The Canning Shelves

Hubby built me canning shelves today!! He's so glad to have that wood out of the way, and the canned stuff out of the way, and I'm so glad to have this glorious way to see what I still need to be DOING!!

I could use at least 20 more pints of salsa, 20 more qts of purple hull cowpeas, 20 more squash pickles, and I want some plain squash, corn, and more berry jams.

This is GREAT!!

Life is full of joy and sorrow, and sometimes it's all happening at the same time.

Tonight, Rachel invited us to dinner for Coq au vin. We always have wonderful talks while there, the kids get along great, and she has a piano I get to play! Rachel was very gracious with us tonight, because we had a baby bunny that Monty discovered wasn't doing well. He'd gotten chilled during the bad weather today, and Monty had Jessica holding him to warm him and get him back up to par. They were giving him sugar water, and taking turns holding him. We all sat down to dinner, and Jessica had the bunny in her lap. She had decided that she'd keep this one as her indoor pet, and she'd worked out how to get it litter box trained, how it would live in her bedroom, she had it named "Flop" and she was instantly in love.

We visited for a while, and gathered around the piano for conversation and quiet playing. Jessie and her dad took turns with the bunny so she could play a bit, too. Then we sat down to dinner. The Coq au vin was WONDERFUL, the asparagus divine, and the fingerling potatoes were perfect. We were eating and laughing and enjoying ourselves, and I looked over at the bunny beside me. No nose twitching, no breathing - he was gone. Jessica was (understandably) overcome with emotion, and she and her daddy went outside. Rachel followed and got a shovel, and Dad and daughter solemnly said goodbye to Flop in Rachel's flowerbed.

Everyone came back to the table and the conversation slowly started back and worked its way back to laughter. It's interesting how this farm life helps you value and enjoy the little lives of the creatures we enjoy so much, and how it teaches you about things passing away. I know Jessica isn't "over it" and won't be for some time. I also know she grew a little bit today, and she was willing to put in lots of extra time and effort to save this baby. That is such a lesson in denying self, and this bunny was a lesson in taking a risk to love. It is beautiful.

The Garden

Here are a few pics from the garden. Note the baby tomato hornworm - I named him Gozer the Gozarian - the Destructor.

The Ducks

Here are the ducks. They are HUGE!! Only one has a name so far and it is Spot. He has a white area on his neck.

The Puppies

Here are Eduard du Chocolat (Eddy) and Vianne de CoCo (ViVi), our standard chocolate poodles. They are betrothed. Vivi has a pink collar, and Eddy's is blue. He's a milk chocolate color, and she is more of a dark chocolate.

The "Layin' Hens"

I have 6 Americaunas and 7 Black Australorps that I bought in April to be my laying hens. With 6 of us, I figured 12 hens (we got a baker's dozen) would make plenty of eggs for us and the neighbors. Well, still waiting on the BOUNTY of eggs, but after getting the one, I am encouraged. The large black one with bright red comb and waddle is 'Bigmamma.' The grey and tan hen is an Americauna. They vary in color, and are really QUITE gorgeous. I have 4 more girls I've put in the pen with the 6-month-olds. These girls are Americaunas of various colors - 11 weeks old - and are named. White one is Marilyn, golden/reddish one is Pocahontas, grey with black head is Jemima, and mostly grey is Martha.

Baby Chicks

The chicks arrived! I got 250 (plus overages for shipping incidents) pullets in the mail today. They had left off the Japanese Black Bantams. :-(

I have a pic of a buff orpington (yellow) and a silver-laced wyandotte (black w/ white). I also got Rhode Island Reds, gold-laced wyandottes, and barred rocks. They are SO cute, and that's a LOT of chickens!

Goat Girls

The caramel colored girl is Nellie, and she is lying with her sister Josie. They are triplets with the boy named Billy. These girls love to be petted and held and they are just precious. They are a little smaller than Spencer, so about the size of a full grown cat. The silver-beige girl with almost no ears and ominous 5-inch horns is precious, sweet Lilly Potter - yes - Harry's mom. She follows you around like a puppy wanting to be petted and sweet-talked, but I'm still not turning my back on those horns. I think I've already posted pics of Mary and Carly. We have 8 goats, 5 girls and 3 boys, and they are the reason I wanted to move to the country. They have great personalities and are SO much fun to watch. There is a big, long fallen pine tree in their fence, and they love to climb up on it and run the length of it. There is a dirt mound in there, too, and the girls play "king of the hill" all the time.

Goat Guys

The boys: Black one with white is Spencer the Short, caramel colored one is Billy (original, huh?), and tall, silver-beige one is Harry Potter. That is a dog bowl they are eating out of for a size reference. Spencer is about the size of a Jack Russell terrier. They are all the same age - born around April 1.

265 baby chicks on the way. 265, yes, 265.

I called the hatchery a few weeks ago to find out what breed of chickens would be available in August and September. There were 5 egg-laying breeds available in August and only one in September, and then NOTHING until February.

Well, we reacted with all expected swiftness to keep our chicken business thriving. We ordered 50 pullets (females) each of the 5 breeds available for the month:
* 50 Silver-laced Wyandottes
* 50 Gold-laced Wyandottes
* 50 Buff Orpingtons
* 50 Barred Plymouth Rocks
* 50 Rhode Island Reds

Makes total sense to me. "Oh, yes, "I said to the nice lady at the hatchery. "Do you have any Japanese Black Bantams I can order?" "Yes," she says, "but they are straight run only and minimum order is 15." "Please add that to my order," I said.

Well, I want to raise bantam chickens, and I don't know what breed I have right now. If I'm going to raise them, I have to know their "pedigree" don't I? Anyway, they are just SO cute.

Tomorrow or Friday, they will arrive, and we'll get a call from the post office around 7:30am. We'll have lots and lots and lots of fuzzy babies! They will be so cute and stinky!

The incredible, edible egg . . . .

One anonymous Americauna hen laid our very first chicken egg today!! It is about a size medium and is greenish turquoise in color. To celebrate, I poked holes in it, blew out the contents (which we'll put in with others for a celebratory omelet tomorrow), wrote on it with Sharpie, and coated with glossy medium! It will be proudly displayed as our $140 first egg. ;-) . . . . ;-| . . . . ;-(

I wrote, "First Hen Egg, 8/19/09" on one side and a big "#1" on the other.

We are all very egg-cited here! We now know that we have at least ONE hen that will lay eggs, and maybe the others will start laying soon. They turned 6 months old today, so we're due for some major eggage.

I integrated 4 more Americauna girls that are about 11 or 12 weeks old in with them over the week. They stay out of the way of the big mammas, but they seem to be doing OK so far.

Canning up a storm!!!!

Canning is a wonderful thing when the air conditioner is running full blast! Monty and I had run a whole box of roma tomatoes through the food processor on Wednesday, and went ahead and did the onions, peppers, pineapple, etc. and let the salsa stand in the water bath canner pot in the fridge for 4 days. Sunday morning, bright and early, I awoke to a clean kitchen, sterilized pint jars, and a full head of steam to get this done. So, I did, and we got 21 jars filled and began to process. I lost a jar in the first batch of salsa - first one EVER! But the rest processed up fine.

Then the adventure really began. I took out the half-pint jelly jars and the pear juice I'd made from all those pear peels and cores from the pear relish. It was SO easy making the jelly! Sure-Jell, sugar, pear juice, and a bit of added flavor from either crystallized ginger or vanilla bean and VOILA!! A gorgeous, translucent golden treat in a lovely little glass container. Just beautiful. I ladled out the excess and let the family try some. They LOVED it! I made one reduced-sugar batch for my Mother-in-Law and another friend with diabetes. I didn't have enough left over to taste-test it, so I hope it's good. It jelled quicker than the regular!

I have lots of hot peppers from our friend Tony, and I'm trying to decided whether to make hot pepper jelly or just make pepper sauce. World Market has lots of great containers for that kind of stuff if I decide on sauce.

I found a really cheap online source for vanilla beans, and I may make real vanilla (extract) for gifts this Christmas. Just need cute jars for it, and I'll look at Hobby Lobby and World Market for those.

BTW, new adventure coming soon - blowing quail eggs! I want to blow out the stuff inside, rinse the eggs, and let it dry. Then put some shiny stuff on it to protect it and sell several in a little fake bird's nest. They should be SO cute!

Back to school week was a busy one!

