bacon

Some days are just good days. Not because of anything particularly special, but just a collection of little things. Like a Starbucks coffee on a grey fall day (and no, not a pumpkin something or other.. I may be the only person in the world who doesn't like them, but the fact remains that I do NOT. I much prefer my grande non-fat, no whip peppermint mocha, thanks), and a successful grocery shopping trip where I actually felt like I spent a hundred bucks and got my money's worth. And stopping here:

which is on my way home, and is apparently THE place to go for country hams. Foodie tourists make detours to get their hands on some Benton's ham and bacon. I've driven by it for years, and always thought I should stop, but never quite actually managed to make it happen. I picked up a pound of bacon, soaked up the delicious smoky pork smells, and drooled over the hams and shoulders and jowls and who-knows-what else hanging on racks all around. It was ham heaven, and I left there kicking myself for never having stopped sooner, and for not buying the bulk package of bacon ends and pieces. I also left there thinking about how blessed we are to live in an area where we have access to such amazing food. "Local" food isn't the rage here, it's just here. It's been here for years. Generations. We could actually get about 80% of our groceries from local farmers.. maybe more, but I don't know of anyone selling flour or other grains. Wish I did... that would be great. Either way.. it's great to live in such an agriculturally-minded area. And living down the road from the world's best country hams and bacon isn't too bad either.

just checking in...

3 weeks goes by so fast. This happens to me every fall... I get all excited, because yay! Fall is here! and then I get all wrapped up in.. whatever.. and bam! it's gone. And I'm sad.

But I'm trying really hard not to do that this year.

I'm trying to be present, to not miss things going on around me. So instead I miss things like checking in on my blog. Or doing the laundry. And then I resolve not to miss those things either, which in turn means I miss something else. Being me is exhausting.

Seriously, though. I really am trying much harder .. to pay attention, which is oh, so hard for me to do. To make things a little more manageable, I gave myself a schedule. Or rather, I started making myself pay attention to the schedule I made for myself about a year ago. It's a simple schedule - Mondays I do this, Tuesdays I do this, and so on, and so forth, but it helps, A LOT, in those moments where I'm really struggling to keep my head above water, wandering aimlessly around my destroyed-by-toddlers home and wondering what the heck I was doing, or supposed to be doing. That usually ended with me overwhelmed and seeking the soothing mindlessness of Pinterest, where I'd see some awesome something or other I wanted to do, and then jump up, start another mess, only to promptly forget about it because someone is screaming about something. Nope. Not any more. Now, I just think to myself, "This is Thursday. Today I clean the girls' rooms. That's what I was doing." And then I plop down in front of the computer and lose myself in Pinterest. Sure, it's not perfect. But it's helping. Our house looks a little less desperate these days, and I feel a little less manic. I'll take it.

So, all that to say that I'm really trying to enjoy fall this year. I actually got (most of) our Halloween decorations up in a timely manner. I've made soup 3 times already. I got to wear my fuzzy boots in the morning. This weekend, I have big plans for a bonfire, and hot cider, something, anything pumpkin related (most likely muffins. Who doesn't love muffins?) and all of this is much easier to do because I know what is (for the most part) expected of each day. Sure, some days I get thrown for a loop because the car dies, or the girls choose to have supreme-o meltdowns at exactly the same time (every time!), but that's life. My new (old) schedule is my rock, my fortress of solitude in the midst of the swirling chaos of life with toddlers.

What I'm saying is, I love my schedule. and I love fall. The end.

weekly goals

So this is a day late, due to our camping trip over the weekend, but it's time to lay out some goals for this first week of fall (hooray for fall, by the way!), and at least try to get them done.

For starters, I need to clean up the camping aftermath, but that's kind of a given.

I'm STILL trying to get some homemade mozzerella done. This really needs to happen.

I also need to make yogurt. Homemade yogurt is so good.

I've got a pile of peppers (all kinds of peppers!) to do something with. Need to do something with the last of the tomatoes as well.

I really, REALLY need to shear Cirrus, before the weather gets too cold. Don't worry, I've got an old wool sweater to put on her if she needs it.

And lastly, it's time to do some serious fall housecleaning.. there's only one  more week til October, and Halloween decorating time!!!!

Speaking of... we stopped at a pumpkin stand on the way home from our camping trip and let Punkin pick out the one she liked best. After much serious deliberation, she picked this one:

Not exactly the traditional choice, but the kid knows what she likes. 

camping with toddlers...

...is like .. uhhh.. nevermind.

Yes. We are crazy. Thanks for asking.

Also - I'd like to apologize to all the other campers who heard me say "Maezie, NO!" or "Maezie, get out of the road!" at least fifteen HUNDRED times. The child is nothing if not persistent.

and cute.

Seriously, though. We took our girls on their very first camping trip this weekend. After a whole lot of thinking and rethinking and wishing we could go to Florida, we decided on Cades Cove. This is usually one of my favorite spots - it's so peaceful, restful, tranquil. Other than the excessive traffic and "bear jams" every 500 yards or so. Still. I've always loved to get out into the woods and walk by a quiet stream, and imagine what it must've been like to actually live there a hundred years ago. I was excited to share this with my girls.

