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Hi Everyone,
Have you seen any robins lately? I have, and I’ve been hearing the bluebirds chirping away as they fly all around the farm. With the rains we have had this week; it truly is looking like spring as the grasses begin to turn green. The elephant grass in the backyard is already a foot tall. The different types of daffodils are blooming, and while the tulips have done a great job of leafing out, I believe that they are not enjoying the heat. We shall see as the days pass by, but so far it looks like the flowers are melting before they get two inches tall.
Today is the Day!
Do you ever have a list of things that you need to get done before a certain time, but you never seem to get around to doing any of them? With the spring garden and chicken processing season fast approaching, we have a long list of things that need to be done.
1. Seal the floors in the poultry kitchen
2. Seal the wall seams in the poultry kitchen so that the rain will quit coming in
3. Find sinks, tables, and knives for the Poultry kitchen
4. Weed the garden areas
5. Order seeds
6. Make the garden beds
7. Buy compost
8. Buy mulch—unless we can find some free wood chips
9. Plan where to plant all the flowers and veggies
10. Start the seeds in seed trays
They are all things that need to get done, and one day will get done, but it can be very hard to remember that we need to do them. Well, last Monday I decided that it was the day to move the chickens into the garden so that they can weed for us. We have about seven weeks before we need to plant the garden, and the weeds are so thick, that I decided to hire the chickens. The one thing that has caused us to procrastinate putting the chickens in the garden is that we do not have a little house for them to lay eggs in and be locked up in at night. We have used a hoop house before—but the men folk all say that they are too heavy to pick up and put over the fence. I would love to have a 3ft by 8ft chickshaw—but I don’t have one. I thought that we could just use an old chain link fence dog kennel—they are not heavy to move. For a roof I would just bend some PVC pipe and put a tarp over it---------but my idea just wouldn’t work. So Mom came to the rescue. While weeding was on her agenda for the day, her plans got changed and we spent the whole day building a Chicken Shack—and let me tell you “It is a SHACK!” After much “can we use this?—no that will not work.” “How about this?—no that won’t work.” We finally settled on five wooden 4 x 4 pallets, one wooden 4 by 8 pallet, a 4 x 8 piece of plastic lattice, hay string, screws, old white vinyl siding, an old leaky tarp, three wooden nesting boxes that we found by the wood shed, two pieces of 2 x 2 wood from the broken windmill shaft, and a 30 year old chicken wire/wooden door that went to our very first turkey house. It took us all day long to turn our “scraps” into a “shack”. While the roof is screwed to the walls, the walls are all tied together with hay string. The tarp is tied on too—good thing, because we need a new one since we found out it leaks. The little shack is 4ft x 8ft, and is housing 13 chickens. We put 14 in there, but we cannot figure out where number 14 disappeared too--hopefully not in the stomach of the hawk that I saw hanging around there yesterday. The chickens like their new shack very well, have taken kindly to their new nesting boxes—we get 2 eggs a day. The chickens are old, so since they do not pay rent with eggs, we let them weed in exchange for room and board.
And he huffed and he puffed, and he burned the weeds all gone!
Tuesday morning when we were done milking the cows we had the sheer joy of heading to the garden. There were beds to weed, flowers to transplant form the greenhouse, and a pile of pruned branches from the roses and lemon tree that needed to be burned. Last year I planted a mix of pollinator wildflowers—bee, butterfly and hummingbird feed. In that mix was a California poppy. When that one plant bloomed, the whole garden benefited from the bright orange flowers. I loved them so much that I bought a whole packet of California poppy seeds. We planted them in seed trays back in October, and they were now ready to grow in the garden. I tucked those little plants all over the garden, and hope to get a good ORANGE show in a few months. Along with the poppies, I planted snapdragons, baby’s breath, and Shasta daisies everywhere I could find an open spot, or an easy to weed spot. While we weeded and planted, Papa came out with his flame thrower—simply called a propane torch. We have a fire pit in the middle of the garden with concrete all around it. The fire pit was full of branches, and the concrete was too—but Papa made it all quickly disappear. We then gathered up other piles of wooden weeds and threw them into the fire. The garden got a nice face lift that day—I just didn’t get a roasted hot dog.
O where, O where can it be?
