Apple pie

Here is the recipe for our apple pie:

For crust:
3 cups of flour
1 cup of cold butter (you can also use lard but do not use margarine)
cold water to appropriate consistency

Place butter and flour in a bowl. Using two butter knives (or a pastry cutter) cut the cold butter into your flour until it looks all crumbly. Try not to have any of your butter/lard pieces bigger than the size of a pea. Add a little cold water and start pressing down to form layers. As the flour blends bring up flour from the sides and the bottom to press down. Continue until the consistency is hard but blended. You do not want it to be wet or soft. If the butter/lard is getting warm place it back into the fridge and prepare your apples.

For filling:
4-5 good sized apples (enough to fill your pie pan) - firm and not mushy but not unripe
honey
cinnamon
ginger
nutmeg
mace

Peal, core, and thinly slice apples. Place apples in a small dish to marinate with other ingredients. Add honey (I add enough to coat all the apple pieces) and as much or as little of all spices. My normal quantity is more of cinnamon (about 1 tbsp), a little less of ginger (about 1 tsp), a little less of nutmeg (about 1/4 tsp), and just a sprinkle of mace. Cover and set aside to finish preparing pie crust.

Bring out your pie pan and preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Split dough in half and roll out first half on a floured surface. Make the crust big enough to cover all of the bottom of the pan and still have about a half an inch draping over the sides. You can do this by rolling out a large section, placing it in pie pan, and then cutting off any excess. Place your filling ingredients into your pie pan. Roll out the second half of the dough so that it covers the top of pie with another inch hanging over the sides. Again, you can do this by making it a little bigger then cutting it off to fit. Take the extra inch and tuck it into the pie pan so that your folding it in over the bottom crust. Once all of the crust is tucked in (it should be a little mounded along the whole outer edge) take your thumb and first finger of your left hand and the first knuckle of your right hand to seal the crusts together and the make a shaped edge. (place your first finger and your thumb of your left hand on your right first finger knuckle to make a <) Once edge is sealed make four cuts on your crust to let the excess bubble out. Add any decorations you would like to your crust using the left over crust.

Place in oven and bake until the crust starts to brown on top. Once it starts to brown lower the temp to 350 and bake for another 35 mins. Take out your pie and let cool. And then... enjoy!

Intro for our ram - Casanunda

We've been thinking about breeding our sheep for a while since we like the thought of mutton and the wool is awesome (even though Ivan hasn't given me enough time to actually start processing it). Well, I found a 4 month old Shetland ram on craigslist for a very reasonable price so I went to go pick him up. The thing is... he's Shetland which is one of the smallest breeds. Mind you they are endangered and they are a heritage breed so we thought it was a win for us to help the species on a bit. Well, when I brought him home my first thought was... I'm going to need a step ladder for him. Really, he is that short. About 1/2 the height of the other sheep, granted that he is not full grown yet but if he does not put on few inches the other sheep will have to start laying down to breed. On the plus side he has a calm demeanor nice wool and cool black curly horns. Due to his short stature and his adoring affection he showers on the sheep we decided to call him Casanunda, after the dwarf character from Pratchett. If you are a disc world fan you will understand. So with any luck (and perhaps a step ladder) we will have some baby lambs running around the farm in the near future.

Welcome surprise - watermelons

It turns out that watermelons love Paso summers. We had moon and star watermelons in the front and volunteers in the back that covered a whole great big area, gave us tons of watermelons and helped improve the soil. We'll be doing that again next year to have tons of nummy watermelons for the whole summer.

Front yard harvest

As with last year, our front yard was able to produce a lot more than was allowed in our back yard. This year we were able to get a ton of cucumbers (Armenian and green), watermelons, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, bell peppers, different types of chiles, a dozen apples(there wasn't supposed to be any... I tried to cut them all off so that the tree could just grow this year), lots of black raspberries that I didn't get to can because I kept eating them, a bunch of grapes, tons of artichokes and asparagus and some other things... now that I look back on it, we actually did pretty good. I was starting to feel like a failure for not being able to plant out as much as I wanted... but I guess we actually did pretty well.

We also have corn that is ripening and some eggplant coming in. Zucchini is also coming in and some of the beans survived the great bunny devastation. We've harvested basil for pesto and herbs for cooking.