What a perfect place to spend the first day of Autumn!

All things considered, it could have been much worse. While it was definitely not tranquil, or peaceful, or restful, it was good to take the girls out and let them get some camping experience. I firmly believe that they will get better at it with practice (and age). Punkin did great - which wasn't surprising because that kid LOVES to be outside. Maezie learned a lot about boundaries this weekend, and delighted in pushing them. I learned that a firmer parenting hand with my youngest is probably long overdue.

There were a lot of special moments.

There was very little sleep.



Hello, gorgeous.



Bottom line?

I can't wait to go again.

yes, please

end of season

Yeah. So that's our vegetable garden. Under about a foot and a half of water. Oh dear.

So glad our house is on top of a hill.

Just the other day Davey and I were talking about how we'd like to eventually build raised beds up by the house for all of our vegetable gardening needs, and converting all of the lower areas into pasture (animals can be moved in bad weather.. plants - eh, not so much). This morning, that seems even more like a really, really good idea.

Sunday, I went out and picked everything that was ripe in the garden - pretty much a ton of peppers and tomatoes, a dozen eggplants, the last of the shelling beans, and a few pumpkins. I have no idea what this flood will do to the potatoes...  I'm hoping that if the water recedes quick enough that they'll still be diggable. Same for the parsnips and onions. The peppers and tomatoes? Who knows. I think the sunflower heads will be ok if they can get dry - the sun is supposed to make an appearance tomorrow. And oh.. our peach trees!

(Also - we've had crazy rain for 2 days, and somehow, we still have internet. This is big news, folks, since this has been the summer of  "oh,no! It's overcast - bye bye internet! We'll see you in 2 weeks!"
Seriously, I have no idea why it's working through this mother of all rainstorms but didn't work every other time we had a little sprinkle. It's a great mystery of the universe, apparently, because the satellite company can't explain it either.

Sorry. End rant.)

I'm so thankful this happened at the end of the season, and that we had been totally lazy about planting any winter greens yet. We'll still plant them, because we're eternal optimists, but clearly it won't be happening this week. Instead, it feels like a good week for soup. And bread. Is it too early for a fire in the fireplace? Because I'm so there. Summer is OVER. Minus the whole raging floodwaters thing, I'm pretty excited. It's time to cuddle up on the couch with my snuggie and a cup of something warm while the girls watch Annie for the umpteenth time and wait for the sun to shine again. Maybe make some cookies. Start contemplating fall/halloween decorations (don't worry - I won't actually start decorating til Oct 1st - but it helps to have a plan). It's my time of year - pumpkin and hot cider and sweater time. The other seasons all have their special charms, and I appreciate all of them, but fall - fall is mine. It's when I wake up from the long swelter of summer and feel ALIVE. Unstoppable. It's magic, pure and simple, ya'll.

the herb garden

Lookee, lookee!! I got my paws on a working camera! Finally. So what's the first thing I did when I could at last take pictures again? Why, take some embarrassing shots of my overgrown herb garden to show you, that's what.

 So yeah. That's my "herb garden" from the front. The part people see when they walk up to our front door. Oh the shame. The bushy line running right to left across the bottom is a volunteer pumpkin that came up. We let it do it's pumpkin thing, and it's pretty much taken over the whole yard.

This is my herb garden from the back. This is actually a raised bed, done in cinder blocks, which you can't see for all the grass. There's cilantro blooming there in the center of the photo. There's also sage, horehound, strawberries, lavender, fennel, borage, and some other stuff that you can't see. No one can see it. 'Cept Jesus.

Look! Basil! It managed to beat out the rogue pumpkin and some crazy agressive morning glories for a little place in the sun. Considering that it's had zero attention, other than picking it to make yummy stuff, it's done surprisingly well. 

Oh, look, and there's some dill! The dill also did very well this year. Again, no credit to me. 

 Rosemary. I had to use a machete to find it. Oh dear.

One of the reasons my herb garden is such a mess. We had such horrible luck with pumpkins this year, and this guy came up, and thrived, so I let it be. And it repaid me with general weediness, and butt pumpkins. They're not really butt pumpkins. That's just what Davey likes to call them. They have some other, much more pleasant sounding name for sure, I just can't remember what it is. 

 Truth be told, the herb garden is not a total loss. These are the random flower seeds I threw out into the bare dirt this spring, just to see what would happen.

 Magic happened. That's what.

And look! I'm about to have me some zinnias!

I'll be back soon with more pictures - the critters need a little face-time, too!

weekly goals.

So... yeah. Ummm. This is embarrassing. I didn't accomplish a single solitary goal I set for myself last week. Oh dear.

