Feeding us with stuff that Doesn't come from the grocery store.

My garden is in full swing. I have green tomatoes ever where. All my tomatoes have grown into one giant plant. I have little yellow squash poking out from giant umbrella leaves all over. The cucumbers have little teenie cukes starting to grow behind the flowers that haven't wilted away yet. The corn is above my head. Beets are doing their beet thing and want to become pickled beets for the hubby. My cauliflower  is almost ready to harvest and I'm sorry I didn't plant rows and rows of it.

Last night I pulled radishes right out of the ground, brought them in, washed them well, and hit the mandolin to them. I sauteed them in butter and olive/canola oil blend till the edges were starting to turn brown, then threw in some salt, minced garlic, and the sugar snap peas I picked and had in the fridge. It all had a wonderfully sweet, nutty taste, and even the hubby thought the side dish was a keeper.

Tonight we're having ground beef browned with sliced banana peppers, sugar snap peas, eggs, and cheese. The cheese is from a local company, the eggs, peppers, and peas from my yard. Next year the beef will be from the steer I'm raising.

I'm trying my had and making my first pie that didn't come from the frozen section of the grocery store. I go down to a local dairy a friend owns every night at 6:30 and pick up the milk they have left over after feeding calves. This is for my piggies to grow fat and strong and tender on. Tonight his mom asked if I wanted a box of apricots. They were from a friend of her's tree. My neighbor's tree hasn't started fruiting yet, so I said of course. I found a recipe that looked good on the internet, and away I go. I'll let you know tomorrow how it turns out.

Apricot Pie

SERVES8

• ACTIVE TIME:25 MIN
 
• START TO FINISH:4 1/2 HR (INCLUDES CHILLING DOUGH AND COOLING PIE)

ADAPTED FROM COMFORT ME WITH APPLES BY RUTH REICHL

FEBRUARY 2008

• Pastry dough
• 2 lbs fresh apricots
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

• Preheat oven to 400ºF with rack in lower third.
• Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin into a 13-inch round. Fit into a 9-inch pie plate. Trim excess dough, leaving a 1/2-inch overhang. Fold overhang under and press against rim of pie plate, then crimp decoratively. Chill pie shell in freezer 15 minutes.
• Meanwhile, pull apricots (with skins) apart into halves, discarding pits. Melt butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, then stir in sugar, flour, and nutmeg and remove from heat. Cool mixture until firm enough to crumble, 10 to 15 minutes.
• Put apricots in pie shell and crumble butter mixture over them. Bake pie, with a foil-lined baking pan on rack below it (to catch drips), 10 minutes.
• Reduce oven temperature to 350ºF and continue to bake until top is golden, 50 minutes to 1 hour more.
• Cool pie to warm or room temperature on a rack.

Hollywood movies with corn fields are full of baloney

I've watched movies with some damsel in distress trying to get away from the axe wielding manic, by running through a corn field. What a load of horse turds! Have you ever even Been in a corn field? Bah. We have a little patch of corn growing in the back of the garden. That stuff shot up like crazy in the last two weeks. Along the edges is still shorter than I am, but in the middle that stuff is taller than the hubby, and he's just over 6ft tall. Well Idaho weather being what it is, two evenings ago, just before sunset, this monster down draft of wind smacked into our house. One minuet Teh Spawn and I are sitting on the couch chatting with friends on Facebook, and the next we hear the wind pick up and start wooshing through the trees. The wall of dust hit, and I could see out the living room window, all my poor corn plants that I have been so proud of start to blow over in the wind. Idaho, being what it is, fifteen minutes later the wind died down and was gone.

I went out to look over the damage. Right in the center was the worst. Some of the corn was bent over, almost onto the ground, just it's neighbor stalks keeping it upright a little. Row after row pushed over. Hoping I could stand it back up I got to work. Out there in the dying light, mosquitoes making me into a sundown snack, I lifted corn stalks back up, and tried to tamp around the base with my flip flop to make them stand again. I made the mistake twice of trying to go back up between a row I'd just stood up instead of walking around the outside back to the front of the rows. That stuff is sharp along the edges of the leave. The leaves want to whip across you eyes, cheek, shoulders.  I was just walking and though, oh I don't want to do that again. My rows are more or less a wide enough for me to walk through. I wanted to be able to get in there and weed. The corn is planted more or less ten inches apart down the row. Have you ever really looked at a field of filed corn? That's the stuff for animal feed, not sweet corn. That's what they grown around here in all the corn fields. The rows are planted a ton closer together than my little garden plot. They don't space them at ten inches either. It's more like four. They pack in as much as possible, in as small an area as they can. That and the darned wind around here would knock it flat to the ground without neighbors to help hold it up. Try running through a field of that stuff. You'd get sliced to ribbons in the first five steps. 