Keeping our animals fed lately has been quite a challenge. We seem to run out of hay, before we can get another shipment delivered, and this time we ran out of chicken feed—but we were not supposed to. Feeding our chickens corn and soy-free feed is really nice when you are allergic to corn, but when you get low, and cannot get another shipment in, we cannot run down to the local feed store and get a bag of feed. Our feed comes all the way from Virginia, and for the most part it always arrives on time. If the bank account was big enough, we wouldn’t have to worry how many tons of feed are ordered on the credit card—but alas, you have to have money to pay your bills. Therefore, I can only order so much feed per month, and I cannot order again until the credit card rolls over to a new month. One pallet holds 45 bags of feed, but we go through 60 bags a month just to feed the laying hens. A local feed store does carry the feed we use, but they only keep 10 to 15 in stock, which is about what we need to finish out the month. Last month they were short 3 bags, and they do not order more just because they ran out. Thankfully though, we had a few extra bags, and our new shipment for this month would arrive the day we ran out—at least it was supposed to. The tracking number said that it would be here by Tuesday night. I meant to call the UPS freight in Jacksonville at 6:00 Tuesday morning to make sure that it was coming—but I forgot. At 3:00 that afternoon I called them to make sure the feed was on the truck, and they told me that our order had been removed from the delivery truck. UGH! I asked if we could come and pick it up ourselves. The man said that he would go and track down the feed and call me back. At 4:30 I still had not heard back from him, so I called again. He had forgotten! For the next thirty minutes he looked all over the docks, and at 5:00 he called back and said that he could not locate our feed. He asked if we could be there at 5:00 in the morning. Papa didn’t want to drive to JAX at 3:00 in the afternoon; I knew that he would never drive there at 3:00 in the morning. So, I asked the man how early he could get the feed to me on Wednesday. He told me that I would be the first stop, and that it would arrive between 10:00 and 12:00 Wednesday morning. I was grateful, and hung up. At 9:00 Wednesday morning I called to make sure that the feed had been found—and it had. I was informed that we would be the third or fourth stop, and that the truck doesn’t leave JAX until 10:00, but that the feed should be here by 1:00. Papa had to leave to make the Jacksonville farm delivery at 11:45, that meant that Steve would have to off load the feed—and this time I had ordered 2 tons of feed since we are now feeding broiler chicks too. At 12:30 I called the UPS Freight to see where the driver was. He was in Baldwin, Florida, and it would be another hour before he got to Lake City. UGH! Steve had to leave to go home at 1:00. That left us with just the garage to cram 2 tons of feed into, and now Mom and I would have to lug a 50 pound bag up to feed the chickens. Two o’clock came and went, and so did three o’clock. Come 3:30 I called the office again and they told me that the driver was in Live Oak—that is 45 minutes past Lake City. Do you know what it is like to want to complain real badly—but you cannot complain to the person who is responsible for your problem, and everyone that you do talk to can do nothing about it? At 5:00 my brother-in-law came over with the children for a visit, and just as he was leaving at 5:50 the UPS freight truck came rolling down the road. Thankfully Gary was able to dump a 50 pound bag of feed into two buckets so that Mom and I could go give the chickens dinner—just an hour before it got dark enough for them to go to bed. Thankfully our chickens run lose all day, so they had bugs, grass, and weeds to eat. They sure did mob the grain though when we finally got to dump it in their troughs.
Poor Pa!
Two tons of feed arrived at 6:00 Wednesday evening—but Papa was gone. We had the driver cram them into the garage, so that Papa could take care of them on Thursday. All day Wednesday we also waited for the man to deliver us another truck load of hay—it never arrived on Wednesday, but when we headed outside Thursday morning, the hay was in our driveway. Papa now had 2 tons of feed to put away and 42 rolls of hay to off load and stack in the barn—and Steve doesn’t work on Thursday’s. He quickly fed up the chickens and dogs, and then got the hay unloaded. After the hay was unloaded, then he could restock the hay racks for the animals. When all that was done, he began to move the feed from the garage to the feed room. Before he finished, Moises was ready to go home. While Pa took Moises home, Mom started lunch and I worked on my latest floral arrangement—although it had no flowers in it. Years ago I read how Tasha Tudor would force tree branches every spring. Needless to say, we do not have any flowering trees, but Tasha did use birch as one of her trees. If I had pussy willow I would use it for sure. I did this once before, and it makes a very simple but grand display. I finally took some time and headed to the pond to cut some branches. When I got home, both Moises and Papa wanted to know what I was going to do with my arm load of three foot long branches. All I said was, “decorate,” for they just wouldn’t understand. So, while Mom cooked lunch (she stole the ground beef that I had out for dinner to make hamburgers with—and she made hamburgers for lunch), I made my stick décor. Just as we finished lunch, Papa called—the truck had stopped running and he was stuck on the side of the road about 10 minutes away. Mom had to go and get him. After Papa ate his lunch, he moved more feed to the feed room. Then Gary came over and drove Papa back to the truck and they tried to figure out what was wrong with it. About an hour later I saw Gary towing Papa home. By then the sky was turning black, and the evening chores needed to be done.
