Crazy Chickens!

So I get a text last night that maybe one of my chickens has gone to live across the street at my neighbors chicken coop!  Really?  What can I say, you will never believe half of what goes on with those crazy birds.  They are most adorable, very sociable and entertaining.  Better than watching TV for sure.
So, my neighbor texts me a photo and it sure looks like our  Churchy Chicken.  She is an adoptee from our church.  Our church used to have a chicken coop with chickens, along with their community garden.  However, some of the neighbors said they had a rise in rodents and wanted the chickens gone.  Don't they know a chicken will eat rodents, that is after they play with them for a while.
Anyway, the church found a good home for the 4 chickens down the road, away from the complaining neighbors, but this one bird kept escaping and coming back home.  After the third time  this happened, we were asked if we could take her home with us.  Of course we said yes and before we knew it , a box with the chicken in it was waiting at the back of the church.  After mass, we drove her to her new home.  Now she's had a bit of a time blending in with our old girls but the baby chickens (5 months old) have no problem sharing with her.  But Churchy has decided she wants to sleep in the barn with the ducks.  Birds of a feather....not this gal, she is a rebel!
So I thought maybe she wanted a home a bit farther away but this morning when I went out to the coop to let the girls out, all my chickens were accounted for, even Churchy!  Go figure!
I don't know where that chicken came from but she is not one of ours! 
Another day, another nutty story!
Stay Warm, Stay Close to family and Happy Holidays to you all!

Pears Picked before the Polar Vortex Arrives!

Well, the world is coming to an end, at least that's how it sounds if you listen to the weather reports. Today it will be a high of 67 and tomorrow morning it will be 30.  With highs in the 30's expected all week, I had to get out and pick more pears. With an abundance of pears and apples I whipped up a fabulous crumble for dessert last night for dinner:

APPLE, PEAR, CRANBERRY CRUMBLE:
3 cups each, apples and pears, peeled and cut up in bite-sized chunks
1 cup fresh cranberries
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Place ingredients in a large pan, heat to medium and mix until cranberries become soft and pop
pour ingredients in a buttered 13X9 baking pan.  Pour prepared topping over the fruit and bake for 35 minutes or until topping is golden brown.  Serve with vanilla ice cream.


Topping:
1/4 cup flour, for gluten free, use almond  or oat flour
1/2 stick of butter, hardened, cut into small slices
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup old fashioned oats

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, cut in butter until ingredients starts to clump together and becomes small pea-size clumps. Sprinkle over prepared fruit and bake.

Fall Harvest of Fruit At The Farm

We were lucky enough to spend a week in Connecticut, during the peak Foliage Color time.  Everywhere we drove, we were dazzled by the colors.  The photo above is from the field behind my Dad's yard. Spectacular!  I had not seen the leaves in the Northeast for about 20 years.  What a treat!

Then we came home to totally full apple and pear trees and an abundance of veggies waiting to be picked.  With the wonderful cooler weather we have had this summer, our cucumbers and watermelon are still producing.  The apples are big and crisp.  Apple sauce prep this week for sure. We have picked about 40 lb. of apples so far and at least 50 pounds of pears and have hardly made a dent.  If you want a nice Sunday drive, come on out to pick some and take them home.  Bring your own bag, ours are all full!

The baby chickens are now out of their brooder and doing well. They are small but fast and staying away from the adults who try to manipulate them away from the food. They certainly are holding their own and have made friends with the ducks as well.

The kittens are keeping us busy in the house.  A few items got broken and drapes destroyed, but they will soon be spayed and hopefully calm a bit.

I will take new photos of Peekachoo, as his adult colors are coming in.  He now has bright green across his back and his neck and head are royal blue.  He is blazing with color and we are so proud of him.  Later this week I will post some photos of him.

On October 31st, it hit a full freeze.  All the summer plants are gone, now its just a few fall plants left, cabbage, turnip, cauliflower and Spigarella.  I'll replant lettuce and spinach in my cold frame  boxes now. Leaves have come off the trees and Steve is busy with winter clean up.  He will be cutting firewood soon.  Winter is just around the corner.