The animals are all doing well, but getting MUCH less attention this week with the children back at school. Monty and I have been in Birmingham on business or doctor/dentist visits almost every day last week, and will be again for several days this week. We had 29 quail babies hatch last week and we lost only 3! Our average is much better on this batch. We've pickled 5 dozen more jars of a dozen quail eggs each, and we have 50 or so ready to go.

I have a lady coming tomorrow to buy 30 or so chickens, and that's probably all I'll sell out of that batch leaving me around 12 to add to my STILL NOT laying hens. Meanwhile, I placed another order at the hatchery and will receive 250 chickens around the 21st of August. Am I ready??? I think NOT! OY VEY!

I am excited about them, though. Along with the pullets, I ordered a set of straight run Japanese Black Bantams which means I'll get males and females. I want to raise these birds - they are SO beautiful. The bantams I have in chicken tractors in the garden each have a mating pair, and one has an extra hen - I call her the mistress. These little roosters are crowing now, but they are so small, it's like the volume is turned WAY down on a big rooster! It sounds SO cute!! You see this little rooster strut all around, and puff up his chest, and ER ER ERRRRRRRR! It's just a bit squeaky! ;o) This pic if from another website, but it shows what my roosters look like, so I think they are Old English Game Bantam Roosters.

The ducks are getting absolutely HUGE!! The ducks in the picture are fully feathered juveniles, and mine still have LOTS of ducky fuzz, and some feathering on the chest and sides. I still have no ideas which are males or females in the seven we've raised successfully. They are having a BLAST toodling around in the garden, chasing crickets, ending my grub infestation, and sampling fire ants here and there.

Well, more to come later in the week as I ready the brooder pen for the new gangs.

A/C finally working again!!

Now I'm ready to fill like a hundred half-pint jars with pear relish and water bath them.

I also have 4 jugs of pear juice made from pear cores and peels, and I'm going to make ginger pear jam and vanilla-bean pear jam (or a simpler jelly) with them. I'm SO excited to see how it'll look. It will HAVE to be gorgeous.

I've bought a bunch of beautiful fabrics (in bags from the thrift store - YAY!) that I will use by cutting into squares and placing under the ring of the jars and it makes them even MORE gorgeous! I can hardly wait, so I have to go now and DO this work.

Heat processing on hot days . . . .

Yesterday, Monty and I decided to can our green beans and make pear relish, so we set out about 8am to buy the necessities to go with the free pears Rachel gave me (thanks again, Rachel) to make her absolutely unbelievably good pear relish. I went to Walmart and bought celery and lemon juice so I could use my ATM card for $40 cash. Then we went to the Saturday version of the Cattle Sale (really veggies and critters only, no great junk) to buy 12 onions, 12 red bell peppers, 12 green bell peppers, and 2 (or more) hot red peppers. We got all the red bell peppers for $3 (let me repeat $3!!!!!!!), green peppers for the same, onions $10 for 15 huge white onions, and $2 for a big basket of jalapenos. So, I decided we'd make salsa, too, and I bought a BOX of roma tomatoes for $12. Then we left and went to Darlene's discount grocery store and bought 3 jugs of apple cider vinegar - big ones - for $1.75 each, and a big jug of balsamic vinegar for $4.99 - the really good stuff to add to our pickled quail eggs for color and flavor.

We began snapping beans about 11am while Monty located, washed and put in the dishwasher to sanitize about 25 quart jars, 12 pint jars, and 30 or so half pints.

We began packing beans about 2pm, and we put 7 quart jars at a time in the pressure canner. Well, you're boiling about 12 quarts of water and all those beans and jars and it takes a while to get up a steam, then you letter the canner steam about 10 minutes, then you put the pressure gauge on and let the pressure begin to rise. To get to 11 pounds of pressure took about 20 minutes at full blast, then you set the timer for 25 minutes for green beans. So, you're cooking this huge pot of hot mess under pressure at intense heat with the eye on HIGH on the stove for about and hour before you turn the stove off to let it slowly lose pressure and you can open it and put it the next batch. It takes about 30 - 40 minutes to get the pressure back down! So that's about 1.5 to 2 hours of HIGH heat in the kitchen on this one item. And, I had 3 batches to do. And, I'm working on getting pears peeled and cored and chopped for relish.