Valentine’s Day
Thursday night we watched a YouTube where the Parisienne Farmgirl painted a beautiful cake. I remembered that I had a heart shaped cake pan, and I wondered if I could find a recipe for a chocolate cake that used Cassava Flour. To my delight I found a recipe before I went to bed and it was my top priority Friday. As soon as we finished milking the cows, bottling the milk and kefir, and taking care of some laundry, I headed to the kitchen to create my heart shaped chocolate cake. I began gathering my ingredients, and my appliances—but I couldn’t find my heart shaped cake pan. Surely I didn’t throw it out when I cleaned out the kitchen a few years back! I looked in every cupboard, I grabbed the flashlight and climbed in two cupboards—no cake pan! I headed for the attic, the garage, the pantry—but no cake pan! Evidently I trashed it—but it was probably because it was not made out of stainless steel. I wanted a pretty shaped cake, and while Papa said that I could use a round cake pan and a square cake pan to make a heart—the cake recipe only made an 8 inch cake. Since we do not eat a lot of sweets, I really didn’t want to double the recipe. So I used our glass ring cake pan, with the idea of dumping it out, icing it and filling the middle whole up with strawberries. I made the cake (https://traditionalcookingschool.com/food-preparation/paleo-chocolate-cake/) and when it was done I started the icing. As I cooked the icing I realized that I would not be able to dump the cake out of the pan. The ganache icing was a liquid that you were supposed to pour warm over the warm cake and then place it in the fridge for three hours—where it would then thicken. As I poured the icing over the cake, Mom thought that it would be great to have the icing run down the sides of the cake. She took a knife and loosened the cake from the sides so that the icing could seep down the sides. Then all of a sudden we watched as the cake lifted and began to float—I didn’t know whether to laugh, or be upset that Mom just ruined the cake. Well, she didn’t actually ruin it; she just created a new way to icing the bottom of the cake. I thought that when the cake was cooled, we should be able to dump the cake out and then the icing would be on the top—but alas, the icing was like glue, and the cake was firmly anchored to the cake pan. In the end though, the cake was absolutely scrumptious, and like the lady who made the recipe said—the leftovers just get better. While the cake chilled in the fridge, Mom and I headed to town to stroll through the arts and crafts at the Olustee Crafts Festival. On our way home we stopped to buy some strawberries to go with our chocolate cake. For dinner I cooked Spicy Honey Mustard Chicken wings, kale and some red carrots. After dinner Papa showed up with a black lamb that had white scribbles all over it. Papa found him curled up next to his mother—we do not know why, but she had died. Now we have a true orphan lamb and I am calling him Valentine.
A Cooking we will go
Today we had a special potluck dinner at church officially welcoming our new Pastor. Therefore, I spent all afternoon Saturday working in the kitchen. That morning was spent milking the cows and packing the Gainesville order. Then I had to go to the garden to harvest some greens. After I got the receipts done, I headed back to the garden to harvest a weed—chickweed that is. We found it growing heavily under the roses beside the garden shed, and since I wanted to harvest it, we left it there until I could go back and gather it. That is what I did yesterday, and after I washed it up I put it on the dehydrator so that I can use it for my Soothing Salve that I make. On the dehydrator I had some dried orange peels that I ground up to powder—I like to use it for cooking and in teas. My stash was pretty full, so I decided to sell some this year. The rest of the afternoon was spent making some oven-fried chicken drumsticks and some Pineapple-Ginger Sweet Potatoes. Then it was time to bring the cows in out of the green field, and round up the sheep to one field instead of two—or three. When we got back inside it was time for dinner, and may I say that we were doing dishes around 8:00, and I was pretty tired of the kitchen by then. I am thankful though that I have a nice kitchen to work in, and that we had some scrumptious homegrown food to cook.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare