A morning's labor

It's been a few eventful days around the city homestead...

A few of you have been asking about our Pumpkin.

While I am sure you are talking about the kitten my husband brought home, it reminded me that you haven't seen the garden recently.

Well, as you can see Pumpkin is a small snoozy cat who loves a little boy.

His heart belongs to that little boy and the little boy's heart belongs to his kitten who is now

Pumpkin Duncan Shumunkin.

The pumpkins in the garden are doing well too.  

I only planted the New England Pie and Long Pie seeds (one each but have many more), but also got about 2 other types of winter squash growing as well.

We didn't cage the tomatoes this year, and now I am wondering how I'm going to pick them.

The main problem is that I get too many volunteer tomatoes and then don't have the heart to pull them.

Lesson learned...next year I will be heartless.

The calendula is growing like wildfire and seeds are all over the ground for next year it seems too.

I have pulled tons of potatoes and am still waiting on the blues.  

They seem to be very slow.

In place of the potatoes pulled, I have planted fall spinach, lettuce, and carrots.

The peppers have also been taken over by the volunteer tomatoes.

Garlic has been pulled, cured, and is now in our refrigerator waiting for the biggest and best to be planted in a few months.

And the corn.

It is currently 15 pints of creamed corn.

In our full bellies as corn on the cob.

Waiting to be husked and frozen.

In the fridge for dinner tonight.

About to be put into corn bread.

Basically everywhere.

I'll have to update later on how much there really was.

So far the count is up to 48 ears.

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bubble bubble buzz....

Despite my total absence from this space for the past few months...things have indeed continued on here on the Country homestead.  There is plenty of updating and filling in to do.  Reflections on summer.  Changes in the landscape and on the animal front.  All that.  But for today, late as it is, I can tell you that amidst a house full of children, lawn mowing and thunderstorms, and in the face of an oven repair that was two months in the waiting...I was kitchen bound! 
Things have been bubbling, fizzing, buzzing and rising all over the place.  City sister, during her recent (and super fantastic) visit, left me with some sourdough starter that actually originated from another lovely homesteader so many miles away.  By a stroke of miracle I did not kill it.  It is living on the top shelf of my fridge.

I kicked off 5 loaves of oatmeal bread today (oven repaired just in time...phew).  A double batch of cookies.  Rhubarb muffins for the freezer.  Soaked our dry beans for crock pot baked beans.  Two quarts of yogurt culturing away in the cooler. 



One loaf taken by force with bread knife and butter...




Our own Jacob's Cattle beans soaking on the counter.



How we do our yogurt.  Cultured milk snuggled in with hot water bottles in a cooler for 8 hours.

A little of the good fermented stuff to close out a long day in the kitchen.

One of those days where it all comes together.  Busy kids, food put away for the week, kitchen cleaned.  And would you belive it...a blog post to boot!  Feels good to be back.
More details on the buzzing in a couple days.....

It's good to have friends...

While a friend was on vacation, she asked me to pick up her CSA share...

I'm thinking Chili...with some jalapenos from the garden and beef from the quarter cow in the freezer.

Yes, it's good to have friends.

Ones that share.

Locally Delicious...Very nutritious

Dinner...Ahhh Dinner

Mostly homegrown

Chicken from a local farm roasted with homegrown herbs on top of a bed of our own Swiss Chard braised with a bit of broth and fresh (homegrown...may I add) garlic...

A side of potatoes (that I grew) baked with a touch of local butter and backyard herbs...

Carrots and beets (that both grew in our garden,) glazed with a touch of local honey...

Each item cared for by either me or someone I have met in person...

Something is so right about it.

Maple Syrup...part one

Last fall, the brilliant leaves of my neighbor's sugar maples caught my eye.  They looked like they were on fire.  To tell you the truth, these three trees drive me nuts.  

They shade one side of our house making it impossible to grow anything shy of hostas on that side.  

So when life threw lemons at me, I chose to make lemonade...

I got  the courage one day (while handing off another dozen eggs free of charge) to ask my neighbor if we could tap her sugar maples. 

 "Those are sugar maples?  They don't look too sweet to me."  