Here's the deal. We'll just pretend that didn't happen, and focus on all the stuff I DID get done last week.
I made hot sauce from our home-grown peppers - super tasty and recipe to follow soon.
I mowed the lawn with lots of help from Davey.
We got 3 new chickens, promptly lost two, but found one still alive the next morning and hanging out with the rabbits. I named her Lucky.
I actually tried a recipe that I pinned on pinterest (oven-fried chicken... it was actually pretty good)
I spent a lot of time on pinterest.
I pickled beets, peppers, and cucumbers. And burned my fingers on hot peppers. Ouch.
I also made tzatziki sauce and baba ghanouj (the only reason to grow eggplant).
This making things from scratch bit is taking up a lot of my time.
I'm totally ok with it, though.
Davey tilled the cornfield. (ok, so maybe, technically, I didn't actually get this done. But it probably wouldn't have gotten done this week if I hadn't said that it absolutely HAD to get done before he could go play at Baby Falls with all his guy friends. So I'm taking the credit. My game, my rules.)
I watched the Hunger Games and was woefully disappointed in the ending, thinking that that was it.. but then someone told me that it's only the first of 3 movies, so I forgave it. For now.


So, as you can see, I had a week chock-full of good accomplishments. And now for this week's goals:

plant the fall garden
make bagels
make mozzerella
clean the toynado in Punkin's room
tame the jungle growing around our front porch.
list some crafty stuff on Etsy! (I'm getting the use of a real, working camera this week, so that will make this goal a little more accomplishable. Is that even a word? It is now.)
electrify the chicken coop.


I could go on, but I'm afraid to make any more goals for this week, seeing as how my track record is not so good on this so far. I'll consider it a major win if I get even just a few of these things done. Err.. hrmm.. I mean, yeah.. I'm gonna get all this done! I'm a winner! Yeah! Or something like that..

What about the rest of you? What are your goals for this week?

a little update, and some goals for the week

Whew! The last few weeks have been a handful. Mostly in a good way. We've pretty much had no internet access for the last month, so, you know, I've been pretty much a total wreck. I've got a lot of good posts in the works about stuff going on around here, so stay tuned, provided I can avoid any more technological troubles.

Also, I'm not sure what happened, but BOOM, summer's whipped. I mean, it's not quite fall yet, not really, but summer has definitely lost all his chutzpah, and I don't walk out the front door and immediately wither into a sweaty, disgusting mess. Also, I can cook in my kitchen without turning into a sweaty, disgusting mess. I might even be convinced to work out in the garden again now that it will take a little while before I turn into a sweaty, disgusting mess. I'm sure summer still has a couple of hot days or weeks up his sleeve, but the point is, he's losing. It's over. Fall is on her way, and there's no stopping it. Amen.

In other news, I decided pretty much on a whim right this minute, that I am going to start posting some weekly goals on here every Monday, and then report back at the end of the week about what actually gets done and what doesn't. Hopefully this will keep me blogging regularly and getting some projects done. So. Here goes:

This week's goals:

try my hand at making bagels

make mozerella cheese (yes, please!)

get the fall garden planted

roast sunflower seeds

get some crafty stuff photographed and listed on ETSY



Here goes nothin'! What are your goals for the week?

(MIY) teriyaki sauce

(Make it Yourself!)

It's my mama's birthday today, and in honor of that occasion, I'm hosting dinner at my house tonight: jerk chicken, per her request. Davey, myself, and my mama LOVE jerk chicken, in all it's spicy-hot glory. But my dad and gramps are more on the wussy side of the heat spectrum, and voted for something a little less intense. Dad requested teriyaki chicken. For years I used Soy Vey teriyaki sauce, mostly because it's Jewish teriyaki sauce, and how can you not love that?! and also because it had great quality ingredients and yummy flavor. Sadly, grocery stores out here don't carry it, so I decided that this week it was time to make my own. So, I did what I often do in these situations and just sort of guessed at what might make the sweet/savory teriyaki flavor I was looking for. And it couldn't be any easier. Here's the recipe:

Juice of 1 can pineapple (can be rings, chunks, crushed, whatever. In my case, it was chunks)
5-6 chunks pineapple
1/4 cup tropical juice blend, or orange juice. Whatever makes your skirt fly up. I happpened to have both, so I used 'em.
soy sauce to taste
1/2 tsp ginger
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup brown sugar or honey
1/4 cup sesame oil
splash of rice salad vinegar

run the whole thing thru the blender til the pineapple and garlic are pretty much pulverized, and then add in 1 tsp sesame seeds. It makes the sauce look pretty. This is pretty much my dream sauce, and I'll have a hard time choosing between it and my favoritest favorite jerk chicken tonight. I'm guessing I'll solve this predicament by eating both. It's a cruel world, but I get by.

chicken blues

I knew something was wrong when only 3 chickens greeted me. Looks like a fox (or foxes?) got in last night, my fault because I forgot to close the coop. And of course they got my 3 favorites - the blue wheaten amaracauna rooster, our welsummer hen, and Camilla, with the crooked beak and the plucky attitude. That leaves us with 2 RIR roosters and 1 amaracauna hen. Not promising in terms of egg production. So I guess we start over again. Again.

Make it yo'self!

Sorry for the poor picture quality. I had to take this photo with my dumbphone (tm), because all cameras in a five mile radius of my house appear to have crapped out, all at the same time. It's a gov'ment conspiracy, ya'll!

