Slaughter Party!

Well it is that time, time to say good buy to some of our animals. Rosie and I are planning a slaughter day for the 26th of march, we will be slaughtering one pig and if we get enough people to help a goat as well and perhaps a few roosters. If you are interested in participating in the slaughter day drop us a email or message and we will let you know more details. Just a word of warning, slaughtering animals is messy, smelly, bloody and can be psychologically traumatizing for some people. A quick outline of the process:

We will start by shooting the pig in the head then immediately slashing its throat to let the blood drain out. Then the carcass will be scalded in hot water and scrapped to get the outer layer of skin and hair off. Then we will split the carcass and begin to part it out. Any organs and extra bits of meat will be used that evening to make sausage. The skin will be dried and used for leather. We will use everything but the oink. This is a lot of work and will take all day.

If that sounds good to you, we would love to have you help. We will have some homebrew on hand and can offer some crash space if needed. Hope to see some of you there.

Bee Catastrophe

It had been raining on and off all of Thursday and when I got home I decided to go check on the animals and see if I can set up some shelters for them. I put some boards for the piggies and set some up for the goats. When I walked over to the bee enclosure I saw that the goats had been playing in there and had unfortunately knocked over all the hives. The supports were still standing so they had just knocked them over. =( There were no bees to be found.

With Aaron's help we were able to bring in all the boxes and I started to ectract the honey that I could and the honey that had already crystalized I just cut up into blocks and put them in the freezer. I'll go ahead and put the rest of the good frames in the freezer to save them for any future bees. I still have boxes all over the living room, but hopefully I'll be able to sort out tonight. Not a good ending to my bee year, but we'll know more for next year.

I founds me some rhubarb!

Last night while picking up supplies to finish some projects around the house I found some rhubarb. Yaaay! I've been looking for some for a few years. It's of the Victoria veriety and I'll be planting it in the front to go with the rest of the perennial plants in the front yard. Now if I could only find some comfrey....

Ice cream!

What happens when a pregnant lady craves ice cream? She researches how ice cream is made and then goes home and makes some home made ice cream. =) You don't need anything fancy to make your own batch of ice cream. All you need is a bowl, some ingredients, a whisk (or something to stir with) and a place to freeze your concoctions.

Basic Honey Vanilla recipe:

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup honey
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Place ingredients into a bowl (that can go into the freezer) and whisk until it is as fluffy/thick as you want it. Place bowl into freezer for 30 minutes. Take bowl out and whisk everything again until it is all well blended. Place bowl in freezer for another 30 minutes. Go through this pattern 3 times and then leave in freezer until fully frozen - about 2 hours. And now you have honey ice cream!

For Jed's mint ice cream we did it slighly different.

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp mint extract

Place ingrients into a medium pot and stir over medium heat until starting to boil. Take off heat and cool mixture in an ice bath or in the fridge. Pour into bowl and whisk until as fluffy as you want. Place bowl into freezer for 30 minutes. Take out bowl and whisk until all well blended. Go through this pattern at least 3 times then leave bowl in freezer until cream fully frozen - about 2 hours. And now you have sugar ice cream!

We'll post up recipes as we experiment with other ice cream flavors. Enjoy!

When blacksmiths get hungry

So I have been trying to work threw my backlog of blacksmithing commissions, and there are a LOT of them. Frankly I am over my head with work. This is the reason I don't take anything up front for my work, I don't want that kinda pressure when I am working. So any way I was working up a storm one day and was getting pretty hungry, which is really saying something as I often forget to eat when I am working (Once I forgot to eat more than a bowl of rice in two days, figured it out when I was getting dizzy and feeling like I would pass-out) so rather than do the smart thing and take a break and have a snack I figured I could combine food with forging. I used what I call my "battle fork", (a high carbon steel fork) to roast some linguica sausages over a lovely 2300-3000 deg. flame. Now normally 2300 deg. is not what you would call a cooking temp. but if you keep a sharp eye out and keep everything moving it comes out pretty darn good. In the future I want to see about getting a coffee pot attachment for my forge and perhaps a small grilling plate.......

The Feast of St. Thomas Valentine

OK not really, but it was a feast on Valentine's day and we did feast on Tom. So I roasted tom in a pretty standard way, a little salt and a little butter/olive oil over the top to baste while cooking and stuffed with chopped onions. Final weight for tom was about 13 lbs and it took about 2.5 hours to cook at around 325 deg. A few things about tom that where a little different from your normal store turkey;

Length: tom was quite a bit longer than a store turkey and a bit narrower. Not a big deal but I had to change my carving technique as the breast was almost 12 inches long.