We discussed the leaf color and shape, at which point she said that it was fine by her.  

We got an email on Monday about a maple sugaring class being held at the local nature center for a local home school group.  Would we like to tag along?  But of course...

In my camera's infinite wisdom, it decided to malfunction yet again, so I only got one picture, and not of the process...

We learned all about trees, maples, and sap.

They even told a story about how the maple came to be tapped.

Tree selection (must be over 35 inches at 52 inches height and of the maple variety.)

Materials (drill, gallon milk container, nail, straw.)

When (freezing nights, warm days...before buds appear.)

So now that we have that info...just wait to see what we do.

That is, if the neighbors are still okay with it.

Not so Scrumptious Saturday

Broken oven...not so good.
We've been eating lots of items cooked on the stove top...pancakes, rice, chicken.
Old favorites, comfort food.
My sister in law came over for the weekly cooking lesson.  On the stove today was...
Chicken Cacciatore
1 Whole Chicken broken up into pieces
1 can tomato paste
2 onions cut in1/6ths
6 carrots
4 ribs celery
4 cloves garlic smashed.
olive oil
Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, oregano etc to taste
flour
1 cube veggie broth bouillon

Put olive oil in pan and heat.  Break chicken into thighs, drumsticks, breasts, and back.  Dredge the chicken in flour and then brown the chicken in the pan for about 8 min on each side...be careful not to crowd the chicken or it will not sear/brown nicely.  Take the chicken out and put the veggies in.  Let them hang out and get nice and soft.  Dissolve the bouillon  in 1 cup hot water and mix in the tomato paste (if you don't have paste, you can use canned tomatoes...just dissolve the bouillon in water.) Then pour the tomato/bouillon mixture in the pot and add the chicken.  Put a top on and cook on low or put it all in a Crockpot (vintage orange from your parents, not a dump, works best!)  I also will put it in the oven (if it's working) for a few hours while I do baking.  It's one of those recipes that are done when they are done, but just make sure the chicken is done.  The longer you cook it, the better it is!  Serve over some sort of grain or pasta, either one will soak up the yummy juices.

Scrumptious Saturday

My sister and I both adore bacon...

As you may have read last week in our bean-off it is true.  

My sister even raises beautiful pigs which produce a lovely bacon.

I was even lucky enough two Christmases ago to be gifted a whole pound of it.

So I promise, cross my heart and hope to die stick a needle in my eye, promise this is the last time I will write my Scruptious Saturday about a baconed item...who knows...maybe next week I will even go vegetarian for pennance of my bacon consumption.

Any one who knows my husband knows one thing.  

He does not like veggies.

When I first met him he claimed, and I quote, "It isn't a meal unless an animal and a tree died during the process of it's making and/or consumption."

Even his school's cafeteria worker was stunned when he actually took some salad one day.

I have a recipe that will entice even my non-veggie loving husband to eat spinach.

On the other hand, I was a vegetarian when I met him.
I only began eating meat right before I got pregnant with W.
I was dreaming of hamburgers every night.

I will admit, I have weird taste in food.

Once in college, a psychology professor asked each person to write what food item they were craving at that particular moment on a card.

It was to demonstrate how culture has influenced people's taste in food.

Most people wrote:

1) Chocolate

2) Coffee

3) Pancakes

(note 8:00 am class)

I wrote spinach and butternut squash.

Odd.

So here I will share one of my favorite spinach recipes.

One that will confirm my theory.

Everything is better with bacon.

Saute of Spinach

with bacon and garlic

4 thick slices of bacon

4 cloves of garlic

1 package frozen spinach (thawed and drained)

that's it!

Cut bacon into small pieces and place in a frying pan over medium heat.  Chop the garlic and add to the bacon once it starts releasing some fat.  Cook until the bacon is done and the garlic is golden brown.  Add the package of spinach and cook until the spinach is warmed through (and tastes like BACON and GARLIC.)

Even though I do firmly believe that everything is better with bacon, I will say that it is still good if you saute the garlic in olive oil and then add the spinach.  It can also be done with fresh spinach, it's just not in season right now...