Not really.

And while I'm hangin' out in disclaimer-ville, I might as well mention that even though I'm about to get all preachy about homemade, good for you food, I am not, have never been, will probably never really be a whole food, real food, paleo, vegan, etc, etc. My kids eat at McDonalds sometimes. I LOVE "chinese" food. And pizza. In any form. When we go to church, the whole family hits up the cheeseball bucket. Orange fingers are practically a Wednesday night tradition. What I'm trying to say is, I am not on a bandwagon. What I am is cheap. Well, more like broke, but it adds up to the same thing. So. On to the good stuff.

A few weeks back, just before we had a wet, rainy, no-internet-because-satellites-apparently-don't-work-in-the-rain episode, I decided that it was time to start making a lot more of our food from scratch - A. because I want to, 2. because it usually tastes better, and C. because, as I mentioned, I'm cheap. I started thinking about foods that we buy cheaply, and how that equals less quality, and more unpronounceable ingredients, and made a list of things to start making from scratch. Then I spent 2 weeks wailing and gnashing my teeth because of the aforementioned internet outage. And deciding that I really need to invest in some good cookbooks, gardening books, and books with lots of pretty pictures, because if we ever lose internet for good, I will be adrift in a sea of emptiness and pinterest withdrawal.

Ahem.

Anyhow. The internet is back up, and so I've been on the hunt for recipes and whatnot. And I've been trying out some fun stuff, like homemade yogurt - which is about the easiest thing in the world, and tastes so much better than storebought (I'm about to say that alot, just a headsup). There's a nice tutorial here:

http://www.theartofdoingstuff.com/how-to-make-yogurt-from-scratch/

Today I made the wheat crackers at the top of the post, because I've had a serious hankerin' for crackers and none in the pantry. And these are super yummy. I just ate about half of them with some homemade pesto. Oh my goodness. I used a mix of wheat and white flour and subbed 1/4 cup of wheat germ for part of the flour, and it was delicious. The whole process, start to finish, only took 30 minutes, and cost pennies to make (compared to 3 bucks a box. Nabisco can suck it!). They taste so much better than box crackers. Here's the recipe link:
http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2010/02/05/finer-things-friday-homemade-cracker-recipe-at-long-last/
(I noticed that this same website has a lot of recipes that look interesting)

I've also been making bread (lots of bread!), pesto, and lots of other sauces, on top of the summertime canning and preserving. It's easier on the grocery bill, and on our health (and tastebuds!). I've never been much of a label reader, because seriously, who has the time? but just the other day I made a coconut cake for my dad's birthday, and read the ingredients in the white frosting can. If I had any powdered sugar in the pantry, I would have thrown that junk right out and made some real frosting, with real, pronounceable ingredients. It doesn't seem like that big a stretch to me that the less processed food is, the healthier it is for you. And if it tastes better, too, then why not make the switch?

I've challenged my self to "make it yo'self", so I'll be trying to post a lot more recipes and showing what has worked (and what hasn't!) in the homemade food department. In the meantime, if you're interested in healthy and affordable food - give it a try! It's amazing how easy and affordable a lot of staple foods are when you make them yourself!

midsummer garden update

Hard to believe it's already the middle of summer. July is almost over, and we only have to slog through August before we (hopefully) begin to see hints of fall in the air. Hints are all I need to make those last hot weeks more bearable. This year has been a doozy, too. 112 degrees, say wha?!? So not cool. Haha. We've found ways to beat the heat, like the community pool (surprisingly nice considering that Englewood boasts 2 stoplights and not much else), and our own little blue frogpond  swimming pool. It may only be about 4 feet across, but filled with cool, cool water, it gets the job done.
We've been fortunate that we've had some rain this scorching summer. The beginning of July looked pretty bad - the pond was DRY, and the bog was mowable for the first time in I don't know how many years (thanks for mowing it, Papaw!) and we were beginning to wonder if our beautiful, promising spring was about to crash and burn. But then, miracle! we got 5 solid days of rain, and lots of little afternoon showers since then. The pond is back up (no more hauling trashcans full of water down to the garden!) and what with all those frequent rain showers we haven't really needed to water. Even if we do need to, it's much nicer to do so in 90-degree heat than 110.
We lost pretty much all the corn to this heat and drought. I managed to put up a dozen or so ears, but not nearly so much as I was hoping to. We still have our 3rd planting of corn, which is looking pretty good and should be ready in a few weeks, but it's a small patch, so I don't know how many ears we'll get. Here's hoping!
I harvested all of the beets and carrots this week - only got about a handful of each, but I wanted to get the garden ready for fall planting, and they were in the way. I also pulled the onions, but they were still so small that I decided to put them in water for a day or 2 and then replant them so they can fill out. Next year I will start them MUCH earlier.
Pulled up the peas finally, and I've got the row ready for beans now - I will hopefully get them planted tomorrow. I'm really hoping to get at least one round of greenbeans in.
The beans we planted in the cornfield were pretty much a total loss - my fault, too. They were drying beautifully on the vine, and then we got 5 days of rain.. they got moldy, and some of them even sprouted inside the pods. I should have picked them sooner. I'm saving what I can for next year's seed.
My feelings at this point on the 3-sisters planting style is that I don't like it for beans. Our corn wasn't strong enough to support the beans for their full growth cycle, and it's hard to find the beans to pick them. I'd much rather have them on a handy trellis.
The tomatoes and peppers are the real stars of the garden this year. They are LOVING this heat. I've already picked several basket-fulls and more on the way.

This week's goal is to get the fall veggies started, and maybe pick up a few pullets at the animal sale this weekend to replace 2 of my roosters.

cock-a-doodle thrice

Well, there's no longer any denying it - out of 6 chicks bought this spring, 3 are roosters. The 2 Rhode Island Reds are destined for the stock pot, I think, but the Blue Wheaten Amaracauna? I think I may just let him stick around... he's going to grow up into one beautiful boy. So - it's time to go pick up some more chicks (I was just itching for an excuse), and pray for better odds this time around.

garden update

Happy Independence Day everyone! Hope you all have a safe and wonderful 4th.


I think we have learned more from this year of gardening than any other.. and it's only July.

For starters, corn+hills=good, especially in 100+ degree temperatures. It doesn't hurt that our cornfield is on the edge of a wetland, and so even when it's crazy dry and we need rain, there is moisture in that ground. Thankful for that. We've got a pretty decent corn harvest in the second section - I need to get it picked and preserved. However - I am not happy about our pumpkins and greenbeans. Squash bugs were especially brutal this year, and so so many of the pumpkins that I planted simply never came up. Even the yellow squash and zucchini are not doing well. Eternal optimist me decided that even though it's July, it's not to late to try to sprout some pumpkins and get them going. I'm trying to get them started in the house and then plant them outside, where I will water them dilligently every single day until they are thriving, because I need pumpkins. NEED them. This must happen.
Our second planting of beans was pretty much a total loss as well. They sprouted and then promptly shriveled in this crazy heat. I'm going to rip out our snap peas this week and plant bush beans..  I really want to can green beans this year. I'll buy them if I have to, but I'd rather grow them myself. Nothing beats home canned green beans. So - 3 sisters prognosis is this... it works great for the corn and for beans that we're going to dry on the vine, as long as the beans get started before it gets too hot. I don't like it for green beans, and I'm very disappointed in the squash this year, though whether that has anything to do with the 3 sisters method is unclear. They just never got going. Soil test time, perhaps?

The vegetable garden, on the other hand,  is rockin' this year. Tomatoes and peppers are growing like mad, the tomatoes especially are the biggest and best we've ever grown and I've already picked enough cukes for  2 jars of refrigerator pickles. I'm about to pickle some banana peppers, as soon as I can work up the nerve to fire up the canner in this heat. I've got my first ever eggplant, the onions are looking great, and my optimism potatoes appear to be thriving. Parsnips look great, and we got 8 whole peaches off our peach tree!  All in all, it has been a good year so far, and I am already looking forward to next spring. Of course, there's still a lot going on in this year's garden, and this fall to plan for and plant, but I am excited. Every year we learn so much more and things begin to make more sense.. it becomes second nature, like an old friend. An old, good friend.

Fermenting pickles - in a few days they'll go in the fridge to slow the fermentation process. This is the best recipe I've found for pickles.. they taste like Claussen pickles. For real. recipe here: http://www.lesleycooks.com/canning/delipickles.htm

controlling the chaos

Sometimes I just need to say things out loud.


It's been observed that condition of a person's home is a reflection of the condition of their soul. And if that's true (I'm pretty certain it is), then mine is full of good intentions and insanity. Sometimes I do really well at keeping the chaos in check... other days it just seems to have a will of it's own. It doesn't help that the house is daily subjected to a violent "toynado" that rips through with the intensity that only a 1 and 2 year old can achieve. It also doesn't help that all I really want to do right now is be outside - staring at little seedlings and dreaming of their potential, staring at little goatlings and dreaming of their potential, staring at the rabbits and thinking I really need to get them separated because of their >ahem< potential. It gets hard for me to focus on other things, mundane things like laundry and dishes and toys.. oh, the ever-present toys. Some would say not to sweat the mess, and just be happy with the things that make me happy - the seedlings, sprouts, and wee ones of all species, but the mess is making it harder to enjoy said small things. It's canning time, or nearly, but there's just no way I can tackle that job right now - the chaos makes it impossible. I'm itching to bake bread, to make things.. I've got a head full of things I want to get done, but the mess. Oh, the mess. It's days like these when I look at all our accumulated stuff, and I come very close to just chucking it all. One of these days I might actually just do it. I have a feeling that day will be both terrifying and glorious. Until then, I'm trying to work up the energy and focus to tackle the mess and bring it back under my thumb, for the tranquil, blissful 15 minutes that it lasts. Because after that, Maezie will unload her milk bottle on the carpet, Punkin will dump out a box of Cheerios, and Davey will decide that now that the house is clean, it's a great time to haul all the junk in from his car. And so it goes.