My rooster is a dud

None of my chicken eggs hatched that the Traveling Chicken was tending so patiently. Every day, two or three times a day, I walked up behind the house and squatted down where Miss Traveler had her nest. I wore a flat spot on the ground from being out there so much. Sometimes I'd get home from work just a little bit early, and she'd be back up against the house with the other girls hunting spiders and other random bugs, or taking a dirt nap. I'd get to see the eggs without having to gently lift her backside. I waited and waited. The eggs never hatched. All 14 were duds. Twenty one days came and went. Then twenty three. My neighbor talked to the man we hers and my chickens from and he said give it to twenty eight days. On day thirty I gave up. I picked up one of the eggs and gently shook it. I could feel something shifting about. My curiosity got the better of me and I tapped the shell with a stick and cracked it open. All that was in there was yolk. It looked like scrambled eggs after you mix them up and before you put them in the pan. Sure enough I shook all the other eggs and they all felt the same. Something sloshing about inside. I pitched them all. The whole thing made me sad. I wanted to hear the little peeping noises as the chicks started to hatch. The momma chicken making her, "I'm talking to my eggs," noises. See the little buggers emerge from under all momma's feathers in the morning. Watch her teach them how to scratch, hunt, and peck out in the yard. Dammit, I wanted to raise some chickens. I feel cheated. I have to get a new rooster. I knew Hitler Rooster was retarded, but I really like him. He does the weird Nazi soldier march when he walks. His head tilts off to the side a lot. He lays down in front of the pan to eat his scratch. I know I saw him get up on the hens a few times, but he promptly fell off. I hoped he was doing his thing, but I guess not. He's a very nice roo for being a little weird. He doesn't harass the hens. He doesn't pull out all their feathers being too amorous. He's not mean to people even if he does have almost four inch long spurs. He lets you walk right up to him. I hope I can find a nice roo that won't be a bully to Hitler or the hens. I do want to get a fun colored roo. All my hens and Hitler are black. 

Waiting on a chicken, Teh Spawn works on the truck

Sunday was 21 days that we noticed the Traveling Chicken sitting on eggs. They still haven't hatched. I tried bringing one inside in the dark bathroom and shined a flashlight through it. I did see the ring at one end that was very light with the air bubble, and most of the rest was dark, with a darker side. If I read right this means there is something growing in there. I think I go out there three, four times a day and just hunker down and look at momma sitting there giving me the stink eye. She still gets up off them in the heat of the afternoon and goes and hangs with the other chickens back behind the house. That's when I get a good look at the eggs. No cracks, no pips. I've tried tapping them with my fingernail, and don't hear any return peeps. I was getting very sad face. Andrea next door talked to the guy we got them from and he said that I should wait 28 days for a hatch, not 21-23. This gives me hope still. Otherwise what do I do with them? Feed them to the pigs? When do I tell the Traveling Chicken enough, and keep pitching her off the nest? 

Teh Spawn wants to be a mechanic in the Air Force. I think it's great. Her older friends got her interested in turning a wrench and getting greasy. I remember when we were little and it was Dad's turn to entertain us for the day. e'd pack up all four of us and take us down to the body shop he worked for. We all got a handful of wrenches and sent off in back to the bone yard to take apart whatever we could get loose. I still love the smell of Bondo. The oil in the Ford needed changed and Teh Spawn decided she was going to be the one to do it. With little instruction from Scott she did it all her self. She also pulled off the right rear tire, and she and Scott worked on the brake caliper. I've had this rattle in my hind end of the truck. Turns out one of the bolts holding the caliper together had backed out, and was missing, and the other was working itself out. This morning I took it in and had to have the front end aligned. All better now.

Fudge the potato with legs

 One of my girls

 Piggies are getting big

Patches got a bath, feet trimmed, then off to the arena for some much needed work.

Fluffy pancake chickens and pigs misters

I have six chickens and one rooster. They were pretty sorry looking when they got here. The rooster had been amorous and pulled out some of the hen's feathers. They were picking at each other and pulling out more. On top of all that they were moulting, so they were pretty ugly. The saddest looking one was a little hen I started calling the Traveling Chicken. She was always off somewhere away from the rest. See her over there behind the house. Now she's out back with Dave's horses. Five minutes later, and she's watching me weed the garden. The other girls and the rooster pretty much just hang out together. First they were over out back by the rabbit hutch they lived in before the Chicken Condo was done. Then they mostly stayed out by the Condo, or out back in the shade under the hutch. This crazy little hen was everywhere.

 Now I've been saying that I'm only getting like 2-3 eggs a day because the girls are all still growing their feathers back. Turns out I was wrong. I thought I'd actually lost the Traveling Chicken. She usually came running when I threw out feed in the morning, or took out crusts of bread, or weeds from the garden. No Traveling Chicken. Did she wander far enough out that she got lost? Did she go to far from somewhere she could get under cover and turn into a hawk's lunch? Did the cyotes I can sometimes hear off in the distance turn her into a midnight snack?

