Firewood and Hay, Pullet eggs

Last weekend the boys came down from Boise to go help Scott get the first load of firewood. They brought home about four cord for one days work. We use about eight cord of wood in the winter to heat the house.

We got our hay for the coming winter the other day. Pat and Larry came over to help Scott and The Boy got pick it up. Leo grows the best grass/alfalfa blend hay around here. I love his hay. He charges a reasonable price for the area and he is so nice about letting us pay it off a little at a time, and storing it for us until we have it all payed for. The guys take the big trailer over, load it, and bring it home and stack it. It takes about two ton or so per horse to feed through the winter until the grass starts growing and we can turn them out to pasture. 

And now for some gratuitous chicken pictures. 

This little hen likes to eat out of my hand

White Plymouth Rock Rooster

The new Sagitta pullets that we raised up from chicks have started laying their first eggs this week. They are about half the size of the older hen's eggs, but I was ever so excited to see them. I started locking everyone up during the day just to see if they were laying yet, and hiding them from me. On day three I had one tiny, perfect egg in with the big girl eggs. The bigger egg in this pic is actually a smaller egg for the older girls. 

Home Made ButterMilk Waffles, Survivial Bracelet, Wood Box

Scott made a place for me to keep firewood in the house for Christmas. It took a little bit longer than Xmas to get it to the house. He still wants to sand blast it, fix the weld joints, and make it Plum Brown to match the bed he made for me. It holds quite a bit of wood. More than I thought by looking at it. It easily holds enough for a few days. I snapped a photo of it in place in the kitchen next to the wood stove. He has plans eventually for a whole set of tables for the living room. Coffee table, end tables, plant stands, all in the same reed and cat tail pattern. I've very excited. I'm also very lucky to have a husband who is crafty and can build stuffs for me.

 

I have a better picture this morning of Scott's Survival Bracelet.  

 

I made Waffles this morning. I love this recipe.  It's easy to put together. Everything is already in my pantry or my fridge except the buttermilk. I have to remember to pick that up every time I make these. This time I bought enough for two batches, and froze the second batches worth in ice cube trays in my freezer. I'm pretty sure I found the recipe on Alton Brown's site, but I have changed it a little. The waffles are yummy when done. Crispy on the outside, chewy and soft inside. Just the right amount of salty. In fact I eat these plain for breakfast in the morning at work. Just heat in the micro, no butter, no syrup.

Butter Milk Waffles

• 2 cups flour (I used bread flour, that's what was in my pantry)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
•  1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 3 whole eggs beaten
• 2 oz melted butter
• 10 oz butter milk at room temp

Wisk together the dry ingredients. Add in the wet ingredients. Wisk together well till almost smooth. This will be a very thick batter. Almost like cake batter.  Let sit for 5 mins while the Waffle iron heats up. Follow direction for you waffle maker. My batter and waffles came out very yellow because I'm using eggs fresh from my chickens. The yolks are a very rich orange color and oh so yummy.

I picked my waffler up at a thrift store for $2.50. It is forever old. I looked it up online, but couldn't find when it was made. All I care is that it still works, and makes the perfect size to stuff into a small sandwich ziplock baggie. They break into four pieces.

Suasage balls, getting ready for the winter, calves are back, potato soup

I really like this picture. I'm not sure what appeals to me so much about it, but it does. It was taken quite a bit ago. I found it hiding on my camera. The camera has officially died. I'm so hard on them. I'm a clumsy clumsy girl, and I drop things. A lot. This is the camera Scott got for me two years ago for Christmas. It finally won't focus anymore. For a while it had a lens error show up on the screen, but if I turned it on and off a few times, it would resolve itself. No more. /sigh.  I'm stuck taking crappy pics with my phone for a while. I have a few to post today, and a recipe.


