August 27, 2013

Weekend Projects: Floors Off/ Floors On

We finally got some good work done on some projects this weekend!

I spent most of the day in the barn and kitchen processing 6 11 week old fryers: 2 went in the freezer whole for Pocket and the rest i dressed and froze for us, save one that i cooked for dinner. And my, what an amazing feeling/event/feat: i bred these fryers, waited a month for them to be born, made sure they were safe the first days of their lives, cared for them for another 2.5 months and finally dispatched them with respect and humane speed. A few hours later, one was a delicious and nutritious meal for my husband and myself plus leftovers for the next night’s meal and a few bones saved to go into a big batch of soup in a few weeks. That feels great! I also tried deboning one of them and didn’t totally muck it up – it’s in the freezer and will be half thawed next weekend to try my hand at grinding meat! i have no idea the quality of my old hand-crank, German grinder i picked up at Goodwill years ago, so i’ll need luck!

While i was outside listening to the summer rain (what the heck?) bounce off the tin roof of the barn, i could hear saws and hammers inside the house. My dear husband spent a few days in the last weeks tearing out disgusting, stinking (of cat pee and years of mold/abandonment) carpet, discovering a rotted portion of the floor, tearing that up and replacing it with fresh wood, painting the moldy wall with Kilz and spraying down the room with Nature’s Miracle. The room now smells CLEAN and is ready for a new floor to be laid!

Side note: Here on the farm, i fill the role of ‘animal husband:’ manager of all things animal husbandry and principle caretaker/decision maker of animal wellbeing. Andy helps out and is usually the ‘close the coop at night’ guy and principle water shlepper, but i’m basically the go-to gal for anyone on the farm with 4 legs or feathers. I also work at home, which means i do a lot of the thinking and planning of all the other projects… but i get overwhelmed. Andy is ‘supposed’ to be the infrastructure guy. Heavy lifting, building things, designing gates, etc. Eventually he’ll have to do a lot of the gardening as i’ll be spending most of my weekend time with animals. It’s pretty great when we are both ‘filling our roles’ at the same time and can just check in on each other and watch the progress the other has made. I love our partnership and couldn’t do this crazy homesteader thing without him!

AND we finally started laying the living room floor! AH, I’M SO EXCITED to have this project DONE! i did bash my fingers pretty wickedly last night, but hey: i stab my fingers with felting needles repeatedly just about every day so i’m used to it. I can’t wait to post the before/after pictures of this project!

So, floors up, floors on, progress being made and renewed vigor in our ‘in home’ projects is making me feel pretty swell. Oh, and i didn’t even mention the pickles i started fermenting – i might even make time for some real homesteading this fall!

How have you been spending the last few weekends of summer?

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August 26, 2013

Summer Roasted Vegetables: Easy, Versatile Recipe for Dinner and Leftovers

Do you love roasted vegetables? Do you miss them in the Summer, or is a pile of root veggies slathered in oil just too heavy a dish for a warm, sunny evening? Well, i’ve got just the thing! SUMMER roasted vegetables!

This recipe is completely flexible and versatile – great for a side dish or main course, wonderful for a potluck and can be vegetarian friendly. Ready for some delicious? Go hit the garden or farmer’s market and meet me in the kitchen with an arm load of your favorite veggies.

Welcome back! Here are the tools you will need, along with those veggies you just picked up:

  • 1 cookie sheet
  • 1 large bowl
  • a big spoon
  • olive oil
  • your favorite herbs or seasoning blend
  • a pot for boiling water
  • a pan for browning meat should you choose to add it
  • quinoa, bulgur wheat or orzo
  • parmesan cheese
  • optional chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, etc)

Chop up your vegetables while your oven preheats to 425 degrees. Don’t chop them too small, but try to keep all the pieces similar in size. I chose an onion, cabbage, some serranos, tomatoes and squash plus a bunch of kale. For this version i added the stemy bits of the kale at the beginning and added the leafier bits halfway through cooking. For extra protein and delicious, consider throwing in some pecans or walnuts halfway through cooking as well! Toss the chopped veg with a liberal amount of olive oil and your favorite seasoning and spread out in an even layer on your cookie sheet.

Bake in 10 minute intervals, stirring in between. I baked for a total of 4 intervals (40 minutes) The tomatoes helped ‘sauce’ things up a bit and the kale leaves turned almost to ‘chips’ which was a really fun texture element. While your veg is roasting, brown some meat (or not) and heat up some water. Cook about a half cup of quinoa, orzo or bulghur wheat, drain and toss with some parmesan cheese and salt. The cheese helps the whole dish to stick together a bit. Toss everything all together and get ready for some mouth-gasms.

Bonus: This dish is awesome cold the next day as well! So, this really is an all around perfect dish for a potluck: good hot or cold, fresh or leftover and is also great for dinner with lunch leftovers for your work week.

Have you tried roasting summer veggies?

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August 23, 2013

Fiber Friday: Laci!

Thanks to Laci’s mom for submitting this swell photo for August’s “Fun in the Sun” theme!

Laci’s one cool cat (er, dog)! Check out the rest of this week’s newsletter HERE.

PS, Pocket went to the vet yesterday  to get her teeth cleaned. She had a tooth pulled last year and the molar below it was looking quite scary. Thank you to ALL my friends on Facebook who sent your love, prayers and well wishes while Pocket was under! She came through great and is hitting the steps without face planting again, good as new! (Those sleepy drugs make a normally spry Corgi rather “stoned” indeed!)

Have a great weekend, everyone! Next Fiber Friday, look for “sir Kai” and his little Fiber Friend!

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August 20, 2013

Chicken Update: Eggs!

We brought home our little chicks on April 6th, and 18 perfect weeks later we got our very first, tiny, white Leghorn egg!

Everyone is laying well, in fact. The heat has subsided, we switched back to layer feed from ‘all purpose,’ and we’ve upped the pasture rotation to more frequent intervals. The ‘grass’ is totally dormant right down to the weeds, but there are some seeds and grasshoppers (and flies) for them to eat plus more and more windfall fruit from the farm where i work. Very unlike me: i didn’t photograph our VERY FIRST DUCK egg – but it was pretty awesome and delicious in our fritatta last night! (You can tell muscovy duck eggs from chicken eggs both by their size and by a ‘waxy’ texture on the outside.)

Pretty soon we’re going to be swimming in eggs! We need a few more consistent customers – so holler at me to reserve a dozen: available at the farm or in Philomath most weekdays. We really thought that we wouldn’t like the Leghorn – she’s flighty and strange (and thus named “Space Wizard”) and who wants white eggs? Well, she’s already laying almost every day and it turns out Leghorns have actually been around since Roman times (i’ve read that somewhere!) so we might add a few more crazy white chickens to the roster next year for greater laying consistency in the flock. The rest of our birds were chosen for dual purpose (eggs and meat) performance and uniquely colored eggs. Honestly: dual purpose just means “not as skinny” so we may focus more on egg laying skill and just grow out broilers once or twice a year. Still, we hope to brood our own chickens and will eat the boys and keep the girls as replacement layers, so ‘less skinny’ has its function. 😉

Do you keep chickens? What is your favorite breed of chicken? (We’re loving the Welsummers so far, though ‘The Wiz’ is winning in the egg laying department so far!)

 

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