And I love bacon!

(locally pasture raised and smoked...once you have it, you can't go back to the slimy grocery store stuff.)

I served it with chicken wings raised locally and some local potatoes.  Amazing what you can find in your own "backyard"

(If your backyard was 20 miles or so.)

So what's your favorite enticing scrumptious recipe?

Chez Poulet Redux: Part Deux

Yup:
Typical our style.  Its 15 degrees..dusk approaching..a nor'easter bearing down on us...and...voila!  We bust out the chicken house in a 3 hour push. 
It aint pretty...but it will do.  The hens are moved in, thanks to my 7 year old chicken catcher.  I would put her up against any 60 year old poultry farmer any day...she's fast, accurate and fearless and she can carry up to 4 hens at a time, upsidedown, two per hand.  She's incredible.

We are already psyched about shortened water and grain hauling trips...
And I am dreaming about slipper-footed runs just steps out the back door to fresh eggs.

salvaged rebar and slab wood and retired 4 year old greenhouse plastic=free chicken house



everyone tucked in for the storm...including us!



Progress.

Its a deliberate choice we make to do things...the "hard" way.  Is the hard way better? 

There must be something better about it, because we keep doing it that way, in the face of an easier path.  We've reasoned that in some cases its better for us.  Eating whole foods that are more laborious to prepare rather than processed foods with their strange ingredient lists and excessive packaging.  In many cases it saves us dollars.  Processing firewood to heat our home and hot water rather than picking up the phone for an oil delivery.  And in some cases, it meets those criteria and...it just feels right.  Making our own cheese, or growing our own vegetables and meat.  All of these things seem pretty accessible and frankly, aren't that difficult.  Despite the extra effort that is involved, we continue to feel compelled.  We find enough value and satisfaction in it that we want to go out there and do it...and we're not alone.

You feel compelled to do it even when it is 95 degrees out, or the mosquitos have started a blood bank, or its sleeting and 20 degrees and the animals need water.  And those are the days that try your choice.  When half of the bucket spills down the back of your boot as you negotiate an icy patch.  When you're drenched in sweat and you still have hundreds of feet of picking left or when you get home from a long day at work and you realize that you didn't meal plan well and any well made dinner is at least an hour or more away and you decide to feed your family eggs with cheese and cut up carrots--again.  Is it still better?  Usually my answer is yes.  But I'm no homestead hero.  I fantasize about heated water buckets and, on a stagnant summer day, I love to sit in front of a big fan.

I know for sure that my husband's farmer-grandparents thought ding dongs and spaghettios were two of life's great inventions.  After baking and cooking your whole life over a wood cookstove, all 4 seasons, for your family and a farm crew, a can of "lunch" on an electric stove and a pre-made cake looked pretty darn good.  Interesting, isn't it.  People that wouldn't consider putting pasturized milk past their lips, mowing down a ho-ho with their raw moo juice.  Ah, progress!

Somehow it seems, all of us that do this, this homesteading stuff, we all draw our own lines.  We're, for the most part, doing it by choice.  The ho-ho's and boyardee are all there for us to take advantage of.  But we find value and satisfaction in another turn.  Despite its challenges, we ultimately decide that the more difficult road gets us to a destination that we consider better, or at least, one that we prefer.  And in each little effort to make one or another part of our lives a little more simple, more basic, we notice that we truly appreciate and are grateful for the access to modern conveniences that we have.  And we use them, mindful of their usefulness.  We love chainsaws and toilet paper.  Stuff like that. 

Which brings me to the greatest recent homestead FREE acquistion that had us hopping with excitement.  With much of our small wheat crop still in shocks in the barn, we were tediously and slowly processing little bits indoors in the evening.  It was beyond ridiculous considering the amount remaining to be done.  ENTER our new-to-us thresher.  
We had seen this nifty little chipper-turned-thresher on the interwebs but never figured that we would acutally find one---and certainly not for a reasonable price, like free. 
The great news is that without any modifications, it works pretty good!  We are still in the initial stagesbut....having done this job "the hard way" , we are definitely appreciating a little help from mother necessity.  And so, feeling a little like my husband's grandparents, we indulge, and plug in the mechanical thresher.  Now let me say that threshing and winnowing wheat at dusk in 20 degree weather while kneeling on frozen ground is a far cry, with regard to ease, from grabbing a bag of flour from the shelf at the store (and I might have mentioned that once or twice as I lost all feeling in my fingers)...but the wheels of "progress" were a-churning.  Ah, progress!