Then Ashley, the beagle mix found her. Right out back is a Russian Olive tree. Some of the branches hang towards the ground. There are a couple of big rocks scattered around the base. Here's Ashley snuffling and she starts barking in the low branches. So off I go to see what she's found. I found the Traveling Chicken. I thought for sure she was dead. She was flattened to the ground in a little hollow like a feathered chicken pancake. Her eyes were opened, but I just knew she was a goner. But then I poked her and she Growled at me. What the Crap?! Now she's even flatter, puffed out more and refuses to move.

I've seen this before. The neighbore has a chicken thats gone broody. I had to take care of the critters while they went camping and this fluffy broody kept stealing the eggs the other chickens were laying and wanted to hatch them. She had the same fluffy pancake thing going on. Sure enough, I carefully lift Traveler's butt and she has a whole mess of eggs under her. I was tickled to death. She must have ten or twelve eggs under her. I debated picking her up and moving her and her brood into the condo, but obviously she didn't want to be in there or she would have her clutch, and any other eggs the other girls laid. Then I thought about moving her into the rabbit hutch. I know shes not going to go far from those eggs for the next 23 days. Scotty said she wanted to be right where she's at, so why not leave her? He got her a pan of scrathc and cracked corn, and it's right where she can reach out her neck and eat. Ashley I was a little worried about harrassing her, but she runs over every time we go outside to make sure the momma is still where she belongs. The cats aren't bothering her, and I'm counting the days till be have little fluffy yellow chicks. Or black fluffies. I guess I should look up and she what the chicks should look like.
                       

Speaking of chickens, I saw the funniest damned thing the other day. I like to go out with my Knidle, sit under the tree by the Condo, and watch the girls scratch, hunt bugs, and eat weeds. Ashley is the biggest mouse and vole hunting dog that ever lived. She gets more of those buggers than the cats do. So two days ago, I'm sitting out there reading and here comes the dog with a vole hanging out of her mouth. She likes to bring them to me so I can she what she got, then eats them. Well she drops this dead vole, and one of the girls caught sight of it. Quicker than Ash can blink that hen ran in snatched the vole up and ran off. The other girls saw her trying to peck something on the ground and ran over to steal her tastey morsel. It was too big for the first girl to swallow whole so she kept snatching it back up and running off with a five other hens in a line behind her. Everytime they lost intrest she dopeed it and started pecking at it which started the got the other girls intest again and started them chasing after her with the vole in her beak. I sat and laughed and laughed.

Scotty has been talking to other people he knows at work, and friends about the piggies. Around three pounds a day is what they should gain he was told, but when it's really really hot out, we can expect them to not want to eat as much and slow down a little on the growth. He got recomendations to make a cold water mash with their feed. He saw on the website for the hardware store a five nozzle, inexpensive misting sytem. So now the pigs have a mister system to help beat the heat of the day.

We spent all day yesterday fishing. Started at Ritter Island in the morning. Hit Niagra springs till it got hot. Tried Billingsly creek, but it was a moss and weed infested little irrigation ditch, so back to Niagra. I caught my first big trout in Idaho. I got two more small ones. The boy got a few, and so did Scott. We ended up with seven trout we brought home. Gutted them when he caught them, and I whacked off thier heads when we got home and vaccume sealed them into the freezer. Scotty wants to try out his smoker with the fishes. I'm excited to try it.

Mrs. Jones, how does your garden grow?

The calves are off the replacer milk, and very happy each day to see their grain and hay. Our calf doesn't have horn starting yet, but Andrea's guy has little nubbies poking through. Trimmed feet on Patches and Ben last week, but I still have to do Apache.

Chigs and Pickens

...As Scott calls them. Everyone is in their little houses now. Scotty got my chicken condo, the pig auto water, and the feeder done. I still have to paint daisys and peace signs on the condo, but I'll wait for Teh Spawn to get back from Arizona. The garden is still growing carpets of weeds. I went out like an idiot today in a sports bra and shorts to do my morning weeding. I thought I'd work on getting rid of the hillbilly farmer tan I have going on. My arms and face are nice and tan. My cheeks all rosey. And..... it all stops and my shirt sleeves. So out I went a weeding. I spent two hours out there bent over on my hands and knees pulling fistfulls of weeds. I do that all the time. Unfortunatly I didn't think of all that untanned white skin across my back and shoulders. All that white skin that is now a bright cherry red. And Tender. Moron... /sigh. Of course I can't really reach it either to put lotion on it, and Scott works tonight. I didn't even realize I'd done it till later this afternoon when I came in to shower all the dirt and mud off my shins and knees. I got this flash of red from the mirrow out of the corner of my eye, and thought, "Good googly moogly, thats going to hurt like a bitch later." Yeah, I was right. The worst part is that I have a brand new can of spray on sunscreen sitting right there on the counter.