The title for this recipe is Sausage Balls. I didn't make it up. It's what they came with.
I pound any flavor you like sausage. I used the mild stuff from our Tasty Pig I had in the freezer
4 cups grated cheddar cheese
3 cups bisquick
2 shakes of red pepper flakes
2 shakes garlic salt

Preheat oven to 350
Smosh and mash cheese and sausage together with your hands. Add the a half cup or so of the Bisquick, the garlic salt, and the red pepper flakes and mash some more. Keep adding the Bisquick a half a cup or so at a time. Adding any more will make it a pain to mix in. As is, it's already tough to work in as you get to the last of the Bisquick. Once the ingredients are all mashed together well, spray a cookie sheet lightly with cooking spray. Roll the mixture in your hands to form a ball a little smaller than a golf ball. I made mine a little bigger than that, but next time I would make them smaller.

Bake in the oven at 350 for 10 mins. My oven cooks a little hotter, so I set them at 340. Take the pan out and flip the balls over. They should have browned on the bottom by now. Back in the oven and bake for 15 more mins.

Tadda

I liked them. Scott liked them. Next time I would not add garlic salt, and instead add just a clove or two of crushed garlic. They were salty enough without adding any. Scott says they are a keeper recipe.

These two shots were taken Oct 31st when Scott and I went up above Princess mine to go looking for a deer on the last day of hunting season. Mostly it was just to go for a ride, and see if the horses would behave while firing a big gun by them.

 Scott took a few days a little while back and on his days off, tore apart my, and his saddle, and gave them a deep, thorough cleaning. They both needed it terribly. 

The calves are back over and Andrea's next door. They spent some time over at BJ's mom's out on pasture, and just were over at our friend's, husband's, dad's pasture getting fat on grass. They are still little buggers, but they are Jersey steer, and those are dairy cows. They grow a lot slower, and have a lighter frame, and less meat than a beef cow. 

We had Lucas with us over the last weekend. We put a huge dent in the wood that needed to be cut, split, and stacked. The pile is a little over eight feet wide, a little over four foot tall, and I'm going to guess twelve foot long -ish. There is the two bottom shelves on the metal shelves by the back door in the garage filled as well. BJ next door let us use the wood splitter he had, and that made it go so much faster.  Lucas would put the eight foot logs up on the jig stand Scott built, Scott would wield the chainsaw cutting them into two foot lengths, and then I ran the splitter and threw them into the back of the bed. The guys stacked them while I pushed the pile out of the bed of the truck.

We fixed the plug on Andrea's trailer when we took the splitter back. The part that plugs into the back of the truck to power the lights on the trailer separated.  "We," meaning Scott.

 

After all that was done we finally took Uncle Mikes trailer back to him. We've had it all summer. It hauled two trips worth of wood, the tractor back and forth, our supply of hay for the horses for the winter, and my truck when the alternator went out. 

Hay all stacked and tarped for the winter.

 Today I'm making Potato Soup. Instead if using chicken stock I'm using turkey stock. I took the carcass from Thanksgiving's Day turkey, simmered it on the stove for 27 hours and used my pressure canner to make canned turkey stock for the first time.

Sometimes I get so caught up

Some days I get so caught up in reading about other people out there in the bog-o-sphere that I run out of time to update about what's going on here. I get in a snippet and a picture here and there and just gloss over what's going on.

Life has slowed down on the homestead with the coming of winter. The garden in done producing and I'm looking towards what I'm going to do with it next year. What changes I want to make, what to plant and what not to do again. Placement changes and variety changes.

The kids are gone. The boy is back with his Mom. Teh Spawn has gone to live with her Dad. It's quiet around the house when Scott is gone to work. No one to do the chores for me. No more slave labor. You'd think with the kids gone there would be less mess. Dinners for Scott and I still have to be cooked. I still bake bread once every other week or so. The dishes still pile up. Laundry still has to be done and put away. It just takes a few days longer to get there. Two days ago it finally felt like they were gone. Most of the time it just feels like they are just in town... at school, at a friends... The atmosphere almost feels like they're going to walk in the door any time. They still have stuff and belongings in their rooms. I find bits and memories here and there. I think I just spent over an hour going through the SD card on my camera looking over pictures I've seen before when one kid or the other had  control of the camera. I found photos and vids I had missed seeing before. It makes me sad. It still feels like they are just going to come tromping through the door, loud and boisterous.

My surgery is done and over with again. Three in the space of a year. Bowel resection, removal of a cyst and my right ovary. This time it was a huge cyst and removal of my left ovary. I feel like putting in a zipper. This was the first planned one though. Waited two months for it so I could try and get through the busy summer shave down season at work. I'm back to work now. They were able to do this surgery laproscopically. Less down time. Less recovery time.

The hot flashes have started. They started in the first week after I was home. Scott shared his head cold with me. This week I've felt like I was either getting frostbite when the fever was coming on, or I was going to spontaneously combust from the hot  flashes and burn down the house. The cold is finally leaving my system and I don't feel like passing out on the couch as soon as I get home from work.

Irrigation season is over for the year. No more moving the horses from pasture to pasture to keep their feet dry. We were bringing them up onto the dry lot in the evenings and letting them out on the grass during the day. Ben gets fat just from the fart of a near by blade of grass, there was no need to leave them out full time. I went out the other day and opened the fence between the short pasture and the one out in front. The hose will stretch to the short pasture and I can water them there.

We had to sell Patches, Scott's mare. It made me so sad. The bills were pilling up, and it was looking seriously like we weren't going to be able to get out from under them in time to buy hay for all three of them. A guy from Vegas drove up and bought her. I guess his girlfriend had a horse that looked similar to Patches when she was younger, and just had to have her. More power to them. She was marked so beautifully, but she was not a good ride. I hated having to get rid of her though. She was Scott's first horse he owned. It killed me to put up the adds. I put it off every chance I could thinking there surely was a way to make it all work without selling her. I know it made Scott nuts that I kept saying I would do it, and then never followed through. I just kept hoping though.

Why her instead of one of the boys? Ben is pushing 23 or 24. There was no one in their right mind gonna pay money for an unregistered horse that old. I thought he was only 18 when I bought him three years ago, and the only reason I did was he was dirt cheap and I knew the kids could manhandle him into going where they wanted to. That and I couldn't make him spook no mater what I tried, how I hung half way out of the saddle, or what I rode him over. Apache was my other choice, but again... unregistered, been lame on and off for a while, and he's small. He carries me fine, but Scott won't ride him because he feels he's too big for the little guy. So Patches was the only choice. I knew with the pattern she had, someone would give me money for her.

Tasty Pig is back from Scarrows and in my freezer.

Tasty Pig

We've eaten the sausage, bacon, ham steaks, pork steaks, brats, and tonight I made bone in pork chops. She lived up to her name, and was mighty Tasty. I'm very happy with the way this tastes compared to what I can buy in the grocery store. Does she taste better because of all the hard work Scott and I put into the building, raising, and feeding we did? dunno, but the outcome is the same, and I'm pleased with that. 

Finally got around to smoking the trout we caught earlier in the year. It was dinner along with some of the corn put away from this year's garden. I liked it so much I took some to work for lunch the next day. I never got time to sit down and eat it, so it became dinner two nights in a row. If I hadn't made pork chops for Scott and eaten shortly after he left, it would have been dinner again. 

Smoked Trout

Scott's been talking for a while about painting one of the walls in the living room as an accent wall. We (meaning he did it) finally got around to getting it done. It's a nice sagey green. It goes with the couches and the blanket I crocheted last year.  I really really like it. 

The new color on the east wall

It's also that time of year to start heating with the wood stove. It was getting just cold enough to turn on the heater at night, but with my hot flashes I kept it off. Scott would come home to me sound asleep, the window in the bedroom open, the ceiling fan on high, and it only being 65 degrees in the house.  :)  So he got down to cutting some wood. This year I learned my lesson though. Teh Spawn was so good helping split wood last year. We split it, and split those pieces into smaller pieces. Really we had glorified kindling when we were done with it. Good thing we didn't do the whole lot. just a good portion of it. I didn't know it was going to burn so fast that small. This year, if there is any chance I can cram it into the opening of the stove, it doesn't get split, just stacked whole.