Fat: tom had a large fat deposit on the upper part of his breast near where the neck is. A very large fatty area, after cooking it was almost 2 inches thick and went from one wing to the other and about 5-6 inches up the breast from the neck. This will go in the pig bucket with the rest of the stripped carcass. Happy piggies tonight!

Flavor: tom was amazingly rich in flavor but not gamy. I was only able to eat one drumstick and Rosie was unable to eat more than a small-ish serving of white meat. The flavor was so wonderful that turkey will continue to be a meat source on our farm for all time.

Texture: I was expecting tom to be much like our chickens, excellent flavor but a little tougher. I was wrong on the latter count. The meat was tender but firm with an excellent texture, I don't think I have ever eaten fowl with such a good texture. Also the meat was very moist (in part from the fat layer I am sure) with none of the dryness some have come to expect from a roast turkey.

The other parts of our feast where mashed potatoes with turkey gravy (made from the turkey neck) sauteed asparagus, Rosie made biscuits and home made ice cream for afters. So in all our first yard turkey was a grand success and we will certinly be having more holliday turkeys in the future. Now I am off to have some leftovers.

Home soap give-away!

Howdy all - I know there aren't many of us on here, but if you would like some home made soap made from the lard taken from our slaughtered piggies (mixed with cloves and cinnamon so you don't have a lard smell) I'll be glad to mail some out to the first 3 people who post. Let me know so that I can send some your way. Cheers! Or if you would rather have a small jar of mustard we can do that too. =) Sharing the love!

Thoughts on planting

There is so much work to be done in regards to the garden in the front and the back. I just want to be able to go and fix the destruction that the animals caused so that I can just plant something again. We do have the artichokes growing in the front, but I would love to have more items that are permanent so that the front doesn't necessarily look like a war zone. I think I'll be looking through my copy of The Complete Guide to Self-Sufficiency to see what he recommends. The book was written for Britain, but some perennials should be fun to grow over here.
I'm also thinking about planting the three sisters where the pigs have mucked up. That might help the soil over there. I noticed that some of the seeds that I threw out did sprout so we'll see if we get vetch, clover, and alfalfa growing in the back.
The waterlogged area that the pigs mixed up really well would work fabulously for the outmost layer of the bread over so I think that after it gets soft I'm going to pile it all up around the bread oven and probably decide to use all of the god forsaken rocks we have in the back to make designs on the bread oven. I cannot think what else to do with a few truckloads full of smallish rocks. Any suggestions for designs?

Progress on the list

Between one thing or another, neither Jed nor I have been able to get much done around the house but yesterday and today we were able to go through a lot of things on our list. Mind you, Tom was not on our list but got added anyways. Dishes are done, laundry is done, kitchen is cleaned(counters cleaned, microwave cleaned, stove and oven cleaned, floors swept), bread is baked, xmas tree was taken down and put outside, xmas ornaments were put away, picked up a new mop, picked up parts to hang the curtains in the bedroom, bottled the mead, picked up some of the front yard, swept dining room, and some others! As soon as I donate items to the good will the living room will be looking a lot more like its old self.
We still have a lot on our list of projects, but just the fact that some of the things are being accomplished is making me feel more productive and happy.
We're supposed to have another week of rain so we'll see how that goes and if it will help out the ground or flood it. We'll most likely have to make some make-shift homes for the sheep and the goats, as well as the pigs, so we'll see what we can do. Yaaay for productiveness!

Dead Tom is dead, Long John shot him!

Uh.... Dead Tom has always been dead, that's why he's called Dead Tom.

Bonus points if you know the reference.

So as others have done before, Tom crossed the line. Tom had been getting more and more aggressive toward Rosie and I over the last few months and the other day it came to a head. I was out feeding the chickens and Tom thought it would be a good time to take a flying leap attack at my head.

That was the last mistake he will ever make.

Now don't get me wrong Tom was not killed out of vengeance or out of anger, Tom had reached a point where Rosie was a little worried about small children in the yard and as you know, at our house personality counts for a lot. So Tom was grabbed and placed on the chopping block, neck placed in the noose and we used a machete to cut off his head. He went quickly with a single chop from a sharp blade. We then dunked his carcass in a tub of hot water (about 120 deg.) to scald him and make the plucking easier. With the exception of the large wing pin feathers the plucking was very easy, much easier than a chicken or a duck. In a little less than an hour Tom went from an angry attacking turkey to slaughtered, plucked and dressed in the fridge with a carcass weight of about 12-15lbs. So for Valentines day Rosie and I will be dining on a roast turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy, home made rolls, and a nice veggie side. I will get some images up in the next few days of Toms' journey from diner to dinner so you can all see the process. I will also see about getting some images up of the lovely roast turkey coming out of the oven, YUM.