Wheat Berries!!!(and a little chaff)

http://sustainableseedsystems.wsu.edu/nicheMarket/smallScaleThreshing.html

Scrumptious Saturday

Okay, so it's not really a soup...it would even be a stretch to call it a stew...

It's a wonderfully starchy filling meal that feels so good after coming in

from a cold winter day.

We are very fortunate that all the ingredients were grown/raised locally.

Beef Bean Barley Soup

One large beef soup bone (optional)

2 cups sliced carrots

1 large onion 

2 stalks celery

2 more cups assorted veggies

1 cup chopped beef (optional)

1 cup barley 

1 cup mixed lentils (golden and green come in my favorite mix)

Water to cover the items

Simmer the beef bone for about an hour in water that will cover it.  Remove any beef leftovers from the bone and discard (or give to the dog) the bone.  Add in the veggies and beef.  Let simmer until everything is tender.  Bring to a boil and add in the grains.  Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until the grains are tender.

Simple

Yummy

Good for you

What did you make this week?

I've been...

a little absent this past week...thanks to my sister for picking up my slack.  My creative evening time has been soaked up by "snuggle me" requests that result in me waking up at 1pm crunched into one of my kids beds.  It's where I was needed most. 
A busy week of work and school and the barn...but thankfully capped off with an amazing day....I went to bed (in my own bed....with the two girls) so grateful for days like this:

1.  The kids were dressed and fed before 7am, on their own!  Good start!

2.  Family drive to school and then a quick stop at the local chainsaw store to drop our VERY old Stihl for a little TLC, and a peek at the shiny new stuff on the shelves.  I know what my husband is putting on his Santa list. 

3.  Having time to make playdough. 

4.  The cleaning time that playdough allows me.

5.  Roasted Long Pie Pumpkin and SEEDS!

5.  A card game and tea with her...

6.  "Mommy, you 'yarn' while I play the piano"

7.  A phonecall with City Sister.

8.  Stopping back at the repair shop to get the bad news about the Stihl.  Oh Santa, I hope the elves can build something, cause the change jar in the laundry room just isnt gonna cut it.

8. Watching my oldest tack up a really big horse and ride....all by herself

9.  Our own chicken for dinner

10.  Family sing-alongs with Daddy on guitar...even my 7 year old can harmonize on this one!!

11.  My oldest teaching us a all a new contra-dance she learned at school (love that music program) to bluegrass Christmas music.

12.  A witch and a fairy burning off the last of the day's energy

Chez Poulet Redeux

I can hear the wheels of old man winter's truck coming down the driveway.  He drives real slow.  But when he arrives, its not just a stay for dinner kinda situation.  It's a long one.  This is the time of year that I can never have enough of.  Never enough time to get the wood done.  Never enough time to get all of the animals set exactly the way we want them.  Never enough time to get all of the "stuff" cleared off the yard before it gets buried--until the unsightly spring thaw. 

Sunday, determined to have easily accessed eggs through the winter, I took matters into my own hands. You see, we have gone through many different set ups with our layers.  We have had as many as 60 hens at one time and some large portable and stationary layer housing.  But, now, with a nice homestead sized flock of 8, our ladies are a bit lost in their large range house.  It offers limited protection from the winter elements and they lack the mass population body heat to keep it cozy. 

I surveyed the yard junk (which proliferates everywhere) and turned up several lengths of re-bar, a bunch of scrap lumber, various fasteners...a plan.  I decided to build a mini 10' x 10' hoop house just outside our back door.  Right along the path to our woodpile which gets regularly shoveled!  An easy run for an extention cord for a little extended fake daylight to keep the eggs coming.  A quick slipper run for eggs in the morning.  Because last year it was a long slog out into the pasture to get to the ladies, ok, as its on the way to the pigs...but not ideal.

We laid out the location and the base.  I snagged the learning opportunity.  How do we know if this thing is square?  The two girls and I did some pythagorean theorem.  Well, the little one raked leaves.  Then we pounded holes and bent poles.  Having a 7 year old partner proved crucial.  We divided 10' into three equal sections using leaves to represent each foot and dividing 10 leaves into three equal piles.  "Three and one third!"  She proudly announced.  Then the elder took a swing break and the little took up the pencil...drew me some lines and other various artwork on lumber not related to cut lines.  The moment of truth..we lifted the endwall together.  Not bad. 

We called it a day as no one had injured themselves on the job.  A sure sign of success.  We turned in to make soup and bread for dinner.  A little more framing and a sheet of plastic and the hens will be tucked in for his arrival.  And everyone will be happy for those short egg runs when I yell that we're out of eggs in the middle of holiday baking season.

The Pieman...

Okay he may not be a pie man, maybe a pie boy...but boy 'o boy does he love his pie.  

So often, I find that people do not know where their food comes from...so, I am making sure the kiddos know pie doesn't come from the store, or even a can, but from real foods.  

So here is our pumpkin pie...and an art lesson, and  a math lesson...and whatever else you want to fit into this space.

First one must have the perfect pumpkin.

Then we cut it in half and removed the seeds.  The pumpkin
went in the oven at 350 degrees.

While the pumpkin was baking, we counted the seeds and
used non-standard measurement to find out how big
our paper towels are.  We did multiple trials to demonstrate how it is not the
best method to measure in (the towel was between 15 and 16 pumpkin seeds.)

W. then drew pictures of the pumpkin seeds.

When done, we scooped all the pumpkin pulp out of the shells.

I made a simple whole wheat crust (the nutty flavor really
complements the rich pumpkin flavor.)  The trick is this:
Put the crust on the rack...then fill with pumpkin (less mess.)

We then mixed up a standard fresh pumpkin recipe (more
eggs so it gels well.) baked it...and devoured it (can it count as
a veggie for dinner?)

Off the beaten trail

It was a dreary, rainy day.  The night before, we had called the place we had ordered a quarter of a cow for the freezer.  It was ready to be picked up, so off we went to get it.  On our way home we saw a sign for an organic fruit farm.  They also had a sign about apples, so we drove down the road rarely followed.  I was thinking that either we'd never return or something wonderful would be down this out of the way road.  Luckily, it was something wonderful. 

We found culled apples they were selling as "deer apples" for $4.00 per bushel.  I picked through 2 bushels and took the ones that were in usable condition (slightly bruised, too small for market, oddly shaped etc) and put them in bags.  I also took some pictures as it was such a lovely sight.  With the apples, I followed "Putting Food By" and made applesauce, no sugar, no juice, no water, just apples and heat.  I have only processed about 2/3 of the apples and already have 12 quarts, oats and apples bars, 2 pints put into the fridge for snacks, as well as all the apple slices and warm applesauce we can eat. 
(UPDATE: I have now made a total of 18 quarts of applesauce, 2 batches of oats and apple bars, 1 pint of apple butter...as well as all the eating slices and warm applesauce my family could eat.)

As you may know, I love cost analysis...so...

$8.00/2 bushels of apples

$12.00/new jars (did not take into account jars I'm reusing)

(Guesstimating how many this will make)

18 quarts of applesauce

Cost/quart is...$1.11/quart for organic applesauce (3.5 cents/ounce)

cost at co-op

$3.46/24 oz (14 cents/ounce) or $4.48 per quart

Savings of...$3.37 per quart!!!!! or for 18 quarts $60.66

Despite all that saving, what made it worth it was:

My kiddos "help" when I was cutting the apples (alright, so they were chowing down on apples.)

The wonderful comparisons of how each different type of apple tasted/looked/was colored inside and out.

The SMELL oh, that rich fall smell.

Spending time with the family in the kitchen.

and...

W. saying, "You made all the applesauce because you know I love it so...you're the best mommy ever!"

Sometimes it's the little things.