Wish me luck, friends, and a healthy dose of grace. I'm 'bout to rassle with the chaos.

Garden update

So much good stuff is growing now! We''ve got vines loaded with plump green tomatoes that should be ripening soon (I'm really curious to try our 'Indigo Rose' tomato - a truly purple variety!), and we've already harvested quite a few peppers, mostly banana and filius blue (a hot, delicious "ornamental"), and squash and zucchini. The peas are going strong after our early spring root maggot setback - I need to go out today and pick a basket of them (glory, hallelujah!), my onions and parsnips are doing great, and the corn is forming up very nicely. The first round will probably be ready to pick right about the time we leave for camp. Again. We planted a late round of corn this past weekend (popcorn and a colored sweet corn called 'Triple Play' that I'm really excited about), and I'll add more beans and squash to the hills as soon as it's up. I also did a small section of bush beans in 4 different varieties.. I'm curious to see what we think of them. I thinned out my carrots this week, and because I can't bear to throw all those baby carrot seedlings away (and only about half of my row of carrots came up), I decided to try my luck at transplanting carrots. I've read that they won't grow as straight, but crooked carrots don't scare me. I also gave up on my celery this week. The plants just never really took off, and the weeds did. I think I started it at the wrong time. It's ok, though. We try again next time and hopefully do better. Still, it hurt a little to watch Davey till them into the dirt. Ouch. But, in happier news, I finally got my herb garden planted - oregano, basil, horehound, dill, fennel, cilantro, thyme, sage, hyssop, borage, nasturtiums, summer and winter savory, pineapple sage, lavender and tarragon so far. I've got room for more, so I'm on the lookout for tansy and any other fun or interesting herbs.  I also started a little flower garden for the girls with zinnias, hollyhocks, sunflowers, cosmos and about a thousand other flower seeds I've had stashed for a while. Many of them might not come up, but they definitely won't if they're still in the package. I pretty much just dumped them all into an empty spot in the dirt. The girls will have fun picking whatever blooms. They love flowers.
And lastly, because I'm an eternal optimist, I started my potatoes. About 2 months too late. We'll see how that works out. OH! And I still need to get my sweet potatoes planted... I never get it all done in time...

Meet Luna!

Hope everyone had a fun, safe holiday weekend. Things were pretty crazy around here. Crazy like good crazy, and not the other kind of crazy. Crazy like we went to the animal sale in Delano, where usually all the really good stuff  is sold by 9:30 am, (oh, and it starts at 9!) and yet, somehow, when we got there at 10:15, there was the sweetest little saanen mix doeling, still waiting for a home (and at a really great price, to boot!). We walked around, looked at everything, talked about the astonishing fact that no one had bought her yet, and how we weren't ready to bring home a goat just now, bought a few other things, and then wandered back around to the corner to see that she still had not been sold. Unbelievable. And then.. and then! Davey (wonderful, wonderful man) looked at me and said... "Well, I guess that's your goat." People, I teared up a little. Not even kidding (haha). I practically ran down the aisle to grab the card from her cage (some other woman was eyeing my goat!) and back up to the table to pay for her before anything could go wrong. I have wanted a dairy goat for so long, and up until recently, I couldn't even get Davey to consider goats, much less actually buy one. We had other plans for our farm money for the year, and goats were further down on the list, after cattle and maybe a greenhouse. But we both thought that it was just meant to be. And, I mean, who could resist that sweet little face?!?

She's still very young, so it will be a while before I get into the milking aspect of having a dairy goat.
I'm also on the lookout for a second goat to keep her company. She's a herd animal, and she needs friends. We learned that lesson the hard way.
For now, though, I'm just enjoying spending time with our new girl. I'm not kidding people, she's like a dog that mows your grass for you. And doesn't try to hump your leg. Love.

fresh strawberries: a love story

Nothing beats fresh-from-the-farm strawberries.

We're absolutely blessed to be surrounded by strawberry growers here. The nearby town of Dayton even has a strawberry festival every year.

This was an especially good year for strawberries. Aren't they just luscious looking?

We finally made it to the pick-your-own farm down the road from us this year. Punkin had a great time helping us pick "apples".

But somehow I still didn't end up with enough strawberries to make any jam. Oh well.. there's always next year!

Mr. Beefy - The conclusion

780

Sorry -  I just can't seem to quit talking about this dumb steer. It's pretty much the biggest thing going on around here right now. Literally.



seven cubic feet of Beefy

Oh my, ya'll. Beefy came back from the butcher the other day, all nicely paper-wrapped and stamped. All SEVEN HUNDRED and EIGHTY pounds of him. For the record, that's a serious lotta beef. I'm still a little giddy over it. Our chest freezer proved to be woefully inadequate, only holding a little more than half of it. I spent most of the morning scrambling to throw out just about everything in our other 2 freezers to make room, and we still needed my parents' upright freezer and 3 coolers. We managed to unload about 250 lbs or so on friends, neighbors, and coworkers, but we still have the chest freezer and the upright freezer full to their tiptops with beef! I wish, wish, wish that I had gotten a picture of the back of the minivan (it took 2 of us over an hour just to unload) - the whole back, from the front seats to the back hatch, was stacked 3 feet deep with little paper parcels. Unreal.  I DID think to get pictures of it in our freezers. I only wish I had also driven over to my folks' place to get a picture of their freezers, too. SEVEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POUNDS.





I had to throw out nearly everything in our freezer to make extra room (but I couldn't bring myself to part with all those chopped bell peppers from last autumn!).





Even Big Ugly had to get in the mix. That's what we call our extra refrigerator. Doesn't everyone have an extra fridge in their kitchen?

There was still an extra couple hundred pounds of meat that wouldn't fit, so we took it to my parents' place, which is fortunately right next door, and filled their upright freezer to bursting, and still had to use 3 coolers to hold it all. That left us with six 2-gallon bags of "dog bones" to do something with. I managed to fit 2 bags of them into 4 soup/stock pots to start cooking down to boullion.  

Doesn't that look tasty?

I'm actually not entirely sure what happened to the other 4. I'm pretty sure one got thrown outside to the neighborhood dogs. I was frankly too tired and overwhelmed to even care about the rest... though now I'm wondering if they're still around and I can make them into broth. I can't help it. I'm hard-wired to find a use for everything.

And speaking of thrifty - I did the math, and at the end of all this, Beefy clocked in at just shy of $1.00 a pound. Shut. Up.

Mr. Beefy - part 4

Our plans to have a neighbor drive Beefy to the processors fell thru, which meant that we had to work something else out, and fast, because we'd had enough damage to our cars already. So. I made some phone calls and did some finagling, and ended up on an early friday morning with 2 friends, a rented trailer, a borrowed truck, and one very suspicious steer. I handed Terry a pitchfork, and Scott a stout stick (you know, to make them feel safer. Ha.) and climbed into the back of the trailer. Beefy really, and I mean REALLY, wanted the grain I was offering, but he just couldn't quite work up the nerve to go for it. He charged and snorted and shied away and came back again for about an hour, strrrrreeeeeeetching his neck into that trailer, until he finally stepped in halfway, and Scott pretty much shoved him the rest of the way in by closing the door on his butt. And then it got really fun. Beefy hadn't been on a trailer since he was a weanling, and he decided it wasn't for him. He bucked and kicked and reared and dang near threatened to overturn that thing. The next 10 miles took us roughly 30 minutes, because the trailer was fishtailing as he threw his weight around in it. Every time the truck came to a stop, he went nuts again, shaking the trailer and the truck. People in the cars next to us at stoplights looked nervous. I think I actually saw someone lock their doors. But, we managed to get him there and off the truck and into the holding pen at the slaughterhouse in one piece.

Now. Right about this time I'm sure that some of you are feeling very sorry for poor Mr. Beefy and all the trauma I just put him through and blah blah blah. So I'm just going to tell you right now: No. He was a jerk. And also to reassure you that he got the last laugh, because when we were done, I had to clean the trailer. 'Cause it was rented, and that's how it works. And oh, people. I wish I had taken photos. I really do. I'm pretty bad about not having my camera around to capture the really great stuff as it happens, or in being just too wrapped up in the moment to think to take a picture. So let me just try to 'splain. There was 2 inches of cow crap all over the inside of the trailer. Have you ever tried to remove a 2-inch thick layer of cow crap from the inside of a livestock trailer with a pressure sprayer? I got cow crap in my mouth! In my MOUTH, people. It was everywhere.  It was so bad that Scott was a perfect gentleman and stood way off to one side while I worked so I wouldn't get any of it on him. And I don't blame him for that for one second. It could have been an episode of that "Dirty Jobs" show. It should have been. In it's own really disgusting way, it was kinda glorious.

Mr. Beefy, Part 3

more on our first beef cattle experience here and here.

I've already discussed how our steer, Mr. Beefy, is the bane of my existence. I look forward daily to the thought of his beefy-ness gracing my plate. I will not be sad to eat him.

We bought a few weeks of peace with him by having him castrated, but the peace was to be short-lived.

One week after castration (or A.C.) he was still pretty mellow. He politely asked for his grain. Frankly, he seemed a little pathetic. And I was glad.

Two weeks A.C., he seemed to be getting his gumption back. He even had the gall to charge the fence once as I walked down to the garden. 4 strands of barbed wire seem mighty insufficient with 1000+ pounds of steer coming at you.

Three weeks A.C., and we were back to business as usual. He snorted, he bucked, he demanded his grain with a wild look in his eye that plainly said that he knew darn well he could take out that fence if he really wanted to. We stopped walking down to the garden and started riding down on the lawn tractor.

Four weeks A.C., it happened. I felt him go thundering by, even as I saw the black and white blur whoosh past the front of the house. "He's out again," Davey said, and went to strap on his boots and work pants. This time I knew exactly why he was out. We ran out of grain a few nights earlier. He wanted his grain and he wanted it NOW. So. I snuck out of the house while he beat the crap out of the grain bin and the lawn tractor and went to get what he wanted. This time there was no 2-hour wrangling. He charged right through the gate after that bucket.. and I nearly peed myself. We closed up the gate, and Davey fixed the fence where it had been pushed down. (That sounds simple enough, but the job included breaking 2 large sticks over Beefy's nose to keep him away from where Davey was working. He finally got the idea.)