The functionality of Tom

So we have this gorgeous Royal Palm tom which Jed cunningly named... Tom. We felt sorry for him because the turkey hens would either beat him up or just ignore him, but he grew on us. The turkeys finally allowed him to sit where they sat and just lately we've seen him trying to mount one of the hens. Unfortunately his idea of mounting consists of standing on top of the hen and not doing anything practical with his male parts. The other day we saw him doing a mating dance... to the bread oven, while the hens just walked away from him. The seemed to be a little embarrassed by him and gave us this look of - Don't mind him, he'll be back to normal in no time. That in itself would have been all right, we can live with poor genetic material as all we want is the personality and intelligence of the hens.. but we need the male in order to get it. Well, lately Tom has decided that he needs to attack children and myself. He tried rushing at Jed the other day just to get smacked on the head hard enough to turn him all the way around. Tom's gotten into the habit of trying to attack me, I can only assume that it is because his hens hang out with me and eat out of my hand, but that doesn't seem to be working out well for him. He keeps on getting beat down and then he cries to the other turkeys because I must be killing him. The other turkeys have to rush over to try to protect him with this disgusted look on their faces and just wait until he decides that he doesn't really want to attack me. I would love to have baby turkeys (aka: Thanksgiving turkeys) but I'm not sure how much longer I can put up with this antics. We'll see how it goes, but as soon as we have baby turkeys... he's on the list with Ramses and Macaroon... and all the roosters.

Uppity Rabbits

I pulled into the driveway tonight to find two rabbits lounging on the spot where I was trying to park. They watched me the whole time I was inching forward but at no time did they ever move. Darn uppity rabbits! I put it in park and just walked to the front door with them watching me the whole time while they chewed some straw.... I hope they have babies soon so that I can eat them.

Piggy parade

When the piggies were still free range they found a way to get into the front yard. Digger was the first to figure it out as she dug her way under the horse gate and decided to dig in the front yard.. then Macaroon squeezed under and ate the strawberries... and then Oreo felt left out after a few days of this so he decided we didn't really need the horse gate and so he just lifted the whole thing off the post and moved it aside so that he could eat and dig up my artichokes, asparagus, and other perennial veggies. As this point it is 3 minutes after I should have left for work in the morning so I did the only thing a rushed pregnant woman could have done.. I grabbed some pumpkins and led them to the back of the yard. I had three skipping piggies following after me; the weight of which ranged from about 400lbs down to 150lbs... I had a neighbor driving by while this was happening and he actually stopped to watch me lead the pigs around the side of the house. I got the piggies to stay in the back and eat the pumpkins while I tried to lift up the horse gate. I can honestly say that I cannot put the horse gate back on the post all by my self so the best thing I could do is just lean it up against the post. Apparently, Jed found them in the front later on that day and decided it was time to make a new pen since they had thrashed everything in the front.

Piggy personalities

Oreo is kind of a simple pig.. he runs around, wags his tale when he's happy, chases chickens, runs to meet you because he's excited to see you, and will try to eat everything in his view.

The one surprise has been Digger.. she's not that simple. She has figured out a way to manipulate her surroundings and Oreo as well.

The other day when I was taking apples out to them Digger was the first one to run over to me and took an apple in her mouth and found out that she really liked the taste. I proceeded to throw apples around their area while Oreo ran over. At that point I threw an apple on the left side of Digger and she turned to Oreo and then pointed to the opposite direction of the apple with a squeal. I swear you could have heard her yell - Look! An idiot! Oreo turns in the direction she's pointing and he runs off in search of the apple. Digger runs back to her apple and runs off to the opposite corner to finish chewing.

*shakes head*

If

The word "if" has a lot of weight around here... frankly I think it has a lot of weight with many farm/ranches...

We were able to plant all our trees and our currants and they looked fabulous... but there's this goat that just figured out how to escape the fenced in area and decided that they are the most delicious things in this world.. what does this mean to my medieval orchard? It means that it is very heavily pruned and that I'm having to coerce them to grow in a very distinctly different form. What does this mean for the goat? Well, since it's Ramses and he's not really doing anything.. I think it might be time for another goat slaughter. Jed likes him, but he is more mad at him for eating my "special" trees.

We'll keep you posted.. we're about ready to just have a mass slaughtering party as the weather is still cold and we're getting fed up with having to make to many accommodations.