MEANWHILE, the central a/c has been out for 3 weeks. Yes, that's right. 3 weeks from mid July until now, because we are under a "home warranty." This is fancy terminology for it'll take as long as possible for the chosen contractors to fix anything with the cheapest available part that'll go out again by next summer. That's OK though, because our A/C went out last August for 3 weeks, and we bought window units - one for the back of the house, one for the front - to compensate and to keep from DYING in the ALABAMA HEAT!!!!!!!! So, yesterday, during this intense canning day with major heat being generated in the kitchen, little did we know the window unit in the living room - front of the house with the kitchen - had frozen up and wasn't blowing cold air. By 9pm, the whole front of the house was about 90 degrees, and we were about to DIE of heat! We didn't figure out why until this morning, after the 21 quarts of green beans have been through the process and are sealed up tight and gorgeous.

Also yesterday, while the green beans were processing, Monty and I measured out the ingredients for the pear relish which called for "a peck" of pears. We decided this meant 18 qts, so we took 2 big bowls from the kitchen, measured roughly and pulled out and washed 18 qts of pears and began peeling and coring and chopping them for the relish. We peeled and chopped for 2 movies with the pears, then the bell peppers, then the onions, and the hot peppers. Then I made the syrup and covered all of it in a huge pot and put the cover on to let it sit overnight. I put all the peels and cores on to boil for pear peel jelly as the pressure canner began the last batch of green beans. At 12 something am this morning, I turned everything off, showered, and began to wind down to try to go to sleep. Then I remember; we only cut up the first 18 qts of pears - that's only one recipe's worth!!! OMG!!! We have to peel pears AGAIN today!!!!! Oh, well, I guess we'll have a movie marathon of some sort for this round, too.

This stuff BETTER turn out to be as good as Rachel's!!!

How will we fit farm chores in now that school is starting?

Creativity, my love. Creativity.

With school starting back, the children are a little worried about their various beloved farm animals missing out on so much attention that they've gotten all summer. We really didn't have anything but laying hens until school was out.

I've got it all worked out with each child doing about 15 minutes (max) of animal chores before school. Noah will feed and water goats. Jessica will take care of bunnies and cats. Annie and Lizzie will feed chickens, but Dad and I will do the water because it's HEAVY. Dad and I will take care of the puppies, the ducks, and the bantams in the garden. THERE! Everyone's fed.

After school, the children will attend to the animals again, but at this time they'll have time for petting and playing and talking to them at length. Noah has been letting the boys out to graze - unfenced - for a short time each day, and I want him to keep that up. Jessica has been taking out the baby bunnies and holding and petting them for a time each day, so they'll be ready to be a good pet for someone. Annie and Lizzy pick up the chickens and pet them, too, for the same reason. The ducks are great to "play" with, but they don't love to be held. They like to follow me around in the garden and taste EVERYTHING - dirt, plants, crickets, whatever.

There will be lots of adjustments as the kids start back to school, and we start our business back up in our new town, but we'll get through it.

Experimenting with Ranging

Today we allowed (okay - forced) one of our hens out of the "hundred pen" to roam around for the day. She's not one of the purebreds that I can sell as such, so she was chosen for her unmarketability. It's not that we don't love her though.

Anyway, she did great all day long pecking and roaming about, and generally staying close to the pen. We put her back in around 7pm with the evening feeding.

We have only 6 Americauna hens left, and now I can distinguish between them so well that we named a few of them. The black headed with a golden body is Cleopatra. The black headed with red body is Pocahontas. The black headed with grey body is Jemima. The all white one (we think she's Americauna - there are a few tan colored spots on her) is Marilyn. The white one with lots of tan on her is Martha. The all grey one is Phyllis Diller. I was going to name one Farrah as a tribute, but she got purchased Sunday afternoon.

Back to ranging, I decided to close the garden gate and allow the ducks out of their cage for the first time ever. They were SO cute. We'd just mown the grass in the walkways and I'd pulled lots of plants, so we mowed there, too. There were just dozens of crickets hopping around. The ducks began their systematic search of the garden floor, meandering in every area I led them to. They tasted mown grass, weed leaves, purple hull peas (they did NOT like), and lots of crickets! When the time came for me to house them for the night, I simply filled their waterer and they went right back into the cage. I'm SO looking forward to them ranging all the time! They are getting SO big!