Gir and the cut logs

There is just something about the feel of the heat a wood stove puts off. It's a totally different feeling than walking into a house with the heat set at 70, or even 72. I do have to crank the heat up till it's 76 in the front half of the house to warm the bedrooms. We still need to attach a blower to the back of the stove. One of the projects still in the works. 

Yay Fire

The only time you will see Fudge let a Bastard lay next to him.

Ashley taking advantage of the heat on the other side. See the pretty green wall? Don't mind the remnants of the mess from paining

Such a slacker

I've gotten caught up in my game. The Star Wars game. It doesn't consume every waking moment of my day, but I find myself less going through other blogs, or updating this one. Last Wed I did Patches and Apache's feet. Patches actually have decent, almost normal looking hooves now, instead of the under slung, flared out messes she had when were got her two years ago. I've been trying to to the barefoot trim on her, and do it myself. The results are really good. I wheeled 15 wheelbarrow loads full of wood from the wood stack next to the driveway, into the garage, and filled two shelves so I don't have to tromp outside, fight with a tarp and/or wind, rain, snow, dogs, cats etc, just to get a few logs for the fire.

I'm working in wool for the very first time. Scott and I went to Michaels and I did the unthinkable. I payed way too much for mass produced wool. I know I could have gotten it off the net, and prolly from someone over on the Homesteading Today forums, but I was there, and I "Had to have it NOW." Scott picked out the color. Brown and white twist. He requested a hat. This stuff is not as easy to work with as the acrylic. It's not twisted as tight, so I end up snagging with my crochet hook. It's smaller diameter. I'm using a tiny hook compared to what I'm using on the blankets. I get discouraged easily because I don't see me making as much progress as the blankets from the smaller hook. I'll keep at it though. It doesn't stop me from wanting to do eight more projects in wool. I'm also working on the blanket for my nephew. I'll have to get pics.

I need to stick to kindling

So in an effort to do some work around the house, and work on some upper body strength, I decided to try and split some of the logs we didn't get to when the log splitter was here. Ugh. I am not strong enough, or coordinated enough for it. I thunked the handle into a log with the axe part off the side. I hit the side of the axe into the wood. I thunked the damned thing right into the log, and just dented the top. It was rather funny actually to watch. I kept splitting just a thin sliver off the side of the log. A few I actually hit just right, perfect in the center, and split the log. It was not a pretty site. I made Teh Spawn take pics, since I'm always taking pics of them working around the house. Try not to laugh too hard.

 Hitting with the handle instead of the head

Splitting a piece off the side

Oh look, another slice off the side

Good weather is over

Forty One degrees, rainy, windy. Cold is here. Jess spent one of the last few nice days splitting wood. Scott and Jess had cut up a bunch of logs into rounds, and we borrowed a hydraulic splitter from a neighbor. Jess ran the splitter, and I pitched splits into the truck, made another pile, and brought rounds for her to split.

 

This morning Dave's horses behind us were out. Scott found them when he pulled up from work. They didn't go far, just eating grass shoulder high on them, on the side of the drive. He got one caught by the flymask, and the other two followed and bolted into the short pasture. I bundled up in my Carharts, and went out to help case them down. They were caught in the pasture, but in no mood to be caught up. They ran, they bucked, they acted like they hadn't seen a person before in their lives. Scott got a bucket of grain and suddenly they were ready to be caught. They ran and bucked like wild things again after we turned them loose out back at Dave's again.  Jess and I had to bundle up again later and go lash down the hay tarps again. The wind has been crazy here for two days. So I decided hot, fresh bread sounded wonderful. It's in the over as we speak. Another twenty mins and yummiE.