On the possibility of baby goats

We bred Bugger to Mr. Pee-pee face in late spring/early summer. At first she seemed to be carrying, but then it looked as if she wasn't so we just assumed that she wasn't pregnant. But as Jed and I noticed yesterday, her utters seemed to have elongated and her milk ducts seem to be filling in. Sooo, our little girl might be pregnant and she might be getting to deliver some time soon. If so, that means milk (Yaaay! even though I would be unable to drink any due to Ivan.) and more baby goats. We haven't noticed any difference in Uni-goat so we'll see if we might just have to get her bred again. And as an update for those who don't get to visit often. Here is the update on our goats: Big goat - eaten, Ramses - eaten, Rosie - donated to neighbors for letting us breed our goats to their Mr. Pee-pee face, Bugger - still on the homestead and possibly pregnant, and Uni-goat (previously Lucy) who is probably not pregnant but who we hope to breed soon. We've also decided that we wish to keep our number of goats on the property pretty low as they have a tendency to be the most destructive to our plant life. So we'll be keeping our number down to 2 does, depending on how much milk they give us.

Homemade pectin

I was able to pick a lot of unripe apples from my brother's trees during their early drop. These apples are great for making home pectin for when all the fruits are ready to be canned. Here is a recipe for making homemade pectin.

For pectin:
Ingredients:
Unripe apples

Take your unripe apples and quarter them. Make sure there aren't any worms or borers in your fruit. You don't need to wash them if they were in a good environment. If you're not sure what kind of an environment they were in I would suggest your at least rinse them. Place in pot and add water until it is about 1 inch from the top of the apples. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring it down to a simmer and let cook until the meat of the apples is separating from the skins. Let cool completely, then mash. Put through a strainer or use a towel. Squeeze most of the meat out as you need the liquid and the meat.

Just make sure that your liquid is cloudy and you now have pectin. Store in a container in the fridge or use.

LET MY PIGGIES GO!!!!!!

Said Piggy Moses to Farmer Pharaoh....

Anyway....

I read recently from someone that animals on a farm can not be happy because they are not in the wild.

Now let me say I agree with this 100%!
I have included a picture of two of our pigs to prove this point.

Now let me point out the bigger pig (Digger) notice the rolls of fat under her chin and behind her leg, obviously a condition relating to her chronic starvation and cruelly high level of stress. I mean seriously, how long can one pig stand to spend her days eating, sleeping and lounging in her mud wallow?!

Now on to our next image of animal cruelty, the little pig (Squeaker AKA Little Squeaks). Don't let her napping fool you, that one cocked ear is always on guard for the cruel farmer coming to unfairly load food into her trough or even (dare I say it?!) scratch her on the back and behind the ears. Note the piggy smile on her face, this smile comes from the satisfaction of knowing that someday in the piggy afterlife her sadist masters will have to answer for their abominable crimes and suffer the endless torments of piggy hell.

Sarcasm off.

I hope I have made my point, saying that animals can only be happy in the wild is like saying that humans (also animals) can only be happy living half way to starvation in caves and running from leopards while dying of infection (our natural state). There is nothing wrong with animals in the wild, but to idealize "The Wild" as some sort of non-stop animal nirvana is the utmost of ignorance. Living in "The Wild" means a harsh, short, painful life of kill or be killed and that is why humans (as I said before, also animals) live in houses and cultivate our own food. The animals on our farm have the opportunity to benefit from our civilization; they receive more food than they would in the wild, better housing, better medical care, no predators and more often than not an opportunity to pass on their DNA.....Jeeze farm life is tough for our animals.

We value our animals as part of our family and as such give them every opportunity to live the happiest life we can give them. If you doubt our animals are happy and content, I would invite you over to the farm to see for your self. Granted you may get bowled over by the friendly 200lb dog, mobbed by the turkeys looking for a snack, charged by goats looking for a little petting, savaged by pigs who want a back scratch, or have your shoulder ravaged by a chicken hopping up on it to see what you are doing. But if you have the fortitude to stand all that, we will pour you a glass of home brew, fire up the BBQ and the bread oven and you can spend all day trying to find the unhappy animals. Ya.... Good luck with that.....