So onto the pic spam. I love taking pics of the goings on around here.

The chicken condo started with this...

and this

Starting to put the kennel together while...

Putting the last coat of paint on the nest boxes and the outside of the box

We were going to have the condo inside the fence, but it cut down on so much space we decided to take the chain link off the back pannel and replace it with chicken wire we could cut a whole through for the condo doors.

Our first egg.... if I could just figure out how to make the chicken stop eating thier own eggs before I can...

Gratuitous piggie pic

I haz a Piggies!!!!!

Scott took a picture of me being all hillbilly and weeding my garden.

I've given up on pulling every weed one at a time since then. They've become a carpet that's everywhere. I've taken to reaching down into the dirt and grabbing a handfull of weed and soil and just churning everything up. Scotty bought me a Garden Weasle. It's not so great at digging up the weeds between the rows. It does get some of them out, and it sure makes the soil alot looser so I can dig in with my hands and get the weeds out though.



I got to go play cowgirl last week with my friend Andrea and Honey Jo. Honey's dad was moving some cows down the valley, and up over the mountians to a smaller high valley on the other side. Let me tell you, those cows were not happy about being pushed up the hill. The were lined out and moving along as long as they thought they were moving to the next ranch down the velley. Soon as we turned them up the fenceline it was a fight the whole way. The side of the mountian was rather steep. Steep enough that I prolly wouldn't have chosen to go up it if I'd just been out for a trail ride. Good thing 'Ole Benjamin Butthead has worked cows before. Dad Cisco and Andrea got a bunch of those critters moving up towards the top and me and HJ were trying to keep pushing from the bottom. I ended up pointing Ben right through the middle of them and whooping and hollaring drove right up the middle. Managed to push some of them up, then circled back down and did it again.

Here's the view from the top looking back the way we came. The view was worth the trip alone.

Scotty almost has my chicken condo done. It's turning out just the way I was hoping when he was decribing how he wanted to build it. This is a view through the top into one of the nest boxes. He made the lid with hinges on the outside so I can just lift the lid and grab my eggs and go.

Scotty and the boy working in the garage on the chicken condo

And now we move onto finishing the pig pen, because yesterday I picked up the piggiez!!!! Scott and the boy worked hard all day getting it ready for the pigs.

Here's Scotty trying to herd them out of the trailer. They were not happy about coming out. It was getting late in the evening after we unloaded them so I promise more pics later today.

Am I the only one who likes pulling weeds?

 I think I'm the only person I know who likes pulling weeds. I don't like the fact that there are weeds in my garden. I don't like being bent over or crouched down for eighty feet at a time. My back hurts and my knees creak when I stand up. I don't think there is a square inch out there that doesn't have something growing that shouldn't be there. But then there is that little sound the roots make as they let go is what does it for me. That little snap, and then the whole plant, root and all at there between your fingers. That's what I like about weeding. Pinching the little leaves in my fingers, or having to dig under the plant just a little bit, and then... SNAP. No more weed.Toss it in my little bucket, move forwards a little, and repeat. It just makes me happy. I can go out and pull for a while, go do something else, and back out there again, snick, snick, snick.

I have all kinds of stuff coming up in my garden. Stuffs that I put in as seeds are poking their little leaves out of the dirt to say hello. I'm amazed. After all the trouble I went to to start plants inside this year and last, and to have them all die, to see things starting to poke out that I put in the ground as seeds amazes me. I put in cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, cantaloupe, squashes, and strawberries as plants I got from the garden center. I also set out seeds of everything but the tomatoes, and added peas, carrots, radishes, and corn. There is little plants coming up where I set the seeds. This makes me do a little happy dance in my seat.

Little bitty corn plants coming up

I forgot I planted radishes and finally gave up on them and planted peppers. Well here come the radish

Onions

 Strawberries

  I added three blueberry bushes at the back of the garden

 Sugar snap peas

 View of the garden

So the calf is next door. Piggies still on the way, but now I have chickens. Six hens and a rooster. Andrea took the other three hens. I already have gotten eggs from them and they've only been here since Sunday. It's a friend of my neighbor that had them and he gave us a heck of a deal on them $5 each for last years babies. So they are just over a year old. The rooster had something funky going on with his legs and walks a little weird, but he was free so I don't care. We were told they are New Jersey Black Giants. They don't seem to be any bigger than the hens Andrea already has, but I read they don't finish growing out till around 18-24 months. They lay brown eggs. I've gotten a very pale almost white, some regular browns, and a brown with dark speckles. I'm very excited to go out every afternoon and find eggs that my own chickens have left for me. They are still living in the rabbit hutch. Scotty has to finish the outside nest boxes still on my chicken condo.