tall last fall. I thought it died over the winter, but it came back all on its own.

Here's all our tea ingredients (minus the water).

And everything in a pot with a gallon of water.


And the end result! Full of antioxidants and completely organic. I'd be happy to supply anyone with lemongrass plants and some cuttings of mint and stevia if you're in volusia county.

Now if only we didn't have to BUY our water! The well tastes really bad!!! :-(

Don't get used to this

2 posts in 2 days! I'm on a roll. More like I want this eat-from-your-own-land-bug that I've got to be really contagious. So, what's on the menu tonight???

Meatloaf!

1 lb of grassfed Samsula ground beef (which we traded some chickens for)

1/2 lb of ground mutton (Bella, to be exact)

1 store bought onion (because I used all my green onions in recent meals)

1 can diced tomatoes (one day they'll be homegrown)

1 bunch parsley (their last hoorah)

several sprigs of homegrown rosemary and thyme

3 fresh eggs

And this shall be served with roasted homegrown sweet potatoes and store bought cabbage (again, one day... maybe)

Pictured is the meatloaf and the sweet potato/cabbage (in a loaf pan) in our nifty convection oven. Since its not too hot, I'm cooking this inside because the convection oven is small and looses less heat. When its hot out and the AC is cranking, I roast things on the porch in a separate roasting pan. I rarely use the big oven anymore.

The second picture is what's left over of our sweet potatoes. The laundry basket was FULL in December from about 20 square feet.