After all was said and done, we got to survey the damage:



I'm sexy and I know it...



 And this is just what he did to the van. Davey's car is just as bad. It helps keep us humble.

It's not like our cars were ever beauty queens to begin with, but any illusions of "niceness" are definitely gone now. It was right after this that we learned our biggest mistake was in keeping Beefy alone. Cattle are herd animals, and without a herd to hang with, they get crazy. Clearly.

We live, we learn. And maybe next time we raise sheep.

My early Mother's Day (several days late)

I totally meant to have this post up on Friday night, Saturday at the latest, and now, it's the next Thursday. Life happens, and I'm a sucker for good life. There will be more on the craziness that was this week later, (maybe MUCH later, given my track record). But for now, 4 days late, Happy Mother's Day!

Friday turned out to be one of those really great days. I had some errands to run, but nothing particularly pressing, and the weather was gooooooorgeous. Seriously amazing. The girls and I headed out to the farm market, just the 3 of us, and then I decided that, what the hey, we'd make the drive out to the bigger farm market in Delano (more about that here), just because we could. And because they sell great garden plants usually and I wanted to see what they had. And also because it's one of my favorite places on earth. Especially when the weather is gorgeous.

See what I mean?

It was so gorgeous, in fact, that once we got there, I didn't really want to leave. So instead we had a little picnic in the parking lot.

 

The girls absolutely loved the novelty of lunch in the shade with the van doors open, and I love how easy it is to please this mama and two little girls. 

The farm market in Delano sells homemade baked goods, including pizza rolls, which we devoured before I remembered I had a camera, and this beauty:

 I'm pretty sure it's not Weight Watchers friendly. Oh well.

I made up for it by eating pretty much the whole basket of these. Snap peas are my favorite!

 I really want Davey to build me one of these...

And some day I'd like to have one of these for trips to the market. It just seems right somehow. Even though it would turn a 10 minute drive into a 30 or 40 minute drive... it would be totally worth it.

About half-way through our impromptu picnic lunch, I decided that this was my early Mother's Day celebration with my girls, and it couldn't have been more perfect. Sometimes the best things just happen. I love that.

After our little party, I drove into town to take the girls to visit Daddy at work, and Punkin decided to stay and help the residents play their Friday bingo. I snapped this picture as they were walking away and was instantly struck by how BIG Punkin is getting - that little girl is my baby... only she's not a baby any more! 

Mr. Beefy, Part 2

You can read more about our adventures in owning our first beef cattle here.

Spring sprang early this year. We had decided that Mr. Beefy would go to the butcher when tax returns came back. I am not an April 15th-er. If I get my way, our taxes are filed by the first week of February, and I get antsy as all get out if I can't have them done by the end of February at the latest. This year was no exception. By the end of February we had the money in hand and were ready to go, except for one thing. We heard that bull meat can have a strong flavor*, so it was decided that we would have him castrated, and then wait a month to let him work out all that excess testosterone before we took him to the slaughter-house. I'm not even gonna pretend that I felt bad about it. Frankly, after watching him beat up my van with my 2 precious daughters inside, and go head to head with my equally precious husband, I was perfectly ok doling out some retribution. So we had him emasculated. And I watched with smug satisfaction.
Truthfully, it was pretty fascinating. And I really felt, well, farmy. I mean, we had a large animal vet here at the farm. He talked cattle and told his war stories about old bulls and skittish cows and being gored under the armpit, and wrapped it all up with, " I love it. Never worked a day in my life." YES.
So, Doc managed to get a rope on Beefy, and then, calm as he could be, walked in to the pasture with 1,000+ pounds of angry, snorting cowflesh, and hit him with the sedative. Heart in throat, over here. AND I was holding a stick to wallop him with should the fencepost he was tied to not hold. Fifteen minutes later, Beefy was down, and Doc went to work.
It only took about 10 minutes to do the whole job. Snip and clamp, that's pretty much all there is to it. I texted this picture to Davey when the job was done:

He laughed for a solid 10 minutes when he saw it. Until I started telling him all about how to prepare "mountain oysters" for cooking, anyway. Doc showed me, even though I assured him I had no intention of serving those ....ummm... boys <ahem> up for supper. Still, I like to learn new things, and so if you ever want to know how to fry up a bull's dangly bits, give me a call. I'm told they're quite tasty. I'm going to stop talking about this now.

Beefy woke up an hour or so later. I'm guessing he felt pretty strange. And for a solid 3 weeks he seemed pretty subdued. We thought we had won. We were wrong.


*we found out after the job was done that this step probably wasn't necessary. According to Doc, there can be a stronger flavor, but he's never noticed it personally and most don't. Europeans actually prefer bull meat to steer meat. Next time I think we'll save the vet bill.