The garden is ready to finish tilling and begin the August planting of carrots, more rattlesnake pole beans, purple hull cowpeas, squash, potatoes, leeks, and lots of other goodies. It's going to be interesting to record all this and make decisions about the garden next year based on this year's data.

Gardening and Canning Today . . . .

Today's agenda is very full.

*Feed and water animals.

*Pull squash plants and spent purple hull pea plants and put them in the compost pile.

*Mow the tall grass between veggies in the garden.

*Till for new plantings.

*Plant according to the fall planting guide I just got from the county extension service - at least squash, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, swiss chard, etc.

*Wash, snap, and can about 20 pounds of green beans.

*Pick up a load of free pears and start peeling for processing tomorrow.

Making pear preserves, pear relish, pear peel jelly, and maybe pear honey. I'll put some recipes in tomorrow while I'm procrastinating by blogging like today!!!! I gotta get going.

I think Spencer is a fainting goat, and I KNOW he's a little fatty butterball!

Spencer is beginning to exhibit strange behaviors that - if I hadn't ever heard of before - would scare me to death that he was neurologically disturbed or something.

Noah was holding him like a baby on Sunday, and his little beer-gut looking belly was all round and puffy. Noah put him down awkwardly and Spencer tumbled over on his back. Well, instead of immediately trying to right himself, he went stiff-legged and his eyes rolled back for about 10 seconds or so. Then he started trying to get up and then walked away.

When I remarked about how odd that was, Noah told me that when the dogs had startled him the other day he flipped over backward and did the same thing!! He must be a fainter. I have to look them up and find out more.

More Quail Babies!!!

Hubby went to visit a new friend yesterday who raises quail. After a two-hour visit, he'd learned a great deal about hatching, brooding, housing, mating, and then slaughtering and cleaning quail. He even got a new recipe for pickled quail eggs that we are excited to try.

He brought home 11 new adults, one of which has already laid an egg (YAY!!), and 28 day old quail babies! We quickly retrieved the 10-gal aquarium we'd bought at the flea market and outfitted it with special non-slick paper and a shop light for heat and moved the babies from the shoe box they traveled in to the warm make-shift brooder.

They quickly began to get their "sea legs" and stand, making it to the small pile of ground up game bird feed and to the waterer. They are SO cute and we can't believe our quail babies were that small only two weeks ago!

BIGGEST tomato hornworm I've ever seen . . . .

Today, I visited the rain-soaked garden and noticed much lush greenery missing from some of my newest tomato plants in the roma patch! I mean branches stripped nekkid of leaves!! Well, on closer inspection, I spy the well-camouflaged fiend. How could I miss him??!! He's bigger than the trunk of the plant, for cryin' out Pete!! Yikes!

He was about the size of my middle finger - 1/2" in diameter and about 3" long. BLECH! It gives me the willies just thinkin' about it. Hubby plucked him off the strange-looking tomato plant sans leaves, and we dropped him into the chicken tractor with the bantam chickens. They looked at us like, "What the heck? How we gonna eat that? No knife, no fork, and it's still movin'? Nuh uh. Not us."

Well, smart new farmers that we are, we picked him back up and put him in our little basket and took him over to the duck pen and tossed him in there. The 3-week old ducks walked all over him getting their water. Two of them finally noticed him and pinched him a couple of times with their beaks, then went back to the stupid feeder and waterer.

Disgusted, we walked away. I looked back and the hornworm gave me the eye and stuck his tongue out at me. I shook my head and kept walking. Like the Terminator, he'll be back.

Hens, I want eggs, dang it!!!

OK, I've begged, I've pleaded, I've cajoled, and now, I'm going to start threatening! My hens were 6 months old in mid-July, and they were supposed to start laying in July. Today is August 1, and not ONE egg yet.

I stuck a rooster in there for about 2 minutes on Thursday, and I've never seen a bigger CHICKEN than HE. Those hens had him on the run the second his feet hit the ground. They let him know right QUICK they didn't need his kind around.

So, I'm left with no option. I'm going to walk in that hen house and tell them how it's gonna be. I want eggs. I'm going to fry one hen every day until I start getting EGGS!!!!! That'll show 'em.

Hmmmph. (envision me hands on hips, neck moving, and snapping 3 times as I turn and stomp off)