New babies on the farm!!!

New babies have arrived!  Two 6 week old kittens, we call them Tom & Jerry. So tiny we have to be careful not to step on them, but man, do they have energy.  They run around like mad for an hour and next thing you know, they are sound asleep somewhere. Great entertainment to watch them for sure.

19 new chicks have arrived.  18 day old chicks came in the mail to keep Fuzzball company.  Fuzzball was hatched by our chickens, Mr. Gray is his Dad and the little White and Black chicken is the Mom.  Fuzzball is two weeks old and not too excited to share her food.

Steve came home with a new baby convertible two weeks ago.  This Crossfire has a Mercedes Engine and Steve has wanted one for quite a while.  He's been searching and finally found one in Columbia MO.  He and our neighbor, Bob, drove off in Bob's Crossfire to go pick it up. Boys night for sure.  I am a bit miffed to give up my spot in the garage.  He better clean the other half before winter.

And now the garden: wax beans and cucumbers are going crazy!  I pick about 30 cucumbers every 3 days.  Every weekend I have canned 8 quarts of pickles.  We take cucs to work for lunch everyday.  Too bad this doesn't last all year.
Tomatoes are doing well also.  I planted on 16 tomato plants this year, half as much as last year, because we had so much waste.  I couldn't keep up with them.  I also have fennel, Oriental long beans, still have beats and turnips, but I will pick them this weekend.  Its getting too hot for them now.  Tomatillo's were planted from seeds so they are a bit behind this year.  Hopefully I'll be able to make a batch of green salsa to freeze for the winter.  Eggplant is still doing fine.  I grew oriental eggplant, the long skinny ones for stir fries.  I also picked my first melons, cantaloupe and watermelon.  Fantastic.  So sweet and yummy.

Renovations continue on the house and out-buildings.  Steve has been replacing windows on the house and ordered new garage doors.  Our garage doors on our big shed have gone to the fire pit, so we will replace the ones on the house and move them existing ones to the shed.  Recycling is great.
We also have finished putting our plastic mulch down in between all of our rows of veggies.  It was free from Steve's company, giant tarps, that now cover all the grass and keep weeds at bay.  Again, recycling at its best.  The company was glad not to have to pay to have them trashed, instead just loaded them in Steve's truck.

We have been eating a lot of salads these days.
My favorite is just a bowl of cut Tomatoes, sliced Red Onion, sliced Cucumber, feta cheese and a lemon  vinaigrette with olive oil,  lemon juice, and Greek seasoning.
Yummy!

Green and Growing! Summer is here!

As I said in earlier posts, we got a later start this year.  But cooler temps and lots of rain and helped everything really take off.  This past weekend I picked the ingredients of the basket.  One week earlier I picked the turnips and the garlic in top photos.  The yellow cucumbers are organic white pickling cucumbers.  I made 8 quarts of pickles this past weekend and 4 jars of plum jam from our plum tree.
We have covered all the paths in between our growing rows with plastic mulch that was free from Steve's work.  Giant sheets of woven plastic are used to cover lumber when being shipped.  These make great ground cover and we have plenty.
My favorite summer salad has been my Mediterranean Watermelon Salad.  Recipe is below.
Mediterranean Watermelon Salad
1 small watermelon, cut flesh into 1/2 in bite-sized chunks (about 6 cups)
2 Tbsp. Balsamic Vinegar
2 tbsp. Olive oil
3 oz. crumbled feta cheese
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves (chiffonier)
Place all ingredients in a large glass or plastic bowl, toss and season with salt and pepper to taste. Done! Chill and serve!

Roasted Baby Turnips and Beets
I usually can't wait until my turnips or beets are huge.  As soon as they start peeking out of the soil I have to pick them.  I made a pot roast a week ago, as it was unseasonably cool and here's what I did.
In a Dutch oven, laid  the piece of chuck or arm roast on the bottom of the pan that was smeared with olive oil, sliced two onions and laid them on top of the meat, then after scrubbing the entire turnip and beet (with greens attached) I lay them over the onions, then sprinkle one packet of dry onion soup mix over the top, pour  1/2 cup red wine and 1/2 cup beef broth in pan, cover and roast for 1 hour at 400 degrees, or 15 minutes in a pressure cooker.  Pull our pan and let sit for 10 minutes.  Fabulous!
You can add potatoes and make a whole meal, but we like to add more veggies and less starch.

A Spring French Feast

 Its Spring and I have an itch to cook up a storm.  We invited a couple of our friends over, who appreciate worldly flavors and cuisines.  First we started with Endive stuffed with Marinated Goat Cheese.  I marinated the goat chees with olive oil, herbs, garlic, salt and pepper.  Below is the fish course.  Baked Salmon with Green Goddess Sauce, which was made with Tarragon, Chives, Parsley, Horseradish and a bit of mayo.  The fresh herbs and horseradish really made that sauce pop! A delight in the mouth.

 I served  radishes and baby endives braised in garlic and white wine on the side of the fish.  If you have never tried them braised, try it.  I would suggest just picked fresh radishes, organic of course, then slice them down the center.  Braised in the wine takes away the bitter taste in the greens and gives them a buttery smoky flavor.

 For the main entre I served Coq Au Vin, which is the classic Stewed chicken in red wine.  It was outstanding.  But the best was my  Crème Brulee, I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it because they were gorgeous!  Sunny yellow with perfectly charred sugar on top with raspberries on the side.  Fantastic experiment.  I never made it with duck eggs before.  And I also made a quiche with fresh spinach, bacon and Gruyere, just to have for quick bites.  I make one about every two weeks.  Quiche is great fro breakfast or a quick lunch at work.

Planted and Waiting for Rain

A busy two weekends and we got everything planted.  What a better way to celebrate Mother's Day Weekend but digging in the dirt until exhaustion, then talking on the phone with my sons.  In the photo above we have tomatoes in the back with a few cucumber seeds on the row to the left, vine spinach, fennel and more cucumbers in the foreground.

 In the photo above, we have potatoes planted, (yes, its late this year) and bush and pole beans.  To the far right you see our uncovered hoop house.  The boxes under there were planted in March, so the beautiful veggies in the basket are from there.  Strawberries are ripening as well.  We are harvesting about 1 1/2 lbs. of asparagus every two days.  Radishes, spinach and mustard greens have been yielding well.  The mustard greens we have been using in salad, but I have so much I will cook some as well. I have one bunch of Swiss Chard growing from a stub of a plant from two years ago.  It still has not died and I just picked about 8 beautiful big leaves from it yesterday.  I call it my Super Veggie!

All hens and ducks are happily laying.  We have 7 female ducks laying eggs everyday.  I would have as many chicken eggs each day but a black snake has moved in under the floor of the coop and keeps eating my chicken eggs.  Steve will cover all the holes in the floor and lower walls to make it more difficult for the snake to get in.  I have my pitch fork handy if I see him again!

A Busy And Blessed Easter Weekend!

Friday started the weekend with a trip up north to Legg's Peafowl Farm.  What a glorious morning for a drive.  I picked up Steve's birthday present, a female Indigo Blue Peahen, just a year old, to be a bride for our Peekachoo!  Peekachoo was not too please to be put in a pen with anyone, female or not.  But their honeymoon suite that Steve built is 20 feet by 12 feet for their outside area, which is plenty for a few months.  They need to stay together during the spring and early summer, as this is the mating season and the female would take off looking for a male to mate with.  Peekachoo will be old enough to mate with her next year.  Right now we have to keep the female accustomed to us and our farm.  By the end of July she will be able to cruise the grounds with Peekachoo.  The two peafowl from next door come to visit everyday.  Their female is quite interested in looking at the birds in their pen and the male just struts around and calls out constantly. Its pretty noisy!

The weather is now fabulous, 50's at night and 70's during the day.  I have begun to plant and over the weekend, I picked my first pound of asparagus from the garden.  The strawberry plants took a beating with the drought but they are slowly coming back.  I see a few blooms starting already.
The cold frame box is yielding spinach as well.  I picked my first 1/2 pound yesterday.

While Steve was building the peafowls honeymoon pen, I was taking care of my least favorite chore, cleaning out the chicken coop.  After such a long and cold winter that coop was really full of poop!  4 hours of shoveling and another hour of placing new hay, it now is beautiful and the girls are very happy.  We are getting 7 to 10 eggs a day from our 11 hens.  That's great considering two of the hens are over 3 years old and don't lay very often anymore.

The pear trees are in full bloom and they look great!  Bees are buzzing and the tiny green shoots of plants are looking good.  Monday after Easter, we had about an inch of rain, which helped fill the pond a bit more.  We need another 6 inches or rain, and  hopefully we'll get enough this spring to really fill the pond to keep it from drying out in the summer.

Since Derek is a converted Jew, we made matzo ball soup, with Spinach & diced chicken in the matzo balls, swimming in a saffron onion broth.  We used the fresh spinach and it was fabulous.
It has become one of our Easter traditions along with Lamb Roast and carrot & sweet potatoes roasted with a molasses & bourbon glaze.  Yummy!

Half way through April and its still cold!

Winter just doesn't want to go away.  We are teased with a few nice warm days of 60 degrees or more then Winter pops up again with 30 degree mornings and wind that just won't quit.
I am longing for a nice long growing season, but this year I have not even gotten my onions and potatoes in the ground yet.  My hoop house, which was not covered for winter yet, has 4 large grow boxes.  There I have tiny starts of mustard greens, spinach, a few turnips, a few cauliflower,  lettuce, beets and spigarella (rapa broccoli greens) and some garlic from the fall planting.  So far they have survived two frosts that recently occurred.
The pear trees and apple trees have beautiful blooms this year.  We are happy to see the abundance of blooms after last year receiving no fruit. Although, just a week ago we had bad thunder storms which produced hail the size of peas that blanketed much of our yard.  Luckily it didn't knock off the blooms.  We were lucky.  This is a tricky weather time which one micro burst can destroy an entire fruit crop.

The top photo is our peacock, who when HE was young, we thought we had a female.  I ordered a male to pick up on Friday April 19th, only to find out we had a male and now I need a female.  So I contacted my breeder, who does have a suitable female and will pick HER up on Friday.  I'll post her photo on the next entry.

I just finished reading one of my favorite blogs "The Chicken Chick" who discussed anomalies in egg production.  I thought I would post a recent occurrence of ours.  My Rhode Island Red, who is one of our original hens has these crazy eggs once in while as she is getting old.  The pale beige eggs is a normal grade A large egg and the brown eggs is the size of a tbsp. Cute huh?  I did not use the tiny egg but when I cracked it open, it did have a tiny yolk.

Its Easter this weekend, hopefully we will have some warmth coming our way! 

Polar Vortex Loosening

 

When you have a raging sinus infection and you have to go out to feed your poultry in the barn and chicken coop at 10 below zero, this is fashionable!  Fur and tissue stuffed up your nose to keep it from running.  However, my peacock keeps trying to pull it out of my nose, so I have to be quick!The animals are SO tired of this freezing weather.  Steve and I want to move to Florida!
I have not started any seeds in the basement yet, nor have I ordered anything for this years garden.  Just can't get motivated when its so cold.  I am concentrating on checking propane prices and strategizing my purchases so I don't go broke before the end of winter.  A huge amount of price gouging is going on around here and the companies know who they are.  Now that the kitchen is done and we are cooking with gas, we are worried that it will be used even faster.  But, we monitor prices and buy when its lower and pray for warmer weather!

Another weekend of work done!

This weekend was a short one for Steve, as he had to work on Saturday.  He arrived late in the evening but got up early on Sunday to get started with the plumbing.  He started mapping his plumbing plan of the island, put all the pieces together, cut all the wholes and by afternoon he installed everything.  He took a break in the afternoon to route a bunch of baseboards and window trim so I could prime and paint it all while he was busy working with plumbing.  He also spay painted the hinges for the island cabinet doors.  We want them to match the pewter pulls.
The dark island cabinets have pewter pulls and hinges and the back cabinets,  that are light have the bronze pulls and hinges.  Details, Details, Details that take a lot of time!
 Sunday was a long day then we had dinner with Derek, grilled chicken breasts, roasted asparagus, salad and a rustic berry galette for dessert.  Derek had arrived Saturday with a load of veggies and salad makings.

Monday was Martin Luther King's birthday and our office was closed, Derek didn't have to work too, so we taped off the pantry cabinet area and he sprayed the inside of the pantry door with Chalk-board paint.  We now have a place for Steve to note what food items he is out of or would like for the next shopping trip.  Derek did a great job and it looks great.

I also gave the island cabinet doors one more coat of poly, since they were a bit beat up with all the counter top work going on. Now everything is uniform and consistent in its finish.  They are ready to hang.

Steve will finish the plumbing this week and do electrical for the island next weekend.  Hopefully we can make our first full dinner in the kitchen for the Super Bowl weekend!  I am not holding my breath however.

Kitchen Update

Steve has been working hard this past week.  We are getting so close to being ready to cook in the kitchen, it is getting painful.
Last week he grouted the backsplash and put the final sealer on the back counter tops.  He installed the pot-filler faucet on the back wall.  He installed the flexible gas pipe to be ready to install the stove.
Steve created a plastic enclosure around the island so when he polished the counter tops, the dust would stay within the enclosure.  It sure looked like a Dexter episode was being filmed in our house.
Two nights of polishing and making a lot of dust, then he cleaned the top and added two coats of sealer.  Two more coats will do it.  He also cut the holes in the stone for the faucet and disposal button.
Now I have a lot of cleaning to do, because all the dusty work is finished.
Also, while Steve was doing the polishing and grouting, I was painting all the walls in the living room, dining room and kitchen.  Two coats every where and now just touch ups left.
Today's duty is to paint the brick of the fireplace (a medium gray color) and to clean out all the cabinets with warm soapy water.  I have to remove all the dust from polishing.
We still have to add wiring to the island, plumbing to the faucets and fridge (for ice maker)  a few more shelves have to be installed in the cabinets and the hardware for my pots and pans drawers.
Hopefully by the end of January we at least will be able to cook in the kitchen.
Finishing all the baseboards can come later in February, but I am getting pretty tired of spending every cold evening in the basement trying to cook a meal.

Last Stages of kitchen Reno

Well, it certainly is cold and keeping motivated is not easy, but we plug along.  Steve took New Years Eve, Tuesday off and installed the gas line to the new 6-burner gas stove.  Not an easy job as we had to go from the propane tank through the basement up to the stove, in the kitchen.  All day project, to say the least.

Next day we installed the stainless steel vent hood.  Can't have a gourmet kitchen without one of those.  Not an easy job either as we had to go up through the attic with the venting pipe.  Nothing in this reno is easy!

Yesterday, Saturday January 4th, while Derek and I shopped for more glass tile (accent for the back splash) Steve installed the three new shelves in the pantry cabinet that he built and prepped the back-splash area for tile.  He began installing the large white oblong tiles, that will be our overall back splash and Derek and I worked on the glass tile project.  Steve's idea was to paint, in reverse,  a Fleur de Lys on the back of the glass tile, so when installed, you will see it from behind the glass.  I chose the colors for him to do it like rusted iron, so it will match my island pendant lights that will hang in front of the viewing area.
Derek did an excellent job painting the Fleur, it is exactly how we pictured it would be, or maybe better.

Sunday, up early and after egg sandwiches we talked the tiling.  I assisted with tool finding and painted the last pantry cabinet in which Steve installed in the kitchen, on Saturday morning.  By 4:00 PM we had the pantry cabinet done and all the tile installed.  We are ready for grout.  That will be for another day.  Tile adhesive has to dry well.  The Fleur de Lys is outstanding.  Definitely a feature art piece for our kitchen.
Thank you Derek!